Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Before and after the deluge
Steve Platt, Tribune column 10 September 2004
What were you doing on 10 September 2001? Most people can tell you where they were and what they were thinking when they heard about the hijacked planes being crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But what about beforehand? What were the issues that were concerning us? Did the world really change forever on 11 September, as so many commentators were quick to say it had?
The New York Daily News front page on the day before the twin towers came tumbling down was headlined "Killer Mold". It was a story about an East Side apartment building infected with Stachybotrys chartarum – a potentially toxic black mould that Time magazine had reported earlier that summer as spreading "like a biblical plague". Inside the paper, one of the main column features was discussing "Pets and their Celebrities".
On the economic scene, after a day of ups and downs, the Dow Jones index had returned to its opening figures, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 made small gains. A panel of business economists had lowered their expectations on US GDP growth for 2001, but with America enjoying the longest economic boom in living memory, optimism remained high. The pension funds crisis and revelations of boardroom corruption were still in the future.
There was also optimism on the international front. Anti-globalisation protests were placing the issues of poverty and development high on the world's agenda. The Jubilee 2000 Coalition's campaign to secure a fresh debt-free beginning for a billion people had brought together an unparalleled campaigning alliance. "The world will never be the same again," it had declared in celebration of its perceived success.
Meanwhile, the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations was concluding in New York on 10 September 2001 with the adoption of the far-reaching Millenium Declaration, spelling out policies on globalisation, development and poverty, peace, security and disarmament, the environment, human rights and democracy.
The largest gathering of world leaders ever assembled, the Assembly had set itself ambitious targets. These included ensuring the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol on the environment by the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 2002; and, by 2015, halving the proportion of people with income of less than one dollar a day, and of those suffering from hunger and lack of safe drinking water; ensuring equal access to all levels of education for girls and boys and primary schooling for all children everywhere; reducing maternal mortality by three quarters; and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.
Only one world leader, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president of Algeria, mentioned terrorism in his statement to the summit. He called for a study of the funding of internationalism terrorist groups, particularly in countries that are "bridgeheads for terrorists".
No one showed much interest. George Bush's international priorities at the time were very different. On 10 September 2001, his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was leading the attack on a military spending bill that would cut $1.3 billion from Bush's request for missile defence and restrict testing to keep it in line with international agreements. Earlier in the summer, the new US president had identified China as the principal threat to American interests, calling it a "strategic competitor" and talking of tougher trade and other sanctions to keep it in line. He also spoke of the importance of developing a "special relationship" with Mexico; floated the idea of a total amnesty for illegal immigrants; appeared to be supportive of the Kyoto treaty; and pledged to "show humility" in world affairs.
Whatever they meant for the world, the 11 September attacks made sure that George Bush's presidency at least would never be the same again. "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive," he declared soon afterwards.
It was certainly decisive – and a lot more expensive than a couple of million dollars. The US Congress has provided at least $165 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other anti-terrorism efforts since 2001. Estimates for 2005 put the cost of the Iraq war at around $5 billion per month. This is all on top of an annual military budget that has now reached more than $400 billion.
The sums are comparable with what the US was spending a generation ago on another war against a different enemy. During the eight years between 1964 and 1982, the US spent $111 billion, or more than $494 billion, adjusted for inflation, on its war in Vietnam – an average of $5.15 billion per month.
In one key respect, then, nothing has really changed at all since 11 September. The richest country in the world still spends the sort of vast sums on prosecuting war that could surely, if spent wisely, buy a better peace at a very much lower price.
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Steve Platt, Tribune column 10 September 2004
What were you doing on 10 September 2001? Most people can tell you where they were and what they were thinking when they heard about the hijacked planes being crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But what about beforehand? What were the issues that were concerning us? Did the world really change forever on 11 September, as so many commentators were quick to say it had?
The New York Daily News front page on the day before the twin towers came tumbling down was headlined "Killer Mold". It was a story about an East Side apartment building infected with Stachybotrys chartarum – a potentially toxic black mould that Time magazine had reported earlier that summer as spreading "like a biblical plague". Inside the paper, one of the main column features was discussing "Pets and their Celebrities".
On the economic scene, after a day of ups and downs, the Dow Jones index had returned to its opening figures, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 made small gains. A panel of business economists had lowered their expectations on US GDP growth for 2001, but with America enjoying the longest economic boom in living memory, optimism remained high. The pension funds crisis and revelations of boardroom corruption were still in the future.
There was also optimism on the international front. Anti-globalisation protests were placing the issues of poverty and development high on the world's agenda. The Jubilee 2000 Coalition's campaign to secure a fresh debt-free beginning for a billion people had brought together an unparalleled campaigning alliance. "The world will never be the same again," it had declared in celebration of its perceived success.
Meanwhile, the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations was concluding in New York on 10 September 2001 with the adoption of the far-reaching Millenium Declaration, spelling out policies on globalisation, development and poverty, peace, security and disarmament, the environment, human rights and democracy.
The largest gathering of world leaders ever assembled, the Assembly had set itself ambitious targets. These included ensuring the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol on the environment by the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 2002; and, by 2015, halving the proportion of people with income of less than one dollar a day, and of those suffering from hunger and lack of safe drinking water; ensuring equal access to all levels of education for girls and boys and primary schooling for all children everywhere; reducing maternal mortality by three quarters; and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.
Only one world leader, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president of Algeria, mentioned terrorism in his statement to the summit. He called for a study of the funding of internationalism terrorist groups, particularly in countries that are "bridgeheads for terrorists".
No one showed much interest. George Bush's international priorities at the time were very different. On 10 September 2001, his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was leading the attack on a military spending bill that would cut $1.3 billion from Bush's request for missile defence and restrict testing to keep it in line with international agreements. Earlier in the summer, the new US president had identified China as the principal threat to American interests, calling it a "strategic competitor" and talking of tougher trade and other sanctions to keep it in line. He also spoke of the importance of developing a "special relationship" with Mexico; floated the idea of a total amnesty for illegal immigrants; appeared to be supportive of the Kyoto treaty; and pledged to "show humility" in world affairs.
Whatever they meant for the world, the 11 September attacks made sure that George Bush's presidency at least would never be the same again. "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive," he declared soon afterwards.
It was certainly decisive – and a lot more expensive than a couple of million dollars. The US Congress has provided at least $165 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other anti-terrorism efforts since 2001. Estimates for 2005 put the cost of the Iraq war at around $5 billion per month. This is all on top of an annual military budget that has now reached more than $400 billion.
The sums are comparable with what the US was spending a generation ago on another war against a different enemy. During the eight years between 1964 and 1982, the US spent $111 billion, or more than $494 billion, adjusted for inflation, on its war in Vietnam – an average of $5.15 billion per month.
In one key respect, then, nothing has really changed at all since 11 September. The richest country in the world still spends the sort of vast sums on prosecuting war that could surely, if spent wisely, buy a better peace at a very much lower price.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Voting for Kerry?
Tribune column, 27 August 2004
Does it matter who wins the US presidential election this autumn? There are some on the left, such as the 9/11 film-maker, Michael Moore, who seem to think that nothing matters so much as ousting George W Bush in November. There are others, such as the activist presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, and his supporters, who think the outcome of the election is secondary to building a new political movement outside the current two-party carve up. And there are others still, such as the journalist John Pilger and the historian Gabriel Kolko, whom Pilger quotes approvingly, who believe that Bush may actually be the lesser of two evils.
According to Kolko, John Kerry would differ from Bush as president principally in attempting to rebuild the US's damaged international alliances and reconstructing the multilateral approach to foreign policy that Bush has contrived to demolish. In contrast, Bush is "much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power. One does not have to believe the worse the better, but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush's mandate . . . As dangerous as it is, Bush's re-election may be a lesser evil."
This is a dangerous analysis for dangerous times. In essence, it's saying give us imperialism red in tooth and claw because that way the world will see it unmasked and isolated. And despite Kolko's denial, it does indeed hark back to the old revolutionary notion that things must get worse before they improve – that the people will only rebel when they are faced with the iron fist, not cosseted with the velvet glove.
In the British context there are echoes here of the ultra-left illusion of the 1970s: the belief that it would be good for socialism if Margaret Thatcher's Tories came to power because it would somehow hasten the workers' revolt. It didn't advance the cause of the left then; and it's hard to see what benefits would arise from a second Bush victory now.
John Kerry, to be sure, is no standard bearer of the left. He is, as Noam Chomsky and other commentators of the American left have described him, "Bush-lite". He's a long way removed from the reforming Democratic presidents of the past century. There is nothing in his programme to match Kennedy's domestic radicalism, or Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programme or Roosevelt's New Deal. There is nothing even to compare with the health reform plan for which Bill Clinton campaigned so hard before seeing it diluted beyond all recognition in office.
Having chosen, moreover, to fight the election in no small part on his ability as a military commander, in an attempt to out-patriot the president, Kerry must also bear no small part of the responsibility for the way in which he is currently being hoist by his own petard on the issue of Vietnam. At the very least, he should have seen it coming. If George Bush's dirty campaigning department felt no qualms about turning its vitriol on a Republican ex-PoW like John McCain; if the draft-dodgers of the right could get Georgia senator Max Cleland kicked out of office for being "unpatriotic", even though he lost three limbs in Vietnam – then how much easier would they find it to target a man who left Vietnam with only some pieces of shrapnel in his body?
Kerry's decision to play the patriot card was an error of both tactics and principle. Having testified before a Senate foreign relations committee when he returned from Vietnma that America's war there was conducted "in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan", what exactly are the lessons from that war that he is promising to bring to the present one? His message is at best confused; to many, it sounds downright disingenuous.
There are many other criticisms that can be, and are being, laid at Kerry's door from the left. But there would still be a huge difference in outcome between the election of George W Bush and the one man who offers any kind of viable electoral alternative to him in November. To argue that it doesn't matter who wins, or worse that a Bush victory would be some sort of good thing, ignores the extent to which electoral victories in themselves help to shape the political landscape.
The left in Britain greatly underestimated the ideological, as well as the immediate practical, significance of Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979. It helped to shift the entire terms of the political debate rightwards, and not just in Britain but in the rest of the world too. Bush's stolen victory did much the same in the US in 2000; and a second victory in 2004 would have devastating consequences for the direction of opinion and policy on a whole range of issues, including the environment, development, civil liberties, race, religion, women's and gay rights, employment, taxation, public services and poverty as well as foreign policy and war.
Even where the differences between Kerry and Bush are small, the consequences of those differences can be big. As Noam Chomsky has put it, the scale of US power means that "small differences can translate into large outcomes". Progressives in the US face a bald choice, according to Chomsky: "Help elect Bush, or do something to try to prevent it."
Chomsky himself, together with thousands of other US activists, will be voting for Ralph Nader. There's no contradiction there: it's because his home state is Massachusetts – safe Kerry territority. In non-safe states, however, he is urging people to vote for Kerry. There is no progressive alternative.
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Tribune column, 27 August 2004
Does it matter who wins the US presidential election this autumn? There are some on the left, such as the 9/11 film-maker, Michael Moore, who seem to think that nothing matters so much as ousting George W Bush in November. There are others, such as the activist presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, and his supporters, who think the outcome of the election is secondary to building a new political movement outside the current two-party carve up. And there are others still, such as the journalist John Pilger and the historian Gabriel Kolko, whom Pilger quotes approvingly, who believe that Bush may actually be the lesser of two evils.
According to Kolko, John Kerry would differ from Bush as president principally in attempting to rebuild the US's damaged international alliances and reconstructing the multilateral approach to foreign policy that Bush has contrived to demolish. In contrast, Bush is "much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power. One does not have to believe the worse the better, but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush's mandate . . . As dangerous as it is, Bush's re-election may be a lesser evil."
