Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 226
July 23, 2014
"Who, Whom?" becomes "EU, EUM?" The EU and the Nature of Power
Since I wrote my original commentary on the MH17 atrocity, a lot of people have contested my view that the European Union is an expansionist power, which has gobbled up large numbers of small countries. They have also contested my view that the EU is the aggressor in Ukraine.
Here are some samples of their points. My replies follow, marked *** and shown in bold,
My old friend Edward Lucas, of the Economist, tweeted ‘I am arguing w[ith] @ClarkeMicah who says EU "gobbled" CEE countries. I say no coercion -- they wanted to join’.
***And this of course is where the fun begins. What is coercion in the modern world?
Ostensibly, each new EU nation joins happily of its own free will. But how true is this? It is often an elite decision. even where it is not, how fair are the state-sponsored plebiscites in which it is sometimes approved? Britain, relatively rich, powerful and independent, was finagled into EU membership with shameless lies and a wholly unbalanced post-facto referendum. So how much less free must it be in poorer, weaker nations?
What choice did these tiny, often bankrupt countries really have as they stumbled, blinking, out of their Soviet prison camp? Where else but from the EU did they hope to get markets, investment or subsidy, even though the price was often bitter and high?
Poland, much-touted as a big success, is now a dependency of Germany whose young people must go abroad in legions to find work. We hear little about the effects of EU rules on these countries, though I recall some years ago riots in Warsaw, as coalminers from the Polish south protested against the destruction of their jobs.
And then of course there is the hard, unavoidable fact about EU membership. Countries which accept it place themselves under the EU’s Supreme Court in Luxembourg, so sacrificing an independent legal system, a key attribute of a sovereign nation; they place themselves under the EU Commission in Brussels, so sacrificing the direction of much of their domestic, trade defence and foreign policy; in most cases they sacrifice their currencies, so ceding control of their fiscal policy; and they abolish their frontiers with all EU neighbours.
Lenin’s simple question about power ‘Who Whom?’ could perhaps be reworded as ‘Eu Eum?’. Can there be any doubt as to which way power flows in this relationship? Does any truly free and independent nation *willingly* give up so much control over its destiny? Of course not. They all did it (including Britain) because their elites believed, or knew, that they had no real alternative.
By the way, the riveting and brilliant chapters on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in Adam Tooze’s majestic work ‘The Deluge’ are full of keys and clues to modern Europe, which show how and why ‘self-determination’ became Germany’s principal weapon against Russia.
P.108 ‘At Brest it was the Germans as much as the Soviets who sought (in 1918) to craft a modern peace in the East , based on the new standards of legitimacy, or at least it was the German Foreign Secretary Richard von Kuehlmann and his backers in the Reichstag majority who did. Quite deliberately they sought to seize the initiative by establishing a liberal order in the east to replace the autocratic empire of the Tsar’.
P.109;’Brest gave birth to the precursors to the Baltic states in their modern form, an independent Ukraine and a Transcaucasian Republic’
Adding ‘Of course, in 1918 all of these polities fell willy-nilly under the ‘protection’ of Imperial Germany’.
(I’ll say they did, PH).
‘Since 1991, all of these creations of the ‘Brest-Litovsk moment’, and more, of the family of nations have come to be regarded as legitimate members of the family of nations. Now as then Poland and the Baltic states look to protectors in the West. Today they are keen members of an American-dominated NATO and the European Union, in which Germany is the dominant force’.
I don’t think I’m doing Professor Tooze any disservice by quoting his analysis. I rather suspect (I’m only a third of the way though his superb, original book) he favours the new arrangement.
I’ll bung in a couple of other extracts :(P.113) ‘ Since the publication of Friedrich Naumann’s much-misunderstood book on the vision of a unified Mitteleuropa in October 1915, there had been a lively discussion of a zone of German hegemony in central Europe, based on some kind of federative imperialism….
‘…once Tsarist power collapsed in 1917 and America entered the war, it was obvious to the more intelligent strategic thinkers in Germany that there was no better means with which to dynamite the Tsarist empire than for Berlin to espouse the demand for self-determination’.
Do you see the trick here. ‘Federative imperialism’ , in a ‘zone of German hegemony’ arises out of the break-up of the Russian empire, dressed up as self-determination. Sound familiar at all?
But none of this jolly, progressive stuff would have mattered a bit in the 21st century if Germany had not gone to war against Russia in 1914. And after the USSR;s reversal of Brest-Litovsk in the 1920s, the issue would have died away had it not been for the second German assault on Russian domination of the region, in 1941. This failed in 1945, but Russia was not able to sustain her victory (thanks to the mad economics of Communism) and the wound reopened in 1990. It is still open.
My own view is that Germany’s two violent attempts to dominate the European continent continue to influence all those affected, directly or indirectly, and that the EU is itself a mechanism to institutionalise that influence - fear and apprehension, terror of having to go through it again, into non-violent channels. The threat, however, remains - implicit most of the time but occasionally explicit.
The best evidence of this came from Helmut Kohl, the modern Bismarck, in a speech at Louvain/Leuven in February 1996.
I quote Sarah Helm’s report from the ‘Independent’ because both reporter and newspaper are impeccable ornaments of the establishment, not wild secessionists such as I am:
The report is datelined Brussels, 3rd February 1996
‘Chancellor Helmut Kohl yesterday warned in the most strident terms that a retreat from further political integration in Europe could plunge the continent into new "nationalist" wars in the next century.
‘In language intended to challenge the rise of Euro-scepticism - no longer a merely British phenomenon - the German leader proclaimed: "The policy of European integration is in reality a question of war and peace in the 21st century." Beseeching his European partners to take far-reaching decisions on further EU integration at the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) in March, he said: "If we suffer a set-back now on the road to Europe it will take considerably longer than one generation before we are given such an opportunity again." Mr Kohl said he was not advocating a "superstate". But he added: "We have no desire to return to the nation state of old. It cannot solve the great problems of the 21st century. Nationalism has brought great suffering to our continent." Recalling his friendship with Francois Mitterrand, who died last month, he said that the former French president shared his view that "nationalism is war".
‘Mr Kohl's warnings were clearly directed in part at Britain, where the Government has been fuelling fears of further integration and questioning the timetable for the creation of a European single currency.
‘"If individual partners are not prepared, or able, to participate in certain steps towards integration," he said, "the others should not be denied the opportunity to move forward and develop increased co-operation in which all partners are welcome to take part." This was a renewed plea for the Franco-German proposals for a "hard-core" Europe of federally-minded countries which would relegate Britain to a Euro-sceptic periphery.
‘Mr Kohl has frequently argued that strengthening the EU is essential if German power is to be contained. His fear is that a dominant Germany, unshackled by common European rules, would fuel nationalism among its neighbours, putting Europe back on the road to the wars which disfigured the first half of this century.
‘The Chancellor made it clear that, despite warnings of the imminent collapse of the plans for European Monetary Union, he believes that the single currency remains the linchpin of the next phase of European integration. He called for "considerable efforts on everybody's part to achieve a major step forward". He also restated his conviction that enlarging the EU to take in new members from the East was crucial to Europe's future.
