Wonder what people think of this one, today's lead story in the Telegraph:
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Boys convicted of attempted rape: branded criminals for 'playing doctors and nurses'
Telegraph
24 May 2010
Two boys have been convicted of the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl even though she admitted in court that she lied about her ordeal. The defendants, who were both 10 at the time, are the youngest people ever to be convicted of the sex offence.
Their case immediately provoked a debate over whether juveniles should appear in a Crown Court, either as defendants or witnesses, especially in a sex offence case where they may be too immature to understand the allegations involved.
The jury was not told that the trial judge had admitted to having misgivings about allowing the case to go ahead. Mr Justice Saunders conceded that the Old Bailey case would have been dropped if the victim had been an adult, because the evidence the girl gave via videolink was so contradictory. The judge also admitted that the system involving child witnesses was far from “ideal”, noting that the victim had been subjected to a string of leading questions which she may not have understood. He said he would write to the Lord Chief Justice suggesting “lessons” should be learned from the way the case was handled.
The girl had told her mother and police that the boys had “done sex” with her in a field near her home in Hayes, west London, last October. Under cross-examination, she denied that either boy had raped her, agreeing that they had just been playing a game.
One of the boys’ barristers suggested that they had been playing ''you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’’, or ''that age-old game, doctors and nurses’’.
After two days of deliberations, the jury cleared the boys, now 10 and 11, of rape but found each guilty of two counts of attempted rape by a majority verdict. The defendants, who both denied the charges, could face lengthy custodial sentences and will be put on the sex offenders’ register, though the judge conceded: “I am not quite sure how it applies to children of this age.”
Senior lawyers and children’s charities described the trial as “horrific and absurd”. Felicity Gerry, a barrister and author of the Sexual Offences Handbook, questioned the decision to take the boys to court, saying sex offences were different from crimes of violence, such as the murder of James Bulger by two schoolboys.
“A lot of children may know that to kill a three-year-old with an iron bar or to drop concrete on a child is wrong, but proper sexual awareness only comes with greater maturity,” she said. “One might think [these defendants] would benefit from good social intervention rather than prosecution.”
...
The jury was not told that, after the girl had given evidence, the judge expressed misgivings about the process, saying: “I don’t think anyone who has sat through this trial would think for a moment that the system that we employ is ideal. However, the reality remains that we have a witness who said one thing and has now said completely the opposite ... if you had an adult witness who said what this girl said the Crown would not be proceeding.”
The judge rejected an attempt by the defence to have the case stopped, ruling that it was up to the jury to decide whether the girl had told the truth. At the end of the trial he said: “I will at some stage be sending my views about the procedure to those who are most concerned with it.’’
The Ministry of Justice said it would examine the case and any communication from the judge to see if there were issues which needed to be resolved. Both defendants, who cannot be named, were released on bail for psychological reports to be compiled before they are sentenced.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Smelly Little Orthodoxies - Peter Hitchens on winning the Orwell Award for Journalism
Hitchens reflects on winning the George Orwell Award for Journalism:
"In the meantime, I'd like to indulge myself and post a few mildly controversial thoughts on the Orwell Prize for Journalism, which I am proud to say I won last week. This was the one prize I had always wanted, as someone who has steeped himself in Orwell since the age of 15 and regards him as the pattern of honest writing. Because Orwell was of the Left (though a very troubled and troublesome member of that movement) he is regarded by many on the modern left as their perpetual property. I disagree. I think Orwell belongs to the truth, not to the left. And I think the judges recognised this crucial fact when they chose to quote from Orwell's essay on Charles Dickens in their citation (this was the moment when I, having pretty much assumed that it would be awarded to someone else, began to hope that I might win after all).
By the way, I really do have to thank the judges, Peter Kellner and Roger Graef, for their magnanimity in giving me the award when they must have known that so many of their friends would strongly disapprove. I can hear the aggrieved cries of ‘How could you give it to him?’, which they will now have to endure. By showing that magnanimity, they showed that they - and the Prize in general - understand the spirit of Orwell better than do many of those who resent my getting it.
Orwell wrote of Dickens as ‘a man who is always fighting against something but who fights in the open and is not frightened...a man who is generously angry...a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’
No, it's not that I presume to compare myself with Dickens (though I would cite 'Great Expectations', 'David Copperfield' and 'A Tale of Two Cities' as among the greatest books ever written). But I do think it's the case that - if you do your job properly - you will be loathed by the smelly little orthodoxies of your own age.
My thanks to those who sent kind wishes on my winning it. My thanks also to those who didn't. One of the delights of winning this award, for which I have entered unsuccessfully several times, is that quite a lot of the right, or left sort of people will be annoyed that I have got it. I even like to think that Orwell himself might have enjoyed the sharp intake of breath among London's left-wing mediocracy when they were reminded last Wednesday night that I was on the short-list. (They behaved impeccably when the actual award was announced, I should add). He might also have enjoyed the tiny, tiny mention of my name in the Guardian's report on the award, which dwelt mainly on the Blog Prize given to the pseudonymous social worker 'Winston Smith'.
Soon afterwards there was the comment by Roy Greenslade on his blog: ‘I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism. The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting. Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable. “Never”, he replied, “they'll hate me even more for this.” ’
The reported conversation did take place exactly as described, by the way, and I stand by it.
And I will always treasure another Guardian blog comment by legal expert Afua Hirsch, the closest anyone has come to saying openly that they disagree with the judges. Under the headline ‘Some wins more surprising than others’, Ms Hirsch wrote: ‘This year's Orwell prize steered close, as ever, to the most current political issues of the moment. Despite having nominated an array of journalists feted for their coverage of issues including protest rights or social breakdown, the award for journalism went to the Mail on Sunday's Peter Hitchens. The audience – comprised of liberal, political writers and bloggers – struggled to express an informed view on that choice of award because so few of them read the Mail on Sunday.’
And no doubt they're all proud of that, that so few of them read the MoS. And yet I read 'The Guardian' and 'The Observer' and I would be ashamed to be a member of my trade and admit that I didn't.
I think that 'despite' and the tortured grammar that follows it, speak volumes. Oddly enough, I do write about protest rights (on this blog particularly but elsewhere too, see the posting 'It's not debatable') and incessantly about social breakdown, but not perhaps in a way that Ms Hirsch would want me to.
What is it that I like about Orwell? Above all it is the good, clear English and the desire to be truthful even at some cost. Orwell ran into a great deal of trouble with the left (especially over 'Homage to Catalonia') because he refused to be an orthodox servant of his own cause. He once wrote (in a preface to 'Animal Farm' which was then itself not published):
‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
The paradox in this is that 'Animal Farm' itself was very nearly not published, not least thanks to the disgraceful behaviour of T.S.Eliot, a man who really should have known better.
I have explained (well, to some people, anyway) how this orthodoxy works in some ways in an earlier posting on bias in the publishing industry. But I know that Orwell never had a column in a national Sunday newspaper. So again, I am not in any way claiming a martyr's crown here, merely pointing out that I meet hostility and obstruction where a more orthodox writer would not. It is also the case that, in these times, conservative newspapers and magazines are more likely to foster and project unorthodox voices than are the journals of the left, which are bland and smug, while imagining themselves to be exciting and radical.
It's pointless to speculate on what Orwell would have made of the post Cold War world, of the 1960s cultural revolution, or of the controversies of today. We cannot know, and nobody should claim him as their own. But I have absolutely no doubt that, had he lived, he would have continued to annoy people by telling truths they did not wish to hear. There's a quotation I can't properly remember in which he said that a genuinely controversial opinion would always be a dangerous thing, because it would arouse serious fury (any Orwellians out there who can identify this? It was much better put).
And I wouldn't dare claim that I am somehow the inheritor of his mantle. That would be absurd. The point is, the Guardian isn't the inheritor of his mantle either.
But I do think that his extraordinary attempt to combine fierce patriotism with radical politics, in 'The Lion and the Unicorn' is in many ways as upsetting to the radical orthodoxy, who are never patriotic, as is his hostility to Stalinist totalitarianism (which they all excoriate now it's safe to do so, but would have apologised for when it was still powerful and fashionable, as they prove with their attitude towards Cuba).
I would also point to a strong cultural conservatism and dislike for crass modernity in much of his writings, especially in my favourite among his light novels, 'Coming up for Air'. And I always like to tease his modern partisans by pointing out that he specified in his Will that he should be buried (as I hope to be) according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England as set out in the 1662 Prayer Book, about the most uncompromising, raw, earthy and traditional religious service anywhere in any language. He'd also expressed a wish, granted thanks to his friend David Astor, to be laid in an English country churchyard.
And last Saturday evening, partly because there were no trains between Didcot and Oxford, I took the opportunity to bicycle through Sutton Courtenay, the rather lovely village where he is buried, and to pay my respects at his properly modest grave, six feet of English earth (no metres for him), under a Yew tree, near the Thames."
"In the meantime, I'd like to indulge myself and post a few mildly controversial thoughts on the Orwell Prize for Journalism, which I am proud to say I won last week. This was the one prize I had always wanted, as someone who has steeped himself in Orwell since the age of 15 and regards him as the pattern of honest writing. Because Orwell was of the Left (though a very troubled and troublesome member of that movement) he is regarded by many on the modern left as their perpetual property. I disagree. I think Orwell belongs to the truth, not to the left. And I think the judges recognised this crucial fact when they chose to quote from Orwell's essay on Charles Dickens in their citation (this was the moment when I, having pretty much assumed that it would be awarded to someone else, began to hope that I might win after all).
By the way, I really do have to thank the judges, Peter Kellner and Roger Graef, for their magnanimity in giving me the award when they must have known that so many of their friends would strongly disapprove. I can hear the aggrieved cries of ‘How could you give it to him?’, which they will now have to endure. By showing that magnanimity, they showed that they - and the Prize in general - understand the spirit of Orwell better than do many of those who resent my getting it.
Orwell wrote of Dickens as ‘a man who is always fighting against something but who fights in the open and is not frightened...a man who is generously angry...a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’
No, it's not that I presume to compare myself with Dickens (though I would cite 'Great Expectations', 'David Copperfield' and 'A Tale of Two Cities' as among the greatest books ever written). But I do think it's the case that - if you do your job properly - you will be loathed by the smelly little orthodoxies of your own age.
My thanks to those who sent kind wishes on my winning it. My thanks also to those who didn't. One of the delights of winning this award, for which I have entered unsuccessfully several times, is that quite a lot of the right, or left sort of people will be annoyed that I have got it. I even like to think that Orwell himself might have enjoyed the sharp intake of breath among London's left-wing mediocracy when they were reminded last Wednesday night that I was on the short-list. (They behaved impeccably when the actual award was announced, I should add). He might also have enjoyed the tiny, tiny mention of my name in the Guardian's report on the award, which dwelt mainly on the Blog Prize given to the pseudonymous social worker 'Winston Smith'.
Soon afterwards there was the comment by Roy Greenslade on his blog: ‘I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism. The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting. Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable. “Never”, he replied, “they'll hate me even more for this.” ’
The reported conversation did take place exactly as described, by the way, and I stand by it.
And I will always treasure another Guardian blog comment by legal expert Afua Hirsch, the closest anyone has come to saying openly that they disagree with the judges. Under the headline ‘Some wins more surprising than others’, Ms Hirsch wrote: ‘This year's Orwell prize steered close, as ever, to the most current political issues of the moment. Despite having nominated an array of journalists feted for their coverage of issues including protest rights or social breakdown, the award for journalism went to the Mail on Sunday's Peter Hitchens. The audience – comprised of liberal, political writers and bloggers – struggled to express an informed view on that choice of award because so few of them read the Mail on Sunday.’
And no doubt they're all proud of that, that so few of them read the MoS. And yet I read 'The Guardian' and 'The Observer' and I would be ashamed to be a member of my trade and admit that I didn't.
I think that 'despite' and the tortured grammar that follows it, speak volumes. Oddly enough, I do write about protest rights (on this blog particularly but elsewhere too, see the posting 'It's not debatable') and incessantly about social breakdown, but not perhaps in a way that Ms Hirsch would want me to.
What is it that I like about Orwell? Above all it is the good, clear English and the desire to be truthful even at some cost. Orwell ran into a great deal of trouble with the left (especially over 'Homage to Catalonia') because he refused to be an orthodox servant of his own cause. He once wrote (in a preface to 'Animal Farm' which was then itself not published):
‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
The paradox in this is that 'Animal Farm' itself was very nearly not published, not least thanks to the disgraceful behaviour of T.S.Eliot, a man who really should have known better.
I have explained (well, to some people, anyway) how this orthodoxy works in some ways in an earlier posting on bias in the publishing industry. But I know that Orwell never had a column in a national Sunday newspaper. So again, I am not in any way claiming a martyr's crown here, merely pointing out that I meet hostility and obstruction where a more orthodox writer would not. It is also the case that, in these times, conservative newspapers and magazines are more likely to foster and project unorthodox voices than are the journals of the left, which are bland and smug, while imagining themselves to be exciting and radical.
It's pointless to speculate on what Orwell would have made of the post Cold War world, of the 1960s cultural revolution, or of the controversies of today. We cannot know, and nobody should claim him as their own. But I have absolutely no doubt that, had he lived, he would have continued to annoy people by telling truths they did not wish to hear. There's a quotation I can't properly remember in which he said that a genuinely controversial opinion would always be a dangerous thing, because it would arouse serious fury (any Orwellians out there who can identify this? It was much better put).
And I wouldn't dare claim that I am somehow the inheritor of his mantle. That would be absurd. The point is, the Guardian isn't the inheritor of his mantle either.
But I do think that his extraordinary attempt to combine fierce patriotism with radical politics, in 'The Lion and the Unicorn' is in many ways as upsetting to the radical orthodoxy, who are never patriotic, as is his hostility to Stalinist totalitarianism (which they all excoriate now it's safe to do so, but would have apologised for when it was still powerful and fashionable, as they prove with their attitude towards Cuba).
I would also point to a strong cultural conservatism and dislike for crass modernity in much of his writings, especially in my favourite among his light novels, 'Coming up for Air'. And I always like to tease his modern partisans by pointing out that he specified in his Will that he should be buried (as I hope to be) according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England as set out in the 1662 Prayer Book, about the most uncompromising, raw, earthy and traditional religious service anywhere in any language. He'd also expressed a wish, granted thanks to his friend David Astor, to be laid in an English country churchyard.
And last Saturday evening, partly because there were no trains between Didcot and Oxford, I took the opportunity to bicycle through Sutton Courtenay, the rather lovely village where he is buried, and to pay my respects at his properly modest grave, six feet of English earth (no metres for him), under a Yew tree, near the Thames."
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Peter Hitchens wins the Orwell Award for Journalism
Nominated three times, Peter Hitchens wins the George Orwell Award for his foreign reporting on China, Canada, Eastern Europe and Africa.
Guardian's Roy Greenslade writes:
I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism.
The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting.
Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable.
"Never", he replied, "they'll hate me even more for this."
Guardian's Roy Greenslade writes:
I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism.
The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting.
Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable.
"Never", he replied, "they'll hate me even more for this."
Friday, May 21, 2010
The ADHD Fantasy
Peter Hitchens claims that ADHD doesn't really exist.
The Hitch takes apart the 5 most common angry responses he receives when he writes about ADHD. Here are two of them (the full list and his answers is available by following the link above):
"1. "Dear Mr Hitchens, I feel utterly insulted by your gratuitous claim that there is no such thing as ADHD'. You are obviously an ignorant moron. You should do some research on this, and then you would know that it was a real problem."
A. An insult can only be offered to a person, directly, and concern his personal failings or faults. It is not possible to be 'insulted' by a statement of fact, or by an argument you disagree with. If the statement isn't true, then you are well placed to prove that. If you disagree with the argument, then you can say so. To say that you have been 'insulted' is to refuse to accept that there may be some truth in what I say, possibly because you have some doubts about the matter yourself. In fact I often find that angry, personal vehemence in an argument is a sign that the person involved has serious doubts about his or her position. Let us begin as we mean to go on, and treat this as a matter of facts and logic. Also, as it so happens, I have done a great deal of research on this matter, not least as a result of dealing with several waves of correspondence on the subject. And the more research I have done, the more alarmed I have become at the great numbers of children and teenagers being drugged because they are supposed to be suffering from a complaint for which there is no established, objective test.
The question here is one of scientific fact, which - let us agree here to accept Karl Popper's view - has to be proved by experiment, and in such a way that it could later be disproved by new discoveries. Anything else is speculation, not fact or knowledge. If someone wants to say that there is something called 'ADHD', and prescribe actual drugs for it, the burden is on him to prove it by experiment, and to present a proof which could be exploded by new discoveries. I say no such proof has ever been produced. There are, it is true, some attempts to produce it. But one has been pretty thoroughly knocked down, and the other is tentative. Crucially, neither is generally used to diagnose 'ADHD', which is generally done by a subjective assessment.
I must also stress that, if you have been told that your child is suffering from a 'disorder', that does not actually mean that this must be so. Sceptics and doubters may be right. Doctors, regrettably, are often mistaken. Medical practice, even in physical medicine, undergoes fashions and fads just like every other field of human activity. Some examples: To my own knowledge, 23 years ago parents were told that the best way to avoid cot death was to lie babies face down. Five years later, the advice was the exact opposite. Putting them face down was likely to be fatal, and they must be laid on their backs. In the mid-20th century many psychiatrists believed that pre-frontal lobotomy was a miracle treatment. It is now universally decried as a barbaric and destructive operation.
Fashions in psychiatry have changed even more completely than fashions in ordinary physical medicine and surgery, during the short period of psychiatry's existence, with many of Sigmund Freud's original theories now regarded as wrong or flawed. As for neurology, the discipline which deals with the human brain, neurologists themselves admit that we know startlingly little about this complex, delicate and vulnerable organ. Undoubtedly, drugs can affect the brain. But neurologists are often extremely vague about how they operate and why they have the effects that they do have. Many drugs prescribed for neurological complaints, or for complaints which are assumed to be neurological, also have severe side-effects, and long-term consequences which are often discovered after some time. Some physical treatments for allegedly neurological complaints, such as electro-convulsive therapy, have been described to me by doctors as the medical equivalent of thumping a TV set that has gone on the blink.
In my childhood, operations for tonsillectomy were routinely given to children with nothing seriously wrong with them. Shoe shops provided machines in which you could X-ray your own feet, machines which were believed to be wholly safe and advertised as such. Most first-aid textbooks recommended treating burns by putting greasy creams on them, now acknowledged to be one of the worst things you can possibly do. When I first became a blood donor, in the 1970s, I was given iron pills by the nurse and told to take them without fail. This is now considered unnecessary, and possibly harmful. And so on. Many of us have also been misdiagnosed by doctors at one time or another. I certainly have, and once ended up in hospital being prepared for a wholly needless operation because I had been prescribed the wrong antibiotic. The mistake was discovered just before I went under the anaesthetic. It is perfectly reasonable for informed laymen to question the wisdom of doctors, and often wise to do so.
2. "You plainly have no idea of what you are talking about. If you came and spent a week at our house, then you would know that ADHD existed."
