I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

The American Way of War

Today's Sunday Times magazine has a fascinating interview with Stanley McChrystal, the former US general who commanded US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, having earlier led America's Joint Special Operations Command.

Of all the revelations, perhaps the most remarkable is that the US, fighting insurgency on two fronts, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, had such little knowledge concerning key elements of that struggle. McChrystal observes:

"I had zero experience with interrogation. None us of had. So there's nobody who's ever done it before. To be honest, I didn't have a single person in the room who really knew a thing about it. So I went over to Israel to talk to them to get smart on how to do it" (Decca Aitkenhead, Sunday Times Magazine, p.11)

Too Good To Be True?

I suspect this American story is one of those that is simply too good to be true, but reproduce it anyway:

"One day this week the collector of assessed taxes in Chesterton had occasion to leave a tax-paper with a gentleman who has a small white bulldog; the paper being in fact a notice to tax that animal. No one was at home, but the collector thrust the paper under the door. Glancing at the window, he saw the dog looking steadfastly at him. The dog then deliberately took the paper in his mouth, placed his feet upon the fender, and thrust the objectionable paper into a low fire, and perseveringly held it between the bars of the grate. The collector rattled meanwhile at the window, and made a noise, to induce the dog to bark and drop the paper, but utterly in vain; it was held in the fire till it was consumed."

This seems to be a C19th story by a Rev Williams, cited in "The Book of the Bulldog" by Joan McDonald Brearley, pp.24-5 (TFH Publications: New Jersey, 1985).

A Conservative Intellectual and Brexit

Jesse Norman is talked by some as a future leader of the Conservative Party. Bryan Appleyard's Sunday Times piece of 01/07/18 certainly tried to portray him as the leading Conservative intellectual, offering a puff piece for Norman's new book on Adam Smith.

There is not much point in being an intellectual if you can't translate complicated ideas into simple formats, or struggle with basic concepts. Lets listen to the great sage on Brexit:

"As I thought about the Brexit situation I found myself thinking that there are just so many questions embedded in this.... that the idea that there is some right answer actually does violence to the problem and it also removes (people) from the need to think it through for themselves."

That is as clear as mud.

Norman's position on the EU though, may be influenced by simple self-interest, or nervousness

"I once asked someone whether they knew anyone.... who's maintained their reputation after taking a position on either side."

There a lots of things Mr Norman's Eton education could have given him. It does not seem to have given him any balls?

On England, and Englishness

Last year I had an article on Englishness and Brexit published in the British Politics Review, where I argued that Englishness was less important in our vote to leave the EU, than many people like to think. You can read it for free on my academia page here, but you will need to register.

The World Cup has got people thinking about Englishness again, and Tim Stanley's "To be English is to be guilty of the Original Sin" was a useful it not particularly revelatory contribution to this debate. Stanley beautifully picks up Orwell's view of the disdain the English may have for their fellows when he writes:

"There are Englishmen who have built their whole identity around rejecting Englishness, and they're often the most painfully English people of all. What other country could produce The Guardian, which dedicates columns to arguing that its English readers either don't exist or are inherently racist"?

The further England go in the World Cup, the more the pressure on that fault line, and the more we will be discussing Englishness. Imagine, if the only country in Europe without a Parliament, won the World Cup!

What Terrorism Costs France

Tucked away in the 'In Brief' section of the Daily Telegraph's sports pages, you could easily miss one of the saddest items of the day:

"The threat of terrorist attacks in France means no World Cup matches will be broadcast on big screens in public spaces, the government said yesterday."

When the barbarians are inside the gates, we lose the freedom to even socialise together. A desperately sad decision to see.

Anti-Semitism: Where the Labour Left and Right Agree?

One of the things the Labour right and Corbynistas agree on, is a sort of non-aggression pact concerning Islamic anti-Semitism.

Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters can hardly turn round and say "actually left anti-Semitism exists, but it is probably less directly threatening to Jews across Europe than Islamist violence, which has killed 11 Jews in France in 12 years." Those on the right of the Labour party, just as likely to be dependent on Islamic votes for office, are equally unlikely to spend too much time correcting debates. Consider little Jim McMahon in Oldham West and Royton, pictured fourth from right, below:

The Commons debate on anti-Semitism in the Labour party mentioned Islamophobia almost as many times (3) as any reference to Islamist anti-Semitism (4). On the Labour benches only John Mann seemed capable of grasping the nettle, despite cases such as Aysegul Gurbuz, and a series of similar scandals up and down the country in the past few years. More will break in the coming weeks.

In the long run, this pact is unsustainable. The truth will always out. It may take a shattering event, perhaps the mass murder of British Jews aspired to by some jihadists coming to fruition, but it will end. Across the channel in France, where those murders are already happening, there is also the drip, drip, drip of low level, continuous intimidation. Tucked away in Monday's press coverage of a manifesto condemning the intimidation of French Jews by Islamists, was this line:

"Ten per cent of the Jewish citizens of the Paris region.... have recently been forced to move because they were no longer secure in certain council estates. This is a quiet ethnic cleansing." (Adam Sage, The Times, 23/04/18).

What is remarkable about the British response to this ethnic cleaning, is that senior figures in the British Jewish community, apparently wish to cover it up. Last Friday, Rabbi Lord Sacks, on Thought for the Day, insisted that contemporary anti-Semitism can be explained by the global rise of the far left and far right. He did not mention Islamism, Islamists or jihadists. In an ending that would be comic if it were not so serious, he even managed to drag out the line that for evil triumph, all that is neccesary is for good men to do nothing.

Precisely the charge that can be levelled against himself, and for that matter, much of the Labour party....

Northamptonshire Is Out.....

From todays Sunday Times 'Best Places to Live, 2018'

"There is no room for Northamptonshire on the list. It has attractive countryside, handsome houses and a plausible commute to the capital - but please tell us where we should make ourselves at home."

The Perils of Media Fact Checking

One journalistic tool that is now used frequently is to 'fact-check' particular claims or statements by politicians and campaign groups. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, quite a bit actually. This is Mollie Ziegler's take:

"The 'fact-checking trend' meant that journalists would gain more power. They wouldn't just get to determine which stories saw the light of day and which were killed or downplayed; they would pick the angle and framing for the stories and determine who was quoted and how. And through fact-checking, they would tell people what to think about claims made in these stories."

Mollie Ziegler, "Trump vs the Media" (Encounter Broadside No:51, Encounter Books: New York) p. 40 - 41.

Duties and Responsibilities in Counter-Terrorism

Several newspapers and news sites have covered the release, in Pakistan, of a US-Canadian couple, Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle. They had been kidnapped in Afghanistan in October 2012, and had three children whilst being held by the Haqqani Network.

