Lost object.
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Friday, October 31, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Prohibition still not working, still set to endure.
There's been much in the way of celebratory noises today following the publication of the Home Office study comparing how other countries fight, or rather don't, the war on drugs. In one of those wonderful examples of a report just confirming what you already knew, it concludes there is no obvious correlation between a punitive approach and lower overall drug use. Indeed, while drug use in Portugal has fallen since decriminalisation, it has risen in the Czech Republic, where more draconian legislation was introduced in 2010. Who would have thought?
Except, oh, everyone. Let's not mince words here. Politicians have known for decades that prohibition doesn't work. While the modern approach in this country can be linked back to the panic over heroin use in the early 1970s, coinciding with the Nixon administration's beginning of the crusade against drugs (more than somewhat based around Nixon's conspiratorial belief left-wingers were trying to destroy the right and society itself through promoting "homosexuality, dope, immorality in general"), let's not forget the lesson of that great American experiment from 1920 to 1933. Quite apart from the inherent stupidity of making something illegal that you can easily brew yourself with ordinary household items, as prison inmates have been doing with little more than apple cores and orange skin since time immemorial, it resulted in the further rise of organised crime. Back then it was the likes of Al Capone who benefited; now, if you so wish, you can go and see how the Mexican drug cartels operate. Just be advised you need a strong stomach.
When the Graun nevertheless urges politicians to study the evidence, the leader writer does so knowing full well they have. It's why politician after politician has come out in favour of liberalisation - after they've left office. Nor is the refusal to consider decriminalisation all down to fear of what the tabloids will say, as Tony Blair proved when he took the baby steps of ensuring cannabis was downgraded as the Advisory Committee urged and the licensing laws were reformed. Come the coronation of Gordon Brown, one of his first acts as prime minister was to suck up to Paul Dacre by upgrading cannabis to Class B again. Blair more often than not led the tabloids, whereas those who've followed have done the opposite.
Is the tide beginning to turn? Well, yes and no. Yes, the weight of evidence is becoming too overwhelming to ignore. Yes, the Sun, apparently sensing a wind of change (to mix metaphors) now joins the Graun in saying the status quo is not an option. Yes, the legalisation of cannabis in some American states as well as decriminalisation in Uruguay is as the report itself recognises the kind of development that attracts and interests in equal measure. All this seems encouraging, until that is you remember that we're still in 2014 criminalising the possession of plants which have "mild stimulative effects", as the coalition has done with the ban on khat. Then you realise that alongside the warm words of Norman Baker on moving towards decriminalisation, the same report advises putting restrictions on head shops and internet sellers of "legal highs" while possession will remain legal. Baker apparently wants these shops reduced to selling Rizlas; no word on whether bongs would also be allowed. Where then exactly will people get their still legal for personal possession highs from? The same person or sites retailing the illegal stuff, perchance?
Forgive me then if I don't get too excited by all this. For the Lib Dems it's obviously been alighted upon as something that might just get a few of their former supporters to return to the fold, and in truth they deserve credit for continuing to push for change. When though the first response from a prime minister who previously wanted to liberalise drug laws is to resort to the "sending a message" argument, and the Labour frontbench accuses the Lib Dems of wanting to solve "a problem that doesn't exist" it's still going to be years, if not decades, before we have laws based somewhat even slightly related to the evidence of harm.
Except, oh, everyone. Let's not mince words here. Politicians have known for decades that prohibition doesn't work. While the modern approach in this country can be linked back to the panic over heroin use in the early 1970s, coinciding with the Nixon administration's beginning of the crusade against drugs (more than somewhat based around Nixon's conspiratorial belief left-wingers were trying to destroy the right and society itself through promoting "homosexuality, dope, immorality in general"), let's not forget the lesson of that great American experiment from 1920 to 1933. Quite apart from the inherent stupidity of making something illegal that you can easily brew yourself with ordinary household items, as prison inmates have been doing with little more than apple cores and orange skin since time immemorial, it resulted in the further rise of organised crime. Back then it was the likes of Al Capone who benefited; now, if you so wish, you can go and see how the Mexican drug cartels operate. Just be advised you need a strong stomach.
When the Graun nevertheless urges politicians to study the evidence, the leader writer does so knowing full well they have. It's why politician after politician has come out in favour of liberalisation - after they've left office. Nor is the refusal to consider decriminalisation all down to fear of what the tabloids will say, as Tony Blair proved when he took the baby steps of ensuring cannabis was downgraded as the Advisory Committee urged and the licensing laws were reformed. Come the coronation of Gordon Brown, one of his first acts as prime minister was to suck up to Paul Dacre by upgrading cannabis to Class B again. Blair more often than not led the tabloids, whereas those who've followed have done the opposite.
Is the tide beginning to turn? Well, yes and no. Yes, the weight of evidence is becoming too overwhelming to ignore. Yes, the Sun, apparently sensing a wind of change (to mix metaphors) now joins the Graun in saying the status quo is not an option. Yes, the legalisation of cannabis in some American states as well as decriminalisation in Uruguay is as the report itself recognises the kind of development that attracts and interests in equal measure. All this seems encouraging, until that is you remember that we're still in 2014 criminalising the possession of plants which have "mild stimulative effects", as the coalition has done with the ban on khat. Then you realise that alongside the warm words of Norman Baker on moving towards decriminalisation, the same report advises putting restrictions on head shops and internet sellers of "legal highs" while possession will remain legal. Baker apparently wants these shops reduced to selling Rizlas; no word on whether bongs would also be allowed. Where then exactly will people get their still legal for personal possession highs from? The same person or sites retailing the illegal stuff, perchance?
Forgive me then if I don't get too excited by all this. For the Lib Dems it's obviously been alighted upon as something that might just get a few of their former supporters to return to the fold, and in truth they deserve credit for continuing to push for change. When though the first response from a prime minister who previously wanted to liberalise drug laws is to resort to the "sending a message" argument, and the Labour frontbench accuses the Lib Dems of wanting to solve "a problem that doesn't exist" it's still going to be years, if not decades, before we have laws based somewhat even slightly related to the evidence of harm.
Labels: Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, drug policies, drug prohibition, drug stupidity, drugs, Home Office, Norman Baker, politics, war on drugs
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Wednesday, October 29, 2014
I didn't know.
Art critics say porno's easily obscene / Late Show retards, Dice Clay's true poetry
At times, as anyone who really knows me is all too well aware, I give in to my worst instincts. I've never been shall we say convinced by some of the motives behind the Everyday Sexism project, which to me has at times come alarmingly close to suggesting there are no circumstances in which it is ever OK to give someone a compliment, at least without it being misconstrued or taken as evidence of that person's latent misogyny. Reading Lindy West's column in the Graun last week, in which she related how twice women sitting near to her in a coffee shop were approached by creepy older men trying desperately if obliquely to get into their pants, I felt the bile rising. I had never experienced anything like she was describing happen. It's true I've also never patronised a Starbucks in my life, but I would have noticed if it went on in similar places and situations.
So I asked an American guy I've talked to on IRC for over a decade now whether it could be this is more of an American thing. Yeah, it's a real problem, he said. His girlfriend worried about going out alone as some men were so creepy, and he linked me to this piece on Jezebel, written by a woman told to her face by the man harassing her it was her fault for being pretty. Her fault for having the nerve to be attractive in a public place. A man, who, for whatever reason (perhaps he'd had a terrible day; perhaps he'd tried the same "what are you reading" approach before and it had either worked or rather, had never worked and so released all his pent-up anger and self-pity in this almost empty train against this woman who dared to tell him to leave her alone; or perhaps, and this is the most likely explanation, he was just an entitled prick of the highest order used to getting what he wants), took it upon himself to terrify someone he had just met simply because she wanted to read her book in peace.
Except it obviously isn't just an American problem. When someone captures over 100 examples of harassment, from sustained, aggressive following and invasion of personal space to less troubling but still unwanted remarks in just 10 hours of filming, as Shoshana B Roberts did just walking around New York, somehow resisting the urge to tell these man children exactly what they could do, it touches a nerve. It touched mine. I honestly didn't know. I really didn't. No, I don't suppose it's this bad universally; on a couple of occasions I have seen women being harassed in a similar fashion, and once I did check if the victim was OK, telling her how those who'd catcalled and then insulted her were arseholes, as if she didn't know.
It poses a whole number of questions. Do these men really not know any better? Are some of them, while undoubtedly frightening, otherwise harmless, as the guy asking whether he's "too ugly" might be, apparently oblivious to how it's what he's doing rather than his looks that make him unattractive? Moreover, is it really so difficult to look, as men (and women) always will, without passing comment or going out of their way to make that person feel uncomfortable? I don't doubt some long-term relationships have begun due to chance encounters, an especially flattering compliment or just chatting someone they meet on the street up on the off chance; there's a way of going about it though, and let's not pretend the vast majority want any more out of it than the (extremely remote) possibility of a quick fuck.
Just as pertinent is how it puts or should put silliness like this into sharp relief. We are once again in the season of gesture poppytics, when almost everyone put in front of a TV camera has to be wearing one, regardless of whether they want to or not. Little things like how this completely dilutes the meaning of remembrance are cast aside, lest the Daily Mail start whining again or what used to be the red ink brigade start complaining about lack of respect. Perhaps both Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband really are feminists, but is David Cameron, despite what he's said in the past? I'm not a feminist and wouldn't pretend to be, regardless of how my politics overlap with most of those who identify as such, mainly down to how modern identity politics seems more concerned with arguments over privilege and who's the most oppressed than with doing something about it. This kind of hashtag style activism is at best false and at worst encourages further cynicism about people's motives, and also seems meant to catch those already deemed to be the enemy out, as the Sun has previously with Ed Miliband failing to pose with a Help for Heroes wristband.
As couldn't be made clearer by Hollaback's video, we really do need feminism. We also need men, and yes women, who know friends who've acted similarly to those in New York to make clear just how upsetting such behaviour can be. By contrast, what we could really do without are the sweeping generalisations of some of those who really ought to know better.
At times, as anyone who really knows me is all too well aware, I give in to my worst instincts. I've never been shall we say convinced by some of the motives behind the Everyday Sexism project, which to me has at times come alarmingly close to suggesting there are no circumstances in which it is ever OK to give someone a compliment, at least without it being misconstrued or taken as evidence of that person's latent misogyny. Reading Lindy West's column in the Graun last week, in which she related how twice women sitting near to her in a coffee shop were approached by creepy older men trying desperately if obliquely to get into their pants, I felt the bile rising. I had never experienced anything like she was describing happen. It's true I've also never patronised a Starbucks in my life, but I would have noticed if it went on in similar places and situations.
So I asked an American guy I've talked to on IRC for over a decade now whether it could be this is more of an American thing. Yeah, it's a real problem, he said. His girlfriend worried about going out alone as some men were so creepy, and he linked me to this piece on Jezebel, written by a woman told to her face by the man harassing her it was her fault for being pretty. Her fault for having the nerve to be attractive in a public place. A man, who, for whatever reason (perhaps he'd had a terrible day; perhaps he'd tried the same "what are you reading" approach before and it had either worked or rather, had never worked and so released all his pent-up anger and self-pity in this almost empty train against this woman who dared to tell him to leave her alone; or perhaps, and this is the most likely explanation, he was just an entitled prick of the highest order used to getting what he wants), took it upon himself to terrify someone he had just met simply because she wanted to read her book in peace.
Except it obviously isn't just an American problem. When someone captures over 100 examples of harassment, from sustained, aggressive following and invasion of personal space to less troubling but still unwanted remarks in just 10 hours of filming, as Shoshana B Roberts did just walking around New York, somehow resisting the urge to tell these man children exactly what they could do, it touches a nerve. It touched mine. I honestly didn't know. I really didn't. No, I don't suppose it's this bad universally; on a couple of occasions I have seen women being harassed in a similar fashion, and once I did check if the victim was OK, telling her how those who'd catcalled and then insulted her were arseholes, as if she didn't know.
It poses a whole number of questions. Do these men really not know any better? Are some of them, while undoubtedly frightening, otherwise harmless, as the guy asking whether he's "too ugly" might be, apparently oblivious to how it's what he's doing rather than his looks that make him unattractive? Moreover, is it really so difficult to look, as men (and women) always will, without passing comment or going out of their way to make that person feel uncomfortable? I don't doubt some long-term relationships have begun due to chance encounters, an especially flattering compliment or just chatting someone they meet on the street up on the off chance; there's a way of going about it though, and let's not pretend the vast majority want any more out of it than the (extremely remote) possibility of a quick fuck.
Just as pertinent is how it puts or should put silliness like this into sharp relief. We are once again in the season of gesture poppytics, when almost everyone put in front of a TV camera has to be wearing one, regardless of whether they want to or not. Little things like how this completely dilutes the meaning of remembrance are cast aside, lest the Daily Mail start whining again or what used to be the red ink brigade start complaining about lack of respect. Perhaps both Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband really are feminists, but is David Cameron, despite what he's said in the past? I'm not a feminist and wouldn't pretend to be, regardless of how my politics overlap with most of those who identify as such, mainly down to how modern identity politics seems more concerned with arguments over privilege and who's the most oppressed than with doing something about it. This kind of hashtag style activism is at best false and at worst encourages further cynicism about people's motives, and also seems meant to catch those already deemed to be the enemy out, as the Sun has previously with Ed Miliband failing to pose with a Help for Heroes wristband.
As couldn't be made clearer by Hollaback's video, we really do need feminism. We also need men, and yes women, who know friends who've acted similarly to those in New York to make clear just how upsetting such behaviour can be. By contrast, what we could really do without are the sweeping generalisations of some of those who really ought to know better.
Labels: Everyday Sexism, feminism, politics, sexism, sexual harassment
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
The pull factor.
A few years back now, an enterprising individual with a paint can took it upon himself to daub "KILL ASYLUM SEEKERS" in 2 foot high letters on a wall close to where I worked. It took the best part of a month before anyone saw fit to cover it over. How and why this person chose asylum seekers specifically as the focus of his passive aggressive ire rather than illegal immigrants say, or a defined ethnic minority has always stuck with me. After all, it's a lot harder to argue against providing someone fleeing persecution with sanctuary than it is to oppose economic migration, legal and illegal. Hence why the tabloids got into so much bother with the countless pieces on "bogus asylum seekers", their attempt to fight back against a loaded term with one of their own. The PCC was forced into recognising there could be no such thing as an "illegal" or "bogus" asylum seeker, only those whose applications had been rejected and so were "failed" asylum seekers.
In all likelihood, the person responsible wasn't specifically offended by the idea of states being required by international law to provide sanctuary to someone who asks for it, and whose case is found to be legitimate. He just hated immigrants, regardless of their merits or demerits. Our politicians, by contrast, don't hate asylum seekers; they just either don't care, or rather, care only about the resources they use and the responsibility they have to look after them, especially in the face of public outcry.
