Tuesday, 28 February 2006
Take some responsibility
See, this is the problem:
The bid to halt rising child obesity by 2010 will fail unless the government shows more leadership, a study says.
Paul Sacher, founder of the Institute of Child Health's Mend Programme, which works with families on adopting healthier lifestyles, accused the government of lacking ambition. "We should be trying to reverse the trend, not just halt it. We have shown that if you address diet, exercise and behaviour you can make a difference." But to date we have had little lead by the government, it has been too slow."
It's not the government's fault that kids are beginning to look like they're shoplifting pillows. It's their parents' fault. End of. When did we suddenly hand responsibility for our childrens' health and upbringing to the government? I must have missed that meeting.
As serious as childhood obesity is, the culture of blaming the government for all the ills of society is more serious [cue gasps from anyone who's ever even glanced at this blog before], because it leads us to buy in to the ancillary misconception that government is the solution. But not in this case, it's not. The solution is for Mum and Dad to get Junior to chug back a salad once in a blue moon, and not deep-fry his cereal every morning. (The beauty of anonymous blogging is that you have no idea how unbelievably hypocritical this statement is.)
Leave your son to get his dinner at McDonald's five times a week if you like. But you don't get to complain when he collapses and dies at his next sports day. Rule number 1: If the answer to the question is, "the government", then you're asking the wrong fucking question.
UPDATE: As Dr Crippen rightly points out in the comments over at the Devil's Kitchen, it's not the wrong question if the question is, "Who fucked over my pension, my education system, my health service and my right to privacy?"
"Normality and the Jowells"
Craig Murray on the strange case of the Jowells, the £400,000 mortgage and the Italian PM.
Tessa Jowell tells us she did nothing wrong. She merely signed documents to remortgage her home. She strongly asserted today that this was “a very normal thing to do, and certainly not illegal.”
It is indeed not unusual to remortgage, though it was unusual that she remortgaged with an offshore bank. It is also unusual to remortgage for as much as £400,000. But it is very unusual indeed to remortgage for £400,000, then pay off the full loan, within a month, with spare cash.
What sort of people do such a thing? Well, money launderers. If you have £400,000 of cash not easily explained, you now have remortgage papers available to show where you got it.
Galloway Watch: Follow the money
Harry's Place with some more Galloway-related shenanigans.
South Dakota abortion ban
ID cards - make up your minds
As if ID cards weren't Orwellian enough already, the general public now seems to have embraced the concept of "doublethink" - a new poll shows that people agree with the arguments against ID cards, and yet are still in favour of them. Sigh.
Much more work still to do.
Dan Brown - angel or demon?
Guy Herbert over at Samizdata makes a rather good point about the Da Vinci code trial currently in progress at the High Court:
If the author of a history book were to sue an historical novelist, then we would expect it to be on the ground that passages of text were quoted without permission. For use of expression, not content. There is no copyright in facts.But weirdly that's not what is going on here. Jonathan Rayner-James QC for the plaintiffs said:
"The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail ('HBHG') is a book of historical conjecture setting out the authors’ hypothesis. The authors’ historical conjecture has spawned many other books that developed aspects of this conjecture in a variety of directions. But none has lifted the central theme of the book."
Which is what Dan Brown is accused of.
What could make "historical conjecture" original work capable of copyright protection? Only that it bears no relation to history, it seems to me. Can it really be the plaintiffs' case that the novel is not novel enough, because their read - sold all over the world labeled 'non-fiction' - is in fact a fantasy?
No-one would care if he hadn't made a hundred squillion bucks from the whole thing. Fair play to him. As Dick Cavett once said, "As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."
Monbiot: If I could turn back time
If we want to stop the planet from cooking, we will simply have to stop travelling at the kind of speeds that planes permit. [...] Flying kills. We all know it, and we all do it. And we won't stop doing it until the government reverses its policy and starts closing the runways.
Monday, 27 February 2006
The Clinton Foundation is looking for interns. According to their website, successful candidates will get "hands-on experience". Heh.
I know we're venturing into the realms of the subjective, but... is it just me, or do you reckon Bill's vetting the applicants?...
By my count, 12 of the 15 interns are young women and, by my entirely subjective and, let it be said, somewhat hormone-fuelled reckoning, at least 7 of those 12 are honeys... perhaps a statistician, or for that matter a swordsman, could tell me how likely this is?
Galloway watch: Mohammed Cartoons "worse than 9/11"
Today, the objective of the Western states is to control the oil of the Muslims whatever the price. In fact, the cartoons published in Denmark did not surprise me because the Western states have been waging fierce attacks against Islam for years. These began by humiliation, insults and then occupation. Today they reached the point of ridiculing the prophet. This incident is worse than the 11 September attacks in the US and the 7/7 incidents in London. Therefore, today it is the right of Muslims to express their anger and to defend their right and faith.
Just as a postscript, he also said this:
Denmark is the only European state which practices racism in the pure sense of the word. There is not a single mosque in the entire Denmark.
Bullying the little guy
Sometimes the EU astonishes even me.
Montenegro's campaign for independence from Serbia is being complicated by Brussels, which is warning the tiny republic that independence will not be recognised by the EU unless it accepts voting conditions set by Brussels. In a decision that has outraged analysts, Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, is insisting that for it to be valid, at least 55% of voters casting ballots must opt for independence.
Critics say that the terms imposed by Brussels are more exacting than those practised mostly within the EU itself. Sweden or Malta would not be EU members if the same conditions had been applied to their membership referendums. The Venice Commission, a Council of Europe body whose recommendations on democratic governance are regarded as authoritative, said in a study in December that Montenegro's referendum law - requiring a straight majority result on a turnout of at least half the electorate - was entirely acceptable and in line with good European practice.
