Another important topic without an Impdec place of its own is the Left-Islamist alliance, perhaps most obvious to British eyes in the courting by Ken Livingstone of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to the outrage of (amongst others) some of the gay community.
The motivation for beginning this thread was a quite brilliant article in the last Sunday Times by an ex-Greenham Common protestor. She was reflecting on her erstwhile feminist chums marching cheek-by-jowl with Islamic fundamentalists who hate everything they used to stand for. Go read the whole article, you cannot fail to be moved.
Wimmin at War
by Sarah Baxter
Sunday Times
13/8/06
It is 25 years since the Greenham Common protests began. Sarah Baxter was there, but now asks why feminist ideals have become twisted into support for groups like Hezbollah
The peace movement ... has gone on to find new friends in today’s Stop the War movement. Women pushing their children in buggies bearing the familiar symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marched last weekend alongside banners proclaiming “We are all Hezbollah now” and Muslim extremists chanting “Oh Jew, the army of Muhammad will return.” For Linda Grant, the novelist, who says that “feminism” is the one “ism” she has not given up on, it was a shocking sight: “What you’re seeing is an alliance of what used to be the far left with various Muslim groups and that poses real problems. Saturday’s march was not a peace march in the way that the Ban the Bomb marches were. Seeing young and old white women holding Hezbollah placards showed that it’s a very different anti-war movement to Greenham. Part of it feels the wrong side is winning.”
As a supporter of the peace movement in the 1980s, I could never have imagined that many of the same crowd I hung out with then would today be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with militantly anti-feminist Islamic fundamentalist groups, whose views on women make western patriarchy look like a Greenham peace picnic. Nor would I have predicted that today’s feminists would be so indulgent towards Iran, a theocratic nation where it is an act of resistance to show an inch or two of female hair beneath the veil and whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is not joking about his murderous intentions towards Israel and the Jews. On the defining issue of our times, the rise of Islamic extremism, what is left of the sisterhood has almost nothing to say. Instead of “I am woman, hear me roar”, there is a loud silence, punctuated only by remonstrations against Tony Blair and George Bush — “the world’s number one terrorist” as the marchers would have it.
Women are perfectly entitled to oppose the war in Iraq or to feel that Israel is brutally overreacting to Hezbollah’s provocation. But where is the parallel, equally vital debate about how to combat Islamic fundamentalism? And why don’t more peace-loving feminists regard it as a threat? Kira Cochrane, 29, is the new editor of The Guardian women’s page, the bible of the Greenham years, where so many women writers made their names by staking out positions on the peace movement. She has noticed that today’s feminists are inclined to keep quiet about the march of radical Islam. “There’s a great fear of tackling the subject because of cultural relativism. People are scared of being called racist,” Cochrane observes.
...
Looking back I think I was wrong about Reagan and too sympathetic towards the Soviet Union. There were plenty of fellow travellers in the peace movement who were cheering on the Soviet Union under their breath. I can remember making a lot of silly excuses about it myself. But the fear of mutual assured destruction was genuine enough. As long as it worked, Mad was a plausible strategy. Were it to fail, the results would be catastrophic. As President Dwight Eisenhower said after the testing of the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s: “Atomic war will destroy civilisation.” If war came, “you might as well go out and shoot everyone you see and then shoot yourself”.
The situation today is very different. Writing in The Wall Street Journal last week, Bernard Lewis, the noted scholar of Islam, pointed out that Iran’s messianic rulers are not constrained by such fears. According to their theology, the day of judgment will be glorious. “At the end of time there will be general destruction anyway,” Lewis writes. “What matters will be the final destination of the dead — hell for the infidels and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, Mad is not a constraint, it is an inducement.” Hassan Nasrallah, the Shi’ite cleric who leads Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, regularly issues bloodcurdling threats against the Jews. “If they (the Jews all gather in Israel,” he has said, “it will save us the trouble of going after them on a worldwide basis.”
For some on the left such words are merely understandable hyperbole, provoked by decades of Israeli ill-treatment of the Palestinians, but I prefer to take Islamic fundamentalists at their word when they spout insults about Jews being the descendants of “pigs and apes” and launch their chillingly apocalyptic tirades. Why? Because they not only talk centuries-old nonsense about the place of women in society, but they also purposely oppress the female sex whenever they are given the chance. As regards their treatment of women, there is no discernible difference between their acts and their words.
In my own life I have been lucky enough not to experience a great deal of sexism. The 1980s and 1990s were decades of progress for western career women and working mothers. But I felt how it was to be invisible when I interviewed Hamas militants and clerics many years ago in Gaza. They were very courteous and helpful and I tried to be respectful by covering my hair with a black scarf. But they never looked me in the eye or addressed me directly. I would ask the questions; they would answer the male photographer who accompanied me.
Phyllis Chesler, 65, the writer and a founder feminist in the 1960s, has experienced some of the more disturbing aspects of Muslim patriarchy at first hand. In the summer of 1961 Chesler married Ali, her western-educated college sweetheart, and went to live with him in Afghanistan. Nothing had prepared her for the restrictions and humiliations which Muslim women endured there, nor the gradual personality change that her husband underwent. The worst of it, she discovered, was “nothing unique happened to me”. It was the way of the world. “The Afghanistan I knew was a prison, a police state, a feudal monarchy, a theocracy rank with fear and paranoia,” Chesler recalls in The Death of Feminism, published last year. “
Afghanistan had never been colonised. My Afghan relatives were very proud of this fact. ‘Not even the British could occupy us’, they told me, not once but many times. “I was ultimately forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism, tyranny and misogyny were entirely of their own making and not attributable to colonialism or imperialism. It is what they themselves would say.” Six months later, travelling on false papers obtained by a sympathetic German-born friend, Chesler secretly fled the country. The ardent feminism that she embraced on her return to America was forged in Afghanistan, she told me last week. She has not recanted her support for women’s rights, she insists, but she has seen the views of others morph in alarming new directions.
“The compassion for people of colour has been translated into feminists standing with terrorists who are terrorising their own women,” she says. In the week when a massive bomb plot against civilians was uncovered in Britain, Chesler’s critique of women’s complacency in her book is prophetic. “The Islamists who are beheading Jews and American civilians, stoning Muslim women to death, jailing Muslim dissidents and bombing civilians on every continent are now moving among us both in the East and in the West,” she writes. “I fear that the ‘peace and love’ crowd in the West refuses to understand how Islamism endangers our values and our lives, beginning with our commitment to women’s rights and human rights.” Women’s studies programmes should have been the first to sound the alarm, she points out: “They did not.”
Chesler has fallen out with many old friends in the women’s movement. They have in effect excommunicated her for writing in right-wing publications in America, but she has found it impossible to get published on the left. There are whispers that she has become paranoid, mad, bonkers, a charge frequently levelled against the handful of women writers who are brave enough to tackle the same theme. In Britain there is the polemicist Julie Burchill, who has written incisively about the desire of terrorists to commit acts “not so that innocents may have the right to live freely on the West Bank, but so that they might have the right to throw acid in the face of innocent, unveiled women”. Well, the outrageous Julie has always been bonkers, hasn’t she.
Then there is “mad” Melanie Phillips, the Cassandra of our age, banging on that “if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around”. Of course she would say that, wouldn’t she. She’s Jewish, and anyway didn’t you know that she is crazy enough to believe in two-parent families? In America the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin died last year virtually unmourned by women on the left in part, as her friend Christopher Hitchens remembered, because “she wasn’t neutral against a jihadist threat that wanted, and wants, to enslave and torture females. “That she could be denounced as a ‘conservative’,” he concluded, “says much about the left to which she used to belong.”