This is a dangerous analysis for dangerous times. In essence, it's saying give us imperialism red in tooth and claw because that way the world will see it unmasked and isolated. And despite Kolko's denial, it does indeed hark back to the old revolutionary notion that things must get worse before they improve – that the people will only rebel when they are faced with the iron fist, not cosseted with the velvet glove.
In the British context there are echoes here of the ultra-left illusion of the 1970s: the belief that it would be good for socialism if Margaret Thatcher's Tories came to power because it would somehow hasten the workers' revolt. It didn't advance the cause of the left then; and it's hard to see what benefits would arise from a second Bush victory now.
John Kerry, to be sure, is no standard bearer of the left. He is, as Noam Chomsky and other commentators of the American left have described him, "Bush-lite". He's a long way removed from the reforming Democratic presidents of the past century. There is nothing in his programme to match Kennedy's domestic radicalism, or Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programme or Roosevelt's New Deal. There is nothing even to compare with the health reform plan for which Bill Clinton campaigned so hard before seeing it diluted beyond all recognition in office.
Having chosen, moreover, to fight the election in no small part on his ability as a military commander, in an attempt to out-patriot the president, Kerry must also bear no small part of the responsibility for the way in which he is currently being hoist by his own petard on the issue of Vietnam. At the very least, he should have seen it coming. If George Bush's dirty campaigning department felt no qualms about turning its vitriol on a Republican ex-PoW like John McCain; if the draft-dodgers of the right could get Georgia senator Max Cleland kicked out of office for being "unpatriotic", even though he lost three limbs in Vietnam – then how much easier would they find it to target a man who left Vietnam with only some pieces of shrapnel in his body?
Kerry's decision to play the patriot card was an error of both tactics and principle. Having testified before a Senate foreign relations committee when he returned from Vietnma that America's war there was conducted "in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan", what exactly are the lessons from that war that he is promising to bring to the present one? His message is at best confused; to many, it sounds downright disingenuous.
There are many other criticisms that can be, and are being, laid at Kerry's door from the left. But there would still be a huge difference in outcome between the election of George W Bush and the one man who offers any kind of viable electoral alternative to him in November. To argue that it doesn't matter who wins, or worse that a Bush victory would be some sort of good thing, ignores the extent to which electoral victories in themselves help to shape the political landscape.
The left in Britain greatly underestimated the ideological, as well as the immediate practical, significance of Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979. It helped to shift the entire terms of the political debate rightwards, and not just in Britain but in the rest of the world too. Bush's stolen victory did much the same in the US in 2000; and a second victory in 2004 would have devastating consequences for the direction of opinion and policy on a whole range of issues, including the environment, development, civil liberties, race, religion, women's and gay rights, employment, taxation, public services and poverty as well as foreign policy and war.
Even where the differences between Kerry and Bush are small, the consequences of those differences can be big. As Noam Chomsky has put it, the scale of US power means that "small differences can translate into large outcomes". Progressives in the US face a bald choice, according to Chomsky: "Help elect Bush, or do something to try to prevent it."
Chomsky himself, together with thousands of other US activists, will be voting for Ralph Nader. There's no contradiction there: it's because his home state is Massachusetts – safe Kerry territority. In non-safe states, however, he is urging people to vote for Kerry. There is no progressive alternative.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Statistical disorder
Tribune column, 30 July 2004
Reuters, ITV, the Mail and the Express all ran with variations on the theme "Violent crime soars 12%". The Times headline referred to "One million violent crimes". The Mirror led with "Lawless UK". And the Sun, under the heading "Drunk and disorderly", reported how "Boozed-up yobs were blamed yesterday for a whopping 12 per cent surge in violent crime."
That was one version of the different crime figures published last week. The other was represented in the Guardian, under the headline "Longest period of falling crime for 106 years"; and, more stridently, in the Independent, which proclaimed: "Crime: the truth. New figures reveal that crime has fallen 39 per cent over the past nine years – the biggest sustained fall since the 19th century."
This conflict of evidence has become a recurring theme in the crime debate. On the one hand, the Sun can declare – correctly – that: "The number of violent offences last year topped a million for the first time . . . Assaults, woundings and threats to kill have TREBLED under Labour, according to the shock figures. Meanwhile, police detection rates have FALLEN in every region of England and Wales."
On the other hand – and equally correctly – the Independent can demonstrate how the decline in crime has been "quite staggering: car thefts, burglaries, domestic violence and assaults on people who are known to each other have all dropped by about half . . . In every category of crime – including violent crime – there has been a decrease. The risk of becoming a victim of crime has fallen from 40 per cent in 1995 to 26 per cent."
So whose interpretation of these apparently conflicting statistics does one believe? And what does it mean in terms of public policy on crime and punishment at a time when the government is sending out seemingly mixed messages announcing that crime is under control and falling, and at the same time that it is necessary to ditch the so-called "1960s liberal consensus" and get tough on law and order?
First, the figures. The 12% hike in violent crime that made most of the headlines last week comes from police figures for recorded offences, which showed a total of 1,109,017 violent offences in the UK in 2003-04, up from 991,603 the previous year. Altogether, on this reckoning, the number of recorded crimes rose 1% to 5,934,580.
The Guardian, Independent and the government, however, preferred to rely on the British Crime Survey, in which 40,000 people aged 16 and over are interviewed about their personal experiences of crime. This is considered to provide a more accurate picture because it includes unreported crimes. About half of all crimes are not reported to the police, so the BCS figures show an estimated 11,700,000 crimes committed in the year ending April 2004. This may be almost twice as high as the number of crimes recorded by the police, but it is a massive reduction from the peak of 19,300,000 crimes reported in the 1995 British Crime Survey.
"Not since 1981, when the total was a little over 11 million, have the figures been so low," the Independent declared triumphantly. "The last time Britain enjoyed such a sustained fall in crime was in 1898 – a decade in which, ironically, Jack the Ripper was terrorising Whitechapel, east London."
So is it just an "urban myth" that fear of crime and anti-social behaviour is rising, as Professor Paul Wiles, the director of research, development and statistics at the Home Office, believes? And have David Blunkett and Tony Blair miscalculated in their emphasis on a crackdown on social disorder and crime?
The answer is that neither the precise figures nor the detailed trends matter as much to most people as what is happening in their immediate neighbourhoods. And whichever way you look at, more than a million violent crimes in a single year means that a very substantial proportion of the population will have had direct experience as a victim, or as a friend or relative of a victim, of those crimes.
Look at people's experience of violent crime over a longer period (our perceptions are shaped not just by what happened in the year 2003-04 but by what occurred in the five, ten or 15 years before that too), and it becomes clear that the fear of crime is not urban myth but reality. The statistical risk of becoming a victim of crime may have fallen from 40 per cent in 1995 to 26 per cent in the year just gone, but spread that figure over four years and it becomes a 104% probability, or 260% over ten years. Spread it over a lifetime and the odds are that an individual will have been the victim of more than 18 different crimes. And since crime is not distributed evenly, some people are going to have been on the receiving end of a great deal more than that.
It's not necessary to rail against some supposed "1960s liberal consensus" on crime to recognise that safeguarding the right of citizens to live free from fear is one of the first responsibilities of the state. Those 1,109.017 violent offences recorded in the UK last year include 955,752 offences of violence against the person, a 14% increase. Threats to kill were up 23% to 22,232; serious wounding up 8% to 19,358; racially-aggravated wounding up 11% to 4,840; and harassment up 26% to 152,269. Sex offences increased by 7% to 52,070 – including an 8% increase in rapes of women to 12,354.
These are all statistics that merit urgent action, whichever way you choose to interpret them.
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Tribune column, 30 July 2004
Reuters, ITV, the Mail and the Express all ran with variations on the theme "Violent crime soars 12%". The Times headline referred to "One million violent crimes". The Mirror led with "Lawless UK". And the Sun, under the heading "Drunk and disorderly", reported how "Boozed-up yobs were blamed yesterday for a whopping 12 per cent surge in violent crime."
That was one version of the different crime figures published last week. The other was represented in the Guardian, under the headline "Longest period of falling crime for 106 years"; and, more stridently, in the Independent, which proclaimed: "Crime: the truth. New figures reveal that crime has fallen 39 per cent over the past nine years – the biggest sustained fall since the 19th century."
This conflict of evidence has become a recurring theme in the crime debate. On the one hand, the Sun can declare – correctly – that: "The number of violent offences last year topped a million for the first time . . . Assaults, woundings and threats to kill have TREBLED under Labour, according to the shock figures. Meanwhile, police detection rates have FALLEN in every region of England and Wales."
On the other hand – and equally correctly – the Independent can demonstrate how the decline in crime has been "quite staggering: car thefts, burglaries, domestic violence and assaults on people who are known to each other have all dropped by about half . . . In every category of crime – including violent crime – there has been a decrease. The risk of becoming a victim of crime has fallen from 40 per cent in 1995 to 26 per cent."
So whose interpretation of these apparently conflicting statistics does one believe? And what does it mean in terms of public policy on crime and punishment at a time when the government is sending out seemingly mixed messages announcing that crime is under control and falling, and at the same time that it is necessary to ditch the so-called "1960s liberal consensus" and get tough on law and order?
First, the figures. The 12% hike in violent crime that made most of the headlines last week comes from police figures for recorded offences, which showed a total of 1,109,017 violent offences in the UK in 2003-04, up from 991,603 the previous year. Altogether, on this reckoning, the number of recorded crimes rose 1% to 5,934,580.
The Guardian, Independent and the government, however, preferred to rely on the British Crime Survey, in which 40,000 people aged 16 and over are interviewed about their personal experiences of crime. This is considered to provide a more accurate picture because it includes unreported crimes. About half of all crimes are not reported to the police, so the BCS figures show an estimated 11,700,000 crimes committed in the year ending April 2004. This may be almost twice as high as the number of crimes recorded by the police, but it is a massive reduction from the peak of 19,300,000 crimes reported in the 1995 British Crime Survey.
"Not since 1981, when the total was a little over 11 million, have the figures been so low," the Independent declared triumphantly. "The last time Britain enjoyed such a sustained fall in crime was in 1898 – a decade in which, ironically, Jack the Ripper was terrorising Whitechapel, east London."
So is it just an "urban myth" that fear of crime and anti-social behaviour is rising, as Professor Paul Wiles, the director of research, development and statistics at the Home Office, believes? And have David Blunkett and Tony Blair miscalculated in their emphasis on a crackdown on social disorder and crime?
The answer is that neither the precise figures nor the detailed trends matter as much to most people as what is happening in their immediate neighbourhoods. And whichever way you look at, more than a million violent crimes in a single year means that a very substantial proportion of the population will have had direct experience as a victim, or as a friend or relative of a victim, of those crimes.
Look at people's experience of violent crime over a longer period (our perceptions are shaped not just by what happened in the year 2003-04 but by what occurred in the five, ten or 15 years before that too), and it becomes clear that the fear of crime is not urban myth but reality. The statistical risk of becoming a victim of crime may have fallen from 40 per cent in 1995 to 26 per cent in the year just gone, but spread that figure over four years and it becomes a 104% probability, or 260% over ten years. Spread it over a lifetime and the odds are that an individual will have been the victim of more than 18 different crimes. And since crime is not distributed evenly, some people are going to have been on the receiving end of a great deal more than that.
It's not necessary to rail against some supposed "1960s liberal consensus" on crime to recognise that safeguarding the right of citizens to live free from fear is one of the first responsibilities of the state. Those 1,109.017 violent offences recorded in the UK last year include 955,752 offences of violence against the person, a 14% increase. Threats to kill were up 23% to 22,232; serious wounding up 8% to 19,358; racially-aggravated wounding up 11% to 4,840; and harassment up 26% to 152,269. Sex offences increased by 7% to 52,070 – including an 8% increase in rapes of women to 12,354.
These are all statistics that merit urgent action, whichever way you choose to interpret them.