Significant in this is the tone of the US government statement. This certainly seems to refer to other Americans (and other westerners?) in a similar predicament, but also that the US government has pretty clearly expectations of Pakistan to address this.

It may be too early to talk of a 'Trump Doctrine' but at least part of what we see forming is a desire for other countries to take on duties and responsibilities, with no doubt some behind the scenes encouragment from either carrot or stick. There is little doubt here, that Pakistan was held responsible either for the kidnapping itself, or its continuation.

The times they are a changing?

A Solution to the Rohinga Crisis?

This is a bit too long for a tweet, so I shall leave it here.

Lets get all those who insist Buddhism is a religion of peace. And all those who insist Islam is a religion of peace. Lets lock them all in a room together. And watch as they beat the shit out of each other.

Irene Lancaster v David Irving

The Sunday Times has a feature by Sian Griffiths (p.13) on Manchester University refusing to remove from open display, books by the far-right historian David Irving.

Some universities have already moved Irving's books into closed access areas, or added disclaimers (!) to them. This is reportedly due to a campaign by Dr Irene Lancaster (who I think is a retired academic) and Dr Rowan Williams, who having retired as Archbishop of Canterbury is now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Two comments on this madness. Firstly it is not as new as Sian Griffiths supposes. Way back in January 1993, on my first day as a library assistant at the University of North London's then Kentish Town library site, I was shown the 'under the counter' books. Sadly this was not a collection of red-hot pornography or studies of illicit sexual practices, but a small collection of books by David Irving. Following a campaign by the Anti-Nazi League (the SWP's then anti-fascist front group, now Unite Against Fascism) the university authorities had taken the books off the shelves. I was given a stern lecture by a senior librarian that this was a terrible mistake and undermined both academic freedom and the nature of a university library. That approach stands the test of time - libraries are by definition places where ideas sit, germinate, breathe and, whether you like or or not, fester. If you want them to be places where only nice, cuddly, safe ideas are to be found, go to a children's library.

Why this issue has flared up again now, having first run over twenty years ago, is unclear. My second comment is motivated by the quote from Irene Lancaster which appears in the Sunday Times. "Leaving this literature on the shelving with inadequate labelling poses a physical threat to the Jewish student and staff body and constitutes a deep insult to the lives of all those who were exterminated in the Nazi holocaust". These presumably include members of the Lancaster family, who we are told died at Treblinka.

Several issues emerge here. Firstly books do not attack people. The ideas in them may or may not inspire people to action, and may or may not inspire people to violence. To function, a democracy has to have a marketplace of ideas. Given the historical fact of the holocaust, it is hard to see how Mr Irving comes out top in that marketplace. Why can he not be defeated in argument? Also, how does putting a sticker on one of his books makes any difference at all?

There is another, less comfortable issue which emerges from Dr Lancaster's fear of violence. The neo-Nazi far-right in Britain is weaker today than it has ever been, be it in electoral terms or in street activism. Who then is providing a threat to Jewish students and staff? If Jews are leaving Europe today because of violence, it is not because of people like David Irving, but because of violence from Islamists. And yet (correctly) we do not seek to purge university library's of material from Sayyid Qutb, Osama bin Laden or a succession of Islamist actors who would happily do to Irene Lancaster what the Nazis did to her Grandmother.

Ideas matter. And they matter too much to give in to selective outrage, in the very place where those ideas need to be digested and discussed.

JD Vance on Trump

There is a good interview by Josh Glancy in today's Sunday Times magazine, of the American author J D Vance.

Of particular interest are some of his quotes about Donald Trump.

"My fears thus far have been confirmed..... He understands the problems, but there's no evidence he's actually articulating a way out."

Glancy then paraphrases Vance "He points out that the president gained a lot of trust by telling people things no other politician would say".

There was also this on Trump's support base "They will give him a long leash, and judge him by whether their lives have got better in two to three years".

That seems the right way to judge a politician, certainly from a viewpoint in rust belt America - are you better off, or is the framework there for you to make yourself better off, than at the last election? In pressuring US companies to stay in America rather than decamping to Mexico, and reopening coalmines, Trump, as Vance says, does get it. If Steve Bannon stays in the White House (by no means a certainty) there is the prospect of focus on those issues remaining. If there is another plus point here, it is that whether Trump still articulates things other politicians do not, he will grasp the nettle of issues where western elites have failed. On FGM, his administration is already light years ahead of the UK, as shown here and here.

Vance does not really touch on Trump's approach to security issues. This is much harder to fathom. I have never seen how Shia Iran (the minority trend within Islam) can be viewed as an existential threat to the west. Yet Trump is working with a country which is an existential threat to the west, Saudi Arabia, to isolate Iran and Qatar. There may or may not be method in his madness. We shall see. In the long term the travel ban, should it be fully implemented, probably does make the US more secure, although as it does not include countries Trump is in bed with - Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to name three - it is a string vest.

I am not sure a President in a string vest can be re-elected. But as Vance points out, if people are better off when he stands for re-election than they were previously, he will be judged on that criteria.

Journalistic Solidarity From Shepherd's Bush to Qatar

Yesterday's Evening Standard saw the BBC's World Affairs Editor, John Simpson, complaining about the pressure Qatar is under to close down Al-Jazeera. He wants to see the West supporting the station.

One of Simpson's lines particularly caught my attention:

"It may have been accused of being slanted in favour of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt and elsewhere but it employs talented ex-colleagues of mine from the BBC, and I've always felt its heart is in the right place".

It is a sign of just how lightweight Simpson is, that whilst showing solidarity to his old BBC muckers, he does not actually get the main problem with Al-Jazeera. That is its ability to take in western liberals by saying one thing in its English language programming, and something entirely different in its Arabic material. Consider these findings from one US think tank:

"Aljazeera Arabic, in contrast, has much less freedom to report on regional developments -- including in Qatar -- than the English site. Very little criticism of Doha can be found in Arabic"

or the wave of resignations among its staff because of this subservience to the Qatari royals. More recently Al-Jazeera's racism re-surfaced, for once in English, when it blamed climate change on the Jews.

Either Simpson does not know these things, in which case he is a fool. Or he does know it, and decided it did not matter.

Sun Tzu On Sweden's 'Feminist' Government and Iran

Ever since I read reports of the Swedish government's trade delegation to Tehran, a thought had been rattling around in my head. Who had analysed this already?

It was of course Sun Tzu, in The Art of War. There he wrote: "to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

Any 'resistance' on the part of Sweden's government, any concept of solidarity towards those who may have been resisting the Islamic republic in Iran, or elsewhere, has been broken. Islam means submission. Sun Tzu would be in no doubt - so hegemonic are the arguments of the world's second largest faith, Sweden's 'feminist' government has submitted, without fighting.