Trust me, I'm a pretty straight kind of guy
Others have already commented on this piece of verbal excrement from our Prime Minister, so it seems remiss of me not to do the same. I actually made the grave error of purchasing the Observer yesterday; mainly, let it be said, to read the excellent Food Monthly magazine. Imagine my rage to discover that it was a "Vegetarian Special". Waste of bloody newsprint. And Spar refused to give me my money back, too. Fucking bastards. So then I went to the pub, but the cash machine was on the blink, and my bank never sent me one of those new Chip-and-PIN cards so the pub wouldn't take Switch, but I got hammered anyway and now my head hurts...
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, the Maximum Tone.
There is a charge, crafted by parts of the right wing and now taken up by parts of the left, that New Labour is authoritarian, in particular, that I am. We are intent on savaging British liberties, locking up those who dissent and we abhor parliamentary or other accountability.
At one level, the charge is easy to debunk. But on another level, there is a serious debate about the nature of liberty in the modern world.
I have given away more prime ministerial power than any predecessor for more than 100 years. I have spent proportionately more time answering questions than any predecessor; given more statements; am the only PM ever to agree to appear before the select committee chairs; the only one to give monthly press conferences.
And I gave a vote specifically on whether to go to war.
I am from the generation that I would characterise, crudely, as hard on behaviour, but soft on lifestyle, i.e. I support tough measures on crime but am totally pro gay rights.
For me, this is not an issue of liberty but of modernity. If we fail to tackle ASB because the court system is inadequate, other people's liberties suffer. If we don't take head-on organised criminals or terrorists, others are harmed.
The question is not one of individual liberty vs the state but of which approach best guarantees most liberty for the largest number of people.
It is precisely because we protect the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority that we don't bring black people from Africa at gunpoint to make our tea any more, Tony, you horrendous, odious fucking moron. The needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the few, as this splendid little essay demonstrates:
At the climax of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock nobly sacrifices himself in order to save the crew of the Enterprise from certain doom. Consider a slightly altered scenario. The dispassionate reasoning embodied in this argument could equally well have sanctioned Spock forcing someone else into the deadly radiation-flooded chamber.
If, for example, in order to save the ship, Spock had held a phaser to Scotty's head and forced him into the chamber to fix the warp drive, we would surely not think his action so honourable, noble or moral. Indeed, it would have been positively immoral.
Couldn't have put it better myself. Tony is, in effect, putting a phaser to all our heads, and then asking us to trust not merely him, but all future governments of this country, not to shove us into the radiation-flooded chamber. And, with that, let us lay the somewhat tortured Star Trek analogy to rest.
In theory, traditional court processes and attitudes to civil liberties could work. But the modern world is different from the world for which these court processes were designed.
In terms of low level punishment for low level crimes, it is BETTER to punish the innocent than to let the guilty go free. Being innocent and getting a 100 pound fine is not the end of the world. [...] I'm sorry but, principles and tradition mean nothing here.
On ID cards, there is a host of arguments, irrespective of security, why their time has come.
Most people already have a range of different cards, for workplace, bank or leisure. And, contrary to what is said, it will not be an offence not to carry one.
The worry some people have is that the Tories have joined with the Lib Dems and that we are therefore on the wrong side of the debate. I would answer: have confidence in our position.
In other words; "Trust me, I'm a pretty straight kind of guy". Yeah, that one flew in 1997, but it doesn't fly now. You are a serial liar, manipulator, spinner and charlatan, and since a prison cell in the Hague seems unlikely, the sooner you're giving boilerplate lectures to American businessmen and out of my fucking life, the better.
Britblog Roundup #54
Friday, 24 February 2006
The Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons: American reaction
Via a series of links comes this "wordcloud" of some of the most common words used on this blog, which I can get made into a T-shirt if I really so desire thanks to these people.
I think it's rather natty.Rage.
Ministers have admitted spending £32 million on preparing for the introduction of ID cards before Parliament has even approved.
The figures issued by Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, in a Commons written answer, also show that spending soared in the second half of last year from £25,000 a day to £63,000 a day.
Such is the end of Empire...
The saga of Prince Charles' diaries is just too tedious for words, but I found myself nodding in sympathy at this:
Talking of his outward journey on a British Airways 747, Charles writes: "It took me some time to realise that this was not first class (!) although it puzzled me as to why the seat seemed so uncomfortable." He then discovered dignitaries, including Edward Heath, Douglas Hurd, "the new Foreign Secretary Robin Cook", and Paddy Ashdown, were all "in First Class immediately below us". "Such is the end of Empire, I sighed to myself," Charles wrote.
Well aware as I am of how like a retired colonel I will sound, I must say that it's little short of an outrage that Ted Heath and Paddy Ashdown were flown First Class to Hong Kong, but Prince Charles had to "make do" with Club. Heath, in particular, should have been sent steerage.
Thursday, 23 February 2006
Caving to extremism
To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus.
So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.
Worth a read.
I'm not really sure there's any point in editorialising on this one.
A man who raped his unconscious teenage stepdaughter as she lay dying from a head injury has been jailed for nine years at the High Court in Glasgow.
The court heard Kerry had fallen ill after taking a cocktail of alcohol and drugs. Her death [...] was caused by head injuries sustained during falls. These included a fall down stairs after which McKee took her to his bed and raped her.
