GordonSquareCircle

Buckley's Bigotry

2007-08-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

British OpeningsBy William F. Buckley
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/british_openings.html

An essay published in a popular American news website that touches on British history and identity. Basically, a disquieting piece concerning the "Muslim problem" in Britain that supposedly threatens our way of life and parallels Napoleon and the Nazis. In short, crudely disguised xenophobia of a rather unpleasant nature, considerably weakened by his citation of Enoch Powell as a source of wisdom. Some thoughts:

Firstly (and facetiously), trying to blow up/destroy London IS part of the British way of life. From Guy Fawkes to the Dutch to the Germans to Northern Irish it is a well established feature of London life and everybody worth their salt has at least tried it.

Secondly, Muslims trying to set up a school to promote extreme (?) values occurs much less than Christians trying to do so and the idea that Islam is intrinsically more violent than Christianity or any other religion (except maybe Buddhism) is absurd. In Buckley's own words: "But it is time for the mother of parliaments to look unruly, unassimilable creeds in the face and say: No more." However, I don't think the world is ready for an purely atheistic state. Then again Buckley does remark that "In the end, the English are not hampered by toplofty commitments to freedom of speech and of conscience" so perhaps it would be ok.

Bush Gets Historical

2007-08-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

The US President on why withdrawal would lead to bloodshed, citing the precedents of Korea and Vietnam. The Second World War also features, to prove that democracy is possible in previously undemocratic states, such as Japan, as well as to invoke the imagery and moral clarity of that struggle. He concludes, slightly disconcertingly, with an evangelical tone: "The greatest weapon in the arsenal of democracy is the desire for liberty written into the human heart by our Creator." Disconcerting because democracy seems to be regarded not a fair and accountable political system but thr realisation of some innate disposition imputted as part of a divine plan. Playing to the base I suppose.

August 22, 2007

History Offers Lessons on Iraq - G. W. Bush

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/lessons_from_history.html

I want to open today's speech with a story that begins on a sunny morning, when thousands of Americans were murdered in a surprise attack -- and our nation was propelled into a conflict that would take us to every corner of the globe.
The enemy who attacked us despises freedom, and harbors resentment at the slights he believes America and Western nations have inflicted on his people. He fights to establish his rule over an entire region. And over time, he turns to a strategy of suicide attacks destined to create so much carnage that the American people will tire of the violence and give up the fight.
If this story sounds familiar, it is -- except for one thing. The enemy I have just described is not al Qaeda, and the attack is not 9/11, and the empire is not the radical caliphate envisioned by Osama bin Laden. Instead, what I've described is the war machine of Imperial Japan in the 1940s, its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and its attempt to impose its empire throughout East Asia.
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Ultimately, the United States prevailed in World War II, and we have fought two more land wars in Asia. And many in this hall were veterans of those campaigns. Yet even the most optimistic among you probably would not have foreseen that the Japanese would transform themselves into one of America's strongest and most steadfast allies, or that the South Koreans would recover from enemy invasion to raise up one of the world's most powerful economies, or that Asia would pull itself out of poverty and hopelessness as it embraced markets and freedom.
The lesson from Asia's development is that the heart's desire for liberty will not be denied. Once people even get a small taste of liberty, they're not going to rest until they're free. Today's dynamic and hopeful Asia -- a region that brings us countless benefits -- would not have been possible without America's presence and perseverance. It would not have been possible without the veterans in this hall today. And I thank you for your service. (Applause.)
There are many differences between the wars we fought in the Far East and the war on terror we're fighting today. But one important similarity is at their core they're ideological struggles. The militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam were driven by a merciless vision for the proper ordering of humanity. They killed Americans because we stood in the way of their attempt to force their ideology on others. Today, the names and places have changed, but the fundamental character of the struggle has not changed. Like our enemies in the past, the terrorists who wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places seek to spread a political vision of their own -- a harsh plan for life that crushes freedom, tolerance, and dissent.
Like our enemies in the past, they kill Americans because we stand in their way of imposing this ideology across a vital region of the world. This enemy is dangerous; this enemy is determined; and this enemy will be defeated. (Applause.)
We're still in the early hours of the current ideological struggle, but we do know how the others ended -- and that knowledge helps guide our efforts today. The ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy are the same that lead us to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The defense strategy that refused to hand the South Koreans over to a totalitarian neighbor helped raise up a Asian Tiger that is the model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East. The result of American sacrifice and perseverance in Asia is a freer, more prosperous and stable continent whose people want to live in peace with America, not attack America.
At the outset of World War II there were only two democracies in the Far East -- Australia and New Zealand. Today most of the nations in Asia are free, and its democracies reflect the diversity of the region. Some of these nations have constitutional monarchies, some have parliaments, and some have presidents. Some are Christian, some are Muslim, some are Hindu, and some are Buddhist. Yet for all the differences, the free nations of Asia all share one thing in common: Their governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, and they desire to live in peace with their neighbors.
Along the way to this freer and more hopeful Asia, there were a lot of doubters. Many times in the decades that followed World War II, American policy in Asia was dismissed as hopeless and naive. And when we listen to criticism of the difficult work our generation is undertaking in the Middle East today, we can hear the echoes of the same arguments made about the Far East years ago.
In the aftermath of Japan's surrender, many thought it naive to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy. Then as now, the critics argued that some people were simply not fit for freedom.
Some said Japanese culture was inherently incompatible with democracy. Joseph Grew, a former United States ambassador to Japan who served as Harry Truman's Under Secretary of State, told the President flatly that -- and I quote -- "democracy in Japan would never work." He wasn't alone in that belief. A lot of Americans believed that -- and so did the Japanese -- a lot of Japanese believed the same thing: democracy simply wouldn't work.
Others critics said that Americans were imposing their ideals on the Japanese. For example, Japan's Vice Prime Minister asserted that allowing Japanese women to vote would "retard the progress of Japanese politics."
It's interesting what General MacArthur wrote in his memoirs. He wrote, "There was much criticism of my support for the enfranchisement of women. Many Americans, as well as many other so-called experts, expressed the view that Japanese women were too steeped in the tradition of subservience to their husbands to act with any degree of political independence." That's what General MacArthur observed. In the end, Japanese women were given the vote; 39 women won parliamentary seats in Japan's first free election. Today, Japan's minister of defense is a woman, and just last month, a record number of women were elected to Japan's Upper House. Other critics argued that democracy -- (applause.)
There are other critics, believe it or not, that argue that democracy could not succeed in Japan because the national religion -- Shinto -- was too fanatical and rooted in the Emperor. Senator Richard Russell denounced the Japanese faith, and said that if we did not put the Emperor on trial, "any steps we may take to create democracy are doomed to failure." The State Department's man in Tokyo put it bluntly: "The Emperor system must disappear if Japan is ever really to be democratic."
Those who said Shinto was incompatible with democracy were mistaken, and fortunately, Americans and Japanese leaders recognized it at the time, because instead of suppressing the Shinto faith, American authorities worked with the Japanese to institute religious freedom for all faiths. Instead of abolishing the imperial throne, Americans and Japanese worked together to find a place for the Emperor in the democratic political system.
And the result of all these steps was that every Japanese citizen gained freedom of religion, and the Emperor remained on his throne and Japanese democracy grew stronger because it embraced a cherished part of Japanese culture. And today, in defiance of the critics and the doubters and the skeptics, Japan retains its religions and cultural traditions, and stands as one of the world's great free societies. (Applause.)
You know, the experts sometimes get it wrong. An interesting observation, one historian put it -- he said, "Had these erstwhile experts" -- he was talking about people criticizing the efforts to help Japan realize the blessings of a free society -- he said, "Had these erstwhile experts had their way, the very notion of inducing a democratic revolution would have died of ridicule at an early stage."
Instead, I think it's important to look at what happened. A democratic Japan has brought peace and prosperity to its people. Its foreign trade and investment have helped jump-start the economies of others in the region. The alliance between our two nations is the lynchpin for freedom and stability throughout the Pacific. And I want you to listen carefully to this final point: Japan has transformed from America's enemy in the ideological struggle of the 20th century to one of America's strongest allies in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. (Applause.)
Critics also complained when America intervened to save South Korea from communist invasion. Then as now, the critics argued that the war was futile, that we should never have sent our troops in, or they argued that America's intervention was divisive here at home.
After the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel in 1950, President Harry Truman came to the defense of the South -- and found himself attacked from all sides. From the left, I.F. Stone wrote a book suggesting that the South Koreans were the real aggressors and that we had entered the war on a false pretext. From the right, Republicans vacillated. Initially, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate endorsed Harry Truman's action, saying, "I welcome the indication of a more definite policy" -- he went on to say, "I strongly hope that having adopted it, the President may maintain it intact," then later said "it was a mistake originally to go into Korea because it meant a land war."
Throughout the war, the Republicans really never had a clear position. They never could decide whether they wanted the United States to withdraw from the war in Korea, or expand the war to the Chinese mainland. Others complained that our troops weren't getting the support from the government. One Republican senator said, the effort was just "bluff and bluster." He rejected calls to come together in a time of war, on the grounds that "we will not allow the cloak of national unity to be wrapped around horrible blunders."
Many in the press agreed. One columnist in The Washington Post said, "The fact is that the conduct of the Korean War has been shot through with errors great and small." A colleague wrote that "Korea is an open wound. It's bleeding and there's no cure for it in sight." He said that the American people could not understand "why Americans are doing about 95 percent of the fighting in Korea."
Many of these criticisms were offered as reasons for abandoning our commitments in Korea. And while it's true the Korean War had its share of challenges, the United States never broke its word.
Today, we see the result of a sacrifice of people in this room in the stark contrast of life on the Korean Peninsula. Without Americans' intervention during the war and our willingness to stick with the South Koreans after the war, millions of South Koreans would now be living under a brutal and repressive regime. The Soviets and Chinese communists would have learned the lesson that aggression pays. The world would be facing a more dangerous situation. The world would be less peaceful.
Instead, South Korea is a strong, democratic ally of the United States of America. South Korean troops are serving side-by-side with American forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And America can count on the free people of South Korea to be lasting partners in the ideological struggle we're facing in the beginning of the 21st century. (Applause.)
For those of you who served in Korea, thank you for your sacrifice, and thank you for your service. (Applause.)
Finally, there's Vietnam. This is a complex and painful subject for many Americans. The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech. So I'm going to limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.
The argument that America's presence in Indochina was dangerous had a long pedigree. In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called, "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism -- and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."
After America entered the Vietnam War, the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. As a matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people.
In 1972, one antiwar senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?" A columnist for The New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: "It's difficult to imagine," he said, "how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." A headline on that story, date Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: "Indochina without Americans: For Most a Better Life."
The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.
Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."
There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."
His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."
Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet." Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently.
We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that "the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever." Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror -- but it's the central front -- it's the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it's the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (Applause.)
If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America. (Applause.)
Recently, two men who were on the opposite sides of the debate over the Vietnam War came together to write an article. One was a member of President Nixon's foreign policy team, and the other was a fierce critic of the Nixon administration's policies. Together they wrote that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be disastrous.
Here's what they said: "Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences." I believe these men are right.
In Iraq, our moral obligations and our strategic interests are one. So we pursue the extremists wherever we find them and we stand with the Iraqis at this difficult hour -- because the shadow of terror will never be lifted from our world and the American people will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator meant for all. (Applause.)
I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. I understand that. But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time. And we can learn something from history. In Asia, we saw freedom triumph over violent ideologies after the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives -- and that freedom has yielded peace for generations.
The American military graveyards across Europe attest to the terrible human cost in the fight against Nazism. They also attest to the triumph of a continent that today is whole, free, and at peace. The advance of freedom in these lands should give us confidence that the hard work we are doing in the Middle East can have the same results we've seen in Asia and elsewhere -- if we show the same perseverance and the same sense of purpose.
In a world where the terrorists are willing to act on their twisted beliefs with sickening acts of barbarism, we must put faith in the timeless truths about human nature that have made us free.
Across the Middle East, millions of ordinary citizens are tired of war, they're tired of dictatorship and corruption, they're tired of despair. They want societies where they're treated with dignity and respect, where their children have the hope for a better life. They want nations where their faiths are honored and they can worship in freedom.
And that is why millions of Iraqis and Afghans turned out to the polls -- millions turned out to the polls. And that's why their leaders have stepped forward at the risk of assassination. And that's why tens of thousands are joining the security forces of their nations. These men and women are taking great risks to build a free and peaceful Middle East -- and for the sake of our own security, we must not abandon them.
There is one group of people who understand the stakes, understand as well as any expert, anybody in America -- those are the men and women in uniform. Through nearly six years of war, they have performed magnificently. (Applause.) Day after day, hour after hour, they keep the pressure on the enemy that would do our citizens harm. They've overthrown two of the most brutal tyrannies of the world, and liberated more than 50 million citizens. (Applause.)
In Iraq, our troops are taking the fight to the extremists and radicals and murderers all throughout the country. Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year. (Applause.) We're in the fight. Today our troops are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against the extremists and radicals, into the fight against al Qaeda, into the fight against the enemy that would do us harm. They're clearing out the terrorists out of population centers, they're giving families in liberated Iraqi cities a look at a decent and hopeful life.
Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer is clear: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed. (Applause.)
Despite the mistakes that have been made, despite the problems we have encountered, seeing the Iraqis through as they build their democracy is critical to keeping the American people safe from the terrorists who want to attack us. It is critical work to lay the foundation for peace that veterans have done before you all.
A free Iraq is not going to be perfect. A free Iraq will not make decisions as quickly as the country did under the dictatorship. Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this. As I noted yesterday, the Iraqi government is distributing oil revenues across its provinces despite not having an oil revenue law on its books, that the parliament has passed about 60 pieces of legislation.
Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him. And it's not up to politicians in Washington, D.C. to say whether he will remain in his position -- that is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy, and not a dictatorship. (Applause.) A free Iraq is not going to transform the Middle East overnight. But a free Iraq will be a massive defeat for al Qaeda, it will be an example that provides hope for millions throughout the Middle East, it will be a friend of the United States, and it's going to be an important ally in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. (Applause.)
Prevailing in this struggle is essential to our future as a nation. And the question now that comes before us is this: Will today's generation of Americans resist the allure of retreat, and will we do in the Middle East what the veterans in this room did in Asia?
The journey is not going to be easy, as the veterans fully understand. At the outset of the war in the Pacific, there were those who argued that freedom had seen its day and that the future belonged to the hard men in Tokyo. A year and a half before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan's Foreign Minister gave a hint of things to come during an interview with a New York newspaper. He said, "In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will without question win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished, the democratic system bankrupt."
In fact, the war machines of Imperial Japan would be brought down -- brought down by good folks who only months before had been students and farmers and bank clerks and factory hands. Some are in the room today. Others here have been inspired by their fathers and grandfathers and uncles and cousins.
That generation of Americans taught the tyrants a telling lesson: There is no power like the power of freedom and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights for a free future for his children. (Applause.) And when America's work on the battlefield was done, the victorious children of democracy would help our defeated enemies rebuild, and bring the taste of freedom to millions.
We can do the same for the Middle East. Today the violent Islamic extremists who fight us in Iraq are as certain of their cause as the Nazis, or the Imperial Japanese, or the Soviet communists were of theirs. They are destined for the same fate. (Applause.)

The greatest weapon in the arsenal of democracy is the desire for liberty written into the human heart by our Creator. So long as we remain true to our ideals, we will defeat the extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will help those countries' peoples stand up functioning democracies in the heart of the broader Middle East. And when that hard work is done and the critics of today recede from memory, the cause of freedom will be stronger, a vital region will be brighter, and the American people will be safer.
Thank you, and God bless. (Applause.)

GSC Debate: Is the British Empire something to be proud of?

2007-08-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

In this year marking the 60th anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence it seems fitting to pose the historical question of whether the ideologies and insitutions of imperialism that governed the subcontinent, and indeed at one point a quarter of the globe, were admirable in their form and acheivements or whether they were a cause of oppression and tyranny. The GSC this week will publish a series of essays on this subject in order to determine how this grand project should be viewed in a post-colonial age.

Whilst the impact of British hegemony will be a matter of contention its scale cannot be denied, stretching as it did, in some form, across centuries and continents. Even today the foreign policy of great world powers is seen in its shadow, whether in neo-conservative justifications for Middle Eastern intervention or former colonies' conceptions of political philosophy. Therefore, as the UK considers its place in the world, should it look fondly on those times when the sun never set upon its empire?

Genetically Capitalist - Is Britain's work ethic biologically determined?

