Peter Hitchens has set out the principles by which he believes a true conservative manifesto ought to be written. Lots to argue with, I'm sure.
Here it is:
"Britain, though one of the freest countries in the world, and one of the most stable societies, with a long history of limited government and the rule of law, is not a happy, contented or particularly peaceful home for many of its inhabitants. Yet it is also uniquely prosperous, with material wealth unmatched in its history combined with enormous, generously funded public services and welfare systems for the less well-off.
Low-level disorder and misbehaviour are a grave and dispiriting feature of the lives of many. Authority seems unable or reluctant to act against either. Yet this weakness is coupled with an increasing amount of official, bureaucratic interference with the private and even personal lives of law-observing, productive, peaceful people.
A large part of the population is concentrated into the big cities and heavily-urbanised landscape of the South East. Many find the resulting congestion uncomfortable and are made anxious and bad-tempered by permanently thronged streets and almost unrelieved heavy road traffic. The high cost of housing means that many people are living in confined spaces, closer to their neighbours and more dependent on their goodwill than before.
Into this stressful and cramped society arrive increasing numbers of young people, who have been educated and raised in ways quite different from those common in the recent past. I am not talking about new migrants, but about the rising generation, especially among the poor. Households lack fathers, and in many cases any figure of authority at all. Old family and kinship networks, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friendly neighbours who keep an eye out for you, have virtually ceased to exist. Any adult who tries to discipline or even help a child to whom he is not related can be accused of 'paedophilia' or of assault. The police, who have some powers to intervene, rarely do so and are in any case largely absent. Home life, in homes without real families, is influenced by powerful outside forces - TV, advertising, computer games, rock music, even gangs - that challenge and deny the authority of parents when they try to exert it. Inevitably, these problems are worse in the areas where the poor live.
Schools, struggling to maintain discipline without the power to enforce it, and handicapped by some of the worst teaching methods and structures imaginable, can do little to overcome this. They are under competing pressures to expel pupils who will not behave (as the teachers and the pupils want) and to keep them in school (as the state wants). What were previously national habits of mind, based on a common understanding of the lore of the tribe gained through shared history, customs and traditions have lost their power because these things have simply ceased to be taught. People under 35 now often don't know them at all. The failure to teach good reading skills is also important, since these older forms of culture were often passed on through the written word and absorbed in the imagination - where moral questions are resolved. The more immediate influences of the rock, rap, drug, video-game culture enter the mind much more immediately, and bypass (and atrophy) the imagination.
In some of these areas, these problems are in fact sharpened by the presence of large numbers of recent immigrants, many of them not English speakers. In some cases, migrant groups bring with them nothing but good education and habits of hard work which put our own young people to shame. Many employers sadly complain that our own young, festooned with 'qualifications' lack basic knowledge, common sense or the ability to concentrate - whereas migrant workers make up for their poor English by having all these good qualities.
In some migrant groups, it is not always so. But in many cases, problems with such groups arise not when they first arrive, but when the second generation, born and raised here, confront the problems which arise from our society's failure to integrate their parents properly, sometimes worse than failure, since multiculturalism seems determined to keep them separate for ever. It would be absurd to deny that much of the social decay and chaos, in fact most of it, comes from indigenous British people who have been brought up without respect for law or authority. It would be equally absurd to deny that part of that problem also comes from migrants, or the British-born children of migrants, and the ridiculous policies which have been followed in settling them here.
There are many other social problems (we could go into these), many of them arising out of the ones I’ve named specifically. Many of them seem to stem from a dependency on various forms of welfare, and a belief that government action is the main solution for the problems of society. This is coupled with a change in the nature of virtue, with a strong, well-publicised social conscience being more highly regarded than a well-developed individual conscience. The result of this is a very high level of taxation, which is generally accepted as being necessary and right by those who pay for it - despite the inefficient and unfair delivery of the services paid for by this tax.
There is also a general acceptance of powerlessness, that nothing can be changed. No alternative is offered to this form of society except some version or other of Thatcherism, which in office failed to deal with many of these problems and made several of them worse.. Political, social and moral conservatism, a spurned alternative, has been excised from the programmes of all major parties. A dominant and intolerant ideology smears anyone who approaches this position as a hopeless nostalgist, obsessed with recovering a non-existent 'golden age' or as a racial bigot, unhinged fruitcake, extreme nationalist or closet Nazi. Worse, the transfer of power to the European Union means that a large amount of supposedly British regulation and legislation, from rubbish collection and Home Information Packs to data protection and safety legislation, is in fact not British at all, but originates from the European Commission, and is beyond the power of the electorate, or of the House of Commons.
This arrangement has certainly not led to widespread contentment. People are simultaneously materially well-off and yet full of dissatisfaction and concern for the future. But nor, at present, has it led to organised or focused discontent. That is partly because of low interest rates and generous welfare provisions, plus the huge number of jobs now provided by the state. But it is also partly because the only major vehicle for discontent accepts the status quo.
The Conservative Party is not opposed to the moral revolution, is not opposed to multiculturalism or the rewriting of the rules of family life, is not opposed to the level of welfarism or public employment, largely accepts the left-liberal view of national history and penology and - perhaps above all - is wedded to this country's continuing membership of the European Union.
****************
How to address this? The proper conservative has to be modest about what can be done, how fast it can be done, and remember that there are strong limits on a lawful government. Many of these problems are so deep, and excite such strong feelings, that he must also be careful not to create passions which get out of control and which he cannot satisfy. Much of the problem lies in the consciences of individuals and will not be fixed until and unless a new John Wesley appears, who can find some way of remoralising a population that is at least as demoralised as it was in the 18th century. (One rather alarming possibility is that such a figure will appear, and he will be a Muslim, which should concentrate our minds).
But a lot of what is necessary is the removal of obstacles which prevent people from living as they would like to, and as they ought. This must, in my view, begin with the reassertion of national legal independence, the right to make and enforce our own laws for ourselves. That means an unequivocal commitment to negotiate, as swiftly as possible, an amicable departure from the European Union. In my view, the majority of the population oppose EU rule over this country in practice - that is, they are angered and frustrated by their individual encounters with it. But they often do not realise that it is the EU that is responsible. The existence of a large and obviously responsible and coherent political party which advocates EU withdrawal would make that connection. One of the main reasons for a reluctance to favour departure is that voters see the leaders of the major parties united in favour of EU membership, and assume that they know something we don't. Not since Hugh Gaitskell has any significant or credible party leader taken a position in favour of national independence. Had any done so, support for departure would be much higher than it is. Level headed, unhysterical leadership, untainted by fake Churchillian rhetoric and linked to a serious programme on other issues, could quite easily climb over this barrier. It must, in any case, if it is to achieve anything.
One possible method would be to set out a programme, on issues across the whole area where the EU decides our laws, and to pursue each issue to the European Court of Justice to demonstrate the powerlessness of a British parliament inside the EU. And to behave at all times as if we were independent, and to draw noisy attention to the barriers which prevent us from being so. This would certainly educate the public, but it might also frustrate them and use valuable time. I think it should be the keystone of the manifesto, and that it should be explained why it had to be.
The issue on which this is clearest is that of control of our own borders, our own right to decide who lives here. Nobody who claims to be serious can really argue that we should not have this right - though there can be much disagreement over how we should exercise it. There is no more fundamental or decisive security barrier against the threats we currently fear. There is no basis for a reconsideration of our immigration policy without an absolute control of our frontiers. The restoration of a British passport, and of a British citizenship giving an absolute right of entry and residence, seems to me to be a simple and clear illustration of what independence means, what you cannot have without it, and what you can have if you regain it.
That is why both these issues should be prominent. Labour has long dreaded the existence of a party that could convincingly and respectably make this case, since large numbers of its current (and former) voters feel very strongly about this matter.
For that reason, the rest of the initial manifesto should bear in mind that it is the less well-off, the people living in the abandoned cities of the industrial areas or in the marginal suburbs, who may well be the main supporters of social conservatism. The old Tory upper middle class of independent professionals, educated at traditional schools and universities, has largely ceased to exist. There are middle class conservatives, but my guess is that they are these days at least equalled in numbers by middle class liberals and left-wingers - protected by affluence from many of the social consequences of left-wing policies.
So the rest of the first programme should be aimed very clearly at helping the strivers, the responsible, the thrifty, the ones on the frontier.
That means a series of simple measures on crime. They include the immediate repeal of the laws which prevent the police from patrolling effectively on foot, especially PACE 1984, and measures -probably based on budget allocations - putting severe pressure on chief constables to put their officers on such patrols by day and night. Longer term measures, like the breaking up of unwieldy large forces into smaller, truly local ones, would have to wait until a reform of local government in general, central to a revival of proper civic life, but necessarily a second-rank issue.
The prison regime should also be reformed, and once again based on the old principle of 'due punishment of responsible persons', so that punishment, in the form of arduous labour, deprivation of luxuries and comforts etc, could once again take place in prison, with facilities such as TV sets and pool tables available only as a reward for long-term good behaviour. The legal position of prison officers would have to be altered, so that their authority, and ability to exercise it, is restored. Remission and early release should once again be dependent entirely on good behaviour, and never automatic.
Penal policy on drugs should concentrate on possession, not on supply. Possession should be dealt with by a caution for a first offence, and three months imprisonment for a second. Effectively enforced, such a law should sharply reduce drug use and the criminal activities linked with it.
Schools should all have their ability to discipline pupils restored. How far could we go in this? Personally I think corporal punishment would be hard to restore in the existing climate, but an absolute power of expulsion, probably to special schools with the power to detain unruly pupils at evenings and weekends, might be an effective alternative. In all such measures, we should seek for ingenuity and subtlety rather than crudity. A good example of this is Norman Tebbit's measures to control the trades unions. Rather than threats of prison, or stripping away privileges, the laws used a sort of judo. The unions' legal immunities were guaranteed - provided they introduced strike ballots and fair elections for their leaders, controlled unofficial strikes and ceased secondary pickets.
As for the schools themselves, education reform should concentrate on ensuring a good basic education for the children of those who cannot afford private fees or postcode selection - and should be presented as such. This means the return of selection by merit on the German model, and the establishment, for the moment only in areas now blighted by bad comprehensives, of a first generation of new grammar schools whose aim is unequivocally to benefit the poor. This would obviously require serious reforms of the feeder primary schools, and would necessarily the construction of new technical and vocational schools of high standard, for those who did not qualify for an academic secondary education.
No pledges, in my view, should be made for tax cuts at this stage. A society so heavily dependent on welfare needs to be weaned off it, and reformed so that it actually desires to come off it.
And gosh, is that the time? I have got almost nowhere and spent much of the day doing it. Imagine what it would be like getting even this modest programme through a sharply-divided Parliament in, say, four years. I hope for your interested criticisms and contributions."
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Junk Medicine : Heroin addiction isn't an illness
Dr Theodore Dalrymple tears into 'Doctors, lies and the addiction bureaucracy':
"For the past 14 years, I have worked as a doctor in a large general hospital in a deprived area of Britain, and in the even larger prison next door.
In that time, I have seen heroin addiction rise from an infrequently encountered problem to a mass phenomenon.
It has now become so widespread that the city council has politely asked residents not to put used needles and syringes in the weekly rubbish collections.
No stairwell in any housing estate is complete without the discarded paraphernalia of drug abuse."
[...]
"I had briefly run a drug-addiction clinic in a famous university town, at a time when I accepted what I now know to be myths about heroin addiction.
But as more addicts came to my attention – I see up to 20 new cases a day in prison – I began to think about it more. The medical perspective, that these people were ill and in need of treatment, seemed less and less convincing.
I discovered that most addicted prisoners stopped taking heroin in jail, even when it was available. They came into the prison starving and miserable, and went out relatively healthy.
But within a few months, many were back in their former condition, and when brought once more before the courts, some would beg to be imprisoned.
When, soon after their return, I asked them whether they intended to give up taking heroin, some would reply: "I'll have to, I've got no choice."
Asked why, they would offer replies such as: "Because my girlfriend's just had a baby and she won't let me see it unless I do."
This answer was a strange one if these addicts truly thought of themselves as ill and in need of treatment. #
Instead, they clearly believed a purpose in life was enough to enable them to abstain. This is not how pneumonia, for instance, is cured.
No one would say: "I must stop having pleuritic pain each time I breathe deeply because I have just had a baby." Yet the medical services allow addicts to focus exclusively on the physiological aspects of addiction, which in practice means the prescription of a drug such as methadone.
There is a strenuous, almost outraged, rejection of the idea that addiction is, at bottom, a moral problem, or even that it raises any moral questions at all.
Of course, addiction to heroin and other opiates has serious medical consequences. I often saw addicts with deep vein thromboses or multiple abscesses; they would have TB; they would be malnourished and infected with Hepatitis B or C, or both, and HIV.
It would be difficult to obtain blood from the veins in their arms or legs because they had injected so often.
But medical consequences do not make a disease. Many mountaineers get frostbite, but mountaineering is not a disease.
To conceive of heroin addiction as such seems to me to miss the fundamental point: it is a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment."
Full article here.
"For the past 14 years, I have worked as a doctor in a large general hospital in a deprived area of Britain, and in the even larger prison next door.
In that time, I have seen heroin addiction rise from an infrequently encountered problem to a mass phenomenon.
It has now become so widespread that the city council has politely asked residents not to put used needles and syringes in the weekly rubbish collections.
No stairwell in any housing estate is complete without the discarded paraphernalia of drug abuse."
[...]
"I had briefly run a drug-addiction clinic in a famous university town, at a time when I accepted what I now know to be myths about heroin addiction.
But as more addicts came to my attention – I see up to 20 new cases a day in prison – I began to think about it more. The medical perspective, that these people were ill and in need of treatment, seemed less and less convincing.
I discovered that most addicted prisoners stopped taking heroin in jail, even when it was available. They came into the prison starving and miserable, and went out relatively healthy.
But within a few months, many were back in their former condition, and when brought once more before the courts, some would beg to be imprisoned.
When, soon after their return, I asked them whether they intended to give up taking heroin, some would reply: "I'll have to, I've got no choice."
Asked why, they would offer replies such as: "Because my girlfriend's just had a baby and she won't let me see it unless I do."
This answer was a strange one if these addicts truly thought of themselves as ill and in need of treatment. #
Instead, they clearly believed a purpose in life was enough to enable them to abstain. This is not how pneumonia, for instance, is cured.
No one would say: "I must stop having pleuritic pain each time I breathe deeply because I have just had a baby." Yet the medical services allow addicts to focus exclusively on the physiological aspects of addiction, which in practice means the prescription of a drug such as methadone.
There is a strenuous, almost outraged, rejection of the idea that addiction is, at bottom, a moral problem, or even that it raises any moral questions at all.
Of course, addiction to heroin and other opiates has serious medical consequences. I often saw addicts with deep vein thromboses or multiple abscesses; they would have TB; they would be malnourished and infected with Hepatitis B or C, or both, and HIV.
It would be difficult to obtain blood from the veins in their arms or legs because they had injected so often.
But medical consequences do not make a disease. Many mountaineers get frostbite, but mountaineering is not a disease.
To conceive of heroin addiction as such seems to me to miss the fundamental point: it is a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment."
Full article here.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Hitchens on Anglo-French relations
The wonderfully grumpy Peter Hitchens has a bone to pick with all of the French bashers out there.
"French Military Victories
I am so irritated by the stupid supposed joke on Google, where a search for 'French Military Victories' produces the response "Your search did not match any documents" and asks 'Did you mean 'French military defeats'?' Oh, ha ha. How unimprovably witty and trenchant. And, since the origin of the jape is almost certainly American, how very ignorant and stupid.
The single most important French military victory in history was of course at Yorktown (accompanied by the related naval battle of the Chesapeake), where the Comte de Rochambeau on land (aided by the Marquis de La Fayette) and the Comte de Grasse by sea defeated British forces and so secured victory for the American colonists, changing the history of the entire world forever. The United States would not even exist if these victories had not happened. Do Americans really not know this stuff any more?