Battle of Ideas: Quoted in the New Statesman

The current issue of the New Statesman, features a page by editor Jason Cowley. reflecting on the US election, Nigel Farage and our shifting political times.

Having read my first article for Lapido media on the Islamisation of the Labour Party, Cowley phoned me for a chat, and he makes use of several of my quotes in the section sub-headed 'Battle of Ideas'.

For Every University Student Taking Research Methods

"The anger at both Trump and Brexit derives, in part, from epistemic hubris. People were shocked to realise that the stats weren't as reliable as they had supposed. That they didn't know their own countries nearly as well as they had thought.

But the best way to react to this realisation isn't rage, but humility. Recognising the limits of our knowledge ought to encourage us to investigate more.

Assuming total knowledge is part of what's polarising Western societies. It's the complacency that encourages people never to leave the Facebook filter bubble, or meet anyone who thinks – or votes – differently."

Douglas Carswell, the UKIP MP for Clacton, 10th November 2016.

Ian Birrell Can't Help Himself

Like the pub bore for whom everything comes down to race, some Remainers just cannot accept Brexit.

In Monday's i, Ian Birrell had a one page review of the book Hillbilly Elegy by J D Vance, a best selling examination of small town, white America. Birrell nearly makes it to the end without complaining about the referendum result, but in the penultimate column comes this little beauty:

"There are valuable lessons at this time of rising resentment. In Vance's book one acquaintance quits work from a dislike of waking early, then goes on social media to attack the "Obama economy" for his misfortune. Similar blame games lie behind Brexit."

Birrell comes across as a nineteenth century Lord complaining about the idle peasants on his estate. Only its actually worse than that - on an issue which meant everything to him, the peasants have not only revolted, but hit his social group where it hurts most - at the ballot box.

They will never forgive us......

Advertising and the Referendum: You Lose, You Win

M & C Saatchi, the advertising company founded by Maurice and Charles Saatchi, was responsible for the advertising run by Remain in the EU referendum.

The doom, gloom and pestilence predicted by Remain's project fear has not only failed to materialise to the man on the Clapham omnibus, it has failed to effect..... M & C Saatchi either.

"M & C Saatchi, the advertising agency enlisted to run the unsuccessful Remain campaign in the recent EU referendum, says Brexit has given the business a positive currency boost as it reported a rise in sales and profits." Kate Palmer, Daily Telegraph Business, 23 September 2016.

The article went on to quote:

David Kershaw, M & C Saatchi's chief executive, "We have not seen any impact as a result of the Brexit decision, other than a positive foreign currency impact".

After St-Etienne-du-Rouvray: How To Respond To Islamism In Its Varying Stripes?

How best do we respond to jihadist terrorism? In the same way we that we should be responding to every other stripe of Islamism. That is what the murderers of St-Etienne-du-Rouvray are, Islamists, with the jihadis best described as the violent protruding end of a much bigger stick. A stick that seeks to gradually clear and then control space, at all levels in our society.

Respond without fear, and with the utmost confidence in your own life and values.

After the Brussels airport bombing in March, Charlie Hebo published an editorial which emphasised the inherent danger of living in a society which always steps back.

"The first task of the guilty is to blame the innocent. It's an almost perfect inversion of culpability. From the bakery that forbids you to eat what you like, to the woman who forbids you to admit that you are troubled by her veil, we are submerged in guilt for permitting ourselves such thoughts. And that is where and when fear has started its sapping, undermining work. And the way is marked for all that will follow."

I am indebted to Kerensky @Petrograd1917 (probably not his or her's real name) for drawing my attention to the above quote, which I am ashamed to say I missed at the time.

Boris Johnson: More Turkish Rhymes Please

Those of us hoping the British government will eventually take a tough line on Turkish state terrorism and Ankara's sponsorship of terrorism, will allow ourselves a brief surge of expectation at the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary.

It is only two months since Boris won The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition for this little ditty:

There was a young fellow from Ankara
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.

Lets take down the section of the UK embassy in Turkey's website, concerned with assisting Turkey and its application to join the European Union - British voters exercised a veto on that on June 23rd. May I suggest it is now replaced with a poetry corner?

The Spurious Neutrality of Hope Not Hate's 'Find the Facts' EU Referendum Intervention

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the 'Find the Facts' intervention by Hope Not Hate, a charity which seems to spend most of its time involved in political campaigning.

With an air of neutrality and a supposed desire for facts, HnH has today launched a new service entitled 'Find the Facts', following up on its highly selective voter registration drive for the EU elections.

HnH have some work to do if they are to convince anyone they are capable of providing a rounded introduction to the referendum debate. Indeed a series of key HnH leaders and activists are prominent Remain campaigners, most noticeably Eddie Izzard (he of the disastrous Question Time performance of 9th June) and Ruth Smeeth, a Labour MP associated with the Europhile Progress wing of the party. She was Hope Not Hate's Deputy Director, and now leads Labour Friends of Hope Not Hate.

More sinisterly, some in HnH have a track record of seeking to manipulate public and press opinion against those campaigning to leave the European Union. Back in 1996, HnH's Nick Lowles, then working for its predecessor organisation Searchlight, wrote to the European Movement offering to provide propaganda for its campaign against critics of Brussels:

“this research will be a unique insight into the anti-European network in Britain. Utilising sources inside these organisations, the European Movement will be furnished with information not otherwise easily accessible. The report and the drip flow of information will provide your organisation with invaluable ammunition to add to your cause”.

Who those sources 'inside' anti-EU organisations were, and whether they are still in place, is unclear. What we do know is given the groups lineage, any 'facts' produced by HnH in the run up to June 23rd should be taken with a pinch, nay a crate, of salt.

For a more detailed examination of HnH and Searchlight interference with anti-EU groups, do see this 2013 article from the Notes from the Borderland website. A fuller examination of their dirty tricks may be found in issues 4, 5 and 10 of Notes from the Borderland, in particular the 2001 article "This Cursed Plot: How the Secret State and Fascists Disrupt the Anti-EU Movement" by Larry O'Hara and David Pegg, which was in issue 4. Given the closeness of the referendum, it is extremely likely we will see some very dirty tricks from the Remain camp in the next two weeks. If so, this needs to be seen in terms of the historical attempts to derail, disrupt and denigrate those seeking political independence from Brussels.

Thomas Paine on Freedom

Today marks the anniversary of the death in 1809 of Thetford's finest son, Thomas Paine, who went on to become one of America's founding fathers. 

When we have the EU referendum, do consider the quote below, and merely replace the word 'King' with the letters EU:

Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says No to this question is an independent, for independancy means no more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or whether the king, the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us "there shall be no laws but such as I like."

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1997, 27).

The 'Vulnerable' Terrorists?

The quote below is from a BBC report last week into an NHS doctor from Sheffield who has joined Islamic State in Syria, although it could just as easily be from a score of similar reports in recent years.

