Power to the people

What do we think of the recommendations from Baroness Helena Kennedy’s Power Inquiry, on challenging the low turnout among Britain’s young electorate?

I agree with David Aaronovitch, who disagrees with the reports finding but does support the recommendations. I haven’t the time or inclination to get bogged down with how the inquiry reached its conclusions, but I would like to express my own thoughts.

Firstly on the point of voting at 16, I see no major reason why a 16-year-old cannot vote. Those with opinions will utilise this right, yet I feel the majority, who couldn’t care less, will not. Counterproductively this will probably send the proportion of the non-voting electorate up, not down.

The restriction on donations would protect the democratic process, why should the rich have a disproportionate ‘voice’ in the argument leading up to an election? Yes they contribute more to the country in terms of taxation, but equal funding would help ensure the best argument wins the day. Lobbying is a cancer on the capitalist system, not a virtue.

I also like the idea of public petitions (signed by a minimum of 400,000 people) forcing a debate in parliament. MP’s argue that they don’t have enough time for their own bills to be debated, but my retort is that they have created 700 new criminal offences since 1997, so evidently they spend far too much time ‘lawmaking.’ They should do as we instruct, not debating their own pet-projects.

Parliament is important as it’s in control of billions of pounds that we, as the taxpayers, have laboured for. Parliament is also important as a means to keep almost 500 busybodies out of industry, but that’s another story. Parliament should therefore, be supremely accountable to us, and if we the people want ministers to do monkey flips while we sit around laughing, then it’s tough shit. Good idea Helena, I look forward to abusing the system.

I actually have my own recommendation. I believe that all public institutions should be democratic. Schools should not only have elected governors, but also democratically elected student representation, with real power. How can we expect kids to embrace democracy at eighteen when all they have known is an undemocratic autocracy?

Waste, sanitation, the police force; all should be democratically accountable, not following central diktat from Whitehall. Lawmakers should make the law not dictate implementation. The ministerial record on delivering progress is evidence enough, that our politicians couldn’t manage a towel draw, never mind a budget in the billions.

Only localism and regional representation will solve the disengagement of the masses from the self-important nonsense of Westminster. It’s hard to reconcile Blair’s tenure with devolution of power, but at least they tried with the regional assemblies. This was of course in truth, a watered down, almost powerless façade. What we need is real regional federalism, with London based government dismantled to all but defence of the realm and international diplomacy. The executive power of the PM (easily the most constitutionally powerful democratic public office in the world, bar non) must be tempered by powerful, locally accountable, regional political institutions.

Only then can we give power back to the people.

Goodbye liberty

I just watched the latest episode of Dispatches on Channel Four, presented by political commentator Peter Hitchens. It was an excellent summary of the unbridled curbing of civil liberties by this Labour Government, and their questionable justification for the growing state.

There was, predictably, an air of the Daily Mail in the film; but this should not divert the viewer from the reality of the Blair administration, and their constant affronts to both British justice, and the innate freedoms we hold dear.

Think I’m exaggerating? How about this from the horse’s mouth: -

In theory, traditional court processes and attitudes to civil liberties could work. But the modern world is different from the world for which these court processes were designed.

I’m sorry Tony, but if we burn Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, what exactly are we fighting to protect?

The Mac difference

Microsoft gets a great deal of bad press, and if you have the misfortune to have to wrangle with the peculiarities of the Windows operating system, you would appreciate why. I’m an accountant, so at work I am armed with a P4 Dell running Windows NT, and it’s a depressing experience.

Drab spreadsheet after drab spreadsheet, such is my Excel-powered existence (not to mention time spent with the unfathomable and unwieldy Internet Explorer). Yet at five-o’clock, each and every day, I can emerge from my office and go home to a wonderful enlightened world of Macintosh. Ah the simplicity, elegance, and functionality of the OS X operating system. The ease at which my iPod syncs with Tiger, the pure tactile ecstasy of the PowerBook, and the robust portability of my iBook, never has technology felt so right.

For those yet to make the change, take a view of this video of a Microsoft makeover of the iPod packaging, it’s a mock-up of course, but it brilliantly conveys the difference between the two companies.

Top Trump

This post will probably cut short a promising real-estate career before it’s even began, but what the hell is the deal with Donald Trump’s hair?

Now premature baldness is no trifling matter, but one has to go gracefully, with a debonair disregard for ones own vanity. Not, as is the case with Multi-Billionaire Trump, desperately employing an Olympic size comb-over.