Friday, July 16, 2004
Spend it like Beckham
Tribune column, 16 July 2004
There are worse ways of filling the weekend viewing schedules than a charity event like last Saturday's Sport Relief "Go the extra Mile" fundraiser. And there are worse ways of massaging celebrity egos than by allowing them to parade their social consciences on the little screen on behalf of people less publicity-hungry than themselves.
I just wish we'd charge them a proper rate for our services.
Across the UK, according to the BBC, some 81,000 of us took part in 144 official races in the "biggest mile event in history". Ten thousand of us, including Prince William (who failed to break the six-minute barrier despite all his advantages of birth, breeding and starting at the front), did the run on London's Embankment. We raised what the organisers describe as "a record £11,078,359" on the day. And the BBC transmitted five hours of programmes for the event.
These included an interview with England's penalty-misser-in-chief, David Beckham, by the Fast Show's Ron Manager, aka comedian Paul Whitehouse. Beckham, it was generally agreed, had been an all-round "good sport" by submitting himself to jokes about those penalty misses, his high-pitched voice, his love of "bling", text-sex messages – and "holding his own" in the dressing room. The one question that was presumably off-limits, as it always seems to be on these occasions, was how much of his own money he'd put into the Sport Relief appeal.
The same was true of the trip to Peru on behalf of Sport Relief by Beckham's wife, Victoria, which featured in the BBC's documentary A Mile in Their Shoes. "I feel so sad and helpless, yet I really want to help," said Victoria, after spending time with 11-year-old Dinah, whose mum died three years ago and who lives and works with her dad on a rubbish tip – or at least did until the Sport Relief-supported charity ChildHope came up with the cash to enable her to go to school.
"People shouldn't have to live like this," Victorian commented. "I'm finding that everything I've seen and experienced is taking its toll on me – as it would any mum."
Now I'm not going to join the "former Spice Girl seeks to revive flagging image with public sympathy from charity work" knocking crew. Better a picture opportunity of Posh Spice bringing public attention to bear on the plight of Lima's quarter of a million working children under the age of 12 than yet another shallow photo shoot publicising some unnecessary product or other in the Beckhams' extravagant consumerist lifestyle.
But why don't we charge our celebrities to take part in these sorts of things, rather than, as is so often the case, allow them at a minimum to milk us for every penny of expenses they can possibly claim – or at a maximum to impose "appearance fees" that are usually more than most beneficiaries of the particular charity appeal in question earn in a year?
The rich and celebrity-famous owe us at least this much. Their wealth and fame, after all, comes from us. They clearly feel some guilt at not having earned it. (What else, other than guilt about unmerited riches, makes questioning someone about their money the last taboo in celebrity interviewing?) And they clearly feel some need to absolve themselves through good deeds.
So why not put a price on their absolution, as the church used to in medieval times with its sale of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins? David Beckham wants to turn his cheating on his wife with his former PA, Rebecca Loos, into a joke about "textual intercourse"? Fine. How much is that Vodafone sponsorship worth again, David?
Victoria really really wants to help Peru's poor children and not feel so "sad and helpless" about their situation? No problem. How about (as a down payment, of course – we'll talk final terms later) something like the £100,000 you laid out for that statue of baby Brooklyn posing with you and his dad?
We should be careful, though, lest the sale of celebrity indulgences is done too cheaply. This year's Sport Relief event sold its principal sponsorship slot to a chain of gyms for about what the Beckhams earn in a week. For around £250,000, the company got its name listed even ahead of Sport Relief itself in the 144 official Fitness First Sport Relief Miles held around the country. With five hours of prime-time television to accompany the races, you can't help but feel that the Fitness First folk bought themselves a bloody good deal.
The truth is that celebrity and corporate support for charity is built upon a con-trick. We, the charity-supporting public (whose generosity declines in direct proportion to the size of our income), are being taken for a ride by people who want wealth with a clear conscience – but are not prepared to pay for it.
The money raised by events such as Sport Relief makes a big difference to people's lives – and not only those of Peruvian children lucky enough to have their photos taken with a British pop star. But it's a mere fraction of what the celebrities alone could contribute if they wished.
I wonder, did anyone from Sport Relief make the obvious point to Victoria Beckham that the poor are poor because the rich are rich? And nowhere more so than in Latin America, where a recent report by Merrill Lynch and CapGemini revealed that the very rich have a higher average wealth than any other major region in the world.
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Tribune column, 16 July 2004
There are worse ways of filling the weekend viewing schedules than a charity event like last Saturday's Sport Relief "Go the extra Mile" fundraiser. And there are worse ways of massaging celebrity egos than by allowing them to parade their social consciences on the little screen on behalf of people less publicity-hungry than themselves.
I just wish we'd charge them a proper rate for our services.
Across the UK, according to the BBC, some 81,000 of us took part in 144 official races in the "biggest mile event in history". Ten thousand of us, including Prince William (who failed to break the six-minute barrier despite all his advantages of birth, breeding and starting at the front), did the run on London's Embankment. We raised what the organisers describe as "a record £11,078,359" on the day. And the BBC transmitted five hours of programmes for the event.
These included an interview with England's penalty-misser-in-chief, David Beckham, by the Fast Show's Ron Manager, aka comedian Paul Whitehouse. Beckham, it was generally agreed, had been an all-round "good sport" by submitting himself to jokes about those penalty misses, his high-pitched voice, his love of "bling", text-sex messages – and "holding his own" in the dressing room. The one question that was presumably off-limits, as it always seems to be on these occasions, was how much of his own money he'd put into the Sport Relief appeal.
The same was true of the trip to Peru on behalf of Sport Relief by Beckham's wife, Victoria, which featured in the BBC's documentary A Mile in Their Shoes. "I feel so sad and helpless, yet I really want to help," said Victoria, after spending time with 11-year-old Dinah, whose mum died three years ago and who lives and works with her dad on a rubbish tip – or at least did until the Sport Relief-supported charity ChildHope came up with the cash to enable her to go to school.
"People shouldn't have to live like this," Victorian commented. "I'm finding that everything I've seen and experienced is taking its toll on me – as it would any mum."
Now I'm not going to join the "former Spice Girl seeks to revive flagging image with public sympathy from charity work" knocking crew. Better a picture opportunity of Posh Spice bringing public attention to bear on the plight of Lima's quarter of a million working children under the age of 12 than yet another shallow photo shoot publicising some unnecessary product or other in the Beckhams' extravagant consumerist lifestyle.
But why don't we charge our celebrities to take part in these sorts of things, rather than, as is so often the case, allow them at a minimum to milk us for every penny of expenses they can possibly claim – or at a maximum to impose "appearance fees" that are usually more than most beneficiaries of the particular charity appeal in question earn in a year?
The rich and celebrity-famous owe us at least this much. Their wealth and fame, after all, comes from us. They clearly feel some guilt at not having earned it. (What else, other than guilt about unmerited riches, makes questioning someone about their money the last taboo in celebrity interviewing?) And they clearly feel some need to absolve themselves through good deeds.
So why not put a price on their absolution, as the church used to in medieval times with its sale of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins? David Beckham wants to turn his cheating on his wife with his former PA, Rebecca Loos, into a joke about "textual intercourse"? Fine. How much is that Vodafone sponsorship worth again, David?
Victoria really really wants to help Peru's poor children and not feel so "sad and helpless" about their situation? No problem. How about (as a down payment, of course – we'll talk final terms later) something like the £100,000 you laid out for that statue of baby Brooklyn posing with you and his dad?
We should be careful, though, lest the sale of celebrity indulgences is done too cheaply. This year's Sport Relief event sold its principal sponsorship slot to a chain of gyms for about what the Beckhams earn in a week. For around £250,000, the company got its name listed even ahead of Sport Relief itself in the 144 official Fitness First Sport Relief Miles held around the country. With five hours of prime-time television to accompany the races, you can't help but feel that the Fitness First folk bought themselves a bloody good deal.
The truth is that celebrity and corporate support for charity is built upon a con-trick. We, the charity-supporting public (whose generosity declines in direct proportion to the size of our income), are being taken for a ride by people who want wealth with a clear conscience – but are not prepared to pay for it.
The money raised by events such as Sport Relief makes a big difference to people's lives – and not only those of Peruvian children lucky enough to have their photos taken with a British pop star. But it's a mere fraction of what the celebrities alone could contribute if they wished.
I wonder, did anyone from Sport Relief make the obvious point to Victoria Beckham that the poor are poor because the rich are rich? And nowhere more so than in Latin America, where a recent report by Merrill Lynch and CapGemini revealed that the very rich have a higher average wealth than any other major region in the world.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Glastonbury, faith and pleasure
Tribune, 2 July 2004
The Guardian took a double-decker Routemaster bus to Glastonbury last weekend, in the hope that some of the stars of the festival would hop aboard between (or, more likely, during) cloudbursts and provide the paper with some free copy.
Sir Paul McCartney, the English National Opera and the now apparently drug-free Gallagher brothers all forgot their bus passes. But there were still more than enough sort-of-star visitors popping by to justify the expenditure on the Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and limitless supplies of loo paper.
(It's always a good festival crowdpuller, that last one. I once had the inspired idea of giving away a free toilet roll with every copy of the New Statesman we sold at Glastonbury. We got through around a thousand – and some of the purchasers were even compos mentis enough to know which one to read and which one to use for other purposes.)
One of the Guardian bus passengers was Michael Franti, now with Spearhead and formerly with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (which is possibly the only band in British music history ever to have insisted to its advertising agency that its records must be advertised in a political weekly).
Franti is not long back from Baghdad. He told the Guardian: "I wanted to go there and see first hand what was happening. I just took my guitar and went over there. I said, 'I want a tourist visa', and they just looked at me like, 'Yo maan, if you're stupid enough to come here, just come on in!'"
The way Franti tells it, he walked the streets of Baghdad, playing for anyone who would listen. "I wrote a song with just one word, 'habibi'. Habibi means, like, sweetheart, and it's the thing that everyone says, like 'Yo dude, what's up?'" he explains. "I sang it on the streets, and crowds would gather round and just with that one word people would open their hearts up."
A few years ago, I travelled with a sound system across southern Africa from Cape Town to Lusaka, putting on impromptu "raves" (for want of a better word) at various open-air venues en route. So I understand the power of music to bring together the most unlikely participants in the most improbable places.
Even so, the notion of playing in Baghdad at the moment seems to be stretching the old hippie festival ethic to its limits. Some local Christians once erected a huge wooden cross on the ridge overlooking the Glastonbury festival site in a kind of protest against the pagan goings-on in the valley below. The mind boggles at how the imams and ayatollahs of unreconstructed Islam might react to even a shadow of this bacchanalian festivity.
The Guardian dipped the tiniest of toes into this gaping cultural divide by taking its Iraqi columnist, Ghaith Abdul Ahad, along for the ride to Glastonbury this year. Ahad had never even been to Britain before, let alone a gathering along such lines as these. So culture shock was to be expected, and shock was what he got.
But it wasn't the open sexuality, the drug-taking, the drunkenness, or any of the other works of Satan that are haram, or forbidden, to Muslims that constituted the biggest shock. Rather, according to Ahad, "The shock came from the actual feeling of the festival, from seeing so many people together in one place, enjoying themselves despite the amazing amount of mud and rain."
For someone who had previously experienced only two kinds of festival – the stage-managed "celebrations" of Saddam and all his works, or the self-flagellating processions of the great Shia ceremonies – the "true sense of having fun", of simply enjoying oneselves, was something new.
Ahad makes what I can only assume to be a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to take Glastonbury to Iraq. It would, he says, "be a great opportunity for all those organisations that usually set up tents and hand flyers to people half-drunk talking about the poverty in the world to do the same thing in a place where poverty and hunger is the norm".
As indeed it would. But is it – could it ever be – compatible with unreconstructed Islam? Or, for that matter, with any other fundamentalist religious doctrine that seeks not only that its own adherents stick to its particular version of the "straight and narrow" but that everyone else does also?