One approach by which they try and evade responsibility is that old favourite, blaming everyone other than themselves. Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, might as well have been quoting from a years-old think piece in the Express in her evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on why it is so many migrants continue to try to get to Britain rather than seek asylum in France or work there. Bouchart claimed those camped out in Calais aren't asylum seekers, and yet when challenged by Ian Austin on why they couldn't then be deported as illegal immigrants, said she was in dispute with the French government over the matter. All the talk of the "pull factor", of migrants being attracted by the benefit system, of the UK being a "soft touch", all was to distract from how the French have never cared about asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise, trying to get to Britain through French ports but obviously can't admit as much, and second, how France is so poorly regarded that many of those fleeing persecution want to stay anywhere but there.
There are many reasons other than ones to do with our famously generous welfare state for why those wanting sanctuary aim for Britain rather than elsewhere in Europe, and they're pretty much the same as why others choose to head for Sweden or Germany rather than ask for asylum in the first European country they enter. Real pull factors are relatives, or friends who've previously made the journey, as little as stories of friends of friends of friends. Long established communities of ex-pats are known about and play a similar role. Then there's language, culture, the way countries have an image whether accurate or not, and knowledge of economic success. There's a reason why Australia continues to attract migrants and asylum seekers despite its hardline approach to both, whereas a country like Japan which on the surface ought to be similarly regarded doesn't.
The fact is facts don't matter. Politicians don't really believe funding search and rescue operations encourages other desperate people to pay traffickers to get them into Europe, as they aren't that stupid. The idea someone weighing up whether to flee Syria, Iraq, Libya or Eritrea is going to be put off by the Italian navy not being there to save them should their boat sink is patently, insultingly absurd. Nor is it about money. Both ourselves and the French for instance had no problem in finding the cash to bomb Islamic State in Iraq, just the latest self-defeating measure in a whole line of policies connected with Syria and Iraq. Rather than try to bring an end to the civil war in the former, we lined up behind rebels it quickly transpired could not overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Despite our role in fomenting the conflict, with millions of Syrians displaced, the only European nations to go beyond platitudes have been, again, Germany and Sweden.
It isn't that politicians are heartless, inhumane or morally bankrupt either. Rather, the sad thing is they're just going by what they hear. People don't care that hundreds, almost certainly thousands of migrants are drowning every year while trying to reach Europe's shores, or if they do, it's because they're angered more isn't being done to keep them out, to remove those "pull" factors. The only surprising thing is we've reached a point where another excuse wasn't found as to why EU-wide funding isn't going to be made available, and this was presumably only down to how the Home Office thought they had cover due to it being agreed by a group of foreign ministers. The contrast between the current attitude and that of Sir Nicholas Winton, celebrated today for making the arrangements that allowed 669 mostly Jewish children to escape from occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, could not be more stark. Then too sanctuary to those escaping conflict was opposed and demonstrated against. That we haven't truly moved on from those times ought to challenge more consciences than it apparently does.
In all likelihood, the person responsible wasn't specifically offended by the idea of states being required by international law to provide sanctuary to someone who asks for it, and whose case is found to be legitimate. He just hated immigrants, regardless of their merits or demerits. Our politicians, by contrast, don't hate asylum seekers; they just either don't care, or rather, care only about the resources they use and the responsibility they have to look after them, especially in the face of public outcry.
One approach by which they try and evade responsibility is that old favourite, blaming everyone other than themselves. Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, might as well have been quoting from a years-old think piece in the Express in her evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on why it is so many migrants continue to try to get to Britain rather than seek asylum in France or work there. Bouchart claimed those camped out in Calais aren't asylum seekers, and yet when challenged by Ian Austin on why they couldn't then be deported as illegal immigrants, said she was in dispute with the French government over the matter. All the talk of the "pull factor", of migrants being attracted by the benefit system, of the UK being a "soft touch", all was to distract from how the French have never cared about asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise, trying to get to Britain through French ports but obviously can't admit as much, and second, how France is so poorly regarded that many of those fleeing persecution want to stay anywhere but there.
There are many reasons other than ones to do with our famously generous welfare state for why those wanting sanctuary aim for Britain rather than elsewhere in Europe, and they're pretty much the same as why others choose to head for Sweden or Germany rather than ask for asylum in the first European country they enter. Real pull factors are relatives, or friends who've previously made the journey, as little as stories of friends of friends of friends. Long established communities of ex-pats are known about and play a similar role. Then there's language, culture, the way countries have an image whether accurate or not, and knowledge of economic success. There's a reason why Australia continues to attract migrants and asylum seekers despite its hardline approach to both, whereas a country like Japan which on the surface ought to be similarly regarded doesn't.
The fact is facts don't matter. Politicians don't really believe funding search and rescue operations encourages other desperate people to pay traffickers to get them into Europe, as they aren't that stupid. The idea someone weighing up whether to flee Syria, Iraq, Libya or Eritrea is going to be put off by the Italian navy not being there to save them should their boat sink is patently, insultingly absurd. Nor is it about money. Both ourselves and the French for instance had no problem in finding the cash to bomb Islamic State in Iraq, just the latest self-defeating measure in a whole line of policies connected with Syria and Iraq. Rather than try to bring an end to the civil war in the former, we lined up behind rebels it quickly transpired could not overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Despite our role in fomenting the conflict, with millions of Syrians displaced, the only European nations to go beyond platitudes have been, again, Germany and Sweden.
It isn't that politicians are heartless, inhumane or morally bankrupt either. Rather, the sad thing is they're just going by what they hear. People don't care that hundreds, almost certainly thousands of migrants are drowning every year while trying to reach Europe's shores, or if they do, it's because they're angered more isn't being done to keep them out, to remove those "pull" factors. The only surprising thing is we've reached a point where another excuse wasn't found as to why EU-wide funding isn't going to be made available, and this was presumably only down to how the Home Office thought they had cover due to it being agreed by a group of foreign ministers. The contrast between the current attitude and that of Sir Nicholas Winton, celebrated today for making the arrangements that allowed 669 mostly Jewish children to escape from occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, could not be more stark. Then too sanctuary to those escaping conflict was opposed and demonstrated against. That we haven't truly moved on from those times ought to challenge more consciences than it apparently does.
Labels: asylum seekers, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, European Union, foreign policy, immigration, politics
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Monday, October 27, 2014
Enoch: "I misspoke".
Despite being dead for 16 years, Enoch Powell has surprised politics by admitting that he was "careless" in his notorious "rivers of blood" speech.
"I used words I wouldn't have normally," said the reanimated former Ulster Unionist MP. "To be frank, I misspoke."
"Looking back now, there are many obvious problems with my oration. For instance, I quoted an unnamed man, who said "in this country in 15 or 20 years' the black man will have the whip hand over the white man" . Quite apparently, those were my views, and I shouldn't have tried to hide behind someone else in such an intellectually dishonest manner.
"Also, in quoting Virgil from the Aenied, who wrote of the "river Tiber foaming with much blood", I wore my past, that of a professor of the classics, rather heavily. I was posing as the prophet, expecting riots, perhaps almost hoping there would be.
"You'll have noted that despite these qualifications, I haven't actually stepped back from anything I said at the time. As I don't regret it for a second. The lesson is clear: you can say the most outrageous things so long as you use language carefully. Michael Fallon's real mistake was in mixing his metaphors: how on earth can a place be swamped as well as under siege? As for his past reference to Bryony Gordon as a "slut", he ought to have referred to her as "not being known to express prejudice". Unlike myself. Ha ha."
In other news:
Faceless McNomark, the TV executive behind this year's smash hit fly-on-the-wall documentary Just Take a Gander at These Feckless Cunts, has defended the show amid continuing protests at the filming of two follow-up series.
"They assume we have malign intent, when we don't," the indignant McNomark told me. "There isn't an agenda. Just because we suggested the documentary was going to be called "Community Spirit" doesn't mean they have a right to complain. Indeed, what they're calling for is nothing less than censorship. I will never relinquish our right to take advantage of and completely fictionalise the stories of some of the most distressed parts of our society."
Due for broadcast in January and March, Why Aren't You Stringing These Scrounging Bastards Up Right Now? and Filthy Fucking Pikeys: Over Here, Taking Your Jobs promise a new paradigm in current affairs programming.
In short:
PM in security scare: proves the prime minister needs more security, say security experts
Media obsessed with Russell Brand, complains everyone over the age of 10
Media not obsessed enough with Russell Brand, complains Russell Brand
War in Afghanistan draws to a close - sequel expected in 2017
"I used words I wouldn't have normally," said the reanimated former Ulster Unionist MP. "To be frank, I misspoke."
"Looking back now, there are many obvious problems with my oration. For instance, I quoted an unnamed man, who said "in this country in 15 or 20 years' the black man will have the whip hand over the white man" . Quite apparently, those were my views, and I shouldn't have tried to hide behind someone else in such an intellectually dishonest manner.
"Also, in quoting Virgil from the Aenied, who wrote of the "river Tiber foaming with much blood", I wore my past, that of a professor of the classics, rather heavily. I was posing as the prophet, expecting riots, perhaps almost hoping there would be.
"You'll have noted that despite these qualifications, I haven't actually stepped back from anything I said at the time. As I don't regret it for a second. The lesson is clear: you can say the most outrageous things so long as you use language carefully. Michael Fallon's real mistake was in mixing his metaphors: how on earth can a place be swamped as well as under siege? As for his past reference to Bryony Gordon as a "slut", he ought to have referred to her as "not being known to express prejudice". Unlike myself. Ha ha."
In other news:
Faceless McNomark, the TV executive behind this year's smash hit fly-on-the-wall documentary Just Take a Gander at These Feckless Cunts, has defended the show amid continuing protests at the filming of two follow-up series.
"They assume we have malign intent, when we don't," the indignant McNomark told me. "There isn't an agenda. Just because we suggested the documentary was going to be called "Community Spirit" doesn't mean they have a right to complain. Indeed, what they're calling for is nothing less than censorship. I will never relinquish our right to take advantage of and completely fictionalise the stories of some of the most distressed parts of our society."
Due for broadcast in January and March, Why Aren't You Stringing These Scrounging Bastards Up Right Now? and Filthy Fucking Pikeys: Over Here, Taking Your Jobs promise a new paradigm in current affairs programming.
In short:
PM in security scare: proves the prime minister needs more security, say security experts
Media obsessed with Russell Brand, complains everyone over the age of 10
Media not obsessed enough with Russell Brand, complains Russell Brand
War in Afghanistan draws to a close - sequel expected in 2017
Labels: Benefits Street, immigration, Michael Fallon, mockery, politics
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Friday, October 24, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Extremely loud and incredibly close.
John Harris is without a doubt one of the best political commentators we have. Unlike many of the others with a column and their name in a large font, he bothers to respond to the keyboard hammerers below the line, and he really does go beyond, indeed anywhere but Westminster. Just though as not getting out enough leads to losing touch, so too can travelling to wherever the next by-election is being held make you think the hot topic of the moment is the most important issue in politics outright. Add in a straw man, and you pretty much have his piece for the Graun today.
To say I'm bored out of my mind by the immigration debate in general doesn't really cover it. It's taken the place of the Iraq war in being constantly talked about without anyone ever making an original point or changing their position. These are the facts: despite claims to the contrary, we've been having a debate about immigration for over half a century now. Yes, there have always been some people who've shouted racist whenever the topic is broached, mainly for the good reason that up till relatively recently the majority of complaints about immigration, rather than being couched in economic or social terms, were based around skin colour or culture. This is to simplify massively, but Steve Bell captured how far we've come in his cartoon from last week: we've moved on from the days of "if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour" to "if you want a fruit picker from Romania for a neighbour, vote Labour".
Next, Labour did not try and transform the country into a truly multicultural society through immigration, as those who can remember back to the times when it was asylum seekers rather than eastern European migrants who were regarded as the biggest problem facing the country will know. The mistake in 2004 was not realising the effect opening the borders to A8 states would have, especially when only Sweden and Ireland similarly didn't impose further restrictions. Even fewer Poles speak Swedish than English, hence why so many journeyed here instead of to Stockholm. Lastly, as it bears repeating, it's now almost been a decade since the Conservatives under Michael Howard used "it's not racist to impose limits on immigration" as a slogan. Ever tighter limits have since been imposed, except of course when it comes to the EU.
Harris's piece could have almost been in response to my post on Tuesday. He was though most likely thinking of the works of either Polly Toynbee or Richard Seymour, aka Lenin from the Tomb. Without referring directly to Harris, Seymour has since tweeted this poll finding, which does rather underline his point. No, people's worries and fears about migration writ large aren't racist, bigoted or down to prejudice; are however some of those fears at their most base down to as, Seymour puts it, entitlement and chauvinism? Well, yes.
That topsy-turvy poll finding by ComRes does in its own way sum up the immigration, even the Europe debate in microcosm. Do we still want the undoubted benefits of being in the EU, that past waves of immigration have brought here? Certainly. Are we as keen on the impact on public services, on how towns like Wisbech, Peterborough and Boston have been altered, and just how swift the pace of change has been? Not so much. At the same time, the poll makes clear those most concerned about immigration are extremely noisy, as a solid 36% still accept freedom of movement within the EU. As Flying Rodent has argued, concern about immigration is one of the relatively few areas of public opinion which is pandered to.
And it hasn't worked, for the reason it hasn't addressed the fundamental right of freedom of movement, as politicians haven't had the guts to make the argument for why it's one of the few areas of EU policy they ought to be able to agree has been a success. Chris answers Harris's question of whether free movement has been of most benefit to capital or labour, but that obviously isn't going to convince the people he's been listening to. What might, and is something Westminster politicians have shied away from as it would reduce their control is, as we now know to a fair extent where the most pressures have been put on public services and housing, the targeting of extra funding to those areas. This, finally, does seem to be where Labour is moving towards, with Ed Miliband today setting out 5 points around which an immigration bill from his government would be based. We can quibble about the rights and wrongs of preventing migrants from sending child benefit and child tax credits back to their home nation when Brits working abroad can do the same, but if it helps to staunch public concern then so be it.
If some of the left has been blasé about migration, as Harris puts it, the reason is precisely because of the way we've arrived at this point. Yes, public concern about immigration has been high in the past, and is high now. Where though did the current mood have its roots, and is it all about migration or rather migration becoming the rallying point for a whole other myriad of concerns? Easily forgotten is the way panic was whipped up last year over the looming ending of restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians coming here, with the media all but joining UKIP in predicting a movement similar to that of post-2005. It didn't happen. What did happen is the economy continuing to recovery, albeit without a similar recovery in living standards, the former leading to workers in western rather than eastern Europe looking for jobs further afield. The fault is not with the migrants, but with the joint failings of late capitalism and politicians both here and in Europe.