A postmortem examination revealed she was still alive when her stepdad raped her. It found she had horrific injuries consistent with being raped with considerable force.
I await the protests in the streets of London over this insult to Islam.
The identity of the bombers is unclear to all except the Tehran Times:
Undoubtedly, it is a new plot which first of all can be considered as the continuation of the disrespectful move of the European newspapers’ that published cartoons of the Prophet of Islam.
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei: “This is a political crime and its roots have to be traced in the intelligence organizations of the Iraqi occupiers and the Zionists. The aggressive powers that perceive the political and social conditions in Iraq as contrary to their objectives devise ominous plans in their heads, some of which to intensify insecurity and create sectarian strife."
Yep, us again.
Wednesday, 22 February 2006
Life imitating satire
Once again, where satirists go, the powers that be swiftly follow...
Spoof BBC Online story, February 16th 2006:
Daily Telegraph, February 22nd 2006:
A teenager who used the F-word while chatting with friends in a park has been handed an £80 fine by a police officer for anti-social behaviour. Kurt Walker, 18, a student and volunteer youth centre worker, is refusing to pay the fine, saying that the use of the word in a private conversation was normal among his peer group and did not constitute an offence.
Mr Walker said yesterday that he was not given a chance to explain when the woman officer approached him in a park in Dover, Kent, and handed him the fixed penalty notice fine. He said the incident happened as he was walking through the park on his way to the youth centre, when he came across a group of his friends. "One of my mates asked: 'What have you been up to?' And when I replied, I used a swear word. But I was shocked when the police officer gave me the fine. "She just slapped on the fine and then left. I walked off up the street furious. It's my right to swear in a private conversation."
Due respect to Owen Barder, whose spoofs tend to anticipate NuLabour policies with uncanny regularity...
On namechecking God, but not Allah
Via Andrew Sullivan, file this one under "sign of the times": a lady named Linda Kallahar was unable to register her name for an email address, because Yahoo! don't allow email addresses with the word "Allah" in them. Needless to say, "God", "Yahweh" and "Buddah" are all perfectly fine. Sigh.
(UPDATE: Pete Blackwell quite correctly points out to me in the comments what twenty seconds' research would have revealed: this isn't true. Not even slightly. It's a fair cop. Just as well no-one relies on me to, you know, tell the truth.)
(UPDATE 2: Thursday: It appears that the story was, after all, true, at least when Sullivan wrote it. Yahoo have changed their policy so as to allow such email handles, but only since Andrew noted this anomaly on his blog.)
While we're on the subject of Andrew Sullivan, he's pretty sure that Rudy is running in 2008:
The fastest growing theme in American evangelicalism is the pre-millennialist movement, while Left Behind, the fictional books dramatising the “end times”, are the bestselling adult series in America. What was surprising was that the Republican candidate addressing them was none other than Rudy Giuliani, the pro-choice, pro-gay, divorced Catholic former mayor of New York.
When asked if he was running for president he said: “Only God knows. I’ll know better in a year whether I can fully commit to that process.” The pastors said they’d pray for him. Giuliani replied: “I appreciate you. I can tell you from my heart how much I appreciate what you are doing: saving people, telling them about Jesus Christ and bringing them to God.”
Take it from me: if Giuliani is talking Jesus, he’s running for president.
Hitchens on Denmark
Once again the erratic drink-soaked Trotskyite popinjay makes his point both eloquently and well.
The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability! A small democratic country with an open society, a system of confessional pluralism, and a free press has been subjected to a fantastic, incredible, organized campaign of lies and hatred and violence, extending to one of the gravest imaginable breaches of international law and civility: the violation of diplomatic immunity.
And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary—that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let's be sure we haven't hurt the vandals' feelings.
DNA profiling
I'm all for new technology, but am I the only one that finds this disturbing?
Forensic scientists could use DNA retrieved from a crime scene to predict the surname of the suspect, according to a new British study.
The method exploits genetic likenesses between men who share the same surname, and may help prioritise inquiries.
Bad news for Mr Bob Shipman of Doncaster, methinks...
Tuesday, 21 February 2006
New blood
New blogger Notes from a Small Bedroom seems to taken all of three days to find the words to sum up and crystallise what I've been incoherently ranting about for four months now:
Who was it said politics was ’showbusiness for ugly people’? There’s a certain cruel truth in that. In particular the constant need politicians seem to have to be in the public eye, rather than actually doing the job they are paid for (you know, scrutinising legislation, managing departments of state).
I wonder if a lot of this is the consequence of a combination of a more pervasive mass media and essentially weak characters - such that the semblance of activity becomes more important than the effectiveness of the action. Thus we have a constant stream of new legislation, and little attention paid to the enforcement of the laws that already exist - if it’s just the plods doing their job, then it looks like the ministers aren’t doing anything.
Of course if our politicians weren’t such feeble wretches, it wouldn’t matter so much, since they wouldn’t feel driven to do something, anything, to give the impression of activity. And was there ever a nation ruled over by such a set of political and intellectual pygmies?
Euphemism of the week
From Reading Borough Council's tourist website (my emphasis):
Reading Gaol (or Reading Young Offenders Centre in its current form) is right next to the Abbey Ruins, enshrined forever in literature thanks to the epic poem written by its most famous inmate, Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol". Designed in the 1830's as a "model" prison, Wilde was sent here due to concerns for his health.
