First report

[There are no illustrations in this longish posting because I cannot imagine what would be appropriate. When in doubt, ignore pictures is not a bad motto.]

Part of Monday was spent at a conference organized jointly by (deep breath) the Center for Security Policy with the New Criterion, Hudson Institute, City Journal – Manhattan Institute and our own Centre for Social Cohesion. With such illustrious sponsors there were illustrious speakers, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Mark Steyn, Daniel Johnson, Melanie Phillips, John O’Sullivan and David Pryce-Jones. Several postings will be needed to do it all justice and this is merely a preliminary musing.

The theme was “Free Speech, Jihad and the Future of Western Civilization” with a sub-heading mentioning libel tourism, a peculiarly British problem but that was not one of the main subjects. Since there were no lawyers on either of the panels, there could be no discussion of how the libel laws of this country can be changed as, we all agree, they must be.

A repeated theme elaborated by several speakers was the notion that the danger we are facing through soft jihad is greater than any we have faced before as neither Nazism nor Communism were so obviously ensconced in our society. There were no schools named after Lenin or St Adolph churches on street corners. Thus, our refusal to fight the jihad is liable to destroy Western civilization in a way the other two ideologies could not.

Let me, respectfully, disagree with that. The presence of mosques and madrassas (that means school) on our street corners need not be a problem as long there is a reasonable oversight as to what is taught there. No religious or educational institution is supposed to encourage people to go out and murder various others. By and large the people who attend these institutions have no power or influence in our society. (In fact, many of the youngsters have little to look forward to and that is a separate problem that needs to be addressed.)

Obviously, we cannot allow the building of extraordinarily large mosques, whose minarets will dwarf all Christian churches; nor can we have muezzins calling the faithful to prayer five times a day in Oxford. This is not a Muslim country.

However, there is an important difference between the inability displayed certainly by the establishment and various institutions in the West to fight for our culture and our civilization as against soft jihad and the refusal to do so when Nazism and, more importantly, Communism was the threat.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of the “inevitability” of Sharia law being accepted on equal footing with the ordinary law of the land or the Lord Chief Justice speaks of being

willing to see sharia law operate in the country, so long as it did not conflict with the laws of England and Wales, or lead to the imposition of severe physical punishments,

they do not really mean that they see Sharia as being superior to Western law.

Admittedly, it is difficult to work out what the Archbishop means at the best of times and Lord Phillips appears to think that Sharia should go beyond dispute resolution and, possibly, apply to marriage arrangement with all that implies for Muslim women. Nevertheless, both statements are expressions of moral paralysis and, possibly, physical cowardice rather than belief in the system.

This is very different from the real fifth column that all Western countries had for Nazi and, much more so, Communist ideology. The politicians, officials, diplomats, film producers and actors, officers during the latter half of the Second World War, academics, teachers, and others promoted Communism, openly or covertly, because they believed that the Western system of social, political, economic and moral ideas must be destroyed in order to create a higher societal structure. Not only was that much more dangerous it was also much more long-lasting.

I would argue that our perplexity in the face of the latest enemy and inability to proclaim the superiority of our own values of political, religious and social freedom have been caused to a very grerat extent by the infiltration of the much more dangerous enemy the West faced for decades until the Soviet Union collapsed in the early nineties.

At the conference Ayaan Hirsi Ali talked of soft jihad as termites. You may think your beautiful furniture is still standing but as soon as you move it there is a complete collapse – the termites have destroyed it. I am afraid it was the Communist infiltration that were the termites and the furniture that was in place and looked so nice cannot stand up to the strong movement that is being inflicted by the jihadists.

In the same way, many of us would argue that another specie of termites are the tranzis and, particularly, the European Union that is lodging in our furniture and destroying it from inside.

The extent to which that system’s agents penetrated our society has been documented in greater detail for the United States than for any European country, including Britain. Partly, this is a matter of luck – the CPUSA’s documents have ended up in the hands of competent researchers and historians, thus making it possible for the Yale series on the history of Communism to be published, starting with “The Secret World of American Communism” in 1996.

Then there are is the historical fact that the Venona documents that produced a remarkable list of individuals, some of whom have not yet been identified, were decoded in the United States, though often with British help. The declassification of documents was possible because of America’s Freedom of Information Act, which actually allows people to find out matters of some importance. Similar attempts to find out names of agents have failed in Britain and in European countries.

There are other issues: the famous libel laws that have prevented many an historian from disclosing the truth about the situation in Britain; and a curious desire to bury and ignore the past, often coupled with misplaced compassion for the now elderly agents or their families if they themselves have died.

Even in the United States McCarthyism is a word to invoke shivers of horror in many a right-thinking individual and George Clooney can get away with making a deeply dishonest film about the period, “Good night and good luck”. Ed Murrow may have been “a useful idiot” but the man at the heart of the story, Lawrence Duggan, was most definitely a Soviet agent and his death, allegedly a suicide, remains deeply suspicious.

The announcement that the Rosenbergs were definitely spies by one of their co-agents produced a frisson of astonishment in the New York Times.

In other words the debate is not ended and a great deal more is likely to come out on the subject of those “invisible” groups of agents, most of whom were in some position of power and influence. Compare that to the position the soft jihadists hold in our society.

Some, either Muslims themselves or their sympathizers, who, nevertheless, do not actually want to live in a Sharia-run society, have acquired positions in such organizations as the Canadian Human Rights Councils (that are now being investigated and may well cease to exist soon). Some, like Khalid bin Mahfouz, have enough money to manipulate the disgraceful British libel laws in order to impose censorship on all those who try to discuss what he has been doing with his money. But most of the mosque-goers and madrassa-attenders are on the fringes of society. That causes problems of its own but they cannot be compared with the likes of Harry Dexter White or Alger Hiss.

This is not to say that I do not find soft jihad seriously disturbing. Attempts to silence research, debate, even artistic expression whether through our libel courts, the Canadian Human Rights kangaroo courts or the manipulation of the American legal system and academia (so what else is new?) are outrageous and must be resisted.

(Incidentally, all those people who were so schocked by the fact that Governor Palin, as Mayor of Wasilla, asked the City Librarian about the possibility of certain books being withdrawn, not actually suggesting that she should do so, were very silent when Cambridge University Press, terrified by Khalid bin Mahfouz’s determination to bankrupt them if necessary, demanded that all libraries worldwide should withdraw copies of “Alms for Jihad”. Luckily, the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association recommended that American libraries refuse to comply and many readers seconded that.)

The decisions taken by the OIC and the Human Rights Council are also worrying. We all know that these organizations should have no influence on what happens in our countries at all and we also know that there will be creeping indirect influence. In fact, as I have suggested before on the BrugesGroupBlog, the transnational organizations are, in many ways, a greater danger to us than the Islamists.

We cannot allow books being pulped or withdrawn from publication because there are people around who do not like what is being said with respected writers and researchers like Rachel Ehrenfeld being prevented from publishing her work; we cannot have journalists like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant bullied and harassed by sinister commissars for truth, who are not accountable to anyone and who have no legal framework within which they must operate (though, I understand they are now being investigated by various law enforcement agencies); we cannot accept that the likes of Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch should be silenced because they dare to point to unpalatable truths.

At the same time let us not forget that there are other forces that try to abolish liberties that had been fought for. The EU, as my colleague has reported, is once again trying to control blogs and bloggers, no doubt for the good of us all.

Over on the other side of the Pond, there are constant Democrat threats or promises to reintroduce the “Fairness Doctrine”, whose aim is to close down the highly successful right-wing radio channels and programmes. There were reports of Obama campaigners closing down Clinton-supporting blogs and trying to derail interviews with the likes of Stanley Kurtz on the subject of Obama’s links with the not-all-that-remorseful former Weatherman Bill Ayers and their joint behaviour over the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Those egregious Holocaust denial laws not only go on in countries like Germany but there have been proposals to extend them to other countries. And, of course, we all, in Britain, live under the constant threat of the libel laws as operated by rich crooks with the aid and support of some (not many) members of the judicial profession.

The point I am making that the censorship and other aspects of the soft jihad are imposed through fear not through ideological agreement. In the first place, it is physical fear. If we don’t agree to stop investigating the Koran or pointing out that almost all recent terrorist acts were committed by Islamist groups, they might come after us. We might be blown up or murdered in the street like Theo van Gogh was. At best we shall have to live under permanent protection like Ayaan Hirsan Ali and other outspoken Muslims and ex-Muslims do or like Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian does, or like the Danish cartoonists do.

There is also the matter of intellectual cowardice. Too many people in the establishment and, one has to admit, outside it are terrified of proclaiming a point of view, particularly if it sounds nasty or unpleasant. The exceptions are the United States and Israel. You can say anything you like about them. Actually, you can say anything you like about any right-wing analyst or politician, as Governor Sarah Palin has found out.