My irritation is partly because I rather like France, and about which American neo-conservatives are especially absurd. For some reason 'right-wing' people are supposed to abominate France and foreigners in general. I have never really understood this. Since the moment I first set foot in France in 1965 ( via the old 'Golden Arrow' that then still ran between London and Paris, steam-hauled by an enormous black locomotive with a surprisingly effeminate whistle, from Calais to Amiens) I have looked on it as a place from which Britain can learn a great deal about the arts of life.
And there are of course plenty of other French military victories, from Valmy, Jena, Marengo, Friedland, and Austerlitz to the clashes that drove the Austrians out of Italy and the great battles on the Marne which stopped the Germans in 1914. And partly because, just at the moment, I am deep into a book 'That Sweet Enemy', which describes the curious relation between two of the world's longest-enduring nations.
The book, wittily and enjoyably written by an English historian and his French wife (Robert and Isabelle Tombs) has the charm of a lot of oblique history. Seen from a slightly different angle, events which you thought you knew about suddenly look different and often more interesting.
It is as if, after growing used to what you thought was a superb view of an ancient and fascinating city from a northerly hilltop, you one day travelled to the opposite side, and saw it for the first time from the south. It is the same place, but lit up and arranged in a way which makes you realise you had missed half the point before."
"French Military Victories
I am so irritated by the stupid supposed joke on Google, where a search for 'French Military Victories' produces the response "Your search did not match any documents" and asks 'Did you mean 'French military defeats'?' Oh, ha ha. How unimprovably witty and trenchant. And, since the origin of the jape is almost certainly American, how very ignorant and stupid.
The single most important French military victory in history was of course at Yorktown (accompanied by the related naval battle of the Chesapeake), where the Comte de Rochambeau on land (aided by the Marquis de La Fayette) and the Comte de Grasse by sea defeated British forces and so secured victory for the American colonists, changing the history of the entire world forever. The United States would not even exist if these victories had not happened. Do Americans really not know this stuff any more?
My irritation is partly because I rather like France, and about which American neo-conservatives are especially absurd. For some reason 'right-wing' people are supposed to abominate France and foreigners in general. I have never really understood this. Since the moment I first set foot in France in 1965 ( via the old 'Golden Arrow' that then still ran between London and Paris, steam-hauled by an enormous black locomotive with a surprisingly effeminate whistle, from Calais to Amiens) I have looked on it as a place from which Britain can learn a great deal about the arts of life.
And there are of course plenty of other French military victories, from Valmy, Jena, Marengo, Friedland, and Austerlitz to the clashes that drove the Austrians out of Italy and the great battles on the Marne which stopped the Germans in 1914. And partly because, just at the moment, I am deep into a book 'That Sweet Enemy', which describes the curious relation between two of the world's longest-enduring nations.
The book, wittily and enjoyably written by an English historian and his French wife (Robert and Isabelle Tombs) has the charm of a lot of oblique history. Seen from a slightly different angle, events which you thought you knew about suddenly look different and often more interesting.
It is as if, after growing used to what you thought was a superb view of an ancient and fascinating city from a northerly hilltop, you one day travelled to the opposite side, and saw it for the first time from the south. It is the same place, but lit up and arranged in a way which makes you realise you had missed half the point before."
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Yazidi 'devil worshippers' massacred in Iraq
It's not like these Yazidi guys have any more respect for women than Muslims, but I've had some sympathy for them since reading this a few months ago:
Massacre fuels northern Iraq tensions
24 April 2007
BBC
... and now there's this:
Iraq bombs: 250 die in worst terror attack
Telegraph
15/08/2007
Al-Qa'eda has been blamed for the deaths of 250 Iraqis in a co-ordinated bomb attack - the worst terrorist atrocity the country has witnessed since the downfall of Saddam Hussein four years ago. Five fuel tankers were driven by suicide bombers into two crowded villages belonging to Kurdish members of the Yazidi religious sect before they were detonated almost simultaneously.
What occurs to me is that since the Yazidi were the victims of suicide bombers, they must have done something truly awful to inspire the oppressed yet brave al-Qaedans to resort to this weapon of the powerless. My suspicion immediately falls on Yazidi foreign policy, and I hereby call on them to change it (whatever it is), and to withdraw from Kashmir and wherever else they are oppressing Muslims. After all, we're all al-Qaeda now.
Massacre fuels northern Iraq tensions
24 April 2007
BBC
... and now there's this:
Iraq bombs: 250 die in worst terror attack
Telegraph
15/08/2007
Al-Qa'eda has been blamed for the deaths of 250 Iraqis in a co-ordinated bomb attack - the worst terrorist atrocity the country has witnessed since the downfall of Saddam Hussein four years ago. Five fuel tankers were driven by suicide bombers into two crowded villages belonging to Kurdish members of the Yazidi religious sect before they were detonated almost simultaneously.
What occurs to me is that since the Yazidi were the victims of suicide bombers, they must have done something truly awful to inspire the oppressed yet brave al-Qaedans to resort to this weapon of the powerless. My suspicion immediately falls on Yazidi foreign policy, and I hereby call on them to change it (whatever it is), and to withdraw from Kashmir and wherever else they are oppressing Muslims. After all, we're all al-Qaeda now.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Michel Houllebecq's "Platform"
Just read Michel Houllebecq's brilliant "Platform". Brilliant on love, sex and the tourist industry, and Islam comes in for the odd swipe, as in this taste:
"The paradise promised by the Prophet," the banker tells Michel, "already existed here on earth. There were places on earth where young, available, lascivious girls danced for the pleasure of men, where one could become drunk on nectar and listen to celestial music; there were about twenty of them within five hundred meters of our hotel. These places were easily accessible. To gain admission, there was absolutely no need to fulfill the seven duties of a Muslim nor to engage in holy war; all you had to do was pay a couple of dollars ... Already, young Arabs dreamed of nothing but consumer products and sex. They might try to pretend otherwise, but secretly, they wanted to be part of the American system. The violence of some of them was no more than a sign of impotent jealousy, and thankfully, more and more of them were turning their backs on Islam."
"The paradise promised by the Prophet," the banker tells Michel, "already existed here on earth. There were places on earth where young, available, lascivious girls danced for the pleasure of men, where one could become drunk on nectar and listen to celestial music; there were about twenty of them within five hundred meters of our hotel. These places were easily accessible. To gain admission, there was absolutely no need to fulfill the seven duties of a Muslim nor to engage in holy war; all you had to do was pay a couple of dollars ... Already, young Arabs dreamed of nothing but consumer products and sex. They might try to pretend otherwise, but secretly, they wanted to be part of the American system. The violence of some of them was no more than a sign of impotent jealousy, and thankfully, more and more of them were turning their backs on Islam."
Monday, July 23, 2007
Alan Johnston - what if the Israelis had done it?
All over now of course, but 'hear hear' nonetheless. I wondered if anyone else was thinking this.
BTW, have there been any interviews with AJ since, asking him how his opinions have changed, if at all? Personally my money is on Stockholm Syndrome, though I'm not sure if that applies where you're already bosom buddies with them before they nab you.
What if Israelis had abducted BBC man?
By Charles Moore
Telegraph Comment
03/06/2007
Watching the horrible video of Alan Johnston of the BBC broadcasting Palestinian propaganda under orders from his kidnappers, I found myself asking what it would have been like had he been kidnapped by Israelis, and made to do the same thing the other way round. The first point is that it would never happen. There are no Israeli organisations - governmental or freelance - that would contemplate such a thing. That fact is itself significant. But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?
There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down. Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete. If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by thus torturing him on television. No one would have been shy of saying so.
But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston, and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been "asked" to say what he said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an "ask", why did he not say no?
Throughout Mr Johnston's captivity, the BBC has continually emphasised that he gave "a voice" to the Palestinian people, the implication being that he supported their cause, and should therefore be let out. One cannot imagine the equivalent being said if he had been held by Israelis.
Well, he is certainly giving a voice to the Palestinian people now. And the truth is that, although it is under horrible duress, what he says is not all that different from what the BBC says every day through the mouths of reporters who are not kidnapped and threatened, but are merely collecting their wages. The language is more lurid in the Johnston video, but the narrative is essentially the same as we have heard over the years from Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen and virtually the whole pack of them.
It is that everything that is wrong in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world is the result of aggression or "heavy-handedness" (have you noticed how all actions by American or Israeli troops are "heavy-handed", just as surely as all racism is "unacceptable"?) by America or Israel or Britain.
Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the "absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to 40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West". That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC. The other side is almost unexamined. There is little to explain the internecine strife in the Arab world, particularly in Gaza, or the cynical motivations of Arab leaders for whom Palestinian miseries are politically convenient. You get precious little investigation of the networks and mentalities of Islamist extremism - the methods and money of Hamas or Hizbollah and comparable groups - which produce acts of pure evil like that in which Mr Johnston is involuntarily complicit. The spotlight is not shone on how the "militants" (the BBC does not even permit the word "terrorist" in the Middle East context) and the warlords maintain their corruption and rule of fear, persecuting, among others, the Palestinians. Instead it shines pitilessly on Blair and Bush and on Israel.
From the hellish to the ridiculous, the pattern is the same. Back at home, the Universities and Colleges Union has just voted for its members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions". Well, they could consider how work by scientists at the Technion in Haifa has led to the production of the drug Velcade, which treats multiple myeloma. Or they could look at the professor at Ben-Gurion University who discovered a bacteria that fights malaria and river blindness by killing mosquitoes and black fly. Or they could study the co-operation between researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have isolated the protein that triggers stress in order to try to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and their equivalents at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research, often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.
The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly singling out the only country in the region with a free press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli goods, products of the only country in the region with a free trade union movement. The doctrine is that Israel practises "apartheid" and that it must therefore be boycotted.
All this is moral madness. It is not mad, of course, to criticise Israeli policy. In some respects, indeed, it would be mad not to. It is not mad - though I think it is mistaken - to see the presence of Israel as the main reason for the lack of peace in the region. But it is mad or, perhaps one should rather say, bad to try to raid Western culture's reserves of moral indignation and expend them on a country that is part of that culture in favour of surrounding countries that aren't. How can we have got ourselves into a situation in which we half-excuse turbaned torturers for kidnapping our fellow-citizens while trying to exclude Jewish biochemists from lecturing to our students?
Nobody yet knows the precise motivations of Mr Johnston's captors, but it is surely not a coincidence that they held him in silence until the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War approached, and only then made him speak. They wanted him to give the world their historical explanation - Israeli oppression - for their cause. Yet that war took place because President Nasser of Egypt led his country and his allies declaring "our basic aim will be to destroy Israel". He failed, abjectly, and Egypt and Jordan later gave up the aspiration. But many others maintain it to this day, now with a pseudo-religious gloss added.
We keep giving sympathetic air-time to their death cult. In a way, Mr Johnston is paying the price: his captors are high on the oxygen of his corporation's publicity. As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to work out each morning how it can survive.
BTW, have there been any interviews with AJ since, asking him how his opinions have changed, if at all? Personally my money is on Stockholm Syndrome, though I'm not sure if that applies where you're already bosom buddies with them before they nab you.
What if Israelis had abducted BBC man?
By Charles Moore
Telegraph Comment
03/06/2007
Watching the horrible video of Alan Johnston of the BBC broadcasting Palestinian propaganda under orders from his kidnappers, I found myself asking what it would have been like had he been kidnapped by Israelis, and made to do the same thing the other way round. The first point is that it would never happen. There are no Israeli organisations - governmental or freelance - that would contemplate such a thing. That fact is itself significant. But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?
There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down. Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete. If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by thus torturing him on television. No one would have been shy of saying so.
But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston, and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been "asked" to say what he said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an "ask", why did he not say no?
Throughout Mr Johnston's captivity, the BBC has continually emphasised that he gave "a voice" to the Palestinian people, the implication being that he supported their cause, and should therefore be let out. One cannot imagine the equivalent being said if he had been held by Israelis.
Well, he is certainly giving a voice to the Palestinian people now. And the truth is that, although it is under horrible duress, what he says is not all that different from what the BBC says every day through the mouths of reporters who are not kidnapped and threatened, but are merely collecting their wages. The language is more lurid in the Johnston video, but the narrative is essentially the same as we have heard over the years from Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen and virtually the whole pack of them.
It is that everything that is wrong in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world is the result of aggression or "heavy-handedness" (have you noticed how all actions by American or Israeli troops are "heavy-handed", just as surely as all racism is "unacceptable"?) by America or Israel or Britain.
Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the "absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to 40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West". That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC. The other side is almost unexamined. There is little to explain the internecine strife in the Arab world, particularly in Gaza, or the cynical motivations of Arab leaders for whom Palestinian miseries are politically convenient. You get precious little investigation of the networks and mentalities of Islamist extremism - the methods and money of Hamas or Hizbollah and comparable groups - which produce acts of pure evil like that in which Mr Johnston is involuntarily complicit. The spotlight is not shone on how the "militants" (the BBC does not even permit the word "terrorist" in the Middle East context) and the warlords maintain their corruption and rule of fear, persecuting, among others, the Palestinians. Instead it shines pitilessly on Blair and Bush and on Israel.
From the hellish to the ridiculous, the pattern is the same. Back at home, the Universities and Colleges Union has just voted for its members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions". Well, they could consider how work by scientists at the Technion in Haifa has led to the production of the drug Velcade, which treats multiple myeloma. Or they could look at the professor at Ben-Gurion University who discovered a bacteria that fights malaria and river blindness by killing mosquitoes and black fly. Or they could study the co-operation between researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have isolated the protein that triggers stress in order to try to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and their equivalents at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research, often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.
The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly singling out the only country in the region with a free press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli goods, products of the only country in the region with a free trade union movement. The doctrine is that Israel practises "apartheid" and that it must therefore be boycotted.
All this is moral madness. It is not mad, of course, to criticise Israeli policy. In some respects, indeed, it would be mad not to. It is not mad - though I think it is mistaken - to see the presence of Israel as the main reason for the lack of peace in the region. But it is mad or, perhaps one should rather say, bad to try to raid Western culture's reserves of moral indignation and expend them on a country that is part of that culture in favour of surrounding countries that aren't. How can we have got ourselves into a situation in which we half-excuse turbaned torturers for kidnapping our fellow-citizens while trying to exclude Jewish biochemists from lecturing to our students?
Nobody yet knows the precise motivations of Mr Johnston's captors, but it is surely not a coincidence that they held him in silence until the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War approached, and only then made him speak. They wanted him to give the world their historical explanation - Israeli oppression - for their cause. Yet that war took place because President Nasser of Egypt led his country and his allies declaring "our basic aim will be to destroy Israel". He failed, abjectly, and Egypt and Jordan later gave up the aspiration. But many others maintain it to this day, now with a pseudo-religious gloss added.
We keep giving sympathetic air-time to their death cult. In a way, Mr Johnston is paying the price: his captors are high on the oxygen of his corporation's publicity. As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to work out each morning how it can survive.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Dalrymple on the British economy
Dalrymple reviews the new book, 'Fantasy Island: waking up to the Incredible Economic, Political and Social Illusions of the Blair Legacy':
'The British economy has long seemed to me to resemble a rotting fish that shines by moonlight. It is true that so far the light has been somewhat stronger than the smell, at least for most of us, but all that may be about to change. I have been expecting and predicting disaster, wrongly, for a long time, and I can only hope that I continue to be wrong.
My sense of doom was deepened, however, when I read a book by two financial journalists, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, just published, called Fantasy Island (Constable). There are no prizes for guessing the name of the island referred to, even if you have not read the subtitle: Waking up to the Incredible Economic, Political and Social Illusions of the Blair Legacy.'
Full article here.
'The British economy has long seemed to me to resemble a rotting fish that shines by moonlight. It is true that so far the light has been somewhat stronger than the smell, at least for most of us, but all that may be about to change. I have been expecting and predicting disaster, wrongly, for a long time, and I can only hope that I continue to be wrong.
My sense of doom was deepened, however, when I read a book by two financial journalists, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, just published, called Fantasy Island (Constable). There are no prizes for guessing the name of the island referred to, even if you have not read the subtitle: Waking up to the Incredible Economic, Political and Social Illusions of the Blair Legacy.'
