Wednesday, June 24, 2009 

Change we can believe in.


At least 43 people have died in missile strikes by a US drone aircraft in a militant stronghold of Pakistan, a Taliban spokesman has told the BBC.

The people killed in South Waziristan had been attending the funeral of a militant commander who had been killed in an earlier strike.

This is the sort of thing that jihadists in Iraq have been doing now for a number of years; first killing dozens, then targeting them again when the bereaved bury their dead. It has also been used as a tactic in Pakistan itself. One anti-jihadist blog commented on one of these attacks that apparently nothing was sacred, except jihad itself. It seems that the same applies to the United States, regardless of those at the top of the chain of command.

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6/24/2009 11:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, June 04, 2009 

State of independence.

Barack Obama's speech in Cairo today, billed almost as a state of the nation address, except to the "Muslim" world, was never going to live up to the hype accorded to it. The challenge itself was fairly daunting: how, after 8 years of suspicion, conspiracy theories and such mutual apparent loathing was the president of the United States meant to even attempt to lance the boil?

The predictable answer was to shower love, tolerance and moral equivalence liberally all over those who deigned to listen. Obama quotes repeatedly from the "Holy Koran", which is unlikely to do much to win over those in the States that continue to accuse him of being little more than a Manchurian Muslim, and equally will do little to appease the hardliners that will take such quoting itself as an insult. He repeatedly broaches respect for the hijab, although he apparently mispronounced it Human rights are barely mentioned, as could have been expected from someone who has just visited Saudi Arabia and still praises their interfaith "dialogue", as well as while speaking from the capital of a nation where the president has ruled since 1981 without anything approaching democratic legitimation. Behind the warm words, there was very little that can be called substance, but that hardly seems to have been the modus operandi: this was meant instead to restart relations, and if you judge it on those grounds alone there's little to take too much offence from or to quibble with.

The only section that may well stand the test of time was also the most important, and if there was any doubt that Obama does mean what he says when it comes to Israel/Palestine, then the strength of his words and the equivocation between both Jewish and Palestinian suffering will surely concentrate minds:

The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.

America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers - for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's interest. That is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires. The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the Road Map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them - and all of us - to live up to our responsibilities.

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.


The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. Palestine's right to exist cannot be denied. The settlements have to stop. No recent president has put it both so simply and so powerfully. These things ought to be platitudes; everyone realises that all three of these things are facts, yet to make them so perfectly clear has been to invite brickbats from those who wish to either completely deny or slow to a standstill the movement towards an independent Palestinian state. Again, none of this is an actual change in US policy, but the Bush administration did little more than pay lip service to the idea that growth of settlements in the West Bank had to cease, and the outrage and dissent with which Israel has greeted Obama forcing the issue has shown the fear which the Israeli government has for the potential pressure which the US can bring to bear.

Some will sneer at Obama's last paragraph on I/P (below), especially its pie in the sky hope for religious unity in Jerusalem and wonder whether he truly will put his words into action, but he has clearly put his position forward, and he can now be held accountable for it. Too much hope has already been put in Obama's potential for real change, but to finally make the case for a Palestinian state's right to exist as forcefully as Israel's itself is as fine a position to start from as could have been expected.

America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true. Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.

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6/04/2009 10:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, April 17, 2009 

Torturers justifying to themselves that they are not torturers.

It turns out that I did perhaps speak slightly too soon in being disappointed that the Obama administration hadn't opened up the books on the Bush regime's involvement in both rendition and torture. Although the release of the four memos sent between the CIA and two different deputy attorney generals was "required by the rule of law", that certainly wouldn't have stopped the prior administration or some individuals within Obama's from doing the exact opposite.

It's been clear since the first allegations emerged of mistreatment of detainees that just like all the other regimes which subsequently fell, with their secrets and misdemeanours exposed through documents, the Bush administration didn't just discuss what it was doing in secret and on a need to know basis: it left behind a distinct paper trail, of which these memos are just the latest example. The most notorious was perhaps the stress techniques which Donald Rumsfeld signed off with the pithy justification that considering he stood for 8-10 hours a day, why couldn't the detainees be forced to stand for longer than 4 hours? This sort of thinking and a general complete lack of concern at what they were ordering others to do is evident throughout the documents and memos that have so far been released.

The key document of the four released, although the others also have significant sections, is the August the 1st 2002 memo from Jay S. Bybee, then assistant attorney general to John Rizzo, the acting general counsel for the CIA. Rizzo was specifically asking whether 10 "techniques", including the most notorious, "waterboarding", would violate the prohibition against torture "found at Section 2340A of title 18 of the United States Code", as the CIA intended to use them against Abu Zubaydah, at that point the most senior alleged al-Qaida leader to be captured. The document, which recounts in minute detail just how the "enhanced techniques" would be used, is chilling. Of these, the most disturbing is the blithe way in which Bybee recounts that Rizzo had previously informed him that they would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than 11 days, having already kept him awake for more than 72 hours, of how they wished to confine Zubaydah in a box, in which an insect would be placed, Zubaydah apparently having a fear of such creatures, while not informing him that the insect would be completely harmless, and finally of how they would waterboard him, where the simulated drowning would not last longer than 20 minutes, and sessions as a whole would last 2 hours.

