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TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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| October 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #138 - 22nd October 2006 [244+305= 549]
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We often find ourselves asking ourselves (or others) reflective questions such as, am I happier? is this better? was this the right thing to do? Inherent in these is the phrase “compared with something else”. After all, that is what makes a comparative adjective like happier comparative - it must be compared with something. Yet it is surprising how many people who use comparative adjectives are either so sloppy that they fail to realise what they are supposed to be comparing against, or else through ignorance or malice choose to compare against something unrealisable if not ridiculous. How many times, for instance, has the question been asked, in relation to 9/11 and the two wars which followed it, “are we safer now”? Responders who are against the war(s), will almost alway say “No! We are not safer.”. Pro-warriors will likely wobble a bit more, but many of them will also say “No”. But the question is meaningless unless “safer than what” is first answered. Consider.
These would all, surely, elicit a negative answer from most of us. But both the question and the answer are fatuous: they refer either to times past or to stuff that might rattle around futilely in my head. So what if the answer is no. It is inconsequential. But if the question becomes
we are dealing with an issue that has real resonance, for we're now trying to evaluate real alternatives. And it's much tougher. Imagine today's world of 2006, if during the preceding five years the Americans had responded much as they and the rest of the West responded to the escalating Islamicist outrages of the previous decade, where terrorist attacks were treated as little more than irritating breaches of the law. For example,
With such a litany (and these are just some of the more egregious samples), we certainly can get some sense that feeble responses do not stop Islamicist attacks. I remember many years ago doing a negotiating skills course, and learning - to my surprise - that if the other party gives you a concession, it doesn't necessarily follow that you should give him one in return. Quite the contrary. This is because he is showing weakness, and this should be a signal for you to demand more concessions and bigger concessions, not to go offering some of your own. Brutal but, if you think about it, rational. Likewise, during the 1990s, when Islamicists did bad things that earned no serious reaction, they interpreted this as evidence of weakness, the equivalent of a concession. They must have attended the same negotiating skills course because their response was to demand more, ie to bomb more. And more. Until the acme of attacks on September 11th, which murdered 2,752 people. This unspeakably evil act at last elicited a commensurate reaction from the West, showing it was not in fact as weak as its previous responses suggested. For it launched two regime-changing thug-deposing wars, which to different extents are still raging today. And guess what? Whilst there have indeed been
more terrorist outrages aimed at Westerners similar to those of the
1990s (Istanbul, Bali, Madrid, London etc), there has been no repeat
anywhere near the
But had 9/11 elicited just another ho-hum supine response, representing just another open door, there can be no doubt that Islamicist attacks on such a scale, or indeed worse, would have been repeated in America and other conurbations of infidels and Jews. We would be measuring Western casualties not in the hundreds but in the tens of thousands. For not only would Islamicists have been immeasurably emboldened by America's virtual non-response to the worst-ever attack on their native soil, but their bases in Afghanistan would have remained forever secure, whilst people like Saddam would have continued to protect, fund and encourage Islamicists in their attacks against Westerners. So, going back to the question, of whether we - selfishly meaning we Westerners - are safer than we would have been without the Afghan and Iraq wars, to me the answer is an emphatic YES. But “safer” doesn't mean we are safe. Not whilst uncounted thousands of Islamicists still want to convert, enslave or kill us.
In my previous post, I observed that while Westerners are “safer” than they would have been without the Afghan and Iraq campaigns, this may not be so for “the Iraqi and Afghani majorities who have demonstrated with their iconic purple fingers their desire to embrace democracy and peace”. That is because actions by America and its Coalition have brought the front line of the jihad into these countries. On the face of it, this sounds unfair and unjust. Afghanis and Iraqis have to die so that we in the West can be safe? I would have two responses to this.
Governments need to do whatever it takes to keep their own
people safe. If that includes ensuring wars take place far
away rather than on native soil, than this is not only
defensible, but a bounden duty. One's own
citizens/electorate come first. Secondly,
of course, whether the Iraqi and Afghan death rate is higher
than it would have been anyway is a moot point, because huge
numbers of Iraqis and Afghanis were, over a period of decades,
terrorised and murdered by the evil regimes of Saddam, the Taliban and
various warlords.
