True Friends

The French Embassy in the US has a paean to our shared values... rather amusing.

And the Kings of earth in fear

Just saw the first pictures I've seen of jubilant Iraqis celebrating Allied arrival. Jolly good. But what was more important was what they were saying: "Saddam is dead," according to the translators. In some ways, this makes the question of whether we killed Saddam or not irrelevant. If the word of mouth is spreading that Saddam is dead, then his regime is over.

Which makes the line I quote above (from the poem whence this blog's title is derived) seem more and more apposite:

"And the Kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hear
What the hand of God hath wrought for the Houses and the Word."

Tyrants all over the world should take Saddam's fate to heart. With the very first shot of the war we may have killed him and at the very least loosened his grip of fear over his people.

PP: They're now saying the people were saying "Saddam's days are numbered." Ah well. Still, I think Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il will probably have required a change of trousers after they heard the news.

Similarly

Sadly, this is unsourced, but sounds right:

EU DEFENCE POLICY IN TATTERS

The absence of the British Defence Minister, Geoff Hoon, from a routine EU defence ministers' meeting in Greece on Friday and Saturday (He had "more urgent business" to attend to in London, he said) could not have been more symbolic. Nonetheless, the French Defence Minister, Michel Alliot-Marie, tried to pretend that all was well: "Our transient differences," she said, "will not impede our will to make progress with European defence." The only problem with her optimistic statement is that the backbone of European defence is Franco-British co-operation - the one relationship which has soured more than any other within the EU.

At the beginning of April, the EU is to take over from Nato in the running of Macedonia, and supporters of European defence are looking forward to this with glee. (They seem less interested in the actual resolution of the crisis in that country, so keen are they to have their own EU protectorate.) But apparently Macedonia is only the amuse-bouche for other more important military dishes: the EU wants to take over peacekeeping operations in Bosnia as well. There seems, therefore, to be little chance of the situation being resolved there either, now that institutional interests are firmly driving the agenda. The EU already has a police mission in Bosnia & Herzegovina composed of 510 policemen under the command of Javier Solana; it is now looking forward to greater glory.

CFSP is dead, thank goodness. Wouldn't surprise me, though, if it rose like a vampire in a year or so.

Collateral Benefit

The Irish National Platform is an isolationist group that almost got the Nice Treaty on the future of the EU scuppered. They're currently anti-war, which I think is consistent with their general outlook. Anyway, in their recent e-mail alerts have been a couple of very interesting gobbets gleaned from European sources, such as:

BERLUSCONI: CONSTITUTION IN DANGER

The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who supports the US-UK attack on Iraq, has expressed the fear that the chances of the European constitution being signed in Rome in December, as planned, are receding. Although Berlusconi, in a meeting with Gerhard Schroder, has said that he was very attached to the December deadline, because he wanted the new constitution to be signed in Rome. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the chairman of the Convention which is drawing up the document, admitted on 14th March that the Constitution could probably not be presented to the European Council in Thessaloniki on 20th and 21st June, as planned. He claimed to see no problem in delaying the conclusion of his Convention's work to the end of September; but the risk, in the eyes of the supporters of the constitution, is that any delay now will only snowball.

Giscard thinks there should be a special summit devoted only to the constitution, to be held in October or November; but there might still be disagreements then, especially since the new member states are involved in the process too. Four member states (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the United Kingdom) have joined six candidate countries (Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Latvia) in asking for a period of reflection between the end of the Convention's work and the beginning of the Inter-governmental Conference that will actually draw up the new treaty.

The EU candidate states do not want the Constitution to be signed before they join on 1st May 2004, by which time the presidency will be held by Ireland. So Berlusconi seems to have lost grip of "his" ceremony in Rome this December. But according to commentators, his support for the British, Danish, Portuguese and Spanish governments on the Iraq crisis has pushed suspicion among EU states to their highest imaginable level. Under the circumstances created by the Iraq crisis, Paris and Berlin are unlikely to accept that foreign policy should be decided by majority vote. But just as disagreements and national reflexes of the European states could not be greater, Giscard is still talking about the "profound unity of European peoples" which he wants to "come to the surface." [Liberation, 18th March 2003]

The Iraq crisis has turned over the stone of "European unity." There are all sorts of unpleasant things crawling underneath.

Idle thoughts

Watching the news tonight, I am completely sick of the excuse for opposing the war given by certain Muslims that Hussein is their co-religionist. Somehow, I doubt he's observant. Therefore, in a similar vein, all Christians ought to support Milosevic, Mugabe, Gerry Adams, et al, given that they all respect the cross. Given that Islam has condemned the Crusades for that exact mentality, it's rank hypocrisy to belief support of Hussein for that reason to be any better. After all, aren't the Kurds and Shi'ites fellow Muslims?

Furthermore, what's all this demanded linkage between Iraq and Israel/Palestine? It befuddles the mind. Although Arabs may believe it to be unfair, let's turn the question on its head. If the US and UN proposed to solve the Israel issue tomorrow, ought objectors have a right to oppose due to the fact that measures on Iraq are not included? Again, the resolutions against Israel are of a different nature than that to Iraq.

The beliefs of many young protestors are dangerously naive. Apparently, the Iraqis have free reign to overthrow Hussein, despite several noticeable failures. The belief that mobs in the street equate to democracy is foolish. After all, many voters aren't happy with the government they elected. If we let the mobs rule, why don't we descend to anarchy? After all, that's the way democracy works. I don't agree with Roe v. Wade, but I don't consider the government illegitimate as a result. A much needed introduction to the real world for these blinded youth.

More on crime

The second and third parts of my crime series are now up at the UPI site.

Sacre bleu!

Ricin found in Paris. Chriac set to blame America. BBC to host special Question Time devoted to the issue with guests Dominique de Villepin, Tam Dalyell, Michael Moore and Osama bin Laden, with Jolly Josh Fischer as the comedian.

The humble soldier

As Stephen Pollard says, Lt. Col. Tim Collins' speech to his men makes me proud to be British too.

America's role in the (crime) world

The first part of my 2500 word magnum opus on just how crime-ridden America is compared with the rest of the world has been put out by UPI at Analysis: America the crime-free, Part 1. This part tackles the question of whether America's murder rate is a good guide to how crime-ridden its society is.

Panic and security

Boris Johnson conjures up a wonderful image of the degree of panic being spread in the UK at the moment:

In the restaurants of London, we are invited to imagine that Levantine waiters will sidle up and sprinkle anthrax on our spaghetti. Out of the doner huts and falafel dens will swarm the tarbooshed hordes, plotting to release their deadly vapours on the Tube.

It's the Phony War again, isn't it? And the upshot is a bizarre contradiction:

Worse was to follow when Ann tried to fly to Scotland for a wedding. Now she was told she needed a passport for the plane to Scotland! No ifs, no buts, she needed a passport or photo ID - which she did not have - if she wished to travel within what is still the United Kingdom. Why? "Security."

Something has gone seriously wrong, if we are so obsessed by security that we inhibit the right of a freeborn Batley girl to fly to Scotland. If we are so worried about undesirable aliens within our borders, wouldn't it make more sense to crack down on the freedom of movement of asylum seekers?

After the policeman was killed in Manchester, I discovered that in 2001 there were 2,665 Algerian applications for asylum, of which 2,530 were turned down.

Guess how many were either removed or departed? 125. No doubt many of these are good people, who deserve sympathy. But shouldn't something be done to sort out this abuse of the system, before taking away, from British people, in a hysteria about "security", the basic right to move around their own country?

Actually, people do have a right to move around Britain, just not necessarily to fly. We've accepte that in the US for some time. If they're demanding papers at Kings Cross railway station and at roadblocks on the M1 going North towards Edinburgh, then that is a problem and the right is being denied. I don't think that's happening, though. Yet.

Child abuse

Yesterday, there were many protests by schoolchildren over the war. They played truant to demonstrate, but their teachers "understand." Hmmm. This Telegraph editorial has it right. There are two problems. First, what this tells us about our schools (as if we didn't know already):

The head of education at the National Union of Teachers, John Bangs, told Radio 4's Today programme yesterday: "I don't condone young people leaving school, but we have to understand it. These are major events." Equivocation over whether this truancy should be punished is tacitly to politicise education.

Second, the fact that immature minds are being used in such a fashion demonstrates the intellectual poverty of the antiwar movement:

A sort of pacifist jingoism has, lately, replaced real and thoughtful dissent. Just as jingoism is a perversion of the admirable values of patriotism, Stop the War is a perversion of pacifism. Militantly and flatly, the peace jingoists assert that all soldiers are bad, all government untrustworthy, any use of military force motivated by economic agendas. The children of Servicemen should not be made to feel defensive as they watch their schoolmates protest on television. Those children must be rightly proud of their parents. It is the child protest organisers who should be ashamed.

It seems that the dumbing-down of education has now spread to the level of protest. How ironic. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

HM's Message

Her Majesty the Queen has sent a message to her troops that says it all, really:

"May your mission be swift and decisive, your courage steady and true, and your conduct in the highest traditions of your service both in waging war and bringing peace," she said.

"My thoughts are with you all, and with your families and friends who wait at home for news and pray for your safe return."

Simple yet elegant, and exactly what needed to be said.

Well, the Guardian often gets it wrong...

I forget on whose site I found this, but it deserves posting everywhere. Back in 1999, The Guardian was reporting on a meeting between Saddam's people and Al Qa'eda. Even if it was rebuffed, it is still evidence that the supposed hostility between the two is not nearly as deep as people say it is.

Le deluge

Iain Dale is a publisher as well as a blogger. He's decided to publish a humor book on "why we hate the French" and, as part of the research, wants us to send him our best anti-French jokes. Fire away!

Useful source

From what I've seen of the American coverage so far, it looks like Sky News, Fox's sister network in the UK (but without the reputation), is the best source for up-to-the-minute news on what's happening in Iraq.

If you're tired of watching C-SPAN

Or Fox News, or CNN or even MSNBC, try to catch the reruns of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tomorrow. My friend John Hulsman from Heritage is on it and he really puts the case for action in Iraq as well as can be expected in the circumstances...

Resignation Issue

I have an article over at The American Enterprise Magazine Online explaining for an American audience the significance, or lack of it, of the various resignations from the British Government over the Iraq issue.

Buggers at work in EU

Officials at the building that House of the EU Council of Ministers have uncovered mystery buggings of the offices of the UK, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Austrian delegations. Curious that this should have been discovered on Feb 28 but only made public today. Less curious that the French newspapers should blame the US. Watch this space for developments.

Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferentes?

The Greek presidency of the EU has decided to use the internet to give Europeans a voice in their government. Hmmm. I wonder what will become of this, given the unrepresentative nature of the internet. Anyway, Vote for the EU YOU want is the intiative. Thanks to Dan Hannan MEP for the heads up.

Precedents

A brief exchange between my good friend Paul Robinson and Eugene Volokh on the dangers of precedents in warfare is up at The Volokh Conspiracy. I think both sides make good points. But if the onrushing war is a military disaster, or even just less effective a solution than we thought it would be based on the precedents of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, I think the "dangerous precedent" argument won't hold much water, because there will be severe negatives in following it. It will probably remain a "good precedent" until we run into trouble, at which point a new precedent will be set.

The ongoing political war

Now the British public is moving to acceptance of war, there will be two political wars ongoing there. First, the Civil War within Labour, where I think Blair will win handsomely. More interesting perhaps will be the war between the Tories and the Lib Dems. Like Chirac, I think Kennedy overplayed his hand in thinking that British antiwar feeling was stronger than it is. The Tories should be able to exploit this and paint the Liberals as the leftists they are. Peter Cuthbertson, a Second Lieutenant in the Tory forces, comes out with guns blazing in this particular fight.

Blair for an Independent Britain

Excellent analysis by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post of Tony Blair's internal contradictions over Iraq. She concludes that Blair's decision is a rejection of transnationalism:

But they [Blair's opponents] won't all come around, because the debate about Iraq in Britain is actually about far more than Iraq. It is about making a choice between two radically different options. Either Britain will become further enmeshed in the world of multilateral institutions, eventually diluting its sovereignty in the European Union; or Britain will continue to have its own foreign policy and a distinct international role. Blair knows this, and said yesterday that the decision to go to war in Iraq "will determine the pattern of politics for the next generation." Putting it more grandly, the British philosopher Roger Scruton has described this as a test of whether Britain will remain a "nation-state" at all.

Odd though it sounds, Blair is asserting his country's independence by siding with George Bush. If he is perceived to fail -- if the war goes badly, if his party votes him out of office -- his career will be at an end, and so will a very old British foreign policy tradition. After such a setback, it's hard to see how any future British prime minister would ever be able to defy European conventional wisdom again. Until now, Blair has always tried to play by the rules of multilateral Europe and to back the United States. Now he knows that he can't have it both ways, and his agony shows on his face.

I think she's right. If the war goes badly, the British may well lose the self-confidence they have been regaining gradually since Thatcher, and might throw themselves wholly into the European project as a way of preventing such tragedy again. Europe will become a protectionist hedgehog, rolling itself up in the face of any danger, only with no spines to protect it. We can but pray that the Generals know what they're doing.

Kris on "So you think you might be a tyrant?"

Not sure what counts as tyranny? Perhaps you think you can spread the definition so thinly as to apply to any leader, thereby making the concept of tyrants irrelevant (and thus protect yourself).

Well, here goes….

If you think gassing men, women, and children for political gain is okay, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If teaching your sons how to torture is a fun way to spend a Saturday, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If holding your government’s family members in prison is a good way to get the votes you need, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If keeping the home fires lit involves covering citizens with oil and igniting them, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If shredding old documents and people is a good way to tidy up the place, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If your idea of urban renewal is to build dozens of palaces while your people starve, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If rape is a good way to meet a girl, control a father, or get driving directions, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If shooting unwanted party guests is a good way to keep your shindigs intimate, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If you think you need to be on constant move and only sleep 4 hours a night, well, then you might be a tyrant.

If your “posse” consists of thousands of heavily armed soldiers, well, then you might be a tyrant.

Some people might call certain leaders tyrants because they hold a different political view than they. Some people might call certain leaders tyrants because they made one horrible mistake. But let’s not lessen the term by bandying it about. Tyrants do unimaginably horrible things for a long time. Let’s leave the past behind us. We can not change what has happened there. Let’s start looking at leaders who have for the past, say 10 years, been truly tyrannical and concentrate on getting rid of them. Let’s call for a new approach where these evil men are no longer tolerated or supported.

-- Post by Kris Murray (Iain's wife)

Old World Order

Janet Daley has a compelling column in the Telegraph where she says this is the dawn of the New World's order. Some good points well made, but her last sentence set me thinking:

And so they will fight this fight now in the only way that it can be fought: with the unflinching dedication of true believers, while the Old Europeans cringe on the sidelines.

The current "new" world view is in many ways a reversion to the Evangelical era of British foreign policy. The view was that, if something is wrong, then it will be stamped out, whether it be sati (the Hindi practice of immolating widows on their husband's funeral pyre) or the slave trade. Yes, some these actions had serious consequences: 15,000 in total died in the Indian Mutiny that was inspired by the imposition of "British values" on India. But as 7,500 women died in just Bengal in the years 1813-1825, I think it's fair to say far more lives were saved than lost.

