Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 211
December 27, 2014
Questions Expecting the Answer 'No'
Following yesterday's posting, I felt readers might like to know the answer to the question I posed. Did I ever, as accused, assert that cannabis was more injurious than alcohol?
I think we can now safely say that the answer is 'No'.
Yet the person who assailed me for allegedly doing this thing believes that he won the exchange. And so, apparently, does Mr David Frum, the Victor of Baghdad and Scourge of the Kremlin, who cited it as evidence of a tendency to backtrack which he claims that I exhibit.
Isn't life strange? (No answer is required or expected to this question)
Left-Wing Person Nearly says Something Interesting
Some of you may enjoy this reasonably intelligent assessment of me by a left-wing person.
http://livinginphilistia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/why-i-respect-peter-hitchens.html?spref=fb
The fault in it is the universal fallacy among my critics that I examine the past out of a sense of nostalgia, rather than as source of lessons for the future.
The writer even notices that I excuse the modern left from having desired the ends its policies have led to. But (and this is invariable so far with left-wingers) he doesn’t pause to wonder if there might be something in this.
He observes (quoting me) : ‘the way he frames left-wing politics really comes from the position he takes on cultural and socio-moral issues. "It is because the left's ideas – by their nature – undermine conscience, self-restraint, deferred gratification, lifelong marriage and strong, indivisible families headed by authoritative fathers."
But he doesn’t say whether he accepts or rejects this, or even what he actually thinks about conscience (can he be against it?) or the other things I list as virtues undermined by the strong modern state.
he just asserts: ’ He's wrong on almost all cultural and social issues’.
Well, that is plainly what he thinks, but it would at least have been interesting to find out why, or if he actually knows why he thinks this, or has just been taught to do so.
Then he says irrelevantly: ‘Fortunately, it is too late to turn back the clock on the progress achieved in our attitudes to sexuality, gender and race.’
He cites no call by me for the turning back of any clock. This is because I have made none. He makes no distinction ( as any thinking person must) between the many different areas of life, morals and custom covered by ‘sexuality, gender and race’, a subject to which I have devoted many pages. What does he think I think about these things? Or is he just not interested, being in too much of a hurry to distance himself from me in case anyone thinks he might have been influenced by me?
In fact, the Left may now be finding that much of its once-reliable voter support will soon disappear into the SNP in Scotland, and UKIP in England. I don’t think the British Labour party can survive for long as a major force if it relies for its votes on metropolitan bourgeois bohemians and retired Eurocommunists. In both cases it will be because it has utterly ignored, for at least 20 years, the warnings of people such as me. And it has slandered people such as me as ‘fascists’ ‘homophobes’, ‘sexists’ and ‘racists’.
The Left will find that the SNP simply supplants them while UKIP are, in general, far less thoughtful and sympathetic to their concerns than I am. Am I being unfair to UKIP here? I don't think so. The crudity and incherence of its general policy-making are a real problem, and one of the many reasons I keep my distance from it. Alas for us all, these forces are a response to the cloth-eared attitude of the Labour Party towards its voting base, as much as they are a response to the Tory Party’s similar scorn for its supporters. The longer you ignore justly-discontented people, the more radical and intolerant their ultimate response will be.
It's never a question of going back to the past. Only Dr Who can do that. It's always a question of choosing the future.
December 25, 2014
Oh Hush Your Noise, Ye Man of Strife - a message for David Frum
Beating the Frum of War
After many months of casting doubt on the conventional coverage of the Ukraine crisis, I published the following column in the Mail on Sunday, which was also posted on my blog and on Mailonline.
By one of those strange chances which decide what does and does not get noticed, it attracted more attention on the web than anything else I’ve written on this subject in some years of doing so. This is the article that began it all some time back:
By using the index, or by simply Googling ‘Peter Hitchens Blog’ and ‘Ukraine’ you should be able to call up a wealth of material. If you are especially interested in history, add the terms ‘Tooze’ ‘Litovsk’, and ‘Naumann’ to the search.
I suspect that there is a large number of people on both sides of the Atlantic who are puzzled or unconvinced by the endless one-sided coverage of this issue, and alarmed by the apparent recklessness of so many of those involved. There is actually a war in Eastern Ukraine, involving heavy artillery and regular troops. A civilian airliner has been shot down with terrible loss. Now the world oil price is dropping mysteriously, and a major country (as it happens a nuclear power at the junction of Europe, the Far East and the Middle East is threatened with hyper-inflation and economic collapse). Sensible people are entitled to be worried that they are being drawn into a conflict they do not desire, for aims they do not share.
I have explained at length here what I believe is taking pace –a rebirth of a longstanding German policy of breaking up the old Russian empire by encouraging nationalist feelings in Russia’s subject peoples, and then incorporating the new ‘independent’ countries in a modern liberal empire.
I have explained how I believe German aspirations, which Germany itself can no longer pursue because it is discredited as a power by the Hitler era – have been transferred to the EU.
In fact the EU *is* the Liberal ‘federative empire’ dreamed of by German liberal imperialists such as Friedrich Naumann and Richard von Kuehlmann, whose Eastern policy was so devoted to the destruction of Russia that they financed the Bolshevik putsch of October/November 1917, not caring about the appalling aims of Lenin and his accomplices, and continued to support them till they were no longer able to do so.
This policy also led to to the creation of an ostensibly independent Ukraine which was in fact a German colony, and which was indeed very useful economically to the besieged Wilhelmine empire.
I have quoted repeatedly Zbigniew Brzezinski’s remarks on the significance of Ukraine. Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, is without doubt one of the most powerful and experienced minds to have considered this subject. He wrote in his 1997 book ‘The Grand Chessboard’ : ‘Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’
‘However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.’
You will note that Brzezinski here mentions Ukraine’s population and resources as well as its position. As a skilled and experienced geopolitical power player he knows that people, food, raw materials and markets (and coastlines, another thing I mentioned) are crucial to political economy. To imagine that these things don’t matter in the current tug-of-undeclared-war over Ukraine would be absurd.
Anyway, a few months ago I got into a brief tussle, on Twitter, with Mr David Frum, a North Anerican neo-conservative writer . This followed a previous article I had written. I cannot remember the details. I recall mainly being struck by the reappearance of someone I had assumed was so laughably in error about one of the major issues of our time that he must have disappeared into some sort of obscurity.
I mention the previous clash only to point out that, if Mr Frum is interested in my views on Ukraine, he has had plenty of time to read them and discover what they are, if he wishes to.
Because he has suddenly appeared in my life again.
Let me briefly explain who he is. A Canadian born in 1960, Mr Frum became (in 2000) a speechwriter and assistant to President George W. Bush, where he is said to have invented the not-very-useful phrase ‘Axis of Evil (then embracing Iraq, Iran and North Korea, now presumably extended to embrace Russia) and was a keen supporter of the Iraq war. Curiously, he said : ‘ During the decision-making about the Iraq war, I was powerfully swayed by the fact that the proposed invasion of Iraq was supported by those who had been most right about the Cold War—and was most bitterly opposed by those who had been wrongest about the Cold War. ‘
I think this is plain mistaken. Perceptive minds of Left and Right (I here cite my late brother and myself) both quickly saw that this was in fact nothing like the Cold War, and that the USA was now the chief Utopian power in the world, warring vigorously and in the name of Freedom against conservative facts and ideas such as national sovereignty, particularism, protection of trade and industry.
The Blair Creature, one of the keenest supporters of the Iraq war, had been a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (and therefore wrong) during the Cold War , a fact he sought to conceal but which was easily discovered. Almost his whole party had been spectacularly wrong (for instance) in the quarrel over medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe.
By contrast there were Cold War conservatives on either side of the Atlantic who were against the Iraq adventure. I can’t believe Mr Frum is unaware (for example) of the existence of Patrick Buchanan.
Mr Blair (it could be objected) is not very bright, but many of his aides and close colleagues are. They are, in several cases, former Marxists and in almost all cases ideological left-wingers who opposed the USA during the Cold War on almost everything, lined up in favour of the Iraq adventure (and before that, the trial run in Kosovo). It’s also not very hard to track the Trotskyist strain in American neo-conservatism, some of whose greatest minds were disappointed revolutionaries who still (in my view) yearned for an earthly Utopia.
I am sorry Mr Frum’s knowledge of the Left wasn’t good enough for him to observe and make sense of this interesting anomaly, that many Cold War leftists were actually quite keen on the Iraq war. But one would have hoped the light would have dawned by now. He appears to accept that the Iraq war was not, in fact, terribly successful. He must at least suspect that this might have something to do with its aims and character, not just its execution.