At least now the people perhaps have some measure of hope which
they didn't have before.
In conclusion, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan undoubtedly do represent the front line in the global jihad against the West and Western values, which the Islamicists precipitated in their attacks throughout the 1990s culminating in 9/11. To cut and run would not only leave the (purple-fingered) peaceable and democratic majorities in those countries to a life of oppression under illegitimate, violent, Sharia regimes. It would also suck into America and Europe the front line of the Jihad, in which the Islamicists would be a heartened and strengthened force, just as the defeated Americans and Europeans would be demoralised and weakened. The thought of then sending armies back to the Middle East would fill everyone with horror. It would bring the dream of a global Caliphate that much closer. That is too ghastly a scenario to contemplate.
Rodney Hobson, a commentator with Hemscott, a financial advisory service, made an interesting observation last week. He wanted to contrast the extradition to the US, without evidence having been heard in a UK court, of three British bankers for Enron-related offences, the so-called NatWest Three, with an extraordinary turn of events in the Enron case. Enron's founder and chief executive Kenneth Lay (Kenny-boy to his friend George Bush) was convicted by a jury of ten counts of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks. But then he suddenly died, two months later, without going to prison. Enron, it will be recalled, collapsed in 2001 wiping out thousands of jobs and $60 billion worth of investments in its shares, not to mention what was owed to its creditors. This came about as the result of one of the largest and most coldly calculated frauds ever committed. It has now transpired that because Lay died before he had time to appeal, his convictions have been voided. In other words he has in effect been found, posthumously, “not guilty”. This will make it more difficult for the Department of Justice to recover Lay’s ill-gotten gains, in particular the $43m it was seeking. Bizzarely, this amount will now be added to the $139m being sought from fellow convictee Jeffrey Skilling, who has not had the foresight to die. So people can be convicted in McCarthy-style witchhunts where “confessions” implicating others (such as the Natwest Three) are traded in return for lighter sentences. Yet a conviction for a massive clear-cut fraud is wiped out on a technicality. At least we don't have to witness Lay gloating and exulting in his peculiar and unjust exoneration.
I am sick of all the guff on TV, radio and newspapers about Madonna and her new brat. Not of the underlying story, which is heartwarming. But of all the hype, hypocrisy and begrudgery. Let me see if I've got this straight. Madonna is a multi-millionaire pop star, happily married to her second husband, movie director Guy Richie, has two children Lourdes and Rocco, and the family all live in England. For some reason they want a third child. He is 38, but at 48 her time is no doubt past, so they decided to adopt. Madonna went to Malawi and applied to adopt a 13-month-old boy David from an orphanage. Through a combination of influence, money and fame she managed a few short cuts and earlier this month had the child brought to England. This has provoked outrage:
This list all boils down to a view that the adoption is wrong and it would be better if it did not go ahead. But better than what? The objectors never say. We're back to comparing one course of action (adoptions) to alternatives that are realistic rather than hairy-fairy. Most people would agree that any child's best life-chances - though nothing is guaranteed - will result from being brought up by its own (not too old) married birth mother and birth father. Its life-chances deteriorate the further you deviate from that model - unmarried parents, single parents, elderly parents, homosexual parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, parents from different cultures/races, institutions such as orphanages. However, before condemning, say, a proposed adoption of a child by a different-coloured elderly gay couple, you have to look at the realistic alternatives open to that particular child, for it is only his/her interests that count. Undoubtedly, the future for some children is so dreadful (one thinks of the worst Romanian orphanages), that almost any type of parent is preferable, assuming he/she is loving and not abusive. However, the rights should rest with the child alone; the prospective parent(s) should have no rights in the adoption decision-making. In the case of baby David, his mother had died and his dad dumped him in an orphanage for God's sake. His father and granny got interested in him only when Madonna got interested (money has its own aroma). So the child's alternatives are a childhood either in a Malawi orphanage or with Madonna's family in England. Being raised by his own family is not an option as his own family rejected this when they institutionalised him and are not offering to take him back. The baby's the only person who is important here, and Madonna is undoubtedly his better option. The only point I would make is that she would have had a little less grief had she selected an orphan with no family connections. Nevertheless, little David is one African who now, thanks to Madonna, has better life-chances. Is this not heart-warming? Why would people not rejoice instead of carp?