For all the insults and asking of what the "modern left" would do, Harris himself doesn't offer a solution other than restricting free movement, despite how this both isn't going to and shouldn't happen. We could start with being straight with the public rather than continuing to lie to them. Who knows, it might just begin to have an effect.
To say I'm bored out of my mind by the immigration debate in general doesn't really cover it. It's taken the place of the Iraq war in being constantly talked about without anyone ever making an original point or changing their position. These are the facts: despite claims to the contrary, we've been having a debate about immigration for over half a century now. Yes, there have always been some people who've shouted racist whenever the topic is broached, mainly for the good reason that up till relatively recently the majority of complaints about immigration, rather than being couched in economic or social terms, were based around skin colour or culture. This is to simplify massively, but Steve Bell captured how far we've come in his cartoon from last week: we've moved on from the days of "if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour" to "if you want a fruit picker from Romania for a neighbour, vote Labour".
Next, Labour did not try and transform the country into a truly multicultural society through immigration, as those who can remember back to the times when it was asylum seekers rather than eastern European migrants who were regarded as the biggest problem facing the country will know. The mistake in 2004 was not realising the effect opening the borders to A8 states would have, especially when only Sweden and Ireland similarly didn't impose further restrictions. Even fewer Poles speak Swedish than English, hence why so many journeyed here instead of to Stockholm. Lastly, as it bears repeating, it's now almost been a decade since the Conservatives under Michael Howard used "it's not racist to impose limits on immigration" as a slogan. Ever tighter limits have since been imposed, except of course when it comes to the EU.
Harris's piece could have almost been in response to my post on Tuesday. He was though most likely thinking of the works of either Polly Toynbee or Richard Seymour, aka Lenin from the Tomb. Without referring directly to Harris, Seymour has since tweeted this poll finding, which does rather underline his point. No, people's worries and fears about migration writ large aren't racist, bigoted or down to prejudice; are however some of those fears at their most base down to as, Seymour puts it, entitlement and chauvinism? Well, yes.
That topsy-turvy poll finding by ComRes does in its own way sum up the immigration, even the Europe debate in microcosm. Do we still want the undoubted benefits of being in the EU, that past waves of immigration have brought here? Certainly. Are we as keen on the impact on public services, on how towns like Wisbech, Peterborough and Boston have been altered, and just how swift the pace of change has been? Not so much. At the same time, the poll makes clear those most concerned about immigration are extremely noisy, as a solid 36% still accept freedom of movement within the EU. As Flying Rodent has argued, concern about immigration is one of the relatively few areas of public opinion which is pandered to.
And it hasn't worked, for the reason it hasn't addressed the fundamental right of freedom of movement, as politicians haven't had the guts to make the argument for why it's one of the few areas of EU policy they ought to be able to agree has been a success. Chris answers Harris's question of whether free movement has been of most benefit to capital or labour, but that obviously isn't going to convince the people he's been listening to. What might, and is something Westminster politicians have shied away from as it would reduce their control is, as we now know to a fair extent where the most pressures have been put on public services and housing, the targeting of extra funding to those areas. This, finally, does seem to be where Labour is moving towards, with Ed Miliband today setting out 5 points around which an immigration bill from his government would be based. We can quibble about the rights and wrongs of preventing migrants from sending child benefit and child tax credits back to their home nation when Brits working abroad can do the same, but if it helps to staunch public concern then so be it.
If some of the left has been blasé about migration, as Harris puts it, the reason is precisely because of the way we've arrived at this point. Yes, public concern about immigration has been high in the past, and is high now. Where though did the current mood have its roots, and is it all about migration or rather migration becoming the rallying point for a whole other myriad of concerns? Easily forgotten is the way panic was whipped up last year over the looming ending of restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians coming here, with the media all but joining UKIP in predicting a movement similar to that of post-2005. It didn't happen. What did happen is the economy continuing to recovery, albeit without a similar recovery in living standards, the former leading to workers in western rather than eastern Europe looking for jobs further afield. The fault is not with the migrants, but with the joint failings of late capitalism and politicians both here and in Europe.
For all the insults and asking of what the "modern left" would do, Harris himself doesn't offer a solution other than restricting free movement, despite how this both isn't going to and shouldn't happen. We could start with being straight with the public rather than continuing to lie to them. Who knows, it might just begin to have an effect.
Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, David Cameron, European Union, immigration, John Harris, Labour, politics, Tories, UKIP
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Wednesday, October 22, 2014
So damn easy to cave in.
Pressure is once again growing on ministers over their latest choice of candidate to lead the inquiry into historic child sexual abuse.
It had been thought all sides would unite around the appointment of the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, known for his long record in uncovering paedophiles, including in cases where there was no record of the guilty so much as having contact with a child. "He's completely unbiased," said a ministerial source. "Every single person he has accused has been found guilty, as proved by their failure to pass ordeal by water. You can't get more unbiased than that."
Campaigners have since discovered however that Mr Pursuivant is a 10th cousin, thrice removed of Lord Brittan, bringing his objectivity into question. The Witchsmeller denies ever meeting Lord Brittan, but admits he cannot guarantee having never been within 10 miles of the former Conservative home secretary, the latest stipulation asked for by MPs and lawyers.
Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, was scathing of the choice of Mr Pursuivant. "How many more times does this government intend to choose establishment figures who are unable to prove they are sufficiently removed from Lord Brittan? That he can't account for every single one of his movements over the course of the past 45 years simply isn't acceptable. I don't know what world these people inhabit but where I come from you know if you're within 10 miles of a lizard in human skin. You can smell them for a start."
Asked who he would like to chair the inquiry, Danczuk had the answer. "There is only one man for the job. I realise Geoffrey Dickens has been dead for 19 years, but that doesn't mean he can't be channelled by a medium, one suitably removed from Leon Brittan, obviously. His spirit would also be able to answer questions over the contents of his dossier as no one else could. The fact he was vehemently opposed to the occult poses a problem, I'll admit, but it shouldn't be insurmountable. I'm sure he'll understand."
Should Pursuivant be forced to stand down, he will join Lady Butler-Sloss, Fiona Woolf, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Will.i.am, Jeremy Irons, Sara Payne and Chris Hansen, all of whom have been appointed only to then resign.
In other news:
Ched Evans speaks - "It wasn't rape, just a light sexual assault, and I apologise for my infidelity"
Meghan Trainor withdraws All About That Bass from sale, apologises for pretending to be African-American
Man kills everything
It had been thought all sides would unite around the appointment of the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, known for his long record in uncovering paedophiles, including in cases where there was no record of the guilty so much as having contact with a child. "He's completely unbiased," said a ministerial source. "Every single person he has accused has been found guilty, as proved by their failure to pass ordeal by water. You can't get more unbiased than that."
Campaigners have since discovered however that Mr Pursuivant is a 10th cousin, thrice removed of Lord Brittan, bringing his objectivity into question. The Witchsmeller denies ever meeting Lord Brittan, but admits he cannot guarantee having never been within 10 miles of the former Conservative home secretary, the latest stipulation asked for by MPs and lawyers.
Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, was scathing of the choice of Mr Pursuivant. "How many more times does this government intend to choose establishment figures who are unable to prove they are sufficiently removed from Lord Brittan? That he can't account for every single one of his movements over the course of the past 45 years simply isn't acceptable. I don't know what world these people inhabit but where I come from you know if you're within 10 miles of a lizard in human skin. You can smell them for a start."
Asked who he would like to chair the inquiry, Danczuk had the answer. "There is only one man for the job. I realise Geoffrey Dickens has been dead for 19 years, but that doesn't mean he can't be channelled by a medium, one suitably removed from Leon Brittan, obviously. His spirit would also be able to answer questions over the contents of his dossier as no one else could. The fact he was vehemently opposed to the occult poses a problem, I'll admit, but it shouldn't be insurmountable. I'm sure he'll understand."
Should Pursuivant be forced to stand down, he will join Lady Butler-Sloss, Fiona Woolf, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Will.i.am, Jeremy Irons, Sara Payne and Chris Hansen, all of whom have been appointed only to then resign.
In other news:
Ched Evans speaks - "It wasn't rape, just a light sexual assault, and I apologise for my infidelity"
Meghan Trainor withdraws All About That Bass from sale, apologises for pretending to be African-American
Man kills everything
Labels: Geoffrey Dickens, mockery, moral panics, Simon Danczuk
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Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Farage's face, staring out - forever.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell through O'Brien offered as a picture of the future a boot stamping on a human face - forever. It's a visceral, shocking image you want to turn away from, yet it's not as horrifying as the current vision of the future we are presented with. It still involves a human face, only rather than it being stamped on, there's a rictus grin across its mug, the eyes bright, teeth being flashed for all their worth. The face, all but needless to add, belongs to Nigel.
Future historians looking back on the coalition government will have plenty to examine and debate over. They will wonder how a government which insisted it was dealing with a national emergency, the size of the budget deficit, could first choke off the recovery left by the previous government by cutting back capital spending and then conjure to provide a recovery of their own in which the deficit fails to fall. They will try to reach conclusions over whether it was the emphasis on cuts to the welfare budget by this government that led inexorably to the dismantling of the system of social security as the country had known it post-Beveridge. Most significantly, they will be forced to consider how despite presenting himself as a strong leader, David Cameron was in fact the embodiment of a weak prime minister, at every step giving in to the worst instincts of his party rather than pursuing what was right for the country.
The evidence for just such a finding is there in abundance. Most fundamental will be the colossal error Cameron made in January 2013, announcing in a speech that if returned to power in 2015, his government would hold an in/out referendum on remaining in the European Union by 2017, after a successful "renegotiation" with the other member states. Designed to win over backbenchers complaining about his leadership and the party's standing in the polls, it does for a matter of days. Having succeeded in pressurising a leader they have never taken to and never will into making one promise, they quickly demanded he move sooner. They make clear their displeasure at legislation not being present in the Queen's speech preparing for the referendum, and again, Downing Street soon gives in.
Not that it was only backbenchers taking the credit for Cameron's shift. In another example of Cameron's reckless promises coming back to bite him, prior to the 2010 election he set out how a Conservative government would bring immigration down from the hundreds of thousands to the "tens of thousands". At first it looked as though he might achieve his aim, only for the continuing economic woes in the Eurozone to result in a surge of migrants from the western European states most affected by austerity coming to the country. Immigration duly becomes second only to fears over the NHS in people's concerns, not because of it having a personal impact on most, but as a catch-all complaint over the sense of drift, the general feeling of powerlessness most are experiencing as real wages fall and politicians refuse to offer anything resembling a vision of where the country is heading.
So desperate are the public they look anywhere for an alternative. In any other circumstances Nigel Farage would be an incongruous figure, a deeply boring, petty man who covers up for his party's lack of policies and rigour with an overarching narrative: things ain't what they used to be, and it's all the fault of the European Union. Nigel smokes tabs, drinks beer, and so delights a media starved by the blandness and sterility of the focus grouped out of existence political elite. They can't get enough of him, and the publicity combined with the mood of hopelessness leads to his UK Independence Party winning hundreds of council seats, before it comes out on top in 2014's European parliament elections. Rather than bother to submit Farage himself to anything resembling proper scrutiny, with a very few select exceptions, the media instead focus on those lower down the party structure. All the while the personality cult of Farage continues to build, to the point where a former DJ imagines the UKIP leader at Number 10 in a calypso inspired song. It seems and is completely absurd, and yet the main topic of debate is whether Mike Read's appropriation is racist.
Absurd is the word. Cameron's weakness knows no apparent bounds. Only a few weeks ago he offered to his party and by proxy the country the promise he would put freedom of movement at the heart of his renegotiation strategy. He said he wouldn't take no for an answer. The outgoing president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, points out the answer could only be no when the rest of the EU, imposing its own restrictions on benefits or not, has not the slightest intention of curtailing one of the EEC's founding principles and biggest successes. Panicked further by the prospect of losing the Rochester by-election, and apparently fearing a leadership challenge in the aftermath, we now learn Cameron is set to announce some form of unilateral restriction on low-skilled eastern European migrants, most likely by refusing to issue them with national insurance numbers. How this will affect the economy he cares not; nor does he worry over the legal implications.
Cameron's gambit has failed on all fronts. His backbenchers, meant to be sated by his giving them what they want, now realise they have pushed to the point at which they are closer than ever to reaching their goal of getting Britain out of Europe. Why on earth would they stop now? UKIP, meanwhile, has had its every argument validated, continues to gain support and still can point out that the only way to truly control the borders is to leave. All this, and the Conservatives remain behind Labour in the polls. The only reason Cameron hasn't been called on this disaster is due to the majority of the press sharing the backbenchers' opinion on the EU, and how they can't imagine anything as terrible as Red Ed in Number 10. I can. It's another 5 years of Farage's fizzog staring out from every screen, every alternate sheet of newsprint, every billboard, the same silent laugh emanating from his gob. You're the one he's laughing at, Dave.
Future historians looking back on the coalition government will have plenty to examine and debate over. They will wonder how a government which insisted it was dealing with a national emergency, the size of the budget deficit, could first choke off the recovery left by the previous government by cutting back capital spending and then conjure to provide a recovery of their own in which the deficit fails to fall. They will try to reach conclusions over whether it was the emphasis on cuts to the welfare budget by this government that led inexorably to the dismantling of the system of social security as the country had known it post-Beveridge. Most significantly, they will be forced to consider how despite presenting himself as a strong leader, David Cameron was in fact the embodiment of a weak prime minister, at every step giving in to the worst instincts of his party rather than pursuing what was right for the country.
The evidence for just such a finding is there in abundance. Most fundamental will be the colossal error Cameron made in January 2013, announcing in a speech that if returned to power in 2015, his government would hold an in/out referendum on remaining in the European Union by 2017, after a successful "renegotiation" with the other member states. Designed to win over backbenchers complaining about his leadership and the party's standing in the polls, it does for a matter of days. Having succeeded in pressurising a leader they have never taken to and never will into making one promise, they quickly demanded he move sooner. They make clear their displeasure at legislation not being present in the Queen's speech preparing for the referendum, and again, Downing Street soon gives in.
Not that it was only backbenchers taking the credit for Cameron's shift. In another example of Cameron's reckless promises coming back to bite him, prior to the 2010 election he set out how a Conservative government would bring immigration down from the hundreds of thousands to the "tens of thousands". At first it looked as though he might achieve his aim, only for the continuing economic woes in the Eurozone to result in a surge of migrants from the western European states most affected by austerity coming to the country. Immigration duly becomes second only to fears over the NHS in people's concerns, not because of it having a personal impact on most, but as a catch-all complaint over the sense of drift, the general feeling of powerlessness most are experiencing as real wages fall and politicians refuse to offer anything resembling a vision of where the country is heading.