A. I did once respond to such an offer, asking the writer to name a date. I warned that I spent rather a long time in the bathroom in the morning, but promised to bring my own wine and do my own laundry and ironing. But I heard nothing more, perhaps because I added . "I can assure you that, even if I spent a year in your home, I should still not be persuaded that 'ADHD' exists." How can I be so sure? Why wouldn't I be influenced by daily contact with a badly-behaved or uncontrollable child?
First, because the fact that there are such children is not in doubt. There are many. I wouldn't have to spend a week watching them misbehave to be convinced of that. Many modern British and American children, especially young boys, cause their parents and their teachers great difficulty. They defy authority, they run wild, they break things, they yell and shout and are horrible to their brothers and sisters. But their existence does not prove that 'ADHD' exists. That is a separate issue. It just proves that in modern Western societies there are a lot of ill-behaved boys. The question is not "do children behave badly in increasing numbers, especially at school?" Everyone knows this is the case. The question is "what is causing their bad behaviour?" Is there one simple reason, that can be cured by giving them all a drug? Or are there many reasons, some of which might be curable by drugs (I am suspicious of this method under all circumstances, but don't rule out the possibility that there might be cases where drugs could help), some of which can be cured by sleep, exercise, diet, the rationing of TV watching, a different pattern of family life, a better school, and some of which have actual physical causes and may or may not be treatable?
One of the problems with the diagnosis of 'ADHD' is that it covers such an extraordinarily broad range of behaviours including -in my experience - children who may actually suffer from birth trauma or brain damage, and children who are merely wilful and obstinate, or are driven to distraction by dull schools and bad teachers. Worse, it closes the subject. If they are all suffering from a treatable physical disorder, then we need not worry about our debased family life and our useless schools. And the small minority of children who do actually have something physically wrong with them are dosed with drugs that pacify them, and their real problems are ignored and go uninvestigated This means firstly they are not treated, and secondly that medical knowledge ceases to advance. The 'diagnosis' of 'ADHD' helps none of those to whom it is applied. But it gets a lot of adults off the hook of responsibility and closes off scientific inquiry.
Even if some of these children do actually have a physical defect curable by drugs, they cannot conceivably all be the same - six or seven million children now in the USA, hundreds of thousands in Britain.
Among the 'ADHD' children are those who have been exposed to an enormous amount of TV from early infancy, or to violent computer games. There are those who suffer from an almost total absence of physical exercise, and those who have never been introduced to a routine of mealtimes and bedtimes, and so are unwilling to adapt to any environment in which there are routines and timetables. There are those who have never been taught to read, and so would find school a constant frustration. There are those whose schools are unbearably dull test-factories, in which they are compelled to spend hours at uncongenial, repetitive and maddening tasks. There are those whose diet is packed with sugar and unhealthy chemicals, and those who suffer from a grave lack of sleep. there are combinations of some or all of these factors. There are what I refer to as 'spirited ' children ( who are well described by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka in her book on this subject) who are simply very bright and rebel against being treated as normal children. Others are seeking attention because they feel neglected by absent, busy parents or are angry about divorces or separations or the unwelcome appearance of step-parents in the home. Some are just plain badly brought up.
Surely a proper, medically-defined complaint couldn't encompass so many different sorts of child, and still mean anything? Also, if it's a physical manifestation, why does it affect boys so very much more than it affects girls? No other medical complaint - except those involving reproductive organs - discriminates between the sexes in this way. Yet the very name "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" is - or appears to be - highly precise and specific. It is intended to sound scientific and exact. It cannot be both precise and vague. Yet, if it exists, it is. Year by year, especially in Britain and the USA, thousands of children damaged, disadvantaged or neglected in hundreds of different ways - or with nothing wrong with them at all - are alleged to be suffering from it, on the basis of a sketchy, subjective assessment - which I'll come to later.
This wouldn't matter so much if the 'treatment' for 'ADHD' were as vague and variable as the thing itself. But it isn't. In most cases, some of them involving very young children indeed, the medical response is a highly specific one. It is to prescribe powerful psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs - notably ones containing the chemical methylphenidate ( most commonly marketed as the pill called Ritalin). In the USA (though not, so far as I know, in Britain), it is also often 'treated' with Adderall, an actual amphetamine which I believe was once marketed as Obetrol, an appetite suppressing diet drug ( among whose users was Andy Warhol). It is a controversial substance. Look it up on Google for more information, and see if you think it is a good idea to give it to children.
And what about Methylphenidate? Unlike Adderall, it isn't technically an amphetamine, but it is very similar to amphetamines, which are generally strictly controlled by law in most civilised countries. It is claimed that it 'treats' 'ADHD', but there is a major problem here. First, there is no recognised objective chemical, physical or biological test for the existence of 'ADHD'. Secondly, nobody actually knows what effect methylphenidate has upon the human brain. It is said to 'aid concentration' ( as are amphetamines) and anyone who took it would certainly find it was easier to concentrate on dull, repetitive tasks and unwanted duties such as last-minute exam revision. If you worked in a call centre, you would probably find it helped you get through the day. But why? And at what cost?
One theory, unproven by research, is that 'ADHD' is caused by a dopamine imbalance in the brain. Since Methylphenidate increases dopamine levels in the brain's synapses, this would, if proven, at least justify its use in this case. But it isn't proven, a point I'll address in more detail. Another theory is that Methylphenidate affects the action of serotonin in the brain, the chemical that provides feelings of well-being. Personally, I think it's amazing that even an adult should swallow a substance about which so little is known, which affects an organ so sensitive, valuable and little understood. It is even more amazing that it should be given to children with unformed brains. Methylphenidate is sold on the black market as a stimulant, as amphetamines are, both in Britain and the USA. It has recognised side-effects, including stomach-ache, sleeplessness, headaches, dry mouth and - more rarely - palpitations and high blood pressure. Anti-Ritalin campaigners in the USA allege that it has even greater problems, and some American websites suggest that it may actually be dangerous to some users. In the US, there have allegedly been cases of cardiac arrest in children taking methylphenidate, and the US authorities have been divided about whether to place health warnings on the labels of Methylphenidate-based medications. Some experts have strongly urged that such warnings should be displayed, but so far the authorities have declined to do so."
The Hitch takes apart the 5 most common angry responses he receives when he writes about ADHD. Here are two of them (the full list and his answers is available by following the link above):
"1. "Dear Mr Hitchens, I feel utterly insulted by your gratuitous claim that there is no such thing as ADHD'. You are obviously an ignorant moron. You should do some research on this, and then you would know that it was a real problem."
A. An insult can only be offered to a person, directly, and concern his personal failings or faults. It is not possible to be 'insulted' by a statement of fact, or by an argument you disagree with. If the statement isn't true, then you are well placed to prove that. If you disagree with the argument, then you can say so. To say that you have been 'insulted' is to refuse to accept that there may be some truth in what I say, possibly because you have some doubts about the matter yourself. In fact I often find that angry, personal vehemence in an argument is a sign that the person involved has serious doubts about his or her position. Let us begin as we mean to go on, and treat this as a matter of facts and logic. Also, as it so happens, I have done a great deal of research on this matter, not least as a result of dealing with several waves of correspondence on the subject. And the more research I have done, the more alarmed I have become at the great numbers of children and teenagers being drugged because they are supposed to be suffering from a complaint for which there is no established, objective test.
The question here is one of scientific fact, which - let us agree here to accept Karl Popper's view - has to be proved by experiment, and in such a way that it could later be disproved by new discoveries. Anything else is speculation, not fact or knowledge. If someone wants to say that there is something called 'ADHD', and prescribe actual drugs for it, the burden is on him to prove it by experiment, and to present a proof which could be exploded by new discoveries. I say no such proof has ever been produced. There are, it is true, some attempts to produce it. But one has been pretty thoroughly knocked down, and the other is tentative. Crucially, neither is generally used to diagnose 'ADHD', which is generally done by a subjective assessment.
I must also stress that, if you have been told that your child is suffering from a 'disorder', that does not actually mean that this must be so. Sceptics and doubters may be right. Doctors, regrettably, are often mistaken. Medical practice, even in physical medicine, undergoes fashions and fads just like every other field of human activity. Some examples: To my own knowledge, 23 years ago parents were told that the best way to avoid cot death was to lie babies face down. Five years later, the advice was the exact opposite. Putting them face down was likely to be fatal, and they must be laid on their backs. In the mid-20th century many psychiatrists believed that pre-frontal lobotomy was a miracle treatment. It is now universally decried as a barbaric and destructive operation.
Fashions in psychiatry have changed even more completely than fashions in ordinary physical medicine and surgery, during the short period of psychiatry's existence, with many of Sigmund Freud's original theories now regarded as wrong or flawed. As for neurology, the discipline which deals with the human brain, neurologists themselves admit that we know startlingly little about this complex, delicate and vulnerable organ. Undoubtedly, drugs can affect the brain. But neurologists are often extremely vague about how they operate and why they have the effects that they do have. Many drugs prescribed for neurological complaints, or for complaints which are assumed to be neurological, also have severe side-effects, and long-term consequences which are often discovered after some time. Some physical treatments for allegedly neurological complaints, such as electro-convulsive therapy, have been described to me by doctors as the medical equivalent of thumping a TV set that has gone on the blink.
In my childhood, operations for tonsillectomy were routinely given to children with nothing seriously wrong with them. Shoe shops provided machines in which you could X-ray your own feet, machines which were believed to be wholly safe and advertised as such. Most first-aid textbooks recommended treating burns by putting greasy creams on them, now acknowledged to be one of the worst things you can possibly do. When I first became a blood donor, in the 1970s, I was given iron pills by the nurse and told to take them without fail. This is now considered unnecessary, and possibly harmful. And so on. Many of us have also been misdiagnosed by doctors at one time or another. I certainly have, and once ended up in hospital being prepared for a wholly needless operation because I had been prescribed the wrong antibiotic. The mistake was discovered just before I went under the anaesthetic. It is perfectly reasonable for informed laymen to question the wisdom of doctors, and often wise to do so.
2. "You plainly have no idea of what you are talking about. If you came and spent a week at our house, then you would know that ADHD existed."
A. I did once respond to such an offer, asking the writer to name a date. I warned that I spent rather a long time in the bathroom in the morning, but promised to bring my own wine and do my own laundry and ironing. But I heard nothing more, perhaps because I added . "I can assure you that, even if I spent a year in your home, I should still not be persuaded that 'ADHD' exists." How can I be so sure? Why wouldn't I be influenced by daily contact with a badly-behaved or uncontrollable child?
First, because the fact that there are such children is not in doubt. There are many. I wouldn't have to spend a week watching them misbehave to be convinced of that. Many modern British and American children, especially young boys, cause their parents and their teachers great difficulty. They defy authority, they run wild, they break things, they yell and shout and are horrible to their brothers and sisters. But their existence does not prove that 'ADHD' exists. That is a separate issue. It just proves that in modern Western societies there are a lot of ill-behaved boys. The question is not "do children behave badly in increasing numbers, especially at school?" Everyone knows this is the case. The question is "what is causing their bad behaviour?" Is there one simple reason, that can be cured by giving them all a drug? Or are there many reasons, some of which might be curable by drugs (I am suspicious of this method under all circumstances, but don't rule out the possibility that there might be cases where drugs could help), some of which can be cured by sleep, exercise, diet, the rationing of TV watching, a different pattern of family life, a better school, and some of which have actual physical causes and may or may not be treatable?
One of the problems with the diagnosis of 'ADHD' is that it covers such an extraordinarily broad range of behaviours including -in my experience - children who may actually suffer from birth trauma or brain damage, and children who are merely wilful and obstinate, or are driven to distraction by dull schools and bad teachers. Worse, it closes the subject. If they are all suffering from a treatable physical disorder, then we need not worry about our debased family life and our useless schools. And the small minority of children who do actually have something physically wrong with them are dosed with drugs that pacify them, and their real problems are ignored and go uninvestigated This means firstly they are not treated, and secondly that medical knowledge ceases to advance. The 'diagnosis' of 'ADHD' helps none of those to whom it is applied. But it gets a lot of adults off the hook of responsibility and closes off scientific inquiry.
Even if some of these children do actually have a physical defect curable by drugs, they cannot conceivably all be the same - six or seven million children now in the USA, hundreds of thousands in Britain.
Among the 'ADHD' children are those who have been exposed to an enormous amount of TV from early infancy, or to violent computer games. There are those who suffer from an almost total absence of physical exercise, and those who have never been introduced to a routine of mealtimes and bedtimes, and so are unwilling to adapt to any environment in which there are routines and timetables. There are those who have never been taught to read, and so would find school a constant frustration. There are those whose schools are unbearably dull test-factories, in which they are compelled to spend hours at uncongenial, repetitive and maddening tasks. There are those whose diet is packed with sugar and unhealthy chemicals, and those who suffer from a grave lack of sleep. there are combinations of some or all of these factors. There are what I refer to as 'spirited ' children ( who are well described by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka in her book on this subject) who are simply very bright and rebel against being treated as normal children. Others are seeking attention because they feel neglected by absent, busy parents or are angry about divorces or separations or the unwelcome appearance of step-parents in the home. Some are just plain badly brought up.
Surely a proper, medically-defined complaint couldn't encompass so many different sorts of child, and still mean anything? Also, if it's a physical manifestation, why does it affect boys so very much more than it affects girls? No other medical complaint - except those involving reproductive organs - discriminates between the sexes in this way. Yet the very name "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" is - or appears to be - highly precise and specific. It is intended to sound scientific and exact. It cannot be both precise and vague. Yet, if it exists, it is. Year by year, especially in Britain and the USA, thousands of children damaged, disadvantaged or neglected in hundreds of different ways - or with nothing wrong with them at all - are alleged to be suffering from it, on the basis of a sketchy, subjective assessment - which I'll come to later.
This wouldn't matter so much if the 'treatment' for 'ADHD' were as vague and variable as the thing itself. But it isn't. In most cases, some of them involving very young children indeed, the medical response is a highly specific one. It is to prescribe powerful psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs - notably ones containing the chemical methylphenidate ( most commonly marketed as the pill called Ritalin). In the USA (though not, so far as I know, in Britain), it is also often 'treated' with Adderall, an actual amphetamine which I believe was once marketed as Obetrol, an appetite suppressing diet drug ( among whose users was Andy Warhol). It is a controversial substance. Look it up on Google for more information, and see if you think it is a good idea to give it to children.
And what about Methylphenidate? Unlike Adderall, it isn't technically an amphetamine, but it is very similar to amphetamines, which are generally strictly controlled by law in most civilised countries. It is claimed that it 'treats' 'ADHD', but there is a major problem here. First, there is no recognised objective chemical, physical or biological test for the existence of 'ADHD'. Secondly, nobody actually knows what effect methylphenidate has upon the human brain. It is said to 'aid concentration' ( as are amphetamines) and anyone who took it would certainly find it was easier to concentrate on dull, repetitive tasks and unwanted duties such as last-minute exam revision. If you worked in a call centre, you would probably find it helped you get through the day. But why? And at what cost?
One theory, unproven by research, is that 'ADHD' is caused by a dopamine imbalance in the brain. Since Methylphenidate increases dopamine levels in the brain's synapses, this would, if proven, at least justify its use in this case. But it isn't proven, a point I'll address in more detail. Another theory is that Methylphenidate affects the action of serotonin in the brain, the chemical that provides feelings of well-being. Personally, I think it's amazing that even an adult should swallow a substance about which so little is known, which affects an organ so sensitive, valuable and little understood. It is even more amazing that it should be given to children with unformed brains. Methylphenidate is sold on the black market as a stimulant, as amphetamines are, both in Britain and the USA. It has recognised side-effects, including stomach-ache, sleeplessness, headaches, dry mouth and - more rarely - palpitations and high blood pressure. Anti-Ritalin campaigners in the USA allege that it has even greater problems, and some American websites suggest that it may actually be dangerous to some users. In the US, there have allegedly been cases of cardiac arrest in children taking methylphenidate, and the US authorities have been divided about whether to place health warnings on the labels of Methylphenidate-based medications. Some experts have strongly urged that such warnings should be displayed, but so far the authorities have declined to do so."
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Drug legalisation debate
Drugs can be safe and should be legal
Intelligence Squared
01/04/10
The usual high quality debate summary from I2.
FOR
Drugs can be harmless fun
Many - perhaps most - occasional drug users take drugs for one simple reason: they enjoy it. Social drinkers know how welcome a couple of beers or glasses of wine can be in the evening - they are not seeking obliteration, and few slide into alcoholism. They are simply treating a drink as one of life’s many pleasures. The same is true of most users of cannabis, LSD or ecstasy, none of which are particularly addictive, and all of which have fans who insist that using them enhances their lives. The psychotherapist Gary Greenberg praises the ability of ecstasy "to foster open, fearless communication" in his recent book Manufacturing Depression, and describes feeling total love for his girlfriend when they took the drug together. Such enjoyment is a widespread human trait - indeed, Ronald K Siegel, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, believes that it is universal. In his book Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances, Siegel argues that the human instinct to seek mind-altering substances is so strong and persistent that it deserves to be recognised as the "fourth drive" alongside hunger, thirst and the need for shelter. Our current drugs policy fails to acknowledge this, banning relatively safe drugs like cannabis and ecstasy (the latter is no more dangerous than riding a horse, according to David Nutt) while permitting nicotine and alcohol, both of which are fairly harmful. This conservatism is misguided. Rather than trying to eliminate the desire for intoxication, we should embrace it. If we allowed scientists to research non-addictive highs that didn’t harm health, we would be opening the door to new, safe pleasures that everyone could enjoy if they chose. It would be pure, harmless fun. We build theme parks and create new cuisines to stimulate ourselves, and designer drugs are no different.
Drugs play an important role in society
Recreational drugs don’t just benefit individuals. They also play an important role within wider societies, and always have done. Alcohol is an integral part of Northern European culture, dating back at least to the Vikings, who are thought to have been committed boozers and never took an important collective decision unless drunk. Peyote, a hallucinogen, has spiritual importance for many indigenous Americans, just as cannabis does for Rastafarians. The effects of this sort of social drug use can be very positive - pubs are often community hubs across Britain, and the coffee houses where people could gather in 17th century Britain arguably contributed to the development of newspapers, the Glorious Revolution and even the Enlightenment. The same is true of currently-illegal drugs. LSD contributed to the liberating, free-wheeling atmosphere of the 60s, and many look back on the ecstasy-fuelled raves of the early 90s with great fondness. Drugs have also contributed to great art (as well as some dreadful rubbish). Sartre used amphetamines for writing philosophy and mescaline for writing fiction; Graham Greene took a lot of Benzedrine while writing The Lawless Roads and The Power and the Glory. As John Lanchester says in the New Yorker, "The paranoid and menacing atmosphere of that superb novel…surely owes something to Greene's pill-chugging". Getting high is an important communal activity. New ways to do so will create new cultural institutions, and this is something to look forward to.
You’ll never get rid of drug use...
Even if you don’t like the idea of people getting high, there is no point in trying to stop them. Every attempt to ban popular drugs - even the most draconian - has failed. When Sultan Murad IV took over the Ottoman Empire in 1623, he introduced the death penalty for using tobacco, alcohol or coffee, and is even said to have carried out the penalty himself, walking the streets of Istanbul in plain clothes and using his mace to execute anyone caught using tobacco. Russia introduced a similar ban on tobacco at the same time – first-time offenders would have their nostrils slit or be exiled to Siberia, and repeat offenders earned the death penalty. But smoking continued in both countries until the laws were repealed later in the 17th century. During Prohibition in America, even Presidents Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover drank secretly. Our current laws on heroin and cocaine have inflicted huge problems on the developing countries where they continue to be grown, put users in danger of taking contaminated doses of unpredictable sizes and allow drug barons to grow rich.
