I remember reading some weeks ago a report made public by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service the SVR to the effect that if the bombing of Libya had not achieved Gaddafi's overthrow by the end of May then regardless of the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 ground troops would be introduced into the country.
Al Jazeera is now reporting the presence of British troops in the rebel held western Libyan city of Misurata. Apparently the Al Jazeera correspondent not only saw the troops but even managed to film them. I take this as another sign together with the deployment of helicopter gunships that a ground invasion of the country is now quietly underway.
Monday 30 May 2011
LAST WORDS ON OSAMA BIN LADEN
I have just read an interesting article in the Guardian, which has provoked me into writing what I expect will be my very last post on the subject of Osama bin Laden. It seems that the US authorities going through the "vast haul" of documents and data they found at Osama's Abbotabad residence are now starting to develop doubts that a lot of this material was ever distributed to anyone. It seems that Osama may have whiled away the time writing lengthy memos to himself and hatching all kinds of schemes and plans that never actually got passed the front door of his own house. It seems that Osama was also becoming increasingly frustrated by his own isolation and by the degree to which he had become marginalised within the jihadi movement he had set out to lead.
In my earlier posts I pointed out that it would have been simply impossible for Osama to control the farflung jihadi movement by relying only on couriers. In the twenty first century it is impossible to control a global movement by relying on communications methods better suited to the eighteenth century.
To all intents and purposes in the last years of his life Osama was a prisoner of the Pakistanis. For a man accustomed to an active and outdoor life the strain must have been almost unendurable. I would not be surprised if the arrival of the Americans came as a relief.
In my earlier posts I pointed out that it would have been simply impossible for Osama to control the farflung jihadi movement by relying only on couriers. In the twenty first century it is impossible to control a global movement by relying on communications methods better suited to the eighteenth century.
To all intents and purposes in the last years of his life Osama was a prisoner of the Pakistanis. For a man accustomed to an active and outdoor life the strain must have been almost unendurable. I would not be surprised if the arrival of the Americans came as a relief.
Thursday 26 May 2011
OBAMA IN BRITAIN
I do not usually find myself in agreement with Timothy Garton Ash but for once I think an article he wrote in the Guardian following Obama's speech at Westminster Hall was spot on. As Timothy Garton Ash correctly pointed out the speech with its tiresome recitation of reassuring cliches could have been made by Kennedy or Reagan or Clinton. At no point in the speech did Obama remotely address the reality of a changed world. On the contrary he appeared anxious to reassure his audience (both Britiish and domestic) that the world was not really changing at all.
The reality is that the US and UK (the erstwhile "leaders of the free world") are two economies that are heavily in debt, which as they both suffer from systemic trade and budget deficits, is in both countries going to get worse. The underlying reason for this is runaway defence spending in the US. In contrast to the situation in almost every other major economy defence spending is by far the biggest single item in the US budget. This is so even based on official figures though it is universally accepted by all serious commentators and economists that the true extent of US spending on defence is much greater than official figures say. Defence spending on this scale does not merely undermine the US's fiscal position. It is the cause of its trade deficit as factories that should be producing civilian goods produce weapons instead and as investment is diverted from the civilian economy to the defence industries. It is the cause of the financial crisis as US banks and financial institutions have to invent ever more exotic financial instruments to trade as assets on which the US can secure its debts, which it needs to take out to cover its trade and budget deficits. Though the UK spends only a fraction of what the US spends on defence as an outpost of the US economy it shares in its problems.
In other words it is precisely the US attempt to sustain its global leadership that is ultimately undermining it. Rather than acknowledge this truth his speech shows that even a politician like Obama who is touted as a sober minded realist remains in denial.
The reality is that the US and UK (the erstwhile "leaders of the free world") are two economies that are heavily in debt, which as they both suffer from systemic trade and budget deficits, is in both countries going to get worse. The underlying reason for this is runaway defence spending in the US. In contrast to the situation in almost every other major economy defence spending is by far the biggest single item in the US budget. This is so even based on official figures though it is universally accepted by all serious commentators and economists that the true extent of US spending on defence is much greater than official figures say. Defence spending on this scale does not merely undermine the US's fiscal position. It is the cause of its trade deficit as factories that should be producing civilian goods produce weapons instead and as investment is diverted from the civilian economy to the defence industries. It is the cause of the financial crisis as US banks and financial institutions have to invent ever more exotic financial instruments to trade as assets on which the US can secure its debts, which it needs to take out to cover its trade and budget deficits. Though the UK spends only a fraction of what the US spends on defence as an outpost of the US economy it shares in its problems.
In other words it is precisely the US attempt to sustain its global leadership that is ultimately undermining it. Rather than acknowledge this truth his speech shows that even a politician like Obama who is touted as a sober minded realist remains in denial.
THE TRIAL OF MLADIC
It is a foregone conclusion that following his arrest Ratko Mladic the leader of the Bosnian Serb army will be sent to the Hague for what will be called a "trial".
It is important to emphasise that what will happen in the Hague will not be a trial in the normally understood meaning of the word. Mladic has already been judged guilty as even a cursory reading of the way in which his arrest is being reported shows The outcome of any "trial" whether at the Hague or elsewhere is therefore pre determined and a foregone conclusion. The purpose of any "trial" of Mladic is not to determine his guilt or innocence. It is to legitimise the western narrative of events in Yugoslavia in the 1990s by conferring on that narrative the appearance of independent judicial validation.
That this is so was shown by the way in which the "trial" of the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic was conducted. Faced with the difficulty of proving any of the charges against him the court process was repeatedly changed in such a way as to assist the prosecution case. This included allowing hearsay evidence and evidence from anonymous witnesses and imposing on Milosevic a lawyer not of his choice. Anyone wishing to learn about this should read the book Travesty by the writer John Laughland. In the end when despite the manipulation of the trial process it still proved impossible to make a convincing case against Milosevic he was allowed to die in prison through the denial of medical treatment.
It is important to emphasise that what will happen in the Hague will not be a trial in the normally understood meaning of the word. Mladic has already been judged guilty as even a cursory reading of the way in which his arrest is being reported shows The outcome of any "trial" whether at the Hague or elsewhere is therefore pre determined and a foregone conclusion. The purpose of any "trial" of Mladic is not to determine his guilt or innocence. It is to legitimise the western narrative of events in Yugoslavia in the 1990s by conferring on that narrative the appearance of independent judicial validation.
That this is so was shown by the way in which the "trial" of the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic was conducted. Faced with the difficulty of proving any of the charges against him the court process was repeatedly changed in such a way as to assist the prosecution case. This included allowing hearsay evidence and evidence from anonymous witnesses and imposing on Milosevic a lawyer not of his choice. Anyone wishing to learn about this should read the book Travesty by the writer John Laughland. In the end when despite the manipulation of the trial process it still proved impossible to make a convincing case against Milosevic he was allowed to die in prison through the denial of medical treatment.
Sunday 22 May 2011
RAPE AND KENNETH CLARKE
Further to my last point I feel I need to clarify a point that has just been made to me by someone who has read it.
If Kenneth Clarke had said that certain individual cases of rape are worse than others I doubt there would have much protest or comment. What Kenneth Clarke instead appeared to say was that there are different categories of rape each with a different definition (thus "date rape", "serious rape" etc). As I said in my previous post this is simply wrong.
I do not know whether Kenneth Clarke meant to say what he did. Probably he did not though the surprisingly long time it took him to apologise and withdraw his comments does make me wonder. The thought did cross my mind that he might be thinking of changing the law to redefine certain offences such as rape with a view to reducing sentences. If so it is just possible that he was floating a trial balloon though in that case he did it in an astonishingly inept way and I would say that where rape is concerned I for one would strongly oppose such a reform. Against that is the fact that Kenneth Clarke has something of a reputation for being a loose cannon and for talking freely without thinking through what he is saying. I remember that he once bragged that he had not bothered to read the text of a European treaty he was supporting even though such a comment was bound to antagonise even further the powerful anti European element in his party. Having said this he is a Queen's Cousnsel, a part time Judge and the Justice Minister and one would have thought that on the issue of rape he would know what he is talking about.
If Kenneth Clarke had said that certain individual cases of rape are worse than others I doubt there would have much protest or comment. What Kenneth Clarke instead appeared to say was that there are different categories of rape each with a different definition (thus "date rape", "serious rape" etc). As I said in my previous post this is simply wrong.
I do not know whether Kenneth Clarke meant to say what he did. Probably he did not though the surprisingly long time it took him to apologise and withdraw his comments does make me wonder. The thought did cross my mind that he might be thinking of changing the law to redefine certain offences such as rape with a view to reducing sentences. If so it is just possible that he was floating a trial balloon though in that case he did it in an astonishingly inept way and I would say that where rape is concerned I for one would strongly oppose such a reform. Against that is the fact that Kenneth Clarke has something of a reputation for being a loose cannon and for talking freely without thinking through what he is saying. I remember that he once bragged that he had not bothered to read the text of a European treaty he was supporting even though such a comment was bound to antagonise even further the powerful anti European element in his party. Having said this he is a Queen's Cousnsel, a part time Judge and the Justice Minister and one would have thought that on the issue of rape he would know what he is talking about.
"NON VIOLENT" RAPE
I have just read an article in the Independent by the columnist Joan Smith in which she seeks to dispel certain myths about rape.
I agree with nearly everything the article says but I was very surprised to see Joan Smith make what seemed to me a distinction between rape that involves "violence" and rape that supposedly does not. A moment's reflection should suffice to show that such a distinction does not exist. Rape (any rape including so called "date rape") is an act of violence mostly by men against women. It is not and cannot be anything else. There may be and frequently is additional violence that renders the rape more violent but that does not mean that rape without this additional violence is not already violent.
This by the way is the same fallacy that is behind Kenneth Clarke's foolish remarks and which explains the false distinction he sought to make between supposedly different types of rape. In Clarke's case there is no excuse since as a top QC and Justice Minister who has tried rape cases as a Judge one would expect him to understand the position.
Incidentally whilst on the subject of rape I must take strong issue with the suggestion that Kenneth Clarke and some columnists have made that so called "date rape" is somehow less traumatic by its nature than rape by a stranger. Any rape is traumatic and to suggest that rape is less traumatic simply because the victim knows her rapist and/or has some sort of relationship with him is wrong. On the contrary such rape in so far as it involves a gross breach of trust may be and often is more traumatic and more psychologically damaging than rape by a stranger.
I agree with nearly everything the article says but I was very surprised to see Joan Smith make what seemed to me a distinction between rape that involves "violence" and rape that supposedly does not. A moment's reflection should suffice to show that such a distinction does not exist. Rape (any rape including so called "date rape") is an act of violence mostly by men against women. It is not and cannot be anything else. There may be and frequently is additional violence that renders the rape more violent but that does not mean that rape without this additional violence is not already violent.
This by the way is the same fallacy that is behind Kenneth Clarke's foolish remarks and which explains the false distinction he sought to make between supposedly different types of rape. In Clarke's case there is no excuse since as a top QC and Justice Minister who has tried rape cases as a Judge one would expect him to understand the position.