Those of us of the Bacchanalian tendency – which, judging by the continuing success of Glastonbury, now stretches well into the British mainstream – have no problem with the essential arts of compromise that allow us to indulge our passions while others keep theirs in check. Can the same be said of those who have a different take on faith and pleasure?
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Tribune, 2 July 2004
The Guardian took a double-decker Routemaster bus to Glastonbury last weekend, in the hope that some of the stars of the festival would hop aboard between (or, more likely, during) cloudbursts and provide the paper with some free copy.
Sir Paul McCartney, the English National Opera and the now apparently drug-free Gallagher brothers all forgot their bus passes. But there were still more than enough sort-of-star visitors popping by to justify the expenditure on the Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and limitless supplies of loo paper.
(It's always a good festival crowdpuller, that last one. I once had the inspired idea of giving away a free toilet roll with every copy of the New Statesman we sold at Glastonbury. We got through around a thousand – and some of the purchasers were even compos mentis enough to know which one to read and which one to use for other purposes.)
One of the Guardian bus passengers was Michael Franti, now with Spearhead and formerly with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (which is possibly the only band in British music history ever to have insisted to its advertising agency that its records must be advertised in a political weekly).
Franti is not long back from Baghdad. He told the Guardian: "I wanted to go there and see first hand what was happening. I just took my guitar and went over there. I said, 'I want a tourist visa', and they just looked at me like, 'Yo maan, if you're stupid enough to come here, just come on in!'"
The way Franti tells it, he walked the streets of Baghdad, playing for anyone who would listen. "I wrote a song with just one word, 'habibi'. Habibi means, like, sweetheart, and it's the thing that everyone says, like 'Yo dude, what's up?'" he explains. "I sang it on the streets, and crowds would gather round and just with that one word people would open their hearts up."
A few years ago, I travelled with a sound system across southern Africa from Cape Town to Lusaka, putting on impromptu "raves" (for want of a better word) at various open-air venues en route. So I understand the power of music to bring together the most unlikely participants in the most improbable places.
Even so, the notion of playing in Baghdad at the moment seems to be stretching the old hippie festival ethic to its limits. Some local Christians once erected a huge wooden cross on the ridge overlooking the Glastonbury festival site in a kind of protest against the pagan goings-on in the valley below. The mind boggles at how the imams and ayatollahs of unreconstructed Islam might react to even a shadow of this bacchanalian festivity.
The Guardian dipped the tiniest of toes into this gaping cultural divide by taking its Iraqi columnist, Ghaith Abdul Ahad, along for the ride to Glastonbury this year. Ahad had never even been to Britain before, let alone a gathering along such lines as these. So culture shock was to be expected, and shock was what he got.
But it wasn't the open sexuality, the drug-taking, the drunkenness, or any of the other works of Satan that are haram, or forbidden, to Muslims that constituted the biggest shock. Rather, according to Ahad, "The shock came from the actual feeling of the festival, from seeing so many people together in one place, enjoying themselves despite the amazing amount of mud and rain."
For someone who had previously experienced only two kinds of festival – the stage-managed "celebrations" of Saddam and all his works, or the self-flagellating processions of the great Shia ceremonies – the "true sense of having fun", of simply enjoying oneselves, was something new.
Ahad makes what I can only assume to be a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to take Glastonbury to Iraq. It would, he says, "be a great opportunity for all those organisations that usually set up tents and hand flyers to people half-drunk talking about the poverty in the world to do the same thing in a place where poverty and hunger is the norm".
As indeed it would. But is it – could it ever be – compatible with unreconstructed Islam? Or, for that matter, with any other fundamentalist religious doctrine that seeks not only that its own adherents stick to its particular version of the "straight and narrow" but that everyone else does also?
Those of us of the Bacchanalian tendency – which, judging by the continuing success of Glastonbury, now stretches well into the British mainstream – have no problem with the essential arts of compromise that allow us to indulge our passions while others keep theirs in check. Can the same be said of those who have a different take on faith and pleasure?
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
A rush of blood to the head
Tribune column, 18 June 2004
In the end, I had a rush of blood to the head and voted for Respect. I think it was David Aaronovitch who did it. It was such a snide and unpleasant little reportage that he wrote in the Guardian about some ill-attended Respect meeting a few days before the election that it brought out all my 'Well sod you then!' infantile leftism on behalf of the outside-left underdogs. Like a large chunk of the electorate last Thursday, I suspect, I decided that a more considered opinion on how my vote should be cast could wait until the next election.
But now we really must start to get serious.
For reasons that I outlined in this column before the election, the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) poses more immediate problems – both tactically and strategically – for the Tories than Labour. UKIP could do to the Tories what the SDP did to Labour in the 1980s by taking away enough of their potential supporters to fatally weaken the opposition vote. Five to 10 per cent for UKIP in a general election would see Labour and the Lib Dems laughing all the way to Westminster.
There is a more important issue at stake here, however, than short-term electoral advantage. UKIP represents the sour old face of narrow English nationalism. (Forget about the UK bit of the title: the party is Little Englandish to its bitter, malcontented core.)
It's the suburban anti-asylum seeker sorts, who've never spoken to an asylum seeker in their lives. It's the petrol pump desperadoes who put cheap motoring before schools and hospitals (and whose idea of civil liberty is the inalienable right to roads free from speed cameras). It's the subsidy-hugging irrationals who think the world owes no one a living except themselves. It's the anti-government angries, who are against not just this government but any government that isn't only for them.
It's England as it never was imagining an England that will never be. And although UKIP may be loathe to admit as much, far from being something specifically English, it's actually a localised eruption of a more widespread European disease, with long-suppurating sores such as the French Front National now being joined by the likes of the League of Polish Families – and UKIP.
In the glowering visage of Robert Kilroy-Silk, moreover, England has now got its very own shock-jock tinpot demagogue to compare with the worst of Europe's far-right ranters. Kilroy's wild-eyed interjection signalling an intent to 'wreck' the European parliament looked for all the world like the action of a man who's been mainlining vitriol for so long that he's run out of veins to stick the needle in.
Eyes bulging and arteries throbbing like a suntanned Norman Tebbit on amphetamines, Kilroy has the presence of an Ian Paisley about him, but without the belief in any god other than himself – or of a latterday John Tyndall, but with a more certain conviction about his own perfection. If there's another ego in UKIP that's half as big as Kilroy's, the entire continent of Europe will not have space enough to contain the explosion when they clash.
You wonder, when you see him in action, how or why this man ever served as a Labour MP. And then you recall the political trajectory of one Oswald Moseley.
The times are different. Kilroy is no Moseley. (He lacks the refinement, for a start.) UKIP has no programme beyond 'wrecking' the European Union and no prospects beyond the European elections. Most of their supporters would no more like to see Kilroy in Downing Street than I would George Galloway if the prospect should somehow ever become a real one.
Yet the ragtag collection of prejudices that rallied millions under the UKIP banner represents an ideological army with which the left must do battle. The British National Party may be a more obviously nasty political enemy on the far right, but in essence UKIP is only a more respectable manifestatation of the same forces.
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I only managed to vote at all last Thursday by breaking the electoral law. Although not living in one of the all-postal voting regions, I nevertheless have a postal vote. Having managed to delay posting it until the last-possible minute (a journalists and deadlines thing), I suddenly realised that I'd not got anyone to sign the new slip that must accompany the ballot paper verifying who you are.
With just five minutes left before the last post that would give my vote a chance of arriving in time, I filled in and signed the paper myself. Did anyone notice? Will the police come knocking on my door?
I doubt it, but the whole postal voting system seems so open to abuse that a lot more thought needs to be given before rolling it out nationwide.
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Tribune column, 18 June 2004
In the end, I had a rush of blood to the head and voted for Respect. I think it was David Aaronovitch who did it. It was such a snide and unpleasant little reportage that he wrote in the Guardian about some ill-attended Respect meeting a few days before the election that it brought out all my 'Well sod you then!' infantile leftism on behalf of the outside-left underdogs. Like a large chunk of the electorate last Thursday, I suspect, I decided that a more considered opinion on how my vote should be cast could wait until the next election.
But now we really must start to get serious.
For reasons that I outlined in this column before the election, the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) poses more immediate problems – both tactically and strategically – for the Tories than Labour. UKIP could do to the Tories what the SDP did to Labour in the 1980s by taking away enough of their potential supporters to fatally weaken the opposition vote. Five to 10 per cent for UKIP in a general election would see Labour and the Lib Dems laughing all the way to Westminster.
There is a more important issue at stake here, however, than short-term electoral advantage. UKIP represents the sour old face of narrow English nationalism. (Forget about the UK bit of the title: the party is Little Englandish to its bitter, malcontented core.)
It's the suburban anti-asylum seeker sorts, who've never spoken to an asylum seeker in their lives. It's the petrol pump desperadoes who put cheap motoring before schools and hospitals (and whose idea of civil liberty is the inalienable right to roads free from speed cameras). It's the subsidy-hugging irrationals who think the world owes no one a living except themselves. It's the anti-government angries, who are against not just this government but any government that isn't only for them.
It's England as it never was imagining an England that will never be. And although UKIP may be loathe to admit as much, far from being something specifically English, it's actually a localised eruption of a more widespread European disease, with long-suppurating sores such as the French Front National now being joined by the likes of the League of Polish Families – and UKIP.
In the glowering visage of Robert Kilroy-Silk, moreover, England has now got its very own shock-jock tinpot demagogue to compare with the worst of Europe's far-right ranters. Kilroy's wild-eyed interjection signalling an intent to 'wreck' the European parliament looked for all the world like the action of a man who's been mainlining vitriol for so long that he's run out of veins to stick the needle in.
Eyes bulging and arteries throbbing like a suntanned Norman Tebbit on amphetamines, Kilroy has the presence of an Ian Paisley about him, but without the belief in any god other than himself – or of a latterday John Tyndall, but with a more certain conviction about his own perfection. If there's another ego in UKIP that's half as big as Kilroy's, the entire continent of Europe will not have space enough to contain the explosion when they clash.
You wonder, when you see him in action, how or why this man ever served as a Labour MP. And then you recall the political trajectory of one Oswald Moseley.
The times are different. Kilroy is no Moseley. (He lacks the refinement, for a start.) UKIP has no programme beyond 'wrecking' the European Union and no prospects beyond the European elections. Most of their supporters would no more like to see Kilroy in Downing Street than I would George Galloway if the prospect should somehow ever become a real one.
Yet the ragtag collection of prejudices that rallied millions under the UKIP banner represents an ideological army with which the left must do battle. The British National Party may be a more obviously nasty political enemy on the far right, but in essence UKIP is only a more respectable manifestatation of the same forces.
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I only managed to vote at all last Thursday by breaking the electoral law. Although not living in one of the all-postal voting regions, I nevertheless have a postal vote. Having managed to delay posting it until the last-possible minute (a journalists and deadlines thing), I suddenly realised that I'd not got anyone to sign the new slip that must accompany the ballot paper verifying who you are.
With just five minutes left before the last post that would give my vote a chance of arriving in time, I filled in and signed the paper myself. Did anyone notice? Will the police come knocking on my door?
I doubt it, but the whole postal voting system seems so open to abuse that a lot more thought needs to be given before rolling it out nationwide.
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Gorgeous George and the St Tropez factor
Tribune column, 4 June 2004
I suppose we ought to be grateful to Joan Collins. The Seventies' soft-porn star from St Tropez has at least enlivened the forthcoming Euro elections by hitching her absentee wagon to Robert Kilroy-Silk and the UK Independence Party. In the salons of Lower Holloway we now debate into the wee hours which of three Euro-egos we would least like to wake up next to on the morning after the election. The choice is between Collins, Kilroy or the outside left's own version of a celebrity candidate, "Gorgeous George" Galloway.
