God Save the Queen

Duly noted

Harry links to a piece which deserves to be read - before tomorrow, if possible.

And why stop at Number 10 Downing Street when there's a much bigger house in Washington?

May 04, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Some more current reading

Dean Esmay on the lessons of Vietnam - as relevant as ever.

Arthur Chrenkoff posts on why we fight.

An article I've been wanting to see for a while, because it cuts to the chase about Iraq: will the new Iraqi security forces actually cut the mustard? It looks like they will, though it's a dirty war. 'Among the just, be just, among the filthy, filthy too...' The biggest danger is that they might get too successful, and their leaders might develop political ambitions: still, they need to be given a chance. One fascinating quote:

"Captain Bennett was on his second tour in Iraq... he was among the Third Infantry Division troops who captured Baghdad airport against stiff resistance from Republican Guard forces. Bennett wears his division patch on the shoulder of his uniform, and soon after he arrived in Samarra, the patch was recognized by a few of the Iraqi commandos, who informed him that they had been in the Republican Guard unit at the airport that fought his unit. Initially, Bennett was leery about going into combat with men he had tried to kill, and who had tried to kill him, but after their first battle together, fighting shoulder to shoulder against insurgents, his doubts disappeared."

Omar discusses prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. It gives a little, shall we say, perspective.

In the light of all this, I can only endorse this poster from Anthony. There's a few more ticks still to make, and that's a subject I'll be returning to, but three isn't bad going. It's three more than most PMs manage.

May 03, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Bonne chance

The French anti-EU-constitution types have a website. The reasons given there diagnose precisely the fundamental problems (unfortunately no way to link to the specific post):

Une Constitution doit être lisible pour permettre un vote populaire : ce texte-là est illisible.

A constitution should be readable in order to permit a popular vote: the current text is unreadable.

Une Constitution n’impose pas une politique ou une autre : ce texte-là est partisan.

A constitution does not impose one or another policy: the current text is partisan/ prescriptive.

Une Constitution est révisable : ce texte-là est verrouillé par une exigence de double unanimité.

A constitution is changeable: the current text is bolted in place by the double-unanimity requirement.

Says it all, really. Bonne chance, mes braves.

April 28, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Dear AUT, and matters arising

Via Clive Davis, a splendid letter from Emanuele Ottolenghi.

Also from Clive, this interesting post about the prevalence of ex-liberals. Well, I was once liberal enough to go on demonstrations for right-on causes (Jubilee 2000, as was, and I don't really regret it), read a huge amount of frightful guff by and about Gramsci, Althusser, Freire etc. etc. (ah, nostalgia, not) and think that proportional representation was a path to national salvation. So I suppose it was only ever a matter of time before becoming a reactionary monarchist babykiller. 9/11 wasn't a turning point, just a marker along the way, but it might be more than coincidence that it was about then that I stopped thinking of myself as a small-l liberal and started to entertain the previously alarming thought that I might become a small-c conservative.

Which is how I come to read this sort of thing sympathetically. A dashed good read.   

April 28, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Dear Mr Blair

The Sun demonstrates a level of sympathetic multicultural engagement that certain other organs find regrettably impossible. Perhaps those others need sensitivity training.

April 27, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Forget all feuds

Yet another attack-dog performance by Humphrys against poor Jack Straw on Today this morning. Surely it's reached the point of diminishing returns by now? On the news bulletin at 9 an excerpt from the inquisition interview was played in which Humphrys got the last word: in other words the journalist had become the story. He could hardly have been more partisan without wearing a yellow rosette, I'm assuming he doesn't, perhaps it's just that being on radio we can't see it. The problem, for the nth time, is not that he goes after government ministers: the problem is that he wouldn't dream of going after Menzies Campbell remotely as hard. But that theme is one these good people can take up.