‘Mr Kohl emphasised that the IGC reform process should be used to restructure European institutions for greater power-sharing in the next century. He set out four areas in which Germany wants to see progress: a strengthening of the EU's foreign and security policy; more pooling of powers in criminal justice; greater openness in decision-making and more power for the European Parliament.
‘Acknowledging that warnings of further war were not popular, the Chancellor said: "My warnings may contain an unpleasant truth. [But] if there is no momentum for continued integration this will not only lead to standstill but also to retrogression.” '
He said it. And alert readers will note that he got his way. The crazed scheme for EU currency union was adopted, and is still ruining lives all over our mighty continent (though the tragedy is by no means over yet).
I am amazed at the way in which so many people think that power can only be exerted through troops, tanks and bombs. Diplomacy can be, and often is, the extension of warfare by other means. It is often forgotten that most of Hitler’s early successes were achieved by menace rather than force. The redrawing of Europe’s borders at Versailles was an exercise in polite violence, with people driven hither and thither, empires dismantled and borders shifted, on the basis of fear that the whole thing would have to be begun again.
And it was varied and frustrated by threats of violence from the Czech and the Turks, among others.
Edward is in a bit of cleft stick here. The Saarland voted willingly to rejoin Germany, in 1935, long aftr Hitler came to power, in a fairly conducted plebiscite. Did power play no part, even if it was popular? Sudeten Germans, and Austrians, likewise gaily welcomed their accession to the Reich. Was power not involved? And if popular willigness to be oart of the EU means the nation invilved has not been gobbled up, then Edward presumably applauds and sympathizes with Crimea's indubitably popular absorption into the Russian Federation? Or does he? I rather think he believes Mr Putin has gobbled it up, whether it was popular or not.
Power is frequently exerted by engineering the overthrow of governments one does not like. Britain and the USA did this to Iran quite recently, in a putsch which is documented in detail and not disputed.
American interference is not limited to the Middle East. On March 12 2003, then president George W.Bush made a contemptuous threat to topple the Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, having misunderstood British politics so badly that he thought IDS might oppose British participation in the Iraq War. The President also though IDS was called ‘Iain Duncan Baker’
The USSR did it in Czechoslovakia in 1948, engineering a Communist putsch. Many believe that the KGB was also behind the eventual fall of Communism in Prague 41 years later. And let’s not get started on the Caribbean and Latin America.
The USSR continued to hold a veto over Cabinet appointments in (neutral) Finland until the end of the Cold War. EU members attempted to force Jorg Haider’s ‘Freedom Party’ out of the Austrian governing coalition in 2000, which, whatever you think of Herr Haider (and I thought he was appalling) , is not a gesture of confidence in sovereign democracy. The attempt also backfired, probably because it was so blatant and public.
I haven’t noticed *any* of my critics even mentioning one key part of my Monday article, the quotation from Matthew Omolesky’s (pro’Maidan’) article in the ‘American Spectator, in which Mr Omolesky says: ‘‘Some might take issue with the rather grandiose claim that Europe cannot endure without Ukraine, but the European Union has long had designs on it. Brussels funnelled some 389 million Euros to Ukraine between 2011 and 2013 alone and distributions were made to a host of civil-society NGOs…
...The 2014 protests, touched off by Yanukovych’s rejection of a European Union association deal, constitute the natural and immediate consequence of groundwork undertaken in Brussels, much to the Kremlin’s chagrin’.
Now, if this is true, is it not intervention?
‘Elaine’, asked to explain why it is ‘absurd’ to say the EU began the conflict, replied: ‘To summarize why I don't think he (PH) has made his case (a rather different thing form it being ‘absurd’ to say this, but never mind) :
‘Ukraine is an independent country, so it really doesn't matter how Russia views Ukraine, the point is they have the right to self-determination.
***This is just assertion. As so often explained here (was ‘Elaine’ away?), Ukraine does not have an economy healthy enough to assert true sovereignty. Nor does it possess true integrity as a linguistic cultural or political whole.
‘Elaine’ ‘The EU, so far has only signed a free trade agreement with Ukraine, as they have with many other countries’.
*** *Only* a free trade agreement? Sigh. Again, I must ask her to pay attention. Michel Mosbacher, a supporter of the Euromaidan, is clearly quoted in my article as saying : ‘‘The critics are right that the Association Agreement is much more than a free-trade agreement. In Article Seven it commits Ukraine to "promote gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy". Article Ten of the agreement provides for "increasing the participation of Ukraine in EU-led civilian and military crisis management operations" and exploring the potential of military-technological cooperation.’
It is mere politeness for her to at least acknowledge this, when claiming my position is absurd, rather than totally ignoring it. If she hasn’t read the article properly, then she really has no business commenting on it at all, let alone using such words as ‘absurd’.
‘Elaine’ adds: ‘ If they eventually become part of the EU, that is their right as an independent country.’
***The legitimate leader of Ukraine decided *not* to sign the agreement. That was also *his* right. As has been discussed here, its implications for Ukraine’s already disastrous economy were quite alarming, and were accompanied by rather minor offers of aid. But he was then overthrown unconstitutionally by a violent mob. Is that their ‘right’? If so, does she apply such rules to her own home country? I hope she will tell her neighbours that she favours mob rule.
‘Elaine’ again: ’If this bothers Mr. Putin then maybe he should consider why Europe and the EU is more appealing to Ukraine’
***What does she mean ‘More appealing to Ukraine’? The legitimate, democratically-elected President of Ukraine decided that Russia’s offer more appealing to his country. He was then lawlessly overthrown, by foreign-backed mobs. Once again, does ‘Elaine’ favour this method of changing government for her own country?
‘Elaine’ again: ‘ but going into a neighbouring country and fomenting a civil war is a bully response. And this is where it becomes clear who threw the first punch.’
***Indeed it does. As soon as President Yanukovych rejected the association agreement, hostile mobs began to gather in Kiev, egged on by EU and US politicians and western media. Even dogged believers in coincidence theory must be impressed by the fact that these mobs, allegedly outraged by Ukrainian corruption, have melted away since a pro-EU regime has been installed,. Does Elaine seriously believe that corruption has now come to an end in Ukraine? Or could the diminishing of the mob have another cause (see Mr Omolesky above)?
Brian Warner asked : ‘Mr Hitchens, you refer to the EU as an "expansionist power to rival China.....gulping down 16 countries since 1995". Doesn't the fact that all of these countries were desperate to join the EU, and did so out of their own free will, make your comparison with China pretty insulting to the people of, say, Tibet?’
***Nope. Why should I? My comparison was only with the expansion, and the fact that these countries had come under an alien authority. Post-modern empires may be politer than old fashioned ones, but they still tell you what to do. As I keep saying ‘Who, whom?’
‘Paul P’ in a long posting apparently intended to undermine my argument, quotes at length from Wikipedia. His extracts include: ‘Ukraine deputy premier Hryhoriy Nemyria said that the project is the way to modernise the country and that they welcome the Eastern Partnership policy, because it uses 'de facto' the same instruments as for EU candidates.’
***Which would rather seem to make my point, not that of Mr ‘P’
Mr ‘P’ then says : ‘(again quoting) ".....on 21 November 2013 a Ukrainian government decree suspended preparations for signing the agreement that was scheduled to be signed during a 28–29 November 2013 EU summit in Vilnius, and it was not signed. The decision to put off signing the association agreement led to the 2014 Ukrainian revolution."