The third intelinking thread is moral cowardice or, rather, a moral paralysis, the result, I submit, of the activity of those termites. Faced with a determined onslaught by people who are not particularly interested in convincing us but in overcoming our possible resistance by any means necessary, too many of us find it hard to define what it is we are fighting for and how to go about the fight.

The EU, needless to say, has been part of the problem. By insisting that member states abandon their own identities and histories in order to become part of the grand project; by officially proclaiming that part of the project is not upsetting anybody (except those who oppose it) as Commission President Barroso made it more or less clear in a waffly statement about the Danish cartoons and certain reactions to them, the EU has made our fight against the enemy that is trying to destroy our culture that much more difficult. Come to think of it, the EU, together with other tranzis and many of our own establishment, has refused to acknowledge that the enemy exists and is armed.

However, this is a war we can win. The Islamists, unlike our earlier enemies, are offering very little. Few people want to live under Sharia law or go back to a particularly backward version of the social structure of the Dark Ages. So they are beatable as long as we remain determined to do so and that means, among other things, not handing over Muslim populations to their rule.

The idea of imposing Sharia on Muslim communities in the West, thus creating a legal apartheid and condemning millions of people who should be living under our laws to that backward social structure ought to be repugnant.

We can stand up to these people, rescue their victims (those unfortunate youngsters who have been seduced by highly unpleasant imams and the women who are trapped in Sharia family rules, for instance) and, in the process, reassert those values that make the West, in particular the Anglosphere, the most attractive and energetic part of the world.

Going back to the conference, I want to quote two of the speakers (others will turn up in other postings), both writers I admire greatly and who have made appearances on the blog: David Pryce-Jones (here is his blog) and John O’Sullivan.

Mr Pryce-Jones is an expert on Middle Eastern history and very knowledgeable on Islam. In fact, he is considerably more knowledgeable than many of the Imams that spout hate-filled rubbish and all those who protest against “Islamophobia”. (Nothing new in that, many eurosceptics are more knowledgeable about European countries and their history as well as the EU than all those who scream “swivel-eyed Europhobes”.)

He started his comments by mourning the degradation that has fallen on the North African and other Arab Muslim countries in the last few decades, blaming it on the absolutist political systems that have grown up in them since the Second World War.

The nationalists got rid of the few nascent political institutions that the French and the British left behind (very few, as it happens) and turned the countries into oppressive one-party states. When these did not produce all or even some of what they promised, a power struggle ensued with the radical Islamists taking over, often in very bloodthirsty fashion. (Let me just add that the story of radical Islamism growing out of left-wing, Soviet supported Communist or quasi Communist regimes has not been properly told. It is so much easier to blame Western imperialism. The latest issue of the Salisbury Review has a fascinating article on this process in Algeria by the Portuguese writer and politician Patricia Lança but you have subscribe to the magazine to read it in full.)

Breaking absolute power is immensely difficult though, as Mr Pryce-Jones pointed out, the much-maligned Bush regime seems to have managed it and Iraq may well turn into an exemplar for the rest of the Middle East. It is certainly a worrying precedent for the rulers of those countries.

In the meantime, Mr Pryce-Jones advocates a new and more attractive Congress for Cultural Freedom that will give a forum to those Muslim thinkers and writers who are not so much “moderate” as that is a meaningless term but intent on turning Islam into a modern ideology that can survive without too much bloodshed into the twenty-first century and develop into the future.

The original Congress for Cultural Freedom was set up by the disillusioned left to counter the very effective Communist propaganda and other activity that was destroying Western culture and society. It was financed by the CIA because no-one else would. I think we can all agree that its work was but partially successful.

A Congress that would be opposing Islamism will have to be different as it will have to concentrate on the Muslim countries and communities themselves. In the West, it will have to proclaim the importance of Western values and culture and fight cowardice and abject desires to surrender rather than a powerful ideology.

John O’Sullivan, Executive Editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, pointed out that not all threats to free speech come from radical Islam. He should know. He and his staff are fighting very tangible threats and attacks in many countries, not least Russia.

He further pointed out that the lack of decent British patriotism that can be passed on to the young (and old but let that pass) has created problems for everyone in this country, not just the Muslim communities. (This, too, is a point we have made frequently on this blog.)

He suggested a programme of five points:

End multiculturalism and concentrate on teaching that decent British patriotism that includes a great deal of history, not forgetting that within a liberal (in the true sense of the word) Western culture there can be many divergences.

Something nasty to be done with the establishment, whose idiocy and dishonesty has, if not exactly landed us, certainly has kept us in the mess we are in. Of course, the establishment tends to be rather left-wing these days so let us not have any more nonsense about the poor underprivileged left, ranting against power structures that disappeared decades ago.

A serious reform of the police, which has become “the paramilitary wing of the Guardian”, a phrase so clever that many of us in the audience immediately made a note of stealing it.

An alteration to immigration rules that would prevent all those endless first cousin marriages to people from backward villages in the Indian sub-continent. This, needless to say, will start working towards an improvement in the situation of women in the Muslim communities.

The fifth point was the most important one as this is something we can all do immediately: resistance to foolish intellectual fashions, no matter where they come from.

So there we are dear readers. A first report on the many subjects raised by an important conference and a general musing on the subjects covered. I may add that quite a few people on the panel and in the audience might not have agreed with my opinion. Unsurprisingly, I remain convinced by them.

Who should decide - Part 2

[This is a continuation of a posting I put up yesterday.]

Let us have a look at Jonathan Freedland's piece first because it comes from the same stable that tried to influence the last presidential election by urging Guardian readers write to voters in Ohio, suggesting to them that for everybodys sake they should vote John Kerry (D). Ohio, incidentally, the last major State to declare, went Republican.

Mr Freedland's piece is riddled with inaccuracies. He rehashes all the accusations against Governor Palin, having clearly not heard the truth about any of them; he calls Andrew Sullivan a conservative, something that has not been true for some time; he assumes that it is black candidates who do worse in elections than in polls, whereas the truth is that it is left-wing candidates; and he actually thinks that the ill-fated Berlin rally was a good thing. Then he delivers what he thinks are the killer punches:

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was rejected because of his colour - the world's verdict will be harsh. In that circumstance, Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote recently, international opinion would conclude that "the United States had its day, but in the end couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy
irrationality over race".

Even if it's not ethnic prejudice, but some other aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical decline". Let's not forget, McCain's campaign manager boasts that this election is "not about the issues."

Well now, let us try to sort this rubbish out. First of all, one cannot start by dismissing Sarah Palin, whose one great fault is that she is an outsider by Washington DC standards and then demand that Americans vote for the insider and call it "change" and "fresh start".

Furthermore, after the Democrats discarded Hillary Clinton, surely not voting for the McCain/Palin ticket would mean that the American electorate is motivated more than anything else by crazy irrationality over gender. If not voting in Obama is racist, not voting in Palin must be sexist. You see, Mr Freedland, two can play that stupid game. (As a matter of fact, whoever loses in 2008, Palin will emerge as the winner. Tough luck Mr Freedland.)

But, of course, it is more than that – we are talking about Americans not recognizing their own “self-interest”, which consists of being liked by Mr Freedland and Slate’s Jacob Weisberg and the mob in Berlin who applauded wildly whenever Obama mentioned completely irresponsible things such as solving the Darfur problem and global warming. (Incidentally, Senator Obama’s contribution to the problem of global warming is not, as you would expect, very helpful, as this account makes it clear.)

The conclusion one finally draws from that attack column is that as far as Mr Freedland is concerned Americans have to prove their non-racist credentials by voting in a black man (or, in this case, a mixed race one) and any black (or mixed race) man will do as they are in Mr Freedland's mind completely interchangeable. Ahem, isn't that rather racist?

I know of a very large number of Americans who read everything Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele writes, are followers of LaShawn Barber's blog (woops, she is a black woman so she does not count), think Clarence Thomas is a good Supreme Court judge and would happily vote for Michael Steele (more here). (Incidentally, the last two of these have received a staggering amount of racist abuse from the left. Clearly, this does not bother Mr Freedland.) But they will not vote for Barack Obama not because he is black (well, mixed race) but because of who and what he is. He himself, not the rest of the male black population. That is what politics is about, Mr Freedland, in a democracy and not the sort of oligarchic government you are happy with.

Nor do I see why America needs to prove its anti-racist credentials to countries where ethnic minorities do not exactly prosper (a look at the situation in France might be instructive). The present Secretary of State and her immediate predecessor are both black. The fact that neither has managed to overcome the problems with the job is irrelevant. Their white predecessors did not either.