Quite why Bybee doesn't just say immediately that he completely agrees that what Rizzo is proposing doesn't amount to torture is unclear, as the arguments he then details are simply pitiful. These amount to little more than the fact that soldiers that were trained in SERE techniques did for the most part not suffer any long-term side-effects as a result of being treated in the same way as they were proposing to deal with Zubaydah. This is akin to comparing apples to oranges: there is a world of difference between undergoing these techniques once or twice with friends and professionals that you trust so that if you are captured you both know what to expect and how to deal with it, and instead having them repeatedly used on you, by people you neither trust and who you quite reasonably believe have the intention and the means to harm you if you don't co-operate with them, despite not being able to comply with their demands.

This finally culminates in Bybee admitting that waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death, which directly breaches Section 2340A. This however is not a problem, as Bybee decides that "prolonged mental harm must nonetheless result to violate the statutory prohibition", and, judging by Rizzo's authoritative and extensive research into the long-term effects of such procedures on SERE students, no such mental harm has been recognised. If things were not already Orwellian enough, Bybee then continues onward, concluding that additionally, there has to be "specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering" for there to be a breach of the prohibition. Despite the fact that the CIA would be using such measures on Zubaydah deliberately in order to get him to talk, because of how they are using these methods in "good faith", and restricting themselves so that they are not abused beyond acceptable limits, there would be no such specific intent. This is no more and no less than torturers justifying to themselves that they are not torturers. It's the sort of thing which dictatorships indulge in; this is the land of the free and the home of the brave resorting to such methods after 9/11 swifter than the likes of Soviet Russia did.

The results of Zubaydah's torture were worryingly predictable. Differences remain between those who claim he was a significant member of al-Qaida and those that instead claim that he was on the periphery, but what is beyond doubt is that in response to his treatment he told his interrogators anything and everything, including details of numerous false plots and individuals, all of which came to nothing. Likewise, the far more senior Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who became so adept at being waterboarded that he impressed and gained the respect of his interrogators, talked himself into being possibly the most dastardly terrorist in history, the only detail missing from his claims being that he wasn't the one who fired the second shot from the grassy knoll. Even if you completely disagree with the argument that you shouldn't abuse the detainees you capture for moral reasons, the reason to oppose torture is that it simply doesn't work, illustrated perfectly by Zubaydah.

There is one other key passage in one of the other memos which perfectly sums up the hypocrisy and contempt that the Bush administration had when it came to international obligations regarding torture:
In other words: we know full well what we're doing is torture, but the fact that we condemn others for doing exactly what we are isn't going to stop us from continuing with it.

Obama released the documents saying that there would be no prosecutions of those responsible, and this should be a time for "reflection, not retribution". That's fair enough where it concerns those that actually carried out the mistreatment, although post-Nuremberg and indeed, post-Bush, it should be no excuse to say that you were only following orders. Those who should be held accountable however are the ones that wrote these documents, the ones above them that were the ones really pulling the strings, and especially those who both then and now continue to defend the use of such methods. Those who first proposed these techniques are those responsible for them being used routinely, as we saw at Abu Ghraib. As before though, it seems likely that once again it will be the little people that serve the jail sentences while the real war criminals can write their memoirs and parade around the lecture circuit.

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4/17/2009 09:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, January 22, 2009 

An end to torture porn?

The inauguration ceremony was terrible, but no one can honestly say that Obama hasn't lived up to his promises so far:

Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush's war on terror, shutting down the CIA's secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush's thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East.

Of interest here is that we were explicitly told by Bush and co that the "black sites" had already been shut down. This was always dubious because some of the prisoners that were known to have been captured by the Americans, or captured by others and rendered into their care had simply disappeared. Unless they were tortured so badly that they died or committed suicide, they must presumably still be out there somewhere.

The thing that's so invigorating about Obama's initial moves is because it's all been so effortless: just a simple issuing of decrees and the abuses of the Bush adminstration have been washed away, almost as if they never existed. That's part of the problem: however much praise Obama and his team deserve for moving so swiftly to end his predecessor's crimes, we still shouldn't forget that this nation which supposedly didn't and would never torture did so with such ease and with so little soul-searching. Our abiding image of it though isn't those who adminstered the worst of it, or those who authorised it, but instead most probably Lynndie England, cigarette in mouth, pointing at the limp dicks of her captives. How fitting that those who thought they were the cocks of the walk have had their little empire brought down to size so swiftly.

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1/22/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 05, 2008 

Barack knew.

For all that has already been written, is currently being written, and will be written, for all of it that will come to be seen as the over-enthusiastic euphoria-influenced dementia that it was, for all of the similarly deluded denunciations of how America has in effect just signed away its freedom, it's still too easy to play down just how honestly transformational Barack Obama's election is and will be. Not because of the scale of the victory: whilst winning a more convincing victory than either of Bush's, it was not the landslide that some claim it was, broadly in line with the more successful Democratic victories; not because Obama won the popular vote; not because Obama overcame the GOP smear machine despite the filth that was consistently thrown at him; not because of the turnout, however unprecedented it was; but because of the one thing that never should have mattered: the colour of his skin.

