I am however still packing/preparing for my trip to Hong Kong (estimated departure date: friday). It’ll be good to get back to the ‘Big Lychee’ as veteran blogger Hemlock puts it and with only 1 more year of Law to read before I can read for the bar in Hong Kong, I’ll be there on a more permanent basis pretty soon.
In my absence, Al Sistani bailed out Al Sadr and in the process relegated him to an SWP-esque political entity (entirely flaccid without guns to enforce his views), Kelly Holmes won an Olympic gold (where the hell did that come from?) and Michael Howard’s constant opportunistic guff has managed to get him barred from the White House - nice one Mikey, you just shafted the Conservatives for the next 5 years!
I just put a £4 bet on Bush dropping Cheney at the Republican Convention because, hey it’s £4 and the odds are 100-1. It’s not going to happen, but if it does I want to be as smug as is humanly possible without having to beat Sir Menzies Campbell at scrabble.
Life seems pretty damn good.
Blogging will return to a more regular level once I’m on the concrete reclaimed-terra-firma that I like to call home.
Later
John
Oliver Kamm provides, what is perhaps the best essay written on much of the left’s union with clerical fascism. Far reaching, well thought out and clearly demonstrated. Have a read if you’ve got the time. I’m not going to quote any of it because it’s impossible to choose a single paragraph to reproduce.
Later
John
This from Yahoo (via AFP)
DOHA (AFP) - Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against US forces in the region to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.
“We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly,” Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera TV when asked if Iran would respond to an American attack on its nuclear facilities.
I’m absolutely certain that no one in Iran would be that stupid, or more accurately that there there’s someone there who isn’t thusly stupid who can stop someone bent on triggering the US invasion of Iran.
“We will bury them!” anybody?
Later
John
Stephen Pollard lays into the left for its self-contradictory position with regards to Sudan in light of their Iraq policy.
The revolting truth is that such sentiments are shared by most of the liberal Left, who rank their belief in humanitarian action below their antipathy towards President Bush and, more generally, the United States.
So much for the fabled internationalism of the Left. So much for the idea that human beings are what count. To the anti-war liberal mindset, human misery is less important than hatred of America.
Ouch.
It has to be said that whilst he savages the left with a vitriol that stings, he’s right in a number of ways. The left that I’ve left behind doesn’t seem to know what the hell it believes anymore. There is no underlying fundamental core of beliefs anymore, liberal interventionism as a principle died in Iraq when much of those who professed to hold its principles to heart ignored it in favour of giving George Bush a notional bloody nose (they missed).
Much of the left has disgraced itself by failing to provide a coherent policy on the war on terror and humanitarian intervention in general - for a few years they paid lip service to the only practitioner of Liberal Interventionism in power today and now are content to drift back towards some reactionary creed that grates against everything I was taught the left stood for.
Too much of the left’s edifice has been built on the lunacy of the 80’s ineffectual liberal policy and when presented with a new foundation to build on by the centre-left many have instead elected to return to the quicksand of their former ideals. Watching such beasts today, like Sir Menzies Campbell is a tragically comic ordeal, they stand tall and self-puffed whilst their shins slowly sink.
Later
John
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. - Corinthians 13
In talking with and reading the writings of a lot of the left-wing something has been illustrated with astounding clarity. It is also relevant to the above quote so fear not, this has not become some forum for Bible Bashing.
A lot of the liberal ideals I embrace today are far from those which I ‘inherited’. None of my family is particularly liberal, I instead obtained my world view from a voracious appetite for journalistic comment. I read Time and Newsweek and whatever papers were available to me. It was not a construct of my mind, it was instead a rubber stamp of liberal ideology, that marked me down with a certain set of beliefs and a certain way of thinking, as macabre and Leninist as that might be to imagine.
However something changed all that, and I am in a morbid way, thankful for it: September 11th and the ensuing war on terrorism.
My sixth form class was unique amongst all the other sixth forms of Shatin College both previous and forthcoming, in that it was the only year to not have access to a common room. Ours was annexed to make more teaching rooms for our year and a new one was built the following year. The 2 year period in which there was to be no biliardino (foosball) table, no lounging sofas or stereo coincided precisely with my lower and upper sixth years.
(Man that was annoying - it is a little known fact that I am a foosball god having spent all my young summers in Italy learning from the best players in the world - Italians are preternaturally good at biliardino. Seriously, some people can put their fist in their mouths, others can name all 50 states, I can rocket a little plastic ball into a goal at such pace as to make grown adults cry with the flick of a wrist with no spinning. Heck I used to beat kids twice my age in country clubs and anonymous europeans in cafes.)
Instead we had what was known as the SSC, the Sixth form Study Centre. A room filled with computers, desks and a small enclave containing all the liberal literature one could wish for, flanked by some low-slung fabric loungers and bean-bags. As a result a lot of my year were very well versed in common affairs and it made for some interesting conversations.