There are numerous black Senators, Representatives, Governors, Mayors (oh yes, they are important in American politics, despite Mr Freedland's ignorant comments), State legislators. The mere fact that a black (well, mixed race) man was chosen to be the candidate for one of the main parties is a huge achievement. Then again, the fact that a woman has been chosen to be the Vice-Presidential candidate for one of the main parties is also a huge achievement. And she, unlike Geraldine Ferraro, stands a good chance of winning and, probably, going on to becoming the Presidential candidate.

So much for Mr Freedland. Let us turn our attention (and, I trust, vitriol) to the BBC World Service poll. Goody, goody, the "World Wants Obama as President". Well, the majority of the 23,500 people asked in this poll across 22 countries does, anyway. Not decisive, I should have thought, particularly as these would be people who had access to the BBC and, more to the point, to whom the BBC had access.

A total of 23,531 people in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, the UAE, Britain and the United States were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone in July and August 2008 for the poll.

Of course, one has to add that in July and August Senator McCain had had very little coverage in much of the world media (including the American MSM) as it was before his brilliant pick of Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice-President. Is the BBC going to conduct another poll that would take recent developments into account? I think not.

Several things strike me about the piece, apart from the comment:

In the United States, three polls taken since the Republican party convention ended on Thursday (local time) show Senator McCain with a lead of 1 to 4 percentage points - within the margin of error - and two others show the two neck-and-neck.

One wonders whether there was any mention of the margin of error when Obama's lead was below 5 percent, which has happened a number of times. Again, I suspect not. It's the way you tell 'em.

The summary of the figures is odd:

The margin in favour of Senator Obama ranged from 9 per cent in India to 82 per cent in Kenya, while an average of 49 percent across the 22 countries preferred Senator Obama compared with 12 percent preferring Senator McCain. Some four in 10 did not take a view.

Right. So nearly half the world, according to this, actually has no view on the subject. That's very interesting. I didn't see that in all the headlines. The spread is also interesting. The margin of preference was nine percent in India, a country that has close links with America and is worried about the defence situation in Asia.

In Kenya, that seat of freedom and democracy, the margin was 82 percent. Would that have anything to do with the fact that Obama's father (who had abandoned him and his mother when the child was two years old) was Kenyan? Surely not.

We have been here before in 2004 when we wrote about the sheer arrogance of presuming to dictate to the Americans how they should vote here and here. The subject came up earlier in this campaign as well.

Let me sum up: the American President and the American Congress are elected by the American people according to the rules laid down in the American Constitution, which has been around for well over 200 years. This is called constitutional democracy. The alternative of acclaiming the POTUS by journalists, NGOs, tranzis and people they condescend to ask is not acceptable. Though it may suit Senator Obama's campaign who lost a lot of good will in America when they had their man strut around as if he was already the President. Unfortunately, America has this small thing called an election. Oh dear, I am repeating myself.

Then there is a question of governments and elections in the countries where they so blithely tell us who should be the American President. Just how much say do the people of China, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Nigeria, Russia and the UAE have in the selection of their own government, a matter of greater concern to them, one would have thought?

So we come to the last and, for us, the most important point. Does Mr Freedland ever mention the fact that in Britain around 80 per cent of the legislation comes from the European Union with the Parliament, even if it is aware of it, unable to strike it down? Has the BBC ever conducted a poll about the fact that legal decisions in Britain can be overthrown by the ECJ and legislation properly passed in Westminster can be declared invalid by the same body?

This is what I wrote in July in response to the notion that "we" should have a say in the choice of the POTUS:

To which one can say only one thing: who is this "we"? We, the people of European countries, do not have a say in the selection of our real government. Nor do we have a say in whether to have a completely new constitutional arrangement, to wit the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty imposed on us. When the people of one European country are graciously allowed to vote on the subject and say no, plans are made to disregard their vote. So, before we claim a right to impose our views on the Americans on who should be their President perhaps we should take a closer look at what is happening in our own countries.

Furthermore, is it not strange that "our" opinion always seems to be on the side of the Democrats and the more left-wing and anti-American their rhetoric is, the more "we" seem to like them? Could it be because we are fed a succession of … ahem … inaccurate stories about American politics by our own media and various political pundits? Or could it be that "we" are only a very small proportion of the population?

Well now, let me ask that question buried in the first paragraph: before we start interfering with the American constitutional structure are we to be allowed to decide whether we want the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty imposed on us and is Mr Freedland going to write an angry article about the need for Britain and other European countries to turn over a new leaf and resume their existence as democratic countries? I take that is a no. After all, it is so much easier to make irresponsible statements about the next occupant of the Oval Office.

What do they hope to achieve?

In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal Bret Stephens's column argued something we have been saying on this blog for a long time: Russia’s flaying about and bullying neighbouring smaller and weaker countries are not a sign of strength, no matter what most of the media repeats ad nauseam; it is a sign of weakness.

Putin, supposedly the strong man of Russia and of the whole Eurasian sphere, has demonstrated his and his government's weakness on a number of occasions, in the international and, more importantly, the domestic arena.

"In Russia," wrote the great scholar of Russian imperialism Dietrich Geyer many years ago, "expansion was an expression of economic weakness, not exuberant strength."

Keep this observation in mind as Vladimir Putin and his minions bask in the glow of Western magazine cover stories about Russia's "resurgence" following its splendid little war against plucky little Georgia. The Kremlin is certainly confident these days, buoyed by years of rising commodity prices and a bullying foreign policy that mistakes fear for respect -- the very combination that made the Soviet Union seem invincible in the 1970s.

Then there is the question of demography. Russia is not reproducing itself by its birthrate and has the lowest life expectancy, especially for men, in the developed world (if one can really count it as a developed country). Given that its military strategy still seems to depend on "we have more soldiers than you have bullets", the demographic factor is very important as President Putin (before he became Prime Minister) for one, had noted.

Then there is the question of the all-important oil and gas production where many things are going wrong, not least because of the Russian state determinedly taking over and gradually easing out those Western firms that could provide investment and expertise.

There's bad news here, too. Oil production is set to decline this year for the first time in a decade, a decline that is widely expected to accelerate rapidly in 2010. Of Russia's 14 largest oil fields, seven are more than 50% depleted. Production at its four largest gas fields is also in decline. Russia drilled about four million feet of new wells last year. In 1990, it drilled 17 million.

None of this is because Russia is necessarily running out of oil and gas: Existing fields could be better managed, and huge expanses of territory remain unexplored. Instead, it is a function of underinvestment, incompetence, corruption, political interference and crude profiteering. "If you're running Gazprom but you don't really own it, then your interest is in maximizing short-term profits, not long-term development," a Western diplomat told McClatchy's Tom Lasseter.

Amazingly, the system is of deliberate design, as if nothing was learned from the collapse of communism. Parastatal companies are rarely if ever efficient. Yet Mr. Putin has gone about effectively nationalizing entire industries. Foreign investors crave predictability. Yet Mr. Putin has created conditions which his own president, Dmitry Medvedev, calls "legal nihilism." Foreign customers of Russia's commodities seek reliable supplies. Yet Mr. Putin has made no secret of his willingness to turn the energy spigot off whenever it suits his political convenience.

All of which makes one wonder why Russia has chosen to flex her muscle militarily rather than, as before, through her control of energy supplies now. For the attack on Georgia was carefully planned and was not a spontaneous reaction either to the Georgian attempt to reconquer South Ossetia or to the Kosovan declaration of independence.

It is not entirely clear what advice Saakashvili was receiving from his allies in the West or from his own cabinet, some of whom may well have wanted to provoke a fight at this point, knowing that the Georgian forces were not ready to fight a strengthened 58th Army (which is not an elite organization but quite the opposite).

There is some evidence that the Russian forces were not very well equipped technically, that the Georgian air force did rather better than expected and rumours that the Georgian ground forces managed to inflict more damage than the Russians had expected. Much of their advance, in any case, came after Saakashvili had ordered the Georgian troops to stop fighting and had asked for cease-fire negotiations.

The Russians are not releasing information about the numbers that had gone in or the numbers that came out after the long-delayed adherence to the agreement supposedly brokered by President Sarkozy but largely ignored by President Medvedev. Given that those early numbers about the supposed “genocide” in South Ossetia have been discarded even by the Russian authorities, any information emanating from that source can be described safely as mere propaganda. Independent journalists are not being allowed in to the occupied territories and the fog of war seems denser than ever.

It is possible to do a preliminary summing up of the situation. As these are largely well-known facts from news stories, there seems no point in linking them as it would be difficult to decide who to link to. On the other hand, if there is a story that has not been widely published, a link will be provided.