***I love that ‘led to’. How did it ‘lead to’ this? We do not know, though it is the most interesting question in the whole discussion. We do know that President Yanukovych’s decision to spurn the EU agreement was *followed* by violent, menacing demonstrations and mob sieges of government buildings until the President was forced from office. We know that those demonstrations received the open support of major figures form the US and EU. But I have seen no examination of the mechanisms by which this happened. We must assume that it was magic, or coincidence. Or that it was orchestrated by persons who desired this outcome. Nobody ever questions that the Kremlin has a hand in the pro-Russia demonstrations and other actions in eastern Ukraine. I don’t. It obviously does. Yet there is an extraordinary coyness among the pro-EU contributors here, who seem unable to conceive of the possibility that ‘their’ side might actually have organised what it did.
Mr ‘P’ then adds‘....which led to the 'war' which led to the downing of the Malaysian jet. The reader will note that there is no mention of EU tanks rolling into Ukraine by way of a "move into Ukraine", or EU fighter jets screaming across the border, or EU surface-to-air missiles being deployed by EU "aggressors". In a handful of punchy sentences, bereft of ventures into classical literature or the calling into play of a billion particulars of ancient history, would Mr Hitchens please explain how the EU "began the war in Ukraine"?’
*** I have repeatedly explained. But Mr ‘P’ stops his ears to what he does not wish to know. Backed by the USA, It used the post-modern methods of ‘people power’ which long ago rendered tanks obsolete in such matters. Even if ( and we cannot be conclusive as nobody has even studied it) nobody organised or directed the Kiev demonstrators, even if no ‘civil society organisations’ received help, money and advice, even if the secret services of the EU and the US played no part whatever in the deploying or operation of these crowds (and I regard this is an unasked question rather than an unanswered one), the sympathetic presence among them
Of Ms Nuland, Ms Ashton, Herr Westerwelle and Senator McCain is a clear and public endorsement and encouragement of what developed into an assault on the Ukrainian constitution. If he can’t see this obvious fact, it is because he does not want to.
Mr 'P' said in a later posting: ‘My amateur understanding of the laws and conventions applicable to warfare in the modern era can be illustrated by a simple instance. At one second before midnight before the day of an announced armistice following the prosecution of a declared war, one soldier shooting another soldier is an instance of duty being exercised. At one second after midnight the soldier will have murdered the other soldier. The point is that one cannot suddenly declare oneself a 'rebel' and then start killing people under the cover of 'warfare' in a 'war zone'. The so-called 'separatists' in Ukraine did precisely that.
And then (all these initials are getting a bit tiresome) Mr ‘Mike B’ joined in, addressing his remarks to Mr ‘P’ : You are right to criticise Mr Hitchens's use of the term "the EU's move into Ukraine". It is inapposite and misleading. Russian troops entering Crimea was a "move into Ukraine". as is its undoubted deployment of military personnel into eastern Ukraine. Mr Hitchens began his article with a passage from "Alice in Wonderland". Perhaps he should consider this passage from "Alice Through the Looking Glass": "When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less”’
***If only it were so. But few wars are declared these days, and I’m not sure I can remember the last time one was. Did Britain declare war on Libya before bombing it, for instance?
If Mr ‘B’ is truly familiar with the passage he quotes, he will know that Humpty Dumpty claimed that ‘glory’ meant ‘ a knock-down argument’. This is an obvious nonsense. But here we are simply talking about willingness to absorb and understand facts, and to understand modern political methods in a new world of electronic media.
Only someone determined to shut his mind against the truth would deny that the manipulation of crowds and the might of ‘people power’ has in recent years become a major weapon of politics, and one which can be ( and in my view has been) used to overthrow governments in contested territories. It was to guard himself against such an attempt in Moscow that Mr Putin developed his own mob, in the form of the ‘Nashi’ movement, of which I have no doubt Mr ‘P’ strongly disapproves because it is not his mob. But its very existence rather proves my point. Mr ‘B’ has neither provided a knock-down argument, nor covered himself in glory.
July 22, 2014
A Plea for Restraint on the Ukraine Tragedy
A new plea for restraint, thought and justice on the Ukrainian tragedy.
What follows is necessarily long. It is, among other things, a detailed response to many attacks made on my article about the MH17 horror yesterday. I don’t expect that the people who most need to read it will do so. But it is here for anyone who is really interested.
I’ll begin with an excerpt from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ of which I grow fonder and fonder as the years go by :
‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’
‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.
‘I won’t!’ said Alice.
‘Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.’
I’ll begin with the things my detractors and slanderers will ignore. Here and on Twitter, there’s been a distressing number of people grossly oversimplifying my carefully-argued article .E.g. (these are rough summaries, I can’t be bothered to trawl through the slurry for the exact wordings) : ‘Peter Hitchens says EU is responsible for MH17 shootdown’ , ‘Go and work for RT where you belong!’ or curious claims that I have just said what I say because I am in the pay of Russia, or to play a game. Or I am something called a ‘contrarian’, who takes up contrary positions for the sake of it.
None of this is true.
I write and speak what I believe to be true.
I try when I do so to overcome any fear of being in a minority, or of being howled down by a conformist mob. It is a human duty to refuse to be cowed by mobs, real or electronic.
But I must admit the experience of being slandered, interrogated as if I were a defendant at a show-trial, distorted and abused, simply for urging caution in face of what might become a rush for war, is unpleasant and dispiriting. After an hour or so of tangling with it on Twitter yesterday afternoon (at one stage I was actually accused by one of these twisters of excusing the killings of such brave journalists as Anna Politkovskaya), I went off to Evensong at Oxford Cathedral, partly to pray for the souls of my attackers (though with no very great hope of success).
Our Strange Willingness to be Rushed into War
Had we not been in the midst of two major outbreaks of tension (The Ukraine and Gaza, where I repeat that I think the Israeli attack is both morally wrong and a severe political mistake), I had planned today to review a new book by Douglas Newton ‘The Darkest Days – the truth behind Britain’s rush to war 1914’ ,published by Verso tomorrow (22nd July), £20.
Professor Newton’s book has already been attacked in at least one review, and I’m not equipped to judge its historical scholarship, as I’m no specialist in this field. But it is in step with Barbara Tuchman’s superb ‘The Guns of August’ in showing how a small and determined group, headed by Henry Wilson, secretly committed Britain to an unwritten but binding military alliance with France in the years before 1914.
Some People Really do Want Wars to Start
This was kept secret from the Cabinet and Parliament, who were falsely told that no such commitment existed, when in fact there were detailed plans for Anglo-French naval co-operation and for the deployment of British troops in France.
Did you know that four members of Asquith’s Cabinet actually resigned in protest at moves towards war in the days before the actual declaration? Few do. Herbert Asquith and Edward Grey successfully persuaded them to keep their resignations secret, and persuaded some but not all of them to return to government. John Burns and John Morley emerge as men of some principle, and their warnings against the danger of such a war are terrifyingly prophetic. Ramsay Macdonald, whom I had previously rather despised, was not in government but led the Labour Party at that time. He also emerges as a courageous and almost lone opponent of war during the wretched, powerless, misinformed, overwrought, propagandized and brief debate which the House of Commons was allowed before the slaughter began. David Lloyd George, by contrast, shows up as a complete weathercock, swinging in the wind.