However after the September 11th attacks I found the newspapers and journals wanting. I spent weeks being told by all manner of publications that the US would be hopelessly bogged down in Afghanistan, a veritable middle-eastern Vietnam, that George W Bush was a bozo (didn’t take long for that veneer of false sincerity to wipe from the liberal establishment over Bush’s administration) and that America deserved what it got. September 11th I was told, was a slightly irrational reaction to American Neo-Imperialist policy in the middle east. Baaaaad Israel Give those Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians and Lebanese back their land!
The liberal media had done what is seemingly their wont - they had overplayed their hand. Within a few weeks America hadn’t sustained more than 50 casualties. This wasn’t a war - this was a whitewash. Where were the broken down burning hummers? The countless body bags that I had been told to expect?
This was the straw that broke my political scaffold. Everything I’d been told to believe seemed tainted by some insane desire amongst the left to keep things meaning what they always had meant. My naive idolization of the UN, brought on by days spent in the Hong Kong Model United Nations seemed a joke.
Slowly I discovered that there were alternatives, I read the blogosphere intently and finally decided that I’d bring my laughable personal blog into the arena of political discussion. As insignificant as it may have been it provided a tool to engage in debate, something which I had enjoyed on the loungers of the SSC was now available to me at a level of complexity and intellect that far exceeded what I was used to, I relished every jagged paragraph of it.
Sullivan, Arranovitch, Cohen, Reynolds, Simon. Just a few of the writers who’s work challenged me. I had learned the lessons from my childhood to early adulthood. I didn’t accept anything as gospel and approached everything with a critical eye.
At the end of it I joined the New Labour Party, specifically under the leadership of Tony Blair. I have always been clear as to which party I joined, if Blair were to depart and be replaced by someone who would return the party to it’s 80’s to early 90’s idealism I would quite simply rescind my membership.
I saw a few more grey areas and at the same time, saw where I had been plain wrong in the past. I saw that Neo-Conservatism, that spectre of far-right dominance that has long been projected by the left as a hideous imperialistic beast was in fact not a ‘disease’ but an attempted cure for the chronic affliction which has befallen our international institutions. The right wing was at least attempting to formulate policy to tackle this issue, as were some sectors of the centre-left where I pin my own views like some over-eager blindfolded child at a birthday party. The left that I ‘left behind’ so to speak was petulantly denying the festering wound which defaced those institutions that I so believed in.
Iraq proved the death knell for anything I had left in me of my old beliefs, any vestiges of conventional left wing politics fled with its opposition to the toppling of a fascist murderous dictator and far more sickeningly its childish refusal to support the Iraqi people in their new struggle for democracy. It even now disgusts me to think that many cheered on the bloodthirsty bastards who continue to terrorize the Iraqi people.
So now that I find myself on the centre-left, steadily moving towards the plain centre with the recognition that right now I would support Bush over Kerry in an American presidential election, it seems ironic to see some of those writers who so helped dismantle and reassemble my political beliefs, recognize those faults that they had inadvertently pointed out.
Harry’s Place has a link to Nick Cohen’s latest piece in the New Statesman - ‘Where have all the children of the left gone?’. It’s a good read and an interesting one, on the fall from grace of the now reactionary left. As an email I received from the Labour Party boldly stated “We must win the Battle of Ideas” - that skirmish is necessary, but rather than being a campaign over the broiling sea of public opinion it must instead be fought within the consciousness of the rest of the left wing. I’ll be standing over here if any of them want to come join me, thankful that the leader of the Labour Party understands what needs to be done.
Later
John
Michael Howard has in the past day or so moved to establish a strong Tory line on policing and crime.
It seems interesting as he was after all the Home Secretary who had the wind taken out of his sails by a young shadow minister who promised to be “Tough on crime, Tough on the causes of crime” at a time when Howard had managed to cut police numbers. That young shadow minister was obviously Tony Blair.
Strong Law and Order has always been a traditional Tory policy and it seemed a bit of a coup to have Tory position usurped by a Labour government. The great irony with the much lambasted David Blunkett is that the Home Secretary is extremely tough on crime, (much to the distaste of many on the Labour back bench) and as a result has had Conservatives chomping at the bit - they’re favourite path for criticizing Labour has largely been blocked.
However Howard has decided that he’s going to tackle the paperwork which the Labour government has forced upon Her Majesty’s Constabulary. I’ll be honest, this does seem to be a rather impotent line of policy from Howard, even ignoring my own misgivings about his leadership, but it is indicative of the astounding success of New Labour’s tactics in refusing the Conservatives room for maneuver on this issue.
Blair’s government has done such a great job of taking a tough line on crime that Howard is reduced to vainly poking at a cloud of “political correctness” and attacking paperwork used to guard Human Rights.
As a chief inspector on Newsnight noted, filing in a form for a stop and search, a police power granted under the PACE act that would normally be subject only to a set of guidelines which carry little penalty for contravention, adds a rather insignificant amount of paperwork to the average bobby’s workload.
Let some people balk at Blunkett’s hard line, the fact of the matter is that most of the opposition is from the people in low-crime areas. The people who are affected most by crime policy such as those living in the Middlesborough council estates shown on Newsnight yesterday evening, are the ones calling for increased police powers and by playing the ‘tough’ card, Blair’s government has blocked what looks to be one of the last real theatres for policy debate between Labour and the Conservatives.