The evangelical era died out because the British lost the confidence that they were right, coupled with the crippling costs of World War I. This new era has two crucial differences: first, it is secular, not religious and belief in democracy, personal liberty and social justice is unlikely to be eroded as quickly as was belief in evangelicism. Second, the British had rivals to its hegemony who were able to drag it into debilitating war. We are unlikely to see that happen to the US any time soon.

There is also another aspect to this. This new era reflects, as Jim Bennett has written, an understanding between the American Jacksonians and the British Gladstonians, typified by Tony Blair. In realising that he is a Gladstonian, Blair may be beginning to reject European-style transnationalism. We'll see when the European issue comes back to the table, but the bitter personal attacks of the European transnationalists against him cannot but have had some effect on his worldview.

Watch C-SPAN if you can

And try to catch the LA Times debate on American Power and the Crisis Over Iraq. Christopher Hitchens and Michael Ignatieff effectively destroy the "dirty hands" argument, Hitchens dealing particularly well with the accusation of double standards over his treatments of Kissinger and Wolfowitz.

"Tommy" seems apposite here

More evidence that the UN was a distraction in British public opinion. Thanks to commenter Richard for pointing me towards this ITV poll that shows 50% support for war. A far cry from the ten percent of a couple of weeks ago. And whose fault is the collapse of the UN process in the opinion of the British public?

French President Jacques Chirac has few supporters for his stance. Sixty eight per cent said he was wrong to block UN backing for the threat of force. Just 21 per cent felt that he was right and 11 per cent didn't know.

Mr Chirac also gets most blame for the failure of the international community to work together through the UN. Fifty per cent said it was his fault. Thirty five per cent thought George Bush was responsible and Mr Blair was blamed by just two per cent. The don't know tally was 13 per cent.

This was a YouGov poll, whose previous methods have tended to lean things leftwards when compared with other polls, so I'm not surprised the President only gets 38 percent support in this one, but it's remarkable to see these numbers on war support and blaming the French in one of their surveys.

Terrorists caught

Meanwhile, "three European men" have been arrested after 'home-made bombs' were found at their flat.

Uh-oh en Francais

It seems that realization is growing in France and Germany that they blew it badly. Germany first:

In Berlin, a reporter talking to a German official heard that the Schroeder government initially believed Iraq was a one-issue crisis, narrowly confinable to disagreement on the military undertaking and the painful although surmountable problem (in the middle term) of Germany's nonparticipation.

But reacting in fear of isolation, the official suggested, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's willingness to subordinate Germany to a French view of confrontation with the United States on many wider fronts has brought the government to a position it now finds an awkward fit with Germany's long-term interests, outside the two men's realm of when they ran for re-election on a pacifist platform last September.

In very less specific terms, this notion of things having gone too far appeared to suffuse remarks on Monday by Fischer that American policy was absolutely nonimperial in nature, that the United States was the irreplacable element of global and regional security, that there was no alternative to good trans-Atlantic relationships and that he well understood how the new East European membership of the European Union could have a "very different view" of their security than this or that EU founding member.

So Germany is crawling back. What about France?

For the first time, French publications, reporting on the disarray of political analysts, are now asking: Who are we against, Saddam or Bush? Or: Where was the sense in Chirac's promising a veto of a new UN resolution when such a gesture was not an absolute necessity? And even: How did France manage to reject British revisions to its draft resolution last week hours before Iraq did?

"Have They Gone Overboard?" this week's cover-story in Le Point, a center-right newsmagazine, wondered over a picture of Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominic de Villepin. Its lead editorial's response was mostly yes, noting viperishly that France was rather good at accommodating itself to any detestable status quo. But that hardly signaled some kind of special unease, no more than the middle-ground financial daily La Tribune did in saying Tuesday that France would pay dearly for its gratuitous threat of a veto.

Instead, the notion that a botch may well be at hand for France came in a well-researched article in the current issue of the left-populist magazine Marianne, normally a font of anti-American tweaks and bellows, which analyzed recent French diplomacy under the title, "Visionary Policy or Operetta-Style Gaullism?"

It said France always sought if possible to propel its own policies with a European motor but found that its disagreement these days with many of the EU's members and candidates about the French desire for a Europe defined by its opposition to America eliminated any hope of a common policy.

And, all of a sudden, the French are beginning to confront the reality of Iraq possibly using WMDs on the battlefield:

There were other, more palpable aspects of French policy that caused discomfort among the French. Therese Delpech, a Frenchwoman who is director of strategic affairs at the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and a commissioner in charge of Iraqi affairs for the UN's control, verification and inspection commission, pointed to a French dilemma if American or British troops were felled by Iraqi chemical or biological arms.

"In a case like that, it will be very difficult (for France) not to participate," she said. "You've got to look (the situation) straight in the eye. If chemical weapons are used against American or British troops, that's really going to be very difficult."

De Villepin referred to the issue Monday, telling a radio interviewer that in those circumstances, France would be alongside what he called "its precious friends." When an American official in Washington was asked if knew of such a contingency, he said no and called the French gesture "meaningless."

I suspect a British official's off-the-record reaction would have been a little more, how can I put it, Anglo-Saxon.

And the upshot?

In the sense of the French having brazenly overreached, while the Germans were stuck holding on to Chirac's shirttail, that has some of Germany's foreign policy professionals regarding the circumstances with irony and tinges of regret. Whatever Fischer says, theirs is a Germany that could come out of the war with deteriorated relations with America, tarnished ones with an Eastern Europe it did not quickly raise its voice to defend and ties well short of full confidence with France.

For the French, the regrets may not yet be full blown. But what is moldering now is a parallel sense of France's having eaten up all its room for maneuver, and all the potential of its star-turn in the run-up to the war through an excess, in the words of a German official, of the French "prestige imperative."

Ah, Chirac. L'etat c'est lui?

Blair wins both votes comfortably

The amendment that there was no justification for war was defeated 396 to 217, including about 140 Labour rebels. The substantive motion approving military action only had 149 voting against it, if I heard right. This was a pretty good result for the Prime Minister.

It's up to the Generals now.

PP: Just to put this in perspective, he would have won without the Tories' 163 votes (although some Tories voted against). While the rebellion was a large one, 2/3rds of Labour MPs supported him. The Labour left simply isn't strong enough to damage him significantly at present.

A quick distraction

My latest TCS column is up in full form (an earlier glitch meant only the first half was posted). TV in the Dock takes a detailed look at the latest study to claim TV causes violence. There's something there, but it's not in black and white like they claim.

They don't do this in Congress...

Britain may have its constitutional problems, but packed Parliamentary debates are great theater. How about this from the much-missed William Hague:

William Hague stands up - and cannot avoid the temptation to have a go at the leader of the Lib Dems, saying if the Iraqi army "collapses under fire as quickly as his argument, it will be a short war indeed!"

Mr Kennedy picks his nose and turns red.

Mr Hague then compliments Robin Cook on his speech last night, before commenting on Clare Short that he has never seen "a more spectacular failure to resign."

He jokes that Mr Blair has had his revenge on her by forcing her to stay IN the cabinet...Mr Blair laughs.

Under fire from Jon Owen Jones, Mr Hague reveals he would not have supported the US invasion of Grenada - but quotes this as showing that backing for America is not unconditional, but vital at this particular time.

Mr Hague goes on that Saudia Arabia and Kuwait "do not care what happens to Saddam Hussein", revelations he has made travelling to those countries since his resignation as Tory leader. "They will not shed a tear for him" he adds, saying the Israel/Palestinian conflict is far more important to those countries.

But he backs pre-emptive action against "rogue states and sponsors of terrorism."

Mr Hague commends the prime minister's stance, urges colleagues to vote for it, and receives a nod of thanks from Mr Blair.

We also learn that the Lib Dem's junior foreign affairs spokesman is Michael Moore. Aha!

Britain moves to war footing

It took me ages to find it, but The Guardian has a very interesting poll today:

Public opinion has shifted dramatically towards military action against Iraq, with the anti-war lead in the Guardian/ICM opinion poll narrowing from 23 to only six points in the past month.

This has been accompanied by a recovery in Tony Blair's personal rating, according to results of the March survey, published today.

Women and Liberal Democrat voters remain overwhelmingly opposed to the war, but majority backing for military action is now to be found for the first time among men and among Labour and Conservative voters.

Now the UN distraction is out of the way the resolve of the British public will stiffen quickly. And just look at this:

Surprisingly the poll also shows quite good ratings for George Bush with 53% of voters saying they have confidence in him to make the right decisions on Iraq, while 43% have no confidence in him.

As long as Blair retains the confidence of the House today, his position is secure politically. For him, all will then depend on the military.

Short Sham Shock

Well, it seems Clare Short, who said angrily she would resign from the Blair cabinet, has decided to stay, and it has stengthened Tony's hand:

The astonishment at his refusal to sack her over her original outburst has now turned into admiration at the way he has completely neutralised her as a political force.

Not quite the way I thought it would go, but I did say Blair would handle this well.

Written Before Bush's Speech

The cover story in this week’s Newsweek talks about how America has been the strongest nation on earth for a full century however, anti-Americanism is only very recent. The author blames Bush’s foreign policy tactics which have managed to both offend and alienate our allies and enemies alike.

Islamic fundamentalists and left-leaning socialist countries have always hated America because we do things exactly the way they think America should not. But everyone else still had a relatively positive image of America. Now as the only super power in the world, Bush has chosen an approach that makes us appear both arrogant and uncontrollable.

I believe there is a lot of truth in this but I think there is something more. The author touched upon America’s ability to crush the Taliban swiftly in the Afghan war, a place where other great empires (Russia & Britain) had failed. We did not.

We won not because we are a huge superpower so much as we were liberators. We came in, we exacted justice, we are rebuilding. That we won so easily is what has scared so many countries. We had been so nice and low-key for so long, they lost sight of how powerful America is. The other countries were hoping we would, maybe not fail but, struggle more. They fear us not because we are bad, but because we succeeded too easily. But again, let me underscore that unlike previous countries, we were liberators (ultimately) in Afghanistan, not conquerors.

What many these other countries don’t understand is that America doesn’t do things the way Islamic fundamentalists and left-leaning socialist countries would. If we really wanted to “rule the world”, Peru, Mexico, and Venezuela would have been American states ages ago. That said, it floors me when Europe actually expects the US to give up its sovereignty to an international body. They call us arrogant when they clearly think the US is too stupid to see through their Kyoto Treaty stunt, amongst others.

Yes, President Bush has a lot of fences to mend. And I sincerely hope he does it quickly and sincerely. He squandered decades of good will in just a few years. I don’t know how we can rebuild it, except to do our best. We also need to counter the really ugly propaganda that Islamic fundamentalists and socialist countries have been broadcasting. Propaganda that is proven a lie when held up against the actions of America and the general feelings of the American people.

I deeply hope President Bush will work hard to improve US relations with the rest of the world and reassure them that we mean no harm, but I would be seriously pissed off if he gave up my rights as an American to please elitist-run socialist countries.

Kris Murray
Iain's Wife

Murray backs winning candidate shock horror

Amazing. Chris Patten is the new Oxford chancellor. Yet the BBC still manages to twist things round. They say he

beat off a strong challenge from senior judge Lord Bingham to win the election for the coveted post

The votes were as follows:

First round: Patten 3657, Bingham 2251, Neill 1290, Toksvig 1179. Toksvig excluded.

Second Round: Patten 4203, Bingham 2483, Neill 1470.

So Patten had half as many votes again as Bingham in the first round and got fully half of Toksvig's transfers. Strong challenge? This was a walkover.

I'm still reeling from the idea that I backed a winner...

Warming up flocks

Dame Thora Hird has died. A splendid lady, may she Rest In Peace.

The Diplomatic Game

It seems clear to me, as it seems clear to British, Spanish, American and Portugeuse leaders that France has overplayed its hand. We'll see tomorrow (well, today now) whether France's unreasonable veto threat wins the day and plunges the world into war,,,

Blogger This

You may not agree with what he say, but that forthright Aussie John Ray has a new site at Dissecting Leftism.

Where's Dead or Alive when you need them?

what decade does your personality live in?


quiz brought to you by lady interference, ltd

99 Red Balloons

Lilli Marleen is the website of the Group Captain's German friend. A useful insight into the current German psyche.

Spring is here

Well, the Tories think it is, at least. Peter Cuthbertson's coverage of their spring conferance is here. As another delegate suggested to me over the weekend, much of this was irrelevant in view of the momentous events about to happen.

What?

This has to be the most bizarre news headline I've ever seen: Tory leader woos middle classes.

Poll pall

I am an unindicted co-conspirator at The Volokh Conspiracy, having been asked by the well-bred one to post there a few time. Eugene himself tells it like it is about current polls on the war. Well worth reading, even if you're not a conspircay theorist.

Legitimacy

What are the sanctions of the United Nations? Jay Manifold tells us exactly what the USA would be like if it reflected the UN. Exquisite.

The reality of Zimbabwe

Thanks to Fred Boness for this article about the courageous cricketer Henry Olonga. He has had to go into hiding to escape the secret police.

In sporting terms, this is worse than what happened in the Soviet Union or South Africa. God bless Henry Olonga, and may he be able to take many wickets for a free Zimbabwe in the future.

Roundheads for Liberty

As may be gathered from the title of this website, I tend towards the Roundhead point of view. It is one of the most annoying facets of the Left that they have co-opted the Roundhead image for their own. This is twisting their position. The Levellers, for instance, were in favor of free trade, as can be seen here:

"The Case of the Army Truly Stated"... included this demand: "That all Monopolyes be forthwith removed, and no persons whatsoever may be permitted to restrain others from free trade."

It is interesting that the current crisis seems to me to be returning us to the 17th/18th century arguments. The arguments of liberty. justice and free trade on one side, the arguments of entrenched position, arbitrary power and regional protection on the other.

Of course, we won then. We'll win again now.

For conspiracy theorists

Don't fail to check out David Icke's web site. He knows the real truth: check out especially this page, where you'll find out that both the 9/11 hijackers and the American authorities are tools of the Global Secret Society Network. Doubtless Saddam, Bush, Blair and Chirac are all taking their orders as we speak.

They're all shape-shifting alien reptiles, you know.

Kris had a thought (just the one)

This came to me, I thought about it, and Iain is letting me share with ya'll (it's very exciting).

Which is more frightening to the anti-West folk (including anti-West Westerners), that America is so powerful it could crush any nation it chooses, or that America could but doesn’t?

I wonder if those most jealous of America’s wealth and power are not only jealous but also angry that America “wastes”.

It’s an odd thought but I’m beginning to suspect it a true one.

America’s success is not a secret. The means are available to any country that wishes to for it. We made good choices about the handling of our resources (including tax policies) in order to maximize opportunities and minimize risk for the majority of our citizens. Were we right all the time? No. Are we perfect? Lord, no! But did we get it more right than wrong? Yes.

Let’s face it. What so upsets the liberals and fundamentalists equally is we didn’t choose their way and we were (mostly) right. That we don’t “use” our power the way they would is just the icing on the cake.

Kris Murray (Iain's Wife)

Young Thugs for Peace

Be sure to check out OxBlog's accounts of antiwar protests by the young in Oxford. How pleasant.

Olonga Silenced

Zimbawean cricketer Henry Olonga, who protested against Robert Mugabe's regime in front of a Harare crowd, has been silenced:

"I would love to talk to you guys," he told reporters at Bloemfontein's Goodyear Park on Monday, "but they don't want me to."