Full article here.
Tories and Marriage
Ian Duncan Smith's social justice commission report advocates tax cuts for married couples. Here are two very different reactions to the report.
In the Blue corner, we have Peter Hitchens calling for a return to the sanctity of marriage but scornfully dismissive of the Tories:
'Will the Tories back marriage? No, of course they won't. It's too difficult and dangerous. They would be smeared, if they did so, as haters and persecutors of 'single mothers'. This wholly false, and in fact absurd, accusation is invariably made against anyone who stands up for marriage, and is equally invariably believed by large numbers of gullible people, many of them supposedly intelligent journalists. Often this is because they are afraid of being on the receiving end of the same intolerant persecution that will be visited on the person who has dared to speak in favour of marriage. The only way to challenge it would be to have the guts to be unapologetic about it, and the Tories just aren't like that. Wait and see, if you don't believe me.'
And in the Red corner, we have Polly Toynbee, progressive and proud, equally scornful of the Tories but for very different reasons:
'Cameron says married parents are far more likely to stay together, but it doesn't need a professor of logic to spot the flaw: making cohabitees marry to collect a bonus is unlikely to sprinkle fairy dust and turn them into the same people as those who are already married. Almost everyone wants a lifelong good relationship, yet many fail. Now the small-state party that says governments can't run a whelk stall suddenly imagines the state can control the most wayward of human behaviours and superglue parents together for ever.'
Personally I think one of the posters on Hitchens might have it right when he writes 'It was Charles Murray who said that governments should never get involved in people's personal relationships. It always cocks it up. We don't have to support marriage we just have to stop supporting all other forms of family (single or otherwise). When you do that, the clear financial benefits of the stable married relationship will always come out on top. Problem solved.'
In the Blue corner, we have Peter Hitchens calling for a return to the sanctity of marriage but scornfully dismissive of the Tories:
'Will the Tories back marriage? No, of course they won't. It's too difficult and dangerous. They would be smeared, if they did so, as haters and persecutors of 'single mothers'. This wholly false, and in fact absurd, accusation is invariably made against anyone who stands up for marriage, and is equally invariably believed by large numbers of gullible people, many of them supposedly intelligent journalists. Often this is because they are afraid of being on the receiving end of the same intolerant persecution that will be visited on the person who has dared to speak in favour of marriage. The only way to challenge it would be to have the guts to be unapologetic about it, and the Tories just aren't like that. Wait and see, if you don't believe me.'
And in the Red corner, we have Polly Toynbee, progressive and proud, equally scornful of the Tories but for very different reasons:
'Cameron says married parents are far more likely to stay together, but it doesn't need a professor of logic to spot the flaw: making cohabitees marry to collect a bonus is unlikely to sprinkle fairy dust and turn them into the same people as those who are already married. Almost everyone wants a lifelong good relationship, yet many fail. Now the small-state party that says governments can't run a whelk stall suddenly imagines the state can control the most wayward of human behaviours and superglue parents together for ever.'
Personally I think one of the posters on Hitchens might have it right when he writes 'It was Charles Murray who said that governments should never get involved in people's personal relationships. It always cocks it up. We don't have to support marriage we just have to stop supporting all other forms of family (single or otherwise). When you do that, the clear financial benefits of the stable married relationship will always come out on top. Problem solved.'
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Islamists who have changed sides - Butt and Husain
My plea to fellow Muslims: you must renounce terror
Hassan Butt
Sunday July 1, 2007
The Observer
As the bombers return to Britain, Hassan Butt, who was once a member of radical group Al-Muhajiroun, raising funds for extremists and calling for attacks on British citizens, explains why he was wrong
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
Friday's attempt to cause mass destruction in London with strategically placed car bombs is so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that it is likely to have been carried out by my former peers.
And as with previous terror attacks, people are again articulating the line that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy. For example, yesterday on Radio 4's Today programme, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: 'What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.'
He then refused to acknowledge the role of Islamist ideology in terrorism and said that the Muslim Brotherhood and those who give a religious mandate to suicide bombings in Palestine were genuinely representative of Islam. I left the BJN in February 2006, but if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.
...
I know how these terrorists are inspired
By Ed Husain*
Telegraph
02/05/2007
The recent conviction of five young British Muslim men has yet again opened the debate about how Britain, famed for its plurality and tolerance, bred home-grown terrorists. And, more important, how do we heal the divisions and communal disintegration in our cities that continue to serve as an Islamist underworld in which the rhetoric of jihad and destruction goes unchallenged?
I know how these young men are inspired to wreak death and destruction because I have first-hand experience of being in one such cell. I have since seen the error of my ways.
In 1995, at college in east London, I was part of the secret cell structure of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist organisation banned in most Muslim countries and rejected by most mosques in Britain. Yet the group had a free rein on university and college campuses, where it advocated that British Muslims were a community whose allegiance lay not with Queen and country, but to a coming caliph in the Middle East.
This caliph would instruct us to act as agents of the caliphate in Britain, and open a "home front" by assisting the expansionist state. We believed that all Arab governments were not sufficiently "Islamic" and were liable to removal; entire populations would submit to the army of the caliph, or face extinction.
I was part of a generation of young British Muslim teenagers who were raised in mono-cultural ghettoes, disconnected from mainstream Britain and receptive to the message of separatism preached by Arab political asylum seekers. I was indoctrinated in my cell meetings as I studied the books written by Islamist ideologues such as Taqiuddin al-Nabhani and Syed Qutb, angry men struggling in a post-colonial Middle East to find meaning in a new world.
We brought al-Nabhani's teachings to life in my secret meetings: Britain, France, America and Russia were enemies and the army of the Islamist state would "march on Downing Street and raise the Islamist flag above Westminster". All this can easily be dismissed as extremist claptrap. But the mindset and ideology that spouts this worldview - Islamism - is entrenched in certain sections of the Muslim community in Britain.
Terrorism begins with a less extreme shade of Islamism, and in many cases Saudi-inspired Wahhabism - unless we understand the root causes of the theology of terror, we will not be able to defeat it.
I recall my Islamist days when my mind was closed to an alternative argument: there was only one way - my group's way. All others, including fellow Muslims, were wrong and heading for hell. To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all human life.
Wahhabism and segments of Islamism are defined by their rejection of mainstream Muslim teachings and age-old spiritual practices, literalist readings of scripture devoid of scholarly guidance, and a hell-bent commitment to confronting the West. Moderate Muslims have common cause with the West to extinguish extremism in our midst.
As long as it remains legal for extremists in Britain to plan and finance Islamist attempts to mobilise the Muslim masses in the Middle East, and prepare an army for "jihad as foreign policy", there will always be a segment of this movement that will take jihad to its logical conclusion and act immediately, without leadership.
The rhetoric of jihad introduced by Hizb ut-Tahrir in my days was the preamble to 7/7 and several other attempted attacks. By proscribing Hizb ut-Tahrir, we would send a strong message to extremists that Britain will not tolerate intolerance. Yes, we are a free country with a proud tradition of liberty, but it has always had limits.
In 1991, Omar Bakri, then leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, called for the assassination of John Major - we ignored it. In 1997, Osama bin Laden declared a jihad against the West - we ignored it.
Today, in our midst, Hizb ut-Tahrir calls for an expansionist, violent, totalitarian Islamist state - and we continue to ignore it. There is no quick fix to the problem of home-grown terrorism, but banning Hizb ut-Tahrir would be an excellent first step, sending a strong signal to aspiring terrorists that Britain has not changed the rules of game. We no longer play that game.
* author of The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left
Hassan Butt
Sunday July 1, 2007
The Observer
As the bombers return to Britain, Hassan Butt, who was once a member of radical group Al-Muhajiroun, raising funds for extremists and calling for attacks on British citizens, explains why he was wrong
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
Friday's attempt to cause mass destruction in London with strategically placed car bombs is so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that it is likely to have been carried out by my former peers.
And as with previous terror attacks, people are again articulating the line that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy. For example, yesterday on Radio 4's Today programme, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: 'What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.'
He then refused to acknowledge the role of Islamist ideology in terrorism and said that the Muslim Brotherhood and those who give a religious mandate to suicide bombings in Palestine were genuinely representative of Islam. I left the BJN in February 2006, but if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.
...
I know how these terrorists are inspired
By Ed Husain*
Telegraph
02/05/2007
The recent conviction of five young British Muslim men has yet again opened the debate about how Britain, famed for its plurality and tolerance, bred home-grown terrorists. And, more important, how do we heal the divisions and communal disintegration in our cities that continue to serve as an Islamist underworld in which the rhetoric of jihad and destruction goes unchallenged?
I know how these young men are inspired to wreak death and destruction because I have first-hand experience of being in one such cell. I have since seen the error of my ways.
In 1995, at college in east London, I was part of the secret cell structure of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist organisation banned in most Muslim countries and rejected by most mosques in Britain. Yet the group had a free rein on university and college campuses, where it advocated that British Muslims were a community whose allegiance lay not with Queen and country, but to a coming caliph in the Middle East.
This caliph would instruct us to act as agents of the caliphate in Britain, and open a "home front" by assisting the expansionist state. We believed that all Arab governments were not sufficiently "Islamic" and were liable to removal; entire populations would submit to the army of the caliph, or face extinction.
I was part of a generation of young British Muslim teenagers who were raised in mono-cultural ghettoes, disconnected from mainstream Britain and receptive to the message of separatism preached by Arab political asylum seekers. I was indoctrinated in my cell meetings as I studied the books written by Islamist ideologues such as Taqiuddin al-Nabhani and Syed Qutb, angry men struggling in a post-colonial Middle East to find meaning in a new world.
We brought al-Nabhani's teachings to life in my secret meetings: Britain, France, America and Russia were enemies and the army of the Islamist state would "march on Downing Street and raise the Islamist flag above Westminster". All this can easily be dismissed as extremist claptrap. But the mindset and ideology that spouts this worldview - Islamism - is entrenched in certain sections of the Muslim community in Britain.
Terrorism begins with a less extreme shade of Islamism, and in many cases Saudi-inspired Wahhabism - unless we understand the root causes of the theology of terror, we will not be able to defeat it.
I recall my Islamist days when my mind was closed to an alternative argument: there was only one way - my group's way. All others, including fellow Muslims, were wrong and heading for hell. To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all human life.
Wahhabism and segments of Islamism are defined by their rejection of mainstream Muslim teachings and age-old spiritual practices, literalist readings of scripture devoid of scholarly guidance, and a hell-bent commitment to confronting the West. Moderate Muslims have common cause with the West to extinguish extremism in our midst.
As long as it remains legal for extremists in Britain to plan and finance Islamist attempts to mobilise the Muslim masses in the Middle East, and prepare an army for "jihad as foreign policy", there will always be a segment of this movement that will take jihad to its logical conclusion and act immediately, without leadership.
The rhetoric of jihad introduced by Hizb ut-Tahrir in my days was the preamble to 7/7 and several other attempted attacks. By proscribing Hizb ut-Tahrir, we would send a strong message to extremists that Britain will not tolerate intolerance. Yes, we are a free country with a proud tradition of liberty, but it has always had limits.
In 1991, Omar Bakri, then leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, called for the assassination of John Major - we ignored it. In 1997, Osama bin Laden declared a jihad against the West - we ignored it.
Today, in our midst, Hizb ut-Tahrir calls for an expansionist, violent, totalitarian Islamist state - and we continue to ignore it. There is no quick fix to the problem of home-grown terrorism, but banning Hizb ut-Tahrir would be an excellent first step, sending a strong signal to aspiring terrorists that Britain has not changed the rules of game. We no longer play that game.
* author of The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left
Friday, June 22, 2007
God is not Great - Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens has a new book out: God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion
He and his brother had an interesting chat about it the other morning:
BBC Radio 4
Today Program
19/06/07
08:20 We debate a new book "God is not Great" with it's author Christopher Hitchens and his brother Peter Hitchens
Listen (@ 19'20") | Permalink
And here is the old boy giving some of his views in an erudite discussion program about religion:
Start The Week
Radio 4
18/06/07
This week Andrew Marr is joined by Tina Brown, Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Hurd and Allan Leighton.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS is calling for what he calls a "New Enlightenment". He argues that religion is outdated, entitling his new book God is Not Great. He describes his personal encounters with religion including Anglicanism, the Greek Orthodox Church and Judaism, and his early dislike for compulsory prayers at school. He says he has been writing this book all his life and passionately believes that religion of all kinds is a form of self-delusion.
He and his brother had an interesting chat about it the other morning:
BBC Radio 4
Today Program
19/06/07
08:20 We debate a new book "God is not Great" with it's author Christopher Hitchens and his brother Peter Hitchens
Listen (@ 19'20") | Permalink
And here is the old boy giving some of his views in an erudite discussion program about religion:
Start The Week
Radio 4
18/06/07
This week Andrew Marr is joined by Tina Brown, Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Hurd and Allan Leighton.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS is calling for what he calls a "New Enlightenment". He argues that religion is outdated, entitling his new book God is Not Great. He describes his personal encounters with religion including Anglicanism, the Greek Orthodox Church and Judaism, and his early dislike for compulsory prayers at school. He says he has been writing this book all his life and passionately believes that religion of all kinds is a form of self-delusion.
Why Israel Is The Victim - Horowitz
I've been inspired by the excellent potted history of Israel in the Peter Hitchens article that we've been discussing in this thread to post another article on Israel's history by David Horowitz.
It contains some top-class myth debunking (it's *not* about land, it's *not* about self-determination etc), and much the same content is available in the form of a 10 - 15 minute Flash movie that some of you may well want to email around.
Why Israel Is The Victim And The Arabs Are The Indefensible Aggressors In the Middle East
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com
January 9, 2002
It contains some top-class myth debunking (it's *not* about land, it's *not* about self-determination etc), and much the same content is available in the form of a 10 - 15 minute Flash movie that some of you may well want to email around.
Why Israel Is The Victim And The Arabs Are The Indefensible Aggressors In the Middle East
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com
January 9, 2002
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Rushdie knighthood inflames Islamic world (surprise)
Am creating a separate thread for this story (first blogged here), because I think this might be another Danish cartoons episode, and also because the spineless Western response to the original Rushdie fatwah was a seminal moment for the Islamist movement, (rightly?) convincing them that the West had no appetite even for self-defence.
Two stories are below: gotta love the Sun headline, as well as the accusation that Rushdie is the one with blood on his hands. These Islamist sympathizers sure have Chutzpah. Meanwhile the Telegraph headline reminds us of the hopeless addiction of the Muslim world on the (infinitely flexible, utterly unrequitable) concept of 'honour'.
Pakistan orders smoked Salman
The Sun
June 19, 2007
A SICK Pakistani politician last night said Salman Rushdie’s knighthood justified suicide bombings against British targets — as mobs burned effigies of the author. Cabinet minister Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq said the gong for The Satanic Verses writer was to blame for fuelling al-Qaeda terrorism.
He told the Islamabad parliament: “This is an occasion for the world’s 1.5billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision. “The West always wonders about the cause of terrorism. Such actions are the root cause. "If someone commits a suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammed, his act is justified.”
The comments from Pakistan’s religious affairs minister came as mobs demonstrated in the eastern city of Multan. About 100 students chanted, “Kill him! Kill him!” as they carried banners and set fire to images of Rushdie. Figures of the Queen were also torched. Pakistan’s lawmakers, meanwhile, passed a resolution demanding Britain withdraw the knighthood.
Another leading Pakistan politician, Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, branded Rushdie a “blasphemer”. In Britain, the first Muslim Peer fuelled the row by accusing Rushdie, 59, of having “blood on his hands”. Labour Lord Ahmed, 48, said Verses triggered “violence around the world”.
Prize-winning Rushdie was forced into hiding for ten years when Iran issued a fatwa against him in 1989. Lord Ahmed added: “Honouring a man who has blood on his hands goes too far.”