... I am surprised by the persistence of the ideological blind spot that has led women who are so quick to condemn the failings of the West to make transparent excuses for the behaviour of some of the world’s most anti-feminist regimes. Recently Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, wrote a breathtaking apologia for the Iranian nuclear energy programme, which took at face value Ahmadinejad’s claims to be developing it for “strictly peaceful” purposes. (Since when, by the way, has CND regarded Britain’s nuclear power plants so benignly?) Never mind the preposterous dancing with enriched uranium around the doves of peace nor the missiles marked “Tel Aviv” paraded in the streets.
...
It is certainly plausible, as Pettitt [Greenham Common pioneer] claims, that Bush’s actions have “accelerated the radicalisation of the Islamic world tremendously”, although this popular view conveniently downplays the growing Islamic fundamentalist movement before the September 11 attacks and the huge psychological boost that it received from Al-Qaeda’s strike on America. Let us assume that what Pettitt says is true. I can remember when the women’s movement was told that its persistent demands for equality were leading to a “backlash”. Susan Faludi wrote a feminist bestseller of that name, based on the premise that men were fighting back tooth and nail in the gender wars.
I have just got the book down from my shelves. It says on the back cover: “The backlash against women is real. This is the book we need to understand it, to struggle through the battle fatigue and to keep going.” There was no question of slinking away out of fear that men were being emboldened to find new ways of oppressing women. The Middle East is engaged in a titanic struggle between modernity and theocracy. Whatever one’s views about the Iraq war or the conflict in Lebanon, it deserves more than slogans about “We are all Hezbollah now” and fury against Bush and Blair. I don’t agree with Chesler that we are witnessing the death of feminism, but for now it is MIA: missing in action.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
War on Terror (aka War on Islamofascism)
Thought we should have a thread to discuss the War on Terror, or as Bush recently called it, At War with Islamic Fascists.
This was the front page lead in today's Telegraph, contained some positive and some contradictory views.
Example of positive:
Seventy three per cent agreed that "the West is in a global war against Islamic terrorists who threaten our way of life". When asked whether Britain should change its foreign policy in response to terrorism only 12 per cent said it should be more conciliatory, compared with 53 per cent who thought it should become more "aggressive" and 24 per who wanted no change.
Example of contradictory:
A majority of British people wants the Government to adopt an even more "aggressive" foreign policy to combat international terrorism, according to an opinion poll conducted after the arrests of 24 terrorism suspects last week. However - by a margin of more than five to one - the public wants Tony Blair to split from President George W Bush and either go it alone in the "war on terror", or work more closely with Europe.
Ditch US in terror war, say 80pc of Britons
Telegraph
17/08/2006
This was the front page lead in today's Telegraph, contained some positive and some contradictory views.
Example of positive:
Seventy three per cent agreed that "the West is in a global war against Islamic terrorists who threaten our way of life". When asked whether Britain should change its foreign policy in response to terrorism only 12 per cent said it should be more conciliatory, compared with 53 per cent who thought it should become more "aggressive" and 24 per who wanted no change.
Example of contradictory:
A majority of British people wants the Government to adopt an even more "aggressive" foreign policy to combat international terrorism, according to an opinion poll conducted after the arrests of 24 terrorism suspects last week. However - by a margin of more than five to one - the public wants Tony Blair to split from President George W Bush and either go it alone in the "war on terror", or work more closely with Europe.
Ditch US in terror war, say 80pc of Britons
Telegraph
17/08/2006
Monday, August 14, 2006
Rwanda
As the discussions surrounding a UN force for Lebanon take place, the notorious failings of another UN mission is worth recalling. Kofi Annan does not come out well, and neither do the US, UK or France.
Film reveals grim Rwanda images that haunt general
Telegraph
11/08/2006
If Gen Romeo Dallaire finds clothing dropped in the street, he fights the urge to check whether the rags conceal a corpse. His searing experience as the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda, which failed to halt the genocide in 1994 when 800,000 people were slaughtered, has left him tormented.
...
Gen Dallaire, 60, suffered a breakdown at the end of his service in Rwanda, tormented by the "red, fearful, bewildered eyes" of the victims of massacres he witnessed day after day. He has made several suicide attempts, injuring himself with razor blades, and was discharged from the Canadian army six years ago on medical grounds.
...
Gen Dallaire's UN superiors repeatedly ignored warnings of disaster. Three months before Rwanda's Hutu extremist regime started the genocide of the minority Tutsi tribe - and the murder of any Hutus who opposed the killing - an informant told him exactly what was going to happen. He disclosed the locations of four arms caches in Kigali, each stacked with weapons for use in the genocide. Gen Dallaire proposed to seize the caches but Kofi Annan, who was then the head of UN peacekeeping, vetoed the operation.
When the massacres began, Gen Dallaire was ordered not to use force to protect civilians. His soldiers were to "fire only if fired upon".
Only 2,500 troops were under his command. Of these, 1,100 were undisciplined Bangladeshis who often shirked patrols by sabotaging their own vehicles. Another 450 were Belgians but they withdrew when 10 of their number were murdered on the first day of the killing. Gen Dallaire told his superiors that a well-trained force of 4,000 could halt the genocide. Instead, the Security Council reduced his contingent still further, leaving him with only 450 soldiers at the height of the massacres.
America offered 50 armoured cars but demanded £6 million payment in advance. Britain offered 50 obsolete lorries and also wanted to be paid first. France supplied a plane-load of weapons to the genocidal regime shortly before the killing began.
Film reveals grim Rwanda images that haunt general
Telegraph
11/08/2006
If Gen Romeo Dallaire finds clothing dropped in the street, he fights the urge to check whether the rags conceal a corpse. His searing experience as the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda, which failed to halt the genocide in 1994 when 800,000 people were slaughtered, has left him tormented.
...
Gen Dallaire, 60, suffered a breakdown at the end of his service in Rwanda, tormented by the "red, fearful, bewildered eyes" of the victims of massacres he witnessed day after day. He has made several suicide attempts, injuring himself with razor blades, and was discharged from the Canadian army six years ago on medical grounds.
...
Gen Dallaire's UN superiors repeatedly ignored warnings of disaster. Three months before Rwanda's Hutu extremist regime started the genocide of the minority Tutsi tribe - and the murder of any Hutus who opposed the killing - an informant told him exactly what was going to happen. He disclosed the locations of four arms caches in Kigali, each stacked with weapons for use in the genocide. Gen Dallaire proposed to seize the caches but Kofi Annan, who was then the head of UN peacekeeping, vetoed the operation.
When the massacres began, Gen Dallaire was ordered not to use force to protect civilians. His soldiers were to "fire only if fired upon".
Only 2,500 troops were under his command. Of these, 1,100 were undisciplined Bangladeshis who often shirked patrols by sabotaging their own vehicles. Another 450 were Belgians but they withdrew when 10 of their number were murdered on the first day of the killing. Gen Dallaire told his superiors that a well-trained force of 4,000 could halt the genocide. Instead, the Security Council reduced his contingent still further, leaving him with only 450 soldiers at the height of the massacres.
America offered 50 armoured cars but demanded £6 million payment in advance. Britain offered 50 obsolete lorries and also wanted to be paid first. France supplied a plane-load of weapons to the genocidal regime shortly before the killing began.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Bad Debts
This is an interesting entry on the Adam Smith Institute Blog regarding the rise in bad debts.