The Russian Duma, Prime Minister and President have all announced that the two break-away autonomous republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, will now be independent of Georgia. This is a reversal of Russian policy so far. Despite the presence of a large number of Russian "peace-keepers" in the two areas, there has been no formal recognition of their "independence" as Russia is not too keen on that subject, having the odd problem or two of her own in the Caucasus. The names of Chechnya, Ingushetiya and, possibly, North Ossetia spring to mind.

Interestingly enough, China has distanced herself from Russia, as have the other member states of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization, though that is not how the Kremlin likes to put it.

In a joint statement, the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan said they "support the active role of Russia in assisting peace and cooperation in the region."

The six in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) also "express their deep concern over the recent tensions surrounding the South Ossetia question and call for the sides to peacefully resolve existing problems through dialogue."

Echoing language used in the West over the conflict, a portion of the statement also said the summit members supported the principle of "territorial integrity" of states.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the statement showed a "united position" on the Georgia conflict, and Kremlin officials indicated they were happy with its phrasing.

China's foreign ministry reiterated, however, its concern over Russia's decision to recognise two breakaway Georgian provinces as independent states, and experts were split on how to interpret the Dushanbe statement.

This is not good news for Russia. They were undoubtedly expecting hostility from the West, though maybe not the NATO fleet in the Black Sea, which has produced some venomous statements from President Medvedev and various military spokesmen. One would expect a certain amount of venom but the shrillness of attacks both on the United States (whose fault it all is, naturally) and on its allies from the hitherto mild and rational Russian president has taken a lot of people aback. Though I must admit that his description of the EU's carefully worded non-threat of possible sanctions as the product of a "sick" and "confused" imagination made me smile.

President Medvedev's virulent language that descended into gutter speak at times in the weeks since the beginning of the invasion of Georgia indicates either that he is prompted by Prime Minister Putin, who has always spoken in that way, or that he is trying to show himself to be as tough as his predecessor was.

Of course, the two ex-Georgian autonomous republics are not going to be independent and from various reports it would appear that this fact is beginning to dawn on the unfortunate inhabitants there. While, one assumes, many were hoping for nothing more than Russian protection, the stark truth is that they will be subsumed into the country. How anyone who lives on Russia's border can make such a mistake is a mystery. Then again, they had very few choices.

Occupation forces in the guise of peacekeepers (Russian ones only) will be positioned in both republics with many missiles in South Osssetia. Abkhazia appears to be in the process of being bought up by various Russians who have always liked holidaying in Sukhumi and its surroundings.

Over and above that, the Russians are staying in a security zone that extends 14 kms beyond the borders of the two regions. Since most of the troops have been withdrawn from Georgia, leaving behind a certain amount of devastation and, as usual, tales of extensive looting, those occupying the security zone will be a sitting target, should the Georgians decide to take a leaf out of other Caucasian people’s book. Then again, the Kremlin might welcome some attacks, in order to re-invade.

All round, this does not appear to be a sufficient reward for what may have been unpleasant fighting and for losing whatever position they may have managed to achieve in international affairs. The idea spread by the Kremlin and its busy propagandists is that the West will forget after a while, since they need Russia as a supplier of energy and in the fight against terrorism.

As for the second, Russia is a questionable ally in that she plays a complicated game, which is of little use to any other country. As for the first, Russia’s behaviour may well be encouraging more European countries to start looking round for alternative sources of energy, especially as at some point in the not too distant future Russia may well have to start making decisions on whether to continue to sell abroad and deplete the domestic market with all that entails, or to satisfy the domestic market and forego income from Europe.

Another interesting development is the defiance shown by countries that may be next on the Putin-Medvedev shopping list, such as Ukraine. This is being openly encouraged by several Western countries, with the US and Britain in the lead. Reports of the military effort that was needed to invade Georgia does not indicate that Russia is ready to move into Ukraine, a much larger and more populous country with a better equipped military.

Of course, there is the possibility of fomenting a civil war, which will result in Russian intervention to guarantee stability there as well as in the Caucasus and the detaching of Crimea to be subsumed into Russia.

In the meantime, the expression a new Cold War has taken over all public discourse, whether it is the Foreign Secretary warning Russia not to start one or President Medvedev saying that Russia is not afraid of it or simply everybody discussing whether we are heading into one or not. One wonders whether all those somewhat pompous critics of Edward Lucas's book, like the ex-ambassador, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, who was so sure that Mr Lucas did not understand Russia, are feeling a little silly at the moment. Probably not, if I know anything about ambassadors (Charles Crawford being the honourable exception).

Was this really what the Putin-Medvedev ménage had intended? Or is the whole unpleasant saga aimed, as previous foreign sorties had been, at the domestic market? Is the invasion of Georgia, in other words, yet another way of whipping up fear in the Russian population?

Shouldn't Brown and Cameron do "foreign"?

A little while ago I was asked by the BBC Russian Service to comment on the ongoing problems in Russo-British relationship. What will happen at the Brown-Medvedev meeting at the G8 Summit? Not a lot, was my prediction, and I seem to have been right.

The larger point is one that I had made before in the selfsame studio: Gordon Brown’s views on foreign policy are completely unknown. Does he even have any views? Does he even know that there is a world out there? He certainly has no concept of what Britain’s foreign policy might be based on. And, sad to say, neither does the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, whose Shadow Foreign Secretary seems to be a part-time member of the front bench, even though he is shadowing one of the great offices of state.

This became painfully obvious during the last NATO summit when important matters were discussed. The question of whether Ukraine and Georgia should be asked to participate in the Membership Action Plan (MAP) went to the heart of several rather tricky problems. How far should NATO extend? What is to be done about making the Caucasus – important for all sorts of reasons, not least oil – secure? And, above all, is Russia to be allowed to interfere in internal NATO matters? Subsequent developments in the Caucasus with Russia, to all intents and purposes, invading Abkhazia, known as the break-away region of Georgia, have confirmed the importance of all these issues.

The summit divided rather sharply between those, led by the United States and Canada, who wanted to invite Ukraine and Georgia to participate in MAP and those, led by Germany and France, who opposed it, largely because they did not want to upset Russia, from whom Germany and some other West European countries are buying an ever larger proportion of their gas and oil and will do unless, as seems likely, Russian production is steeply reduced.

The final outcome was unexpected. While Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy with their acolytes, the Spanish and the Benelux governments, strutted round boasting of how they had stood up to America, President Bush quietly lined up his allies and the final statement promised both Ukraine and Georgia eventual membership of NATO. This went further than the original offer of the Membership Action Plan that had been defeated by Russia’s proxies.

What was Britain’s position? Did Gordon Brown line up with George Bush and Stephen Harper with their allies or with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy and their allies? Neither. Prime Minister Brown sat on the fence, whining that there was no consensus he could adhere to. What was the Opposition’s attitude? Did they think Britain should go with the pro-MAP or the anti-MAP group and did they demand a debate because HMG had shown itself to be so utterly feeble? Well, no. The whole episode seemed to pass Messrs Cameron, Hague and Fox by without so much as a raised eyebrow.

The main problem here is the European Union, a subject, which seems to mesmerize most politicians, particularly the Conservatives. When asked what their views on foreign policy are, they (and their Labour counterparts) inevitably start talking of the EU and, possibly, the Lisbon (formerly known as Constitutional) Treaty. The trouble is that the EU is not a matter for foreign policy only. As it is the fount of most of this country’s legislation it has to be discussed under domestic matters. At the same time, it is well-nigh impossible for Britain to develop a coherent foreign policy as long as such matters as international trade agreements remain in the hands of the European Union and the Common Foreign Policy is an avowed aim of the integration process.

Of course, if neither the Government nor the Opposition express any ideas of what Britain’s foreign policy should be, the situation becomes even more difficult. Apart from an insistence that we must ratify the Lisbon Treaty, no matter what happens with promises to support the French desire to create a European force and a generalized bleating about the situation in Zimbabwe, we have heard very little from the youthful Foreign Secretary. Gordon Brown makes the odd comment about the need to send either more aid or just as much aid to countries that clearly need to be weaned off it in order to develop their economy. He is also sometimes in favour of a close alliance with the United States and sometimes against it.

On the other side David Cameron shows no interest in matters of foreign policy beyond the odd trip to help some African country and getting into a muddle as to what he intends to do or not do about the Lisbon Treaty. This would not matter if the Shadow Foreign Secretary made it clear what the Conservative ideas on British foreign policy are. William Hague, who cannot be seriously described as an opponent of the European Union or even of the integration process, has been known to make the odd comment about the Lisbon Treaty (he is against it) and the remote possibility of Tony Blair becoming the first President of the European Council (he thinks it’s funny).

There are the compulsory comments on the need to help poor countries without any serious ideas as to how this might be done and there was at least one major speech. In it the Shadow Foreign Secretary explained that Britain should move away from a close relationship with the United States and look to other countries, the growing economies of Asia such as China and India. The speech appeared to be rather random, written after a cursory glance at the atlas.