He told BBC Radio 4: “Two weeks ago the Prime Minister was calling for building relations between the Muslim world and Britain, then suddenly this knighthood is given to a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims but also to Christians — because he used abusive language towards Jesus Christ.”
Lord Ahmed said the decision had damaged British interests abroad and community relations in the UK.He went on: “This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world.” Rushdie got the knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours on Saturday. Yesterday her Majesty was at the Order of the Garter service at Windsor Castle.
-------------
Honour 'justifies' suicide attack on Rushdie
Telegraph
19/06/2007
Sir Salman Rushdie, the author, was facing fresh threats to his life yesterday following his knighthood. A senior minister in the Pakistani government said that the decision was a justification for suicide bombing, after the parliament in Islamabad condemned the honour as "blasphemous and insulting" to the world's Muslims.
As Pakistani MPs issued a demand for the award to be immediately withdrawn, the religious affairs minister, Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, said: "The West always wonders about the root cause of terrorism. Such actions [giving Sir Salman a knighthood] are the root cause of it. "If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act is justified." The parliament passed a unanimous resolution deploring the honour as an open insult to the feelings of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.
Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, the minister for parliamentary affairs who tabled the motion, said that the knighthood was "a source of hurt for Muslims" and would encourage people to "commit blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammad".
Mr ul-Haq then called on Pakistan and all other Muslim states to "break off diplomatic relations with Britain" if the knighthood was not withdrawn. The minister was later forced to clarify his potentially highly inflammatory statement, saying that he was speaking about the wider causes of terrorism and not of Sir Salman specifically.
Pakistan's condemnation came after Iran expressed similar sentiments at the weekend and will again raise concerns for Sir Salman's safety almost 20 years after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Pakistan's religious parties ordered supporters on to the streets of two provincial cites yesterday. Effigies of both the Queen and Sir Salman were burned while some protesters chanted "Kill him! Kill him!"
Sir Salman, 59, who said he was "thrilled" to be knighted, was forced to live in hiding for nine years after Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill him for allegedly insulting Islam's holy Prophet in The Satanic Verses. It was not until 1998, when the Iranian government said that it would not support the outstanding fatwa, that the author took the decision to return to public life.
Last night British officials were waiting nervously for further reaction to the award at a time when Pakistani society is becoming increasingly radicalised. At the Multan protest, Asim Dahr, a student leader from the group Jamiat Turaba Arabia said that Sir Salman should face Islamic justice. "This Queen has made a mockery of Muslims by giving him a title of 'sir'.
Salman Rushdie was condemned by Imam Khomeni and he issued a decree about his death. He should be handed over to the Muslims so they can try him according to Islamic laws." Robert Brinkley, Britain's High Commissioner to Pakistan, said: "It is simply untrue to suggest that this in any way is an insult to Islam or the Prophet Mohammed, and we have enormous respect for Islam as a religion and for its intellectual and cultural achievements."
However, the Muslim peer, Labour's Lord Ahmed, told BBC Radio 4's PM that he was "appalled" to hear of a knighthood for "a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims, but also to Christians".
Two stories are below: gotta love the Sun headline, as well as the accusation that Rushdie is the one with blood on his hands. These Islamist sympathizers sure have Chutzpah. Meanwhile the Telegraph headline reminds us of the hopeless addiction of the Muslim world on the (infinitely flexible, utterly unrequitable) concept of 'honour'.
Pakistan orders smoked Salman
The Sun
June 19, 2007
A SICK Pakistani politician last night said Salman Rushdie’s knighthood justified suicide bombings against British targets — as mobs burned effigies of the author. Cabinet minister Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq said the gong for The Satanic Verses writer was to blame for fuelling al-Qaeda terrorism.
He told the Islamabad parliament: “This is an occasion for the world’s 1.5billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision. “The West always wonders about the cause of terrorism. Such actions are the root cause. "If someone commits a suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammed, his act is justified.”
The comments from Pakistan’s religious affairs minister came as mobs demonstrated in the eastern city of Multan. About 100 students chanted, “Kill him! Kill him!” as they carried banners and set fire to images of Rushdie. Figures of the Queen were also torched. Pakistan’s lawmakers, meanwhile, passed a resolution demanding Britain withdraw the knighthood.
Another leading Pakistan politician, Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, branded Rushdie a “blasphemer”. In Britain, the first Muslim Peer fuelled the row by accusing Rushdie, 59, of having “blood on his hands”. Labour Lord Ahmed, 48, said Verses triggered “violence around the world”.
Prize-winning Rushdie was forced into hiding for ten years when Iran issued a fatwa against him in 1989. Lord Ahmed added: “Honouring a man who has blood on his hands goes too far.”
He told BBC Radio 4: “Two weeks ago the Prime Minister was calling for building relations between the Muslim world and Britain, then suddenly this knighthood is given to a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims but also to Christians — because he used abusive language towards Jesus Christ.”
Lord Ahmed said the decision had damaged British interests abroad and community relations in the UK.He went on: “This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world.” Rushdie got the knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours on Saturday. Yesterday her Majesty was at the Order of the Garter service at Windsor Castle.
-------------
Honour 'justifies' suicide attack on Rushdie
Telegraph
19/06/2007
Sir Salman Rushdie, the author, was facing fresh threats to his life yesterday following his knighthood. A senior minister in the Pakistani government said that the decision was a justification for suicide bombing, after the parliament in Islamabad condemned the honour as "blasphemous and insulting" to the world's Muslims.
As Pakistani MPs issued a demand for the award to be immediately withdrawn, the religious affairs minister, Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, said: "The West always wonders about the root cause of terrorism. Such actions [giving Sir Salman a knighthood] are the root cause of it. "If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act is justified." The parliament passed a unanimous resolution deploring the honour as an open insult to the feelings of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.
Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, the minister for parliamentary affairs who tabled the motion, said that the knighthood was "a source of hurt for Muslims" and would encourage people to "commit blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammad".
Mr ul-Haq then called on Pakistan and all other Muslim states to "break off diplomatic relations with Britain" if the knighthood was not withdrawn. The minister was later forced to clarify his potentially highly inflammatory statement, saying that he was speaking about the wider causes of terrorism and not of Sir Salman specifically.
Pakistan's condemnation came after Iran expressed similar sentiments at the weekend and will again raise concerns for Sir Salman's safety almost 20 years after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Pakistan's religious parties ordered supporters on to the streets of two provincial cites yesterday. Effigies of both the Queen and Sir Salman were burned while some protesters chanted "Kill him! Kill him!"
Sir Salman, 59, who said he was "thrilled" to be knighted, was forced to live in hiding for nine years after Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill him for allegedly insulting Islam's holy Prophet in The Satanic Verses. It was not until 1998, when the Iranian government said that it would not support the outstanding fatwa, that the author took the decision to return to public life.
Last night British officials were waiting nervously for further reaction to the award at a time when Pakistani society is becoming increasingly radicalised. At the Multan protest, Asim Dahr, a student leader from the group Jamiat Turaba Arabia said that Sir Salman should face Islamic justice. "This Queen has made a mockery of Muslims by giving him a title of 'sir'.
Salman Rushdie was condemned by Imam Khomeni and he issued a decree about his death. He should be handed over to the Muslims so they can try him according to Islamic laws." Robert Brinkley, Britain's High Commissioner to Pakistan, said: "It is simply untrue to suggest that this in any way is an insult to Islam or the Prophet Mohammed, and we have enormous respect for Islam as a religion and for its intellectual and cultural achievements."
However, the Muslim peer, Labour's Lord Ahmed, told BBC Radio 4's PM that he was "appalled" to hear of a knighthood for "a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims, but also to Christians".
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The greater threat to Israel
Peter Hitchens reports from Israel.
Which of these is the greater threat to Israel?
Could this be the way the Middle East conflict ends, not with a mushroom cloud or a peace deal but with the slow disappearance of the Jewish state? It seems a real possibility.
Israel must cope with two far deeper dangers than Iran’s amateur atom bomb, or even unending waves of suicide bombers.
Those perils come instead from maternity wards, where Arabs are slowly winning a long-distance population race with Jews – and from Israel’s own foolishly forgotten Arab people, finally beginning to pump up their political muscle.
Which of these is the greater threat to Israel?
Could this be the way the Middle East conflict ends, not with a mushroom cloud or a peace deal but with the slow disappearance of the Jewish state? It seems a real possibility.
Israel must cope with two far deeper dangers than Iran’s amateur atom bomb, or even unending waves of suicide bombers.
Those perils come instead from maternity wards, where Arabs are slowly winning a long-distance population race with Jews – and from Israel’s own foolishly forgotten Arab people, finally beginning to pump up their political muscle.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The catastrophic decline in the quality of the British Civil Service
The British Civil Service was once a byword for efficiency as well as incorruptibility. I'm as fascinated as I am appalled by the extraordinary decline in our quality of government. Perhaps this thread can become a place where we explore what the reasons behind this may be.
Amateurs in charge of government business
Telegraph
05/06/2007
The Government's chronic inability to manage costly IT schemes effectively is well documented - indeed, it has become one of New Labour's trademarks. This morning's report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee helps to explain why Whitehall gets it so wrong, so often.
At the heart of the problem is a slapdash approach to the management of high-value projects that would not be tolerated in the private sector. The fact that the Government spends rather more than £500 billion of taxpayers' cash each year seems to have inculcated a cavalier approach to value for money that is costing the country dear.
The committee highlights two specific areas of weakness in the management of complex IT programmes.
First, the high turnover rate among senior civil servants means there is little continuity in the running of schemes. The MPs found that half the senior civil servants in charge of IT projects are doing such work for the first time. In an area where expertise is invaluable, it seems - quite perversely - to be positively discouraged. This "lack of relevant experience, combined with a regular turnover of post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled change", observes the PAC.
The committee is even more exercised by the stupefying level of neglect shown by government ministers. The prudent expenditure of public funds should be a priority for all ministers of the Crown. Yet the PAC has discovered that in many of the most sensitive IT schemes, the senior officials in charge had not held a single meeting with ministers to discuss progress. This unforgivable laxity was found in 20 per cent of all "mission critical and high risk" computer systems.
In a further 28 per cent of these projects, ministers held meetings with officials fewer than four times a year. That means almost half of these multi-billion-pound projects are being invigilated in the most cursory way. The PAC rightly insists that ministers have a duty to ensure they are briefed "fully and candidly" on risks, progress and cost escalation. The failure to do so has led to such well-documented disasters as the enormous cost and time overruns in the computerisation of NHS records and the multi-billion-pound fiasco of the introduction of tax credits.
It hardly augurs well for the introduction of identity cards.
These failings expose a deeper weakness in the way government does business. There is often an air of starry-eyed naivety about Whitehall's contract negotiations with private sector companies, many of which must be laughing all the way to the bank. The same mindset was in play in the disastrous renegotiation of GPs' and dentists' contracts.
The common factor in all these cases is the sheer amateurishness of the government machine when it comes to cutting a deal. If the men from the ministry are incapable of driving a hard bargain, they should get people in who can.
-------------
Ministers lose grip on £14bn IT
Telegraph
05/06/2007
Ministers are failing to keep a grip on Government computer projects that cost the taxpayer up to £14 billion a year, a report by MPs warns today. Senior officials running many of Whitehall's most "mission critical" IT schemes have not even held a meeting with the minister responsible, the report discloses. The high turnover of civil servants running such projects, and their lack of experience, has led to damaging "discontinuity" and increased the risk of cost over runs and delays.
Today's report from the Commons public accounts select committee follows a catalogue of costly problems with Government IT projects, including new computer systems for the NHS and tax credit systems. Many have gone billions of pounds over budget and are years behind schedule. The MPs said that in one in five "mission critical and high-risk" computer schemes, senior officials had not met the minister responsible.
"For these major, high-risk undertakings to succeed, ministers need to be briefed fully and candidly at least quarterly on risks, progress and cost escalations," the report says. It found that 70 per cent of senior officials were concerned about the lack of "programme and project management skills" within their departments.
There was also a disturbing turnover of staff involved in such schemes. More than half of the senior officials in charge of IT projects were carrying out the role for the first time. "Lack of relevant experience, combined with a regular turnover of post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled change," the report says.
-------------
Hewitt admits defeat on doctors' job fiasco
Telegraph
17/05/2007
Amateurs in charge of government business
Telegraph
05/06/2007
The Government's chronic inability to manage costly IT schemes effectively is well documented - indeed, it has become one of New Labour's trademarks. This morning's report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee helps to explain why Whitehall gets it so wrong, so often.
At the heart of the problem is a slapdash approach to the management of high-value projects that would not be tolerated in the private sector. The fact that the Government spends rather more than £500 billion of taxpayers' cash each year seems to have inculcated a cavalier approach to value for money that is costing the country dear.
The committee highlights two specific areas of weakness in the management of complex IT programmes.
First, the high turnover rate among senior civil servants means there is little continuity in the running of schemes. The MPs found that half the senior civil servants in charge of IT projects are doing such work for the first time. In an area where expertise is invaluable, it seems - quite perversely - to be positively discouraged. This "lack of relevant experience, combined with a regular turnover of post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled change", observes the PAC.
The committee is even more exercised by the stupefying level of neglect shown by government ministers. The prudent expenditure of public funds should be a priority for all ministers of the Crown. Yet the PAC has discovered that in many of the most sensitive IT schemes, the senior officials in charge had not held a single meeting with ministers to discuss progress. This unforgivable laxity was found in 20 per cent of all "mission critical and high risk" computer systems.
In a further 28 per cent of these projects, ministers held meetings with officials fewer than four times a year. That means almost half of these multi-billion-pound projects are being invigilated in the most cursory way. The PAC rightly insists that ministers have a duty to ensure they are briefed "fully and candidly" on risks, progress and cost escalation. The failure to do so has led to such well-documented disasters as the enormous cost and time overruns in the computerisation of NHS records and the multi-billion-pound fiasco of the introduction of tax credits.
It hardly augurs well for the introduction of identity cards.
These failings expose a deeper weakness in the way government does business. There is often an air of starry-eyed naivety about Whitehall's contract negotiations with private sector companies, many of which must be laughing all the way to the bank. The same mindset was in play in the disastrous renegotiation of GPs' and dentists' contracts.
The common factor in all these cases is the sheer amateurishness of the government machine when it comes to cutting a deal. If the men from the ministry are incapable of driving a hard bargain, they should get people in who can.
-------------
Ministers lose grip on £14bn IT
Telegraph
05/06/2007
Ministers are failing to keep a grip on Government computer projects that cost the taxpayer up to £14 billion a year, a report by MPs warns today. Senior officials running many of Whitehall's most "mission critical" IT schemes have not even held a meeting with the minister responsible, the report discloses. The high turnover of civil servants running such projects, and their lack of experience, has led to damaging "discontinuity" and increased the risk of cost over runs and delays.
Today's report from the Commons public accounts select committee follows a catalogue of costly problems with Government IT projects, including new computer systems for the NHS and tax credit systems. Many have gone billions of pounds over budget and are years behind schedule. The MPs said that in one in five "mission critical and high-risk" computer schemes, senior officials had not met the minister responsible.
"For these major, high-risk undertakings to succeed, ministers need to be briefed fully and candidly at least quarterly on risks, progress and cost escalations," the report says. It found that 70 per cent of senior officials were concerned about the lack of "programme and project management skills" within their departments.
There was also a disturbing turnover of staff involved in such schemes. More than half of the senior officials in charge of IT projects were carrying out the role for the first time. "Lack of relevant experience, combined with a regular turnover of post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled change," the report says.
-------------
Hewitt admits defeat on doctors' job fiasco
Telegraph
17/05/2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
The slow fade of Fidel's Cuba
Excellent piece on Cuba in Prospect magazine. Journalist Bella Thomas, who has experienced Cuba first hand, presents a sober, unsentimental look at the country quite at odds with the romantic myth popularised by many westerners.