...and policing it is only going to get harder
Drug regulation is only set to get more difficult, as dealers continue to develop new - and therefore legal - highs by tweaking the chemical formulae of existing drugs to reproduce their effects, as occurred with mephedrone. Mephedrone was just one of over 400 new drugs identified in a report commissioned by the EU into the scale of the problem. New chemical formulae will continue to emerge and gain popularity. They have never been tested, and some will inevitably prove poisonous. Creating, rigorously testing and then selling safe drugs in a controlled way is the only solution. David Nutt is currently working on a harm-free alternative to alcohol at Imperial College London, based on drugs known as benzodiazepines or "benzos", which include Valium and temazepam. It would make users pleasantly tipsy, and they could simply take an antidote when they wanted to sober up. We need far more of this kind of work - it would save the lives of countless users, innocent road accident victims and those caught up in drug-related violence.
New drugs will enhance our future
Drug use need not just be a matter of simple enjoyment. New psychotropic substances have real potential to enhance our lives by releasing us from archaic notions of human nature - we can choose how we want to be by choosing the substances we take. Cognitive enhancers like Modafinil and Ritalin - developed, respectively, for sufferers from narcolepsy and ADHD - have been shown to enhance concentration and short-term memory in healthy users. Modafinil has been tested by both the British and American armed forces, and could one day offer a substitute for the caffeine and amphetamine "go pills" the US army and air force have long relied on for night-time operations. It has also become increasingly popular with students on tough deadlines and hedge fund workers trying to keep up with 24-hour markets - many say it is a vastly superior alternative to caffeine, allowing them to work long and hard without unwanted side effects. Scientists are currently investigating the effects of oxytocin, the "love drug", a hormone released in mothers’ bodies during birth, which contributes to bonding and trust. It appears to help people with Aspergers Syndrome to function better, and may also make healthy people feel more inclined to kindness. Propranolol, a beta-blocker currently used to treat high blood pressure and prevent migraines in children, may help to reduce the pain of traumatic memories without eliminating their content - potentially allowing us to learn from terrible events in our pasts without being tormented by the psychological agony they are normally associated with. We don’t need to fear this brave new world - drugs are going to make us cleverer, kinder and less scared
AGAINST
Real joy and fulfilment cannot be chemical
The pleasure brought by any drug is fleeting and hollow compared with real happiness, and the fact that people search for chemical highs is a worrying sign that they are not satisfied with their ordinary lives. As the great 19th century British political theorist John Stuart Mill put it, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”. One of the key things offered by many popular drugs - from alcohol to heroin - is an opportunity for obliteration. We seek to escape our problems but the long term solution should be to address them rather than finding new ways to avoid confronting them. In an ideal world we would not need even alcohol or caffeine to feel good - and we should be working towards such a situation rather than creating new alternatives for mental escape. To paraphrase Marx, opium is now the opiate of the people, a way to keep the public - particularly those who are unhappy and dissatisfied by the status quo - sedated and untroublesome. Governments, scientists and the medical profession should be encouraging us to embrace the world and reform it where needed, with its many subtle everyday pleasures, rather than searching for ways to get out of it. A society dominated by escapism is a society that is bound to rot.
Drugs destroy cultures in many different ways
Drugs - especially new drugs - can have devastating effects on cultures. History should teach us to be very wary of introducing them. Particular psychotropic substances may have historic or spiritual importance for some groups, but those societies are likely to have developed ways to limit their potential for harm - with alcohol, for instance, children can be introduced to the idea of drinking in moderation as part of a culturally acceptable way to socialise. With newly invented drugs, there is no opportunity for this to happen, so the effects may be catastrophic. They may also be unpredictable. Alcoholism is far more widespread among Australian Aborigines and indigenous Americans than the cultures which introduced alcohol to them, for instance. Even if you test drugs extensively to make sure they are not toxic or addictive, the entire point of them is to modify people’s behaviour, and the impact of this on society as a whole can never be foreseen. Some have even suggested that the recent recession could be blamed on heavy cocaine use by city workers. The drug, which makes users feel indomitable, arrogant and powerful, was widely used by bankers in London (so widely used, in fact, that one study found that 99% of bank notes were tainted with it) and might well have encouraged the kind of risk-taking which caused the crash.
Legalisation has terrible consequences
The current law on drugs may be flawed and badly applied, but legalisation is no solution. No substance which has a profound effect on our bodies or minds can be totally safe physically or psychiatrically. We should always be fighting drug use, and the law remains a deterrent. The fact that it forces drugs to be used and sold relatively covertly also reduces the opportunities for peer pressure, especially among the young. Legalisation would inevitably increase the number of users, therefore increasing the number of people exposed to risk. You might expect David Nutt's now notorious study on the relative risks of horse-riding and ecstasy to have been a serious work of statistics. In fact, it was nothing of the sort. It was based on questionnaires of professionals, was riddled with subjective judgement and was just the kind of scientism - the belief that only science can tell the truth about the world - that gives proper social research a bad name.
The dangers of drugs take time to emerge...
It may in theory be possible to use some recreational drugs in a harmless way, but in practice new drugs are likely to have terrible effects. These may take time to emerge - when heroin was discovered by drug company Bayer in 1898, it was thought to be a harmless alternative to morphine, and was marketed as a remedy for coughs and a range of other ills. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal wrote in 1900 that heroin is "not hypnotic, and there's no danger of acquiring a habit." Sigmund Freud was one of many who believed that cocaine had great potential as an antidepressant as well as a painkiller. He even prescribed it to friends, including the Austrian physiologist Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, who may then have been the first person to ever die of a speedball, an intravenous mixture of heroin and cocaine. These kinds of risks may be worthwhile when drugs also have a positive medical impact, but simple fun-seeking is not justification enough.
...and we have no idea what terrible world we might inadvertently create
The potential for abuse is inescapable - on both an individual and a societal level. It's possible to imagine a happy world in which people took cognitive enhancers in order to get their work done and rush home to be with the family, for instance. But the idea that we can choose our own psychologies using a pharmaceutically provided selection is an illusion - we are too much shaped by our history and the culture we live in. In reality, the huge majority of Modafinil and Ritalin users do so to work ever harder and more competitively. The idea of using chemicals to rewire our brains is dangerous for our sense of ourselves - our personalities are made up of our bad experiences and bad traits as well as our good ones. Do we really want to be able to wipe out the pain associated with bad memories, and wouldn’t it be dangerous to allow our soldiers to do so? This might be a route to creating ranks of remorseless killers. And how will they be used next? We understand so little about the way that society, culture and humanity depend on each other that messing with its fundamental psychological components is a risk just not worth taking.
Intelligence Squared
01/04/10
The usual high quality debate summary from I2.
FOR
Drugs can be harmless fun
Many - perhaps most - occasional drug users take drugs for one simple reason: they enjoy it. Social drinkers know how welcome a couple of beers or glasses of wine can be in the evening - they are not seeking obliteration, and few slide into alcoholism. They are simply treating a drink as one of life’s many pleasures. The same is true of most users of cannabis, LSD or ecstasy, none of which are particularly addictive, and all of which have fans who insist that using them enhances their lives. The psychotherapist Gary Greenberg praises the ability of ecstasy "to foster open, fearless communication" in his recent book Manufacturing Depression, and describes feeling total love for his girlfriend when they took the drug together. Such enjoyment is a widespread human trait - indeed, Ronald K Siegel, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, believes that it is universal. In his book Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances, Siegel argues that the human instinct to seek mind-altering substances is so strong and persistent that it deserves to be recognised as the "fourth drive" alongside hunger, thirst and the need for shelter. Our current drugs policy fails to acknowledge this, banning relatively safe drugs like cannabis and ecstasy (the latter is no more dangerous than riding a horse, according to David Nutt) while permitting nicotine and alcohol, both of which are fairly harmful. This conservatism is misguided. Rather than trying to eliminate the desire for intoxication, we should embrace it. If we allowed scientists to research non-addictive highs that didn’t harm health, we would be opening the door to new, safe pleasures that everyone could enjoy if they chose. It would be pure, harmless fun. We build theme parks and create new cuisines to stimulate ourselves, and designer drugs are no different.
Drugs play an important role in society
Recreational drugs don’t just benefit individuals. They also play an important role within wider societies, and always have done. Alcohol is an integral part of Northern European culture, dating back at least to the Vikings, who are thought to have been committed boozers and never took an important collective decision unless drunk. Peyote, a hallucinogen, has spiritual importance for many indigenous Americans, just as cannabis does for Rastafarians. The effects of this sort of social drug use can be very positive - pubs are often community hubs across Britain, and the coffee houses where people could gather in 17th century Britain arguably contributed to the development of newspapers, the Glorious Revolution and even the Enlightenment. The same is true of currently-illegal drugs. LSD contributed to the liberating, free-wheeling atmosphere of the 60s, and many look back on the ecstasy-fuelled raves of the early 90s with great fondness. Drugs have also contributed to great art (as well as some dreadful rubbish). Sartre used amphetamines for writing philosophy and mescaline for writing fiction; Graham Greene took a lot of Benzedrine while writing The Lawless Roads and The Power and the Glory. As John Lanchester says in the New Yorker, "The paranoid and menacing atmosphere of that superb novel…surely owes something to Greene's pill-chugging". Getting high is an important communal activity. New ways to do so will create new cultural institutions, and this is something to look forward to.
You’ll never get rid of drug use...
Even if you don’t like the idea of people getting high, there is no point in trying to stop them. Every attempt to ban popular drugs - even the most draconian - has failed. When Sultan Murad IV took over the Ottoman Empire in 1623, he introduced the death penalty for using tobacco, alcohol or coffee, and is even said to have carried out the penalty himself, walking the streets of Istanbul in plain clothes and using his mace to execute anyone caught using tobacco. Russia introduced a similar ban on tobacco at the same time – first-time offenders would have their nostrils slit or be exiled to Siberia, and repeat offenders earned the death penalty. But smoking continued in both countries until the laws were repealed later in the 17th century. During Prohibition in America, even Presidents Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover drank secretly. Our current laws on heroin and cocaine have inflicted huge problems on the developing countries where they continue to be grown, put users in danger of taking contaminated doses of unpredictable sizes and allow drug barons to grow rich.
...and policing it is only going to get harder
Drug regulation is only set to get more difficult, as dealers continue to develop new - and therefore legal - highs by tweaking the chemical formulae of existing drugs to reproduce their effects, as occurred with mephedrone. Mephedrone was just one of over 400 new drugs identified in a report commissioned by the EU into the scale of the problem. New chemical formulae will continue to emerge and gain popularity. They have never been tested, and some will inevitably prove poisonous. Creating, rigorously testing and then selling safe drugs in a controlled way is the only solution. David Nutt is currently working on a harm-free alternative to alcohol at Imperial College London, based on drugs known as benzodiazepines or "benzos", which include Valium and temazepam. It would make users pleasantly tipsy, and they could simply take an antidote when they wanted to sober up. We need far more of this kind of work - it would save the lives of countless users, innocent road accident victims and those caught up in drug-related violence.
New drugs will enhance our future
Drug use need not just be a matter of simple enjoyment. New psychotropic substances have real potential to enhance our lives by releasing us from archaic notions of human nature - we can choose how we want to be by choosing the substances we take. Cognitive enhancers like Modafinil and Ritalin - developed, respectively, for sufferers from narcolepsy and ADHD - have been shown to enhance concentration and short-term memory in healthy users. Modafinil has been tested by both the British and American armed forces, and could one day offer a substitute for the caffeine and amphetamine "go pills" the US army and air force have long relied on for night-time operations. It has also become increasingly popular with students on tough deadlines and hedge fund workers trying to keep up with 24-hour markets - many say it is a vastly superior alternative to caffeine, allowing them to work long and hard without unwanted side effects. Scientists are currently investigating the effects of oxytocin, the "love drug", a hormone released in mothers’ bodies during birth, which contributes to bonding and trust. It appears to help people with Aspergers Syndrome to function better, and may also make healthy people feel more inclined to kindness. Propranolol, a beta-blocker currently used to treat high blood pressure and prevent migraines in children, may help to reduce the pain of traumatic memories without eliminating their content - potentially allowing us to learn from terrible events in our pasts without being tormented by the psychological agony they are normally associated with. We don’t need to fear this brave new world - drugs are going to make us cleverer, kinder and less scared
AGAINST
Real joy and fulfilment cannot be chemical
The pleasure brought by any drug is fleeting and hollow compared with real happiness, and the fact that people search for chemical highs is a worrying sign that they are not satisfied with their ordinary lives. As the great 19th century British political theorist John Stuart Mill put it, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”. One of the key things offered by many popular drugs - from alcohol to heroin - is an opportunity for obliteration. We seek to escape our problems but the long term solution should be to address them rather than finding new ways to avoid confronting them. In an ideal world we would not need even alcohol or caffeine to feel good - and we should be working towards such a situation rather than creating new alternatives for mental escape. To paraphrase Marx, opium is now the opiate of the people, a way to keep the public - particularly those who are unhappy and dissatisfied by the status quo - sedated and untroublesome. Governments, scientists and the medical profession should be encouraging us to embrace the world and reform it where needed, with its many subtle everyday pleasures, rather than searching for ways to get out of it. A society dominated by escapism is a society that is bound to rot.
Drugs destroy cultures in many different ways
Drugs - especially new drugs - can have devastating effects on cultures. History should teach us to be very wary of introducing them. Particular psychotropic substances may have historic or spiritual importance for some groups, but those societies are likely to have developed ways to limit their potential for harm - with alcohol, for instance, children can be introduced to the idea of drinking in moderation as part of a culturally acceptable way to socialise. With newly invented drugs, there is no opportunity for this to happen, so the effects may be catastrophic. They may also be unpredictable. Alcoholism is far more widespread among Australian Aborigines and indigenous Americans than the cultures which introduced alcohol to them, for instance. Even if you test drugs extensively to make sure they are not toxic or addictive, the entire point of them is to modify people’s behaviour, and the impact of this on society as a whole can never be foreseen. Some have even suggested that the recent recession could be blamed on heavy cocaine use by city workers. The drug, which makes users feel indomitable, arrogant and powerful, was widely used by bankers in London (so widely used, in fact, that one study found that 99% of bank notes were tainted with it) and might well have encouraged the kind of risk-taking which caused the crash.
Legalisation has terrible consequences
The current law on drugs may be flawed and badly applied, but legalisation is no solution. No substance which has a profound effect on our bodies or minds can be totally safe physically or psychiatrically. We should always be fighting drug use, and the law remains a deterrent. The fact that it forces drugs to be used and sold relatively covertly also reduces the opportunities for peer pressure, especially among the young. Legalisation would inevitably increase the number of users, therefore increasing the number of people exposed to risk. You might expect David Nutt's now notorious study on the relative risks of horse-riding and ecstasy to have been a serious work of statistics. In fact, it was nothing of the sort. It was based on questionnaires of professionals, was riddled with subjective judgement and was just the kind of scientism - the belief that only science can tell the truth about the world - that gives proper social research a bad name.
The dangers of drugs take time to emerge...
It may in theory be possible to use some recreational drugs in a harmless way, but in practice new drugs are likely to have terrible effects. These may take time to emerge - when heroin was discovered by drug company Bayer in 1898, it was thought to be a harmless alternative to morphine, and was marketed as a remedy for coughs and a range of other ills. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal wrote in 1900 that heroin is "not hypnotic, and there's no danger of acquiring a habit." Sigmund Freud was one of many who believed that cocaine had great potential as an antidepressant as well as a painkiller. He even prescribed it to friends, including the Austrian physiologist Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, who may then have been the first person to ever die of a speedball, an intravenous mixture of heroin and cocaine. These kinds of risks may be worthwhile when drugs also have a positive medical impact, but simple fun-seeking is not justification enough.
...and we have no idea what terrible world we might inadvertently create
The potential for abuse is inescapable - on both an individual and a societal level. It's possible to imagine a happy world in which people took cognitive enhancers in order to get their work done and rush home to be with the family, for instance. But the idea that we can choose our own psychologies using a pharmaceutically provided selection is an illusion - we are too much shaped by our history and the culture we live in. In reality, the huge majority of Modafinil and Ritalin users do so to work ever harder and more competitively. The idea of using chemicals to rewire our brains is dangerous for our sense of ourselves - our personalities are made up of our bad experiences and bad traits as well as our good ones. Do we really want to be able to wipe out the pain associated with bad memories, and wouldn’t it be dangerous to allow our soldiers to do so? This might be a route to creating ranks of remorseless killers. And how will they be used next? We understand so little about the way that society, culture and humanity depend on each other that messing with its fundamental psychological components is a risk just not worth taking.
Friday, April 09, 2010
UK 2010 General Election
Christ, this election is annoying. See this typical story:
General Election 2010: Tories' public sector savings 'could cost 40,000 jobs'
Telegraph
09/04/2010
All the political parties, including the Tories, are at fault for (a) pretending the cuts to come will be anything but savage and (b) making uncosted promises.
So when the Tories make a (drop in the ocean) promise to remove £2b from the (insanely bloated) public sector the rational reaction is "right, where's the next £60b coming from?". Instead we get hysterical shrieking from the other (even more deceitful) parties about it, as I heard on the radio this morning.
A few questions:
* Apparently the interest we're currently paying on our (ever escalating) national debt is £42b, so bigger than the defence budget. Why aren't the opposition parties hawking that figure around more?
* Why are all the political parties indulging in this ludicrous ring-fencing of health & some other big-spending departmental budgets, meaning the cuts in the non-ring-fenced departments will be twice as great? Given the real-term rises health & others have seen over the last few years, and the fact that transport, defence etc are all important too, why the hell shouldn't all depts take their share of cuts?
* All parties are making promises of efficiency savings. Why the hell aren't the Tories and the Lib Dems campaigning on the grotesque waste & incompetence of a govt that allowed such waste to develop? (Not that they'd have been any better, of course)
Douglas Murray in the latest Standpoint (not online yet) bemoans the Tories' performance - given how pathetic Labour are, for the Conservatives *not* to be trouncing them is inexcusable.
Bollocks to it all.
General Election 2010: Tories' public sector savings 'could cost 40,000 jobs'
Telegraph
09/04/2010
All the political parties, including the Tories, are at fault for (a) pretending the cuts to come will be anything but savage and (b) making uncosted promises.
So when the Tories make a (drop in the ocean) promise to remove £2b from the (insanely bloated) public sector the rational reaction is "right, where's the next £60b coming from?". Instead we get hysterical shrieking from the other (even more deceitful) parties about it, as I heard on the radio this morning.
A few questions:
* Apparently the interest we're currently paying on our (ever escalating) national debt is £42b, so bigger than the defence budget. Why aren't the opposition parties hawking that figure around more?
* Why are all the political parties indulging in this ludicrous ring-fencing of health & some other big-spending departmental budgets, meaning the cuts in the non-ring-fenced departments will be twice as great? Given the real-term rises health & others have seen over the last few years, and the fact that transport, defence etc are all important too, why the hell shouldn't all depts take their share of cuts?