Let us hope that it soon does dawn. In the meantime, I must here give a full response to the storm of abuse and distortion which he unleashed against me on Twitter.
I did respond to it at the time ( as I have mentioned before) , but this sort of speed-debating only really works if both sides are playing the game straight, and Mr Frum, in my view, preferred to distort and caricature my position than to engage with it. This sort of behaviour almost always comes from people who are unsure about their own positions.
One of his Tweets was so silly that I riposted ‘David, you are not so clever that you can afford to pretend to be stupid’. This , for a few hours stemmed the flow of distortion. But I suspect it must have rankled overnight, for he then accused me of backtracking, which for the life of me I couldn’t see how or where I had done. So I pressed him to explained how I had done this.
For those of you with time to spare, and indeed for Mr Frum, whose future intellectual development I hope to aid and edify, I recount below a selection of my responses to his principal jibes and twists. I know Twitter is hard to follow(I find it very hard to follow myself) but this is intended as a rough guide, not a total description. Those who want the whole thing can still find it on Twitter.
He began by telling his many followers :
‘P Hitchens: Ukraine crisis due to EU desire for cheap labor, wheat, & coal. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2882208/PETER-HITCHENS-Forget-evil-Putin-bloodthirsty-warmongers.html … Also, oats for EU’s heavy cavalry’.
Of course, this is *part* of my argument. But I thought and think it trivial and wrong for him to pretend he thought it was my entire argument. There was a bit of byplay about oats which you can look up for yourselves, but I objected to the suggestion that there is anything old-fashioned about grain or coal. I pointed out that China’s entire boom was based on enormous consumption of coal, much of it from huge new fields in Inner Mongol ia(my point being that the West’s obsession with ‘clean’ energy is not shared elsewhere, and coal is still a valuable commodity.
Mr Frum’s retort was ‘Ah, so that explains the Chinese invasion of Ukraine’, a remark so bottomlessly trivial, obtuse and unserious that it provoked my warning to him that he is not so clever that he can afford to pretend to be stupid.
After that Mr Frum’s readers started to join in, not always on his side, and I went home.
Earlier yesterday, I had seen his claim that I had backtracked, and twice asked him to substantiate it, but again went home having had no reply. But last night after my modest supper, I checked Twitter and found I was under a sort of Frummish cyber-attack.
It began;
Frum: I’m always struck by your disinclination to stand by the words you write after you write them. Why do you publish them then?
Me: What ‘disinclination’? Give examples
He then referred to an irrelevant exchange with a person called David Juurlink, who claimed on Twitter that I had said cannabis was ‘more dangerous’ than alcohol (a claim I don’t think I have made because I don’t see how one could establish the order of danger in any objective fashion) , and when I asked him to substantiate this produced quotes which did not confirm his claim. Yet he pressed on undaunted, saying that I had *implied* it by not saying it. I shall probably analyse this later, for those interested.
Sorry about all this, but the only answer to misrepresentation is fair representation. . Then he veered off into even more obscure territory, letting fly at an article I had written about the MMR controversy which he said was ‘evasive’, though I couldn’t get him to elaborate on why.
He then said I’d used the same ‘manouevre’ in my reply to him about the Ukraine, in which I had cited the Oakland Institute’s report on the West’s strong interest in Ukraine’s agriculture.
I still can’t see how this was in any way a backtrack.
Then he characterised me as saying that ‘the EU’s stake in Ukraine/Russia is covetousness for grain, coal and cheap labour’.
Well, this is *part* of the explanation, but I really don’t think any serious person, reading my many articles on the subject or even the one in question, could conclude that I believe it to be the *sole* reason.
I just think I’ve written quite enough about Friedrich Naumann’s Mitteleuropa project, Richard von Kuehlmann’s plan to destroy the Russian empire by fomenting nationalism in its possessions, Brest-Litovsk, the fact that the EU is the continuation of Germany by other means.
I thought it worth mentioning that there is also a material underpinning to this, which there is. Indeed , the origins of Germany’s desire to expand eastwards are all fundamentally material (lebensraum, soil, markets, raw materials, the elimination of the danger of Russian competition) , though ( as all advances need to be covered against resistance) they are strategic as well.
When one deals with adults, one assumes that they will at least attempt to debate reasonably, and generously – that is to say, to recognise that their opponent’s motives are good until they have evidence to the contrary, and sometimes even afterwards, to read his responses and respond to them directly, rather than misrepresenting or avoiding them.
Debating with someone who doesn’t follow these rules is like playing chess with a squirrel, or teaching Latin to a marmoset. You get a lot of squeaking and running away but not much progress.
Take, for instance, Mr Frum, who thught it witty to represent my view as : ‘Grain, coal and cheap labour matter to China, and for that reason (through some unexplained mechanism) motivate the EU in Ukraine.’
Note that this was posted some time after my blog posting devoted to explaining the importance of material issues in the Ukraine controversy: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/12/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings.html
But it was even longer after I had tweeted to Mr Frum that food and natural resources were never out of date, and followed this by tweeting him the Zbigniew Brzezinski quote (given in full above) in which he discusses key importance of Ukraine’s millions of people and ‘major resources’.
Mr Frum described this as ‘harrumphing over the “Risk” board’, which I think is a reference to a popular board game. But it isn’t. It’s what it’s all about. I call this behaviour unresponsiveness. It’s easy on Twitter, where you can just keep going as if the other person wasn’t replying, and misrepresent him to your audience(many of whom will believe you), It’s much(I imagine) like being a prosecutor in a show trial in a people’s court.
There was one brief moment of levity, after he asked me why I didn’t mention thatch for roofing as an EU motive to which I replied ‘Because I’m not a Thatcherite. Ho Ho Ho’ But I don’t think he got it.
I was at the same trying to fend off some Ukrainian fanatic who couldn’t acknowledge that the removal of President Yanukovych had not been according to the constitution (when this fact is undeniable).
Anyway, Mr Frum spent much of yesterday evening telling me that I ‘like Putin better than the EU’ , a (let us be kind) misunderstanding of my view that Putin’s defence of national sovereignty is correct and admirable(even if not much else about him is). And that whatever the faults of the Russian state, aggressive expansion into its sphere of influence is foolish and dangerous and has gone too far already.
He said that if the EU wanted cheap Ukrainian labour, ‘all it need do is lift visa requirements on EU travel, and millions would arrive in the next six months’ . This statement is ridiculous. The EU, in its current state, would not dare do any such thing. There are other ways, as many workers in northern Mexico well know, of exploiting cheap labour without actually importing human beings.
He then said that to attribute this conflict to the West’s desire for cheap labour is farcical.
I agree that to attribute it *solely* to such a desire would be. But I have never done so. I cannot believe that Mr Frum does not understand or know this.
I said, as I have been saying form the start, that the issue is the rightness and wisdom of the West’s current aggression in eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
While I was doing this, the Ukrainian Parliament was voting to drop the non-aligned status which it adopted in 2010. See here http://euobserver.com/defence/30212
Several of the scanty and brief reports of this momentous development (one that I suspect may be remembered in history for all the wrong reasons) said Ukraine had adopted its non-aligned status four years ago (June 3rd 2010) ‘under Russian pressure’. No doubt this was so. Ukraine, being virtually bankrupt, is very much at the mercy of neighbours.
They did not say, though it is without doubt the case, that it adopted its new aligned state under Western pressure. A BBC website report http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30587924
even put the word “expanding” in inverted commas, in referring to NATO expansion. I mean, NATO is getting bigger, and in an eastward direction. Why then is “expansion” in quote marks?
I do worry, as these events unroll, that we are at the beginning of a new Iraq, an unwise aggression, the absurd and thoughtless caricature of a foreign government as a new Hitler, pathetic unanimity in the media, followed by blood, failure and recrimination, after which everyone discovers they should have thought a lot harder.
Mr Frum’s involvement in the anti-Russian side does not diminish my fears. I do begin to think we may be on the path to war. I do wish those who beat this drum would realise what war actually means.
Full of Grace and Truth - Prayers and Readings for Christmas
If you are very fortunate, you may be able to hear these words spoken in Church tonight at midnight, or tomorrow morning. If not, I supply them here for you to read, preferably aloud. You will not regret doing so.
They are the Collect (a prayer specific to the day or season) Epistle and Gospel for Christmas Day from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the supreme achievement of English Christianity and an unfailing source of poetic beauty to me and many others. Shakespeare knew these words, as did George Herbert, Charles Dickens, Dorothy Sayers, P.G. Wodehouse, W.H. Auden and P.D. James. A very blessed and joyous and peaceful Christmas to you all.