So desperate are the public they look anywhere for an alternative. In any other circumstances Nigel Farage would be an incongruous figure, a deeply boring, petty man who covers up for his party's lack of policies and rigour with an overarching narrative: things ain't what they used to be, and it's all the fault of the European Union. Nigel smokes tabs, drinks beer, and so delights a media starved by the blandness and sterility of the focus grouped out of existence political elite. They can't get enough of him, and the publicity combined with the mood of hopelessness leads to his UK Independence Party winning hundreds of council seats, before it comes out on top in 2014's European parliament elections. Rather than bother to submit Farage himself to anything resembling proper scrutiny, with a very few select exceptions, the media instead focus on those lower down the party structure. All the while the personality cult of Farage continues to build, to the point where a former DJ imagines the UKIP leader at Number 10 in a calypso inspired song. It seems and is completely absurd, and yet the main topic of debate is whether Mike Read's appropriation is racist.
Absurd is the word. Cameron's weakness knows no apparent bounds. Only a few weeks ago he offered to his party and by proxy the country the promise he would put freedom of movement at the heart of his renegotiation strategy. He said he wouldn't take no for an answer. The outgoing president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, points out the answer could only be no when the rest of the EU, imposing its own restrictions on benefits or not, has not the slightest intention of curtailing one of the EEC's founding principles and biggest successes. Panicked further by the prospect of losing the Rochester by-election, and apparently fearing a leadership challenge in the aftermath, we now learn Cameron is set to announce some form of unilateral restriction on low-skilled eastern European migrants, most likely by refusing to issue them with national insurance numbers. How this will affect the economy he cares not; nor does he worry over the legal implications.
Cameron's gambit has failed on all fronts. His backbenchers, meant to be sated by his giving them what they want, now realise they have pushed to the point at which they are closer than ever to reaching their goal of getting Britain out of Europe. Why on earth would they stop now? UKIP, meanwhile, has had its every argument validated, continues to gain support and still can point out that the only way to truly control the borders is to leave. All this, and the Conservatives remain behind Labour in the polls. The only reason Cameron hasn't been called on this disaster is due to the majority of the press sharing the backbenchers' opinion on the EU, and how they can't imagine anything as terrible as Red Ed in Number 10. I can. It's another 5 years of Farage's fizzog staring out from every screen, every alternate sheet of newsprint, every billboard, the same silent laugh emanating from his gob. You're the one he's laughing at, Dave.
Labels: by-elections, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, David Cameron, European Union, immigration, Labour, Nigel Farage, politics, Tories, UKIP
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Monday, October 20, 2014
Poisoning national life? That'll be two years.
Gosh, was it really but two weeks ago some of the internet world was up in arms over the apparent suicide of Brenda Leyland, aka Sweepyface, aka one of those meanies still obsessed with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and still insisting her parents might have had something to do with it, or at least bear some responsibility? Unpopular opinions certainly, but not illegal, and probably not really deserving of a doorstepping from a Sky reporter.
How fast things move these days. Just as we saw in the aftermath of the riots, when some judges took it upon themselves to hand down harsher sentences to those who didn't riot but suggested they might than to some of those who did, so now Chris Grayling promises the maximum sentence for "trolls" will be lengthened from the current six months to 2 years. Anyone would have thought we don't have a prison system in crisis, one where the debate over whether Ched Evans should be allowed to play football again ought to have been delayed until he'd served the full 5 years he was given after being found guilty of rape, but no, space can always be found for those who "poison our national life".
Apparently Chloe Madeley was last week subjected to "online terrorism". I say apparently as I really, truly, don't care enough to look any deeper. One suspects the rape threats she received amounted to what they usually do, a handful of people, sometimes not even that, reaching for the most obvious weapon in their verbal arsenal, either sexual assault and/or death. Back in the day, we called the people whose first response to getting bested in argument was to say the equivalent of "I'd beat u up m8" internet tough guys. Because in the majority of examples, that's all they are: cocky and arrogant online but likely to shit themselves if someone took them up on the offer and arrived on their doorstep.
This isn't always the case, as #gamergate has (somewhat) demonstrated. Madeley doesn't seem to have had her personal information posted online, as Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian have. #Gamergate has also now been going for two months, an incredibly long time by internet standards for a drama to still be developing. For those who've missed the whole farrago up to now, in microcosm #gamergate is either one of two things: a crusade against corrupt videogame journalism, or a dying, backwards community trying desperately to keep its domain in aspic, without politics, especially left-wing politics and feminism, gaining a foothold.
As you might expect, in reality it's neither. Both sides doth protest too much: despite how gaming journalists have tried to argue there was no truth behind the claims of corruption from Quinn's ex-boyfriend, who detailed how she had slept with journalists and others in the wider industry while still in a relationship with him, there has long been a problem with cronyism at best and outright corruption at worst in gaming media. Rather than face up to the initial outcry following the spreading of Eron Gjoni's allegations, one of the first responses came in the shape of multiple news and review sites declaring the "gamer" label itself dead, all on the same day. You know, exactly the sort of collusion and refusing to listen the old media used to indulge in and still does, albeit on a smaller scale than before.
Then again, you can't exactly blame them considering some of the abuse directed their way. Think the trolling of Caroline Criado-Perez et al except multiplied many times over. Nearly everyone with even a passing role has been "doxed", items really have been sent through the post, and so on. It has also been to a certain extent orchestrated, one internet subculture organising for all out war on another. Their enemy is "SJWs", social justice warriors, imposing their values and standards on others whether they like it or not, and anonymous most certainly does not like it.
You'd think being something of a left-winger, believing wholeheartedly in equality and so on I would be in alliance with those criticising games and gamers for their continued Neanderthal ways. And I would be, if that first response hadn't been so woefully constructed, the backlash against the mere asking of questions so vehement. The reason this has gone on so long without burning itself it out is precisely because those on the side of Quinn and Saarkesian have risen to the bait over and over and over, just as Criado-Perez and those supporting her did. Moreover, just as the coverage of the banknote campaign and its aftermath made clear how journalists themselves ramped it up due to how they knew those involved, or indeed, how they were being targeted themselves, so any semblance of objectivity went almost immediately. It's shone a light on the vulnerabilities and insecurities of both sides, highlighting groupthink and the way narratives are constructed in this extremely new media landscape.
There is of course no defence for threats, for "doxing" people, for scaring them to the extent they feel compelled to leave their homes. Concerted, sustained trolling has to be tackled in some way, and if that means involving the authorities, so be it. You don't have to be a cynic however to note it's only some victims the media cares for, and there are plenty of journalists who have never taken to their writing becoming so open to criticism. We've already seen people imprisoned for making tasteless jokes, or given community service for daring to make angry political statements. Handing judges the power to impose longer sentences for going beyond what we consider the bounds of free speech, will, as it always does, encourage them to use it, just as publicity also makes them believe they have to set an example the next time a spotty herbert with a miserable life and a hateful online alter ego appears before them. The only people who ever truly poison national life are those in positions of power, and the vast majority of keyboard denizens have none.
How fast things move these days. Just as we saw in the aftermath of the riots, when some judges took it upon themselves to hand down harsher sentences to those who didn't riot but suggested they might than to some of those who did, so now Chris Grayling promises the maximum sentence for "trolls" will be lengthened from the current six months to 2 years. Anyone would have thought we don't have a prison system in crisis, one where the debate over whether Ched Evans should be allowed to play football again ought to have been delayed until he'd served the full 5 years he was given after being found guilty of rape, but no, space can always be found for those who "poison our national life".
Apparently Chloe Madeley was last week subjected to "online terrorism". I say apparently as I really, truly, don't care enough to look any deeper. One suspects the rape threats she received amounted to what they usually do, a handful of people, sometimes not even that, reaching for the most obvious weapon in their verbal arsenal, either sexual assault and/or death. Back in the day, we called the people whose first response to getting bested in argument was to say the equivalent of "I'd beat u up m8" internet tough guys. Because in the majority of examples, that's all they are: cocky and arrogant online but likely to shit themselves if someone took them up on the offer and arrived on their doorstep.
This isn't always the case, as #gamergate has (somewhat) demonstrated. Madeley doesn't seem to have had her personal information posted online, as Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian have. #Gamergate has also now been going for two months, an incredibly long time by internet standards for a drama to still be developing. For those who've missed the whole farrago up to now, in microcosm #gamergate is either one of two things: a crusade against corrupt videogame journalism, or a dying, backwards community trying desperately to keep its domain in aspic, without politics, especially left-wing politics and feminism, gaining a foothold.
As you might expect, in reality it's neither. Both sides doth protest too much: despite how gaming journalists have tried to argue there was no truth behind the claims of corruption from Quinn's ex-boyfriend, who detailed how she had slept with journalists and others in the wider industry while still in a relationship with him, there has long been a problem with cronyism at best and outright corruption at worst in gaming media. Rather than face up to the initial outcry following the spreading of Eron Gjoni's allegations, one of the first responses came in the shape of multiple news and review sites declaring the "gamer" label itself dead, all on the same day. You know, exactly the sort of collusion and refusing to listen the old media used to indulge in and still does, albeit on a smaller scale than before.
Then again, you can't exactly blame them considering some of the abuse directed their way. Think the trolling of Caroline Criado-Perez et al except multiplied many times over. Nearly everyone with even a passing role has been "doxed", items really have been sent through the post, and so on. It has also been to a certain extent orchestrated, one internet subculture organising for all out war on another. Their enemy is "SJWs", social justice warriors, imposing their values and standards on others whether they like it or not, and anonymous most certainly does not like it.
You'd think being something of a left-winger, believing wholeheartedly in equality and so on I would be in alliance with those criticising games and gamers for their continued Neanderthal ways. And I would be, if that first response hadn't been so woefully constructed, the backlash against the mere asking of questions so vehement. The reason this has gone on so long without burning itself it out is precisely because those on the side of Quinn and Saarkesian have risen to the bait over and over and over, just as Criado-Perez and those supporting her did. Moreover, just as the coverage of the banknote campaign and its aftermath made clear how journalists themselves ramped it up due to how they knew those involved, or indeed, how they were being targeted themselves, so any semblance of objectivity went almost immediately. It's shone a light on the vulnerabilities and insecurities of both sides, highlighting groupthink and the way narratives are constructed in this extremely new media landscape.
There is of course no defence for threats, for "doxing" people, for scaring them to the extent they feel compelled to leave their homes. Concerted, sustained trolling has to be tackled in some way, and if that means involving the authorities, so be it. You don't have to be a cynic however to note it's only some victims the media cares for, and there are plenty of journalists who have never taken to their writing becoming so open to criticism. We've already seen people imprisoned for making tasteless jokes, or given community service for daring to make angry political statements. Handing judges the power to impose longer sentences for going beyond what we consider the bounds of free speech, will, as it always does, encourage them to use it, just as publicity also makes them believe they have to set an example the next time a spotty herbert with a miserable life and a hateful online alter ego appears before them. The only people who ever truly poison national life are those in positions of power, and the vast majority of keyboard denizens have none.
Labels: #gamergate, bloggocks, Caroline Criado-Perez, Chloe Madeley, Chris Grayling, feminism, media analysis, social networking websites, trolling, Twitter
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Friday, October 17, 2014
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Not a statement from John Grisham.
(This is a post about child abuse and paedophiles. I despise "trigger warnings", but considering the content on this occasion thought it should be made clear.)
The reaction to John Grisham's remarks in his Telegraph interview has been all too familiar. His argument, which it must be said is not wholly convincing in itself and certainly lacked in delivery, was there is a major difference between someone who finds themselves prosecuted for downloading a small number of indecent images of a post-pubescent child and someone who actively abuses a child. Grisham was talking in the context of America in particular jailing far too many people, including "60-year-old white guys" who "drunkenly" search out such things, relating an anecdote about an old friend from law school caught up in a "honey trap" operation by Canadian police. The Telegraph itself notes a study from the U.S. Sentencing Commission that found the average sentence for possessing child pornography had doubled since 2004, from 54 months to 95.
Jon Brown of the NSPCC, talking to the BBC, repeated the regularly heard claim that "every time these images are clicked on or downloaded it creates demand that ultimately fuels more child abuse". In the Guardian, Suzanne Ost writes that "seeking out these images can encourage the market and thus the abuse of more children to fulfil demand". Which raises the following questions: what kind of a market is there in child abuse images? Does one exist at all, and if it does, what form does it take? Does it adhere to the classical laws of supply and demand? Does it resemble the market for adult pornography, or say the one for illegal drugs?
Attempting to answer those questions is as you might expect, incredibly difficult to next to impossible. What we do know is that child pornography operated for an extremely short period of time as an above ground industry, and only then in a tiny number of countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, although magazines were also produced in this country as well the United States. When it comes to the internet era, less than 10 years ago research suggested a "substantial amount, if not most" of the child abuse imagery circulating could still be traced to this period, roughly between 1969 and 1987, when one of the last mail order magazines was closed.
This will have undoubtedly changed since then. There is still relatively little however to suggest there is a market for child abuse images beyond the relatively small paedophile communities established on private forums, and most notably, on the so-called "dark net(s)". Nor with the exception of the occasional professional operation, mostly based in eastern Europe, have there been what can be described as commercial producers of "new" child abuse material rather than simply distributors of that which already existed. Most of the forums and sites to be found on the dark net, of which there have been a dwindling number since the shutting down of Freedom Hosting, require registration, with the most "exclusive" even requiring that prospective members first upload child abuse images they have obtained from elsewhere before they are given access.
One of the best insights we have into the volume of child abuse material available online was provided by the Anonymous raids on Lolita City, with those behind the hacking of the site claiming it hosted over 100GB of indecent images. Anonymous first discovered Lolita City and the hosting of child pornography on Tor via the Hidden Wiki; the wiki itself claims that a month before it closed, Lolita City hosted 1.4 million images. How far the Hidden Wiki can be relied upon is obviously open to question, as with any wiki: one of its pages attempts to do nothing less than provide a "history of CP", including describing in graphic detail the abuse of children depicted in some of the videos presumably available via the sites it provides links to. The page for one of the newest established forums, up only since August, claims it already has over 110,000 registered users. For context, the BBC suggested that Black Market Reloaded had around 300,000 registered users back in December, while the FBI indictment against Ross Ulbrict, the alleged owner of the Silk Road marketplace, claims it had 957,079 registered users. The BBC also in June conducted an interview with a self-described former operator of a dark net paedophile forum, which he said had 40,000 registered users. His own cache of material amounted to "12 gigabytes".