When asked who "they" were, he added: "Work it out for yourselves. Work out who doesn't want me to talk about things other than cricket."

Olonga has also not been selected to play for Zimbabwe since the incident. Owing to a rain-shortened match, he bowled only 3 overs, but conceded only 8 runs. If he was dropped on cricketing rather than political grounds, they didn't give him much of a chance.

Also on sp!ked

The always readable Jennie Bristow sums up the dreadful Clare Short in The war of Clare's ego. She finishes off with a useful reminder of what politcians are supposed to be about:

When even a Cabinet minister is so ill-prepared to take responsibility for the actions of a government of which she is supposed to be a part, preferring to broadcast her personal objections across the UK media instead of fighting them out with her colleagues, this is not political leadership, but its opposite. It is a self-conscious abdication of responsibility, for the sake of an individual ego.

There's nothing brave or admirable about the likes of Clare Short attacking the government from within. What public life needs are more people prepared to fight, to lead, and to take responsibility, and fewer moral cowards looking to nurse their gripes in public.

Amen.

MMR Mania

Sorry to hear that Melanie Phillips has bought into the MMR panic. Sp!ked's resident doctor, Michael Fitzpatrick effectively demolishes the arguments here. Fitzpatrick has an autistic son.

Lomborg

If you're tired of waiting for my Lomborg summary, check out Duane Freese's coverage at TCS.

What a surprise

Republican - You believe that the free market will
take care of most things, but that the
government should be there with moderate
taxation to provide for national defense and
enforcing morality. Your historical role model
is Ronald Reagan.


Which political sterotype are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

PP: I just re-ran the quiz answering as I think a New Labour type would. The result was: "Fascist: You believe that an alliance of monopolistic corporations and oppressive government should cooperate to lord it over the population with an efficient iron fist. Your historical role model is Adolf Hitler."

Jacques Who?

I think the most interesting thing to come out of this FOX News poll is that fully 45 percent of Americans have never heard of Jacques Chirac. The equivalent figure for Tony Blair is 17 percent. So much for the Frnch being demonized over here.

Vote for Patten

I helped nominate him, so I'm going to go a little further and ask Oxford MAs to vote for Chris Patten, for essentially the reasons outlined in this Times leader. He would also almost certainly give up being an EU Commissioner if elected, so it's likely to be a win double.

As Cicero once said...

"Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth." Eoghan Harris, in his Telegraph article, "Unlike Clare Short, Tony Blair knows that evil must be fought," points out a difference between the Platonist and Aristotelian ways of thinking about the nature of man which gets to the heart of the moral questions being asked about the current nastiness:

Most of the woollier anti-war activists are Platonists. But their ethically empty rhetoric, if applied to Nazi Germany, would go like this: "Hitler is no worse than Churchill. Look at Gallipoli, look at the way he shot the miners. How do we know Hitler means what he says about the Jews? Anyway we shall have to wait until he does something to them. And in the meantime, let's leave it to the League of Nations."

What at first appears to be a high-minded stance against using force against Saddam Hussein is in reality a recipe for raising children to be the sort of ethical eunuchs and moral neutrals who will lack the character to fight the good fight in any field.

I'm more and more convinced that this is right.

Law. What is it good for?

Interesting review of the arguments for and against the legality of military action in Iraq in The Times. The case for its legality looks compelling to me, given that we have been taking military action against Iraq for years:

One difficulty in assessing the legality of a war is the lack of clear principles. A quick scan of the literature shows no consensus on how the UN Charter is to be interpreted. Nevertheless, there are arguments to justify the legality of war on Saddam. The first is textual. Although Resolution 1441 would not appear to authorise war, it has to be read against the background of resolutions passed during and after the first Gulf War. The UN Secretary-General (among others) has used these to justify the use of force against Iraq after ceasefire violations in the past 13 years, strong evidence that further explicit measures are unnecessary.

This is why I don't think the argument that resolution 678 is irrelevant holds much water. The Kosovo precedent is also important, whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of that situation.

You know, I'm no lawyer, but I have a feeling Britain's use of force to suppress the slave trade might have been illegal under current law. That has to suggest that there's something wrong with the law as it stands.

Blair and Chirac

The Telegraph thinks it knows why Chirac has set upon the course he has:

M Chirac's actions are better explained by his historic links with Saddam, whether building the nuclear reactor at Osirak or selling arms, and the satisfaction of infuriating the Anglo-Saxons to the sound of domestic and international applause. The result has been to blow apart the United Nations Security Council, Nato and the European Union, and severely to undermine Mr Blair, the most pro-European British prime minister since Edward Heath.

M Chirac does not seem to care. But once Saddam has been removed from power, M Chirac will find himself isolated and diminished. What we have witnessed over the past few weeks is the reckless indulgence of debased Gaullism.

Perhaps. But there's another issue here.

The current debacle is not about Iraq. It's not even about the US. It seems pretty clear to me that the whole thing is a struggle to decide who is the most powerful politician in Europe, Jacques Chirac or Tony Blair. Blair has successfully challenged the Franco-German axis by allying with Spain and Italy, so creating a balancing force. His nation has overtaken France in economic terms, and its military is better. His close alliance with the world's only superpower adds to his lustre. He has won two elections by massive landslides. This is, I think, why Chirac spotted a weakness in his support and went for the jugular. If he can bring down such a powerful politician, he will be the undisputed master of Europe.

Yet I think there are signs that Blair's position may even be strengthening.
Andrew Marr's BBC analysis contains some interesting hints:

First, a growing number of Labour MPs now see the prime issue as one of Tony Blair's survival.

He has won them two elections and they are unwilling to give up on him just yet.

"This is no longer about Iraq, it's about supporting Tony," is being heard in the corridors just now.

Second, the tough behaviour of France is seen by some MPs as intransigent and unreasonable.

Third, MPs report a clear class and gender split, with men and working class supporters likelier to favour war than middle class and female members.

It is often MPs with university backgrounds and more affluent constituencies who are the most hostile to the war.

The class element may help keep Labour -- the party of the working class for generations -- together, although it's quite possible, as I've said before, that the "educated" MPs representing middle class constituencies will defect to the Lib Dems, which seems there more natural home.

But it's the French intransigence that may be the key to keeping Blair in power as head of a Labour, rather than coalition, government. The "veto under any circumstances" threat cannot be seen as anything other than unreasonable, except by ideologues. Chirac may have overplayed his hand. The struggle between these two European titans is far from over, but I have a feeling it will swing Blair's way again very soon.

PP: Blairite Times columnist Mary Ann Sieghart helps confirm my thesis:

But it was M Chirac’s insistence on Monday night that he would veto any UN resolution, however framed, that most helped Mr Blair. This allowed the Prime Minister to portray himself as the one desperate to follow the UN route, while the French President acted as a wrecker. M Chirac’s behaviour gave those MPs who had impaled themselves on a second resolution an excuse to get off the hook.

The PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party -- ed.] meeting was, by all accounts, an electrifying occasion. Diana Organ, an MP who rebelled in the last Iraq debate, made a passionate speech supporting the Prime Minister and lambasting his opponents. She was followed by colleague after colleague making the same points. Tam Dalyell, one of the most vocal opponents of Mr Blair, sat shaking with rage and eventually stormed out. And Ms Abbott was slated by a fellow Leftie, Lynne Jones, as the two women left, for making a stupid tactical error in trying to undermine the Labour leader at this most delicate of times.

Solidarity among the Comrades. Whodda thunk it?

Spin City

I cannot imagine why I left him out of my blogroll, but one of the best commentators on British Politics today is Mr British Spin. He's from the right part of the world as well, yerbuggermar (as they used to say).

Thank God

I meant to mention this yesterday, but the news that Elizabeth Smart has been found safe and well should lift the hearts of everyone.

Apologies again

A day full of meetings. I heard Nobel peace prize winner David Trimble speak at breakfast, and then heard Walter Olson of Overlawyered.com speak at lunch. Currently preparing for a dinner party as well. I'm aware I have still to write up my comments on the Bjorn Lomborg event, but will try to do so tomorrow.

In the meantime, check out Fainting in Coyles, by a Brussels-based Brit, Acepilots, by a fan of both Tony Blair and J-Lo, and The Ranting Rationalist, by, erm, a ranting rationalist.

More on sanctions

Chris Bertram rightly pointed me towards Matt Welch's take down of Walter Russell Mead's piece referred to below. I had thought that Mead's use of the low-end UNICEF figures was reasonable, but it appears not.

Nevertheless, if you read Welch's own Reason article from last year, we can get an idea of the real situation. Leaving aside the pre-food-for-oil deaths, we see that Richard Garfield, whom Welch obviously respects, estimates about 120,000 deaths of children under 5 from 98-02. One quarter were directly attributable to sanctions. I have to say I think Welch's focus on sanctions alone misunderstands Mead's use of "containment," which basically means "allowing Saddam to stay in power, sanctions or no." Saddam's bleeding of the country probably accounts easily for at least as many deaths as sanctions.

So let's be charitable to Saddam and say that 50% of the deaths are down to him and 50% would have happened anyway. That means 15,000 deaths of children under 5 each year. Given the approximate civilian death toll -- all ages -- of under 2,000 in our intervention in Afghanistan (not directly comparable, of course, but it's an indicator), there still appears to be a clear utilitarian case here in lives saved. Gosh, let's accept Herold's figure of 4,000 of all ages. The case still seems pretty firm. (Remember, Afghanistan's population is probably larger than Iraq's).

And, of course, Mead may have deliberately used the UNICEF numbers on the grounds that the Chomskyites use them. Arguing against them also argues against their previous utterings, which have entered the public domain, Herold-like, as the accepted figures on the left. They either have to admit their inconsistency or accept Mead's figures. Either way, they lose. So Mead may have been cleverer than Matt gives him credit for.

The costs of inaction

"War will kill thousands," they say. Now, thankfully, Walter Russell Meade shows how containment is Deadlier Than War:

Each year of containment is a new Gulf War.

Saddam Hussein is 65; containing him for another 10 years condemns at least another 360,000 Iraqis to death. Of these, 240,000 will be children under 5.

Those are the low-end estimates. Believe UNICEF and 10 more years kills 600,000 Iraqi babies and altogether almost 1 million Iraqis.

Ever since U.N.-mandated sanctions took effect, Iraqi propaganda has blamed the United States for deliberately murdering Iraqi babies to further U.S. foreign policy goals.

Wrong.

The sanctions exist only because Saddam Hussein has refused for 12 years to honor the terms of a cease-fire he himself signed. In any case, the United Nations and the United States allow Iraq to sell enough oil each month to meet the basic needs of Iraqi civilians. Hussein diverts these resources. Hussein murders the babies.

But containment enables the slaughter. Containment kills.

We know the consequences of letting Saddam stay in power. The containement regime isn't working and will not work, in terms of human lives and suffering. The utilitarian case for war has never been more clearly set out.

Fame at last?

It appears I'm mentioned in the March 24 issue of National Review. The Anglosphere is the subject of the cover story by Ramesh Ponnuru. Jim Bennett is interviewed, of course. A must-read, I'd say...

BBC gets it right?

This is actually a pretty good analysis of where we are now. I have to say I think I agree that Rumsfeld's comments have backfired and have actually weakened Tony Blair's position, despite what Stephen says here. Yet the upshot seems quite simple, and I think the Beeb correspondent has it right:

They have added to a growing feeling amongst those who support action that the sooner it comes the better.

The longer the diplomatic process continues, the more damage is being done - to international relations, to the UN, and to Tony Blair's standing.

None of the key countries are about to change their positions, despite the prime minister's predictions that things may change once cards have to be put on the table.

And if the prime minister believes he will emerge victorious at home after a short, clean, successful war - with or without the UN's backing - then he might as well get on with it.

Mr Blair can claim he has done what his dissenters want by pursuing the UN route to the last.

And he can claim that the French insistence it would veto a second resolution under any circumstances is the "unreasonable veto" he has previously said he would ignore.

Meanwhile, his defence secretary Geoff Hoon has signalled that Britain is ready to play the 1441 card - by declaring the original UN resolution gives countries the right to take action against Saddam without further permission.

This is surely the end of the diplomatic game.

And few in Westminster now believe Britain will not be at war within days.

If it 'twere done, 'twere best 'twere done quickly, as the saying goes.

Outrageous

Tony Benn has alleged that "UK troops may soon 'be ordered to commit war crimes'". This is an outrageous calumny that should be thrown back in his face as often as it possibly can.

Arff arff

Iain Dale has a joke about the French quite a few people in the US might approve of...

Blair's position

It's stronger than it looks, I think. Blair surely has the confidence of the Cabinet and of the House. The question is whether his party can do anything. It's not that easy, as the Telegraph hints:

John Reid, the Labour chairman, described talk of moves to replace Mr Blair as the work of a few "usual suspects". They would be heavily outnumbered on the National Executive Committee which would have to approve any special conference by a majority vote. But Mr Reid confirmed that Labour dissidents were plotting against Mr Blair.

"There are a small number of people who, given the choice between getting Saddam Hussein or Tony Blair to lose their job always seem to choose Tony Blair."

Yesterday Mr Blair also met union leaders, most of whom are strongly opposed to war without a second resolution, at Downing Street to discuss Iraq. Their members' votes will be crucial in determining whether the party holds a leadership contest, and its eventual result if one were to take place.

This of course raises the question of why union leaders need a position on Iraq and the UN. One can imagine them being opposed to the war in any event becuase of economic difficulties it might bring to their members, but being willing to support it with a UN resolution? Sounds inappropriate to me.

Anyway, that's a side issue. The central question is whether Blair can survive. I'd suggest he can. If not, I hope he's making contingency plans with the loyal Blairites for a formal party split. In coalition with the Tories, he'd be able to remain as Prime Minister, I suggest, while damning the wrecking forces that took over the Labour Party in an attempted coup: it was his manifesto, not the manifesto of the Left, that the people voted for, etc. That's be the least attractive scenario for him, and I don't think it's likely, but it could be the biggest shift in party politics in the UK since the Liberal Unionist split of the 19th Century.

Revamp

I've revamped Iain Murray Online a wee bit. At some point I hope to have links to all my published work up there, but this will do for starters. Please e-mail me with any comments.

Germans take action against arms dealers. For shame?

Mrs Tilton and the gang at The 6th International give us some useful perspective on the idea that Germany has been arming Iraq.

Bennett and Basora

Xavier Basora has a series of interesting commentaries on the Anglosphere from the continental perspective up at Buscaraons. Jim Bennett has kindly responded as follows:

I agree with about 3/4th of what Xavier says, or rather, I would if he substituted "Anglosphere Wilsonian/Gladstonians" for "Anglosphere". That is to say, the attitudes he attributes primarily to the Anglosphere as a whole mostly are found among those
who fit Walter Russell Mead's closely related categories of "Wilsonian" (in the US) and "Gladstonian" (in the UK) as set forth in his
interesting book Special Providence.

I consider myself an "Anglosphere Jeffersonian", to slightly amend Mead's typology. That is to say, I believe that Anglosphere liberty (Jefferson would have said American liberty, but he's clear on its English roots) comes from the specific historical experience of the Anglosphere and cannot be transplanted wholesale into other cultures. Unlike Wilsonians, I don't believe in crusades to bring liberty to unlike cultures, although I do support expeditions to smash specific tyrannies that pose a problem to us.