The Nativity of our Lord, or the Birth-day of Christ,
Commonly called Christmas-Day.
The Collect.
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle. Heb. 1. 1.
GOD, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high: Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.
The Gospel. St. John. 1. 1.
IN the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
December 24, 2014
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
I am (unusually) grateful to 'Sid' for directing me to this very interesting document produced by the Oakland Institute, a think tank of which I know virtually nothing, save that it describes itself, dispiritingly, as 'Progressive'.
http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/OurBiz_Brief_Ukraine.pdf
He did so after a North American neo-conservative called David Frum started jeering at me on Twitter for pointing out that Ukraine possessed enviable natural resources including grain and coal, which might impel the EU to wish to absorb it. He said that the EU is a net exporter of grain (so what? Saudi Arabia exports oil, and doesn't object to finding more so that it can export more) and that next I would be claiming that the EU needed Ukrainian oats for its heavy cavalry. He also said that coal was about as old fashioned as sailing ships.
When I pointed out that China is still an enormous user and producer of coal, he started joking about a Chinese invasion of Ukraine, at which point I Tweeted: 'David, you are not so clever that you can afford to pretend to be stupid' . Since which I have heard less from him.
But it is odd that people seem to think that the old basics of life, death and war, the needs of peoples for food, of governments for money, the need of economies for raw materials, labour and markets, never change. Nor, in landmasses without natural barriers, does the desire to use territory as a security barrier against invasion ever diminish. Nor do powers cease to wish for access to the sea, nor do they ever forget history. All these elements seem to me to be needed for a dispassionate and rational understanding (which is all I seek) of the Ukraine crisis.
To think otherwise is to imagine that the end of World War Two and the foundation of the UN put an end to traditional national rivalry, and old fashioned political economy, much as antibiotics put an end (or appeared to put an end, as we now see) to traditional medicine.
After all, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser and no mean mind in the world of international diplomacy, wrote in his 1997 book ‘The Grand Chessboard’ : ‘Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’
‘However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.’
He seemed to think the resources were an important part of it.
Anyway,I do find this document interesting and would welcome informed comment on it. I don't and can't endorse it (Not only do I know nothing of the publisher. I lack the facilities to check its claims in full) but simply urging its importance as another angle on the topic. I was especially struck by this fascinating passage, which possibly undermines claims that the people of Ukraine stand to benefit hugely from EU associaton. I agree that the word 'may' is prominent, but I simply have not seen this subject even mentioned:
'Amid the current turmoil, the World Bank and the IMF are now pushing for more reforms to improve the business climate and increase private investment. In March 2014, the acting Prime Minister, Arseny Yatsenyuk, welcomed strict and painful structural reforms as part of the $17 billion IMF loan package, dismissing the need to negotiate any terms. The IMF austerity reforms will affect monetary and exchange rate policies, the financial sector, fiscal policies, the energy sector, governance, and the business climate. The loan is also a precondition for the release of further financial support from the EU and the US. If fully adopted, the reforms may lead to significant price increases of essential consumer goods, a 47 to 66% increase in personal income tax rates, and a 50% increase in gas bills.
It is feared that these measures will have a devastating social impact, resulting in a collapse of the standard of living and dramatic increases in poverty.'
Is this correct? Can anyone confirm? I am also unsure about its description of the comparative offers of loans and aid from the EU and Russia . I have previously stated this thus : 'Just before the Kiev putsch Ukraine had asked for €20 billion (US$27 billion) in loans and aid. The EU was willing to offer €610 million in loans, one 16th of what Kiev wanted. Russia offered $15 billion in loans plus cheaper gas prices, far closer to what Kiev was asking for. ' I have taken these figures from media reports at the time.
You will see that the Oakland Institute's version is signifcantly different, with the EU offer set much higher. If anyone can explain this discrepancy to me, I would be grateful.
December 22, 2014
Three Wise men provoke some thoughts about modern Germany
As I walked home last night from the beautiful service of lessons and carols at the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, I thought my readers deserved one last thoughtful analysis, before the Feast of the Nativity, of what is going on in our increasingly frightening world. If you prefer the clangour and sparks of sharper combat, I've been fending off a ring of angry assailants on Twitter.
St Mary the Virgin looks peaceful and picturesque now, but was mopre than once the scene of sore struggles. The Virgin's statue on the amazing baroque front porch once had her head shot off by a Parliamentarian soldier who thought it idolatrous. It isn’t the Church I normally attend.
Although it is a glorious building, crammed with history, and its music and choir are superb, most of its worship is in modern language, which I cannot bring myself to use for the praise of God. But not all of it. The extraordinarily moving Advent Carol Service, held jointly with the thriving German Lutheran congregation who have been using St Mary’s since the 1930s, largely uses the Authorised Version of the Bible, plus Palestrina and a lot of Bach. Likewise the Christmas Carol service held last night.
Those of you who can remember the proper TV version of ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy ‘ will have seen St Mary's spire on the credits at the end , a solo choirboy’s voice singing the Magnificat while clouds roll by above a twilit Radcliffe Square, with the Bodleian Library in the foreground, the Radcliffe Camera next and behind it St Mary’s with its spire. Anyone who has the old blue Dragon Book of Verse (not the inadequate new paperback) will recall the picture of that spire, seen from (I think) Oriel Street. It is there to illustrate a verse from ‘The Dying Patriot’: ‘Noon strikes on England, noon on Oxford town –Beauty she was statue-cold – there’s blood upon her gown...’ I think it’s time for a Flecker revival, so there probably won’t be one. On the left is the western wall of All Souls. This dense concentration of architectural splendour is one of the most precious and irreplaceable few square yards on earth.
Thomas Cranmer’s show trial, the highlight of Bloody Mary’s war against Protestants, took place in St Mary’s and they will still show you the mutilated pillar, hacked out of shape nearly 500 years ago to make way for the stage on which Cranmer faced his accusers before being hauled off to be burned outside Balliol College (where better?).
So it was something of an honour when Brian Mountford, the Vicar at St Mary’s, asked me to read one of the lessons (the coming of the Three Wise Men) . I think more and more of their journey, having been to the town in Persia where they are said to have started from (it is now widely believed that they were Zoroastrians), and having traversed by land much of the landscape they would have seen, especially the unearthly, almost Martian, Persian desert and mountains north of Isfahan and the long desert between Baghdad and the Jordan valley.
Many of you will know 'The coming of the Magi', T.S.Eliot’s astounding and profound poem, in which present-day truth seems to come striding out of the world of myth.
Not all of you will know where he got a lot of it from, a sermon delivered on Christmas Day 1622 by the genius Launcelot Andrewes , the mind who made the Authorised Version of the Bible, one of those tough old Anglican divines who carved out a distinct position for the Church of England, neither wholly one thing nor wholly the other, but crammed with reason and poetry. The whole thing is here:
http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/andrewes/v1/sermon15.html
But this bit is worth lifting out: ‘First, the distance of the place they came from. It was not hard by as the shepherds - but a step to Bethlehem over the fields; this was riding many a hundred miles, and cost them many a day's journey.
'Secondly, we consider the way that they came, if it be pleasant, or plain and easy; for if it be, it is so much the better. This was nothing pleasant, for through deserts, all the way waste and desolate. Nor secondly, easy neither; for over the rocks and crags of both Arabias, specially Petra, their journey lay. Yet if safe - but it was not, but exceeding dangerous, as lying through the midst of the black tents of Kedar, infamous then, and infamous to this day. No passing without great troop or convoy. Last we consider the time of their coming, the season of the year. It was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter….
‘And these difficulties they overcame, of a wearisome, irksome, troublesome, dangerous, unseasonable journey; and for all this they came. And came it cheerfully and quickly, as appeareth by the speed they made. It was but vidimus, venimus, with them; they saw, and they came; no sooner saw, but they set out presently. So as upon the first appearing of the star, as it might be last night, they knew it was Balaam's star; it called them away, they made ready straight to begin their journey this morning. A sign they were highly conceited of His birth, believed some great matter of it, that they took all these pains, made all this haste that they might be there to worship Him with all the possible speed they could. Sorry for nothing so much as that they could not be there soon enough, with the very first, to do it even this day, the day of His birth.’
The story is marvellous, and to the preacher as fresh as yesterday and an undoubted factual truth, not pushed away by a few centuries of flashy modernity but seen by him as having taken place in times much like his own. And enjoy the power of the language, then, like England itself, in its greatest freshest flowering, shames our wretched speech and worse writing.