Despite all of the hope and the expectation, we weren't willing to believe that he really could win, or really had won until McCain conceded. If McCain had ran his campaign with the same magnaminity, respect, grace, heartfeltness and humility with which he delivered his concession speech, the result could surely have been different. McCain always was a fundamentally decent, honourable man, undone on this occasion by his volatility, both in his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, even if she did help to deliver the base, and then his behaviour over the crash, first claiming the economy was fundamentally sound, next cancelling his campaign to go back to Washington to attempt to fix things single-handed. He cannot be blamed for how the campaign was run; the smears were always going to happen, regardless of the candidate. In an ideal world, he would surely be offered some sort of job by Obama; thanks to those smears, that seems highly unlikely.

Before that speech, the paranoia was still overwhelming. We feared the polls had been wrong; we feared that the exit polls, like in 2004, were wrong; we feared the Bradley effect; we feared, that somehow, the Republicans would manage to steal a second election, if not a third. As it was, we need not have worried. Pennsylvania should have tipped us off, but it took Fox News, of all stations, to call Ohio for Obama, for it to finally begin to sink in. Florida followed, and before we knew it, the game, such as it was, was over. That was the point when I went to bed, and unlike the others, my tears waited until this morning. Not at McCain's dignity; not at Obama's beautifully worded, measured and delivered victory speech, with a crowd more befitting of Glastonbury than a political rally; but instead at the tears on the face of Jesse Jackson, the old warrior, the man who only a few months ago had wanted to cut the president-elect's nuts out, who had never believed that he would see an African-American win the presidency in his life-time, now overwhelmed by the emotion of seeing the reality before his eyes. For those of us who have been critical of the fatuity of the American dream when so many in that nation remain downtrodden without any real hope, this was the shattering of our cynicism happening in front of our noses. This doesn't just show the American child of whatever skin colour, gender or sexuality that anything is possible; it shows the world's children that anything is possible.

We should not give in to wilful exaggeration, or not confront the sad fact that from here the only way is inexorably down. Barack Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States of America at a time when few would want the job. His first task is to tame the recession which is coming, to rebuild an economy which like ours has for too long relied on the financial sector for its profits and growth. He faces two wars, one which appears to be winding down, with another which seems to coming up to boil. He faces a world which thanks to his predecessor has turned against America, no longer willing to listen to the chutzpah and bullying which has so often been the tone and content of diplomacy over the last 8 years. The amount of expectation on one man's shoulders would be enough to crush a lesser person's will. He will inevitably, especially to the European left, and maybe even the American anti-war left, be a disappointment, as the pragmatism which he will need to display will take precedence over populist measures. A swift withdrawal from Iraq, however welcome, cannot be countenanced whilst there is still the possibility that the former Sunni insurgents who now form the Awakening councils or what remains of them could go back to war, especially against a Shia administration that may yet abandon them. Likewise, in Afghanistan, where Obama seems to favour something resembling a "surge", we cannot expect him to come to the realisation that others have that Afghanistan cannot possibly exist as a democratic sovereign state in its current form. Deals with the Taliban, or what is described as it, will have to be considered. There is unlikely to be any significant difference between Obama's policy on Russia's re-emergence than that of the current administration.

The biggest problem Obama will face though is keeping together the incredibly fragile coalition that has brought him to power. America is still frighteningly polarised between the two parties, especially considering how little they often disagree over, even with Obama securing 52% of the vote to McCain's 46%. Overwhelmingly, the reason why he won that share of the vote is the economy, and those that voted for him will not be instant returns next time round. While some may have decided to be colour-blind this year, with voters directly in some cases saying to canvassers that they were "voting for the nigger", that will not last. While the Republican machine may be temporarily broken and bowed today, what Hillary Clinton long ago described as the "vast right-wing conspiracy" will shortly be doing everything in its power to make Obama a one-term president. The young that turned out yesterday, empowered by belief in this one man, will be the apathetic of the years to come. Whilst Obama is not Tony Blair, we should not dismiss the possibility that we don't yet know what we've let ourselves in for.

Tonight though such things are for another day. Today we should just enjoy the fact that after 8 years of seemingly endless war, abuses of power, contempt, arrogance, ignorance and imperial hubris, the underdog who almost became the establishment candidate has triumphed. Another world is possible. We need to hope, once again, that Barack Obama can begin to deliver on his and that exceptional promise.

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11/05/2008 09:04:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 04, 2008 

Till tomorrow.

No point whatsoever in adding to the millions of words currently going unread, so here's the whole presidential election cycle as one very large image. Oh, and if Obama doesn't win, we just might be fucked.

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11/04/2008 11:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 

Wolves in sheep's clothing.

If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. Strangely though, if you put lipstick on George W. Bush, and squint hard enough, you might just see Sarah Palin. After all, victory is coming to Eye-raq!

(In fairness to Bush, I'm not sure even he supports the teaching of creationism in schools or opposition to abortion in cases of rape or incest.)

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9/10/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, July 14, 2008 

Americans not getting irony shocker.