2007-08-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

England’s success may be in our genes - Gregory Clark

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2280334.ece

"the Industrial Revolution is more plausibly linked to a Darwinian process of “survival of the richest” that operated from at least 1250. Capitalist attitudes and economic growth triumphed in England because those with such attitudes came to predominate in the population by biological means. The modern English are the descendants of the upper classes of the preindustrial world, those who prospered economically. The poor disappeared. This process was most likely cultural, but we cannot exclude the possibility that the English may even be genetically capitalist."

Also:

"But why did this process advance faster in England than elsewhere? One advantage of England was how dull most English history is – there are plenty of villages where nothing of significance happened between 1200 and 1800. "

Notes from the end of history

2007-08-13T04:15:00.000-07:00

Big business will pacify the clash of cultures - Francis Fukuyama

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2240415.ece

The end of history (as an A-level subject)

2007-08-10T03:41:00.000-07:00

The end of history (as an A-level subject) - Joan Bakewell

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/joan_bakewell/article2851405.ece

"[History] is on one level a vast story of intrigue and machinations, rivalries and triumphs to outstrip any Bourne Inheritance-style plottings and counter-plottings. It is full of colourful people, challenging ideas, deadly betrayals, terrible tragedies, soaring achievements. Where's to be bored?"

Ashtead Hits the News Again

2007-07-28T03:28:00.001-07:00

Row over wounded soldiers' house
By Sally Nancarrow

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/surrey/6918675.stm

Thousands of people have signed up to support plans for a £1.7m house in Surrey to become a "home from home" for families of injured service personnel.
A charity wants the seven-bedroom house in Ashtead to be used for families of people being treated at Headley Court rehabilitation centre near Epsom.
But Mole Valley District Council has said the proposal should be turned down after "overwhelming" local opposition.
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Dr Liam Fox, condemned the objections.
In a letter of support to the council he said they were "preposterous and offensive" and praised local MP Chris Grayling, who wants to see the plans go ahead.
A total of 83 residents have sent letters of objection to the council.
"I can't believe their attitude - it beggars belief," said Sue Norton, wife of Capt Peter Norton, an Army bomb disposal officer who was awarded the George Cross for bravery after losing a leg and part of an arm in Iraq.
"This sort of facility is something that should have been in place a long time ago - they have them in America and Germany, but in the British system we have to make do."

SOME RESIDENTS' OBJECTIONS
Increased traffic
Loss of privacy for neighbours
In view of local feeling house residents would not feel part of community
Harm to quiet residential area
Burglars could cruise area pretending to be visitors
House would be soft target for terrorists
Constant turnover of new people
Noise from children playing in street
Noise in garden
Emotive references to injured relatives designed to cloud issues

Capt Norton has been at Headley Court for a year and is shortly to leave to study for a Masters degree at the Defence Academy in Oxfordshire.
The couple have two sons, Tom, four, and Toby, two, and Mrs Norton has had to drive them to and from their home in Gloucester to visit their father or leave them with grandparents.
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) needs planning permission to convert the house in Grays Lane for use by up to six families.
It would be adapted to provide disabled access so men and women being treated at Headley Court could visit or stay overnight.
"You are talking about giving families a chance to be together," said Mrs Norton.
"It is so important for children to be able to build a relationship with their father.
"Toby was only seven months when Peter was injured and he didn't know him.
"Do people think that families visiting injured servicemen are going to be out partying?"

Headley Court has been expanded to cope with more casualties
A new 30-bed ward has recently been added to the existing 170 beds at Headley Court to cope with the growing numbers of forces personnel injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A report to Mole Valley's development control committee, which will consider the application on Wednesday, admits it is an "emotive" issue.
A Downing Street petition supporting the application had received 19,000 signatures from all over the world by Friday morning.
Letters supporting the application received by the council say a wider view should be taken of the proposal than the "nimby" attitude of local residents.
Council officers say it is for the committee to decide the weight to be given to opposing arguments.
But they say that based purely its planning merits, the application should be refused because it would "adversely impact the quiet, peaceful nature of the existing area".

Conctroversy Hits Ashtead

2007-07-28T03:17:00.001-07:00

Legless boys' mammas? Not in Ashtead By Vicki Woods

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/07/28/do2804.xml

A fortnight ago the MoD opened a new, 30-bed annexe at Headley Court, the national Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC).
Veterans' minister Derek Twigg went down to open it. The extra beds were needed to cope with the increasing number of casualties coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, as Mr Twigg conceded in his remarks.
"Clearly there is some hard fighting taking place out there - with a great deal of courage and sacrifice - and we have to contend with more injured."

He says "injured", I say "wounded", but there we are.
Headley Court, a handsome Jacobean mansion set in 84 acres of well-kept parkland in Epsom, Surrey, is where the most gravely wounded servicemen and women go for rehabilitation, after Selly Oak has finished the surgical work: operations, skin-grafting, stitching-up.
Rehabilitation means learning to cope with amputations (sometimes multiple), brain injuries, loss of sight and hearing and psychological damage.
Many stay for months, some for years. There is only one DMRC in Britain, so family members have to get to Surrey from all over the kingdom to visit their wounded.
These are families who themselves are grieving: having waved goodbye to a fit young serviceperson, they must come to terms with daddy in a wheelchair, a son or daughter with grievous brain injury. The whole family must cope with a very different, and difficult, future.
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) is the leading British charity that helps the services and their families.
Daily Telegraph readers don't need to be told: you're rather fond of SSAFA (and vice-versa). This newspaper's Christmas appeal, which closed in January, raised just under £400,000 for SSAFA. (Thanks again.)
Recently, SSAFA, after careful search, found a house that it deemed perfect for families visiting Headley Court to use as a home-from-home for a few nights at a time. It's a no-brainer that we should have such a facility.
America (which hates its wars, but loves its troops) has a long-standing charity called The Fisher House, which provides similar accommodation for their legless boys' mammas to stay in. Britain has no such.
SSAFA chose a fairly modern house in Gray's Lane, Ashtead, because, according to spokesman Athol Hendry: "It's in a good state of repair. It's in a nice, quiet area. We don't have to do anything much to it, apart from putting a wheelchair ramp at the front access." On average, he would expect eight people to stay, and the limit is 12.
SSAFA applied for planning permission for a sui generis change of use (plus the wheelchair ramp), from Mole Valley District Council's planning department. I think they were surprised when permission was rejected.
Various near-neighbours, in Gray's Lane and three nearby streets, whanged in 83 crossly worded letters of objection to what they called a short-term, multiple-occupancy hostel. Some cited "increased traffic noise", others "additional pollution", one was worried about the increased risk of becoming "a soft target" from "these awful terrorists".
Mole Valley Planning Committee refused the application on grounds of "adversely affecting the character of this quiet residential lane".
"No Heroes in My Back Yard, say Ashtead Nimbys" became first a hot local story, then a national story, and - in the past fortnight - global.
One of my favourite websites, the Army Rumour Service (ARRSE), started boiling with rage over the Ashtead nimbys 10 days ago. It's a site for thousands of serving and ex-military and widely read by what you might call "friendly forces" (ie me, and most newspapers' defence correspondents).
Some of its members were so apoplectic they made wild calls for tanks down Gray's Lane - see how the nimbys like that, eh? But they were restrained at once, and told to keep tight military discipline. What we need, lads, is a campaign.
Remember the ARRSE campaign to bring Gurkha Pun VC to Britain? Let's do another: the appeal against the refusal is next Wednesday.
So ARRSErs and others from their sister sites (PPruNe, E-Goat, Rum Ration - I know, wacky names, wacky guys) e-petitioned the PM (over 21,500 signatures; go on, reader - sign up); built a lobbying website called www.36grayslane.co.uk; wrote, emailed and posted letters to counter the objections (Countess Mountbatten of Burma has sent one, so has Liam Fox); auctioned "The self-respect of Ashtead" on eBay (bids climbed a quid at a time to £48 before eBay's management removed it); and leafleted Ashtead's residents in a hearts-and-minds campaign.
This last is being done by Blue Team, all suited and booted and wearing campaign medals in the pouring rain (so as not to look like Jehovah's Witnesses).
They post up SITREPs on the website if they meet Red Team (Ashtead nimbys).
Last time I looked, Tigs2 reported CONTACT with OPFOR (Red Team), who asked if the chaps in medals were from that "scurrilous website". Tigs2 was very polite. "Red: I agree there is a need for such a facility but... Tigs2: Not in your backyard? Red: Yes, not in my backyard."
One very new member of ARRSE signs on as Wondermum. They've made her very welcome. She is wife to Captain Peter Norton GC, who is indeed a hero. He is pictured on www.36grayslane.co.uk in a wheelchair. One of his arms is prosthetic and the picture doesn't show his legs (one missing, the other badly damaged).
He has been at Headley Court since 2005. These are long wars we're in. He has a place at Cranfield University to study for an MSc in Explosive Ordinance Engineering and will take it up when he is fit. He'll be speaking for Blue Team next Wednesday at the appeal. Fingers crossed, eh?

The Yellow Peril in the Western Imagination

2007-07-25T03:28:00.000-07:00

Polluting minds
There is something horribly familiar about the west's attacks on China for daring to develop: it's called racism. Brendan O'Neill

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brendan_oneill/2007/07/polluting_minds.html

"[P]eriodic transformations in dominant Western images [the East], from positive to negative and back again, indicate the tremendous malleability of perceptions of the 'other' in response to specific historical circumstances, and especially in response to circumstances in Western nations themselves."

The War on Terror Chinese Style

2007-07-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

Beijing’s ‘war on terror’ hides brutal crackdown on Muslims - Michael Sheridan

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article2116123.ece

Beware the Ides of March

2007-07-20T04:51:00.000-07:00

Move over, St Patrick!
Tampering with Ireland's most cherished tradition, the Catholic church has changed the date of St Patrick's day. - Malachi O'Doherty

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/malachi_odoherty/2007/07/move_over_st_patrick.html

A New Credulity of Metanarratives

2007-07-20T04:45:00.000-07:00

To know yourself, get to know the dead
Every child should discover the sweep of history - Ben Macintyre

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article2106450.ece

"history is becoming a potpourri of facts crammed into a few key periods, the past as buffet: a few Romans, some Tudor bloodletting, a soupçon of Classical Greece, a taste of Victorian urban squalor, with a massive serving of Nazis, again."

Laissez-faire Is More

2007-06-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

A revisionist history of the Depression - John Updike

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/07/02/070702crbo_books_updike

The Empire and the Middle East

2007-06-18T01:03:00.000-07:00

This heat is a recipe for Armageddon - Niall Ferguson

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=JAMRQI2CUFACLQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/06/17/do1701.xml

The Politics of Museums

2007-06-18T00:59:00.000-07:00

Why museums must stay free - Ben Russell and Jerome Taylor
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2669895.ece

"Senior figures from politics, education and the arts leapt to defend free admission to Britain's most famous museums and galleries after a senior Tory suggested that charges could be reintroduced. "

Trouble in the Conservative Party

2007-06-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

People power is at our core - David Cameron

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1875733.ece

"The changes I am leading in the Conservative party today have two vital characteristics: modernity and long-term thinking. "

Historians on Blair's Legacy

2007-05-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

How will history judge Blair? - Ian Kershaw, Andrew Roberts, Anthony Seldon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6636091.stm

The Scramble for Africa Part II

2007-05-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

Sudan using Chinese, Russian weapons in Darfur

http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/the-week-in-review/20070508-darfur-china-russia-arms.html

"China and Russia are supplying arms to Sudan, which is using them in war-torn Darfur in violation of a UN embargo, the human rights group Amnesty International charged Tuesday."

ID Cards: An Unhealthy Development for British Democracy

2007-05-10T02:35:00.000-07:00

Security is on the cards - John Reid

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_reid/2007/05/security_is_on_the_cards.html

"It is about enabling the public to feel safe, secure and confident in their daily lives. As our society changes, so do our liberties. "

Oil, China and the Darfur Crisis

2007-05-10T02:32:00.000-07:00

A century on, the new scramble for Africa - Camilla Cavendish

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article1769266.ece

What Rhymes with Blears?

2007-05-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

Thirty more years? Is that a promise or a sentence? - Armando Ianucci

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2073479,00.html

"In the olden days, immortality seemed a perfectly respectable ambition; so why is it today if someone says to you that you can live 30 years longer, you're instinctive reaction is to say: 'Really? Do I have to?'"

This man is a genius.

Nuff Said!

2007-05-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

The Terminator says go green - Arnold Schwarzenegger

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1752345.ece

"Global warming is not something we are fantasising. It is real. The science is in. "

Tony Blair's Legacy

2007-05-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1617511,00.html

Why You'll Miss Tony Blair - Tony Elliott

Agree but:

"But we have learned the hard way that it is not for the West to say what is imperialism and what is liberation. When you invade someone else's country and turn his world upside down, good intentions are not enough."

Bomb, Bomb Iran (Second Verse)

2007-04-28T07:47:00.001-07:00

Romney's Remarks at Yeshiva University - Mitt Romney April 28, 2007

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/mitt_romneys_remarks_at_yeshiv.html

"Today, America faces a number of critical challenges. In my view, at the top of the list is the threat of radical, violent Jihad and the associated threat of nuclear proliferation...

Jihadism - violent, radical, fundamental Jihadism - is this century's nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century's nightmares: fascism and Soviet communism....

First, we have to sharply increase our investment in national defense. I want to see at least 100,000 more troops in our military. I want to see us finally make the long overdue investment in equipment and armament, weapon systems, and strategic defense. That's going to require that we spend at least 4 percent of our GDP on defense....

Others believe that frankly back in the logic of deterrence, which served us through the Cold War - that that will protect us. But for all of the Soviet Union's deep flaws, they were never suicidal. A Soviet commitment to national survival was never in question. And that assumption simply can't be made about an irrational regime that celebrates martyrdom like Iran."

"America must truly be the greatest society of all"

2007-04-28T04:34:00.000-07:00

Rosen: True measure of society - Mike Rosen

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5507191,00.html

I almost feel like saluting.

"Perhaps a truer measure of a society is to observe which way the guns are pointed: inward to keep captive subjects from escaping (e.g., the old Berlin Wall) or outward to keep too many hopeful immigrants from entering (U.S. border security - if we had any). That's the objective market test. And by that standard, America must truly be the greatest society of all."

The History of Shock and Awe

2007-04-27T04:41:00.000-07:00

70 years of 'shock and awe' :The 1937 air raid on the Basque city of Guernica ushered in the modern concept of total war. - Mark Kurlansky, historian

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kurlansky26apr26,0,5552374.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

His histories of the Basque people and Cod were good but I am a little sceptical whether the US invasion of Iraq can be compared too much to Nazi/Fascist assistance to Franco...

The US and Eu

2007-04-27T03:53:00.000-07:00

Hands across the ocean: EU-U.S. summit - Jose Manuel Borroso

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/25/opinion/edbarroso.php

Belgium receives four times as much US investment as China? Who'd have thought?

A Classical Historian on the Iraq War

2007-04-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Is the War on Terror Over? - Victor Hanson

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/is_the_war_on_terror_over.html

Not quite convinced that Al-Qaeda are more of a threat than Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia...

Also:

"And when we kill jihadists abroad, we are told it is peripheral to the war or only incites more terrorism." = killing people doesn't incite violence?

"Fifth, everything from our 401(k) plans to municipal water plants depend on sophisticated computers and communications. And you don't need a missile to take them down. Two oceans no longer protect the United States - not when the Internet knows no boundaries, our borders are relatively wide open, and dozens of ships dock and hundreds of flights arrive daily." = Al-Qaeda are going to attack through the internet? (= greater infringement of our civil liberties as the FBI start monitoring all emails)

The 'war on terror' was useful as a means of mobilizing opinion (and generating money) but used the language of moral crusade a bit too much and thus is now counterproductive. Even the 'Long War' is not much better - surely wars only occur between states?

Just in case you weren't sure

2007-04-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

I will vote for Gordon - David Milliband

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2062797,00.html

The 'Inevitability' of Collapse in Iraq

2007-04-24T05:22:00.000-07:00

A Hell of a CountryAli Allawi's new memoir shows Iraq's collapse was inevitable - Chirstopher Hitchens

http://www.slate.com/id/2164824/

Interesting to compare this to Niall Ferguson's article on inevitability listed below.

George McGovern...Remember Him?

2007-04-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

Cheney is wrong about me, wrong about war - George McGovern

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcgovern24apr24,0,4084076.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Handbags at dawn!

And in other news...

2007-04-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

The BBC have been going downhill a bit I think.

Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat - BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4740000/newsid_4748200/4748292.stm

"A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal. "

Environmentalism is dead, Long Live Environmentalism!

2007-04-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

Forget the whales -- save the Earth, Hall Clifford
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-clifford21apr21,0,1537344.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Why climate change is different to toher types of environmentalism.

Niall Ferguson on the Difficulties of Causality

2007-04-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Niall Ferguson - We can see the causes of Cho's rampage now, so why not before?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/04/22/do2201.xml

"Having been completely caught out by some random event, we human beings are wonderfully good at retrospectively predicting it."

