Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 179

Another Student Interview

Some weeks ago I was asked to give another interview to a student journalist. I try to say 'yes' to these requests, as I benefited, early in my career, from older journalists doing similar favours to me.

I don't necessarily expect the outcome to be good. Many students have pretty fixed ideas, and won't be diverted from them by anything I say. But I have to say ,from the moment this particular encounter began, I had the feeling I wasn't going to come out of it well. This may, just possibly, have influenced my responses. See what you think:

http://exepose.com/2015/11/27/if-you-misrepresent-me-ill-haunt-you-after-im-dead-an-interview-with-peter-hitchens/

Later note: There are now quite a lot of comments on my interviewer's site. Some of you may like to read them (one in particular is far too long for this site).

PH

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Published on December 03, 2015 15:10

Further Reflections on Last Night's Debate and Vote

Robert E. Lee probably didn��t say ��It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it��. But his great opponent, William Tecumseh Sherman, almost certainly did say: ��I am tired and sick of fighting ��its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers. It is only those who have never heard a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated �� that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.��

And a few years afterwards, to graduates of Michigan military academy: ��I��ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It��s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.

'Suppress it! You don��t know the horrible aspects of war. I��ve been through two wars and I know. I��ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I��ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!��

Sherman prosecuted war with merciless vigour and is nobody��s idea of a pacifist. I suspect him of believing (as Prussia��s elite military corps did) that the only mercy in war is a swift victory by one side or the other , an unpleasant truth especially hard to stomach if yours is the side that loses.

Almost all the people I have met who knew about war held opinions similar to Sherman��s. As a small boy, rather in love with war and its alleged glory, and as a callow youth, amoral about violence in what I thought was a good cause, I thought them soppy and foolish. And when, without meaning to , I blundered into the edges of a couple of war zones, and heard live firing for the first time, and saw corpses after bullets had passed through them, and dirty, overcrowded hospital wards full of wounded men, and buildings which had been hit by modern munitions, I very much took that view myself. I am not a pacifist. I believe war is sometimes necessary, mainly in self-defence - and I absolutely support the training and maintenance of strong and usable armed forces.

But if I by some chance I were an MP, and if I were asked to support a warlike policy, I would need to hear arguments far better than those advanced in Parliament yesterday. I am amazed at the strange enthusiasm which war still seems to produce in so many adults. I think it immature and naive. I suppose I must just be very lucky to have known the people I knew, and seen the things I have seen.

We��ve been over the arguments here quite thoroughly. Three things worth mentioning happened yesterday. One was the Prime Minister��s failed attempt to argue that Opposition to his policy was founded on disloyalty and so illegitimate.

Next was the pitiful parade of MPs who haltingly read out speeches which appeared to have been written for them by the Government whips, full of Whitehall jargon such as ��ISIL�� (the later versions said ��Daesh��) or talk of ��degrading�� , used as a transitive verb, and containing the dud argument that , since we were already bombing Iraq, it was illogical not to bomb Syria. The problem with this supposed clincher is that there is still the irritating matter of national sovereignty. Iraq��s government, for all its faults, has invited us to bomb there. Syria��s government has not, and the legal basis for us to apply national armed force on someone else��s territory is non-existent, a simple point obscured by rhetoric and emotion.

One member, supporting war (I forget his name), had the nerve to quote Edmund Burke, making out that he owed a duty of consideration to his constituents, rather than a duty of obedience to them (they had written to him in overwhelming numbers, he admitted, urging him to oppose the action). He quoted the Dublin sage : ��Your representative��owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.�� Quite so, but was this MP in fact acting in obedience to his own independent mind, or in obedience to the Executive? Contrast his action with that of the ever-thoughtful Tory Andrew Tyrie, as usual a beacon amid the gloom of third-rate rhetoric, who rejected an emotional reflex and pointed out that military action without a political strategy is folly.

There was much guff, too, about not being at the top table if we did not bomb. This was exploded by John Baron, one of the few Tories to distinguish himself (and an ex-soldier) who pointed out that China is at the top table on this issue, and has no intention of joining in any military action. If rash and silly bombing is our only ticket to this top table, then we are like the poor man trapped by pride into risking his home to stay at the roulette table in the casino. We shouldn��t be there in the first place.