"Dr Abuanza is a Palestinian doctor with British citizenship who spent seven years working for the NHS. He is the first practising NHS doctor known to have joined the Islamic State group.
Security minister John Hayes said IS "target vulnerable people".

In what way is a professional man in his mid-late thirties, married with two children and a job for life in Britain's most respected industry, 'vulnerable'? What is this rubbish?

One element with such terminology, is it is the way that well-meaning people in authority have come to talk about ethnic minorities. And only ethnic minorities. We managed to go through thirty years of terrorism in Northern Ireland without a single Conservative or Labour Minister describing IRA or UDA members as 'vulnerable'. I do not think we can explain such curious language as specific to this era. Does anyone imagine if the English Defence League had morphed into a terrorist group regularly murdering Muslims on our streets, MPs would stand up and describe their number as 'vulnerable'?

It is ultimately about politicians - and more generally a liberal elite across core sectors of our society - that cannot quite accept what it sees happening, and so wants to believe some subterfuge or deceit is instead at play.

The Government That Takes

I am always fascinated when politics appears in places it does not normally intrude.

Earlier this week The Times had an interview with the former Southampton and England footballer James Beattie, last seen as a somewhat unsuccessful manager at Accrington Stanley. He talks about the sacrifices his father, a lorry driver, made for the Beattie family before he was stricken with cancer:

"All he could think of was to try to get to 65 for the pension. But he passed away two days before his 65th birthday. Mum never got the pension. Scandalous. He's been paying contributions all his life and then it disappeared. I try to remember him as a person before the cancer: the dad taking me here, there and everywhere for swimming".

Quoted in Henry Winter "When Rooney and I started, England was full of cliques", The Times, 25 May 2016.

Will Chilcot Be Further Delayed To Protect The Remain Campaign?

It is hard to imagine how the Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq could be any further delayed. But it seems it might be, in order to assist those arguing to keep Britain in the European Union.

Ben Barry, of the Institute for Strategic Studies comments:

“If Chilcot is doing his job, I suspect many key New Labour figures will be criticised. Whilst many of them are not as active in politics as they once were, they are still figures who could make a positive contribution to Cameron’s campaign to remain in Europe. So delaying a report that might damage or even destroy their reputations might be an understandable judgment call.”

This is most likely to be a reference to former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. A keen supporter of Remain, his son, Will Straw, is the Executive Director of Britain Stronger in Europe.

The European Union and Syria's 'Rebels'

My Blogging for Leave contribution today concerns the consistent ability of the EU to make us less safe. The EU is far more than a mere trading bloc, but a political player with a completely unnecessary security role.

Whilst the definitive history of the EU's engagement with Syria's 'rebels' is still to be written, this snippet on their relationship is indicative, with the declaration Brussels should arm those in the field:

"The call by the Syrian National Coalition followed EU's decision earlier this week to let the Syrian arms embargo expire, paving way for individual countries in the 27-member union to send weapons to Assad's outgunned opponents."

Manchester Evening News, 30/05/13.

Many of those guns, wherever they eventually came from, are today pointing not at Assad, but at Brussels, Paris and London.

Sacrificing Greece To Save The EU

Today's quote in my Blogging for Leave series comes courtesy of Douglas Carswell, the UKIP MP for Clacton. Having encouraged sustained borrowing in Greece, the EU abrogated all responsibility:

"In response to the inevitable crash, though, only Greece was expected to pay the price. Instead of making the lenders who made bad investments in Greece bear the full cost of their bad decisions, the EU Troika has forced Greece into a vicious circle of economic contraction and debt expansion that creates a constant crisis."

Brussels may or may not succeed in postponing the next Greek crisis until after the UK's referendum on June 23rd. But that crisis will come - Greece cannot possibly function as a nation state and pay its debts to the troika. Carswell adds:

"But to keep up the absurd pretence that the single currency is a success, the Greeks have been reduced to debt servitude instead. The EU hasn't just failed to save the Greek economy. It has sacrificed the Greek economy to save the European project."

A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan?

You might not have seen it debated, and American taxpayers might never have voted for it, but it seems that over the past 13 years, the US government has repeated the Marshall Plan, but in Afghanistan.

It was the Marshall plan which helped to rebuild and reconstruct a battered Europe after WW2. It now emerges that US spending in Afghanistan this century exceeds that spent in Europe from the late 1940s onwards:

"Some $113bn (£79bn) has already been spent by the US government on reconstruction in Afghanistan in 13 years. That's more than the $103bn (in today's money) it spent on helping to rebuild Europe after the Second World War."

So, Afghanistan must be well on its way to enjoying the wealth, stability and prosperity enjoyed by West Germany or the Netherlands, right? Er, not quite.

"For every dollar spent in Afghanistan, at least 29 cents disappears in fraud or wastage, based on figures from the US Commission on War Time Contracting. And even that 29 cents is a conservative estimate".
Both quotes in Jonathan Owen "We have worked with many brave Afghan policemen..but many are no longer there," i, 29/03/2016. The Independent version of the article is online here.

As a result of this, the Americans appointed John Sopko, a former member of the Department of Justice's organised crime force in Cleveland, as Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Since 2012, this organisation estimates it has saved $946 million, and levied dozens of criminal charges.

Whatever the Americans have been doing in Afghanistan since 2001, let no one say it is imperialism. By its very nature, imperialism takes more than it gives - and the Americans have given an enormous amount. Who they have given it to, and whether they had any mandate from their own voters for what is in effect a second Marshall Plan, is another matter entirely.....

Acceptable and Unacceptable Glories

This morning BBC Radio 4's Start the Week was a discussion centering on the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany, and his new work.

What I found remarkable about this was less Al Aswany, or even the panel discussion, but the issues redolent in Tom Sutcliffe's introduction. Sutcliffe stated:

"The greatness of Islamic societies in the past has led Muslims of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious Islamic societies in the future. How can they get past the disappointing compromised and sometimes violent present though? Must an Islamic state necessarily be at odds with modern secular democracy? And can an open pluralistic society come to a working accommodation with a monotheistic faith?"

There is plenty of food for thought here. For Islamists, the gap between theory and reality in Muslim majority societies, and especially in countries which declare themselves Islamic, poses an almost insurmountable challenge. Thus far, the easiest response has been to call for ever more of whatever interpretation of Islam is to hand - hence in part the Islamification of Pakistan under Zia, and later the development of both Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. To my mind it also helps explain the prevalence of conspiracy theories in both Muslim communities here and in Muslim majority nations - if life is not ideal, it cannot be due to the beliefs on which life is predicated, but the wiles of those opposed to the faith. Equally, the extent to which a pluralistic society can accommodate Islam is one of the issues of our age - certainly since the Rushdie affair.

