He "appears to see public protection as the key task".
Topic: Politics
Interesting insight into the experience of an American policeman who worked for the Essex probation service. It's all written from his point of view of course, but I find it rather alarming that someone wrote of him that he "appears to see public protection as the key task" and intended it as a criticism!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2209981.html

NB: (from the article) - more than 10,000 crimes a month are committed by offenders on probation.

Back from Canada, just as it hots up.
Topic: Politics
I got back from Canada on Thursday morning and have been too jet-lagged to write until now. It looks like I left before the fun started too. Canadian police have made 12 arrests (perhaps more by the time you read this) in connection with a planned Al Qaeda attack in Southern Ontario, just the part where I was staying!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5044560.stm

This must have come as a shock to the head of the Toronto Transit System who told Canadians last year that they were safe because "we have no troops to pull out of Iraq" and "the terrorists would have to find Toronto first."

http://canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/9832.shtml

An Iraqi writes. (long)
Topic: Politics
After the incident in which a British helicopter crashed onto a residential block in Basra, I decided to write to an Iraqi poker player whom I have known for about a decade.

My e-mail to him:

I've been wondering about something today. On the news I saw that a British helicopter had come down in Basra. There was a small crowd of mostly young men. Many were throwing stones at it and waving their fists in the air. An observer would feel that they wanted coalition troops out of the country. They are entitled to want this, of course.

But I'm puzzled because Iraq's had three elections and I believe that they were fair ones. So if there was a widespread feeling that the coaltion should leave, why didn't people vote for parties that promised to demand a coalition withdrawal?

Or do the young men I saw on TV represent only a minority of opinion?

His reply:

Sadly, like most people, you are under the misapprehension that the elections in Iraq represent victory for democracy. In reality they represent a defeat for all the democrats in Iraq for the following reasons. During Saddam's regime there were no organised secular political parties in Iraq because he killed/suppressed all politicians who did not declare their allegiances to him. In fact most of the Iraqi democrats were living in Europe. The only organised resistance to Saddam's regime were the religious Mullahs in the south and of course the Kurds in the North.

After the occupation, the true Iraqi democrats had no popular bases in the country. They needed at least three years to organise themselves into effective political parties with branches in all the major cities through which they can present their secular political programs. Holding three elections in three years was one of the biggest mistakes committed by the Americans because they forced failure upon the people who want democracy and handed power to the mainly religious parties who believe that the Islamic Al-Shariah is the only way forward.

At the moment Iraq is dominated by more than four militias - two Kurdish forces known as the "Besh-murgah", two Iranian backed forces("Al-Badr Core" and "Al-Mehdi Army") and a few more groups consisting of former Baathist and religious Sunni parties(like Hamas in Palestine or the Moslem Brothers in Egypt). Iraq will be stable IF and ONLY IF one of these militia forces dominates the political scene. Sadly this will never happen since none of the Arab militias can defeat the Kurdish forces and vice versa. The elected Iraqi politicians STILL have not formed a government AFTER MORE THAN FOUR MONTHS of this year's election. I'm afraid the only way out is a civil war which will lead to a partitioning of the country.

The British forces in the south of Iraq have effectively handed the power to Iran via the Badr Core and Al-Mehdi Army .These two Shia militias are imposing their interpretation of the Shariah on the people in that region; for example they killed six girls in Basra because the girls were wearing blue jeans!! They also killed owners of off-license shops in Basra,Omara...etc.

The coalition forces are delaying the inevitable.The longer the Brits stay the more likely things will turn very sour for them. Most Arabs don't like to see British or American soldiers in their country. The sooner they leave the better.

I hope the above answers your question. Let me know if you disagree

I replied:

thanks for your reply. I agree that it would have been better for there to have been a delay before holding elections in order for secular parties to develop. But that was never possible. Instead Iraqis will have sectarian politics, until they get disillusioned with it. Life under sharia is only appealing to those who haven't had it. Those who've seen it up front in Iran, Afghanistan and Algeria are glad to see the back of it.

I have a website in which I discuss my political opinions. Would you object if I posted what you wrote? An opinion from a real Iraqi would be of interest to the readers. I don't have to name you if you don't want that.