The Jyllands-Posten Mohammed Cartoons: Spot The Difference
From a Reuters report, Rome, some time around now
The Vatican has protested in “the strongest possible terms” against the publication in paperback of Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Cardinal Loopi, of the Office of the Defence of the Faith, condemned the book for defaming Catholicism and, in its suggestion that Jesus Christ was married, of heresy. “We demand that the book be destroyed and that the author be punished,” said Loopi, “otherwise we cannot be held responsible for how Catholics throughout the world may react.”
Excerpt from a speech by Angela Merkel, the German ChancellorMerkel: “The affront to the honour of the one true Church is in fact an affront to the worship of God, and to the seeking of truth and justice, and an affront to all the prophets of God. Obviously, all those who harm the honour of the one true Church . . .”
Crowd: “Death to Dan Brown. Death to Dan Brown. Death to Dan Brown. Death to Dan Brown.”
From the Paris correspondent of al-JazeeraA Lyons priest today offered half a million euros and a top-of-the-line Toyota as a reward to anyone who killed Dan Brown or any executive of the Da Vinci Code publishers, Jonathan Cape. Speaking to a 1,000-strong crowd gathered after Mass outside the church of St Marie-la-Vierge, Fr Jules Monbiot announced that the offer was “a unanimous decision by all bishops that whoever insults the one true Church deserves to be killed, and whoever will take this insulting man to his end will get this prize”.
Buncefield fire: the investigation
Thank God for the Health and Safety Executive.Evidence points to a mixture of petrol and air which ignited being the cause of the Buncefield oil depot explosions, the lead investigator has said.
Monbiot: a visionary thinker
Oh dear God, I'm reading George Monbiot in today's Guardian and nodding...
A company in Ohio called City-Watcher has implanted radio transmitters into the arms of two of its workers. The implants ensure that only they can enter the strongroom. Apparently it is "the first known case in which US workers have been tagged electronically as a way of identifying them".
The transmitters are tiny (about the size of a grain of rice), cheap (£85 and falling fast), safe and stable. Without being maintained or replaced, they can identify someone for many years. They are injected, with a local anaesthetic, into the upper arm. They require no power source, as they become active only when scanned. There are no technical barriers to their wider deployment.The company that makes these "radio frequency identification tags", the VeriChip Corporation, says they "combine access control with the location and protection of individuals". The chips can also be implanted in hospital patients, especially children and people who are mentally ill. When doctors want to know who they are and what their medical history is, they simply scan them in. This, apparently, is "an empowering option to affected individuals". For a while, a school in California toyed with the idea of implanting the chips in all its pupils.
A tag such as this has a maximum range of a few metres. But another implantable device emits a signal that allows someone to be found or tracked by satellite. The patent notice says it can be used to locate the victims of kidnapping or people lost in the wilderness. There are, in other words, plenty of legitimate uses for implanted chips. This is why they bother me. A technology whose widespread deployment, if attempted now, would be greeted with horror, will gradually become unremarkable. As this happens, its purpose will begin to creep.
David Irving: fucked
So the old Holocaust-denier has been put away for three years. What a shame. Still, his hero got 5 years, so I suppose he can count himself lucky.
If you struggled through my post on this a couple of months back, you'll have guessed that my view remains the same: let him publish and be damned. As I pointed out in December, it seems odd that Europe should be imprisoning Holocaust deniers, when in Turkey, its newest applicant member, it is not Holocaust denial, but affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, which is the crime - carrying a maximum sentence of ten years.
Voltaire's dictum, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", is over-used: but attempting to apply this maxim to David Irving stretches our forebearance to its very limits. (As an aside, this famous quote is a misattribution. Voltaire never said or wrote it. It was coined by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in a book called The Friends of Voltaire in 1906. I feel kind of smug telling you that, but I must admit that it was news to me, too.)
The best way to defeat Irving's brand of "revisionism" [sic.] is to expose it to the glare of open debate and analysis. It was in just such a fashion that Christopher Hitchens, who had supported Irving's right to free speech for years on the grounds that he was, if nothing else, a serious historian, came to realise, on further reading, that the man was in fact a charlatan:
I allowed for Irving's obsessions. I wrote a column [describing him] as not just a fascist historian but a great historian of fascism. One should be allowed to read "Mein Kampf" as well as Heidegger. Allowed? One should be able to do so without permission from anybody.
[However], there are suspicious mistranslations, suggestive ellipses and, worst of all, some tampering with figures: in other words, Irving knowingly inflates the death toll in the Allied bombing of Dresden while deflating it in the camps and pits to the East. And, yes, all the "mistakes" have the same tendency. In a crucial moment, Irving "forgot" what he had said about Nazi Gen. Walter Bruns, who had confessed to witnessing mass killing of Jews and had been taped by British intelligence while doing so. When it suited Irving to claim that Bruns didn't know he was being recorded, he claimed as much. When it didn't, he suggested that Bruns was trying to please his hearers. Having listened myself to Irving discuss this fascinating episode, I mentally closed the book when I reached this stage in it. It was a QED.
Lies are only exposed when out in the open. Irving is a fool and a liar, and not the poster-boy for free speech that anyone would choose. But if we believe in it as a principle, then by definition it has to apply to everyone.
Zimbabwe: fucked
When Mr Eugenides was in Zimbabwe around three years ago, he noticed a number of things, in between dodging angry baboons, checking mosquito nets and almost getting engaged by mistake (long story). The first thing that he noticed was that, amusingly enough, while British and American travellers were charged about 40 quid for a tourist visa, Irish citizens were admitted to the country gratis. Clearly, revolutionary ties die hard.