Taleb's 'The Black Swan' and the Virginia massacre. Argues that our retrospective models of reality never fit the real thing. Interesting if not terribly convincing.

An Interesting Article From the Archbishop of Canterbury

2007-04-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

Down with godless government - Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1687465.ece

This article raises the interesting question of whether morality, or rather morality in government, is possible without the Church. Would there have been an end to slavery without Wilberforce? Does an absence of religion lead to moral nihilism/relativism? How would politics safeguard the intrinsic value of an individual? (Apart from groups that the Church is happy to discriminate against e.g. gays)

However, a closing paragraph reveals another, more politick, concern:

"And I make no apology for saying that the nature and extent of religious representation in the upper house — a bigger issue than the number of Anglican bishops holding seats there — is not a marginal question at all in the light of this discussion. "

The Church of England gets free (i.e. unelected) seats in the House of Lords (26 I think), under threat, no doubt, from current reforms. Why do we not have representatives from other faiths? (NB This might mean a Jedi Lord in the near future) What about atheists (a significant proportion of the populace)? The Church of England needs to go a long way to justify deserving these freebies.

My Historian's Spidey Sense is Tingling

2007-04-20T04:59:00.000-07:00

Gun control isn't the answer - James Wilson, LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wilson20apr20,0,4514008.story?coll=la-opinion-center

"For historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English, even when they can't use a gun. This fact sets a floor below which the murder rate won't be reduced even if, by some constitutional or political miracle, we became gun-free."

This is set in an argument AGAINST gun control... Surely if it's true (which I very much doubt) America should have STRICTER control on guns. And knives. And sharp poking things.

I Can't Tell if this is Satire...

2007-04-19T04:39:00.000-07:00

Did the Devil Make Him Do it? - Lauren Green, FoxNews

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266860,00.html

"Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic … psychotic … manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan … good against evil … lightness and darkness?"

cf 'How to Spot a Psycho'

On the Dangerous Anachronism that is the 2nd Amendment.

2007-04-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

Only the names change. And the numbers - Gerald Baker, The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article1662949.ece

Slightly worrying is the response from one that the problem can be solved by students being armed.

"there is a lot to be said for militarism" (!)

2007-04-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

Global leaders need to rule the seas - Niall Ferguson (imperial and imperialistic historian)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ferguson16apr16,0,1130365.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

(NB Highly selective quotation)

The New Axis of Politics...?

2007-04-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2057060,00.html
Or, the Pope has a pop at postmodernism...

Arms Race in the Far East?

2007-04-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

An interesting article by historian Paul Kennedy:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/05/opinion/edkennedy.php?page=1

Far Eastern states are building their navies at a time when European states are mothballing their fleets. This includes the two Koreas, Vietnam, a nationalistic Japan and China, the "next superpower."

George Bush Takes an Interest in History...

2007-04-02T04:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a5b7ebd2-dd4c-11db-8d42-000b5df10621.html

The historian shielding Bush from reality

By Jacob Weisberg

Published: March 28 2007 18:35 Last updated: March 28 2007 18:35

President George W. Bush is sometimes a boastful anti-intellectual, but in the past year he has been touting his reading lists and engaging in who-can-read-more contests with Karl Rove, his chief political adviser. There is even a White House book club.
The most recent selection was A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 by Andrew Roberts, the conservative British writer. Mr Bush invited Mr Roberts for a discussion over lunch at the White House earlier this month. The author was joined by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Mr Rove and a variety of other neo-conservative intellectuals, officials and journalists. Mr Bush’s embrace of Mr Roberts’ book is hardly surprising, given how it glorifies his presidency. But it does suggest that all the reading he has been bragging about lately may not be opening his mind.

Mr Roberts’ book picks up in 1900, around where Winston Churchill’s four volumes of a similar title left off. It also takes up Mr Churchill’s pet idea that the Anglo-American alliance is uniquely responsible for the survival of liberty in the world. Though Mr Roberts does not favour the term, his framework closely tracks the notion of an “Anglosphere” – a natural alliance among the English-speaking former colonies of Great Britain that serves to spread civilisation in the form of democracy and capitalism.

His own idiosyncratic definition of the English-speaking world, which includes New Zealand but not Bermuda, Canada but not Ireland, and Australia but not India or South Africa, explains the book’s curious cross-cutting from London to Wellington to Washington to Canberra.
At the core of the book is Mr Roberts’ notion of what might be called the “super-special relationship”. When Britain could no longer rule its empire in 1946, it handed the responsibility for mankind over to its successor, the US. Mr Roberts views British colonialism and American hegemony as alike in their benevolence and effectiveness. Like Mr Bush, he is peevish that the recipients of such generosity are not more grateful.

As a historian, Mr Roberts is present-minded in the extreme, returning at every stage to justifications for Mr Bush’s actions in Iraq. The neo-conservatives who want to spread democracy in the Middle East are the heirs to compassionate Victorians who sought to civilise India, China and Africa. While the reader is still choking on his casting of Richard Perle as Lord Macaulay, Mr Roberts is already at work grafting Mr Bush’s head on to Mr Churchill’s body. The president’s prosecution of the war on terror is “vigorous” and “absolutely unwavering”. The Iraq war has provided “excellent value for money” to the British taxpayer. That Mr Bush has brought “full democracy” to Iraq is stated as unequivocal fact.

Mr Roberts has written several other well-regarded works of history, but it is hard to see how this form of assertion qualifies as scholarship, as opposed to polemic. A true historian explores questions; a great popular one can spin a yarn while revealing complexities. Mr Roberts musters a muscular narrative, but examines nothing. All charges against the Anglo-American imperium are dismissed, from the “supposed ill-treatment” of women and children in Boer war internment camps to Dresden, Nagasaki and the prison camp at Guantánamo, which he declares Mr Bush is “right” to keep open. The abuses at Abu Ghraib, he writes, were overstated and resulted from “the fact that some of the military policemen involved were clearly little better than Appalachian mountain-cretins”.

Mr Roberts is as sloppy here as he is snobbish. Charles Grainer, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib and the only such “cretin” named, grew up in California. I am seldom bothered by minor errors from a good writer, but Mr Roberts’ mistakes are so extensive, fatuous and revealing of his basic ignorance about the US in particular, that it may be worth noting a few of them.
The San Francisco earthquake did considerably more than $400,000 in damage. Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in 1941, did not write for Encounter, which began publication in 1953. The Proposition 13 tax revolt took place in the 1970s, not the 1980s – an important distinction, because it presaged Ronald Reagan’s election. Michael Milken was not a “takeover arbitrageur”. “No man gets left behind” is a line from the film Black Hawk Down, not the motto of the US Army Rangers. Gregg Easterbrook is not the editor of The New Republic magazine. In a breathtaking peroration, Mr Roberts points out that “as a proportion of the total number of Americans, only 0.008 per cent died bringing democracy to important parts of the Middle East in 2003-05”. Various issues aside, 0.008 per cent of 300m people is 24,000 – off by a factor of 10. If you looked closely enough, I expect you could find an error on every page.
With this book, Mr Roberts takes his place as the fawning court historian of the Bush administration. He claims this role not just by singing its achievements but by producing a version of the past century that confirms its assumptions and prejudices.
He favours Mr Bush, but does him no favour, by feeding his preference for the unknowable future to a problematic present, assuring him that history will vindicate him if only he continues to hold firm.

An Interesting way to waste a few minutes

2007-03-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

www.politicalsurvey2005.com

Response from Professor Rob Dunbar, Stanford Expert in Climate Change

2007-03-28T02:22:00.000-07:00

My own opinion is that there is now a great deal of consensus among climate scientists that man-made global warming exists. My views on this are identical with a recent letter published in the New York Times by Jim McCarthy at Harvard (see below).........

The fact is, that in the peer-reviewed literature there are almost no papers that dispute this view. The few that are there are mainly taking issue with methodologies rather than results (although the credibility of the latter depends on the former....but this is a different kind of criticism than providing evidence that global warming does not exist or that it cannot be tied to anthropogenic forcing......

I did have a look at "swindle" movie you refer to below. My view? Almost entirely recycled and discredited opinions provided mostly by well-known skeptics that do not publish their ideas in the peer-reviewed literature. There are a few folks in the "documentary" that have credibility and in at least one case (Wunsch) there is a claim that his comments were taken out of context or were edited to promote the notion that he supports a view that he says he doesn't......The long and short of it is that in my view there is no comparison between the backgroun research and credibility of the Gore film and the "swindle". The "swindle" is junk as far as being a reasonable and balanced view of the science......

The Gore film may also appear to some to lack balance but in fact is a reasonable representation of the near consensus views held by most climate scientists. I think he overstated a few things but it is, for the most part, on target.

Cheers,

Rob

Letter published on March 17 by the NYT.To the Editor:The <http://www.webmail.ucl.ac.uk/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftopics.nytimes.com%2Ftop%2Freference%2Ftimestopics%2Forganizations%2Fn%2Fnational_academy_of_sciences%2Findex.html%3Finline%3Dnyt-org%3ENational Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorology Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all issued statements stating that <http://www.webmail.ucl.ac.uk/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftopics.nytimes.com%2Ftop%2Fnews%2Fscience%2Ftopics%2Fglobalwarming%2Findex.html%3Finline%3Dnyt-classifier%3Eclimate change is: a) occurring, b) largely caused by humans and c) likely to continue with large negative consequences for natural and human socioeconomic systems unless we rapidly decarbonize our global energy systems.

People who have evidence that contradicts these statements can publish their findings in scientific journals, after which the public might expect to see this work discussed in Science Times. In the meantime, if you feel obligated to publish what are simply opinions, please use the opinion pages rather than the science section.James J. McCarthyCambridge, Mass.The writer is the president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Response from Richard Linzen, MIT Expert in Climate Change

2007-03-20T12:07:00.001-07:00

Attached is the only recent survey I know of. There was also an earlier Gallup-Mark Mills Poll of members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society who listed climate as their specialty. It showed minority support for the proposition. Also attached is popular paper I have prepared on my views. The notion of consensus for such a complex multi-faceted issue is actually borderline insane. It is, however, an excellent propaganda tool for influencing people who either can't or won't consider the science itself.
Best wishes,
Dick
PRELIMINARY DRAFT

The Nature of Arguments for Anthropogenic Global WarmingRichard S. Lindzen

Given, the ever more frantic insistence that doubters must concede that anthropogenic global warming is an established fact with dire consequences, it may be helpful to review what exactly the arguments for global warming amount to. For this purpose, I will initially restrict myself to the issue of global mean temperature. Other issues like alpine glaciers retreating, major ice sheets collapsing, infectious diseases spreading, and polar bears scrambling for ice floats will be considered briefly later, but they are largely devices to promote alarm with little basis in fact, and frequently at odds with the IPCC, itself.

The primary argument for the attribution of recent warming to anthropogenic increases in CO2 is due to the Hadley Centre, the UK Met Office’s climate research group. Their argument is quite simple. It begins with the assumption that their climate model is correct. They then subject their model to forcing by volcanos and solar variations, and find that they can replicate the observed global mean temperature until about 19761, but that the increase in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree since then could not be reproduced without additional climate forcing. This additional forcing, they assert, is due to man. The argument is based fundamentally on the assertion that the model is correct. The confirmation for this assertion is that the model was capable of replicating earlier changes in global mean temperature in the instrumental record for the period 1880 to 1976.

Hence, they are confident that the attribution of the recent warming to man is correct, and that the forecasts for future warming are correct as well. Although this sounds simple enough, the problems with the argument are huge, and leave one without any logical grounds to stand on. The following are the major problems (and all of them have already been noted by the IPCC):

1. Forcing by volcanoes and solar variability are essentially unknown. Hence, the ability to replicate observations prior to about 1976 depends on arbitrary choices which are tantamount to ‘tuning.’ The claim that models are capable of replicating the past record is really a statement that the models can be adjusted to replicate the record. Even with such adjustments, the models fail to replicate regional changes in climate (such as the fact that much of the continental US has been cooling over the past 60 years)..

2. Although it is claimed that models cannot replicate global mean surface temperature since about 1976 without additional forcing, it is found that the model response to increasing CO2 is so sensitive that anthropogenic greenhouse forcing leads to several times as much warming as1 Although the Hadley argument pertains to the past 30 years, somehow this got transformed into 50 years in IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The use of the 50 year time frame allows one to clearly distinguish those parroting the Summary from those who read the text.Page 2 of 5needed to replicate the data2. This presents a political problem. Even if the warming since 1976 were due to greenhouse gas additions to the atmosphere, it suggests relatively low sensitivity. On the other hand, high sensitivity is needed to produce alarming scenarios. Modelers at the Hadley Centre dealt with this by replacing anthropogenic greenhouse forcing with just plain anthropogenic forcing which they claim includes aerosols sufficient to cancel about two thirds of the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing. However, the community of aerosol scientists maintain that aerosol forcing is thus far unknown. Thus, aerosols too form an arbitrary adjustment designed to bring models and observed global mean temperature into agreement. In order to maintain the politically crucial alarm, it is proposed that aerosols will cease cancelling greenhouse forcing shortly.

3. Finally, in what sense does the fact that a model cannot duplicate a warming of a few tenths of a degree constitute evidence that anthropogenic forcing is necessary? The alternative hypothesis is that the warming is simply natural unforced internal climate variability. It is well known that the climate does indeed fluctuate without any external forcing. There are several reasons for this. At the most fundamental level, the atmosphere and oceans are turbulent fluids, and it is a general property of such fluids that they can fluctuate widely without external forcing. There are moreover specific features of the oceans and atmosphere that lend themselves to such changes. The most obvious is that the oceans are never in equilibrium with the surface. There are exchanges of heat on all time scales between the abyssal oceans and the near surface thermocline region. Such exchanges are involved in phenomena like El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillations, and produce large variable forcing for the atmosphere.

In addition, the turbulent motions of the atmosphere randomly deposit heat in locations having varying water vapor and cloudiness (the two main greenhouse substances in the atmosphere) thus potentially leading to fluctuations in global mean temperature. In general, models simulate such phenomena rather poorly. Thus, it should be no surprise that they might fail to replicate a natural cause for recent warming, and this constitutes no meaningful demand for anthropogenic forcing. How do modelers deal with this logical problem? In general, the response consists in the embarrassing assertion that they cannot think of any alternative to anthropogenic forcing. This was explicitly the response of Alan Thorpe, head of NERC, the main UK funding agency for climate research.The issue is thus reduced to essentially religious faith.

It is no accident that various agencies refer to the fact that scientists believe that recent warming is due to man. In point of fact, there appear to have been numerous occasions in the past of significant climate change occurring without anthropogenic or any other known external forcing. Most notable was the so-called medieval optimum. As late as the first IPCC Scientific Assessment, the climate community was2 The fact that models predict that we should already have seen much more warming may come as a surprise to some readers. It should not. A doubling of CO2 would give rise to a climate forcing of about 3.5 Watts per Square Meter. Interestingly, the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing at the moment is about three quarters of this. About 1.5 Watts per Square Meter comes from CO2 while the remainder comes from methane and other gases. Note that the impact of CO2 per unit CO2 goes down as CO2 increases. The impact goes logarithmically rather than linearly with the amount of CO2. Note as well, that the current IPCC invokes uncertainty about even the magnitude of radiative forcing to reduce this embarrassment by reducing its estimate of current forcing to something closer to about half of what would be associated with a doubling of CO2.

In general agreement that the middle ages were characterized by significantly warmer temperatures than we currently have. Thus, there did indeed exist factors unknown to modelers that had led to substantial warming in the absence of human contributions. What was done about this inconvenient truth? As David Deming, a paleoclimatologist, noted, the word went out that one had to get rid of the medieval warm period. Sure enough, in a notorious paper by Mann et al, a few handfuls of proxy data (primarily from tree rings) were used to assert that there had been no medieval warm period. This paper served as the key result for the Third Assessment of the IPCC, and was the basis for the oft-repeated claim that current global mean temperatures were unprecedented for the last 1000 years. To be sure, this claim did nothing to change the fact that observed warming was much less than models predicted we should be seeing. However, it did eliminate the inconvenient fact that models were incapable of replicating past warming, and permitted defenders of climate attribution to continue to claim that unknown causes were ‘unlikely to exist.’ Unfortunately, as noted in two extensive reviews of the Mann et al work, the methodology was severely flawed and would produce similar results from random inputs. Under the circumstances, Thorpe’s claim is unsustainable, and the basis for attribution disappears. It should be noted that one of the reviews was by the National Academy. Although the text of the review was clear on this matter, the front end was intentionally misleading. This practice of attaching misleading front ends to otherwise reasonable documents is ubiquitous in climate science.In point of fact, Mann’s claims could have been dismissed on simpler grounds. Even if their methodology had been reasonable, it would nonetheless have required the regression of the small number of proxy records on the present climate. In order for such regressions to be valid tools for estimating past Northern Hemisphere temperature, it would have been necessary for the geographic pattern of temperature change to have been invariant.