HSBC personal Finance services division reported a 36% increase in bad debts which has taken the shine off record profits. 36%?! Wow. If bad debts continue to rise like that the terms on which money is borrowed will change drastically. As the blog concludes 'I try to avoid paying for boy racers when I take out auto insurance, and I think I'd rather like to avoid paying for bad debtors when I do my banking.'
HSBC personal Finance services division reported a 36% increase in bad debts which has taken the shine off record profits. 36%?! Wow. If bad debts continue to rise like that the terms on which money is borrowed will change drastically. As the blog concludes 'I try to avoid paying for boy racers when I take out auto insurance, and I think I'd rather like to avoid paying for bad debtors when I do my banking.'
Monday, July 17, 2006
Tax Cuts = Higher Tax Revenues
This is very counter intuitive - US tax cuts have delivered higher tax revenues, with the rich paying a higher share of the total tax share. This year the US Treasury saw an 11 percent gain in tax revenues. As a consequence the US deficit is set to halve by 2009. Not only that, some of the American states have recorded growth rates just behind China and ahead of India.
The real news, and where the policy credit belongs, is with the 2003 tax cuts. They've succeeded even beyond Art Laffer's dreams, if that's possible. In the nine quarters preceding that cut on dividend and capital gains rates and in marginal income-tax rates, economic growth averaged an annual 1.1%. In the 12 quarters--three full years--since the tax cut passed, growth has averaged a remarkable 4%.
[...]
This growth in turn has produced a record flood of tax revenues, just as the most ebullient supply-siders predicted. In the first nine months of fiscal 2006, tax revenues have climbed by $206 billion, or nearly 13%. As the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, "That increase represents the second-highest rate of growth for that nine-month period in the past 25 years"--exceeded only by the year before. For all of fiscal 2005, revenues rose by $274 billion, or 15%. We should add that CBO itself failed to anticipate this revenue boom, as the nearby table shows. Maybe its economists should rethink their models.
[...]
Remember the folks who said the tax cuts would "blow a hole in the deficit?" Well, revenues as a share of the economy are now expected to rise this year to 18.3%, slightly above the modern historical average of 18.2%. The remaining budget deficit of a little under $300 billion will be about 2.3% of GDP, which is smaller than in 17 of the previous 25 years. Throw in the surpluses rolling into the states, and the overall U.S. "fiscal deficit" is now economically trivial.
It's worth remembering that the U.S. tax cuts of 2003 where much-derided and Bush was mocked for his economic stupidity. Who's laughing now?
The real news, and where the policy credit belongs, is with the 2003 tax cuts. They've succeeded even beyond Art Laffer's dreams, if that's possible. In the nine quarters preceding that cut on dividend and capital gains rates and in marginal income-tax rates, economic growth averaged an annual 1.1%. In the 12 quarters--three full years--since the tax cut passed, growth has averaged a remarkable 4%.
[...]
This growth in turn has produced a record flood of tax revenues, just as the most ebullient supply-siders predicted. In the first nine months of fiscal 2006, tax revenues have climbed by $206 billion, or nearly 13%. As the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, "That increase represents the second-highest rate of growth for that nine-month period in the past 25 years"--exceeded only by the year before. For all of fiscal 2005, revenues rose by $274 billion, or 15%. We should add that CBO itself failed to anticipate this revenue boom, as the nearby table shows. Maybe its economists should rethink their models.
[...]
Remember the folks who said the tax cuts would "blow a hole in the deficit?" Well, revenues as a share of the economy are now expected to rise this year to 18.3%, slightly above the modern historical average of 18.2%. The remaining budget deficit of a little under $300 billion will be about 2.3% of GDP, which is smaller than in 17 of the previous 25 years. Throw in the surpluses rolling into the states, and the overall U.S. "fiscal deficit" is now economically trivial.
It's worth remembering that the U.S. tax cuts of 2003 where much-derided and Bush was mocked for his economic stupidity. Who's laughing now?
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Freedland and Baddiel interviewed on Hardtalk
Great interview with Freedland and Baddiel on the BBC's Hardtalk, discussing Jewishness and Britishness with their usual intelligence and humour.
BBC Hard Talk
In a Hardtalk Extra interview broadcast on Friday 7th October, Gavin Esler talks to Jonathan Freedland and David Baddiel. One is a leading journalist, the other a well-known comedian, recently turned writer. Both are Jewish and have recently published books which seek to assess the issues - past and present - of being both Jewish and British.
BBC Hard Talk
In a Hardtalk Extra interview broadcast on Friday 7th October, Gavin Esler talks to Jonathan Freedland and David Baddiel. One is a leading journalist, the other a well-known comedian, recently turned writer. Both are Jewish and have recently published books which seek to assess the issues - past and present - of being both Jewish and British.
Israel at war in Gaza and Lebanon - Pipes was right
Very interesting interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today Program where Isaac Herzog, a member of Ehud Olmert's government, suggests that their (defining) policy of unilateral disengagement may be a mistake.
This would represent one huge "I told you so" for Daniel Pipes who has repeatedly critised the policy of unilateral withdrawal from both Lebanon and Gaza, and the links between the two.
I have blogged about this elsewhere, but one of my previous comments is worth re-posting, as the empirical evidence says unequivocally that Pipes was right:
-----------
And a contrary view. Credit to Pipes, he makes a concrete, falsifiable prediction as to the consequences of Sharon's Gaza pullout, which we can keep an eye on to see if he is proved right or wrong.
"Today Gaza, Tomorrow Jerusalem"
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 9, 2005
Are Israel's critics correct? Does the "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza cause the Palestinian Arabs' anti-Semitism, their suicide factories, and their terrorism? And is it true these horrors will end only when Israeli civilians and troops leave the territories?
The answer is coming soon. Starting August 15, the Israeli government will evict about 8,000 Israelis from Gaza and turn their land over to the Palestinian Authority. In addition to being a unique event in modern history (no other democracy has forcibly uprooted thousands of its own citizens of one religion from their lawful homes), it also offers a rare, live, social-science experiment.
We stand at an interpretive divide. If Israel's critics are right, the Gaza withdrawal will improve Palestinian attitudes toward Israel, leading to an end of incitement and a steep drop in attempted violence, followed by a renewal of negotiations and a full settlement. Logic requires, after all, that if "occupation" is the problem, ending it, even partially, will lead to a solution.
But I forecast a very different outcome. Given that about 80% of Palestinian Arabs continue to reject Israel's very existence, signs of Israeli weakness, such as the forthcoming Gaza withdrawal, will instead inspire heightened Palestinian irredentism. Absorbing their new gift without gratitude, Palestinian Arabs will focus on those territories Israelis have not evacuated. (This is what happened after Israeli forces fled Lebanon.) The retreat will inspire not comity but a new rejectionist exhilaration, a greater frenzy of anti-Zionist anger, and a surge in anti-Israel violence.
Palestinian Arabs themselves are openly saying as much. A top Hamas figure in Gaza, Ahmed al-Bahar says "Israel has never been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today following more than four years of the intifada. Hamas's heroic attacks exposed the weakness and volatility of the impotent Zionist security establishment. The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state. We believe that the resistance is the only way to pressure the Jews."
This would represent one huge "I told you so" for Daniel Pipes who has repeatedly critised the policy of unilateral withdrawal from both Lebanon and Gaza, and the links between the two.
I have blogged about this elsewhere, but one of my previous comments is worth re-posting, as the empirical evidence says unequivocally that Pipes was right:
-----------
And a contrary view. Credit to Pipes, he makes a concrete, falsifiable prediction as to the consequences of Sharon's Gaza pullout, which we can keep an eye on to see if he is proved right or wrong.