I was interested to see what Dr Sarah Wollaston would have to say, since she is generally independent-minded, but fell into line rather early in the argument. Alas, she spoke much about atrocities, employing emotion rather than reason. She implied that bombing might reduce the risk of terror attacks in London, which I do not think is the government line. And then there was this : �� This is the fascist war of our generation. We had to take action against fascism in Europe, and I think there is a compelling case for us to say that we have done everything we can today.��

The word ��fascist, also popped up in the speech of the Barnsley Labour MP and former army officer, Dan Jarvis, who pronounced : ��Daesh are the fascists of our time��. There was then some stuff about the War Cabinet of 1940 and labour��s role in the fight against Hitler.

I suppose this use of the term ��fascist�� is the left-wing person��s version of invoking Churchill. I will come in a moment to Hilary Benn��s overpraised speech, but first I must ( as I always do on these occasions) quote George Orwell��s irresistible dismissal of the use of the word ��fascist��, made in his unanswerable essay ��Politics and the English Language��, written in 1946 (which you may read in full here, and which all should read, at least once a year) https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

What Orwell says is : ��The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." ��

How right he is. Communists and their fellow-travellers, embarrassed about the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939-41, disliked the use of the word ��Nazi�� as a boo-word, as it tended to remind people of their long and happy alliance with the Nazis. So Soviet and Communist (Comintern and Cominform) propaganda, from 1941 until the end of Communism, used the word ��fascist��, first to describe all three Axis powers, also the Falangist government of Franco in Spain, and later to smear anyone who resisted them, including Trotskyists, who became ��Trotsky-fascists��. Earlier on, during the mad period when German Communists refused to ally with democratic socialism to fight Hitler, the Moscow-backed German CP even referred to the German Social Democratic Party as ��Social fascists��. In more recent years, it is just a general term of abuse, designed to dismiss, destroy and silence. Once the left have called anyone or anything 'fascist', they can stop thinking about that person or thing.

In fact it is very hard to find a way in which ��fascism�� can be made to mean anything specific, once it is separated from its origin, Italian Fascism, itself a rather vague mish-mash of corporatism , thuggery and bombast. Mussolini, for instance, was not anti-Semitic to start with, had to be persuaded into passing anti-Jewish laws and was lax and unenthusiastic about enforcing them. He was also decreasingly keen on going to war. It was said that a refugee Jew, trapped in Europe, was safer under Italian Fascist rule than under Vichy French government. Japan was also free of Judophobia. Fascism and Imperial Japan also retained monarchy, whereas National Socialism was aggressively anti-monarchist, and was in returned disliked by monarchist aristocrats. There are strong differences, too, in attitudes towards religion and the Church. Franco��s Spain (utterly religious, uninterested in anti-Semitism, more in the tradition of old-fashioned southern European despotism than of any popular movement) also fails to conform to any precise model. If you start looking for outward signs, militaristic youth groups, huge rallies, flags, rearmament, indoctrination of children, one-party state, secret police, homicidal prison camps for opponents, rape of the rule of law, people's courts, rigged votes, censorship, undermining of family life etc, you will find that Stalin��s USSR (by no means free of informal anti-Semitism) might fall within the classification.

It is very hard to see anything specific that either Islamic State or Saddam Hussein��s Iraq have in common with 1930s nationalist despotisms in Europe. But the new leftist neocons, such as Nick Cohen made a great deal of Saddam��s alleged ��fascism�� at the time of that war. Maybe it helped Hilary Benn support the Iraq invasion in 2003 ( as he did). In 2007, Mr Benn told the Guardian that he did not regret his support for the Iraq war, using a standard evasive Blairite formulation ��I don��t regret that Saddam is no longer in power��.

is this still true? Saddam was of course a monster, as one must say to avoid being falsely accused of fascism, but under his rule Iraq was a largely secular country in which women were emancipated and Shia-Sunni sectarianism comparatively controlled, though any signs of revolt among the majority Shias were ( as we know) savagely crushed. Were he still in power, there would be no Islamic State. Mr Benn claims to regard Islamic state as fascist. Are they more fascist, or less fascist, than Saddam? Wouldn��t leaving things alone in 2003 have left a lot of people better off, and alive rather than dead? Should a proper modesty cause Mr Benn to wonder whether this part of the world is the right place to let his conscience out to go for a run?

And it��s not really a matter of ��regret�� , is it? If you personally supported government action to overthrow him from a high position, so helping to launch an enormous, costly and bloody war whose consequences still reverberate throughout the world, ��not regretting�� the biggest political decision in your life is probably a rather weak conclusion.