Now, the documentation of the Medieval Warm Period for Europe and the North Atlantic is pretty solid. Mann et al, however, argued that this was a local climate change and not characteristic of the whole Northern Hemisphere. For this to have been the case, the geographic pattern of temperature change would have to have changed. Such a change, itself, is sufficient to invalidate the analysis. Unfortunately, logic has ceased to be a significant factor in the so-called climate debate; neither is data integrity.

In normative science, there ought to be healthy conflict between observations and calculations. In climate science, one sees a remarkable attempt to bring data into agreement with model calculations.A particularly illustrative example is the matter of atmospheric as opposed to surface temperature change. Few issues better illustrate the exploitation of widespread ignorance, and the avoidance of basic physical questions. Beginning in 1979, atmospheric temperatures were measured by microwave sensors on NOAA satellites. In contrast to surface temperature data, these atmospheric measurements failed to show warming. Immense pressure arose (sometimes explicitly from Al Gore) to ‘correct’ the atmospheric data. This is a much easier task than one might suppose. All data analyses have errors. The basic assumption is that these errors are accidental and hence likely to be random. If, in searching for genuine errors, one selectivelychooses only those that change results in one direction, one relinquishes any claim that the remaining errors are random

3. Rather, one has introduced a bias into the analysis. Thus, a recent review of the temperature situation by an NRC panel, now found that the satellite data could be made to show some warming. This, it was asserted, meant that there was no fundamental discrepancy with surface thermometric records. However, despite the bias that was likely introduced into the ‘corrections,’ the resulting analysis still actually failed to address the science. The scientific question was not whether there was warming in the atmosphere, but rather whether there was more warming in the atmosphere than at the surface as required by both greenhouse theory and modeling results – especially in the tropics. This was not found – even with the biased corrections. This result further contradicts the attempt to attribute surface warming over the past thirty years or so to greenhouse gas emissions. More precisely, greenhouse warming should correspond to the warming found in mid troposphere, and the warming trend found there is about one third of what is found at the surface, thus profoundly reducing the already small response. The confusion between well focused scientific questions and the mere citation of the sign of a trend is typical of the dumbing down of the public discourse.Befuddling the public has become a primary activity of warming enthusiasts.

Thus, when trends are absent, one speaks of record breaking years. For example, there has been no significant trend in global mean temperature for almost ten years. However, we have been at a high value for globally averaged surface temperature since about 1997. Thus, the normal year-to-year fluctuations in temperature are expected to produce record breakers. This has nothing to do with trends. Indeed, the absence of a sequence of record breaking years since 1998 argues strongly against the existence of any trend during this period. Even with trends, the fact that such quantities as global mean temperature and total land ice are always changing, gives rise to emphases on which direction any of these quantities is going at any given moment. However, in science this is not, in general, the issue. Rather we are interested in the magnitude of the trend and whether it is larger or smaller than natural fluctuations and, most important, how observed3 The business of inadvertent bias is both obvious and extremely difficult to deal with.Consider a difficult measurement: for example, equatorial sea surface temperatures during the last glacial maximum. A program called CLIMAP determined some 20 years ago that these temperatures were indistinguishable from today’s. At the same time, it was the practice of the modeling community to assume that glacial maximum was due to reduced CO2, and they concluded that equatorial sea surface temperatures should have been considerably colder than those at present.

As I have noted, all measurements involve errors (errors in actual measurements, errors in sampling, errors in assumptions underlying measurement techniques, etc.) An implicit assumption in such situations is that the errors – even if unknown – are random so that we can hope that they will largely cancel out. Let us imagine that we have all these errors in a box. We take out each error and examine it to see if it will help reconcile the models with the observations by decreasing the estimate of equatorial sea surface temperature. If it does, we apply the correction; if not we throw it back in the box. At the end of the process, the observations agree with the model, and the errors that were corrected were genuine errors that were genuinely corrected, but it is pretty safe to assume that the errors remaining in the box are no longer random, and that applying them will lead to increasing equatorial sea surface temperatures and increased differences between models and observations. The difficulty with the situation in reality is that the errors are often unknown at first, and so any error identified has a legitimate claim to be corrected.

However, the fact that in climate science, such corrections inevitably lead to reconciliation of observations with the models leads one to strongly suspect bias. Demonstrating such bias is, nonetheless, difficult unless one has the expertise and resources to search for and examine other sources of error trends compare to alarming forecasts. Moreover, climatically relevant trends can only be determined over long periods – typically 100 years or more.

As in any issue dominated by propaganda, there is a focus on ‘show stoppers.’ Here, changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree tend to lack caché. Retreating alpine glaciers, starving polar bears, hugely rising sea levels, invasions of infectious disease, even when false or irrelevant to global warming, are obviously more impressive and more telegenic. There is nonetheless something profoundly pathetic about some politician or movie star being flown to a remote location in order to witness a retreating glacier (even when that glacier may have been retreating since the early 19th century or when a few miles away there is another advancing glacier, or when the retreating glacier is associated with decreasing rather than increasing temperatures), and proclaiming to the world that they have seen ‘global warming’ with their own eyes.

Just for the record, polar bear populations have been increasing for decades – largely because of curbs on hunting. Malaria is still found in Siberia and was once common throughout the US; it is a disease more associated with poverty and inadequate disease control than with climate. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the beginning of the 19th century, though since 1970 they are advancing again in some parts of the world. The earths major ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica are in near balance between accumulation at their centers and ablation at their edges. The net impact on sea level is anticipated to be no more than millimeters per century. One could go on at length, but the point is simply that the earth is a very dynamic planet, and its dynamism has little to do with man. Clinging to alarmist scenarios for which there is no evidence, is simply exploitation of public gullibility.

Iran Feels Threatened by 300 Half-Naked Greeks

2007-03-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

As astute readers may be aware, I have rarely let the stifuling oppression of historical accuracy interfere with the writing of a good argument. It seems a number of media publications have adopted this philosophy too, no doubt as a gesture of solidarity.

For proof of this please consult the coverage of the release of the recent blockbuster '300', which depicts the efforts of Spartan soldiers at Thermopylae in 480BC, who all died fighting the Persian invasion of King Xerxes. Stirring stuff, indeed. However, this battle, it has been claimed, stands as a metaphor for the tensions between the US and Iran, the country now cited as being the successor to the infamous ancient region. Greece, the birthplace of democracy etc. stands in place for Bush's armies fighting his war on terrorism/for oil. But wait! Are we not forgetting something? Greece, did not exist back then, save for a vague clamouring that the disparate city-states of Hellas should unite against the threat of the East. Sparta itself was not democratic, in fact far from it. It had a militaristic monarchy, with state-run slavery and a rather nasty secret police force. Every year 'war' was declared against its slaves - the helots - in which any act of cruelty or murder was legal. Now read on the 300 website how Thermopylae was "drawing a line in the sand for democracy"(!). I think the Spartans would beg to differ.

Furthermore not all Hellenic city-states were opposed to Xerxes' Persia and in Athens, symbol of democracy, suffrage was far from universal and its behaviour far from exemplarary. Not a terrible good metaphor I would say.

Some poor knowledge of the Classics going on here, I think. In fact I would be rather worried if ancient Sparta and its complete barbarity towards the majority of its population is supposed to stand for the US. What next? George Bush stripping down to his pants to throw spears at Iranians in mimicry of the Spartan king Leonidas. Not something I care for, perhaps that's just me.

Before you make you mind up about Trident...

2007-03-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

'The War Game' by Peter Watkins, available on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxKkLsYICYY

Powerful stuff, made by the BBC and banned by the government.

On a completely unrelated subject, www.archive.org has 'Salt of the Earth', made by American communists (something of a rarity).

A Copy (Simulacrum?) of Baudrillard's Obituary

2007-03-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

The Shadow of His Formere Self

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/julian_baggini/2007/03/the_shadow_of_his_former_self.html

News of the death of Jean Baudrillard provokes mischievous and possibly disrespectful thoughts about how he would have reported his own passing. "It never happened" would be the obvious choice. For those of us who didn't know him personally, the "death of Baudrillard" is an entirely media event, one which we only observe through the filter of news, the internet and television. To believe otherwise is to fail to recognise the nature of our "hyperreal" society, in which we are no longer able to distinguish between reality itself and its simulation.
Some readers who have learned to dismiss anything that has the vague whiff of postmodernism about it will probably be snorting at the absurdity of all this. But it actually makes quite a bit of sense to me. Not complete sense, but then that's probably because, like almost everyone whose training in philosophy took place in a British university, I've never seriously studied Baudrillard. That sort of stuff isn't considered bona fide by most of our team, which is why a group of Cambridge academics tried to stop their university awarding Jacques Derrida an honorary degree in 1992.
It's certainly true that France is a philosophically foreign country: they do things differently there. You could say they adopt a different style, but that would be to imply that Anglo-American philosophy has any style at all, when most of its arid writing is actually the literary equivalent to Alan Partridge's sports-causal fashion collection. What our breed of philosophy has is a method, and with it supposed rigour.
The French, in contrast, have, if anything, too much style. The grand rhetorical sweep of many of Baudrillard's pronouncements - the Gulf war never happened; history has become its own dustbin; the west, in a sense, wanted 9/11 - sound to our commonsensical ears like absurd exaggerations.
Yet, if you get past the hyperbolic flourishes, thinkers like Baudrillard are actually saying things that have more resonance and relevance to contemporary society than the majority of what is written by more sober Brits and Americans. That's why, although shunned by philosophers, the likes of Baudrillard have been taken up by other social sciences and humanities.
The recurring theme of Baudrillard's work is that we live in a world in which representation and simulation have come to dominate over what was once thought of as reality, to the extent that our reality now often is our simulation of it. That's why it is now not only possible to be "famous for being famous", but it's what many young people actively have as an ambition. Because of thinkers like Baudrillard, we have come to think better and deeper about such issues, which is why we should be more prepared to forgive him for his many excesses.
There is some irony in the fact that many of those quickest to dismiss Baudrillard don't actually have any knowledge of his philosophy at all, but only secondhand representations of it. Perhaps the oft-derided Baudrillard got the last laugh, after all.

Fair Trade not Fair Enough?

2007-02-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

http://money.independent.co.uk/personal_finance/invest_save/article2298342.ece
Fairtrade is booming - but is it still a fair deal?
Trade justice at last or a perpetuation of a rotten system? Decide for yourself, says David Prosser
Published: 24 February 2007
Fairtrade is booming - but is it still a fair deal?
It's almost 11 years since the first Fairtrade bananas went on sale in Britain, and on Monday the Fairtrade Foundation will launch a fortnight-long celebration of the movement. The foundation, the umbrella organisation of Fairtrade groups active in the UK, wants Fairtrade Fortnight to be a showcase for more than 200 products that now bear the movement's kitemark.
There's certainly plenty to celebrate. More than a million developing world producers of everything from commodities, such as coffee, tea and fruit, to essentials, including herbs, spices and cotton products, to luxuries, such as ice cream and biscuits, are now signed up to the scheme.
To bear the Fairtrade mark, a product's retailer must be able to show that local farmers have been paid a higher price for the goods than local markets stipulate, and that workers involved in production have been paid fairly.
The fact that an independent organisation strictly polices the award of the Fairtrade mark - and beyond these two basic criteria, there are all sorts of other tests - has meant consumers in the West have been able to buy with confidence. As a result, business is booming.
Fairtrade sales have been growing at 40 per cent a year over the past three years. Market analyst Mintel estimates sales reached £230m in 2006 and predicts they will continue to grow to as much as £550m by 2011.
It helps that mainstream retailers are embracing the scheme. Marks & Spencer last year began selling a range of Fairtrade cotton clothing. Sainsbury's has plans to switch to selling only Fairtrade bananas.
But should consumers really be so confident they're doing the right thing when buying Fairtrade? Is the scheme, now a hugely powerful voice in many parts of the world, really as fair as it seems? There is no doubt that Fairtrade has helped many farmers in countries that have suffered at the hands of the inequities of a world trade system dominated by developed countries. But at the same time, there is a small but vocal band of Fairtrade critics who insist the scheme has many serious flaws.
Claire Melamed, the head of trade and corporates at Action Aid, the charity that works on a broad range of issues in developing countries, says: "The Fairtrade movement has worked wonders in making consumers think about world trade, but it is very much the start of a journey."
Action Aid's main concern about Fairtrade is that it does nothing to address the fundamental injustices in world trade systems. "While it's great for those farmers in the club, millions are left on the margins scraping a living," Melamed adds. "What Fairtrade does conclusively prove is that markets can be rigged in favour of poor people - and that consumers do care where their products come from."
Put another way, the argument is that Fairtrade is not sufficiently ambitious; it helps a few people to cope with an unfair system, rather than tackling the system itself. It's a point that is taxing French trade justice campaigners such as Jean-Pierre Boris and Christian Jacquiau. Both argue that by working within the current system, Fairtrade undermines the chances for radical reforms.
However, Ian Bretman, deputy director of the Fairtrade Foundation, is fiercely critical of such arguments. "It's too cynical to say that because you can't help everyone you shouldn't help anyone," he argues. "We do what we can and in any case, the system is changing, partly because Fairtrade has encouraged many people to become more engaged with the need for reform."
Bretman is concerned about other criticisms, in particular the arguments first put by Tim Harford, the populist academic who two years ago published The Undercover Economist. Harford says that by subsidising the price of commodities, Fairtrade is sending the wrong message to farmers. The fact that the price of, say, coffee is so low, he argues, is a sign there is too much of the stuff on the market. Rather than relying on a subsidised price, farmers should be diversifying into other markets.
Fairtrade itself says it agrees with this argument - to a point. "We recognise farmers need to make changes, whether it's improving productivity or diversifying or developing in another way," says Bretman. "But all of those changes require investment, which people can't do when their goods sell for below-subsistence prices."
Then there's the issue of who is really benefiting from Fairtrade. Consumers are prepared to pay a premium for Fairtrade goods because they like the concept. But how much of the premium ends up with the end producer? Are supermarkets charging higher prices for Fairtrade goods and exploiting consumers' good nature?
Harford, for example, believes that just 10 per cent of the premium that Fairtrade customers pay for coffee in a coffee bar ends up with the producer.
Bretman says it is impossible to say whether Western retailers are pocketing fatter margins on Fairtrade produce because prices vary so much. He believes the danger of this will recede as growing demand for Fairtrade goods encourages price competition among retailers. Even so, Bretman admits: "The scheme guarantees a minimum price for the producer, but we don't feel it's practical to set controls further down the road."
That represents a challenge for ethical consumers because they want the end producer to benefit. Many have deep-seated reservations about supermarkets, and would be reluctant to buy goods that swelled their coffers further. Nor does the moral maze end there. Nestlé, the food giant, is one of the most disliked and boycotted companies in the world by ethical shoppers, yet last year it launched Partners' Blend, a Fairtrade certificated coffee.
Bretman describes Nestlé's decision to seek Fairtrade certification as "a victory that shows a huge company is recognising this growing market". But is Fairtrade selling out to big business, signing deals with the sort of companies many people believe are responsible for trade injustices in the first place?
Ruth Rosselson, a director of campaigning group Ethical Consumer, remains a fan of Fairtrade. You don't have to buy Partners' Blend, she points out; there are plenty of other Fairtrade coffees to choose instead. Nevertheless, she says many people have been concerned by the Nestlé development. "There are a large number of consumers who wouldn't buy from Nestlé for all sorts of reasons and there has certainly been a backlash," she warns. "Fairtrade should not just be about whether a product qualifies for certification."
The final worry some campaigners now have about Fairtrade is an environmental one. While there are plenty of Fairtrade goods that British shoppers have no choice but to source from abroad - it's tricky growing cotton here, for example - there are others where local produce does exist. Should people support far-flung providers of honey or green beans, say, given the environmental costs of transporting the goods to this country and the fact they are already available locally?
Bretman says such issues are never black and white, but that ultimately consumers have to make up their own minds about any purchasing decision.
Nevertheless, he remains convinced of the power of Fairtrade - and that the brand will continue to grow. "There are more opportunities all the time," he says. "What I've seen over the past 10 years has been a move from us knocking on the door of businesses, trying to get a foot in, to them knocking on our door; that's down to the power of consumers."
How fair trade works
* The Fairtrade Foundation is an independent certification body that awards the Fairtrade mark to products that meet international Fairtrade standards. These are set by Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International.
* The label guarantees consumers that disadvantaged producers are getting a better deal. More than five million people - farmers, workers and their families - across 58 developing countries benefit.
* Fairtrade itself describes its mission as "addressing the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest providers".
* Producers must be paid above market prices for their goods, and workers involved in production must be paid minimum levels of wages.
* The organisation urges consumers to be sceptical about suppliers that claim to pay fair prices if they have not applied for Fairtrade certification.
* Full range of Fairtrade products: coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa, sugar, bananas, apples, pears, plums, grapes, lemons, oranges, satsumas, clementines, lychees, avocados, pineapples, mangoes, fruit juices, smoothies, quinoa, peppers, green beans, coconuts, dried fruit, rooibos tea, green tea, ice cream, cakes, biscuits, honey, muesli, cereal bars, jams, chutney, sauces, herbs, spices, nuts, nut oil, wine, beer, rum, flowers, sports balls, rice, yoghurt, baby food, sugar body scrub, cotton products.
* In recent times, other such schemes have been developed, such as Equitrade, Rainforest Alliance and Utz Kapeh. All have different standards, to which Ethical Consumer (www.ethicalconsumer.org) publishes a guide.