The cliché is official then - Americans really don't understand irony, or at least, Barack Obama's campaign team doesn't. You can perhaps imagine why their campaign might not like the New Yorker's front cover because some of those who don't get the joke (or who do, but will cling to it as a propaganda tool) might use it against them, but to call it "tasteless and offensive" seems to show that the ones who don't get it are also those whom it was meant to appeal to.

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7/14/2008 11:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, June 05, 2008 

Barack knows.

When even the Sun, doubtless directly influenced by Murdoch's recent comments on the Democratic presidential candidate, praises to high heaven the first African-American to contest the White House, it's hard not to acknowledge that something has fundamentally changed, both in American society and also in American politics for Barack Obama to have finally won his party's nomination.

While it's easy to overstate his credentials, it's clear that Obama is certainly the most liberal presidential candidate for a generation, coming directly after what will certainly go down as one of, if not the most right-wing president of at least the last century. The hope that this signals the beginning of the end of the culture wars which have split America completely down the middle is probably still for now a pipe dream; it may well nature to take its course for that to be finally brought to a close.

It does however signify a generational shift. This wasn't just a rejection of the last 8 years; it was a rejection of the last 20. For those with a visceral dislike for Hillary Clinton, the slow collapse of her campaign, with her standing for nothing but her own personal vanity, believing from the beginning that she had a divine right to not just become the Democratic candidate, but also to become president, the last few months were little short of joyous. For someone who had spent their entire political career being the only woman in the nation with balls, even if she only wore them from her ears, her resorting to shallow femininity and even less feasibly, vulnerability before finally simple delusional intransigence, was completely shameless. Even with her plans for healthcare, and her defence of the right to choose, her comments on how she would "obliterate" Iran if it launched an attack on Israel using weapons which it doesn't have showed how the difference between her and John McCain were she to have won the candidacy would have been so slight as to warrant the spoiling of a ballot.

A little charisma can, as we've discovered to our cost, be a dangerous thing. The last thing that should be done is to give in to the hero worship towards Obama that some on the left both here and in America have displayed. As inspiring and hopeful as his campaign has been up until now, enough to make you wistful to wonder where our equivalent may come from, he's not the full package and doubtless we will be disappointed time and again from now until November as he tacks towards the right to head off some of McCain and the Republicans jibes. Already he's having to somewhat understandably row back on his pledge to talk to Iran and Cuba without pre-conditions, as welcome as that would be, purely because going too far all at once from the position which has been in the ascendance since the Iranian revolution causes irrational worry about just what else he might do. For all his rousing if ultimately vacuous rhetoric, he has to prove that he genuinely does have the power to both change the country and to unite it, and set out exactly how he intends to do so.

The first thing he could do to move towards that is to not give into the facile and desperate demands of some within the Democrats to appoint Hillary as his running mate. Despite her undoubted appeal to older voters and the white working classes yet to be convinced of Obama, she also still stands for the battles of the late 90s. She may have been right in denouncing the vast right-wing conspiracy which nearly brought her husband down, even if he was a liar caught with his pants around his ankles, but America desperately needs to move on, however painful in the short-term it might be for him and hurtful for Hillary herself. The dream would have been for the other main Democratic candidate, John Edwards, to join him, someone with undoubted appeal to the working class, but he's made clear that he doesn't want to be the prospective VP again after 2004. Most of his other options are ones that we in this country have barely and if at all have heard of, but he needs someone who can reach that parts that he either has trouble with or that have rejected him so far, but either James Webb or Ted Strickland of those already in frame appear on the surface to offer the most.

Secondly, he has to be prepared to take the Republicans on at their own game, something which both Al Gore and John Kerry failed to do. The Republicans will fight the only way they know how, as dirtily as they can without completely turning the electorate off, and Obama has to be ready to rebutt fiercely and repeatedly every claim and smear which they make. They're going to indulge if not backup those that have been claiming he's a Muslim, that he has the most "liberal" voting record in the Senate, and that he isn't "American" enough. They're going to use Jeremiah Wright against him, even if there might actually be more understanding if they actually listened to portions of what he said and how some have become embittered and almost ashamed to be American. They'll put his comments on guns, religion and small towns on billboards and adverts even if truer words had never been spoken.

The choice, whether from here or in America seems stark. Does the country want a continuation of the last 20 years, or does it want to attempt to start afresh? Does it want to continue an unwinnable war which should never have been fought or does it want to keep spending unaffordable billions on it for the next 100 years? Does it want a 71-year-old man who is by anyone's standards remarkable, honourable and indefatigable, but who offers just more of the same, or the 46-year-old whom, if doesn't quite want to rip it up and start again, wants fundamental change that the other candidate simply isn't interested in? If I was being pessimistic, and it's often difficult not to be, I'd fear they'd still plump for McCain. The hope, and the hope in this case is so important, has to be that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

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6/05/2008 10:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, May 31, 2008 

Murdoch and Obama sitting in a tree?

Rupert Murdoch's lavishing praise for Barack Obama, while stopping short of a complete endorsement, makes it look increasingly likely that the Dirty Digger is intending to swing his stalwart support from the Republicans over to the Democrats come the election.

