Very interesting article from Times columnist Matthew Parris (Dan I think you'll enjoy it):
The Labour Party should dump compassion
Christianity has not done socialism any favours. The Left must embrace progress and winners, not the workshy and the weak
It's time to ask not who should lead the Left in Britain, but where they should be led. Does socialism have a future? Little seems to be coming from the old warhorses of the left-wing intelligentsia these days, so, as the party conference season gets under way today, I thought I'd have a bash myself.
Socialism was never set in stone. In postwar Britain it has been evolving, and a powerful influence on this evolution, especially under the leaderships of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has been something called “Christian socialism”: the belief that the democratic and liberal Left may have something to learn from, and contribute to, New Testament morality: the working out of God's purpose on Earth. After all, didn't Jesus say “sell all that thou hast and give to the poor”?
I'm not suggesting that most politicians on the Left are consciously motivated by biblical injunction, or are even active believers. It's more subliminal. Ours remains a predominantly Christian culture, with Gospel beliefs about fairness, mercy and helping the poor, sick and weak, embedded deeply among our values; as is a tendency to ennoble suffering, and a guilt about wealth.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, all of us have drunk deep at this well. It does not take the subtlest of minds to make a connection between these values, and the socialist political imperative to redistribute wealth, and care for all classes. Both aim, in their outcomes, for humanitarian goals.
Background
But this apparent convergence of purposes is a deception. Far from reinforcing true socialism, Christian socialism has ambushed it, subverting its original message and wrecking it as a viable philosophy of government in a market-driven age.
Marx is about power. Christianity is about charity. Marx is about the authority of the collective. Christian liberalism is about the individual conscience. Marx is about justice. Christian humanitarianism is about mercy. The common causes in which Christians, liberals and socialists have tried to reconcile their differences - personal freedom, the redistribution of wealth and the beneficent State - have in Christian hands proved ruinous to the socialist idea: softening its head, picking its pocket, throwing good money after bad, nursing the weak and neglecting the winners, hearkening to disability and turning away from ability, and leaching its energies into a welter of simpering charitable causes. For most of the second half of the 20th century, Western socialism has hovered around the bedside of the victim, the loser and the marginalised. To win, it should have been outdoors, exhorting the strong.
This wheelchair socialism has sucked the Centre Left into spending people's taxes on unproductive causes, and associating itself with failure rather than success. Nietzsche characterised the driving Christian ethic thus: “It lived on distress...” H.L.Mencken added: “God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.”
It's not for me, here, to defend or attack the Church's absorption with the Prodigal Son rather than his industrious brother, the single lost sheep rather than the rest of the flock; or the way Christianity has made victimhood on the Cross both its mascot and its guiding light. I simply observe that this has absolutely nothing to do with what Marx was trying to say. Socialism was a most unsqueamish creed. If it wished to redistribute wealth, that was not for reasons of mercy but because Marx saw capitalism as a machine doomed to seize up: whereas mankind would fire on all cylinders if labour realised and exercised its potential muscle, and all men pulled together.
A socialist true to these roots, sitting in a modern British Cabinet, and faced with a decision whether to channel Treasury money into (a) scientific research; (b) transport infrastructure; (c) free bus passes for pensioners; or (d) a subsidised national paternity-leave scheme, could weigh socialist arguments for any or all of these purposes; but Christian charity, compassion, or a human-rights-based notion of “fairness” would not be among them.
Properly understood, socialist priorities should never be divorced from considerations of how most effectively to motivate citizens, oil the cogs and drive the pistons. Marx would have been contemptuous of the workshy and mildly uninterested in the disabled.
Nor would he have shared Christian socialism's tenderness for the outcast, for individual conscience, and for liberty. Socialism should see little value in personal freedom except in so far as it contributes to the collective good.
Central to socialism is the power of the collective (for the moment, the State): the power to improve the common lot, overriding the individual where necessary. This case for muscular government has always been stronger than we free-market liberals have wanted to acknowledge. Perversely, as socialist movements flounder everywhere, the case for muscular government is actually getting stronger.
This is not an ideological movement I would join, and in a post-industrial age its fixation with organised labour is redundant, but in other ways it remains a perfectly modern if brutal idea that deserves a confident voice in the century ahead.
Not that you would know it from the state of the Labour Party. I'm not in the business of advising Gordon Brown on how to save his skin; that battle is lost. The next election is lost. The election may come sooner than we think - how many more Siobhain McDonaghs wait to fall on their swords?
After that election, a Left Opposition will need to find a voice. It will not hear it from the Manse. It needs to find a crowd. They will not be discovered sleeping rough. It needs to find a class. They will not be the underclass. It needs to find a national purpose. Fairness and Equality will not suffice; Sure Start is not enough.
There's no point trying to out-smooth David Cameron or out-compassion Nick Clegg. Away (the socialist should say) with caring and diversity: let's hear about investment, not subsidy; progress, not equality; about Crossrail (what's the betting Mr Brown cancels it?); about how Britain generates its own power, how we rescue our rail network from impending insolvency, how we get from London to Scotland by train in two hours, and how we stop the planning system throttling every big project; about how we develop a global positioning system that the Americans don't control, how we pay for better highways and uncongested streets with proper road pricing, and how we research and market carbon-free transport, heat and power.
Unless you believe in big, costly, muscular and intrusive government, your voice in all such national causes must be muted. There's a damn good case to be made for strong-arming by the State, and only the Left can make it. This is not a time for Bonhoeffer and playgroups, but for a Left which believes unashamedly in taking command."
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
War - What is it good for?
Peter Hitchens on ariel bombardment in general and Dresden in particular:
"Personally I am against this kind of war, which may achieve victories in the short term, but damages those who use it in the long-term. For it is the long-term that matters. Using bombs knowing that they will kill innocents is a deliberate act, and it is silly to pretend otherwise. Britain's decision to embark on the even more explicitly deliberate bombing of German civilians, taken in May 1940 and intensified hugely afterwards, is a serious stain on our national record. I think the knowledge that we used such methods has done serious damage to our general moral state ever since, and contributed to our post-war decline and diminishing self-respect, even though we have tended to try to deceive ourselves about what we did. It is still thought to be pretty bad taste to talk about this.
The whole business is made somehow worse by the fact that the bombing was carried out with selfless courage by some of the bravest young men who ever lived, the bomber crews themselves, who believed they were helping to win the war and had quite enough to think about without wondering what their incendiaries and high explosive were doing, thousands of feet below. Their contribution to defeating Germany is debatable. My own view is that it probably did not shorten the war at all, but I doubt if this can ever be resolved. The casualties among those flyers were appalling, the worst since the mass human sacrifice of the flower of British youth on the Somme in 1916, and just as wasteful of young talent and hope. As for what happened when their bombs hit the ground, most people prefer not to know.
And who can blame them? The details (unhinged mothers carrying the shrivelled corpses of their bomb-baked children around the country in suitcases, immense clouds of bluebottles gathering on the rubble as the thousands of dead decomposed) are beginning to be published in mainstream histories and they are deeply distressing to anyone who possesses an ounce of human sympathy. The fact that most of the victims were the German urban working class ( who as Social Democrats had been Hitler's principal democratic opponents) makes it difficult to claim that the bombing was some sort of judgement on the Nazis. I'd like to see how much courage most of us would have shown faced with a similar regime, and how we would then have felt if we'd been bombed to bits, or baked and suffocated in cellars, for the misdeeds of a government we loathed and feared.
The protests of George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, against this method of warfare were sneered at, at the time, but seem to me to have been both honourable and right. Bell was no simpleton pacifist. He was a long-term friend and contact of German Christians who opposed Hitler, and if the British government had taken more notice of him and of what he told them, the July plot against Hitler, or something like it, might have succeeded and saved us a year of bloody war, as well as preventing Stalin taking over much of central Europe."
"Personally I am against this kind of war, which may achieve victories in the short term, but damages those who use it in the long-term. For it is the long-term that matters. Using bombs knowing that they will kill innocents is a deliberate act, and it is silly to pretend otherwise. Britain's decision to embark on the even more explicitly deliberate bombing of German civilians, taken in May 1940 and intensified hugely afterwards, is a serious stain on our national record. I think the knowledge that we used such methods has done serious damage to our general moral state ever since, and contributed to our post-war decline and diminishing self-respect, even though we have tended to try to deceive ourselves about what we did. It is still thought to be pretty bad taste to talk about this.
The whole business is made somehow worse by the fact that the bombing was carried out with selfless courage by some of the bravest young men who ever lived, the bomber crews themselves, who believed they were helping to win the war and had quite enough to think about without wondering what their incendiaries and high explosive were doing, thousands of feet below. Their contribution to defeating Germany is debatable. My own view is that it probably did not shorten the war at all, but I doubt if this can ever be resolved. The casualties among those flyers were appalling, the worst since the mass human sacrifice of the flower of British youth on the Somme in 1916, and just as wasteful of young talent and hope. As for what happened when their bombs hit the ground, most people prefer not to know.
And who can blame them? The details (unhinged mothers carrying the shrivelled corpses of their bomb-baked children around the country in suitcases, immense clouds of bluebottles gathering on the rubble as the thousands of dead decomposed) are beginning to be published in mainstream histories and they are deeply distressing to anyone who possesses an ounce of human sympathy. The fact that most of the victims were the German urban working class ( who as Social Democrats had been Hitler's principal democratic opponents) makes it difficult to claim that the bombing was some sort of judgement on the Nazis. I'd like to see how much courage most of us would have shown faced with a similar regime, and how we would then have felt if we'd been bombed to bits, or baked and suffocated in cellars, for the misdeeds of a government we loathed and feared.
The protests of George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, against this method of warfare were sneered at, at the time, but seem to me to have been both honourable and right. Bell was no simpleton pacifist. He was a long-term friend and contact of German Christians who opposed Hitler, and if the British government had taken more notice of him and of what he told them, the July plot against Hitler, or something like it, might have succeeded and saved us a year of bloody war, as well as preventing Stalin taking over much of central Europe."
Sarah Palin - The Debate
Ok then! On the Right of this debate we have none other than Melanie Phillips, declaring her admiration and support for Republican VP Sarah Palin:
A Star is Born
The woman is a natural. Watch her performance last night here -- and you'll see why the left is in such a panic.
Middle America has found its champion: someone who embodies its values and makes it proud to hold them. She has pulled off something that the left assumed was as likely a development as the sun rising in the west: she makes conservatism attractive, optimistic and fun. She is totally authentic, the real deal: she turns the values of small-town America that she so proudly embodies into a lethal boomerang against the sneering elitists who scorn them. The repercussions will cross the Atlantic: British Tories who have tried to reinvent conservatism as social liberalism may well be sucking their teeth if Sarah Palin actually makes it to the White House.
Well okay, say her detractors, so she’s a good performer -- but she’s still way out there in fruitcake-land because she’s a creationist. Well, if she is I’d like to see the evidence -- because so far all I’ve seen is one statement by her which falls far short of supporting creationism, plus enormous confusion and ignorance among commentators about what creationism actually is. As far as I can see, all she has ever said on the subject, as reported in the Anchorage Daily News two years ago, is that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in schools. The following day she explained that all she had meant by that was that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms: ‘I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum’.
She would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum. She simply didn’t think that any views should be excluded on the basis of religious or scientific opinion. It seemed that she had never even thought much about creationism. She was simply expressing a liberal view about the flow of ideas.
But here’s where the confusion among commentators kicks in. Palin is a Christian, which means she believes that the world had a Creator. She shares that belief with other Christians along with Jews and Muslims the world over. Unless one takes the view that all religious belief is certifiable, there is nothing remotely odd about a person of faith believing in God. Indeed, one might say this is a prerequisite (unless one happens to belong to the Church of England). But various commentators have committed the howler of assuming that belief in a Creator is creationism. Not so. Creationism is very specifically the belief that the world was literally created in six days. Millions of believers in God agree that this is absurd and irrational.
Then there is the further confusion – fomented in large measure by the astoundingly ignorant assertions made by lawyers and judges in the various US court cases over the teaching of creationism in American schools – that creationism is the same thing as Intelligent Design. It is not. Intelligent Design simply holds that life could not have originated spontaneously, but must have been at source the product of some kind of purposeful force. It does not deny evolution, rather the claim that evolution somehow spontaneously created itself. It is a view held by growing numbers of scientists, several of great distinction, and arises out of the very complexity of life that science has uncovered. Whether or not this is a well-founded theory it cannot be argued that, like creationism, it stands in opposition to science and reason. Yet the furore over Sarah Palin has persistently elided both creationism and ID with each other and with her actual belief in a Creator.
Maybe she is a creationist – but so far it’s just another smear."
And on the centre Left here is Oliver Kamm, no Palin fan, disagreeing with Melanie Phillips on more or less everything:
"I'm sorry to write yet again on this subject. But before moving on, I'll comment on a relevant and enthusiastic post about Sarah Palin, entitled "A star is born", by the Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips on her Spectator blog. And before doing that, I'll say a word about the author herself.
I know, like and respect Melanie. She has shown a good deal of courage in expounding her views on, among other things, the threat of radical Islam - an issue of immense importance on which she is essentially right, and about which she has been writing for a long time. I'm very much in disagreement, however, with her view that "if liberal values and democracy are to be defended, their Christian roots have to be vigorously defended, upheld and reasserted". On the contrary, one of the most vital principles of liberalism is the secularist insistence, codified in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, that there be no religious test for public office.
Christianity has proved compatible with literally any ideology, even in recent history: consider the racist justifications for apartheid offered by the Dutch Reformed Church; the Social Gospel preached by the Baptist reformer Walter Rauschenbusch; or the strong Tory pro-appeasement sentiments of Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1930s. I'm not concerned in public affairs with people's beliefs about first and last things, but only with whether they accept the implict social contract on which a free society depends. Moderate religion, whether or not you find its doctrines credible, accommodates itself to secular education and secular government, and is thereby a matter of private conscience.
And here we come to the issue of Melanie's post. Melanie believes that Sarah Palin is the victim of a smear campaign to suggest that she is a biblical Creationist. For my part, I'm not convinced - because the relevant data are not in the public realm, as far as I can see - that Governor Palin, whatever her faith, has made her accommodation with the secular principles that are integral to American goverment. The reason I'm not convinced is that she is on record, in public debate for an elected post, as stating that Creationism should be taught alongside evolutionary biology. This is not disputed by Melanie.
I've said nothing about whether Ms Palin is herself a Creationist; I don't know whether she is or not. But if she believes that religious dogma belongs in science education - possibly for a non-religious principle, such as not offending the sensibilities of believers - then her position is illiberal and must be opposed. To raise this question is not a smear, as Melanie believes. It's an important issue of public policy. And because Melanie has certainly and demonstrably misunderstood both the science and the pseudoscience in question, I hope she will reconsider her views."
A Star is Born
The woman is a natural. Watch her performance last night here -- and you'll see why the left is in such a panic.
Middle America has found its champion: someone who embodies its values and makes it proud to hold them. She has pulled off something that the left assumed was as likely a development as the sun rising in the west: she makes conservatism attractive, optimistic and fun. She is totally authentic, the real deal: she turns the values of small-town America that she so proudly embodies into a lethal boomerang against the sneering elitists who scorn them. The repercussions will cross the Atlantic: British Tories who have tried to reinvent conservatism as social liberalism may well be sucking their teeth if Sarah Palin actually makes it to the White House.
Well okay, say her detractors, so she’s a good performer -- but she’s still way out there in fruitcake-land because she’s a creationist. Well, if she is I’d like to see the evidence -- because so far all I’ve seen is one statement by her which falls far short of supporting creationism, plus enormous confusion and ignorance among commentators about what creationism actually is. As far as I can see, all she has ever said on the subject, as reported in the Anchorage Daily News two years ago, is that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in schools. The following day she explained that all she had meant by that was that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms: ‘I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum’.
She would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum. She simply didn’t think that any views should be excluded on the basis of religious or scientific opinion. It seemed that she had never even thought much about creationism. She was simply expressing a liberal view about the flow of ideas.
But here’s where the confusion among commentators kicks in. Palin is a Christian, which means she believes that the world had a Creator. She shares that belief with other Christians along with Jews and Muslims the world over. Unless one takes the view that all religious belief is certifiable, there is nothing remotely odd about a person of faith believing in God. Indeed, one might say this is a prerequisite (unless one happens to belong to the Church of England). But various commentators have committed the howler of assuming that belief in a Creator is creationism. Not so. Creationism is very specifically the belief that the world was literally created in six days. Millions of believers in God agree that this is absurd and irrational.