Incidentally whilst on the subject of rape I must take strong issue with the suggestion that Kenneth Clarke and some columnists have made that so called "date rape" is somehow less traumatic by its nature than rape by a stranger. Any rape is traumatic and to suggest that rape is less traumatic simply because the victim knows her rapist and/or has some sort of relationship with him is wrong. On the contrary such rape in so far as it involves a gross breach of trust may be and often is more traumatic and more psychologically damaging than rape by a stranger.
Thursday 19 May 2011
OSAMA BIN LADEN AND PAKISTAN
Now that the dust from Osama Bin Laden's death has settled it is time to weigh the implications. The manner of his death provokes many serious thoughts.
Firstly, a point that many are making, the discovery that he was living in a large walled villa complex a short distance away from Pakistan's premier military academy in the middle of a military cantonment in a town that has been called the Pakistani Aldershot can only mean that he was being protected by the Pakistani army or at any rate by elements within it. To my mind the point is so obvious as to hardly require explanation. Suffice to say that even if descriptions of Osama's residence as some sort of fortress are exaggerations the presence in a garrison city close to some of the country's most important military facilities of a large secure compound complete with closed circuit television cameras, high walls, armed guards and barbed wire could not have gone unnoticed especially in a country like Pakistan, which is facing a serious domestic insurgency and which has a major terrorist problem. If Osama had been discovered holed up in such a complex located close to key military facilities in Tehran or Tripoli or Damascus would anybody be in any doubt? In other words the country that is America's key ally in the so called "war on terror" has turned out to be the chief terrorist's protector.
The second point is that this discovery must call into question the extent to which Osama was ever an independent agent. Given that the Pakistanis were protecting him the question must be whether they were also controlling him. Osama had a $25 million price on his head and was the subject of an international man hand orchestrated by the world's most powerful country. He would have been totally at the mercy of his Pakistani protectors. Would he have been in a position to take any step that they opposed or disagreed with? I cannot see how. Given the mystery of his whereabouts the Pakistanis would have been in a position to silence him by killing him or imprisoning him or by cutting off his communications with the outside world whenever they wanted. As we know senior Pakistani officials including at various times the former President Pervaiz Musharraf often made claims or publicly speculated that Osama was dead. Could these have been intended as warnings and reminders to Osama of the extent to which the Pakistanis had him at their mercy?
The US authorities have disclosed that the compound had no telephone links which strongly suggests that Osama depended on his Pakistani protectors to communicate with his followers and with the outside world. As I said in a previous post it is impossible that he could have controlled or exercised any influence over or maintained any sort of in depth contact with the rest of the jihadi movement if he was relying exclusively on couriers. Presumably for important messages and for distribution of his videos he depended on the Pakistanis and those visitors the Pakistanis allowed him to meet. Given that this was so the Pakistanis would have been in a position to control Osama by blocking the flow of information to and from him at any time they wanted without even having to resort to force. As it happens we know that there were long and unexplained gaps in Osama's communications and video broadcasts. Could this have been because the Pakistanis for their own reasons imposed periods of silence on him?
During the 1970s and 1980s several Arab regimes including those in Syria, Iraq and Libya acted as hosts to various Arab terrorist groups. Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq for example hosted the Abu Nidal terrorist organisation. No one doubted then that the actions of those organisations were largely controlled and directed by their host states. Why suppose that the situation with Osama was any different?
If it is conceded that the Pakistanis were indeed protecting and to a great extent controlling Osama the next obvious question is when did they start to do so? It seems that the compound in which he was found was built in 2005. It seems moreover that the compound was purpose built the Americans say to "house a prominent Al Qaeda leader" who it now turns out was none other than Osama himself. If one allows for six months to a year to buy the land and build and fit out the compound, which seems reasonable given its size, this would mean that there was a plan formulated by someone to house Osama in a purpose built compound in Abbotabad in 2004 that is within less than three years after his flight from Afghanistan. Accordiing to the BBC a senior Pakistani source has confirmed that Obama was living in the compound for over five years, in other words from when it was built. Moreover another Pakistani source has told the BBC, citing evidence supposedly given by one of Osama's wives, that Osama had been living in a suburb of Abbotabad for some time even before the compound was built. This suggests that Osama was living in Abbotabad almost continuously from the time of his flight from Tora Bora in Afghanistan in 2001 until his death.
This in turn can only mean that the theory that Osama was being concealed and protected by the Pushtu tribes on the north west frontier was simply wrong and that the various claims and "evidence" locating him there were part of a deception operation intended to misinform the Americans and to direct their attention away from him. One of the saddest aspects of this affair is the degree to which certain journalists including one writing for the Guardian and another writing for the BBC who had fallen for this deception (one has even written a book on the subject) continue to cling to this theory even after it has been discredited. Instead of admitting that the theory was wrong and that their informers deceived them these journalists instead come up with elaborate and over complicated explanations of why the theory was right and why the facts of Osama's death do not contradict it. Such an elaborate and effective deception operation cannot be carried out without the active collusion of the authorities of the country in which it is being carried out and is further proof if any were needed that the Pakistanis have been protecting Osama from the time he arrived in their country at the end of 2001 or at the beginning of 2002.
In other words the Pakistanis or at any rate elements within their army and intelligence agencies have been protecting Osama since almost the inception of the hunt for him. Not only does this seem to me to be the only possible explanation of the known facts but it also explains how he was able to evade capture for so long despite his distinctive appearance and the scale of the manhunt that was looking for him. He was able to avoid detection because the powerful country in which he was living actively helped to conceal him.
All this it seems to me can be fairly deduced from the known facts. I would actually go a step further and suggest that the facts point to the Pakistanis having been in touch with Osama even before the fall of the Taliban and of having arranged his escape from Afghanistan when the Taliban regime fell. As is well known Osama became involved in the jihadi war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s during which time he seems to have taken no personal part in the fighting but acted instead as a channel for the financial and logistical support and the volunteers reaching the jihadis from Saudi Arabia. Much has been made of his possible contacts with the CIA during this period but in the light of what we now know more pertinent would appear to have been the far more extensive contacts he would have had at this time with the Pakistani authorities on whose territory he was of course operating. Subsequently when in the mid 1990s he made his home in Afghanistan he did so with the consent of the Taliban regime, which was closely allied with Pakistan at the time. Given that this is so and given the known links between the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence service during this period it seems logical that Osama would have renewed his contacts with the Pakistanis and in the light of what we now know this seems to have been what happened. When in December 2001 the Taliban regime collapsed Osama presumably made use of his contacts with the Pakistanis to arrange his escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan.
I understand that the former head of the Afghan intelligence service is now saying publicly that his agents had traced Osama to the region of Abbotabad as long ago as 2007 and that when the Afghan President Hamid Karzai sought to pass this information on to the then Pakistani President Pervaiz Musharraf this precipitated a furious row between the two men. I understand that the former head of Afghan intelligence also claims that the titular leader of Afghan Taliban Mullah Omar is living in a safe house provided to him by the Pakistanis in the Pakistani city of Karachi. A few weeks ago I would have discounted this information as scaremongering but in the light of what we now know these claims should be taken seriously.
All this begs the fundamental and much larger question of why would the Pakistanis go to so much trouble and accept so great a risk to protect such a notorious and dangerous criminal when to do so would put Pakistan in potential conflict with the United States. In saying this I should make it clear that I utterly reject the outrageous claims that have appeared on the internet to the effect that the Americans too were in on the secret of Osama's whereabouts. It is to my mind simply inconceivable that any American politician or official would risk his or her career and reputation as well as the threat of a prison sentence by colluding in a conspiracy to conceal Osama.
In a series of articles he has written on the internet the left wing commentator and activist Tariq Ali, who comes from a prominent Pakistani family with the links to the Pakistani elite, has called attention to his previous publication of a conversation he had with a Pakistani intelligence official in 2006. Over the course of this conversation the official not only all but admitted that Osama was present in Pakistan and that his whereabouts were known to the Pakistani authorities but explained the Pakistani decision to protect Osama and to conceal him from the Americans as looking after "the goose that lays the golden eggs". Tariq Ali has suggested that by this comment the official was referring to the economic and military aid that Pakistan was receiving from the United States as a reward for its participation in the so called "war on terror". The implication presumably is that Pakistan has an interest in prolonging the "war on terror" since that way it receives more of this aid from the United States and that Pakistan kept Osama concealed from the United States for this reason.
I think this explanation is unduly cynical and simplistic. Concealing Osama from the Americans was an act that jeopardised Pakistan's relationship with the United States. If Pakistan's objective in its dealings with the United States is to get as much aid from the United States as possible then concealing Osama from the Americans seems just about the worst way to go about it. As it is the discovery that Osama was at all times holed up in his compound in Abbotabad has put relations between the United States and Pakistan under extreme strain and led to calls in the United States for aid to Pakistan to be cut off.
Nor do I think likely the suggestion I have read elsewhere that the Pakistanis were holding on to Osama as some sort of bargaining chip they could trade with the Americans at a future negotiation. What would the Pakistanis hope to receive in return for him? More to the point I cannot think of anything more calculated to inflame relations between Pakistan and the United States than for Pakistan to admit to the United States that it was holding Osama whilst refusing to hand him over.
It seems to me that the only explanation for the protection extended by Pakistan to Osama was that he represented a vital link between Pakistan and the international jihadi movement. That Pakistan has been involved in sponsoring the international jihadi movement and in seeking to direct it against its enemies, be they Russia, Afghanistan or India, has long been known. That the Pakistanis were prepared to afford protection to a person such as Osama shows the extent to which they are committed to this strategy. Apparently it is so important to them that they are determined to persist with it even if by doing so they jeopardise their relationship with the United States, the most powerful state in the world. It is of only limited comfort to me that I suspect that one of the reasons why Osama was moved to Abbotabad and so close to the centre of Pakistani military power was presumably so that the Pakistanis could control him better and could prevent any repetition of his involvement in events like 9/11. One suspects that the Pakistanis were horrified by 9/11 and were determined that Osama would never become involved in anything like that again. By isolating him in Abbotabad far from the rest of the jihadi movement they were able to ensure this.
Notwithstanding my last comment, all this has very disturbing implications. At the minimum it means that the stream of propaganda videos that has issued from Osama's compound in Abbotabad has done so with the knowledge and probable assistance of the Pakistani authorities. One wonders whether and if so to what extent the Pakistanis dictated some of the things Osama said in them. More to the point it means that the west's most important ally in "the war on terror" is the main sponsor and protector of the jihadi terrorist movement the west is fighting. This is an ally with nuclear weapons that is willing to sponsor terrorists in pursuit of its regional ambitions even at the risk of its international reputation, its long term relationship with the United States and its own internal stability. Is Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world?
Firstly, a point that many are making, the discovery that he was living in a large walled villa complex a short distance away from Pakistan's premier military academy in the middle of a military cantonment in a town that has been called the Pakistani Aldershot can only mean that he was being protected by the Pakistani army or at any rate by elements within it. To my mind the point is so obvious as to hardly require explanation. Suffice to say that even if descriptions of Osama's residence as some sort of fortress are exaggerations the presence in a garrison city close to some of the country's most important military facilities of a large secure compound complete with closed circuit television cameras, high walls, armed guards and barbed wire could not have gone unnoticed especially in a country like Pakistan, which is facing a serious domestic insurgency and which has a major terrorist problem. If Osama had been discovered holed up in such a complex located close to key military facilities in Tehran or Tripoli or Damascus would anybody be in any doubt? In other words the country that is America's key ally in the so called "war on terror" has turned out to be the chief terrorist's protector.