As far as partition is concerned, if it's what people want, they why not? When the British left India it got partitioned into Pakistan and India. Later Bangladesh broke away too. Would you wish to stick them all back together again?

He replied:

My father was Kurdish and my mother was the daughter of an Arabic father and a Turkish mother. The wife of my brother Ali belongs to the Shia sect. Ayad Alawi, the prime minister of Iraq during last year, was my very close childhood friend. He is a Shia Arab, but his first wife is a Christian. His brother is married to a lovely Kurdish woman. I can spend hours listing intermarriages between the various Iraqi sects. The truth is Iraq is a melting pot of Arabs, Kurds, Turks and Iranians

You seem to think that sectarian politics have always dominated the Iraqi political scene. This couldn't be further from the truth until the onset of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Then Saddam introduced ethnic division by deporting over half a million Iraqis, belonging to the Shia sect, to Iran under the pretext that they were of Iranian origin/nationality. I can assure you these evictions met the quiet disapproval of most Iraqis.

Sectarian/ethnic divisions become nearly irrelevant in countries blessed with strong and growing economies. Strong economies in the developing countries, can only be built by determined leaders, who enjoy the support of regional as well as international powers.

Sadly, all the Arab countries lack the correct leadership, not because their culture forbids it but because the regional and international political environment/scene does not allow it. Instead, corrupt kings and emirs or dictators supported by corrupt and brainless army officers and religious leaders plague us. Most intelligent high school graduates in Iraq go to medical or engineering colleges; the military and religious colleges receive the dim wits with the lowest grades; I think this happens in all of the Arab countries and may be part of the problem.

Many people, including many Arabs, believe that the Arabs are shackled by their outdated Islamic cultures…etc. I cannot see how culture, which is basically transmitted behavioural patterns, can influence the way a doctor, engineer or a road sweeper perform his/her job. In my opinion this is a myth propagated by ignorance or racism. Consider this fact. There are over 200,000 Iraqi professionals in the UK-most of them live in London. All of them have established very successful careers, and yet, none of them have changed their culture or religion. The same applies to the millions of Arabs living in the UK and Europe. They survived and flourished, despite the cultural and language difficulties they encountered, because the strong economies of the European countries offered them a multitude of opportunities to excel.

You suggest that people will turn against the religious parties after they realise the unpalatable nature of Al-Shariah. The Mullahs in Iran are still in power after over 25 years of the Islamic "revolution". They may, and I hope will, eventually lose power. But, they have delayed the creation of stable democracies in the region for many years.

The same is happening in Iraq with the inadvertent help of the Americans. If you look carefully at what is happening there, you will realise that the Mullahs are in fact outwitting Bush and Blaire. The so-called coalition forces are fighting the Mullahs' opponents in the central region of Iraq while the Iranian backed Al-Badr and Al-Mehdi militias are tightening their grip over the southern regions of Iraq.

You can post my opinions if you wish to do so.

My thoughts:

There is usually a difference in life between the best possible solution and the best solution possible. Delaying elections for years to give secular politics a chance falls in the former category, not the latter. His point about the Iranian mullahs not being ousted despite their growing unpopularity is true, but they were never voted into power in the first place either. We have to start somewhere with reforming the middle-east or it will still be a backwater of "corrupt kings and emirs", 'brainless army officers and "religious leaders" for decades to come. That's not something we can tolerate any more, as it's the part of the world with the highest proportion of young people and the mixture of a rising youth population and the lack of economic opportunity due to nepotism and corruption is as dangerous as any WMD programme. It's worse in the part of the world where people are taught by their religion that they have the most recent word of God, yet see themselves behind the West and Asia economically and diplomatically. The result of this combination is rage. To deflect this rage, the dictators have redirected hatred towards the West and Israel by permitting the media and mosques the freedom to speak out against external 'enemies', in exchange for the dictators being kept out of the crosshairs.

He is right when he says: "Sectarian/ethnic divisions become nearly irrelevant in countries blessed with strong and growing economies." It's notable that the most stable Arab countries are those with strong oil revenues and small populations. Places like the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar are oases of calm by comparison, but it's a quirk of geology and demographics that has made it possible.