* All parties are making promises of efficiency savings. Why the hell aren't the Tories and the Lib Dems campaigning on the grotesque waste & incompetence of a govt that allowed such waste to develop? (Not that they'd have been any better, of course)
Douglas Murray in the latest Standpoint (not online yet) bemoans the Tories' performance - given how pathetic Labour are, for the Conservatives *not* to be trouncing them is inexcusable.
Bollocks to it all.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
'Falklands - Where's our De Gaulle?' - Hitchens
Peter Hitchens on the Falklands dispute:
'So where’s our De Gaulle?
Let's stop pretending we have a ‘special relationship’ with the USA, and treat America the way France’s General de Gaulle used to.
They’ll respect us for it, as they respected him. Here’s the first thing we should do, which I am sure the great General would have done.
Washington refuses to back us against Latin America’s renewed campaign to make us hand over the Falklands and their people to the Banana Republic of Argentina.
Right then, we should immediately take all our troops and equipment out of Afghanistan, and put them on boats and planes to Port Stanley, leaving nothing behind but a few empty baked-bean tins.
Any politician willing to pledge this will win the Election, by the way. This one-sided ‘relationship’ is far more unpopular than they realise.
* Talking of Latin America, isn’t it interesting that all its leaders are willing to lecture us about the Falklands, where the people are free and happy. But most of them won’t dare criticise the disgusting prison island of Cuba, where a brave dissident, Orlando Zapata, has just died after an 86-day hunger strike."
'So where’s our De Gaulle?
Let's stop pretending we have a ‘special relationship’ with the USA, and treat America the way France’s General de Gaulle used to.
They’ll respect us for it, as they respected him. Here’s the first thing we should do, which I am sure the great General would have done.
Washington refuses to back us against Latin America’s renewed campaign to make us hand over the Falklands and their people to the Banana Republic of Argentina.
Right then, we should immediately take all our troops and equipment out of Afghanistan, and put them on boats and planes to Port Stanley, leaving nothing behind but a few empty baked-bean tins.
Any politician willing to pledge this will win the Election, by the way. This one-sided ‘relationship’ is far more unpopular than they realise.
* Talking of Latin America, isn’t it interesting that all its leaders are willing to lecture us about the Falklands, where the people are free and happy. But most of them won’t dare criticise the disgusting prison island of Cuba, where a brave dissident, Orlando Zapata, has just died after an 86-day hunger strike."
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Amongst the Dead Cities - Hitchens
I posted a piece by Hitchens on Dresden, where he responds to defenders of the British bombing. Here, for anyone interested, is the original piece by Peter Hitchens, which provoked his readers to rally to justify the bombardments.
"Among the Dead Cities
Last weekend was the 65th anniversary of the RAF and USAAF bombing of Dresden. I was impressed to see that residents of that lovely city formed a human chain to prevent a demonstration by neo-Nazis, trying to equate the bombing with the Holocaust. Appalling as the bombing was, it was an act of war taken against an aggressor nation, not the same as the deliberate, cold-blooded industrial slaughter of Europe's Jews, a unique crime (which I hope will remain unique and is often falsely compared with lesser horrors by irresponsible propagandists of many kinds).
The citizens of modern Dresden, which has now at least partly recovered from the destruction, and also from nearly 50 years of Communist vandalism and stupidity, are a credit to the German Federal Republic, which has made immense efforts to build a free, law-governed society out of the ruins of Hitler's Reich, and doesn't get enough credit for its success. No, it's not a perfect society (its attitude to home schooling is insupportable, for instance). But it is a very creditable one. Perhaps now we can see (in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance) how badly such attempts to build freedom out of the rubble of tyranny can fail or falter, we should pay more attention to the German success.
Apart from anything else, anyone who seeks to excuse or minimise or diminish the Holocaust may have the effect of making a repeat of it more likely, however unintentionally. That is why the 'revisionist' arguments of some German historians, who seek to equate Holocaust and bombing, ought to be resisted.
Even so, I think we have to admit that the bombing of civilian targets by the RAF during World War Two was wrong. We can say this without in any way impugning the undoubted courage of the young men who flew in the bombing missions - and who suffered appalling casualties while doing so. But their commanders, and the politicians who knew full well what was going on, cannot be let off.
I have just read A. C. Grayling's powerful book ‘Among the Dead Cities’ (you will have to read it yourself to find out where this startling and disturbing phrase comes from). I think its case against the bombing of German civilians is unanswerable. He deals with all the standard arguments of those who justify it, pointing out that all of these would be a better argument for what the RAF largely didn't do - that is, accurate bombing of industrial, economic and military targets. One of the few missions where careful targeting was involved was the rightly famous 'Dambusters' raid, though that did inevitably cause some severe civilian casualties, many of them slave workers from defeated allied nations. Another was the bombing of the missile factory at Peenemunde. Such bombing, which was also tackled by the USAAF, also at great cost in young lives, did in fact have a much greater effect on the German ability to wage war than the bombing of civilians. The Americans, by the way, did bomb civilians in Japan, another dubious episode.
Many other issues flow from this, including the validity of the 'finest hour' and 'glorious struggle' views of the Second World War, which seem to me (who once believed them entirely) to grow more threadbare by the year. And I know that many people would simply rather not think about the matter for this very reason. The market for accounts of the Hamburg firestorm is pretty limited in Britain. That's a pity. We need to know what was done in our name, and in my view to be horrified by it, so that we can be sure we are not again reduced to this barbaric and - as it happens - ineffectual form of warfare.
It is my suspicion that the moral shrivelling of Britain since 1945, the increased violence and delinquency, the readiness to accept the abortion massacre, the general coarsening of culture and the growth of callousness have at least something to do with our willingness to shrug off - or even defend - Arthur Harris's deliberate 'de-housing' of German civilians. The British people in 1939, told of what would be done in their name within six years, would have been incredulous and astonished. I am glad at least that people such as Bishop George Bell of Chichester raised powerful voices against it at the time, at some cost to themselves. We owe it to them to revisit the argument."
"Among the Dead Cities
Last weekend was the 65th anniversary of the RAF and USAAF bombing of Dresden. I was impressed to see that residents of that lovely city formed a human chain to prevent a demonstration by neo-Nazis, trying to equate the bombing with the Holocaust. Appalling as the bombing was, it was an act of war taken against an aggressor nation, not the same as the deliberate, cold-blooded industrial slaughter of Europe's Jews, a unique crime (which I hope will remain unique and is often falsely compared with lesser horrors by irresponsible propagandists of many kinds).
The citizens of modern Dresden, which has now at least partly recovered from the destruction, and also from nearly 50 years of Communist vandalism and stupidity, are a credit to the German Federal Republic, which has made immense efforts to build a free, law-governed society out of the ruins of Hitler's Reich, and doesn't get enough credit for its success. No, it's not a perfect society (its attitude to home schooling is insupportable, for instance). But it is a very creditable one. Perhaps now we can see (in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance) how badly such attempts to build freedom out of the rubble of tyranny can fail or falter, we should pay more attention to the German success.
Apart from anything else, anyone who seeks to excuse or minimise or diminish the Holocaust may have the effect of making a repeat of it more likely, however unintentionally. That is why the 'revisionist' arguments of some German historians, who seek to equate Holocaust and bombing, ought to be resisted.
Even so, I think we have to admit that the bombing of civilian targets by the RAF during World War Two was wrong. We can say this without in any way impugning the undoubted courage of the young men who flew in the bombing missions - and who suffered appalling casualties while doing so. But their commanders, and the politicians who knew full well what was going on, cannot be let off.
I have just read A. C. Grayling's powerful book ‘Among the Dead Cities’ (you will have to read it yourself to find out where this startling and disturbing phrase comes from). I think its case against the bombing of German civilians is unanswerable. He deals with all the standard arguments of those who justify it, pointing out that all of these would be a better argument for what the RAF largely didn't do - that is, accurate bombing of industrial, economic and military targets. One of the few missions where careful targeting was involved was the rightly famous 'Dambusters' raid, though that did inevitably cause some severe civilian casualties, many of them slave workers from defeated allied nations. Another was the bombing of the missile factory at Peenemunde. Such bombing, which was also tackled by the USAAF, also at great cost in young lives, did in fact have a much greater effect on the German ability to wage war than the bombing of civilians. The Americans, by the way, did bomb civilians in Japan, another dubious episode.
Many other issues flow from this, including the validity of the 'finest hour' and 'glorious struggle' views of the Second World War, which seem to me (who once believed them entirely) to grow more threadbare by the year. And I know that many people would simply rather not think about the matter for this very reason. The market for accounts of the Hamburg firestorm is pretty limited in Britain. That's a pity. We need to know what was done in our name, and in my view to be horrified by it, so that we can be sure we are not again reduced to this barbaric and - as it happens - ineffectual form of warfare.
It is my suspicion that the moral shrivelling of Britain since 1945, the increased violence and delinquency, the readiness to accept the abortion massacre, the general coarsening of culture and the growth of callousness have at least something to do with our willingness to shrug off - or even defend - Arthur Harris's deliberate 'de-housing' of German civilians. The British people in 1939, told of what would be done in their name within six years, would have been incredulous and astonished. I am glad at least that people such as Bishop George Bell of Chichester raised powerful voices against it at the time, at some cost to themselves. We owe it to them to revisit the argument."
Peter Hitchens on the bombing of Dresden
A very interesting post from Hitchens where he responds to readers of his blog who have posted comments in defence of the British bombing of Dresden.
"Now to the bombing of Dresden. I am accused of hindsight. Well, I personally can have no other sort of sight in this case, since I was born more than six years after the Dresden events. I hope I should have had the courage to object at the time. Others certainly did. There were notable voices raised against the indiscriminate bombing of German civilians at the time, particularly by the most impressive and courageous George Bell, then Bishop of Chichester and (until he raised his voice) likely to have become a very distinguished Archbishop of Canterbury. Bell was a powerful intellect, not a naive sentimentalist, and had maintained good contacts with the anti-Hitler resistance in Germany since before the war.
As A.C. Grayling says in his book (p.181) ‘George Bell's attitude to the conduct of the war was not a function of other-wordly innocence. He knew rather better than most what was at stake in Nazi Germany. Before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, he was active in helping people of Jewish origin gain asylum in Britain, and he had maintained contact with people engaged in opposition to Hitler.’
Bell called what the RAF was doing 'obliteration bombing'. He had supporters in both the Lords and the Commons, including Richard Stokes MP and the then Marquess of Salisbury. Others opposed the decision to engage in this sort of bombing on the grounds that it would do little to end the war, would draw valuable resources away from the decisive battle against the U-boats, and would cost horrendous numbers of lives (an interesting insight is given into this in C.P. Snow's novel 'The Light and the Dark' in which (spoiler warning) a brilliant academic who was at one time sympathetic to the Nazis eventually joins the RAF as a bomber pilot and (knowing full well that this fate is virtually certain) is killed while bombing Berlin. Snow wrote from personal knowledge of the debate, as a senior scientific civil servant. He was horrified at the losses, comparable to those on the Somme in 1916, and it is plain from his account that many experts argued against the Harris campaign, on the grounds of the casualties, which by their nature destroyed the lives of some of the country's best young men, and the military futility of the action.
In answer to 'Roy,' and Michael Williamson, Grayling also notes a surprising (to some) lack of enthusiasm for the bombing of German civilians by British civilians who had themselves been subjected to this uniquely horrible form of attack. When a British pacifist , Vera Brittain, wrote a book attacking the bombing, it was most savagely denounced in the USA, a country which had at that time never experienced aerial attack on civilians. I should stress here that I have little time for Miss Brittain, whose silly attitude between the wars contributed to calls for British military weakness in the 1930s and so helped lead to a war in which we felt the need to resort to bombing.
George Orwell, who justified bombing during the war, wrote after touring the scenes of destruction in Germany when the war was over: ‘To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.’
And I should say here that the destruction visited on Germany by British bombs was immeasurably greater than that suffered by British cities. Even the famous raid on Coventry was small by the standards of Harris's thousand bomber raids (600 people died in the Coventry raid. This would be equalled or exceeded in many British raids which nobody has heard of - Stuttgart, April 1943, Dortmund, twice in May 1943, Wuppertal, 3,400 dead in May 1943, 1,800 dead in a second raid soon afterwards, Dusseldorf, 1,292 dead, June 1943, Krefeld, 1056 dead, June 1943, Hamburg, 1,500 dead, July 1943, then two days later, 35,000 dead in the firestorm of 'Operation Gomorrah' - these are a mere selection from the catalogue of carnage). Nothing Germany ever did compared with 'Operation Gomorrah', which destroyed the houses and people of much of Hamburg, or the Dresden raid, in which the numbers of dead are not known but were probably around 25,000. As many as 20,000 may have died in Pforzheim a few days later. There was no German equivalent of the Lancaster bomber.
And 'Roy' should note that most Germans, while they still remained free from secret-police terror (under which even he might have found himself voting for someone he didn't like. Can he be sure he wouldn't have?) did not vote for Hitler, and that the principal opposition to him (and the last brave voice raised in the Reichstag against him before the darkness fell, that of Otto Wels) came from the Social Democratic Party, whose support was concentrated in the close-packed working-class housing which Harris destroyed. What were these poor people supposed to do to avoid the supposed 'justice' of Arthur Harris's incendiaries and high explosives? Emigrate in protest?
'Brian T' says: ‘As far as I know, the people who prevented the demonstration in Dresden were not peaceful residents of the city, but violent left-wing extremists.’ He does not know very far in that case. Such extremists were present, mainly in the area round the Neustadt Station (used for the deportation of Jews to the death camps) which is some way from, and on the other side of the Elbe from, the historic centre. One might expect such people to be present. But, in a report which can be found with ease on the English site of 'Der Spiegel', and also from the account in the International Herald Tribune, it is clear that the human chain was composed of ordinary citizens. Their action was applauded by the city's Christian Democrat Mayor, and by civilised people all over Germany. Why, I wonder, would anyone want to give a different impression?
Mr Barnes's curious remarks on the Holocaust (15th February, 6.52 pm) are worth serious study, despite being partly incoherent. I shall certainly read his future contributions more closely, in the light of this one.
James Shaw (among others) dismisses as 'nonsense' my argument that: 'It is my suspicion that the moral shrivelling of Britain since 1945, the increased violence and delinquency, the readiness to accept the abortion massacre, the general coarsening of culture and the growth of callousness have at least something to do with our willingness to shrug off - or even defend - Arthur Harris's deliberate 'de-housing' of German civilians.'
I think he has missed my point. He can explain whether this was accidental or deliberate. I am obviously not offering a direct line between Arthur Harris and the 1967 Abortion Act, nor (as he fails to note) is abortion my only example of the effects of the wartime demoralisation of Britain. If I were, his instances would be of some value. But I am not. I am saying that such actions helped to coarsen and brutalise a nation which was formerly notable for its gentleness, kindness and Christian charity.
Other countries started from different places and came under different influences. Sweden, which enthusiastically sterilised some of its citizens before 1939, may have other reasons for its demoralisation, rooted in its enthusiastic worldly utopianism. Few would question that the Spanish Civil War, with its legacy of horror and unrestrained brutality, has poisoned that country for generations, and also associated the Catholic Church with the discredited Franco tyranny.
He also makes two other remarks which I find irritating and rather low: ‘Presumably you would have rather that the RAF had allowed German industry production to peak even higher, and take a terrible toll on the Russian front.’
Well, if he had made any attempt to study my argument, let alone to read Professor Grayling's book, or even studied the subject marginally, he would know that the effect of bombing German civilians on German industry was startlingly small, especially in comparison to the awful losses of our young men, and the hecatombs of German dead.
People were angry and defiant, rather than demoralised. Germany remained able to restore basic services in its bombed cities until a very late stage in the war. Its air defences by night were frighteningly effective, as any Lancaster veteran can recount - not all that much less effective than by day. And the factories were untouched except by accident. The main damage to German industry was done by the accurate daylight bombing of the USAAF, especially its attacks on oil installations rather late in the war. The Americans sacrificed bomb load for protection, and developed, as we could have done, long-range escort fighters which made such bombing practicable. Harris didn't like being asked to do this, and resisted his Army colleagues' demands for help in attacking transport targets in the run-up to D-Day. When he did assent, the attack was highly effective. A policy of bombing industrial targets by day under fighter escort would also have absorbed just as much, if not more, of the German war effort as did the indefensible alternative of killing women and children in their homes, by indiscriminate carpet-bombing.
Mr Shaw adds: ‘It's also worth remembering that the British government only came to the conclusion that the bombing of German cities would work after examining the effect of German bombing on British cities.’
Did it? What is his evidence for this claim? He seems very assured, verging on the smug. Has he any reason to feel so? British civilian morale did not break during the London Blitz or after the Coventry massacre. So why should the Germans behave differently? (They didn't either, as it turned out). The main reason for the de-housing policy was that we couldn't hit proper targets by night. The devastating Butt Report (look it up) demonstrated that Bomber Command's night attacks were mostly dropping bombs on German cows, if they were lucky. The reason for attacking big cities, rather than industrial or military targets, was because they could reliably hit them by night.
The bombing of civilians from the air may have appeased Stalin a little and given the British people the (wrong) impression that they were doing serious damage to Hitler's war effort. But it squandered valuable young lives, and was a poor substitute for direct engagement with the enemy on the ground, the only way in which wars are won.
This we were unable to do because our army in 1940 had been so small and weak that it had been abruptly ejected from continental Europe at Dunkirk (which was, by the way, a defeat, not a victory). It could not get back there for many years and then at horrendous cost in lives, invasion from the sea being a terribly bloody form of fighting. No wonder Churchill (who could not forget the disaster of his attempted landings at Gallipoli) hesitated so long. The bombing's only good effects, the diversion of strength from the Eastern front, could have been achieved by American-style accurate daylight attacks, with well-armed bombers under fighter escort, which would have been morally defensible while simultaneously doing real damage to the Nazi war effort. I doubt if the casualties on our side would have been much worse, either. Admit it. Bombing civilians deliberately was both wrong and ineffectual, and robbed us of much moral authority. Its roots lie in British weakness, brainless pacifism and dumb diplomacy during the 1920s and 1930s. It is time we recognised it.'
"Now to the bombing of Dresden. I am accused of hindsight. Well, I personally can have no other sort of sight in this case, since I was born more than six years after the Dresden events. I hope I should have had the courage to object at the time. Others certainly did. There were notable voices raised against the indiscriminate bombing of German civilians at the time, particularly by the most impressive and courageous George Bell, then Bishop of Chichester and (until he raised his voice) likely to have become a very distinguished Archbishop of Canterbury. Bell was a powerful intellect, not a naive sentimentalist, and had maintained good contacts with the anti-Hitler resistance in Germany since before the war.
As A.C. Grayling says in his book (p.181) ‘George Bell's attitude to the conduct of the war was not a function of other-wordly innocence. He knew rather better than most what was at stake in Nazi Germany. Before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, he was active in helping people of Jewish origin gain asylum in Britain, and he had maintained contact with people engaged in opposition to Hitler.’