'This does not mean that those still in Cuba are acquiescent or happy. They are far poorer than their eastern European counterparts were in 1989: the average wage, at $20 a month, can barely feed a single person for a couple of weeks. You cannot spend any length of time in Havana without noticing the lack of food for the majority of Cubans. The mother of a friend, an old lady who lived in one tiny rotting room in a former brothel with her son, gets by selling matchboxes to her neighbours, having stolen them from the factory where she worked. Another acquaintance keeps pigs on her balcony and sells pork to a few locals. The luckier ones sell cigars or taxi rides to foreigners. An elite work in hotels.'
[...]
'Healthcare and education are supposed to be the redeeming graces of the regime, but this is questionable. There are a large number of doctors, but, according to most Cubans I know, many have left the country and the health system is in a ragged state—apart from those hospitals reserved for foreigners—and people often have to pay a bribe to get treated. Michael Moore, the American film director, who has recently been praising the system should take note of the real life stories beneath the statistics. I went into a couple of hospitals for locals on my latest visit. In the first, my friend told me not to say a word in case my accent was noticed, as foreigners are not allowed in these places. I was appalled by the hygiene and amazed at the antiquity of the building and some of the equipment. I was told that the vast majority of Cuban hospitals, apart from two in Havana, were built before the revolution. Which revolution, I wondered; this one seemed to date from the 1900s.
On another occasion, I saw a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck hurrying along the boulevard of Vedado, in west Havana. We struck up a conversation. He was on his way to the hospital around the corner. I asked him if he would take me there. He was charming and intelligent, and had that ease of communication that many Cubans possess: he wasn't at all taken aback by an unknown woman in dark glasses asking to accompany him to work. The doctor told me that I shouldn't be too shocked; the hospital was being "refurbished." The building certainly was in a state of filth and decrepitude. This was not a place one would want to be ill in.'
[...]
'I also took the risk of visiting a dissident who had been imprisoned in 1997 for five years for writing a ten-page document criticising the lack of a liberalisation programme. (Even so, he considers himself a socialist.) His house was supposed to be watched, and I decided to go for an early breakfast, judging that this might be a moment when the "neighbours" were otherwise engaged.
Unlike some dissidents, who can be rather hysterical, he was methodical and grave. We sat in his kitchen and discussed the state of the prisons, which he described in some detail. He also spoke of the healthcare system and echoed the view that the propaganda about it has been absurdly successful. Turning to the issue of regime change, he claimed that totalitarian governments can rarely be challenged from below. "In fact it has never happened before," he said forcefully. "When Stalin died, when Mao died, nothing happened. It takes movement from above, as with Gorbachev in Russia, or from outside, as with the exodus in east Germany, for change to emerge." There is no sign of either in Cuba so far.
When I told the same man that Ken Livingstone was preparing to organise a celebration in London for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution in 2009, he asked how was it that such people turned a blind eye to the difficulties in these places? He shrugged and, with a measure of forced self-discipline, said, "Well, you are a democracy, I suppose," before changing the subject.
When I returned to London, I watched an edition of Newsnight in which the reporter claimed to be immensely impressed—after four days on the island—by the state of Cuban healthcare. I wondered where this man had been. Had he been to hospitals other than the ones his minders had taken him to? Why was it that Fidel Castro was treated by a Spanish doctor? "There's all kinds of things we could learn from this place," the reporter said, after his drive around Havana in an open-top 1950s Chevrolet, with a Cuban bolero playing in the background.
'This does not mean that those still in Cuba are acquiescent or happy. They are far poorer than their eastern European counterparts were in 1989: the average wage, at $20 a month, can barely feed a single person for a couple of weeks. You cannot spend any length of time in Havana without noticing the lack of food for the majority of Cubans. The mother of a friend, an old lady who lived in one tiny rotting room in a former brothel with her son, gets by selling matchboxes to her neighbours, having stolen them from the factory where she worked. Another acquaintance keeps pigs on her balcony and sells pork to a few locals. The luckier ones sell cigars or taxi rides to foreigners. An elite work in hotels.'
[...]
'Healthcare and education are supposed to be the redeeming graces of the regime, but this is questionable. There are a large number of doctors, but, according to most Cubans I know, many have left the country and the health system is in a ragged state—apart from those hospitals reserved for foreigners—and people often have to pay a bribe to get treated. Michael Moore, the American film director, who has recently been praising the system should take note of the real life stories beneath the statistics. I went into a couple of hospitals for locals on my latest visit. In the first, my friend told me not to say a word in case my accent was noticed, as foreigners are not allowed in these places. I was appalled by the hygiene and amazed at the antiquity of the building and some of the equipment. I was told that the vast majority of Cuban hospitals, apart from two in Havana, were built before the revolution. Which revolution, I wondered; this one seemed to date from the 1900s.
On another occasion, I saw a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck hurrying along the boulevard of Vedado, in west Havana. We struck up a conversation. He was on his way to the hospital around the corner. I asked him if he would take me there. He was charming and intelligent, and had that ease of communication that many Cubans possess: he wasn't at all taken aback by an unknown woman in dark glasses asking to accompany him to work. The doctor told me that I shouldn't be too shocked; the hospital was being "refurbished." The building certainly was in a state of filth and decrepitude. This was not a place one would want to be ill in.'
[...]
'I also took the risk of visiting a dissident who had been imprisoned in 1997 for five years for writing a ten-page document criticising the lack of a liberalisation programme. (Even so, he considers himself a socialist.) His house was supposed to be watched, and I decided to go for an early breakfast, judging that this might be a moment when the "neighbours" were otherwise engaged.
Unlike some dissidents, who can be rather hysterical, he was methodical and grave. We sat in his kitchen and discussed the state of the prisons, which he described in some detail. He also spoke of the healthcare system and echoed the view that the propaganda about it has been absurdly successful. Turning to the issue of regime change, he claimed that totalitarian governments can rarely be challenged from below. "In fact it has never happened before," he said forcefully. "When Stalin died, when Mao died, nothing happened. It takes movement from above, as with Gorbachev in Russia, or from outside, as with the exodus in east Germany, for change to emerge." There is no sign of either in Cuba so far.
When I told the same man that Ken Livingstone was preparing to organise a celebration in London for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution in 2009, he asked how was it that such people turned a blind eye to the difficulties in these places? He shrugged and, with a measure of forced self-discipline, said, "Well, you are a democracy, I suppose," before changing the subject.
When I returned to London, I watched an edition of Newsnight in which the reporter claimed to be immensely impressed—after four days on the island—by the state of Cuban healthcare. I wondered where this man had been. Had he been to hospitals other than the ones his minders had taken him to? Why was it that Fidel Castro was treated by a Spanish doctor? "There's all kinds of things we could learn from this place," the reporter said, after his drive around Havana in an open-top 1950s Chevrolet, with a Cuban bolero playing in the background.
Monday, June 04, 2007
40th anniversary of the Six Day War
It's the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War.
How 1967 defined the Middle East
Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East editor
4/6/07
The Jewish state was only 19 years old and the youngest survivors of the Holocaust were barely in their 20s. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser's radio station Voice of the Arabs fed their anxieties by broadcasting bloodcurdling threats.
Its chief announcer, Ahmed Said, had the best known voice in the Arab world in the 1960s after Nasser himself and the legendary diva, Umm Kulthum.
Said was famous for lines like this: "We have nothing for Israel except war - comprehensive war... marching against its gangs, destroying and putting an end to the whole Zionist existence... every one of the 100 million Arabs has been living for the past 19 years on one hope - to live to die on the day that Israel is liquidated."
No wonder many Israelis and their friends and relations abroad were scared stiff.
How 1967 defined the Middle East
Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East editor
4/6/07
The Jewish state was only 19 years old and the youngest survivors of the Holocaust were barely in their 20s. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser's radio station Voice of the Arabs fed their anxieties by broadcasting bloodcurdling threats.
Its chief announcer, Ahmed Said, had the best known voice in the Arab world in the 1960s after Nasser himself and the legendary diva, Umm Kulthum.
Said was famous for lines like this: "We have nothing for Israel except war - comprehensive war... marching against its gangs, destroying and putting an end to the whole Zionist existence... every one of the 100 million Arabs has been living for the past 19 years on one hope - to live to die on the day that Israel is liquidated."
No wonder many Israelis and their friends and relations abroad were scared stiff.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Dalrymple on Honeyford - the man who predicted the race riots
Those of you whose political memories extend back to the 80's may remember the Honeyford Affair, triggered by this article:
Education and Race - an Alternative View
Ray Honeyford
The Salisbury Review
1984
My current fave author, Theodore Dalrymple, has written about the affair with his usual brilliance:
The Man Who Predicted the Race Riots
Theodore Dalrymple
City Journal Spring 2002
As ever, you should read the whole article, but one aspect of is relevant to the principle of 'locality' in education, as discussed elsewhere on impdec:
Though [Honeyford] failed to gain admission to a selective grammar school himself, he bitterly regrets the passing of these quintessentially meritocratic institutions, which allowed so many poor but talented children a chance to join the mainstream and even to excel in Britain’s open society. (This fact alone suggests his large-mindedness: how many people can resist erecting a general principle out of their personal disappointments?) Such schools, which ideologues condemned as elitist, might have helped prevent the strife that convulses Bradford today by creating a common culture and an interracial elite. They would have drawn (by and large, though not of course with 100 percent accuracy) the most intelligent children from diverse areas, allowing lasting friendships to form across the races among people likely to grow up to be the most prominent citizens of their respective groups.
Instead, today the schools draw children of every level of ability, but from a single geographical area only. If that area is white only, then the school will be white only; if Muslim, the school will be Muslim. Different ethnic and cultural groups—their differences preserved in educational aspic—live in geographical proximity but without any real contact. It does not require a Nostradamus to predict the consequences.
Education and Race - an Alternative View
Ray Honeyford
The Salisbury Review
1984
My current fave author, Theodore Dalrymple, has written about the affair with his usual brilliance:
The Man Who Predicted the Race Riots
Theodore Dalrymple
City Journal Spring 2002
As ever, you should read the whole article, but one aspect of is relevant to the principle of 'locality' in education, as discussed elsewhere on impdec:
Though [Honeyford] failed to gain admission to a selective grammar school himself, he bitterly regrets the passing of these quintessentially meritocratic institutions, which allowed so many poor but talented children a chance to join the mainstream and even to excel in Britain’s open society. (This fact alone suggests his large-mindedness: how many people can resist erecting a general principle out of their personal disappointments?) Such schools, which ideologues condemned as elitist, might have helped prevent the strife that convulses Bradford today by creating a common culture and an interracial elite. They would have drawn (by and large, though not of course with 100 percent accuracy) the most intelligent children from diverse areas, allowing lasting friendships to form across the races among people likely to grow up to be the most prominent citizens of their respective groups.
Instead, today the schools draw children of every level of ability, but from a single geographical area only. If that area is white only, then the school will be white only; if Muslim, the school will be Muslim. Different ethnic and cultural groups—their differences preserved in educational aspic—live in geographical proximity but without any real contact. It does not require a Nostradamus to predict the consequences.
Friday, May 18, 2007
MP's exempt themselves from Freedom of Information Act
A more contemptuous decision is hard to imagine.
MP's exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act
Times Online
May 18, 2007
A move to exempt Parliament from freedom of information law has been approved by MPs after attempts to block it in the Commons failed.
MPs brushed aside accusations that they were creating one law for themselves and another for those they govern as they voted through the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill.
MP's exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act
Times Online
May 18, 2007
A move to exempt Parliament from freedom of information law has been approved by MPs after attempts to block it in the Commons failed.
MPs brushed aside accusations that they were creating one law for themselves and another for those they govern as they voted through the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Scruton - The Nation-State and Democracy
Fascinating piece, encompassing history, philosophy and politics, about what it takes to make a nation. Thanks to Andy for digging this up (some time ago).
The Nation-State and Democracy
By Roger Scruton
The American Spectator
14/2/07
A country like Iraq is not, never has been, and never will be a nation-state. This is not merely because it contains communities that identify themselves in terms of their religious and ethnic allegiance; it is also because for these communities their place of settlement has never been a *country*, a place defined as *ours*, where *our* way of doing things prevails, and which must be defended at all costs if *our* way of life and web of affections is to survive. Country has always taken second place to religion, family, or tribe.
Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire by Western diplomats who imagined, like Woodrow Wilson, that nation-states lie concealed beneath every empire, that national boundaries are already inscribed in the affections of the people, held in place by lines of force that have the same historical fixity as those which created the nation-states of Europe. This piece of wishful thinking is very far from the truth. Even if Iraq were to divide today into three regions, Sunni Arab, Shiite, and Kurd, these would not succeed in becoming nation-states. Authority would still be attributed to family, tribe, and creed above that of country, and in emergencies the people of the resulting territories would still unite behind those old ideas of identity, and not behind the "law of the land."
The Nation-State and Democracy
By Roger Scruton
The American Spectator
14/2/07
A country like Iraq is not, never has been, and never will be a nation-state. This is not merely because it contains communities that identify themselves in terms of their religious and ethnic allegiance; it is also because for these communities their place of settlement has never been a *country*, a place defined as *ours*, where *our* way of doing things prevails, and which must be defended at all costs if *our* way of life and web of affections is to survive. Country has always taken second place to religion, family, or tribe.
Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire by Western diplomats who imagined, like Woodrow Wilson, that nation-states lie concealed beneath every empire, that national boundaries are already inscribed in the affections of the people, held in place by lines of force that have the same historical fixity as those which created the nation-states of Europe. This piece of wishful thinking is very far from the truth. Even if Iraq were to divide today into three regions, Sunni Arab, Shiite, and Kurd, these would not succeed in becoming nation-states. Authority would still be attributed to family, tribe, and creed above that of country, and in emergencies the people of the resulting territories would still unite behind those old ideas of identity, and not behind the "law of the land."
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Quotes
I thought it might be interesting to start a new thread on great quotes. They don't need to be on any specific subject, they can be famous or obscure, fact or fiction, serious or funny (or both serious and funny) whatever you like.
Here's my one to start:
'Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.'
George Orwell
Here's my one to start:
'Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.'
George Orwell
Leave the Middle East to sort itself out - Edward Luttwak
I heard a certain Edward Luttwak on the radio this morning.
Radio 4 Today Program
03/05/07
0857 Edward Luttwak of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington thinks that we pay too much attention to the Middle East region.
Listen | Permalink
It's rare you hear someone talking on a familiar topic in such a new, thought-provoking, and frankly funny manner. All of these characteristics can be seen in this piece, where he covers the ground in the radio interview and more. He is a man who can come up with, and defend, comments like: "It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless."
The middle of nowhere
Prospect Magazine 2007
Edward Luttwak
Western analysts are forever bleating about the strategic importance of the middle east. But despite its oil, this backward region is less relevant than ever, and it would be better for everyone if the rest of the world learned to ignore it.
...
We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.
Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.
The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the UN's 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 per cent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 per cent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 per cent. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire middle east generated under 4 per cent of global GDP in 2006—less than Germany.
Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and east Asia—places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.
His comments in the same article on Iran echo those of Peter Hitchens in recent threads:
Now the Mussolini syndrome is at work over Iran. All the symptoms are present, including tabulated lists of Iran's warships, despite the fact that most are over 30 years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s, Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in name. There are awed descriptions of the Pasdaran revolutionary guards, inevitably described as "elite," who do indeed strut around as if they have won many a war, but who have actually fought only one—against Iraq, which they lost. As for Iran's claim to have defeated Israel by Hizbullah proxy in last year's affray, the publicity was excellent but the substance went the other way, with roughly 25 per cent of the best-trained men dead, which explains the tomb-like silence and immobility of the once rumbustious Hizbullah ever since the ceasefire.
Then there is the new light cavalry of Iranian terrorism that is invoked to frighten us if all else fails. The usual middle east experts now explain that if we annoy the ayatollahs, they will unleash terrorists who will devastate our lives, even though 30 years of "death to America" invocations and vast sums spent on maintaining a special international terrorism department have produced only one major bombing in Saudi Arabia, in 1996, and two in the most permissive environment of Buenos Aires, in 1992 and 1994, along with some assassinations of exiles in Europe.