"Today Gaza, Tomorrow Jerusalem"
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 9, 2005
Are Israel's critics correct? Does the "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza cause the Palestinian Arabs' anti-Semitism, their suicide factories, and their terrorism? And is it true these horrors will end only when Israeli civilians and troops leave the territories?
The answer is coming soon. Starting August 15, the Israeli government will evict about 8,000 Israelis from Gaza and turn their land over to the Palestinian Authority. In addition to being a unique event in modern history (no other democracy has forcibly uprooted thousands of its own citizens of one religion from their lawful homes), it also offers a rare, live, social-science experiment.
We stand at an interpretive divide. If Israel's critics are right, the Gaza withdrawal will improve Palestinian attitudes toward Israel, leading to an end of incitement and a steep drop in attempted violence, followed by a renewal of negotiations and a full settlement. Logic requires, after all, that if "occupation" is the problem, ending it, even partially, will lead to a solution.
But I forecast a very different outcome. Given that about 80% of Palestinian Arabs continue to reject Israel's very existence, signs of Israeli weakness, such as the forthcoming Gaza withdrawal, will instead inspire heightened Palestinian irredentism. Absorbing their new gift without gratitude, Palestinian Arabs will focus on those territories Israelis have not evacuated. (This is what happened after Israeli forces fled Lebanon.) The retreat will inspire not comity but a new rejectionist exhilaration, a greater frenzy of anti-Zionist anger, and a surge in anti-Israel violence.
Palestinian Arabs themselves are openly saying as much. A top Hamas figure in Gaza, Ahmed al-Bahar says "Israel has never been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today following more than four years of the intifada. Hamas's heroic attacks exposed the weakness and volatility of the impotent Zionist security establishment. The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state. We believe that the resistance is the only way to pressure the Jews."
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Happy Birthday George
On the occasion of G.W.'s 60th birthday (and a couple of days after July 4th) here is a rather nice piece in praise of America:
What's So Great About America?
By Dinesh D'Souza
The newcomer who sees America for the first time typically experiences emotions that alternate between wonder and delight. Here is a country where everything works: The roads are paper-smooth, the highway signs are clear and accurate, the public toilets function properly, when you pick up the telephone you get a dial tone. You can even buy things from the store and then take them back if you change your mind. For the Third World visitor, the American supermarket is a marvel to behold: endless aisles of every imaginable product, 50 different types of cereal, multiple flavors of ice cream, countless unappreciated inventions like quilted toilet paper, fabric softener, roll-on deodorant, disposable diapers.
The immigrant cannot help noticing that America is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s, when CBS television broadcast an anti-Reagan documentary, “People Like Us,” which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with the intention of embarrassing the Reagan administration. But it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans had television sets and cars. They arrived at the same conclusion that I witnessed in a friend of mine from Bombay who has been trying unsuccessfully to move to the United States for nearly a decade. I asked him, “Why are you so eager to come to America?” He replied, “Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.”
Read on...
Found it via: instapundit
What's So Great About America?
By Dinesh D'Souza
The newcomer who sees America for the first time typically experiences emotions that alternate between wonder and delight. Here is a country where everything works: The roads are paper-smooth, the highway signs are clear and accurate, the public toilets function properly, when you pick up the telephone you get a dial tone. You can even buy things from the store and then take them back if you change your mind. For the Third World visitor, the American supermarket is a marvel to behold: endless aisles of every imaginable product, 50 different types of cereal, multiple flavors of ice cream, countless unappreciated inventions like quilted toilet paper, fabric softener, roll-on deodorant, disposable diapers.
The immigrant cannot help noticing that America is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s, when CBS television broadcast an anti-Reagan documentary, “People Like Us,” which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with the intention of embarrassing the Reagan administration. But it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans had television sets and cars. They arrived at the same conclusion that I witnessed in a friend of mine from Bombay who has been trying unsuccessfully to move to the United States for nearly a decade. I asked him, “Why are you so eager to come to America?” He replied, “Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.”
Read on...
Found it via: instapundit
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Survey of World's Muslims Yields Dismaying Results - Pipes
Survey of World's Muslims Yields Dismaying Results
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
June 27, 2006
How do Muslims worldwide think?
To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other, it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Britain, and Spain).
The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three rubrics.
A proclivity to conspiracy theories: In not one Muslim population polled does a majority believe that Arabs carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, on America. The proportions range from a mere 15% in Pakistan holding Arabs responsible, to 48% among French Muslims. Confirming recent negative trends in Turkey, the number of Turks who point the finger at Arabs has declined to 16% today from 46% in 2002. In other words, in every one of these 10 Muslim communities, a majority views September 11 as a hoax perpetrated by the American government, Israel, or some other agency.
Likewise, Muslims are widely prejudiced against Jews, ranging from 28% unfavorable ratings among French Muslims to 98% in Jordan (which, despite the monarchy's moderation, has a majority Palestinian Arab population). Further, Muslims in certain countries (especially Egypt and Jordan) see Jews conspiratorially, as being responsible for bad relations between Muslims and Westerners.
Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, "What is most responsible for Muslim nations' lack of prosperity?" between 14% (in Pakistan) and 43% (in Jordan) blame the policies of America and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam.
This conspiracism points to a widespread unwillingness in the umma to deal with realities, preferring the safer bromides of plots, schemes, and intrigues. It also exposes major problems adjusting to modernity.
Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8% (in Turkey) and 72% (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13% (in Germany) to 69% (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come.
British and Nigerian Muslims are most alienated: Britain stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32% of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less than their counterparts in France (41%), Germany (52%), or Spain (60%). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations.
But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for September 11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme.
The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression.
Nigerian Muslims generally have the most belligerent views on such issues as the state of Western-Muslim relations, the supposed immorality and arrogance of Westerners, and support for Mr. bin Laden and suicide terrorism. This extremism results, no doubt, from the violent state of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria.
Ironically, most Muslim alienation is found in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best - where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in Britain, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria.
Overall, the Pew survey sends an undeniable message of crisis from one end to the other of the Muslim world
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
June 27, 2006
How do Muslims worldwide think?
To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other, it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Britain, and Spain).
The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three rubrics.
A proclivity to conspiracy theories: In not one Muslim population polled does a majority believe that Arabs carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, on America. The proportions range from a mere 15% in Pakistan holding Arabs responsible, to 48% among French Muslims. Confirming recent negative trends in Turkey, the number of Turks who point the finger at Arabs has declined to 16% today from 46% in 2002. In other words, in every one of these 10 Muslim communities, a majority views September 11 as a hoax perpetrated by the American government, Israel, or some other agency.
Likewise, Muslims are widely prejudiced against Jews, ranging from 28% unfavorable ratings among French Muslims to 98% in Jordan (which, despite the monarchy's moderation, has a majority Palestinian Arab population). Further, Muslims in certain countries (especially Egypt and Jordan) see Jews conspiratorially, as being responsible for bad relations between Muslims and Westerners.
Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, "What is most responsible for Muslim nations' lack of prosperity?" between 14% (in Pakistan) and 43% (in Jordan) blame the policies of America and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam.
This conspiracism points to a widespread unwillingness in the umma to deal with realities, preferring the safer bromides of plots, schemes, and intrigues. It also exposes major problems adjusting to modernity.
Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8% (in Turkey) and 72% (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13% (in Germany) to 69% (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come.
British and Nigerian Muslims are most alienated: Britain stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32% of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less than their counterparts in France (41%), Germany (52%), or Spain (60%). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations.