Week 138's Letters to the Press Two missives this week, one published, one not. The interesting thing about the published letter is that, for the second time in a month, the editor has chosen not to publish my assertion (shamelessly filched from Mark Humphrys who in turn got the idea from an unguarded remark by George Bush) that all it takes to stop hostilities is for Israel's neighbours to cease attacking it. Why would she want to suppress this?
- - - - - - - - - - J I H A D - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “This regime, thanks to God, has lost the reason for its existence ... You should believe that this fake [Israeli] regime is disappearing ... it is in your own [America's and its allies'] interest to distance yourself from these criminals ... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow.” Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad As the
Daily Telegraph reported
earlier this year, Only regime-change, or an
Osirak-style raid, Quote: “We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith. And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem ... Speak up and condemn terrorism.” Andrew Robb, Australia's parliamentary
secretary Why don't any other Anglophone leaders speak up like the Ozzies? - - - - - - - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “We don't make those kind of mistakes here.” Justin Geoghegan, an arrogant
consultant-surgeon, It later emerged that he had in fact
mistakenly Quote “In comparison to some of the people that I think we are dealing with here, those two [Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley] are two very reasonable men.” Noel Dempsey, Irish Minister for Marine
and Natural Resources,
The dispute is over Shell's plan to process natural gas
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ISSUE #137 - 15th October 2006 [253]
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Turkey and the EU - There Is a Third Way Last week, Denis McShane, a respected British MP for the Labour Party, who was Europe Minister from 2002 to 2005, wrote a thoughtful article in the Financial Times about Turkey's long-standing aspiration to join the EU. It is common knowledge that this is giving rise to deep misgivings among many Europeans, and that this in turn is raising anger and hostility among many Turks. Few political leaders are, however, willing to articulate the true reason for the misgivings, and so they set up smokescreens. European Commission president José Manuel Barroso simply states, baldly, that the era of EU enlargement is over. As another example, President Jacques Chirac of France, host to a large Armenian minority, recently declared that Turkey should recognize as “genocide” its WW1 massacre of 1˝m Armenians, which de-facto creates a new condition for entry (or excuse to deny it). Indeed, France's parliament has just voted to make it a criminal offence to deny that the “genocide” happened. Within Turkey, by contrast, this is such a sensitive issue that anyone supporting the “genocide” view has long been committing a criminal offence. Only in 2005, was the Turk, Orhan Pamuk, now the 2006 Nobel prize winner for literature, facing jail for saying that Turkey had killed a million Armenians. So it is a big ask to require that the whole Turkish state now commit this “crime”. Mr McShane reminds us that the Turks do have a point in that it was the decaying Ottoman Empire that did the killing, rather than the modern Turkey founded by Ataturk. The true reason for Europe's misgivings are, however, that Europe sees itself as a white, Christian space within clearly understood geographical boundaries. Turkey is largely non-white, is predominantly Muslim and lies outside those geographic boundaries; moreover it has a very big population of 70m. In short, it is not European and its admittance will seriously dilute the European identity. While the boundaries are geographical fact, the “whiteness” argument can be dismissed as intrinsically immoral because it is racist. Nevertheless, though the “Christian” contention may at one level be also dismissed as laughable, given
its modern interpretation would be “non-Muslim”. For the overwhelming cause of concern among Europeans is simply the potential influx into the existing EU of a goodly proportion of Turkey's 70m Muslims, most of whom are far poorer (GDP $8,200 pp) than current EU citizens ($24,000). Pre-9/11 this would not have been a major issue. Europe has in the past accommodated numerous Christian sects, as well as minorities of Jews (pace Hitler), Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and - yes - Muslims. But today it is most certainly an issue, because of Europe's ubiquitous suspicion towards all Muslims that has been generated by