Say, in the course of trying to catch a burglar, you had accidentally set fire to and destroyed your neighbour��s house, and the burglar��s corpse was later found in the ruins, among several other dead bodies, many of them of innocent persons, would it really be enough to say that you ��did not regret the death of the burglar'?

Mr Benn��s speech on Wednesday night was similarly tricky. He greatly overstated the authority of the recent Security Council resolution, as all the pro-war speakers have done. I am genuinely unsure what the legal position of our forces in Syria is. There were (true) atrocity stories. These are never a guide to action in themselves. Alas, there are many other places on the planet where there are atrocities, injustices and outrages of one kind or another, about which we choose to do nothing. Some would say that many of them take place in the territory of our ally, Saudi Arabia.

Mr Benn also asserts, without the conclusive evidence for which I often ask, that the murders of Russian airline passengers, and those in Paris , and those in Beirut, Ankara and Suruc, can be linked directly to the Islamic State. Maybe they can. Maybe they will be, but are we not inclined to assume this rather readily, and should a Shadow Foreign Secretary be so undemanding in the quest for evidence, before helping to commit this country to military intervention in a Sovereign State which has not invited our presence?

Shockingly, Mr Benn said : �� the House should look at how Daesh��s forward march has been halted in Iraq.��

Has it? Not really, except by the Kurds, who have of course been able to work alongside the US military in the choosing of targets. The Iraqi army remains a shambles and if it were not for the Shia militias, with whom we will not co-operate, Baghdad would be much more at risk. In Syria, where US airstrikes(and French airstrikes) have been taking place for some months, Islamic State is not in retreat, but has captured Palmyra. Could this have something to do with the fact that US and French forces, in Syria, refuse to co-operate with the Syrian Army which is fighting IS much harder than the Iraqi Army is fighting it in Iraq, and so lacks the information necessary to make its strikes effective. As far as I know, the RAF fliers over Syria will suffer the same problem. The recent reversals suffered by various anti-Assad groups in Syria (moderates to a man!) have, by contrast, followed close co-operation between the Syrian Army and the Russian Air Force.

Now we come to Mr Benn��s peroration;

Mr Benn again: ��As a party we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road.��

I am not sure exactly what this means. Keir Hardie and Ramsay Macdonald fiercely opposed entry into the Great War, though others ( as now) took the other view) . I do not know (does anyone?) if Labour in 1917 and 1918 opposed any intervention in Russia to crush the Bolsheviks, the Islamic state of their day. Many in the unions were certainly against such intervention, and halted ships intended to support such an intervention. Despite the careful cultivation of a myth to the contrary, Labour in the 1930s was largely a pacifist party, led until 1935 by an actual pacifist, George Lansbury, and voting against rearmament until 1939 because of fears that the weapons would be used against Moscow.

The Spanish Civil War, as Orwell rightly pointed out, rapidly solidified into a proxy war between Germany and the USSR, with the Communists committing atrocities and suppressing opponents in ways horribly similar to those of Franco��s Nazi and Fascist-backed troops. I have always had the impression that International Brigades were dominated by the Communist Party and its front organisations, not by democratic socialists such as the Labour Party. The British battalion was originally named after the Communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala, though this never caught on, and one company was later named after Major Clement Attlee. I recall hearing years ago that he was rather embarrassed about this, yet he can be seen in this film welcoming the survivors home in 1938, and there is a glimpse of his name on a banner. But there is also film of Harry Pollitt, leader of the Communist party of Great Britain, addressing the soldiers. Note the Red Front clenched fist salutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr4EMeSWLfg

It was Mr Benn who brought this up. I think it��s interesting that it was more complicated than those who rushed to join it thought at the time, and ended differently from the way most people thought or hoped it would. Interesting, by the way, to wonder what would have happened to Gibraltar after 1939 if Franco had lost and the pro-Soviet Popular Front had won, when Hitler and Stalin sealed their pact.

Labour successfully and rightly kept Britain out of the Vietnam war in the 1960s, which was walking by on the other side of the road, and ignoring the pleas of a close ally, if you like.

Mr Benn continued : ��We are faced by fascists��

Not in any technical sense we aren��t. Islamic State, a straightforward theocracy, is not in any way the inheritor of National Socialism, which was pagan, and made frequent assaults on the Churches, or Italian fascism, which was on pretty good terms with Roman Catholicism but asserted state power when challenged. It originates in the Sharia law world in which Mosque and State are already intertwined. It does not directly threaten our rule over our own islands, our economy, our trade, our military or political integrity. It is an enemy, but it is not the same kind of enemy as Nazi Germany was, and the historical and military parallels are emotional, not rational.