It is doubtful if the radicals could have stopped the war, as the Tories were only too keen to start it, and would readily have formed a Coalition with pro-war Liberals, including Winston Churchill (then of course a Liberal), whose unilateral commitment of the Royal Navy to war stations deepened our commitment to France and made war more likely.
Emotional pretexts for war are seldom the real reason for it
Newton is also adamant that war was already decided upon *before* Germany invaded Belgium (it was a pretext invented later) , that Britain was absolutely not treaty-bound to aid Belgium, and that the British government tried very hard to avoid all mention that its alliance with France also meant an alliance with Tsarist Russia, regarded by right-thinking people of the time as a monstrous tyranny, suppurating with anti-Semitism and corruption.
I fear that Newton gives too much credence and importance to German efforts to keep Britain out , as I am sure Germany did want war with Russia, sure that Germany knew this must mean war with France as well, and I suspect that Germany had always planned to attack through Belgium and would never have been diverted from it. What is interesting about this period, though is that the famous Anglo-German naval race had in fact ended with a British victory some years before 1914, and was not really an issue any more.
And we all know that much (though not all) of the atrocity reports emerging from Belgium in August 1914 was false, and exaggerated - and that compared with what was to come in ‘legitimate’ warfare conducted by both sides, it was quite minor.
I’m also in the midst of a wonderful work by Adam Tooze (The Deluge, the Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order: Allen Lane £30) , a refreshing departure from the standard-issue account, concentrating on the way in which 1914 transferred power from Britain to the USA, and providing details about the cost and financing of the war which are similar to the little-known things I discussed in my recent Radio 4 programme, about the transfer of gold across the Atlantic and the financial humiliation of the British Empire by Washington in 1940). Professor Tooze’s account of the Washington Naval Treaty is also lucid and brutal.
What I think about MH17
So, with all this in mind, I turn sadly to the horrors of Grabovo, the wreckage, the bodies of the dead, the claim and counter claim.
Those who have not read my column item on the subject, published on Sunday , are urged to do so here
It does not excuse the action. It does not say ‘the EU caused the shootdown’. It explains the context, which is undeclared war between two major European power blocs, and which was indubitably and indisputably started by the EU, in the knowledge that its action was provocative.
How did this dispute become violent?
Russia’s long-term alarm about the policy of NATO expansion up to its borders was articulated more than seven years ago in this speech by Mr Putin, in language of extraordinary bluntness. It is fair to say that nobody in the ‘West’ paid any attention.
I should also point out that serious anti-Putin commentators, such as Michael Mosbacher in a recent edition of Standpoint magazine, do not pretend that the EU’s move into Ukraine, through the ‘Association Agreement’ is non-political:
‘Much more than a trade agreement’
‘The critics are right that the Association Agreement is much more than a free-trade agreement. In Article Seven it commits Ukraine to "promote gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy". Article Ten of the agreement provides for "increasing the participation of Ukraine in EU-led civilian and military crisis management operations" and exploring the potential of military-technological cooperation.
He adds:
'The agreement may indeed undermine Ukrainian sovereignty, but surely is nothing compared to the Russian-dominated Eurasian Customs Union. While the latter may on paper be nothing more than a customs union does anyone seriously believe that it will remain as such? Has Putin's aggression in Ukraine not rather proven the point that Ukrainian sovereignty is not high on his list of priorities?’
(You can find the full context in the third section of the article here
I agree with Mr Mosbacher that the Eurasian Customs Union is also political as well as economic. Of course it is. This is a military-political struggle, which was fought without bloodshed through diplomacy and politics until President Viktor Yanukovych rejected the Association Agreement on 29th November (proposing instead a three-way commission of Ukraine, EU and Russia which would have left Ukraine as neutral or non-aligned between the blocs).
At that point Clausewitz stepped in, and war climbed out of its gory, bone-heaped cave, to continue policy by other means. But it was a postmodern war, so a lot of people have yet to recognize it as such, expecting something out of 'War Picture Library'.
A common misconception
Putin, by the way, loathes Yanukovych, who angered him, by squeezing billions of roubles out of him in tough negotiations over Russian rights in the naval base at Sevastopol, a few months before. The idea that Yanukovych was Putin’s pet does not stand up to examination.
It was at that point that huge numbers of people suddenly allegedly discovered that they could no longer stomach the corruption which has in fact been a feature of Ukrainian public life since that country broke away from the USSR (and indeed before then) and the ‘Euromaidan’ protests began, which were not free of violence and intimidation, which were extra-constitutional, which were openly supported by American and EU political and official figures including Senator John McCain, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (with her bags of bread and biscuits), by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and by Guido Westerwelle, former Foreign Minister of Germany.
Coincidence theory – and a Miracle on the Dnieper
Quite why there should have been this spontaneous eruption of discontent at Ukraine’s corrupt and undemocratic nature, which had gone on so long with so little protest before and since the (equally coincidental) ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004 and 2005, must be a matter for coincidence theorists to resolve. Presumably it has now died down because Petro Poroshenko’s government has miraculously solved the problem of Ukrainian corruption. Or perhaps there is another explanation.
WE don’t do this, of course
It is of course quite unknown for the governments of Western countries to intervene in the internal politics of nations in which they have interests, so we can rule out any connection between the desires of those governments and the appearance of well-organised demonstrations against a President who was frustrating a EU attempt to gather Ukraine into its sphere of influence.
The head of the CIA takes a cultural vacation
Likewise, the later appearance of CIA Director John Brennan in Kiev last April was purely done for schmoozing and tourism purposes. As Mr Brennan has since said (one account is here) http://rt.com/usa/158268-cia-brennan-ukraine-visit/
‘I was out there to interact with our Ukrainian partners and friends. I had the opportunity to walk through the streets of Kiev and also go to Maidan Square and see the memorials to those Ukrainians trying to find liberty and freedom for their people.’
Mr Brennan said that the situation in Ukraine is ‘something that needs to be addressed” and insisted that the US wants “the Ukrainian people to have their ability to define their future.’
‘We here at the CIA can work with our partners in Ukraine and other areas to give them the information, the capabilities that they need in order to bring security and stability back to their country.’
WE don’t do that either, but THEY do
In recent months, doubtless coincidentally, Ukraine’s ill-equipped, poorly trained and largely feeble armed forces have begun to put up much more of a fight in their struggle against the pro-Russian militias which have undoubtedly been encouraged and assisted by Moscow, almost certainly via Russia’s military intelligence arm, the GRU.
Constitutions? Who cares about them? We’re democrats!
Last winter’s mob pressure, uncritically backed by Western media, led to the unlawful overthrow of President Yanukovych, who was then removed without resort to the provisions on impeachment in the Ukrainian constitution, and replaced by a government willing to sign the Association Agreement.
Violence and lawlessness beget violence and lawlessness – as usual
From these violent and lawless events date the sometimes violent and undoubtedly lawless Russian actions, including seizure of Crimea and encouragement of secessionists in eastern Ukraine, which have since grown into a small but savage war, in which hundreds of civilians are believed to have died, often at the hands of Ukrainian armed forces.