The wider problem is that Humphrys plainly has no capability for sympathetic understanding of his ideological opponents. I remember once saying to a political science class that no politician should be trusted who hasn't read and understood and reflected on both Burke - the Reflections, say - and Paine, say the Rights of Man. That was hyperbole, of course. But the point should be obvious enough. Is it true to think that the average politician, the average blogger, and (above all) the average journalist has never done anything of the kind? Or is that unfair? What is clear enough is that people who have done this kind of mental work are invariably better writers than the party-line hacks. (Orwell, inevitably, made the same point long ago.) Look at this, for instance, from SIAW, atheists (and Marxists) to a wo/man, or this.

None of this implies wishy-washiness. It doesn't even imply a centrist or moderate or non-partisan position in politics etc. My touchstone here is the historian Macaulay, who was also an active politician, a very partisan Whig, strongly identified with Protestantism, England and the British Empire (in no particular order). His writings are nonetheless full of generous tributes to the enemies of England, to French soldiers, to decent Tories, to good Roman Catholics, and many others. His History of England is unapologetically pro-Whig and pro-William of Orange: Macaulay unequivocally identifies the Revolution of 1688 as the origin of British greatness. Much of the four volumes is taken up with description and discussion of the villainy and stupidity of the Jacobites, the enemies of the Revolution.

And then he writes this:

A Jacobite's Epitaph

TO my true king I offer'd free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languish'd in a foreign clime,
Gray-hair'd with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fever'd sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I ask'd, an early grave.
O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

Tune me back in to Today when Humphrys expresses anything like that level of insight.

April 25, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Show Saturday

The AUT has gone bonkers. There don't seem to have been any motions demanding a boycott of Chinese or Russian universities in protest at what's going on in Chechnya and Tibet, but I guess I'm just a Likudnik or something.

Meanwhile, I got out of the smoke for a dose of the real world, visiting my home town. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's good to know it's still there. My companion described it as like going back to the 1980s. I bumped into the local MP, out canvassing in close proximity to the Tories - the two studiously ignored each other in the time-honoured way. I wished him luck, even though I won't be able to vote for him. Strolling through the street market on Saturday the sense of historical continuity was tremendous. That space in the town centre has seen markets week in week out since 1159 or thereabouts, the shouts of the vendors changing slowly from Old through Middle to Modern English, but the business of the day much the same as always.  May it always be there.

April 24, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Required reading

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has been doing some thinking and linking. There have been a lot of articles about China in the press lately, more than there used to be, evidently some journalists are waking up. But not enough, and this piece fills the gap. You need to read it if you want to have an informed opinion about the international politics of the next decade or so. I was particularly fascinated by the prospect of a US fleet returning to Cam Ranh Bay - rather more welcome than before. Surely not? Well, the wheel makes some strange turns.

April 19, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

The desert

Severe dearth of posts here lately, I know. It won't get better any time soon, I'm afraid.

Meanwhile:

- Damian spots a family resemblance.

- Wretchard gives some fascinating perspective on China's strategic conundrum. His conclusions are oddly reassuring. If he's right, a showdown over Taiwan could be postponed indefinitely, or even avoided completely.

- Oxblog has been in Afghanistan, I perceive.

- Clive strikes again, with one of the few sensible comments that the average LRB reader will get this month. (Via Oliver Kamm.) Also from Oliver: why you should vote Labour. Not because of the party, but because of its leader. Now that both my hot-button issues - the Chinese arms embargo and the religious-hate bill - are on the back burner, it's a position I can endorse. Blair has been there where it counted in overthrowing the world's two worst tyrannies. Next to that, waiting lists, exclsuion orders and interest rates are just nowhere.

- An earlier generation had to deal with the same sort of things and in much the same way. (Via Harry.) Or to put it another way, the issues of today have a family resemblance to the issues of decades ago. These good folk have a campaign on the subject which is at least worth noting.

April 17, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

Two years on

Stealing the title of this post, it is two years to the day that Majid al-Khoie was murdered. The man responsible is still in Iraq and still stirring, even though in the meantime he masterminded a rebellion that killed hundreds of Iraqis, alongside rather smaller numbers of American and British soldiers. I had rather hoped that Moqtada al-Sadr would have faced justice by now.

Prediction: the guy will yet come to a bad end. That, though, might just be wishful thinking.

April 10, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink

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