It is a wonderful precursor for imaginative thought. I almost stumbled as I read the words ’rejoiced with exceeding great joy’ so powerfully did they evoke in my mind the belief that this moment had actually happened, and that these old, thoughtful Persians understood what they were seeing, as we find it so hard to do.
When I read the passage about how Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him, the picture came alive in my mind, of a small and chilly hilltop city in the December night, its stone staircases and carpeted, vaulted chambers full of intrigue and fear , as the signs and portents of alarming, perhaps revolutionary change gathered, and men were sent off in all directions to find and if possible destroy the threat.
My mind can’t stay on the same subject for long, but seeks new things to devour. As I walked through the wind and the drizzle, and listened to the gale roaring in the trees, I turned afresh to an argument I have been having by e-mail with my friend Edward Lucas, the most intelligent and well-informed of the ‘New Cold War’ advocates. And it seemed to me that I should elaborate a bit on what I had said to him about Germany.
He , like so many on his side, resists my point that the EU is the extension of Germany by other means. He says Germany doesn’t have territorial ambitions, Germany has resisted NATO expansion, etc etc. And of course this is absolutely true. Yet Germany always allows the USA, often in the name of NATO or the EU, to do these things anyway. And they all like remarkably like German policies, German desires, German needs.
For Germany, as a force in political economy, still exists, even though its power and desires are no longer wielded or officially sought by the German state or the German people. They have relieved themselves of these responsibilities because the disaster of Hitler means they can no longer assert them, and probably cannot for a century or so.
Yet, the German people still exist, Germany as a territory still exists. The German language and culture still exists. Its great cities still exist. Above all, the German economy exists with its need for markets, labour , raw materials, secure trade routes, energy.
The force generated by this fact thunders and rumbles at the heart of Europe. It has to find an outlet. I believe this has been achieved by the European Union.
As I wrote to Edward:
When I say that the EU is a continuation of Germany by other means, I am trying to state a subtle truth as well as making a joke. Germany isn't *allowed* to have an expansionist foreign policy. Germans habitually don't think about it ( apart from some of the elite) and reject such ideas. Germany's rejection of such things is quite genuine.
But Germany is still a huge, powerful rich entity sitting in the middle of Europe, inevitably dominating its neighbours, inevitably needing things from them, material and diplomatic. What’s more, the USA, whose engagement in Europe is based on a desire for stabilisation and federalisation, has long recognised that this domination is a fact which needs to be contained and channelled.
Read the opening of Koestler's 'Scum of the earth' for a brilliant summary of the Franco-German problem in 1939, France's unwillingness to concede primacy to a country which was, in fact, far more powerful and growing more powerful all the time. This conundrum was solved by the EEC, which gave France ostensible primacy while granting Germany primacy in reality. But it transferred Germany's expansionist Geist from Germany to an American-sponsored Federal Empire. Germany has no need to speak of these things, though Helmut Kohl once did, at Leuven.
Once Yalta collapsed all the forces of expansionism were reignited, and the EU has dutifully followed every direction of liberal German imperialism as pioneered by Richard von Kuehlmann, the unacknowledged founder of modern Ukraine. Not to mention the good old thrust into the Balkans.
If you haven't read Adam Tooze's wonderful 'The Deluge' about the Brest-Litovsk period, you really, really must. Read together with Richard Pipes on German involvement in the Russian Revolution, it's quite overwhelming. Tooze is also brilliant about the USA's real purposes for engaging in the First World War, and the Washington Naval Treaty, but above all, he understands Germany and its engagement with Russia and the borderlands, and the policy of encouraging separatists in the Russsian empire( as it then was) , not because they seriously regarded these new countries as true states, but because it put a bomb under Moscow.
There's even a prophetic bit about the Baltics. They come, they go. It’s sad, but it’s undeniable. If I were Estonian, I might well *want* to be in NATO. The question is, would it be kind or responsible for NATO to indulge my fantasy that this would mean anything when push came to shove. Or would it be rash and dishonest, a la 1939 Polish guarantee? When Germany is strong, the Baltics will be German/EUish. When Russia is strong, they will be Russian. No moral question arises, except to wonder if it is wise for us to have a war about this. Would you think London (with your family in it) worth sacrificing for Tallinn? If the answer is really no, why give a different impression now? If the answer is really yes, then be clear and honest about your willingness to go to war.'
Christmas is a time of beauty, but also of alarm at the power which has been unleashed and the old beliefs we must lay aside to amke way for it. The fears of Advent, of wars and rumours of wars, of some unknown power overshadowing the familiar landscae, do not entirely disperse when they end, apparently so cosily, in the birth of a tiny child.
And if we continue to refuse to grasp what that birth means, otehr powers can and will prevail. Every generation must learn this anew, We, who care so little for the incarnation, seem particularly reluctant to learn, and hopelessly attached to worldly idealism and utopianism - which in my view is why the mutter of gunfire can now be heard faintly on the farthest edges of our little world, nothing like as far away as we think.
December 20, 2014
Forget 'evil' Putin: we're the bloodthirsty warmongers
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail On Sunday column
This is a time of year for memories, and the ones that keep bothering me are from my childhood, which seemed at the time to be wholly happy and untroubled.
Yet all the adults in my life still dwelt in the shadow of recent war. This was not the glamorous, exciting side of war, but the miserable, fearful and hungry aspect.
My mother, even in middle-class suburban prosperity, couldn’t throw away an eggshell without running her finger round it to get out the last of the white. No butcher dared twice to try to cheat her on the weights.
Haunted all her life by rationing, she would habitually break a chocolate bar into its smallest pieces. She had also been bombed from the air in Liverpool, and had developed a fatalism to cope with the nightly danger of being blown to pieces, shocking to me then and since.
I am now beset by these ingrained memories of shortage and danger because I seem surrounded by people who think that war might be fun. This seems to happen when wartime generations are pushed aside by their children, who need to learn the truth all over again.
It seemed fairly clear to me from her experiences that war had in fact been a miserable affair of fear, hunger, threadbare darned clothes, broken windows and insolent officials. And that was a victory, more or less, though my father (who fought in it) was never sure of that.
Now I seem surrounded by people who actively want a war with Russia, a war we all might lose. They seem to believe that we are living in a real life Lord Of The Rings, in which Moscow is Mordor and Vladimir Putin is Sauron. Some humorous artists in Moscow, who have noticed this, have actually tried to set up a giant Eye of Sauron on a Moscow tower.
We think we are the heroes, setting out with brave hearts to confront the Dark Lord, and free the saintly Ukrainians from his wicked grasp.
This is all the most utter garbage. Since 1989, Moscow, the supposed aggressor, has – without fighting or losing a war – peacefully ceded control over roughly 180 million people, and roughly 700,000 square miles of valuable territory.
The EU (and its military wing, Nato) have in the same period gained control over more than 120 million of those people, and almost 400,000 of those square miles.
Until a year ago, Ukraine remained non-aligned between the two great European powers. But the EU wanted its land, its 48 million people (such a reservoir of cheap labour!) its Black Sea coast, its coal and its wheat.
So first, it spent £300 million (some of it yours) on anti-Russian ‘civil society’ groups in Ukraine.
Then EU and Nato politicians broke all the rules of diplomacy and descended on Kiev to take sides with demonstrators who demanded that Ukraine align itself with the EU.
Imagine how you’d feel if Russian politicians had appeared in Edinburgh in September urging the Scots to vote for independence, or if Russian money had been used to fund pro-independence organisations.
Then a violent crowd (20 police officers died at its hands, according to the UN) drove the elected president from office, in violation of the Ukrainian constitution.
During all this process, Ukraine remained what it had been from the start – horrendously corrupt and dominated by shady oligarchs, pretty much like Russia.
If you didn’t want to take sides in this mess, I wouldn’t at all blame you. But most people seem to be doing so.
There seems to be a genuine appetite for confrontation in Washington, Brussels, London… and Saudi Arabia.
There is a complacent joy abroad about the collapse of the rouble, brought about by the mysterious fall in the world’s oil price.
It’s odd to gloat about this strange development, which is also destroying jobs and business in this country. Why are the Gulf oil states not acting – as they easily could and normally would – to prop up the price of the product that makes them rich?
I do not know, but there’s no doubt that Mr Putin’s Russia has been a major obstacle to the Gulf states’ desire to destroy the Assad government in Syria, and that the USA and Britain have (for reasons I long to know) taken the Gulf’s side in this.