But as so often with the BBC, Sutcliffe accidentally tells us as much about his world, as he does anything else. Just read that first line again:

"The greatness of Islamic societies in the past has led Muslims of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious Islamic societies in the future".

I am not sure many Radio 4 listeners felt uncomfortable hearing those words. Substitute the word British, for Islamic and Muslims, and then see how it reads. You could equally do that with the words German, American or French, to similar effect.

"The greatness of British societies in the past has led Britons of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious British societies in the future".

But Sutcliffe, and I suspect many Radio 4 listeners, would feel distinctly uncomfortable if a politician were talking of the glories of Britain's past forming the basis to establish a glorious future. The liberal aversion to Donald Trump talking about the United States in such terms, is marked.

Why then is liberal opinion tolerant of such a vision for Islamic societies?

Significantly, references to glorious Islamic societies of the future tend not to predominate in the discourse of contemporary British Muslim representative organisations. You can certainly find it though in recent decades - old Islamic Foundation pamphlets are a good source for it - and it is certainly present in the current rhetoric of the Islamic State. For now though, we tend to hear much more from the Muslim Council of Britain about pluralism, democracy and accommodation.

Am I the only person who considers that deep down in Tom Sutcliffe's words is a recognition, by his focus on 'glorious Islamic societies in the future' that we don't really buy all this talk of accommodation and pluralism, but, as with many others, he is much too polite to say so?

Human Rights Tied In Knots

How terrified some have become of causing offence. So terrified that it even precludes the development of a rational argument.

I have been reading the book "Double Jeopardy: Police Abuse of Women in Pakistan" by Dorothy Q Thomas. This was jointly published in 1992 by Women's Rights Project and Asia Watch, divisions of Human Rights Watch. I apologise for using a somewhat obscure title to make a broader political point, but even if the book itself is hard to pick-up now, the text is available online here.

Following the introduction of Islamic law in 1979 by General Zia, the number of women in prison in Pakistan increased from a mere 70 (!) to over 2000. HRW wants to address this, but its own fear and equivocation of articulating what it ostensibly advocates - universal human rights - prevents it from doing so:

"The Hudood Ordinances criminalize, among other things, adultery, fornication and rape, and prescribe punishments for these offenses that include stoning to death, public flogging and amputation. Human Rights Watch has no opposition to Islamic law per se and does not object to laws founded on religion, provided that human rights are respected and the principle of equality before the law is upheld. However, the Hudood laws, as written and applied, clearly conflict with these rights and principles. Not only do they prescribe punishments that are cruel and inhuman under international law, but they clearly discriminate on the basis of gender."

It is worth noting, this is a 'human rights' organisation writing 23 years ago. After an additional two decades of agitation from religious organisations and apologists, and migration from Muslim majority countries to the west, the fence sitting and obsessive desire to avoid causing offence is considerably worse.

Looking at the Human Rights Watch website today, the main article on its home page is a call to illicit financial donations before 2015 closes. Its financial appeal is accompanied by this mission statement:

"Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice."

If so, HRW needs to grow a pair and develop some critique of religiously based legal systems. Sharia seems as good a place as any to start. Until it does, why should anyone donate money to those practising such determined obfuscation?

"We're Not Political, We're Only Doing Our Jobs"

Following their role in the 1984-5 miners strike, demonstrators took to mocking police officers with the sarcastic song "We're not political, we're only doing our jobs" whenever a group of uniformed police officers appeared anywhere in significant numbers.

In 2015, it seems little has changed. Flicking through the current issue of the Docklands and East London Advertiser, there is a small report on a demonstration held outside East London Mosque on 11 December, following Friday prayers. Its purpose was to condemn US Presidential challenger Donald Trump, who responded to the San Bernadino terrorist attack by calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration to the United States.

An important centre for the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami (who are accused of massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Bangladesh Independence War of 1971) East London Mosque can certainly rally political leaders to its doorstep - local Labour Mayor John Biggs joined the protest. Among the others, the Advertiser reports:

"The protesters included United East End umbrella organisation of anti-racist groups, trades unions, faith leaders and Met Police Det Sgt Phil Langworthy".

According to the Met Police website, Det Sgt Langworthy is part of the police's Senior Leadership Team in Tower Hamlets, where he is in command of Criminal Investigation. And it seems, going to political demonstrations outside mosques?

Altogether now "We're not political, we're only doing our jobs".

Still Debating The ANZAC Withdrawal From Gallipoli?

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the withdrawal of Australian and New Zealand troops from the coast of Ottoman Turkey on 19-20 December 1915. British troops were to follow suit on 8-9 January 1916.

As a resource on WW1, and certainly in terms of suggestions for further reading, I have found the Independent/the i's "A History of the Great War in 100 Moments" - easily the best series I have seen in a British newspaper in years. I have the book version, and the small section on Gallipoli - number 27, pp.80-83, is evocatively written by Kathy Marks. The sheer numbers killed still shakes you - 80,000 defending Turks, 44,000 Allied forces, including 9000 Australians. All in a little over six months. The debacle perhaps feels less distant in terms of time than other WW1 battles when you read that the last veteran died in 2002 (when I was 33) or that the failings of the Allied military were exposed by journalist Keith Murdoch, father of Rupert.

Gallipoli became central to concepts of identity for an Australia emerging from being a British colony, and Marks explains how Australian war correspondent Charles Bean situated Gallipoli in terms of its demonstration of key aspects of Australian character - courage, sacrifice, irreverence and 'mateship'. In the modern era however, such concepts could not be allowed to pass without criticism. Marks observes:

"In a 2010 book, What’s Wrong with Anzac?, the historian Marilyn Lake called it “white Australia’s creation myth”, while another academic, Martin Ball, has written that the myth “suppresses parts of Australian history that are difficult to deal with. Anzac is a means of forgetting the origins of Australia. The Aboriginal population is conveniently absent. The convict stain is wiped clean. Post-war immigration is yet to broaden the cultural identity of the population."

I wonder if those quotes tell us more about the approach and world view of the academics concerned, than they illustrate about contemporary, or past Australia. How strange it would have seemed to the men who fought at Gallipoli, and their families, that they were part of a 'white creation myth' or that they would have to wait for post war immigration before their cultural identity would be 'broadened'.

If men are from Mars, some academics truly are from Venus.

The Dangers of Relying on Faith Leaders

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has today issued a report on the importance of knowledge in tackling honour crimes, female genital mutilation and forced marriage.

What is significant in the report is that it indicates some thirty years worth of policies and approaches towards minority communities in Britain may be flawed. Top-down multi-culturalism rather depends on the big white chief speaking to a big brown (or black) chief. Yet this is precisely what may need to be avoided in combating the types of crimes listed above.