Then there is the further confusion – fomented in large measure by the astoundingly ignorant assertions made by lawyers and judges in the various US court cases over the teaching of creationism in American schools – that creationism is the same thing as Intelligent Design. It is not. Intelligent Design simply holds that life could not have originated spontaneously, but must have been at source the product of some kind of purposeful force. It does not deny evolution, rather the claim that evolution somehow spontaneously created itself. It is a view held by growing numbers of scientists, several of great distinction, and arises out of the very complexity of life that science has uncovered. Whether or not this is a well-founded theory it cannot be argued that, like creationism, it stands in opposition to science and reason. Yet the furore over Sarah Palin has persistently elided both creationism and ID with each other and with her actual belief in a Creator.
Maybe she is a creationist – but so far it’s just another smear."
And on the centre Left here is Oliver Kamm, no Palin fan, disagreeing with Melanie Phillips on more or less everything:
"I'm sorry to write yet again on this subject. But before moving on, I'll comment on a relevant and enthusiastic post about Sarah Palin, entitled "A star is born", by the Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips on her Spectator blog. And before doing that, I'll say a word about the author herself.
I know, like and respect Melanie. She has shown a good deal of courage in expounding her views on, among other things, the threat of radical Islam - an issue of immense importance on which she is essentially right, and about which she has been writing for a long time. I'm very much in disagreement, however, with her view that "if liberal values and democracy are to be defended, their Christian roots have to be vigorously defended, upheld and reasserted". On the contrary, one of the most vital principles of liberalism is the secularist insistence, codified in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, that there be no religious test for public office.
Christianity has proved compatible with literally any ideology, even in recent history: consider the racist justifications for apartheid offered by the Dutch Reformed Church; the Social Gospel preached by the Baptist reformer Walter Rauschenbusch; or the strong Tory pro-appeasement sentiments of Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1930s. I'm not concerned in public affairs with people's beliefs about first and last things, but only with whether they accept the implict social contract on which a free society depends. Moderate religion, whether or not you find its doctrines credible, accommodates itself to secular education and secular government, and is thereby a matter of private conscience.
And here we come to the issue of Melanie's post. Melanie believes that Sarah Palin is the victim of a smear campaign to suggest that she is a biblical Creationist. For my part, I'm not convinced - because the relevant data are not in the public realm, as far as I can see - that Governor Palin, whatever her faith, has made her accommodation with the secular principles that are integral to American goverment. The reason I'm not convinced is that she is on record, in public debate for an elected post, as stating that Creationism should be taught alongside evolutionary biology. This is not disputed by Melanie.
I've said nothing about whether Ms Palin is herself a Creationist; I don't know whether she is or not. But if she believes that religious dogma belongs in science education - possibly for a non-religious principle, such as not offending the sensibilities of believers - then her position is illiberal and must be opposed. To raise this question is not a smear, as Melanie believes. It's an important issue of public policy. And because Melanie has certainly and demonstrably misunderstood both the science and the pseudoscience in question, I hope she will reconsider her views."
Monday, September 08, 2008
Beware of statistics
BBC News is running a weekly ongoing series of articles that describe and illustrate common misconceptions (and manipulations) of statistics using examples from the news and ads.
There's an index of these articles here.
There's an index of these articles here.
Friday, September 05, 2008
US Election - check, please!
I last posted this link 4 years ago, but it's that time again. Anyone interested in the US election should bookmark this site.
http://www.factcheck.org
Because right now the focus is on the Republican National Convention, it may look like it's particularly pro Obama, but if you scroll down, you'll see that they go after the anointed One's lies and distortions too.
(Oh, and in the interests of declaring my own bias - "Obama '08!!!!")
http://www.factcheck.org
Because right now the focus is on the Republican National Convention, it may look like it's particularly pro Obama, but if you scroll down, you'll see that they go after the anointed One's lies and distortions too.
(Oh, and in the interests of declaring my own bias - "Obama '08!!!!")
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Great Olympics Debate
Two counter posing views on what Britain's Olympics success means.
In the Blue corner we have Peter Hitchens, a man for whom the glass is always half empty:
"Isn’t this British Olympic boasting all rather East German?
Huge state-directed resources have been devoted to gathering supposed glory at a world sports festival.
But these medals do not tell the truth about what sort of nation we are at all. [...]
East Germany had a similar aim when it spent millions to produce medal winners.
The country itself was a backward, dirty dump, run by horrible old men and women, shrouded in a smog of two-stroke exhaust, brown coal smoke and cabbage fumes.
But at the Olympics it managed to appear to be modern, clean, youthful and bright.
And we have to pretend that Olympic success matters, just as they did, because we have nothing else to be proud of.
We achieve this by levying a tax on the sad, the deluded and the hopeless, called the National Lottery, and spending the money bamboozled out of these poor people on velodromes where cyclists dressed as spacemen whizz endlessly round under the cold gaze of ruthless trainers.
And how odd it is that all this effort, all this money and talent should have been devoted to succeeding in a contest which is, deep down, quite meaningless.
Politicians of all the Liberal Elite parties join in praising the way it has been done. Yet if anyone advocates the same methods in our State education system – ruthless selection, encouragement of the best, harsh discipline, no tolerance of failure – he is dismissed by the same politicians as an ‘elitist’.
Well, excuse me, but isn’t it far more important that we survive as an economy and a society in this hard, competitive and increasingly merciless world than that we gain a few shiny knick-knacks in an athletics meeting?
Let John Major, Michael Gove, Gordon Brown, Tessa Jowell and the rest of the supporters of comprehensive schools and diluted exams and socialised university entrance apply their principles to Britain’s 2012 Olympic team.
Your parents went to university? You’re rejected, so as to give an opportunity to someone who can’t swim as fast but needs encouragement.
You went to a private school? You’re rejected, too. We can’t have any privilege here, even if your parents bankrupted themselves to pay the fees. Your place will go to someone slower and less fit.
You passed a tough test way ahead of the others? Sorry, you’ll just have to go at the speed of the slowest in a mixed-ability training squad.
You’re talented but you live in a poor area? Too bad. All our best training schemes are in rich suburbs.
Your training is constantly interrupted by bullying, swearing and loutish behaviour? Too bad. Here’s a copy of our ‘anti-bullying policy’.
You’re doing really well? No help for you, then. Our concern is for equality, not excellence.
You’re slow, undisciplined, disruptive and no good? Have a special trainer and lots of resources.
If we nurtured our Olympic hopefuls the way we educate our children, the only role they’d have in any Games would be sweeping up litter in the stadium.
I have seldom seen a better example of an entire country getting its priorities wrong.
The day will come, and quite soon, when we win no medals and realise what we have become.
But I suspect, by then, it will be too late.'
Hoorah for Hitchens! When the country's basking in the sunny glow of all of those golds he comes along with a ruddy great black storm cloud.
In the red corner we have the New Labour apologist and Times Columnist, David Aaronovitch:
"One must be empathic. If I was a rank-and-file reactionary Conservative, forced to swallow political failure for more than a decade, and now permitted, lizard-like, to come out of my smelly culvert to claim a place on the sunny rock, I might let the light go to my head too. I might preen my scales and tell tales of the decline - no, the breaking - of Britain under Labour.
But one can take empathy too far. It seems impossible to counter the triumphal gloominess of the old Right with anything as feeble, as unconvincing, as facts. The best figures available show crime has gone down, but we know, we know, we know it has gone up! The best figures available suggest improving performance at GCSE and A levels, but we know, we know, we know that this is because of a dilution in standards!
Then along come the Olympics, and the national narrative, for a moment, no longer favours the lizard class and its story of decline. So let me make the most of it, in this short interval before pessimism sets in again. In 1996, after 17 years of Conservative government, the past six under the premiership of the cricketing Major, Great Britain went to the Atlanta Olympics and won precisely one gold medal. We ended that Games in 36th position, just behind Ethiopia and just ahead of Belarus. It wasn't just that Greece did better than us - Kazakhstan got four golds. If one were to take the Olympics as any kind of indicator of national health (and why should we not?) we would have to conclude that the past 12 years have been very well spent. And if Gordon Brown is to get it in the neck for every ill, real and imagined, why should he not get some credit for this?
Of course, I know it's not as simple as that, and I can acknowledge that the National Lottery, set up by John Major in 1994, is likely to have been a big factor in our changed sporting fortunes. But however we divide up the accolades (other than to the sporting men and women themselves), what seems clear, to me and to Boris Johnson, is that this success hardly points to our living in some kind of brutalised, boneless pre-dystopia.
[...]
If the “broken society” only means that there are places where there is too much poverty and crime, and that any death caused by a knife or a gun is a tragedy then, this side of Paradise, it means nothing. This is the peculiarly irritating aspect of the phrase. To take just one side of modern Britain with which I am familiar now that my drinking days are over, hundreds of thousands of Britons are involved, as participants or supporters, in scores of sporting events: marathons, half-marathons, ten-kilometre runs, bikeathons, triathlons, duathlons, from Orkney to the Isle of Wight. Some are athletes, some are motivated by charity, some - like me - are recovering lard-arses. Are they part of a broken society?
I was struck this week by Adam Sage's story in these pages about the French families who are sending their children to learn English by staying with British families in France. They speak English in the home and then go horse-riding in the safety of France. “I don't want to say bad things about Britain, but you do hear horror stories about children sent to stay with families there,” remarked one French teacher. But I would be prepared to bet that what really motivates such Gallic fearfulness is media coverage of the supposed brokenness of Britain.
Fine. How many times have we been told that there are two Olympic-size swimming pools in the whole of Britain and 29 (or something improbable) in Paris alone? So how come we came third in the swimming medals and the French came ninth? Are they 20 times as broken as we are?
The lizards may get their new government. If so it should begin its rule by admitting what its predecessors - the party of 2012 - got right."
In the Blue corner we have Peter Hitchens, a man for whom the glass is always half empty:
"Isn’t this British Olympic boasting all rather East German?
Huge state-directed resources have been devoted to gathering supposed glory at a world sports festival.
But these medals do not tell the truth about what sort of nation we are at all. [...]
East Germany had a similar aim when it spent millions to produce medal winners.
The country itself was a backward, dirty dump, run by horrible old men and women, shrouded in a smog of two-stroke exhaust, brown coal smoke and cabbage fumes.
But at the Olympics it managed to appear to be modern, clean, youthful and bright.
And we have to pretend that Olympic success matters, just as they did, because we have nothing else to be proud of.
We achieve this by levying a tax on the sad, the deluded and the hopeless, called the National Lottery, and spending the money bamboozled out of these poor people on velodromes where cyclists dressed as spacemen whizz endlessly round under the cold gaze of ruthless trainers.
And how odd it is that all this effort, all this money and talent should have been devoted to succeeding in a contest which is, deep down, quite meaningless.
Politicians of all the Liberal Elite parties join in praising the way it has been done. Yet if anyone advocates the same methods in our State education system – ruthless selection, encouragement of the best, harsh discipline, no tolerance of failure – he is dismissed by the same politicians as an ‘elitist’.
Well, excuse me, but isn’t it far more important that we survive as an economy and a society in this hard, competitive and increasingly merciless world than that we gain a few shiny knick-knacks in an athletics meeting?
Let John Major, Michael Gove, Gordon Brown, Tessa Jowell and the rest of the supporters of comprehensive schools and diluted exams and socialised university entrance apply their principles to Britain’s 2012 Olympic team.
Your parents went to university? You’re rejected, so as to give an opportunity to someone who can’t swim as fast but needs encouragement.
You went to a private school? You’re rejected, too. We can’t have any privilege here, even if your parents bankrupted themselves to pay the fees. Your place will go to someone slower and less fit.
You passed a tough test way ahead of the others? Sorry, you’ll just have to go at the speed of the slowest in a mixed-ability training squad.
You’re talented but you live in a poor area? Too bad. All our best training schemes are in rich suburbs.
Your training is constantly interrupted by bullying, swearing and loutish behaviour? Too bad. Here’s a copy of our ‘anti-bullying policy’.
You’re doing really well? No help for you, then. Our concern is for equality, not excellence.
You’re slow, undisciplined, disruptive and no good? Have a special trainer and lots of resources.
If we nurtured our Olympic hopefuls the way we educate our children, the only role they’d have in any Games would be sweeping up litter in the stadium.
I have seldom seen a better example of an entire country getting its priorities wrong.
The day will come, and quite soon, when we win no medals and realise what we have become.
But I suspect, by then, it will be too late.'
Hoorah for Hitchens! When the country's basking in the sunny glow of all of those golds he comes along with a ruddy great black storm cloud.
In the red corner we have the New Labour apologist and Times Columnist, David Aaronovitch:
"One must be empathic. If I was a rank-and-file reactionary Conservative, forced to swallow political failure for more than a decade, and now permitted, lizard-like, to come out of my smelly culvert to claim a place on the sunny rock, I might let the light go to my head too. I might preen my scales and tell tales of the decline - no, the breaking - of Britain under Labour.
But one can take empathy too far. It seems impossible to counter the triumphal gloominess of the old Right with anything as feeble, as unconvincing, as facts. The best figures available show crime has gone down, but we know, we know, we know it has gone up! The best figures available suggest improving performance at GCSE and A levels, but we know, we know, we know that this is because of a dilution in standards!
Then along come the Olympics, and the national narrative, for a moment, no longer favours the lizard class and its story of decline. So let me make the most of it, in this short interval before pessimism sets in again. In 1996, after 17 years of Conservative government, the past six under the premiership of the cricketing Major, Great Britain went to the Atlanta Olympics and won precisely one gold medal. We ended that Games in 36th position, just behind Ethiopia and just ahead of Belarus. It wasn't just that Greece did better than us - Kazakhstan got four golds. If one were to take the Olympics as any kind of indicator of national health (and why should we not?) we would have to conclude that the past 12 years have been very well spent. And if Gordon Brown is to get it in the neck for every ill, real and imagined, why should he not get some credit for this?
Of course, I know it's not as simple as that, and I can acknowledge that the National Lottery, set up by John Major in 1994, is likely to have been a big factor in our changed sporting fortunes. But however we divide up the accolades (other than to the sporting men and women themselves), what seems clear, to me and to Boris Johnson, is that this success hardly points to our living in some kind of brutalised, boneless pre-dystopia.
[...]
If the “broken society” only means that there are places where there is too much poverty and crime, and that any death caused by a knife or a gun is a tragedy then, this side of Paradise, it means nothing. This is the peculiarly irritating aspect of the phrase. To take just one side of modern Britain with which I am familiar now that my drinking days are over, hundreds of thousands of Britons are involved, as participants or supporters, in scores of sporting events: marathons, half-marathons, ten-kilometre runs, bikeathons, triathlons, duathlons, from Orkney to the Isle of Wight. Some are athletes, some are motivated by charity, some - like me - are recovering lard-arses. Are they part of a broken society?
I was struck this week by Adam Sage's story in these pages about the French families who are sending their children to learn English by staying with British families in France. They speak English in the home and then go horse-riding in the safety of France. “I don't want to say bad things about Britain, but you do hear horror stories about children sent to stay with families there,” remarked one French teacher. But I would be prepared to bet that what really motivates such Gallic fearfulness is media coverage of the supposed brokenness of Britain.
Fine. How many times have we been told that there are two Olympic-size swimming pools in the whole of Britain and 29 (or something improbable) in Paris alone? So how come we came third in the swimming medals and the French came ninth? Are they 20 times as broken as we are?
The lizards may get their new government. If so it should begin its rule by admitting what its predecessors - the party of 2012 - got right."
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Obama vs McCain
Like many non Americans watching the presidential contest, if I'm honest with myself, the emotional side of me wants Obama to win. The young charismatic black contender winning the election is a more inspiring and exciting result than it's alternative a very old white guy becoming President of the United States. So when I read that McCain is leading in the opinion polls my heart kind of sinks. Now this isn't really rational I admit it, but I still can't quite shake it. Anyway, this is all by way of introducing this opinion piece in the FT which gives some hard and realistic advice to Obama - ditch the poetry and promise to defeat evil:
Tips for Obama: no poetry, promise to defeat evil
By Edward Luce
At the civil forum on faith last week, Barack Obama was asked whether evil existed and, if so, whether we should “ignore it, contain it, negotiate with it or defeat it?”