However, as Jefferson said, we can wish other nations well in their own pursuit of liberty, and strive to serve as an example to them, primarily by improving our own institutions. Once you understand how the Anglosphere became rich and free, you can start to
think about how other culture areas that are currently neither, or not enough so, can start moving their own cultures in that direction. Catalan constitutionalists are right to look back to their own medieval parliaments and try to imagine them brought forward in time, rather than just copying the British Parliament or the American Congress. As I've said elsewhere, what France really needs to do is go back in time and undo the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre.

On the other hand, it's also important to not let this understanding be an excuse for other cultures to never reform themselves. Latin culture as it exists today is less adaptive to modern industrial society and globalized commerce , and even if they don't adopt our
institutions, they do need to adapt somehow. And some of our institutions may in fact be the only effective adaptation.

However, this gets into the whole issue of what is a "better" or "more successful" culture. If we're discussing this in sociological or anthropological terms, we really can only think about what is more adaptive to the times and conditions in which it is referenced. A moral discussion is in the realm of ethics and philosophy and requires a different discussion. In basic biological terms, a culture is
adaptive to the extent that it reproduces itself and prevents its extinction or absorption by other cultures. Latin American civilization has clearly been successful in the former sense over the past five centuries, and has clearly been successful in the latter sense for most of the same time period.

However, since at least the 1650s, areas of Latin American civilization have become detached from the Hispanosphere and have been absorbed into the Anglosphere and to a lesser extent into the Francosphere. Although in areas like the Mexican-American borderlands, a vigorous hybrid culture has emerged, its very hybrid nature assigns itself to the Anglosphere rather than the
Hispanosphere: as Claudio Véliz points out in The Gothic Fox in the New World (must reading for any discussion of this topic!) "Spanglish" and other hybrid culture forms violate the fundamental Hispanosphere characteristic of uniformity as ideal.

Today, the nations of the Hispanosphere find the problems of feeding, housing, employing, and governing their populations less tractable than do those of the Anglosphere. In fact, millions stream yearly from the former to the latter to take advantage of the
Anglosphere's ability to take on more. Similarly, the United States is constrained from directly dominating the states of the Hispanosphere militarily primarily because of its own internal nature as a maritime commercial republic. If it were a real empire, and
actually practiced a "blood for oil" politics, it would have annexed the oil lands of Mexico and Venezuela long ago.

Xavier is right in that liberty and prosperity, when they come to Latin America, (as they will, I believe) will probably be constructed from Latin American roots, and will be based only indirectly on the example of the Anglosphere. Because strong civil societies all share certain characteristics, a successful Latin American strong civil society would inevitably seem more "yanquificado" to today's Latin
Americans, although tomorrow's Hispanosphereans will find their society perfectly natural and will have no trouble distinguishing it from Gringolandia. In this they will be no different from today's Japanese, who find their cultural artifacts such as beer, Prussian-style school uniforms, or trains to be completely Japanese.

Xavier's problems with people in the Anglosphere stem, ironically, from a lack of a proper understanding of the Anglosphere by its own people, and the facile universalism that has become popular here. A real Anglospherist cannot be a cultural imperialist: rather, an understanding of the roots of our own strong civil society teaches the lesson that strong civil society cannot be imposed by pure imitation of forms from another culture. For one thing, it's too easy to import one cultural institution without being understanding that you must also import the other institutions that counterbalance it. Otherwise, it becomes a form of cargo cult: instead of building the
outward forms of control towers from bamboo, you construct parliament houses with noble architecture, but the actions of those inside no more resemble those of legislators in an authentically constitutional government than the actions of cargo cultists can actually guide an airplane in to a landing.

More useful elucidation of the idea, I think. Jim welcomes comments.

Sorry for the hiatus

Went to a very interesting meeting today where the guest speaker was Bjorn Lomborg. I hope to write my thoughts on that up later today.

TCS Column up

Substance Abuse, Science Abuse is my latest TCS column, looking at the insane position that allows dangerous herbal dietary supplements to go unregulated, simply because they are "natural."

Blupdate

Finally updating my blogroll. Obviously still some teething problems, but if I've promised you a link and it's not there, yell!

Conscious in the womb?

I have no real problem with early abortion, for reasons I've spelled out here before. Yet abortion of foetuses that are capable of consciousness deeply troubles me. The growing realization by neurologists that foetuses 'may be conscious long before abortion limit' is therefore something we as a society should be paying attention to. This forms an important rider to the current debate, as summarized by Gregg Easterbrook in an excellent New Republic article from a couple of years ago which TNR has now callously hidden behind their subscription wall. Here's a link to the Google cached version.

SUV owners look away now

I've never been particularly convinced of the safety case for SUVs as opposed to a decent mid-size car. My latest Recent research suggests ... column for UPI looks at evidence that backs up that view.

While at the UPI site, look for Jim Bennett's latest, in which he argues for a formal Declaration of War against Iraq.

Caught Short

Overseas Development Secretary Clare Short has always been the token loony lefty in Blair's cabinet. She launched an attack against his Iraq policy yesterday but has kept her job. Peter Briffa thinks this is a sign of weakness.

As I said in Peter's comments, I'm not sure about this. If Tone sacks her, she instantly becomes a martyr and Blair will be depicted as even more out of touch. He needs to reaffirm the collective responsibility of Cabinet in the next Cabinet meeting and ask her directly whether she agrees with that. If not, she must resign. Her early, pre-war resignation will be less damaging than him sacking her. It will also force the other Cabinet members to implicitly agree with Blair's strategy, so the Party looks more united. I can't imagine a full-scale Cabinet revolt at present, especially given Alan Milburn's and Patricia Hewitt's attacks on Short. Perhaps Robin Cook might resign as well, as Stephen Pollard suggests, but I think that's as far as it will go. And it would make Cook look like he was Short's follower, which is not what he would want. Personally, I think Short's broadside has given Blair an excellent opportunity to strengthen his position, if he's wise.

Time to raise the drawbridge

Our Tone has said time and time again that he wishes to be the bridge between America and Europe. The current crisis has blown that option out of the water, but Blair clings to it, as evidenced by his joint proposal with Spain for a European President responsible to the Council of Ministers. Yet Irwin Stelzer clearly sets out the position, including a couple of unpleasant facts I've been saying here for some time:

“W” and “Tone” may continue to use the same brand of toothpaste. But America’s need and wish to consult No 10 on matters of importance will be gone in a world in which the G7 has been replaced by a G3 (the EU, US, Japan), for the sensible reason that one need not discuss international monetary policy with countries that don’t have their own money. Eventually, Britain and France will be pressured to surrender their Security Council seats to the EU’s chosen representative.

It is, of course, for Blair and Britain to decide whether the costs of deeper integration are exceeded by the benefits. But it is for America to say how it will deal with Britain under the alternative scenarios available to the UK. As an American in love with your country, and an admirer of your Prime Minister’s willingness to pay a steep political price for his moral principles, I can only hope that Britain understands the situation it faces.

Blair once saw only one path open to Britain — further integration into Europe in the hope of becoming Europe’s man in America. The world has changed: he can no longer have Brussels and Washington, too. He will have to choose between the new European constitution, which weds him to the Franco-German axis, and the alternative that strengthens and enlarges the historic special relationship with America, while at the same time solidifying Britain’s role as the leader of “New Europe”. That would involve what politicians dread — a U-turn. But a driver who has negotiated the twists and turns of foreign policy as skilfully as has Blair surely knows that when headed in the wrong direction it is better to execute a U-turn than to continue on a hiding to nowhere.

If the US needs a point man within Old Europe, then Spain is currently doing quite a good job at that. It is better for US interests for the UK to stay out of the Frnco-German Europe. It goes without saying that it is better for UK interests to do so (the only argument ever raised by Eurofanatics in its favor is that lots of British trade goes to Europe. But the fact is that the EU raising tarriff barriers on a withdrawn Britain would be illegal and detrimental to the EU as well. A Britain that has negotiated entry into the EEA would not be subject to these tarriffs in any case. Furthermore, and sorry for this long digression, what would that tell us about Europe's real commitment to free trade?). I cannot for the life of me understand why Blair is clinging to this obviously stupid policy.

Ban Itchy and Scratchy!

Oh, be serious. Researchers from the University of Michigan claim they have evidence of a long-term effect of watching televised violence as children. Children who at 8 or 9 watched violent TV shows were more likely later to have had physical contact with their wives during arguments, to have been involved in physical violence with another adult or to have committed a crime or a traffic violation.

Two problems with this research. It asked the children to name their favorite TV shows, categorizing Road Runner cartoons, for instance, as violent. This seems a little over-the-top. I'd be interested to see what the results were like if cartoons were stripped out. Second, they haven't proved that violent TV casuses violence. It may be simply that more aggressive children prefer more action-oriented TV and then go on to be aggressive adults. In other words, both factors may be symptoms of the same cause. A twin study is desperately needed here to sort out whether aggression is genetic, environmental or, perhaps, influenced by TV. This study doesn't really tell us that much.

A Little Good News

More evidence of an increasingly bipartisan effort between Labour's Blairites and the conservatives. Oliver Letwin proposed an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill so that burglars would be banned from suing their victims in the evnt of an injury received while burgling. David Blunkett has accepted the amendment. This is a pretty rare event, and something to be celebrated, especially given the soundness of the measure.

Debating with Prof. Robinson

Paul Robinson is a man I respect greatly. A former military officer in two of Her Majesty's armies and a formidable intellect, he is now a lecturer in security studies at Hull University. He is also implacably opposed on moral grounds to military intervention in Iraq. He first set out his views here in The Spectator and has since reiterated them to me in e-mail exchanges. He has given me permission to publish our most recent exchanges here. Some of this will repeat what has been said in earlier posts, but I think this will be of interest to most readers.

Paul began by saying the following:

What the UK and USA are planning to do is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. I feel like tearing up my British passport. If the issue goes to a vote in the House of Commons, and gets passed with Tory votes, then I will probably tear up my party membership card - if there are any active Labour or Conservative party types out there, kick your MP, get him to vote against. We cannot permit this ABHORRENCE to go ahead.

Why?

First, the concept of Iraq being a threat is just plain nonsense.

Second, the justification is that Iraq is not complying with UN Resolution 1441. This rests on the assumption that Iraq has lots of WMD and isn't admitting it. But in fact, we have failed to prove that Iraq does have lots of WMD and is hiding them. Yes, some WMD are 'unaccounted for', but 'unaccounted for' does not, as Blix has pointed out, mean that they actually exist. We have not proven that they exist - indeed we have given no solid evidence that they do. Any evidence we have provided has turned out to be false. So we have no proof of non-compliance. Blix again was quite clear on that - he needs months not to disarm Iraq but to tell if it is complying or not. In short, we can't tell right now whether it is or isn't.

The argument therefore comes down to 'trust us, we know he isn't complying, we know it'. But I don't trust Bush and Blair on this one, and I don't believe that they actually have proof, because if they did, they would have told people by now, and would have got the inspectors to dig the stuff up. THE PROOF IS CLEARLY LACKING.

Third, the basis of peace and international order is the prohibition against aggressive war - enshrined in the Kellogg-Brian Pact, the Protocols of the Nuremburg Tribunal, the UN Charter, various resolutions of the UN General Assembly etc. It is fundamental to the maintainance of peace and order, and not some arbitrary rule dreamt up in the mid-20th century, but the product of centuries of experience. And we wish to tear it up, with all the consequences that implies - just because it happens to suit us on this occasion.


Fourth, because Iraq is not a real threat to us, any use of force would be disproportionate. People will die. And there is no need for it. None at all. Now, quite probably the war will be short and victorious, and the deaths will be minimal. But there don't need to be any. It just isn't necessary.

I could go on and on. Isn't it interesting, for instance, that every military officer I have spoken to thinks that this operation sucks? Not only that but they tell me that everybody they know in the armed forces thinks that it sucks too. So we are asking them to kill people and risk their lives for something they don't believe in, and which they know the public doesn't support. How can we justify that?

I despair. I really do. I have rarely felt so gloomy, and I take it extremely personally. It is an insult to the very heart of what I believe in.

I replied as follows:

The key to the problem rests on your 3rd point. The international law we are talking about was framed in a different era. Then, there was the simple disincentive towards a smaller power attacking a larger one on the obvious grounds that a larger power would retaliate with all its might. Now, however, we live in a different era. Sept 11 showed that, as Mr Collard put it, an "impromptu air force" could wreak severe havoc on the civilian population of a country that, at the time international law was written, could feel safe by virtue of distance from and military superiority over its enemies. It is the nature of modern warfare that a country that is unable to wage aggressive war against its enemy might develop weapons of mass destruction and convey them to a third party who would then utilise them against the innocent country. International law is plainly lacking in describing what a country might do if it believes there is such a credible threat against it. One might compare the situation to the state of the law when wives were not allowed to allege rape against their husbands or some similar analogy. Merely because the law is as stated does not make it just. Democracies should not be required to suffer harm against them before they act (I should add that I find it ridiculous that Blair's government is considering abolishing the ancient defense of provocation in murder trials just at a time when it becomes relevant in international law). International law as it currently stands equates democracies and tyrannies. To this extent, international law needs changing. With any luck, this crisis will hasten such a change.

Second, when it comes to Iraq's supposed innocence: see here. Even the Inspectors have found this:

"The decision by Dr Blix to declassify the internal report marks the first time the UN has made public its suspicions about Iraq’s banned weapons programmes, rather than what it has been able to actually confirm. “Unmovic has credible information that the total quantity of biological warfare agent in bombs, warheads and in bulk at the time of the Gulf War was 7,000 litres more than declared by Iraq. This additional agent was most likely all anthrax,” it says.

The report says there is “credible information” indicating that 21,000 litres of biological warfare agent, including some 10,000 litres of anthrax, was stored in bulk at locations around the country during the war and was never destroyed."

This somewhat contradicts your assertions. This is UNMOVIC speaking, not the US or UK.

We must further consider, a consideration that is wholly absent from your analysis, the state of affairs within Iraq itself and the suffering going on there as a result of our idiotic refusal to finish the Gulf War. Consider Anne Clwyd's testimony here.

"I'd seen museums in Rwanda, Cambodia and on the Holocaust, but nothing prepared me for this," she says.

"The museum has been set up in the old torture centre, where thousands died. They've kept the cells with the bullet holes, and pictures drawn by children imprisoned there - images of birds and aeroplanes scratched into the walls with blood. The guards said they didn't imprison anyone younger than 11 but they forged their birth certificates."

Former prisoners showed her around. On the walls were hundreds of photographs of piles of clothing, mass graves and skulls. "Saddam's regime is like the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis; they are obsessed by documenting everything they've done. There are lots of photographs of prisoners just before they were executed, grinning at the cameras. The guards tickled them before they died to make them laugh."

The day she opened the museum it was snowing, grey and icy. "Hundreds of relatives of the dead and the victims queued up to watch and to tell me their stories. An old Kurdish woman shoved a piece of plastic at me; inside were two photographs of her husband and two missing sons. She wanted to know how they died. One old man showed me a photograph of 15 of his family. He was the only survivor. 'Why was I meant to survive?' he said."