��not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this Chamber tonight and all the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy��the means by which we will make our decision tonight��in contempt.��

This is probably true, though our democracy is not working especially well, given the great mismatch between the Commons vote last night and the known views of the electorate. Given the views of the people Mr Benn and his colleagues represent, were Mr Benn and his colleagues perhaps a little contemptuous of their voters last night? If he is going to use this sort of exalted language, I think Mr Benn has to measure himself by the same high standards with which he measures others. Maybe Parliament has no duty to follow the wishes of its electors. But in that case don't go on about how democratic you are.

Then there is : ��What we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated��

And yet, how many regimes with which the government to which Mr Benn belonged, and the Coalition and the current Tory government do business might be regarded as ��fascist�� according to the vague definition we can extract from the word, as Mr Benn uses it? Have all such regimes been ��defeated��? Has the ��fascism�� (quite arguable) of the Provisional IRA been defeated? Is our policy in the Middle East or Central Asia or the Far East to bomb, defeat or boycott every despotism? Not a bit of it. Once again we are in the land of claptrap, which as readers will know, means verbiage designed to trigger applause in a gullible audience.

.

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Published on December 03, 2015 15:10

Another Student interview

Some weeks ago I was asked to give another interview to a student journalist. I try to say 'yes' to these requests, as I benefited, early in my career, from older journalists doing similar favours to me.

I don't necessarily expect the outcome to be good. Many students have pretty fixed ideas, and won't be diverted from them by anything I say. But I have to say ,from the moment this particular encounter began, I had the feeling I wasn't going to come out of it well. This may, just possibly, have influenced my responses. See what you think:

http://exepose.com/2015/11/27/if-you-misrepresent-me-ill-haunt-you-after-im-dead-an-interview-with-peter-hitchens/

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Published on December 02, 2015 15:08

A few brief thoughts on this rather feeble debate

As I watch the not-very-good and very rushed parliamentary debate on Syria (what is the hurry?), I am still amazed by the Prime Minister��s petulant folly in suggesting that those who are against his war are consorting with terrorist sympathisers. How many of these MPs, reading from scripts rather than speaking properly, using ��degrade�� as an active verb, talking about ��ISIL�� or now ��Daesh��, which they can��t pronounce, and saying it is ��absurd that we are bombing Iraq but not Syria��, have lent their minds to the executive and accepted speeches from the Government whips?

There��s no doubt that this is what he thinks about his opponents. He is increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of opposition of any kind, and tends, I suspect, to see it as disloyal and subversive, not an essential function of good government. Despite all the praise given to him for being unusually relaxed in office, it may well be that his time in Downing Street is beginning to work its nasty magic, and he is losing touch with the actual world.

Certainly, if anything could lose him the vote (and I will hope that he does, and believe it possible that he will, until the result is announced) this mistake was that thing. I really hope it does.

This is not just because of its obvious stupidity, in lumping together everyone from Matthew Parris to me as consorters with terror sympathisers. It is because it betrays a complete misunderstanding of the way in which people��s minds work and the way in which they choose their opinions on matters of moment.

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Published on December 02, 2015 15:08

Here We Are Again on the Way to War - and All Anyone Can Talk About is the Labour Whip

Often in the past few days, BBC listeners and viewers, and readers of the unpopular newspapers, might have had the impression that Britain is discussing the pros and cons of an intervention in the Labour Party, rather than of an intervention in Syria.

As I read the papers and listened to BBC Radio 4 on Friday morning last week, I was baffled to find that the main item was not the plan for war, but the divisions on this subject within the Labour Party.

As it happens, the Tory party is also divided on the issue, as is the Tory press My newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, cautiously favoured bombing yesterday (Advent Sunday, 29th November). By contrast, our stablemate, the Daily Mail, said on Saturday 28th November that Mr Cameron had not made the case for war. Sir Max Hastings says he finds it hard to accept that bombing Syria will ��bring us any closer to a happy ending�� http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3335744/MAX-HASTINGS-die-cast-going-join-bombing-Islamic-State-Syria.html. Matthew Parris, generally sympathetic to Mr Cameron, wrote in the Times on Saturday (behind a paywall) that Jeremy Corbyn was right on this issue. Careful readers of the London press will no doubt have found many other reservations about bombing among normally pro-Government publications.