This ungallant political parlour game is justified on the basis that each of these characters, in their own inimitable fashion, thinks of him or herself as among the sexiest creatures in God's creation. And each of them, in their own way, shares the same vanity of believing that their supposed popular appeal in the groin department will translate into votes in the ballot box.
My prediction, for what it's worth, is that the UKIP will indeed mop up enough low-level prejudice against Europe, immigrants and the "go soft on crime brigade" (whoever they may be these days) to add to its existing representation at Strasbourg. This may be no bad thing from a Labour Party election strategist's point of view, since it will undermine both the BNP vote and any developing Tory revival without posing a serious threat to Labour beyond the Euro elections.
At the same time, a perceived three-pronged right-wing challenge from the UKIP, BNP and Conservatives will probably prove scary enough to keep sufficient Labour supporters on board to avoid any effective electoral challenge from the left. The unholy alliance of the Socialist Workers Party, the Muslim Association of Britain and George Galloway under the Respect banner seems unlikely to get any closer to an electoral breakthrough from the left than past endeavours along similar lines. It might even reduce the effectiveness of the left-of-Labour vote by splitting the support that would otherwise have gone to the Greens.
In short, I suspect that Labour will come out of these elections less damaged than it might have feared under the circumstances. The Liberal Democrats, no doubt, will make inroads here, there and everywhere in a scrappy, inconsistent sort of way. But they'll probably lose ground, as well as take it, as a result of the Conservative revival.
The Conservatives, for their part, may re-establish themselves as a competent opposition, and even retake a few more of those places in local government that you wonder how they ever lost. But they're unlikely to do any better than that; and a competent opposition does not a government-in-waiting make. Michael Howard, moreover, may discover that the Euro Curse that Margaret Thatcher bequeathed to his party will re-emerge to haunt him as it has his predecessors – except that this time it has Joan Collins's face on it.
As for the purported challenge from the left, well make me eat the unread copies of this column if I'm wrong, but it really doesn't feel as though Respect is on a roll to me. If George Galloway squeaks home on a low London turnout I'll be surprised. If any other Respect candidate gets to represent us in Europe, I'll be flabbergasted.
The English left's best big chance of busting open Labour's electoral monopoly came and went with Ken Livingstone. It was possible to imagine a Livingstone-led alliance of the left polling perhaps 10-15 per cent of the national vote in elections such as these, and doing a Scottish Socialist Party south of the border. Livingstone in London has displayed just the mix of populism, pragmatism and principle that can reach beyond the ghettoes of the outside left. But with him back in the Labour fold, no one else comes close to creating the same crossover appeal.
If this sounds as though I'm saying that personalities are more important than policies when it comes to getting elected, it's because to some extent I am. At any rate, it's important who you get to project the policies and how.
But in the longer term, serious electoral ambition requires serious electoral organisation. That's one reason why Ken Livingstone decided against remaining an outsider: even the biggest personalities find it almost impossible to go it alone.
It also requires commitment that goes beyond just one election. It remains to be seen whether the SWP will tire of its latest political adventure, or Respect's Muslim and other supporters look elsewhere, if this week's election results turn out to be disappointing for them. It's hard to see them being in it for the long haul of local election campaigning, though. Getting a councillor elected in Preston is a bit of a come-down when you've been pitching for the overthrow of the whole world order.
Whatever happens on Thursday, by the time of the general election, we'll be back to the same basic choice of Labour versus the Tories, with the Lib Dems chipping away at the edges. And Joan Collins sitting it out in St Tropez.
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Tribune column, 4 June 2004
I suppose we ought to be grateful to Joan Collins. The Seventies' soft-porn star from St Tropez has at least enlivened the forthcoming Euro elections by hitching her absentee wagon to Robert Kilroy-Silk and the UK Independence Party. In the salons of Lower Holloway we now debate into the wee hours which of three Euro-egos we would least like to wake up next to on the morning after the election. The choice is between Collins, Kilroy or the outside left's own version of a celebrity candidate, "Gorgeous George" Galloway.
This ungallant political parlour game is justified on the basis that each of these characters, in their own inimitable fashion, thinks of him or herself as among the sexiest creatures in God's creation. And each of them, in their own way, shares the same vanity of believing that their supposed popular appeal in the groin department will translate into votes in the ballot box.
My prediction, for what it's worth, is that the UKIP will indeed mop up enough low-level prejudice against Europe, immigrants and the "go soft on crime brigade" (whoever they may be these days) to add to its existing representation at Strasbourg. This may be no bad thing from a Labour Party election strategist's point of view, since it will undermine both the BNP vote and any developing Tory revival without posing a serious threat to Labour beyond the Euro elections.
At the same time, a perceived three-pronged right-wing challenge from the UKIP, BNP and Conservatives will probably prove scary enough to keep sufficient Labour supporters on board to avoid any effective electoral challenge from the left. The unholy alliance of the Socialist Workers Party, the Muslim Association of Britain and George Galloway under the Respect banner seems unlikely to get any closer to an electoral breakthrough from the left than past endeavours along similar lines. It might even reduce the effectiveness of the left-of-Labour vote by splitting the support that would otherwise have gone to the Greens.
In short, I suspect that Labour will come out of these elections less damaged than it might have feared under the circumstances. The Liberal Democrats, no doubt, will make inroads here, there and everywhere in a scrappy, inconsistent sort of way. But they'll probably lose ground, as well as take it, as a result of the Conservative revival.
The Conservatives, for their part, may re-establish themselves as a competent opposition, and even retake a few more of those places in local government that you wonder how they ever lost. But they're unlikely to do any better than that; and a competent opposition does not a government-in-waiting make. Michael Howard, moreover, may discover that the Euro Curse that Margaret Thatcher bequeathed to his party will re-emerge to haunt him as it has his predecessors – except that this time it has Joan Collins's face on it.
As for the purported challenge from the left, well make me eat the unread copies of this column if I'm wrong, but it really doesn't feel as though Respect is on a roll to me. If George Galloway squeaks home on a low London turnout I'll be surprised. If any other Respect candidate gets to represent us in Europe, I'll be flabbergasted.
The English left's best big chance of busting open Labour's electoral monopoly came and went with Ken Livingstone. It was possible to imagine a Livingstone-led alliance of the left polling perhaps 10-15 per cent of the national vote in elections such as these, and doing a Scottish Socialist Party south of the border. Livingstone in London has displayed just the mix of populism, pragmatism and principle that can reach beyond the ghettoes of the outside left. But with him back in the Labour fold, no one else comes close to creating the same crossover appeal.
If this sounds as though I'm saying that personalities are more important than policies when it comes to getting elected, it's because to some extent I am. At any rate, it's important who you get to project the policies and how.
But in the longer term, serious electoral ambition requires serious electoral organisation. That's one reason why Ken Livingstone decided against remaining an outsider: even the biggest personalities find it almost impossible to go it alone.
It also requires commitment that goes beyond just one election. It remains to be seen whether the SWP will tire of its latest political adventure, or Respect's Muslim and other supporters look elsewhere, if this week's election results turn out to be disappointing for them. It's hard to see them being in it for the long haul of local election campaigning, though. Getting a councillor elected in Preston is a bit of a come-down when you've been pitching for the overthrow of the whole world order.
Whatever happens on Thursday, by the time of the general election, we'll be back to the same basic choice of Labour versus the Tories, with the Lib Dems chipping away at the edges. And Joan Collins sitting it out in St Tropez.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Sexual sadism and the smog of war
Tribune column, 21 May 2004
The timing could hardly have been worse to try to launch a critical dialogue on the Koran, Islam and unbelievers. The plan had been that, following my Tribune column of a couple of weeks ago, I would co-author a piece on the subject with two friends: one, a gay Arab asylum-seeker, currently resident in London; the other, a one-time Zanzibari Muslim activist, now close to apostasy, living in Dar-es-Salaam. We had intended to publish simultaneously in Britain, Tanzania, several Arab countries and via the internet.
Last week, both of my co-authors and the principal Arab publisher pulled out of the project, at least for the time being. Their explanations varied, but stemmed from the same cause: the evidence of US, and to a different extent, British abuse of Muslim prisoners in Iraq.
Husam, my gay Arab friend, told me he was simply too scared to go public with anything that was critical of Islam in the current international climate. His homosexuality alone had already made him a target for the murderous Islamists in his country of origin; hence his (as yet unprocessed) asylum application in this country. Putting his name to a critique of Koranic illiberalism now would be like issuing his own death warrant, he said.
Ayuba, my Zanzibari friend, approached the subject from a different direction when we spoke. "I am still part of the umma [the Muslim community] even if I am no longer an active Muslim," he told me. "If I attacked Islam now it would feel like a betrayal. That is how people would see it, even those who agree with some of what we are saying."
Our Arab publisher was both fearful and angry. "You can't write about these things. Not now. It would not be tolerated by Muslims. What the Americans have done here is disgusting."
It is difficult to underestimate the effect of the Abu Gharaib prison revelations on Muslim sensibilities. It is not the fact that prisoners were mistreated; not the fact even that some have been beaten and killed. Heaven knows, enough innocent Iraqis have been beaten, blasted, shot or blown to bits in the course of their "liberation" from Saddam.
It is the humiliation that really bites. And it is the sexual element of that humiliation that cuts to the core of Muslim values, faith and pride. Torture would have been cause for condemnation, for anger and outrage. But this goes deeper: it invites disgust, and confirms, for those seeking guidance from such a source, every Koranic imperative about the perversities of the unbelievers. "To us," as our Arab publisher said, "this is worse than torture."
Husam had wanted us to write about sexual intolerance in the Koran; about the legitimation of murder of homosexuals and other sexual deviants; about the treatment of women; about the fear and oppression of human sexuality; about the fact that Muslim men could have as many "slave girls" as they liked but that the punishment laid down for adultery by a Muslim woman is stoning to death. He had even talked about whether it might be possible, in an Arab publication, to raise the issue of the Prophet having married a girl aged six and consummated that marriage when she was nine.
And then came the pictures of naked Iraqi men being piled up in obscene human pyramids, forced to masturbate or simulate sex for the camera. There was the smiling Lyndie England, cigarette in hand, pointing at a man's genitals as he was made to touch himself. And, worst of all, the image that will now surely come to characterise George Bush's Iraqi adventure like no other: the naked Iraqi on a leash.
How do you initiate a serious dialogue about sexuality, freedom and Islam in the face of this sort of behaviour and this sort of imagery? At worst, the sexual humiliation of Muslim prisoners is an act of deliberate policy that comes from the top of the US command. At best, it reflects a debasement of human values among ordinary GIs, who can then try to justify themselves, as one did, by saying, "We just thought they looked funny."
Perhaps it's no wonder that the Boston Globe couldn't tell the difference between real pictures of US troops raping Iraqi women and the ones they published last week, which came from a Hungarian porn site. Perhaps America can't tell the difference.
Perhaps, in the blur of sexual sadism and the smog of this most ill-planned war, it has lost all sight of what liberty is really supposed to be about. It is certainly doing a better job of setting set back the cause of liberty than even the most optimistic Al Qaeda strategists could have dreamt of when they set out to provoke the Great Satan on 11 September 2001 and got it to respond every bit as stupidly as they might have hoped for.
Join the discussion at the Heirs of Hell message board
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Tribune column, 21 May 2004
The timing could hardly have been worse to try to launch a critical dialogue on the Koran, Islam and unbelievers. The plan had been that, following my Tribune column of a couple of weeks ago, I would co-author a piece on the subject with two friends: one, a gay Arab asylum-seeker, currently resident in London; the other, a one-time Zanzibari Muslim activist, now close to apostasy, living in Dar-es-Salaam. We had intended to publish simultaneously in Britain, Tanzania, several Arab countries and via the internet.
Last week, both of my co-authors and the principal Arab publisher pulled out of the project, at least for the time being. Their explanations varied, but stemmed from the same cause: the evidence of US, and to a different extent, British abuse of Muslim prisoners in Iraq.