The Democratic presidential nominee gave a nuanced answer that suggested that evil “should be confronted” but that we should have “some humility” in doing so “because, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil”.
John McCain’s answer was: “Defeat it.” Although the Republican nominee followed up with his trademark promise to follow Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell”, all that anybody will recall is that Mr McCain answered the question in two plain words. And that Mr Obama did not. The same pattern was repeated when they were both asked when human life begins. “At conception,” said Mr McCain. “This, that, the other, and every other Tuesday,” said Mr Obama (OK, that was a paraphrase).
Leaving aside whether these are remotely appropriate questions for campaigning politicians (this is America, remember), most thoughtful people would prefer Mr Obama’s calibrated musings on matters of such complexity. But as Adlai Stevenson, the perennial Democratic presidential candidate, once quipped after being told that thinking people were supporting him: “Yes, but I need to win a majority.” He never did.
At next week’s Democratic convention in Denver, which promises to be the grandest convention since John F. Kennedy pipped Mr Stevenson to the nomination in 1960, Mr Obama will have his biggest opportunity so far to silence those who doubt his ability to speak in simple declarative sentences to ordinary voters. It is an opportunity he must not flunk.
Mindful of what happened to the Hamlet-esque candidacies of Al Gore and John Kerry, even some of Mr Obama’s strongest supporters are beginning to doubt whether he can. Take this, not untypical, offering from Margery Eagan, a self-confessed “Obama cheerleader”, in Friday’s Boston Herald: “I wish he’d save nuance and sanctimony for senior seminars; give America some straight answers; crack some jokes at his own high-horse expense; convince me he’s up to this . . . That’s what McCain’s done lately. It’s working.”
The auguries are mixed. By choosing to move his acceptance speech in Denver next Thursday from the convention hall to the Invesco stadium, because the latter can accommodate 75,000 people, Mr Obama has signalled that he plans to deliver one of his Berlin specials. Some Democrats believe that another mellifluous, highly oratorical Obama address to a mass adoring rally is precisely what will turn off the blue-collar voter.
As Bill Galston, a veteran of Democratic campaigns, puts it: “If Obama’s speech scores high on artistry and aesthetics, then we have a problem, Houston.” Better for Mr Obama to swallow his instincts and model himself on George W. Bush, whose constant repetition of simple themes – short on artistry and sometimes even grammar – broke through to the average voter.
“George W. announced his candidacy with a list of four or five promises of what he would do as president,” says Mr Galston. “Eighteen months later he was still repeating the same list in the same words.”
In his struggle to portray himself as empathetic to middle-class Americans’ needs, Mr Obama may be tempted to believe that Mr McCain has already done some of his work for him. By failing to recall, in an interview on Thursday, how many houses he owned and then asking his staff to check on it, Mr McCain presented his opponent with something of a windfall. The correct answer was “none” because all eight of the McCain properties are in the name of his wealthy wife, Cindy.
But such windfalls do not come often. And given most people’s low expectations for his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Minneapolis the following week, all Mr McCain will need to do is give a clear address having avoided falling over on the way to the podium. Beating low expectations is another Bush speciality. Exceeding high ones, as Mr Obama must do, is a more serious challenge altogether.
Here is a simple outline of what Mr Obama should do. Many people doubt whether he can emulate Bill Clinton’s ability to persuade voters that he can “feel their pain”. Such people are now being told by the McCain campaign that Mr Obama is an “arugula [rocket]-eating, pointy-headed professor type” who lives in a “frickin mansion”.
Mr Obama should therefore do what quiche-eating Ivy-League types are not supposed to do and display some real anger. He should postpone until the presidential inauguration next January any more suggestion that “we are the ones – the ones we have been waiting for” and remind people in simple terms of who he is and then link it with what he intends to do. He must spell out again and again that he was raised by a single mother who relied on food stamps.
He should contrast this with Mr McCain’s privileged background as the son and grandson of admirals and the spouse of a woman worth more than $100m. And he should promise to defeat evil. That always goes down well. Then he should get up the next day and do the same thing all over again. And again. Until we are all saying it in our sleep.
The writer is the FT’s Washington bureau chief "
Tips for Obama: no poetry, promise to defeat evil
By Edward Luce
At the civil forum on faith last week, Barack Obama was asked whether evil existed and, if so, whether we should “ignore it, contain it, negotiate with it or defeat it?”
The Democratic presidential nominee gave a nuanced answer that suggested that evil “should be confronted” but that we should have “some humility” in doing so “because, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil”.
John McCain’s answer was: “Defeat it.” Although the Republican nominee followed up with his trademark promise to follow Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell”, all that anybody will recall is that Mr McCain answered the question in two plain words. And that Mr Obama did not. The same pattern was repeated when they were both asked when human life begins. “At conception,” said Mr McCain. “This, that, the other, and every other Tuesday,” said Mr Obama (OK, that was a paraphrase).
Leaving aside whether these are remotely appropriate questions for campaigning politicians (this is America, remember), most thoughtful people would prefer Mr Obama’s calibrated musings on matters of such complexity. But as Adlai Stevenson, the perennial Democratic presidential candidate, once quipped after being told that thinking people were supporting him: “Yes, but I need to win a majority.” He never did.
At next week’s Democratic convention in Denver, which promises to be the grandest convention since John F. Kennedy pipped Mr Stevenson to the nomination in 1960, Mr Obama will have his biggest opportunity so far to silence those who doubt his ability to speak in simple declarative sentences to ordinary voters. It is an opportunity he must not flunk.
Mindful of what happened to the Hamlet-esque candidacies of Al Gore and John Kerry, even some of Mr Obama’s strongest supporters are beginning to doubt whether he can. Take this, not untypical, offering from Margery Eagan, a self-confessed “Obama cheerleader”, in Friday’s Boston Herald: “I wish he’d save nuance and sanctimony for senior seminars; give America some straight answers; crack some jokes at his own high-horse expense; convince me he’s up to this . . . That’s what McCain’s done lately. It’s working.”
The auguries are mixed. By choosing to move his acceptance speech in Denver next Thursday from the convention hall to the Invesco stadium, because the latter can accommodate 75,000 people, Mr Obama has signalled that he plans to deliver one of his Berlin specials. Some Democrats believe that another mellifluous, highly oratorical Obama address to a mass adoring rally is precisely what will turn off the blue-collar voter.
As Bill Galston, a veteran of Democratic campaigns, puts it: “If Obama’s speech scores high on artistry and aesthetics, then we have a problem, Houston.” Better for Mr Obama to swallow his instincts and model himself on George W. Bush, whose constant repetition of simple themes – short on artistry and sometimes even grammar – broke through to the average voter.
“George W. announced his candidacy with a list of four or five promises of what he would do as president,” says Mr Galston. “Eighteen months later he was still repeating the same list in the same words.”
In his struggle to portray himself as empathetic to middle-class Americans’ needs, Mr Obama may be tempted to believe that Mr McCain has already done some of his work for him. By failing to recall, in an interview on Thursday, how many houses he owned and then asking his staff to check on it, Mr McCain presented his opponent with something of a windfall. The correct answer was “none” because all eight of the McCain properties are in the name of his wealthy wife, Cindy.
But such windfalls do not come often. And given most people’s low expectations for his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Minneapolis the following week, all Mr McCain will need to do is give a clear address having avoided falling over on the way to the podium. Beating low expectations is another Bush speciality. Exceeding high ones, as Mr Obama must do, is a more serious challenge altogether.
Here is a simple outline of what Mr Obama should do. Many people doubt whether he can emulate Bill Clinton’s ability to persuade voters that he can “feel their pain”. Such people are now being told by the McCain campaign that Mr Obama is an “arugula [rocket]-eating, pointy-headed professor type” who lives in a “frickin mansion”.
Mr Obama should therefore do what quiche-eating Ivy-League types are not supposed to do and display some real anger. He should postpone until the presidential inauguration next January any more suggestion that “we are the ones – the ones we have been waiting for” and remind people in simple terms of who he is and then link it with what he intends to do. He must spell out again and again that he was raised by a single mother who relied on food stamps.
He should contrast this with Mr McCain’s privileged background as the son and grandson of admirals and the spouse of a woman worth more than $100m. And he should promise to defeat evil. That always goes down well. Then he should get up the next day and do the same thing all over again. And again. Until we are all saying it in our sleep.
The writer is the FT’s Washington bureau chief "
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
British anti-Americanism 'based on misconceptions'
British anti-Americanism 'based on misconceptions'
Telegraph
18 Aug 2008
British attitudes towards the United States are governed by ignorance of the facts on key issues such as crime, health care and foreign policy, according to a new survey.
A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states.
...
Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent.
more...
Telegraph
18 Aug 2008
British attitudes towards the United States are governed by ignorance of the facts on key issues such as crime, health care and foreign policy, according to a new survey.
A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states.
...
Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent.
more...
Arts subsidies - for or against?
I find this a fascinating question: should the Arts, predominately enjoyed by the rich and the middle classes, be funded by Tax payers' cash?
Self identified leftwing commentator Oliver Kamm argues in defence of Opera subsidies (comments are interesting):
"In defence of opera subsidies
There used to be a Tory MP called Terry Dicks. He was so crude a right-wing populist that even Teddy Taylor, a veteran pro-hanger and anti-European, urgently disassociated himself from Dicks's views. Dicks's pet cause was hostility to public subsidy to the arts. The late Tony Banks said of him: "When he leaves the chamber, he probably goes to vandalise a few paintings somewhere. He is to the arts what Vlad the Impaler was to origami ... He is undoubtedly living proof that a pig's bladder on a stick can be elected as a Member of Parliament."
So I immediately thought of Dicks when I read Fraser Nelson of The Spectator referring - without irony - to opera subsidy as a middle class rip-off. Dicks was the last person I remember using that argument. Here's how Fraser resurrects it:
"Great moment on the Today programme this morning when John Major – without irony – told James Naughtie how great the National Lottery was because an opera lover like him could benefit from the money poured into the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. That deal was perhaps the most egregious example of cash transferred from poor people to rich people, but sadly typical of the regressive nature of arts funding. I can understand the logic behind supporting indigenous arts lest they die out, but why have British taxpayers subsidise the singing of songs written a hundred years ago in Italian or German? If the usually-rich people who tend to watch opera do not wish to fund the real cost of it, I have never seen why hard-pressed taxpayers should cover a chunk of the ticket price. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy opera, I just don’t see why other people should subsidise my night out any more than they should subsidise my holiday."
Oh dear. Leave aside the cultural nationalism and the assumption that opera is an activity for the affluent; if Fraser believes the value of a night at the opera is the recreation he gets out of it, then at a minimum he has misperceived the economics of the transaction. If the state were to withdraw from subsidising opera from taxation - and the lottery is of course a voluntary levy - then the cost of it would simply not be met by those who attend. The gap would be filled by business sponsorship, with a bias against new and experimental productions. Imagine the vacuous populism of Classic FM on, literally, a grand operatic scale.
If you think that opera is just an individual consumption good like your holiday destination, then that won't trouble you. But if you consider the arts are a public good, and not only a private choice, then there is an impeccable liberal case for subsidy, understood as "a network of implicit contracts, which it would be prohibitively expensive to negotiate explicitly, both because of transaction costs and because of the incentive to act as a free rider and leave others to finance the activities of which one privately approves". (The quotation comes from Sir Samuel Brittan, who uses the example of arts subsidy, in his book The Role and Limits of Government: Essays in Political Economy, 1983, p. 56.)
Posted by Oliver Kamm on August 19, 2008
Self identified leftwing commentator Oliver Kamm argues in defence of Opera subsidies (comments are interesting):
"In defence of opera subsidies
There used to be a Tory MP called Terry Dicks. He was so crude a right-wing populist that even Teddy Taylor, a veteran pro-hanger and anti-European, urgently disassociated himself from Dicks's views. Dicks's pet cause was hostility to public subsidy to the arts. The late Tony Banks said of him: "When he leaves the chamber, he probably goes to vandalise a few paintings somewhere. He is to the arts what Vlad the Impaler was to origami ... He is undoubtedly living proof that a pig's bladder on a stick can be elected as a Member of Parliament."
So I immediately thought of Dicks when I read Fraser Nelson of The Spectator referring - without irony - to opera subsidy as a middle class rip-off. Dicks was the last person I remember using that argument. Here's how Fraser resurrects it:
"Great moment on the Today programme this morning when John Major – without irony – told James Naughtie how great the National Lottery was because an opera lover like him could benefit from the money poured into the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. That deal was perhaps the most egregious example of cash transferred from poor people to rich people, but sadly typical of the regressive nature of arts funding. I can understand the logic behind supporting indigenous arts lest they die out, but why have British taxpayers subsidise the singing of songs written a hundred years ago in Italian or German? If the usually-rich people who tend to watch opera do not wish to fund the real cost of it, I have never seen why hard-pressed taxpayers should cover a chunk of the ticket price. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy opera, I just don’t see why other people should subsidise my night out any more than they should subsidise my holiday."
Oh dear. Leave aside the cultural nationalism and the assumption that opera is an activity for the affluent; if Fraser believes the value of a night at the opera is the recreation he gets out of it, then at a minimum he has misperceived the economics of the transaction. If the state were to withdraw from subsidising opera from taxation - and the lottery is of course a voluntary levy - then the cost of it would simply not be met by those who attend. The gap would be filled by business sponsorship, with a bias against new and experimental productions. Imagine the vacuous populism of Classic FM on, literally, a grand operatic scale.
If you think that opera is just an individual consumption good like your holiday destination, then that won't trouble you. But if you consider the arts are a public good, and not only a private choice, then there is an impeccable liberal case for subsidy, understood as "a network of implicit contracts, which it would be prohibitively expensive to negotiate explicitly, both because of transaction costs and because of the incentive to act as a free rider and leave others to finance the activities of which one privately approves". (The quotation comes from Sir Samuel Brittan, who uses the example of arts subsidy, in his book The Role and Limits of Government: Essays in Political Economy, 1983, p. 56.)
Posted by Oliver Kamm on August 19, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
To spell or not to spell...
... that is the question. Ken Smith, Senior Lecturer in Bucks University, argues that we should accept commonly misspelt words as 'variant spellings':
"Just spell it like it is
7 August 2008
Don't let students' howlers drive you mad, says Ken Smith. Accept their most common mistakes as variant spellings ... and relax
Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students' atrocious spelling. Aren't we all!?
But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea. University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.
The spelling of the word "judgement", for example, is now widely accepted as a variant of "judgment", so why can't "truely" be accepted as a variant spelling of "truly"?
As a starting point, may I suggest the following ten candidates, which are based on the most commonly misspelt words by my students:
- Arguement for argument. Why do we drop the "e" in argument (and in judgment) but not in management? We do not pronounce "argument" "ar-gum-ent", so why should we spell it this way?
- Febuary for February (and Wensday for Wednesday). We spell the word "February" the way we do only because it is taken from the Latin word februa, the Roman festival of purification. Similarly, the "correct" spelling of the word "Wednesday" comes from the Old English Wodnes daeg, or Woden's day. But why should we still pay homage today to a pagan god or a Roman festival of purification?
- Ignor for ignore. The word "ignore" comes from the Latin ignorare meaning "to know" and ignarus meaning "ignorant". Neither of these words has an "e" after the "r", so why do we?
- Occured for occurred. There is no second "r" in the words "occur" or "occurs" and that is why nearly everyone misspells this word. Would it really upset you to allow this change, and if so why?
- Opertunity for opportunity. This looks odd, but in fact we only spell "opportunity" as we do because in Latin this word refers to the timely arrival at a harbour - Latin portus. However in Latin this word is spelt obportus not opportus, so, if we were being consistent, we should spell "opportunity" as "obportunity".
- Que for queue, or better yet cue or even kew. Where did we get the second "ue" in the word "queue"? Its etymology is obscure. But, etymology or not, why do we need it?
- Speach for speech. We spell "speak" with an "ea". We do not have to but we do. Since we do, let us then spell "speech" with an "a" too, to coincide with the spelling of the words "peach", "preach" and "teach". Both words come from the same origin - the Old English spechan - which, therefore, does not support either the "ea" or "ee" spelling.