It is true enough that if Iran's nuclear installations are bombed in some overnight raid, there is likely to be some retaliation, but we live in fortunate times in which we have only the irritant of terrorism instead of world wars to worry about—and Iran's added contribution is not likely to leave much of an impression. There may be good reasons for not attacking Iran's nuclear sites—including the very slow and uncertain progress of its uranium enrichment effort—but its ability to strike back is not one of them. Even the seemingly fragile tanker traffic down the Gulf and through the straits of Hormuz is not as vulnerable as it seems—Iran and Iraq have both tried to attack it many times without much success, and this time the US navy stands ready to destroy any airstrip or jetty from which attacks are launched.
As for the claim that the "Iranians" are united in patriotic support for the nuclear programme, no such nationality even exists. Out of Iran's population of 70m or so, 51 per cent are ethnically Persian, 24 per cent are Turks ("Azeris" is the regime's term), with other minorities comprising the remaining quarter. Many of Iran's 16-17m Turks are in revolt against Persian cultural imperialism; its 5-6m Kurds have started a serious insurgency; the Arab minority detonates bombs in Ahvaz; and Baluch tribesmen attack gendarmes and revolutionary guards. If some 40 per cent of the British population were engaged in separatist struggles of varying intensity, nobody would claim that it was firmly united around the London government. On top of this, many of the Persian majority oppose the theocratic regime, either because they have become post-Islamic in reaction to its many prohibitions, or because they are Sufis, whom the regime now persecutes almost as much as the small Baha'i minority. So let us have no more reports from Tehran stressing the country's national unity. Persian nationalism is a minority position in a country where half the population is not even Persian. In our times, multinational states either decentralise or break up more or less violently; Iran is not decentralising, so its future seems highly predictable, while in the present not much cohesion under attack is to be expected.
He's an interesting guy, this Luttwak, certainly not afraid to break taboos. And he *loathes* humanitarian agencies:
Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace
If you had a U.N. Works and Relief Administration in Europe in the history of Europe, there would be no Europe. There would be great, giant camps for displaced Visigoth, mis-Burgundians, Gallo-Romans, uprooted Gallo-Romans. There would be camps perpetuating refugee nations for ever and ever, in which resentment and hatred are preserved like fresh flowers.
So if you intervene in the realm of conflict with good intentions, the outcome is invariably negative. When you go to a battlefield and you see humanitarians, shoot them. They are the ones who are going to perpetuate that conflict. They are the ones who are going to do the thing that all of us witnessed, in Goma after the Rwandan War. Instead of the natural dispersal of the Hutus around Africa, the arrival of these competing NGOs - well-meaning welfare, distributing food - kept the Hutus there under the control of the murderous inter-Rwandan people so that they would start ranging back into Rwanda again.
War is the realm of conflict. If you go in with good intentions, you will disturb the solution of conflict. Anybody who gives money to an NGO that provides help to the victims of war is perpetuating war in one way or the other. For one thing, when you feed people in that environment, the men with the guns get fed first. Somalia was perpetuated. If you want to give money to people, you can give it to my World Foundation against Monotheism, but never give it to any humanitarian organization. They are the ones who do the greatest harm.
Give War a Chance
The most disinterested of all interventions in war—and the most destructive—are humanitarian relief activities. The largest and most protracted is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It was built on the model of its predecessor, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), which operated displaced–persons’ camps in Europe immediately after World War II. The UNRWA was established immediately after the 1948–49 Arab–Israeli war to feed, shelter, educate, and provide health services for Arab refugees who had fled Israeli zones in the former territory of Palestine.
By keeping refugees alive in spartan conditions that encouraged their rapid emigration or local resettlement, the UNRRA’s camps in Europe had assuaged postwar resentments and helped disperse revanchist concentrations of national groups. But UNRWA camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip provided on the whole a higher standard of living than most Arab villagers had previously enjoyed, with a more varied diet, organized schooling, superior medical care, and no backbreaking labor in stony fields. They had, therefore, the opposite effect, becoming desirable homes rather than eagerly abandoned transit camps. With the encouragement of several Arab countries, the UNRWA turned escaping civilians into lifelong refugees who gave birth to refugee children, who have in turn had refugee children of their own.
During its half–century of operation, the UNRWA has thus perpetuated a Palestinian refugee nation, preserving its resentments in as fresh a condition as they were in 1948 and keeping the first bloom of revanchist emotion intact. By its very existence, the UNRWA dissuades integration into local society and inhibits emigration. The concentration of Palestinians in the camps, moreover, has facilitated the voluntary or forced enlistment of refugee youths by armed organizations that fight both Israel and each other. The UNRWA has contributed to a half–century of Arab–Israeli violence and still retards the advent of peace.
If each European war had been attended by its own postwar unRwa, today’s Europe would be filled with giant camps for millions of descendants of uprooted Gallo–Romans, abandoned Vandals, defeated Burgundians, and misplaced Visigoths—not to speak of more recent refugee nations such as post–1945 Sudeten Germans (three million of whom were expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945). Such a Europe would have remained a mosaic of warring tribes, undigested and unreconciled in their separate feeding camps. It might have assuaged consciences to help each one at each remove, but it would have led to permanent instability and violence.
The UNRWA has counterparts elsewhere, such as the Cambodian camps along the Thai border, which incidentally provided safe havens for the mass–murdering Khmer Rouge. But because the United Nations is limited by stingy national contributions, these camps’ sabotage of peace is at least localized.
That is not true of the proliferating, feverishly competitive nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that now aid war refugees. Like any other institution, these NGOs are interested in perpetuating themselves, which means that their first priority is to attract charitable contributions by being seen to be active in high–visibility situations. Only the most dramatic natural disasters attract any significant mass–media attention, and then only briefly; soon after an earthquake or flood, the cameras depart. War refugees, by contrast, can win sustained press coverage if kept concentrated in reasonably accessible camps. Regular warfare among well–developed countries is rare and offers few opportunities for such NGOs, so they focus their efforts on aiding refugees in the poorest parts of the world. This ensures that the food, shelter, and health care offered—although abysmal by Western standards—exceeds what is locally available to non–refugees. The consequences are entirely predictable. Among many examples, the huge refugee camps along the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Rwanda stand out. They sustain a Hutu nation that would otherwise have been dispersed, making the consolidation of Rwanda impossible and providing a base for radicals to launch more Tutsi–killing raids across the border. Humanitarian intervention has worsened the chances of a stable, long–term resolution of the tensions in Rwanda.
To keep refugee nations intact and preserve their resentments forever is bad enough, but inserting material aid into ongoing conflicts is even worse. Many NGOs that operate in an odor of sanctity routinely supply active combatants. Defenseless, they cannot exclude armed warriors from their feeding stations, clinics, and shelters. Since refugees are presumptively on the losing side, the warriors among them are usually in retreat. By intervening to help, NGOs systematically impede the progress of their enemies toward a decisive victory that could end the war. Sometimes NGOs, impartial to a fault, even help both sides, thus preventing mutual exhaustion and a resulting settlement. And in some extreme cases, such as Somalia, NGOs even pay protection money to local war bands, which use those funds to buy arms. Those NGOs are therefore helping prolong the warfare whose consequences they ostensibly seek to mitigate.
Radio 4 Today Program
03/05/07
0857 Edward Luttwak of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington thinks that we pay too much attention to the Middle East region.
Listen | Permalink
It's rare you hear someone talking on a familiar topic in such a new, thought-provoking, and frankly funny manner. All of these characteristics can be seen in this piece, where he covers the ground in the radio interview and more. He is a man who can come up with, and defend, comments like: "It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless."
The middle of nowhere
Prospect Magazine 2007
Edward Luttwak
Western analysts are forever bleating about the strategic importance of the middle east. But despite its oil, this backward region is less relevant than ever, and it would be better for everyone if the rest of the world learned to ignore it.
...
We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.
Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.
The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the UN's 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 per cent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 per cent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 per cent. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire middle east generated under 4 per cent of global GDP in 2006—less than Germany.
Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and east Asia—places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.
His comments in the same article on Iran echo those of Peter Hitchens in recent threads:
Now the Mussolini syndrome is at work over Iran. All the symptoms are present, including tabulated lists of Iran's warships, despite the fact that most are over 30 years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s, Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in name. There are awed descriptions of the Pasdaran revolutionary guards, inevitably described as "elite," who do indeed strut around as if they have won many a war, but who have actually fought only one—against Iraq, which they lost. As for Iran's claim to have defeated Israel by Hizbullah proxy in last year's affray, the publicity was excellent but the substance went the other way, with roughly 25 per cent of the best-trained men dead, which explains the tomb-like silence and immobility of the once rumbustious Hizbullah ever since the ceasefire.
Then there is the new light cavalry of Iranian terrorism that is invoked to frighten us if all else fails. The usual middle east experts now explain that if we annoy the ayatollahs, they will unleash terrorists who will devastate our lives, even though 30 years of "death to America" invocations and vast sums spent on maintaining a special international terrorism department have produced only one major bombing in Saudi Arabia, in 1996, and two in the most permissive environment of Buenos Aires, in 1992 and 1994, along with some assassinations of exiles in Europe.
It is true enough that if Iran's nuclear installations are bombed in some overnight raid, there is likely to be some retaliation, but we live in fortunate times in which we have only the irritant of terrorism instead of world wars to worry about—and Iran's added contribution is not likely to leave much of an impression. There may be good reasons for not attacking Iran's nuclear sites—including the very slow and uncertain progress of its uranium enrichment effort—but its ability to strike back is not one of them. Even the seemingly fragile tanker traffic down the Gulf and through the straits of Hormuz is not as vulnerable as it seems—Iran and Iraq have both tried to attack it many times without much success, and this time the US navy stands ready to destroy any airstrip or jetty from which attacks are launched.
As for the claim that the "Iranians" are united in patriotic support for the nuclear programme, no such nationality even exists. Out of Iran's population of 70m or so, 51 per cent are ethnically Persian, 24 per cent are Turks ("Azeris" is the regime's term), with other minorities comprising the remaining quarter. Many of Iran's 16-17m Turks are in revolt against Persian cultural imperialism; its 5-6m Kurds have started a serious insurgency; the Arab minority detonates bombs in Ahvaz; and Baluch tribesmen attack gendarmes and revolutionary guards. If some 40 per cent of the British population were engaged in separatist struggles of varying intensity, nobody would claim that it was firmly united around the London government. On top of this, many of the Persian majority oppose the theocratic regime, either because they have become post-Islamic in reaction to its many prohibitions, or because they are Sufis, whom the regime now persecutes almost as much as the small Baha'i minority. So let us have no more reports from Tehran stressing the country's national unity. Persian nationalism is a minority position in a country where half the population is not even Persian. In our times, multinational states either decentralise or break up more or less violently; Iran is not decentralising, so its future seems highly predictable, while in the present not much cohesion under attack is to be expected.
He's an interesting guy, this Luttwak, certainly not afraid to break taboos. And he *loathes* humanitarian agencies:
Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace
If you had a U.N. Works and Relief Administration in Europe in the history of Europe, there would be no Europe. There would be great, giant camps for displaced Visigoth, mis-Burgundians, Gallo-Romans, uprooted Gallo-Romans. There would be camps perpetuating refugee nations for ever and ever, in which resentment and hatred are preserved like fresh flowers.
So if you intervene in the realm of conflict with good intentions, the outcome is invariably negative. When you go to a battlefield and you see humanitarians, shoot them. They are the ones who are going to perpetuate that conflict. They are the ones who are going to do the thing that all of us witnessed, in Goma after the Rwandan War. Instead of the natural dispersal of the Hutus around Africa, the arrival of these competing NGOs - well-meaning welfare, distributing food - kept the Hutus there under the control of the murderous inter-Rwandan people so that they would start ranging back into Rwanda again.
War is the realm of conflict. If you go in with good intentions, you will disturb the solution of conflict. Anybody who gives money to an NGO that provides help to the victims of war is perpetuating war in one way or the other. For one thing, when you feed people in that environment, the men with the guns get fed first. Somalia was perpetuated. If you want to give money to people, you can give it to my World Foundation against Monotheism, but never give it to any humanitarian organization. They are the ones who do the greatest harm.
Give War a Chance
The most disinterested of all interventions in war—and the most destructive—are humanitarian relief activities. The largest and most protracted is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It was built on the model of its predecessor, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), which operated displaced–persons’ camps in Europe immediately after World War II. The UNRWA was established immediately after the 1948–49 Arab–Israeli war to feed, shelter, educate, and provide health services for Arab refugees who had fled Israeli zones in the former territory of Palestine.
By keeping refugees alive in spartan conditions that encouraged their rapid emigration or local resettlement, the UNRRA’s camps in Europe had assuaged postwar resentments and helped disperse revanchist concentrations of national groups. But UNRWA camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip provided on the whole a higher standard of living than most Arab villagers had previously enjoyed, with a more varied diet, organized schooling, superior medical care, and no backbreaking labor in stony fields. They had, therefore, the opposite effect, becoming desirable homes rather than eagerly abandoned transit camps. With the encouragement of several Arab countries, the UNRWA turned escaping civilians into lifelong refugees who gave birth to refugee children, who have in turn had refugee children of their own.
During its half–century of operation, the UNRWA has thus perpetuated a Palestinian refugee nation, preserving its resentments in as fresh a condition as they were in 1948 and keeping the first bloom of revanchist emotion intact. By its very existence, the UNRWA dissuades integration into local society and inhibits emigration. The concentration of Palestinians in the camps, moreover, has facilitated the voluntary or forced enlistment of refugee youths by armed organizations that fight both Israel and each other. The UNRWA has contributed to a half–century of Arab–Israeli violence and still retards the advent of peace.
If each European war had been attended by its own postwar unRwa, today’s Europe would be filled with giant camps for millions of descendants of uprooted Gallo–Romans, abandoned Vandals, defeated Burgundians, and misplaced Visigoths—not to speak of more recent refugee nations such as post–1945 Sudeten Germans (three million of whom were expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945). Such a Europe would have remained a mosaic of warring tribes, undigested and unreconciled in their separate feeding camps. It might have assuaged consciences to help each one at each remove, but it would have led to permanent instability and violence.
The UNRWA has counterparts elsewhere, such as the Cambodian camps along the Thai border, which incidentally provided safe havens for the mass–murdering Khmer Rouge. But because the United Nations is limited by stingy national contributions, these camps’ sabotage of peace is at least localized.
That is not true of the proliferating, feverishly competitive nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that now aid war refugees. Like any other institution, these NGOs are interested in perpetuating themselves, which means that their first priority is to attract charitable contributions by being seen to be active in high–visibility situations. Only the most dramatic natural disasters attract any significant mass–media attention, and then only briefly; soon after an earthquake or flood, the cameras depart. War refugees, by contrast, can win sustained press coverage if kept concentrated in reasonably accessible camps. Regular warfare among well–developed countries is rare and offers few opportunities for such NGOs, so they focus their efforts on aiding refugees in the poorest parts of the world. This ensures that the food, shelter, and health care offered—although abysmal by Western standards—exceeds what is locally available to non–refugees. The consequences are entirely predictable. Among many examples, the huge refugee camps along the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Rwanda stand out. They sustain a Hutu nation that would otherwise have been dispersed, making the consolidation of Rwanda impossible and providing a base for radicals to launch more Tutsi–killing raids across the border. Humanitarian intervention has worsened the chances of a stable, long–term resolution of the tensions in Rwanda.
To keep refugee nations intact and preserve their resentments forever is bad enough, but inserting material aid into ongoing conflicts is even worse. Many NGOs that operate in an odor of sanctity routinely supply active combatants. Defenseless, they cannot exclude armed warriors from their feeding stations, clinics, and shelters. Since refugees are presumptively on the losing side, the warriors among them are usually in retreat. By intervening to help, NGOs systematically impede the progress of their enemies toward a decisive victory that could end the war. Sometimes NGOs, impartial to a fault, even help both sides, thus preventing mutual exhaustion and a resulting settlement. And in some extreme cases, such as Somalia, NGOs even pay protection money to local war bands, which use those funds to buy arms. Those NGOs are therefore helping prolong the warfare whose consequences they ostensibly seek to mitigate.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Nick Cohen's What's Left - A Review
Here is an interesting review of What's Left by Nick Cohen. The piece is by a writer called Anthony Daniels, who I believe also writes under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, a fact that will I imagine be greeted with anticipation by some bloggers and dread by others.