Husam, my gay Arab friend, told me he was simply too scared to go public with anything that was critical of Islam in the current international climate. His homosexuality alone had already made him a target for the murderous Islamists in his country of origin; hence his (as yet unprocessed) asylum application in this country. Putting his name to a critique of Koranic illiberalism now would be like issuing his own death warrant, he said.
Ayuba, my Zanzibari friend, approached the subject from a different direction when we spoke. "I am still part of the umma [the Muslim community] even if I am no longer an active Muslim," he told me. "If I attacked Islam now it would feel like a betrayal. That is how people would see it, even those who agree with some of what we are saying."
Our Arab publisher was both fearful and angry. "You can't write about these things. Not now. It would not be tolerated by Muslims. What the Americans have done here is disgusting."
It is difficult to underestimate the effect of the Abu Gharaib prison revelations on Muslim sensibilities. It is not the fact that prisoners were mistreated; not the fact even that some have been beaten and killed. Heaven knows, enough innocent Iraqis have been beaten, blasted, shot or blown to bits in the course of their "liberation" from Saddam.
It is the humiliation that really bites. And it is the sexual element of that humiliation that cuts to the core of Muslim values, faith and pride. Torture would have been cause for condemnation, for anger and outrage. But this goes deeper: it invites disgust, and confirms, for those seeking guidance from such a source, every Koranic imperative about the perversities of the unbelievers. "To us," as our Arab publisher said, "this is worse than torture."
Husam had wanted us to write about sexual intolerance in the Koran; about the legitimation of murder of homosexuals and other sexual deviants; about the treatment of women; about the fear and oppression of human sexuality; about the fact that Muslim men could have as many "slave girls" as they liked but that the punishment laid down for adultery by a Muslim woman is stoning to death. He had even talked about whether it might be possible, in an Arab publication, to raise the issue of the Prophet having married a girl aged six and consummated that marriage when she was nine.
And then came the pictures of naked Iraqi men being piled up in obscene human pyramids, forced to masturbate or simulate sex for the camera. There was the smiling Lyndie England, cigarette in hand, pointing at a man's genitals as he was made to touch himself. And, worst of all, the image that will now surely come to characterise George Bush's Iraqi adventure like no other: the naked Iraqi on a leash.
How do you initiate a serious dialogue about sexuality, freedom and Islam in the face of this sort of behaviour and this sort of imagery? At worst, the sexual humiliation of Muslim prisoners is an act of deliberate policy that comes from the top of the US command. At best, it reflects a debasement of human values among ordinary GIs, who can then try to justify themselves, as one did, by saying, "We just thought they looked funny."
Perhaps it's no wonder that the Boston Globe couldn't tell the difference between real pictures of US troops raping Iraqi women and the ones they published last week, which came from a Hungarian porn site. Perhaps America can't tell the difference.
Perhaps, in the blur of sexual sadism and the smog of this most ill-planned war, it has lost all sight of what liberty is really supposed to be about. It is certainly doing a better job of setting set back the cause of liberty than even the most optimistic Al Qaeda strategists could have dreamt of when they set out to provoke the Great Satan on 11 September 2001 and got it to respond every bit as stupidly as they might have hoped for.
Join the discussion at the Heirs of Hell message board
Monday, May 03, 2004
The heirs of Hell
Tribune column, 7 May 2004
I have been re-reading the Koran recently. It's a dispiriting experience for an unbeliever, especially one who comes to it with an open mind. No matter what good works I may do in this life, my disbelief is sufficient for the "curse of God" to be upon me. An "evil fate", a "lasting torment" awaits. Regardless of my actions, I am condemned as one of the "heirs of Hell", fuel for Allah's everlasting fire.
It's dispiriting because I'd hoped that by going back to the source I'd find something different, more inclusive. I'd hoped to find something closer to the philosophy espoused by my Muslim friends – one that judges people more on what they do than on what name they give to God in their prayers. I'd wanted to be able to blame the flaws in fundamentalist Islamism on the followers, not on Allah.
In fact, the more I read of the Koran, the more it seems clear that it is Allah's followers (or the non-fundamentalist ones amongst them, at any rate) who put a beneficent spin on his revelations – and it is Allah himself whose words are deeply flawed. If every letter in the Koran is Allah's infallible own, as believers insist, there's no room for argument, no scope for interpretation. It's not someone else but Allah in person who must take the rap.
So, for example, it's not the Islamist extremists distorting a message of peace when they say that "Al-Fitnah [disbelief, idolatry] is worse than killing." It's the Koran, the perfect expression of Allah's will. And it says so more than once, just to make sure there's no misunderstanding. Disbelief is worse than killing: truly words to chill you to the bone.
Sadly, the mere act of making these statements means that I am cutting myself off from dialogue with the more rigid "true believers" of Islam. The Koran does not permit dialogue with those who do not believe. It enjoins Muslims, at best, not to waste their breath on the likes of me or, at worst, to fight and kill me.
Not even friendship with non-believers is permitted for Muslims if they're going to abide strictly by Allah's injunctions:
"Believers, take not as bitanah [advisors, consultants, friends, helpers] any but your own people." (3:118)
Or, more explicitly: "Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends." (5:51)
Some British Islamists have been telling people arrested under anti-terrorism legislation, or subjected to racist or anti-Islamic treatment, that injunctions such as these prohibit them from accepting help from non-Muslim supporters. It is forbidden, so this argument goes, for good Muslims to use non-Muslim solicitors or even to seek redress under a non-Muslim legal system. One sheikh is cited saying that, "One of the factors that turns a Muslim into an apostate [for which the penalty specified in the Koran is death] is seeking any judgement other than that of Allah and his Prophet."
Are these the arguments of a warped extremism or a literal reading of Koranic texts? The answer, unfortunately, is both. It is difficult, in any honest reading of the Koran, to avoid the conclusion that it contains within itself the fundamental rationale for such extremism.
The Koran is no different to the bible in this respect, and it would be wrong, even in a short column such as this, to pass over the fact that there is much that is wise and good and merciful in its contents. Again and again, it makes clear that belief is not enough: it must be accompanied by "good works" in order for the faithful to ascend to paradise. The giving of alms (crucially, for the glory of God and not to earn praise for oneself) is central to Islam in a way that would make the average western capitalist blanch. Not for nothing does Islam have such a powerful appeal to the poor and powerless.
But the Koran still carries what is, in essence, an exclusive and intolerant message. The rewards of paradise are reserved for those who believe in every last jot and tittle of that message; and who, literally, submit to the God who supplied it. As for the rest of us, "They are the heirs of the Fire, and there they shall remain for ever."
If that was all the Koran had to say on the subject, it might be possible to agree to differ and let those of us who are unbelievers take our chances with the rest of humanity on the Day of Judgement. It's not, though, and therein lies a terrible dilemma for every non-believer who wants to stand firm with Muslims against racism and discrimination and in support of religious freedom.
How do we square the circle of standing steadfast in defence of religious tolerance, when so many of the world's religions (Islam is far from being alone in this respect) would deny that tolerance to others?
Steve Platt has set up the "Heirs of Hell" message board for anyone interested in discussing these and other issues at http://www.splatts.net/cgi-bin/amb/view.pl?board=heirs
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Tribune column, 7 May 2004
I have been re-reading the Koran recently. It's a dispiriting experience for an unbeliever, especially one who comes to it with an open mind. No matter what good works I may do in this life, my disbelief is sufficient for the "curse of God" to be upon me. An "evil fate", a "lasting torment" awaits. Regardless of my actions, I am condemned as one of the "heirs of Hell", fuel for Allah's everlasting fire.
It's dispiriting because I'd hoped that by going back to the source I'd find something different, more inclusive. I'd hoped to find something closer to the philosophy espoused by my Muslim friends – one that judges people more on what they do than on what name they give to God in their prayers. I'd wanted to be able to blame the flaws in fundamentalist Islamism on the followers, not on Allah.
In fact, the more I read of the Koran, the more it seems clear that it is Allah's followers (or the non-fundamentalist ones amongst them, at any rate) who put a beneficent spin on his revelations – and it is Allah himself whose words are deeply flawed. If every letter in the Koran is Allah's infallible own, as believers insist, there's no room for argument, no scope for interpretation. It's not someone else but Allah in person who must take the rap.
So, for example, it's not the Islamist extremists distorting a message of peace when they say that "Al-Fitnah [disbelief, idolatry] is worse than killing." It's the Koran, the perfect expression of Allah's will. And it says so more than once, just to make sure there's no misunderstanding. Disbelief is worse than killing: truly words to chill you to the bone.
Sadly, the mere act of making these statements means that I am cutting myself off from dialogue with the more rigid "true believers" of Islam. The Koran does not permit dialogue with those who do not believe. It enjoins Muslims, at best, not to waste their breath on the likes of me or, at worst, to fight and kill me.
Not even friendship with non-believers is permitted for Muslims if they're going to abide strictly by Allah's injunctions:
"Believers, take not as bitanah [advisors, consultants, friends, helpers] any but your own people." (3:118)
Or, more explicitly: "Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends." (5:51)
Some British Islamists have been telling people arrested under anti-terrorism legislation, or subjected to racist or anti-Islamic treatment, that injunctions such as these prohibit them from accepting help from non-Muslim supporters. It is forbidden, so this argument goes, for good Muslims to use non-Muslim solicitors or even to seek redress under a non-Muslim legal system. One sheikh is cited saying that, "One of the factors that turns a Muslim into an apostate [for which the penalty specified in the Koran is death] is seeking any judgement other than that of Allah and his Prophet."
Are these the arguments of a warped extremism or a literal reading of Koranic texts? The answer, unfortunately, is both. It is difficult, in any honest reading of the Koran, to avoid the conclusion that it contains within itself the fundamental rationale for such extremism.
The Koran is no different to the bible in this respect, and it would be wrong, even in a short column such as this, to pass over the fact that there is much that is wise and good and merciful in its contents. Again and again, it makes clear that belief is not enough: it must be accompanied by "good works" in order for the faithful to ascend to paradise. The giving of alms (crucially, for the glory of God and not to earn praise for oneself) is central to Islam in a way that would make the average western capitalist blanch. Not for nothing does Islam have such a powerful appeal to the poor and powerless.
But the Koran still carries what is, in essence, an exclusive and intolerant message. The rewards of paradise are reserved for those who believe in every last jot and tittle of that message; and who, literally, submit to the God who supplied it. As for the rest of us, "They are the heirs of the Fire, and there they shall remain for ever."
If that was all the Koran had to say on the subject, it might be possible to agree to differ and let those of us who are unbelievers take our chances with the rest of humanity on the Day of Judgement. It's not, though, and therein lies a terrible dilemma for every non-believer who wants to stand firm with Muslims against racism and discrimination and in support of religious freedom.
How do we square the circle of standing steadfast in defence of religious tolerance, when so many of the world's religions (Islam is far from being alone in this respect) would deny that tolerance to others?
Steve Platt has set up the "Heirs of Hell" message board for anyone interested in discussing these and other issues at http://www.splatts.net/cgi-bin/amb/view.pl?board=heirs
Monday, April 19, 2004
A crime or a mistake?
Tribune column, 23 April 2004
"C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute." It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. Barely a day has passed in recent weeks without some new Middle-Eastern event bringing to mind Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe's comments on hearing of Napoleon's execution of the Duc d'Enghien in 1804.
From the Israeli assassinations of Hamas leaders in Gaza to the Americans' murderous blunderings in Falluja and elsewhere, thoughtful politics and diplomacy have been blown away by the barrels of many guns. Only the Islamist-fascists can have reason to be pleased by the developments of the past month. If Bush and Sharon were on their side, they could hardly have planned things better.
How did things come to such a pass? How, in particular, did the US manage to squander so wantonly the sympathy and goodwill that came its way worldwide after the September 11th atrocities? Was it a crime or a mistake?