- Thier for their (or better still, why not just drop the word their altogether in favour of there?). It does not make any difference to the meaning of a sentence if you spell "their" as "thier" or "there", and the proof of this is that you are always able to correct this. "Thier" would also be consistent with the "i" before "e" rule, so why do you insist on "their"?
- Truely for truly. We don't spell the adverb "surely" as "surly" because this would make another word, so why is the adverb of "true" spelt "truly"?
- Twelth as twelfth. The "f" word. How on earth did that "f" get in there? The answer is Old English again: twelf is related to the Frisian tweli, but why should we care? You would not dream of spelling the words "stealth" or "wealth" with an "f" in them (as "stealfth" and "wealfth") so why insist on putting the "f" in "twelfth"?
I could go on and add another ten words that are commonly misspelt - the word "misspelt" itself of course, and all those others that break the "i" before "e" rule (weird, seize, leisure, neighbour, foreign etc) - but I think I have made my point.
Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such.
Remember, I am not asking you to learn to spell these words differently. All I am suggesting is that we might well put 20 or so of the most commonly misspelt words in the English language on the same footing as those other words that have a widely accepted variant spelling."
"Just spell it like it is
7 August 2008
Don't let students' howlers drive you mad, says Ken Smith. Accept their most common mistakes as variant spellings ... and relax
Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students' atrocious spelling. Aren't we all!?
But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea. University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.
The spelling of the word "judgement", for example, is now widely accepted as a variant of "judgment", so why can't "truely" be accepted as a variant spelling of "truly"?
As a starting point, may I suggest the following ten candidates, which are based on the most commonly misspelt words by my students:
- Arguement for argument. Why do we drop the "e" in argument (and in judgment) but not in management? We do not pronounce "argument" "ar-gum-ent", so why should we spell it this way?
- Febuary for February (and Wensday for Wednesday). We spell the word "February" the way we do only because it is taken from the Latin word februa, the Roman festival of purification. Similarly, the "correct" spelling of the word "Wednesday" comes from the Old English Wodnes daeg, or Woden's day. But why should we still pay homage today to a pagan god or a Roman festival of purification?
- Ignor for ignore. The word "ignore" comes from the Latin ignorare meaning "to know" and ignarus meaning "ignorant". Neither of these words has an "e" after the "r", so why do we?
- Occured for occurred. There is no second "r" in the words "occur" or "occurs" and that is why nearly everyone misspells this word. Would it really upset you to allow this change, and if so why?
- Opertunity for opportunity. This looks odd, but in fact we only spell "opportunity" as we do because in Latin this word refers to the timely arrival at a harbour - Latin portus. However in Latin this word is spelt obportus not opportus, so, if we were being consistent, we should spell "opportunity" as "obportunity".
- Que for queue, or better yet cue or even kew. Where did we get the second "ue" in the word "queue"? Its etymology is obscure. But, etymology or not, why do we need it?
- Speach for speech. We spell "speak" with an "ea". We do not have to but we do. Since we do, let us then spell "speech" with an "a" too, to coincide with the spelling of the words "peach", "preach" and "teach". Both words come from the same origin - the Old English spechan - which, therefore, does not support either the "ea" or "ee" spelling.
- Thier for their (or better still, why not just drop the word their altogether in favour of there?). It does not make any difference to the meaning of a sentence if you spell "their" as "thier" or "there", and the proof of this is that you are always able to correct this. "Thier" would also be consistent with the "i" before "e" rule, so why do you insist on "their"?
- Truely for truly. We don't spell the adverb "surely" as "surly" because this would make another word, so why is the adverb of "true" spelt "truly"?
- Twelth as twelfth. The "f" word. How on earth did that "f" get in there? The answer is Old English again: twelf is related to the Frisian tweli, but why should we care? You would not dream of spelling the words "stealth" or "wealth" with an "f" in them (as "stealfth" and "wealfth") so why insist on putting the "f" in "twelfth"?
I could go on and add another ten words that are commonly misspelt - the word "misspelt" itself of course, and all those others that break the "i" before "e" rule (weird, seize, leisure, neighbour, foreign etc) - but I think I have made my point.
Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such.
Remember, I am not asking you to learn to spell these words differently. All I am suggesting is that we might well put 20 or so of the most commonly misspelt words in the English language on the same footing as those other words that have a widely accepted variant spelling."
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Georgia invaded by Russia over South Ossetia
The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report
George Friedman
August 12, 2008
The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery. This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity for the Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential response of the United States or Europe; hence, the invasion did not shift the balance of power. The balance of power had already shifted, and it was up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that Aug. 8.
Let’s begin simply by reviewing the last few days.
On the night of Thursday, Aug. 7, forces of the Republic of Georgia drove across the border of South Ossetia, a secessionist region of Georgia that has functioned as an independent entity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The forces drove on to the capital, Tskhinvali, which is close to the border. Georgian forces got bogged down while trying to take the city. In spite of heavy fighting, they never fully secured the city, nor the rest of South Ossetia.
On the morning of Aug. 8, Russian forces entered South Ossetia, using armored and motorized infantry forces along with air power. South Ossetia was informally aligned with Russia, and Russia acted to prevent the region’s absorption by Georgia. Given the speed with which the Russians responded — within hours of the Georgian attack — the Russians were expecting the Georgian attack and were themselves at their jumping-off points. The counterattack was carefully planned and competently executed, and over the next 48 hours, the Russians succeeded in defeating the main Georgian force and forcing a retreat. By Sunday, Aug. 10, the Russians had consolidated their position in South Ossetia.
On Monday, the Russians extended their offensive into Georgia proper, attacking on two axes. One was south from South Ossetia to the Georgian city of Gori. The other drive was from Abkhazia, another secessionist region of Georgia aligned with the Russians. This drive was designed to cut the road between the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and its ports. By this point, the Russians had bombed the military airfields at Marneuli and Vaziani and appeared to have disabled radars at the international airport in Tbilisi. These moves brought Russian forces to within 40 miles of the Georgian capital, while making outside reinforcement and resupply of Georgian forces extremely difficult should anyone wish to undertake it.
THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE GEORGIAN INVASION
In this simple chronicle, there is something quite mysterious: Why did the Georgians choose to invade South Ossetia on Thursday night? There had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more intense than usual, artillery exchanges were routine. The Georgians might not have fought well, but they committed fairly substantial forces that must have taken at the very least several days to deploy and supply. Georgia’s move was deliberate.
The United States is Georgia’s closest ally. It maintained about 130 military advisers in Georgia, along with civilian advisers, contractors involved in all aspects of the Georgian government and people doing business in Georgia. It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia’s mobilization and intentions. It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. U.S. technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The Russians clearly knew the Georgians were ready to move. How could the United States not be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the posture of Russian troops, how could intelligence analysts have missed the possibility that the Russians had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian invasion to justify its own counterattack?
It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew of the Russian forces but — along with the Georgians — miscalculated Russia’s intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s-1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an invasion.
If this was the case, then it points to the central reality of this situation: The Russians had changed dramatically, along with the balance of power in the region. They welcomed the opportunity to drive home the new reality, which was that they could invade Georgia and the United States and Europe could not respond. As for risk, they did not view the invasion as risky. Militarily, there was no counter. Economically, Russia is an energy exporter doing quite well — indeed, the Europeans need Russian energy even more than the Russians need to sell it to them. Politically, as we shall see, the Americans needed the Russians more than the Russians needed the Americans. Moscow’s calculus was that this was the moment to strike. The Russians had been building up to it for months, as we have discussed, and they struck.
THE WESTERN ENCIRCLEMENT OF RUSSIA
To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The first is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the U.S. and European point of view, the Orange Revolution represented a triumph of democracy and Western influence. From the Russian point of view, as Moscow made clear, the Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded intrusion into the internal affairs of Ukraine, designed to draw Ukraine into NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia. U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had promised the Russians that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union empire.
That promise had already been broken in 1998 by NATO’s expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — and again in the 2004 expansion, which absorbed not only the rest of the former Soviet satellites in what is now Central Europe, but also the three Baltic states, which had been components of the Soviet Union.
The Russians had tolerated all that, but the discussion of including Ukraine in NATO represented a fundamental threat to Russia’s national security. It would have rendered Russia indefensible and threatened to destabilize the Russian Federation itself. When the United States went so far as to suggest that Georgia be included as well, bringing NATO deeper into the Caucasus, the Russian conclusion — publicly stated — was that the United States in particular intended to encircle and break Russia.
The second and lesser event was the decision by Europe and the United States to back Kosovo’s separation from Serbia. The Russians were friendly with Serbia, but the deeper issue for Russia was this: The principle of Europe since World War II was that, to prevent conflict, national borders would not be changed. If that principle were violated in Kosovo, other border shifts — including demands by various regions for independence from Russia — might follow. The Russians publicly and privately asked that Kosovo not be given formal independence, but instead continue its informal autonomy, which was the same thing in practical terms. Russia’s requests were ignored.
From the Ukrainian experience, the Russians became convinced that the United States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and strangulation of Russia. From the Kosovo experience, they concluded that the United States and Europe were not prepared to consider Russian wishes even in fairly minor affairs. That was the breaking point. If Russian desires could not be accommodated even in a minor matter like this, then clearly Russia and the West were in conflict. For the Russians, as we said, the question was how to respond. Having declined to respond in Kosovo, the Russians decided to respond where they had all the cards: in South Ossetia.
Moscow had two motives, the lesser of which was as a tit-for-tat over Kosovo. If Kosovo could be declared independent under Western sponsorship, then South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway regions of Georgia, could be declared independent under Russian sponsorship. Any objections from the United States and Europe would simply confirm their hypocrisy. This was important for internal Russian political reasons, but the second motive was far more important.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didn’t mean that he wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which Russian national security was threatened by Western interests. As an example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about 1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United States, Europe and, in some cases, China.
RESURRECTING THE RUSSIAN SPHERE
Putin did not want to re-establish the Soviet Union, but he did want to re-establish the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union region. To accomplish that, he had to do two things. First, he had to re-establish the credibility of the Russian army as a fighting force, at least in the context of its region. Second, he had to establish that Western guarantees, including NATO membership, meant nothing in the face of Russian power. He did not want to confront NATO directly, but he did want to confront and defeat a power that was closely aligned with the United States, had U.S. support, aid and advisers and was widely seen as being under American protection. Georgia was the perfect choice.
By invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not brilliantly), Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian army. But far more importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American consumption. It is something that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts and the Central Asians need to digest. Indeed, it is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to Poland and the Czech Republic as well. The United States wants to place ballistic missile defense installations in those countries, and the Russians want them to understand that allowing this to happen increases their risk, not their security.
The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.
The Russians also know something else that is of vital importance: For the United States, the Middle East is far more important than the Caucasus, and Iran is particularly important. The United States wants the Russians to participate in sanctions against Iran. Even more importantly, they do not want the Russians to sell weapons to Iran, particularly the highly effective S-300 air defense system. Georgia is a marginal issue to the United States; Iran is a central issue. The Russians are in a position to pose serious problems for the United States not only in Iran, but also with weapons sales to other countries, like Syria.
Therefore, the United States has a problem — it either must reorient its strategy away from the Middle East and toward the Caucasus, or it has to seriously limit its response to Georgia to avoid a Russian counter in Iran. Even if the United States had an appetite for another war in Georgia at this time, it would have to calculate the Russian response in Iran — and possibly in Afghanistan (even though Moscow’s interests there are currently aligned with those of Washington).
In other words, the Russians have backed the Americans into a corner. The Europeans, who for the most part lack expeditionary militaries and are dependent upon Russian energy exports, have even fewer options. If nothing else happens, the Russians will have demonstrated that they have resumed their role as a regional power. Russia is not a global power by any means, but a significant regional power with lots of nuclear weapons and an economy that isn’t all too shabby at the moment. It has also compelled every state on the Russian periphery to re-evaluate its position relative to Moscow. As for Georgia, the Russians appear ready to demand the resignation of President Mikhail Saakashvili. Militarily, that is their option. That is all they wanted to demonstrate, and they have demonstrated it.
The war in Georgia, therefore, is Russia’s public return to great power status. This is not something that just happened — it has been unfolding ever since Putin took power, and with growing intensity in the past five years. Part of it has to do with the increase of Russian power, but a great deal of it has to do with the fact that the Middle Eastern wars have left the United States off-balance and short on resources. As we have written, this conflict created a window of opportunity. The Russian goal is to use that window to assert a new reality throughout the region while the Americans are tied down elsewhere and dependent on the Russians. The war was far from a surprise; it has been building for months. But the geopolitical foundations of the war have been building since 1992. Russia has been an empire for centuries. The last 15 years or so were not the new reality, but simply an aberration that would be rectified. And now it is being rectified.
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report
George Friedman
August 12, 2008
The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery. This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity for the Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential response of the United States or Europe; hence, the invasion did not shift the balance of power. The balance of power had already shifted, and it was up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that Aug. 8.
Let’s begin simply by reviewing the last few days.
On the night of Thursday, Aug. 7, forces of the Republic of Georgia drove across the border of South Ossetia, a secessionist region of Georgia that has functioned as an independent entity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The forces drove on to the capital, Tskhinvali, which is close to the border. Georgian forces got bogged down while trying to take the city. In spite of heavy fighting, they never fully secured the city, nor the rest of South Ossetia.
On the morning of Aug. 8, Russian forces entered South Ossetia, using armored and motorized infantry forces along with air power. South Ossetia was informally aligned with Russia, and Russia acted to prevent the region’s absorption by Georgia. Given the speed with which the Russians responded — within hours of the Georgian attack — the Russians were expecting the Georgian attack and were themselves at their jumping-off points. The counterattack was carefully planned and competently executed, and over the next 48 hours, the Russians succeeded in defeating the main Georgian force and forcing a retreat. By Sunday, Aug. 10, the Russians had consolidated their position in South Ossetia.
On Monday, the Russians extended their offensive into Georgia proper, attacking on two axes. One was south from South Ossetia to the Georgian city of Gori. The other drive was from Abkhazia, another secessionist region of Georgia aligned with the Russians. This drive was designed to cut the road between the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and its ports. By this point, the Russians had bombed the military airfields at Marneuli and Vaziani and appeared to have disabled radars at the international airport in Tbilisi. These moves brought Russian forces to within 40 miles of the Georgian capital, while making outside reinforcement and resupply of Georgian forces extremely difficult should anyone wish to undertake it.
THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE GEORGIAN INVASION
In this simple chronicle, there is something quite mysterious: Why did the Georgians choose to invade South Ossetia on Thursday night? There had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more intense than usual, artillery exchanges were routine. The Georgians might not have fought well, but they committed fairly substantial forces that must have taken at the very least several days to deploy and supply. Georgia’s move was deliberate.
The United States is Georgia’s closest ally. It maintained about 130 military advisers in Georgia, along with civilian advisers, contractors involved in all aspects of the Georgian government and people doing business in Georgia. It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia’s mobilization and intentions. It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. U.S. technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The Russians clearly knew the Georgians were ready to move. How could the United States not be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the posture of Russian troops, how could intelligence analysts have missed the possibility that the Russians had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian invasion to justify its own counterattack?
It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew of the Russian forces but — along with the Georgians — miscalculated Russia’s intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s-1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an invasion.
If this was the case, then it points to the central reality of this situation: The Russians had changed dramatically, along with the balance of power in the region. They welcomed the opportunity to drive home the new reality, which was that they could invade Georgia and the United States and Europe could not respond. As for risk, they did not view the invasion as risky. Militarily, there was no counter. Economically, Russia is an energy exporter doing quite well — indeed, the Europeans need Russian energy even more than the Russians need to sell it to them. Politically, as we shall see, the Americans needed the Russians more than the Russians needed the Americans. Moscow’s calculus was that this was the moment to strike. The Russians had been building up to it for months, as we have discussed, and they struck.
THE WESTERN ENCIRCLEMENT OF RUSSIA
To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The first is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the U.S. and European point of view, the Orange Revolution represented a triumph of democracy and Western influence. From the Russian point of view, as Moscow made clear, the Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded intrusion into the internal affairs of Ukraine, designed to draw Ukraine into NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia. U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had promised the Russians that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union empire.
That promise had already been broken in 1998 by NATO’s expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — and again in the 2004 expansion, which absorbed not only the rest of the former Soviet satellites in what is now Central Europe, but also the three Baltic states, which had been components of the Soviet Union.