But most obviously noticeable was the startling discrepancy between the official and black market exchange rates for foreign currency. 1 US dollar would get you 150 Zim dollars in a bank or hotel lobby, but 900 Zim dollars from the guy in the pub. This would cover the cost of a beer nicely. Mr Eugenides, for one brief, rollercoaster day, lived like a king - albeit one surrounded by starving, destitute subjects.
1 US Dollar now gets you three of these shiny new notes - 150,000 Zim dollars in all. By my back-of-the-envelope reckoning, that's 17,000% inflation in the black market over three years. Even the official inflation rate is 500%, and some economists are predicting 1000% inflation over the next two months. Makes you almost glad to have Gordon in charge, doesn't it?
As a consequence, 50,000 Zim dollars is nowhere near enough to buy a beer these days - even a can in the supermarket. This wonderful new denomination buys somewhere between three or four eggs. Or 4 candles to fight the power-cuts. Or (this is the good news) 1.25 loaves of basic bread to feed the family. It would also buy you about a quarter pound of mince meat, if there was any in the shops. But, of course, there isn't, because Zimbabwe is run by a murderous tyrant who doesn't give a shit about his people and has turned his country from the "breadbasket of Africa" into a poverty-stricken, starving, totalitarian hellhole.
In this context, the utter disinterest on the part of his neighbours, particularly South Africa, in encouraging any kind of democratic change, is not merely a scandal, but one which is costing lives. The UN estimates that 700,000 people were affected by last year's urban clearances, which the government claimed was just an exercise in demolishing slums in order to build new housing, but which was actually aimed at areas suspected of supporting the opposition MDC. And of course the seizing of white farmers' land has left farms in the control of government cronies who know nothing about agriculture. Even ministers now admit this.
This, to give them due credit, has been one area where the British government has been consistent in its policy. But it's hardly been banging the drum about it. Toothless complaints will only go so far. Only when its African neighbours step up to the plate will there be any real pressure on Zimbabwe to get rid of Mugabe and reform - and there seems precious little chance of that happening any time soon. More pressure needs to be brought to bear on the likes of Thabo Mbeki to do something about the obscene mess on his doorstep.
Monday, 20 February 2006
Cheney update
After neoconservatism?
Francis Fukuyama has an interesting (if lengthy) essay in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, entitled "After Neoconservatism". He argues that while the goal of promoting democracy around the world, and particularly in the Muslim world, remains an important one, America needs to reassess the means by which it has tried to do this since 2001.
Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends.
Communism collapsed within a couple of years because of its internal moral weaknesses and contradictions, and with regime change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact threat to the West evaporated.
The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan... it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside.
This strikes me as entirely plausible. As Fukuyama points out, the neoconservative project assumed (he writes about it in the past tense) that liberal democracy was a "default position" to which societies would naturally revert, rather than the end point of a long and painstaking process which could not be imposed by outside actors. Of course, some would say that FF himself was guilty of promoting this view, though typically enough the man himself denies it.
The conclusion seems to be that the US should rely less on military force to effect change in totalitarian states, and more on its "soft" power to promote democracy and civil society. If this all sounds like wooly thinking, then you may be right. But which will be the more effective strategy in the long run, only time will tell. And, as W is fond of saying, "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
Google stands up for privacy
Google are refusing to hand over customer details, including search records, to the US Department of Justice. Bravo.
If only they showed the same backbone in China.
Previous:
Do a Yahoo! search on this, you bastards
Google's surrender
Friday, 17 February 2006
Go hunting with Dick Cheney
Another fine mess
The cause of creating a true European single market was "set back years" yesterday when the European Parliament approved a fatally weakened version of a proposal to slash red tape and barriers to cross-border business. British Conservatives complained of a ''missed opportunity'' when the parliament approved a plan to liberalise the European Union's vast services market, but in a watered-down version that was crammed with opt-outs and exclusions.
Don't believe Conservatives? OK, maybe you'll listen to the Socialists:
"We managed to turn this directive upside down. We managed to focus on the social protection of our citizens," said Evelyne Gebhardt, the German Socialist MEP who was charged with steering the Bill through the parliament. The European Trade Union Confederation said the votes were "a real victory for European workers".
It's an emasculated mess, a classic Euro-fudge that has stripped out one of the central planks of the legislation, the so-called "country of origin principle", which would have allowed service providers to operate across borders (on a short-term basis) under the regulations of their home countries. It's also littered with opt-outs and exemptions:
Public transport was explicitly excluded from the liberalising scope of the directive by MEPs. Other exclusions agreed by the parliament included broadcasting, postal services, temporary employment agencies, legal services, gambling, public healthcare, and some social services, "such as social housing, child care and family services".
If this was such a blow for free markets, why, exactly, was the Tory in charge of shepherding the directive through the parliament, Malcolm Harbour MEP, being given manly hugs by Martin Schultz, head of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, and Robert Goebbels, a Lefty from Luxembourg?
Now Mr Harbour is a decent sort, and committed to a free single market. But after a while in Brussels, my rule of thumb is that, if a piece of market-opening legislation is cheered by French MEPs and earns you bear-hugs from German socialists, something has gone badly wrong.
This is not an entity that can be reformed, no more than a Scorpion can be trained not to sting. Its purpose is to create socialism in Europe, and no amount of reform effort will ever change that.
Retired colonel observation #925
ROMEO’S dying gesture in Romeo and Juliet — when he demands a last embrace and a kiss — would be restricted to a chaste peck on the cheek under guidelines for school plays.[...] The guidance, which is being considered by teaching organisations, suggests that stage directions for characters to kiss should be replaced with “a peck on the cheek or an embrace”.