The Laws of War explained
Whose fault is this?
This is a simple matter of the normal rules of engagement between countries. The nation which first unleashes violence, and which - by any means - forces its power into disputed, non-aligned or neutral territory is a) the aggressor. So that b) it has licensed matching behaviour by its opponent, and c) is ultimatelyresponsible for the later acts of violence which take place because armed conflict has begun.
Arithmetic, geometry and geography all show that the EU began this conflict by its open encouragement of unconstitutional lawlessness in Kiev.
I am, by the way, seeking details of civilian deaths and injuries in this war so far, from the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, the nearest we have to an impartial observer in this zone). A figure of 250 deaths in the Lugansk region has been suggested, but my e-mails to the OSCE have not yet been answered and I have not yet been able to confirm its origin.
For a little background to this I refer readers to a publication that cannot be accessed online except via paywall, but which I have here in front of me .
Funnelling Euros to Kiev – and groundwork in Brussels
It is the American Spectator, a magazine for which I sometimes write, and it appears in an article (July/August issue, pp 28-30), broadly sympathetic to the Euromaidan and Ukraine’s alignment with the EU, by Matthew Omolesky
In his sometimes lyrical article, Mr Omolesky refers to a 2004 address to the European Parliament by the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych ‘Europe is waiting for us, it cannot endure without us… Europe will not continue to be in all its fullness without Ukraine.’
Mr Omolesky says ‘Some might take issue with the rather grandiose claim that Europe cannot endure without Ukraine, but the European Union has long had designs on it. Brussels funnelled some 389 million Euros to Ukraine between 2011 and 2013 alone and distributions were made to a host of civil-society NGOs…
...The 2014 protests, touched off by Yanukovych’s rejection of a European Union association deal, constitute the natural and immediate consequence of groundwork undertaken in Brussels, much to the Kremlin’s chagrin’.
Why Ukraine really, really matters to the USA
It’s useful, at this point, to recall words written by Zbigniew Brzezinski( Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, and the unsung architect of Moscow’s doomed intervention and eventual downfall in Afghanistan. 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.’
Now do you see why this might be important?
Pay Attention at the Back!
I have attempted some brief history lessons about this interesting, much-contested this region here before,
(Here
Here
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/01/are-we-wise-to-take-sides-in-ukraine.html
here
and here http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/03/on-freedom-of-speech-and-thought.html
…though some of the class seem to have been looking out of the window at the time.
But if you look you will find that the real, dangerous and decisive battles for territory between Berlin and Moscow (in 1914-18 with Vienna fighting alongside Berlin) took place precisely in this region. Distracted by our own narrow obsession with the Western Front, most British and American people are pitifully unaware of this aspect of both World Wars.
If you don’t know what happened at the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, if you have never heard of Stepan Bandera, if you don’t know what Lemberg is now called or how many countries it has been in since 1914, then you need to know. Once you do, you will understand that we see here the re-ignition of one of the great disputes of modern Europe. That is why it is so dangerous, and above all so dangerous to be rushed into hostile hysteria.
Sponsoring Terrorism
And now we come to the heart of the dispute. The new Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, has attracted some attention by saying that President Putin is ‘sponsoring terrorism’ .
Things aren’t always as they appear
I think he got carried away. I have known Mr Fallon, a funny, clever, enjoyably blunt politician, since I reported on the 1983 Darlington by-election which he lost (to the great grief of the Labour Party’s right wing, who had secretly wanted their own side to lose so that they could stage a putsch against Michael Foot and install Denis Healey as leader instead).
Labour unexpectedly won because the Social Democrat candidate’s vote collapsed after he was shown up on TV as embarrassingly inexperienced. So it was a good lesson, for all involved, in the difference between appearance and reality, and the importance of unintended consequences.
A misplaced accusation
The accusation of sponsoring terror is wrong in a number of ways.
Most importantly, it mistakes the nature of the outrage. The need to guard myself against lying and slanderous misrepresentation means this will take a little longer than it should in a civilized debate. The destruction of the Malaysian airliner and the killing of those aboard was a foul and inexcusable action. But there is no evidence that the culprits, whoever they may have been, intended to hit a civil airliner and kill its passengers. Such an action would serve no purpose for any conceivable culprit.
It is most likely that they believed their target was a Ukrainian military aeroplane.
Terrorists, by contrast, have more than once deliberately killed airline passengers, or other non-combatant innocents in large numbers, in the belief (sadly often justified) that it will advance their cause. Men who planned and executed such outrages have lived to become ‘statesmen’ , welcomed in the halls of diplomacy. Or their chiefs and backers have lived to see their objective obtained as a result of the fear and horror engendered by the action.
The Ukrainian government, understandably, has milked the outrage for all it is worth, and introduced the word ‘terrorist’ into the discussion at the earliest moment, In fact, it has long been using this word to describe the anti-Kiev separatists against which Ukraine has been fighting a bitter war for some months. In general, impartial media have declined to follow the lead set by Kiev. Presumably this is because they regard the word as contentious in this case, raising ( as it does) questions about the legitimacy of the Kiev government itself, and questions about the methods adopted by the Ukrainian armed forces to put down the rebels.
What does ‘terrorism’ mean?
The rebels have certainly behaved in disgraceful ways, but so have the Ukrainian forces, about whose exact composition, discipline and legality it would be interesting to know more. There are no saints in war. The Ukrainians appear to have been careless of civilian deaths in a way which (rightly) brings criticism on to the heads of the Israelis.
If the Israelis did this in Gaza, you’d rightly be against it
Ukrainian shells have landed on Russian territory with fatal effect, and Ukrainian forces are heavily suspect in the death of 11 civilians at Snizhne last week, when it is believed a block of flats was attacked from the air. There is some apprehension all round about how Ukrainian forces will avoid grave civilian casualties if , having recaptured Slavyansk with heavy use of artillery, they now use the same methods in densely-urban Donyetsk, (I have been there, I know what it’s like) the rebels’ main stronghold.
So far as I know, the rebels have not resorted to the methods generally associated with terrorism in Ireland and the Middle East – the car bomb, the hijack, the placing of bombs in bars and shopping areas. Though they have, disgracefully, held hostages.
I am not (despite what my attackers will claim) saying the rebels are nice. I am just saying that ‘terrorist’ is a contentious name for them.
Anyway, the destruction of the plane does not seem to me to be a terrorist act, not least because it so unlikely to have been deliberate.
A simple question
Here’s a simple question. Do you think Vladimir Putin was pleased or sorry when he learned of the shooting down of the airliner and the deaths of those involved?
Quite.
A terrorist would have been pleased. That is what they do.
Letting your bias close your mind to the truth
Now, for the sponsoring. I was very, very pro-American when, as a defence reporter back in 1988, I found myself writing about the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes ( and by the way, I mentioned the number of children on board in my earlier mention of this because it might not be known to modern readers, whereas the large number of children killed in this latest outrage is all too well-known. It is amazing how careful one must be to avoid accusations of bias).
In 1988, because of my then strongly pro-American leanings, I was anxious not to believe that the US Navy was really responsible for something so terrible, and so I was regrettably ready to believe all kinds of excuses and to sympathize (quite wrongly as I now think) with the commander of the Vincennes.