The second point is that this discovery must call into question the extent to which Osama was ever an independent agent. Given that the Pakistanis were protecting him the question must be whether they were also controlling him. Osama had a $25 million price on his head and was the subject of an international man hand orchestrated by the world's most powerful country. He would have been totally at the mercy of his Pakistani protectors. Would he have been in a position to take any step that they opposed or disagreed with? I cannot see how. Given the mystery of his whereabouts the Pakistanis would have been in a position to silence him by killing him or imprisoning him or by cutting off his communications with the outside world whenever they wanted. As we know senior Pakistani officials including at various times the former President Pervaiz Musharraf often made claims or publicly speculated that Osama was dead. Could these have been intended as warnings and reminders to Osama of the extent to which the Pakistanis had him at their mercy?
The US authorities have disclosed that the compound had no telephone links which strongly suggests that Osama depended on his Pakistani protectors to communicate with his followers and with the outside world. As I said in a previous post it is impossible that he could have controlled or exercised any influence over or maintained any sort of in depth contact with the rest of the jihadi movement if he was relying exclusively on couriers. Presumably for important messages and for distribution of his videos he depended on the Pakistanis and those visitors the Pakistanis allowed him to meet. Given that this was so the Pakistanis would have been in a position to control Osama by blocking the flow of information to and from him at any time they wanted without even having to resort to force. As it happens we know that there were long and unexplained gaps in Osama's communications and video broadcasts. Could this have been because the Pakistanis for their own reasons imposed periods of silence on him?
During the 1970s and 1980s several Arab regimes including those in Syria, Iraq and Libya acted as hosts to various Arab terrorist groups. Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq for example hosted the Abu Nidal terrorist organisation. No one doubted then that the actions of those organisations were largely controlled and directed by their host states. Why suppose that the situation with Osama was any different?
If it is conceded that the Pakistanis were indeed protecting and to a great extent controlling Osama the next obvious question is when did they start to do so? It seems that the compound in which he was found was built in 2005. It seems moreover that the compound was purpose built the Americans say to "house a prominent Al Qaeda leader" who it now turns out was none other than Osama himself. If one allows for six months to a year to buy the land and build and fit out the compound, which seems reasonable given its size, this would mean that there was a plan formulated by someone to house Osama in a purpose built compound in Abbotabad in 2004 that is within less than three years after his flight from Afghanistan. Accordiing to the BBC a senior Pakistani source has confirmed that Obama was living in the compound for over five years, in other words from when it was built. Moreover another Pakistani source has told the BBC, citing evidence supposedly given by one of Osama's wives, that Osama had been living in a suburb of Abbotabad for some time even before the compound was built. This suggests that Osama was living in Abbotabad almost continuously from the time of his flight from Tora Bora in Afghanistan in 2001 until his death.
This in turn can only mean that the theory that Osama was being concealed and protected by the Pushtu tribes on the north west frontier was simply wrong and that the various claims and "evidence" locating him there were part of a deception operation intended to misinform the Americans and to direct their attention away from him. One of the saddest aspects of this affair is the degree to which certain journalists including one writing for the Guardian and another writing for the BBC who had fallen for this deception (one has even written a book on the subject) continue to cling to this theory even after it has been discredited. Instead of admitting that the theory was wrong and that their informers deceived them these journalists instead come up with elaborate and over complicated explanations of why the theory was right and why the facts of Osama's death do not contradict it. Such an elaborate and effective deception operation cannot be carried out without the active collusion of the authorities of the country in which it is being carried out and is further proof if any were needed that the Pakistanis have been protecting Osama from the time he arrived in their country at the end of 2001 or at the beginning of 2002.
In other words the Pakistanis or at any rate elements within their army and intelligence agencies have been protecting Osama since almost the inception of the hunt for him. Not only does this seem to me to be the only possible explanation of the known facts but it also explains how he was able to evade capture for so long despite his distinctive appearance and the scale of the manhunt that was looking for him. He was able to avoid detection because the powerful country in which he was living actively helped to conceal him.
All this it seems to me can be fairly deduced from the known facts. I would actually go a step further and suggest that the facts point to the Pakistanis having been in touch with Osama even before the fall of the Taliban and of having arranged his escape from Afghanistan when the Taliban regime fell. As is well known Osama became involved in the jihadi war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s during which time he seems to have taken no personal part in the fighting but acted instead as a channel for the financial and logistical support and the volunteers reaching the jihadis from Saudi Arabia. Much has been made of his possible contacts with the CIA during this period but in the light of what we now know more pertinent would appear to have been the far more extensive contacts he would have had at this time with the Pakistani authorities on whose territory he was of course operating. Subsequently when in the mid 1990s he made his home in Afghanistan he did so with the consent of the Taliban regime, which was closely allied with Pakistan at the time. Given that this is so and given the known links between the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence service during this period it seems logical that Osama would have renewed his contacts with the Pakistanis and in the light of what we now know this seems to have been what happened. When in December 2001 the Taliban regime collapsed Osama presumably made use of his contacts with the Pakistanis to arrange his escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan.
I understand that the former head of the Afghan intelligence service is now saying publicly that his agents had traced Osama to the region of Abbotabad as long ago as 2007 and that when the Afghan President Hamid Karzai sought to pass this information on to the then Pakistani President Pervaiz Musharraf this precipitated a furious row between the two men. I understand that the former head of Afghan intelligence also claims that the titular leader of Afghan Taliban Mullah Omar is living in a safe house provided to him by the Pakistanis in the Pakistani city of Karachi. A few weeks ago I would have discounted this information as scaremongering but in the light of what we now know these claims should be taken seriously.
All this begs the fundamental and much larger question of why would the Pakistanis go to so much trouble and accept so great a risk to protect such a notorious and dangerous criminal when to do so would put Pakistan in potential conflict with the United States. In saying this I should make it clear that I utterly reject the outrageous claims that have appeared on the internet to the effect that the Americans too were in on the secret of Osama's whereabouts. It is to my mind simply inconceivable that any American politician or official would risk his or her career and reputation as well as the threat of a prison sentence by colluding in a conspiracy to conceal Osama.
In a series of articles he has written on the internet the left wing commentator and activist Tariq Ali, who comes from a prominent Pakistani family with the links to the Pakistani elite, has called attention to his previous publication of a conversation he had with a Pakistani intelligence official in 2006. Over the course of this conversation the official not only all but admitted that Osama was present in Pakistan and that his whereabouts were known to the Pakistani authorities but explained the Pakistani decision to protect Osama and to conceal him from the Americans as looking after "the goose that lays the golden eggs". Tariq Ali has suggested that by this comment the official was referring to the economic and military aid that Pakistan was receiving from the United States as a reward for its participation in the so called "war on terror". The implication presumably is that Pakistan has an interest in prolonging the "war on terror" since that way it receives more of this aid from the United States and that Pakistan kept Osama concealed from the United States for this reason.
I think this explanation is unduly cynical and simplistic. Concealing Osama from the Americans was an act that jeopardised Pakistan's relationship with the United States. If Pakistan's objective in its dealings with the United States is to get as much aid from the United States as possible then concealing Osama from the Americans seems just about the worst way to go about it. As it is the discovery that Osama was at all times holed up in his compound in Abbotabad has put relations between the United States and Pakistan under extreme strain and led to calls in the United States for aid to Pakistan to be cut off.
Nor do I think likely the suggestion I have read elsewhere that the Pakistanis were holding on to Osama as some sort of bargaining chip they could trade with the Americans at a future negotiation. What would the Pakistanis hope to receive in return for him? More to the point I cannot think of anything more calculated to inflame relations between Pakistan and the United States than for Pakistan to admit to the United States that it was holding Osama whilst refusing to hand him over.
It seems to me that the only explanation for the protection extended by Pakistan to Osama was that he represented a vital link between Pakistan and the international jihadi movement. That Pakistan has been involved in sponsoring the international jihadi movement and in seeking to direct it against its enemies, be they Russia, Afghanistan or India, has long been known. That the Pakistanis were prepared to afford protection to a person such as Osama shows the extent to which they are committed to this strategy. Apparently it is so important to them that they are determined to persist with it even if by doing so they jeopardise their relationship with the United States, the most powerful state in the world. It is of only limited comfort to me that I suspect that one of the reasons why Osama was moved to Abbotabad and so close to the centre of Pakistani military power was presumably so that the Pakistanis could control him better and could prevent any repetition of his involvement in events like 9/11. One suspects that the Pakistanis were horrified by 9/11 and were determined that Osama would never become involved in anything like that again. By isolating him in Abbotabad far from the rest of the jihadi movement they were able to ensure this.
Notwithstanding my last comment, all this has very disturbing implications. At the minimum it means that the stream of propaganda videos that has issued from Osama's compound in Abbotabad has done so with the knowledge and probable assistance of the Pakistani authorities. One wonders whether and if so to what extent the Pakistanis dictated some of the things Osama said in them. More to the point it means that the west's most important ally in "the war on terror" is the main sponsor and protector of the jihadi terrorist movement the west is fighting. This is an ally with nuclear weapons that is willing to sponsor terrorists in pursuit of its regional ambitions even at the risk of its international reputation, its long term relationship with the United States and its own internal stability. Is Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world?
STRAUSS-KAHN AND THE IMF
I have no intention of discussing the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn though I do have very definite views about it. However I do want to take strong issue with the suggestion that he was some sort of "reformer" who was trying to change the IMF for the better.
All of the "reforms" that Strauss-Kahn is associated with are purely cosmetic. They have had no discernible effect on the way the IMF operates in the countries in which it becomes involved. Their only purpose was to enhance Strauss-Kahn's image with left of centre voters in France who he needed to win over in order to secure the Socialist Party's nomination in the forthcoming elections for the French Presidency. That these "reforms" were not intended to be taken seriously is shown by the fact that Strauss-Kahn was intending to leave the IMF to run for the French Presidency before any of his "reforms" were implemented or in place.
Nor is there the slightest possibility that this situation is going to change. The west European governments have already made it clear that Strauss-Kahn's replacement will not come from the developing world or from the BRICS states or those aligned with them but will be another west European who can be relied on to enforce the existing orthodoxy. Notwithstanding the drift in economic power away from Europe and North America western countries still dominate the international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and their say on Strauss-Kahn's successor will be decisive.
All of the "reforms" that Strauss-Kahn is associated with are purely cosmetic. They have had no discernible effect on the way the IMF operates in the countries in which it becomes involved. Their only purpose was to enhance Strauss-Kahn's image with left of centre voters in France who he needed to win over in order to secure the Socialist Party's nomination in the forthcoming elections for the French Presidency. That these "reforms" were not intended to be taken seriously is shown by the fact that Strauss-Kahn was intending to leave the IMF to run for the French Presidency before any of his "reforms" were implemented or in place.
Nor is there the slightest possibility that this situation is going to change. The west European governments have already made it clear that Strauss-Kahn's replacement will not come from the developing world or from the BRICS states or those aligned with them but will be another west European who can be relied on to enforce the existing orthodoxy. Notwithstanding the drift in economic power away from Europe and North America western countries still dominate the international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and their say on Strauss-Kahn's successor will be decisive.