Still, It gets him the ladies….

French going to teach us to be Europeans

Those habitual anti-progressives and occasional rioters, the French, have announced a proposal to create European Lessons in secondary schools across the 25-state union. In a sardonic nod to the democratic process, several of the ideas are ‘are recycled from the constitution’s ruins.’ Remind me, who was it that first rejected the French authored constitution?

The lessons, which British officials have dismissed as a “non-starter,” would the French argue, be an “apprenticeship” for young Europeans. Not happy with dislocating the European people from democratic accountability, our intellectual betters now suggest that we’re socially engineered into good, compliant, little federalists.

Did someone once say the Soviet Union had fallen?

Regular readers will know that I am a passionate European, and a regular traveller across our glorious continent, but our continent is glorious because of the very differences that our political elite seeks to destroy in their homogenising socialist quest.

The EU should be a union of free trade, free-movement, and peaceful co-operation, nothing more, and nothing less.

We don’t need lessons for that.

The Box

Update - please see a correction, here

A regular reader made a comment on the Neocon’s Break Ranks post, referring to a poem by Lascelles Abercrombie, sung by John Denver, called The Box. This recommendation was accompanied by an emailed link to the lyrics, which I have reproduced below: -

LASCELLES
THE BOX

Once upon a time in the land of hush-a-bye,
around about the wondrous days of yore,
I came across a sort of box
bound up with chains and locked with locks
and labelled, “Kindly do not touch, it’s war.”

Decree was issued round about
all with a flourish and a shout
and a gaily coloured mascot tripping lightly on before:
“Don’t fiddle with this deadly box
or break the chains or pick the locks.
And please, don’t ever play about with war”

Well, the children understood,
Children happen to be good,
they were just as good around the time of yore
They didn’t try to pick the locks,
or break into that deadly box
They never tried to play about with war

Mummies didn’t either
Sisters, aunts, grannies neither
‘Cause they were quiet and sweet and pretty
in those wondrous days of yore
Well, very much the same as now,
not the ones to blame somehow
For opening up that deadly box of war

But someone did
Someone battered in the lid
And spilled the insides out across the floor
A sort of bouncy, bumpy ball
made up of guns and flags and all
the tears and horror and the death that goes with war

It bounced right out
And went bashing all about
And bumping into everything and stored
And what was sad and most unfair
is that it didn’t seem to care
how much it bumped
Or why, or what, or for

It bumped the children mainly
And I’ll tell you this quite plainly
It bumps them every day, and more and more, and leaves them
dead and burned and dying
Thousands of them sick and crying
‘Cause when it bumps, it’s really very sore

Now there’s a way to stop the ball
It isn’t difficult at all
All it takes is wisdom, I’m absolutely sure that we could get it
back into the box
And buy the chains and lock the locks
[but] No one seems to want to save the children any more

Well, that’s the way it all appears
‘Cause it’s been bouncing round for years and years
In spite of all the wisdom wiz since those wondrous days of yore
And the time they came across the box
Bound up with chains and locked with locks
And labelled, “Kindly do not touch, it’s war”

Words by Lascelles - Sung By John Denver

The poem, and the subsequent song, certainly have a timeless and poignant message.

Arab League Video

If you didn’t think it was possible to offend both the White House and the Islamic World, prepare to be surprised….

Taking issue with Fukuyama

One point I wanted to cover in my essay, but it didn’t fit in with my initial assessment, was a throwaway statement by Fukuyama, which went: -

There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

This is a line that was peddled by the right around the time of Bush’s second inaugural speech, which I took issue with then; I’m not sure there are any positive ‘spillover’ effects in the Middle East. Democratic elections in Palestine have delivered power to Hamas, in Egypt (as I pointed out) the Muslim Brotherhood are extremely popular, and in Iran the response has been the rise to power of an anti-Israel extremist.

This sceptical position is shared by fellow blogger Freedom, who argued: -

I disagree with that statement. The war did have an impact on the entire region but not in terms of spreading democracy or anything remotely positive. If anything, the Iraq war has effectively convinced dictators that if the great powers (well, the only great power, USA) have made up their minds to invade and occupy a country they will do so regardless of what concessions they offered. In fact, I think the fact that the Iraq war by USA was not at all justified has further delegitimized USA in the eyes of the Arab world. There is an interesting development, in my opinion, wherein the people are inclined to favour neither their dictatorial leaders nor the alleged “liberators”. Although this has been rather difficult to implement. Nevertheless such a perspective is there and has received a huge boost thanks to the Iraq war. Washington’s response to the Hamas victory serves as yet another proof (for Middle Easterners at least) that USA does not want democracy or justice per se, but democracy on its own terms, justice as defined by its interests.