I’m still ashamed of that mistake. I hope I have learned from it. So though I am openly sympathetic to Russia in its quarrel with the EU and the US over the future of Ukraine, I can see that by far the most likely culprits for this crime are the Russian separatists, who have been encouraged, armed, equipped and assisted in many other ways by Russia. The same separatists have used surface-to-air missiles to bring down several Ukrainian military planes in the last few weeks, though this has not been widely reported, and most involved seem to regard it as falling within the laws of war.
Careful what you believe , and remember WMD.
Beyond that, I would like to know a lot more. The question of how the rebels acquired that particular surface-to-air missile seems not to be settled, though many write and speak as though it is. Their information comes from the same sort of sources who brought us WMD in Iraq, and who tried to panic us into backing islamic fanatics in Syria - and which need to be treated with the usual caution. It seems to me that loud declarations of blame and guilt should be held back until we know quite a bit more, and when I say ‘know’, I don’t mean from some partisan ‘dossier’.
I mentioned the Vincennes episode (and that of Siberian Air flight 1812) in my Sunday column not to excuse anyone, but to point out that the question of intent was important, and that similarly hideous incidents, quite unforgiveable and unbearable to those bereaved, have ended with muttered compromise rather than with loud declarations of clear guilt and strong justice. Before anyone draws himself up to his full height on this, whether in Britain (where as I recall Lady Thatcher was inclined to sympathize with the dilemma faced by the captain of the Vincennes) Ukraine or the USA, I think we should begin softly and get louder if the evidence justifies it, rather than start loud and then back off later.
For what purpose does it serve to heat the matter up? It is quite bad enough that, exactly a century since Europe rumbled towards the worst war of modern times, there is now a bloody territorial war raging on the same Russo-German faultline that opened up in the earthquake of 1914.
Whichever side you take, or if you take neither, there is no joy to be had in cranking up the passions and the rhetoric to the point where diplomatic relations are broken and combat more likely to continue.
And, seen through the stained and darkened lens of suspicion and rage, even the ghastly, pitiful events at the crash site can be turned from the more-than-sufficient horror which it already is, into another cause for war. Let us not be hurried down this slope, either. Not all the reporters at the scene, ready as they often are to join inthe lecturing, have behaved with perfect propriety.
The downed airliner and its slain passengers fell in the midst of a war zone, yet within the reach of electronic media. This has not happened before in modern times, so far as I know. No ordered or effective government controls the area. The eventual destination of the bodies and wreckage has become extremely sensitive because of the powerful involvement of propagandists.
Evidence is always better than unsupported claims
What passes for authority is a rabble of undisciplined men without experience, knowledge or tact. This is ghastly, but until there is actual evidence of looting, of deliberate theft or destruction of evidence, of desecration of the beloved dead, do you think it might be both wiser and kinder to refrain from too much attribution of guilt, crime and evil motives?
The ordinary fellow-creatures of ours who live in this place are , I have no doubt, at least as grieved and desolated by what they see around them as any of us would be. Most are traped in their homes by circumstances they hate. And in that impoverished and war-blackened place, they lack (as we would not) the costly apparatus of modern government to help them deal with it quickly and efficiently. Judge not, lest ye be judged. And if you hate the sight of torn human bodies, especially of the dead bodies of innocents, do and say nothing which might spread cruel red war deeper and further into our continent. We have been playing with danger quite enough already.
July 20, 2014
Somebody Else Says Addiction is not a Disease
My thanks to 'Soap Jackal' on Twitter, for linking to the following terse but rather powerful article. Note the definition of 'disease':
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3314045/
Mourn the victims... but don't turn one tragedy into a global catastrophe
This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column
One thing we should have learned in the past 100 years is that war is hell. We might also have noticed that, once begun, war is hard to stop and often takes shocking turns.
So those who began the current war in Ukraine – the direct cause of the frightful murder of so many innocents on Flight MH17 on Thursday – really have no excuse.
There is no doubt about who they were. In any war, the aggressor is the one who makes the first move into neutral or disputed territory.
And that aggressor was the European Union, which rivals China as the world’s most expansionist power, swallowing countries the way performing seals swallow fish (16 gulped down since 1995).
Ignoring repeated and increasingly urgent warnings from Moscow, the EU – backed by the USA – sought to bring Ukraine into its orbit. It did so through violence and illegality, an armed mob and the overthrow of an elected president.
I warned then that this would lead to terrible conflict. I wrote in March: ‘Having raised hopes that we cannot fulfil, we have awakened the ancient passions of this cruel part of the world – and who knows where our vainglorious folly will now lead?’
Now we see. Largely unreported over the past few months, a filthy little war has been under way in Eastern Ukraine. Many innocents have died, unnoticed in the West. Neither side has anything to boast of – last Tuesday 11 innocent civilians died in an airstrike on a block of flats in the town of Snizhne, which Ukraine is unconvincingly trying to blame on Russia.
So PLEASE do not be propagandised by Thursday’s horrible slaughter into forgetting what is really going on. Powerful weapons make it all too easy for people to do stupid, frightful things. Wars make such things hugely more likely to happen.
In September 1983, the Soviet air force, inflamed by Cold War passions and fears, inexcusably massacred 269 people aboard a Korean Airlines 747.
In July 1988, highly trained US Navy experts aboard the cruiser Vincennes, using ultra-modern equipment, moronically mistook an Iranian Airbus, Iran Air Flight 655, for an F-14 Tomcat warplane. They shot the airliner out of the sky, killing 290 innocent people, including 66 children. All kinds of official untruths were told at the time to excuse this. In October 2001, bungling Ukrainian servicemen on exercise were the main suspects for the destruction of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 over the Black Sea. Whoever did it, they killed 78 passengers and crew en route from Israel to Novosibirsk – though Ukraine has never officially admitted guilt.
Complex quarrels about blame for such horrors are often never resolved. I am among many who do not believe that Libya had anything to do with the mass murder of those aboard Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, very likely an Iranian-backed retaliation for the Airbus tragedy. All the evidence points to a terror group operating from Syrian-controlled territory, and none points to Libya.
But at the time of the prosecution, we were trying to make friends with Syria, which has since gone back near the top of our enemies list but may soon be our ally again, against the fanatics of Isis. Confused? You should be.
So, let us just mourn the dead and comfort the bereaved, and regret human folly and the wickedness of war. Let us not allow this miserable event to be fanned into a new war. That is what we did almost 100 years ago, and it is about time we learned something from that.
Dave, the high-five federalist
See how quickly the Government’s fake hostility towards the EU has vanished?
This picture of David Cameron performing a high-five with new European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker shows the truth about the relationship.
Both men understand Mr Cameron has to do a bit of play-acting now and then, to try to whittle away the Ukip vote. Next, they’ll be sharing a bottle of something agreeably federalist.
Finally, Fry gets it right
I CAN’T stand Stephen Fry – smug, vain, tedious Leftist that he is. When we met, at my late brother’s memorial service, he forced his company on me then went away and insulted me on Twitter.
So it gives me no pleasure to praise him for saying at a New Labour gathering that accused persons are innocent until proven guilty. This is never more so than when the accusation is child sex abuse, a charge so horrible it makes people forget their duty to be just.