Bell called what the RAF was doing 'obliteration bombing'. He had supporters in both the Lords and the Commons, including Richard Stokes MP and the then Marquess of Salisbury. Others opposed the decision to engage in this sort of bombing on the grounds that it would do little to end the war, would draw valuable resources away from the decisive battle against the U-boats, and would cost horrendous numbers of lives (an interesting insight is given into this in C.P. Snow's novel 'The Light and the Dark' in which (spoiler warning) a brilliant academic who was at one time sympathetic to the Nazis eventually joins the RAF as a bomber pilot and (knowing full well that this fate is virtually certain) is killed while bombing Berlin. Snow wrote from personal knowledge of the debate, as a senior scientific civil servant. He was horrified at the losses, comparable to those on the Somme in 1916, and it is plain from his account that many experts argued against the Harris campaign, on the grounds of the casualties, which by their nature destroyed the lives of some of the country's best young men, and the military futility of the action.
In answer to 'Roy,' and Michael Williamson, Grayling also notes a surprising (to some) lack of enthusiasm for the bombing of German civilians by British civilians who had themselves been subjected to this uniquely horrible form of attack. When a British pacifist , Vera Brittain, wrote a book attacking the bombing, it was most savagely denounced in the USA, a country which had at that time never experienced aerial attack on civilians. I should stress here that I have little time for Miss Brittain, whose silly attitude between the wars contributed to calls for British military weakness in the 1930s and so helped lead to a war in which we felt the need to resort to bombing.
George Orwell, who justified bombing during the war, wrote after touring the scenes of destruction in Germany when the war was over: ‘To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.’
And I should say here that the destruction visited on Germany by British bombs was immeasurably greater than that suffered by British cities. Even the famous raid on Coventry was small by the standards of Harris's thousand bomber raids (600 people died in the Coventry raid. This would be equalled or exceeded in many British raids which nobody has heard of - Stuttgart, April 1943, Dortmund, twice in May 1943, Wuppertal, 3,400 dead in May 1943, 1,800 dead in a second raid soon afterwards, Dusseldorf, 1,292 dead, June 1943, Krefeld, 1056 dead, June 1943, Hamburg, 1,500 dead, July 1943, then two days later, 35,000 dead in the firestorm of 'Operation Gomorrah' - these are a mere selection from the catalogue of carnage). Nothing Germany ever did compared with 'Operation Gomorrah', which destroyed the houses and people of much of Hamburg, or the Dresden raid, in which the numbers of dead are not known but were probably around 25,000. As many as 20,000 may have died in Pforzheim a few days later. There was no German equivalent of the Lancaster bomber.
And 'Roy' should note that most Germans, while they still remained free from secret-police terror (under which even he might have found himself voting for someone he didn't like. Can he be sure he wouldn't have?) did not vote for Hitler, and that the principal opposition to him (and the last brave voice raised in the Reichstag against him before the darkness fell, that of Otto Wels) came from the Social Democratic Party, whose support was concentrated in the close-packed working-class housing which Harris destroyed. What were these poor people supposed to do to avoid the supposed 'justice' of Arthur Harris's incendiaries and high explosives? Emigrate in protest?
'Brian T' says: ‘As far as I know, the people who prevented the demonstration in Dresden were not peaceful residents of the city, but violent left-wing extremists.’ He does not know very far in that case. Such extremists were present, mainly in the area round the Neustadt Station (used for the deportation of Jews to the death camps) which is some way from, and on the other side of the Elbe from, the historic centre. One might expect such people to be present. But, in a report which can be found with ease on the English site of 'Der Spiegel', and also from the account in the International Herald Tribune, it is clear that the human chain was composed of ordinary citizens. Their action was applauded by the city's Christian Democrat Mayor, and by civilised people all over Germany. Why, I wonder, would anyone want to give a different impression?
Mr Barnes's curious remarks on the Holocaust (15th February, 6.52 pm) are worth serious study, despite being partly incoherent. I shall certainly read his future contributions more closely, in the light of this one.
James Shaw (among others) dismisses as 'nonsense' my argument that: 'It is my suspicion that the moral shrivelling of Britain since 1945, the increased violence and delinquency, the readiness to accept the abortion massacre, the general coarsening of culture and the growth of callousness have at least something to do with our willingness to shrug off - or even defend - Arthur Harris's deliberate 'de-housing' of German civilians.'
I think he has missed my point. He can explain whether this was accidental or deliberate. I am obviously not offering a direct line between Arthur Harris and the 1967 Abortion Act, nor (as he fails to note) is abortion my only example of the effects of the wartime demoralisation of Britain. If I were, his instances would be of some value. But I am not. I am saying that such actions helped to coarsen and brutalise a nation which was formerly notable for its gentleness, kindness and Christian charity.
Other countries started from different places and came under different influences. Sweden, which enthusiastically sterilised some of its citizens before 1939, may have other reasons for its demoralisation, rooted in its enthusiastic worldly utopianism. Few would question that the Spanish Civil War, with its legacy of horror and unrestrained brutality, has poisoned that country for generations, and also associated the Catholic Church with the discredited Franco tyranny.
He also makes two other remarks which I find irritating and rather low: ‘Presumably you would have rather that the RAF had allowed German industry production to peak even higher, and take a terrible toll on the Russian front.’
Well, if he had made any attempt to study my argument, let alone to read Professor Grayling's book, or even studied the subject marginally, he would know that the effect of bombing German civilians on German industry was startlingly small, especially in comparison to the awful losses of our young men, and the hecatombs of German dead.
People were angry and defiant, rather than demoralised. Germany remained able to restore basic services in its bombed cities until a very late stage in the war. Its air defences by night were frighteningly effective, as any Lancaster veteran can recount - not all that much less effective than by day. And the factories were untouched except by accident. The main damage to German industry was done by the accurate daylight bombing of the USAAF, especially its attacks on oil installations rather late in the war. The Americans sacrificed bomb load for protection, and developed, as we could have done, long-range escort fighters which made such bombing practicable. Harris didn't like being asked to do this, and resisted his Army colleagues' demands for help in attacking transport targets in the run-up to D-Day. When he did assent, the attack was highly effective. A policy of bombing industrial targets by day under fighter escort would also have absorbed just as much, if not more, of the German war effort as did the indefensible alternative of killing women and children in their homes, by indiscriminate carpet-bombing.
Mr Shaw adds: ‘It's also worth remembering that the British government only came to the conclusion that the bombing of German cities would work after examining the effect of German bombing on British cities.’
Did it? What is his evidence for this claim? He seems very assured, verging on the smug. Has he any reason to feel so? British civilian morale did not break during the London Blitz or after the Coventry massacre. So why should the Germans behave differently? (They didn't either, as it turned out). The main reason for the de-housing policy was that we couldn't hit proper targets by night. The devastating Butt Report (look it up) demonstrated that Bomber Command's night attacks were mostly dropping bombs on German cows, if they were lucky. The reason for attacking big cities, rather than industrial or military targets, was because they could reliably hit them by night.
The bombing of civilians from the air may have appeased Stalin a little and given the British people the (wrong) impression that they were doing serious damage to Hitler's war effort. But it squandered valuable young lives, and was a poor substitute for direct engagement with the enemy on the ground, the only way in which wars are won.
This we were unable to do because our army in 1940 had been so small and weak that it had been abruptly ejected from continental Europe at Dunkirk (which was, by the way, a defeat, not a victory). It could not get back there for many years and then at horrendous cost in lives, invasion from the sea being a terribly bloody form of fighting. No wonder Churchill (who could not forget the disaster of his attempted landings at Gallipoli) hesitated so long. The bombing's only good effects, the diversion of strength from the Eastern front, could have been achieved by American-style accurate daylight attacks, with well-armed bombers under fighter escort, which would have been morally defensible while simultaneously doing real damage to the Nazi war effort. I doubt if the casualties on our side would have been much worse, either. Admit it. Bombing civilians deliberately was both wrong and ineffectual, and robbed us of much moral authority. Its roots lie in British weakness, brainless pacifism and dumb diplomacy during the 1920s and 1930s. It is time we recognised it.'
cold weather puts the freeze on the economy
Interesting
observation from economist Blogger Stefan Karllson:
'Freezing Weather Freezes Economies
Last month, I told you about how unusually cold weather was a factor increasing the probability of a "double dip" recession in the U.K.
Now we are seeing more examples of how the cold winter in the northern part of the northern Hemisphere is reducing economic activity.
The U.S. payroll employment number for February will likely be negatively affected by the blizzards that struck much of the North East United States, while the German ifo-index fell as cold weather reduced both retail sales and construction activity. Meanwhile, much of the Swedish rail system (and to a lesser extent some car/truck and air traffic) was paralyzed by extreme cold and large amounts of snow, something which will likely negatively affect many business activities.
If only we had more "global warming"....
Aside from that, another interesting observation one could make is that this makes "seasonal adjustments" more problematic. While I think "seasonal adjustments" makes sense in principle (assuming the absence of below mentioned practical problems), it is often a lot more problematic than many people think in practice applied to actual statistics.
Here we have a clearly seasonal (in the northern hemisphere, cold- and snow related problems only arise during the last and the first months of the year) factor depressing economic activity, yet because the severity of this seasonal factors varies from different years, the standard statistical method of historical averages will easily become misleading. If it was possible, one should let the factor vary from different years instead, but the risk is that this could allow statisticians to make arbitrary judgments, possibly influenced by political factors. Finding a way to objectively assess the different seasonal effect each year is something which aspiring statisticians should think about.'
observation from economist Blogger Stefan Karllson:
'Freezing Weather Freezes Economies
Last month, I told you about how unusually cold weather was a factor increasing the probability of a "double dip" recession in the U.K.
Now we are seeing more examples of how the cold winter in the northern part of the northern Hemisphere is reducing economic activity.
The U.S. payroll employment number for February will likely be negatively affected by the blizzards that struck much of the North East United States, while the German ifo-index fell as cold weather reduced both retail sales and construction activity. Meanwhile, much of the Swedish rail system (and to a lesser extent some car/truck and air traffic) was paralyzed by extreme cold and large amounts of snow, something which will likely negatively affect many business activities.
If only we had more "global warming"....
Aside from that, another interesting observation one could make is that this makes "seasonal adjustments" more problematic. While I think "seasonal adjustments" makes sense in principle (assuming the absence of below mentioned practical problems), it is often a lot more problematic than many people think in practice applied to actual statistics.
Here we have a clearly seasonal (in the northern hemisphere, cold- and snow related problems only arise during the last and the first months of the year) factor depressing economic activity, yet because the severity of this seasonal factors varies from different years, the standard statistical method of historical averages will easily become misleading. If it was possible, one should let the factor vary from different years instead, but the risk is that this could allow statisticians to make arbitrary judgments, possibly influenced by political factors. Finding a way to objectively assess the different seasonal effect each year is something which aspiring statisticians should think about.'
Monday, February 22, 2010
Human progress happens at 4% per year
I had to blog this with a headline like that!
Progress in Usability: Fast or Slow?
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox
February 22, 2010:
...
Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon wrote a book called It's Getting Better All the Time that summarizes improvements in 100 different fields across the 20th century. Following are some of their statistics (all from the United States):
Progress in Usability: Fast or Slow?
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox
February 22, 2010:
...
Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon wrote a book called It's Getting Better All the Time that summarizes improvements in 100 different fields across the 20th century. Following are some of their statistics (all from the United States):
- Infant mortality: 100 per 1,000 births in 1915, dropping to 9 in 1998. Improvement rate: 3% per year.
- Children without dental cavities: 26% in 1971, increasing to 55% in 1988.
Improvement rate: 5% per year. - People showering or bathing daily during winter: 29% in 1950, increasing to 75% in 1999. Improvement rate: 2% per year.
- Time worked to buy a chicken (at an average worker's salary): 2 hours in 1920, dropping to 15 minutes in 1999. Improvement rate: 3% per year.
- S&P stock market index: 6 in 1900, growing to 1,400 by 1999. Improvement rate: 6% per year. (As it turns out, 1999 was a bubble year, and the S&P later dropped, but for the sake of the long-term analysis, I'm sticking with the book's 20th century data.)
- Toy sales: $2 billion in 1921 (adjusted to 1998 dollars), growing to $45 billion in 1998. Improvement rate: 4% per year.
- Farm productivity, sacks of onions per acre: 200 in 1950, increasing to 800 in 1999. Improvement rate: 3% per year.
- Deaths caused by Chicago heat waves: 10,000 in 1901, dropping to 300 in 1995. Improvement rate: 4% per year.
- Airplane speed: 37 miles per hour in 1905 (Wright brothers Flyer III), increasing to 2,070 miles per hour in 1965 (Lockheed YF-12A). Improvement rate: 7% per year.
Israel accused over death of Hamas' Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai
Can you imagine BBC coverage of the killing in Dubai - supposedly by Mossad - of senior Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh including pictures of babies and children killed by Mabhouh-sourced rockets? No, I can't either, but there are a couple at Tom Gross's blog.
Personally I hope Mossad did do it, but that the exposure of the operatives (if such it be) was not a hideous cock-up, but either no such thing, or planned that way.
-------------
Is Israel the only suspect over Dubai death?
Tom Gross
February 18, 2010
* Dubai death may have the support of many actors
* Did the Saudis have a hand? Did British intelligence?
* Few weeping over death of Hamas master terrorist
* There’s much we don’t know about Mabhouh’s death, so it’s unwise to jump to conclusions
...
* There seems a very real possibility that Israel is being set up. Airlines keep detailed passenger records these days and anyone could have got the flight manifestos of British and other passport holders who have flown to Israel in the past and then used these names in a deliberate attempt to point the finger of blame at Israel.
* The Dubai authorities have provided no forensic evidence that points to Israel, only a series of photos and videos of random hotel guests who may or may not all know each other. In any event, the persons shown in these photos and videos are not shown committing any crime. It would be very easy to frame Israel, using the identities of six randomly-chosen Israelis based on flight manifestos. This could have been done by anyone – and especially by persons who wanted to avoid being suspected of this action by blaming the Israelis and diverting attention from the real perpetrators.
...
* Many governments wanted Mabhouh out of the way, not only Israel. Sources confirm to me that the missiles Mabhouh was procuring from the Iranians had the capability of hitting central Tel Aviv, and were Hamas to use such missiles later this year, the Israeli response might lead to a region-wide conflagration, which many Western and Arab governments want to avoid.
* If Israel was responsible – and that is a very big if – it would be an indication of how strongly Israel feels it is being left with few other options in protecting its citizens from deadly threats. All the governments that have supported the Goldstone report have in effect told Israel that it cannot defend itself when attacked by missiles from Gaza in future, missiles that put over five million people at risk, so it would not be surprising if Israel decided it has no choice but to try and prevent those missiles reaching Gaza at an earlier stage in the supply chain.
...
* Indeed it is not even clear that those nine photographs that the Dubai authorities have released to the media actually portray real people. (Have they been heavily retouched, for example? Is each one a composite of several faces?) They have been shown repeatedly in news broadcasts and plastered on the front page of newspapers around the world in the last 48 hours, not a single person has come forward to say they recognize any of them, even from high school days, despite front page headlines such as Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper saying “If you recognize any of these people, call us”.
* Unlike the anti-Israeli elements of the Western media that have rushed to blame Israel (creating a public furor and thereby forcing the hands of the British, Irish and French governments to summon their respective Israeli ambassadors), the Arab media are suggesting that the truth is far more complicated.
For example, the Arab world’s leading and arguably its most reliable newspaper, Al Sharq Alawsat, runs these stories:
* UAE Tipped Jordan of Palestinian Suspects whilst they were in the Air – Sources
* Palestinian Dubai Murder Suspects are Hamas Members – Palestinian Security Official
more...
-------------
BBC broadcast: 'One million Jews help Mossad'
Telegraph Blogs
Douglas Murray
February 18th, 2010
Amid all the excitable nonsense being talked about dead Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh I think the BBC has topped the lot. In an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s PM programme last night broadcast (at 17:35 mins) one interviewee explained that up to one million Jews worldwide might be on hand to assist Mossad in executions. That would mean about one in every dozen Jewish people worldwide is a secret assistant to assassins.
Now I must have more than a dozen or so Jewish friends. So which is it? Maybe I know two? It makes you think doesn’t it?
more...
-------------
Mossad Passport Affair: A Stick to Beat Israel?
Honest Reporting
22/02/10
Personally I hope Mossad did do it, but that the exposure of the operatives (if such it be) was not a hideous cock-up, but either no such thing, or planned that way.
-------------
Is Israel the only suspect over Dubai death?
Tom Gross
February 18, 2010
* Dubai death may have the support of many actors
* Did the Saudis have a hand? Did British intelligence?
* Few weeping over death of Hamas master terrorist
* There’s much we don’t know about Mabhouh’s death, so it’s unwise to jump to conclusions
...
* There seems a very real possibility that Israel is being set up. Airlines keep detailed passenger records these days and anyone could have got the flight manifestos of British and other passport holders who have flown to Israel in the past and then used these names in a deliberate attempt to point the finger of blame at Israel.
* The Dubai authorities have provided no forensic evidence that points to Israel, only a series of photos and videos of random hotel guests who may or may not all know each other. In any event, the persons shown in these photos and videos are not shown committing any crime. It would be very easy to frame Israel, using the identities of six randomly-chosen Israelis based on flight manifestos. This could have been done by anyone – and especially by persons who wanted to avoid being suspected of this action by blaming the Israelis and diverting attention from the real perpetrators.
...
* Many governments wanted Mabhouh out of the way, not only Israel. Sources confirm to me that the missiles Mabhouh was procuring from the Iranians had the capability of hitting central Tel Aviv, and were Hamas to use such missiles later this year, the Israeli response might lead to a region-wide conflagration, which many Western and Arab governments want to avoid.
* If Israel was responsible – and that is a very big if – it would be an indication of how strongly Israel feels it is being left with few other options in protecting its citizens from deadly threats. All the governments that have supported the Goldstone report have in effect told Israel that it cannot defend itself when attacked by missiles from Gaza in future, missiles that put over five million people at risk, so it would not be surprising if Israel decided it has no choice but to try and prevent those missiles reaching Gaza at an earlier stage in the supply chain.
...
* Indeed it is not even clear that those nine photographs that the Dubai authorities have released to the media actually portray real people. (Have they been heavily retouched, for example? Is each one a composite of several faces?) They have been shown repeatedly in news broadcasts and plastered on the front page of newspapers around the world in the last 48 hours, not a single person has come forward to say they recognize any of them, even from high school days, despite front page headlines such as Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper saying “If you recognize any of these people, call us”.
* Unlike the anti-Israeli elements of the Western media that have rushed to blame Israel (creating a public furor and thereby forcing the hands of the British, Irish and French governments to summon their respective Israeli ambassadors), the Arab media are suggesting that the truth is far more complicated.
For example, the Arab world’s leading and arguably its most reliable newspaper, Al Sharq Alawsat, runs these stories:
* UAE Tipped Jordan of Palestinian Suspects whilst they were in the Air – Sources
* Palestinian Dubai Murder Suspects are Hamas Members – Palestinian Security Official
more...
-------------
BBC broadcast: 'One million Jews help Mossad'
Telegraph Blogs
Douglas Murray
February 18th, 2010
Amid all the excitable nonsense being talked about dead Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh I think the BBC has topped the lot. In an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s PM programme last night broadcast (at 17:35 mins) one interviewee explained that up to one million Jews worldwide might be on hand to assist Mossad in executions. That would mean about one in every dozen Jewish people worldwide is a secret assistant to assassins.