As for Iraq now, since this e-mail exchange, the Iraqi politicians have at last formed a government. From now on they will have to insist that they have a monopoly on the use of force, since they alone reflect the voice of the Iraqi people who bravely voted in three elections.

Hojjatieh
Topic: Politics
Caught an interesting interview with American crime fiction writer Robert Ferrigno yesterday. I have read one of his books, a serial killer detective story called 'Flinch' and thought it was good. But his most recent book, "Prayers for the Assassin", is a departure from that genre. In it he describes an Islamified USA in 2025, with a broken-off Christian South and Nevada and Utah as independent states. He spent a year researching material for the novel so I was interested in his views on the situation in Iran. At the end of the interview he advises listeners to do a Google search on the word 'Hojjatieh'. That's the name of the sect to which Iran's president is said to belong. A search for it on Wikipedia reveals:

They believe that chaos must be created to hasten the return of the Mahdi, the 12th Shi'ite Imam. Only then, they argue, can a genuine Islamic republic be established.

Quite shocking stuff - a deliberate desire to create chaos in order to bring about the return of the 'hidden' 12th iman! If you're one of those people who thinks that George Bush wishes to bring about armageddon because of a prophesy in the book of Daniel, this ought to worry you a hundred times more!

Mohammed Afroze.
Topic: Politics
Hat tip to James Feeny for pointing me to a page on the British National Party's website, which claims that a fifth bomb was intended to explode in the London Tube network on July 7th, directly underneath the Thames, thereby drowning thousands of passengers. Allegedly the police foiled the attack the day before.

I can't give a lot of credence to the story, given its source. While I don't want to call the Party liars on my blog, I can imagine some readers of this blog drawing the conclusion that the story has been fabricated to create animosity towards foreigners and non-white Britons. So that isn't why I mention it.

Instead, what I find interesting about the whole affair is that there is someone in jail right now charged with plotting to destroy Tower Bridge and the House of Commons on September 11th 2001. And I'm fairly sure that most people have never heard of him. His name is Mohammed Afroze and he's serving a seven-year jail term in India for "criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to disturb relations between friendly nations, and forging documents".

The Times has the story here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1705386,00.html

I find it remarkable that this story is never discussed. If someone in the BNP thought that a scare story about more bombings in London would get them publicity, they were wrong.

Moral comparisons.
Topic: Politics
Does anyone here read Juan Cole? I do from time to time. I respect the fact that he can read and speak Arabic (more the former than the latter) and that he puts in a lot of effort to pick up stories from the middle eastern media. But I'm often left baffled by the moral comparisons that he draws. Here is an instance from June 26th last year (see bottom of page):

"By the way, rightwing US commentators often slam Iranian elections because the candidates are vetted by the clerical Guardian Council for their loyalty to the Khomeinist ideology. In the past two years, the vetting has grown ever more rigorous, excluding relative liberals from running for parliament or president. The commentators are correct.

However, in the United States the "first past the post" system of winner-takes-all elections and the two-party system play a similar role in limiting voters' choices of candidates. Neither libertarians nor socialists are likely to be serious contenders for the presidency in the United States, since neither of the two dominant parties will run them. The US approach to limiting voter choice is systemic and so looks "natural," but US voters have a narrower range of practical choices in candidates than virtually any other democratic society."

Bizarre! He's equating direct 'vetting' of candidates by the Guardian Council for conformance with the ideology of one person, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, with indirect 'vetting' of candidates for conformance with the views of the majority of American voters! His comparison takes no account of the fact that in the former case, candidates get rejected for having views that might actually be popular with voters, while in the latter case they are rejected because their views won't be. How can someone so otherwise intelligent make such a fatuous comparison? The world of academia seems to be full of this.

Steyn on the Palestine panacea.
Topic: Politics
A writer to Mark Steyn says what some people, including some readers of this blog, think:

Thanks, for your opinions. My, opinion, is: give back Palestine, to the Palestinians. Then the Middle East problems would be gone. And, no 9-11.