Unlike some on the Left, I don't doubt that the motives of most of those who supported the war on Iraq were honourable – particularly in this country, and particularly in the Labour Party. I share many of those motives myself. While others among my friends and political associates were marching in their millions in apparently unequivocal opposition to war, I was torn between that clear-cut standpoint and a deep-felt desire to see Saddam's tyranny destroyed. How else, if not by invasion and occupation, was that to be done? In common with most Iraqis, it would seem, I have still not managed convincingly to resolve that contradiction in my mind.
It's harder to attribute the same honourable motives to the US sponsors of war on Iraq. The smell of unfinished family business between the Bush clan and the Husseins, concealed in the ideological smog of neo-con fundamentalism, and fuelled by oil, arms and Israel, is a pungent one. But even without honour, there can be intelligence, whether military or otherwise. Both kinds have been conspicuous by their absence over Iraq.
I do not consider myself to be an Iraq 'expert'. I have worked on various stories and campaigns over the years about Saddam's use of chemical weapons, his suppression of the Kurds and others, the two Gulf Wars and the effect of UN sanctions on Iraq. As chairman of Medical Aid for Iraq, I was responsible with others in that organisation for getting the first convoy of medical supplies into the country after the 1991 war. Over the next decade, MAI took many other convoys into Iraq, working with and supplying hospitals throughout the country.
That experience alone has meant that nothing that has happened in Iraq since the invasion has come as any surprise. Not the collapse of Saddam's army and the relatively easy initial military victory of the coalition forces. Not the looting and breakdown of civil order that followed the removal of the dictatorship. And certainly not the – at best – ambivalent feelings of most Iraqis towards the occupation forces, towards which they felt simultaneously grateful for the overthrow of Saddam and resentful for their usurping of Iraqi sovereignty.
It was apparent – to me and my colleagues in MAI, at any rate – that the great majority of Iraqis felt equally hostile towards the 'international community' for the sanctions and continuing military action against their country as they did towards Saddam. It was clear that the aftermath of any overthrow of the Ba'athists would be messy, disordered and bloody. It was obvious that any foreign intervention would provoke large-scale resentment and, sooner or later, resistance, and that any such intervention would have be properly authorised, well prepared, tightly restrained and short-lived.
The fact that it has been none of these things illuminates a mindboggingly ignorant approach to international affairs. Did the US and its allies really believe that Iraq would behave like Paris in 1944 or Berlin in 1990? Was there no one around to tell them that Baghdad (and still less Falluja or Najaf) wouldn't be like that? Or didn't they ask anyone? Or listen to their replies?
The alarming thing is that, far from having learned any lessons from what has happened in Iraq over the past year, the US seems intent on repeating its mistakes. After a period of relative restraint (if sniper attacks and other shootings, helicopter gunship raids and the occasional bombing sally can be called restraint), the US administrator in Iraq, L Paul Bremer III, broke seven days of silence this week with a warning that the US military will not "hold back" indefinitely.
"They must be dealt with, and they will be dealt with," he said of the various insurgent forces, without putting a figure on how many more deaths must be added to the 1,000-plus Iraqis and 100-plus coalition soldiers who have already been killed during April.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has declared that, not content with its 'targeted killings' in the occupied territories, it is now prepared to pursue Palestinian leaders in other countries too. One such target, according to the Israeli cabinet minister, Gideon Ezra, is the Damascus-based Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal. "The minute we have the operational opportunity we will do this," said Ezra.
Crimes and mistakes, what passes for western Middle East policy is littered with them.
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Tribune column, 23 April 2004
"C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute." It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. Barely a day has passed in recent weeks without some new Middle-Eastern event bringing to mind Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe's comments on hearing of Napoleon's execution of the Duc d'Enghien in 1804.
From the Israeli assassinations of Hamas leaders in Gaza to the Americans' murderous blunderings in Falluja and elsewhere, thoughtful politics and diplomacy have been blown away by the barrels of many guns. Only the Islamist-fascists can have reason to be pleased by the developments of the past month. If Bush and Sharon were on their side, they could hardly have planned things better.
How did things come to such a pass? How, in particular, did the US manage to squander so wantonly the sympathy and goodwill that came its way worldwide after the September 11th atrocities? Was it a crime or a mistake?
Unlike some on the Left, I don't doubt that the motives of most of those who supported the war on Iraq were honourable – particularly in this country, and particularly in the Labour Party. I share many of those motives myself. While others among my friends and political associates were marching in their millions in apparently unequivocal opposition to war, I was torn between that clear-cut standpoint and a deep-felt desire to see Saddam's tyranny destroyed. How else, if not by invasion and occupation, was that to be done? In common with most Iraqis, it would seem, I have still not managed convincingly to resolve that contradiction in my mind.
It's harder to attribute the same honourable motives to the US sponsors of war on Iraq. The smell of unfinished family business between the Bush clan and the Husseins, concealed in the ideological smog of neo-con fundamentalism, and fuelled by oil, arms and Israel, is a pungent one. But even without honour, there can be intelligence, whether military or otherwise. Both kinds have been conspicuous by their absence over Iraq.
I do not consider myself to be an Iraq 'expert'. I have worked on various stories and campaigns over the years about Saddam's use of chemical weapons, his suppression of the Kurds and others, the two Gulf Wars and the effect of UN sanctions on Iraq. As chairman of Medical Aid for Iraq, I was responsible with others in that organisation for getting the first convoy of medical supplies into the country after the 1991 war. Over the next decade, MAI took many other convoys into Iraq, working with and supplying hospitals throughout the country.
That experience alone has meant that nothing that has happened in Iraq since the invasion has come as any surprise. Not the collapse of Saddam's army and the relatively easy initial military victory of the coalition forces. Not the looting and breakdown of civil order that followed the removal of the dictatorship. And certainly not the – at best – ambivalent feelings of most Iraqis towards the occupation forces, towards which they felt simultaneously grateful for the overthrow of Saddam and resentful for their usurping of Iraqi sovereignty.
It was apparent – to me and my colleagues in MAI, at any rate – that the great majority of Iraqis felt equally hostile towards the 'international community' for the sanctions and continuing military action against their country as they did towards Saddam. It was clear that the aftermath of any overthrow of the Ba'athists would be messy, disordered and bloody. It was obvious that any foreign intervention would provoke large-scale resentment and, sooner or later, resistance, and that any such intervention would have be properly authorised, well prepared, tightly restrained and short-lived.
The fact that it has been none of these things illuminates a mindboggingly ignorant approach to international affairs. Did the US and its allies really believe that Iraq would behave like Paris in 1944 or Berlin in 1990? Was there no one around to tell them that Baghdad (and still less Falluja or Najaf) wouldn't be like that? Or didn't they ask anyone? Or listen to their replies?
The alarming thing is that, far from having learned any lessons from what has happened in Iraq over the past year, the US seems intent on repeating its mistakes. After a period of relative restraint (if sniper attacks and other shootings, helicopter gunship raids and the occasional bombing sally can be called restraint), the US administrator in Iraq, L Paul Bremer III, broke seven days of silence this week with a warning that the US military will not "hold back" indefinitely.
"They must be dealt with, and they will be dealt with," he said of the various insurgent forces, without putting a figure on how many more deaths must be added to the 1,000-plus Iraqis and 100-plus coalition soldiers who have already been killed during April.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has declared that, not content with its 'targeted killings' in the occupied territories, it is now prepared to pursue Palestinian leaders in other countries too. One such target, according to the Israeli cabinet minister, Gideon Ezra, is the Damascus-based Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal. "The minute we have the operational opportunity we will do this," said Ezra.
Crimes and mistakes, what passes for western Middle East policy is littered with them.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
The smallest things
Tribune column, 9 April 2004
Sometimes it's the smallest things that catch you emotionally unawares.
There's a café at the end of my road that the past three decades have somehow passed by. It has one of those tills like an old-fashioned manual typewriter that makes a loud 'terr-ring' sound and throws open its cash drawer when you push down the keys. There's a timeworn Lyon's ice cream sign on the wall, a faded notice saying 'We accept Luncheon Vouchers', and a menu that includes rice pudding and custard for afters.
It's been run by the same couple for as long as I've been going there, which goes back to when Chris Smith and Margaret Hodge were councillors on the local housing committee. A squatter, homelessness campaigner and Labour activist in those days, I used to talk politics there with the regulars over sweet teas and bacon sarnies.
Both the proprietors and the regulars have grown old with the décor (although even 20-odd years ago the place seemed to have more than its share of OAPs discussing operations and whose funerals they'd been to recently). And I've gone there less and less, as the course of my life has taken me away from home more and more. In recent years I've hardly been there at all. An anonymous stranger, I'd imagined myself, sitting there unnoticed among the builders, the council workers from the office opposite and the pensioners fresh from their visit to the nearby Post Office.
I must have been in there just before leaving for Africa on my last trip overseas. And although I have no memory of it, I must have left behind a two-litre bottle of Diet Coke. (Yes, I know, but you can't expect me to boycott Kit Kat, Nescafe and Coke, can you?)
The reason I know this is that I called in there the other day with a serious starch and saturated fat craving to satiate. (With three slices, please. White bread, Mother's Pride, and cheap marge.)
I caught a glimpse of an elderly woman nudging her companion and nodding in my direction as I reminded myself what was on the menu (unchanged from when its 1970s-style red mock-leather holder was new). A few hushed words were exchanged with the woman proprietor, who disappeared into the back room before returning a few minutes later to present me with my bottle of Diet Coke.
It was more than six months since I'd left it there, tucked out of sight under the table where I'd been eating. One of the elderly regulars spotted that I'd forgotten to take it with me, but was no longer fleet enough of foot or loud enough of voice to alert me to the fact before I'd disappeared up the road. She'd given it to the café proprietor for safe keeping, and now, many months later, she recognised me on my return and reunited me with my bottle.
I don't know whether I was most touched by the fact that someone had remembered me amidst all the tumult and turnover of the ever-altering metropolis that is London; or that they had kept this bottle for so long in expectation of my eventual return. Either way, it made me feel a part of a community that I had only half recognised as existing at all.
These are the people for whom, every spring when I am in the country, I put out new pots and window boxes at the front of the flat. I do this even though, every spring almost without fail, eventually they get stolen, because I would rather share other people's pleasure in them for a short while than keep them to myself at the back of the flat, where they can't get stolen. Senseless and inconsequential though all this may seem, getting my bottle of Diet Coke back felt like a victory over everyone who would reduce human existence to a selfish scramble for survival.
Anyone who has spent any time in the Poor World will know that the poorest western visitor is wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most of its inhabitants. It's one of the reasons why, whatever immigration controls we may decide to impose for pragmatic reasons, there is no conceivable moral case against 'economic migrants'.
Sometimes, though, even the most committed socialists can get frustrated when people seem to fail to do all they can to help themselves in their own countries.
I have been involved in trying to set up a website that would enable local people involved in sustainable tourism to publicise their own ventures without having to go through intermediaries, who then cream off most of the profits. Some of my contacts in Kenya were supposed to be getting back to me in January with details of the campsite and other initiatives they operate in the Maasai heartland on the Kenya-Tanzania border.
I had become increasingly frustrated as a result of hearing nothing from them, until I received an email this week. 'Sorry for the delay,' it said. 'We couldn’t email you because the business has been terribly down. We didn’t get even a single [visitor] since November and I haven't had the money to get into Nairobi for emails.'
Sometimes it's the smallest things that catch you emotionally unawares.
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Tribune column, 9 April 2004
Sometimes it's the smallest things that catch you emotionally unawares.
There's a café at the end of my road that the past three decades have somehow passed by. It has one of those tills like an old-fashioned manual typewriter that makes a loud 'terr-ring' sound and throws open its cash drawer when you push down the keys. There's a timeworn Lyon's ice cream sign on the wall, a faded notice saying 'We accept Luncheon Vouchers', and a menu that includes rice pudding and custard for afters.