Now I must have more than a dozen or so Jewish friends. So which is it? Maybe I know two? It makes you think doesn’t it?
more...
-------------
Mossad Passport Affair: A Stick to Beat Israel?
Honest Reporting
22/02/10
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Obama is right to bash the bankers - discuss
Obama is right to bash the bankers
Intelligence Squared Debate
29 Jan 2010
PRO
VOLCKER AND OBAMA’S REFORM HITS THE BULLS EYE: IT DIRECTLY TACKLES THE INHERENT DANGER
There’s a clear economic logic in insuring that from now on the basic utility aspects of banking – making ordinary loans to businesses and households and managing the nation’s payment system – is kept quite separate from the casino aspects of banking – all those credit default swaps, synthetic derivatives and special purpose vehicles which make up the hugely profitable but risky “proprietary trading arms” of the big banks. It was those "proprietary" activities that fuelled the bonanza in all those super dodgy mortgage-backed securities that led to the credit crunch of 2008. The new ban on insured, deposit-taking banks engaging in proprietary trading is a good first step on the road to total separation of these two activities.
THE REFORM IS GROUNDED IN THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
Between 1933 and the 1980s, finance was remarkably stable – and this was an era when the spheres of banking were kept safely separate by the Glass-Steagall Act in the USA and by various rules and regulations in the City of London. But then, when free-market Thatcher abolished the separations in London in 1986 and Clinton put the last nails into the coffin of Glass-Steagall in the late 90s, it was farewell stability; hello financial crisis. So even if economists find it hard to explain precisely why the separation worked, we should trust the historical evidence: the separation did work and Volcker's plans are a welcome return to responsible thinking.
THE REFORM RESTORES CRUCIAL ELEMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL
Finance in the first decade of the 21st century had become too complicated to control; indeed, the sheer complexity of deregulated finance was a big part of what led to the crisis. Financial firms had lots of competing regulators with no one quite knowing what activity should be regulated where. What deregulation should have taught us is that financiers are endlessly creative at finding new ways to take gambles, and that we need protection from that sort of creativity. That’s where the ban on proprietary trading comes in: it returns us to some kind of transparency. By splitting proprietary and deposit-taking functions, regulators know who should be doing what, and keeping financiers to the rules becomes possible once again. In fact, Obama could go further in reestablishing transparency and insist on full disclosure of derivatives positions – something that would have really helped in spotting how much trouble Lehman's collapse was going to cause.
PUTTING A SIZE LIMIT ON BANKS IS AN ESSENTIAL ANTIDOTE TO THE "TOO BIG TO FAIL" PROBLEM
The terrible thing about big banks is that they can hold the whole economy hostage: "bail-us out or we'll sink you" is their basic message. And you can be sure that once they know they're in that position of strength, they'll use it...by taking on the sorts of risks you do when you know that failure goes unpunished. Obama's plan proposes to extend the size limits that already apply to deposit-taking banks to other parts of the financial system. With a well-implemented size limit, the government should be able to stare down the "let-me-fail-if-you-dare" threat that was used to such effect by Wall Street in 2008.
BANKS SHOULD BE SMALLER ANYWAY
Banks are pretty clearly too big and insufficiently competitive - how else can you explain the $1.2 trillion in "excess" profits that the sector has made in the last decade according to Deutsche Bank? Nor is it true that giant global businesses need to rely on giant global banks. That notion is "pure poppycock", says The EpicureanDealMaker blog, which is written by a New York banker in mergers and acquisitions. As he points out, "institutional clients make a point of using more than one investment or commercial bank for virtually all their financial transactions, no matter what they are. In fact, the bigger the deal, the more banks the customer usually uses. This is because banking clients want to make sure none of these oligopolist bastards has an exclusive right to grab the client by the short and curlies."
THE LEVY IS A GOOD WAY TO KEEP BANKS' RISK-TAKING UNDER SOME SORT OF CONTROL
Now that the casino aspects of banking are to be separated out, it seems an inspired idea to have a pop at the casino – especially since the casino operators have benefited so much from taxpayer bailouts. It’s good to think the taxpayer is getting some return, and good to know that the levy, by being based on the amount banks have lent above some minimum threshold, is designed to be more expensive the more risk a bank has taken on. More money for the taxpayer and less risk-taking by banks – what on earth is wrong with that? The only problem is that the levy does not go far enough: at 0.15% of assets above $50bn, it is designed only to recoup over many years the amount spent on bailouts, whereas it should be a permanent part of the landscape.
THIS ISN'T POPULISM, IT'S DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
The financial industry lobbied furiously during the boom-time to be allowed to carry on with their risky lending practices, and they have spent hundreds of millions on lobbying since then to make sure the gravy-train does not stop. The finance industry currently employs three lobbyists for every member of Congress. Along with the healthcare lobby, it is the biggest, best funded and most powerful group in Washington. Obama is at last getting tough with them – a long overdue reassertion that the good of all should be prioritised over the pay-packets of the few. Even if it took a defeat in Massachusetts to get Obama back on track, this is a splendid example of democracy at work.
CON
OBAMA’S REFORM MISSES THE TARGET ALTOGETHER
Proprietary trading by deposit-taking banks had little or nothing to do with the present crisis. The crisis came from the US mortgage market, which was the most heavily regulated part of the finance industry. The fund managers who bought the overly-complex securitised mortgage products could still have done so whether they acted as arms of deposit taking banks or not. In fact, the main source of the trouble had little to do with the big banks anyway: Lehman Brothers was not that big; Northern Rock in the UK was a small mortgage lender with no proprietary trading operations whatsoever.
THERE WAS A MUCH BETTER WAY OF ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM, ONE THAT WOULD ACTUALLY WORK
The root cause of the present crisis shouldn't be guessed at by making spurious comparisons with earlier historical eras. It was quite obvious: financial firms were able to take on too much risk, and didn’t have sufficient resources to cover it. The simple solution is to regulate leverage – that is, limit the amount that banks can lend out to a strict percentage of their safe, liquid assets. Even better, follow the proposal put forward by Britain’s Lord Turner, and grant central banks the power to vary the permitted leverage, tightening the limits at times when credit looks as if it may be getting out of control.
LIKE ALL POPULIST POLICY, THIS REFORM SOUNDS GREAT BUT CAN'T ACTUALLY BE IMPLEMENTED
There are just too many activities that a bank performs for its deposit clients or its borrowers that are indistinguishable from prop trading. When a bank trades a security for a client, it will hold that security for some period of time. When it makes a market, it needs to provide liquidity in this or that instrument and so expose itself to market movements. When it offers a fixed rate loan or a mortgage, it insures itself against exposure to interest rate movements with a derivative. In all this, how can a regulator tell what is prop trading and what is sound banking? You'll always be able to dress up the first as the second. Nomi Prins, a former director at Goldman Sachs, says that the way banks shift money from one part of their business to another is so opaque that the ban on proprietary trading will be impossible to police. "Bank of America, for example, has its fixed income, currency and commodities trading figures merged together, making it impossible to see the contribution of Merrill Lynch’s sizeable trading activities, as well as the line between proprietary and possibly customer-oriented trading." Making rules you can't police adds to the regulatory confusion that got us into this trouble in the first place. And anyway, it'll just push the banks to do their proprietary trading elsewhere: London, Singapore and Geneva just can't wait.
LARGE BANKS ARE POSITIVELY SAFER THAN SMALL BANKS
Obama wants to limit the size of all financial institutions. But the Great Depression saw linked runs on hundreds of small banks. Indeed, one of the real problems during a financial crisis is that no one knows if a counterparty will be good for their money. The more transactions happen within a single firm, the less uncertainty there is. The European-style "universal banks" like Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale combine deposit-taking, investment, trading, advisory and even insurance roles. They have been more resilient to crisis than specialised and quite small operations like Lehman Brothers. It all points to Obama's populism: design a plan that bashes the foreigners, undermines global solutions and appeals to stereotypes of the big bad corporation.
A GLOBAL ECONOMY CAN’T DO WITHOUT BIG BANKS
Even if a giant corporation spreads some of the financial risk between financial institutions, they still want to be dealing with major global banks. When Kraft Foods looks to raise $7 billion of debt to finance its takeover of Cadbury's, you can't expect it to have to go cap in hand to hundreds of small deposit-taking institutions to put a loan together. Business on a global scale is efficient and the path to economic growth everywhere. You need smoothly running capital markets to oil the wheels of globalisation, and artificial barriers to bank size will put a break on prosperity for all.
THE LEVY WILL BE CIRCUMVENTED - IT JUST MAKES MONEY FOR CORPORATE TAX LAWYERS
The levy is going to be based on banks' total US assets. But it is a simple matter for legal departments of banks to make assets appear where in the world they want. If Goldman Sachs in the US lends a hedge fund shares in Kraft Foods for the hedge fund to short them, that'll appear as a taxable asset under the levy. But assets and income can be moved around - a Goldman Sachs vehicle in the British Virgin Islands can enter the lending agreement with the hedge fund and no tax will be incurred. The levy just throws money at lawyers and reduces transparency. What is needed is a global regulatory system that does away with this wasteful game of cat and mouse.
OF COURSE IT'S POPULISM: OBAMA DESPERATELY NEEDED A BIT OF PUBLIC THEATRE
Obama’s first year in office has been a bit of a disaster: his healthcare plans have gone nowhere, unemployment has reached its highest for a quarter of a century, his approval rating has plummeted to around 50%. Then there was this January’s electoral humiliation, deep in supposedly Democrat territory, when an unknown Republican won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts. So, with November’s mid-term elections fast approaching. Obama needed a media stunt which would appeal to working-class Americans, and take the focus off his failures. This populist assault on the money men of Wall St was just the ticket, especially with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs reporting huge profits and bonus pools again. Indeed, Goldman delayed announcing record results until the day the Obama plan was announced, so diverting attention away from its embarrassment of wealth. In reality, we should actually be saluting the restoration of bank profits as the great achievement of the last few years and recognizing that a big part of repairing bank profitability has come from their proprietary trading desks. Which is why one might worry about Obama’s populist assault, were it not obvious that the administration isn’t really serious about getting tough. It’s shadow punching. Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, has on many occasions flatly repudiated the stated ambitions of the plan’s architect, Paul Volcker. Ben Bernanke, the Wall Street-friendly chairman of the central bank, looks certain to be reappointed. This is exactly how you'd expect an administration to behave when it was trying to say to Wall Street: "don't worry - we're just appeasing the mob".
Intelligence Squared Debate
29 Jan 2010
PRO
VOLCKER AND OBAMA’S REFORM HITS THE BULLS EYE: IT DIRECTLY TACKLES THE INHERENT DANGER
There’s a clear economic logic in insuring that from now on the basic utility aspects of banking – making ordinary loans to businesses and households and managing the nation’s payment system – is kept quite separate from the casino aspects of banking – all those credit default swaps, synthetic derivatives and special purpose vehicles which make up the hugely profitable but risky “proprietary trading arms” of the big banks. It was those "proprietary" activities that fuelled the bonanza in all those super dodgy mortgage-backed securities that led to the credit crunch of 2008. The new ban on insured, deposit-taking banks engaging in proprietary trading is a good first step on the road to total separation of these two activities.
THE REFORM IS GROUNDED IN THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
Between 1933 and the 1980s, finance was remarkably stable – and this was an era when the spheres of banking were kept safely separate by the Glass-Steagall Act in the USA and by various rules and regulations in the City of London. But then, when free-market Thatcher abolished the separations in London in 1986 and Clinton put the last nails into the coffin of Glass-Steagall in the late 90s, it was farewell stability; hello financial crisis. So even if economists find it hard to explain precisely why the separation worked, we should trust the historical evidence: the separation did work and Volcker's plans are a welcome return to responsible thinking.
THE REFORM RESTORES CRUCIAL ELEMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL
Finance in the first decade of the 21st century had become too complicated to control; indeed, the sheer complexity of deregulated finance was a big part of what led to the crisis. Financial firms had lots of competing regulators with no one quite knowing what activity should be regulated where. What deregulation should have taught us is that financiers are endlessly creative at finding new ways to take gambles, and that we need protection from that sort of creativity. That’s where the ban on proprietary trading comes in: it returns us to some kind of transparency. By splitting proprietary and deposit-taking functions, regulators know who should be doing what, and keeping financiers to the rules becomes possible once again. In fact, Obama could go further in reestablishing transparency and insist on full disclosure of derivatives positions – something that would have really helped in spotting how much trouble Lehman's collapse was going to cause.
PUTTING A SIZE LIMIT ON BANKS IS AN ESSENTIAL ANTIDOTE TO THE "TOO BIG TO FAIL" PROBLEM
The terrible thing about big banks is that they can hold the whole economy hostage: "bail-us out or we'll sink you" is their basic message. And you can be sure that once they know they're in that position of strength, they'll use it...by taking on the sorts of risks you do when you know that failure goes unpunished. Obama's plan proposes to extend the size limits that already apply to deposit-taking banks to other parts of the financial system. With a well-implemented size limit, the government should be able to stare down the "let-me-fail-if-you-dare" threat that was used to such effect by Wall Street in 2008.
BANKS SHOULD BE SMALLER ANYWAY
Banks are pretty clearly too big and insufficiently competitive - how else can you explain the $1.2 trillion in "excess" profits that the sector has made in the last decade according to Deutsche Bank? Nor is it true that giant global businesses need to rely on giant global banks. That notion is "pure poppycock", says The EpicureanDealMaker blog, which is written by a New York banker in mergers and acquisitions. As he points out, "institutional clients make a point of using more than one investment or commercial bank for virtually all their financial transactions, no matter what they are. In fact, the bigger the deal, the more banks the customer usually uses. This is because banking clients want to make sure none of these oligopolist bastards has an exclusive right to grab the client by the short and curlies."
THE LEVY IS A GOOD WAY TO KEEP BANKS' RISK-TAKING UNDER SOME SORT OF CONTROL
Now that the casino aspects of banking are to be separated out, it seems an inspired idea to have a pop at the casino – especially since the casino operators have benefited so much from taxpayer bailouts. It’s good to think the taxpayer is getting some return, and good to know that the levy, by being based on the amount banks have lent above some minimum threshold, is designed to be more expensive the more risk a bank has taken on. More money for the taxpayer and less risk-taking by banks – what on earth is wrong with that? The only problem is that the levy does not go far enough: at 0.15% of assets above $50bn, it is designed only to recoup over many years the amount spent on bailouts, whereas it should be a permanent part of the landscape.
THIS ISN'T POPULISM, IT'S DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
The financial industry lobbied furiously during the boom-time to be allowed to carry on with their risky lending practices, and they have spent hundreds of millions on lobbying since then to make sure the gravy-train does not stop. The finance industry currently employs three lobbyists for every member of Congress. Along with the healthcare lobby, it is the biggest, best funded and most powerful group in Washington. Obama is at last getting tough with them – a long overdue reassertion that the good of all should be prioritised over the pay-packets of the few. Even if it took a defeat in Massachusetts to get Obama back on track, this is a splendid example of democracy at work.
CON
OBAMA’S REFORM MISSES THE TARGET ALTOGETHER
Proprietary trading by deposit-taking banks had little or nothing to do with the present crisis. The crisis came from the US mortgage market, which was the most heavily regulated part of the finance industry. The fund managers who bought the overly-complex securitised mortgage products could still have done so whether they acted as arms of deposit taking banks or not. In fact, the main source of the trouble had little to do with the big banks anyway: Lehman Brothers was not that big; Northern Rock in the UK was a small mortgage lender with no proprietary trading operations whatsoever.
THERE WAS A MUCH BETTER WAY OF ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM, ONE THAT WOULD ACTUALLY WORK
The root cause of the present crisis shouldn't be guessed at by making spurious comparisons with earlier historical eras. It was quite obvious: financial firms were able to take on too much risk, and didn’t have sufficient resources to cover it. The simple solution is to regulate leverage – that is, limit the amount that banks can lend out to a strict percentage of their safe, liquid assets. Even better, follow the proposal put forward by Britain’s Lord Turner, and grant central banks the power to vary the permitted leverage, tightening the limits at times when credit looks as if it may be getting out of control.
LIKE ALL POPULIST POLICY, THIS REFORM SOUNDS GREAT BUT CAN'T ACTUALLY BE IMPLEMENTED
There are just too many activities that a bank performs for its deposit clients or its borrowers that are indistinguishable from prop trading. When a bank trades a security for a client, it will hold that security for some period of time. When it makes a market, it needs to provide liquidity in this or that instrument and so expose itself to market movements. When it offers a fixed rate loan or a mortgage, it insures itself against exposure to interest rate movements with a derivative. In all this, how can a regulator tell what is prop trading and what is sound banking? You'll always be able to dress up the first as the second. Nomi Prins, a former director at Goldman Sachs, says that the way banks shift money from one part of their business to another is so opaque that the ban on proprietary trading will be impossible to police. "Bank of America, for example, has its fixed income, currency and commodities trading figures merged together, making it impossible to see the contribution of Merrill Lynch’s sizeable trading activities, as well as the line between proprietary and possibly customer-oriented trading." Making rules you can't police adds to the regulatory confusion that got us into this trouble in the first place. And anyway, it'll just push the banks to do their proprietary trading elsewhere: London, Singapore and Geneva just can't wait.
LARGE BANKS ARE POSITIVELY SAFER THAN SMALL BANKS
Obama wants to limit the size of all financial institutions. But the Great Depression saw linked runs on hundreds of small banks. Indeed, one of the real problems during a financial crisis is that no one knows if a counterparty will be good for their money. The more transactions happen within a single firm, the less uncertainty there is. The European-style "universal banks" like Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale combine deposit-taking, investment, trading, advisory and even insurance roles. They have been more resilient to crisis than specialised and quite small operations like Lehman Brothers. It all points to Obama's populism: design a plan that bashes the foreigners, undermines global solutions and appeals to stereotypes of the big bad corporation.
A GLOBAL ECONOMY CAN’T DO WITHOUT BIG BANKS
Even if a giant corporation spreads some of the financial risk between financial institutions, they still want to be dealing with major global banks. When Kraft Foods looks to raise $7 billion of debt to finance its takeover of Cadbury's, you can't expect it to have to go cap in hand to hundreds of small deposit-taking institutions to put a loan together. Business on a global scale is efficient and the path to economic growth everywhere. You need smoothly running capital markets to oil the wheels of globalisation, and artificial barriers to bank size will put a break on prosperity for all.
THE LEVY WILL BE CIRCUMVENTED - IT JUST MAKES MONEY FOR CORPORATE TAX LAWYERS
The levy is going to be based on banks' total US assets. But it is a simple matter for legal departments of banks to make assets appear where in the world they want. If Goldman Sachs in the US lends a hedge fund shares in Kraft Foods for the hedge fund to short them, that'll appear as a taxable asset under the levy. But assets and income can be moved around - a Goldman Sachs vehicle in the British Virgin Islands can enter the lending agreement with the hedge fund and no tax will be incurred. The levy just throws money at lawyers and reduces transparency. What is needed is a global regulatory system that does away with this wasteful game of cat and mouse.