But do we have any idea what we are doing? Ordinary Russians are pretty stoical and have endured horrors unimaginable to most of us, including a currency collapse in 1998 that ruined millions. But until this week they had some hope.
If anyone really is trying to punish the Russian people for being patriotic, by debauching the rouble, I cannot imagine anything more irresponsible. It was the destruction of the German mark in 1922, and the wipeout of the middle class that resulted, which led directly to Hitler.
Stupid, ill-informed people nowadays like to compare Mr Putin with Hitler. I warn them and you that, if we succeed in overthrowing Mr Putin by unleashing hyper-inflation in Russia, we may find out what a Russian Hitler is really like. And that a war in Europe is anything but fun.
So, as it’s almost Christmas, let us sing with some attention that bleakest and yet loveliest of carols, It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, stressing the lines that run ‘Man at war with man hears not the love song which they bring. Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing’.
Or gloat at your peril over the scenes of panic in Moscow.
How does Theresa May get away with it? She sits for months on a report which exposes her department as a slovenly shambles. It shows that 220,000 files on immigrants who should have been deported were found rotting in boxes in back rooms and even in a lift shaft. The people involved aren’t (of course) being deported. But it gets one tenth of the coverage of the latest Ukip mini-scandal.
Does anyone really think that merging small police forces into big ones in 1967 made the police better? Absolutely not. It was then that they stopped foot patrols. So ignore calls for even bigger forces. Small is best, as lucky Americans know.
If the campaign for Berlin Time had got its way (and it very nearly did), sunrise in southern England this morning would be after 9am. How can this possibly be a good idea?
At Woolwich, in Ottawa and now in Sydney, deranged maniacs kill, in most cases while out of their minds on the drugs we have given up trying to control. Deluded by propaganda, we classify this as ‘terrorism’.
The streets are flooded with troops and robocops, helicopters clatter overhead and blowhard ‘experts’ drone portentously about how these are ‘lone wolves’, as if that solved the matter.
Actually, they are mad, and in the days before ‘care in the community’ they would not have been able to kill because they would have been in mental hospitals. Such hospitals would be a much better use for all the money we currently pour into grandiose ‘security services’.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down
December 19, 2014
Why can't Russia Join the EU? - and an urgent warning to Mr 'P'
I have reluctantly to respond yet again to Mr ‘P’, having said I wouldn't, because if I did not do so he or others might imagine that I accepted some or all of what he says. My rebuttals are marked ****
He writes: ‘From Mr Hitchens... "But he (Mr ‘P’) still can’t somehow acknowledge that Ukraine’s change (following a violent foreign-sponsored mob putsch) from being a non-aligned country to being a member of an anti-Russian economic and political alliance is not detrimental to the interests of Russia and against Russia’s (openly and repeatedly expressed) will." The first question must be obvious: what "anti-Russian economic and political alliance" has Ukraine joined?
I reply **** I suppose you could loosely call it ‘The West’, as Ukraine has definitely joined itself to the ‘West’ without obtaining full membership of either of the alliances generally taken to form that amorphous thing. The Association Agreement contains political and military clauses and brings Ukraine under partial EU jurisdiction. It is not EU membership but it is a clear political, military and economic link with the alliance which includes both NATO and the EU. Mr Yatsenyuk and others have been clear , in their own statements, that the move cancels Ukraine’s previously non-aligned status. So with whom, then, are they aligned, if not with the EU-NATO combination generally known as ‘the West’?
Mr ‘P’ :’ The Association Agreement is a treaty. Ukraine hopes to become a member of the EU by 2020. Ukraine has at present not 'joined' anything.
I reply***That is not the case. See above. Full membership of either EU or NATO is not necessary for a country to be clearly linked to this alliance. It would be absurd formalism to claim that no shift in Ukraine’s alignment took place when the Association Agreement was signed. Ukraine has certainly joined something. It looks to me like an anti-Russian alliance.
Mr ‘P’ : The EU is of course not "anti-Russian".
I reply **** Isn’t it? Currently the EU is engaging in sanctions against Russia, imposed on Russia for pursuing its own sovereign national interests in a part of the world where the EU had no jurisdiction at the time. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs (at the time) gave her open endorsement to the Kiev mob, when it was demanding that the Ukraine align with the EU. The EU has spent £300 million on influencing civil society organisations in Ukraine to favour an EU alignment detrimental to Russia. The EU has never made any serious offer of membership or even association to Russia, even though Russia is no more of a ‘basket case’ than Ukraine (rather less of one, most dispassionate observers would say) , or than one or two existing EU members I could name. The EU has in fact been more friendly to Turkey, an Islamist-run country with severe corruption and an increasingly despotic government, than it has ever been to Russia. NATO, which makes no real pretence that it is not an anti-Russian alliance, is now more or less coterminous with the EU in Europe and membership of it is usually spoken of in the same breath by countries in eastern Europe and the Caucasus who are seeking to join the anti-Russian bloc.
Mr ‘P’ The EU is principally 'anti war-in-Europe', the founding impetus of the organisation.
I reply ****I really would have thought that no reader of this weblog would persist with this tedious old advertising slogan, so many ties demolished here. Can he actively be seeking to provoke? The original European Community had no impact on the danger or otherwise of war in Europe in general. It helped cause the only major European war since 1945, by accelerating the break-up of Yugoslavia and recognising Croatia as a sovereign state. It is now helping to cause another one.
It was indeed intended to institutionalise the conflict between Germany and France, and to soothe France’s wounded pride at losing its place as top nation in Europe, while also concealing German hegemony in an empire which never openly acknowledged who was in charge of it. Had there been any doubt about this, then the end of the Cold War would have confirmed it. If the EU had ever been intended to be a Europe-wide organisation, with a general European aim, it would have set out to include Russia, the largest country in the reunited post-1989 Europe. It didn’t. Nobody ever says openly why not , because the truth is so obvious. Russian membership of the EU would necessarily challenge German domination of the organisation, because Russia’s population ( 144 million) is so much greater than that of Germany (80 million) or any other member state that Russian representation on EU bodies would necessarily be overpowering. This has been a pardonable German worry since the age of Bismarck, and one of the reasons why Germany has always worried about the rest of Russia and repeatedly sought to prevent it. If the EU were called 'The German Empire', as it ought to be, then the exclusion of Russia wouldn't really need any explanation. However, for reasons we all know, it can't be called that.
Mr ‘P’ :The EU has since 2004 sought closer ties with Russia through its European Neighbourhood Policy, but Russia has always refused to cooperate, instead preferring to define four 'common spaces' of cooperative activity. It is essentially the same thing except that Russia doesn't feel itself to be a junior partner - the other 'neighbourhood' countries comprising mostly developing countries - as it believed it would within the ENP. As to Russia joining the EU, it is often mooted but is not likely in the foreseeable future. There is no way that Russia would at present meet EU criteria for membership.
I reply****I have heard this said about so many countries which have then, not long afterwards, been welcomed into the EU despite ropey economies, shameful corruption and dreadful legal and administrative systems. It simply won’t do as a reason for excluding Russia from the path to membership.
Mr ‘P’ : Russia is a basket case politically and economically and would drag the EU into an uncertain abyss.
I reply**** No more than Ukraine, in fact much less so, because of its huge energy reserves, its advanced military industries and rather sensible decision to build a surplus.
Mr ‘P’ : The 'common spaces' will for the present have to stand surrogate for 'neighbourliness' between the EU and Russia. And then we have Mr Hitchens' 'German plot' theme, which no doubt excites the imaginations of conspiracy buffs, but can he be serious? Half the contributors to this blog think it's an American plot. Still another bunch think it's a NATO 'plot'. The 'plot' has become a belief system not unlike a religious belief system which in the face of deeply held a priori prejudices (hopes and desires in the case of religious belief systems) serves as the preferred 'best explanation'.
I reply***This is what is so exasperating about trying to argue with people such as Mr ‘P’. I have never used the word ‘plot’, as he well knows. I have carefully elucidated the century-old development of German policy towards Russia, explained its liberal origins, its political, diplomatic and economic rationality, explained why it persists despite all the changes in Germany since it began. I’ve explained the USA’s long-term interest in seeking (though not necessarily finding) the federalisation of Europe, dating back to Woodrow Wilson. I have quoted exhaustively from, and referred to, reputable historical works on the subject. And the response of Mr ‘P’ is to sit on this pile of facts and reason like a performing flea squeaking ‘Plot! Plot! He says there’s a plot!’ .