"Overall, we found that the need to speak with the right people to build intelligence, and the risk to victims of speaking with the wrong people, was not always well understood by police officers and staff. The right people are not necessarily faith and community leaders, who may sometimes be the very
people promoting or supporting harmful practices in the name of honour."

The full pdf of the report is here. This is the HMIC press release on the report itself. Finally there is a broader University of Bristol report on these issues, by Marianne Hester et al, here.

The EU Still Has Its Boot on Greece's Throat

Tucked away behind stories of floods, jihadist attacks and Christmas shopping, it is easy to forget the financial crisis in Greece continues, merely in quieter form.

The Greek Parliament has just passed its budget for 2016, described thus by Madhumita Murgia:

"The terms include privatising 50bn Euros of Greek assets to help repay its debts, slashing pensions, and the handing over of a veto power on domestic laws to Brussels. The 2016 budget, the first by the Tsipras-led government, includes 5.7bn Euros of public spending cuts, with 1.8bn Euros coming from pensions, and 500m Euros from defence. It also includes tax increases of just over 2bn Euros".

It is hard to see how Greece can ever recover financially to that backdrop, although in a way writing of 'Greece' is a misnomer. If Brussels has the power of veto on all domestic laws, what is the point of Greece, the Greek parliament or for that matter Syrizia and Mr Tsipras?

More From the Blair Memo

Tucked away in the March 2002 memo from Colin Powell to George W Bush, discussing Tony Blair, was a small line which speaks volumes for New Labour.

Colin Powell writes

"We do not expect Blair to dwell on the steel decision".

The Mail on Sunday explains this brief comment:

"Loyal Blair would spare Bush's blushes by not making a public fuss about a US decision on import tariffs which had devastated Britain's steel industry."

So much for our industrial base, and so much for the steel workers who had voted Labour. Looking through Alastair Campbell's diary for the period April 5-7 2002, when he and Blair were in Crawford, Texas with President Bush, I see no reference to the steel industry. Campbell has since developed the nerve to complain that Germany supports its steel industry, and Cameron is declining to do so for ideological reasons

German govt has helped steel industry without breaking State aid laws. This government/ ideological Business Sec don't want to #redcar

— Alastair Campbell (@campbellclaret) September 28, 2015

The Colin Powell memo suggests new Labour had the chance to act itself, but did not want to make a fuss.

In Tony Blair's memoir, A Journey, the index section relating to George Bush has an enormous amount about various summits, Iraq, the embarrassment of the 'Yo Blair' incident, even sections on an HIV programme and Bush's reservations about climate change. On industrial relations between Britain and America, there is a big fat zilch.

Which may explain why we barely have a steel industry today.

One In, All In

I have spent a lot of time this summer reading some of the burgeoning literature of feminist critiques of Islamism - writers such as Meredith Tax, Melinda Cooper and Karima Bennoune. My paper to the 2015 Critical Terrorism Studies conference "Feminism or Islamism: Critical Terrorism Studies Develops a Blind Spot" largely covered their interventions.

You might not think much humour emerges in such circles, but it does. Consider Bennoune's 'Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here' and its report of a 2009 protest in Sudan against the flogging of journalist Lubna Hussein for the crime of wearing trousers in public:

"One of the protesters was an older, heavy-set woman from a generation which had known life before such restrictions. Young soldiers came to drag the protesters away and threw them one after another into a truck. When they got to the older woman, they could not lift her, so they told her to go home. Outraged, she hired a taxi to follow the other arrested women to jail."

Karima Bennoune, "Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories From the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism" p.82

Where Corbyn Gets It Right

I am not a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. My opposition is due to the deep relationships he has developed with Muslim Brotherhood leaders in north London over the past decade, including running constituency surgeries out of the Ikhwan's Finsbury Park Mosque. A Corbyn Labour Party would give Islamists the greatest boost they have had in this country since the invasion of Iraq.

But Corbyn has real strengths. In talking politics, and giving straight answers to straight questions, he has presented a clear alternative to the Tweedledee and Tweedledum candidatures of Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall (who she?). I can't help thinking that inside Andy Burnham there is a normal bloke occasionally struggling to get out. But he was long ago eaten up by the New Labour party machine - its now a little too late to be shouting from inside the belly of the beast.

In his refusal to launch counter-attacks when brickbats are thrown, Jeremy Corbyn has risen above the fray. There is something faintly noble in his words to the latest criticism, this time from Yvette Cooper:

"We’ve used this campaign to put forward policy issues on the economy, the environment, arts policy. We’re the one putting forward ideas, so I don’t do personal, I don’t do reaction, I don’t do abuse. Life is too short and it devalues the political process. I think we should try and enhance the democratic life of this country, not reduce it to that level.”

The wheels could yet come off. Those who wish the Corbyn campaign well would be well advised to get him as far away as possible from the Muslim Brotherhood's Middle East Monitor (MEMO) event in London on 22nd August. To appear on the same panel as the anti-Semitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff is a bit much, even in the left's current Islamist friendly climate.

Such problems aside, Corbyn is the only candidate presenting political ideas, and seeking a constructive debate. For that alone he should win.

The Decline of Labour and the Rise of UKIP

The Fabian Society has published a pamphlet 'Never Again: Lessons From Labour's Key Seats' which examines constituencies the party either lost, or failed to win despite expectations, at the 2015 general election.

As so often in life it is during recriminations that the really interesting facts and argument tend to emerge. Perhaps the most significant lines are from Rowenna Davis, who lost the marginal of Southampton Itchen to the Conservatives. The potentially terminal mess the left has got itself into over race and immigration, and consequent loss of influence to a non-racist alternative in UKIP,  is clearly established (I choose the word non-racist deliberately, as anti-racism per se is now such a farce). Davis writes:

We had been told by senior figures in the party that UKIP was a boon to Labour, splitting the right of the country, but not for marginal seats like ours. In these white working class communities, particularly on the coast, UKIP tore our vote apart. The safer, older council estates in areas like Weston and Thornhill that used to be solid Labour were now significantly disillusioned. No matter how hard we worked these areas, significant national differences, particularly on immigration, meant that we couldn’t stop the tide.

Without wishing to disrespect the excellent work of my colleagues campaigning in Southampton Test, I believe we managed to hold Itchen’s neighbouring seat because the demographic simply had more liberal, middle class, student and immigrant voters to win. This loss of the white working class vote is a crisis for our party, not just because we lost, but because it raises an existential question about who we represent. We have always won by uniting working and middle class people in England. Without that first half, you have to question why we’re here and where we’re going to go.