It's been run by the same couple for as long as I've been going there, which goes back to when Chris Smith and Margaret Hodge were councillors on the local housing committee. A squatter, homelessness campaigner and Labour activist in those days, I used to talk politics there with the regulars over sweet teas and bacon sarnies.
Both the proprietors and the regulars have grown old with the décor (although even 20-odd years ago the place seemed to have more than its share of OAPs discussing operations and whose funerals they'd been to recently). And I've gone there less and less, as the course of my life has taken me away from home more and more. In recent years I've hardly been there at all. An anonymous stranger, I'd imagined myself, sitting there unnoticed among the builders, the council workers from the office opposite and the pensioners fresh from their visit to the nearby Post Office.
I must have been in there just before leaving for Africa on my last trip overseas. And although I have no memory of it, I must have left behind a two-litre bottle of Diet Coke. (Yes, I know, but you can't expect me to boycott Kit Kat, Nescafe and Coke, can you?)
The reason I know this is that I called in there the other day with a serious starch and saturated fat craving to satiate. (With three slices, please. White bread, Mother's Pride, and cheap marge.)
I caught a glimpse of an elderly woman nudging her companion and nodding in my direction as I reminded myself what was on the menu (unchanged from when its 1970s-style red mock-leather holder was new). A few hushed words were exchanged with the woman proprietor, who disappeared into the back room before returning a few minutes later to present me with my bottle of Diet Coke.
It was more than six months since I'd left it there, tucked out of sight under the table where I'd been eating. One of the elderly regulars spotted that I'd forgotten to take it with me, but was no longer fleet enough of foot or loud enough of voice to alert me to the fact before I'd disappeared up the road. She'd given it to the café proprietor for safe keeping, and now, many months later, she recognised me on my return and reunited me with my bottle.
I don't know whether I was most touched by the fact that someone had remembered me amidst all the tumult and turnover of the ever-altering metropolis that is London; or that they had kept this bottle for so long in expectation of my eventual return. Either way, it made me feel a part of a community that I had only half recognised as existing at all.
These are the people for whom, every spring when I am in the country, I put out new pots and window boxes at the front of the flat. I do this even though, every spring almost without fail, eventually they get stolen, because I would rather share other people's pleasure in them for a short while than keep them to myself at the back of the flat, where they can't get stolen. Senseless and inconsequential though all this may seem, getting my bottle of Diet Coke back felt like a victory over everyone who would reduce human existence to a selfish scramble for survival.
Anyone who has spent any time in the Poor World will know that the poorest western visitor is wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most of its inhabitants. It's one of the reasons why, whatever immigration controls we may decide to impose for pragmatic reasons, there is no conceivable moral case against 'economic migrants'.
Sometimes, though, even the most committed socialists can get frustrated when people seem to fail to do all they can to help themselves in their own countries.
I have been involved in trying to set up a website that would enable local people involved in sustainable tourism to publicise their own ventures without having to go through intermediaries, who then cream off most of the profits. Some of my contacts in Kenya were supposed to be getting back to me in January with details of the campsite and other initiatives they operate in the Maasai heartland on the Kenya-Tanzania border.
I had become increasingly frustrated as a result of hearing nothing from them, until I received an email this week. 'Sorry for the delay,' it said. 'We couldn’t email you because the business has been terribly down. We didn’t get even a single [visitor] since November and I haven't had the money to get into Nairobi for emails.'
Sometimes it's the smallest things that catch you emotionally unawares.
Fine words butter no parnsnips
Tribune column, 19 March 2004
Two things strike me immediately about Britain on returning from a long spell in Africa. The first is its affluence: the fourth-richest country in the world, and it shows, despite all the inequalities. The second is the poverty of its ambitions: the inability to utilise this wealth to achieve any sort of meaningful change in the world, whether at home or abroad.
It doesn't do to become nostalgic about a time before you were born, particularly when it was a period that was dominated by the bloodiest conflict in human history. But a smidgeon of research I've been doing on the contrast between those two giants of post-war Labour politics, Nye Bevan and Ernest Bevin, makes it difficult not to despair at our lost sense of the possible in both domestic and international politics.
There, at the end of the second world war, was a battered, bloodied and impoverished Britain. But it was a country that never doubted that it could "afford" a National Health Service. And it was a country that, in spite of all the hardships at home, was prepared to introduce bread rationing in 1947 (after enduring the entire war without it) in order to send grain to Germany, which was on the verge of starvation.
That single act brings into sharp focus the practical, good-sense internationalism of a generation of political activists who had seen little of the world beyond their own borders, except in war. Without access to cheap air travel or the communications revolution of the modern mass media, they had more of a sense of being part of an interdependent world community than any number of the globalised jet-setters who were to follow. Whatever their flaws, the leaders of post-war Britain – and, more importantly, America – knew that there was more to winning a war than success on the battlefield. For all of its Bevanite past, what Tribune reader would not swap the Bevinite transatlantic alliance created in the 1940s for the version that exists today?
It's worth casting a comparative eye back to the 1940s, not least because the Prime Minister is doing likewise in his rhetorical war on terrorism. Tony Blair's speech to Labour's spring conference, hastily re-cast in response to the Madrid bombings, was generally described as "Churchillian", evoking the "spirit of the second world war". While the previous generation faced war with the Nazis, he told us, we face "a war of a different nature to anything before . . . terrorism waged without limits".
If Tony Blair spent more time studying history, rather than pondering his own place in it, he might have more of a sense of proper perspective. Al Qaeda and its allies have the ability to inflict awful pain, as they have shown in one atrocity after another, most recently in Madrid. But terrible as these may be, they do not bear comparison with the terror wrought by the Nazis; nor indeed with the routine toll of deprivation, starvation and disease that kills thousands daily worldwide.
Al Qaeda's are episodic, ugly paroxysms, not a sustained and serious threat to western democracy and freedoms. Some of the technology available to the Islamist-nihilists facilitates actions of a "different nature to anything before", and a globalised world makes possible a globalised terror network.
But unless you count only acts carried out in the last 60 years against countries of the first world, or you believe that terrorism is the sole prerogative of non-national, non-state groups, any half-serious historian would have to say that the world has seen terror "waged without limits" far more often, far more extensively and far more indiscriminately than the very worst that Al Qaeda is capable of attempting. Al Qaeda may have the capacity to hurt, terribly; but, unlike the Nazis, there is not a Christian in Mecca's chance that it can win.
How long it goes on hurting depends on how well we learn our history lessons. It goes without saying that we have to defeat – or, more realistically, contain – the terror networks of Al Qaeda and its ilk; and that there will be a price to be paid in doing so. Much more importantly, though, we must also be prepared to pay the price of the modern-day equivalent of exporting grain to post-war Germany.
Three weeks after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Tony Blair delivered what was widely regarded as an inspirational speech to the Labour conference. He declared that, "The world community must show as much its capacity for compassion as for force." He said that, "The Palestinians must have justice, the chance to prosper and in their own land, as equal partners with Israel." And he described the state of Africa as "a scar on the conscience of the world". "If the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it," he argued. "And if we don't, it will become deeper and angrier."
In the weeks that followed there was much talk of a new "Marshall Plan for Africa", in reference to the economic aid programme for the rebuilding of Europe after the second world war. One month to the day after September 11th, the European Union launched its "New Africa Initiative". The following year, the G8 countries formally endorsed the "New Partnership for Africa's Development", or NEPAD.
"Fine words butter no parsnips," one of my African hosts told me (quoting Lenin, although he didn't realise it at the time) after one of the most recent NEPAD pronouncements. Buttered parsnips won't beat Al Qaeda on their own, but anyone with an understanding of history can tell you that they won't be beaten without them.
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Tribune column, 19 March 2004
Two things strike me immediately about Britain on returning from a long spell in Africa. The first is its affluence: the fourth-richest country in the world, and it shows, despite all the inequalities. The second is the poverty of its ambitions: the inability to utilise this wealth to achieve any sort of meaningful change in the world, whether at home or abroad.
It doesn't do to become nostalgic about a time before you were born, particularly when it was a period that was dominated by the bloodiest conflict in human history. But a smidgeon of research I've been doing on the contrast between those two giants of post-war Labour politics, Nye Bevan and Ernest Bevin, makes it difficult not to despair at our lost sense of the possible in both domestic and international politics.
There, at the end of the second world war, was a battered, bloodied and impoverished Britain. But it was a country that never doubted that it could "afford" a National Health Service. And it was a country that, in spite of all the hardships at home, was prepared to introduce bread rationing in 1947 (after enduring the entire war without it) in order to send grain to Germany, which was on the verge of starvation.
That single act brings into sharp focus the practical, good-sense internationalism of a generation of political activists who had seen little of the world beyond their own borders, except in war. Without access to cheap air travel or the communications revolution of the modern mass media, they had more of a sense of being part of an interdependent world community than any number of the globalised jet-setters who were to follow. Whatever their flaws, the leaders of post-war Britain – and, more importantly, America – knew that there was more to winning a war than success on the battlefield. For all of its Bevanite past, what Tribune reader would not swap the Bevinite transatlantic alliance created in the 1940s for the version that exists today?
It's worth casting a comparative eye back to the 1940s, not least because the Prime Minister is doing likewise in his rhetorical war on terrorism. Tony Blair's speech to Labour's spring conference, hastily re-cast in response to the Madrid bombings, was generally described as "Churchillian", evoking the "spirit of the second world war". While the previous generation faced war with the Nazis, he told us, we face "a war of a different nature to anything before . . . terrorism waged without limits".
If Tony Blair spent more time studying history, rather than pondering his own place in it, he might have more of a sense of proper perspective. Al Qaeda and its allies have the ability to inflict awful pain, as they have shown in one atrocity after another, most recently in Madrid. But terrible as these may be, they do not bear comparison with the terror wrought by the Nazis; nor indeed with the routine toll of deprivation, starvation and disease that kills thousands daily worldwide.
Al Qaeda's are episodic, ugly paroxysms, not a sustained and serious threat to western democracy and freedoms. Some of the technology available to the Islamist-nihilists facilitates actions of a "different nature to anything before", and a globalised world makes possible a globalised terror network.
But unless you count only acts carried out in the last 60 years against countries of the first world, or you believe that terrorism is the sole prerogative of non-national, non-state groups, any half-serious historian would have to say that the world has seen terror "waged without limits" far more often, far more extensively and far more indiscriminately than the very worst that Al Qaeda is capable of attempting. Al Qaeda may have the capacity to hurt, terribly; but, unlike the Nazis, there is not a Christian in Mecca's chance that it can win.
How long it goes on hurting depends on how well we learn our history lessons. It goes without saying that we have to defeat – or, more realistically, contain – the terror networks of Al Qaeda and its ilk; and that there will be a price to be paid in doing so. Much more importantly, though, we must also be prepared to pay the price of the modern-day equivalent of exporting grain to post-war Germany.
Three weeks after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Tony Blair delivered what was widely regarded as an inspirational speech to the Labour conference. He declared that, "The world community must show as much its capacity for compassion as for force." He said that, "The Palestinians must have justice, the chance to prosper and in their own land, as equal partners with Israel." And he described the state of Africa as "a scar on the conscience of the world". "If the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it," he argued. "And if we don't, it will become deeper and angrier."
In the weeks that followed there was much talk of a new "Marshall Plan for Africa", in reference to the economic aid programme for the rebuilding of Europe after the second world war. One month to the day after September 11th, the European Union launched its "New Africa Initiative". The following year, the G8 countries formally endorsed the "New Partnership for Africa's Development", or NEPAD.
"Fine words butter no parsnips," one of my African hosts told me (quoting Lenin, although he didn't realise it at the time) after one of the most recent NEPAD pronouncements. Buttered parsnips won't beat Al Qaeda on their own, but anyone with an understanding of history can tell you that they won't be beaten without them.