Surely Mr Hague must know that Britain’s relationship with India, with whom there are historic links, which is an Anglospheric country with similar political, legal, constitutional and, intermittently, economic ideas must be different from that with China, which is an oppressive Communist gerontocracy where political and economic tensions are becoming more and more apparent. Surely Mr Hague is aware of that entity we call the Anglosphere. Perhaps not, as he has never referred to it and has ignored the fact that both India and Australia have separate and close relations with America and both are developing into serious regional powers. In other words, there is no suggestion that under William Hague’s guidance and David Cameron’s leadership the Conservative Party has the slightest intention of developing a foreign policy.

Given Britain’s history it is, to put it mildly, disconcerting to find the country in a situation where neither the Government nor Her Majesty’s Opposition has the slightest interest in her position in the world.

Anything better than this!

Monday 12 June 2000 and I was riding the suburban train from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris Nord, then to switch stations and get the train to Strasbourg where I was to spend the next few days at the European Parliament.

When disaster struck, it was all so natural. About halfway through the journey, a young lad - of Arab appearance, maybe late teens or early twenties – came up to me as we were stopped at a station. He came quite close, asking me in French whether this was the train to Charles de Gaulle.

It took me a time to work out what he was saying but once I understood, I told him he was on the wrong train. In my best pidgin French, with much gesticulating, I told him he wanted one going the other way. The lad dashed for the doors, which were just closing, and the train moved off. Only then did I notice that my computer bag, containing my laptop, was gone. The bastard had nicked it!!

At Gare du Nord I was minded to report the theft to the police, but I could not see a police station or any sign of one. I thus resolved to report it at Gar de l'Est, where I recalled seeing a police post. I found it easily enough but the two policemen and the one policewoman behind the counter – none of whom, incidentally, spoke English - told me that it was outside their jurisdiction.

The crime had occurred "sur le train" so it had to be dealt with by "le bureau chemin de fer". Fortunately, or so I thought, their office was just round the corner, an anonymous door in the wall with only the tiniest of signs alongside. I pressed the entryphone button and was admitted, only to be told by the police there – who also did not speak English - that I had to report it to the police in Gare du Nord. "Forget it!", I told them – I had my train to catch to Strasbourg. I would report it on my way home, that Thursday – which indeed I needed to do in order to claim the insurance.

A mere routine, I thought. It was something I was going to regret.

Come the Thursday, I left Strasbourg on the 2.39 pm train, headed for Paris. A colleague had written me a letter in French, explaining the details of the theft, asking the police to prepare a certificate for the insurance claim. She also had written a letter on European Parliament writing paper, explaining that I was very pressed for time, having to catch an aeroplane at Charles de Gaulle at 8.15 that evening.

The train was due in at Gare de l'Est at 6.40pm and the trip from there to the airport would take an hour. Since I had to check in half an hour before the flight, that gave me only ten to fifteen minutes to make the report and get the certificate. I was going to be pushed.

At Gare de l'Est, I walked across to Gare du Nord – that was the quickest way. I had already found out that the police post was situated on Platform 3, but what I hadn't reckoned on was how big Gare du Nord really was. Needless to say, platform 3 was at the opposite end of the point I entered it. I made my best speed and found the bureau Chemin de Fer halfway down the long platform. There were absolutely no signs directing people to it, and only the tiniest name plaque adjacent the door, when I finally got there. No wonder I couldn't find it on my way out and, if I hadn't known to look for the "bureau Chemin de Fer", I wouldn’t have known what I was looking for anyway.

As with the other bureau – at Gare de l'Est – the door was guarded by an entryphone. I pressed the button and was admitted, to find three policemen. I gave them my colleague's letter and one of them read it, conferring with his own colleague.

As before, none of them spoke English but the first officer explained that this bureau only dealt with immigration matters relating to the Eurostar. In French, he explained to me that there was another "bureau" on the station, and I had to go there.

Here I was, at a major international station, dealing with police whose job was immigration, and none of them spoke English. Nevertheless, they did give me a photocopy of a hand-drawn map. Obviously, this was not the first time they had been confronted with this problem. As an additional clue, one of the policemen told me to look for the "porte bleu".

According to the map, the proper "bureau" was back the way I had come, but fortunately – as I thought – in the direction of the suburban station from where I was to catch my train to Charles de Gaulle. Indeed, as I followed the map, I found myself led into the very part of the station where I wanted to be.

But, for the life of me, I could not see the "bureau Chemin de Fer". In desperation, I asked the assistant of a newspaper kiosk, who pointed beyond the electronic barriers which guarded the entry to the platforms. I had to get a train ticket in order to get to the police station!

Fortunately – or so I thought – I had the return half of my ticket bought earlier in the week to get me to the Gare du Nord, but when I pushed it into the slot to open the barrier, all I got were insistent electronic bleeps. The damn thing refused to open.

By now I was running seriously short of time and, with no railway officials in sight, I resolved that the quickest way to get access was to buy yet another ticket. That cost me ten minutes, working up the interminable queue to the ticket office, and left me 49FF (£5.00) poorer. Nonetheless, I did get past the barrier, into a cavernous hall, with no sign whatsoever of the fabled "bureau Chemin de Fer". On the verge of giving up entirely, I tried walking up what appeared to be a completely unused area of the expanse. Lo and behold, at the very end, I spotted a blue door.

Once I got right up to it, I spotted the tell-tale plaque alongside, announcing the presence of this fabled bureau. I pressed the button on the entryphone – what else did I expect? – and the door clicked open. Inside, I was confronted with… another door and another entryphone.

After the ritual pressing and pushing, I then found myself in an enormous room, an absolute hive of activity with policemen in uniform rushing hither and thither. In the corner was an American-style lock-up cage, housing a very unsavoury-looking character. At the very far end of the room was a small counter, behind which stood a single policeman, with a single chevron on his epaulettes. He looked at me expectantly as I approached, almost quizzically as if to say, "What are you doing here?"

To my complete lack of surprise, he did not speak English. I gave him my colleague’s letters, and made sure he read the one saying I was in a hurry. He read both slowly and deliberately and then asked, "Passport, monsieur?" That was my big mistake. I gave it to him, whereupon he disappeared, with it and my letters. Ten minutes latter, with me still standing at the counter, he reappeared, drinking a cup of coffee from a vending cup, sans passport and letters, completely oblivious to my presence.

As I summoned up the courage to challenge him, I was approached by a sergeant who had my letters – but no passport. Would I look at some photographs, he asked – in French. Like his colleagues, he could not speak English. I demurred, saying a had only seen the thief for a matter of seconds, and in any case, I had a plane to catch.

The sergeant disappeared, only to be replaced by another. Suivez moi, this officer commanded, leading me to a booth in which there was a desk and a computer terminal, and my original sergeant. I was given a chair and told to wait.

Alongside me in the booth, also seated, was a young man. It turned out he was another "victim" who had managed to discover where the police were hidden. He was there – like me as I now discovered – to look at photographs. Once the sergeant returned, it was obvious he did not know how to work to computer, and had to ask for help from his fellow sergeant – who had little more idea.

Once they got the machine working, they turned to my fellow victim. He had fallen foul of a black perpetrator, aged between 35-45. Between them, the sergeants loaded up some rather poor pictures of blacks between 35-45, all of whom looked the same. Despite my letter telling the police my perpetrator was an Arab in his late teens to early twenties, the sergeant thought it a good idea if I looked at each the photographs as well, requiring from me a ritual "non" as each picture came up on the screen.

My fellow victim was dismissed – with equally negative results - and the sergeant then tried to load the "Arab" file. To my horror, the database then kindly reported that there were over 7,000 entries to review. By now I had visions of being there all night.

However, perhaps prompted by my increasingly despairing cries of "l'avion", accompanied by my tapping my watch, the sergeant relented and, with a Gallic shrug, switched off the computer. It was now just gone half-past seven and, a pinch, I could just make Charles de Gaulle. If I was very, very lucky, they might let me on the plane. But I did not have my certificate for the insurance.

The sergeant led me to an interview booth and left me there, where I was joined across the desk by the original sergeant. He had my passport, which he returned to me. I considered making a bolt for it but the man demanded my attention. He was going to fill in a form on the computer.

Working from a type-written instruction sheet, he started asking me questions, in French, the answers to which he laboriously tapped in to the computer, one-finger style. At least I learned the words for "Windows 98", which had been in my bag with the computer: "Windows quatre-vingt dix-huit".

At last, after what seemed an age, but in fact wasn't very long, he finished. There was just an outside possibility I could catch the plane. But it was not to be. With a flourish, my sergeant pressed the button on the keyboard to print out my coveted certificate, but nothing happened. He looked puzzled and called over his fellow sergeant. "Il a disparu", he complained. He had wiped the file from the computer and we had to start all over again.