Rowenna Davis, "The Need for Strength" in "Never Again: Lessons From Labour's Key Seats" (Fabian Society: London, 2015) p.16

Nothing I have heard from any of the four Labour leadership candidates comes even close to addressing the 'existential question' raised above. However Davis herself ducks addressing an important issue locally - the closure of the city's Ford Transit plant in 2012. She writes:

The likes of Ford, Pirelli and Vosper Thorneycroft which used to provide dependable, respected work for huge numbers of people in the city, have now disappeared, to be replaced with more white-collar, unstable work (p14)

Certainly with regards to Ford, that is only half the story. The local factory closed following its transfer to Turkey with an £80 million loan from the European Union.  Whilst there is some recognition in the Fabian pamphlet that Labour was wrong to oppose an EU referendum, the intellectual re-configuration required to accept that the EU may be bad news for working class people, and the country as a whole, is almost certainly a step too far for Labour. 

Unwelcome Political Artithmetic

From Frank Field's letter today in The Times about the Labour leadership contest, where he defends endorsing Jeremy Corbyn's nomination:

"The other candidates have shied away from confronting the brutal political arithmetic that no government in recent times has been able to raise more than 37-38 per cent of GDP in taxation for more than a single year, and yet these governments spend at least 40 per cent of GDP fulfilling promises made to the electorate". 

Democracy? Perhaps Not For Greece

As Greece holds its referendum today, some indications as to the arrogance and scale of the European Union project. 

Syriza were democratically elected in January, yet this reality is one leaders of the European Union appear capable of overlooking. Despite this mandate, Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, wishes to see Alexis Tsipras' government replaced, not by the will of the Greek people, but by Brussels. To quote from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Colin Freeman in today's Sunday Telegraph:

"Mr Schulz earlier called for the elected Syriza government to be replaced by 'technocrat' rule until stability is restored. The alarmist warnings are part of an escalating campaign of pressure by European leaders as Greeks decide their destiny"

This seems to relate to an Agence France-Presse article on Schulz from earlier this week. The desired replacement of elected leaders by 'technocrats' demonstrates just what the European Union has become. A No vote in Greece today is the best response to Brussels colonialism. 

 

Why Do Jihadists Attack Tourists?

No doubt detailed claims of responsibility will soon emerge for the massacre of tourists in Sousse, Tunisia. Such attacks are far from unique, with examples of this tactic in north Africa going back to the 1990s, most notoriously at Luxor in Egypt in 1997.

Estimates of the importance of tourism to Tunisia are that it contributes as much as 15% of the nation's GDP. That presents a motivation to terrorist groups, but answers for their actions are also likely to be found within their political and religious belief systems. Past articulations indicate the tourist can be particularly 'provocative' to Islamists.  This is Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyyah leader Talat Fuad Qasim in 1996 discussing tourists to Egypt:

"First, many tourist activities are forbidden, so this source of income for the state is forbidden. Striking at such an important source of income will be a major blow against the state. It does not cost us to strike against this sector. Second, tourism in its present form is an abomination: it is a means by which prostitution and AIDS are spread by Jewish women tourists, and it is a source of all manner of depravities, not to mention being a means of collecting information on the Islamic movement. For these reasons we believe that tourism is an abomination that must be destroyed. And it is one of our strategies for destroying the government."

Talat Fuad Qasim, quoted in "Religion and Political Violence: Sacred Protest in the Modern World" by Jennifer L Jefferis (Routledge, 2011, p.89).

We will see what statements emerge from the Tunisian attackers. But that mixture - of religious and economic imperative - may well be to the fore. 

 

The Impossibility of Anti-Racism

I have recently been sent a marvellous article by Michael Collins, that was in the i newspaper on 19 March 2015, and can be found on the Independent website. 

Collins is the author of The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class, a superb 2004 polemic which also serves as family history and memoir of a lost Southwark. Here he is writing just ahead of Trevor Phillips Channel 4 documentary Things We Won't Say About Race That Are True. Phillips now serves a function as quite a useful lightening conductor - by and large if someone is against him, it is good form to put your self on the opposite side of their arguments - something I would not have imagined myself saying twenty years ago.

Anyway, Michael Collins ends his article on race in Britain by citing one of the core characteristics of contemporary anti-racism. Like the war between Oceania and its rivals in Orwell's 1984, it appears never to end. Indeed new manifestations - the concept of 'islamophobia' is the most prominent currently - emerge to reinvigorate the cause at regular intervals:

Central to the problem is that the end of racism  is not an objective that has a finish line, and so the goalposts will shift whenever something close to it is in sight. There are jobs in academia, the public sector, the consultancy sector, human rights law that depend on it. Racism in its truest form has diminished over the years, yet the campaign that emerged to tackle it has, oddly, expanded into a billion-pound industry. The concept of racism continues to re-invent itself and expand its remit ad infinitum to justify the existence of this industry. It wants racism gone - but without it, it's nothing. 

What Greece and Scotland Can Learn From Iceland

Iceland seems to have emerged from economic collapse following its banking crisis in 2008. Its Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson offers what should be words of advice for Syrizia:

"What proved instrumental in getting us out of the crisis and to where we are today is to do with having our own currency and having control over our own monetary and economic policy and natural resources. Greece's options are obviously more limited, being a member of the euro."

Quoted in the Sunday Telegraph (Business) 14 June 2015. 

Iceland has now dropped its application to join the European Union.

Gunnlaugsson could also have added for British readers that the three banks involved - Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbank - went into receivership and so were not propped up by the taxpayer. Scottish readers may wish to note that Iceland's decision to back away from the EU was influenced by the reality that new members of the EU are required to join the Euro. Iceland would lose the very independence which saved it. 

Cultural Studies: Is This Indicative?

Reasons why Cultural Studies, and indeed Stuart Hall, are somewhat over rated, No.367.

This is from outside LG02 at the eponymous Professor Stuart Hall Building at Goldsmiths University in London. 

 

What Further Intervention in Iraq Would Mean

Whilst the war party (which in practice covers MPs in all three traditional big Westminster groupings) is quiet-ish in the UK, in the US debate is becoming more polarised. If it is Hillary Clinton following Obama as President, or any Republican bar Rand Paul, US troops will be heading to the Middle East in significant numbers. 

The quote below from Republican dissident Patrick Buchanan, perhaps best encapsulates the nonsense John McCain and others would inflict now if they could:

Interviewed by CBS News, Gen. David Petraeus said the United States is “probably losing” the war to ISIS, and we need more U.S. troops in Iraq or we run “the risk of losing the fight.”

Now consider what the general is saying:

America should send her best and bravest back into Iraq to defeat ISIS, while Turkey, the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and Israel are helping bring about the defeat of a Syrian army that has been battling ISIS for years.

Buchanan ends with a call that America should in effect, mind America's business, not that of its questionable allies. In Britain the main MP pushing the intervention line is the wasp-like Dr Liam Fox, who thankfully was not invited to return to the Cabinet following the Conservatives victory last month. Buchanan's dismissal of General Petraeus is equally applicable to Fox and whichever members of the war party he manages to get behind him in the coming months. Let us mind our own business. 