We can't of course know how much of the hosted and exchanged material would be found to be indecent under the Protection of Children Act. There has long for instance been a demand for "non-nude" images of children, and on some of these forums they would almost certainly be hosted alongside the illegal content. Without doubt the most widely available indecent content is that categorised as Level 1, erotic posing without sexual activity. This raises the question of how erotic posing is defined, as past controversies have centred around. By the same token, the rarest is likely to be Level 5, which involves either sadism or bestiality, referred to by some paedophiles as "hurtcore", although it would presumably also comprise some of Level 4, defined as penetrative sexual activity between children and adults.
None of which answers the question of whether merely viewing an indecent image, beyond its illegality, really does encourage the abuse of more children, taking out of the equation for the moment whether doing so can encourage the viewer himself to either abuse a child or lead to the belief that sexual attraction to children is normal. Certainly, the forums hosted on Tor would soon wither if there was no new material posted, and they are without doubt used by abusers themselves to share images and videos of their crimes, and are encouraged to continue by their fellow abusers. At the same time, it is far too simplistic to claim as Brown does that "every time these images are clicked ... it creates demand". It's certainly arguable that this could be the case if some of the admins of these sites were producers of material, and also if they were charging for access to it. Very few if any are. Even those actively seeking out material through web searches or on "clear net" p2p services are unlikely to be creating further demand, mainly because the battle against abuse imagery has been so successful when it comes to the overground. The image Brown conjures up is one analogous to that of the adult pornography business, which could not survive even in its current emasculated form without consumers being willing to pay for content. It just doesn't work like that, and never really did.
Ost in her piece goes on to further describe how viewing child abuse images harms beyond the simple market and demand argument, and on this she is on far sturdier ground, also pointing out how much harder it is to stumble across such material than it once was. One wonders though whether the immediate criticism of Grisham in such condemnatory terms really helps anyone. It certainly doesn't add to our understanding of how online paedophiles are currently organised or how they operate, nor does it do anything but further stigmatise those attracted to children who have no intention of acting on their feelings. It could however push them towards others who do. Surely that's something no one wants, regardless of how paedophiles as a whole are viewed.
The reaction to John Grisham's remarks in his Telegraph interview has been all too familiar. His argument, which it must be said is not wholly convincing in itself and certainly lacked in delivery, was there is a major difference between someone who finds themselves prosecuted for downloading a small number of indecent images of a post-pubescent child and someone who actively abuses a child. Grisham was talking in the context of America in particular jailing far too many people, including "60-year-old white guys" who "drunkenly" search out such things, relating an anecdote about an old friend from law school caught up in a "honey trap" operation by Canadian police. The Telegraph itself notes a study from the U.S. Sentencing Commission that found the average sentence for possessing child pornography had doubled since 2004, from 54 months to 95.
Jon Brown of the NSPCC, talking to the BBC, repeated the regularly heard claim that "every time these images are clicked on or downloaded it creates demand that ultimately fuels more child abuse". In the Guardian, Suzanne Ost writes that "seeking out these images can encourage the market and thus the abuse of more children to fulfil demand". Which raises the following questions: what kind of a market is there in child abuse images? Does one exist at all, and if it does, what form does it take? Does it adhere to the classical laws of supply and demand? Does it resemble the market for adult pornography, or say the one for illegal drugs?
Attempting to answer those questions is as you might expect, incredibly difficult to next to impossible. What we do know is that child pornography operated for an extremely short period of time as an above ground industry, and only then in a tiny number of countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, although magazines were also produced in this country as well the United States. When it comes to the internet era, less than 10 years ago research suggested a "substantial amount, if not most" of the child abuse imagery circulating could still be traced to this period, roughly between 1969 and 1987, when one of the last mail order magazines was closed.
This will have undoubtedly changed since then. There is still relatively little however to suggest there is a market for child abuse images beyond the relatively small paedophile communities established on private forums, and most notably, on the so-called "dark net(s)". Nor with the exception of the occasional professional operation, mostly based in eastern Europe, have there been what can be described as commercial producers of "new" child abuse material rather than simply distributors of that which already existed. Most of the forums and sites to be found on the dark net, of which there have been a dwindling number since the shutting down of Freedom Hosting, require registration, with the most "exclusive" even requiring that prospective members first upload child abuse images they have obtained from elsewhere before they are given access.
One of the best insights we have into the volume of child abuse material available online was provided by the Anonymous raids on Lolita City, with those behind the hacking of the site claiming it hosted over 100GB of indecent images. Anonymous first discovered Lolita City and the hosting of child pornography on Tor via the Hidden Wiki; the wiki itself claims that a month before it closed, Lolita City hosted 1.4 million images. How far the Hidden Wiki can be relied upon is obviously open to question, as with any wiki: one of its pages attempts to do nothing less than provide a "history of CP", including describing in graphic detail the abuse of children depicted in some of the videos presumably available via the sites it provides links to. The page for one of the newest established forums, up only since August, claims it already has over 110,000 registered users. For context, the BBC suggested that Black Market Reloaded had around 300,000 registered users back in December, while the FBI indictment against Ross Ulbrict, the alleged owner of the Silk Road marketplace, claims it had 957,079 registered users. The BBC also in June conducted an interview with a self-described former operator of a dark net paedophile forum, which he said had 40,000 registered users. His own cache of material amounted to "12 gigabytes".
We can't of course know how much of the hosted and exchanged material would be found to be indecent under the Protection of Children Act. There has long for instance been a demand for "non-nude" images of children, and on some of these forums they would almost certainly be hosted alongside the illegal content. Without doubt the most widely available indecent content is that categorised as Level 1, erotic posing without sexual activity. This raises the question of how erotic posing is defined, as past controversies have centred around. By the same token, the rarest is likely to be Level 5, which involves either sadism or bestiality, referred to by some paedophiles as "hurtcore", although it would presumably also comprise some of Level 4, defined as penetrative sexual activity between children and adults.
None of which answers the question of whether merely viewing an indecent image, beyond its illegality, really does encourage the abuse of more children, taking out of the equation for the moment whether doing so can encourage the viewer himself to either abuse a child or lead to the belief that sexual attraction to children is normal. Certainly, the forums hosted on Tor would soon wither if there was no new material posted, and they are without doubt used by abusers themselves to share images and videos of their crimes, and are encouraged to continue by their fellow abusers. At the same time, it is far too simplistic to claim as Brown does that "every time these images are clicked ... it creates demand". It's certainly arguable that this could be the case if some of the admins of these sites were producers of material, and also if they were charging for access to it. Very few if any are. Even those actively seeking out material through web searches or on "clear net" p2p services are unlikely to be creating further demand, mainly because the battle against abuse imagery has been so successful when it comes to the overground. The image Brown conjures up is one analogous to that of the adult pornography business, which could not survive even in its current emasculated form without consumers being willing to pay for content. It just doesn't work like that, and never really did.
Ost in her piece goes on to further describe how viewing child abuse images harms beyond the simple market and demand argument, and on this she is on far sturdier ground, also pointing out how much harder it is to stumble across such material than it once was. One wonders though whether the immediate criticism of Grisham in such condemnatory terms really helps anyone. It certainly doesn't add to our understanding of how online paedophiles are currently organised or how they operate, nor does it do anything but further stigmatise those attracted to children who have no intention of acting on their feelings. It could however push them towards others who do. Surely that's something no one wants, regardless of how paedophiles as a whole are viewed.
Labels: child abuse, child pornography, John Grisham, NSPCC, paedophile hysteria, paedophilia
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Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Judge actions, not just words.
It's another of those days when you look down the headlines and think, is there really nothing else going on in the world than outrages about who said what to whom, and arguments over whether the threats of one side are more reprehensible than their opponents'? Well, admittedly, there is, it's just the other big story continues to be Ebola, which is still failing miserably to gain a foothold in the West, whereas it continues to ravage West Africa, killing poor black people, who aren't quite as important. Also we already seem bored about the siege of Kobani, for similar reasons.
We come then to Lord Freud's comments about disabled people and the minimum wage at a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference. If you completely ignore the context in which he was speaking, then yes, they really are as bad as they look on the surface. Minister says some disabled people aren't worth the minimum wage! He must resign forthwith! Look closer however, and it becomes apparent he was responding to a question from a Tory councillor who related an anecdote about a person who wanted to work but at the same time found it difficult to do so and keep the same entitlement to benefits. The solution David Scott found was to set him up as a company director, meaning he could do some gardening, get paid for it and not be penalised for doing so.
The conversation is admittedly not conducted in language which everyone would use: Scott talks of the "mentally damaged" not "being worth the minimum wage" and goes on to speak of "them" in a more than slightly patronising, if not outright offensive way. He is though describing the contradiction between wanting to help the sick and disabled either back into work or to be able to work, and how the system currently immediately ends support once it's deemed someone's capable of holding down a job. Freud in response mentions universal credit, which to a certain extent is meant to be able to adapt to fluctuations in the number of hours someone works, then agrees with Scott on "there is a small, there is a group ... where actually they're not worth the full wage".
How far Freud is agreeing with Scott on his overall point and just repeating his words is obviously open to interpretation. He has since apologised on precisely these grounds, saying he shouldn't have accepted the "premise of the question", while making clear the disabled should "without exception" receive the minimum wage. Certainly, if Freud really does believe a group, however small isn't worth the full wage he can't remain in his position.
Always you should consider a person, or in this instance government's deeds alongside their words. David Cameron, reasonably enough, said he would take no lectures on looking after disabled people; perhaps though he should take some responsibility for the coalition's woeful record on the work capability assessment and how Iain Duncan Smith insisted everyone needed to go through the system again regardless. That's not to forget the botched introduction of the personal independence payment system, still causing misery, the closing of more of the Reemploy factories or the impact the "spare room subsidy" has had on the vulnerable. Also needing to be factored in is how many disabled people have reported feeling under suspicion, such has been the change in mood towards anyone who might be claiming benefits. The coalition can't take the blame for all the anti-scrounger rhetoric, not least as Labour first encouraged it while in power, but it picked up where they left off. On your works ye shall be judged, and the Tories and indeed the nice, caring Lib Dems must be. Harshly.
We come then to Lord Freud's comments about disabled people and the minimum wage at a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference. If you completely ignore the context in which he was speaking, then yes, they really are as bad as they look on the surface. Minister says some disabled people aren't worth the minimum wage! He must resign forthwith! Look closer however, and it becomes apparent he was responding to a question from a Tory councillor who related an anecdote about a person who wanted to work but at the same time found it difficult to do so and keep the same entitlement to benefits. The solution David Scott found was to set him up as a company director, meaning he could do some gardening, get paid for it and not be penalised for doing so.
The conversation is admittedly not conducted in language which everyone would use: Scott talks of the "mentally damaged" not "being worth the minimum wage" and goes on to speak of "them" in a more than slightly patronising, if not outright offensive way. He is though describing the contradiction between wanting to help the sick and disabled either back into work or to be able to work, and how the system currently immediately ends support once it's deemed someone's capable of holding down a job. Freud in response mentions universal credit, which to a certain extent is meant to be able to adapt to fluctuations in the number of hours someone works, then agrees with Scott on "there is a small, there is a group ... where actually they're not worth the full wage".
How far Freud is agreeing with Scott on his overall point and just repeating his words is obviously open to interpretation. He has since apologised on precisely these grounds, saying he shouldn't have accepted the "premise of the question", while making clear the disabled should "without exception" receive the minimum wage. Certainly, if Freud really does believe a group, however small isn't worth the full wage he can't remain in his position.
Always you should consider a person, or in this instance government's deeds alongside their words. David Cameron, reasonably enough, said he would take no lectures on looking after disabled people; perhaps though he should take some responsibility for the coalition's woeful record on the work capability assessment and how Iain Duncan Smith insisted everyone needed to go through the system again regardless. That's not to forget the botched introduction of the personal independence payment system, still causing misery, the closing of more of the Reemploy factories or the impact the "spare room subsidy" has had on the vulnerable. Also needing to be factored in is how many disabled people have reported feeling under suspicion, such has been the change in mood towards anyone who might be claiming benefits. The coalition can't take the blame for all the anti-scrounger rhetoric, not least as Labour first encouraged it while in power, but it picked up where they left off. On your works ye shall be judged, and the Tories and indeed the nice, caring Lib Dems must be. Harshly.
Labels: benefit system, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, David Cameron, DWP, Lord Freud, politics, Tories, welfare reform
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Tuesday, October 14, 2014
On recognising Palestine.
In general, the principles for recognising a state outlined by Malcolm "Rockets" Rifkind in yesterday's parliamentary debate on Palestine are good ones. A state needs "a government, an army, a military capability", the second of which is conspicuous by its absence in Gaza and the West Bank, although Hamas if no longer Fatah most certainly has a military capability. It also has two governments rather than one, he argued, which while ignoring the recent second unity deal between Hamas and Fatah is probably strictly true. None of this is the fault of the Palestinians themselves, Rifkind said, and it's also the case that Israel has not previously accepted an eventual Palestinian state having a military at all.
Worth remembering then is how the government acted shortly after the vote at the UN giving Palestine observer status, the first step towards being recognised as a state. William Hague in his inimitable half-pompous half-bluff style addressed parliament beforehand on how the government needed "assurances" from the Palestinians they wouldn't do anything silly with their new status, like try and pursue Israel at the International Criminal Court, as only Africans and ethnic cleansers can be prosecuted there. Assurances weren't received, so the government despite fully supporting a two-state solution abstained.
No such assurances were demanded in contrast from the successor organisation to the Syrian National Council, when the government deemed it was the "sole legitimate representative" of the Syrian people. The Syrian National Coalition wasn't a government, didn't have anything like full control of the Free Syrian Army which even then was not an army in a real sense, only having a military capability of sorts, most of which it had but a tenuous connection with. This hasn't exactly worked out, as we've seen. Close to irrelevant from the moment it was born, it's now completely irrelevant, with hardly anyone continuing to pretend it has the support of almost any of the groups still fighting. Except that is for US senators, who've been gullible from the outset.
There are nonetheless problems with recognising Palestine as a state when there is nothing to suggest there will be a peace deal any time soon. With Hamas still refusing to recognise Israel, and the Netanyahu government now insisting on the Palestinians accepting Israel as the "nation-state of the Jewish people", it's difficult to know whether, even if against all the odds a future Israeli government reached a deal with Fatah it would resolve anything. John Kerry's Herculean effort to break the impasse foundered principally over the Israeli refusal to release a final tranche of 26 prisoners. As Mahmoud Abbas or sources close him briefed New Republic, if he couldn't get the Americans to persuade the Israelis to release 26 prisoners, how were they ever going to give him East Jerusalem? Tzipi Livni, now presented as the member of Netanyahu's coalition most dedicated to reaching a peace deal openly told the Palestinians during the previous round of talks they were right to believe the continued annexation of land in the West Bank and expansion of settlements was designed to make a Palestinian state impossible. It wasn't official government policy, but it was of some of the Israeli parties.