The Internet and the 'market revolution'

2007-02-23T05:50:00.000-08:00

Hamish McRae: The internet has shifted the balance of power

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/hamish_mcrae/article2296811.ece

Published: 23 February 2007
It is what in theory ought to happen - but it is good to know that it is indeed happening. In theory the development of the internet is hugely democratic. It gives all of us the access to knowledge that a decade ago would have required a research department in a multinational. But it takes a while for people to figure out how to use the new technologies and for the services distributed through those technologies to be developed. Email, broadband, Google, eBay, Youtube, Skype and other ventures are changing the balance of power between the individual on the one hand and the state and big companies on the other.
The past few days have seen examples of this shift of power. The ability of consumers to compare gas prices has combined with market liberalisation to enable us to switch to the supplier which can offer the best deal, as Centrica has found to its cost. The power of the net has given bank customers the confidence to complain about charges, plus the mechanism for so doing. The easy access to email has enabled 1.8 million people to protest to No Ten about road charges.
This shift of power has happened as part of a wider market revolution. There would be less point in being able to compare gas prices if, as in many countries, you could not switch suppliers. But even where there is a monolith on one side of the equation, the very fact that individuals have access to global information changes the balance of power between them and it.
We are still in the early stages of this shift. But already we can pick out some of the consequences.
One is a sustained increase in the power of the consumer. We are already able to seek out good deals and compare quality as well as price but it takes time to do so and poor suppliers are not immediately punished. In the future they will be, forcing up the quality of goods and services further.
A second is a decline in the power of the expert. For example, doctors' prescriptions can be checked for their effectiveness - and checked globally. Incompetence can be spotted, challenged and punished.
A third is a decline in power of politicians, or more accurately, much more pressure on politicians to do what their electorate wants.
On the other hand the benefits of this "net democracy" only accrue to those individuals who are well-educated enough to take advantage of them. We have to have access but we also need to know how to use the flood of information now available. As with all advances - and this is a huge one - there are people who are left behind. Society needs to look after them too.

Cameron Speech

2007-02-22T02:21:00.001-08:00

Comment
No one will be left behind in a Tory Britain
By vigorously promoting equal opportunity and fairness, we will make this a better country for all
David Cameron
The Observer, Sunday 28 January, 2007
The subject of community cohesion, for understandable reasons, has become prominent in our national conversation over the past few years. But it is a challenge we have faced before: the question of how we live together is as old as humanity itself. Throughout history, there have been periods when Britain has not been entirely comfortable with itself or individual communities within it.
Who would now question the contribution made by Jewish people to British society - or even talk about there being a conflict between being British and Jewish? And yet, only 50 years ago, this was exactly the debate going on in both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. More recently, Britain’s Irish community was questioning and being questioned about its loyalty to Britain.
Each time, over time, we have kept our country together by having faith in our institutions and our way of doing things: freedom under the rule of law, a common culture defined by pluralism and tolerance and a distinctively British approach (calm, thoughtful, reasonable) to potentially incendiary issues. The challenge today may have its own specific characteristics, but our approach should be the same. In that context, I am concerned by the direction that the debate on cohesion has taken recently. I believe it is time for a more British approach.
First, we must not fall for the illusion that the problems of community cohesion can be solved simply through top-down, quick-fix state action. State action is certainly necessary today, but it is not sufficient. Second, it must be the right kind of action, expressed in a calm, thoughtful and reasonable way.
The doctrine of multiculturalism has undermined our nation’s sense of cohesion because it emphasises what divides us rather than what brings us together. It has been manipulated to entrench the right to difference (a divisive concept) at the expense of the right to equal treatment despite difference (a unifying concept). But in seeking to atone for those mistakes, we should not lurch, with the zeal of the convert, into a simplistic promotion of ‘Britishness’ that is neither in keeping with our traditions, nor likely to bring our communities closer together.
Yes, we need to ensure that every one of our citizens can speak to each other in our national language. Yes, we need to ensure that our children are taught British history properly. And I do think it is important to create more opportunities for celebrating our sense of nationhood. Unlike Labour, we will set out a clear and consistent path to ensure these things actually happen, starting with our policy review which will make specific recommendations this week.
But I think we need to go much deeper than this if we are to address the substantial alienation and division that exist in our country today. It’s no use behaving like the proverbial English tourist abroad, shouting ever more loudly at the hapless foreigner who doesn’t understand what is being said. We can’t bully people into feeling British - we have to inspire them.
A number of the interventions we have seen from ministers recently have spectacularly failed to do that. Instructing Muslim parents to spy on their children. Offending our war heroes with the proposal of a new ‘Veteran’s Day’ when we already have Remembrance Sunday. Suggesting that we put flags on the lawn. These and similar clunking attempts to address the complexities of community cohesion show a serious misunderstanding of the scale of the challenge, and the shape of the solution. Above all, we have seen a dangerous muddling of concerns: community cohesion, the threat of terrorism and the integration of British Muslims.
Promoting community cohesion should indeed be part of our response to terrorism. But cohesion is not just about terrorism and it is certainly not just about Muslims. Similarly, promoting integration will help protect our security. But too mechanistic a connection between these objectives will make it harder to achieve both, by giving the impression that the state considers all Muslims to be a security risk.
This week’s report from our policy review, the product of months of dialogue with Britain’s diverse communities, will seek to disentangle these threads and point a clear and responsible way forward. There will be no shying away from the tough issues: the influence of those who twist faith into ideology; the cultural attitudes that exclude women from mainstream society; the impact of foreign policy on domestic affairs; and, vitally, the divisive effects of the catastrophic failure of state education in many parts of urban Britain.
I want the Conservative party to stand for a broad and generous vision of British identity. In a speech in Birmingham tomorrow, I will argue that questions of social cohesion are also questions of social justice and social inclusion. Cohesion is as much about rich and poor, included and left behind as it is about English and Scot or Muslim and Christian. Inspiring as well as demanding loyalty from every citizen will require a new crusade for fairness. A society that consistently denies some of its people the chance to escape poverty, to get on in life, to fulfil their dreams and to feel that their contribution is part of a national effort: such a society will struggle to inspire loyalty, however many citizenship classes it provides.
Fairness will be our most powerful weapon against fragmentation. In America, new immigrants feel part of something from the moment they arrive because they feel they have the opportunity to succeed. It is that belief in equal opportunity that we need in Britain today and it is why the denial of quality education to so many is such a vital part of the cohesion argument.
There is no easy short cut. Having tried to impose democracy in Iraq at the point of a gun, we must surely realise that we will never impose cohesion at home with the ping of a press release. There are serious divisions in our country today. Many thousands - maybe millions - feel shut out, under attack. Turning the situation around will require patience. We must be calm, thoughtful and reasonable: that is the British way.
Building cohesion is a social responsibility. Government must enforce the rules of the road - speaking English, teaching history, upholding and celebrating the symbols of nationhood - and we will be absolutely clear about what needs to be done. If the government brings forward these measures, they will have our full support.
But this is about much more than government and politics. We must each do all we can to make this a fairer and more just society - helping others, creating opportunity and ensuring that no one is excluded from it.

The article was accompanied by a leader comment and a news report:
Inclusive Cameron sets a welcome benchmark
Leader
The Observer, Sunday 28 January, 2007
Any community subjected to the sort of public scrutiny that has been brought to bear on British Muslims in recent years would feel defensive. Their customs and beliefs are analysed, their habits are judged against ill-defined notions of ‘Britishness’.
Often, devout Muslims are compared not with other conservative groups - ultra-orthodox Jews or evangelical Christians, for example - but to the liberal values of the Enlightenment, which had anti-clericalism as one of its central pillars. Not surprisingly, they are found wanting, as if it is not enough for Muslims to obey the law, but that they should also study Voltaire.
The reason Muslim illiberalism is scrutinised more than that of other faiths is that terrorist acts have recently been committed in Britain in the name of Islam. That is why a cultural and historical debate about what it means to be British, once the province of academics, has become a favourite theme for politicians.
Writing in today’s Observer, David Cameron enters that fray. This week, he announces the results of his party’s policy review on social cohesion. Measured against the many forays into the subject from the right, Mr Cameron’s tone is not hysterical. Compared with the government’s approach, it is not activist in its view of the state’s role in promoting integration. Mr Cameron recognises that the exclusion of many Muslims, and, indeed, non-Muslims from mainstream society is a problem, but one that is best seen as a subset of wider issues of poverty and lack of social mobility. For that reason, there is not much sense ordering the excluded to ‘integrate’. We should, rather, have confidence that social cohesion will flow naturally from fair access to good education and more equitable distribution of prosperity.
This is hardly revolutionary thinking. But it does mark a welcome alternative to the view that young Muslims should be urgently inculcated with ‘Britishness’ in the interests of national security. It is also a departure from the Tory habit of waving the flag and waiting impatiently for immigrants to rally to it. But Conservative members have already shown a reactionary queasiness about their leader’s new direction on other issues. It would be shame if they cannot embrace a tolerant message on social cohesion. It is the right one.
Cameron blast at crude bullying on ‘British values’
Muslims must end curbs on women’s study - Tory leader
Gaby Hinsliff and Jamie Doward
The Observer, Sunday 28 January, 2007
David Cameron today dramatically shifts the terms of the debate over Britishness by demanding a new language of cohesiveness on the controversial issues of faith, race and nationhood.
In a ground-breaking article in today’s Observer, the Tory leader lambasts the government for its aggressive approach, arguing: ‘It’s no use behaving like the proverbial English tourist abroad, shouting ever more loudly at the hapless foreigner who doesn’t understand what is being said. We can’t bully people into feeling British - we have to inspire them.
The call for a ‘calm, thoughtful, reasonable’ approach to defining Britishness rather than hectoring ethnic minorities comes ahead of a speech today in which Cameron will nonetheless warn that such a stance must not mean tolerating injustices, such as Muslim women being prevented from studying or working outside the home.
In today’s article Cameron attacks ‘clunking’ government ideas to shore up national identity, such as urging Britons to fly the flag at home, and the ‘dangerous muddling’ of community cohesion with the threat from terrorism. New ways should be found to celebrate ‘our sense of nationhood’ instead, he adds, although it is not clear what these might be.
‘A number of the interventions we have seen from ministers recently have spectacularly failed to do that. Instructing Muslim parents to spy on their children. Offending our war heroes with the proposal of a new “Veterans’ Day” when we already have Remembrance Sunday. Suggesting that we put flags on the lawn.’
And while promoting cohesion could be part of responding to the war on terror, it was ‘not just about terrorism and certainly not just about Muslims’, he added.
His argument will be underlined by a report this week from the party’s policy commission on national security calling for new thinking on community cohesion. It will highlight the removal of teenage Asian girls from school and question whether some Muslim parents are supporting their daughters’ desire for education, as well as calling for forced marriage to be made a criminal offence. In his speech in Birmingham, Cameron will argue that the oppression of women in some communities is a cultural rather than religious phenomenon. Tories must ‘be bold, and not hide behind the screen of cultural sensitivity, to say publicly that no woman should be denied rights which both their religion and their country, Britain, support’.
Sayeeda Warsi, Tory vice-chairman and adviser to Cameron, said she was struck by the way some female Muslims were held back while she was out canvassing at the last election. ‘The number of women I came across who said they wanted to go to university but their parents didn’t want them to, who wanted to get a job but were not allowed, who were not allowed to vote freely because the men in their family got postal votes... I came away feeling that here was an enormous resource wasted,’ she said. ‘This way of life is not because of the faith, it is cultural interpretations of it. David feels we can’t be culturally sensitive to issues which are fundamentally wrong.’
Cameron’s decoupling of cohesion from national security issues was welcomed by the Muslim Council of Great Britain. However, the Commission for Human Rights and Equality said it would reserve judgment for the full report.

Muslim extremists are mirror image of BNP, says Cameron
Hélène Mulholland
The Guardian, Monday 29 January, 2007
David Cameron today compared British Muslim extremists to the British National party, claiming that they were the “mirror image” of the racist organisation.
In a keynote speech on community cohesion, the Tory leader said that extremism was one of five “Berlin walls of division” blocking community cohesion.
Mr Cameron demanded an end to the oppression of women inside the Muslim community who are denied the opportunity to go out to work or attend university.
And he warned that difficult issues must not be avoided by hiding behind a “screen of cultural sensitivity”.
Raising educational standards, controlling immigration and tackling poverty all had important roles to play in bringing down the barriers, he said at the event in Lozells, Birmingham.
Mr Cameron's strong attack on the failure to improve community cohesion comes as a survey published by the Policy Exchange reveals growing militancy among young Muslims who feel they have less in common with non-Muslims than their parents' generation.
While the majority of Muslims feel they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain than with Muslims abroad, the figure dropped from 71% of over-55s to 62% among 16-24-year-olds, the survey found.
The percentage of people who said they would prefer to send their children to Islamic state schools increased from 19% for over-55s to 37% of 16-24-year-olds.
The number who said they would prefer to live under Sharia law than British law increased from 17% of over-55s to 37% of 16-24-year-olds.
Mr Cameron insisted that the question of community cohesion was not “all about terrorism or all about Muslims”. But he went on to attack fundamentalist Muslims who sought to rupture efforts at cohesion.
“Whether it's the BNP, or those who want to separate British Muslims from the mainstream, their aim is to act within the law to subvert its ends, changing the law as and when they can to achieve their ends,” Mr Cameron said.
“We must mobilise the instruments of public policy to draw people away from supporting such ideologies.
“The BNP pretend to be respectable. But their creed is pure hate... and those who seek a Sharia state, or special treatment and a separate law for British Muslims are, in many ways, the mirror image of the BNP.
“They also want to divide people into 'us' and 'them.' And they too seek out grievances to exploit. “
Mr Cameron also insisted it was important to be bold as he highlighted the plight of many Muslim women denied access to education, work and political engagement.
“I'm told time and time again by women that the denial of these opportunities is not because of their Islamic faith but because of current cultural interpretations in Britain.
“We must therefore be bold, and not hide behind the screen of cultural sensitivity... to say publicly that no woman should be denied rights which both their religion and their country, Britain, support.”
The government's failure to control immigration was another key source of tension, he added.
The Tory leader also attacked educational apartheid created by the existence of “good and bad schools” that denied some a decent education and made them prey to extremists who offered “easy explanations and point the finger of blame at other people ... instead of becoming productive citizens who can make a constructive contribution to the community and the country”.
“Some make it despite the obstacles - but too many don't. Those who get left behind are prime targets for extremists who offer easy explanations and point the finger of blame at other people.”Mr Cameron also took the opportunity to criticise a recent government decision to pull free language classes for migrant workers as running contrary to government pledges to help integration. “Quite how that helps bring the country together I don't know,” he said.