As my poor mother used to say between clenched teeth when my brother and I had provoked her beyond endurance ‘Give me strength!’.
As it is, I am going to give Mr ‘P’ a Christmas present. He can either withdraw this suggestion that I have alleged a German plot, which I regard as uncivilized behaviour unworthy of a member of this small society of seekers after truth,or I shall take the greatest personal pleasure in excluding him from this blog forever and a day. It’s poisoning the wells. It’s not serious, and it wastes my time. Five days are allowed.
December 18, 2014
Why does NATO still Exist? What does it stand for, exactly?
When I first published ‘The Cameron Delusion’, under its original title of ‘The Broken Compass’, the distinguished parodist Craig Brown tried to satirise my index in ‘Private Eye. Since the index itself is satirical (I love doing my own indexes now computers have made the job so simple) he didn’t do all that well, and , annoyingly, he didn’t mention the name of the book. But never mind.
One of my favourite entries was under ‘A’, and along the lines of ‘Afghanistan, a very long way from North Atlantic’ (I’m in the middle of an internal office move and can’t lay hands on an actual copy). The point was simple. What was a body called ‘The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’ doing intervening in a complex tribal struggle on the edge of the Himalayas? The location really couldn’t be further from the North Atlantic, either in miles or in nature.
It is odd that nobody (except, occasionally, me) really seeks the answer to this question. The reinvention of NATO is one of the strangest and most instructive changes of the post-Cold War world. It sits in the middle of the diplomatic landscape, a great looming monolith. Why is this? What is it for? Whom or what is it against?
My explanation for the lack of curiosity is the usual one. People are, for the most part, willing propaganda-swallowers. Some of these such as Mr ‘P’, the Wiki Man, actually like the taste so much that they can’t easily be weaned off it. I’ll pause for a moment to illustrate this, before continuing with the main topic of NATO.
Mr P’s struggle to avoid the truth about Ukraine has now become heroic. For instance, in a recent contribution he wrote:
‘Aggression usually is, and in fact is defined as, an action detrimental to the aggressee and against the aggressee's will.’
But he still can’t somehow acknowledge that Ukraine’s change (following a violent foreign-sponsored mob putsch) from being a non-aligned country to being a member of an anti-Russian economic and political alliance is not detrimental to the interests of Russia and against Russia’s (openly and repeatedly expressed) will.
Mr ‘P’ also competes for the Obtuseness Olympics when he writes: ‘In response to my point that tanks rolling over borders *is* aggression, Mr Hitchens, wafting this thought aside, merely opines, Humpty Dumpty-like, that aggression can mean many things, and in this case what Mr Hitchens wants it to mean.’
This is not what I say at all, and he knows it. I say that Russia’s actions are a defensive response to aggression, and that to pretend that the realignment of Ukraine through foreign intervention and the violent overthrow of its government is not aggression is to deceive yourself and (perhaps) others.
I’ll reproduce here part of Richard Pipes’s interesting summary of the traditional European Christian diplomacy (based on the Stoic concept of the Law of Nature ) which the Bolsheviks overthrew in 1917 ( having themselves been put in power by a German-financed putsch, which could be described as ‘aggression’, and was certainly an act of war).
‘International relations are confined to contacts between governments: It is a violation of diplomatic norms for one government to go over the head of another with direct appeals to its population’.
We all know this in any case. How many times have I asked the following questions and received no answers to them from Mr ‘P’ or his allies. How would we in Britain react if EU politicians appeared among pro-independence crowds in Edinburgh or Glasgow, distributing biscuits to them and affirming their solidarity with them?
And how would the EU and NATO and the State Department react if Russian politicians appeared amidst Russian-speaking crowds in Riga or Tallinn, handing out biscuits and urging a new Association Agreement with the Eurasian Union?
They do not answer because they know that such behaviour would be greeted by all right-thinking persons with rage and protests, and rightly so. And that it is directly comparable to the behaviour described in these links, which actually took place:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-victoria-nuland-wades-into-ukraine-turmoil-over-yanukovich/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/04/uk-ukraine-idUKBRE9B20BV20131204
Mr P also says ‘Mr Hitchens here concedes that Ukraine desires to join the EU, which is central to my overall point. ‘. I am not sure that I ‘concede’ any such thing. Many Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs undoubtedly wish to join the EU, because they hope it will provide an unceasing pipeline of money from which they can, er, benefit. The elites of many poor and bankrupt countries likewise believe, rightly or wrongly, that EU membership will lead them to prosperity.
I should have thought that Greece was a good example of the general dangers of this belief. As or the peoples of these countries, they are, alas, as ill-informed and as easily-manipulated as people generally are. Personally, I have always thought that the aim of the EU was political, not economic, and I have found that most informed continental people agree with me. It is only in Britain that we persist in seeing the EU as an economic project. The adventures of the Euro seem to make this point quite well.
Whether the Ukrainian people are any better-informed about the meaning of EU membership for their lives than other populations rushed into the body by their elites, I do not presume to know. The word’ Ukraine’ is not in fact synonymous with ‘Government of Ukraine’. I have no doubt that the current government of Ukraine, installed following a violent unconstitutional putsch, favours the closest possible relations with the EU. But, given that this putsch was backed by the EU, this is hardly a surprise.
Mr ‘P’ makes some silly remarks about Cuba, which is plainly in the USA’s sphere of influence, and whose problems for the past 50 years stem from Soviet meddling in the Caribbean.
This was comparable in provocative irresponsibility to current American meddling in central Europe. It is precisely because the USA regards Cuba as legitimately part of its sphere that it has invaded and then blockaded that island. Is this aggression, or legitimate response to provocation I should say the latter, while describing Soviet Russia’s behaviour in Cuba as aggressive, even before the installation of the famous missiles.
Russia’s current interests in Cuba are vestigial and, I suspect, no more than mischievous retaliation for American meddling in the Caucasus. On my last visit to Cuba, Chinese involvement, and of course Venezuelan involvement, were miles more significant.
Also his reference to Humpty Dumpty is (as I have pointed out to him before, but he paid no attention) wrong. The point about Humpty Dumpty’s use of words was that he used them to mean whatever he liked, and for purposes wholly unrelated to their original use. Thus ‘There’s glory for you’ meant, in Humpty-speak ‘There’s a nice knock-down argument for you’.
My dispute with Mr ‘P’ is not a semantic one and certainly does not involve the total misuse of English. We agree about what aggression *is* in general. Our difference concerns the question of whether there is any other form of aggression apart from the despatch of tanks and troops across a border. Of course there is. But Mr ’P’ knows that his argument will collapse in ruins as soon as he acknowledges this, so he doesn’t acknowledge it. There is a word for this sort of behaviour, but I have forgotten what it is. Let’s just describe it as ‘self-serving anti-thinking’.
Mr ‘P’ offers Russia some good advice about its economy (I can’t imagine why they haven’t taken it, can you? Perhaps it isn’t as easy as it looks), thus : ‘producing goods people want to buy and opening up markets into which people want to sell. A step in that direction would be to rid the system of ex-KGB mafioso politics and oligarchical economics, get to allowing free expression throughout the media and in public discourse’ (actually speech in Russia is more free than he seems to imagine, the problem being much more that of access to major media platforms, much as it is here only more directly state-influenced).
Actually, this is advice that Britain could just as readily take to heart, since our indebted economy, with its miserable manufacturing base, its poor exports and its over-dependence on the City (plus its long insulation from reality by North Sea Oil) is really not all that much more healthy than Russia’s, and couldn’t withstand the sort of attack on it now being made on Russia’s economy.
But his final paragraph enables me to slip back into the general discussion of NATO. Mr P’ writes (first quoting me) : "The even deeper mystery is why anyone in Britain thinks that EU eastward expansion is something this country needs to or should support. What’s in it for us?"
Mr ‘P’ asks :’ What does one make of this? Is there something 'in it for us' if we don't support it? Russia won't attack us if we don't support it. Is that what's 'in it for us'? We'll get a good deal on gas prices. Is that it, or something like it? Is Mr Hitchens an appeasement-monkey?’
I respond that this is just a smear. Foreign policy is generally conducted for the benefit of the country involved. Why then is Britain so keenly joining in on the side of Brussels against Moscow? I cannot myself see what direct interest Britain has in taking the EU’s side in its dispute with Russia. Britain buys very little gas from Russia, relying far more on Norway, and has no strong commercial ties with Russia which would be affected by this conflict. I recommend, as I have always recommended, staying out of a quarrel that isn’t ours and discouraging dogmatic hotheads who seem to think it as a contest between the Shire and Mordor.