But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for September 11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme.
The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression.
Nigerian Muslims generally have the most belligerent views on such issues as the state of Western-Muslim relations, the supposed immorality and arrogance of Westerners, and support for Mr. bin Laden and suicide terrorism. This extremism results, no doubt, from the violent state of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria.
Ironically, most Muslim alienation is found in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best - where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in Britain, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria.
Overall, the Pew survey sends an undeniable message of crisis from one end to the other of the Muslim world
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Empire Discussion with Niall Ferguson
Great discussion here on the rights and wrongs of Empire (in general, and the British in particular). Ferguson is my hero, this Colley woman is ok, then a whinging old Marxist and a couple of trendy lefties to get your right-thinking hackles up! About 30 mins and well worth it!
Radio 4's Start the Week - Empire Discussion
This week Andrew Marr presents a special edition of Start the Week. To mark the end of Radio 4's This Sceptred Isle: Empire series, some of this country's best-known historians will be examining how Britain and other countries around the world have been changed by their experience of empire. They'll be discussing whether Britain should apologise and make reparation for its imperial past or glory in it, and asking whether the twenty-first century will see the birth of new empires. Eric Hobsbawm, Niall Ferguson, Robert Beckford, Linda Colley and Priya Gopal join Andrew Marr.
Radio 4's Start the Week - Empire Discussion
This week Andrew Marr presents a special edition of Start the Week. To mark the end of Radio 4's This Sceptred Isle: Empire series, some of this country's best-known historians will be examining how Britain and other countries around the world have been changed by their experience of empire. They'll be discussing whether Britain should apologise and make reparation for its imperial past or glory in it, and asking whether the twenty-first century will see the birth of new empires. Eric Hobsbawm, Niall Ferguson, Robert Beckford, Linda Colley and Priya Gopal join Andrew Marr.
- The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred by Niall Ferguson is published by Allen Lane.
- Jesus Dub: Theology, Music and Social Change by Robert Beckford is published by Routledge.
- Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence by Priyamvada Gopal is published by Routledge. Her essay on a Moral Empire can be found in the collection she is editing with Neil Lazarus, which will be published in the autumn as a special issue of the journal New Formations, to be called, After Iraq: Reframing Postcolonial Studies.
- The Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm is published by Abacus, as is Nations and Nationalism since 1780.
- The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh by Linda Colley will be published by HarperCollins in the autumn. Captives is published by Pimlico.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Polish anti-semitism on the rise
Ghetto survivor warns of Polish 'fascism'
Telegraph
24/06/2006
As a 24-year-old banished to the Warsaw ghetto with thousands of fellow Polish Jews, Marek Edelman decided that the only way to fight the Nazis was to take up arms.More than six decades later, the last surviving leader of the ghetto's courageous but doomed uprising of 1943 said he thought similar action justified in today's Poland."If we want to save Poland, my advice would be to take up the knife and hit them where it hurts," Mr Edelman, 87, said in his flat in the central city of Lodz.
His anger is directed at the conservative government, which was elected eight months ago, and two nationalist and radical Right-wing parties that were recently invited to prop it up: the League of Polish Families (LPR) and Self-Defence, whose leader has praised Hitler's economic policies.
Poland's entry to the European Union two years ago has generally been hailed as a success. But it has brought with it heavy doses of illiberalism that are embarrassing the champions of EU expansion. The nation of 40 million is in danger of becoming a hothouse of extremism and Catholic nationalism. Ten days ago the European Parliament condemned "a rise in racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic and homophobic intolerance" and urged the government to tone down its rhetoric or risk sanctions. Drawing parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Mr Edelman said: "If this coalition continues to shape the country, I truly believe that our freedom is threatened. Persecution starts with small things: first language, then beatings, then murder."
This week a report alleged that the deputy chief of state television had published a neo-Nazi magazine calling for the expulsion of Jews from Poland. Piotr Farfal, 28, claimed that he had only "lent his name" to the magazine. Asked to confirm his identity on a photograph of him giving a Nazi salute, he said: "You can also use this gesture to greet someone."
Gay rights groups around the world protested after Wojciech Wierzejski, the deputy chief of LPR, speaking before the country's annual gay rights march, referred to gays as "deviants" who should be beaten with sticks if they marched without a permit.
But the main focus of detractors' wrath is Radio Maryja, a popular Catholic radio station that is openly anti-semitic and racist. The station was crucial to the electoral success of the Law and Justice Party, which squeezed into power on the back of public dissatisfaction with the previous Left-wing government's corruption and poor economic management. As a result, the station has acquired a huge influence on government business.
Its listeners are, like the supporters of LPR and Self-Defence, typically rural, elderly, staunch Catholics who feel betrayed by the country's free market transformation. Numbering up to four million, they pay for the station through donations and in return lap up not only the morning doses of prayers, recipes and household tips but also the evening political broadcasts and phone-ins in which government figures regularly take part.
In March Mr Edelman wrote an angry letter to the prime minister after a broadcast in which a regular Radio Maryja commentator said that Poland was "being outflanked by Judeans" who, with their "greasy palms", were "trying to extort money from our government". "I wanted to point out that the government is lending support to the most reactionary currents of xenophobia and anti-semitism," said Mr Edelman, a retired heart surgeon. "Radio Maryja should be closed down."
The government rejects the charges, talking of a Left-wing smear campaign. All Polish Youth, the youth wing of LPR, says it is only by making Poland a Catholic state that its future will be secured. "We do not want to become like Holland with its free drugs and gay marriage," said Konrad Bonislawski, 23, a senior member. "Since joining the European Union we have seen attempts to destroy our Catholic values."
One of the government's most controversial moves has been to announce the reintroduction to schools of lessons in patriotism, in which pupils will celebrate their heritage through history lessons and singing the national anthem. The initiative prompted schoolchildren to form the Pupils' Initiative and to storm the education ministry this month, demanding the sacking of Roman Giertych, the education minister and the leader of LPR.
"You can't teach patriotism," said Karolina Szczepaniak, 18, who attends a convent school in Warsaw. "The government is trying to force on us its religious ideas, its homophobia, its racism, as it tries to turn Poland into a Catholic state. "Look at all the cases where fundamentalists impose their ideas on states and you see how dangerous it can be."
-----------------
JP Note: according to the stats here, the Jewish population of Poland is 25,000, ie 0.065% of the population
Telegraph
24/06/2006
As a 24-year-old banished to the Warsaw ghetto with thousands of fellow Polish Jews, Marek Edelman decided that the only way to fight the Nazis was to take up arms.More than six decades later, the last surviving leader of the ghetto's courageous but doomed uprising of 1943 said he thought similar action justified in today's Poland."If we want to save Poland, my advice would be to take up the knife and hit them where it hurts," Mr Edelman, 87, said in his flat in the central city of Lodz.
His anger is directed at the conservative government, which was elected eight months ago, and two nationalist and radical Right-wing parties that were recently invited to prop it up: the League of Polish Families (LPR) and Self-Defence, whose leader has praised Hitler's economic policies.
Poland's entry to the European Union two years ago has generally been hailed as a success. But it has brought with it heavy doses of illiberalism that are embarrassing the champions of EU expansion. The nation of 40 million is in danger of becoming a hothouse of extremism and Catholic nationalism. Ten days ago the European Parliament condemned "a rise in racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic and homophobic intolerance" and urged the government to tone down its rhetoric or risk sanctions. Drawing parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Mr Edelman said: "If this coalition continues to shape the country, I truly believe that our freedom is threatened. Persecution starts with small things: first language, then beatings, then murder."