Can Anyone Give Football Supporters A List of Sings They Are Allowed to Sing?

England play the Republic of Ireland in Dublin on 7th June in a friendly international.

For reasons that have never been fully explained, the last time England played in Ireland the match was abandoned with some disorder occurring in the English end. It is has certainly never been clear to me why the Irish police were unable to restore order, or what was so terrifying about England's away support that the game could not be completed. As the researcher Larry O'Hara wrote at the time, claims that the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 had incited a riot were fanciful - no one has ever been able to pinpoint any C18 members in the ground on that occasion. 

It says much about the times we are living in that an enormous effort has begun by the football authorities to dissuade England fans from singing 'No Surrender to the IRA' at the Dublin match. This includes the astonishing claim that "England could be banned from the next World Cup under a new Fifa initiative if their fans continue to chant anti-IRA slogans at matches".  At least some of this seems to come from Piara Powar (who readers of some vintage will remember from the Newham Monitoring Project) a member of Football Against Racism in Europe and FIFA's task force against racism and discrimination. One might wonder how FIFA has the moral status to deliberate on anything - what is it doing about the discrimination faced by those building its stadiums for Qatar 2022?  And that is without even beginning to discuss the corruption accusations that have dogged it for many years. 

If people want to sing songs against a terrorist group, that whatever people's views on the Northern Ireland question, did some bad things, I can't really get too excited about it. Each to his own. Piara Powar however, has got his dander up, telling the Telegraph last Wednesday that he may be asked to attend the game to monitor fans chanting:

"No Surrender To The IRA" comes from a point which is extreme nationalism. It's about conflict between two states. That then would be reported. We would be making our reports as often as our experts feel there is a case to answer"

It is hard to think of a more textbook example of how football supporters become disillusioned, not just with those running the game, but the political activists who come into it to supposedly to do good. Piara Powar may consider anti-IRA songs to be about 'extreme nationalism' - others do not. Why is his view, or those of his 'experts' worth more than anybody else's? Getting into the detail of his position it does not impress. Bizarrely his quote seems to portray the IRA as in some way representing one of two states - presumably Ireland. Try telling that to the government in Dublin, whose measures against the IRA were for decades often harsher than anything decreed from London or Belfast. Far from representing the whole of Ireland, the IRA could be just as accurately described as representing a minority of a minority - the Catholic population in Northern Ireland.  

This week we have already seen Home Secretary Theresa May bandying around the word extremism, and the need to establish tougher legislation to address it, whilst unable to define what it actually means in practice. Now  we are expected to be concerned about 'extreme nationalism' in the form of songs against a terrorist group. Does that mean people can be jailed for supporting Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State,  yet football fans could be sanctioned for singing songs against them? Or is it just the IRA - a terrorist group with rusting guns - that we are concerned about? 

This matters, because such declarations, be it from those governing the country or those running football has repercussions for the liberty of our citizens. Earlier this year Glasgow Rangers fan Scott Lamont was jailed for four months for singing 'The Billy Boys' whilst on his way to an Auld Firm game. An Auld Firm match where thousands will have sung the Billy Boys, and thousands of Celtic fans will have declared support for Irish Republicanism, and sang songs in praise of, you guessed it, the IRA. 

Can anyone, perhaps Piara Powar or Theresa May, publish a list of songs football supporters are allowed to sing, and those they are not? 

 

All Must Have Prizes

I have never actually got round to reading Melanie Phillips' critique of the education system, All Must Have Prizes. However, judging by this recent announcement on the staff email list at the University of East Anglia, it has some predictive value:

We will have two extra seminars on 23/07 and 30/07.

Patricia Esteve (Universitat Rovira i Virgili) will present “Affirmative Action through Extra Prizes” on 23/07 from 4 to 5 pm at ARTS 3.15. The following is the abstract.

Abstract: Some affirmative action policies establish that a set of disadvantaged competitors has access to an extra prize. Examples are gender quotas or a prize for national competitors in an international competition. We analyse the effects of creating an extra prize by reducing the prize in the main competition. Contestants differ in ability and agents with relatively low ability belong to a disadvantaged minority. All contestants compete for the main prize, but only disadvantaged agents can win the extra prize. We show that an extra prize is a powerful tool to ensure participation of disadvantaged agents. Moreover, for intermediate levels of the disadvantage of the minority, introducing an extra prize increases total equilibrium effort compared to a standard contest. Thus, even a contest designer not interested in affirmative action might establish an extra prize in order to enhance competition.

 

Nick Griffin - Another Failed Visionary

Last weekend saw the most succesful leader of a British fascist organisation, Nick Griffin of the British National Party, leave its leadership, for the undefined role of 'President'. He has been replaced by Adam Walker, a former teacher from County Durham.  

In a quickly written but detailed analysis of these events, Larry O'Hara of Notes From the Borderland magazine has given a wonderful summation of Griffin's 15 years in charge of the BNP:

"For some time now, Griffin has been a politically dead man walking, but this should not blind us to the strategic breakthrough he made in far right politics. Despite his European dalliances (and those closer to home with CI8/Blood & Honour in the past) he has never been a Nazi, seeking to develop a non-Nazi fascism that combined both electoralism and extra-parliamentary politics. Sadly for him (though not anti-fascism) he could never convince enough BNP members of the nuances and salience of this strategy."

Do read the full article, "The BNP's Nick Griffin Gets Booted Upstairs". 

For The Fallen

Amongst the flurry of World War One related posts and comments, there seemed little point in adding my own - it is not my field. I do though want to share the words of Atatürk on the graves of those Allied soldiers who fell in what is now Turkey: 

"Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.” 
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Why Would America Want To Intervene In The Middle East?

This is from Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer best known for heading the agency's anti-Bin Laden unit. He states:

"For now, however, the beginning of wisdom is to look at what is going on in Iraq and Syria and see it clearly. In both places all of those folks that multiple U.S. administrations have identified as enemies of America are killing each other. In Syria, the Assad regime, Iran, and Lebanese Hizballah are killing Sunni mujhaedin from all over the world, as well as their local allies and supporters. In turn, the Sunni Islamists in Syria are killing Assad’s troops, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Hizballah fighters. This is a perfect circumstance for the United States, all our enemies are killing each other and it is not costing us a cent or a life."

And this conflict is increasingly occuring in Iraq, and to a lesser extent in Lebanon.

It is too early to say if we are approaching a sort of Islamic version of Götterdämmerung, where Islamism and Jihadism are taken to their logical conclusions by opposing elements in an intra-Islamic war.  It is however far from impossible. 

If so the United States, and indeed the United Kingdom, has no business intervening.