Here's the review in full (another New Criterion article I'm afraid so no link available):
Finding his way
By Anthony Daniels | Volume 25, March 2007
Nick Cohen What’s Left?:
How Liberals Lost Their Way
Fourth Estate, 400 pages, £12.99
The author of this book, a respected columnist on Britain’s venerable Sunday newspaper of liberal outlook, The Observer, was born into a family in which it was assumed, as a settled matter beyond reasonable doubt, that all intelligent, cultivated, and decent people were on, and of, the Left, and that there was no serious intellectual or moral case to be made for any type of conservatism. Conservatives were not merely wrong but bad, at best motivated by a fear of change and at worst by their own narrowly material interests (the Left at that time had no material interests, at least in its own estimation). Conservatives might sometimes win elections, of course, but that was no reason to take anything they said seriously.
There comes a time, however, in many a leftist’s life when he looks around him and realizes that, all his tireless support for reform notwithstanding, many aspects of the modern world, some of them brought about by the very reform that he has so assiduously supported, do not entirely please him—and what is more, that some of his erstwhile companions in the struggle now disgust him. The world then becomes for him more ambiguous in its meaning. Mr. Cohen is on the cusp of such a change of worldview.
Changes in outlook generally have provoking causes, though there may be an underlying quasi-biological tendency in the ageing process towards conservatism. In Mr. Cohen’s case, his change of outlook was provoked by Iraq and the response of the Left to Saddam Hussein. In its opposition to the war, the Left has contrived to minimize the horrors of Saddam in order to maximize the evils of Bush and Blair: if the war was bad, then it followed that Saddam was not as bad as all that. According to Mr. Cohen, the Left had fallen for the old illusion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, irrespective of what he is actually like. And this reasoning led Mr. Cohen to doubt whether the Left’s commitment to such desiderata as basic human rights was as strong or principled as he had hitherto supposed to it be. It was more like posturing than like real commitment.
It is, of course, perfectly possible to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise in Iraq without resort to the expedient of whitewashing Iraqi Baathism and its murderous leaders, or to the repulsively grovelling apologetics of George Galloway. One has only to read the words of Elie Kedourie, which are the fruit of deep knowledge, long and discouraging experience, and brilliant intelligence, to realize the difficulties in the way of reform in the Middle East:
It is enough for practical men to fend off present evils and secure existing interests. They must not cumber themselves with historical dogmas, or chase illusions in that maze of double talk which western political vocabulary has extended over the whole world. The very attempt to modernise middle eastern society, to make it western or “democratic” must bring about evils, which may be greater than the benefits.
Professor Kedourie, born an Iraqi Jew, knew whereof he spoke.
Mr. Cohen’s main complaint against his erstwhile companions on the Left is that they have failed to take seriously the universality of Enlightenment values such as freedom of expression and freedom from oppression by arbitrary power. Instead, whenever they saw a foreign enemy of their own country whom they could usefully co-opt as an ally in their disputes with their own domestic enemies, they resorted to nihilistic relativism and multiculturalism, thus explaining away the vileness of their new ally’s atrocities as being the expression of his sacrosanct cultural tradition.
However, it does not follow from a belief in the universality of Enlightenment values that they can, and therefore should, be imposed by force. No doubt it is desirable that people should be kind, but you cannot force or even cajole them into being kind. While philosophical enlightenment can no doubt be encouraged, it cannot be imposed: it is sought and achieved. And not everybody seeks it, let alone achieves it. There is no logical necessity for opponents of the Iraq war to be apologists for Saddam.
The question of Iraq looms so large in Mr. Cohen’s reflections because the Left, to which he once belonged and to which he retains a sentimental attachment, clearly feeling that there must be something worth saving from the ruins, has comprehensively lost the economic argument that was once its very raison d’être, and is now reduced to the work of cultural destruction and the balkanization of society into little communities of ideological monomaniacs—the feminists, homosexual and animal liberationists, and so forth. The Left lost its soul when it lost the economic argument.
As it happens, I write this in my study where I have before me books of erotica smuggled in the late 1950s to my late mother from Paris by her cousin who lived there, and which I have inherited. Published by the Olympia and Obelisk Presses, and an organization called Les Hautes Etudes, they include Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Cancer, the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, and Count Palmiro Vicaron’s Book of Limericks, none of which was obtainable in the England of that time. Personally, I don’t think England was much the loser by that.
More interesting by far than the contents of these books are the newspapers in which my cousin covered them, a method of concealment so ludicrous that it surely would have alerted any customs officer who was not actually of subnormal intelligence to the nature of their contents. A page from the Guardian for 30 November 1959, covering a compendium of 1,700 salacious limericks (complete with scholarly apparatus), reports from the Labour Party Conference of that year. Mrs. Barbara Castle, later to be an important government minister, said, “We [the state as one day to be ruled by the Labour Party] don’t want to take over industries merely in order to make them more efficient, but to make them responsible to us all.” (“We” here having changed its meaning to the whole population of the country). And Aneurin Bevan said “I insist that we will never be able to get the economic resources of this nation fully expanded unless we have a planned economy, in which the nation itself can determine its own priorities.”
These were the core beliefs and commonplaces of the Left until the advent of Mrs. Thatcher and the dissolution of the Soviet empire. So complete has been the defeat of socialism, however, that anyone who now avowed a belief in the superior efficiency of state-run industry would be more a candidate for the lunatic asylum (supposing that any remained open) than for high political office. All that the Left can nowadays propose on the domestic front is social policy so destructive that it allegedly necessitates a vast state apparatus to repair the damage it does. For this reason, the accusation of promoting only its material interests can now be more properly leveled at the Left than at conservatives, or at least at those conservatives who believe that conservatism is more than a matter of the lowest possible taxes.
Hell hath no fury like the former colleagues of a journalist who has changed his mind, and Mr. Cohen has not been altogether praised by them for what seems to them not so much a volte face as outright treachery. His book is not particularly well-written, nor does he present a structured argument: if he had, it would have been quite a lot shorter and more incisive. But it shows real thought, that of a man grappling with doctrines and presuppositions that until recently he took for granted.
He has very little to say about the domestic policy prescriptions of the modern Left, of which multiculturalism is among the most destructive. It was once the honorable goal of the Left, at least in Britain, to spread higher culture to the working class, and also to immigrants, so that every person capable by inclination and natural endowment of enjoying, participating in, or contributing to that higher culture would do so. More recently, however, the Left has devoted its energies to denying that there is any higher or lower, better or worse in cultural matters. Not coincidentally, this betrayal allows leftist intellectuals to preen themselves on the broadness of their minds while they maintain their membership of a social elite. They rarely educate their own children as if their theoretical pronouncements were true. Clearly, there is an analogy here with their betrayal of Enlightenment values in foreign affairs.
This betrayal is not new, though Mr. Cohen appears to believe that it is. It was one thing to oppose the Vietnam War because you thought it was futile and ethically worse than not fighting it (not necessarily true, but at least an honest opinion); quite another because you thought that Uncle Ho was a good man who was leading his people to freedom and prosperity, something that you could believe only by employing all the human mind’s capacity for special pleading and self-deception.
I will be interested to follow Mr. Cohen’s subsequent career. Will he reject his childhood altogether and become truly conservative? He is still young enough to do so.'
Here's the review in full (another New Criterion article I'm afraid so no link available):
Finding his way
By Anthony Daniels | Volume 25, March 2007
Nick Cohen What’s Left?:
How Liberals Lost Their Way
Fourth Estate, 400 pages, £12.99
The author of this book, a respected columnist on Britain’s venerable Sunday newspaper of liberal outlook, The Observer, was born into a family in which it was assumed, as a settled matter beyond reasonable doubt, that all intelligent, cultivated, and decent people were on, and of, the Left, and that there was no serious intellectual or moral case to be made for any type of conservatism. Conservatives were not merely wrong but bad, at best motivated by a fear of change and at worst by their own narrowly material interests (the Left at that time had no material interests, at least in its own estimation). Conservatives might sometimes win elections, of course, but that was no reason to take anything they said seriously.
There comes a time, however, in many a leftist’s life when he looks around him and realizes that, all his tireless support for reform notwithstanding, many aspects of the modern world, some of them brought about by the very reform that he has so assiduously supported, do not entirely please him—and what is more, that some of his erstwhile companions in the struggle now disgust him. The world then becomes for him more ambiguous in its meaning. Mr. Cohen is on the cusp of such a change of worldview.
Changes in outlook generally have provoking causes, though there may be an underlying quasi-biological tendency in the ageing process towards conservatism. In Mr. Cohen’s case, his change of outlook was provoked by Iraq and the response of the Left to Saddam Hussein. In its opposition to the war, the Left has contrived to minimize the horrors of Saddam in order to maximize the evils of Bush and Blair: if the war was bad, then it followed that Saddam was not as bad as all that. According to Mr. Cohen, the Left had fallen for the old illusion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, irrespective of what he is actually like. And this reasoning led Mr. Cohen to doubt whether the Left’s commitment to such desiderata as basic human rights was as strong or principled as he had hitherto supposed to it be. It was more like posturing than like real commitment.
It is, of course, perfectly possible to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise in Iraq without resort to the expedient of whitewashing Iraqi Baathism and its murderous leaders, or to the repulsively grovelling apologetics of George Galloway. One has only to read the words of Elie Kedourie, which are the fruit of deep knowledge, long and discouraging experience, and brilliant intelligence, to realize the difficulties in the way of reform in the Middle East:
It is enough for practical men to fend off present evils and secure existing interests. They must not cumber themselves with historical dogmas, or chase illusions in that maze of double talk which western political vocabulary has extended over the whole world. The very attempt to modernise middle eastern society, to make it western or “democratic” must bring about evils, which may be greater than the benefits.
Professor Kedourie, born an Iraqi Jew, knew whereof he spoke.
Mr. Cohen’s main complaint against his erstwhile companions on the Left is that they have failed to take seriously the universality of Enlightenment values such as freedom of expression and freedom from oppression by arbitrary power. Instead, whenever they saw a foreign enemy of their own country whom they could usefully co-opt as an ally in their disputes with their own domestic enemies, they resorted to nihilistic relativism and multiculturalism, thus explaining away the vileness of their new ally’s atrocities as being the expression of his sacrosanct cultural tradition.
However, it does not follow from a belief in the universality of Enlightenment values that they can, and therefore should, be imposed by force. No doubt it is desirable that people should be kind, but you cannot force or even cajole them into being kind. While philosophical enlightenment can no doubt be encouraged, it cannot be imposed: it is sought and achieved. And not everybody seeks it, let alone achieves it. There is no logical necessity for opponents of the Iraq war to be apologists for Saddam.
The question of Iraq looms so large in Mr. Cohen’s reflections because the Left, to which he once belonged and to which he retains a sentimental attachment, clearly feeling that there must be something worth saving from the ruins, has comprehensively lost the economic argument that was once its very raison d’être, and is now reduced to the work of cultural destruction and the balkanization of society into little communities of ideological monomaniacs—the feminists, homosexual and animal liberationists, and so forth. The Left lost its soul when it lost the economic argument.
As it happens, I write this in my study where I have before me books of erotica smuggled in the late 1950s to my late mother from Paris by her cousin who lived there, and which I have inherited. Published by the Olympia and Obelisk Presses, and an organization called Les Hautes Etudes, they include Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Cancer, the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, and Count Palmiro Vicaron’s Book of Limericks, none of which was obtainable in the England of that time. Personally, I don’t think England was much the loser by that.
More interesting by far than the contents of these books are the newspapers in which my cousin covered them, a method of concealment so ludicrous that it surely would have alerted any customs officer who was not actually of subnormal intelligence to the nature of their contents. A page from the Guardian for 30 November 1959, covering a compendium of 1,700 salacious limericks (complete with scholarly apparatus), reports from the Labour Party Conference of that year. Mrs. Barbara Castle, later to be an important government minister, said, “We [the state as one day to be ruled by the Labour Party] don’t want to take over industries merely in order to make them more efficient, but to make them responsible to us all.” (“We” here having changed its meaning to the whole population of the country). And Aneurin Bevan said “I insist that we will never be able to get the economic resources of this nation fully expanded unless we have a planned economy, in which the nation itself can determine its own priorities.”
These were the core beliefs and commonplaces of the Left until the advent of Mrs. Thatcher and the dissolution of the Soviet empire. So complete has been the defeat of socialism, however, that anyone who now avowed a belief in the superior efficiency of state-run industry would be more a candidate for the lunatic asylum (supposing that any remained open) than for high political office. All that the Left can nowadays propose on the domestic front is social policy so destructive that it allegedly necessitates a vast state apparatus to repair the damage it does. For this reason, the accusation of promoting only its material interests can now be more properly leveled at the Left than at conservatives, or at least at those conservatives who believe that conservatism is more than a matter of the lowest possible taxes.
Hell hath no fury like the former colleagues of a journalist who has changed his mind, and Mr. Cohen has not been altogether praised by them for what seems to them not so much a volte face as outright treachery. His book is not particularly well-written, nor does he present a structured argument: if he had, it would have been quite a lot shorter and more incisive. But it shows real thought, that of a man grappling with doctrines and presuppositions that until recently he took for granted.
He has very little to say about the domestic policy prescriptions of the modern Left, of which multiculturalism is among the most destructive. It was once the honorable goal of the Left, at least in Britain, to spread higher culture to the working class, and also to immigrants, so that every person capable by inclination and natural endowment of enjoying, participating in, or contributing to that higher culture would do so. More recently, however, the Left has devoted its energies to denying that there is any higher or lower, better or worse in cultural matters. Not coincidentally, this betrayal allows leftist intellectuals to preen themselves on the broadness of their minds while they maintain their membership of a social elite. They rarely educate their own children as if their theoretical pronouncements were true. Clearly, there is an analogy here with their betrayal of Enlightenment values in foreign affairs.
This betrayal is not new, though Mr. Cohen appears to believe that it is. It was one thing to oppose the Vietnam War because you thought it was futile and ethically worse than not fighting it (not necessarily true, but at least an honest opinion); quite another because you thought that Uncle Ho was a good man who was leading his people to freedom and prosperity, something that you could believe only by employing all the human mind’s capacity for special pleading and self-deception.
I will be interested to follow Mr. Cohen’s subsequent career. Will he reject his childhood altogether and become truly conservative? He is still young enough to do so.'
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Iran Sanctions boost civil nuclear disaster risk
The FT thinks the chances of a nuclear distaster in Iran will increase with sanctions.
'International sanctions to starve Iran's nuclear programme have heightened the risk of a radiological disaster that could spread across the Gulf, according to a new British report.
John Large of Large and Associates, UK nuclear consultants, writes that once the Bushehr civilian reactor in southern Iran goes into operation this year, a safety failure - a radioactive leak - could threaten Gulf shipping lanes and Arab Gulf states.
"The United Nations Security Council sanctions are aimed at halting, or at least impeding, the transfer of knowledge, information and equipment relating to Iran's uranium enrichment and heavy water related undertakings," the report, commissioned by the United Arab Emirates' Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, states.
"The irony here is that perhaps the culture essential to maintaining nuclear safety for Iran's separate civil nuclear power programme will be left wanting."
Full article here
'International sanctions to starve Iran's nuclear programme have heightened the risk of a radiological disaster that could spread across the Gulf, according to a new British report.
John Large of Large and Associates, UK nuclear consultants, writes that once the Bushehr civilian reactor in southern Iran goes into operation this year, a safety failure - a radioactive leak - could threaten Gulf shipping lanes and Arab Gulf states.
"The United Nations Security Council sanctions are aimed at halting, or at least impeding, the transfer of knowledge, information and equipment relating to Iran's uranium enrichment and heavy water related undertakings," the report, commissioned by the United Arab Emirates' Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, states.