“In the past some unscrupulous drama teachers have used the integrity of the play as an argument to provide cover for their abusive practices,” the guidance states.
“Drama teachers must cut or adapt plays if they have to in order to protect children and young people. [They] should . . . not rely on arguments about the artistic integrity of the text.” Nudity and intimate physical contact are banned, but “accidental sexual contact of a fleeting nature, for example brushing against each other in warm-up exercises or in performance” is permitted. Characters may also “hug each other in friendship”.
Political correctness gone mad, I tell you.
Thursday, 16 February 2006
Smoking fascism cont.
I'm really in danger of having some kind of aneurism over this, and I don't even smoke...
Smokers have been banned from pubs, so they'll have to stand outside the pub like refugees - and, in winter, huddle under those big mushroom-shaped "canopy" or patio heaters to keep warm. If you've ever stood near one, you'll know they're pretty damn good, and give off serious heat. They must use up an awful lot of energy. That can't be good for the environment, surely?
Yes, that's it, you're beginning to guess...
The increased use of patio heaters is also of growing concern to some politicians. Labour's Desmond Turner, MP for Brighton Kemptown, wants to ban them completely, calling them a "waste of energy". He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The use of patio heaters accounts for about one million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, which immediately cancels out, for instance, the savings made by government changes to vehicle taxations."
Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Norman Baker agreed that patio heaters were a "waste of resources" and "doomed to failure". "Patio heaters are an absurd invention. It is ludicrous that people are trying to heat the open air, as well as being irresponsible in the light of the climate change challenge we face". He later said the government should establish an effective strategy, such as selling patio heaters with "health warning" style labels.
"I'm not against people smoking outside, it's better than them smoking inside, but I think they should enjoy the bracing air around them. Instead of reaching for the gas canister, people should reach for another jumper instead," he added.
Cocksuckers, to a man.
The best invention in the world
I was so convinced that this was a wind-up that I read it twice:
Police have given their backing to a gadget that sends out an ultra high-pitched noise that can be heard only by those under 20 and is so distressing it forces them to clutch their ears in discomfort. Eventually they can stand it no longer and have to move on.
But because the body's natural ability to detect some frequency wave bands diminishes almost entirely after 20, adults are completely immune to the sounds. What is more, shop owners can control the strength of the signal as the problem of loitering youths ebbs and flows - and it does not penetrate indoors.
"A gallop down the road to serfdom"
Theodore Dalrymple, in today's Times, gets it spot on:
I have lived under a Latin American military dictatorship where daily life was freer than in Britain today. Of course, you couldn’t go out into the street and shout “Down with Señor Presidente”, at least not without dire consequences; on the other hand, you were considerably less surveyed, supervised and harried as you went about your business than you are in contemporary Britain. [...]
If the citizen should drive, he soon discovers that his vehicle confers anxiety rather than freedom. Slight infringements of the driving rules are photographed and he is fined. When he parks he soon discovers that wheel-clamping is the one public service that works with clockwork efficiency. Squeezing money from him is likewise the one task that the State takes seriously, for he cannot rely on the police to protect him, or the schools to educate his children, or the hospitals to succour him when he is ill, or public transport to take him anywhere without hitch. A bloated payroll does not translate into efficient services: on the contrary, it is incompatible with them.
In this context, the proposal that we should, at all times, carry identity cards containing a great deal of personal information is particularly sinister. [...] But the requirement that we should carry such cards will no doubt give the police another target to aim at: 20 non-carriers a week, for example, producing £1,000 in fines. After all, the immense outlay on producing the cards and the interest on the resulting debt will have to be paid for somehow.
Smoking fascism
I hate to contradict such an estimable ally as the Devil's Kitchen, but he's got this one wrong:
"Smoking will still be allowed in the home and in places considered to be homes, such as prisons, care homes and hotels.
Nice of them. The fucking fascist cunts."
The Department of Health will instigate a three-month consultation period to iron out some of the trickier issues once the legislation passes the Lords this summer.
As one of the aims of the legislation is to protect workers, the case of caterers asked to work at a smoky function in a private home will also be subject to consultation.
Smoking will be permitted in private cars but banned for the driver and passengers of taxis, and probably company cars. But company cars might escape if everyone at the company smokes. Smoking in a privately owned lorry would be legal, but not in a company lorry.
Ministers have told councils, health boards and social work departments that they should compile a "smokers' map" of Scotland, focusing on those who regularly receive visits from officials and carers. This would identify individual households where a smoker is resident.
The smokers would then be sent letters asking them not to smoke for one hour before a council worker or health worker called round.
Remember, it's always worse than you think.
Wednesday, 15 February 2006
Maybe I'm just an old sentimentalist, but I enjoyed these two stories; both, in their different ways, about courage.
Story number 1:
Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn't famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.
Capone had a lawyer nicknamed "Easy Eddie." He was his lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie's skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of Jail for a long time. To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well.
Not only was the money big, but Eddie got special dividends. For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day.
The estate was so large that it filled an entire Chicago City block. Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him.
Eddie did have one soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly. Eddie saw to it that his young son had the best of everything: clothes, cars and a good education. Nothing was withheld. Price was no object.
And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was. Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn't give his son; that he couldn't pass on a good name and a good example.
One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done. He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al "Scarface" Capone, clean up his tarnished name and offer his son some semblance of integrity.
To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great. He testified and within the year, Easy Eddie's life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street. But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he would ever pay.
Story Number 2:
World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare. He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific.
One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission. After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank. He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship. His flight leader told him to return to the carrier.
Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet. As he was returning to the mother ship he saw something that turned his blood cold.
A squadron of Japanese aircraft was speeding their way toward the American fleet. The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless. He couldn't reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger.
There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet.
Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes. Wing-mounted 50 calibers blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another.
Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent. Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dived at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible and rendering them unfit to fly.
Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction. Deeply relieved, Butch O'Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier. Upon arrival he reported in and related the event surrounding his return.The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch's daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had in fact destroyed five enemy aircraft.
This took place on February 20, 1942, and for that action Butch became the Navy's first Ace of W. W. II, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.
A year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29. His home town would not allow the memory of this WW II hero to fade, and today, O'Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man.
So the next time you find yourself at O'Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch's memorial displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It's located between Terminals 1 and 2.
SO WHAT DO THESE TWO STORIES HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?
Butch O'Hare was Easy Eddie's son.
(via The Volokh Conspiracy)
Galloway watch: Love is in the air
I could almost find it in my heart to feel sorry for Gorgeous this morning. The Sun has stitched him up like a kipper.
NOW I’ve been on a few weird Valentine’s Day dates in my time... and kissed a few frogs. But my romantic tryst yesterday with pussy prat George Galloway took the biscuit — or should I say the DONUT. He offered me an iced donut in his Commons office. And as he puffed his vile cigar smoke all over me, he smarmed: “You really must have a nibble.” Yuk!
Our somewhat less than hot date was triggered when The Sun anonymously sent “gorgeous” George a Valentine’s Day bouquet of roses. He had a bit of a rough ride in the Celebrity Big Brother house, pretending to be a cat and prancing about in a silly leotard. So why not cheer him up?
I wrote a message on the bouquet reading: ‘Dear George, Happy Valentine’s Day, Love from your secret admirer ‘G’.” I included a mobile number and added: “Give me a call.” The flowers were delivered to the offices of the MP’s Respect Party at 10.45am yesterday. Within 15 minutes, George was on the phone — and purring. [...]
George chatted freely about Big Brother and I asked if he fancied Rula. Eyeing me, he scoffed: “Not at all, I go for women half her age.” I stroked his ego by telling him I found his cat impersonation sexy. “Really, do you think?” he said, surprised. “The leotard I could understand.”
Hollywood news
I'm taking this blog downmarket, just for today, to bring you some celebrity news:
Actor Tom Cruise has branded a story suggesting he is to split from pregnant fiancee Katie Holmes "100% false".
"Despite the malicious fallacies, the couple is looking forward to a long and happy life together as a family," said a statement issued by their publicist.
Quote of the day
No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well.
Margaret Thatcher
Tuesday, 14 February 2006
We are a father
I know David Cameron is your archetypal "big tent" politician, but this was a bizarre thing to say on the occasion of the birth of your third child, even for him:
Asked whom the baby most resembled, he said: "All of us."
The right to offend
Freedom of speech is not just a special and distinctive emblem of western culture that might be generously abridged or qualified as a measure of respect for other cultures that reject it, the way a crescent or menorah might be added to a Christian religious display. Free speech is a condition of legitimate government. Laws and policies are not legitimate unless they have been adopted through a democratic process, and a process is not democratic if government has prevented anyone from expressing his convictions about what those laws and policies should be.
Ridicule is a distinct kind of expression; its substance cannot be repackaged in a less offensive rhetorical form without expressing something very different from what was intended.
ID Cards: the surrender
Go to the No2ID site and pledge your support. This isn't over...
Monday, 13 February 2006
Pilger on Iran
John Pilger in this week's New Statesman magazine: oh dear, oh dear.
That Washington has managed to coerce enough members of the International Atomic Energy Agency into participating in a diplomatic charade is no more than reminiscent of the way it intimidated and bribed the "international community" into attacking Iraq in 1991. Iran offers no "nuclear threat". There is not the slightest evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing to support American and Israeli claims.
Iran has since claimed back its "inalienable right" under the terms of the NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. There is no doubt this decision reflects the ferment of political life in Tehran and the tension between radical and conciliatory forces, of which the bellicose new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is but one voice.
Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. [...] That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly.
While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. "The first step taken by an invading force," reported Beirut's Daily Star, "would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply." On 28 January the Iranian government said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year.
Khuzestan is indeed an oil-rich province; one with an ethnic Arab majority, and which has been experiencing unrest for some time, as has Iranian Kurdistan. The Iranian government has exploited the region's resources for years, but cuts the local population out of the profits, has attempted to ethnically cleanse parts of the region as part of its policy of "forced displacement", and needless to say abuses human rights on a grand scale throughout the area. Iran is worried that Khuzestani Arabs may wish to secede, taking the area's valuable oil reserves with them.
Blaming outside forces for this ongoing low-level trouble is nothing new, and is a convenient way to deflect attention from the internal ethnic tensions in Iran, and also its continued meddling in Iraqi affairs and support for radical Shia elements. Read the same Beirut Star article and it is clear from the context that it is Iranian officials who posit the possibility of an invading US-led force occupying Khuzestan, and the necessity of shifting the focus of their military planning accordingly.
Pilger clearly knows all this; he has read the article, and he has visited Iran. But in the hands of a lazy, blinkered left-wing polemicist, an article in a Lebanese newspaper (by a British-Greek filmmaker and photographer) and an Iranian governmental whitewash to hide the extent of its problems with an exploited ethnic minority, become "evidence" to be held against the military-industrial complex even now planning "atrocities" against a new "victim".