The reason why Murdoch's gambit is so fascinating is that Obama on most issues is far to the left of Murdoch, and certainly far to the left of the Fox News channel, the New York Post and the Sun, whom lest we forget, former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil told us to read if we wanted to know what he's thinking. It's potentially even more eye-catching that Murdoch switching his support from the Conservatives to New Labour in 1997; Obama is certainly further left than Tony Blair ever was.

As always however, this isn't Murdoch going soft in the head in his adage: it's his typical, some would say cunning, others heartless thinking which abandons politicians or even whole political parties once they are no longer any use to him or when it's obvious that their power is ebbing away. While the presidential election is probably going to be tighter than the polls currently suggest, it's still Obama's to lose at this point. Murdoch, as we know, backs winners. Some Labour figures might take heart from the fact that Murdoch has of yet not showed anything like the praise he gave to Obama to David Cameron, or indeed to the Conservatives as a whole. The Sun especially is still notably sniffy, asking recently exactly what George Osborne would do differently to Alastair Darling.

The contradiction here though is that if Murdoch is close to switching to Obama, then no one yet has informed Fox News, who were at the forefront of the Pastor Wright fiasco, repeating the video of his speech asking his congregation to say "Goddamn America" over and over. Only last weekend a guest joked and laughed about the idea of Obama (and (correction) Osama) being assassinated, while Karl Rove, turd blossom himself, having left the White House is now a regular pundit. There's no prospect of the station's notorious right-wing bias being toned down, but if the network starts being fairer to the prospective Democratic candidate, John McCain just might start to worry.

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5/31/2008 10:19:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, April 28, 2008 

Ashley and Hillary.

Jackie Ashley opens her ball-breakingly familiar column with this paragraph:

There can't be a lot that cheers Gordon Brown over his morning porridge, but if he turns to the foreign pages he might ponder the Hillary effect. In Hillary Clinton, we see a politician loathed by a big section of the population, written off, jeered at, ordered to leave the stage, who, by sheer dogged determination - and by fighting, not quitting - has not only managed a comeback but earned grudging respect.

Well, that's one perspective. There's a different view of Hillary - an individual who's past their sell-by-date, who can't possibly win the popular vote, and whom by sticking around way past when they should have given in is only causing possible irreparable damage to their wider party, especially by resorting to cheap and nasty tactics while her opponent is dignified and respectful by comparison.

Now who does that remind you of?

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4/28/2008 11:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 04, 2008 

Pranked over Cameron's likeness to Obama, while Cameron himself sings from the same old hymn sheet.

It seems then that both I and the rest of the readers of Iain Dale's CiF post yesterday were pranked. Posting on his blog, he writes that the article was first intended for the Torygraph, but that he was then asked to write about Andrew Lansley instead, so he sent his original over to the Grauniad as to not waste it, with the intention of winding up "the Obama supporting fanatics".

Strange then that even after having posted the above on his site, he felt the need to defend his piece in the comments of my own dissection of it. Presumably if it was meant as a wind-up, he wouldn't really have needed to respond to criticisms of it at all. I seem to have got off rather lightly though compared to those on CiF who were rather more stinging in their dismissals:

Good evening and thank you for all your kind words. I especially liked the reference to me being in the Bullingdon Club. Strangely that didn't exist during my time at the University of East Anglia or even Saffron Walden County High School.

Can we really not get over this class ridden language.

And as for Tim Ireland. It will be a cold day in hell. I'm surprised they even let you comment on this site. Mind you, you're in good company among your own kind. Even fewer braincells than the LibDem front bench. And that's saying something.

[prepares self for more torrents of abuse from the self appointed guardian of the blogosphere who must be obeyed or you suffer the consequences]


Which seems like an excellent way of engaging with those not inclined to instantly agree with everything you say.

Speaking as we are of daft posts on Comment is Free, the site is today blessed with a post from the man compared to Obama himself, a certain Mr David Cameron. His main thesis is that politics is broken, and that there are deeper forces at work that underlie how it has come to be smashed to pieces. Both of these forces involve in the internet, the first being blogs and self-publishing, the second being that despite common conception, the youth of today are becoming involved in politics, just not in the "old" ways, but rather through campaigns using social networking.

If this already seems rather dated and close to passe, it might be because Cameron himself made these exact same arguments on the exact same site back in late 2006. Then Cameron was also launching another venture, like he was today. That was the sort-it.co.uk site, which complete with a fake-tanned bloke in a garish suit was aimed at dealing with "yoof" issues and making them think about their "own social responsbilities". The joke was that the suited guy was "the inner tosser", someone who rather than thinking about saving instead urged you to splash the cash. This campaign was such a roaring success that the sort-it.co.uk is still going str.... oh, wait. Sort-it.co.uk now instead links to conservatives.com.

The exact same response to Cameron's arguments then is still mostly valid now. Of the hundreds of millions of blogs Cameron talks about, only a minuscule number are about politics, or updated daily, which ought to be the yardstick by which they should be measured. Of the 20,000 videos uploaded to YouTube every day, the vast majority are either television clips, music videos or the most inane shit that you've ever watched and will afterwards pray that you could get those wasted minutes of your life back. If someone really wanted to do a study, they could sort those videos into respective categories and go from there. My bet would be less than 5%, if that, would be related to politics.