"The irony here is that perhaps the culture essential to maintaining nuclear safety for Iran's separate civil nuclear power programme will be left wanting."
Full article here
Monday, April 02, 2007
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger interviewed by Piers Morgan
Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan (PM) interviews Alan Rusbridger (AR) Editor of the Guardian. Piers accuses Alan Rusbridger of being a bit of a hypocrite and gives him a pretty hard time. It's probably quite unfair but it makes for a very funny interview.
Here are the highlights:
PM: How is your new Berliner-sized paper actually doing?
AR: It is doing, more or less, what we expected.
PM: That's what I used to say when things went badly.
AR: Do you want to see charts?
PM: No. I always used to bamboozle my critics with charts. How did you sell last week, then [December 2006]?
AR: About 386,000.
PM: And what were you selling before the Berliner redesign?
AR: We were down in the 360s, 370s. The one mistake we made was to take out 10,000 bulks, which made the figures look worse than they were.
PM: But you did that to make the relaunch look better than it was.
AR: No, we did that at the time of the relaunch.
PM: I thought you did it a couple of months before the relaunch.
AR: Er, well, we took them out a few months before and didn't put them back for the relaunch.
PM: So I was right. You did it deliberately. It's an old trick.
AR: We did. But we didn't shove them back in; that's the point.
PM: It's not my point.
AR: We were too honest.
PM: Hmmm...I read an interview in which you said that what mattered most between a paper and its staff and the readers was trust. Do you think you have to be as trustworthy privately as you are professionally?
AR: I think you have to be trustworthy in your professional life.
PM: Not personal life?
AR: [Silence for 10 seconds] I like to make a distinction between professional and private in everything we write about.
PM: Would you answer that question? Are you a public figure?
AR: Not really, no. I am accountable to the Scott Trust [owner of the Guardian Media Group], and I make The Guardian's journalism more publicly accountable than any other editor in this country.
PM: I only ask, because I remember The Guardian treating me as a public figure when I encountered various scrapes as an editor. Do you think that your own life would stand up to much ethical scrutiny?
AR: In terms of the journalism?
PM: No, I mean privately. Do you consider that infidelity is always a private matter for public figures, for instance?
AR: I think what people do legally and consensually is private.
PM: If I asked you if you had ever taken illegal drugs, would you feel compelled to answer?
AR: No, I'd say to you to mind your own business.
PM: What's your current salary?
AR: It's, er, about £350,000.
PM: What bonus did you receive last year?
AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.
PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.
AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.
PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?
AR: That's for others to say.
PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Or is Polly raking in so much herself that she wouldn't mind?
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Are you embarrassed by it?
AR: No. I didn't ask for the money. And I do declare it, too.
PM: But if you earned £520,000 last year, then that must make you a multimillionaire.
AR: You say I'm a millionaire?
PM: You must be - unless you're giving it all away to charity...
AR: Er...
PM: What's your house worth?
AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.
PM: You think it's all private?
AR: I do really, yes.
PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.
AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.
PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.
AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.
PM: Well, only because you seem so embarrassed and confused about it.
AR: I'm not embarrassed about it. But nor do I feel I have to talk about it.
PM: What about your cars? Are you still driving that ridiculous G-Wiz thing around?
AR: Yes, and I love it.
PM: But I also read that you use taxis to ferry your stuff to and from work, which sort of negates the green effort, doesn't it?
AR: That story was a bit confused. I used to cycle to work sometimes, and if I was too tired at the end of the day then I would fold up the bike and get a cab home, yes. But about a year ago I was nearly killed in a nasty accident on my bike so I gave up cycling and bought the G-Wiz.
PM: Any other cars?
AR: A company Volvo estate.
PM: A big gas-guzzler.
AR: Yes.
PM: Bit of a culture clash with your G-Wiz, then?
AR: Let me think about that. The problem is that I also have a big dog, and it doesn't fit into the G-Wiz.
PM: I'm sure the environment will understand. Any others?
AR: My wife has a Corsa.
PM: Quite an expansive...
AR: Fleet...
PM: Yes, fleet.
AR: But I've got children as well.
PM: They're privately educated?
AR: Er... [pause].
PM: Is that a valid question?
AR: I don't... think so... no.
PM: And you went to Cranleigh, a top public school.
AR: I did, yes.
PM: Do you feel uncomfortable answering that question?
AR: It falls into the category of something I don't feel embarrassed about, but you get on to a slippery slope about what else you talk about, don't you?
PM: It's not really about your private life though, is it? It's just a fact. And I assume by your reluctance to answer the question that they are privately educated.
AR: [Pause] Again, I am trying to make a distinction between...
PM: You often run stories about Labour politicians sending their kids to private schools, and you are quite censorious about it. Are you worried that it makes you look a hypocrite again?
AR: No. I think there are boundaries. It goes back to this question of whether editors are public figures or not.
PM: And you don't think they are?
AR: Well, again, I've tried to draw a distinction between making my journalism accountable, but I have never tried to go around talking about my private life and therefore making myself into a public figure.
PM: You were originally a gossip columnist on The Guardian. Did you never write about anyone's private life?
AR: I can't remember writing about someone's private life.
Here are the highlights:
PM: How is your new Berliner-sized paper actually doing?
AR: It is doing, more or less, what we expected.
PM: That's what I used to say when things went badly.
AR: Do you want to see charts?
PM: No. I always used to bamboozle my critics with charts. How did you sell last week, then [December 2006]?
AR: About 386,000.
PM: And what were you selling before the Berliner redesign?
AR: We were down in the 360s, 370s. The one mistake we made was to take out 10,000 bulks, which made the figures look worse than they were.
PM: But you did that to make the relaunch look better than it was.
AR: No, we did that at the time of the relaunch.
PM: I thought you did it a couple of months before the relaunch.
AR: Er, well, we took them out a few months before and didn't put them back for the relaunch.
PM: So I was right. You did it deliberately. It's an old trick.
AR: We did. But we didn't shove them back in; that's the point.
PM: It's not my point.
AR: We were too honest.
PM: Hmmm...I read an interview in which you said that what mattered most between a paper and its staff and the readers was trust. Do you think you have to be as trustworthy privately as you are professionally?
AR: I think you have to be trustworthy in your professional life.
PM: Not personal life?
AR: [Silence for 10 seconds] I like to make a distinction between professional and private in everything we write about.
PM: Would you answer that question? Are you a public figure?
AR: Not really, no. I am accountable to the Scott Trust [owner of the Guardian Media Group], and I make The Guardian's journalism more publicly accountable than any other editor in this country.
PM: I only ask, because I remember The Guardian treating me as a public figure when I encountered various scrapes as an editor. Do you think that your own life would stand up to much ethical scrutiny?
AR: In terms of the journalism?
PM: No, I mean privately. Do you consider that infidelity is always a private matter for public figures, for instance?
AR: I think what people do legally and consensually is private.
PM: If I asked you if you had ever taken illegal drugs, would you feel compelled to answer?
AR: No, I'd say to you to mind your own business.
PM: What's your current salary?
AR: It's, er, about £350,000.
PM: What bonus did you receive last year?
AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.
PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.
AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.
PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?
AR: That's for others to say.
PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Or is Polly raking in so much herself that she wouldn't mind?
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Are you embarrassed by it?
AR: No. I didn't ask for the money. And I do declare it, too.
PM: But if you earned £520,000 last year, then that must make you a multimillionaire.
AR: You say I'm a millionaire?
PM: You must be - unless you're giving it all away to charity...
AR: Er...
PM: What's your house worth?
AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.
PM: You think it's all private?
AR: I do really, yes.
PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.
AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.
PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.
AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.
PM: Well, only because you seem so embarrassed and confused about it.
AR: I'm not embarrassed about it. But nor do I feel I have to talk about it.
PM: What about your cars? Are you still driving that ridiculous G-Wiz thing around?
AR: Yes, and I love it.
PM: But I also read that you use taxis to ferry your stuff to and from work, which sort of negates the green effort, doesn't it?
AR: That story was a bit confused. I used to cycle to work sometimes, and if I was too tired at the end of the day then I would fold up the bike and get a cab home, yes. But about a year ago I was nearly killed in a nasty accident on my bike so I gave up cycling and bought the G-Wiz.
PM: Any other cars?
AR: A company Volvo estate.
PM: A big gas-guzzler.
AR: Yes.
PM: Bit of a culture clash with your G-Wiz, then?
AR: Let me think about that. The problem is that I also have a big dog, and it doesn't fit into the G-Wiz.
PM: I'm sure the environment will understand. Any others?
AR: My wife has a Corsa.
PM: Quite an expansive...
AR: Fleet...
PM: Yes, fleet.
AR: But I've got children as well.
PM: They're privately educated?
AR: Er... [pause].
PM: Is that a valid question?
AR: I don't... think so... no.
PM: And you went to Cranleigh, a top public school.
AR: I did, yes.
PM: Do you feel uncomfortable answering that question?
AR: It falls into the category of something I don't feel embarrassed about, but you get on to a slippery slope about what else you talk about, don't you?
PM: It's not really about your private life though, is it? It's just a fact. And I assume by your reluctance to answer the question that they are privately educated.
AR: [Pause] Again, I am trying to make a distinction between...
PM: You often run stories about Labour politicians sending their kids to private schools, and you are quite censorious about it. Are you worried that it makes you look a hypocrite again?
AR: No. I think there are boundaries. It goes back to this question of whether editors are public figures or not.
PM: And you don't think they are?
AR: Well, again, I've tried to draw a distinction between making my journalism accountable, but I have never tried to go around talking about my private life and therefore making myself into a public figure.
PM: You were originally a gossip columnist on The Guardian. Did you never write about anyone's private life?
AR: I can't remember writing about someone's private life.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
U.N. Watch exposes the U.N. Human Rights Council
Thanks to Andy for putting me onto this. UN Watch is an NGO whose name betrays their interests, and here one of their guys telling the UN a few home truths. The most interesting thing is the hostile reaction to his speech, while outrageous lies from the likes of Syria and Zimbabwe receive thanks.
The New York Sun reported on this below.
'I Will Not Express Thanks'
New York Sun
March 30, 2007
Every once in a while there comes a diplomatic moment to remember, and New Yorkers who want to share one can go up on youtube.com and watch the representative in Geneva of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, in a March 23 speech before the 4th session of the Human Rights Council. In the adjacent columns, we print the full text of his remarks, lamenting the loss of the dream of Eleanor Roosevelt and other architects of the human rights movement within the United Nations system. Mr. Neuer offers the substance. But it's worth watching the full clip (it's only a few minutes long) to catch the scandalous behavior of the president of the council, as he — for what may be the only time in its history — refuses to thank a speaker for his intervention and declares he will ban Mr. Neuer, or any other critic of the commission, if he says anything similar again.
To provide the full context, UN Watch has put together a compendium of clippings (Watch Video) called "Admissible and Inadmissable at the U.N. Human Rights Council." It shows actual film clips of the president of the Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, thanking various diplomats for their testimony. He thanks a speaker for Zimbabwe talking about the ignorance of a delegate who has criticized human rights under President Mugabe. He thanks the delegate from Cuba for insulting a human rights expert who exposed abuses of the communist regime. When the permanent observer of Palestine asserts that the one that has a "monopoly on human rights violations" is Israel, which, he adds, is the darling of not only the ambassadors of America and Canada but also of the human rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, the observer is thanked by Mr. de Alba. On the clip one can see Mr. de Alba thanking the delegation of Sudan for a statement saying that reports of violence against women in Darfur has been "exaggerated."
Then one can watch and hear an envoy from Nigeria assert that "stoning under Sharia law for unnatural sexual acts … should not be equated with extrajudicial killings …" Or watch an envoy of Iran defend the Holocaust denial conference. Or watch a defense of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Or speaker after speaker liken Israel to the Nazis, only to get thanked by Mr. de Alba or whoever is presiding. Then one can watch Mr. de Alba lean back demonstrably in his chair and fold his arms across his face and adopt a disapproving visage as Mr. Neuer of UN Watch begins his recent testimony. He notes that 60 years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin, and others gathered on the banks of Lake Geneva to reaffirm the principle of human dignity and created the Commission on Human Rights. He asks what has become of "this noble dream" and offers a devastating answer with a reprise of all the human rights abuses on which the council has been silent.
"Why has this council chosen silence?" Mr. Neuer asks. "Because Israel could not be blamed." He ticks off the actions against Israel, the only one the council takes. When Mr. Neuer is done, Mr. de Alba says, "for the first time in this session, I will not express thanks for that statement. ... I will not tolerate any similar statements in the council." And he threatens to strike any similar statements from UN Watch from the record of the proceedings. We had to tip our hat to Mr. Neuer, who has, on occasion, written for these pages. Newspapermen have to have strong stomachs, but it's nothing compared to what he needs to sit through these sessions. He presents with memorable force and dignity. The compendium of clips runs only seven minutes or so and is winging its way around the World Wide Web. It's worth watching, a reminder of the wisdom of the decision of America's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and his colleagues in the Bush administration to stand down from participating in this charade.
The New York Sun reported on this below.
'I Will Not Express Thanks'
New York Sun
March 30, 2007
Every once in a while there comes a diplomatic moment to remember, and New Yorkers who want to share one can go up on youtube.com and watch the representative in Geneva of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, in a March 23 speech before the 4th session of the Human Rights Council. In the adjacent columns, we print the full text of his remarks, lamenting the loss of the dream of Eleanor Roosevelt and other architects of the human rights movement within the United Nations system. Mr. Neuer offers the substance. But it's worth watching the full clip (it's only a few minutes long) to catch the scandalous behavior of the president of the council, as he — for what may be the only time in its history — refuses to thank a speaker for his intervention and declares he will ban Mr. Neuer, or any other critic of the commission, if he says anything similar again.
To provide the full context, UN Watch has put together a compendium of clippings (Watch Video) called "Admissible and Inadmissable at the U.N. Human Rights Council." It shows actual film clips of the president of the Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, thanking various diplomats for their testimony. He thanks a speaker for Zimbabwe talking about the ignorance of a delegate who has criticized human rights under President Mugabe. He thanks the delegate from Cuba for insulting a human rights expert who exposed abuses of the communist regime. When the permanent observer of Palestine asserts that the one that has a "monopoly on human rights violations" is Israel, which, he adds, is the darling of not only the ambassadors of America and Canada but also of the human rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, the observer is thanked by Mr. de Alba. On the clip one can see Mr. de Alba thanking the delegation of Sudan for a statement saying that reports of violence against women in Darfur has been "exaggerated."
Then one can watch and hear an envoy from Nigeria assert that "stoning under Sharia law for unnatural sexual acts … should not be equated with extrajudicial killings …" Or watch an envoy of Iran defend the Holocaust denial conference. Or watch a defense of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Or speaker after speaker liken Israel to the Nazis, only to get thanked by Mr. de Alba or whoever is presiding. Then one can watch Mr. de Alba lean back demonstrably in his chair and fold his arms across his face and adopt a disapproving visage as Mr. Neuer of UN Watch begins his recent testimony. He notes that 60 years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin, and others gathered on the banks of Lake Geneva to reaffirm the principle of human dignity and created the Commission on Human Rights. He asks what has become of "this noble dream" and offers a devastating answer with a reprise of all the human rights abuses on which the council has been silent.
"Why has this council chosen silence?" Mr. Neuer asks. "Because Israel could not be blamed." He ticks off the actions against Israel, the only one the council takes. When Mr. Neuer is done, Mr. de Alba says, "for the first time in this session, I will not express thanks for that statement. ... I will not tolerate any similar statements in the council." And he threatens to strike any similar statements from UN Watch from the record of the proceedings. We had to tip our hat to Mr. Neuer, who has, on occasion, written for these pages. Newspapermen have to have strong stomachs, but it's nothing compared to what he needs to sit through these sessions. He presents with memorable force and dignity. The compendium of clips runs only seven minutes or so and is winging its way around the World Wide Web. It's worth watching, a reminder of the wisdom of the decision of America's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and his colleagues in the Bush administration to stand down from participating in this charade.
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