The Neocons Break Ranks

Power

The polarising effects of the Bush administration have been assessed many times, both by ideologues on the left, and on the right. Pragmatic centrists such as myself, have also considered them, and found that it’s idealism that separates the two camps.

The Bush of 2000 was of course, we now know, and have always suspected, a puppet. A simple, affable, front for a conglomerate of interests that sought to use political influence to address its causes. This is not some left-wing conspiracy theory (as it is oft dismissed), but a hard-headed acceptance of the realities of the current incumbents of the White House. The less than photogenic Dick Cheney was never going to win over the electorate, not after the saxophone playing Clinton and the movie star Reagan.

Bush was plucked by Karl Rove from his Texan fiefdom and modelled into an all-American poster boy for the Compassionate Conservatism that would carry Cheney’s team to power. Bush was a blank sheet, with a good name, and a knack for down-to-earth oratory that made the audience feel they were being addressed personally. It was a recipe that, with a little intervention from a Republican Supreme Court, delivered victory over a capable and proven Democratic candidate. With power in their hands, Bush was dispatched early to bed, given a copy of Natan Sharanski’s biography to send him to sleep.

We all know what comes next: September 11th thrust an ineffectual, golf-loving, listless baby-boomer into the limelight. America needed a leader, and there was only one on the shelf. It would be cruel and wrong, to suggest that Bush has not grown and developed into a statesman. The difference between his two inaugural speeches show how the bewildered Bush of 2000, had matured into an assured and confidant leader in four tumultuous years. One could argue that Bush is no longer a proxy for Cheney, and has grown into the role; there is clearly some truth in this.

If Bush has one great virtue, it is his ability to appear ‘straight’ to the American people, a simple black and white kind of guy. To the right, and many in the centre he is the determined leader needed in this time of difficulty. To the left he is a simplistic hate figure, and an easy target for visceral, often absurd, loathing. It is this smokescreen of ignorance that so magically masks, the deep intellectual basis for what we now call the neoconservative movement.

The Republican Party of Grover Norquest, Dick Cheney, and Tom Delay, is no loose group of representatives but a well-drilled animal, which has cemented its control over every facet of federal power. With brilliant manipulation of the collective American consciousness, it has painted the Democrats as a ramshackle group of flip-flopping opportunists, who fail to take American security seriously. To secure its other flanks against criticism, the Republicans have also successfully portrayed the American media as a liberal elite, which finds the post 9/11-world utterly incomprehensible in the face of international terrorism. But behind this brilliant Machiavellian machine lies real intellectual idealism, with utopianism at its heart.

The Neoconservatives

The neoconservatives, led by Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle, are supported by an active intellectual foundation supplied by key figures such as William Kristol, Robert Kagen, Paul Wolfowitz, and Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama argued fervently in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man that the endgame for human political progress was a trans-national liberal democracy. It was this Trotskyist idealism that powered the activism of the Bush administration.

It is therefore the most damning illustration of the White House’s operational mismanagement of the neoconservative project, that Fukuyama, probably its most intellectually accomplished and celebrated supporter, has abandoned it.

Writing in the New York Times, in anticipation of the publication of his new book, Fukuyama delivers what could only be described as a stunning criticism of the Bush administration, the Iraq debacle, and forceful interventionism in general.

Titled After Neoconservatism the essay’s first paragraph conveys what most observers have believed for the past two to three years: -

By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran.

With fellow neoconservatives at the Weekly Standard still arguing that the war is succeeding and worthy, this dismissal must be a stinging rebuke. The Bush Doctrine is dismissed as a “shambles” and the post-9/11 National Security Strategy of pre-emptive war is attacked.

The admission that the Bush Doctrine has failed to bring liberal democracy to the Middle East is one shared by fellow neoconservatives, as they realise the prevalence and compulsion of political Islam. This week the Weekly Standard itself runs a story on the conundrum of Egyptian democracy, timed for Condoleezza Rice’s visit to the country. It is clear that if Hosni Mubarak allowed ‘free and fair’ elections, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood would probably sweep to power. Fukuyama at least, seems to have accepted this reality.

Fukuyama also accepts that the handling of the Iraq War has empowered those in American politics, chiefly among the State Department, who advocate a Realpolitik approach to foreign policy: -

But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy “realists” in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America’s naïve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world.