By the time he had finished, it was five to eight. My flight was 8.15 and the train took at least 25 minutes. You will have to hurry monsieur, said my sergeant, exhausting his English vocabulary. What could I do? I thanked both officers gravely, shook them each by the hand, and departed. I arrived at Charles de Gaulle at 8.35. My flight had long gone.

COMMENT THREAD

It's a hard life in the tranzi world

Well, not hard in the usual sense of the word but one does have to do a certain amount of twisting and turning. Take the case of Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s Culture Minister, a close friend of President Mubarak and leading candidate for the top job at the UN Education Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco.

An article in the Wall Street Journal gives a delightful account of his many twists and turns to accommodate everybody. First he tells a Muslim Brotherhood MP that he would burn Israeli books himself if he found any in the Egyptian libraries (what else would be the job of a Culture Minister?); then he backtracks in the light of the various protests, though UNESCO seems to have had no official or unofficial reactions to that comment.

Why should anyone wonder? Is that not what politicians do on a regular basis? Backtracking, I mean, not burning books, though that comes up from time to time as well. Sadly for Mr Hosni, the issue is a little harder to deal with.

With a plum U.N. job slipping out of his reach, Mr. Hosni backtracked. He said the "book burning" remark was merely "a hyperbole -- a popular expression to prove something does not exist." The minister, who is close to President Hosni Mubarak and his wife and considered a liberal by local standards, went further the following day. He told Agence France-Presse that it is "a big mistake that Israeli books have not yet been translated (into Arabic). I have officially asked for it to be done. If people protest, I don't give a damn."

So, three decades after the Camp David accords, would Mr. Hosni support the opening of so far nonexistent cultural ties with Israel? What about a museum of Jewish antiquity and culture in Cairo? The Egyptian went into reverse again. Impossible, Mr. Hosni said, as long as "there are bloody attacks every day against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza strip."

Let me guess. There will be no Israeli books translated into Arabic and stocked in Egyptian libraries and bookshops, not even those that oppose Israeli policies. Perhaps Mr Hosni would not be too happy about Egyptians wondering why it is that writers in Israel can oppose their government's policies with no fear of being silenced or imprisoned while in Egypt even blogging is hazardous if it happens to be outside the accepted political line.

Needless to say, France is officially backing Mr Hosni's candidacy for the UNESCO job. There may be a certain amount of embarrassment on the subject.

Meanwhile, as the indispensable UN Watch has documented, the new expert acquired by the UN Human Rights Council to oversee its standing enquiry into "Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law" is Richard Falk, known for his support for truther 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Here is Hillel Neuer of UN Watch trying to find out what Mr Falk's explanation is for his curious ideas and why is the UNHRC continuing to ignore SecGen Ban Ki-Moon's suggestions that they should start looking at other violations of “the principles and bases of international law” (whatever that may be), not to mention serious human rights problems across the world:

Thank you, Mr. President.

Professor Falk, we appreciate this opportunity to ask you questions.

As we gather to address the Middle East, let us all commit to a future where every child, Palestinian and Israeli alike, will see the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights become reality.

With this goal in mind, Professor Falk, let us turn to the report that you presented today, HRC 7/17.

One of the report's exceptional features is its sharp criticism of the United Nations itself. Leading UN institutions and officials are accused of being insufficiently supportive of the Palestinians, of failing to acknowledge international law, which, according to paragraph 54, "brings the very commitment of the United Nations to human rights into question."

The report criticizes the United Nations role in the Quartet and the Road Map for Peace. It criticizes the United Nations Security Council and one of its permanent members in particular. It criticizes the United Nations Secretary-General, suggesting, in paragraph 53, that he may be refusing to fulfill legal obligations out of political reasons.

Professor Falk, my first question to you is by what methodology does one challenge some UN decisions, while accepting others uncritically?

Why are there no questions about today's Agenda Item targeting Israel, as expressed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on 20 June 2007, and I quote: “The Secretary-General is disappointed at the Council’s decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of Human Rights violations throughout the world.”

Finally, in light of the concerns expressed by the President of this Council -- in the newspaper Le Temps and elsewhere -- about the credibility of this council on the Middle East, could you tell us what credibility you expect your reports to have, when leading newspapers such as The Times of London are commenting on your support for the 9/11 conspiracy theories of David Ray Griffin, who argues, and I quote from the Times article of April 15th, "that no plane hit the Pentagon," and that "the World Trade Center was brought down by a controlled demolition"?

Thank you, Mr. President.

There is then an attempt by the Egyptian delegation to delete the entire statement and question as being irrelevant to the Palestinian issue. This is rather interesting as normally we are told that everything is relevant to the Palestinian issue. Still, the request was refused, which is a step forward for the UNHRC. Here is the video.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has voted unanimously in favour of classifying rape as “a tactic in war and a threat to international security”, apparently in the teeth of objections by China, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam and to the delight of human rights organizations.

As a matter of fact, the definition is accurate enough – mass rape as a method of waging deliberate war is not new and well understood. Next up is a report on how widespread the practice is and what can be done about it. We are looking forward to proposals on severe action by the UN in cases of widespread rape by UN peacekeepers.

Aren't we glad to be funding NGOs?

That is, needless to say, a rhetorical question. Apart from anything else, if we were glad to be funding them, we would do so and not have money compulsorily extracted from us for the purpose. NGOs are not charities that live on voluntary donations but are provided by taxpayers’ money.

This story comes via the Taxpayers’ Alliance blog, which quotes a recent report from NGO Monitor, to which they do not link. Tsk, tsk. But then, it is not always easy to do so, which makes me wonder how often NGO Monitor might suffer from hackers.

The Executive Summary, which is only one page, outlines the problem. The EU is, according to its own propaganda, committed to a peaceful solution that will not involve the destruction of Israel or the expulsion and worse of the Jewish population of that country. (Anyone who thinks that the destruction of Israel will bring peace to that part of the world has not been paying attention.)

That’s the propaganda. The reality is that

Between 2005 and 2007, the European Union provided tens of million Euros from public funds to numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), many of which are politically active in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In addition to offering services, their reports are perceived as providing expert information to policy makers, journalists and others, and their campaigns have significant political impacts. These activities however, are often inconsistent with the stated objectives of both the NGOs and EU frameworks under which they are funded, including the use of funds ostensibly designated to promote peace, for pursuing political objectives which undermine the protection of human rights.

The Report gives details of the NGOs that have received money to promote their political agenda:

This detailed research documents the degree to which EUfunded NGOs exacerbate conflict and advance particular political agendas. Many of these groups participated in the NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban conference, and their reports and campaigns repeatedly refer to Israel as a “colonial entity”, and “racist and apartheid state”, while promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Some EU-funded NGOs also consistently advocate a rejectionist Palestinian narrative of the conflict, erase the context of Palestinian terrorism, falsely accuse Israel of “war crimes” and seek to undermine Israel’s Jewish identity.

The chances of the next Durban conference, scheduled for 2009, being anything but another anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Western hatefest are slim.

Some of the problems are endemic to NGOs and all tranzis, particularly the European Union, the one fully political expression of tranziedom and it boils down to one word: unaccountability. Forget transparency – it means nothing. You can open up the odd meeting to audiences and publish any number of documents. As it happens the EU is quite good at publishing documents; considerably better than our own government or civil service. As long as there is no direct line of accountability to those who provide the money, which is the poor benighted taxpayers, corruption, both financial and political, is inevitable.

Whether the organization in question is a relatively small one like the London Development Agency, whose shenanigans played their part in Ken Livingstone’s downfall, or a much larger and better financed NGO or those über-tranzis, the EU and the UN, the result is always the same.

Naturally enough, the most ruthless and corrupt players take control. So far I have not seen any suggestions for reform that would overcome these problems as unaccountability is endemic to NGOs and tranzis, there being no direct link between funding, political decision making and specific project management.

After all, there is nothing particularly surprising about the following:

This report also examines the limited transparency and accountability in EU funding for NGOs. Despite the tens of millions of Euros provided by taxpayers, there is no uniform framework or central database for obtaining information regarding which NGOs the European Commission funds. Moreover, much of this funding information is unavailable or hidden beneath numerous bureaucratic layers. The various EC offices that do provide some information on NGO funding use different systems to display this data, making comparison and analysis particularly difficult. Although some EC officials cooperated in providing funding information to NGO Monitor, the difficultly in obtaining this data reflects the lack of transparency. Some requests for specific funding information went unheeded.