A Danncast of Thousands: danncast.com and Meme Theory on the Internet

2007-02-09T02:42:00.000-08:00

[Review]

One Contemporary Take on the Enlightenment

2007-02-05T03:31:00.000-08:00

Johann Hari: The art of subverting the Enlightenment

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article2237694.ece

The Chapman brothers' declared aim is an old one, offered by fascists and priests for the past 300 years
Published: 05 February 2007
If a single work of modern art has penetrated our distracted consciousness in the past decade, it is the penis-nosed, vagina-mouthed child-mannequins designed by Jake and Dinos Chapman. These monstrous "zygotic twins" stare at us from behind their genital-noses and demand we stare back. After an infinity of watery watercolours and old Old Masters served up as the only face of Art, the Chapman Brothers offer a kind of punk art that spits in your face, punches you in the stomach, and nicks your wallet while you are puking on the floor.
These works have somehow leeched into our collective subconscious. So why - as I staggered around their retrospective in Tate Liverpool, gaped at their new exhibit at Tate Britain, and read through their scattered essays - did I find myself ravaged by hatred for them?
Many people assume that the Chapmans' work is simply a scattering of anarchic insights and provocations with no underlying coherence. They're wrong.
In the 18th century, a swelling of philosophers, scientists and artists launched the Enlightenment. At its core, they argued that instead of relying on divine revelation, we should closely observe the world around us and base a rational world-view on the empirical evidence we gather. Everything good about our world, such as the miracle of modern medicine, or the birth of human rights movements, comes from this project. The Chapmans' declared aim is an old one, offered by fascists and priests for the past 300 years: to puncture and destroy it.
Jake Chapman has declared that "the Enlightenment project. ... virulently infects the earth". Let's look at an example of how this hatred animates their work.
Francisco Goya was one of the first great artists of the Enlightenment. In 1799, in his famous Caprichos etchings, he caricatured the religious figures who controlled Spain, and he lauded the secular and liberal politicians who fought against them. It was his Enlightenment commitment to showing the unvarnished truth that later made him paint war-scenes as they really were, for the first time. He stripped out the old chivalry and romance; he showed the blood and broken bodies. In 2003, the Chapmans bought some of Goya's original prints - and vandalised them.
Where Goya drew with documentary clarity the agonised victims of war, the Chapmans painted the jeering faces of clowns and puppies over them. "Goya's the artist who represents the kind of expressionistic struggle of the Enlightenment with the ancien regime," Jake Chapman explained, "so it's kind of nice to kick its underbelly." Goya famously said "the sleep of reason produces monsters". The Chapmans say the opposite: it is when reason is wide awake that it produces monsters. (Really? Did Hitler scrupulously adhere to fact, evidence and reason-based inferences?).
The Chapmans trashing Goya is a pure expression of postmodernist philosophy. They vandalise and ridicule the fruits of reason - and what do they offer in its place? At times, they offer up an imaginary pristine past, before reason supposedly contaminated the world. You can see this mentality in The Chapman Family Collection - a gathering of fake African tribal artifacts which the viewer gradually realises are modelled on Ronald McDonald and his friends. We are supposed to lament the contrast between their "authenticity" and our "fakeness".
But ditching the Enlightenment quickly leads to even darker places than this. The Chapmans' intellectual hero is Georges Bataille, the French writer and (anti-)philosopher who was obsessed with moments of "transgression", when the "prison" of the Enlightenment could be left behind. And these glorious moments? They mostly consist of torture. He lauded the Marquis de Sade, an aristocratic rapist who preyed on working-class women, because he "had only one occupation in his long life which really absorbed him - that of enumerating to the point of exhaustion the possibilities of destroying human beings, and of enjoying the thought of their death and suffering".
Jake Chapman echoes his hero. He talks about the "libidinal pleasure" that comes from seeing a real picture of a real person being tortured, because of the "transgression of the ethics that that image is supposed to trigger or incite". A few years ago he was asked in the Papers of Surrealism: "Does Battaille's formulation of the conception of transgression relate to the way that work like your own is sometimes suggested as being part of a necessary force?" He replied: "Yes - a good social service like the children who killed Jamie Bulger." (Perhaps opening their exhibition in Liverpool was not such a smart idea).
Some foolish critics have praised the "moral anger" in the Chapmans' work, directed at "injustice and cruelty". Precisely the opposite is the case. This is immoral anger, celebrating injustice and cruelty as "transgression".
This isn't surprising. When you strip away our Enlightenment defences against psychosis, what are you left with? The best thing you can say about this philosophy is that very few people will ever take it seriously. But a few have: look at Michael Foucault, the postmodernist icon who was another disciple of Bataille. In a telling parable about postmodernism, Foucault went to Iran in 1978 to witness the incipient revolution. Having dismantled the Enlightenment, this was for him "year zero" in terms of political thought.
He was searching for a new intellectual project. He found it with the Ayatollah Khomeini. He met him, called him an "old saint", and fawned about "the love that everyone [in Iran] individually feels for him". He attacked the secular, democratic and feminist wings of the revolution, saying Iranians "don't have the same regime of truth" as Westerners.
Khomeinism descended into tyranny and mass murder. If Foucault has stayed another few months in Tehran, he would have been hanged for his homosexuality. But he only ever criticised "the old saint" once - when he worried he might be about to adopt democracy, because "we know where that leads".
His embarrassed defenders see Foucault's flirtation with the Ayatollahs as a weird abberation. It isn't. It's the culmination of his life's work dismantling reason. Why shouldn't premodernism and postmodernism come together in the face of a common foe? After reason, what remains but raw irrationality?
The Chapmans inhabit the same fetid dead-end. Jake has described the international opposition to the Taliban blowing up ancient Buddhist sculptures as "strange", describing it with bland semi-admiration as the "live, vital religious opposition to something that has a direct and local meaning to them".
So there are only two options left in assessing the faeces-flinging provocations of the Chapmans. You can dismiss them as a pair of unserious middle-aged millionaires who grew up in Cheltenham and now pose as rebels from the badlands of Tate Britain. Or you can assume they mean what they say. So which is it, boys - are you clowns, or monsters?

Schools to Teach 'Britishness'

2007-01-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

It seems my article of a few weeks ago has found an audience - the government. You seem incredulous of my ability to dictate policy...well have a look at these:

http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2186513.ece
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23382957-details/All%20pupils%20must%20study%20modern%20British%20history/article.do
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/content/detail.asp?NewsAreaID=2&ReleaseID=259434
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2567073,00.html

So the government is to introduce more 'Britishness' into history and what has the voice of the discerning British public got to say? Well, the papers have divided along party lines. Whilst the Left leaners produced fairly non-descript articles (a tacit nod almost) The Telegraph responded with a tongue-in-cheek quiz 'How British are you?', with questions about history, geography and the like, 0 points meaning you are French and 100 meaning you are the Queen (minus the German bits?). Plus the standard piece about how standards are falling, noone knows the basics about history etc etc.

In my opinion both sides of this debate come out rather badly, the government becoming rather dictatorial (I mean, do we need 'citizenship' lessons?) and those who object sounding at best snobbish and at worst almost xenophobic. Of course one needs to decide what is to be taught in schools but noone considers those who are being taught. My solution - a bit of 'Kings and Battles', a bit of 'Social', but also let the teachers pick the ones they are best at (within reason of course). At that stage in children's lives it is more the quality and enthusiasm of the teachers that has a lasting effect than some ideological mandate from on high. Well, that's something for the government to bear in mind next time they get their agenda from this website...

The Decline of Western Civilization!

2007-01-28T13:59:00.000-08:00

British Library to start charging

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2192972.ece

Published: 28 January 2007
Its archives hold the Magna Carta, Beatles manuscripts and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Visitors to its fabled reading room in the British Museum included Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw. But the future of the British Library as a world-class, free resource is under threat fromplansto cut up to 7 per cent of its £100m budget in this year's Treasury spending round.
To survive, the library proposes to slash opening hours by more than a third and to charge researchers for admission to the reading rooms for the first time.
All public exhibitions would close, along with schools learning programmes. The permanent collection, which includes a copy of every book published in the UK, would be permanently reduced by 15 per cent. And the national newspaper archive, used by 30,000 people a year, including many researching their family trees, would close.
Scholars, writers and politicians have responded angrily. Award-winning author Margaret Drabble, who is currently using the library for research, said: "It would be a very great mistake and tragic to make cuts. It is a great national institution and it is used by scholars from all over the world."
Ex-Monty Python star Michael Palin, who is a patron of the library, said it was a "precious and thrilling resource" that needs to be looked after.
Since 2001, the library, now based in St Pancras and sites around London, has made savings of £40m and reduced its workforce by 15 per cent.
However, the Department for Culture says the expected cuts will mean that more savings need to be made. A spokesman said: "The cultural sector has had huge real-terms increases in funding since 1997. Clearly, this cannot go on indefinitely."
The plans have also caused consternation in the House of Lords. The broadcaster Lord Bragg said the library was of "massive importance in a society... that depends more and more on information, creativity and brains. It needs to be nourished, not hobbled".
Lord Avebury has written to Gordon Brown, who will preside over the Treasury spending plans, saying: "It is difficult to fathom the mind of a Government that sets out to wreck a world-class public institution, as you would if the British Library is forced to make these cuts."

My Political Affiliation (Apparently)

2007-01-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

www.politicalcompass.org

According to this I am of the libertarian left:

Economic Left/Right: -1.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.28

My nearest political equivalents are Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. Not bad, eh?

What History REALLY Is, or Why I am not an Essentialist

2007-01-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

History today is a lot like a 40 year accountant who has just bought a motorbike - Comfortable in terms of money and position but ultimately not quite sure what he wants to do with his life. I mean, History is popular in terms of student numbers, books written, even TV programmes. However, if you ask most what is the point of history, what it actually does, a few might say there is something to be learnt, some grand historical law or invaluable lesson. The majority would reel out the usual line of 'history for its own sake'. A good number would not, I suspect, have given it a great deal of thought - the past is just 'there', another aspect of time and space to be looked at by someone so inclined.

In theory I am a big fan of doing things 'for their own sake'. I take a cue from Camus in his belief that on some level all life is just acting like that, that we must be delude ourselves that are tasks are in some way meaningful even though our transience and mortality deny them that status. However, for Camus this delusion is born from our freedom and choice. The capacity to wilfully deny the circumstances of our being. Yet, History is a grand, imposing beast of a thing that comes at us through school, through the State, through social interaction like a grey, discursive miasma. We, as historians, must actively seek to preserve our freedom, which is eroded every time the curiosity for discovery departs and our activities seem like burdensome chores.

At present I would argue that it is the aims that aren't quite up to scratch. For one thing the Past has become too commodified. A student goes to university, increasingly almost as an obligation, where he or she receives their fill of 'historical knowledge', then, suitably examined, they scuttle off to the world of work, the focus of three years of their life mostly forgotten save for the occasional pub quiz answer. So what do I propose instead?

Firstly, I think we should accept less and question more. I do not mean the sources or secondary texts but the very nature of the history we practise: Why this topic? Why this way? Why this period? Thus, History will be less passive absoption and regurgitation, but, instead, questioning the questions put to us; the very boundaries of things. I mean, given the financial burdens that courses place on us, are we not entitled to do this anyway? Professors are no longer dispensers of Truth whom we have the good fortune to listen to - they are as dependent on us as we on them, perhaps more so given the commerical nature of universities.

So what, then, is History for? The cynic might say it grounds what we say with an air of smug authority (well actually it happened this way...). I get no kick from that sort of thing, though, I must admit. Instead, I would say that identity, for the greater part, is the sine qua non of our subject: Who we are as people, as communities, as nations. The choice and of what and how something is studied is therefore paramount. Knowledge is not simply the accumulation of facts to be dispensed in appropriate situations: How we understand is as important as what we understand. These models of understanding affect the way we see the present world, how we see ourselves collectively and individually.

Old-school empiricism may have served the Western democracies well against the fictitious ravages of totalitarian regimes, but now, without such cultural markers we have the opportunity for a new and perhaps fairer version of history. No great threat lurches over us that we should mobilize against. We should look a bit closer to home and use our history to make our lives more enjoyable and engaging. This to me seems a very appealing prospect.

Burk/Eldridge Correspondence IV-V

2007-01-19T14:14:00.000-08:00

Burk to Eldridge IV

Thank you for your e-mail. I was quite stunned by some of your comments, and am yet again agog by how I and my work are perceived by others.

It seems that we are, in your terms, matching ideology against> ideology. The fact that you classify writers as left-wing or, I suppose, right-wing, which never occurs to me, means that you have preconceptions about what you expect a history course to produce. The idea that I have chosen the 20th century because I support the 'American Century' is just plain stupid. I did my D.Phil on the First World War, and in the natureof things a newly-fledged scholar expands out from the core of her knowledge and expertise. Given the nature of and time required for research, most historians do not leap around the centuries. Had I to do it all overagain, I would be an ancient historian, but I do not have world enough or time.> Besides: how long a period would you like to cover? And I juxtaposed> Britain and America because my main field of research and teaching is> Anglo-American relations: I find the history of just one country less> interesting than handling two histories, two cultures. By common consentit is more difficult than concentrating on one, but that is part of the> pleasure for me. I am also curious where you got the idea that the course> exemplifies 'almost a paean to American industrialism', and that I support> the idea that the mark of a civilization is its manufacturing output. It> sounds to me as though you yourself are stuck in your own ideological box> and are regretful that I do not recognize your fences.> I was struck by your reference to the 'theory' of American> ascendancy during the period. You may find it unpalatable, but in> diplomatic and military relations, it is undeniable. Even your left-wing> writers acknowledge it, or they would not bother to write bookscriticizingit. But I do not put purely polemical works on my reading list, whether> from the left or the right, because if you looks at the footnotes, on the> whole there tends to be a certain scarcity. I own quite a few of these> myself - sometime I'll show you my clutch of left-wing and communist> pamphlets attacking the Marshall Plan - and use them for other approaches,> but not for teaching below the level of research students. How can one> ascertain the quality of the argument if knowledge of the archives &c is> lacking? For better or worse, this is not a course on 'Images of Great> Britain and the US and of their relationship'.>

You say that it would help to have an acknowledgement of my aims at> the outset. Within this context, it sounds as though you perceive thatwhat I am doing is imposing an ideology, and am limiting what you are able to> work on or read orthink. My aims are to encourage my students to think> logically and to think for themselves. I have had students cite and then> criticize one or another article which I have written, and this gives me> great pleasure, because it is evidence that they are independent thinkers.> I am not at all clear what you mean by a focus on 'key texts' in> international history. What would you suggest? One would be Kennan's'Long> Telegram', but although I marked it vital in the syllabus, it was clearthat> not all had read it.> And of course there is a linear, chronological approach: as I said> before, history is change over time, not a timeless void. And of course> there is an emphasis on the nation-state: that is the actor in relations> between one state and another. This is NOT to imply that there are noother> actors or factors or elements: but when France takes a decision about> declaring war on Germany, it is not your man in the street or artist or> housewife or professor who finally decides, nor is it one of them who> conveys the decision. Yes, foreign policy has traditionally been decidedby> elites, and so what? There are elites in football and there are elites in> foreign policymaking.> I really haven't a clue what you mean by 'modern cultural> chauvinism', and therefore it is difficult for me to have acknowledged it.> If you mean that you don't like the impact of American culture, that is> hardly my affair. What is really strange for me here, and there is no way> you could have known it, is that if anything, I'm more anti-American and> pro-British, in my emotional reaction to some of the things I study. Butit> is necessary 1) to recognize this and 2) put it aside, or else I am> betraying all that I am trying to do, which is to try to establish some> semblance of truth. You do not need to bring on again the unknowabilityof> the 'truth' - anyone who has worked in primary sources is all too aware of> this - but what is important is judgement, and judgement based on a great> deal of work, not purely on gut feelings.> I am sorry that your realization that you are in the wrong course> has come too late for you to change. I can sympathise with your feelingsof> discomfort and probably even rage: I would certainly feel the same in a> course which emphasized subject-object dichotomies and ideologicalconcepts> over getting my hands dirty. Fortunately, all the marks for the courseare based on coursework, so you can get by quite happily by reading what you> want and writing on topics of your choice.

By the way, my own huge book on the relations of Britain and> America, which is out in the autumn, covers 1497-now, and has chapters on> identities, social reform movements, the literary relationship &c as wellas politics, diplomacy, and economics. And I am sick of the 20th century.

------------------------

Eldridge to Burk V

I am pleased my email provoked some thoughts from you. In truth, I did exageratemy points a fair bit, and some of it is a touch speculative, plus I wouldnotparticularly consider myself either left wing or postmodernist. However, youidentified yourself as an empiricist so I took it as a bit of a challenge totake an opposing view.The American Century thing was a guess on my part. However, I have read afewarticles saying how the arrangement of time is important in a history and isnot as straighforward as it seems. The fact that framing time in such a wayseems like a natural thing to do perhaps lends itself to theFoucault/Barthesidea of the 'death of the author', whereby it is discourse, workingunderneaththe surface that shapes it. It could be I am reading things into it. Icommented on the seemingly comparative nature of the course to a largeextentbecause of post-structuralist theory, which seems quite popular nowadays.Thistheory states how things get their identity only from comparison to otherthings (Self/Other), with one half of that couplet getting privelegedstatus.This, in combination with a bit Hayden White trope theory, meant Iinterpretedyour course structure as a narrative, whereby the means of measurement wasfinancial/industrial because you emphasize economics and in the firstseminarwe looked at a table of manufacturing outputs. This I linked to thepostmoderntheory that attempts to quantify, rank, categorize and rationalize thingsarestrategies of control and the exertion of power. This is what I meant bycultural chauvanism.