Mrs Clwyd was asked to cut the ribbon. "I could feel my voice breaking. I've given thousands of speeches but I couldn't speak. I started walking round the room, trying to compose myself, but when a Kurdish TV cameraman asked me how I felt, I burst into tears. As I stood in that museum, I just thought: 'Why didn't we carry on to Baghdad? Why did we let this keep happening for another 12 years?' "

The next day, Mrs Clwyd says, she felt embarrassed. "The Kurds were so composed. I hadn't even suffered and I was sobbing. I went to the market with a Kurdish friend. Suddenly, all the shopkeepers were coming to offer me gifts. One explained: 'We saw you crying on TV last night. Thank you. My mother cried for the first time in 10 years when she saw you. She finally felt she could grieve for her lost husband and brother. Soon, my whole street was crying'."

She also went to the new UN refugee camp. "It's like every wretched camp in the world, only even muddier and colder than Kosovo, and as haunting as Rwanda. They have no fuel, and no possessions. Many once lived quite affluent lives in the towns. Most had less than 24 hours to flee their homes after one of Saddam's ethnic purges."

If you consider leaving this regime in place a benefit to humanity, then there's something seriously wrong. Yes, there are other bad regimes around the world, but, let's face it, Zimbabwe doesn't have 10,000 litres of anthrax and links to Islamic terrorist organizations. North Korea is a comletely different kettle of fish thanks to geography and the unfortunate fact that bilateral negotiation failed completely there.

As to your point about us "tearing up international law just because it suiys us on this occasion," Walter Russell Mead provides a little perspective here. One pertinent section:

"The sad truth is, the Security Council doesn't count for much when nations contemplate war. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, since 1945 there have been 26 international wars, with total deaths estimated at 3.5 million. Only three of those wars had Security Council authorization, including the recent conflict in Afghanistan; the largest, the 1950-53 Korean conflict, was only a U.N. operation because Josef Stalin was in a snit and had ordered his Soviet representative to boycott council meetings. . . .

The United States may be a diplomatic cowboy, but we aren't riding the only horse on the range. Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has undertaken at least one war without the council's permission or endorsement. . . .

The plain if slightly sad fact is that from the day the U.N. Security Council first met in 1946, no great power has ever stayed out of a war because the council voted against it, and no great military power ever got into a war because the Security Council ordered it to."

I think I've said enough. The idea that the threat of military action, which even Villepin admitted had helped in the progress made so far, is WRONG WRONG WRONG is itself plainly wrong. The issue is far more complicated than the black and white terms in which you state it.

There is a crisis in the international order caused by changing circumstances. Clinging to a compromise come to in 1648 is plainly anachronistic. I am grateful that even Tony Blair realizes this is true.

This moved Paul to respond as follows:

2 points:

a) your assertion that international law needs changing because threats have changed and we can't afford to sit back and allow WMD to proliferate etc., is based on a false assumption that countries like Iraq really pose an incredibly great danger to us. I simply don't believe it. I just don't. Because a) in the case of Iraq if it does have WMD, it doesn't have means of delivery (and in any case it probably doesn't have them in huge quantities), b) 'rogue states' are not irrational, and can be contained/deterred, c) BW and CW are not WMD any more than conventional weapons are - there is a huge hype about these things which their true potential does not justify, d) you ignore the elemental nature of war - its tendency to escalate, get out of control, etc. etc. I don't accept arguments that now we have to power to limit and control it. Prohibiting war remains an absolute priority.

b) the humanitarian argument is irrelevant to this case. The USA/UK are not acting out of concern for the Iraqi people. After all, we have said that if Saddam does what we demand (which in fact he may not be able to do - but that's by the by), we will leave him alone. In other words, we are quite willing to let the Iraqi people suffer under him, as long as we feel safe. So, this has nothing to do with helping the Iraqis and relieving their suffering. It has everything to do with the irrational fears of our leaders about the safety of
their own people. Besides, if our leaders really want to relieve suffering why don't they spend the money they are about to spend on this war doing some real positive good helping people in places such as Africa. That would really demonstrate their humanitarianism.

The humanitarian argument is just an excuse pulled up to justify something being done for entirely selfish reasons.

I remain convinced at heart that this war is WRONG. I am personally affronted by it. I was brought up firmly to believe that war is justified only in self-defence. It was what made being a soldier an honourable profession. Now, everything we believed in is being torn up. As one military officer told me, 'I joined the military to defend my country, not to go around attacking people'. I feel exactly the same.

I have not yet replied, as there are others in our e-mail discussion who have not yet contributed and I should like to see their arguments first. When I do reply, I shall likely argue that it is my belief that Tony Blair is getting involved in this action for humantitarian reasons. Yes, there is self-interest involved, but that is only part of the whole argument. As for America, I think foreigners misunderstand the American people if they don't think America acts as a nation out of moral concerns. As Jim Bennett has written, engaging the moral outrage of a certain section of the American populace is crucial in moving this sluggish giant to united action. That has been done in this case. Americans do want to bring liberty and justice to Iraq. That is why the President told the AEI dinner I attended that America would be in there until the job is done, should it be necessary.

As for the casual dismissal of biological and chemical weapons, having lived through the chaos caused by the tiny anthrax attacks of 2001, I shudder to think what might happen if a real anthrax attack took place in an American city. We know from Russian experience that large quantities of anthrax will kill thousands. That's a weapon of mass destruction in my book. Yes, it's difficult, but that's exactly why we must prevent professionals from developing the weapons for the amateurs.

As to Paul's points about military honour, I'd be interested to hear from members of the military, serving or former, on their reactions to these arguments.

I plan to make other points, but those will do for starters. All comments are, of course, welcome.

Up far too late

But there's just too much going on for me to read about... Let's look at what the Telegraph calls "Blair faces wave of resignations as ministerial aides issue ultimatum". The wave of resignations amounts to 5 parliamentary private secretaries. PPSs are the lowest of the low, whose job is essentially that of a ministerial "runner," ferrying information between those with real authority, whether it be ministerial or official. We used to joke that Seb Coe, as John Macgregor's PPS, was the best PPS ever, on the ground that he was by far the fastest we'd ever seen (for the benefit of our American audience, Seb Coe won the 1500m gold medal at two Olympic Games, IIRC).

Second, check out the John Stuart Mill quote spotted first in the Sunday Telegraph by Peter Cuthbertson:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.

I wonder what the great Victorian Liberals (and, indeed, Conservatives like Wilberforce) might think of the current state of politics in the world. I think the Clapham set might meet with renewed vigor.

A Real Corporate Scandal

Amitai Etzioni is fast becoming the new sensation of the blogosphere. I'm cartainly glad to see such a major thinker giving us his, well, thoughts daily and his blog on anti-Americanism at Davos was very interesting. But this post, which a link to an earlier article of his is, reveals a genuine corporate scandal taking place in the USA. This is the sort of thing which, in the UK, leads people to say "It shouldn't be legal." Normally, I think that's a silly over-reaction. In this case, because of the use to which the proceeds were put, I'm not so sure.

Saddam: The Truth!

Hussein's a transvestite!

His X-rated gay movies!

He hates Hummus!
The shocking truth is finally being told by Weekly World News (this is a link to a picture of the current cover, which is so inspired we had to buy a copy). You can also read the views of the real voice of America, Ed Anger.

Well, let's face it, it's about as credible as The Guardian...

Another Blix in the wall

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, if you ask a bureaucrat to report on his progress towards a goal for which no timetable has been set he will say 1) he needs more resources, 2) he needs more time but 3) recent progress has been encouraging.

Hans Blix just did exactly that, in a statement amazingly reported by the BBC as Blix praises Iraq co-operation. When push came to shove, Blix admitted that the Iraqis had attempted to impose conditions -- so their compliance was not unconditional -- and that their compliance could not be described as immediate. The Iraqis are, by this report, in breach of resolution 1441 and the UN must recognize this.

Of course, Joshcka Fischer immediately said that this shows the progress made by inspections. Pardon my, erm, Anglo-Saxon, but bollocks. The cycle has been as follows. Iraq obstructs the inspectors. The UK and US threaten military action and demand a report from Blix and co. The Iraqis suddenly start making some progress. The report is made. Old Europe says the inspection regime is working. Iraq starts obstructing again ... and so on. It is only the immediate threat of war that has extracted any concessions from Iraq. Blix essentially acknowledged this early in his statement when he said it was down to the strong outside pressure that co-operation had increased.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the UN, has just cut through the crap (there I go again) with a statement that a clear deadline will make it blindingly obvious to the UNSC whether ot not Saddam is complying. As I said below, this is right. Saddam will have, as Stephen Pollard puts it, a final, final, final chance to destroy his weapons. Then the UNSC will face its moment of truth. It would be interesting if the French (apparently the Russians, as I predicted, are starting to make noises in favor of the British proposal) decide to move that moment of truth up by vetoing such a suggestion. It seems reasonable to just about everyone (although no doubt the people who don't think the situation is urgent will argue that Blix has said disarmament will take months and months, so we might as well let them carry on at their leisurely pace), so I think France will lose a lot of international goodwill by such an act, especially if Russia votes for the resolution.

More to follow if Straw or Powell make any significant announcements.

Breaking...

Fox News is reporting that the Associated Press is reporting that sons of Osama bib Laden have been arrested in Pakistan. Developing...

Attention Scott Wickstein!

Martin Hutchinson is UPI's economics editor, and a robust chap. Now all good cricket correspondents (i.e. not Martin Engels) had another journalistic job as well. Cardus was an opera correspondent and Arlott a wine correspondent. Brian Johnston would cover major state ceremonies for the BBC, as well as hosting a long-running variety hour. Martin seems to be following in their footsteps, as his Silly Point column for UPI reviews the Cricket World Cup so far. It's a purely sporting review, so Martin doesn't mention that the connection between English, who refused to play in Zimbabwe not out of moral principle but out of fear for their own safety, got knocked out, while Zimbabwe, whose courageous players put their careers -- and indeed their lives -- on the line in their open defiance of the tyrant Mugabe, went through to the final stages of the competition. There must be a lesson there somewhere.

RSS?

I'm trying a different RSS/XML feed to see if it will work better than blogger's own, which doesn't. Let me know if it works, please.

PP Thanks to the munificence of David Janes of Ranting and Roaring, we now have an even better feed...

The Education Hat-trick

I've received the following comments on the current univsersity admissions debacle from someone who is in a position to know what's going on, at least in the "greybrick" universities that the debate is centering around:

The first thing to say is that Utley's contention that perfectly good applicants are being turned down for no better reason than class or school background is false. Lots of AAA applicants get turned down because of something they write (or don't write) in their personal statement on the UCAS form. If an AAA applicant gets rejected, well organised independent schools will often try to explain this in terms of class bias, but the most likely reason is that they failed to show any interest in, or prior engagement with their proposed subject of study. If someone applies to do zoology and then fails to even mention it on the form, then they get an "R" regardless.

Second, the idea that we're imposing quotas is quite false. What we do do is to make slightly lower offers to students from some backgrounds. But the differential is really tight. So an applicant from Eton might get asked for AAB, whereas one from Dagenham Comp would get asked for ABB. I think it reasonable to ask which of those scores is the greater achievement and which of the two applicants has the greater potential (which is, after all, what we're interested in).

Third, A-level scores are a rotten guide to academic ability at a university. I've just marked a pile of essays, all written by people in
the AAA-ABB range. An alarming number contained really elementary errors of spelling or grammar, including completely meaningless sentences.

Fourth, independent school students are, on average, significantly worse performers at university than similarly qualified state school
applicants. At university, kids have to fend for themselves, get their essays in on time, do the reading etc etc. The ones who have made it through Britain's rotten state system are the survivors of a pretty fierce process of Darwinian selection. They've already proved they can cope. The independent school students have been well coached and closely supervised. Without that system of support they often fail.

Finally: social engineering. I don't like being told what to do by the government. I don't like being set targets and I don't like being asked to mop up the problems of Britain's secondary school sector. [My university has] been taking sensible measures to select students for their *potential* for years, though the extent probably varies from department to department. When government directives to do this come down, though, the implementation is inevitably clunky and stupid. But despite this, I don't believe that there's any real unfairness going on.

There you have it. It seems, as Utley indicates but doesn't quite grasp, the current crisis is more about Universities desperately trying to work out who the really good students are because of a failed examinations system, rather than anything else. There are, it seems to me, three possible solutions:

1. Revamp the A level system so that the oustanding get different marks from the competent. This will require grade deflation, and will be resisted strongly by schools who are most likely to see their marks downgraded. And the parents of pupils whose average older child got As while their brighter younger child is looking at a B at best will wonder about the fairness of it all.

2. Abolish the existing system and replace it with a national Standardized Test like the American SAT that has a marking spread broad enough to distinguish between individual students' abilities. This can be backed up by A level and internal school exam results showing competence in particular areas. This may be too revolutionary for some.

3. Keep A levels, but abolish or reform UCAS and allow each individual university to set its own criteria for selecting pupils, probably involving written entrance exams. The command and control freaks in the DfE will lose their minds at this suggestion, but it seems reasonable to me. It may be accompanied by a freeing up of the financing rules, allowing universities that can attract substantial private money to set out in their own direction, allowing them to compete with Harvard, Yale and Princeton again.

Comments on these thoughts welcome, as ever.

Education again

In today's Thunderer, Robbie Millen seems under the apprehension that all public school pupils hie from rich families, and that A-levels are still useful for admissions tutors. He's quite right in his critique of the prevalence of 'stupid rich kids' at some universities, but if they've received the requisite A-levels, why bar them from attending? If anything, the ability of 'stupid rich kids' to obtain the same marks as 'bright dumb kids' points to a gross failure in the state education system, or the inability of exam marks to differentiate between varying levels of ability. Apparently, Mr Millen knows far more about the admissions procedure than most, and about human potential. He alleges that parents send children to private school to purchase an advantage in the admissions process, as opposed to any qualitative reasons, and inveighs against the overwhelming class system present in Britain. Why? All because he was rejected by Bristol 12 years ago. Yes, the admissions system does have inequities, but admissions tutors are only as good as the information they receive. With devalued A-levels, and a lack of any distinguishing questions (such as essays, multiple references, extracurriculars) on the UCAS application system, they're solely left to look at A level marks and school marks. But this inequity is the nature of universities. Iain's right in talking about the apparent lack of Tory education policy, at least as regards higher education. Next to Transport and Health, Education is another great opportunity for the Tories.... or the Liberal Democrats, should the Conservatives not meet the challenge.

Free Speech and Private Property

To chip in with my two pence on the arrest in Albany of the lawyer wearing the anti-war shirt for refusing to leave a shopping mall, I'd agree with Eugene Volokh on this one. While the mall's policy is rather foolish, it is completely within its right to ask Mr Downs and his son to leave. Mr Downs cited free speech as his defense, but like many who seem to view expression as triumphing over all other rights, completely ignores the mall's property rights. Freedom of expression is rather strongly linked to property rights, in my opinion. Protected speech, in my view, is speech that can be ignored and not forced upon anyone. Therefore, property rights allow groups to meet without fear of harassment from groups wishing to express 'speech' deeply offensive to them. To wit, a mosque is within reason to refuse entry to someone wearing an inflammatory T-shirt, as the offender's 'free speech' should not trump the free right of association of the worshippers. Similarily, anti-war protestors should be free to exclude anyone tormenting them during their deliberations.