OF COURSE IT'S POPULISM: OBAMA DESPERATELY NEEDED A BIT OF PUBLIC THEATRE
Obama’s first year in office has been a bit of a disaster: his healthcare plans have gone nowhere, unemployment has reached its highest for a quarter of a century, his approval rating has plummeted to around 50%. Then there was this January’s electoral humiliation, deep in supposedly Democrat territory, when an unknown Republican won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts. So, with November’s mid-term elections fast approaching. Obama needed a media stunt which would appeal to working-class Americans, and take the focus off his failures. This populist assault on the money men of Wall St was just the ticket, especially with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs reporting huge profits and bonus pools again. Indeed, Goldman delayed announcing record results until the day the Obama plan was announced, so diverting attention away from its embarrassment of wealth. In reality, we should actually be saluting the restoration of bank profits as the great achievement of the last few years and recognizing that a big part of repairing bank profitability has come from their proprietary trading desks. Which is why one might worry about Obama’s populist assault, were it not obvious that the administration isn’t really serious about getting tough. It’s shadow punching. Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, has on many occasions flatly repudiated the stated ambitions of the plan’s architect, Paul Volcker. Ben Bernanke, the Wall Street-friendly chairman of the central bank, looks certain to be reappointed. This is exactly how you'd expect an administration to behave when it was trying to say to Wall Street: "don't worry - we're just appeasing the mob".
Friday, January 15, 2010
Gladwell! Pinker! Fight! Fight!
Gladwell and Pinker have a polite falling out:
http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/pinker-on-what-the-dog-saw.html
http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/pinker-on-what-the-dog-saw.html
Monday, January 11, 2010
Oops - Oliver Stoned does it again!
'Talking to critics, Stone, a three-times Oscar winner, explained that Hitler had been “an easy scapegoat throughout history” and that his new series would put things into their proper context. “We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'. [Hitler] is the product of a series of actions,” he noted. “It's cause and effect.”
Stalin, that other product of events, would also be subject of a “more factual representation”, Stone added.
Now, joking aside, there are two things that are grim about this. The first is the obvious gripe about gross moral relativism. It seems to me to be fairly clear that moral absolutes do exist, and herding off millions of people to gas chambers or gulags puts you beyond them.
Secondly, it is shocking that Stone feels it necessary to explain that history needs context – as though this fact has escaped his less beady-eyed peers. Ian Kershaw, whose superlative biography of Hitler is divided into two volumes, the first entitled “Hubris: 1889-1936” may feel he has spotted the link, as Stone so eloquently puts it, between “cause and effect”.
If America really does need enlightening on this fact then we are all in trouble. But in the meantime, Stone’s real achievement is to have said something so banal and yet so offensive.'
Article here
Stalin, that other product of events, would also be subject of a “more factual representation”, Stone added.
Now, joking aside, there are two things that are grim about this. The first is the obvious gripe about gross moral relativism. It seems to me to be fairly clear that moral absolutes do exist, and herding off millions of people to gas chambers or gulags puts you beyond them.
Secondly, it is shocking that Stone feels it necessary to explain that history needs context – as though this fact has escaped his less beady-eyed peers. Ian Kershaw, whose superlative biography of Hitler is divided into two volumes, the first entitled “Hubris: 1889-1936” may feel he has spotted the link, as Stone so eloquently puts it, between “cause and effect”.
If America really does need enlightening on this fact then we are all in trouble. But in the meantime, Stone’s real achievement is to have said something so banal and yet so offensive.'
Article here
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Provocative processions
Oliver kamm on Wootton Bassett and the battle of Cable Street:
"Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship, an invaluable free-speech pressure group, comments on the proposed march by an Islamist buffoon, Anjem Choudary, and his supporters in Wootton Bassett. He concludes:
"Support for free expression includes support for the right to expression of “particularly offensive” sentiments (though not support for the sentiments themselves). It would follow then, that Choudary and his friends should be allowed to march through Wooton Bassett without hindrance. But does this mean the residents of Cable Street were wrong?"
I entirely agree with Padraig about the demonstration. Wootton Bassett is not hallowed ground, and the right to assembly extends to those who hold obnoxious views, in the same way that the right to free speech extends to racists and Holocaust deniers. But I'll have a go at answering his question.
Yes, those who tried to stop the British Union of Fascists from marching in the East End in October 1936 were wrong. The BUF had a democratic right to march in peacetime, and the attempt to stop them did them a power of good. Mosley was looking for a way to call it off anyway, so that he could get to Berlin and secretly marry Diana Mitford Guinness in Goebbels's drawing room (which he managed to do two days later). Support for Mosley in the East End increased after the Battle of Cable Street, as did antisemitic violence. Thugs attacked Jews and their properties, in the so-called Pogrom of Mile End, a week later.
In the end, despite an appalling failure among leaders of the main parties in the 1930s (Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, Herbert Samuel and the ineffably foolish George Lansbury) to recognise the threat from the dictators, it was democratic politics that defeated Mosley and secured economic recovery, not opposition on the streets. When he was interned in 1940, Mosley was a permanently discredited figure."
"Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship, an invaluable free-speech pressure group, comments on the proposed march by an Islamist buffoon, Anjem Choudary, and his supporters in Wootton Bassett. He concludes:
"Support for free expression includes support for the right to expression of “particularly offensive” sentiments (though not support for the sentiments themselves). It would follow then, that Choudary and his friends should be allowed to march through Wooton Bassett without hindrance. But does this mean the residents of Cable Street were wrong?"
I entirely agree with Padraig about the demonstration. Wootton Bassett is not hallowed ground, and the right to assembly extends to those who hold obnoxious views, in the same way that the right to free speech extends to racists and Holocaust deniers. But I'll have a go at answering his question.
Yes, those who tried to stop the British Union of Fascists from marching in the East End in October 1936 were wrong. The BUF had a democratic right to march in peacetime, and the attempt to stop them did them a power of good. Mosley was looking for a way to call it off anyway, so that he could get to Berlin and secretly marry Diana Mitford Guinness in Goebbels's drawing room (which he managed to do two days later). Support for Mosley in the East End increased after the Battle of Cable Street, as did antisemitic violence. Thugs attacked Jews and their properties, in the so-called Pogrom of Mile End, a week later.
In the end, despite an appalling failure among leaders of the main parties in the 1930s (Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, Herbert Samuel and the ineffably foolish George Lansbury) to recognise the threat from the dictators, it was democratic politics that defeated Mosley and secured economic recovery, not opposition on the streets. When he was interned in 1940, Mosley was a permanently discredited figure."
Anti-semitism vs anti-Zionism - Dershowitz
With the upcoming (12/01/10) documentary Defamation on Channel 4, featuring amongst others the charming Norman Finkelstein, the ever clear-thinking Alan Dershowitz provides a checklist for distinguishing anti-semitism and anti-Zionism:
When Legit Criticism Crosses the Anti-Semitism Line
Alan Dershowitz
Huffington Post
01/07/05
...
A CHECKLIST OF FACTORS THAT TEND TO INDICATE ANTI-SEMITISM
1. Employing stereotypes against Israel that have traditionally been directed against "the Jews." For example, portraying Israel as devouring the blood of children or characterizing Israeli leaders with long hook noses or rapacious looks.
2. Comparing Israel to the Nazis or its leaders to Hitler, the German army, or the Gestapo.
3. Characterizing Israel as “the worst,” when it is clear that this is not an accurate comparative assessment.
4. Invoking anti-Jewish religious symbols or caricaturing Jewish religious symbols.
5. Singling out only Israel for sanctions for policies that are widespread among other nations, or demanding that Jews be better or more moral than others because of their history as victims.
6. Discriminating against individuals only because they are Jewish Israelis, without regard to their individual views or actions.
7. Emphasizing and stereotyping certain characteristics among supporters of Israel that have traditionally been used in anti-Semitic attacks, for example, “pushy” American Jews, Jews “who control the media,” and Jews “who control financial markets.”
8. Blaming all Jews or “the Jews” for Israel’s policies or imperfections.
9. Physically or verbally attacking Jewish institutions, such as synagogues or cemeteries, as a means of protesting against Israel.
10. Stereotyping all Jews as fitting into a particular political configuration (such as “neo-conservatives,” Zionists, or supporters of Sharon).
11. Accusing Jews and only Jews of having dual loyalty.
12. Blaming Israel for the problems of the world and exaggerating the influence of the Jewish state on world affairs.
13. Denying, minimizing, or trivializing the Holocaust as part of a campaign against Israel.
14. Discriminating against only Israel in its qualification for certain positions or statuses, such as on the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and the International Red Cross.
15. Blaming the Jews or Israel, rather than the anti-Semites, for anti-Semitism or for increases in anti-Jewish attitudes.
16. Taking extreme pleasure from Israeli failures, imperfections, or troubles.
17. Falsely claiming that all legitimate criticism of Israeli policies is immediately and widely condemned by Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic, despite any evidence to support this accusation.
18. Denying that even core anti-Semitism—racial stereotypes, Nazi comparisons, desecration of synagogues, Holocaust denial—qualifies as anti-Semitic.
19. Seeking to delegitimate Israel precisely as it moves toward peace.
20. Circulating wild charges against Israel and Jews, such as that they were responsible for the September 11 attacks, the anthrax attacks, and the 2005 tsunami.
A CHECKLIST OF FACTORS THAT TEND TO INDICATE LEGITIMATE CRITICISM OF ISRAEL
1. The criticism is directed at specific policies of Israel, rather than at the very legitimacy of the state.
2. The degree and level of criticism vary with changes in Israel’s policies.
3. The criticism is comparative and contextual.
4. The criticism is political, military, economic, and so forth, rather than ethnic or religious.
5. The criticism is similar to criticism being raised by mainstream Israeli dissidents.
6. The criticism is leveled by people who have a history of leveling comparable criticisms at other nations with comparable or worse records.
7. The criticism is designed to bring about positive changes in Israeli policies.
8. The criticism is part of a more general and comparative criticism of all other nations.
9. The criticism is based on objective facts rather than name calling or polemics.
10. The critic subjects his favorite nation to comparable criticism for comparable faults.
...
When Legit Criticism Crosses the Anti-Semitism Line
Alan Dershowitz
Huffington Post
01/07/05
...
A CHECKLIST OF FACTORS THAT TEND TO INDICATE ANTI-SEMITISM
1. Employing stereotypes against Israel that have traditionally been directed against "the Jews." For example, portraying Israel as devouring the blood of children or characterizing Israeli leaders with long hook noses or rapacious looks.
2. Comparing Israel to the Nazis or its leaders to Hitler, the German army, or the Gestapo.
3. Characterizing Israel as “the worst,” when it is clear that this is not an accurate comparative assessment.
4. Invoking anti-Jewish religious symbols or caricaturing Jewish religious symbols.
5. Singling out only Israel for sanctions for policies that are widespread among other nations, or demanding that Jews be better or more moral than others because of their history as victims.
6. Discriminating against individuals only because they are Jewish Israelis, without regard to their individual views or actions.
7. Emphasizing and stereotyping certain characteristics among supporters of Israel that have traditionally been used in anti-Semitic attacks, for example, “pushy” American Jews, Jews “who control the media,” and Jews “who control financial markets.”
8. Blaming all Jews or “the Jews” for Israel’s policies or imperfections.
9. Physically or verbally attacking Jewish institutions, such as synagogues or cemeteries, as a means of protesting against Israel.
10. Stereotyping all Jews as fitting into a particular political configuration (such as “neo-conservatives,” Zionists, or supporters of Sharon).
11. Accusing Jews and only Jews of having dual loyalty.
12. Blaming Israel for the problems of the world and exaggerating the influence of the Jewish state on world affairs.
13. Denying, minimizing, or trivializing the Holocaust as part of a campaign against Israel.
14. Discriminating against only Israel in its qualification for certain positions or statuses, such as on the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and the International Red Cross.
15. Blaming the Jews or Israel, rather than the anti-Semites, for anti-Semitism or for increases in anti-Jewish attitudes.
16. Taking extreme pleasure from Israeli failures, imperfections, or troubles.
17. Falsely claiming that all legitimate criticism of Israeli policies is immediately and widely condemned by Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic, despite any evidence to support this accusation.
18. Denying that even core anti-Semitism—racial stereotypes, Nazi comparisons, desecration of synagogues, Holocaust denial—qualifies as anti-Semitic.
19. Seeking to delegitimate Israel precisely as it moves toward peace.
20. Circulating wild charges against Israel and Jews, such as that they were responsible for the September 11 attacks, the anthrax attacks, and the 2005 tsunami.
A CHECKLIST OF FACTORS THAT TEND TO INDICATE LEGITIMATE CRITICISM OF ISRAEL
1. The criticism is directed at specific policies of Israel, rather than at the very legitimacy of the state.
2. The degree and level of criticism vary with changes in Israel’s policies.
3. The criticism is comparative and contextual.
4. The criticism is political, military, economic, and so forth, rather than ethnic or religious.
5. The criticism is similar to criticism being raised by mainstream Israeli dissidents.
6. The criticism is leveled by people who have a history of leveling comparable criticisms at other nations with comparable or worse records.
7. The criticism is designed to bring about positive changes in Israeli policies.
8. The criticism is part of a more general and comparative criticism of all other nations.
9. The criticism is based on objective facts rather than name calling or polemics.
10. The critic subjects his favorite nation to comparable criticism for comparable faults.
...
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Guantanamo
Amazing we've never had a Guantánamo Bay thread, so am starting one now.
Why now? Well, in view of Obama's failure to close Guantanamo as promised, and the involvement of AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) - some of whose leaders are ex-Guantanamo detainees - in Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, now seems as good a time as any.
I've posted a Stratfor article below on the difficulties of dealing with suspected al-Qaeda types apprehended in a war zone. They are neither soldiers nor normal criminals, hence the legal limbo. I wouldn't wanna be in Obama's shoes trying to decide what to do with these people.
------------
Obama admits Guantanamo won't close by Jan. deadline
Washington Post
November 18, 2009
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"I Had a Good Time at Guantánamo, Says Inmate"
by Daniel Pipes
February 8, 2004
------------
Freed by the U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief
New York Times
January 22, 2009
The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
The new Al-Qaeda chiefs bringing terror to the world
The Sunday Times
January 3, 2010
Said Ali al-Shihri
Said Ali al-Shihri
Wikipedia
------------
Deciphering the Mohammed Trial
November 16, 2009
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Reports
By George Friedman
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in federal court in New York. Holder’s decision was driven by the need for the U.S. government to decide how to dispose of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. Naval base outside the boundaries of the United States selected as the camp in which to hold suspected al Qaeda members.
We very carefully use the word “camp” rather than prison or prisoner of war camp. This is because of an ongoing and profound ambiguity not only in U.S. government perceptions of how to define those held there, but also due to uncertainties in international law, particularly with regard to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Were the U.S. facility at Guantanamo a prison, then its residents would be criminals. If it were a POW camp, then they would be enemy soldiers being held under the rules of war. It has never really been decided which these men are, and therefore their legal standing has remained unclear.
WAR VS. CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The ambiguity began shortly after 9/11, when then-U.S. President George W. Bush defined two missions: waging a war on terror, and bringing Osama bin Laden and his followers to justice. Both made for good rhetoric. But they also were fundamentally contradictory. A war is not a judicial inquiry, and a criminal investigation is not part of war.
An analogy might be drawn from Pearl Harbor. Imagine that in addition to stating that the United States was at war with Japan, Franklin Roosevelt also called for bringing the individual Japanese pilots who struck Hawaii to justice under American law. This would make no sense. As an act of war, the Japanese action fell under the rules of war as provided for in international law, the U.S. Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Japanese pilots could not be held individually responsible for the lawful order they received. In the same sense, trying to bring soldiers to trial in a civilian court in the United States would make no sense. Creating a mission in which individual Japanese airmen would be hunted down and tried under the rules of evidence not only would make no sense, it would be impossible. Building a case against them individually also would be impossible. Judges would rule on evidence, on whether an unprejudiced jury could be found, and so on. None of this happened, of course — World War II was a war, not a judicial inquiry.
It is important to consider how wars are conducted. Enemy soldiers are not shot or captured because of what they have done; they are shot and captured because of who they are — members of an enemy military force. War, once launched, is pre-emptive. Soldiers are killed or captured in the course of fighting enemy forces, or even before they have carried out hostile acts. Soldiers are not held responsible for their actions, but neither are they immune to attack just because they have not done anything. Guilt and innocence do not enter into the equation. Certainly, if war crimes are in question, charges may be brought; the UCMJ determines how they will be tried by U.S. forces. Soldiers are tried by courts-martial, not by civilian courts, because of their status as soldiers. Soldiers are tried by a jury of their peers, and their peers are held to be other soldiers.
International law is actually not particularly ambiguous about the status of the members of al Qaeda. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them because they have not adhered to a fundamental requirement of the Geneva Conventions, namely, identifying themselves as soldiers of an army. Doing so does not mean they must wear a uniform. The postwar Geneva Conventions make room for partisans, something older versions of the conventions did not. A partisan is not a uniformed fighter, but he must wear some form of insignia identifying himself as a soldier to enjoy the conventions’ protections. As Article 4.1.6 puts it, prisoners of war include “Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.” The Geneva Conventions of 1949 does not mention, nor provide protection to, civilians attacking foreign countries without openly carrying arms.
The reasoning behind this is important. During the Franco-Prussian war, French franc-tireurs fired on Prussian soldiers. Ununiformed and without insignia, they melded into the crowd. It was impossible for the Prussians to distinguish between civilians and soldiers, so they fired on both, and civilian casualties resulted. The framers of the Geneva Conventions held the franc-tireurs, not the Prussian soldiers, responsible for the casualties. Their failure to be in uniform forced the Prussians to defend themselves at the cost of civilian lives. The franc-tireurs were seen as using civilians as camouflage. This was regarded as outside the rules of war, and those who carried out such acts were seen as not protected by the conventions. They were not soldiers, and were not to be treated as such.
An Ambiguous Status
Extending protections to partisans following World War II was seen as a major concession. It was done with concerns that it not be extended so far that combatants of irregular forces could legally operate using their ability to blend in with surrounding civilians, and hence a requirement of wearing armbands. The status of purely covert operatives remained unchanged: They were not protected under the Geneva Conventions. Their status remained ambiguous.
During World War II, it was U.S. Army practice to hold perfunctory trials followed by executions. During the Battle of the Bulge, German commandos captured wearing U.S. uniforms — in violation of the Geneva Conventions — were summarily tried in field courts-martial and executed. The idea that such individuals were to be handed over to civilian courts was never considered. The actions of al Qaeda simply were not anticipated in the Geneva Conventions. And to the extent they were expected, they violated the conventions.
Holder’s decision to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to federal court makes it clear that Mohammed was not a soldier acting in time of war, but a criminal. While during times of war spies are tried as criminals, their status is precarious, particularly if they are members of an enemy army. Enemy soldiers out of uniform carrying out reconnaissance or espionage are subject to military, not civilian, justice, and frequently are executed. A spy captured in the course of collecting information is a civilian, particularly in peacetime, and normally is tried as a criminal with rules of evidence.
Which was Mohammed? Under the Geneva Conventions, his actions in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks, which were carried out without uniforms or other badges of a combatant, denies him status and protection as a POW. Logically, he is therefore a criminal, but if he is, consider the consequences.