Simply citing Kissinger is likely to bring bile to the throat of Cheney and Rumsfeld. The former Secretary of State and Nobel Prize Winner is loathed within the Bush administration. But should it really surprise a noted intellectual, that Kissingers’ realpolitik approach, is the best route for American foreign policy? Even the simplistic, non-utopian, approach of engagement and containment is the product of intellectual endeavour, and more importantly, experience.

I don’t accept the fundamental foundations of the neoconservative movement are wrong. I agree that the Liberal Democracy is the political system best equipped to deliver economic prosperity, individual freedom, political representation, and social cohesion. And it would be a benevolent endeavour to remove a tyrannical dictator and replace him with a functioning democracy. This does not mean, however, that such an undertaking is justified or recommended. Europe still has its colonial albatross securely around its neck, and has taken pleasure in watching America get bogged down in its own imperial adventure. But as Fukuyama’s rightly points out, Europe was not against removing Saddam in principle, nor hung up on issues of legality, but unconvinced that case had been made to intervene. Europe knows all about the pitfalls and unintended consequences of interfering in sovereign states. When the neocons, drunk on ideology, ignored the voices of experience, one can surely forgive the continental’s their righteous grin at American folly.

America has also lost standing and moral superiority with the very practice of unilateralism, the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ operated with clear contempt and disregard for international institutions. The obvious institution that was sidelined was, of course, the United Nations, but I would argue it was the US decision to act without NATO support that was the biggest affront to the Europeans. Rumsfeld’s characteristic slight, that ‘Old Europe’ was increasingly out of step and irrelevant is hardly a lesson in how to make friends and influence people. Fukuyama concentrates on the clear hypocrisy in the Iraq invasion: -

The doctrine of pre-emption against terrorist threats contained in the 2002 National Security Strategy was one that could not safely be generalized through the international system; America would be the first country to object if Russia, China, India or France declared a similar right of unilateral action. The United States was seeking to pass judgment on others while being unwilling to have its own conduct questioned in places like the International Criminal Court.

It is this self-analysis from a recognised neoconservative that is so refreshing to those who have become confounded with the current American foreign policy. Watchers of international affairs have become perplexed by the operational ineptitude in Iraq. The decision to dissolve the Iraqi police, and the remaining remnants of the army, was one taken against the advice of British allies. Equally the obduracy in maintaining the Rumsfeld doctrine of ‘Warlite’ has left American commanders unable to secure hard-won territory from the insurgency.

Fukuyama addresses these errors by highlighting the neoconservative belief that “democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred.” With 20/20 hindsight we can pour scorn on this presupposition, but the Neocons in 2003 could point to the flowering of democracy across the former Soviet Union (in Europe) as proof that when totalitarianism collapses, it is democracy that will satiate the political vacuum. What the neoconservatives did not appreciate was that Arab culture and religion is not European. While the caliphates enjoyed practical Greek texts on philosophy and medicine, they did not adopt democracy as a political model. The cradle of European political thought lies in Athens, and the Euro-centric mindset of the Neocon’s cannot comprehend that their ardor for democracy is not shared.

Governmental failure

On reading Fukuyama’s essay, blogger Andrew Sullivan pointed to the inanity of the neocon project in relying on government to deliver results: -

I think [Fukuyama] gets his analysis almost perfectly right. In retrospect, neoconservatives (and I fully include myself) made three huge errors in the last few years. The first was to over-estimate the competence of government, especially in extremely delicate areas like WMD intelligence.

In the essay Fukuyama is frustrated that the intellectuals behind neoconservatism (in which he must include himself) could have such faith, in what is little more than social engineering by force: -

If there was a single overarching theme to the domestic social policy critiques issued by those who wrote for the neoconservative journal The Public Interest, founded by Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell in 1965, it was the limits of social engineering. Writers like Glazer, Moynihan and, later, Glenn Loury argued that ambitious efforts to seek social justice often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted pre-existing social relations (for example, forced busing) or else produced unanticipated consequences (like an increase in single-parent families as a result of welfare).
[…]
How, then, did a group with such a pedigree come to decide that the “root cause” of terrorism lay in the Middle East’s lack of democracy, that the United States had both the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq? Neoconservatives would not have taken this turn but for the peculiar way that the cold war ended.

Again this sentiment is shared by neoliberal econmist Johan Norburg: -

I think we can (and should) have both the attitude that we should try to introduce democracy in all cultures all over the world, and that we shouldn´t be too optimistic about how successfully that gigantic task can be performed by governments that can´t fix our health care and schools.