MEDDLING IN RUSSIAN COURT CASES
Yesterday I wrote a post on the subject of an article by John Kampfner in the Independent about a libel action brought in Russia against a Russian rock music critic Artemy Troitsky. I notice that the story has now been taken up by the Guardian, where it appears on the front page of its website. Like John Kampfner the Guardian invests this legal spat between two pop music celebrities with a portentous importance that it scarcely merits. It reports it, absurdly, as happening within the context of some great existential struggle in Russia between "power" and "freedom".
In yesterday's post I pointed out that this over the top and even ridiculous reporting contrasts strangely with the almost complete silence in the British press about the altogether more threatening and sinister case that has been brought in Poland against a pop singer Doda who has supposedly breached Poland's draconian blasphemy law. Putting this point aside it is important to say that this sort of reporting is not without consequences. Not only does it serve, in this case quite groundlessly, to reinforce a negative western stereotype of Russia but it also has an entirely malign effect on political and cultural life in Russia itself not least in the way the Russian judicial system goes about its business.
The Judge who will have to try to the case against Troitsky now knows that he or she will not have to decide a simple libel action but rather an international cause celebre that has been invested with a political importance it simply does not have. The implicit threat is that if this Judge fails to deliver the "right" verdict he or she will be branded internationally by the western press a Kremlin stooge. This is exactly what has happened to the unfortunate Judge who had the bad luck to preside over the Khodorkovsky case. Even though the International Bar Association has said that his conduct of that case was fair he has been subjected to an extraordinary international campaign of vilification and abuse. The Guardian reporter even went so far as to ridicule his way of speaking during his delivery of the verdict. He is now being accused without any proof of having had his verdict written for him and Khodorkovsky's lawyers, capitalising on this, are now demanding that he should even be prosecuted.
The effect of this sort of pressure on any Judge is not difficult to imagine. I know of no other country whose Judges are bullied in this way. It does seem to me bizarre to say the least that those people in the west who are loudest in criticising Russia for not observing the rule of law should go out of their way to make its operation there more difficult.
In yesterday's post I pointed out that this over the top and even ridiculous reporting contrasts strangely with the almost complete silence in the British press about the altogether more threatening and sinister case that has been brought in Poland against a pop singer Doda who has supposedly breached Poland's draconian blasphemy law. Putting this point aside it is important to say that this sort of reporting is not without consequences. Not only does it serve, in this case quite groundlessly, to reinforce a negative western stereotype of Russia but it also has an entirely malign effect on political and cultural life in Russia itself not least in the way the Russian judicial system goes about its business.
The Judge who will have to try to the case against Troitsky now knows that he or she will not have to decide a simple libel action but rather an international cause celebre that has been invested with a political importance it simply does not have. The implicit threat is that if this Judge fails to deliver the "right" verdict he or she will be branded internationally by the western press a Kremlin stooge. This is exactly what has happened to the unfortunate Judge who had the bad luck to preside over the Khodorkovsky case. Even though the International Bar Association has said that his conduct of that case was fair he has been subjected to an extraordinary international campaign of vilification and abuse. The Guardian reporter even went so far as to ridicule his way of speaking during his delivery of the verdict. He is now being accused without any proof of having had his verdict written for him and Khodorkovsky's lawyers, capitalising on this, are now demanding that he should even be prosecuted.
The effect of this sort of pressure on any Judge is not difficult to imagine. I know of no other country whose Judges are bullied in this way. It does seem to me bizarre to say the least that those people in the west who are loudest in criticising Russia for not observing the rule of law should go out of their way to make its operation there more difficult.
OSAMA BIN LADEN AND 9/11
The same friend who questioned my supposed approval of Osama's murder has asked me why I think that a trial of Osama would have produced little that is actually new.
Any trial of Osama would inevitably have as its main focus his role in the 9/11 attacks. In a video tape Osama issued in 2004 he publicly assumed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Other than this admission hard evidence of his actual involvement in the 9/11 attacks is thin. The Americans have released a video they captured in Afghanistan which purports to show Osama talking about the 9/11 attacks as if he had foreknowledge of them. However the value of this video as evidence has been challenged with doubts expressed about the accuracy of the English translation the Americans have provided of Osama's comments, which were of course originally made in Arabic. The man who claims to have been the main planner and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has been in US custody since 2004 and who is currently in Guantanamo, has cast doubt on the extent of Osama's involvement and has vigorously disputed claims that he was in any sense Osama's subordinate. Indeed there appears to have been some personal friction and even animosity between the two men.
Lost in most discussions of Osama and of the 9/11 attacks is the fact that in the world of the jihadi movement in which Osama operated he would have had a strong interest in playing up his role in the 9/11 attacks in order to boost his importance and prestige. There is in fact evidence that Osama's titular leadership of the jihadi movement was a consequence of the prestige he gained as a result of the 9/11 attacks and that he did not enjoy such a position before them. The same appears to be true of Al Qaeda. Prior to 9/11 Al Qaeda appears to have been just one of a myriad groups that together make up the international jihadi movement. It is not clear for example that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was even a member. After 9/11 Al Qaeda became by far the most famous jihadi group so that jihadis from across the Muslim world wanted to become associated with it.
The trouble is that the same imperative that drove Osama to claim responsibility for 9/11 in his video in 2004 would have been at work at his trial. Having assumed responsibility for 9/11 it is impossible to see how Osama could have backtracked from this at his trial without forfeiting his leadership of the jihadi movement, which everything about him suggests he would have been desperate to avoid having to do. The overwhelming probability is that his trial would have been as unsatisfactory as was that of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed with Osama continuing to claim responsibility for the 9/11 attacks without providing or being able to provide many details.
Having made these comments perhaps I ought to say that such evidence as exists does suggests to me that though Osama's role in arranging the 9/11 attacks may not have been as great as most believe he nonetheless did have some knowledge of the attacks before they happened and may through his organisation have facilitated them in some ways. The jihadi world is small and these people all know each other and it is difficult to believe that they would have been able or would have wanted to keep a project like 9/11 secret from each other. Prior to 9/11 Osama's key role in the jihadi movement was to provide funding, volunteers and technical support, which as a member of the Saudi elite able to tap onto the resources of the Arab Peninsular he was ideally placed to do. All the 9/11 hijackers apart from one were Saudis and it is not unreasonable to believe that they were recruited into the mission in whole or in part through his organisation. There is no evidence however that he was involved in any of the detailed planning and from what is known about him and from what Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has said this seems unlikely.
Nor do I think that Osama would have been much more informative about jihadi actions post 9/11. It seems that he was living in Abbotabad or its outskirts from shortly after his escape from Afghanistan in the winter of 2001. Isolated from the rest of the jhadi movement and without access to a mobile phone or a landline telephone (not to mention email and fax) it is difficult to see how he could have exerted much control over the broader activities of the farflung jihadi movement by relying only on couriers. Apart from giving general guidance, cooking up one or two plans such as the hare brained scheme to attack America's railway network and producing videos to exhort his followers it is difficult to see what more active role he could have played. Over time he would surely also have lost touch with most of what was going on. I for one cannot see how he could have kept himself informed in any detail about the actions of jihadis in such places as the Caucasus, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Kashmir and Afghanistan if he was reduced to a level of communications with the outside world that the rest of humanity left behind with the invention of the telegraph in the nineteenth century.
Any trial of Osama would inevitably have as its main focus his role in the 9/11 attacks. In a video tape Osama issued in 2004 he publicly assumed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Other than this admission hard evidence of his actual involvement in the 9/11 attacks is thin. The Americans have released a video they captured in Afghanistan which purports to show Osama talking about the 9/11 attacks as if he had foreknowledge of them. However the value of this video as evidence has been challenged with doubts expressed about the accuracy of the English translation the Americans have provided of Osama's comments, which were of course originally made in Arabic. The man who claims to have been the main planner and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has been in US custody since 2004 and who is currently in Guantanamo, has cast doubt on the extent of Osama's involvement and has vigorously disputed claims that he was in any sense Osama's subordinate. Indeed there appears to have been some personal friction and even animosity between the two men.
Lost in most discussions of Osama and of the 9/11 attacks is the fact that in the world of the jihadi movement in which Osama operated he would have had a strong interest in playing up his role in the 9/11 attacks in order to boost his importance and prestige. There is in fact evidence that Osama's titular leadership of the jihadi movement was a consequence of the prestige he gained as a result of the 9/11 attacks and that he did not enjoy such a position before them. The same appears to be true of Al Qaeda. Prior to 9/11 Al Qaeda appears to have been just one of a myriad groups that together make up the international jihadi movement. It is not clear for example that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was even a member. After 9/11 Al Qaeda became by far the most famous jihadi group so that jihadis from across the Muslim world wanted to become associated with it.
The trouble is that the same imperative that drove Osama to claim responsibility for 9/11 in his video in 2004 would have been at work at his trial. Having assumed responsibility for 9/11 it is impossible to see how Osama could have backtracked from this at his trial without forfeiting his leadership of the jihadi movement, which everything about him suggests he would have been desperate to avoid having to do. The overwhelming probability is that his trial would have been as unsatisfactory as was that of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed with Osama continuing to claim responsibility for the 9/11 attacks without providing or being able to provide many details.
Having made these comments perhaps I ought to say that such evidence as exists does suggests to me that though Osama's role in arranging the 9/11 attacks may not have been as great as most believe he nonetheless did have some knowledge of the attacks before they happened and may through his organisation have facilitated them in some ways. The jihadi world is small and these people all know each other and it is difficult to believe that they would have been able or would have wanted to keep a project like 9/11 secret from each other. Prior to 9/11 Osama's key role in the jihadi movement was to provide funding, volunteers and technical support, which as a member of the Saudi elite able to tap onto the resources of the Arab Peninsular he was ideally placed to do. All the 9/11 hijackers apart from one were Saudis and it is not unreasonable to believe that they were recruited into the mission in whole or in part through his organisation. There is no evidence however that he was involved in any of the detailed planning and from what is known about him and from what Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has said this seems unlikely.
Nor do I think that Osama would have been much more informative about jihadi actions post 9/11. It seems that he was living in Abbotabad or its outskirts from shortly after his escape from Afghanistan in the winter of 2001. Isolated from the rest of the jhadi movement and without access to a mobile phone or a landline telephone (not to mention email and fax) it is difficult to see how he could have exerted much control over the broader activities of the farflung jihadi movement by relying only on couriers. Apart from giving general guidance, cooking up one or two plans such as the hare brained scheme to attack America's railway network and producing videos to exhort his followers it is difficult to see what more active role he could have played. Over time he would surely also have lost touch with most of what was going on. I for one cannot see how he could have kept himself informed in any detail about the actions of jihadis in such places as the Caucasus, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Kashmir and Afghanistan if he was reduced to a level of communications with the outside world that the rest of humanity left behind with the invention of the telegraph in the nineteenth century.
KILLING OSAMA AND GADDAFI
A friend of mine reading my previous blogs asks why I seem to approve the murder of Osama whilst disapproving the murder (or attempted murder) of Gaddafi.