Another idea I used was Benedict Anderson's theory about how nations are formed,that they are not just naturally there but are a process of imagining peoplethat you will never see. Things such as maps and censuses produce the'imaginary lines' I mentioned; the creation of Self/Other dichotomies. Theseare subtley reinforced in the writing of national histories.According to postmodern theory, your course will always be ideological, whateveryou choose to teach, and the empiricist claim to be unideological is afallacious one. Similarly they claim that the autonomy of the subject is aninvented fiction. They would say there is nothing wrong with being polemical aslong as you acknowledge it, and, if possible, try to accommodate otherviewpoints. The empiricist would say they research the past for its ownsake,the postmodernist would say that even if it were possible, what would be thepoint? The idea of discerning historical laws and lessons from the past ispretty much discredited, why not use it for the present? If all history isideological anyway, why not use for uncovering relationships of powerinsteadof maintaining them? History for them is about identity (who we think we are asa person/society etc.), therefore why privilege elites in the national identityover anyone else?It is true I referred to American ascendency as a theory. In part this isbecause I know in history writing there are loads of theories that say somecivilization is at its zenith or is in decline, usually they are disproven. Theideas of Spengler, Toynbee, Whig historians, Gibbon have all pretty much fallenby the wayside. This of course is a tenuous argument. However, one could saythat the way ascendency is judged can differ. At the moment it is in termsofaggregate industrial output/GNP and military strength but one could alsojustas easily rank nations (as the UN does) in term their citizen's livingstandards (literacy, life expectancy, levels of those living in poverty).According to this scale the US ranks much lower in the world. From thisperspective foreign policy can be judged in terms of the ability to avoidadventuristic foreign policy, curb the power of the military-industrial complexand restrain the elites in power. This may or may not be convincing but I'm surethere's other ways of seeing it.

Finally, I can empathasize with wanting to study ancient history as I didthatas an undergraduate and enjoyed it immensely. Thucydides is one of myfavouraite books and one of the best courses I have been on at universitywasone concerning use and representations of the Classical World in the Modern,perhaps that is an idea?

Burk/Eldridge Edited Correspondence Emails I-III

2007-01-18T03:07:00.000-08:00

Eldridge to Burk I

Although in class you sometimes ask for an 'argument' I have struggled
with how to frame such an argument in the context of the aims of your course. In my history writing I try to avoid simple causal explanations of topics 'What caused event x? etc.' or GCSE-style regurgitation of all available facts about a period but this is what seminars mostly consist of, it seems to me. For instance, should we be considering what the various schools of diplomatic> history represent (revisionist/realist etc.)? Should we consider the influence of postmodernism on the study of diplomatic history (for most other modules this seems a popular question)? What weight should we give internalfactors and issues? Should we be considering whether the nation-state is still a valid more of historical analysis (this has been done a few times in other classes)? Should the ultimate aim of diplomatic history be to decide who is 'winning' and has the most political power at any given time? - I am exagerating but that does seem to be the goal of the course sometimes.

In short, I am not really from a diplomatic history background and don't really know what it means so would appreciate a bit of guidance from you. Overall I acknowledge I have been a touch reticent in seminars but I do not feel there is a lack of effort on my part for I spend more time researchingyour seminars than my other two modules and with my job I have very little time> to> spare. Sometimes I read lots of books on your list but don't know what I'm looking for, at other times I research things that I do not bring up because they do not seem relevant to the discussion that develops. I am not suggesting you dictate with exact precision every aspect of study, I don't think either of us would want that, but I would appreciate suggestions on the nature of debate, what sort of questions would be appropriate to ask, what conceptual apparatus I could or should be using.

--------------------------

Burk to Eldridge II

I also insist on a rigorous level of analysis, but you are correct that I do not try to box in students - or myself - by insisting ona pattern, whether it is realist or functionalist or postmodernist. And of course one has to concentrate on finding out causes and effects, as far as> possible: history is change over time, not a timeless void, and how canone interpret, in any mode, if this has not been established? You will doubtless answer that postmodernism will indicate that we can never know, but I am a proud defiant empiricist, and spend thousands of hours in> archives going through documents and reading other primary sources as far as I can, to establish what events took place, to compare accounts, always asking myself why the differences are what they are. The outbreak of war between states has more than once depended upon when a dispatch reached a Foreign Office, or upon who read it and what decision was taken and why. This may not turn you on, and the simple answer may be that you aretrapped> within an area of the discipline which does not stimulate you. I can understand this: I myself find social history less than engaging. But it seems to me that there is no point in doing history if it is not anattempt to establish what happened, why it happened, the consequences of itshaving happened, and how others have interpreted it, leading to new thoughts, new ideas, new approaches, and on it goes.

You imply that the main thing we do in seminar is to regurgitate facts, or look for simple causal explanations, but it is quite clear to me> that most members of the seminar do not know the facts, and if I can getan outline set out about whatever we are discussing, we can then go on from there. What's to interpret, if the basic knowledge isn't there? If you would like me to indicate, I will tell all of you what I want you to know> about the following week. I have done this once or twice. This will> perhaps be the better approach, since none of you, as far as I can tell, have much academic background in the topic. This is not a complaint: it is a statement of fact, given that high politics and diplomacy is something of a minority subject (although having said that, it is one of the two most> popular topics in the department at undergraduate level).
Since diplomatic history considers the relations of states with each> other in the period with which we are dealing - less relevant, perhaps, in> the ancient Near East or amongst those whose organizing principle is the> tribe or clan - it seems a bit strange to wonder whether the nation-state is a valid mode of historical analysis. Whether one likes it or not,> presidents, secretaries of state and Congress in the US, and prime> ministers, the Cabinet and parliament in the UK conceive, plan, and> implement foreign policy - if only because there has to be a crisis ofsome> sort for most other people to pay any attention to it at all.

Any element in life can have an impact on foreign relations. But this is one class for two terms, and I try to get an overview of thesubject> and the period. Students who then want to dig more deeply into aparticular topic can write a dissertation on it.

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Eldridge to Burk III

Thankyou for your response on this matter, it has been useful. In part thedecision to do your course was because I understood it to be firmlyempirical,so I thought it would contrast nicely with other courses I am doing and havedone, which tend to lean towards postmodernism in their methodology.

However, it seems my understanding of postmodernism differs slightly fromyoursfor Ithink there are few that say you cannot know the past per se, maybe Derrida,not that I understand Derrida much, but most say that because we can knowthepast in many different ways it is how we represent and frame our historythataffects things, ie which bits we leave in and which we take out sincehistoryalways has to be selective. Postmodernism links this with power, hence, Isuspect, that is why diplomatic history does not tend to get on well withpostmodernism, as diplomatic history is all about elites.

For instance, a postmodernist might take issue with the choice of periodization and representation of time for your course. The fact that you chosen thetwentieth century means there is an implicit support for the idea of the'American Century', the theory of American ascendency in this period, whichisalmost self-congratulatory and similar to the triumphalist Americanhistoriography produced after the end of the Cold War. This is demonstratedinthe course by America's juxtaposition with Britain, which, you have argued,isin decline during this period. This is not a complaint: it is a statement offact, I read it in one of your articles. The choice and representation ofevents supports this argument, such as the emphasis on the periodimmediatelyfollowing the Second World War. Areas of ambiguity are moved through morequickly, such as the 1920s and 30s. The bibliography also seems weightedagainst Left Wing writers, for instance you have not included manyrevisionistwriters (to my knowledge). Not that all this invalidates your argument inanyway but it does mean that our approach is laden with ideology, discourse ifyouwill, before we approach the texts and our analysis is not a neutral processandthus not simply a case of verifying/extracting facts. This might be helpedbyacknowledgement of your aims at the outset. You might say in reply that wearefree to research any book we like perhaps even research any topic we like,however constraints of time make this unlikely, as well as the fact thatdiscussion in seminars would be hindered if we had all read completelydifferent things. Besides, the limits of your discourse seem quite firmlyenforced.

There is a generally linear, chronological progression through events, asopposed to, for example, a conceptual approach or heavy focus on key texts.This chronology relies upon a notion of an essential continuity thatconstitutes the nation-state. The boundedness and unicity of a nation-statearesocial constructs. A linear history also implies trajectory for the future.Britain or America thus appears to be an evolving species through time -thereis thus an underlying historical model that our seminars would struggle todislodge given that you choose the topics. In addition, by comparing Britainand America in this fashion the course becomes almost a paean to Americanindustrialism. Two countries are quantifiably and objectively compared,implying the mark of a civilization is its manufacturing output. Americasupplants Britain as world power, presumably with the "tribes" and "clans"youpreviously refer to ranking lower. One might therefore identify an elementofmodernist cultural chauvanism interwoven into the course which is notacknowledged.

The emphasis on establishing facts, with its strong subject-object dichotomydistracts from the ideological orientation of the course. A postmodernistwouldnot say that verifying facts is unimportant but it is prudent to acknowledgehowknowledge is manufactured. Wars are not caused by telegrams arriving inforeignoffices, they are caused by people on one side of an imaginary line thinkingthey are different from people on the other side of that line; history has a lot to do with the creation of those lines.

Divers and Varyed Observations in Satyre of the Naturre and Characterre of An Extroverte, Viz.

2007-01-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

Theatre performers are not like badgers. They do not have quiet, nocturnal shufflings, to be passively and reverently observed in pastoral solitude. If there is not a constant stream of sound and fury, noise and movement, of harangue and grand brachial gesture I believe they would cease to be. They are clearly very philosophical in this. One can surmise that they have taken the Berkelyan notion that if something is not observed it does not exist as their central and sustaining ethos. They provoke irritation. However, I cannot deny an incorrigible fondness for them. 'Them' is a correct appellation, they are indeed a foreign, alien breed among Men, but special and to be preserved, and, I say reluctantly, admired - though at a safe and manageable distance.

It became apparent they are not like us 'normal' people when I sat in conversation with a number of such perfomers. Such language seem inappropriate. There was not a conversation, there was a competition to be the focus, the object of attention, regardless of the opinions of others, regardless of the inanity spumed forth in great abundance. It is a practice made necessary by the profession; where great numbers are tantalizingly close to the glorious validation of the audience yet distanced from the limelight by the membership of some anonymising chorusline, some faceless herd of dancers. The accolades of an applauding crowd seem magnificent but are so diluted by countless intermediary parties they are forced to struggle for the scraps.

The majority of the company that I keep in other circumstances is, by comparison, rather more self-moderated, or at least less conspicuously self-centred. The collective urge to quietly perform the necessary work of the day, to adhere to social mores, lends appeal to the lifestyle of the theatre performer, so obviously free, completely free, from awareness that anyone else in the World exists. Against such mores, in welcome defiance, stands the theatrical type, who has no qualms about being audible, who does indeed believe 'all the world's a stage' and everyone is asking for an encore. But despite and because of this, for me, they are an unsightly and welcome intrusion. Almost exotic. They live, thankfully, in numerically small numbers, colonies in the big cities, around us and yet wonderfully foreign.

Such contradictions I pondered as I sat listening to blonde Disney princess who had just played in Japan. She twirled as she made a cup of tea. Her friend, a man whose camp, Northern accent (it seemed a strange combination) extended every syllable to breaking point, and whose elocution seemed barbarous in its clarity. My friend, with her bright red hair and skin as pale as to be almost translucent was practically mundane in their presence. They were indeed strange aedifices of the performing arts.

In ages past actors were pariahs and ranked alongside lepers and Frenchmen. Now, (when successful) they are the zenith of human acheivement, just as once Keepers of the King's stool was one of the great positions of power, and now few would aspire to such a career. Not that such observations reveal some fundamental truth on the human condition, save that things change, a bit. Perhaps, it just means I can foolishly speculate and hope that one day sheer self-indulgent indolence will be revered as a profession.

Perhaps it already has...

Just in case you weren't sure...

2007-01-01T13:25:00.000-08:00

Look, he is even smiling so must be friendly.

(US WWII poster)

'Darwin's Rottweiler': Richard Dawkins Link

2006-12-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

Nice bit of militant atheism, audio links at the bottom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu

2006-12-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to JL for providing a very interesting article and topic fo reflection.

It seems to me that, in the popular sphere at least, Britain and America approach their history in different ways. The emotions evoked by consideration of the Past are by no means similar; for America the past is a source of celebration or, on occasion, grave disconcertion. For the British, and especially, the English the Past is either a weary burden or some rose-tinted nostalgia. The Second World War, for instance, seems to embody some lost spirit of community, the 'Blitz spirit', as it were, as much as the fighting itself. The English seem to have an unease, a healthy unease, of Jingoism, as shown by the complete indifference shown to St. George's Day. This is reinforced in schools where we are taught, quite rightly in my view, of the bitter anguish and desolation, as expressed by Owen, Sassoon et al., caused by devotion to some woolly notion of nation.

On occasion the hypnotic flames of Jingoism are rekindled - the Falkland Islands spring to mind here - but on the whole it is a reluctance to participate that seems to define Britain as a nation - hence our strong tradition of satire from Hogarth to Baron Cohen. Yet, despite this collective jadedness, recent years have seen a number of interventions, such as Kosovo, Sierra Leone and recently Afghanisatan and Iraq. These operations have some moral purchase, for a foreign policy based solely on pragmatic realism seems just as abhorrent as unrestrained idealism. I would not want Britain to trade and accept some despot or dictator as he commits unknown atrocities or to sit idly by as some country starts wholesale slaughter, as happened in Rwanda.

In the case of Iraq I do not believe in a Rousseaian notion of a 'people' needing to be represented, helped or indeed ruled. But I do believe the amplified effects of religious minorities have caused an unjustifiable loss of life. Nor do these minorities work in complete isolation, Iran and Syria not withstanding, I am mindful of Ian Kershaw's writings on Nazi Germany, on how widespread support and asistance needs to be, on how it was neighbourly denunciations as much as men in leather coats that sustained the Gestapo. The problems of Iraq are deeply ingrained, which it why it was foolish to think it could be acheived with a cheap and easy victory as envisioned by Donald Rumsfeld.

Perhaps it is indicative of a flaw in the American political structure in that it lurches in and out of policy choices with leaps and starts. The vacuum of power seems to require more troops, not less, and of all nations in order to provide legitimacy and prevent the characterisation of militias as anti-Imperial freedom fighters. Blair was right in this respect, for a UN resolution would have greatly assisted in this predicament. The balance was not struck between the energy and resources of America and the legitimacy of a wider global community. As it stands the Coalition seems as multilateral as the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, where a couple of Polish lifeguards were tacked on to an overwhelming mass of Russian tank divisions. To effect worthwhile change requires either luck, or, more frequently, long-term investment in terms of resources, attention and willpower. The beneficial effects of democracy, I read somewhere, do not come as an enlightening flood, but as a slow, accumulated trickle.

Ikiru

2006-12-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

'Living' is its meaning, before you ask, and it is the name of an utterly powerful film by Kurosawa. This film produces such a torrent of superlatives that the mere presence of any other descriptive grammatical form seems an infringement on all norms of decency that are purported to exist in Western civilisation. Kurosawa's best, certainly, perhaps even of all Japanese cinema, the most convincing pondering on the human condition, Shimura's finest work etc. etc.

A faceless bureaucrat faces the ultimate existential quandry as he becomes acutely aware of his own transience. A terminal illness wakes him from his white collar somnabulance and he desperately seeks to find meaning from his empty, wasted life. The product: Ultimately, as the memory of his death fades, only indifference. Yet, there is triumph as he succeeds in building a children's playground, despite a host of obstacles from co-workers, family, even the mafia. It has, arguably, an uncomfortable pessimism but is truly a great work of art. The climax of the film is the bureaucrat Watanabe's uncontrollable contentment as he swings in his playground. The end has resolution, unlike, say, the rather mediocre Broken Flowers, but it much more convincing that some saccharine conclusion of a Capra. Bergmar produced similar works but Ikiru has that subtle humour that just tips the balance in Kurosawa's favour. To my mind many paralells can be drawn with Fellini, which is indeed a good thing.

Upon consideration one would find this general period very fecund for a certain style, a weariness and distrust for the conventions that sat uneasily upon the populaces of the world as they were coming to terms with the scale and impact of the Second World War. There is a miasmic aura of disillusionment and Satre and Camus seem to be on the unacknowledged periphery of all significant artworks. In America think of On the Waterfront and The Pornbroker, the latter an utterly underrated film, the former more acclaimed but both deserving of the highest accolades. In the UK from the troubled mind of Hancock was The Rebel. Of course I could and perhaps should list more, but, suffice it to say that when the glitz and glamour become jejune in the public's eyes, when big budget producers run out of special effects, it is to these types of films, to this genre that they will instinctively look.

Or not, but they're good films.

Some corner of a foreign blog that is forever England: Britishness in the 21st century and why the experts are wrong.