This week a report alleged that the deputy chief of state television had published a neo-Nazi magazine calling for the expulsion of Jews from Poland. Piotr Farfal, 28, claimed that he had only "lent his name" to the magazine. Asked to confirm his identity on a photograph of him giving a Nazi salute, he said: "You can also use this gesture to greet someone."
Gay rights groups around the world protested after Wojciech Wierzejski, the deputy chief of LPR, speaking before the country's annual gay rights march, referred to gays as "deviants" who should be beaten with sticks if they marched without a permit.
But the main focus of detractors' wrath is Radio Maryja, a popular Catholic radio station that is openly anti-semitic and racist. The station was crucial to the electoral success of the Law and Justice Party, which squeezed into power on the back of public dissatisfaction with the previous Left-wing government's corruption and poor economic management. As a result, the station has acquired a huge influence on government business.
Its listeners are, like the supporters of LPR and Self-Defence, typically rural, elderly, staunch Catholics who feel betrayed by the country's free market transformation. Numbering up to four million, they pay for the station through donations and in return lap up not only the morning doses of prayers, recipes and household tips but also the evening political broadcasts and phone-ins in which government figures regularly take part.
In March Mr Edelman wrote an angry letter to the prime minister after a broadcast in which a regular Radio Maryja commentator said that Poland was "being outflanked by Judeans" who, with their "greasy palms", were "trying to extort money from our government". "I wanted to point out that the government is lending support to the most reactionary currents of xenophobia and anti-semitism," said Mr Edelman, a retired heart surgeon. "Radio Maryja should be closed down."
The government rejects the charges, talking of a Left-wing smear campaign. All Polish Youth, the youth wing of LPR, says it is only by making Poland a Catholic state that its future will be secured. "We do not want to become like Holland with its free drugs and gay marriage," said Konrad Bonislawski, 23, a senior member. "Since joining the European Union we have seen attempts to destroy our Catholic values."
One of the government's most controversial moves has been to announce the reintroduction to schools of lessons in patriotism, in which pupils will celebrate their heritage through history lessons and singing the national anthem. The initiative prompted schoolchildren to form the Pupils' Initiative and to storm the education ministry this month, demanding the sacking of Roman Giertych, the education minister and the leader of LPR.
"You can't teach patriotism," said Karolina Szczepaniak, 18, who attends a convent school in Warsaw. "The government is trying to force on us its religious ideas, its homophobia, its racism, as it tries to turn Poland into a Catholic state. "Look at all the cases where fundamentalists impose their ideas on states and you see how dangerous it can be."
-----------------
JP Note: according to the stats here, the Jewish population of Poland is 25,000, ie 0.065% of the population
Friday, June 23, 2006
The public feels patronised, bullied and betrayed
Here's a good piece on Labour in the Guardian.
The public feels patronised, bullied and betrayed
Jenni Russell
The saddest and most puzzling aspect of this rift is that the party adopted the top-down creed of technocratic managerialism just as business was realising the limitations of that approach. These days, successful workplaces are all about delegation and trust. Already the Conservatives have seen what potentially rich territory this is. They are talking of the need to trust people again.
There are signs of hope. Some young Labour ministers think and talk like human beings and would like a new approach. If Labour is to win the next election, it's vital that this more open, less defensive generation of politicians are allowed to start thinking about how they can construct a better relationship between them and us.
The public feels patronised, bullied and betrayed
Jenni Russell
The saddest and most puzzling aspect of this rift is that the party adopted the top-down creed of technocratic managerialism just as business was realising the limitations of that approach. These days, successful workplaces are all about delegation and trust. Already the Conservatives have seen what potentially rich territory this is. They are talking of the need to trust people again.
There are signs of hope. Some young Labour ministers think and talk like human beings and would like a new approach. If Labour is to win the next election, it's vital that this more open, less defensive generation of politicians are allowed to start thinking about how they can construct a better relationship between them and us.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
An Englishman's home isn't his Castle
A new property law enables the council to confiscate your home if it has been empty for over six months.
It's an old saying, a trope or a truism if you prefer, that "An Englishman's home is his castle". Whatever happens outside in the streets, whatever idiocies the current political pygmies have decided to inflict upon the populace, the possession and enjoyment of one's own property was safe, guarded by both law and custom. Certainly there were eminent domain purchases, broadly in line with American practice but as of the first of this month the government no longer even has to pay.
Yes, you did read that correctly, your paid off, unmortgaged, fully owned property can be taken away from you without your even being paid for it.
The law is here: The Housing (Empty Dwelling Management Orders) (Prescribed Exceptions and Requirements) (England) Order 2006. Something of a mouthful, I know, but what this and the preceding pieces of legislation actually state is that if you leave a property uninhabited for 6 months then the local council can take it from you and rent it to whomever it likes. There are a few exceptions, such as vacation homes and so on, but at a stroke the entire basis of property law has changed. Instead of it being yours to do with as you wish it is yours as long, and only as long, as you do as the government wishes.
The set up is that if you have left the property empty then the local council must make reasonable efforts to contact you to let out the house or apartment. If you still decide that you don't want to, then they will do it for you. Worse, far worse, is if their "reasonable efforts" don't actually find you, then they'll do it without actually telling you. These orders allowing them to do this will last 7 years, and can be extended. Yes, this will even be possible in the case of a death: the inheritors have 6 months (not from probate, but from the granting of representation: and there are many only even mildly complicated estates that can take more than 6 months to run the executor's course) to dispose of the property or conceivably have it compulsorarily rented out from underneath them.
That local council can charge you a management fee for this service that you obviously don't want and should then pass on to you whatever is left of the rent they have been charging your new unwanted tenant. Your new tenants will not, of course, be quite from the top drawer of society, for like anywhere else in the world, that's not the social stratum from whom the inhabitants of "social" housing are drawn. Yet you will be responsible for the costs of ensuring that said housing is maintained to the highest standards, whether or not they actually pay any rent; indeed, you won't actually be able to evict them if they should trash the place for, of course, you are not the manager or agent for the property; that is the local council.
Here's the full article.
It's an old saying, a trope or a truism if you prefer, that "An Englishman's home is his castle". Whatever happens outside in the streets, whatever idiocies the current political pygmies have decided to inflict upon the populace, the possession and enjoyment of one's own property was safe, guarded by both law and custom. Certainly there were eminent domain purchases, broadly in line with American practice but as of the first of this month the government no longer even has to pay.
Yes, you did read that correctly, your paid off, unmortgaged, fully owned property can be taken away from you without your even being paid for it.
The law is here: The Housing (Empty Dwelling Management Orders) (Prescribed Exceptions and Requirements) (England) Order 2006. Something of a mouthful, I know, but what this and the preceding pieces of legislation actually state is that if you leave a property uninhabited for 6 months then the local council can take it from you and rent it to whomever it likes. There are a few exceptions, such as vacation homes and so on, but at a stroke the entire basis of property law has changed. Instead of it being yours to do with as you wish it is yours as long, and only as long, as you do as the government wishes.
The set up is that if you have left the property empty then the local council must make reasonable efforts to contact you to let out the house or apartment. If you still decide that you don't want to, then they will do it for you. Worse, far worse, is if their "reasonable efforts" don't actually find you, then they'll do it without actually telling you. These orders allowing them to do this will last 7 years, and can be extended. Yes, this will even be possible in the case of a death: the inheritors have 6 months (not from probate, but from the granting of representation: and there are many only even mildly complicated estates that can take more than 6 months to run the executor's course) to dispose of the property or conceivably have it compulsorarily rented out from underneath them.