I do not approve of Osama's murder. What I said was that his murder was understandable and excusable. That does not by the way mean I excuse it. Nonetheless there is a difference between the two cases. Osama assumed responsibility for the biggest foreign sponsored attack on the territory of the United States since Pearl Harbour. During that attack 3,000 people were killed. He had previously sponsored other attacks on American targets and right up to the day of his death he continued to call for more attacks. He went out of his way to declare himself an enemy of the United States and he did so notwithstanding the fact that prior to his commencement of his terrorist career the United States had had no quarrel with him. Moreover he was the titular leader of a movement, which still exists and which as I said in my previous post might be expected in the event of his capture to do everything in its power (including the taking of hostages) to secure his release.
Gaddafi by contrast at the time of the attack on him was the leader of a country that was at peace with the western powers. Not only had he put his past sponsorship of anti western terrorist movements far behind him but he had opened up his country's economy to western investment, given up on his nuclear weapon ambitions and realigned his foreign policy with that of the west.
In other words whilst Osama whilst he remained alive represented a "clear and present danger" to the United States, Gaddafi did not. Whilst the murder of Osama can therefore be excused as an act of raison d'etat the murder of Gaddafi cannot. Whilst the action the United States took against Osama can be explained as an act of retaliation the action NATO is taking against Gaddafi is straightforward aggression. The attempts to murder Gaddafi are in fact naked gangsterism with NATO supplying the hit squad.
I do not approve of Osama's murder. What I said was that his murder was understandable and excusable. That does not by the way mean I excuse it. Nonetheless there is a difference between the two cases. Osama assumed responsibility for the biggest foreign sponsored attack on the territory of the United States since Pearl Harbour. During that attack 3,000 people were killed. He had previously sponsored other attacks on American targets and right up to the day of his death he continued to call for more attacks. He went out of his way to declare himself an enemy of the United States and he did so notwithstanding the fact that prior to his commencement of his terrorist career the United States had had no quarrel with him. Moreover he was the titular leader of a movement, which still exists and which as I said in my previous post might be expected in the event of his capture to do everything in its power (including the taking of hostages) to secure his release.
Gaddafi by contrast at the time of the attack on him was the leader of a country that was at peace with the western powers. Not only had he put his past sponsorship of anti western terrorist movements far behind him but he had opened up his country's economy to western investment, given up on his nuclear weapon ambitions and realigned his foreign policy with that of the west.
In other words whilst Osama whilst he remained alive represented a "clear and present danger" to the United States, Gaddafi did not. Whilst the murder of Osama can therefore be excused as an act of raison d'etat the murder of Gaddafi cannot. Whilst the action the United States took against Osama can be explained as an act of retaliation the action NATO is taking against Gaddafi is straightforward aggression. The attempts to murder Gaddafi are in fact naked gangsterism with NATO supplying the hit squad.
Wednesday 18 May 2011
HUMAN RIGHTS IN POLAND AND RUSSIA
In one of my earlier posts I discussed my disappointment with a lecture about Russia given by Martin Sixsmith, which was intended to launch his latest book about Russia and to advertise an accompanying radio series. I expressed the view that the lecture with its theme that "autocracy" is in some way Russia's default position amounted to no more than a recitation of cliches, which I happen to think are also profoundly and completely wrong. I also said in two previous posts that there is actually good reason to be optimistic about the situation in Russia.
What has made me revisit this subject is an article I read today in the Independent by John Kampfner who was previously the editor of the New Statesman and who is now the Director of Index on Censorship. In this article John Kampfner discusses at incredible length a court case a Russian pop singer has brought against a well known Russian rock music critic Artemy Troitsky. In a way that has become all too typical of western commentary about Russia Kampfner links this case to certain disparaging comments Troitsky made three years ago about Russia's winning entry at the Eurovision Song Contest (though there is actually no discernible connection) and views the case against Troitsky not as an example of celebrity self indulgence but as some sort of sinister plot by Putin (who else?) to impose political conformity on Russia's cultural life.
Kampfner's comments about the court case correspond precisely with Sixsmith's views about Russia and represent western orthodoxy about Russia. They remind me however of something I read a few weeks ago on the internet. This concerned a criminal case that has been brought in Poland against Doda, Poland's reigning pop diva, in which she is being prosecuted on a charge of blasphemy for saying that she had more belief in dinosaurs than in the Bible because the Bible was obviously written by "potheads and drunks". Though Doda faces a prison sentence of up to three years if convicted her case has provoked no interest or comment in the British press. It struck me at the time that if a pop singer were to be prosecuted in Russia in a similar way there would be no such silence but on the contrary an outcry. Kampfner's comments make my point.
I do not say that Poland is a dictatorship. I do not understand however why Russia is held to so much higher a standard than Poland. Martin Sixsmith during his lecture contrasted the "vibrant democracy" in Poland with the authoritarianism in Russia. I see nothing to suggest that Poland or Russia are more democratic or authoritarian than each other. The only difference is how certain people in the west see them.
What has made me revisit this subject is an article I read today in the Independent by John Kampfner who was previously the editor of the New Statesman and who is now the Director of Index on Censorship. In this article John Kampfner discusses at incredible length a court case a Russian pop singer has brought against a well known Russian rock music critic Artemy Troitsky. In a way that has become all too typical of western commentary about Russia Kampfner links this case to certain disparaging comments Troitsky made three years ago about Russia's winning entry at the Eurovision Song Contest (though there is actually no discernible connection) and views the case against Troitsky not as an example of celebrity self indulgence but as some sort of sinister plot by Putin (who else?) to impose political conformity on Russia's cultural life.
Kampfner's comments about the court case correspond precisely with Sixsmith's views about Russia and represent western orthodoxy about Russia. They remind me however of something I read a few weeks ago on the internet. This concerned a criminal case that has been brought in Poland against Doda, Poland's reigning pop diva, in which she is being prosecuted on a charge of blasphemy for saying that she had more belief in dinosaurs than in the Bible because the Bible was obviously written by "potheads and drunks". Though Doda faces a prison sentence of up to three years if convicted her case has provoked no interest or comment in the British press. It struck me at the time that if a pop singer were to be prosecuted in Russia in a similar way there would be no such silence but on the contrary an outcry. Kampfner's comments make my point.
I do not say that Poland is a dictatorship. I do not understand however why Russia is held to so much higher a standard than Poland. Martin Sixsmith during his lecture contrasted the "vibrant democracy" in Poland with the authoritarianism in Russia. I see nothing to suggest that Poland or Russia are more democratic or authoritarian than each other. The only difference is how certain people in the west see them.
Monday 16 May 2011
MURDER IN LIBYA
A week or so ago I wrote that if there was no protest at the murder of Gaddafi's son and grandchildren then it would show that in the west we had crossed a serious moral line. In the event this straightforward act of murder was eclipsed on the following day by the killing of Osama bin Laden. Though I find the fact morally indefensible I nonetheless recognise it as a fact that the news of Osama bin Laden's killing is an event that would inevitably drive discussion of the murder in Libya off the news and comment pages.
There is no such excuse for an event that has happened since. A few days ago a NATO bomb killed eleven Muslim clerics in the Libyan town of Brega. Apparently the clerics were part of a peace mission on its way to Benghazi. According to the Libyan government another fifty people were wounded and killed. NATO has barely acknowledged this massacre and the British media has barely reported it. Most British newspapers failed even to report the story on their front pages and when they have reported it they have given disproportionate attention to the uncorroborated comments of a Dutch engineer who has claimed that he constructed an underground bunker over the building in which the clerics were killed.
Even if there was a bunker beneath the building (and it is difficult to understand why such a bunker would be built in what is a small provincial town) and even if the bunker in question was being used as a command post I find the indifference to the slaughter of the clerics chilling. NATO continues to do all it can to try to murder Gaddafi himself and will now doubtless use the arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court as a further excuse for doing this even though this is plainly illegal and wrong. Meanwhile the head of the British army General Richards is calling for the bombing campaign to be extended to take in more civilian infrastructure whilst calls for a ceasefire from the African Union and the BRICS states are being ignored. Of the representative of the UN Secretary General who as envisaged in UN Security Council Resolution 1970 is supposed to visit Libya to carry out a mediation mission and to prepare a report on the conflict for the Security Council there is no sign and I doubt that such a person has even been appointed.
In other words what we are seeing is another illegal war prosecuted by criminal means though with the UN Secretary General's sanction against a background of indifference on the part of the public in the countries perpetrating it. I wonder at what point our brutality will reach its limit.
There is no such excuse for an event that has happened since. A few days ago a NATO bomb killed eleven Muslim clerics in the Libyan town of Brega. Apparently the clerics were part of a peace mission on its way to Benghazi. According to the Libyan government another fifty people were wounded and killed. NATO has barely acknowledged this massacre and the British media has barely reported it. Most British newspapers failed even to report the story on their front pages and when they have reported it they have given disproportionate attention to the uncorroborated comments of a Dutch engineer who has claimed that he constructed an underground bunker over the building in which the clerics were killed.
Even if there was a bunker beneath the building (and it is difficult to understand why such a bunker would be built in what is a small provincial town) and even if the bunker in question was being used as a command post I find the indifference to the slaughter of the clerics chilling. NATO continues to do all it can to try to murder Gaddafi himself and will now doubtless use the arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court as a further excuse for doing this even though this is plainly illegal and wrong. Meanwhile the head of the British army General Richards is calling for the bombing campaign to be extended to take in more civilian infrastructure whilst calls for a ceasefire from the African Union and the BRICS states are being ignored. Of the representative of the UN Secretary General who as envisaged in UN Security Council Resolution 1970 is supposed to visit Libya to carry out a mediation mission and to prepare a report on the conflict for the Security Council there is no sign and I doubt that such a person has even been appointed.
In other words what we are seeing is another illegal war prosecuted by criminal means though with the UN Secretary General's sanction against a background of indifference on the part of the public in the countries perpetrating it. I wonder at what point our brutality will reach its limit.
Friday 13 May 2011
CAMERON THE CONQUEROR?
The combination of the local government elections, the referendum vote and the first anniversary of the formation of the coalition have provoked a flood of commentary. Reading this commentary makes me think that the one party that needs to be on guard against complacency is the Conservative party. This is not because the election and the referendum results were bad for the Conservatives - far from it. The problem rather is that far too commentators see them as some sort of unalloyed triumph, which is far from being the case.
As I have said in my previous posts whilst a result favouring the Alternative Vote would have caused some grumbling within the Conservative party this would have posed no danger to Cameron or to his leadership of the Conservative party or to his position as Prime Minister. Such a result would however have greatly strengthened Clegg and thus the stability of the coalition. The strong but entirely predictable vote against the Alternative Vote has by contrast severely weakened Clegg and soured the mood of the coalition. In so far as this puts the future of the coalition and of the government at risk this is bad news for Cameron as I will explain.
As for the local election results, the Conservatives seem to have benefitted in southern England both from the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, which resulted in some Liberal Democrat council seats falling to them, and to the fact that the Alternative Vote referendum seems to have encouraged more Conservatives to vote than might otherwise have been the case. Labour voters by contrast were less motivated to vote because on the subject of the referendum they were getting mixed messages from their party.