2006-12-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

The definition of 'Britishness' seems a very en vogue topic at present. Of course, I would trace its current manifestation to the easy, short-term political capital generated from the (seemingly exagerated) 'threat' of immigration. The difference at the moment is the Left's (well, Labour's) preoccupation with the topic. Labouristas have flirted with the rhetoric of xenophobia in their jockeying for position as Tony Blair begins to wind down his time at number ten. It is certainly an age-old and reliable technique that generates support from the right-leaning sections of the party and headlines in the Mail. Gordon Brown has his speeches on national identity and the style Jack Straw's comments on Islamic headwear seem an almost faint mimicry of Kilroy-Silk, and common sense dictates that any similarity with that man is something to be avoided if at all possible. It is a crude way of doing politics and no doubt will be discarded rapidly for its effects are only short-term.

However, the underlying question remains: What does it mean to be British? Some, such as Lord Tebbitt, believed it can be reduced to a 'cricket match' test: Who would you support in cricket match? Others, such as the Guardian believe it is a set of values, particularly individuality, liberty, inclusiveness and other such terms that sound good but generally become very vague and nebulous upon examination. I mean, it is nice to think of England as the home of noble virtues but we did have the Empire for a good long while, a great cause of oppression, chauvanistic nationalism and general snobbery. Such a definition is woolly and untenable under any intensive scrutiny. So let us take the politicians out of the picture and see what some historians have to say.

If one is to believe the post-structuralists, meaning is derived by a term's opposition to something else, thus, in the past, Britishness was formed by opposition to other countries, particularly the Empire; the stoic rationality of the British was shown by the effeminate barbarism of subject nations. Yet, previous objects of comparison, such as the greasy Frenchman or the lazy Irishman, no longer seem valid. [Note to self -finish this section later]

So what is the answer? Well, the solution is firstly to separate the nation from the state, for it is when the two are combined that problems arise. When nationality can be minutely defined by, say, ethnic critieria, then this legitimises processes of exclusion - tighter border controls, id cards etc. Conversely, vague, rose-tinted values are easily manipulated or used to justify any sort of policy - 'liberty' when spoken by a politician usually means free trade and/or helping out businesses, 'self-sacrifice' and 'civic values' means we'll be probably fighting in some war soon etc.

Far better to recognise nationality in the political sphere as just being a beaureaucratic boundary, lines on a map for administrative purposes, somewhat arbitrary but useful for sharing resources to citizens. Of course, this leads to organisations of a supra-national nature, but I shall return to the theme of cosmopolitanism at a later date.

And a definition of Britishness? Not questioning what Britishness is, not seeking to know its exact causes and forms, that is to be British. To assume the quality of Britishness just emerges from whenever by virtue of itself and accept that as a valid definition in others. If you have to question it, pin it down and study it then it disappears. I believe that is what it means to be British. Without wishing to sound too much like a slacker hippy: 'let it be'.

Hmm quoting Lennon seems to invalidate my argument somehow, I shall reexamine tomorrow.

'Ah Well, the Best Laid Plans... thought Luthor' (www.b3ta.com)

2006-11-30T13:05:00.002-08:00

From Peer to Shining Peer: American Hegemony and the Internet

2006-11-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

The internet is a relatively new medium of cultural expression. It is so ubiquitous, its progress so rapid that our collecitive memory almost forgets that within 10-20 years it has colonized Western households in an unprecedented fashion. Yet, for all its apparent novelty insights into this phenomenon can be derived from historical precedent. Appreciation of the significance of the internet has not yet been fully developed, no doubt because the upper echelons of academia have not had the same level of exposure to and interaction with the internet - old people cannot approach new technology without a profound sense of unease (at least it seems from my experience). Thus, the scrutiny that has been applied to print and broadcast media has not yet been applied and certain assumptions remain unchallenged particularly concerning levels of transparency and democracy on the web.

A naive mentality, present at the early stages of the press, radio and possibly television, proclaims the supposedly 'organic' nature of the internet. Not only can everyone (who wants to) express themselves but also information can accumulate and be dispersed as if free from partiality and interference. A prominent American journalist claimed, for instance, how

"The Information Revolution is likely to democratize politics by weakening the elites’ grip on information."

A cursory glance dispels such mythology.

Firstly, use of internet requires participation in a consumerist culture that is somewhat plutocratic in nature. A prerequisite of the internet is the purchase of a computer as well as paying for connection, the former of which is self-perpetuating given the rapid obsolescence of technology. In addition, one might argue that to make a site that is of decent quality requires training - more so in years to come as complexity increases - which is not as readily available in the developing world. Whilst the opportunity for anyone to create a website is there, the majority are, of course, of Western origin, especially American, which necessarily reflect American agenda, topics and views.

Another feature of interest is the proliferation of 'astroturfing'. Astroturfing is the appearance of sites, videos or opinions purporting to be genuine expressions of 'grass roots' discontent but are produced by political or corporate organizations (hence astroturfing). Thus, media-savvy elites give their messages a facade of popular authenticity. One example is a flash video parody of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Whilst seeming to be made by some random citizen of the internet it was in face the creation of a PR agency funded by ExxonMobil. Of course, this sort of activity has been a common feature in other media (e.g. letters written to editors by 'members of the public') but a common sense skepticism of such features is arguably not present in the internet generation. Consider the 'China Bounder', a blog supposedly of an Englishman living in Bejing, who intertwined criticism of the Chinese govnerment with tales of his sexual conquests of 'easy' Chinese women. The vigilante group formed to track him down was disappointed to find out he was the creation of a few politically minded Japanese students.

Despite assumptions to the contrary some sense of governmental boundaries is still present. One might consider the censorship in China, not just in Google but also the hundreds of security staff who monitor the internet for signs of dissention. One might consider the US government's pressure to censor the .xxx domain name, setting a precedent for intervention in the running of the internet. One might also consider the US's continued control of Icann, the technology that runs the internet, despite EU, Chinese and Russian requests for an inter-governmental body at the WSIS summit. However, the recent actions by the Swedish government to close the Bit Torrent-based website 'PirateBay.org' that is perhaps the most unpalatable development.

Under Swedish law the use of Bit Torrents for file sharing is not illegal. Yet, Hollywood's main political lobbying body, the IMAA, was able to exert influence in the White House, who put immense pressure on the Swedish government to act on the copyright infringement with the threat of sanctions. The Swedish Justice Department then ordered the police (which is illegal under the Swedish Constitution) to take action, which in turn resulted in a raid on the Pirate Bay base of operations and the seizure of computers and databases. The backlash to this has led to the creation of a 'Pirate Party', which seeks to question the nature of international copyright and patent law.

This seems to be happening of its own accord anyway, with music sharing as hard to police as booze during the Prohibition Period. Certainly one website (SpiralFrog) is already preparing to give away all music in exchange for the screening of adverts. It is possible that in the future copyright legislation may change and make a virtue of a necessity. However, a darker possibility exists; America may use its economic might to bully and cajole those who do not adhere to their own conception of jurisprudence. Probably most would side against Pirate Bay if push comes to shove and they survive by means of legal anomaly, yet, this sets a precedent that may surface in another form. It is not completely inconceivable that some site that provokes the ire of America may provide an excuse for unilateral involvement, perhaps in some sort of crackdown on terrorist websites or breech of national security.

Well, it's a possibility, and I write it to illustrate my central point that the internet is not some disinterested intrument of progress and harmony but just as susceptible to manipulation as the more established media. In the past the Press helped cause wars, such as the Spanish-American War, radio and film were sued by totalitarian regimes to great effect (esp. Germany) and television helped stop a war (Vietnam), so I hope with adequate thought and analysis the internet will be used for the good of humanity, or at least not misused too much.

Note to self- polish off that last paragraph when not tired.

Guerilla History: Viva la Revolution?

2006-11-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

Inherited convention often provides the historian with the basic guide for forming his words. Structure, content, methodology; all of these seek provide the Cliophile with the language and form by which he may enter into conversation with the historical community and thus adscribe value to his work. However, adhering to such practices necessarily place the historian at a disadvantage vis-a-vis those who appraise his work. It is thus an act of submission at the very point of initiation that maintains and articulates a relationship of power. It colours the work before a word is spoken. Such a relationship should be renegotiated to the advantage of the historian in order that the work acts not to strengthen the historiographical status quo.

One may assume that actors that play their part in the grand theatre of history were subject to the self-same emotional contortions that you or I experience. Yet, these emotional responses are always neutralised in their translation into historical account. Explanation in history assumes on some level the rationality of leaders to the exclusion of the fundamental causes of human action: the irrational elements. This is not to undermine the intelligence or mental consistency, merely to question the boundaries of rational thought. Yet, these irrational elements are not represented, at least not to any noticeable degree: "Leader x was sad" hardly conveys the vividness and immediacy of his response. How can this be remedied?

A grand event, let's say a conference, can be represented scene by scene, action by action, dialogue written in full adn verbatim, if sources permit. Motivations of actors elaborated upon, as well as minor details, clothing, decor, room layout; all done with a historian's keen eye and skill with sources. Historical agency is not weighted to one event, to a few grand figures in some Carlisylian sense. Instead, long-term influences are articulated in conjunction with immediate ones; for those who exercise power are deemed to be subject to aspects of their environment, their cultural baggage, their personal and collective psychology, the nature of thier social interaction.

Thus will be created, as I have to cut short my writings due to temporal exigency, a micro-historical model that seems almost like a mirror image of Braudel. Whilst he attempted to view history from afar, this history will investigate the mysteries of the universe of the immediate sphere of action. A seemingly revolutionary act.

The Study of History is Depraved and Decadent - Preface to a Gonzo History

2006-11-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

“To future ages may thy dullness last,
As thou preserv’st the dulness of the past”

Men once fought and died for the noble ideals that they discerned from History. To do so was, of course, morally very questionable. In fact those that did so were fools. However, one must admire their spirit. Indeed it is the absence of that spirit that has made History the sham it is today. It is barren, lifeless and in the emaciated hands of foul practitioners, who condense and distil its colourful flavours into a drab, boring grey. We, enlightened readers, must liberate History from the clutches of the Oxbridge necrophiliacs who salivate over antiquated dust-covers in the safe seclusion of the library. It is no longer enjoyable, only commercial, no longer truthful but sedatory. Where are the lively discussions in coffee houses? Where is experimentation? Where is innovation? They are gone, hidden by layers of mediocrity and stultified senility.

Our history is our identity, so what does that make us, the society that produces such insipidity as is seen in today’s works? A confused, bumbling, pretentious mess with a shiny cover, with the obscurity of the esoteric and the shallowness of the populist?

What must be done?

We must unclasp the manacles of mediocrity. Rise up – Sing, shout, dance to Clio’s beautiful tune, for alongside her sister muses sits Clio, equal to them in status and now with an open mouth!

This journal’s goal is, like a Don Quixote of the archives, to seek out new adventures in the foreign land of the past; we will confront the uninteresting and unimaginative wherever we find them and lay siege on their repugnant form. Whether it is by treading the untrodden path or approaching the familiar with new eyes we will progress, bold in our resolve and unflinching in our steps, towards that most worthy of ends: The Historical Truth.

On the Necessity of Error - Blueprint for a Gonzo History

2006-11-16T12:15:00.000-08:00

Praise be for the bumbling inventors, those ramshackle pioneers, those noble experimenters who are responsible for so much. They have contributed to humanity, and not just through their toils and successes, but through their mistakes, their deviations from convention, their erroneous judgements. In error lies progress, for errors produce innovation. It is the flawed mimicry of greatness that sometimes produces greatness, the unsuccessful attempt to appropriate some vision, dream or precedent that results in a new perspective or methodology. Some regard their existing state of affairs as wrong and thus attempt to change it. Others try to perpetuate that state of affairs and are betrayed in doing so by their endeavours to translate some aspect through themselves, wishing to hold true to the original yet losing or changing something in that translation. In Art it is the inability to capture the visual essence of something or the failed adoption of some previous style that produces beauty, in literature a defiance of the rules of clear communication makes language colourful and exciting. Yet, to admit such a process seems anathema to the very basis of knowledge. Orthodoxy states that the inductive process learns from mistakes and thus corrects itself; inversion of this statement is far better – the inductive process should only be valued in its capacity to produce mistakes.

Modernity, and perhaps thinkers before that period, wishes to see the world as it really is, the truthful nature of the universe, universal and correct, free from the limits of perspective that a mere individual human has. I would wonder, though, whether they would really want this, for to see the world as it really is would make it seem cold and lifeless, bleak and futile. We would be mere collections of atoms chemically linked for a while before being dispersed into the cosmos. Rationality would defeat itself, for there would be no need to do much at all, given the obvious finalities of our existence. Thus, the irrational must be present in even the most scientific of investigations to some degree. It is its lifeblood and progenitor. This irrationality is not truthful, it is an erroneous perception of the world but it is vitally, vitally important. Of course, if we indulge in this irrationality we perhaps become as animals and would lose the many benefits of modernity, which have improved the material condition of lives. How, then, should these two aspects of the human condition interact? How is a balance to be obtained? For the most part, people find their own balance and this is probably the best way, though, those who can often try to manipulate the balance and direct it – irrationality is indeed potentially dangerous.
The point should be not to change society on some grand scale, merely a greater acceptance of a playful irresponsibility whenever possible. This is the reasoning behind the Gonzo History Journal and thus it would wholly improper to castigate, demean or condescend the defining ethos of this most academic of academic journals.

On the Aesthetic and Ideological Function of Lampposts

2006-11-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

I see it as a vital function, perhaps duty, of every person who would consider himself (or herself) to be free to question the values that compose their view on life. Not only the foreground matters, though important, the dramas, tribulations and flashing images that preoccupy our thoughts for the most part, but also those that create the backdrop; the hidden discourses, the defining features that it is so easy to leave unquestioned. These form the mise-en-scene of our lives, shape it unquantifiably, indicate so many things about ourselves as individuals and as a society but encounter the anaesthesia of a supposed banality and do not receive our focus.

What one age considers a truism the next age dismisses as ridiculous absurdity. Reality is not as monolithic as is assumed. The possibility for great instability is there; this should not necessarily be employed, but at least acknowledged and pondered, if only occasionally. So it is with this in mind that I approach the topic at hand. Lampposts are ubiquitous; we pass a great number in the course of a single day without ever noting what they represent. They are so ingrained into our being that the possibility of their absence seems anathema, yet they are historically incidental. They are the ornaments of modernity, its symbol, and, as such, are indelibly woven into the construction of our values: They are ideological.

The Sun, and perhaps light in general, has a religious significance that lies, sometimes overtly, sometimes subconsciously, in the Western psyche. Pantheism and animalism gave pride of place to the Sun god, provider of life. Through the Egyptians and Greeks the religious world converged on monotheism, culminating in Christianity in whose the language of revelation and divinity is synonymous with light: Did not Moses demonstrate the Jewish god’s power by blacking out the Sun? Are we not supposed to ‘see the light?’ So the Enlightenment project in overthrowing the ‘superstitions’ of its backward forbears assumed this language. The power over light is power over Nature itself – a mighty goal for humanism. Lampposts are not just about illumination - they are about demonstration.

On every street in every town the power of scientific, rational thought is made evident to the populace. Man proves himself dominant over the revolutions of the Earth. Lampposts represent order and structure and serve society well. A government study (link listed below) has noted that it is not the amount of light that diminishes crime, nor are they of great assistance in increasing visibility, if anything they are blight, causing light pollution. Instead, the effects are placebonic in nature. Crime is reduced indirectly because the spirit of community is fostered, the perception of safety is increased. The rational justifications for their presence are not borne by the facts – they don’t directly reduced crime and one can question the utility of a little extra light. They provide comfort because they show that some higher power (the state) has control here and is looking after this area, giving it attention and this induces informal social control. Criminals are deterred not from fear of detection or improved surveillance but subconscious associations with the instruments of power. Lighted areas illustrate a more controlled use of public space, this is how they effect crime.
They are made by Man and yet seem somewhat natural. A street, particularly a high street, seems odd without this lighting. Since this is part of our identity should we praise their security and comfort or criticise the control they exercise, to pass judgement on this is to pass judgement on ourselves: Should we seek freedom at all costs and view them as self-imposed restraints or see them as achievements and congratulate ourselves?

The answer to this question will determine our aesthetic standpoint.

To be continued.

Squaring the Circle: History in the 21st Century

2006-11-14T13:35:00.000-08:00

This contribution marks the first, I hope, of many.

This circle hopes to entertain thoughts on many subject, reflections on diverse topics, not in pursuit of some far-off and elusive idea of Truth. Instead, the modest and rewarding aim of attempting to make sense, as far as possible, of the world as it stands, both its proteanism and immutability, from the furthest distance to the most introverted of positions.

To this a glancing eye will be cast. Everthing shall be taken with the utmost seriousness, except perhaps ourselves (too much).