Shame on those who have since attacked him. The presumption of innocence is never more vital than when only a few people will stand up for it. On this, we’re shoulder to shoulder.
Police fiddling of crime figures is exposed. A few months later, crime figures go up.But what does it matter? We then discover that police probes into 52 per cent of crimes don’t even manage to identify a suspect.
Female politicians won't help real women
Why do people think that women in politics will help ordinary women lead better lives?
Political females are almost all ambitious careerists who have decided, of their own free will, to work outside the home and spurn the task of raising children.
Such people have no time for those who think it better to stay at home and raise the next generation. And they think all women are like them, actively preferring the office to the home. But, in fact, millions of women go out to work because they have to, not because they want to.
The great paradox is that, in many cases, male MPs will be more sympathetic to the real problems of most women.
Personally, I think the public relations-driven cynicism of Mr Cameron’s reshuffle is so blatant that it will disgust rather than inspire. Not merely has he opted for cheap, superficial cosmetic change but, by firing Michael Gove, the Prime Minister has shown himself a disloyal weakling in the face of polls and focus groups. I think Mr Gove’s reforms were greatly over-rated, but he got himself disliked by the right people.
David Cameron pretended to be Mr Gove’s friend and ally. Mr Gove has now found out just how much that was worth. I doubt they’ll be sharing the school run much longer.
Text cop's clear message
Stronger penalties for texting while driving will never work because nobody enforces them.
Worse than that, I clearly observed a police officer texting while driving a van emblazoned with ‘community policing’ in large letters.
If even the police won’t obey it, the law is dead.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.
July 17, 2014
More Unsolicited Praise for 'Short Breaks in Mordor'
No apologies for linking to this wholly unexpected blog review of 'Short Breaks in Mordor' (there are also now 11 favourable reviews of it on Anmazon.co.uk and three on Amazon.com) .
I must repeat that those who are waiting for it to come out as a three-dimensional book are deluding themselves. There is as I write not the slightest sign that this will ever happen.
http://realcorfu.com/hilarys-blog-talking-peter-hitchens-review-short-breaks-mordor/
You do not need an e-reader to read it. If you have a computer, it's available. You can download it through the Kindle Cloud Reader on to any device:
See here :
You can find the book here:
and
http://amzn.to/T6wyZJ (USA)
Pretty Good Apart From the Badges
At about 9 minutes 45 seconds into this BBC Radio 4 ‘Front Row’ podcast, originally transmitted on Wednesday July 16th
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/frontrow/frontrow_20140716-1955a.mp3
You can also listen here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0499dlw
you can hear an interview of Linda Grant, author of the new and rather good novel ‘Upstairs at the Party’ (The interviewer is Samira Ahmed). As I’ve said, I played some small part in the making of this book, and Linda here explains how.
I do however deny the bit about the badges. I got over my badge problem when I was about 16, and by the time I met Linda I seldom wore any badges apart from a small (shudder) roughly shilling-sized white metal image of Lenin. I hope that this shameful confession will help readers believe my denials about the other thing.
The red shirts, however, are absolutely true. I possessed only three, which I alternated hygienically, making full use of our subsidised launderama facilities. At one stage, a kind and humorous female comrade actually offered to turn the collars (I accepted readily), as they were becoming frayed. Hard to imagine many young women at today’s universities even knowing how to turn a collar, let alone offering to do so.
I’m amazed, by the way, that the Brideshead references were unconscious. They are so strong that they were one of the first things I noticed about it. Mind you, I know the Evelyn Waugh book almost by heart, and return to it every few years. Odd that I already knew it well when I became a Marxist, and it didn't in any wayrestrain me. I think you simply fail to udnerstand nmost of the books you read, when you read them in your teens.
July 16, 2014
Some Musings on the Reshuffle, Career Women, Whips and Blobs
Since before it began I have been trying to work out if this week’s re-ordering of the government matters, and if so why. Few of these people are visibly distinguished. The British government nowadays takes few major decisions, being mainly a machine for doing what it is told by supranational bodies.
As it is a coalition, there is little scope for individual initiative. The civil service apparently ensures that any ideas or proposals must be agreed by the coalition parties at the top before they can be seriously considered for legislation.
Few modern politicians have any interesting ideas or experiences (or if they do, we have not been told about them). To the extent that any of them are interesting, they tend to be the ones who have been got rid of or reduced in rank.
I cannot quite see the logic of increasing the number of women in government. Who is supposed to be pleased, reassured, comforted or encouraged by this? If they were equal to the jobs they now do before this, then why were they not given these jobs sooner? If they were not, why are they being given them now?
Since many of the women involved are young enough to be the mothers of small children, and in some cases may *be* the mothers of young children, one can assume from their lives that they have probably chosen to prefer careers outside the home to full-time parenthood (I understand that some, of course, may not have the choice. But I'm not making an individual point here) .
Even if they haven’t, their chosen path in life will make them, I suspect, more sympathetic to women who have made this choice than to the dwindling, beleaguered number of women who choose to stay at home and raise their own children. As for the much larger number of women who have been forced by financial pressure to go out to work and leave their children in the care of paid strangers, whether they like it or not, does the voluntary career woman even begin to understand their position?
Successful top-rank career women represent other career women very well (which is why they get such a warm reception from the media, which also has plenty of top-flight career women) . But I should have thought that other sorts of women would probably be better represented by some (but not all) men, those men who might be able to see that a career outside the home was not necessarily the only desirable way of life for a woman.
Whereas it strikes me that the successful, career woman might tend to look down on those who have not done as she did, and even be hostile towards them when it came to policy and legislation. This is not because of her sex, but because of her own active choice.
As the opinion polls and the focus groups tend not to ask the questions about this in a form which would make these important distinctions, it is hard to tell how this sort of thing actually affects people’s votes.
I do hope it doesn’t impress any voters, being – apart from anything else - so absurdly insincere and so unsubtly slick, with thighs being flashed on Downing Street and the pathetic PR men who now masquerade as political reporters in much of the media falling for every crude trick in the book.
Maybe it will work. The relentless smearing of Ed Miliband is plainly working, and I find quite educated and conscious people, some of them on the left, now parroting the ‘nerd’ and ‘useless’ attacks cooked up in some Downing Street pantry by the Prime Minister’s propaganda butler.
But in that case it just adds to my fear that our free civilization is coming to an end, because we are no longer independent-minded and sceptical enough to sustain it.
Then there’s the question of Michael Gove. Readers here will have noticed that I have been very hard on Mr Gove since , having praised academy schools, and in particular lauded one such school a short walk from his home, he did not – when the chance arose - send his child to this school, or indeed to any other such school.
Instead he sent her to a single-sex former grammar school miles from his home, with entrance requirements so intricate that some might mistake them for actual selection, though on quite what grounds is unclear (selection by ability being against the law, save in a tiny few heritage grammar schools).
I also felt obliged to hammer this home because of the supine behaviour of most of my trade who failed to note or stress the central facts about the story, and were successfully spun into flattering and even sycophantic coverage of the event.
But this is, in a way, a diversion from my general distaste for his much-trumpeted reform programme a mass of gimmicks and propaganda, lacking any solid principle save exhortation and slogans, and reliant (as all school reforms have been for decades) on the magical powers of exceptional, charismatic heads. As such persons are in short supply, you can see the disadvantages of this quite easily.