In addition, the official guidelines by which the NGOs are selected to receive public funds are very vague, allowing for a high degree of individual preference and bias on the part of EC officials. These (often) anonymous officials and outside experts decide on the allocation of millions of Euros to highly political NGOs, yet are not subject to any external process of accountability. The absence of specific performance indicators to evaluate the impact of EU-funded NGO projects adds to the accountability deficit.

Outrageous, maybe; surprising, no. To be fair, I do not get the impression that NGO Monitor is surprised.

While we are on the subject of NGOs, let us take another look at that interesting and self-righteous organization, Amnesty International. We have written about it on various occasions, for instance here and here. To sum up a long and tedious development, Amnesty International has fulfilled its exemplary role in O’Sullivan’s First Law – not being specifically a right-wing organization it became a left-wing one.

No longer does it limit itself to helping prisoners of conscience in various oppressive countries. The organization’s main role now seems to be, despite the research done by its overworked and underpaid staff (not, naturally enough SecGen Irene Khan), to attack the West, particularly the United States and Israel with other countries that have the temerity to fight terrorists and terrorism coming close behind.

NGO Monitor has been looking at Amnesty International in connection of that organization’s reports on the Middle East. Here is the summary of its latest findings:

NGO Monitor has systematically analyzed Amnesty International’s Middle East coverage in 2007, applying a quantitative methodology, similar to that used to examine the agenda of Human Rights Watch.

The results show that in 2007 Amnesty singled out Israel for more condemnation than Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Lebanon, and Algeria.

More items were published condemning Israel, than the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah combined. If detailed reports are used as an indicator, Amnesty ranks Israel and Iraq as equally the worst human rights abusers in the Middle East.

Israel’s democratic and open society ironically invites disproportionately negative reporting from Amnesty International. Access to information facilitates more comprehensive research than in less democratic regimes; democracy demands higher standards of human rights, according to Amnesty International’s Israel branch; external factors, such as media attention, dictate AI’s policy.

Amnesty's 2008 annual report (covering events in 2007) is yet another example of the NGO's highly biased approach. It presents a gross distortion of the conflict, selectively reports events to remove the context of terrorism and ignore human rights issues not related to its political agenda, while repeating un-sourced and anecdotal claims.

Not precisely what Amnesty International should be doing but as a tranzi NGO it has long ago abandoned its useful role of campaigner on a single but very important issue.

On the organization’s own website one can find all sorts of interesting matters. There is, for instance, the appeal to world leaders to do something about human rights. Well, not to the ones who can do something about it, with the exception of China and Russia, both up to a point, but leaders in general.

Amnesty International’s Report 2008, shows that sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations, people are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in at least 54 countries and are not allowed to speak freely in at least 77 countries.

True enough, but then all those countries are in the United Nations and have all signed the Universal Declaration as well as any other declaration going. In any case, the collapse of the Soviet Empire has brought about a certain amount of alleviation on the subject of human rights though that event had little to do with the UN or that wretched Declaration, which had been strongly influenced by the Soviet Union back in 1948.

So, apart from bringing down unpleasant regimes, something AI does not approve of, as we know, what else can be done?

“The most powerful must lead by example,” said Ms Khan.

China must live up to the human rights promises it made around the Olympic Games and allow free speech and freedom of the press and end “re-education through labour”.

The USA must close Guantánamo detention camp and secret detention centres, prosecute the detainees under fair trial standards or release them, and unequivocally reject the use of torture and ill-treatment.

Russia must show greater tolerance for political dissent, and none for impunity on human rights abuses in Chechnya.

The EU must investigate the complicity of its member states in “renditions” of terrorist suspects and set the same bar on human rights for its own members as it does for other countries.

Ms Khan warned: “World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost. As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses that can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.”

An interesting list and even more interesting emphasis on what matters in human rights. Apparently, it is the war on terror that produces most of the crimes and they are the ones Amnesty International feels the need to emphasise. Iraq and Afghanistan, eh? Not Iran or Syria, one assumes, or is it to be assumed that those two countries are looking to the United States for leadership?

China and Russia are chided lightly and in a very limited fashion, particularly the former. We must not get too worked up about real tyrannies where free speech is suprressed and all critics of the political regime and of officialdom are imprisoned. Oh and it has the highest number of capital crimes and rate of executions after trials that are the shortest in history. Not something Amnesty International should pay attention to?

What of the latest annual report? The Introduction lives up to all one’s worst expectations. It seems that matters have become worse in the last sixty years despite the hope that was engendered by the end of the Cold War which “were dashed by the explosion of ethnic conflicts and implosion of states that unleashed a spate of humanitarian emergencies, marked by massive and vicious human rights abuses”.

So, um, how did the Cold War end, what were the immediate results, why were there these hopes and who unleashed the various conflicts? Indeed, why was there a fertile ground for those conflicts? And why is the name of the Soviet Union not mentioned in this rather sketchy outline of the last sixty years?

Could it be that the powers that be in Amnesty International actually share ex-President, now Prime Minister Putin’s view that the collapse of the Soviet Empire was the greatest geopolitical disaster?

Moving down we find that the worst human rights abuses happen in the United States (our old friend Guantánamo again) and the EU is rapped over the knuckles for not controlling the member states when they exercise “rendition” of terror suspects to countries where they might be ill-treated at the CIA’s behest. No, since you ask there is no particular evidence and no mention in the Introduction of the fact that there are human rights abuses in other countries. And since when have terrorists been political prisoners to be supported by international NGOs?

There is no question about it, Amnesty International sees the war against terror a far greater problem than the terrorism itself, no matter what some of the more detailed chapters in the Report might say. Their website talks far more about protecting rights in the fight against terrorism than about protecting rights against terrorists.

The real problem about NGOs is that they are not charities who live exclusively from private donations. There are big donors, of course, but a reasonable amount comes from government and tranzi funds, in other words, from the taxpayer, whether we like it or not.

What the future might hold

Last Monday I attended no less than two separate talks on, as it turned out, related topics. In the morning Michael Barone, one of the best known American political commentators, author of many, many articles and columns and of several books, most recently, of “Our First Revolution: the remarkable British uprising that inspired America's founding fathers”.

Barone spoke about the presidential race in the United States, not a subject we cover too much on this blog for several reasons. In the first place, it is much written about in the main stream media, though I would not trust British journalists on the subject. They were, after all, convinced that Kerry would win in 2004, a position whose absurdity was clear to anyone who followed events in the American media and the blogosphere.

Secondly, it is a subject that is widely discussed in the American blogosphere. Nothing we say can rival the extensive knowledge and grasp of detail displayed by the likes of Barone himself, Michelle Malkin, Christopher Hitchens or Mark Steyn, to name just a few.

Thirdly, this is not really our subject, apart from the need to point out periodically, that there is this country in which the executive and legislative, properly separated, are both elected by the people of that country. Look upon it and despair about our own situation. No wonder people are gnashing their teeth in envy and calling for the rest of the world a.k.a. the great and the good as well as the tranzis and the NGOs to impose their decisions on the American people.

Still, the President of the United States is an important person for all of us and occasionally we need to look, at least in general terms, at the process that will decide who that person is going to be. A briefing by Michael Barone is a good opportunity for doing just that.

The first thing to be noted (and I do wish British commentators in both the old and new media would do so) is Michael Barone’s strong and reiterated assertion that the result of the presidential election is, at this stage, unpredictable. Obama is not about to be anointed as POTUS, though it is more than likely that he will be the Democratic nominee, not without some trouble there, as it happens.

I may add that Obama’s recent faux pas of threatening people with all sorts of nameless things if they keep quoting what his wife said in a public speech as part of her campaigning on his behalf “inappropriately” has not won him many supporters. The ones who have descended into Obamania are there and will stay there. He needs many more votes, though.

Michael Barone is not an Obama fan but that is not why he remains uncertain about the outcome. He is far too good a commentator to take the wish for the deed. The truth is that the outcome is uncertain because American electoral politics is once again experiencing a big shift and because there are many doubts about all the candidates, Barack Obama, in particular.

His description of American politics was that it has moved from trench warfare with clearly signposted lines and entrenched positions to open field warfare with politicians and voters moving around, separately or in groups.

It is true the President Bush’s approval rating is low but the Democratic Congress, elected with much fanfare in 2006, rates even lower. Recent by-elections have gone the Democrats’ way but, as in this country, people vote differently and less “responsibly” in by-elections than in general ones.

Another sign that the Democrats are doing well is a much higher proportion of people identifying with them than with the Republicans. This, however, is a tricky issue. Republican self-identification was at its highest in 2004 since the 1930s when these questions were first asked. What Mr Barone did not add, as all of us know, is that the Republicans did win the odd election or two during that period. So self-identification is not necessarily a guide to a more general voting pattern in the country.