Robert Bork, in Slouching Towards Gomorrah, attacks the contemporary notions of 'speech' as antiquated. He is wholly justified in condemning the far left and ultra-libertarian right in claiming that any sort of expression is protected speech. Taken to its extremes, speech which would break several laws (either hate speech advocating violence, criminals plotting, etc.) should be protected, as the individual is expressing his views. If that libertarian extreme should be adopted, why not further plunge into anarchy?

On an unrelated note, Bob hoped to see some constructive disagreements with some of Brad DeLong's positions, as well as that of other economists. I'll try, but I hope you're a Sunderland fan, Bob, as this will be rather one sided, with DeLong a distinguished economist, and myself a precocious second-year undergraduate. Just to show his tolerance for free speech, I hope Iain will allow me to continue here after that dig at Sunderland..

Education, education, education

Meanwhile, education policy allows the Tories an immense opportunity to win back at least families in the middle class. Tom Utley gives us an indication of how:

My correspondent's son is obviously extremely bright - quite a bit brighter than mine, by the sound of him - but, if she is right when she says that he scored 100 per cent in all his AS-levels (and I have no reason to doubt her), then there is surely something very wrong with the exams.

I can understand that it may be possible to score 100 per cent in maths, physics or even Latin, by answering every question correctly. But history? There are no right or wrong answers here, except names and dates, and a history exam in which it is possible to score 100 per cent must be seriously flawed. My correspondent's son - and his admissions tutors - would have been much better served by an exam that allowed him to display the full extent of his grasp of the subject before he bumped his head on the 100-per-cent ceiling.

A third conclusion to be drawn from my correspondence is that something very fishy and unfair is going on in the way that universities select their undergraduates. The evidence is now overwhelming that some universities, encouraged by this awful Government, are turning away hard-working, academically gifted students for no better reason than that they are middle-class and go to good schools.

This is not only monstrously unjust, but downright asinine from the point of view of the country's interests. The solution to the crisis in Britain's education system is not to penalise the good schools, but to improve the bad ones. It is clearly a wonderful thing for the Government that mugs like me should pay to have our children well educated, while still financing the schooling of other people's children through our taxes. In general, the middle classes are the most economically productive and the most law-abiding. The more of us, the merrier for the Treasury and for the wellbeing of rich and poor alike.

A Tory party that promises to reform the examination system to allow us to separate out the very good students from the good will be heard by people who deserted them in the 90s, when their children were smaller. A Tory party that offers to end this insane discrimination system will only be derided by class warriors, giving the Tories a battleground they've won on in the past ("the politics of envy" is as good a slogan today as it was years ago, I think). And a Tory party that promises to restore some substance to the National Curriculum will be heard by any whose children are at school. There's a three point plan for a better education strategy.

But I have a question, just what is the Tories' education strategy? Try going to Conservatives.com and looking for it. Yes, there's currently a headline there about IDS's stance on the admissions scandal, but where's the rest? At the very least, the party web site should have a section outlining plans in each major policy area. If this hasn't occurred to them, no wonder there's a presentation problem.

Labour's Vanity

Despite my support for Tony Blair's foreign policy, his domestic policy remains as squalid as ever. This Telegraph review looks at just how bad the position is for the middle classes at the moment:

Since 1997, the middle classes have found themselves assailed on all sides. Pensions have been squeezed to the point where many may have to work into their 70s to avoid penury. The value of their endowment mortgages has been slashed and share portfolios have slumped.

The key investment of the middle classes is their homes, yet they have lost the residual mortgage interest tax relief that Labour inherited and they are taxed to the hilt when they sell. Historically low interest rates and the boom in house prices have made most people feel better off despite the higher taxes they have had to pay; if the property market collapses, there will be a crisis.

They now discover that spending money on their children's education is likely to work to their disadvantage. If they send their children to private school, the best universities may discriminate against them. And if they do get them in, they have to pay top-up fees.

Gordon Brown is squeezing the middle class to pay for improvements to public services that haven't materialized and show no signs of doing so. Instead, the effect is to subsidize another generation of public sector workers.

I wonder, however, if this might be part of a Blairite master plan. While Blair is involved in the war (and I have to say I believe he is passionate about this cause -- this is in no way a "wag the dog" strategy), it can fairly be said that Brown is running the country domestically. When things go belly-up, as they assuredly will, Blair can sack Brown ostentatiously, and move to a more centrist domestic policy. This will stymie hopes of a Tory revival and marginalize Brown as a failed Chancellor. The Labour left may already have been split in two by the defection of a reasonable number to the Lib Dems, or out of politics altogether. Blair can then point to the Lib Dems as being leftists, the failures of the 60s, while to the Tories as the extremist failures of the 80s. The result should be a third election victory, albeit with a reduced majority as the end of tactical voting allows a Tory recovery in the South West and other areas. Blair will have cemented his reputation as the master statesman of the age and he can retire some time in his third term, leaving David Blunkett or Alan Milburn in charge.

Just a thought.

The last compromise

Hans Blix's last report to the UN was a non-event, despite Fox News billing it as "Iraq: Moment of Truth." I don't think he'll be able to do that again this time, although the capacity of the professional bureaucrat for delaying conclusions should never be underestimated. But it's clear that both sides in the UN have entered the endgame. Tony Blair has come down firmly on the US side, publicly stating his willingness to defy UN vetoes.

Here's how I think it will pan out: Blix will deliver a report saying that some progress, but not much, has been made. It will be couched in language such that both sides can claim vindication for their own position from it. The appeasers, however, will realise that a third such report will be the end of their position. They will therefore seek to compromise. A "second" resolution will be passed unanimously (or possibly with Syria abstaining) that sets a deadline for disarmament, but leaves the door open for military action. The French and Russians will then work franticly to persuade Saddam to go into exile. Saddam will refuse, and the war will begin after a futile French bluster about vetoing military action. Russia will switch sides at this point, and China will put a bag over its head.

Lest we forget that the war might bring benefits to the Iraqi people, let's look at the testimony of Anne Clywd MP, a veteran CND-type left-winger, who has seen what Saddam did in Kurdistan and what the Kurds have been able to achieve since coming under British and American protection:

Last week, she returned once more. "I hardly recognise the place since it became self-governing. There's now a university, a library, new schools and three women judges. It's amazing what democracy has done. The markets are full - I bought this watch for $40."

Mrs Clwyd had been invited by the Kurds to open the new genocide museum.

"I'd seen museums in Rwanda, Cambodia and on the Holocaust, but nothing prepared me for this," she says.

"The museum has been set up in the old torture centre, where thousands died. They've kept the cells with the bullet holes, and pictures drawn by children imprisoned there - images of birds and aeroplanes scratched into the walls with blood. The guards said they didn't imprison anyone younger than 11 but they forged their birth certificates."

Former prisoners showed her around. On the walls were hundreds of photographs of piles of clothing, mass graves and skulls. "Saddam's regime is like the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis; they are obsessed by documenting everything they've done. There are lots of photographs of prisoners just before they were executed, grinning at the cameras. The guards tickled them before they died to make them laugh."

The day she opened the museum it was snowing, grey and icy. "Hundreds of relatives of the dead and the victims queued up to watch and to tell me their stories. An old Kurdish woman shoved a piece of plastic at me; inside were two photographs of her husband and two missing sons. She wanted to know how they died. One old man showed me a photograph of 15 of his family. He was the only survivor. 'Why was I meant to survive?' he said."

Mrs Clwyd was asked to cut the ribbon. "I could feel my voice breaking. I've given thousands of speeches but I couldn't speak. I started walking round the room, trying to compose myself, but when a Kurdish TV cameraman asked me how I felt, I burst into tears. As I stood in that museum, I just thought: 'Why didn't we carry on to Baghdad? Why did we let this keep happening for another 12 years?' "

The next day, Mrs Clwyd says, she felt embarrassed. "The Kurds were so composed. I hadn't even suffered and I was sobbing. I went to the market with a Kurdish friend. Suddenly, all the shopkeepers were coming to offer me gifts. One explained: 'We saw you crying on TV last night. Thank you. My mother cried for the first time in 10 years when she saw you. She finally felt she could grieve for her lost husband and brother. Soon, my whole street was crying'."

She also went to the new UN refugee camp. "It's like every wretched camp in the world, only even muddier and colder than Kosovo, and as haunting as Rwanda. They have no fuel, and no possessions. Many once lived quite affluent lives in the towns. Most had less than 24 hours to flee their homes after one of Saddam's ethnic purges."

She also has kind words to say about the US, ones that other critics should bear in mind:

Her views on America also differ from those of her fellow backbenchers. "I don't think that George Bush Jnr won the election fairly but he's not an idiot. There is far too much anti-Americanism about this war. They are not the villains, they're not even over-weening and arrogant. They've listened on human rights; I've always been treated very courteously there."

The cost of peace has been twelve years of murder and misery. It's time we stopped paying the bill.

Daley returns to form

I haven't been particularly impressed by Janet Daley's columns over recent weeks, but she makes a fine return to form in America threatens an epidemic of freedom. She points out that even Martin Amis has implicitly conceded that the "war for oil" argument has lost all credibility, and then goes on to discuss what the shibboleth "international law" really means. I think she side-steps the question of whether international agreements and conventions (in the "written on paper" sense) have any moral validity (merely because some of the signatories are dictatorships should not imply that democracies that agree to them are not bound by their intent), but does a good job in looking at the two main arguments for international law in the sense currently meant. And her conclusion is excellent:

America untrammelled by the Soviet threat is about to unleash - what? An epidemic of freedom? A destabilising onslaught against dictatorship and terrorism? Oddly enough, the critics are almost right in their self-contradictions: America is both interventionist and isolationist. What its people want is to be left alone to enjoy their freedoms and their prosperity in peace.

Since September 11, they have realised that the only way they can achieve this is by bringing the chance of those freedoms to those who would threaten them.

This is true, and has historically been true of Britain as well, I think. Britain, has, however, experienced ingraditude from those to whom it has brought liberty before. Where thought needs to be expended now is, perhaps, on what will happen if the chance of those freedoms is spurned.

Responding to Bob

As Bob Briant mentions in his comment on a post below, Stephen Pollard was gracious enough to post Bob's reasoning for his accusations that Stephen, erm, misses the point on Iraq. I thought I'd give my replies to Bob's points, one by one:

There are several reasons why some of us are reluctant to endorse a commitment to war against Iraq while fully acknowledging the repugnance of Saddam's regime in Iraq:

(1) A war could easily end up killing many thousands of people - an entirely credible possibility given this report by a mainstream American TV network of the war plan: CBS news link.

This is more an objection against war in general than an objection to this war in particular. It's a principled objection, but one that the vast majority of people don't accept. Historically, and even now, we accept that war, which involves the deaths of many, is sometimes acceptable if it provides a greater good. In this case, the polls clearly show that the British people do accept that war may be justifiable, so the pacifist argument falls.

As for the objection to the war plans, I am somewhat skeptical that the actual plans are being broadcast on CBS news. People might remember how the actual course of the First Gulf War took us by surprise. But let us take CBS at its word, and assume that this is indeed the plan. The munitions are precision guided. I'm sure all Brits remember John Simpson's awe at how a cruise missile he saw during the First Gulf War seemed to be following traffic directions (I think he was surprised it didn't stop for a red light, indicating a left turn). In the decade since, technology has increased remarkably. That is why the Afghan conflict saw so very few civilian casualties (the figure of 4000 is a grossly inflated piece of propaganda, as you'll see from my analysis here). The only reason why there could be large numbers of civilian casualties is if Saddam himself uses them as shields, which is recognized as a war crime under the traditional rules and international law.

So I don't think this argument holds water on either ground.

(2) Absent broad international support, the US and UK don't otherwise have a mission from providence to intervene in the affairs of a country with a regime they disapprove of. Many of us bought into Tony Blair's doctrine when he said in a speech to the Chicago Economic Club on 22 April 1999: "If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar." - at page 10 on this Newshour site.

Leaving aside the philosophical justifications for pre-emptive action and the legitimacy or otherwise of international organizations, I believe it is actually precisely this point that makes Blair so adamant in his desire for action. The US and UK have been working within the established framework. The UN has objectives that msut guide its actions. It has passed 17 resolutions that Saddam has flouted. If you are a supporter of the UN and you do not wish ot to go the way of the League of Nations, then you must agree that there will come a point when the UN must act, or fail in its mission. The US and UK believe that that point is fast approaching. Otherwise the UN will have degenerated into a talking-shop whose only effect is to ensure cruel dictators stay in power.

(3) As we learned from experience of more than 30 years in Northern Ireland, state sponsorship is not essential for terrorist networks to survive. Private donations and the proceeds of crime can sustain a network for decades. A regretable fact of nature is that very nasty weapons can be made outside government facilities from accessible materials - like the bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995 made from agricultural fertiliser or the sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway that same year: BBC News link.

An important point, but in this case an irrelevant distraction. If we want to reduce the amount of terrorism in the world, we have to get rid of state sponsorship. Then we can devote our resources to preventing independent outrages. Bob seems to want the argument to go as follows:

Blair: "Iraq sponsors terrorism"

Bob: "Ah, but Timothy McVeigh didn't have state support"*

Blair: "Oh, all right then, we won't do anything..."

This just doesn't work.

* Unless, of course, you consider what The Junk Yard Blog has to say on the subject worth further investigation.

(4) To all appearances, Tony Blair appears very reluctant to put a substantive motion to our Parliament approving military action. So far, he has depended on the Royal prerogative for his authority.

We had a vote last week that gave us the "sense of Parliament," to use an American expression. It passed 350-200. Blair does not have to do this. Under what remains of our Separation of Powers, the power to declare war remains with the Executive, not with the Legislature. He has relied on the Royal Prerogative precisely because that is the only place where the power lies. Now there may be general arguments that this is a bad thing, but that has nothing to do with the Iraq crisis. Reluctance to avoid votes in Parliament on matters involving the Royal Prerogative has sound constitutional thinking behind it.

(5) Do you really buy into: The Project For the New American Century with its stated aim: "to shape a new century favourable to American principles and interests" ? - see here.

Leaving aside the fact that no-one ever said we did, let's look at the PNAC directly rather than what the Grauniad says about it. PNAC says it believes "that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership." All three statements seem unobjectionable to me. Isolationists on both sides of the Atlantic will tremble at the thought, but this seems a perfectly reasonable expression of the position of a nation the world continually looks to for help.

American principles involve freedom, democracy and civil rights for women and minorities. American interests involve a world free from terror, peace (yes!) and free trade. These are just a few examples. So just what the devil is the matter with believing a strong America is good for the world? You don't say, Bob. As you point out, you're persuaded by rational argument, so it might be nice if you advance some on this point rather than asking an ostentatious rhetorical question.

Anyway, I hope Bob will respond to this and that Stephen might add his comments too.

And I'm on NRO at last...

Meanwhile, here's my first ever article on National Review Online. I feel slightly prescient, given the Sun's coverage of this story, which is exactly how the earlier polls should have been covered in the first place!

More circumspect coverage of the latest poll can be found on MORI's website here. There are still steps needed for the British public to give their assent, but those are not far off.

You read it here first

I've expanded my blog post on BSE and added some extra Techcentrally goodness, for my latest TechCentralStation column, Mad Cow Madness.