I am however willing to give Cameron the slight benefit of the doubt on the social networking point now. Facebook was then still only open to college students, or if it had opened up to all and sundry it had only just done so. Facebook undoubtedly is a site where protests movements are increasingly being organised and coordinated from, although whether any of those that started off there have made any major impact as yet is certainly open to question. Again though, Facebook is mostly just a slightly more grown-up version of MySpace and Bebo, with those over 18 mostly using it, and the vast majority are the same self-absorbed individuals interested only in what their friends are doing every second of the waking day. The backlash against the site has also accelerated recently.

The Conservatives then, desperate to look hip and trendy under their somewhat youthful leader, are trying their very best as they were over a year ago to get down with the kids, this time by advertising on Facebook. That most of the web-savvy individuals on there will most likely be running Firefox with Adblock+ or some other combination of browser and blocker and therefore never see the ads seems to have passed them by entirely, but never mind. Of course, that most of those they're trying to target were growing up during the age when the Tories were at their lowest ebb, a collective laughing stock and viewed as the worst possible waste of a vote, not to mention achingly uncool, with nothing having happened since then to change that also seems to have flashed by them without it being acknowledged. The other Conservative wheeze, launching a ludicrous campaign for "friends" to donate to them in an attempt to become presidential candidates in the US, like Obama this time round and Howard Dean before him, who were funded through many small pledges via the web, is also laughable. That the Conservatives are hardly strapped for cash, being donated £2.9m alone by Lord Laidlaw, who just happens to be a tax exile who lives in Monaco, with the grand total donated last year clocking up at £26.4m shows that this is nothing more a PR stunt, with them having no intentions of weaning themselves off of their current sponsors, all while demanding that Labour's donations from the trade unions be capped. Their biggest howls would be reserved for constituency donations being capped, as that's how Lord Ashcroft pumps his cash into the party.

If Cameron really wanted to mend politics, he'd support the one thing that would re-engage the public and ensure that their vote was worth something: proportional representation. Instead, the Tories, unlike Labour back in 1997 who toyed with the idea of PR until they got a whopping majority that meant they didn't need the support of the Lib Dems, think that they can win big enough as to not need it. That is the true face of not just the Conservatives but of Labour too; only when they are not certain of power will they pretend that the public need a proper voice. At the current rate of developing cynicism and disengagement, a whole generation will have lost faith in Westminster before anyone actually acts.

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3/04/2008 11:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 03, 2008 

David Cameron? He's a lot like Barack Obama, honest...

Let it never be said that Iain Dale doesn't do humour. This paragraph on his piece reflecting on the many similarities between David Cameron and Barack Obama is surely laying it on a bit thick, even by the sycophantic standards of the new believers within the Conservatives:

Cameron and Obama have several things in common, not least what is commonly referred to as "it" - that undefineable characteristic which mixes charisma with charm. They're young men in a hurry, both lacking a political past, facing opponents who were the future once. They find it easy to empathise and shrug off attacks. They share a resilience and an ability to wow an audience.

Err, yes. Except that Cameron has a past that encompasses being in No.11 during Black Wednesday, and adopted numerous positions while just a lowly MP which he now rails against as leader. You can't really deny that Cameron does have something approaching charisma, but compared to Obama, who simply radiates enough to make even this cynical operator start to believe in mass-appeal politics, although he can also at times remind one of a certain A.C.L Blair, he's the equivalent of those disappointed, depressed and deeply alone individuals left behind at the end of a singles night. Dale also overdoes the "the future once" jibe; that drew blood when directed against Blair, but not against Brown. Cameron doesn't empathise, he's instead that much more widely available commodity, someone who pretends to listen but is in fact only waiting for their opportunity to talk. You also get the impression, that like Blair, he'll do anything that might get him some momentary gain, and he also relies on the stunt in order to get coverage, whether it being going to the Arctic with huskies, cycling to parliament while his car follows behind with his documents, or attempting to put a mini-wind turbine on his roof. Obama hasn't resorted to either yet, nor does he need to. I keep referring to Blair for a reason, because he is clearly, despite the jibes against him and supposed distaste for what his leadership has meant for the country, Cameron's political model on whom he bases his own persona on. Blair couldn't be more finished or despised in the country at large, which makes that a highly risky strategy. Obama however is clearly channelling the spirit of Martin Luther King, someone whose stock has never fallen and most likely never will.

This is without mentioning the wider background and cultural differences between Obama and Cameron. Obama was born into a middle-class family, and worked on community projects before representing community organizers, discrimination claims and voting rights cases. Cameron instead was born into a family of stockbrokers, before going through the familiar high society ritual of Eton and Oxbridge. Cameron never came into contact with anyone even approaching a normal member of the public until he became an MP, having previously worked for the... Conservatives and then as the director of corporate affairs for the TV company, Carlton. They can't even claim to both share one distinction over their past: Obama has admitted to using drugs, while Cameron has never owned up to any use of controlled substances, instead appealing for such matters to remain private. Obama is not the establishment, although he might form what could be the new establishment, while Cameron embodies everything about it.