Dave Salvador
Hanford, California


MARK REPLIES: Who's gonna "give" it back? You? Is it yours? Is it the international community’s? And if you're giving it "back" to someone, shouldn't the British and the Turks be first in line? And, if we have to "give back" territory, can we give back your town to the Mexicans? Oh, and if you think Palestine is the root cause of 9/11 then perhaps you should read the texts of Osama bin Laden's various keynote addresses, where it's a lower priority than the US troops in Saudi Arabia and the end of the Caliphate in 1922 and the fall of Andalucia in 1492 and even the independence of East Timor. A whole lotta givin' back in there.

It's easy to take refuge in the "soft option". Even assuming you could take Palestine off the Israelis and give it to someone else, that would make not a jot of difference to the spread of the Islamist ideology. Indeed, in Europe – which is, after all, where the 9/11 cell was formed – Bosnia and Chechnya were far bigger motivators for Islamism. But dream on. A lot of other folks are.

I should stress that this isn't an argument against Palestinians getting something called Palestine. That may or may not be the right thing. The point is that it's not the cure-for-all-ills that some people think it is.

Have they looked behind the curtains?
Topic: Politics
As I hope readers will now realise, while I dislike Islamism and Islamists, I trust the 'Arab street' enough to think that if actally allowed to see Islamists in power, they will lose faith in them. And so it is that I'm actually quite pleased that Hamas won the Palestinian election, as it starts the process of disillusionment now rather than later.

It's looking good so far! The Palestinian Authority's Foreign Minister has managed to lose $450,000 in cash from his hotel room while on a trip to Kuwait. Yep, could have happened to anyone I suppose.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/709679.html

Remember that the authority is supposed to be broke and unable to pay its own staff's wages. No wonder the minister was so keen to keep this under wraps. It wasn't likely to stay secret in Kuwait though, as Kuwaitis remember how the Palestinian workers there welcomed the invasion by Saddam in 1990. They were not too popular after that and I'm sure the authorities didn't mind embarrassing them with exposure.

What was the money intended for? What will the unpaid civil servants in Gaza and the West Bank make of this? Or the voters in a place where GDP per head is under $1,000 per year? They deserve an answer.

Provision does not require ownership.
Topic: Politics
Remember the last time that you had a really lousy time in a restaurant; rude service, poor food, dirty tables, unhygienic lavatories and over-priced drinks? Remember how you swore that you would go there again and give their accountant more money, cross your fingers and blithely hope that things would get better for your next visit?

Didn't you? OK, please yourself then. Perhaps you're one of those normal people who decided to take their business elsewhere. Like anyone would actually.

Well that's the problem with the NHS in a nutshell. You don't need to know anything about fundholding, waiting lists, citizens' charters or brain surgery. You just need to know that you pay for it in a way that’s totally different to the way you pay for everything else in life. That’s enough to make you realise that it’s doomed. It was poor under the Tories and after nearly nine years of a Labour government it’s still poor. And that’s after huge increases in tax. Why is this?

Well dare I say it, but maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that you can’t take your money away if you’re dissatisfied? Not if, like most people, you can’t afford private care. You have no threat. Targets can come and go, but the poor punter doesn’t have a choice.

I know that many people reading this will argue that the NHS was underfunded under the Tories. Maybe it was. I have no idea what the ‘correct’ budget should have been. Neither do you. Perhaps you think it would improve with more money now. Maybe it would. I don't know. But if you’ve followed the newspapers or just looked at their Jobs sections, you’ll realise that there has been a big increase in hospital administration. Was this really what the voters wanted when they booted out Major in 1997?

When health is politicised, but not privatised, politicians will still attempt to improve it. But without a free market, the mechanism to ensure that the money is well spent is very indirect. If you don’t like what the politicians are doing to the Health Service on which your life depends you can vote them out at the next election in up to five years time, but wouldn’t you rather have the option to take your business to a better performing service now?

Many Britons are proud of the NHS, believing that it’s right and proper that everyone should be able to get treatment that’s free at the point-of-service. I can understand that. So it’s fine by me if you want to make it free for everyone. But that doesn’t mean that the government needs to own the hospitals or employ any of the doctors and nurses. Provision doesn't require ownership. They are totally different concepts.