Mr ;P’ is one of these, it seems. He says :’ Why should we support it? Well for one thing we would be supporting the aspirations of the former and courageous Soviet satellites, understandably still nervous of the ghosts of politburos past, now rapidly becoming a very real apparition of Tsarisms past. ‘
People in this part of the world are indeed understandably nervous, but not just of politburos (vanished) and tsars (even more defunct). They have reason to be nervous of Germany and its ‘federative empire’ too, and if Mr ‘P’ had spent much time in that region he would know that the fear and the pressure are not always in one direction only.
I am not sure what makes these former Soviet satellites, now EU satellites, so ‘courageous’. What have they done that is so brave? They and their people behaved just as we would behave in the same circumstances – sharing a bed with a hippo on one side and an elephant on the other - very carefully.
Having gained, briefly, actual independence from one empire, they have scuttled, almost as one, under the skirts of another. I should have thought it would have been braver to stay out of both. In any case, I fail to see what it matters to me, whether they look to Moscow or Brussels, as long as the conflict isn’t pushed to the extent of war.
But here we are again at NATO. Lord Ismay famously described its original purpose as keeping the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out …in all cases the preposition referred to Western Europe.
Implicit in NATO’s whole existence was that it accepted absolutely the Soviet domination of the continent from Marienborn eastwards. NATO ignored the 1953 crushing of the East Berlin workers’ rising, the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian rising, the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring, the crushing of Polish Solidarity in the 1980s.
It also had no interest in anything outside Western Europe. It had nothing important to say about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (other people began a long and dangerous process by seeking to oppose that) , nor about China’s crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests.
In some ways more interesting, it was pretty much of a spare part when two if its members almost came to blows over Cyprus in 1974. Turkey, then and now a member of NATO in good standing, invaded and seized North Cyprus.
This was a far more troubled event than Russia’s seizure of Crimea 40 years later, but it has some interesting parallels. Like Russia’s action, it followed a violent foreign-backed putsch which installed a government in Nicosia that was as hostile to Turkey (and to Turkish concerns) as the post-putsch Kiev government was hostile to Russia and Russian concerns.
Its purpose was to turn Cyprus into a Greek island, rather than ( as it then was) an independent state carefully non-aligned between Greece and Turkey. Yet as far as I know, no Greek ships, planes, troops or tanks were directly involved. Was this therefore aggression?
Obviously it was, unless you are Mr ‘P’, who presumably attributes it to a desire by ‘Cyprus’ (the divisions in whose population he will not be able to acknowledge as real, if he applies to it the same lens he applies to Ukraine) to be aligned with Greece. But will he? I doubt it. For this was a putsch by the ‘right-wing’ .
At the time, Greece was of course a military dictatorship. Turkey was not, but the army stood behind the government in a pretty convincing way, and Turkish governments which annoyed the army tended not to last very long in those days.
Anyway, there were many atrocities during this affair, and large numbers of people were frightened or driven from beloved homes. An entire city, Famagusta, remains deserted to this day as a result. Nicosia remains divided, as does Cyprus itself. Nobody ( apart from Turkey) recognizes the state of Northern Cyprus set up by Turkey.
But on the other hand, there are no sanctions against Turkey, and no attempts to destabilise the Turkish economy, just repeated patient attempts to reach a negotiated settlement. Greece and Cyprus have subsequently been allowed to join the EU (*in the original version of this post I wrongly stated that Turkey has been permitted to join the EU, which I knew perfectly well was not the case. I suspect this mistake just goes to show how the EU and NATO have become increasingly confused) , despite being in some ways party to this rather disgraceful running sore of a conflict.
Britain, which actually possesses large military bases next door, and was generally thought to have some lingering responsibility for an island it once ruled and had fought quite hard to hang on to, sat back and did nothing as the Turks parachuted down. Those who regarded the behaviour of the international community at the time as shameful were generally ignored. There was a great lack of blowhards demanding that we went on a war footing against Turkey.
Now, if our behaviour over Crimea and Ukraine is governed by any sort of universal law, advocates of the New Cold War and believers in the ‘Putin is the new Hitler’ theory will have to explain to me (once again) the lack of consistency in our approach here.
For it’s even more striking now. Some of you may have noticed the poorly-covered events in Turkey a few days ago, eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30468199
There is nothing new in this behaviour by Mr Erdogan . Yet his wickedness is little-known in this country (the other day a presenter of Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme, who really ought to be in touch with such things, was so unfamiliar with him that she did not know that the ‘g’ in ‘Erdogan’ is silent.
I wrote this introduction to a speech I didn’t in the end deliver to the Cambridge Union a few weeks ago (there wasn’t time , alas):
‘His regime has imprisoned 70 journalists, does sinister deals with Islamist terrorists, uses ultra-violence against rebel ethnic groups, railroads its political opponents into jail on plainly invented charges, brutally gasses, clubs and even kills peaceful protestors. He is a crude demagogue, given to violent and intolerant language. He has moved from being a parliamentary prime minister to an all-powerful directly elected president. His media are cowed or compliant His troops illegally occupy another country’s sovereign territory, where he maintains a puppet government.’
No, it’s not Vladimir Putin. It’s our NATO ally, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey.
While he is in many ways similar to Mr Putin, he has for years been the poster-boy of the Economist magazine, the head of state of a NATO member - and his misdeeds are barely-known to the noisy moralizers of the British media.’
Regular readers here will know of my interest in this NATO head of state, for example:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/08/mr-erdogan-changes-trams-.html
and
Some of you will have noticed Mr Erdogan's odd behaviour towards Islamic State and Syria in recent months, not perhaps the action of a close ally of the ‘West’.
Well, all of this would make perfect sense if we still confronted a potent Soviet threat, Admiral Gorchkov’s huge Black Sea Fleet (now mostly razor blades) , the Soviet Army parked up against the borders of Turkey in Armenia and of Iran in Azerbaijan, and all these powers devoted to the cause of establishing Soviet power across the globe, directed by a Communist Politburo. Against such a power, you aren’t too choosy about whose help you accept.
But we don’t. We face a declining, shrinking Russia whose principal sin is to complain when we try to diminish it further, whereupon we accuse it of aggression’.
What is NATO for? Why wasn’t it wound up, as was its mirror image, the Warsaw Pact, when the Cold War ended? Do you keep a mower when you don’t have a garden? Why then have an anti-Soviet alliance when there isn’t a Soviet Union?
In the years of Boris Yeltsin, as I understood it, Russia was generally regarded as a friendly power. We happily stood by, even helped, when Yeltsin retained power in a rigged election, and when he bombarded his own parliament with tanks, and sent troops into the state TV headquarters. So against what threat did we extend its umbrella into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states?
What does it stand for, if Turkey can remain a member in good standing? Democracy? Sort of, though Turkey isn’t much more democratic than Mr Putin’s Russia. Liberty and the rule of law? Hardly. Mr Erdogan is not very good at that, and nor (whisper it quietly) are some of the other members. Rigid adherence to International Law? Again, not while Turkey continues to occupy North Cyprus. Absence of corruption? Ha ha. Freedom of the press? Not exactly. And so it goes on. And what on earthwas NATO doing in Afghanstan? Who knows? Didn't work out, anyway.
In considering these anomalies, you may just begin to see the outlines of what may be happening, You will certainly, if you allow yourself to think about these facts , be liberated from the propaganda of the new Cold War’ advocates, and the people who think that one lot of oligarchs in Ukraine are princes of peace, love and beauty, while an equally unlovely bunch of Oligarchs in Moscow are from the nether pit of hell.
But, as we so often find, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think. Doesn’t the old saying go something like that?
December 17, 2014
Surprise! OFCOM steps into the row over the BBC Bob Marley 'Puff Piece'.
I was pleased and surprised on Tuesday to learn that OFCOM, generally no friend of any of my positions, was investigating the BBC, which I had thought was immune from such outside probes. The BBC is amazingly well-protected against critics, above all by its effectively total exemption from Freedom of Information requests. If you read the FoI exemption, mainly for anything connected with BBC 'journalism' you might get the impression that it wasn’t total, but in practice I have found that it is. If it’s interesting or important, you can’t ask.
It turns out that in certain circumstances, OFCOM *can* investigate the BBC. It cannot look into impartiality questions, which are still reserved for the BBC Trust – assuming that the ordinary complainer has the persistence and skill to get that far. I’ll believe that the BBC Trust is an independent monitor when it upholds one of my complaints on impartiality. Not before.