The rest of Dale's piece is better, suggesting how Cameron could adopt some of Obama's stylings to his own advantage, but the whole thing is based on a fundamentally flawed premise that doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. CiF asked last week where all the right-wing comedians had gone; some wags have already suggested that Iain Dale might be able to step into the breach.

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3/03/2008 09:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, January 09, 2008 

Churnalism, getting it wrong and the US primaries.

Hillary was understated in her criticism of the media coverage.

Have a morning's newspapers ever looked so fantastically out of date as they did today? All the tabloids apart from the Mirror went in various guises with the Madeleine McCann film story, which to be fair to them was not denied in any way, shape or form by the McCanns' spin doctor, Clarence Mitchell. Even so, by last night the McCanns themselves had completely denied that there was any truth to it, and quite where some came up with figures such as £10 million as to how much the rights were worth is why people are so cynical about the British press in general.

We expect the tabloids to be filled with such irredeemable bollocks, however. The broadsheets had no such excuses for riding the hype wave generated by Barack Obama's campaign, giving him the win in the New Hampshire primary before the counting had even begun, the Guardian even reporting that Hillary Clinton was poised to sack some of her strategists and go to plan B (an article which seems to have disappeared from the Guardian's online archive). Call it churnalism, as it has been dubbed by Nick Davies, the 24-hour media atmosphere where every new development has to be the biggest and most important ever, or plain hacks getting carried away with themselves, there ought to have been some rather large mea culpas on websites this morning. About the only person to own up and not go through the motions of "Oh! This is so unexpected, amazing!" was Martin Kettle, who's decamped to the States for a nice holiday the occasion. The Times' US editor Gerard Baker goes in the complete opposite direction and tries to pretend that absolutely everyone believed that Obama was going to triumph by double-digits.

The only real signs that pointed towards an Obama victory were the huge numbers going to his meetings, especially among the young, which as anyone could have pointed out was just as much to do with seeing him in person without necessarily going on to vote for him, and the opinion polls, which had turned his way post-Iowa. The primary opinion polls are known for being notoriously fickle and only a guide rather than an exact science, but it seems Obama's victory speech in Iowa was enough to convince everyone that they were looking at the next president of the United States.

Having got it so spectacularly wrong, the media have been looking for answers as to where the tide was turned, and Clinton herself has been more than happy to oblige, pointing towards the moment where her emotions almost got the better of her, showing a side that she hasn't displayed much of previously. She's always been the tough, stoic wife and the harsh, ambitious and forceful senator. Whether it was that, or simply that Clinton had always been in a far better position in a conservative state which prefers tradition and where it seems that despite the high turnout, it was overwhelmingly the middle-aged and retired that voted for her, is now close to impossible to tell. There's also a smidgen of truth in the accusation coming mainly from Clinton supporters that it might have been part of a backlash against a media which had written off Clinton and in some cases even written her obituary. There are also shouts of misogyny, but that's laughable. Clinton is simply a highly unsympathetic figure; as someone already said, America's prepared to vote for a woman [for president], just not a completely ghastly woman. That might have been proved wrong by the NH primary, but it's little wonder that most of the comment towards her is at times less than kind.

Blogging of course is just as much of the "churnalism" cycle as the news channels themselves are. We've gotten all too used to demanding instant opinion and supposed expert comment, when the very best of it usually takes the best part of a day or longer to emerge. Quite why anyone does "live-blogging" of such events, especially primaries is beyond me; election nights maybe, not for last night. We don't expect to know the immediate details of a news event the second it happens, so why do we want the "commentariat" to provide exactly that, when they're probably the least best to provide it? This isn't to be Luddite about it in the way that some resisting online publishing do, but to acknowledge that journalists ought to be above making instant judgments based as Martin Kettle writes, on assumptions and prejudices. I realise writing this as a blogger is the height of hypocrisy, but there's a difference between being narcissistic to a few readers and broadcasting it to the nation at large.

As attractive as a clean sweep by Obama would have been through the primaries, Clinton's resurgence will if anything make the whole process so much the better. Despite all the debates and speeches, meet and greets, we still don't really know just what Obama offers beyond hope and change, those watchwords of any optimistic political campaign, while Clinton constantly plays up her experience and belief in both herself and America. A prolonged contest will mean that both will have to change their messages, further flesh out their policies beyond the platitudes, and show exactly what it is that makes them the one that should end the nightmare of the last 8 years. That has still yet to occur.

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1/09/2008 08:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, January 03, 2008 

And so it begins.

If there's a counter-argument to fixed-term parliaments, as proposed across the political spectrum after Gordon Brown's outbreak of Grand Old Duke of York syndrome, it has to be how a second-term president in the United States oscillates between the two pillars of being free to do whatever he wants or becoming a lame duck. While George Bush's decline in power, if not support has been grossly exaggerated, the re-election of the sitting president now looks to be creating a four-year presidential candidate campaign cycle. That wouldn't be so bad if either the Democrat or Republican campaigns had shown signs of flickering into life, but neither have. The initial excitement around Barack Obama has subsided, while the only Republican to generate genuine fervoured support has been Ron Paul. To quote Dave Barry:

It was a year that strode boldly into the stall of human events and took a wide stance astride the porcelain bowl of history. It was a year in which roughly 17,000 leading presidential contenders, plus, of course, Dennis Kucinich, held roughly 63,000 debates, during which they spewed out roughly 153 trillion words; and yet the only truly memorable phrase emitted in any political context was, "Don't tase me, bro!"