The Russians had tolerated all that, but the discussion of including Ukraine in NATO represented a fundamental threat to Russia’s national security. It would have rendered Russia indefensible and threatened to destabilize the Russian Federation itself. When the United States went so far as to suggest that Georgia be included as well, bringing NATO deeper into the Caucasus, the Russian conclusion — publicly stated — was that the United States in particular intended to encircle and break Russia.
The second and lesser event was the decision by Europe and the United States to back Kosovo’s separation from Serbia. The Russians were friendly with Serbia, but the deeper issue for Russia was this: The principle of Europe since World War II was that, to prevent conflict, national borders would not be changed. If that principle were violated in Kosovo, other border shifts — including demands by various regions for independence from Russia — might follow. The Russians publicly and privately asked that Kosovo not be given formal independence, but instead continue its informal autonomy, which was the same thing in practical terms. Russia’s requests were ignored.
From the Ukrainian experience, the Russians became convinced that the United States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and strangulation of Russia. From the Kosovo experience, they concluded that the United States and Europe were not prepared to consider Russian wishes even in fairly minor affairs. That was the breaking point. If Russian desires could not be accommodated even in a minor matter like this, then clearly Russia and the West were in conflict. For the Russians, as we said, the question was how to respond. Having declined to respond in Kosovo, the Russians decided to respond where they had all the cards: in South Ossetia.
Moscow had two motives, the lesser of which was as a tit-for-tat over Kosovo. If Kosovo could be declared independent under Western sponsorship, then South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway regions of Georgia, could be declared independent under Russian sponsorship. Any objections from the United States and Europe would simply confirm their hypocrisy. This was important for internal Russian political reasons, but the second motive was far more important.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didn’t mean that he wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which Russian national security was threatened by Western interests. As an example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about 1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United States, Europe and, in some cases, China.
RESURRECTING THE RUSSIAN SPHERE
Putin did not want to re-establish the Soviet Union, but he did want to re-establish the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union region. To accomplish that, he had to do two things. First, he had to re-establish the credibility of the Russian army as a fighting force, at least in the context of its region. Second, he had to establish that Western guarantees, including NATO membership, meant nothing in the face of Russian power. He did not want to confront NATO directly, but he did want to confront and defeat a power that was closely aligned with the United States, had U.S. support, aid and advisers and was widely seen as being under American protection. Georgia was the perfect choice.
By invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not brilliantly), Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian army. But far more importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American consumption. It is something that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts and the Central Asians need to digest. Indeed, it is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to Poland and the Czech Republic as well. The United States wants to place ballistic missile defense installations in those countries, and the Russians want them to understand that allowing this to happen increases their risk, not their security.
The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.
The Russians also know something else that is of vital importance: For the United States, the Middle East is far more important than the Caucasus, and Iran is particularly important. The United States wants the Russians to participate in sanctions against Iran. Even more importantly, they do not want the Russians to sell weapons to Iran, particularly the highly effective S-300 air defense system. Georgia is a marginal issue to the United States; Iran is a central issue. The Russians are in a position to pose serious problems for the United States not only in Iran, but also with weapons sales to other countries, like Syria.
Therefore, the United States has a problem — it either must reorient its strategy away from the Middle East and toward the Caucasus, or it has to seriously limit its response to Georgia to avoid a Russian counter in Iran. Even if the United States had an appetite for another war in Georgia at this time, it would have to calculate the Russian response in Iran — and possibly in Afghanistan (even though Moscow’s interests there are currently aligned with those of Washington).
In other words, the Russians have backed the Americans into a corner. The Europeans, who for the most part lack expeditionary militaries and are dependent upon Russian energy exports, have even fewer options. If nothing else happens, the Russians will have demonstrated that they have resumed their role as a regional power. Russia is not a global power by any means, but a significant regional power with lots of nuclear weapons and an economy that isn’t all too shabby at the moment. It has also compelled every state on the Russian periphery to re-evaluate its position relative to Moscow. As for Georgia, the Russians appear ready to demand the resignation of President Mikhail Saakashvili. Militarily, that is their option. That is all they wanted to demonstrate, and they have demonstrated it.
The war in Georgia, therefore, is Russia’s public return to great power status. This is not something that just happened — it has been unfolding ever since Putin took power, and with growing intensity in the past five years. Part of it has to do with the increase of Russian power, but a great deal of it has to do with the fact that the Middle Eastern wars have left the United States off-balance and short on resources. As we have written, this conflict created a window of opportunity. The Russian goal is to use that window to assert a new reality throughout the region while the Americans are tied down elsewhere and dependent on the Russians. The war was far from a surprise; it has been building for months. But the geopolitical foundations of the war have been building since 1992. Russia has been an empire for centuries. The last 15 years or so were not the new reality, but simply an aberration that would be rectified. And now it is being rectified.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
'The Forsaken'
'The Forsaken' tells the true story of the forgotten Americans who during the great depression fled the USA in their thousands to make a better life in Stalin's Russia. Once there they soon became disenchanted with the communist life, but they found that Russia now considered them Soviet Citizens and they could never leave, many ended their lives in the Gulag.
Here is an extract from a review of the book(the reviewer is Richard Pipes does anyone know if he's a relation of Daniel?):
"This is a very sad book, the story of thousands of Americans who, during the Depression, lured by sham Soviet propaganda and pro-Soviet falsehoods spread by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and the corrupt New York Times Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, migrated to the USSR in search of jobs and a role in the "building of socialism." It was, in the words of the author, "the least heralded migration in American history" and a period when "for the first time in her short history more people were leaving the United States than were arriving." Most of these expatriates, not intellectuals but simple working men, were quickly disenchanted and wanted to return home, only to find that Moscow considered them Soviet citizens and barred them from leaving. Ignored by the American government, many of them ended in the gulag. In Tim Tzouliadis's "The Forsaken" (Penguin Press, 436 pages, $29.95), their dismal story is told with great skill and indignation usually missing from Western accounts of communist Russia.
They came to Russia full of enthusiasm, bringing with them baseball and jazz, and eager to acclimatize. Russians found it difficult to believe the Americans' tales of woe when they saw their clothes, luxurious by Russian standards. And the migrants were themselves quite unprepared for the poverty and lawlessness which characterized life under Stalin, and in many if not most cases decided to leave. They soon learned, however, that when they surrendered their American passports upon stepping on Soviet soil (passports which were then used by Soviet agents in America), they had become, automatically, Soviet citizens. Protests and appeals to the American authorities qualified the émigrés in Moscow's eyes as troublemakers and led to their arrests, followed by confinement in concentration camps."
Here is an extract from a review of the book(the reviewer is Richard Pipes does anyone know if he's a relation of Daniel?):
"This is a very sad book, the story of thousands of Americans who, during the Depression, lured by sham Soviet propaganda and pro-Soviet falsehoods spread by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and the corrupt New York Times Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, migrated to the USSR in search of jobs and a role in the "building of socialism." It was, in the words of the author, "the least heralded migration in American history" and a period when "for the first time in her short history more people were leaving the United States than were arriving." Most of these expatriates, not intellectuals but simple working men, were quickly disenchanted and wanted to return home, only to find that Moscow considered them Soviet citizens and barred them from leaving. Ignored by the American government, many of them ended in the gulag. In Tim Tzouliadis's "The Forsaken" (Penguin Press, 436 pages, $29.95), their dismal story is told with great skill and indignation usually missing from Western accounts of communist Russia.
They came to Russia full of enthusiasm, bringing with them baseball and jazz, and eager to acclimatize. Russians found it difficult to believe the Americans' tales of woe when they saw their clothes, luxurious by Russian standards. And the migrants were themselves quite unprepared for the poverty and lawlessness which characterized life under Stalin, and in many if not most cases decided to leave. They soon learned, however, that when they surrendered their American passports upon stepping on Soviet soil (passports which were then used by Soviet agents in America), they had become, automatically, Soviet citizens. Protests and appeals to the American authorities qualified the émigrés in Moscow's eyes as troublemakers and led to their arrests, followed by confinement in concentration camps."
Friday, July 11, 2008
New hostage crisis!
'Body Of Christ' Snatched From Church, Held Hostage By UCF Student
A University of Central Florida student, upset religious groups hold church services on public campuses, is holding hostage the Eucharist, an object so sacred to Catholics they call it the Body of Christ.Church officials say UCF Student Senator Webster Cook was disruptive and disrespectful when he attended Mass held on campus Sunday June 29. It was during that Mass where Cook admits he obtained the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is a small bread wafer blessed by a priest. According to Catholics, the wafer becomes the Body of Christ once blessed and is to be consumed immediately after a minister passes it out to churchgoers.
[...]
"It is hurtful," said Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese. "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."
Full article here.
Another article (including the resolution of the story) here.
Hat-tip richarddawkins.net
Saturday, July 05, 2008
UK knife crime epidemic.
He's a pompous git, Heffer, but occasionally I find myself agreeing with him, as here on knife crime.
How many will die before we get serious?
Simon Heffer
Daily Telegraph Comment
05/07/2008
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the reaction of the liberal Left to the epidemic of stabbed teenage boys that is not merely bereaving family upon family, but is also disfiguring society. They argue it is society's fault. The state, they say, is spending too little on giving the murderers pleasant places to live, and is failing to supply them with recreational facilities or "mentors". Inevitably, therefore, they feel the need to go out and kill: as one does.
That this is self-serving, ignorant nonsense should not be in dispute. How to win the argument with these people is another matter. One can say that many people now in middle or old age grew up in circumstances so deprived and so primitive that they would now be classed as fit only for animals: yet they did not feel the need, when afflicted by "child poverty", to go out and stab people. That is irrelevant, we are told, because times have changed.
They certainly have. As I have written before, a welfare state that absolves people of responsibility for their own lives, and for bringing up their children, has created this feral society in which the recourse to lethal violence is second nature to so many young boys.
They are the product of a land in which the traditional family has been obliterated by state benefits: where a father is an oddity rather than the norm; where the police feel it is their job to engage in acts of social engineering rather than to prevent crime; where the drugs laws are largely unenforced; where the race relations industry calls any attempt at police prevention "racism"; where schools are, with rare exceptions, either entirely ineffectual or out-and-out war zones; and where the judiciary sees it as its duty to protect the criminal classes from whatever strictures the penal system might throw at them.
more
How many will die before we get serious?
Simon Heffer
Daily Telegraph Comment
05/07/2008
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the reaction of the liberal Left to the epidemic of stabbed teenage boys that is not merely bereaving family upon family, but is also disfiguring society. They argue it is society's fault. The state, they say, is spending too little on giving the murderers pleasant places to live, and is failing to supply them with recreational facilities or "mentors". Inevitably, therefore, they feel the need to go out and kill: as one does.
That this is self-serving, ignorant nonsense should not be in dispute. How to win the argument with these people is another matter. One can say that many people now in middle or old age grew up in circumstances so deprived and so primitive that they would now be classed as fit only for animals: yet they did not feel the need, when afflicted by "child poverty", to go out and stab people. That is irrelevant, we are told, because times have changed.
They certainly have. As I have written before, a welfare state that absolves people of responsibility for their own lives, and for bringing up their children, has created this feral society in which the recourse to lethal violence is second nature to so many young boys.
They are the product of a land in which the traditional family has been obliterated by state benefits: where a father is an oddity rather than the norm; where the police feel it is their job to engage in acts of social engineering rather than to prevent crime; where the drugs laws are largely unenforced; where the race relations industry calls any attempt at police prevention "racism"; where schools are, with rare exceptions, either entirely ineffectual or out-and-out war zones; and where the judiciary sees it as its duty to protect the criminal classes from whatever strictures the penal system might throw at them.
more
Friday, June 27, 2008
Nik Nakba Paddy Wackba
Shit heading (sorry) but interesting article:
Acknowledging the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries – written out of history – could be the key to Middle East peace
Lyn Julius
This week, before an audience of peers and MPs, an 80-year-old Jewish refugee named Sarah told the story of her traumatic departure in 1956 in the wake of the Suez crisis. Her husband lost his job. Taken ill, she had remained behind in Egypt with her new baby, while he left to look for work in Europe. She departed with nothing – along with 25,000 other Jews expelled by Nasser and forced to sign a document pledging that they would never return. In a final act of spite, the customs officers ransacked her suitcase and even her baby's carrycot.Sarah was speaking at a House of Lords briefing as part of the Justice for Jews from Arab Countries congress. JJAC, an international coalition of 77 organisations, is holding its inaugural congress in London, and aims to highlight the neglected rights of (according to indisputable UN figures) 856,000 Jewish refugees like Sarah.The exodus began 60 years ago when Arab states, hell-bent on crushing the new state of Israel militarily, also turned on their peaceful Jewish communities. Street violence killed over 150 Jews. Within 10 years, more than half the Jews had fled or been expelled, following discriminatory legislation , extortion, arrests, internment and executions. Those who remained became subjugated, political hostages of the Arab-Israeli conflict.Today 99.5% - all but 4,500 - have gone. As the historian Nathan Weinstock has observed, not even the Jews of 1939 Germany had been so thoroughly "ethnically cleansed".The displacement of Jews from Arab countries was not just a backlash to the creation of Israel and the Arabs' humiliating defeat. The "push" factors were already in place. Arab League states drafted a law in November 1947 branding their Jews as enemy aliens. But non-Muslim minorities, historically despised as dhimmis with few rights, were already being oppressed by Nazi-inspired pan-Arabism and Islamism. These factors sparked the conflict with Zionism, and drive it to this day.
(Read on.)
Recognising the Jewish 'Nakba'
Acknowledging the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries – written out of history – could be the key to Middle East peace
Lyn Julius
This week, before an audience of peers and MPs, an 80-year-old Jewish refugee named Sarah told the story of her traumatic departure in 1956 in the wake of the Suez crisis. Her husband lost his job. Taken ill, she had remained behind in Egypt with her new baby, while he left to look for work in Europe. She departed with nothing – along with 25,000 other Jews expelled by Nasser and forced to sign a document pledging that they would never return. In a final act of spite, the customs officers ransacked her suitcase and even her baby's carrycot.Sarah was speaking at a House of Lords briefing as part of the Justice for Jews from Arab Countries congress. JJAC, an international coalition of 77 organisations, is holding its inaugural congress in London, and aims to highlight the neglected rights of (according to indisputable UN figures) 856,000 Jewish refugees like Sarah.The exodus began 60 years ago when Arab states, hell-bent on crushing the new state of Israel militarily, also turned on their peaceful Jewish communities. Street violence killed over 150 Jews. Within 10 years, more than half the Jews had fled or been expelled, following discriminatory legislation , extortion, arrests, internment and executions. Those who remained became subjugated, political hostages of the Arab-Israeli conflict.Today 99.5% - all but 4,500 - have gone. As the historian Nathan Weinstock has observed, not even the Jews of 1939 Germany had been so thoroughly "ethnically cleansed".The displacement of Jews from Arab countries was not just a backlash to the creation of Israel and the Arabs' humiliating defeat. The "push" factors were already in place. Arab League states drafted a law in November 1947 branding their Jews as enemy aliens. But non-Muslim minorities, historically despised as dhimmis with few rights, were already being oppressed by Nazi-inspired pan-Arabism and Islamism. These factors sparked the conflict with Zionism, and drive it to this day.
(Read on.)
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Too much diversity in front of camera... not enough behind it...
'Too many black and Asian faces on TV,' says BBC director Samir Shah
Broadcasters have overcompensated for their lack of executives from ethnic minorities by putting too many black and Asian faces on screen, a leading television industry figure said last night.
Samir Shah, a member of the BBC's board of directors, said this had led to a "world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease".
(Read on.)
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Shami & DD sitting in a tree...
Not often that articles in major newspapers slag off someone that some members of this board are personally acquainted with...
Marina Hyde:
Marina Hyde:
In bed with the DUP? This is the really curious journey
Andy Burnham's remarks about Shami Chakrabarti and David Davis were those of a man with a very New Labour talent'The individual has no right to anonymity," Andy Burnham once explained during a robotic defence of identity cards. "The state has a right to know who you are." Yet despite his concerted efforts to draw attention to himself with dazzling feats of brown-nosery, the cloak of anonymity has hung heavy on the current culture secretary, with very few citizens of this state having the first clue who he is. Indeed, for most of the final years of Tony Blair's premiership, he was presumed to be lodged in the prime ministerial colon, only emerging blinking into the daylight the minute Gordon took over, whereupon he announced to the press: "I was a Blairite, and now I am a Brownite."