And Mr Cameron is extremely nervous of risking a Parliamentary defeat, as this might severely weaken and even destroy his position. I asked a 'Whitehall source' on Monday morning if there was any word about how the government planned to whip its MPs. There was (then) none.

I might add that, until the Daily Mirror obliged on Saturday morning, showing that there was no absolute majority for bombing, but that pro-bombers were close to 50% of voters and considerably more numerous than anti-bombers (normal at the start of any conflict, alas) I��d seen no attempt to discover the state of public opinion on the matter.

I woke on Friday expecting a variety of opinion and some through coverage of the Commons debate, mentioning the strong doubts about intervention voiced by MPs from all sides.

But that morning, all four major unpopular daily papers chose virtually identical headlines, and identical angles on identical stories.

As I noted in my Sunday MoS column:

��All the four main unpopular newspapers had virtually the same page one headline on Friday morning: The Times: ��Labour at war over vote to bomb Isis��, The Telegraph: ��Labour at war over Syria air strikes��; The Guardian: ��Labour in Syria Turmoil as PM makes the case for war��; ��The Independent�� : ��Labour at war over air strikes in Syria��. The BBC��s headlines were very similar.

��None of these stories contained any clear facts, just anonymous briefings. If it had been a plane crash, or a verdict in a major court case, this sort of unanimity in supposedly competing media would have been normal. But in this case it looks much more as if we have a controlled press.��

And, I might have added, a controlled BBC, which from the beginning of the destabilisation of Syria has reported the government line (a noble and spontaneous rising by liberal-minded democrats against the uniquely evil tyrant Assad) without qualification or scepticism, rarely giving time to doubters.

By the way, I am grateful to Edmund Adamus for reminding me, on Twitter, of the extraordinary interview with Lord (Paddy) Ashdown, normally a part of the interventionist establishment, on the Radio 4��Today�� programme, here

(about 1 hr 30 mins in, but (it's interrupted by a conversation with Jeremy Bowen, for some reason) especially at 1 hour 38 mins):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06r8rx3

Lord Ashdown��s suggestions of reluctance by the Gulf States to take part in the war against ISIS, and of closeness between sections of the Tory Party and rich Arab individuals, are quite astonishing and in my view worthy of more attention than the internal struggles of the Labour Party �� where Jeremy Corbyn��s bad relations with his Blairite MPs are about as surprising and newsworthy as a scowling match between Margaret Thatcher and Ted Heath.

The incessant concentration, especially by the BBC in almost every bulletin I heard over the weekend, night and day, on the Labour Party��s internal strife, seems to me to be a failure of impartiality. Little of substance happened to justify the intensity and sustained continuity of this coverage. It almost all stood upon unattributable briefings received by the reporter involved. Few of these stories (in one I heard it suggested that Jeremy Corbyn might ��force�� his MPs to vote against bombing, something he has no power to do) rose above the level of speculation.

I tried to explain, in my 2004 book ��The Broken Compass��, later re-engineered as ��The Cameron Delusion��, the extraordinary power which the political lobby has over the coverage of politics in this country, and of how its own interests and fixed ideas (few of them are interested in politics in the way that I am. They function much more like show business or sports reporters, whose careers are hitched to the stars they write about) ensure that some things are lavishly, intensively covered and others (often much more important) never covered at all, or barely mentioned. I explained that this was not done in ��conspiracies�� but at lunches and dinners where people privately agreed to pursue a common interest without appearing to do so. Which sounds so much nicer and more normal than a ��conspiracy�� but is in fact exactly the same thing.

Nobody read it, and it made no difference, as usual. And so here we are again, on the way to war, and all anyone can talk about is the Labour Whip.

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Published on November 30, 2015 15:10

This isn't a just war - it's 'recreational bombing' by our Churchill wannabe

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

Once again, as a patriotic Englishman from a Naval family, I stand amazed to find myself so lonely in my doubts about a foolish war.

I am no pacifist. I supported the retaking of the Falklands, national territory illegally seized by foreign invaders. I was thrilled to see that the Royal Navy could still do the hard tasks for which it is paid too little. Could it now?

Yet, on the basis of an emotional spasm and a speech that was illogical and factually weak, we are rushing towards yet another swamp, from which we will struggle to extract ourselves and where we can do no conceivable good.