It's hard to disagree with that. The Iowan caucus, taking place tonight, means at least a temporary halt to the debates and also the end of the phony war for some of the candidates who fail to get into the top three places.

The Republican race is the one that is still most certainly undecided. While there are only three realistic Democratic candidates, the Republican base in Iowa, 60% of which is estimated to be of the evangelical Christian variety, has a veritable pizza menu of choice, as long as you like an entirely male field, all of whom profess to believe in God and deny evolution, are opposed to a woman's right to choose and feel similarly about gay marriage, although some are favourable towards our civil union type model. You expect that from the likes of Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher who has described abortion as a "holocaust", supports insanely right-wing craziness like the oxymoronic FairTax and denied Medicaid to a 15-year-old with learning difficulties raped by her stepfather; Mitt Romney, a Mormon who in an attempt to woo the Christian right made clear he had a problem with those who don't believe in God; the laughing stock that is Fred Thompson and the opportunist policy shifter Rudy Guilani.

You don't however from the suppoused libertarian Ron Paul, whose noisy supporters have been clogging up message boards and irritating everyone else now for months. His only real quality is his opposition to "war on terror" as it's currently being fought, as one of the only Republicans to have opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. He then takes his non-interventionist policy to ludicrous extremes: advocating US withdrawal from the UN, for example. His supporters' talk of how he's the only candidate espousing freedom; what Paul actually supports is fundamentalist, selfish individualism, which is something completely different. An actual libertarian would defend to the death a woman's right to choose and gay marriage, both of which are examples of the state interfering with a person's personal freedom where they're not harming anyone else. Instead, Paul supports the exact opposite: allowing the concealed carrying of guns for self-defense. He doesn't despite such over the top devotion have a chance, likely to come fifth or lower in today's caucus, but it'll be interesting to see if he runs as either an independent or the Libertarian candidate, where he'd have the potential to do a Ralph Nader and split the Republican vote.

John McCain is the only other Republican candidate that anyone on the left would even consider supporting if it came to it, in spite of his number of reactionary positions such as the above. He's the only one other than Paul to oppose to torture in all its guises, even if he blots his copy book with his hawkish views on both Iraq and Iran. His recent co-sponsoring of the bill on illegal immigration, probably the most heated issue enveloping the Republican campaign, shows his refusal to conform either to the ideological Republican base or to the prejudices of the right, and his significant ability to reach out to the Democratic leaning voter. If the worst came to the worst, McCain couldn't possibly be any worse than Bush.

The Democrat campaign, as disappointing as it has been, has at least attempted to deal with the primary concerns of ordinary Americans: health care and the Iraq war. All of the top three, Clinton, Obama and John Edwards support some kind of universal system, the first time that mainstream politicians have come to recognise that the insurance system with Medicaid for the desperately poor is a scar on the nation's conscience. Naturally, none is suggesting an American NHS: "socialised" medicine is almost as dirty as a concept as socialism itself, but it's the first sign that the United States is looking towards Europe or Canada rather than continuing to stare at its navel.

Iraq is and has been far more tricky. Hillary Clinton, as Michael Moore has wrote, has not just supported the Iraq war from the very beginning, she's done everything that's been asked of her when it's come to funding or otherwise. Her continuing belligerence towards Iran, despite the NIE report and her polarising manner ought to rule her out as the presidential candidate altogether. Does anyone really want the most powerful position in the world to begin to resemble a dynasty instead? Please spare us from a 20 year long reign of Bushes and Clintons.

That leaves us with Barack Obama and John Edwards. As inspirational as Obama originally was, and as charismatic as he continues to be, it's difficult to know either whether he has enough experience, or, sadly, whether America is ready for a black man to be president. He has to his credit always opposed the Iraq war, although he was only elected to Congress in 2004 and so didn't vote on the matter, which would have been the ultimate question of his position. He would be the break in convention and perhaps with the past that America desperately needs, even if it doesn't recognise it at the moment. Whether he would be up to that job is also uncertain.

John Edwards, leaving aside his $400 haircuts, has dared to tread in places where those before him would have quailed. He's not only not accepted corporate money towards his campaign, he's also made clear that he is willing to take on poverty and support the emasculated US unions, fighting those same corporate interests if it demands it. Again, the main question is whether he means it: his past record suggests he does, but as the third candidate in the Democratic nomination he's had to look for a different, defining message. The case against is that as a lawyer he's acted for those same hedge funds currently gobbling up so many companies in private equity deals. On Iraq, he's the only candidate to say that within a year of taking office that the troops would be withdrawn; a highly ambitious target.

Whether Democrats should unite around Obama or Edwards will becoming clearer after tonight. The opinion polls suggest that all three are neck-and-neck; victory for Obama or Edwards will be an immense boost. The dream-ticket might be the eventual winner with runner-up as the vice-presidential candidate. Never before have the 2.9 million population of a tiny American state had so much potential influence over something that will undoubtedly change the way the next five years pan out the world over.

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1/03/2008 08:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

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