That local council can charge you a management fee for this service that you obviously don't want and should then pass on to you whatever is left of the rent they have been charging your new unwanted tenant. Your new tenants will not, of course, be quite from the top drawer of society, for like anywhere else in the world, that's not the social stratum from whom the inhabitants of "social" housing are drawn. Yet you will be responsible for the costs of ensuring that said housing is maintained to the highest standards, whether or not they actually pay any rent; indeed, you won't actually be able to evict them if they should trash the place for, of course, you are not the manager or agent for the property; that is the local council.
Here's the full article.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
A Natural History of Jewish Intelligence
The Lessons of Jewish Genes
by Steven Pinker
The New Republic
17/6/06
My grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe who owned a small necktie factory on the outskirts of Montreal. While visiting them one weekend, I found my grandfather on the factory floor, cutting shapes out of irregular stacks of cloth with a fabric saw. He explained that by carving up the remnants that were left over when the neckties had been cut out and stitching them together in places that didn't show, he could get a few extra ties out of each sheet of cloth. I asked him why he was doing this himself rather than leaving it to his employees. He shrugged, tapped his forehead, and said, "Goyishe kop," a term of condescension that literally means "gentile head."
He wasn't exactly serious, but he wasn't exactly not serious either. Jews have long had an ambivalent attitude toward their own intelligence, and toward their reputation for intelligence. There is an ethnic pride at the prevalence of Jews in occupations that reward brainpower. A droll e-mail called "New Words to Add to Your Jewish Vocabulary" includes "jewbiliation, N: pride in finding out that one's favorite celebrity is Jewish" and "meinstein, N: My son, the genius." Many Jews subscribe to a folk theory that attributes Jewish intelligence to what would have to be the weirdest example of sexual selection in the living world: that for generations in the shtetl, the brightest yeshiva boy was betrothed to the daughter of the richest man, thereby favoring the genes, if such genes there are, for Talmudic pilpul.
But pride has always been haunted by fear that public acknowledge of Jewish achievement could fuel the perception of "Jewish domination" of institutions. And any characterization of Jews in biological terms smacks of Nazi pseudoscience about "the Jewish race." A team of scientists from the University of Utah recently strode into this minefield with their article "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence," which was published online in the Journal of Biosocial Science a year ago, and was soon publicized in The New York Times, The Economist, and on the cover of New York magazine.
The Utah researchers Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending (henceforth CH&H) proposed that Ashkenazi Jews have a genetic advantage in intelligence, and that the advantage arose from natural selection for success in middleman occupations (moneylending, selling, and estate management) during the first millennium of their existence in northern Europe, from about 800 C.E. to 1600 C.E. Since rapid selection of a single trait often brings along deleterious by-products, this evolutionary history also bequeathed the genetic diseases known to be common among Ashkenazim, such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher's.
The CH&H study quickly became a target of harsh denunciation and morbid fascination. It raises two questions. How good is the evidence for this audacious hypothesis? And what, if any, are the political and moral implications?
by Steven Pinker
The New Republic
17/6/06
My grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe who owned a small necktie factory on the outskirts of Montreal. While visiting them one weekend, I found my grandfather on the factory floor, cutting shapes out of irregular stacks of cloth with a fabric saw. He explained that by carving up the remnants that were left over when the neckties had been cut out and stitching them together in places that didn't show, he could get a few extra ties out of each sheet of cloth. I asked him why he was doing this himself rather than leaving it to his employees. He shrugged, tapped his forehead, and said, "Goyishe kop," a term of condescension that literally means "gentile head."
He wasn't exactly serious, but he wasn't exactly not serious either. Jews have long had an ambivalent attitude toward their own intelligence, and toward their reputation for intelligence. There is an ethnic pride at the prevalence of Jews in occupations that reward brainpower. A droll e-mail called "New Words to Add to Your Jewish Vocabulary" includes "jewbiliation, N: pride in finding out that one's favorite celebrity is Jewish" and "meinstein, N: My son, the genius." Many Jews subscribe to a folk theory that attributes Jewish intelligence to what would have to be the weirdest example of sexual selection in the living world: that for generations in the shtetl, the brightest yeshiva boy was betrothed to the daughter of the richest man, thereby favoring the genes, if such genes there are, for Talmudic pilpul.
But pride has always been haunted by fear that public acknowledge of Jewish achievement could fuel the perception of "Jewish domination" of institutions. And any characterization of Jews in biological terms smacks of Nazi pseudoscience about "the Jewish race." A team of scientists from the University of Utah recently strode into this minefield with their article "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence," which was published online in the Journal of Biosocial Science a year ago, and was soon publicized in The New York Times, The Economist, and on the cover of New York magazine.
The Utah researchers Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending (henceforth CH&H) proposed that Ashkenazi Jews have a genetic advantage in intelligence, and that the advantage arose from natural selection for success in middleman occupations (moneylending, selling, and estate management) during the first millennium of their existence in northern Europe, from about 800 C.E. to 1600 C.E. Since rapid selection of a single trait often brings along deleterious by-products, this evolutionary history also bequeathed the genetic diseases known to be common among Ashkenazim, such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher's.
The CH&H study quickly became a target of harsh denunciation and morbid fascination. It raises two questions. How good is the evidence for this audacious hypothesis? And what, if any, are the political and moral implications?
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
The Positive Case For Globalisation
An excellent article in the Times on the positive benefits of Globalisation and why it is important to defend it against a rising tide of criticsm. And the Author? Mr Gordon Brown. If he keeps this up I might even vote for him!
The whole article is worth reading but I wanted to pull out these quotes:
'“Economic patriotism” across Europe, with country after country blocking cross-border acquisitions, is antithetical to both the spirit and the rules of an open single market. Protectionist calls from parts of the United States, which would seek to halt necessary change, also send out the wrong message, implying that globalisation is a threat, not the opportunity it should be.
The rising tide of populism in Latin America and continuing protectionism in Asia are direct assaults on the very idea of globalisation itself. Everywhere, instead of barriers coming down, they appear to be going up.'
'Ironically, even globalisation’s beneficiaries — the millions who are seeing cuts in consumer goods prices, lower inflation and lower interest rates, and higher economic growth and employment — are acting as if they are victims. With even winners thinking like losers — and the popular focus on lost manufacturing, lost service jobs off-shored, lost jobs to newcomers moving into their communities — the argument is being run by the hardest hit producers, forgetting the benefits to consumers.
But it is not the side-effects or the inevitable strains of globalisation that they have put under attack. Under assault are the very foundations of globalisation — the free movement of capital, goods and services, and labour — that would be destroyed by this three-pronged attack from protectionism, economic patriotism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
The world is being given a wake-up call about the dangers of retreating back into the kind of beggar-thy-neighbour, heads-in-the-sand protectionism that set nation against nation in the 1930s.
So our first task, indeed our responsibility as economic leaders, is to demonstrate to an insecure and uncertain public that either defending a status quo that cannot endure, or retreating into protectionism is a false prospectus.'
The whole article is worth reading but I wanted to pull out these quotes:
'“Economic patriotism” across Europe, with country after country blocking cross-border acquisitions, is antithetical to both the spirit and the rules of an open single market. Protectionist calls from parts of the United States, which would seek to halt necessary change, also send out the wrong message, implying that globalisation is a threat, not the opportunity it should be.
The rising tide of populism in Latin America and continuing protectionism in Asia are direct assaults on the very idea of globalisation itself. Everywhere, instead of barriers coming down, they appear to be going up.'