Heaven forbid that it will lead (as other such adventures have) to more melancholy processions, bearing flag-wrapped coffins, from RAF Brize Norton; or to quieter convoys, carrying terribly injured men to special hospitals. Why must good, brave, dutiful men and women die or be maimed for life because our politicians are vain and ignorant?

But there is no knowing the end of this, especially given the Prime Minister��s absurd belief that we have 70,000 ��moderate�� allies just waiting to help us in Syria. Among these scattered ��moderates�� are those who last week murdered a Russian pilot as he parachuted to earth, and mauled his corpse.

When this phantom army turns out to be non-existent, or hostile, how long will it take Mr Cameron to return to the House of Commons, pleading oh-so-reasonably for ground troops to follow?

It is all such rubbish. I have yet to see conclusive evidence that the Paris murders were organised by or in Islamic State. France has plenty of home-grown hatred and (despite strict gun laws) is awash with illegal Kalashnikovs and ammunition.

Nor can I see why bombing Raqqa will defend us or anyone against such murders.

France��s President Hollande, a failed politician in bad domestic trouble, mired his own country in Syria months ago. I can��t see what good reason we have to follow him there. It will not help to bind up the wounds of the people of France.

Only three weeks back, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee advised, in a carefully argued report, that intervention in Syria is not a good idea. The pathetic cave-in of that committee��s chairman, Crispin Blunt, who now supports Mr Cameron��s latest war, merely makes Mr Blunt look irrational, weak-minded and easily led.

The UN Security Council resolution (of which Mr Cameron makes so much) actually offers no legal basis for military action. Nor does it cite Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which authorises the use of force.

David Cameron is already suffering from galloping Churchill syndrome (the patient growls, denounces his critics as appeasers, and starts wars). Now he seems to have contracted Blair��s disorder, an irresistible desire to pose alongside military hardware. On Monday he managed to have his portrait taken next to a very macho-looking Typhoon fighter jet at Northolt RAF base on his way back from Paris. Odd, that. Typhoons are not normally stationed at Northolt, and I haven��t been able to get a coherent explanation of what military reason it had to be there, so convenient for a photo-opportunity.

The Prime Minister might have been better employed looking up Syria on a map, reading the relevant documents, or consulting with our former ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford �� who energetically opposes what he denounces as ��recreational bombing��.

In all these modern wars real experts are impatiently pushed aside, while flatterers and yes-men take over. But it��s not decided yet. There��s still just time to write to your MP, if you agree with me that this is folly. I beg you to do so.

Reaping a feminist whirlwind

On Thursday night I witnessed the ugliness of the new student intolerance at the Oxford Union, where I was taking part in a debate on marriage (I was in favour). I had never before seen burly security men stationed around the hall, or had to watch as screeching hecklers �� having ignored pleas to put questions in a civilised way �� were hauled from the room.

It was Germaine Greer they were mainly after (though they handed out leaflets at the gate slandering me, too). I like Germaine, as it happens, and think she is often a lot more sensible than people think she is. But does she ever wonder if the militant feminism she launched has some responsibility for the new generation of self-righteous would-be censors who would rather silence an opponent than listen to her?

****

I travel a lot by train, and have begun to notice that the ride is getting much rougher. On a recent journey from London to Edinburgh I had to move seats because I was over the wheels and being jolted about so much. It reminded me of the Mandalay-Rangoon express (though in its grimy way that��s more comfortable than Virgin).

The worrying thing is that I noticed a similar worsening in the track at the end of the 1990s, just before a terrible series of crashes caused by track failure. Is Network Rail maintaining our lines properly?

****

The turmoil of the past two weeks has buried two pieces of bad news which the Government really doesn��t want you to know.

The first was Thursday��s record net immigration figures, showing that Mr Cameron has completely lost control of our borders.

The other was a huge and unexpected increase in Government borrowing in October, when it was supposed to have fallen. This passed almost entirely unnoticed.

No wonder the Chancellor seems to have put the economy in the hands of Doctor Who. The mythical ��27��billion that he miraculously discovered in time for his Autumn Statement is even more non-existent than the Prime Minister��s imaginary army of 70,000 Syrian moderates.

Doctor Who will be needed to get hold of this money, since it does not yet exist, and is to be found (if at all) only in the future, and then in small annual dribs and drabs.

If George Osborne were a company, he would be heading for bankruptcy. As it is, I confidently predict very severe tax rises within three years. Perhaps Doctor Who will by then have replaced Mr Osborne at No��11 and will be able to escape the voters�� wrath in his Tardis.