Criminal law is focused on punishments meted out after the fact. They rarely have been preventive measures. In either case, they follow strict rules of evidence, require certain treatments of prisoners and so on. For example, prisoners have to be read the Miranda warning. Soldiers are not policeman. They are not trained or expected to protect the legal rights of captives save as POWs under the UCMJ, nor protect the chain of custody of evidence nor countless other things that are required in a civilian court. In criminal law, it is assumed that law enforcement has captured the prisoner and is well-versed in these rules. In this case, the capture was made without any consideration of these matters, nor would one expect such consideration.
Consider further the role of U.S. covert operations in these captures. The United States conducts covert operations in which operatives work out of uniform and are generally not members of the military. Operating outside the United States, they are not protected by U.S. law although they do operate under the laws and regulations promulgated by the U.S. government. Much of their operations run counter to international and national law. At the same time, their operations are accepted as best practices by the international system. Some operate under cover of diplomatic immunity but carry out operations incompatible with their status as diplomats. Others operate without official cover. Should those under unofficial cover be captured, their treatment falls under local law, if such exists. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them, nor was it intended to.
Spies, saboteurs and terrorists fall outside the realm of international law. This class of actors falls under the category of national law, leaving open the question of their liability if they conduct acts inimical to a third country. Who has jurisdiction? The United States is claiming that Mohammed is to be tried under the criminal code of the United States for actions planned in Afghanistan but carried out by others in the United States. It is a defensible position, but where does this leave American intelligence planners working at CIA headquarters for actions carried out by others in a third country? Are they subject to prosecution in the third country? Those captured in the third country clearly are, but the claim here is that Mohammed is subject to prosecution under U.S. laws for actions carried out by others in the United States. And that creates an interesting reciprocal liability.
A FAILURE TO EVOLVE
The fact is that international law has not evolved to deal with persons like Mohammed. Or more precisely, most legal discussion under international law is moving counter to the Geneva Conventions’ intent, which was to treat the franc-tireurs as unworthy of legal protection because they were not soldiers and were violating the rules of war. International law wants to push Mohammed into a category where he doesn’t fit, providing protections that are not apparent under the Geneva Conventions. The United States has shoved him into U.S. criminal law, where he doesn’t fit either, unless the United States is prepared to accept reciprocal liability for CIA personnel based in the United States planning and supporting operations in third countries. The United States has never claimed, for example, that the KGB planners who operated agents in the United States on behalf of the Soviet Union were themselves subject to criminal prosecution.
A new variety of warfare has emerged in which treatment as a traditional POW doesn’t apply and criminal law doesn’t work. Criminal law creates liabilities the United States doesn’t want to incur, and it is not geared to deal with a terrorist like Mohammed. U.S. criminal law assumes that capture is in the hands of law enforcement officials. Rights are prescribed and demanded, including having lawyers present and so forth. Such protections are practically and theoretically absurd in this case: Mohammed is not a soldier and he is not a suspected criminal presumed innocent until proven guilty. Law enforcement is not a practical counter to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A nation cannot move from the rules of counterterrorism to an American courtroom; they are incompatible modes of operation. Nor can a nation use the code of criminal procedures against a terrorist organization operating transnationally. Instead, they must be stopped before they commit their action, and issuing search warrants and allowing attorneys present at questioning is not an option.
Therefore — and now we move to the political reality — it is difficult to imagine how the evidence accumulated against Mohammed could enter a courtroom. Ignoring the methods of questioning, which is a separate issue, how can one prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt without compromising sources and methods, and why should one? Mohammed was on a battlefield but not operating as a soldier. Imagine doing criminal forensics on a battlefield to prove the criminal liability of German commandos wearing American uniforms.
In our mind, there is a very real possibility that Mohammed could be found not guilty in a courtroom. The cases of O.J. Simpson and of Jewish Defense League head Rabbi Meir Kahane’s killer, El Sayyid Nosair — both found not guilty despite overwhelming evidence — come to mind. Juries do strange things, particularly amid what will be the greatest media circus imaginable in the media capital of the world.
But it may not be the jury that is the problem. A federal judge will have to ask the question of whether prejudicial publicity of such magnitude has occurred that Mohammed can’t receive a fair trial. (This is probably true.) Questions will be raised about whether he has received proper legal counsel, which undoubtedly he hasn’t. Issues about the chain of custody of evidence will be raised; given that he was held by troops and agents, and not by law enforcement, the chances of compromised evidence is likely. The issue of torture will, of course, also be raised but that really isn’t the main problem. How do you try a man under U.S. legal procedures who was captured in a third country by non-law enforcement personnel, and who has been in military custody for seven years?
There is a nontrivial possibility that he will be acquitted or have his case thrown out of court, which would be a foreign policy disaster for the United States. Some might view it as a sign of American adherence to the rule of law and be impressed, others might be convinced that Mohammed was not guilty in more than a legal sense and was held unjustly, and others might think the United States has bungled another matter.
The real problem here is international law, which does not address acts of war committed by non-state actors out of uniform. Or more precisely, it does, but leaves them deliberately in a state of legal limbo, with captors left free to deal with them as they wish. If the international legal community does not like the latter, it is time they did the hard work of defining precisely how a nation deals with an act of war carried out under these circumstances.
The international legal community has been quite vocal in condemning American treatment of POWs after 9/11, but it hasn’t evolved international law, even theoretically, to cope with this. Sept. 11 is not a crime in the proper sense of the term, and prosecuting the guilty is not the goal. Instead, it was an act of war carried out outside the confines of the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. goal is destroying al Qaeda so that it can no longer function, not punishing those who have acted. Similarly the goal in 1941 was not punishing the Japanese pilots at Pearl Harbor but destroying the Japanese Empire, and any Japanese soldier was a target who could be killed without trial in the course of combat. If it wishes to solve this problem, international law will have to recognize that al Qaeda committed an act of war, and its destruction has legal sanction without judicial review. And if some sort of protection is to be provided al Qaeda operatives out of uniform, then the Geneva Conventions must be changed, and with it the status of spies and saboteurs of all countries.
Holder has opened up an extraordinarily complex can of worms with this decision. As U.S. attorney general, he has committed himself to proving Mohammed’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt while guaranteeing that his constitutional rights (for a non-U.S. citizen captured and held outside the United States under extraordinary circumstances by individuals not trained as law enforcement personnel, no less) are protected. It is Holder’s duty to ensure Mohammed’s prosecution, conviction and fair treatment under the law. It is hard to see how he can.
Whatever the politics of this decision — and all such decisions have political dimensions — the real problem faced by both the Obama and Bush administrations has been the failure of international law to evolve to provide guidance on dealing with combatants such as al Qaeda. International law has clung to a model of law governing a very different type of warfare despite new realities. International law must therefore either reaffirm the doctrine that combatants who do not distinguish themselves from noncombatants are not due the protections of international law, or it must clearly define what those protections are. Otherwise, international law discredits itself.
Why now? Well, in view of Obama's failure to close Guantanamo as promised, and the involvement of AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) - some of whose leaders are ex-Guantanamo detainees - in Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, now seems as good a time as any.
I've posted a Stratfor article below on the difficulties of dealing with suspected al-Qaeda types apprehended in a war zone. They are neither soldiers nor normal criminals, hence the legal limbo. I wouldn't wanna be in Obama's shoes trying to decide what to do with these people.
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Obama admits Guantanamo won't close by Jan. deadline
Washington Post
November 18, 2009
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"I Had a Good Time at Guantánamo, Says Inmate"
by Daniel Pipes
February 8, 2004
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Freed by the U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief
New York Times
January 22, 2009
The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
The new Al-Qaeda chiefs bringing terror to the world
The Sunday Times
January 3, 2010
Said Ali al-Shihri
Said Ali al-Shihri
Wikipedia
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Deciphering the Mohammed Trial
November 16, 2009
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Reports
By George Friedman
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in federal court in New York. Holder’s decision was driven by the need for the U.S. government to decide how to dispose of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. Naval base outside the boundaries of the United States selected as the camp in which to hold suspected al Qaeda members.
We very carefully use the word “camp” rather than prison or prisoner of war camp. This is because of an ongoing and profound ambiguity not only in U.S. government perceptions of how to define those held there, but also due to uncertainties in international law, particularly with regard to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Were the U.S. facility at Guantanamo a prison, then its residents would be criminals. If it were a POW camp, then they would be enemy soldiers being held under the rules of war. It has never really been decided which these men are, and therefore their legal standing has remained unclear.
WAR VS. CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The ambiguity began shortly after 9/11, when then-U.S. President George W. Bush defined two missions: waging a war on terror, and bringing Osama bin Laden and his followers to justice. Both made for good rhetoric. But they also were fundamentally contradictory. A war is not a judicial inquiry, and a criminal investigation is not part of war.
An analogy might be drawn from Pearl Harbor. Imagine that in addition to stating that the United States was at war with Japan, Franklin Roosevelt also called for bringing the individual Japanese pilots who struck Hawaii to justice under American law. This would make no sense. As an act of war, the Japanese action fell under the rules of war as provided for in international law, the U.S. Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Japanese pilots could not be held individually responsible for the lawful order they received. In the same sense, trying to bring soldiers to trial in a civilian court in the United States would make no sense. Creating a mission in which individual Japanese airmen would be hunted down and tried under the rules of evidence not only would make no sense, it would be impossible. Building a case against them individually also would be impossible. Judges would rule on evidence, on whether an unprejudiced jury could be found, and so on. None of this happened, of course — World War II was a war, not a judicial inquiry.
It is important to consider how wars are conducted. Enemy soldiers are not shot or captured because of what they have done; they are shot and captured because of who they are — members of an enemy military force. War, once launched, is pre-emptive. Soldiers are killed or captured in the course of fighting enemy forces, or even before they have carried out hostile acts. Soldiers are not held responsible for their actions, but neither are they immune to attack just because they have not done anything. Guilt and innocence do not enter into the equation. Certainly, if war crimes are in question, charges may be brought; the UCMJ determines how they will be tried by U.S. forces. Soldiers are tried by courts-martial, not by civilian courts, because of their status as soldiers. Soldiers are tried by a jury of their peers, and their peers are held to be other soldiers.
International law is actually not particularly ambiguous about the status of the members of al Qaeda. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them because they have not adhered to a fundamental requirement of the Geneva Conventions, namely, identifying themselves as soldiers of an army. Doing so does not mean they must wear a uniform. The postwar Geneva Conventions make room for partisans, something older versions of the conventions did not. A partisan is not a uniformed fighter, but he must wear some form of insignia identifying himself as a soldier to enjoy the conventions’ protections. As Article 4.1.6 puts it, prisoners of war include “Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.” The Geneva Conventions of 1949 does not mention, nor provide protection to, civilians attacking foreign countries without openly carrying arms.
The reasoning behind this is important. During the Franco-Prussian war, French franc-tireurs fired on Prussian soldiers. Ununiformed and without insignia, they melded into the crowd. It was impossible for the Prussians to distinguish between civilians and soldiers, so they fired on both, and civilian casualties resulted. The framers of the Geneva Conventions held the franc-tireurs, not the Prussian soldiers, responsible for the casualties. Their failure to be in uniform forced the Prussians to defend themselves at the cost of civilian lives. The franc-tireurs were seen as using civilians as camouflage. This was regarded as outside the rules of war, and those who carried out such acts were seen as not protected by the conventions. They were not soldiers, and were not to be treated as such.
An Ambiguous Status
Extending protections to partisans following World War II was seen as a major concession. It was done with concerns that it not be extended so far that combatants of irregular forces could legally operate using their ability to blend in with surrounding civilians, and hence a requirement of wearing armbands. The status of purely covert operatives remained unchanged: They were not protected under the Geneva Conventions. Their status remained ambiguous.
During World War II, it was U.S. Army practice to hold perfunctory trials followed by executions. During the Battle of the Bulge, German commandos captured wearing U.S. uniforms — in violation of the Geneva Conventions — were summarily tried in field courts-martial and executed. The idea that such individuals were to be handed over to civilian courts was never considered. The actions of al Qaeda simply were not anticipated in the Geneva Conventions. And to the extent they were expected, they violated the conventions.
Holder’s decision to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to federal court makes it clear that Mohammed was not a soldier acting in time of war, but a criminal. While during times of war spies are tried as criminals, their status is precarious, particularly if they are members of an enemy army. Enemy soldiers out of uniform carrying out reconnaissance or espionage are subject to military, not civilian, justice, and frequently are executed. A spy captured in the course of collecting information is a civilian, particularly in peacetime, and normally is tried as a criminal with rules of evidence.
Which was Mohammed? Under the Geneva Conventions, his actions in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks, which were carried out without uniforms or other badges of a combatant, denies him status and protection as a POW. Logically, he is therefore a criminal, but if he is, consider the consequences.
Criminal law is focused on punishments meted out after the fact. They rarely have been preventive measures. In either case, they follow strict rules of evidence, require certain treatments of prisoners and so on. For example, prisoners have to be read the Miranda warning. Soldiers are not policeman. They are not trained or expected to protect the legal rights of captives save as POWs under the UCMJ, nor protect the chain of custody of evidence nor countless other things that are required in a civilian court. In criminal law, it is assumed that law enforcement has captured the prisoner and is well-versed in these rules. In this case, the capture was made without any consideration of these matters, nor would one expect such consideration.
Consider further the role of U.S. covert operations in these captures. The United States conducts covert operations in which operatives work out of uniform and are generally not members of the military. Operating outside the United States, they are not protected by U.S. law although they do operate under the laws and regulations promulgated by the U.S. government. Much of their operations run counter to international and national law. At the same time, their operations are accepted as best practices by the international system. Some operate under cover of diplomatic immunity but carry out operations incompatible with their status as diplomats. Others operate without official cover. Should those under unofficial cover be captured, their treatment falls under local law, if such exists. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them, nor was it intended to.
Spies, saboteurs and terrorists fall outside the realm of international law. This class of actors falls under the category of national law, leaving open the question of their liability if they conduct acts inimical to a third country. Who has jurisdiction? The United States is claiming that Mohammed is to be tried under the criminal code of the United States for actions planned in Afghanistan but carried out by others in the United States. It is a defensible position, but where does this leave American intelligence planners working at CIA headquarters for actions carried out by others in a third country? Are they subject to prosecution in the third country? Those captured in the third country clearly are, but the claim here is that Mohammed is subject to prosecution under U.S. laws for actions carried out by others in the United States. And that creates an interesting reciprocal liability.
A FAILURE TO EVOLVE
The fact is that international law has not evolved to deal with persons like Mohammed. Or more precisely, most legal discussion under international law is moving counter to the Geneva Conventions’ intent, which was to treat the franc-tireurs as unworthy of legal protection because they were not soldiers and were violating the rules of war. International law wants to push Mohammed into a category where he doesn’t fit, providing protections that are not apparent under the Geneva Conventions. The United States has shoved him into U.S. criminal law, where he doesn’t fit either, unless the United States is prepared to accept reciprocal liability for CIA personnel based in the United States planning and supporting operations in third countries. The United States has never claimed, for example, that the KGB planners who operated agents in the United States on behalf of the Soviet Union were themselves subject to criminal prosecution.
A new variety of warfare has emerged in which treatment as a traditional POW doesn’t apply and criminal law doesn’t work. Criminal law creates liabilities the United States doesn’t want to incur, and it is not geared to deal with a terrorist like Mohammed. U.S. criminal law assumes that capture is in the hands of law enforcement officials. Rights are prescribed and demanded, including having lawyers present and so forth. Such protections are practically and theoretically absurd in this case: Mohammed is not a soldier and he is not a suspected criminal presumed innocent until proven guilty. Law enforcement is not a practical counter to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A nation cannot move from the rules of counterterrorism to an American courtroom; they are incompatible modes of operation. Nor can a nation use the code of criminal procedures against a terrorist organization operating transnationally. Instead, they must be stopped before they commit their action, and issuing search warrants and allowing attorneys present at questioning is not an option.
Therefore — and now we move to the political reality — it is difficult to imagine how the evidence accumulated against Mohammed could enter a courtroom. Ignoring the methods of questioning, which is a separate issue, how can one prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt without compromising sources and methods, and why should one? Mohammed was on a battlefield but not operating as a soldier. Imagine doing criminal forensics on a battlefield to prove the criminal liability of German commandos wearing American uniforms.
In our mind, there is a very real possibility that Mohammed could be found not guilty in a courtroom. The cases of O.J. Simpson and of Jewish Defense League head Rabbi Meir Kahane’s killer, El Sayyid Nosair — both found not guilty despite overwhelming evidence — come to mind. Juries do strange things, particularly amid what will be the greatest media circus imaginable in the media capital of the world.
But it may not be the jury that is the problem. A federal judge will have to ask the question of whether prejudicial publicity of such magnitude has occurred that Mohammed can’t receive a fair trial. (This is probably true.) Questions will be raised about whether he has received proper legal counsel, which undoubtedly he hasn’t. Issues about the chain of custody of evidence will be raised; given that he was held by troops and agents, and not by law enforcement, the chances of compromised evidence is likely. The issue of torture will, of course, also be raised but that really isn’t the main problem. How do you try a man under U.S. legal procedures who was captured in a third country by non-law enforcement personnel, and who has been in military custody for seven years?
There is a nontrivial possibility that he will be acquitted or have his case thrown out of court, which would be a foreign policy disaster for the United States. Some might view it as a sign of American adherence to the rule of law and be impressed, others might be convinced that Mohammed was not guilty in more than a legal sense and was held unjustly, and others might think the United States has bungled another matter.
The real problem here is international law, which does not address acts of war committed by non-state actors out of uniform. Or more precisely, it does, but leaves them deliberately in a state of legal limbo, with captors left free to deal with them as they wish. If the international legal community does not like the latter, it is time they did the hard work of defining precisely how a nation deals with an act of war carried out under these circumstances.
The international legal community has been quite vocal in condemning American treatment of POWs after 9/11, but it hasn’t evolved international law, even theoretically, to cope with this. Sept. 11 is not a crime in the proper sense of the term, and prosecuting the guilty is not the goal. Instead, it was an act of war carried out outside the confines of the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. goal is destroying al Qaeda so that it can no longer function, not punishing those who have acted. Similarly the goal in 1941 was not punishing the Japanese pilots at Pearl Harbor but destroying the Japanese Empire, and any Japanese soldier was a target who could be killed without trial in the course of combat. If it wishes to solve this problem, international law will have to recognize that al Qaeda committed an act of war, and its destruction has legal sanction without judicial review. And if some sort of protection is to be provided al Qaeda operatives out of uniform, then the Geneva Conventions must be changed, and with it the status of spies and saboteurs of all countries.
Holder has opened up an extraordinarily complex can of worms with this decision. As U.S. attorney general, he has committed himself to proving Mohammed’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt while guaranteeing that his constitutional rights (for a non-U.S. citizen captured and held outside the United States under extraordinary circumstances by individuals not trained as law enforcement personnel, no less) are protected. It is Holder’s duty to ensure Mohammed’s prosecution, conviction and fair treatment under the law. It is hard to see how he can.
Whatever the politics of this decision — and all such decisions have political dimensions — the real problem faced by both the Obama and Bush administrations has been the failure of international law to evolve to provide guidance on dealing with combatants such as al Qaeda. International law has clung to a model of law governing a very different type of warfare despite new realities. International law must therefore either reaffirm the doctrine that combatants who do not distinguish themselves from noncombatants are not due the protections of international law, or it must clearly define what those protections are. Otherwise, international law discredits itself.
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