Sloshed

Theodore Dalrymple attacks public drunkenness in today's Thunderer, and is right on target. He asserts that drinking is not the problem, but how people comport themselves after they've had a skinful. Walking down the streets at night, you can hear loud singing, see individuals (some of whom are probably quite respectable during the day) urinating on houses, and aggressive behaviour, from those fightin' drunks. Dalrymple places the blame on the license to unlimited self-expression. But he hasn't cracked the nut yet. Part of any solution to inappropriate public behaviour is to attach a social stigma to it. In short, most individuals don't do things they'd be embarrassed to do. I agree with Dalrymple that the police should enforce public drunkenness laws, as drunken louts decrease the quality of life. A fine or a night in jail may suffice as a warning not to do it again. But the British justice system seems to have lost all confidence. It fails to enforce easy but necessary laws, such as traffic laws, while going on a detailed hunt for any illegal immigrants it can deport.

Labour's obsession with targets leads any rational administrator to meet those targets in whatever way possible, as opposed to fulfilling the core duties of their job. This reaches over into the education debate, where Labour advocates 'access' as opposed to quality. One wonders how seriously Labour takes education. After all, the student finance system is a shambles (as I've repeatedly said, it would be far better to use the US model, and force administrators to cut bloated overhead costs, as a university exists to research and to teach, not to provide jobs), but all Charles Clarke can talk about is widening access. He doesn't understand that with living costs in London, a child from a poor family in Britain may not be able to afford to take up an offer from LSE. An admissions offer is hardly the end of the education process. For the sake of quality, Labour should end its obsession with targets, which will free administrators from making cosmetic changes to a fundamentally flawed system.

Doctors with Scruples

Wow. Be sure to head over to Junius and read the interview (translated by Chris from the French) with the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres. Astonishing.

Fame for a Commenter

Stephen Pollard refers to our regular commenter Bob Briant in his Times article today. On the central issue of Stephen's column, I haven't seen Prof. Elias' study yet, but am trting to locate it. It strikes me as getting the causal change wrong. I'd suggest people with lower "mental acuity" are more likely to be fat than the other way round. Will keep you posted.

Discrimination?

Private schools are dissuading their pupils from applying to Bristol University, future alma mater of the Prime Minister's son. Bristol has refused admission to private school pupils with excellent records to increase the representation from state schools. This discrimination is senseless, and based on the prejudice that all private school pupils hie from families with money to burn. Many of these promising pupils are at private schools due to extensive sacrifice by their parents or scholarships. To claim that they are 'advantaged', is ridiculous. Advantaged children don't win scholarships, bright ones do. But part of this is due to the black-box process of university admissions. Quite often accomplished students are rejected for no ostensible reason, while arguably less qualified individuals receive offers. This is by no means a British phenomenon, as well.

Economists, again

A recommendation, of sorts. Brad DeLong, an economist who held high office in the Clinton administration, has an interesting blog on things economic. Given that economics blogs are rare, even though I disagree with Professor DeLong on many issues, he's worth a visit.

In dulce Junio

Happy belated blogiversary to Chris Bertram's excellent Junius. I hope Chris won't mind me saying that there are two blogs I check religiously even when I'm exceptionally busy. Glenn's is one. His is the other. I never fail to find something interesting there, like today's example, realting to his just-completed attendence at a European conference:

One insight I think I gleaned from talking to people was that many European intellectuals, and especially the French, are highly sceptical about the possibility of the EU ever being a democratic political arena in its own right, epecially given the number of states and languages.

(So French intellectuals are admitting the powers ceded to Europe can never be democratically controlled. It's what Euroskeptics of all political hues have been saying for years.)

Anyway, congrats again to Chris and I hope he celebrated his beloved Liverpool FC's thrashing of Man Utd yesterday in appropriate fashion.

The voice of New Europe

Be sure to check out Marian Tupy's article on New Europe at TCS: Europe. Marian is Slovakian, did post-grad work at St Andrew's, Scotland, and is now working for Cato. That makes this conclusion all the more compelling:

In the short- to medium-term, however, it will be the British who will play a pivotal role in the whole European saga. The accession of the Central and East European Countries will strengthen the British role in the EU and turn the United Kingdom into the undisputed leader of its reformist faction. Hopefully, this new bloc will check the power of the Franco-German alliance and succeed in reforming the fossilized edifice of the European economy - a necessary venture, which will in time release the creative potential of all European peoples.

This is an interesting theory. A combination of Eastern European nations and the expansion of the EU may provide the best opportunity ever for the Anglicization of Europe. If this proves to be the case, the writing is one the wall for the EU, because France and Germany will destroy it, not the UK.

Nglsh as she is txtd

Not having a mobile phone, I have not fallen prey to the joys of txt (pronounced Text) messaging, a phenomenon that swept the UK in recent years and is now making headway in the US. Yet this simple Telegraph story shows how something like that reveals the gaping holes in the teaching of the English language. The theory has been the self-expression is important and teaching children spelling and grammar is overly restrictive. The upshot? This essay from a 13 year-old girl:

My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kds FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." Translation: "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York, it's a great place.'

(Students of oral linguistics will be fascinated to see the presence of formulaic phaseology, such as :- kds, I think). The analysis is simple and to the point:

Judith Gillespie, of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said a decline in standards of grammar and written language was partly linked to the craze. "There must be rigorous efforts from all quarters of the education system to stamp out the use of texting as a form of written language so far as English study is concerned.

"There has been a trend in recent years to emphasise spoken English. Pupils think orally and write phonetically. You would be shocked at the numbers of senior secondary pupils who cannot distinguish between their and there. The problem is that there is a feeling in some schools that pupils' freedom of expression should not be inhibited."

Dr Cynthia McVey, a psychology lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said texting was second nature to a generation of young people. "They don't write letters, so sitting down to write or type an essay is unusual and difficult. They revert to what they feel comfortable with - texting is attractive and uncomplicated."

I can see the English language splitting into two forms: demotic and, well, it might as well be hieratic. If the people don't want that to happen, there is only one solution: a return to the proper teaching of English in schools. People will then at least understand both forms and know when it is appropriate to use them.

The End of Natural Justice

The idea of natural rights, although it has some problems with it, forms the basis of Common Law and, more explicitly, the American Founding. Yet it is one of NuLab's central problems when it comes to its approach to crime and justice that it doesn't understand the idea. Take, for instance, the idea now promoted that provocation should be no defense when it comes to homicide:

The Government is considering removing the centuries-old defence of provocation in murder cases.

Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, says in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, that the law, "from a previous age", should be changed.

"It blames the victim," she says. "Men say, 'The woman wound me up; she was planning to leave me and I was upset and therefore I am not guilty of murder.' Even if a woman has done all of those things it does not justify violence, let alone violence to the point of death."

Note how she is arguing from the specific to the general. Provocation is no defense when advanced as a pretext for a husband killing his wife (not that this is common any more, given that domestic violence happens far more in non-marital relationships), so it should be no defense in any situation, for that is the upshot:

The proposed change would affect other situations as well. For example, if a young man was being racially taunted and lashed out, killing the abuser, he would no longer be able to mount a defence based on provocation.

Yet provocation in another form is to be explicitly recognized as a mitigating circumstance:

Miss Harman is considering creating a new form of defence that would allow women who kill their husbands after years of physical abuse to be treated more leniently.

There's a useful discussion of the defence of provocation as it developed in the UK and currently applies in Canada (they seem to be having the same debate there) here. In short, the defence is an admission that we are all prone to anger, that can be summoned up by the actions of another, and we cannot expect detached reflection in every case. This seems reasonable and probably a reflection of natural justice. Indeed, European law often goes further, from what I understand, in its recognition of 'crimes of passion' than Anglosphere law. Yet it seems that a single issue -- that of domestic violence -- is driving a push to abandon this important realization.

If juries are still willing to accept that provocation is appropriate in cases such as that Ms Harman outlines, then the problem is not with the legal system but with current, rather than "antiquated" social mores. If 12 average men and women think unanimously that a threat to leave him is likely to cause a red mist to descend on any man, then the country is rather different from the one NuLab thinks it rules. Changing the law is papering over the cracks. And, one might venture to suggest, is more likely to result in a larger number of acquittals of the guilty than the situation at present. Ms. Harman needs to look again at this issue with a more objective eye.

Yet It Survives in the BBC...

We must remember that the BBC is a giant bureaucracy, and as such there are pockets of decency and the public service ethos (I have always been impressed by the radio interviewers I've dealt with) among the hard-line ideologues. Yet Barbara Amiel provides a convincing case to back up the testimony of Stephen Pollard among others that the Beeb has a party line it is going to push whenever possible. She has apposite comments about the role of audience participation, which strikes me as the most dangerous move towards demagoguery since Oswald Mosley, but the main thrust of her comments is reserved for the BBC's Arabic language service:

The BBC Arabic Service appears to rule out any criticism of Arab leaders or their regimes. Apart from some cryptic and occasional references in news reports, there is no critical discussion and analysis of public policy issues such as human rights, health, housing and illiteracy. There is no discussion of government priorities, government corruption or the activities of the security forces and police. When Saddam Hussein was "re-elected" with a 100 per cent vote, the election was reported as if it were a perfectly normal exercise in democracy.

The very rare exceptions to this often carry anti-West motives: a programme last December 10 included a member of the Iraqi opposition, Hamid Al-Bayati, but the interview with him was turned into an attempt to prove that the opposition was created by foreign enemies of Iraq.

The British report on human rights problems in Iraq, released last December, was reported in the context of its having been written to justify an attack on Iraq. (An exception was a programme broadcast a few days after the release of the report, which contained genuine criticism of human rights in Iraq. The moderator, however, was firmly pro-Saddam and began with a quotation attributed to a British newspaper that threw doubt on the veracity of the whole report.)

The indictment goes on:

Unsurprisingly, the BBC Arabic Service is consistently hostile to peace between Israel and Palestine, which puts it at odds with the Foreign Office and the Government. Anti-Israel remarks are thrown into topics gratuitously. Almost two years after the UN certified that Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon, BBC Arabic Services still told listeners that Israel was in occupation. Officials of the Palestine Authority and various Palestinian organisations are frequently heard, but rejectionist voices (those against any peace settlement) are favoured. Prominent moderates such as Sari Nusseibeh are rarely heard.

This is all, of course, possible because of "the unique way in which the BBC is funded." As a state institution it proved vulnerable to Gramsci's long march. Once captured, it able to be fortified, because the funding system virtually guarantees continued funding for the favored people and endeavors.I have to think even a state-controlled BBC would be better than this, as at least it would then be vulnerable to real cuts demanded by the people. Instead it is able to present itself as an independent public good, when it fact it approaches the level of a debilitating parasite. Pardon me, but I speak as I find.

Anti-Americanism: a Real Lost Cause

In 1933, the Oxford Union voted that it would "under no circumstances fight for King and Country." It used to be thought that this motion helped persuade Hitler that the British had become soft and lost the will to fight (sound familiar?), although there is no real evidence for this view. Nevertheless, the debate cemented the reputation of Oxford as the home of lost causes.

Now it seems that the great cause of anti-Americanism, so beloved of the BBC and the Europhiles, is so lost a cause that it couldn't even get the motion "This House believes the USA is the greatest barrier to world peace" passed. It probably would have gone through quite easily in my day in the mid-80s, when the House voted quite happily in favor of nuclear disarmament, the Sandanistas and every anti-American sentiment you could think of*.

The motion was defeated 195-151, which is not as narrow a margin as the New York Times seems to think. My friend Paul Robinson spoke against the motion, and apparently received the biggest round of applause of the night for mocking the question, "What has America ever done for us?" Paul called the result "amazing," and pointed out that the House was full enough to overflow into the gallery upstairs (a common occurence in my time, but rare now apparently, such is the apolitical nature of the modern student). He also commented that the proposition speeches, with the exception of Bob Marshall Andrews MP, were useless. As Paul is personally opposed to the war for philosophical reasons, as you may have read here, this is an interesting insight into the real strength of the anti-American lobby.

Anti-Americanism is riding the crest of a wave in the UK at the moment. It will not survive a 'capricious' veto in the UN, although it might gain for a while if any breakdown in Security Council unity is not portrayed correctly. It will certainly not survive the smiles and joy of a liberated Iraqi people.

* Not always for anti-American reasons. When the House proposed, and passed, the motion "This House calls for a more united Europe," I proposed a rider to add on to the motion the words "imposed by the Red Army." As this was debated at 10 to 1 in the morning, it got passed, backed by an odd combination of Tories with foresight and Old Labour Europe-haters. Michael Gove was vehemently opposed, regarding it as a silly attempt to wreck a motion that would gain the Union publicity as a forward-thinking organization (far too many Tories believed in Europe in the mid-80s). To some extent it was, to another extent it demonstrated the latent power of the society's rules. But I can assure you, this was not an anti-American motion...

Leagal Warning

I got this from Emuse. A lovely little fake 404 warning, which contains this priceless entry:

If you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq.

Wonderful.

Mad Cow Madness

Well, it seems like the expected vCJD pandemic will never materialize. In case you haven't been following the story, in the mid-late 80s a lot of British people, like students (like me) ate cheap meat (including brain and spinal cord tissue) from cows that had been fed meal that included other cow remains (like ground up bone). It appears that this feeding method helped transmit BSE or "mad cow disease." Initially, scientists believed that BSE and diseases like it could not pass the species barrier and infect other species, so the humans who had eaten the cheap meat were safe. Then some people started dying horribly of a human spongiform encephalopathy, called Creuzfedlt-Jakob Disease. Doctors decided this was a variant of the already known disease because it had slightly diffferent characteristics, and so it became known as vCJD. The method of transmission of this disease is still unknown.

In the early 90s, scientists decided that they did not have enough evidence to be as sure as they could be that beef was safe. Stephen Dorrell, as Health Secretary, therefore announced this to the nation. The reaction was worse than even the Ministry of Agriculture (MAFF) expected. Public confidence in British beef was shattered, and sales plummeted, despite the fact that feeding methods had changed. In the Department of Transport staff "restaurant," for example, it became impossible to get beef for about 6 months (I continued asking for it, of course). Drastic action was decided on to restore public confidence and a program of mass slaughter began aimed at eliminating BSE from the national herd. This cost the government billions. As a colleague of mine on rail privatization commented, "We privatized electricity to finance tax cuts. We're privatizing Railtrack to pay for a barbecue."

But the economic disaster was not the only negative consequence. Public confidence in Government scientists was shattered too. Once the possibility of transmissable vCJD had been established, the modelers got to work. If anyone who had eaten brain-related tissue in the 80s was at risk of exposure, then potentially millions could have been exposed to a horrible brain-eating disease for which there was (and still is) no cure. This, unsurprisingly, made headlines. The basic line of thinking among the public was, "They told us we were safe, now they say we're all going to die in agony. How could they be so wrong? They're either incompetent or evil." This attitude is at the root of current British luddism about GM foods, among other things.

Yet those apocalyptic models all depended on the incubation period of the disease. The shorter the incubation period, the more people would die. As time dragged on, however, and the exponential upturn in vCJD never materialized, the models got more conservative. Now it looks as if they were just plain wrong.

The disasters for british agriculture and science all depend on that putative link between BSE and vCJD. I think it is time to take seriously other possible explanations. One convincing theory, advanced by Scottish scientist George Venters, is that vCJD doesn't actually exist, being a misdiagnosis of the original Creuzfeldt disease (see Brendan O'Neill's excellent Spiked article on this theory here).