Democrats this time round have shown themselves much better at fund raising, utilizing the internet for that purpose very successfully. But all indicators that there is a swing to them from the Republicans go fuzzy when it comes to the presidential campaign, whose intra-party bitterness has had a negative effect, so far as one can tell, on the electorate.

Above all, the presidential campaigns hinge on responses to specific candidates.

Within the Democratic Party there is tribal warfare being waged between the black and other groups (the latter including Hispanic and Asian ones as well as Jewish), between older and younger voters and between upscale and downscale ones. How that will play itself out when the candidate is finally chosen remains unpredictable. Notoriously, Obama is very unpopular among non-black working class voters, who still make up a very large part of the Democratic Party’s supporters. On the other hand, will any of them go so far as to vote for John McCain? It’s not impossible as McCain is centre-left but it is far from a given.

Much of Mr Barone’s talk concerned detailed analyses of figures and groupings, subjects that are not for this blog. He did mention that, so far, there has been little concentration on specific issues and a good deal of discussion as to whether this election will mean the end of the forty year long conservative political hegemony. Again, that is not a given, since in those forty years there were various electoral results.

However, it is fair to say that there is a new generation of electors who do not remember the horrors of the seventies and cannot be scared by them. We face a similar situation in this country and it is an inevitable one.

Voters of that kind in the States cannot see that big state is necessarily a bad thing. Voters of any kind in Britain find it hard to believe that big state is not a good thing so we part company from our brethren over the Pond.

However, the same generation of voters, added Mr Barone, wants to have choices and knows about them through the internet. This could mean a possible Republican opening to that generation. Oddly, he did not mention the widespread popularity and influence of right-wing blogs, who definitely do have a link with the post 1970s generation.

The economy, which is stubbornly refusing to sink as low as it has been predicted for some time, could give either candidate an advantage. If things are not as bad as people say, voters might want to stick with the existing party or they might decide to give the other guys a chance, knowing that things remain fairly safe.

Then there is the question of foreign policy, one that does concern us on this side of the Pond.

Foreign policy may or may not play an important part in the election though the question of security undoubtedly will. Again, one cannot quite predict the outcome as the situation in Iraq has improved considerably and not all the efforts of the MSM and of Democrat politicians can disguise that fact. McCain, as the man who had always advocated something like the present surge, may well reap the benefits.

This is one of Obama’s weak points as he stumbles from one idiotic statement to another and tries to bluster his way out of it. His extraordinary outrage at Bush’s general comments on appeasers in the Knesset, which stated to all the world that he thinks of himself as one, is one more thing that might harm him later on in the fight against McCain.

Barack Obama’s pronouncements on foreign policy have been muddled and full of contradictions as well as showing a distinct lack of knowledge or understanding. It is hard to decide on the biggest gaffe. Was it the reference to 57 states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii? Or was it his completely unhistorical assertion that in talking to the enemy, in this case Baby Assad of Syria and Ahmadinejad of Iran, not to mention various terrorists, he would be following in the footsteps of FDR, Harry Truman and JFK.

Sadly, neither Roosevelt nor Truman are known for too much parlaying with the enemy and the one time Kennedy tried it, in 1961 at the Vienna Summit with Khrushchev, the results were disastrous and he foreswore any future exercise of that kind.

A fascinating article in the IHT gives a good account of that event and its outcome, suggesting that Obama should pay a little more attention to what Kennedy really learnt from it all.

One interesting point about foreign policy ties up with the other talk I attended later that day. In his recent speech on foreign policy John McCain suggested that a new organization should be created perhaps in place of, perhaps in parallel to the United Nations – a league of democracies.

The Henry Jackson Society hosted Professor Thomas Cushman, Founding Editor and Editor-at-Large of the Journal of Human Rights and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College when he spoke on that very subject.

The first part of that proposition is easy to outline and prove. Just a few examples to do with UN peacekeeping scandals and the Human Rights Commission, not to mention the Durban Anti-Racism Conference, and you have managed to prove to many people’s satisfaction that there is a great deal rotten in Turtle Bay, though the chap next to me did not really like Professor Cushman’s description of the UN as a league of autocrats. According to him matters could be improved if we could make the Security Council function better. When asked how he envisaged that he became somewhat coy.

The problem is, of course, with the second part of the proposition, the creation of a league of democracies, as proposed by Professor Cushman and various colleagues of his. The international community, as it exists, explained the good professor, is problematic in that it pays more attention to “international law” than humanitarian principles, which means that individual countries can do what they like with the UN, as representative of that community, powerless to act.

Which leaves us with the need to define "international law".

There is also the problem that the UN consists of those very countries that break all the supposed founding principles of the organization. The idea of setting up a parallel organization that would consist only of countries who agreed on certain principles and would accept that desirable interests, such as freedom, democracy and human rights, should also be vital interests, sounds tempting. I have heard it enunciated in general and not so general terms on several occasions. But the devil, if one may say so, is in the detail.

First of all, it is interesting to note that, though the idea of a parallel organization to the UN is seen by many on the left as being neo-con and, therefore, an emanation of Satan, it has actually become a talking point among politicians of differing hues. And the left with some exceptions, as Professor Cushman rightly pointed out, ceased to interest itself in human rights or freedom some time in the middle of the twentieth century if not earlier.

Thus there are suggestions from Democrat-supporting think-tanks of such names as Alliance of Democracies, Community of Democracies (this one from Madeleine Allbright) and Concert of Democracies. John McCain has suggested League of Democracies and mused about the possibility of about 100 members.

Given that the name League of Democracies irresistibly reminds one of the ill-fated League of Nations, it may not be the right one to go with but none of the others sound particularly attractive either.

Professor Cushman thinks that’s too many as it would be hard to find 100 certified democracies. I’ll say. His idea that at first the new voluntary organization should be restricted to just a few – number unspecified – of solid democracies that will not turn into anything else.

That raises one or two problems. How do you define a solid democracy? How long does it have to have been one? What are its characteristics? Let’s see now. We’ll have the Anglospheric countries, Britain, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and India. India? Hmm. There are a few problems there but, I suppose, one could overlook them.

What of the other European countries? The Scandinavian ones, certainly. France, I suppose. Germany has been a successful democracy long enough to count. But what about Spain, Portugal, Greece and the East European countries? Russia, presumably, would not qualify and neither would China. Japan probably yes. But what of Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and other South-Eastern countries? It exhausts me just to think of all the problems of definition.

Naturally, I was unimpressed by Professor Cushman assuming that the EU, of all organizations, could be a model for the new one in the way it has assimilated new members, first providing them with strong guidelines on how to become worthy of membership. The EU is not a loose organization of democratic states but a less than democratic state in the making and Professor Cushman, with all his astonishing qualifications, fails to realize that. How seriously should we take his other statements?

Furthermore, it is unclear whether this organization is to be anything more than just another talking shop, though this time not with an anti-American, anti-Western bias (maybe we had better keep France out, after all). When I asked whether he envisaged an integrated force that would intervene in countries that abused human rights most flagrantly, the good professor openly told me that he was being evasive because he sees that problem as being well into the future. I think not. If you set up an organization you need to decide at an early stage what the aim is and, in general terms, how that aim is to be achieved. Otherwise, you blunder into badly planned scenarios.

There are a few points to be made here, though. Firstly, it is good that the subject of how to by-pass the UN to the point when it might disappear, is becoming part of mainstream American political discussion. Of course, the best way of achieving that objective would be to stop giving the wretched organization money but, I suppose, it is reasonable for politicians to be able to say that there is an alternative to something that is completely rotten and corrupt but is seen as a shining star of human hopes, if only it could be polished up a bit.

On the other hand if Obama does become President (and with all those idiotic gaffes, McCain’s chances are looking better and better) he will not want to do anything. He, as Professor Cushman said, will be a hero at the UN.

Secondly, the idea of making it clear that countries that actually believe in certain principles, even if they do not always act on them, are basically different from those that merely sign up to agreements and proceed to violate them before the ink is dry is full of potential.

Thirdly, there is no harm in affirming that those principles, based on freedom and democracy should become part of the democratic countries’ interests. Nor is there any harm in creating some organization in which the United States will be merely first among equals and, surrounded by allies, will take cognizance of them. Actually, as we have written before, it is not true that President Bush or any of his predecessors refused to listen. He merely refused to listen to America’s enemies.

Fourthly, national sovereignty is a severely overrated concept. The only reason the UN is stuck with it is because the Soviet Union insisted on putting it into the founding charter (and the meeting that signed it was organized and managed by the well-known Soviet agent Alger Hiss), wishing to prevent any discussion of its own record on freedom and human rights. But if those concepts are to trump national sovereignty there has to be a decisiveness about the need to intervene if necessary, a way of defining when that necessity arises and a method of achieving that intervention. None of which, it seems to me, are even close to being discussed seriously by the potential founders of the League of Democracies.