Perverse as it would be to claim there was never any intention on the part of Netanyahu and his ministers to try and reach a deal, it was on a plan that would have been rejected both by Hamas and the Palestinian street. As Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat argued with Kerry, the 1967 borders which Israel has done so much to erase were not up for discussion. Susan Rice, exasperated with the Palestinians quibbling over such minor details, remarked they "could never see the fucking bigger picture", apparently oblivious to how that was precisely what they were thinking about.
Recognising a Palestine not worthy of the name would not be a solution. In a completely backwards way, the wrecking amendment tabled by the Labour Friends of Israel emphasising recognition should only come after a peace deal almost had it right: difficult as it will be for many to accept, only a deal which includes Hamas is likely to last. Nor is there much point in engaging in gestures that don't lead anywhere; yesterday's vote was symbolic, as everyone stressed. Would it however make clear to the Israeli government just how far opinion is turning against it? To judge by the coverage in Israel itself, as well as the New York Times, the answer on this score at least was yes.
Solidarity is after all next to pointless when you're the one staring down the bullet of a gun, as the Kurds have been discovering the last few weeks. Palestine is a cause that while always popular, ebbs and flows in the public conciousness: the efforts of apologists for the almost biennial slaughter in Gaza to paint all those who protested as anti-Semites have continued unabated while attention has turned elsewhere. Nor has public opinion shifted because of Operation Protective Edge; the mood has been heading in this direction for a long time now. If yesterday's vote further makes clear that "fucking Europe" means what it says, with all the consequences it has for Israeli trade, we might be heading towards the point where the Israeli political class realises it can't go on creating "reality" on the ground and getting away with it. That will ultimately require American pressure of the kind we've yet to see or are likely to any time soon. It is however coming. Whether it will be too late by then for the two state solution remains to be seen.
Worth remembering then is how the government acted shortly after the vote at the UN giving Palestine observer status, the first step towards being recognised as a state. William Hague in his inimitable half-pompous half-bluff style addressed parliament beforehand on how the government needed "assurances" from the Palestinians they wouldn't do anything silly with their new status, like try and pursue Israel at the International Criminal Court, as only Africans and ethnic cleansers can be prosecuted there. Assurances weren't received, so the government despite fully supporting a two-state solution abstained.
No such assurances were demanded in contrast from the successor organisation to the Syrian National Council, when the government deemed it was the "sole legitimate representative" of the Syrian people. The Syrian National Coalition wasn't a government, didn't have anything like full control of the Free Syrian Army which even then was not an army in a real sense, only having a military capability of sorts, most of which it had but a tenuous connection with. This hasn't exactly worked out, as we've seen. Close to irrelevant from the moment it was born, it's now completely irrelevant, with hardly anyone continuing to pretend it has the support of almost any of the groups still fighting. Except that is for US senators, who've been gullible from the outset.
There are nonetheless problems with recognising Palestine as a state when there is nothing to suggest there will be a peace deal any time soon. With Hamas still refusing to recognise Israel, and the Netanyahu government now insisting on the Palestinians accepting Israel as the "nation-state of the Jewish people", it's difficult to know whether, even if against all the odds a future Israeli government reached a deal with Fatah it would resolve anything. John Kerry's Herculean effort to break the impasse foundered principally over the Israeli refusal to release a final tranche of 26 prisoners. As Mahmoud Abbas or sources close him briefed New Republic, if he couldn't get the Americans to persuade the Israelis to release 26 prisoners, how were they ever going to give him East Jerusalem? Tzipi Livni, now presented as the member of Netanyahu's coalition most dedicated to reaching a peace deal openly told the Palestinians during the previous round of talks they were right to believe the continued annexation of land in the West Bank and expansion of settlements was designed to make a Palestinian state impossible. It wasn't official government policy, but it was of some of the Israeli parties.
Perverse as it would be to claim there was never any intention on the part of Netanyahu and his ministers to try and reach a deal, it was on a plan that would have been rejected both by Hamas and the Palestinian street. As Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat argued with Kerry, the 1967 borders which Israel has done so much to erase were not up for discussion. Susan Rice, exasperated with the Palestinians quibbling over such minor details, remarked they "could never see the fucking bigger picture", apparently oblivious to how that was precisely what they were thinking about.
Recognising a Palestine not worthy of the name would not be a solution. In a completely backwards way, the wrecking amendment tabled by the Labour Friends of Israel emphasising recognition should only come after a peace deal almost had it right: difficult as it will be for many to accept, only a deal which includes Hamas is likely to last. Nor is there much point in engaging in gestures that don't lead anywhere; yesterday's vote was symbolic, as everyone stressed. Would it however make clear to the Israeli government just how far opinion is turning against it? To judge by the coverage in Israel itself, as well as the New York Times, the answer on this score at least was yes.
Solidarity is after all next to pointless when you're the one staring down the bullet of a gun, as the Kurds have been discovering the last few weeks. Palestine is a cause that while always popular, ebbs and flows in the public conciousness: the efforts of apologists for the almost biennial slaughter in Gaza to paint all those who protested as anti-Semites have continued unabated while attention has turned elsewhere. Nor has public opinion shifted because of Operation Protective Edge; the mood has been heading in this direction for a long time now. If yesterday's vote further makes clear that "fucking Europe" means what it says, with all the consequences it has for Israeli trade, we might be heading towards the point where the Israeli political class realises it can't go on creating "reality" on the ground and getting away with it. That will ultimately require American pressure of the kind we've yet to see or are likely to any time soon. It is however coming. Whether it will be too late by then for the two state solution remains to be seen.
Labels: Benjamin Netanyahu, Fatah, foreign policy, Hamas, Israel, Israel-Palestine, Malcolm Rifkind, Palestine, Syria
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Monday, October 13, 2014
The UKIPs are coming!
Last week's by-election results told us precisely nothing we didn't already know. In Clacton, a popular local MP won back his own seat after resigning it as part of a marketing campaigning designed to keep the Nigel Farage beerwagon rolling. In Heywood and Middleton Labour won back their safe seat, the party's share of the vote holding up. Only of slight interest is how the party's majority was cut to just over 600 votes, as it shows how people vote differently in by-elections: the Tory, Lib Dem and BNP vote collapsed (the BNP, still in turmoil, didn't stand) and UKIP profited as a result. Some Labour supporters no doubt switched to UKIP as a protest, with former Lib Dem voters going back to Labour making up the difference. Moreover, apathy, non-interest or the pox on you all mentality were the real winners, with a turnout of just 36%.
And yet, and yet, because the former meant the UKIPs finally have a seat at Westminster, which hopefully means everyone can now shut up about it, and the latter obviously means the UKIPs could possibly, maybe, have a major impact on the outcome of next year's general election, even if they don't win more than a handful of seats, if that, all we've heard since has been the equivalent of the UKIPs are coming! The UKIPs are coming!
Yes, just when you thought the why-oh-whying had withered slightly, the number of here's why UKIP is getting so much support articles and think pieces reaches 9,000 again. The same old points are made over and over: it's immigration stoopid; it's because the political elite are all professionals, never had a real job in their lives; they don't communicate in plain English, can't get their message across with descending into slogans and wonk-speak; they're all the same; and so interminably on.
The fact is there are clearly different explanations for why UKIP has gained support in some areas, hasn't in others and will most likely fall back substantially come next May. I think John Harris has overstated at times the UKIP "surge", but his piece on Clacton last week nailed why Douglas Carswell was always likely to retain his seat, albeit for a different party. Telling people just how right-wing Carswell was, the response was one of not caring. UKIP has become a "safe" protest, an anti-immigration party that isn't racist, merely xenophobic, albeit one fronted by a former metals trader with a German wife. Carswell's more out there politics were counteracted by his being a good constituency MP, while most former Tory voters were more than happy to support his shifting slightly further to the right. If there was anger or doubts about the use of public money to stage an unnecessary by-election, those unimpressed stayed at home. Clacton also fits, as John B has noted, the pissed off at the march of progress demographic as first identified by Lord Ashcroft's polling, and perhaps exemplified by Tilbury. People who don't properly know why they're angry, who are opposed to change yet also don't want things to remain as they are.
Apart from opposition to immigration there's not much that unites them apart from contempt and a sense of being abandoned. Hence the desperate search for just why it is they feel this way, with some of the reasons alighted upon saying more about the insecurities of politicians and journalists than getting to the heart. Voters saying politicians don't understand their lives doesn't mean they want them all to talk like Farage, nor have they've developed an instant aversion to PPE graduates, as Owen Jones seems to believe. An amalgam of the crash, the resulting austerity, continued anger over the expenses scandal, the belief that London and the surrounding area dominate everything, a "popular" media that focuses on the negative, while the "serious" puts undue emphasis on ephemera and identity politics as opposed to that of the everyday, along with just good old general alienation and the lack of difference between the big three parties is largely how the majority have reached this point. They've been further encouraged by a media that is enthralled as much as some of it is appalled by UKIP, to the point where certain sections view the party almost as their creation. The emergence of a fourth party is also exciting, or at least is in comparison with much else of politics, and so the hype feeds itself.
There's danger in both over and under-reacting to all this by the parties. The Conservative response has been a mixture of not understanding it combined with appeasement: freezing in work benefits at the same time as promising a giveaway to the upper middle is almost precisely how not to win back working class UKIP defectors, while the moves on Europe merely demonstrate how there's little point in voting for a party that only goes halfway towards the exit and has encouraged the Carswells and Recklesses to make their move. Labour doesn't really want to talk about immigration full stop, whereas it should recognise it made a mistake in 2004 while arguing in reality it's the least of our problems. The Lib Dems meanwhile have just gone the complete anti-populist route, and it's not exactly won them many friends.
Should Mark Reckless manage to win in Rochester and Strood then it might be worth getting concerned. The Tories are set to throw everything at it, while in normal circumstances it's a seat Labour should be taking in a by-election. Even if Reckless fails, the announcement today that Farage has been invited to one of the leader's debates underlines how the media certainly doesn't want to let their little engine that could run out of puff. If UKIP have won enough support to be represented, then surely the Greens and SNP should be too, especially when either or both genuinely would bring a different perspective to proceedings. The Graun, lastly, also sounds an ominous note: taxes are going to have to rise after the election, and yet none of the parties have begun to so much as broach the subject. Should UKIP fall back as some of us believe it will, it or something like it could soon be resurrected when it again turns out a harsh truth wasn't communicated.
And yet, and yet, because the former meant the UKIPs finally have a seat at Westminster, which hopefully means everyone can now shut up about it, and the latter obviously means the UKIPs could possibly, maybe, have a major impact on the outcome of next year's general election, even if they don't win more than a handful of seats, if that, all we've heard since has been the equivalent of the UKIPs are coming! The UKIPs are coming!
Yes, just when you thought the why-oh-whying had withered slightly, the number of here's why UKIP is getting so much support articles and think pieces reaches 9,000 again. The same old points are made over and over: it's immigration stoopid; it's because the political elite are all professionals, never had a real job in their lives; they don't communicate in plain English, can't get their message across with descending into slogans and wonk-speak; they're all the same; and so interminably on.
The fact is there are clearly different explanations for why UKIP has gained support in some areas, hasn't in others and will most likely fall back substantially come next May. I think John Harris has overstated at times the UKIP "surge", but his piece on Clacton last week nailed why Douglas Carswell was always likely to retain his seat, albeit for a different party. Telling people just how right-wing Carswell was, the response was one of not caring. UKIP has become a "safe" protest, an anti-immigration party that isn't racist, merely xenophobic, albeit one fronted by a former metals trader with a German wife. Carswell's more out there politics were counteracted by his being a good constituency MP, while most former Tory voters were more than happy to support his shifting slightly further to the right. If there was anger or doubts about the use of public money to stage an unnecessary by-election, those unimpressed stayed at home. Clacton also fits, as John B has noted, the pissed off at the march of progress demographic as first identified by Lord Ashcroft's polling, and perhaps exemplified by Tilbury. People who don't properly know why they're angry, who are opposed to change yet also don't want things to remain as they are.
Apart from opposition to immigration there's not much that unites them apart from contempt and a sense of being abandoned. Hence the desperate search for just why it is they feel this way, with some of the reasons alighted upon saying more about the insecurities of politicians and journalists than getting to the heart. Voters saying politicians don't understand their lives doesn't mean they want them all to talk like Farage, nor have they've developed an instant aversion to PPE graduates, as Owen Jones seems to believe. An amalgam of the crash, the resulting austerity, continued anger over the expenses scandal, the belief that London and the surrounding area dominate everything, a "popular" media that focuses on the negative, while the "serious" puts undue emphasis on ephemera and identity politics as opposed to that of the everyday, along with just good old general alienation and the lack of difference between the big three parties is largely how the majority have reached this point. They've been further encouraged by a media that is enthralled as much as some of it is appalled by UKIP, to the point where certain sections view the party almost as their creation. The emergence of a fourth party is also exciting, or at least is in comparison with much else of politics, and so the hype feeds itself.
There's danger in both over and under-reacting to all this by the parties. The Conservative response has been a mixture of not understanding it combined with appeasement: freezing in work benefits at the same time as promising a giveaway to the upper middle is almost precisely how not to win back working class UKIP defectors, while the moves on Europe merely demonstrate how there's little point in voting for a party that only goes halfway towards the exit and has encouraged the Carswells and Recklesses to make their move. Labour doesn't really want to talk about immigration full stop, whereas it should recognise it made a mistake in 2004 while arguing in reality it's the least of our problems. The Lib Dems meanwhile have just gone the complete anti-populist route, and it's not exactly won them many friends.
Should Mark Reckless manage to win in Rochester and Strood then it might be worth getting concerned. The Tories are set to throw everything at it, while in normal circumstances it's a seat Labour should be taking in a by-election. Even if Reckless fails, the announcement today that Farage has been invited to one of the leader's debates underlines how the media certainly doesn't want to let their little engine that could run out of puff. If UKIP have won enough support to be represented, then surely the Greens and SNP should be too, especially when either or both genuinely would bring a different perspective to proceedings. The Graun, lastly, also sounds an ominous note: taxes are going to have to rise after the election, and yet none of the parties have begun to so much as broach the subject. Should UKIP fall back as some of us believe it will, it or something like it could soon be resurrected when it again turns out a harsh truth wasn't communicated.
Labels: by-elections, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Labour, Nigel Farage, politics, Tories, UKIP
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Friday, October 10, 2014
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Perpetuating abuse?