*******

All the four main unpopular newspapers had virtually the same page one headline on Friday morning: The Times��: ��Labour at war over vote to bomb Isis��, The Telegraph: ��Labour at war over Syria air strikes��; ��The Guardian: ��Labour in Syria Turmoil as PM makes the case for war��; ��The Independent�� : ��Labour at war over air strikes in Syria��. The BBC��s headlines were very similar.

None of these stories contained any clear facts, just anonymous briefings. If it had been a plane crash, or a verdict in a major court case, this sort of unanimity in supposedly competing media would have been normal. But in this case it looks much more as if we have a controlled press.

(This last item was accidentally omitted when the column was first posted)

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Published on November 29, 2015 15:11

Cannabis Not in Fact Medicinal - Scientists Report

I just thought it worth reproducing these stories from several newspapers, today (27th November 2015) detailing new research which suggests that Skunk cannabis (the most widely available) is associated with physical damage to the human brain. Those who say that if cannabis were on free sale, weaker types would be more readily available, seem to me to have a poor case. Stronger brands of alcohol and tobacco continue to be highly popular, though both are legal and ��regulated��.

Daily Mail:

Strong cannabis does harm brain, researchers warn

By: Colin Fernandez

SMOKING super-strength cannabis can cause significant levels of brain damage, a study has shown. Researchers found that people who regularly took strong 'skunk' cannabis had signs of greater damage to the biggest 'tract' of white matter.

This area - the corpus callosum - carries signals between the brain's left and right sides. Damage to it can lead to mental illnesses and psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, as well as slowing down the brain's activity.

The researchers say their findings demonstrate an 'urgent need' to educate the public, medical staff and policy makers about the risks of skunk - the most popular type of cannabis in the UK.

Skunk has high levels of a compound called Delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - which is key to giving smokers a high. Levels are about 20 per cent higher in skunk now than ten years ago, as cannabis growers create ever stronger strains of the plant to give a bigger buzz.

Dr Paola Dazzan, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said: 'We found that frequent use of high-potency cannabis significantly affects the structure of white matter fibres in the brain, whether you have psychosis or not.

'This reflects a sliding scale where the more cannabis you smoke and the higher the potency, the worse the damage will be.' She said the damage to the corpus callosum was likely 'Urgent need for education' to make the brain less efficient because it slowed the flow of information across the brain.

The researchers studied 56 patients who reported having a psychotic incident for the first time and 43 healthy volunteers.

The healthy subjects had an average age of 27 and the psychotic patients an average age of 29. Half of the healthy volunteers smoked cannabis daily compared with 70 per cent of the psychotic patients. The scientists carried out MRI brain scans to assess levels of damage.

Dr Tiago Reis Marques, a senior research fellow at King's College London, said: 'The white matter damage was significantly greater among heavy users of high potency cannabis than in occasional or low potency users.' Dr Dazzan added: 'There is an urgent need to educate health professionals, the public and policy makers about the risks involved with cannabis use.

'When assessing cannabis use it is extremely important to gather information on how often and what type of cannabis is being used. These details can help quantify the risk of mental health problems and increase awareness on the type of damage these substances can do to the brain.' The authors write in Psychological Medicine: 'High-potency cannabis is replacing traditional herbal cannabis preparations in many European countries. Raising awareness about the risks of high-potency cannabis abuse seems therefore crucial.'

Daily Telegraph

'Skunk' cannabis damages key nerve fibres in the brain

Powerful "skunk weed" cannabis causes significant damage to vital nerve fibres linking the two halves of the brain, a study has found.

The damage occurs in the corpus callosum, the structure that allows communication between the left and right hemispheres. Higher consumption of the drug caused more harm, according to the evidence. Its effect on users, and connection with psychosis - associated with strong forms of cannabis - remains unclear.

Dr Paola Dazzan, of King's College London, said there was an "urgent need" to educate health professionals, the public and policymakers about the risks associated with cannabis use. The study is published in the journal Psychological Medicine.

The Guardian

High-strength cannabis 'may damage brain'

By: Ian Sample

Strong cannabis may damage nerve fibres that handle the flow of messages across the two halves of the brain, scientists say.

Scans of people who regularly smoked a skunk-like form of the drug revealed differences in the corpus callosum, the bundle of fibres connecting the hemispheres. The changes were not seen in non-users or those who smoked less potent forms. The study is thought to be the first to look at the effects of cannabis potency on brain structure. Paola Dazzan, a neurobiologist at King's College London, said the effects appeared to be linked to the level of active ingredient - THC - in the cannabis.