Anyone who’s travelled to the US knows this intuitively anyway. The last time I went there I had a travel insurance policy that I'd bought at the Post Office. It covered me for potential medical costs up to $10m. That is what I needed. I was under no illusion that the British Post Office actually owned any hospitals in the US, nor that it employed any doctors there. I just knew that it had made arrangements to pay for its policyholders to receive treatment should they need it. Why can't the NHS work like that either? Why can't I have insurance coverage guaranteed by the government, but with me having the choice of various competing insurance companies to select from? Hospitals that employed too many administrators and too few nurses would slowly lose custom to those who did the opposite. And this would give the health providers the incentive to cut paperwork and focus on hiring those who actually roll up their sleeves and care for the sick, instead of paper pushers. That’s what I’m interested in paying for.

It’s hard to discuss the NHS. Over the years it’s gone beyond rational discussion. But discussion is need if we’re to change it so that it saves more lives than it does. Don't take my word for it if you don't want to. See what the Observer's Health Editor said in 2001.

Why the NHS is bad for us, by Anthony Browne – Observer Health Editor 2001

In the meantime, I must weep for the opportunity that the Tories have wasted to promote this philosophy. Hague had no chance of winning the 2001 election. The voters were clearly in a mood to punish the Tories for the Major era for years to come. That was the ideal time to promote the idea of reform. It takes years for voters to consider radical change. So it’s tragic that the opposition party didn’t make the case years ago.

Other issues in the Middle East
Topic: Politics
I've had some curious reactions to my post about Syriana below. It seems some people think my feelings about the film were 'predictable' because of my support for Israel. This puzzles me, because Israel isn't mentioned in the film. None of the action takes place there.

I have tried to explain that there are other issues in the Middle East apart from the Israel/Palestine conflict, but some of you don't believe me. Perhaps you need to read it from someone other than me. So I suggest that you read this Al-Jazeera article about the UN initiated Arab Human Development Report of 2002.

Do read the whole thing.

A quick and simple defense of Thatcherism.
Topic: Politics
I caught a few old pop videos from the early 1980s on television the other day and found my mind wandering back to a time when unemployment was high and Britain seemed divided between those who thought Margaret Thatcher was the devil incarnate and those who thought she was the saviour of Britain.

Many still hate her and feel that she did damage to the UK in those years. But I wonder what such critics think of the following crude defense of her actions. Suppose you were one of those who destested her policies. What would you have done differently? I reckon your list would look very familiar to anyone who has lived in Germany and France for the last 20 years -

Subsidy of coal mines - Done in Germany

Maintenance of Trade Union power - Done in Germany and France

Employment protection legislation - Done in France

State shareholdings in major industries - Done in France

Generous welfare payments - Done in Germany

Resist foreign takeovers - Done in France

Aid to depressed regions - Done in Germany (massive transfers to the former east)

And what has been the result of this? Both France and Germany have much higher levels of unemployment than Britain. And both are far more divided societies. Germany is still divided between east and west, despite 16 years of reunification. France has 20 per cent youth unemployment - 40 per cent in the ghettos. The large Muslim and African immigrant population feels utterly cut off from mainstream society. The country has been hit by two separate periods of rioting in the last year.

I don't know why the current Tory leadership is trying so hard to distance itself from Thatcher's legacy. France's disintegration shows that the alternative to Thatcher's short sharp shock was a long agonising decline.

On stability in Iraq.
Topic: Politics
"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

That was President John F. Kennedy.

No mention of 'exit strategies'.
No mention of 'stability'.
No mention of 'legality'.
Just an unapologetic and defiant declaration of the need to fight for freedom.

I am sometimes held to have been 'wrong' about Iraq, because of the continuing violence there. While I did not forecast the savagery that has persisted, I remain convinced that the war has been right. And the savagery that persists, in a peculiar way, shows that some people do understand that I'm right. Those people are the terrorists themselves, who grasp that a successful, prosperous and free Iraq would be a mortal blow to their long term plans, because prosperity and freedom would divert muslims from victimhood and the quest for jihad.

While I would like stability for Iraq and indeed anywhere else, I must again stress that stability for me is a necessary but not sufficient condition of success. Stability is only meaningful if it applies to a just society. And whatever you may think about Iraq now, it is more just. If you only want stability, go to Auschwitz. It's tremendously stable. But it's associated with the greatest injustice of all time.