No matter how peaceable Muslim immigrants to Europe have been, and grateful for the earning opportunities they have gained (eg Bangladeshi shop-keepers in England, Turkish gastarbeiter in Germany, Algerian construction workers in France, Somali taxi-drivers in Norway), the children of some of them have become radicalised, Islamicised and bellicose. The great fear is that the huge wave of Muslim immigration from Turkey, that would inevitably follow its accession to the wealthy EU, will be followed within a generation by untold violence and terrorism, as we have seen in the streets of Paris, Copenhagen, Madrid, London. This, people fear, would only hasten the eventual Islamicisation of Europe itself. Mr McShane, however, argues that the non-admittance of Turkey will give rise to its own set of problems, of a nature even more grave for Europe. He fears that disgust at the EU's rejection will fuel radical groups in Turkish domestic politics, who may turn for friends towards authoritarian Russia, nuclear-armed Iran, energy-rich republics to Turkey's east that share its language and culture, even Pakistan. He postulates a crescent of influence, power and no doubt fundamentalism linking a series of Islamic states governed by strong semi-military regimes, aggressively pursing their interests in the Mediterranean and Middle East, all at the expense of European interests. In other words, he sees a threat of Turkey becoming another fundamentalist Islamic state bound closely to similar states in the neighbourhood, all in search of a mythical global Caliphate founded on Sharia law. This can only augur ill for Europe, as forces of Fundamentalism seek to subdue the West, starting with Europe, by any means possible including terrorism. As Mohammed Bouyeri wrote in the note he stabbed into the corpse of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker he had just assassinated,
But personally, I think that such a two-way vision of
is too narrow. Furthermore, it insults Turkey by portraying it as no more than a weathervane swinging in whatever direction the breeze blows strongest, but too pathetic to have any influence on the wind itself. The Turkish Republic is a powerful, democratic, secular state with both a Muslim ethos and a disciplined army whose remit includes keeping the country secular. Founded in 1923, it is older than many established EU republics such as modern France, Italy, Germany. It knows that, whether within or without the EU, its way to prosperity is through capitalistic policies coupled with respect for human rights. It realises that, short of a Saudi-style oil bonanza, no state can foster the creativity and entrepreneurialism needed to become universally wealthy, if it keeps its people in fear. But Turkey is also home to Islamic radicals and dissident groups, some of whom such as the Kurds in the (mildly oil-bearing) East seek independence. In its efforts to remain secular and unitary, Turkey still exercises brutality and punitive laws to suppress such movements. Yet its record over the past decade or so has been one of gradually removing the worst aspects of these and strengthening its observations of people's rights. The surest way to encourage both of these reformist tendencies - capitalism and human rights - is for Europe (and the rest of the West) to open wide their markets to Turkish goods and services, an act that would benefit European consumers as well. Frankly, it doesn't need to join the EU for this and, with merely a free-trade agreement, it would have a lot more freedom of action unencumbered by EU bureaucracy and petty regulation. Some like to pontificate that Turkey is only reforming because the EU is forcing it to, as a condition of entry. However, these reforms are good for Turkey regardless of whatever clubs it may or may not want to join, and the Turkish leadership undoubtedly knows this. This all points to the third, non-Islamicisation, non-Fundamentalisation way. Why should a successful, prosperous, strong, secular Turkey not be the beacon and exemplar for the populations in the crescent of its neighbouring states, rather than a helpless victim swallowed up by the depravity of their respective, venal dictators. The EU began when, effectively, France inspired West Germany, its mortal enemy of just six years earlier, to work closely with it on iron and steel, and they then brought in a further four European states to sign the initial treaty in 1951. Things grew from these modest beginnings. It is not inconceivable that Turkey could play a similarly inspiring role among its neighbours north, east and south, creating not just a common economic market of their own, but also spreading Turkey's own proven values of capitalism, secularism and democracy, within a strong but peaceable Muslim ethos. So rather than the usual two pessimistic results, there are in fact three possible outcomes to the issue of Turkey's accession-or-not to the EU.