In fact large sections of his article are simply cut-and-pasted from this loony left-wing rant on the "Information Clearing House" website:
The administration has no hope of securing the votes needed for sanctions or punitive action. The trip to the Security Council is purely a ploy to provide the cover of international legitimacy to another act of unprovoked aggression. The case has gone as far as it will go excluding the requisite “touched up” satellite photos and bogus allegations of unreliable dissidents. We should now be focused on how Washington intends to carry out its war plans, since war appears to be inevitable.
Life imitating art
Hat tip to Guido Fawkes for pointing out a splendid story on a website I would never normally visit: Richard Gibbs was a paid regional organiser for New Labour during the year leading up to the May 2005 General Election. But Gibbs, 27, has now left the party after witnessing its dirty tricks from the inside.
Some snippets:
It was on October 7, 2004, that I first visited Labour’s headquarters in Old Queen Street, near Whitehall. It was also the day that terrorists in Iraq murdered British hostage Ken Bigley. There are television sets everywhere in New Labour’s HQ, and as the BBC broke the story I was thinking, like most other ordinary people, of the atrociousness of such a killing and how terrible it must be for Mr Bigley’s family.
But within moments, different sentiments were being expressed by some of Labour’s staff. "What marginal seats are near the Bigleys?" asked one. "If they have a go at Blair, then we could be in trouble." "You don’t think his brother or any of his relatives will stand, do you?" another commented. "This could be really big. It could be a problem."
This is your money, remember. What a shower of bastards.
Often the question arose: How can we get a Cabinet Minister to visit party workers and activists but fix it so the taxpayer picks up the bill? Surestart, the flagship Government childcare project, provided the answer. Since it was a Whitehall initiative, we could have a Minister transported from London to anywhere in the country. The cost would be paid by the Minister’s department because, strictly speaking, this was Government, rather than Labour Party, business.After spending ten or 15 minutes at a Surestart scheme, party officials could drive the Minister to a nearby Labour club for a political event. At the end of the visit, we would reunite the Minister with his Government car and driver and he would be sent back to London, knowing that Labour had not had to pay the transport costs.
One of my tasks as a regional organiser was to arrange large mailshots to constituents in marginal seats to find out who were potential Labour supporters. We would prepare an innocuous letter from an MP about a general subject – anti-social behaviour, street lighting or parking – and attach a voting intention survey. Since we held MPs' signatures and photos on a digital database, we were able to create these communications without even contacting them. And we would use the Parliamentary postage allowance, which meant the taxpayer picked up the bill. It was a naughty thing to do, since this allowance was intended only for Parliamentary rather than party political business, but we did it all the time.
ID Cards: Brown plays the terrorism card
Heh.
Tony Blair will miss a crucial Commons vote on ID cards after being delayed in South Africa, Number 10 has said. He had been due to return from a summit in Pretoria, but his flight was aborted on take off when the pilot spotted a problem with one of the engines.
I doubt it would have made a difference. I've never argued that ID cards would prevent any particular act.
If you take the Ricin plot ... there were 12 main suspects, they had 120 separate identities. If you take one of the 11 September terrorists in America, he was operating with 20 false identities so he could not be spotted.
It is absolutely crucial to the disruption of terrorism that you can spot quickly where multiple identities are being used.
The ID database may actually leave people more vulnerable to identity theft:
the new database will create safety and security risks for all those whose details are entered on the system.
it is shameful that those who are less well-off will be forced to put themselves at serious risk for a system that serves no purpose that cannot be achieved in other, more effective and less costly ways.
in case you think that I am an opponent of ID cards, I should point out that I support an irrevocably voluntary, self-funded ID card scheme.
I believe that the Labour Party will win this vote this evening.
Friday, 10 February 2006
The Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons: Danish editor sacked
It seems that free speech is not quite as absolute as we thought:
Flemming Rose, culture editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, got the order after saying he might print Iranian cartoons of the Holocaust.
Earlier this week, an Iranian newspaper said it was holding a contest inviting cartoonists to depict the Holocaust. Jyllands-Posten editor-in-chief Carsten Juste told a Danish newspaper that the paper's editors told Rose "to take a vacation because no-one can understand the kind of pressure [Rose] has been under".
On Wednesday, Rose said the paper would consider printing the Iranian cartoons, "but we will not make a decision before we have seen the cartoons". However, Juste said that the newspaper "in no circumstances will publish Holocaust cartoons from an Iranian newspaper", which he called a "tasteless media stunt".
The Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which has expressed regret for offending Muslims by first publishing the cartoons last year, apologised for Rose's latest comments. "Flemming Rose has expressed regret for his error of judgement that must be ascribed to the fact that... he has experienced inhumanly hard pressure," Juste said.
The Bonfire of the Sanities
Upping the ante
First they came for the pastries...
Polly on the Lib Dems
Mention the third party and political tribalists in Labour and Tory camps will tumble out identical spitting expletives: ragbag of opportunists, a franchise flip-flopping according to the local opponent of the day, a flag of convenience for assorted political hobbyists in it for the thrill of the game.
They have a strong frontbench, with plenty of competence in reserve behind them.
In our monstrous first-past-the-post voting system - the only one left in all 25 EU countries - the Lib Dems are the necessary escape valve.
Given the injustice of first-past-the-post to Tories (as it used to work against Labour), it is a sign of dumbness in the stupid party that the Cameron rebadging has not grasped the need to support PR.
The coup de grâce:
Huhne is the most knowledgeable of the three - an economist, ex-Guardian economics editor, founder of his own economic consultancy - and he was a well-respected MEP.