The corpus callosum - the brain's largest white matter structure - is rich in cannabinoid receptors, on which THC acts. In the study, reported in the journal Psychological Medicine, it was found that daily users of high-potency cannabis had a slightly greater "mean diffusivity" - by about 2% - in the corpus callosum.

Dazzan said: "That reflects a problem in the white matter that ... makes it less efficient. We don't know exactly what it means for the person, but it suggests there is less efficient transfer of information." The study does not confirm that high levels of THC in cannabis cause changes to white matter and it may be that people with damaged white matter are more likely to smoke skunk in the first place.

But even with the uncertainty, Dazzan urged users and public health workers to change how they think about the drug.

"When it comes to alcohol, we are used to thinking about how much people drink, and whether they are drinking wine, beer, or whisky," she said. "We should think of cannabis in a similar way - in terms of THC and the different contents cannabis can have - and potentially the effects on health will be different."

The Sun

SKUNK WRECKS BRAINS

Drug risk exposed

By: NICK McDERMOTT

SMOKING "skunk" cannabis causes brain damage, scientists have warned. MRI scans on frequent users found the drug permanently altered their brain structure.

Experts fear the changes may have a long-term impact on their thinking power. "Skunk" is four times more potent than normal cannabis, and is the most commonly used form.

Researchers at King's College London looked at 99 adults, around half of whom smoked dope.

They found skunk users had the highest levels of brain damage. Dr Paola Dazzan, of the King's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, said: "We found that frequent use of high potency cannabis significantly affects the structure of white matter fibres in the brain.

"The more cannabis you smoke and the higher the potency, the Danger ...worse the damage. This could reduce cognitive function (brain power)." It is reckoned that in England one in 16 adults have smoked cannabis in the last year.

A World Health Organisation report last year concluded regularly smoking cannabis doubles the risk of serious mental health problems.

The Times

Smoking skunk can cause brain damage

By: Oliver Moody

Smoking skunk or other strong varieties of cannabis can cause brain damage similar to the effects of concussion, a study suggests.

The potency of the drug has risen consistently over the past two decades, leaving frequent users at an elevated risk of psychosis and subtler mental health problems.

Brain scans show that the highstrength cannabis that is increasingly common in the UK does more harm to the "white matter" connecting different parts of the brain than weaker strains.

Paola Dazzan, reader in the neurobiology of psychosis at King's College London, said that the region was the mind's traffic interchange, a tangle of highways carrying crucial instructions from one hemisphere to the other.

She and her colleagues used magnetic scanners called tractographs to examine the brain structure in 99 southeast Londoners, 59 of whom used cannabis regularly and 56 of whom had recently reported their first psychotic episode. They found that people who smoked more powerful varieties of cannabis tended to have more damage to their white matter, regardless of whether or not they had psychosis.

Also known as the corpus callosum, this part of the brain is important for the smooth running of a wide variety of cognitive functions and is the area believed to bear the brunt of concussion.

Two regions that seem to be particularly vulnerable to skunk contain motor fibres, which may contribute to hallucinations, poor co-ordination and warped sense perceptions if they are damaged. Although it is hard to link white matter structure to other specific mental problems, the changes associated with regular use of strong cannabis are likely to be gradual and general. "If you think of our brains, we've got left and right hemispheres, and the fibres that come from each part of the brain need to cross to the other part of the brain, and to do that they go through the corpus callosum," Dr Dazzan said.

Reliable data on the cannabis market are scarce, but a 2008 study for the Home Office found that it was increasingly dominated by homegrown herbal sinsemilla. This is about 15 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the more damaging of the two active compounds in cannabis, compared with 9 per cent found in imported samples of the drug and 5 per cent found in resin.

Dr Dazzan said that THC was a neurotoxin that seemed to harm the brain's cannabinoid receptors. She called on health professionals to pay much more attention to the strength of cannabis used by their patients. "The main message is that the potency of the cannabis people use does matter greatly for the brain, whether they have psychosis or not," she said.

The study is published in the journal Psychological Medicine.

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Published on November 28, 2015 15:07

An appearance on Sky News

Here is an edited version of an interview I gave to Sky News on Friday evening at about 6.30 p.m. The subject is the Syrian intervention:

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/670312474453925888

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Published on November 28, 2015 15:07

Cannabis Not in fact Medicinal - scientists report