'Ironically, even globalisation’s beneficiaries — the millions who are seeing cuts in consumer goods prices, lower inflation and lower interest rates, and higher economic growth and employment — are acting as if they are victims. With even winners thinking like losers — and the popular focus on lost manufacturing, lost service jobs off-shored, lost jobs to newcomers moving into their communities — the argument is being run by the hardest hit producers, forgetting the benefits to consumers.
But it is not the side-effects or the inevitable strains of globalisation that they have put under attack. Under assault are the very foundations of globalisation — the free movement of capital, goods and services, and labour — that would be destroyed by this three-pronged attack from protectionism, economic patriotism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
The world is being given a wake-up call about the dangers of retreating back into the kind of beggar-thy-neighbour, heads-in-the-sand protectionism that set nation against nation in the 1930s.
So our first task, indeed our responsibility as economic leaders, is to demonstrate to an insecure and uncertain public that either defending a status quo that cannot endure, or retreating into protectionism is a false prospectus.'
Monday, June 12, 2006
Civilian deaths in Gaza
It's hard to write about this without sounding like a complete apologist for any action carried about Israel. Just for the record, I'm not defending the shelling of picnicing families. However, just read this (via biased-bbc), which made think that the story was at the very least worth keeping an eye on. (Worth reading for the surprising - to me, anyway - revelation that the Palestinian boy shown cowering behind his father, was not, after all, killed by Israeli bullets.) Good post on moral equivalence from HP too.
In God We Trust (a bit less)
Tipped off to this by the fun-loving National Secular Society:
Although the US is far more devout than Europe (a point frequently made by M. Steyn) a new study suggests that Americans too are beginning to stand in the corner losing their religion. According to the authors of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), the number of respondants claiming no religious affiliation has risen from 8% to 14%.
I realise it probably looks like I'm making some kind of 'aha! they're as godless as us!' point - but I'm not. It's one survey and the numbers aren't exactly massive. Just thought it was mildly interesting. Anyway, you can read more about it here, if you're so inclined.
Although the US is far more devout than Europe (a point frequently made by M. Steyn) a new study suggests that Americans too are beginning to stand in the corner losing their religion. According to the authors of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), the number of respondants claiming no religious affiliation has risen from 8% to 14%.
I realise it probably looks like I'm making some kind of 'aha! they're as godless as us!' point - but I'm not. It's one survey and the numbers aren't exactly massive. Just thought it was mildly interesting. Anyway, you can read more about it here, if you're so inclined.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Friday, June 02, 2006
Hamas leader's three sisters live secretly in Israel as full citizens
Hamas leader's three sisters live secretly in Israel as full citizens
Telegraph
02/06/2006
Israel regards Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian Hamas prime minister, as an enemy of state. But three of his sisters enjoy full Israeli citizenship, having moved 30 years ago to the desert town of Tel Sheva. Some of their offspring have even served in the Israeli army, the force responsible for decades of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, an occupation that the Islamist movement, Hamas, was founded to fight.
Telegraph
02/06/2006
Israel regards Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian Hamas prime minister, as an enemy of state. But three of his sisters enjoy full Israeli citizenship, having moved 30 years ago to the desert town of Tel Sheva. Some of their offspring have even served in the Israeli army, the force responsible for decades of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, an occupation that the Islamist movement, Hamas, was founded to fight.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Recycled politics
How many of the Conservative policies that Labour abolished are they now bringing back?
1. The Governments Education Bill is effectively the Conservatives 1987 Grant Maintained Schools scheme.
2. The Government banned the Conservative internal market reforms in the NHS, massively increased spending on something else and then decided they were wrong to ban the Tory policies in the first place. Now they are pushing forward with internal market reforms to the NHS.
3. And finally we have a new scheme that is similiar in principle to the Conservatives assisted places scheme.
Here's the Adam Smith Institue Blog report on the new scheme:
'Telegraph education correspondent Julie Henry reports that up to 2,000 children in local-authority care in Britain could be offered places in private boarding schools.
Despite the £2.5bn a year that is spent looking after some 60,000 children in care, only 6% of them end up gaining five or more good GCSEs – the standard target in secondary schools. More than a third of them get no GCSE exams at all. They are also three times more likely to get involved in crime than other children. So access to private education could be a great boon for them.
Trials of the idea could start next year. There is, of course, a bit of self-interest for the local councils too. To keep a child in a children’s home costs four times the fees in posh schools like Eton or Winchester.
But what struck me as remarkable is that here we are – eight years later – bringing back a version of the ‘assisted places’ scheme that Tony Blair’s government abolished as soon as it came into office. The scheme offended Old Labour backbenchers, who wanted to make life as difficult as possible for the private schools. So despite the fact that it had given thousands of poor but bright kids access to the very best schooling in the country, it had to go.
So let us hope that this new idea takes root and grows. But why stop at 2,000? Why not give all children state-paid access to the school of their choice? The state does not have to provide an entire service – education, health, food, footwear, clothes – to make sure that everyone has access to it. All it has to do is pay – specifically, for those who could not otherwise afford these things. That gives equal access of the kind Old Labour wants: but without the nationalized industry provision that we all know is a disaster.'
Who knows maybe this is an example of Labour Ideology being best served by Conservative policies. If that's the case it would appear the Government has wasted a lot of money and effort over the last nine years. (Incidently, no book quite defines the right as Marx's Communist manifesto does the left but I reckon Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' and its theory of the Market's 'invisible hand'comes closest).
1. The Governments Education Bill is effectively the Conservatives 1987 Grant Maintained Schools scheme.
2. The Government banned the Conservative internal market reforms in the NHS, massively increased spending on something else and then decided they were wrong to ban the Tory policies in the first place. Now they are pushing forward with internal market reforms to the NHS.
3. And finally we have a new scheme that is similiar in principle to the Conservatives assisted places scheme.
Here's the Adam Smith Institue Blog report on the new scheme:
'Telegraph education correspondent Julie Henry reports that up to 2,000 children in local-authority care in Britain could be offered places in private boarding schools.
Despite the £2.5bn a year that is spent looking after some 60,000 children in care, only 6% of them end up gaining five or more good GCSEs – the standard target in secondary schools. More than a third of them get no GCSE exams at all. They are also three times more likely to get involved in crime than other children. So access to private education could be a great boon for them.
Trials of the idea could start next year. There is, of course, a bit of self-interest for the local councils too. To keep a child in a children’s home costs four times the fees in posh schools like Eton or Winchester.
But what struck me as remarkable is that here we are – eight years later – bringing back a version of the ‘assisted places’ scheme that Tony Blair’s government abolished as soon as it came into office. The scheme offended Old Labour backbenchers, who wanted to make life as difficult as possible for the private schools. So despite the fact that it had given thousands of poor but bright kids access to the very best schooling in the country, it had to go.
So let us hope that this new idea takes root and grows. But why stop at 2,000? Why not give all children state-paid access to the school of their choice? The state does not have to provide an entire service – education, health, food, footwear, clothes – to make sure that everyone has access to it. All it has to do is pay – specifically, for those who could not otherwise afford these things. That gives equal access of the kind Old Labour wants: but without the nationalized industry provision that we all know is a disaster.'
Who knows maybe this is an example of Labour Ideology being best served by Conservative policies. If that's the case it would appear the Government has wasted a lot of money and effort over the last nine years. (Incidently, no book quite defines the right as Marx's Communist manifesto does the left but I reckon Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' and its theory of the Market's 'invisible hand'comes closest).
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