Even allowing for these facts the local election results were for the Conservatives hardly a triumph. Barely a commentator has noted that a year after losing badly in England in the General Election Labour in the local elections overtook the Conservatives in England and emerged the largest party. Whilst it is certainly true that Labour's gains have been at the expense of the Liberal Democrats not the Conservatives, coming on top of the virtual disappearance of the Conservatives in Scotland and the Conservatives' long term weakness in Wales the results suggests that if a General Election were to be held this year the Conservatives would be unlikely to win a majority whilst Labour would regain much of the ground it lost in 2010. The outcome of such a General Election would probably depend on whether the Liberal Democrats managed to hold firm in the west country or whether and if so to what extent the Conservatives were able to make gains there at their expense whilst holding off any challenge from Labour elsewhere. If the Conservatives were able to win seats from the Liberal Democrats in the west country whilst holding off Labour it is just possible that they might win an overall majority but such a majority would be small and even that prospect frankly looks unlikely.
None of this is to say that the Conservatives have any reason to panic. They have achieved a creditable performance but one that as I said in my previous posts is by no mean unprecedented in a new government's first year. There are no iron laws in elections but the usual pattern since the Second World War has been for governments to lose ground between elections. I think I am right in saying that the only occasion when a government substantially improved on its previous showing both in terms of votes cast and of seats won was in the General Election in 1955. In the Conservative landslide year of 1983 the Conservatives actually polled 600,000 fewer votes than in 1979. There is nothing so far to suggest that this pattern is being broken. The General Election in 2010 took place in conditions that were very favourable to the Conservatives. The Conservatives have not improved on their disappointing result in that year whilst a Labour recovery is definitely underway. It is far too early to try to predict the outcome of an election that may be four years away but I have seen reports that Cameron in contrast to some of his more excited supporters apparently feels that the best the Conservatives can hope for even after the forthcoming boundary changes is another hung parliament. If this is right then the souring of relations within the coalition is bad news for his prospects of remaining Prime Minister beyond the next General Election. Certainly on the basis of the local election results he has no interest in a General Election now, which would almost certainly produce just such an outcome.
As I have said in my previous posts whilst a result favouring the Alternative Vote would have caused some grumbling within the Conservative party this would have posed no danger to Cameron or to his leadership of the Conservative party or to his position as Prime Minister. Such a result would however have greatly strengthened Clegg and thus the stability of the coalition. The strong but entirely predictable vote against the Alternative Vote has by contrast severely weakened Clegg and soured the mood of the coalition. In so far as this puts the future of the coalition and of the government at risk this is bad news for Cameron as I will explain.
As for the local election results, the Conservatives seem to have benefitted in southern England both from the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, which resulted in some Liberal Democrat council seats falling to them, and to the fact that the Alternative Vote referendum seems to have encouraged more Conservatives to vote than might otherwise have been the case. Labour voters by contrast were less motivated to vote because on the subject of the referendum they were getting mixed messages from their party.
Even allowing for these facts the local election results were for the Conservatives hardly a triumph. Barely a commentator has noted that a year after losing badly in England in the General Election Labour in the local elections overtook the Conservatives in England and emerged the largest party. Whilst it is certainly true that Labour's gains have been at the expense of the Liberal Democrats not the Conservatives, coming on top of the virtual disappearance of the Conservatives in Scotland and the Conservatives' long term weakness in Wales the results suggests that if a General Election were to be held this year the Conservatives would be unlikely to win a majority whilst Labour would regain much of the ground it lost in 2010. The outcome of such a General Election would probably depend on whether the Liberal Democrats managed to hold firm in the west country or whether and if so to what extent the Conservatives were able to make gains there at their expense whilst holding off any challenge from Labour elsewhere. If the Conservatives were able to win seats from the Liberal Democrats in the west country whilst holding off Labour it is just possible that they might win an overall majority but such a majority would be small and even that prospect frankly looks unlikely.
None of this is to say that the Conservatives have any reason to panic. They have achieved a creditable performance but one that as I said in my previous posts is by no mean unprecedented in a new government's first year. There are no iron laws in elections but the usual pattern since the Second World War has been for governments to lose ground between elections. I think I am right in saying that the only occasion when a government substantially improved on its previous showing both in terms of votes cast and of seats won was in the General Election in 1955. In the Conservative landslide year of 1983 the Conservatives actually polled 600,000 fewer votes than in 1979. There is nothing so far to suggest that this pattern is being broken. The General Election in 2010 took place in conditions that were very favourable to the Conservatives. The Conservatives have not improved on their disappointing result in that year whilst a Labour recovery is definitely underway. It is far too early to try to predict the outcome of an election that may be four years away but I have seen reports that Cameron in contrast to some of his more excited supporters apparently feels that the best the Conservatives can hope for even after the forthcoming boundary changes is another hung parliament. If this is right then the souring of relations within the coalition is bad news for his prospects of remaining Prime Minister beyond the next General Election. Certainly on the basis of the local election results he has no interest in a General Election now, which would almost certainly produce just such an outcome.
Saturday 7 May 2011
MYTHS CONCERNING THE NO CAMPAIGN
Reading the newspapers today and listening to some of the things some Liberal Democrats and some commentators are saying has provoked me into writing one, hopefully final, piece about the Alternative Vote Referendum. This is that the Yes campaign was defeated because of an allegedly massive, vicious and even mendacious campaign against it supposedly orchestrated by the Conservative party.
This is simply wrong. There was nothing especially vicious or mendacious about the No campaign. There was an abundance of half truths, exaggerations and hyperbole but that is true of all elections and this one was no different. Cameron did not campaign vigorously against the No campaign. In fact he barely campaigned at all. In my part of London both campaigns were almost invisible. I saw one or two Yes campaigners but not a single No campaigner throughout the campaign. That a massive Conservative led No campaign was not responsible for the defeat of the Yes campaign is proved by the fact that the Yes campaign was defeated in Wales and Scotland by an identical margin to the one in England even though the Conservative party barely exists as a political force in either Wales or Scotland.
The reason for the defeat of the Yes campaign was as I have said the impossibility of persuading Labour voters to support a Liberal Democrat proposal at a time when the Liberal Democrats are in coalition with the Conservatives. Any proposal that Conservative and Labour voters combine to defeat is certain to be lost and this was what happened in the referendum.
This is simply wrong. There was nothing especially vicious or mendacious about the No campaign. There was an abundance of half truths, exaggerations and hyperbole but that is true of all elections and this one was no different. Cameron did not campaign vigorously against the No campaign. In fact he barely campaigned at all. In my part of London both campaigns were almost invisible. I saw one or two Yes campaigners but not a single No campaigner throughout the campaign. That a massive Conservative led No campaign was not responsible for the defeat of the Yes campaign is proved by the fact that the Yes campaign was defeated in Wales and Scotland by an identical margin to the one in England even though the Conservative party barely exists as a political force in either Wales or Scotland.
The reason for the defeat of the Yes campaign was as I have said the impossibility of persuading Labour voters to support a Liberal Democrat proposal at a time when the Liberal Democrats are in coalition with the Conservatives. Any proposal that Conservative and Labour voters combine to defeat is certain to be lost and this was what happened in the referendum.
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT MELTDOWN
We now have the local election results and the votes for the assemblies in Wales and Scotland. This provokes a number of comments:
1. The SNP has won a landslide in Scotland. This has tended to obscure the fact that the Labour vote has held firm in Scotland. The runaway victory of the SNP in Scotland is a consequence of the collapse of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland. Whilst this is a bitterly disappointing result for Labour it is a totally predictable consequence of an overwhelmingly English Conservative led government in London. Scottish voters deserted the Liberal Democrats, the only one of the two coalition parties with a presence in Scotland, and went over to the SNP as voters in Scotland voted overwhelmingly for a strong Scottish government in Scotland to stand up to the English Conservative led government in London. This does not mean that independence beckons or that the SNP will score the same result in a General Election. Scottish voters in this election were voting for the parliament in Edinburgh not for the parliament in London. There is no possibility of the SNP forming a government in London so come elections to the Westminster parliament Scottish voters have far fewer incentives to vote for it. Just as Scottish voters have voted for an SNP government in Scotland to stand up for Scotland so come a General Election many of them are likely to switch their support to the party with a strong Scottish identity that is best capable of forming a government in Westminster, which is Labour. I can remember how in the 1960s and 1970s industrial workers routinely voted for Communist shop stewards in union elections to stand up for them against their bosses whilst voting for Labour in parliamentary elections. I suspect that something very similar will happen in Scotland.
I would just add that Labour's only chance of winning the assembly elections in Scotland would have come from bringing forward their heavyweight Scottish politicians Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling. The extreme hostility to Gordon Brown within the London dominated political class and Ed Milliband's fear of being branded "the son of Brown" made this impossible.
2. The Conservative vote has held firm in England and may even have slightly increased in Wales. The consistent lesson of twentieth century coalitions is that the bigger partner is given the credit for any success and the smaller partner the blame for any failure. Labour has on three occasions governed with the support of the Liberals (twice in the 1920s and once in the 1970s) and on every occasion its vote at the subsequent general election either held firm or increased (in 1979 by 50,000 votes). The only previous case of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberals in peacetime was the Lloyd George/Austen Chamberlain coalition of 1918 to 1922. That coalition also strengthened the Conservatives and weakened the Liberals. The same pattern has repeated itself in this election. In saying this it is important to remember that the government is still only a year old. New governments should expect to keep or even increase their support in their first year. It would be astonishing and I believe actually unprecedented for a new government to lose support only a year after it had been elected. Some over excited commentary that sees in these results the dawn of a new era of semi permanent Conservative hegemony overlook this point.
3. The Liberal Democrat vote has collapsed. This seems to be the pattern in every region where there has been a vote with the beneficiaries in Scotland being the SNP and the beneficiaries in England being Labour. In addition the Alternative Vote referendum has been lost by an even bigger margin than I had expected. A year ago during the General Election campaign the liberal political commentator Martin Kettle was saying in the Guardian that Labour was about to face an existential crisis. That turned out not to be the case for Labour then but is the case for the Liberal Democrats now.
What these results expose is the scale of the miscalculation that Clegg and his supporters made last year. As I have said (and I was not the only person to say it, the journalist and commentator Simon Jenkins made the same point) coalitions have always damaged the Liberals in the past and there was no reason to think that this coalition would be different. Clegg should have been very careful about entering into any coalition arrangement at all. To enter into a coalition with a Conservative party committed to a political and economic agenda to which the majority of Liberal Democrat voters and activists is opposed was folly. I have already explained in a previous post why it all but guaranteed that any referendum for electoral reform would be lost. The damage to the Liberal Democrats as a party is now also becoming clear. Moreover I do not think that things are going to get better. All the evidence points to the economic picture getting darker not just in Britain but globally. If there is a deterioration in economic conditions in Britain it will be the Liberal Democrats who will be blamed for it. If on the contrary the economic situation improves it will be the Conservatives who will harvest the credit.
Some Liberal Democrats are saying that the Liberal Democrats must somehow distance themselves from the Conservatives by taking a more confrontational and assertive line inside the coalition. I cannot see how that will help. It will make the Liberal Democrats seem fractious and belligerent when a large part of their appeal has always been that they appear to be more reasonable and "nice" than the two big parties. It will also enable the Conservatives to shore up their support by blaming Liberal Democrat for being "obstructive", which allegedly was preventing the government from doing the right things the Conservatives want it to do. It also risks making the Liberal Democrats seem weak and ineffective. Unless they are prepared to withdraw from or vote against the coalition, which would risk a General Election in which the Liberal Democrats might face a wipe out, any act of defiance would be a bluff and one which Cameron and the Conservatives would have a strong incentive to call.