And there is no point saying this again / There is no point saying this again / But I forgive you, I forgive you / Always I do forgive you
There comes a time in every man's life where he has to sit down and ask himself: am I a rapist? Not am I a potential rapist, as in the age old formulation not all men are rapists, but all rapists are men, like you know, the just as accurate not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. No, have I without realising it committed hundreds, possibly thousands of sex crimes?
Horrified as I am to admit, it seems to be the case. According to Jennifer Lawrence, by so much as looking at her stolen naked self-shots I have perpetuated a sexual offence. I don't know her, she certainly doesn't know me, and yet without her knowledge I have violated her. Nor is this limited just to Lawrence. I have raped dozens of other celebrities, and by extension hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women and men. Some may well have consented to or even been paid to appear in the images and videos I've seen of them, but what if they later regretted it, they were doing it only to feed a habit, or were even coerced, as some have said they were?
But even this doesn't begin to scratch the surface of my depravity. Should I find someone attractive while going about my everyday life, there is no way for them to consent to what might be going through my mind. Of course, all the liaisons in my head are consensual, and I don't imagine having sex with every attractive woman I see, but they can't know what I'm thinking and so therefore can't tell me to stop. Just how many people is it I've abused? Did the Bible have it right in suggesting you merely have to look at a married woman in a lustful way to have committed adultery?
We have been, to drop the pretence, thrust right back into the old and increasingly hoary question of complicity. Despite its decrepitude, it still bears examining and in politics if nothing else it remains a vital one. Just this week the Sun has been urging those of faiths and none to come together to condemn Islamic State, with the usual edge of steel just beneath the surface as there always is. "Their imams must ceaselessly condemn IS", the paper intones, with the use of "their" perhaps a bit of a giveaway. There's also more than a certain irony in the recycling of the "not in my name" slogan some took up during the protests against the Iraq war of 11 years ago, this time with even less meaning than the last. More pertinent questions could be asked concerning how government policy encouraged the growth of IS in the first place, but first Muslims ought to deny responsibility for something they have no control over.
Have us ordinary mortals transgressed then for merely looking at Lawrence and the other celebrities as they only wanted themselves or partners to see them? Quite simply, no. I say this despite pretty much agreeing with Lawrence on every other point she made in the interview with Vanity Fair. She doesn't have a thing to apologise for, and the people who broke into her iCloud or however they obtained the images quite possibly are detached from humanity. This was beyond mere "revenge porn", where an embittered ex releases images shared with them in confidence; it was targeted and criminal. All the same, when there's nothing you can do to get the images taken down, not least when they existed in the "cloud" in the first place, looking for yourself does not perpetuate the offence. The abuse has already occurred; you can't make things any worse unless you join in by attempting to profit from the crime. Watching something that has already occurred does not make you complicit in it; as previously argued, it's only when it goes beyond the looking for the unusual into something darker, to the point where you're changed by it that we need to start worrying.
I don't recall for instance anyone having a problem with Caitlin Moran relating how she felt after watching the leaked video of the "Dnepropetrovsk maniacs" murdering Sergei Yatzenko. It probably encouraged more than a few other people to go and watch it, just as it was a passing craze to show the infamous "2 girls 1 cup" clip to someone unsuspecting and film their reaction. Few pointed out the women in the video most likely earned a relative pittance, at least by American porn standards for their performance, nor worried about how it becoming a minor phenomenon could have affected them personally. Ex-porn actors in the US have come under pressure to quit positions they've merely volunteered for, so you can only ponder how difficult it could have made life in Brazil for the women. As a porn producer related in the Graun just this week, there are still those who might shoot perhaps one scene without realising that once it's online it's next to impossible to remove, even if the producer themselves acquiesces to their request to take it down. The internet, if you want it to be, is a test of morals in itself.
The question to ask is where such a standpoint leads, and then there's the paradox within it, as Lawrence hints at. You can't properly comment on something without seeing it, unless that is you're Mary Whitehouse or a politician. At the same time, to look is to perpetuate the abuse. Presumably the Vanity Fair interviewer had seen them prior to conducting the interview, and if Jessica Valenti hasn't also I'd be extremely surprised.
To give Lawrence the last word, in the interview she expresses disappointment rather than anger at how those she knows and loves had also looked at the pictures, which gives a better indication of how our minds work than anything else. When even those closest to her, the most likely to empathise with her plight couldn't resist temptation, what chance the rest of us?
There comes a time in every man's life where he has to sit down and ask himself: am I a rapist? Not am I a potential rapist, as in the age old formulation not all men are rapists, but all rapists are men, like you know, the just as accurate not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. No, have I without realising it committed hundreds, possibly thousands of sex crimes?
Horrified as I am to admit, it seems to be the case. According to Jennifer Lawrence, by so much as looking at her stolen naked self-shots I have perpetuated a sexual offence. I don't know her, she certainly doesn't know me, and yet without her knowledge I have violated her. Nor is this limited just to Lawrence. I have raped dozens of other celebrities, and by extension hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women and men. Some may well have consented to or even been paid to appear in the images and videos I've seen of them, but what if they later regretted it, they were doing it only to feed a habit, or were even coerced, as some have said they were?
But even this doesn't begin to scratch the surface of my depravity. Should I find someone attractive while going about my everyday life, there is no way for them to consent to what might be going through my mind. Of course, all the liaisons in my head are consensual, and I don't imagine having sex with every attractive woman I see, but they can't know what I'm thinking and so therefore can't tell me to stop. Just how many people is it I've abused? Did the Bible have it right in suggesting you merely have to look at a married woman in a lustful way to have committed adultery?
We have been, to drop the pretence, thrust right back into the old and increasingly hoary question of complicity. Despite its decrepitude, it still bears examining and in politics if nothing else it remains a vital one. Just this week the Sun has been urging those of faiths and none to come together to condemn Islamic State, with the usual edge of steel just beneath the surface as there always is. "Their imams must ceaselessly condemn IS", the paper intones, with the use of "their" perhaps a bit of a giveaway. There's also more than a certain irony in the recycling of the "not in my name" slogan some took up during the protests against the Iraq war of 11 years ago, this time with even less meaning than the last. More pertinent questions could be asked concerning how government policy encouraged the growth of IS in the first place, but first Muslims ought to deny responsibility for something they have no control over.
Have us ordinary mortals transgressed then for merely looking at Lawrence and the other celebrities as they only wanted themselves or partners to see them? Quite simply, no. I say this despite pretty much agreeing with Lawrence on every other point she made in the interview with Vanity Fair. She doesn't have a thing to apologise for, and the people who broke into her iCloud or however they obtained the images quite possibly are detached from humanity. This was beyond mere "revenge porn", where an embittered ex releases images shared with them in confidence; it was targeted and criminal. All the same, when there's nothing you can do to get the images taken down, not least when they existed in the "cloud" in the first place, looking for yourself does not perpetuate the offence. The abuse has already occurred; you can't make things any worse unless you join in by attempting to profit from the crime. Watching something that has already occurred does not make you complicit in it; as previously argued, it's only when it goes beyond the looking for the unusual into something darker, to the point where you're changed by it that we need to start worrying.
I don't recall for instance anyone having a problem with Caitlin Moran relating how she felt after watching the leaked video of the "Dnepropetrovsk maniacs" murdering Sergei Yatzenko. It probably encouraged more than a few other people to go and watch it, just as it was a passing craze to show the infamous "2 girls 1 cup" clip to someone unsuspecting and film their reaction. Few pointed out the women in the video most likely earned a relative pittance, at least by American porn standards for their performance, nor worried about how it becoming a minor phenomenon could have affected them personally. Ex-porn actors in the US have come under pressure to quit positions they've merely volunteered for, so you can only ponder how difficult it could have made life in Brazil for the women. As a porn producer related in the Graun just this week, there are still those who might shoot perhaps one scene without realising that once it's online it's next to impossible to remove, even if the producer themselves acquiesces to their request to take it down. The internet, if you want it to be, is a test of morals in itself.
The question to ask is where such a standpoint leads, and then there's the paradox within it, as Lawrence hints at. You can't properly comment on something without seeing it, unless that is you're Mary Whitehouse or a politician. At the same time, to look is to perpetuate the abuse. Presumably the Vanity Fair interviewer had seen them prior to conducting the interview, and if Jessica Valenti hasn't also I'd be extremely surprised.
To give Lawrence the last word, in the interview she expresses disappointment rather than anger at how those she knows and loves had also looked at the pictures, which gives a better indication of how our minds work than anything else. When even those closest to her, the most likely to empathise with her plight couldn't resist temptation, what chance the rest of us?
Labels: celebrities, fappening, hypocrisy, Jennifer Lawrence, media analysis, media coverage, pornography, sex
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Wednesday, October 08, 2014
The chronicles of Glasgow.
And so to Narnia (surely Glasgow? Ed.) for the Liberal Democrat conference. For the second year in a row the yellow peril have decamped north of the border, opting not to go somewhere different every 12 months as the other parties tend to, presumably as booking the hall 2 years in a row was the cheaper option. Never let it be said the Lib Dems don't know how to save money. Indeed, such has been their dedication to making the most out of old material, at times you could be forgiven for wondering if they weren't just giving last year's speeches again, hoping no one would notice. Certainly the media wouldn't have done, and with reports of plenty of delegates leaving before Clegg's main speech, the hall apparently less populated than it was for Vince Cable's annual bash-the-Tories-let's-hope-everyone-forgets-we're-propping-them-up oration, neither would most of the party's members.
Give the delegates their due: they've continued to oppose the leadership's worst instincts, defeating the party on airport expansion, much to Clegg's chagrin. If anything can save the party from being all but wiped out come the election, their sacrifices and dedication just might. What certainly won't is the strategy, or rather lack thereof emanating from the party's advisers. They just can't work out why it is Nick is so disliked, especially when Cleggmania reigned for a couple of weeks, and when he's so personable, honest, prepared to apologise for broken promises and all the rest of it. He's the political leader all the focus groups and people in the street when asked the qualities they most admire are effectively describing, and yet he remains less popular than Ebola.
Perhaps the contempt for Clegg and the Lib Dems in general might just be linked to how the party that once tried to be all things to all people has become disliked for that very reason. If you're a right-wing Tory then Clegg's mob have prevented the coalition from being truly radical, while if you're a Labour supporter or even vaguely left-of-centre then by the same token they've enabled and supported a right-wing administration that's cut the public sector to the bone, privatised Royal Mail, put in place a Health and Social Care act that opens up the NHS to privatisation as never before, froze benefits and introduced the bedroom tax. Most pertinent of all, if you were a floating voter last time around and plumped for Clegg, loathing Brown and not trusting Cameron, believing Clegg when he promised a new politics, no more broken promises and all the rest, you really have been taken for a ride. It isn't just tuition fees, although most will point to it as the most glaring betrayal; it's the whole damn package.
Nor does it help when at the same time as they condemn the Tories as evil for proposing to slash the benefits of the working poor to pay for tax cuts for the well-off and poor old Ed Miliband for his never to be forgotten or forgiven failure to mention the deficit, everyone knows they're actively reaching out to both should there be another hung parliament, as the party itself believes. It takes some almighty chutzpah for Clegg one moment to be going on alarming about an us vs them mentality, the tribalism of right vs left, swinging at both the other main parties, and then once again making the case for how wonderful coalition is with one of those tribes, as though his party's mere presence makes it all better, "undermining the soulless pendulum".
The voting system, for all its faults, does after all protect the Lib Dems to a certain extent. While the party seems destined to lose most of the seats where Labour is its main opponent, in the constituencies where it faces off against the Conservatives the choice for those on the left is either the Libs or bust. With the Tories bound to lose a uncertain percentage of support to the UKIPs, they can afford to be quietly confident about hanging on to around 30 or so seats. It'll mean the party seeing its number of MPs cut in half sure, but the way polling continues to suggest either a dead heat or slight Labour lead it will likely still mean they hold the balance of power. The nightmare scenario, outlined somewhat by Norman Lamb, is Labour winning the most seats but coming second in the popular vote to the Tories, while UKIP picks up a token number of seats if that but manages to come third in the popular vote ahead of the Libs. The right-wing press would duly howl about the illegitimacy of a Lib-Lab coalition, something preventable had they err, supported the alternative vote, and the likely outcome would be a second election sooner rather than later.
This assumes of course enough former Lib Dem voters return to the fold, something not guaranteed by Clegg's address. While Miliband spoke for over an hour and yet managed to say very little, Clegg had everyone heading for home in 52 minutes, racing through all the reasons why the party has much to be proud about and so should return to their constituencies to await their doom. Again we heard how the Tories couldn't have stalled the recovery for 2 years without the help of Clegg and Danny Alexander, although he might have phrased it slightly differently, how the raising of the income tax threshold is the greatest single tax initiative of all time, despite how it helps the better off more than it does the poorest, and how the pupil premium has saved the lives of thousands of school children, with teachers and parents coming up to Clegg in the street to thank him. In spite of the drubbing their anti-populist strategy took in the European elections, Clegg and his party will be resolute in standing up for liberal values, a position less brave than it seems when there's not really that much further their support can fall.
To give Clegg some credit, his speech was probably the best of an extremely poor vintage. He's spent the week acting like someone who can go no lower, coming across happier and more content with his lot. There were some exceptionally dodgy parts, mostly the guff about opportunity all but required by diktat and the parts about "vested interests" where he seemed to be channelling Tony Blair, but this was outweighed to a point by the announcement on mental health services, which if followed through on has the potential to be something resembling a legacy for him. Sure, his portrayal of the Liberals as the only people who can possibly be fair to society while also strengthening the economy is completely putrid when his proposal is for the same 80/20 ratio of cuts to tax rises as the coalition has been pushing through, still leaving the country in the dark to just how savage the next round of cuts will have to be, but at least it's a start. His and his party's chief problem is most people made their minds up long ago. And as the rise of the UKIPs has demonstrated, something akin to realism and shallow decency aren't the sellers they once were.
Give the delegates their due: they've continued to oppose the leadership's worst instincts, defeating the party on airport expansion, much to Clegg's chagrin. If anything can save the party from being all but wiped out come the election, their sacrifices and dedication just might. What certainly won't is the strategy, or rather lack thereof emanating from the party's advisers. They just can't work out why it is Nick is so disliked, especially when Cleggmania reigned for a couple of weeks, and when he's so personable, honest, prepared to apologise for broken promises and all the rest of it. He's the political leader all the focus groups and people in the street when asked the qualities they most admire are effectively describing, and yet he remains less popular than Ebola.