This week, however, Burnham gave people a better of idea of who he is, when he broke his silence on David Davis's endearingly misguided decision to trigger a byelection to campaign against the government's plan to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge. Burnham found "something very curious", he told Progress magazine, in Davis's "late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti".
Mmm ... Could you bring the sledgehammer down one more time, secretary of state? There's a chance that a couple of slightly backward 10-year-olds still haven't understood what you were on about. And yet Andy is now upset that his comments have been interpreted as anything other than the cogent engagement with the 42-days issue that they so obviously were, and cannot for the life of him work out why the Liberty director is taking offence - "if personal offence has been caused", as one of his flunkeys put it. (Read on)
Monday, June 23, 2008
Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts
Hardly an Islamic Reformation, but the first step in a journey of 1000 miles?
Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts
BBC News
26/2/08
Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion. The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.
The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad. As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.
But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam. It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.
Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion. Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.
Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it. The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University's School of Theology.
Fr Felix Koerner, a Christian theologian who has observed the project, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.
"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says. "You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."
Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts
BBC News
26/2/08
Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion. The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.
The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad. As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.
But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam. It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.
Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion. Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.
Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it. The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University's School of Theology.
Fr Felix Koerner, a Christian theologian who has observed the project, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.
"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says. "You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."
Sunday, June 22, 2008
a piece of history from the Balkans :)
Today is the national holiday here, the day of the Antifascist Movement in Croatia. On this day, 67 years ago, 77 people established the first antifascist partisan formation in occupied Europe, in the Brezovica forest, near Sisak (southeast of Zagreb). The one Jon didn't believe it existed.:)) It happened on the day the Nazi attacked Soviet Union. ( http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_antifa%C5%A1isti%C4%8Dke_borbe)
check out the photo of an old partisan at:
http://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/clanak/art-2008,6,22,brezovica_obiljezavanje,124085.jl
:))
Croats were always known after Ustacha regime, but it isn't so well known that the first antifascist formation in the whole occupied Europe was established by Croats and in the Croatian territory. These guys were famous after diversions on the railways and stuff like that.
What also isn't known widely is that many Jews joined partisans here in their fight. My grand-uncle joined too, and actually had a rank of major in the partisans. He kept the family tradition, and was active as a partisan- photographer. :)
check out the photo of an old partisan at:
http://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti
Croats were always known after Ustacha regime, but it isn't so well known that the first antifascist formation in the whole occupied Europe was established by Croats and in the Croatian territory. These guys were famous after diversions on the railways and stuff like that.
What also isn't known widely is that many Jews joined partisans here in their fight. My grand-uncle joined too, and actually had a rank of major in the partisans. He kept the family tradition, and was active as a partisan- photographer. :)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Ireland votes no on the EU Treaty
This is an excellent article on the EU's reaction to Irelands no vote on the EU Treaty:
"Now it’s clear: the EU is an alien imposition in Europe
They have been libelled as an uneducated ‘horde’, yet Irish voters’ rejection of the Lisbon Treaty is a brilliant blow against the EU oligarchy.
Oligarchs cannot stand public humiliation. So when, last Thursday, the Irish electorate pointed their fingers and shouted ‘The Emperor has no clothes!’, the political elites of the European Union pretended that it was not them who stood exposed, but the Irish people.
EU officials, politicians and their friends in the media all read from the same carefully rehearsed script following the Irish electorate’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Adopting a kind of fantasy language, with all the hallmarks of classic Orwellian doublespeak, the EU and its representatives told the world that the ‘No’ vote did not really mean ‘No’, since Irish voters were thoroughly confused.
They argued that the vote lacked meaning or legitimacy because the campaign against the Lisbon Treaty – the name given to the rebranded EU Constitution – encompassed far too many different interest groups to be taken seriously. Apparently, a campaign that successfully brings together people from the far left to the Catholic right cannot be a genuine expression of popular will.
Once the results were announced, EU officials went straight into action, making it clear that the outcome of the Irish referendum would not be respected. Consider the breathtaking cynicism of the EU Commissioner Margaret Wallström. She told the BBC that we must ‘analyse’ the Irish result and then conduct a public survey to find out what was behind the ‘No’ vote. Taking on the role of a disinterested doctor or scientist, Wallström believes that ‘research’ can discover the source of the Irish disease; such ‘research’ will no doubt lead to the cobbling together of a diagnosis, and then a cure.
The rejection of the proposed EU Constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005 represented an important blow for freedom, and a challenge to the aloof, technocratic politics of the EU. However, even though Ireland is a small nation which lacks the economic and political influence of France or Holland, its ‘No’ vote was, in many respects, even more significant. Perhaps the most important contribution made by the Irish ‘No’ campaign has been to give some clarity to the disconnection between the electorate and the political class.
Voters and the political class do not only inhabit different worlds – they speak in different languages. Of course, the disconnection between the people of Europe and the institutions of the European Union has been evident for some time. Yet normally, this distance between voters and their rulers expressed itself in falling voter turnout and declining levels of participation in party political activity; surveys also showed that EU institutions lack legitimacy amongst the public, and that officialdom is out of touch with public sensibilities. The ‘No’ vote in Ireland, however, has revealed something far more important: that for a significant section of the public, elite EU institutions are not only illegitimate – they are an alien imposition.
It is rare indeed for the entire EU oligarchy and political class to join together with the media, the trade unions and the Catholic Church to take on the people. Even the poor old Pope got in on the act: he tried to provide some moral support to his mates in Brussels and Dublin in the run-up to the Irish referendum by giving a speech on the importance of the EU for countries like Ireland. This display of elite unity is probably unprecedented; such unity was not achieved during the referenda in Holland and France. During previous referendum campaigns, things were a lot more confusing; they lacked the clarity of what took place in Ireland, where the people were on one side and virtually all of their ‘representatives’ were on the other.
The cultural dissonance between the elite and the people was on full display during the Irish referendum. It’s worth noting that those media commentators who denounced the rag-tag army of ‘No’ voters happily overlooked the rag-tag army of elite interests behind the ‘Yes’ campaign.
Another striking thing about the Irish experience is how clearly – crystal clearly – it showed up the anti-democratic impulse behind the EU project. In previous times, the EU’s public relations machine had some success in confusing the debate, with its representatives suggesting that it was the opponents of the EU who were a threat to democracy. Officials and commentators frequently argued that ‘No’ campaigners in Holland and France were motivated by a base hatred of foreigners; their campaigning and their voting choices were denounced as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘anti-immigrant’.
The press frequently portrayed opposition to the EU Constitution as a revolt of the reactionary and the prejudiced against modern and enlightened institutions. One British newspaper described the Irish ‘No’ campaigners – all those ‘ultra-rightwing Catholics, neoliberals, pragmatic Eurosceptics, traditional nationalists and Trotskyists’ – as ‘not so much a rainbow alliance as a horde of Goths at the gates of Rome’ (1). Such a representation of recent events and votes in Europe has always been inaccurate; it has been a rather self-serving caricature of the electorate. Anti-immigrant and chauvinistic prejudice did motivate some of the individuals who have voted against the EU, but it has far from been the defining feature of the various ‘No’ campaigns of recent years.
Although a few people have tried it on, these tired old arguments about a revolt of the xenophobes against the enlightened EU cannot be credibly recycled in relation to the Irish referendum. There were simply no angry mobs of right-wing nationalists. So instead, EU propagandists were forced to fall back on explicit nineteenth-century style anti-mass arguments. Back in the nineteenth century, one of the arguments used by arrogant reactionaries against the expansion of the democratic franchise was that the people were too stupid to understand the complexities of parliamentary democracy. It was argued that people of low intelligence, who lacked refinement and good schooling, could not possibly be trusted to exercise any public duties judiciously.
More or less the same arguments were voiced during the Irish referendum campaign. Time and again, the EU and its supporters informed the world that the Irish electorate was thoroughly confused about the issues at stake, and that it was the strength of this ‘public ignorance’ that propelled the ‘No’ campaign. This vitriolic contempt for the people really exposed the reluctance of the ‘Yes’ campaign to acknowledge the poverty of its own ideas.
One of the most disturbing features of the EU’s propaganda before, during and after the Irish referendum was the systematic attempt to infantilise the opponents of the EU. The Irish were described as ‘ungracious’ and ‘truculent’, as school pupils who disobeyed their teachers; they were depicted as children who refused to show sufficient gratitude for all the presents they have received from the EU (see Ireland, you ungrateful wretch!, by Brendan O’Neill). The Irish were continually reminded that their recent prosperity has been founded on EU largesse.
The message is clear: the immature response of the Irish people to the Lisbon Treaty should not be taken seriously. This relentless attempt to infantilise an entire people is an alarming historical moment. The reprimand of a naughty child always hints at future punishment. Will the EU do more than simply threaten to take the Irish children’s toys away? Let’s keep a very close eye on what the EU does next.
Frank Furedi is author most recently of Invitation To Terror: The Expanding Empire of The Unknown, published by Continuum Press. Visit Furedi’s website here."
"Now it’s clear: the EU is an alien imposition in Europe
They have been libelled as an uneducated ‘horde’, yet Irish voters’ rejection of the Lisbon Treaty is a brilliant blow against the EU oligarchy.
Oligarchs cannot stand public humiliation. So when, last Thursday, the Irish electorate pointed their fingers and shouted ‘The Emperor has no clothes!’, the political elites of the European Union pretended that it was not them who stood exposed, but the Irish people.
EU officials, politicians and their friends in the media all read from the same carefully rehearsed script following the Irish electorate’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Adopting a kind of fantasy language, with all the hallmarks of classic Orwellian doublespeak, the EU and its representatives told the world that the ‘No’ vote did not really mean ‘No’, since Irish voters were thoroughly confused.
They argued that the vote lacked meaning or legitimacy because the campaign against the Lisbon Treaty – the name given to the rebranded EU Constitution – encompassed far too many different interest groups to be taken seriously. Apparently, a campaign that successfully brings together people from the far left to the Catholic right cannot be a genuine expression of popular will.
Once the results were announced, EU officials went straight into action, making it clear that the outcome of the Irish referendum would not be respected. Consider the breathtaking cynicism of the EU Commissioner Margaret Wallström. She told the BBC that we must ‘analyse’ the Irish result and then conduct a public survey to find out what was behind the ‘No’ vote. Taking on the role of a disinterested doctor or scientist, Wallström believes that ‘research’ can discover the source of the Irish disease; such ‘research’ will no doubt lead to the cobbling together of a diagnosis, and then a cure.
The rejection of the proposed EU Constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005 represented an important blow for freedom, and a challenge to the aloof, technocratic politics of the EU. However, even though Ireland is a small nation which lacks the economic and political influence of France or Holland, its ‘No’ vote was, in many respects, even more significant. Perhaps the most important contribution made by the Irish ‘No’ campaign has been to give some clarity to the disconnection between the electorate and the political class.
Voters and the political class do not only inhabit different worlds – they speak in different languages. Of course, the disconnection between the people of Europe and the institutions of the European Union has been evident for some time. Yet normally, this distance between voters and their rulers expressed itself in falling voter turnout and declining levels of participation in party political activity; surveys also showed that EU institutions lack legitimacy amongst the public, and that officialdom is out of touch with public sensibilities. The ‘No’ vote in Ireland, however, has revealed something far more important: that for a significant section of the public, elite EU institutions are not only illegitimate – they are an alien imposition.
It is rare indeed for the entire EU oligarchy and political class to join together with the media, the trade unions and the Catholic Church to take on the people. Even the poor old Pope got in on the act: he tried to provide some moral support to his mates in Brussels and Dublin in the run-up to the Irish referendum by giving a speech on the importance of the EU for countries like Ireland. This display of elite unity is probably unprecedented; such unity was not achieved during the referenda in Holland and France. During previous referendum campaigns, things were a lot more confusing; they lacked the clarity of what took place in Ireland, where the people were on one side and virtually all of their ‘representatives’ were on the other.
The cultural dissonance between the elite and the people was on full display during the Irish referendum. It’s worth noting that those media commentators who denounced the rag-tag army of ‘No’ voters happily overlooked the rag-tag army of elite interests behind the ‘Yes’ campaign.
Another striking thing about the Irish experience is how clearly – crystal clearly – it showed up the anti-democratic impulse behind the EU project. In previous times, the EU’s public relations machine had some success in confusing the debate, with its representatives suggesting that it was the opponents of the EU who were a threat to democracy. Officials and commentators frequently argued that ‘No’ campaigners in Holland and France were motivated by a base hatred of foreigners; their campaigning and their voting choices were denounced as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘anti-immigrant’.
The press frequently portrayed opposition to the EU Constitution as a revolt of the reactionary and the prejudiced against modern and enlightened institutions. One British newspaper described the Irish ‘No’ campaigners – all those ‘ultra-rightwing Catholics, neoliberals, pragmatic Eurosceptics, traditional nationalists and Trotskyists’ – as ‘not so much a rainbow alliance as a horde of Goths at the gates of Rome’ (1). Such a representation of recent events and votes in Europe has always been inaccurate; it has been a rather self-serving caricature of the electorate. Anti-immigrant and chauvinistic prejudice did motivate some of the individuals who have voted against the EU, but it has far from been the defining feature of the various ‘No’ campaigns of recent years.
Although a few people have tried it on, these tired old arguments about a revolt of the xenophobes against the enlightened EU cannot be credibly recycled in relation to the Irish referendum. There were simply no angry mobs of right-wing nationalists. So instead, EU propagandists were forced to fall back on explicit nineteenth-century style anti-mass arguments. Back in the nineteenth century, one of the arguments used by arrogant reactionaries against the expansion of the democratic franchise was that the people were too stupid to understand the complexities of parliamentary democracy. It was argued that people of low intelligence, who lacked refinement and good schooling, could not possibly be trusted to exercise any public duties judiciously.
More or less the same arguments were voiced during the Irish referendum campaign. Time and again, the EU and its supporters informed the world that the Irish electorate was thoroughly confused about the issues at stake, and that it was the strength of this ‘public ignorance’ that propelled the ‘No’ campaign. This vitriolic contempt for the people really exposed the reluctance of the ‘Yes’ campaign to acknowledge the poverty of its own ideas.
One of the most disturbing features of the EU’s propaganda before, during and after the Irish referendum was the systematic attempt to infantilise the opponents of the EU. The Irish were described as ‘ungracious’ and ‘truculent’, as school pupils who disobeyed their teachers; they were depicted as children who refused to show sufficient gratitude for all the presents they have received from the EU (see Ireland, you ungrateful wretch!, by Brendan O’Neill). The Irish were continually reminded that their recent prosperity has been founded on EU largesse.
The message is clear: the immature response of the Irish people to the Lisbon Treaty should not be taken seriously. This relentless attempt to infantilise an entire people is an alarming historical moment. The reprimand of a naughty child always hints at future punishment. Will the EU do more than simply threaten to take the Irish children’s toys away? Let’s keep a very close eye on what the EU does next.
Frank Furedi is author most recently of Invitation To Terror: The Expanding Empire of The Unknown, published by Continuum Press. Visit Furedi’s website here."
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
'Troops out of Afghanistan now'
Peter Hitchens argues that British Troops should be brought home:
"Troops out of Afghanistan Now
How exactly could a government minister explain what 100 British servicemen have died for in Afghanistan? We know that the Defence Secretary who sent them there, Comrade John Reid, hadn't a clue why they were going, and famously thought they would not fire a shot . I believe they have since fired five million shots, many of them long after this posing booby and shameless ex-Communist went off into a retirement that couldn't be premature enough for me.
Why aren't they there? They aren't there to abolish the burqa and liberate Afghan women. Most Afghan women, especially in Pashtun areas, are still shrouded or veiled in one Islamic way or another (Persian-influenced Islamists prefer the chador, which is pretty restricting but not restricting enough for the Taleban, to the burqa), and this is not likely to change. if British troops went around ripping off their burqas we'd soon know what a real Afghan war was like. They aren't there to stamp out the opium poppy fields. This would be too dangerous, as it would threaten the farmers involved with destitution. In any case readers of the Mail on Sunday know that opium poppies are being grown commercially and legally in Oxfordshire, for medical purposes, so why couldn't a similar arrangement be made for the Afghan farmers?