Though no option is good in my opinion the least bad option in this situation is for the Liberal Democrats if they want to survive as a viable force in the foreseeable future to look for a way out of the coalition as soon as possible. Inevitably this would mean ditching Clegg as leader. If the Liberal Democrats were serious about reconnecting with the centre left voters who are deserting them it would also mean replacing Clegg not with Chris Huhne but with someone who still has credibility amongst such voters such as Vince Cable or even Charles Kennedy. Such a step would almost certainly provoke a General Election in which the Liberal Democrats would still be bound to suffer heavy losses. However it may be the only way of limiting the damage and of holding on to some of the gains that the Liberal Democrats have made since the original split of the SDP from Labour in 1981. As this is a high risk strategy I do not expect the Liberal Democrats to adopt it for the moment but as things get worse the pressure may increase. It goes without saying that the longer the Liberal Democrats put off doing it the greater the damage to them will be.
Lastly, I have noticed that some Liberal Democrats and liberal political commentators such as Paddy Ashdown and Polly Toynbee and Tom Clarke in the Guardian are already blaming Labour "conservatism" and "tribalism" for the failure of the Alternative Vote referendum and are criticising Ed Milliband for his supposed failure to "stamp his authority" on his party. In the case of Paddy Ashdown there is a certain political logic to such comments. In the case of commentators such as Polly Toynbee and Tom Clarke they betray the basic lack of political understanding of these commentators and their failure to grasp that the rejection of the Alternative Vote and of electoral reform is a direct consequence of the mistaken strategy upon which they embarked when they joined forces against Gordon Brown in the summer of 2009. I explained why this strategy was mistaken in an earlier post. It is perhaps too much to expect of these commentators that they should admit their mistake and accept responsibility for a debacle that they have played no small part in bringing about.
1. The SNP has won a landslide in Scotland. This has tended to obscure the fact that the Labour vote has held firm in Scotland. The runaway victory of the SNP in Scotland is a consequence of the collapse of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland. Whilst this is a bitterly disappointing result for Labour it is a totally predictable consequence of an overwhelmingly English Conservative led government in London. Scottish voters deserted the Liberal Democrats, the only one of the two coalition parties with a presence in Scotland, and went over to the SNP as voters in Scotland voted overwhelmingly for a strong Scottish government in Scotland to stand up to the English Conservative led government in London. This does not mean that independence beckons or that the SNP will score the same result in a General Election. Scottish voters in this election were voting for the parliament in Edinburgh not for the parliament in London. There is no possibility of the SNP forming a government in London so come elections to the Westminster parliament Scottish voters have far fewer incentives to vote for it. Just as Scottish voters have voted for an SNP government in Scotland to stand up for Scotland so come a General Election many of them are likely to switch their support to the party with a strong Scottish identity that is best capable of forming a government in Westminster, which is Labour. I can remember how in the 1960s and 1970s industrial workers routinely voted for Communist shop stewards in union elections to stand up for them against their bosses whilst voting for Labour in parliamentary elections. I suspect that something very similar will happen in Scotland.
I would just add that Labour's only chance of winning the assembly elections in Scotland would have come from bringing forward their heavyweight Scottish politicians Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling. The extreme hostility to Gordon Brown within the London dominated political class and Ed Milliband's fear of being branded "the son of Brown" made this impossible.
2. The Conservative vote has held firm in England and may even have slightly increased in Wales. The consistent lesson of twentieth century coalitions is that the bigger partner is given the credit for any success and the smaller partner the blame for any failure. Labour has on three occasions governed with the support of the Liberals (twice in the 1920s and once in the 1970s) and on every occasion its vote at the subsequent general election either held firm or increased (in 1979 by 50,000 votes). The only previous case of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberals in peacetime was the Lloyd George/Austen Chamberlain coalition of 1918 to 1922. That coalition also strengthened the Conservatives and weakened the Liberals. The same pattern has repeated itself in this election. In saying this it is important to remember that the government is still only a year old. New governments should expect to keep or even increase their support in their first year. It would be astonishing and I believe actually unprecedented for a new government to lose support only a year after it had been elected. Some over excited commentary that sees in these results the dawn of a new era of semi permanent Conservative hegemony overlook this point.
3. The Liberal Democrat vote has collapsed. This seems to be the pattern in every region where there has been a vote with the beneficiaries in Scotland being the SNP and the beneficiaries in England being Labour. In addition the Alternative Vote referendum has been lost by an even bigger margin than I had expected. A year ago during the General Election campaign the liberal political commentator Martin Kettle was saying in the Guardian that Labour was about to face an existential crisis. That turned out not to be the case for Labour then but is the case for the Liberal Democrats now.
What these results expose is the scale of the miscalculation that Clegg and his supporters made last year. As I have said (and I was not the only person to say it, the journalist and commentator Simon Jenkins made the same point) coalitions have always damaged the Liberals in the past and there was no reason to think that this coalition would be different. Clegg should have been very careful about entering into any coalition arrangement at all. To enter into a coalition with a Conservative party committed to a political and economic agenda to which the majority of Liberal Democrat voters and activists is opposed was folly. I have already explained in a previous post why it all but guaranteed that any referendum for electoral reform would be lost. The damage to the Liberal Democrats as a party is now also becoming clear. Moreover I do not think that things are going to get better. All the evidence points to the economic picture getting darker not just in Britain but globally. If there is a deterioration in economic conditions in Britain it will be the Liberal Democrats who will be blamed for it. If on the contrary the economic situation improves it will be the Conservatives who will harvest the credit.
Some Liberal Democrats are saying that the Liberal Democrats must somehow distance themselves from the Conservatives by taking a more confrontational and assertive line inside the coalition. I cannot see how that will help. It will make the Liberal Democrats seem fractious and belligerent when a large part of their appeal has always been that they appear to be more reasonable and "nice" than the two big parties. It will also enable the Conservatives to shore up their support by blaming Liberal Democrat for being "obstructive", which allegedly was preventing the government from doing the right things the Conservatives want it to do. It also risks making the Liberal Democrats seem weak and ineffective. Unless they are prepared to withdraw from or vote against the coalition, which would risk a General Election in which the Liberal Democrats might face a wipe out, any act of defiance would be a bluff and one which Cameron and the Conservatives would have a strong incentive to call.
Though no option is good in my opinion the least bad option in this situation is for the Liberal Democrats if they want to survive as a viable force in the foreseeable future to look for a way out of the coalition as soon as possible. Inevitably this would mean ditching Clegg as leader. If the Liberal Democrats were serious about reconnecting with the centre left voters who are deserting them it would also mean replacing Clegg not with Chris Huhne but with someone who still has credibility amongst such voters such as Vince Cable or even Charles Kennedy. Such a step would almost certainly provoke a General Election in which the Liberal Democrats would still be bound to suffer heavy losses. However it may be the only way of limiting the damage and of holding on to some of the gains that the Liberal Democrats have made since the original split of the SDP from Labour in 1981. As this is a high risk strategy I do not expect the Liberal Democrats to adopt it for the moment but as things get worse the pressure may increase. It goes without saying that the longer the Liberal Democrats put off doing it the greater the damage to them will be.
Lastly, I have noticed that some Liberal Democrats and liberal political commentators such as Paddy Ashdown and Polly Toynbee and Tom Clarke in the Guardian are already blaming Labour "conservatism" and "tribalism" for the failure of the Alternative Vote referendum and are criticising Ed Milliband for his supposed failure to "stamp his authority" on his party. In the case of Paddy Ashdown there is a certain political logic to such comments. In the case of commentators such as Polly Toynbee and Tom Clarke they betray the basic lack of political understanding of these commentators and their failure to grasp that the rejection of the Alternative Vote and of electoral reform is a direct consequence of the mistaken strategy upon which they embarked when they joined forces against Gordon Brown in the summer of 2009. I explained why this strategy was mistaken in an earlier post. It is perhaps too much to expect of these commentators that they should admit their mistake and accept responsibility for a debacle that they have played no small part in bringing about.
Wednesday 4 May 2011
THE AV REFERENDUM
I have just read an opinion poll that puts the no campaign in the coming Alternative Vote referendum ahead with an overwhelming 30% lead (65% No as against just 35% Yes). If the result turns out to be anything like as lop sided as these figures suggest then the cause of parliamentary reform will have been put back for decades. If this does indeed happen then both the Liberal Democrats and the centre left commentators in the Guardian and the Independent who supported the Liberal Democrats in last year's General Election need to ask themselves some serious questions.
The simple fact is that a defeat on anything like such a scale exposes the disastrous miscalculation both the Liberal Democrats and the centre left commentators who supported them made before, during and after the General Election. This miscalculation was so obvious that I could not understand how they could have made it. Briefly, in any vote on the subject of electoral reform it is a given that the bedrock Conservative vote, which accounts for 30-35% of the electorate, will always vote to preserve the status quo. Whilst the Liberal Democrat vote will always support change at between 20-25% of the electorate it is too small to win the referendum by itself. The only way that such a referendum could be won would be if the bedrock Labour vote, which also accounts for 30-35% of the electorate, could be induced to vote in its favour. The subject of electoral reform is never going to be one to excite the sort of working class voters who traditionally vote Labour. Persuading them to vote for a reform the most likely beneficiaries of which would be not Labour but the Liberal Democrats is always going to be a struggle. It is a struggle that is almost bound to be rendered hopeless if the Liberal Democrats whose project these voters are being asked to support are in coalition propping up a government led by Labour's historic enemies the Conservatives. That of course is exactly the situation we have today.
What this in practice means is that the only possible route to electoral reform is through the election of a Labour government just as the only way of securing electoral reform in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was through the election of a Whig government. Just as it took the eventual election of a Whig government committed to electoral reform to pass the Great Reform Act so it will need the election of a Labour government committed to electoral reform to achieve it now.
This I would have thought obvious point seems to have been lost on both the Liberal Democrats and on the centre left commentators who supported then during last year's General Election. Though Gordon Brown had indicated that he was prepared at least to look at electoral reform the centre left commentators like John Rentoul, John Kampfner, Julian Glover, Polly Toynbee and Martin Kettle who say they support electoral reform enthusiastically joined in the Brown bashing and supported the plots against Brown even though by destabilising Brown in this way they inevitably made it more likely that Labour would lose the election and that the Conservatives would form the next government. During the election itself the newspapers for which they write, the Guardian, the Observer and to a lesser extent the Independent all endorsed the Liberal Democrats, something which also made it likely that Labour would lose the election and that the Conservatives would form the next government. When the result of the election proved to be inconclusive the Liberal Democrats, whose only hope of power in the long term is through electoral reform, chose to go into coalition with the Conservatives who as a result formed the government. If the referendum is indeed lost, as now seems certain, that will have been the moment it was lost in which case, given what I said at the start of this post about the probability that the whole subject will now be relegated to the margins of politics for the next few decades, the decision of the Liberal Democrats to go into coalition with the Conservatives will be exposed for what it was, an act of political suicide.
No doubt some people will say that this is all very wrong and that it is wrong and even foolish for Labour voters to vote in this "tribalist" manner given that were they to vote for the Alternative Vote it would open the way for a coalition of the "progressive majority". Whether it is wrong or right and whether it is tribalist or not the simple fact is that this is how politics works in this country. Anyone who wants to achieve anything serious or substantial has to start with an understanding of this simple fact.