Perhaps the contempt for Clegg and the Lib Dems in general might just be linked to how the party that once tried to be all things to all people has become disliked for that very reason. If you're a right-wing Tory then Clegg's mob have prevented the coalition from being truly radical, while if you're a Labour supporter or even vaguely left-of-centre then by the same token they've enabled and supported a right-wing administration that's cut the public sector to the bone, privatised Royal Mail, put in place a Health and Social Care act that opens up the NHS to privatisation as never before, froze benefits and introduced the bedroom tax. Most pertinent of all, if you were a floating voter last time around and plumped for Clegg, loathing Brown and not trusting Cameron, believing Clegg when he promised a new politics, no more broken promises and all the rest, you really have been taken for a ride. It isn't just tuition fees, although most will point to it as the most glaring betrayal; it's the whole damn package.
Nor does it help when at the same time as they condemn the Tories as evil for proposing to slash the benefits of the working poor to pay for tax cuts for the well-off and poor old Ed Miliband for his never to be forgotten or forgiven failure to mention the deficit, everyone knows they're actively reaching out to both should there be another hung parliament, as the party itself believes. It takes some almighty chutzpah for Clegg one moment to be going on alarming about an us vs them mentality, the tribalism of right vs left, swinging at both the other main parties, and then once again making the case for how wonderful coalition is with one of those tribes, as though his party's mere presence makes it all better, "undermining the soulless pendulum".
The voting system, for all its faults, does after all protect the Lib Dems to a certain extent. While the party seems destined to lose most of the seats where Labour is its main opponent, in the constituencies where it faces off against the Conservatives the choice for those on the left is either the Libs or bust. With the Tories bound to lose a uncertain percentage of support to the UKIPs, they can afford to be quietly confident about hanging on to around 30 or so seats. It'll mean the party seeing its number of MPs cut in half sure, but the way polling continues to suggest either a dead heat or slight Labour lead it will likely still mean they hold the balance of power. The nightmare scenario, outlined somewhat by Norman Lamb, is Labour winning the most seats but coming second in the popular vote to the Tories, while UKIP picks up a token number of seats if that but manages to come third in the popular vote ahead of the Libs. The right-wing press would duly howl about the illegitimacy of a Lib-Lab coalition, something preventable had they err, supported the alternative vote, and the likely outcome would be a second election sooner rather than later.
This assumes of course enough former Lib Dem voters return to the fold, something not guaranteed by Clegg's address. While Miliband spoke for over an hour and yet managed to say very little, Clegg had everyone heading for home in 52 minutes, racing through all the reasons why the party has much to be proud about and so should return to their constituencies to await their doom. Again we heard how the Tories couldn't have stalled the recovery for 2 years without the help of Clegg and Danny Alexander, although he might have phrased it slightly differently, how the raising of the income tax threshold is the greatest single tax initiative of all time, despite how it helps the better off more than it does the poorest, and how the pupil premium has saved the lives of thousands of school children, with teachers and parents coming up to Clegg in the street to thank him. In spite of the drubbing their anti-populist strategy took in the European elections, Clegg and his party will be resolute in standing up for liberal values, a position less brave than it seems when there's not really that much further their support can fall.
To give Clegg some credit, his speech was probably the best of an extremely poor vintage. He's spent the week acting like someone who can go no lower, coming across happier and more content with his lot. There were some exceptionally dodgy parts, mostly the guff about opportunity all but required by diktat and the parts about "vested interests" where he seemed to be channelling Tony Blair, but this was outweighed to a point by the announcement on mental health services, which if followed through on has the potential to be something resembling a legacy for him. Sure, his portrayal of the Liberals as the only people who can possibly be fair to society while also strengthening the economy is completely putrid when his proposal is for the same 80/20 ratio of cuts to tax rises as the coalition has been pushing through, still leaving the country in the dark to just how savage the next round of cuts will have to be, but at least it's a start. His and his party's chief problem is most people made their minds up long ago. And as the rise of the UKIPs has demonstrated, something akin to realism and shallow decency aren't the sellers they once were.
Labels: conference season, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Liberal Democrat conference, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics, Tories, Vince Cable
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Tuesday, October 07, 2014
The war against IS: going just swell.
Compared to the previous execution videos released by Islamic State, their fourth "message to America and its allies" was almost apologetic in tone, as though even they realised the murder of Alan Henning was a step too far. Gone was the more obscene bombast that had accompanied the killings of James Foley, Stephen Sotloff and David Haines, the lengthier forced testimonies from the men blaming their deaths on Western leaders, with Henning made to say just a couple of lines on the parliamentary vote that authorised British attacks on IS in Iraq. He also looked calmer, not terrified as he obviously was in the Haines video. Perhaps he was resigned to his fate, or perhaps this wasn't the first time IS had made him give a statement to camera, on the previous occasions not following through.
Lasting not so much as 90 seconds, the video gave every indication of being hurriedly produced. The location clearly wasn't the same as it had been in all the previous videos, it wasn't as well lit, the British jihadi (I'm refusing from now on to refer to him in the same way as the rest of the UK media have decided to) was neither as menacing, coherent or arrogant in his speech. The only things remaining much the same were the execution, the quick fading out, displaying of Henning's lifeless body and then parading of the next likely victim. Jihadis have and always will invent specious, quasi-religious justifications for the murder of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but even the hardcore will have struggled internally to convince themselves killing Henning was necessary: a man who travelled to Syria purely to help the very people IS claims to be defending, his life and compassion will be remembered long after his killer's banal hatred is consigned to history.
If there are crumbs of comfort to be taken from such an act of unconscionable cruelty, it's that even prior to the murder itself there had been an outpouring of condemnation from all sides, and the video itself suggests the airstrikes on the IS capital of Raqqa have already had an effect. Elsewhere the war on IS doesn't appear to be going as planned, not that it's ever been apparent there is something resembling a plan. In northern Iraq airstrikes, combined with the aiding/arming of the peshmerga, have stopped IS from advancing further. This though seems to have been at the price of IS turning its attention both further south, with reports of IS consolidating its hold on territory in Anbar province, while more attention is being paid to the siege of Kobani on the Syria/Turkey border.
The same doom-laden predictions of an imminent massacre, of betrayal at the hands of the Americans and Turks, of demands for heavy weaponry to match that which IS took from the Iraqi army, all have been heard before and are now being aired yet again. There is some truth in these latter complaints: the War Nerd points out IS took the small border crossing of Jarabulus (and in the usual grandiose fashion, declared it an emirate), 25km from Kobani in June 2013, long enough ago for all sides to have acted or prepared for just this eventuality. It also speaks of the relative weakness of IS that it's taken over a year for the group to move the short distance from Jarabulus and try capturing the next obvious large settlement. At work are the divided loyalties of President Erodgan's Turkish state: it doesn't especially want Kobani to fall to IS, but it doesn't want to empower the Kurds either, not least when the militias fighting IS are either allied with or directly connected with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), still designated as a terrorist group despite the long-term ceasefire agreed last year. Until recently the Turkish border with Syria was all but wide open, allowing foreigners to join up with the rebel grouping of their choosing with relative impunity; now it's closed, especially to those wanting to reinforce the Kurdish militias.
Turkey's role in the Syrian civil war has long been opaque, as demonstrated by leaked recordings which suggested the military could have been preparing a so-called "false flag" attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, in a bid to justify intervening in the country. Erodgan today continued to demand a two-pronged strategy, to defeat both IS and Assad simultaneously, without explaining how this could possibly be achieved, only that air power alone couldn't do it. Many Kurds for their part believe IS has received support directly from Turkey, while the Americans are understandably fuming at how a NATO member state has done little beyond place heavy weaponry along the border, despite Turkey's parliament at the weekend voting to support intervention.
For all the insults thrown at IS, including from the esteemed likes of the War Nerd, it's adapted quickly to the forces now ranged against it. Partly this is down to how many of its fighters are relative veterans, either from Iraq or battling Assad, and so aren't strangers to being attacked from the air. They've learned to dig in, scatter when they hear jets or blend in with the population. The airstrikes have disrupted their ability to operate completely in the open for sure, but not to the point where it means they can't still take new ground. Already we have the likes of Jonathan Powell urging everyone not to rule out talking to our new enemy, and he makes quite a few salient points. Strangely, Powell doesn't so much as mention talking to Assad, something that would make far more sense and which even his former boss suggested was inevitable earlier in the year. Powell it seems is more Blairite now than ever: not prepared to jaw-jaw with dictators when we could war-war instead, but perfectly happy to talk with the most brutal of armed groups. One could bring up how Powell and Blair's war effectively created IS, but that would be frightfully rude.
Everyone knows IS can't be defeated through just air power. At the same time, no one wants to admit they're wrong, and have been for the past few years. For either Obama or Cameron to send ground forces (as opposed to special forces or military "advisers", both of whom are and have been operating in Syria and Iraq for some time now) in would be to go against their twin strategies of drawing down and back from prolonged, costly deployments in the Middle East. To even reach a temporary accommodation with Assad would be a propaganda coup for the "illegitimate" gasser of women and children, and outrage the Saudis and Qataris whom are still keen on their proxy war against Iran. To admit the Free Syrian Army doesn't exist and probably couldn't be trained in 8 years, let alone 8 months to a standard where it could take on IS would remove the one remaining illusion of influence we have on the ground.
We could, of course, have chosen not to intervene; we could have told the Saudis, Qataris, Kuwaitis and all the other funders of IS and al-Nusra in no uncertain terms how they were risking the seeming advances made in Iraq; we could have pushed far harder for a peace settlement before the power of the Islamists became too great; we could have done almost everything over the past decade connected with Syria and Iraq differently. In the same way, "boots on the ground" intervention is just a matter of time. It's not that we haven't learned anything, it's not that we haven't had a choice, it's just that not repeating the same mistakes over and over is too difficult by half.
Lasting not so much as 90 seconds, the video gave every indication of being hurriedly produced. The location clearly wasn't the same as it had been in all the previous videos, it wasn't as well lit, the British jihadi (I'm refusing from now on to refer to him in the same way as the rest of the UK media have decided to) was neither as menacing, coherent or arrogant in his speech. The only things remaining much the same were the execution, the quick fading out, displaying of Henning's lifeless body and then parading of the next likely victim. Jihadis have and always will invent specious, quasi-religious justifications for the murder of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but even the hardcore will have struggled internally to convince themselves killing Henning was necessary: a man who travelled to Syria purely to help the very people IS claims to be defending, his life and compassion will be remembered long after his killer's banal hatred is consigned to history.
If there are crumbs of comfort to be taken from such an act of unconscionable cruelty, it's that even prior to the murder itself there had been an outpouring of condemnation from all sides, and the video itself suggests the airstrikes on the IS capital of Raqqa have already had an effect. Elsewhere the war on IS doesn't appear to be going as planned, not that it's ever been apparent there is something resembling a plan. In northern Iraq airstrikes, combined with the aiding/arming of the peshmerga, have stopped IS from advancing further. This though seems to have been at the price of IS turning its attention both further south, with reports of IS consolidating its hold on territory in Anbar province, while more attention is being paid to the siege of Kobani on the Syria/Turkey border.
The same doom-laden predictions of an imminent massacre, of betrayal at the hands of the Americans and Turks, of demands for heavy weaponry to match that which IS took from the Iraqi army, all have been heard before and are now being aired yet again. There is some truth in these latter complaints: the War Nerd points out IS took the small border crossing of Jarabulus (and in the usual grandiose fashion, declared it an emirate), 25km from Kobani in June 2013, long enough ago for all sides to have acted or prepared for just this eventuality. It also speaks of the relative weakness of IS that it's taken over a year for the group to move the short distance from Jarabulus and try capturing the next obvious large settlement. At work are the divided loyalties of President Erodgan's Turkish state: it doesn't especially want Kobani to fall to IS, but it doesn't want to empower the Kurds either, not least when the militias fighting IS are either allied with or directly connected with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), still designated as a terrorist group despite the long-term ceasefire agreed last year. Until recently the Turkish border with Syria was all but wide open, allowing foreigners to join up with the rebel grouping of their choosing with relative impunity; now it's closed, especially to those wanting to reinforce the Kurdish militias.
Turkey's role in the Syrian civil war has long been opaque, as demonstrated by leaked recordings which suggested the military could have been preparing a so-called "false flag" attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, in a bid to justify intervening in the country. Erodgan today continued to demand a two-pronged strategy, to defeat both IS and Assad simultaneously, without explaining how this could possibly be achieved, only that air power alone couldn't do it. Many Kurds for their part believe IS has received support directly from Turkey, while the Americans are understandably fuming at how a NATO member state has done little beyond place heavy weaponry along the border, despite Turkey's parliament at the weekend voting to support intervention.
For all the insults thrown at IS, including from the esteemed likes of the War Nerd, it's adapted quickly to the forces now ranged against it. Partly this is down to how many of its fighters are relative veterans, either from Iraq or battling Assad, and so aren't strangers to being attacked from the air. They've learned to dig in, scatter when they hear jets or blend in with the population. The airstrikes have disrupted their ability to operate completely in the open for sure, but not to the point where it means they can't still take new ground. Already we have the likes of Jonathan Powell urging everyone not to rule out talking to our new enemy, and he makes quite a few salient points. Strangely, Powell doesn't so much as mention talking to Assad, something that would make far more sense and which even his former boss suggested was inevitable earlier in the year. Powell it seems is more Blairite now than ever: not prepared to jaw-jaw with dictators when we could war-war instead, but perfectly happy to talk with the most brutal of armed groups. One could bring up how Powell and Blair's war effectively created IS, but that would be frightfully rude.
Everyone knows IS can't be defeated through just air power. At the same time, no one wants to admit they're wrong, and have been for the past few years. For either Obama or Cameron to send ground forces (as opposed to special forces or military "advisers", both of whom are and have been operating in Syria and Iraq for some time now) in would be to go against their twin strategies of drawing down and back from prolonged, costly deployments in the Middle East. To even reach a temporary accommodation with Assad would be a propaganda coup for the "illegitimate" gasser of women and children, and outrage the Saudis and Qataris whom are still keen on their proxy war against Iran. To admit the Free Syrian Army doesn't exist and probably couldn't be trained in 8 years, let alone 8 months to a standard where it could take on IS would remove the one remaining illusion of influence we have on the ground.
We could, of course, have chosen not to intervene; we could have told the Saudis, Qataris, Kuwaitis and all the other funders of IS and al-Nusra in no uncertain terms how they were risking the seeming advances made in Iraq; we could have pushed far harder for a peace settlement before the power of the Islamists became too great; we could have done almost everything over the past decade connected with Syria and Iraq differently. In the same way, "boots on the ground" intervention is just a matter of time. It's not that we haven't learned anything, it's not that we haven't had a choice, it's just that not repeating the same mistakes over and over is too difficult by half.
Labels: Alan Henning, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, foreign policy, Iraq, Islamic State, jihadists, Kobani, liberal interventionism, politics, Syria, US foreign policy
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