But it has entertained a complaint against a disgraceful broadcast on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme (8.45 a.m. Wednesday 19th November) , which the programme itself accurately described as a ‘Puff Piece’ for a branded type of marijuana.
Here’s a report on it from the Daily Mail;
My own complaint to the BBC, now grinding its way through the complaint system, summed up the matter as follows:
The item was an unremitting promotion of cannabis, a drug which is illegal in this country,. Its legality is currently the subject of major public controversy, as there is an active and high-level campaign for its legalisation. Interspersed with music, it was wholly uncritical of claims about the drug such as that it was 'pure' and has 'positive benefits' . The use of this drug is strongly correlated with irreversible mental illness, especially among the young, a grave tragedy for those affected. Its sale and possession are still officially crimes attracting long prison sentences, yet the reporter and the presenters treated the subject with levity. The legality or otherwise of cannabis is a subject of current major controversy (e.g. the recent Home Office report and subsequent resignation of the minister involved) and likely to be an election issue next May. This was a total failure of balance, and seriously irresponsible behaviour.
A BBC Apparatchik then responded this
The report you have complained about featured in the programme’s business slot and concerned a tie up between an American company , Privateer Holdings and the estate of the late Bob Marley , which had licensed the use of his name to create a brand of cannabis products , called Marley Natural. This story featured in quite similar ways in newspapers such as the Telegraph and the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2839424/This-dreamed-Family-Bob-Marley-launch-global-marijuana-brand-honor-reggae-king-cannabis-industry-braces-hit-10-billion.html.
It was made clear that these products would only be marketed in places where it was legal to do so , including some states in the USA . It was also stated that they would not be sold in the UK where they would be illegal ; a point underlined by the business reporter , Simon Jack at the end of the report when he stated , “ It’s not legal here. Washington and Colorado though have made it legal.”
As you point out, the legality of cannabis is controversial and Today has considered the matter on other occasions , most recently on October 30th when it was discussed by the then Home Office Minister , Norman Baker MP and Michael Ellis MP, who was critical of decriminalising it.
The item in the business slot on November 19th was not intended to be an examination of the social effects of drug use and confined itself to the business aspect of the story.
However the editor of the Today programme considers that the tone of the report was not appropriate given that cannabis is a banned substance in the UK , and accepts that more should have been said to counter any possible impression that the drug has purely positive benefits . Simon Jack should perhaps have referred to the debate over the medical consequences of its use . As there was no suggestion that these products could be purchased by people in Britain , we do not think the report can be held to have promoted their usage but we are sorry it did not meet the standards we would expect.
And I replied to him:
Dear Mr ****
Thank you for your letter. I am copying this reply to the Editorial Complaints Unit, as I view your reply as wholly inadequate and wish to pursue it further. I explain my reasons below.
I would above all dispute your assertion that the item was a 'report'. Apart from a very brief introduction from the presenter and the reporter (whose full name was not even given) , and an equally brief exit, the item contained no BBC reporting as such.
It was an entirely uncritical and uninformative advertorial feature package containing unchallenged and unexamined statements by a spokesman (Brendan Kennedy) for the company involved and by unintroduced and unnamed children of Bob Marley, who were recorded as praising the 'positive benefits' of 'something that was so pure'. To add to the impression that the item was a commercial, it contained long passages of Bob Marley's music, taking up precious time that could have been used for reporting and questioning. The music also gave the impression of Radio 4 endorsing this item as a piece of entertaining jollity rather than a contentious issue. Perhaps the most purely commercial segment of the package was this: 'Marley Natural is a brand with deep roots in the life and legacy of our father, Bob Marley. He's smiling!' Such sentiments would not be out of place in an actual paid advertisement.
But there is another aspect here - of partiality in controversy. Only someone wholly partial in the argument about cannabis legalisation would have failed to see the difficulties with this item. But even such a person should have noticed that the product's own promoters recognised their actions as political . Look at this from Mr Kennedy: 'It's a natural fit. It’s a brand that will immediately have brand recognition around the world. There aren't a lot of branding opportunities out there like this one. It gives us a strong voice in the cannabis movement and in the cannabis industry from day one'
Note the mention of the word 'movement'. Mr Kennedy clearly identifies the promotion as political as well as commercial.
The exit from the item was also openly partial in its tone and content. Given that the sale and possession of this drug are criminal offences under British law, and its use is increasingly correlated with severe and irreversible mental illness, the levity of the item, and the levity of the way in which it was presented, were completely unsuitable and indefensible.
The reporter says at the end, using a clearly light-hearted and amused tone 'That's what they call a puff piece in more ways than one.'
The presenter says in the background something on the lines of :'That's what they call a....joke'(no doubt your superior equipment can reproduce the actual word. I think it is 'terrible'). The tone throughout is joshing and light-hearted, suited to an item on Radio Scunthorpe about (say) a hippopotamus being shampooed in a zoo, but not to this programme, or to this subject.
The reporter then (to the accompaniment of wheezy giggles from the presenter, once again employing unsuitable levity on a subject many people find tragic rather than funny) provides a further product endorsement : '*****(name given) Marijuana brands are available in the territories in which it is legal. It’s not a puff piece in the UK because it's not legal here. Washington and Colorado they have made it legal'.
Why is the mention of the availability necessary at all?
The presenter 's 'Thank you very much Simon' is also wreathed in smiles, once again a partial action. Those who believe that their children have become permanently mentally ill because of cannabis use will not have found it amusing.
The entire item fails completely to acknowledge that there is anything contentious about the subject at all. A separate broadcast in which the controversy was discussed has no bearing on this. The item is, in and of itself, a breach of the BBC's Charter obligations, both to be impartial on matters of major controversy, and to eschew commercial promotions. Imagine, if you will, your own response to a comparably thoughtless and uncritical piece on the 'Today' programme, on a new brand of cigarettes, endorsed by the children of a famous cigarette smoker, presented amidst giggles and smiles.
Your link to Mail Online (not the Daily Mail, which as far as I can find published no such story) has no important bearing on the matter. Mail Online is not financed by a licence fee collected on pain of imprisonment, and is not governed by a Royal Charter. Even so, it managed to include in its report a reflection of the existence of a controversy, which the licence-financed, officially impartial Today programme did not. It noted: ‘However news of the company's launch has not sat well with anti-marijuana campaigners. Kevin Sabet, a professor at the University of Florida, told TODAY*, said it is nothing but a money-making exercise and goes against the anti-establishment views of Marley himself. 'Legalization is not about allowing millions of people some personal freedom,' Sabet said. 'It’s about a allowing a select few people to make millions of dollars.'
The Today' referred to here is of course the NBC TV programme, not yours. So, apart from all the rest of my complaint, the BBC's supposedly most prestigious and responsible daily news programme was outdone, in simple professionalism, by Mail Online, which has no obligation to be impartial, and the commercial NBC.
I am glad that, as you say, 'the editor of the Today programme considers that the tone of the report was not appropriate given that cannabis is a banned substance in the UK , and accepts that more should have been said to counter any possible impression that the drug has purely positive benefits.'
This clear admission of wrongdoing, though wholly inadequate given the scale of it, It is a useful starting point for the process of apology and rectification which should now take place and which I intend to seek.
I would appreciate an acknowledgement that this matter is now being considered by the ECU.
Now here’s what OFCOM say:
‘• Today BBC Radio 4, 19 Nov 14, 08:15
An Ofcom spokesman said :
“Ofcom is investigating whether this news item, about an American company launching a range of cannabis products, condoned, encouraged or glamorised the use of illegal substances”.
When I asked on what basis OFCOM could get involved, they replied: Ofcom is required under the Communications Act 2003 and the Broadcasting Act 1996 to draw up a code for TV and radio, covering standards in programmes, sponsorship, product placement in television programmes, fairness and privacy.
This Code is known as the Ofcom Broadcasting Code. A link to the full legislation can be found here: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/
I shall be interested to see which section OFCOM cites when it comes up with its judgement on this.
The ‘Today’ programme is in my view far too willing to give a platform to drug decriminalisers, and slow to offer a comparable platform to any opponents - apart from dreary government spokesmen who seem to think the existing law is being enforced, which readers here know it isn't being.
I made a relevant complaint to the BBC last year about what I regarded as a similarly frivolous and unbalanced item on the drugs topic, which you may read here
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/05/how-impartial-is-that-bbc-monitoring-.html
Peter Hitchens's Blog
- Peter Hitchens's profile
- 299 followers