They aren't there to stamp out 'The Taleban', a murky body which, like 'Al Qaeda', shrinks and expands to suit our needs. Many Pashtun Afghans more or less favour the sort of Islam and the sort of culture associated with the Taleban. It is based on their tribal traditions. Afghanistan is also an ethnically divided society, in which the differences between the Pashtuns and the Uzbeks are crucial, though there are several other groups as well, including one which adheres to Shia Islam and so is specially loathed by the austerely Sunni Pashtuns. If you get on with one group, the chances are you will be the enemy of the others.
The word also applies (in our own minds) to certain people at certain times, but doesn't apply to the same people at other times. When they are 'village elders' cooperating with us, or being paid off by us, Pashtuns in Helmand are our allies. When they later get behind a rock and shoot at us they are 'The Taleban'. We couldn't stamp them out if we wanted to. They may accept various forms of help from us, but they don't want us there, for dozens of reasons. Even if we carpeted the place with schools, hospitals, factories, irrigation projects and the rest, they still wouldn't want us there. Afghans are very persistent about this and have driven out every would-be conqueror who has ever come their way. So why are we there, where we are so obviously not wanted?
We aren't there to support Afghanistan's 'democratically-elected President' - who barely controls his own Kabul bedroom. But he is a democrat, isn't he ? Well, you can believe if you want to that President Hamid Karzai is in office with the full-hearted consent of the Afghan people after an open contest in a free society, where people voted thoughtfully according to the issues. . Something tells me that he is there because various warlords and faction leaders told their supporters to vote for him. In return, he agreed to leave them alone to tyrannise their slices of the country as they see fit, which is what they do. Some of them are just as bad as the Taleban, but in different ways. General Abdul Rashid Dostum, for example, is not an attractive character (look him up) , and I do not believe he reads 'the Guardian' or 'The New York Times'. Yet he is, on the basis of our enemy's enemy being our friend, the ally of 'The West' in its attempt to build a new Afghanistan.
Even those who have not fallen for any of the above empty reasons for our being in Afghanistan tend to be bamboozled by the propaganda trump card. This goes that under the Taleban. 'Al Qaeda' maintained its headquarters in Afghanistan, and if we let the country fall back under Taleban control, 'Al Qaeda ' will be back, and will organise the next 11th September from there.
How many holes are there in this? The perpetrators of 11th September were mostly Saudis ( from a country whose laws and rules are remarkably similar to those of the Taleban, yet which is a full-scale ally, oil supplier to and arms purchaser from the 'West' , with big embassies in London and Washington). Terrorist atrocities can be cooked up anywhere, not least in our own cities among the many fanatical Islamists who have been brought to Europe by the globalist immigration polices of the 'West', supported so enthusiastically by the Murdoch media and 'neo-conservative' commentators, who also stoke up the 'war on terror', without the slightest sign of seeing any contradiction between these two positions
If there is a second 11th September, it is as likely to have been planned in Leeds as in Kandahar, as our government keeps telling us, though it can't do much about that either. The idea that terrorist outrages can for the most part be prevented by vigilance is, sadly, baseless.
In any case, what sort of Army would we have to deploy even to control the Pashtun areas? ( answer : bigger than we have ) And how hard would it have to fight? (answer , very hard indeed). Casualties dropped recently because we stopped trying to muscle our way into Pashtun tribal zones, and negotiated deals with 'elders' who of course weren't the Taleban ( see above).
Then there's Pakistan. Pakistan is naturally interested in Afghanistan because it's on its northern border, remarkably close to the capital, Islamabad. Also, if there's trouble in Afghanistan, Pakistan has to cope with the refugees. But there's much more to it than that. Pakistan's 'border' with Afghanistan is a silly fiction. It is based on the Durand Line, a British imperial folly forced on the Afghans by naked power in 1893, but one of those imperial granny knots, like the borders of Africa and the middle East, that cannot be unravelled without causing even more problems than we have already.
It runs, madly, right through Pashtun territory. The Pashtuns simply ignore it, making it worthless as a security barrier. The real border is elsewhere. Peshawar, officially in Pakistan, is for all practical purposes an Afghan city, which is why there is a military control post on the Indus River, way inside Pakistan, on the road between Islamabad and Peshawar. That is where Pakistan really stops. There are also huge numbers of Afghan Pashtuns in Pakistan proper, particularly in that vast and volatile city, Karachi. Their votes, and the feelings of their tribal chieftains, cannot be ignored in Pakistani politics.
Now, despite the big fuss about restoring democracy a few months ago, and the overdone praise of the late Benazir Bhutto by her many rather gullible friends in the Western media, Pakistan appears to be drifting back towards control by the same faction that used to be on good terms with the Taleban. This group, not very far distant from the ISI intelligence services and the army, is said to be trying to take over Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, with a view to taking over the country in time. I can't really see how this - a consequence of the recent elections - is better than having the place run by General Musharraf and the Army, though I was never very convinced by the General's claims to be a doughty warrior against 'Terror', or 'our' principal ally in the region. It just goes to show how complicated things become when you start messing around in other people's countries.
Then there's the other question, about where Osama bin Laden actually is. I seem to remember a senior Afghan official saying a few months ago "Well, he's either in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, and he's definitely not in Afghanistan", which I thought was rather a witty way of pointing the finger. In which case, are we going to despatch troops to Pakistan? Of course not. Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan is not so weakened by repeated invasions and civil wars that foreign armies can impose themselves upon it.
What can we really do about these developments? Search me. But the presence or absence of a British army contingent in Helmand province will certainly not help. All we are doing is sending brave men to a place where they can do no good, and where they provide targets for our enemies. The British presence in Afghanistan is at least as stupid and pointless as their continuing presence in Iraq. they should come home, immediately. They only stay there because the politicians who sent them haven't the courage to admit that they don't know what they are doing. Now we have all seen Foreign Secretary David Miliband's grasp of world affairs on display last week, can we really believe that these people understand what is going on, or have any right to order better men than they are into such danger? One death in this pointless war was indefensible. A hundred are a hundred times as indefensible. Bring them home."
"Troops out of Afghanistan Now
How exactly could a government minister explain what 100 British servicemen have died for in Afghanistan? We know that the Defence Secretary who sent them there, Comrade John Reid, hadn't a clue why they were going, and famously thought they would not fire a shot . I believe they have since fired five million shots, many of them long after this posing booby and shameless ex-Communist went off into a retirement that couldn't be premature enough for me.
Why aren't they there? They aren't there to abolish the burqa and liberate Afghan women. Most Afghan women, especially in Pashtun areas, are still shrouded or veiled in one Islamic way or another (Persian-influenced Islamists prefer the chador, which is pretty restricting but not restricting enough for the Taleban, to the burqa), and this is not likely to change. if British troops went around ripping off their burqas we'd soon know what a real Afghan war was like. They aren't there to stamp out the opium poppy fields. This would be too dangerous, as it would threaten the farmers involved with destitution. In any case readers of the Mail on Sunday know that opium poppies are being grown commercially and legally in Oxfordshire, for medical purposes, so why couldn't a similar arrangement be made for the Afghan farmers?
They aren't there to stamp out 'The Taleban', a murky body which, like 'Al Qaeda', shrinks and expands to suit our needs. Many Pashtun Afghans more or less favour the sort of Islam and the sort of culture associated with the Taleban. It is based on their tribal traditions. Afghanistan is also an ethnically divided society, in which the differences between the Pashtuns and the Uzbeks are crucial, though there are several other groups as well, including one which adheres to Shia Islam and so is specially loathed by the austerely Sunni Pashtuns. If you get on with one group, the chances are you will be the enemy of the others.
The word also applies (in our own minds) to certain people at certain times, but doesn't apply to the same people at other times. When they are 'village elders' cooperating with us, or being paid off by us, Pashtuns in Helmand are our allies. When they later get behind a rock and shoot at us they are 'The Taleban'. We couldn't stamp them out if we wanted to. They may accept various forms of help from us, but they don't want us there, for dozens of reasons. Even if we carpeted the place with schools, hospitals, factories, irrigation projects and the rest, they still wouldn't want us there. Afghans are very persistent about this and have driven out every would-be conqueror who has ever come their way. So why are we there, where we are so obviously not wanted?
We aren't there to support Afghanistan's 'democratically-elected President' - who barely controls his own Kabul bedroom. But he is a democrat, isn't he ? Well, you can believe if you want to that President Hamid Karzai is in office with the full-hearted consent of the Afghan people after an open contest in a free society, where people voted thoughtfully according to the issues. . Something tells me that he is there because various warlords and faction leaders told their supporters to vote for him. In return, he agreed to leave them alone to tyrannise their slices of the country as they see fit, which is what they do. Some of them are just as bad as the Taleban, but in different ways. General Abdul Rashid Dostum, for example, is not an attractive character (look him up) , and I do not believe he reads 'the Guardian' or 'The New York Times'. Yet he is, on the basis of our enemy's enemy being our friend, the ally of 'The West' in its attempt to build a new Afghanistan.
Even those who have not fallen for any of the above empty reasons for our being in Afghanistan tend to be bamboozled by the propaganda trump card. This goes that under the Taleban. 'Al Qaeda' maintained its headquarters in Afghanistan, and if we let the country fall back under Taleban control, 'Al Qaeda ' will be back, and will organise the next 11th September from there.
How many holes are there in this? The perpetrators of 11th September were mostly Saudis ( from a country whose laws and rules are remarkably similar to those of the Taleban, yet which is a full-scale ally, oil supplier to and arms purchaser from the 'West' , with big embassies in London and Washington). Terrorist atrocities can be cooked up anywhere, not least in our own cities among the many fanatical Islamists who have been brought to Europe by the globalist immigration polices of the 'West', supported so enthusiastically by the Murdoch media and 'neo-conservative' commentators, who also stoke up the 'war on terror', without the slightest sign of seeing any contradiction between these two positions
If there is a second 11th September, it is as likely to have been planned in Leeds as in Kandahar, as our government keeps telling us, though it can't do much about that either. The idea that terrorist outrages can for the most part be prevented by vigilance is, sadly, baseless.
In any case, what sort of Army would we have to deploy even to control the Pashtun areas? ( answer : bigger than we have ) And how hard would it have to fight? (answer , very hard indeed). Casualties dropped recently because we stopped trying to muscle our way into Pashtun tribal zones, and negotiated deals with 'elders' who of course weren't the Taleban ( see above).
Then there's Pakistan. Pakistan is naturally interested in Afghanistan because it's on its northern border, remarkably close to the capital, Islamabad. Also, if there's trouble in Afghanistan, Pakistan has to cope with the refugees. But there's much more to it than that. Pakistan's 'border' with Afghanistan is a silly fiction. It is based on the Durand Line, a British imperial folly forced on the Afghans by naked power in 1893, but one of those imperial granny knots, like the borders of Africa and the middle East, that cannot be unravelled without causing even more problems than we have already.
It runs, madly, right through Pashtun territory. The Pashtuns simply ignore it, making it worthless as a security barrier. The real border is elsewhere. Peshawar, officially in Pakistan, is for all practical purposes an Afghan city, which is why there is a military control post on the Indus River, way inside Pakistan, on the road between Islamabad and Peshawar. That is where Pakistan really stops. There are also huge numbers of Afghan Pashtuns in Pakistan proper, particularly in that vast and volatile city, Karachi. Their votes, and the feelings of their tribal chieftains, cannot be ignored in Pakistani politics.
Now, despite the big fuss about restoring democracy a few months ago, and the overdone praise of the late Benazir Bhutto by her many rather gullible friends in the Western media, Pakistan appears to be drifting back towards control by the same faction that used to be on good terms with the Taleban. This group, not very far distant from the ISI intelligence services and the army, is said to be trying to take over Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, with a view to taking over the country in time. I can't really see how this - a consequence of the recent elections - is better than having the place run by General Musharraf and the Army, though I was never very convinced by the General's claims to be a doughty warrior against 'Terror', or 'our' principal ally in the region. It just goes to show how complicated things become when you start messing around in other people's countries.
Then there's the other question, about where Osama bin Laden actually is. I seem to remember a senior Afghan official saying a few months ago "Well, he's either in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, and he's definitely not in Afghanistan", which I thought was rather a witty way of pointing the finger. In which case, are we going to despatch troops to Pakistan? Of course not. Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan is not so weakened by repeated invasions and civil wars that foreign armies can impose themselves upon it.
What can we really do about these developments? Search me. But the presence or absence of a British army contingent in Helmand province will certainly not help. All we are doing is sending brave men to a place where they can do no good, and where they provide targets for our enemies. The British presence in Afghanistan is at least as stupid and pointless as their continuing presence in Iraq. they should come home, immediately. They only stay there because the politicians who sent them haven't the courage to admit that they don't know what they are doing. Now we have all seen Foreign Secretary David Miliband's grasp of world affairs on display last week, can we really believe that these people understand what is going on, or have any right to order better men than they are into such danger? One death in this pointless war was indefensible. A hundred are a hundred times as indefensible. Bring them home."
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Pipes: Obama vs McCain on the Middle East
Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
June 5, 2008
With the Democratic Party primaries over, American voters can focus on issues of political substance. For instance: How do the two leading candidates for U.S. president differ in their approach to Israel and related topics? Parallel interviews with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who spoke in early May with Democrat Barack Obama and in late May with Republican John McCain, offer some important insights.
Asked roughly the same set of questions, they went off in opposite directions. Obama used the interview to convince readers of his pro-Israel and pro-Jewish bona fides. He thrice reiterated his support for Israel: "the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea"; "the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is … a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world"; and "You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel's security."
Obama then detailed his support within four specifically Jewish contexts.
* Personal development: "when I think about the Zionist idea, I think about how my feelings about Israel were shaped as a young man—as a child, in fact. I had a camp counselor when I was in sixth grade who was Jewish-American but who had spent time in Israel."
* Political career: "When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I've been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends."
* Ideas: "I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn't know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris."
* Philosophy: "My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives."
In contrast, McCain felt no need to establish his Zionism nor his pro-Jewish credentials. Taking them as a given, he used his interview to raise practical policy issues, particularly the threat from Iran. For example, asked about the justness of Zionism, he replied that "it's remarkable that Zionism has been in the middle of wars and great trials and it has held fast to the ideals of democracy and social justice and human rights," then went on: "I think that the State of Israel remains under significant threat from terrorist organizations as well as the continued advocacy of the Iranians to wipe Israel off the map." Again referring to Iran, McCain committed himself "to never allowing another Holocaust." He referred to the threatened destruction of Israel as having "profound national security consequences" for the United States and he stressed that Tehran sponsors terrorist organizations intent "on the destruction of the United States of America."
A second difference concerns the importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Obama presented it as an "open wound" and an "open sore" that infects "all of our foreign policy." In particular, he said, its lack of resolution "provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions." Asked about Obama's statement, McCain slammed the idea that radical Islam results mainly from the Arab-Israeli confrontation: "I don't think the conflict is a sore. I think it's a national security challenge." Were the Israeli-Palestinian issue resolved tomorrow, he pointedly continued, "we would still face the enormous threat of radical Islamic extremism."
Finally, the two disagree on the import of Israelis continuing to live on the West Bank. Obama placed great emphasis on the topic, commenting that if their numbers continue to grow, "we're going to be stuck in the same status quo that we've been stuck in for decades now." McCain acknowledged this as a major issue but quickly changed the topic to the Hamas campaign of shelling Sderot, the besieged Israeli town that he personally visited in March, and whose predicament he explicitly compares to the mainland United States coming under attack from one of its borders.
Goldberg's twin interviews underscore two facts. First, major-party candidates for the U.S. presidency must still pay homage to warm American ties to Israel, no matter how, as in Obama's case, dramatically this may contradict their previously-held views. Second, whereas McCain is secure on the topic, Obama worries about winning the pro-Israel vote.
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
June 5, 2008
With the Democratic Party primaries over, American voters can focus on issues of political substance. For instance: How do the two leading candidates for U.S. president differ in their approach to Israel and related topics? Parallel interviews with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who spoke in early May with Democrat Barack Obama and in late May with Republican John McCain, offer some important insights.
Asked roughly the same set of questions, they went off in opposite directions. Obama used the interview to convince readers of his pro-Israel and pro-Jewish bona fides. He thrice reiterated his support for Israel: "the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea"; "the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is … a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world"; and "You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel's security."