Remedy

Rather like an alcoholic, Fukuyama has his moment of clarity just in time (to see Iraq descend into civil war?), realising the vacuous actuality of the so-called War on Terror. Intellectuals on the left have always pointed to the fundamental truth behind Bush’s manipulation of the threat of terrorism: That by sowing the seeds of fear in the American people, he could bolster support for interventionism and buttress his position as a strong president. Fukuyama also concludes that the deliberate blurring of the lines between rogue states and radical Islamism have damaged the cause: -

The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally.

Fukuyama’s recommendations are based in a renewed strengthening of America’s internationalist institutions, such as the marginalised State Department; pointing to their previous successes in helping instill democracy across the world. This is again, of course, an echo of the rancor the left has been making since the invasion.

In conclusion the essay must be welcomed. A prominent neoconservative intellectual has, in effect, conceded the argument to the realists. Imperialism concealed under the veil of moral righteousness has been defeated, and shown to be both impractical, undeliverable, and wrong. Hopefully future U.S. administrations will work with its traditional allies, and not listen to hawkish whispers promising quick and easy wars.

“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.” ~ Winston Churchill

20-years

An Argentinean family has taken photos of themselves, every year, for the last two decades. This link offers viewers little intellectual stimuli beyond our natural compulsion for voyeurism.

Dissenters not welcome

George W. Bush stated in his latest State of the Union Address that “Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer — so we will act boldly in freedom’s cause.” So imagine my surprise when I read this story in today’s Seattle Times: -

In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American companies from publishing works by dissident writers in countries under sanction unless they first obtain U.S. government approval.

The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the First Amendment, means that books and other works banned by some totalitarian regimes cannot be published freely in the United States.

So should we assume that Bush’s commitment to support dissident networks, is indeed, meaningless rhetoric?

Lefties on the BBC…. well I never! ~ UPDATED

I have just finished watching the final episode of the BBC love-in, Lefties. The penultimate hour-long documentary covered the short-lived überfailure that was the left-wing rag, the News on Sunday.

The story was a familiar tale of socialism in practice. Well-intentioned quasi-democratic accountability led to backstabbing, hussy fits, and revenge. And in the end, the whole enterprise went bankrupt…twice.

The most unsurprising fact was revealed at the end of the documentary when the activist’s biographies were brought up to date; one of the main founders, another shaggy-haired Marxist, had grown-up to become: [drum roll] Head of Documentaries for the BBC.

You couldn’t make it up.

A month off for Livingstone…FOC

Few people would argue that Ken Livingstone is anything more than a self-interested barking moonbat, but the decision by an unelected body to deny the people of London their democratically elected mayor, on a point of something he said, is ridiculous.

While I have no doubt that a holiday from the bumptious Red Ken would be welcomed by millions of sane-minded Londoners, it is disgusting that insulting a journalist could result in anything other than a knighthood.

Another winter tragedy

A blanket of snow can transform a glum landscape into a beautiful postcard, but we often forget that heavy snowfall can cause immense damage.  Earlier today (4.50am local time) in Moscow, the roof of a municipal market collapsed killing at least 54 people.

This is the third time this winter that Europe has suffered such a tragedy.  Poland and Germany have seen structures collapse under the strain of heavy snow, and allied with many dying in extreme temperatures this has been a very dangerous winter. 

From Russian daily Kommersant: -

There is some hope that the people under the crumbled roof are still alive, the emergency officers said.

Russia’s Emergency Minister Sergey Shoigu has arrived at the place of the tragedy to personally lead the rescue operation. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and the city’s Prosecutor Anatoly Zuev are there as well. All traffic through Baumanskaya St. has been stopped.

Witnesses had heard no explosions or bangs but a strong crack before the collapse, Luzhkov said. The roof is thought to have fallen under the weight of the snow.

The roof of Basmanny market collapsed at 05:45 a.m., Thursday. The project was launched in 1975; its designer is Nodar Kancheli, the architect of collapsed Transvaal Park.

I have been into these types of markets in Russia. They’re wonderful places full of little businesses making a living, and they have a marvellous atmosphere. It’s always a tragedy when people are killed, but especially upsetting when people are just going about there day to day lives, when catastrophe strikes.

Dilbert gets fungible

Scott Adam’s Dilbert blog is always excellent, but this cartoon, based on the American oil conundrum, is especially funny insightful.