Moreover, stability is an illusion. Nothing is ever static in the affairs of man. What we've learned from decades of containment is that in the end, it's the container who gets contained. The rogue states play games with weapons inspectors, bribe UN officials to release funds for illicit purposes and while this illusion of stability is maintained, the free world slumbers in a false sense of security until disaster strikes and it's forced to fight - just as in 1939. I don't want that to happen again.

If you haven't already read it, check out the essay 'Stability, America's enemy' in the essential reading section of the left hand sidebar.

At last, a Tory rethink on housing.
Topic: Politics
Last year, on election day I wrote here about my frustration with the Conservative Party's protectionist attitude to new housing construction:

Quote:

"The one policy where I find myself in agreement with Labour is on housing. The Conservatives vilify Prescott for wanting to build more housing on the Green Belt, but I think Prescott's got this right. There is an urgent need for more housing in the South East of England and I feel that he's facing facts, while others bury their heads in the sand. I do feel sickened listening to some middle-class southerners prattling on about defending the Green Belt. While they may think that they are speaking for the defence of rural tranquility, what they are actually saying is that people who live in overcrowded and overpriced towns and cities should be made to stay there. It sickens me. The Tories express their opposition to 'Prezza's digger' in terms of giving local communities a voice, but we all know what this means because nobody has any incentive to say 'yes'. Every community would say no to more housing, because the people consulted are those who don't benefit from greater supply. The poor and the homeless wouldn't have a voice in this process.

Before anyone leaps to the assumption that I'm wanting government interference in the market to suit my own needs, I should stress that I'm not. What I would like is for the market to be made more free. What we have at present is unrestricted demand, but highly restricted supply. The number of bodies who have the right to object to new housing construction has risen in recent decades and the result is a big anti-development bias. This must be reversed. The Tories are supposed to be the party of free enterprise and it disappoints me to see them being so protectionist on this matter."

It's therefore a great relief to read this article in the Times today:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25610-2031797,00.html

which reports:

In a speech that ignored much of last year’s election manifesto, George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said that he would change the tax regime, planning system and supply of public housing to increase the number of affordable homes.

In 2005 the Tories said that they would oppose all of John Prescott’s homebuilding plans in the South East and establish more green belts with even tighter planning regulations. Although popular with traditionalists, the policy was a turn-off for young families looking for affordable homes. In an attempt to revive the spirit of Margaret Thatcher’s "homeowning democracy", Mr Osborne said that the party would help first-time buyers.

"I want the modern Conservative Party to become again the champion of affordable and sustainable homeownership," he told a housing industry conference in South Wales. "I want us to look afresh at the planning system, and tackle the delays and obstruction that is damaging the the affordability of our housing."

I would love to think that someone in the Conservative Party had read this article about 'Affordable family creation', but I doubt it.

Affordable family creation

Worth reading if you have the time, but the executive summary is:

"In parts of the country where it is economical to buy a house with a yard in a neighborhood with a decent public school, you’ll generally find more Republicans."

If I worked in Tory Central Office I would paint that message in large capital letters on the walls.

Rejoice, eh!
Topic: Politics
Rejoice rejoice! Canada has elected a Conservative government. Another country swings to the right. In Canada's case, levels of corruption and crony-capitalism that exceed anything we're used to in the UK have finally pushed Canadian voters to reject the Liberal Party, which had become hopelessly tainted with sleaze.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4641954.stm


Meanwhile, a new survey by the BBC reports that people in Afghanistan and Iraq are the among most optimistic people in the world when it comes to their economic future.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4641396.stm

I wonder what those two countries have in common!

Former Vice-President of Syria demands change.
Topic: Politics
Only one news story seems important to me today and it's not the resignation of Charles Kennedy.

Khaddam calls for Syrian revolt.

Former Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam says he wants to see President Bashar al-Assad ousted through a popular uprising. Mr Khaddam told the BBC that Syrians were frustrated with the current regime and should be mobilised by the opposition groups in the country.

This is exactly the sort of positive knock-on effect that the invasion of Iraq was supposed to produce.

It's also nice to see someone having a conversion on the journey back from Damascus. :)