Obama then detailed his support within four specifically Jewish contexts.
* Personal development: "when I think about the Zionist idea, I think about how my feelings about Israel were shaped as a young man—as a child, in fact. I had a camp counselor when I was in sixth grade who was Jewish-American but who had spent time in Israel."
* Political career: "When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I've been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends."
* Ideas: "I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn't know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris."
* Philosophy: "My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives."
In contrast, McCain felt no need to establish his Zionism nor his pro-Jewish credentials. Taking them as a given, he used his interview to raise practical policy issues, particularly the threat from Iran. For example, asked about the justness of Zionism, he replied that "it's remarkable that Zionism has been in the middle of wars and great trials and it has held fast to the ideals of democracy and social justice and human rights," then went on: "I think that the State of Israel remains under significant threat from terrorist organizations as well as the continued advocacy of the Iranians to wipe Israel off the map." Again referring to Iran, McCain committed himself "to never allowing another Holocaust." He referred to the threatened destruction of Israel as having "profound national security consequences" for the United States and he stressed that Tehran sponsors terrorist organizations intent "on the destruction of the United States of America."
A second difference concerns the importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Obama presented it as an "open wound" and an "open sore" that infects "all of our foreign policy." In particular, he said, its lack of resolution "provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions." Asked about Obama's statement, McCain slammed the idea that radical Islam results mainly from the Arab-Israeli confrontation: "I don't think the conflict is a sore. I think it's a national security challenge." Were the Israeli-Palestinian issue resolved tomorrow, he pointedly continued, "we would still face the enormous threat of radical Islamic extremism."
Finally, the two disagree on the import of Israelis continuing to live on the West Bank. Obama placed great emphasis on the topic, commenting that if their numbers continue to grow, "we're going to be stuck in the same status quo that we've been stuck in for decades now." McCain acknowledged this as a major issue but quickly changed the topic to the Hamas campaign of shelling Sderot, the besieged Israeli town that he personally visited in March, and whose predicament he explicitly compares to the mainland United States coming under attack from one of its borders.
Goldberg's twin interviews underscore two facts. First, major-party candidates for the U.S. presidency must still pay homage to warm American ties to Israel, no matter how, as in Obama's case, dramatically this may contradict their previously-held views. Second, whereas McCain is secure on the topic, Obama worries about winning the pro-Israel vote.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Dalrymple on marriage
"Some traditional two parent families are miserable, joyless places. Yet - argues Theodore Dalrymple - the denigration of the "ideal normal" of family life has done nothing to improve the quality of childhood in Britain.
permalink
The decision of the House of Commons not to require a woman seeking in vitro fertilisation to have a man even remotely in tow will not have much of an effect, demographically-speaking. After all, I have already met too many mothers whose sexual partner and co-parent of whose child was a syringe to worry very greatly about the statistical effects of Parliament's decision. The idea that, but for this decision, the British population would be playing happy families is, I am afraid, delusory.
Forty-two per cent of births in Britain are now out of what used to be called wedlock; and in some areas of the country - not those with the highest levels of social well-being - the figure must be fast approaching one hundred per cent. In such areas, to ask a young person who his father is has become almost indelicate, and if insisted upon is met either with incomprehension ("Of what relevance to anything could it possibly be?"), or with a shrug ("How should I know?"), or with an enquiry - is what is meant the adult male who is currently most frequently to be found in the household, though not necessarily to the extent of living in it full-time?
As to wedlock itself, it is not what it used to be, at least from the point of view of stability. Although marriages are more stable than other forms of cohabitation, a quarter of them do not last ten years. This means that, in the statistical sense, it is abnormal for a British child to end his childhood with the same adults in the household as when his childhood began. Instability is the norm.
There is another meaning of the word normal: that is to say, the normal that is the unattainable goal which people nevertheless try, as near as possible, to attain. It is surely beyond doubt that monogamy accompanied by faithfulness to the spouse has never prevailed since the world began. DNA tests would have demonstrated throughout history that even in the most monogamous of societies a goodly percentage of men's supposed children were not their own.
So successful, however, has been the attack not only on the practice, but the very ideal, of marriage, that it hardly exists any more as an ideal. This is obvious from a quick look of the works of the most popular and prolific author of children's books of our time, Jacqueline Wilson.
In most of her books, it is taken for granted that the young protagonists do not live in nuclear or two-parent families (the parents being of opposite sexes). Many of the children, on the contrary, have emerged from what would once have been thought of as anomalous or even pathological domestic circumstances. When pathology is normal, however, it becomes mere physiology. No one notices it any longer.
This kind of children's literature is both a cause and an effect. It is a cause because the children who read it will grow up without an awareness that the social arrangements described in it were ever thought of as odd or aberrant. The long march through the generations will have been entirely successful.
It is an effect because, of course, the publishers believe - rightly or wrongly, but sales seem to suggest the latter - that children want to read something that is recognisable to them, that reflects the world in which they live. And there can hardly be a child in the country who does not have a friend whose parents are divorced, separated, never married, completely unknown to each other, in murderous hatred of one another, etc. The literature is therefore an implicit recognition of a change that has already taken place, of which it is a consequence.
Now one would have imagined from the passion with which the case against the necessity, or even desirability, of a father (or merely a father-figure) was argued that something of vast practical effect was at stake, such as (was once) the granting property rights to women. And this passion explains some of the strangeness of what was said.
For example, an editorial in The Guardian, titled "Progress prevails", reported with disapproval what one Member of Parliament had said in the debate:
A knight of the shires, Sir Patrick Cormack, aired [a pernicious message]: "in Staffordshire, at least, it is considered normal for a child to have a father."
This might not be accurate, sociologically-speaking, but it is difficult to see why, if true, it would be a pernicious message. The editorial then explains why:
It is hard to see who is helped by the unstated branding of children from non-traditional families as "abnormal".
But it is clear that the knight of the shires - ex officio to be despised - did not brand any children as abnormal, or advocate any such branding. The normality to which he referred was the normality of a family structure, one in which children (on the whole) lived with their progenitors.
It is, of course, perfectly true that in the past some children were cruelly and unjustly stigmatised. Mothers of illegitimate children were sometimes confined to lunatic asylums merely by virtue of having given birth to such children. Not even the most traditionalist knight of the shires would propose returning to such practices.
But this is not quite the same as saying that such stigmatisation was so bad that it means that society as a whole should make no judgment at all as to what kind of association between men and women is best for children (again, speaking statistically, for there is no form of association that absolutely guarantees either success or failure).
Neither is the avoidance even of the possibility of such stigmatisation the only, or even a very important, purpose of policy. And I think we can be tolerably certain that our willing, even eager, destruction of an ideal normal of family life has not improved the quality of childhood in Britain. Furthermore, it leaves us intellectually defenceless against, for example, the demand for the official recognition of polygamy, for where much is encouraged, eventually everything will be permitted."
permalink
The decision of the House of Commons not to require a woman seeking in vitro fertilisation to have a man even remotely in tow will not have much of an effect, demographically-speaking. After all, I have already met too many mothers whose sexual partner and co-parent of whose child was a syringe to worry very greatly about the statistical effects of Parliament's decision. The idea that, but for this decision, the British population would be playing happy families is, I am afraid, delusory.
Forty-two per cent of births in Britain are now out of what used to be called wedlock; and in some areas of the country - not those with the highest levels of social well-being - the figure must be fast approaching one hundred per cent. In such areas, to ask a young person who his father is has become almost indelicate, and if insisted upon is met either with incomprehension ("Of what relevance to anything could it possibly be?"), or with a shrug ("How should I know?"), or with an enquiry - is what is meant the adult male who is currently most frequently to be found in the household, though not necessarily to the extent of living in it full-time?
As to wedlock itself, it is not what it used to be, at least from the point of view of stability. Although marriages are more stable than other forms of cohabitation, a quarter of them do not last ten years. This means that, in the statistical sense, it is abnormal for a British child to end his childhood with the same adults in the household as when his childhood began. Instability is the norm.
There is another meaning of the word normal: that is to say, the normal that is the unattainable goal which people nevertheless try, as near as possible, to attain. It is surely beyond doubt that monogamy accompanied by faithfulness to the spouse has never prevailed since the world began. DNA tests would have demonstrated throughout history that even in the most monogamous of societies a goodly percentage of men's supposed children were not their own.
So successful, however, has been the attack not only on the practice, but the very ideal, of marriage, that it hardly exists any more as an ideal. This is obvious from a quick look of the works of the most popular and prolific author of children's books of our time, Jacqueline Wilson.
In most of her books, it is taken for granted that the young protagonists do not live in nuclear or two-parent families (the parents being of opposite sexes). Many of the children, on the contrary, have emerged from what would once have been thought of as anomalous or even pathological domestic circumstances. When pathology is normal, however, it becomes mere physiology. No one notices it any longer.
This kind of children's literature is both a cause and an effect. It is a cause because the children who read it will grow up without an awareness that the social arrangements described in it were ever thought of as odd or aberrant. The long march through the generations will have been entirely successful.
It is an effect because, of course, the publishers believe - rightly or wrongly, but sales seem to suggest the latter - that children want to read something that is recognisable to them, that reflects the world in which they live. And there can hardly be a child in the country who does not have a friend whose parents are divorced, separated, never married, completely unknown to each other, in murderous hatred of one another, etc. The literature is therefore an implicit recognition of a change that has already taken place, of which it is a consequence.
Now one would have imagined from the passion with which the case against the necessity, or even desirability, of a father (or merely a father-figure) was argued that something of vast practical effect was at stake, such as (was once) the granting property rights to women. And this passion explains some of the strangeness of what was said.
For example, an editorial in The Guardian, titled "Progress prevails", reported with disapproval what one Member of Parliament had said in the debate:
A knight of the shires, Sir Patrick Cormack, aired [a pernicious message]: "in Staffordshire, at least, it is considered normal for a child to have a father."
This might not be accurate, sociologically-speaking, but it is difficult to see why, if true, it would be a pernicious message. The editorial then explains why:
It is hard to see who is helped by the unstated branding of children from non-traditional families as "abnormal".
But it is clear that the knight of the shires - ex officio to be despised - did not brand any children as abnormal, or advocate any such branding. The normality to which he referred was the normality of a family structure, one in which children (on the whole) lived with their progenitors.
It is, of course, perfectly true that in the past some children were cruelly and unjustly stigmatised. Mothers of illegitimate children were sometimes confined to lunatic asylums merely by virtue of having given birth to such children. Not even the most traditionalist knight of the shires would propose returning to such practices.
But this is not quite the same as saying that such stigmatisation was so bad that it means that society as a whole should make no judgment at all as to what kind of association between men and women is best for children (again, speaking statistically, for there is no form of association that absolutely guarantees either success or failure).
Neither is the avoidance even of the possibility of such stigmatisation the only, or even a very important, purpose of policy. And I think we can be tolerably certain that our willing, even eager, destruction of an ideal normal of family life has not improved the quality of childhood in Britain. Furthermore, it leaves us intellectually defenceless against, for example, the demand for the official recognition of polygamy, for where much is encouraged, eventually everything will be permitted."
Monday, June 02, 2008
"Doomed, I tell you. Doomed"
A thread dedicated to deeply pessimistic predictions.
Christopher Booker in the Telegraph writes that unless politicians move fast, within six years the British will all be reading by candle light:
"Power blackouts only a foretaste of the real energy crisis to come
The power cuts that blacked out a swath of middle England on Tuesday may be the tiniest foretaste of what we can expect in a few years. If there is one fact that should be at the top of our political agenda it is that within six years we stand to lose 40 per cent of our electricity generating capacity.
At the moment we need 56 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to meet peak demand. Our seven nuclear power stations supply 10GW, but by 2015 we may have lost all but one.
We shall have lost nine coal or oil-fired power plants too, which provide 13GW more, because of the prohibitive cost of making them comply with new anti-pollution rules under the EU's Large Combustion Plants directive, 2001/80. So in a few years we will have lost 22GW of the 56GW we need, leaving a massive shortfall.
Waking up at last to the abyss yawning before us, the Government realises that the only sensible way to fill that gap is to order 20 nuclear power stations from the few companies capable of building them, at a time when other countries all over the world are queuing up to place their own orders (in 2006 we sold off the last of our own firms, Westinghouse, for a giveaway £2.8 billion, and it already has 19 orders on its books).
New nuclear plants would take 10 years or more to build, and we would have to rely on companies such as France's state-owned EDF, without being able to offer any inducement by way of subsidy, because this is forbidden by EU "state aid" rules. New EU-compliant coal-fired stations are one hope, but have the greenies screaming up the wall.
If we try to fill the gap with yet more gas-fired plants, we shall need to import ever more gas from the likes of Vladimir Putin, at a time when prices are already soaring. Meanwhile we are ordered by the EU by 2020 to generate 38 per cent of our power from "renewables" (currently 4 per cent), which the Government knows is sheer lunacy, and not even remotely feasible.
Truly our energy policy, thanks to years of neglect and wishful thinking, redefines the term "fuel poverty". Perhaps the Tories would like to tell us how they would avert the catastrophe now roaring down on us like a bullet train."
Christopher Booker in the Telegraph writes that unless politicians move fast, within six years the British will all be reading by candle light:
"Power blackouts only a foretaste of the real energy crisis to come
The power cuts that blacked out a swath of middle England on Tuesday may be the tiniest foretaste of what we can expect in a few years. If there is one fact that should be at the top of our political agenda it is that within six years we stand to lose 40 per cent of our electricity generating capacity.
At the moment we need 56 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to meet peak demand. Our seven nuclear power stations supply 10GW, but by 2015 we may have lost all but one.
We shall have lost nine coal or oil-fired power plants too, which provide 13GW more, because of the prohibitive cost of making them comply with new anti-pollution rules under the EU's Large Combustion Plants directive, 2001/80. So in a few years we will have lost 22GW of the 56GW we need, leaving a massive shortfall.
Waking up at last to the abyss yawning before us, the Government realises that the only sensible way to fill that gap is to order 20 nuclear power stations from the few companies capable of building them, at a time when other countries all over the world are queuing up to place their own orders (in 2006 we sold off the last of our own firms, Westinghouse, for a giveaway £2.8 billion, and it already has 19 orders on its books).
New nuclear plants would take 10 years or more to build, and we would have to rely on companies such as France's state-owned EDF, without being able to offer any inducement by way of subsidy, because this is forbidden by EU "state aid" rules. New EU-compliant coal-fired stations are one hope, but have the greenies screaming up the wall.
If we try to fill the gap with yet more gas-fired plants, we shall need to import ever more gas from the likes of Vladimir Putin, at a time when prices are already soaring. Meanwhile we are ordered by the EU by 2020 to generate 38 per cent of our power from "renewables" (currently 4 per cent), which the Government knows is sheer lunacy, and not even remotely feasible.
Truly our energy policy, thanks to years of neglect and wishful thinking, redefines the term "fuel poverty". Perhaps the Tories would like to tell us how they would avert the catastrophe now roaring down on us like a bullet train."
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Unlikely Thatcherites
This is a new thread on unlikely admirers of Thatcher.
First up, here's Shawn Ryder from the Happy Mondays:
"I look at this city before Thatcher was in power - round here it was loads of tunnels, factories and fuckin' smog," he says peering through the bar's Venetian blinds. "Then, all of a sudden, that industry gets shut down and we've got lots of sunshine and open skies and a whole new industry. I'm not a working-class Tory. I just think what Thatcher did had to be done for the good of the country. It's sad - we all know what happened with the miners - but we were still living in the fucking 1800s in the mid 70s. It was almost Luddite-ish. And the Luddites had to be done the same way for us to move on as a fucking race."
First up, here's Shawn Ryder from the Happy Mondays:
"I look at this city before Thatcher was in power - round here it was loads of tunnels, factories and fuckin' smog," he says peering through the bar's Venetian blinds. "Then, all of a sudden, that industry gets shut down and we've got lots of sunshine and open skies and a whole new industry. I'm not a working-class Tory. I just think what Thatcher did had to be done for the good of the country. It's sad - we all know what happened with the miners - but we were still living in the fucking 1800s in the mid 70s. It was almost Luddite-ish. And the Luddites had to be done the same way for us to move on as a fucking race."
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