The Fundamentalization of Turkey
The Secularization of the Middle East area on Turkey's model
Of these, the third way provides much the most encouraging hope for the future for all parties concerned. Indeed it provides a far more likely non-EU scenario than the pessimism of number two. Turkey should simply stop wasting its time over its EU application (which will never succeed), concentrate on concluding a free-trade agreement with the EU to mutual benefit, and look to export its worthy values to its other neighbours, who badly need Turkey's leadership.
Mock the Veil Jack Straw MP is
in trouble because he dared to state the blindingly obvious:
that if I wear a mask or veil over my face, I will be able to see
you but you will not able to see me, and that disparity
So Mr Straw often asks - not demands - that veiled Muslim women remove their veils when they come for consultations at his constituency surgery in heavily-Muslim Blackburn, so that he can talk to them more easily. This has elicited the predictable Muslim outrage about Western cultural intolerance, a woman's right to choose etc (which makes it sound weirdly like he is opposing abortion). Yet, the Koran does not demand the veil; it is indeed a “cultural” issue (I use the term advisedly) and no prizes for guessing which of the two sexes dreamed it up. (Hint: look at my little green book of Ayatollah Khomenei's sayings). The origin of the veil boils down to sex: males of a certain “culture” happen to be obsessed with sex and with their own insecurity over sex. So their women must be hidden at all times from the view of other males, lest those other males - or indeed the women themselves - are so overcome with lust at the sight of each other's faces that they immediately fling off their clothes and succumb to wild congress. Just to be certain, many menfolk also ensure their female progeny are brutally circumcised at prepubescence so as to eradicate any vestige of feminine lechery in the future. This apparently helps ensure faithfulness and thus enhances marriageability at a higher dowry. There are degrees of hiddenness, from the Hijab (which resembles how my mother once used to wear a veil to attend church) to the full-monty Burqa which BBC journalist John Simpson famously wore to sneak into Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2001.
So what should be the proper response to the Jack Straw controversy? Well, no-one is going to easily convince anyone else to change his/her mind. You're either with them (the veils) or against them. If you're a Muslim woman, of course, your vote doesn't count, you just do what's expected or what you're told. I happen to think the veil is iniquitous and an affront to women, and not very respectful to men either, but others clearly don't.
But supposing it was done for mockery. Suppose it was done to illustrate how ridiculous and offensive it is. Here in the West, every time a veiled woman passes in the street, perhaps every other woman should clip a removable veil across her face to register her protest. If it catches on, maybe men could do so as well, in the best John Simpson spirit. It is often said that, in Tony Blair's heyday when everyone loved him (remember that?) and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were at their most supine, the only true opposition were satirists like Rory Bremner who mocked him mercilessly on the TV. Mockery was the one thing that kept Mr Blair on his toes. A bit of universal veil mockery might go someway to eliminate this foul practice so demeaning to women.
And while we're on the subject of mockery ... Earlier this month Danish state TV aired amateur video footage showing young members of the anti-immigrant Danish Peoples' party engaged in a puerile competition to draw silly cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. It had been filmed by an infiltrator to the party to document the behaviour of the youngsters. You can find the three minutes of footage on You-Tube here and here, but it's rather boring - like watching drunken antics when you're sober. Late
note (31 October): The videos have since disappeared from youtube.com.
Under the circ-umstances, it is to the credit of the TV station that it had the courage to broadcast such stuff, though the story itself is of little or no value. (Young people acting the fool and being rude? When did that become news?) The matter would have been quickly forgotten, had the ever-solemn Organization of Islamic Conference not decided to express outrage:
Ah yes, the values of tolerance. Clearly, however, the lazy Western press forgot to publish the second part of the statement recalling, in the interests of the Islamic values of tolerance, how, within OIC member states over just the past year,
As Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay astutely - and presciently - observed in respect of all bigots, in a lengthy essay he wrote in 1835,
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scale
of 9/11. Moreover, the real jihad against Islamicists is
currently being confined to Iraq and Afghanistan, which can only be
a source of relief from a Westerner's viewpoint (though sadly not
for the Iraqi and Afghani majorities who have demonstrated with
their iconic purple fingers their desire to embrace democracy and
peace). 
Note, however, that this was in Denmark, home
of the