The simple fact is that a defeat on anything like such a scale exposes the disastrous miscalculation both the Liberal Democrats and the centre left commentators who supported them made before, during and after the General Election. This miscalculation was so obvious that I could not understand how they could have made it. Briefly, in any vote on the subject of electoral reform it is a given that the bedrock Conservative vote, which accounts for 30-35% of the electorate, will always vote to preserve the status quo. Whilst the Liberal Democrat vote will always support change at between 20-25% of the electorate it is too small to win the referendum by itself. The only way that such a referendum could be won would be if the bedrock Labour vote, which also accounts for 30-35% of the electorate, could be induced to vote in its favour. The subject of electoral reform is never going to be one to excite the sort of working class voters who traditionally vote Labour. Persuading them to vote for a reform the most likely beneficiaries of which would be not Labour but the Liberal Democrats is always going to be a struggle. It is a struggle that is almost bound to be rendered hopeless if the Liberal Democrats whose project these voters are being asked to support are in coalition propping up a government led by Labour's historic enemies the Conservatives. That of course is exactly the situation we have today.
What this in practice means is that the only possible route to electoral reform is through the election of a Labour government just as the only way of securing electoral reform in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was through the election of a Whig government. Just as it took the eventual election of a Whig government committed to electoral reform to pass the Great Reform Act so it will need the election of a Labour government committed to electoral reform to achieve it now.
This I would have thought obvious point seems to have been lost on both the Liberal Democrats and on the centre left commentators who supported then during last year's General Election. Though Gordon Brown had indicated that he was prepared at least to look at electoral reform the centre left commentators like John Rentoul, John Kampfner, Julian Glover, Polly Toynbee and Martin Kettle who say they support electoral reform enthusiastically joined in the Brown bashing and supported the plots against Brown even though by destabilising Brown in this way they inevitably made it more likely that Labour would lose the election and that the Conservatives would form the next government. During the election itself the newspapers for which they write, the Guardian, the Observer and to a lesser extent the Independent all endorsed the Liberal Democrats, something which also made it likely that Labour would lose the election and that the Conservatives would form the next government. When the result of the election proved to be inconclusive the Liberal Democrats, whose only hope of power in the long term is through electoral reform, chose to go into coalition with the Conservatives who as a result formed the government. If the referendum is indeed lost, as now seems certain, that will have been the moment it was lost in which case, given what I said at the start of this post about the probability that the whole subject will now be relegated to the margins of politics for the next few decades, the decision of the Liberal Democrats to go into coalition with the Conservatives will be exposed for what it was, an act of political suicide.
No doubt some people will say that this is all very wrong and that it is wrong and even foolish for Labour voters to vote in this "tribalist" manner given that were they to vote for the Alternative Vote it would open the way for a coalition of the "progressive majority". Whether it is wrong or right and whether it is tribalist or not the simple fact is that this is how politics works in this country. Anyone who wants to achieve anything serious or substantial has to start with an understanding of this simple fact.
Tuesday 3 May 2011
DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
I have interrupted the writing of a rather more lengthy post about some of the questions raised by Osama bin Laden's death because I am starting to become alarmed at the spread of claims that he is not in fact dead and that the claim that he is dead is false and the result of some sort of plot. I was particularly troubled that the normally level headed Craig Murray seems to have succumbed to this foolishness.
I have absolutely no doubt that Osama bin Laden is dead. I do not need to see his body to believe that he is dead. I find the demand that the Americans produce photographic evidence that he is dead frankly ghoulish. In fact I would prefer not to be shown such "evidence", which to my mind adds nothing. The Americans have no possible motive to pretend that Osama is dead if he is actually alive. On the contrary they would be setting themselves up for complete humiliation when he eventually reappeared alive as in that case he would be bound to do. In addition any conspiracy theories concerning his death have to take into account the need for collusion by the young men who make up the Navy SEALS team that actually carried out the operation. It beggars belief that all of them would be in on such a complex and absurd plot.
I also wish to comment on two further points. Some are saying that the Americans were wrong to kill Osama and that this looks like a premeditated extra judicial killing, in effect a murder, and that Osama should instead have been captured and put on trial. There is also some criticism about the expressions of pleasure in America at the news of his death.
On the first point I should say that I am someone who on principle is strongly opposed to extra judicial killings and that I have no doubt that Osama's murder was one such. Having said this I have to say that on this occasion I can see that there might be a good reason for it. Taking someone like Osama alive would have exposed every western traveller in the Middle East to the serious risk of kidnapping as Osama's followers sought to ransom their leader in order to secure his release. Osama's profile is of an entirely different order to that of any of the other jihadi leaders captured up to now and it seems to me that the threat of such kidnappings would have been very real. With Osama dead whilst there is a possibility of some revenge attacks after some time the risk of this will fade. By contrast with Osama alive in prison the risk of kidnappings to secure his release would have been never ending. For various reasons I will go into in my next post I doubt that a trial would have produced much more information about the jihadi movement or Al Qaeda or the planning and direction of the 9/11 terrorist attacks than is known already whilst there is no need to prove Osama's involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks given that he has publicly assumed responsibility for them. Moreover if at the conclusion of the trial Osama had been sentenced to death and executed the effect on opinion in the Muslim world might have been catastrophic. Though I say it very grudgingly Osama's death in a firefight does appear to me the least unsatisfactory end to this affair. As for whether or not it is right to be happy that he is dead personally I do not take pleasure in the death of any human being but the expressions of joy at his death are human reactions, which given the violent nature of his career were all but inevitable.
I have absolutely no doubt that Osama bin Laden is dead. I do not need to see his body to believe that he is dead. I find the demand that the Americans produce photographic evidence that he is dead frankly ghoulish. In fact I would prefer not to be shown such "evidence", which to my mind adds nothing. The Americans have no possible motive to pretend that Osama is dead if he is actually alive. On the contrary they would be setting themselves up for complete humiliation when he eventually reappeared alive as in that case he would be bound to do. In addition any conspiracy theories concerning his death have to take into account the need for collusion by the young men who make up the Navy SEALS team that actually carried out the operation. It beggars belief that all of them would be in on such a complex and absurd plot.
I also wish to comment on two further points. Some are saying that the Americans were wrong to kill Osama and that this looks like a premeditated extra judicial killing, in effect a murder, and that Osama should instead have been captured and put on trial. There is also some criticism about the expressions of pleasure in America at the news of his death.
On the first point I should say that I am someone who on principle is strongly opposed to extra judicial killings and that I have no doubt that Osama's murder was one such. Having said this I have to say that on this occasion I can see that there might be a good reason for it. Taking someone like Osama alive would have exposed every western traveller in the Middle East to the serious risk of kidnapping as Osama's followers sought to ransom their leader in order to secure his release. Osama's profile is of an entirely different order to that of any of the other jihadi leaders captured up to now and it seems to me that the threat of such kidnappings would have been very real. With Osama dead whilst there is a possibility of some revenge attacks after some time the risk of this will fade. By contrast with Osama alive in prison the risk of kidnappings to secure his release would have been never ending. For various reasons I will go into in my next post I doubt that a trial would have produced much more information about the jihadi movement or Al Qaeda or the planning and direction of the 9/11 terrorist attacks than is known already whilst there is no need to prove Osama's involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks given that he has publicly assumed responsibility for them. Moreover if at the conclusion of the trial Osama had been sentenced to death and executed the effect on opinion in the Muslim world might have been catastrophic. Though I say it very grudgingly Osama's death in a firefight does appear to me the least unsatisfactory end to this affair. As for whether or not it is right to be happy that he is dead personally I do not take pleasure in the death of any human being but the expressions of joy at his death are human reactions, which given the violent nature of his career were all but inevitable.
Sunday 1 May 2011
THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF GADDAFI
I am writing this brief post in response to the recent information coming out of Libya about the death of Gaddafi's son and three of his grandchildren in an air strike.
From the information provided by the journalists who visited the scene of the attack it is clear that the attack was made not on some sort of command centre but on a residential villa. Apparently some sort of family gathering took place at which Gaddafi was, or was expected to be, in attendance. The attack on the villa can only therefore be explained as an assassination attempt though one that seems to have failed. The Russian Foreign Ministry is surely right to say that NATO claims that Gaddafi is not being deliberately targeted are now simply unbelievable. Though the assassination attempt failed at least four innocent people three of them young children who were members of Gaddafi's family (his youngest son and his three grandchildren) were killed.
This is straightforward murder. There is nothing in Resolution 1973 that permits it. On the contrary Resolution 1973 is solely concerned with the protection of civilians. As part of an unsuccessful assassination attempt NATO has now killed four. Nor does Resolution 1973 authorise killing Gaddafi, which is an act of attempted murder and which is also contrary to international law.
We now face an important test. Ever since the bombing of the television station in Belgrade in 1999 we have witnessed an ongoing moral collapse. Once upon a time I could not have imagined the British government colluding in torture and yet this has happened. Similarly I cannot imagine any previous British Prime Minister pre Blair countenancing the open murder of the head of state of a foreign power. Even to think of Gladstone, Disraeli, Asquith, Attlee, Macmillan, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan or indeed Thatcher ordering such a thing is to realise that such a thing would have been impossible. During the Second World War Churchill emphatically ruled out any idea of a British attempt to assassinate Hitler. Nor in former times would British public opinion have countenanced an open attempt at murder by the British government.especially one that resulted in the killing of innocent people. On the contrary had such a thing ever happened the result would have triggered a storm. If the response to the murder attempt on Gaddafi is more business as usual then another line in the ongoing descent into barbarism will have been crossed.
From the information provided by the journalists who visited the scene of the attack it is clear that the attack was made not on some sort of command centre but on a residential villa. Apparently some sort of family gathering took place at which Gaddafi was, or was expected to be, in attendance. The attack on the villa can only therefore be explained as an assassination attempt though one that seems to have failed. The Russian Foreign Ministry is surely right to say that NATO claims that Gaddafi is not being deliberately targeted are now simply unbelievable. Though the assassination attempt failed at least four innocent people three of them young children who were members of Gaddafi's family (his youngest son and his three grandchildren) were killed.
This is straightforward murder. There is nothing in Resolution 1973 that permits it. On the contrary Resolution 1973 is solely concerned with the protection of civilians. As part of an unsuccessful assassination attempt NATO has now killed four. Nor does Resolution 1973 authorise killing Gaddafi, which is an act of attempted murder and which is also contrary to international law.
We now face an important test. Ever since the bombing of the television station in Belgrade in 1999 we have witnessed an ongoing moral collapse. Once upon a time I could not have imagined the British government colluding in torture and yet this has happened. Similarly I cannot imagine any previous British Prime Minister pre Blair countenancing the open murder of the head of state of a foreign power. Even to think of Gladstone, Disraeli, Asquith, Attlee, Macmillan, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan or indeed Thatcher ordering such a thing is to realise that such a thing would have been impossible. During the Second World War Churchill emphatically ruled out any idea of a British attempt to assassinate Hitler. Nor in former times would British public opinion have countenanced an open attempt at murder by the British government.especially one that resulted in the killing of innocent people. On the contrary had such a thing ever happened the result would have triggered a storm. If the response to the murder attempt on Gaddafi is more business as usual then another line in the ongoing descent into barbarism will have been crossed.
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