It seems that this is one area where scientists' natural caution has cost the country dear. I happen to think that the BSE crisis contributed as much as the ERM debacle to painting the Conservative party as incompetent, and so it cost the Tories dear as well. Dorrell could do little. A leak that the government was covering up a potentially horrendous health risk could have been even more damaging. But what should have been done was to put the potential risk in its proper context. As long as very few people were dying, this should have been spelled out: "We don't know enough about this disease yet to say that there's a real public health risk. Very few people have died -- more people die from being struck by lightning every year (or something like that). We're keeping an eye on the situation, but it would be silly to panic." Yet that wasn't the message that got out, and I don't think it's the message anyone tried to deliver.

In case anyone accuses me of 20/20 hindsight, I should add that I continued to eat British beef whenever I could get it throughout the panic. I felt at the time that the reaction was hysterical. Unfortunately, no-one in power seems willing to admit that yet.

I never intended this to become a warblog...

But the antiwar forces keep prodding me into it. For instance, last night I watched the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) annual film awards on BBC America (such an Anglospheric idea, isn't it?). I was a bit disappointed because the BAFTA awards always used to include TV awards too, but now they're just a pale imitation of the Oscars, although I did enjoy Stephen Fry as host. But what incensed me was three separate, increasingly egregious insertions of politics into the occasion.

First Pedro Almodovar, whose early work comes pretty close to pornography, said something largely incomprehensible about an American "chief in commander" or something like that, who had said that a moonless night would be best to attack Saddam. If I understood his argument, Almodovar said that film-making was about light and that therefore the plans to unseat Saddam were evil. One might quibble about the darkness Saddam has brought to Iraq.

Then a Mexican actor presenting an award said that last week many thousands had "voted" against the war and he was still waiting for a response. If shouting in public about something is voting, that's a pretty poor vision of democracy.

Finally, the Academy awarded its fellowship to Saul Zaentz, a producer who introduced the final page of his speech with the laughably paranoid declaration, "This will be the part that gets edited." He went on to display a woeful ignorance of his own country's Constitution by saying that he was one of the majority whose wishes were undemocratically ignored in the Presidential election, stated baldly that America was on its way to becoming a tyranny and finished with an evocation of Martin Luther King's "We shall overcome" that actually had more of the feel of Kruschev's "We will bury you." What annoyed me the most about his paranoid rant was that he knew that, as the recipient of the last and most important award of the evening, he was guaranteed a standing ovation, which he duly got. Given that he was close to calling for the overthrow of the American government, this was a disgustingly cynical ploy.

I wonder how many of the luvvies who nodded in agreement during that speech will visit a liberated Iraq as "UN ambassadors" to be photographed with smiling children.

PP: He'll never win a non-people's choice BAFTA, or an Oscar, but Bruce Willis joins James Woods and, I understand, Gary Oldman as no luvvy.

Another true face revealed by Iraq

It has been one of the demands of the British antiwar movement that the House of Commons vote on the issue of Iraq. Well, an amendment saying the case for war against Iraq has not been proven was defeated 393-199. The emerging Tory-Blairite coalition demonstrated its worth (Blair would have lost if the Tories had voted for the motion) and the reactionary left were roundly defeated. Interestingly, the man some fools are touting as the ideal Tory leader shows how gullible he is once more (this is the man who argued for the disastrous Maastricht treaty despite admitting to never having read it):

But Kenneth Clarke, Treasury chief in the last Conservative government, said peaceful solutions had not been exhausted.

"I cannot rid myself of doubts that the course to war we are now embarked on was actually decided on many months ago, primarily in Washington, and we've seen a fairly remorseless unfolding of events since that time."

A plan that involves endless compromises in the UN in the hope of achieving international unity and saving the UN from its own folly doesn't strike me as the exact definition of "remorseless." There's an expression in the UK that someone is "all mouth and trousers." Now that sounds like a definition of Ken Clarke to me...

Faith, hope and charity

The church that offers prayers for Saddam is dying, of course. A young church-goer helps explain why in this Telegraph article:

Consider the Sunday morning service. The sermons are mostly irrelevant to young people, uninspiring and lack any reference to current affairs. The liturgy is graceless and unappealing. The Common Worship text is a hopeless mixture of ancient and modern and the modern responses use banal, cliched phrasing. Compare, "Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults, Restore thou them which are penitent" (Book of Common Prayer, 1662) with, "We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins" (Common Worship). Don't patronise young people by assuming they want simple language: according to the Social Affairs Unit, 75 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds prefer the traditional Lord's Prayer.

There is little guidance outside the Sunday service for young people who suffer mini-crises midweek, when they have a row with their flatmate, forget a work deadline or run into financial difficulties. Few churches designate someone to empathise with the problems that teenagers and twentysomethings face, and show them how God can provide an answer to some of the miseries.

Interesting that the Baptist church we're currently attending (by accident, really) uses simple, everyday language but really does address everyday issues. The Pastor is currently examining what we can learn from the life of King David -- David was a "bad dad," whose son Absolom set fire to his neighbor's lawn, and so on. He used the rape of Tamar to address the uncomfortable issue of incest and sexual abuse. All of which is exactly the sort of individual issue the CofE should be addessing, rather than the macro issues of the morality of war or, as in the 80s, the scourge of unemployment (see my 1999 Spectator article, Faith Healing, for more on this issue).

Yet the point about language is also true. The Church is, indeed must be a focus for continuity through the generations. You see this in American churches through family attendance, but in transient areas such as the entirety of the UK is becoming, that isn't possible any more. The Church has a unique selling proposition as the provider of that link. But by jettisoning it all, it fails to capitalize on a remarkable opportunity.

So keep the graceful language and the ceremony, but address the issues faced by the congregation. Then you get the best of both worlds. Instead, we have a graceless institution that seems more interested in the welfare of Iraqi dictators than the average congregant. If it can't see that, it deserves to die.

The true face of the Liberal Democrats

As the Telegraph's rather pointed headline puts it, Kennedy won't back our troops:

Mr Kennedy, who braved Labour and Tory jeers in the Commons to criticise Mr Blair's handling of the crisis, was asked on BBC Radio 4's PM programme whether he would publicly support the war if British servicemen ended up fighting in Iraq.

He said it would depend on the circumstances, including the outcome of the weapons inspections and decisions of the UN Security Council. Pressed on whether it was possible that British forces could be involved in fighting and the Liberal Democrats' position might be that they did not support that war, Mr Kennedy said: "It is possible, it is possible."

This is incredible. Are there really enough Guardianista lecturers ready to be won over that they outweigh alienating virtually the whole of the working class, which is traditionally supportive of "our boys" (the last unpopular war in that sense was probably the American Revolution)? As the Telegraph's leader says:

For a party that is touting itself as the new sensible opposition, Mr Kennedy's stance is an illogical - and distasteful - one.

Meanwhile, echoing the distastefulness, the General Synod of the Church of England had prayers for Saddam. I wonder what the downtrodden people of Iraq think of that?

The old debate

Slate's Moira Redmond has a light article about the differences she's found moving back to the UK from the US. It's superficial stuff, of course, and Bill Bryson does it much better, but here's her take:

People (on both sides of the ocean) ask me what is better in each place. On the U.S. side I would put the shopping experience, anything made of cotton, and family restaurants. Customer service everywhere is better. Driving, and parking, are much easier. In the U.K. I like the Indian food (the thing Brits miss most), the wonderful ready meals available in every supermarket (never found anything to match them in Seattle), and the cream (sooo much better—you do bad things to it in the USA in the search for a long shelf-life). We do old houses better, but you have much better new houses. The newspapers here are more entertaining and more diverse. (The people may be less diverse: You never meet anyone who doesn't believe in evolution and gun control.) This is going to be unpopular but I love what Americans call the "socialized medicine" here: It's cheaper, better, and fairer.

Interesting that she didn't give the correlative to driving, that getting somewhere -- anywhere, really -- without a car is so much easier in the UK.

Medicine? Hmm. Yes the medicine is cheaper (although take another look at your income tax deductions next time you say that), and may be fairer (although the gap is so much less than Brits think it is), but is it really better? If I were to move back to the UK, one of the medications I take is unavailable through the NHS and, because the private insurance system is vestigory, I'd have to pay full price for it. Basic care is about the same in the UK and US (and may even be slightly better in the UK, according to some people) but long-term preventive care is much worse in the UK, as are most forms of advanced care (an MRI, guv? Wot's one of them when it's at home?).

Anyway, comments on this are welcome as always.

Light posting alert

I have a project to finish by the end of the week, so I expect there will be light blogging from me for the next few days.

Fly Me To The Moon

Mad Mullah Abu Hamza, also known as Captain Hook, doesn't care if he's deported to the moon. Apparently, Koranic scripture specifically refers to the Moon as 'the Kingdom of God', while non-Muslim nations are outside it. A rather strange view of creation, if you ask me. His lawyer is left with the flimsy 'freedom of speech' defence, which tends not to be acceptable for what is obviously an incitement to racial hatred, if not an incitement to murder. Abu Hamza claims he's 'just as stuck as someone who's in a toilet with a minefield outside'. (Link Here). The moon, a portaloo, but not in Britain. Perhaps the French will take him, as they probably share hygenic standards.

Boss Twee

Ken Il Sung attacks the Evening Standard in the Independent today. It's a rather odd choice of newspapers, given that London's very own Boss Tweed is complaining of its lack of journalistic integrity. Livingstone wants more peppy stories about how great a city London is, etc. The man has no idea about newspapers, as with much else. There is much wrong with London, and I think things have regressed since Livingstone took charge. Any idea that the Evening Standard's journalism is the yellow press, while Livingstone is the epitomize of reason and middle-of-the-road opinion is farcical. He's obviously too concerned with adulatory publications and propaganda plastered with his visage, and like many Communists, thinks any dissent must be crushed. It's time to send him to North Korea, a far better place for him. Either that, or see if he'd like to be a human shield.

Tony the Tory

Great minds think alike. And I think like them occasionally. Now Michael Gove gives Tony Blair a passing grade:

Central to any current assessment of Mr Blair has to be the manner in which he is handling the Iraq crisis. But before considering just how impressive his stance is, and how petty his detractors, it’s worth noting that Mr Blair’s entitlement to conservative respect doesn’t rest on his foreign policy alone.

The Prime Minister has been right, and brave, to introduce market pressures into higher education by pushing through university top-up fees in the teeth of opposition from his egalitarian Chancellor. He’s been correct in conceding, to the annoyance of his wife I’m sure, that the European Convention on Human Rights gets in the way of a sane asylum policy. In dealing with the firefighters, and their absurdly selfish strike, he’s been satisfactorily resolute.

There are certainly idiocies aplenty across the range of this Government’s domestic policy, indeed that’s hardly surprising given ministers like Tessa Jowell and John Prescott in the Cabinet. The problem with putting muppets into office is that there’s no one left to pull the strings when your hands are full.

While we’re on the subject of pulling strings, the Government will also struggle to improve public services while it continues to rely on centralised funding, management and provision. But even here, Mr Blair and some of his smarter ministers, such as Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary, seem to be acknowledging the limitations of their tax, spend, command and control strategy.

It is not, however, on the domestic agenda that Mr Blair is facing his biggest challenge at the moment. It is over Iraq that he is in greatest difficulty politically. All because, as a Labour Prime Minister, he’s behaving like a true Thatcherite.

That's a pretty fair assessment. The ECHR comment is pretty important in all this. Blair's biggest failing has always been his willingness to jump on any PC bandwagon around. Just entertaining the possibility that the ECHR might be more bother than it's worth is an interesting sign of evolving thought. This is all more evidence for my contention that there may yet be a Blairite-Tory coalition.

And the Telegraph agrees...

The Telegraph says basically the same things as I have about the Tories. I liked this bit in particular:

Imagine how the main evening news might look in a month's time. There would be footage of our men in action; jubilant scenes, perhaps, as John Simpson liberates Kirkuk; then, with crashing bathos, we would cut to Andrew Marr outside Conservative Central Office, telling us that Boodle is now supporting Coodle, because he has heard from Doodle that Foodle plans to give his job to Hoodle. Voters would conclude - and who could blame them? - that the Tories had given up any interest in running the country.

The Telegraph concludes that IDS' weakness is a catch-22. They're right. At the moment, I can only see hope for this ending in a deus ex machina. There may be one in the shape of a Labour split. Now wouldn't that be ironic?

Good news, but...

Well I suppose it's good news. A self-styled Muslim sheikh has been found guilty of soliciting murder. I imagine he'll be sentenced to three weeks thinking about what he did. But here's what stopped me dead:

The ground-breaking trial was the first prosecution of a Muslim cleric in Britain. It was also the first time potential jurors were banned from sitting on the jury because of their religion.

The judge agreed to a defence plea not to allow Jewish and Hindu jurors - but in the end none came forward.

I'm all for rules designed to ensure a fair trial, but this strikes me as, well, institutional racism. There should be a huge uproar over this.

Tory idiocy

The idiocy continues from two of the three factions in the Parliamentary Conservative Party. Michael Portillo used the occasion of the best Tory poll showings in years (with the exception of one anomaly) to criticize IDS's leadership. ID, of course, replied with a gaffe and the attempted launch of a new tax policy at a time when it is the Iraqi crisis that is dominating British politics. Now IDS's ally Bernard Jenkin gives us another illustration of the lack of judgement in that camp:

"I do think there is a cancer in the Conservative Party, which is an inability to allow the party to be led.

"I do think it is insanity to the point of madness to contemplate a fully blown leadership election when the country is possibly on the point of military action so that the leadership election would be taking place while our soldiers were risking their lives. I think that is obscene."

He's right on the Tory reluctance to accept leadership. This is the direct result of the Thatcher defenestration, which gave the Tory generals a taste for coups d'etats. New blood is needed to dilute the power of these generals, if you'll allow me to mix my metaphors, but of course this won't happen until the party is back level with Labour at an election.

Yet then he blows it all by going completely over the top. The tautology of "insanity to the point of madness" and the hyperbole of calling a potential leadership challenge from the modernizers "obscene" when it is, in reality, just silly, are indicative of the lack of sense and perspective in the party at the moment.

I fear that most of the current pickle the Tories are in is caused by a lack of talent in the Parliamentary party and in the quality of the advice they receive. So I'm not sure if a leadership change to David Davis -- my preferred candidate -- would be of much help.

Yet despite this pessimism, I'd imagine the Tories will perform pretty well in the local elections now fast approaching. These are often, sadly, a referendum on the performance of the national government, yet not necessarily a sign of approval for the quality of the national opposition (the election of militant Labour councils in the 80s despite the unpopularity of Labour nationally being a case in point). Really, all IDS has to do is keep his head down and he should demonstrate that being quiet can produce results.

Perfidious Old Europe

In yet more fun, Old Europe sounds off on the Bush tax cut. Don't most of them have enough problems dealing with the ill-named 'Growth and Stability' pact? As helpful as it would be for America to chime in on the failures of the Schroder budget (where does one start?), I think we respect national sovereignty enough not to chime in (in public) on their business. The presence of Secretary Snow consulting Gordon Brown on these issues does show an Anglospheric link behind all this.

Sign of the Apocalypse?

Sasha Castel and Andrew Ian Dodge of Sashacastel.com were married yesterday. Much speculation looms about the Second Coming. Congratulations to the lucky couple! I'm so dismayed about the puerile behaviour of elements within the Tory Party (on both sides) that I'm not going to bother blogging about it for a while.