The only real area of debate left open to the Tories for the next election (as a result of almost a year of opportunism and ya-boo politics from the leadership) is Europe and their party still can’t form a consensus on that issue.
There’s a reason the odds for a Labour win next General Election aren’t enticing me over at Ladbrokes.co.uk. It’s because in the time leading up to the election, even with my miniscule HSBC current account interest rates, I’d make more money keeping my tenner in the bank than I would if Blair pulled through for a historic 3rd term.
Later
John
The Onion lays down a hilarious article - CIA Asks Bush To Discontinue Blog.
Enjoy :D
Later
John
Delivered in the Times
The US and British governments remain engaged in a long and complicated struggle against terrorism. The notion that the intelligence services in Pakistan, or elsewhere, twiddle their thumbs and await the most electorally helpful moment at which to grab a major al-Qaeda leader is absurd. The criticism initially made of the decision to raise the terror alert in America — that it was a suspiciously disproportionate response to material that was two or three years old — was itself simplistic. Recent information on fresh al-Qaeda activity also played a role in this decision. And it is ludicrous to imagine David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, ordering arrests to overshadow a parliamentary committee’s report.
It takes a broad swing at both the unrelenting and idiotic cynicism about terror alerts and the spurious assertions that advances made in the war against terrorism have somehow been politically timed (which would in a different time, have been dismissed as crackpot conspiracy theories). This article is a must read.
Intelligent, succinct and more importantly right. No doubt I shall open the paper tomorrow to find an article by Simon “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” Jenkins, entitled “Why I’m not scared of terrorism alerts”.
Later
John
I’ve been a bit slow on the blogging front because I’ve been taking a sort of sabbatical from blogging. I’ll still post the odd article or essay but I won’t be back to frantic speed for a week or so.
In other news, Roger L Simon thinks Zev Chafets has got ‘guts’ for predicting a Bush win in November. Heck I’d have been willing to come out with that weeks ago. Things are only going to get worse for Kerry in the next few months with the added possibility of a total implosion over his Vietnam record (The Swiftboat Veterans seem intent on ‘debunking’ his claims).
Expect more and more success in the war on terror such as the recent capture of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan (guess some of that interrogation paid off).
There are of course many reasons why I’d like to see Bush win, in amongst the many why I’d like to see him lose. Chief amongst these is the fact that if Kerry wins then the media will consider it a sign that they have the absolute power to sway a presidential election. If Kerry loses and the media’s self confessed bias fails to make an impact then it will be a crushing blow for the perceived power of the mass media - a “Dan Rather’s got no clothes” moment if you will.
Anyhow, intermittent blogging will follow.
Later
John
I decided to drop all my ideas about the Democratic party in America and instead come to a conclusion based on their conference. I read transcripts and thanks to iTunes listened to a lot of speeches.
It was all going so well. The Democratic National Conference was playing out brilliantly, they’d managed to steal a lot of the Republican’s wind by adopting the hawkish line that they need to win the centre. Edwards proved for me that he had what it took to not only be a decent VP but to be a powerful and capable president.
Then Kerry stepped up to speak and confirmed my previous assumptions. That he is not the man to lead America for the next 4 years. That the Democratic ticket that would have got my support would have been Edwards/Gephardt or Hillary/Anybody. That ultimately, Kerry is not an electoral asset.
The easy way to work out someone’s electability is simply to imagine what would happen if they ran as an independent. If Clinton ran as an independent, there would be without question a great deal of support for him - he’d win a good few seats in the House of Reps (constitutional restrictions notwithstanding).
However if Kerry ran on his own, I couldn’t see him winning anything more than a few token seats. That’s the thing - the Democratic party brings more to Kerry than Kerry brings to it. They set up a sensationally effective convention and then handed it to someone who actually made things worse with his acceptance speech.
I’m not certain that George W Bush is the best man for the job of Commander in Chief but I do know that he’s preferable to John Forbes Kerry. He’s not preferable compared to almost any other Democratic candidate (with the obvious exception of Al Sharpton) but somehow liberals managed to pick the most ridiculously arrogant, smug, politician available and then let him loose with a completely incoherent foreign policy at a time when he needs to be a strong stable platform for a country at war.
Then there’s the Vietnam issue.
Kerry spent the time after he’d excused himself from the fighting in Vietnam, vilifying his fellow soldiers for activities such as rape, murder and butchery which he said he oversaw and witnessed. Now either this man was a flat out self-aggrandizing lier in the 70’s or worse he’s telling the truth and he took part in said war-crimes. I want neither qualities for the man who’s supposed to be the leader of the free world!
Why why why? The “Firehouses” incident, the dodgy salute, the total absence of any reference to Iraqi or Afghani democratization - a process that is currently in motion and very much ‘in the news’ - this was a speech that actually did damage to the party’s bid for power.
He’s on the ticket now, and after the smallest post convention bounce in history, things aren’t looking good for the Democrats. 4 more years? Guess Hillary’s played her cards perfectly.
Later
John