Mr Gove, in my view, offered no real challenge to ‘The Blob’ ( a term he, ahem, borrowed from Ronald Reagan’s Education Secretary William Bennett, who so described the ‘Bloated Educational Bureaucracy’ which frustrated any attempts to reintroduce traditional teaching amidst the mass of child-centred discovery learning which American and British comprehensive education have become).
But his propaganda, that he was challenging the British Blob, was so successful that both he and the Blob, especially the teachers and other public service workers, seem to have come to believe it, and thus Mr Gove has become (as some politicians do) a liability among focus groups.
And so, despite all the supposed promises of determined, sustained reform, and serving a full term, he has abruptly gone, to be replaced by an unknown. The Prime Minister was at a loss to explain this action when challenged by Ed Miliband at PM’s question time today. None of his answers made sense. He had no need to get rid of Sir George Young as Chief Whip (a much-diminished job anyway, now that the Downing Street spin machine has (since Alastair Campbell’s days) taken over true power in the Parliamentary Party). And his praise for Mr Gove simply raised the question of why, in that case, the Education Secretary couldn’t stay in his job for another ten months.
What a way to go, sacked to satisfy the focus groups and the NUT. I do hope that, despite his brave face, Mr Gove has now learned at least some of what I tried to explain to him about the Cameron Tory Party, long ago. It can hardly be described as principled, after this.
Hamas wants Israel to Bomb and Invade Gaza. So don't do it.
One or two people have asked me what I think of the current state of affairs in Gaza. More or less the same as I did the last time – see here
I am distressed by the way in which supporters of Israel feel the need to be so uncritical about such things.
I remain a hard-line Jabotinsky Zionist, unmoved by megatons of Arab and Muslim propaganda on this issue, sceptical of every ‘peace process’ so far suggested and unconvinced that there is really a ‘Two-State solution’ available. No Jewish or Arab leader could agree to a truly fair and workable deal, without enraging his own side. Much better to develop an informal compromise at low level.
And even I can see that Israeli bombing and shelling of Gaza is *exactly what Hamas wants*.
It will solve nothing. Israel has done very well with its missile shields and being far less densely-populated than Gaza can protect its people reasonably effectively. Any losses will of course be tragic, but the tragedy will not be lessened by matching tragedies in Gaza.
I also (having many times visited Israel and the neighbouring territory, including Gaza itself) rather like the peoples of the region, sympathize with them, living in fear in their homes, want to spare them from death and terror.
Hamas, as all experts know, is in quite a lot of difficulty since it lost its friends, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood government. An Israeli attack is about the only thing that could once again unite the people of Gaza under Hamas’s banner. So why do it?
Something my Brother and I (more or less) Agreed About - but see how different the reception is
Many of my enemies love to tell me how vilely inferior I am to my late brother. In fact about 20% of the messages I receive on Twitter, the well-known left-wing electronic mob, are based on this position. I must admit that when I first encountered this I was a bit distressed, but now view it much as I view delayed trains, or the slowness of computers – a dreary but unavoidable part of life.
Sometimes I wonder why they go to such lengths to be publicly unpleasant to a complete stranger. I should have thought it was quite enough to tell me that I am vile, without making this comparison as well. I tend to suspect that these are virulent atheist fanboys and fangirls of my sibling, who are secretly enraged that a) I knew him far better than they can ever hope to and that b) I disagreed with him .
The reason for their worship is not hard to workout. Half-educated college students, freed for the first time from the direct influence of their parents and religious pastors, were overjoyed to find that their instinctive hatred for God and Christianity was being expressed so eloquently and combatively by an obviously intelligent, witty and educated person.
This is usually why we admire certain people in public life, because they tell us what we think we know already, or what we think we believe, but put it better than we can.
The instinctive hatred arose from a simple conflict, imbued in most young western people, but especially strong among Americans, because of the lingering power of Christianity in their world. All westerners are brought up with some sort of generally altruistic belief, though only in the USA is it so specifically religious.
But they are also brought up with strong examples, in their own lives, those of their parents and teachers, and the lives of prominent rock and showbiz personalities, of powerful , successful and enjoyable selfishness, often righteously justified by the almost universal belief that we own our own bodies and nobody else has any right to tell us what to do with them.
Against the nagging of conscience, they feel the need to shout and sneer, and love to see it done.
I don’t think these people would hate me half as much if I too were a selfist atheist. It’s a good rule that you generally hate in other people what you dislike most in yourself, and these people, still troubled by the increasingly feeble whisperings of a half-developed conscience, loathe me for expressing openly a doubt they wish to suppress.
That’s why, at my famous debate with my brother at Grand Rapids, Michigan, the fact that I opposed the Iraq War and he supported it did not cause any of the audience to love me. My belief in God was the bit that mattered.
The left wear various fashionable causes, opposition to wars being one of them. But these are not real passions, mere declarations of faith for the sake of form. I say ‘wear’ because these are superficial things, easily cast off. The real passion is self-love.
But the short film I append below shows just how problematic this can be. In it, my brother says much that I would agree with about women.
Had I said this in a public forum (and in fact I wouldn’t use terms such as ‘the gentle sex’ or ‘I’m not having any woman of mine going to work’. But ‘they can if they like, but they don’t have to’ pretty much sums up my view), I would have been subjected to cold fury, severe heckling, repeated angry interruption and hostile derision. If you doubt this look at what happened on ABC’s ‘Q&A’ when I said that women were better than men at bringing up small children). No doubt, as I kept my temper and stayed calm during this storm of hatred, I would have been accused of being ‘charmless’ and ‘having no sense of humour’. All I can say is that it’s easy being charming in response to friendly, admiring questioning, not so easy with the other thing.
But my brother’s interviewer ( I don’t know who she is, but the encounter seems to be in the Antipodes) simply refuses to believe that this is what he actually thinks, and tries repeatedly to get him to say what she thinks that he must really think, suggesting that he is being ‘ironic’ or joking or teasing so many times that it becomes embarrassing. I can promise her, being intimately familiar with his facial expressions and use of tones of voice, that he absolutely meant what he said.
But in the end, she forgives him the heresy even though, in her eloquent and carefully reasoned critique of his position (she declares ’It’s wrong!’), she makes it plain she deeply disapproves. And that, I submit, is because his opinions on God versus the Self override any failures to conform to the standard left-wing opinion on anything else. Please watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpA7pfR0FIc&app=desktop
July 15, 2014
From a Delayed Train - Identity Cards, Bishops and Kenneth Clarke
I must apologize to readers for the absence of new postings here today. I ws caught in a typical post-privatization jam-up on the railways this morning (and no it's not rose-tinted glasses.There simply was not so much of this in the days of BR). And then I had a speaking engagement at a school in Watford, so all the hours I had meant to spend blogging were eaten up by waiting in the hope the jam would clear, followed by lengthy re-routing.
During a brief period of wi-fi, I managed to write a little on the fiddly keyboard of a porteble device:
A few responses. Passports and driving licences are not identIty cards, unless we allow them to be used as such. Each of these documents is issued for a specific purpose. it is quite possible to have neither and survive quite well. nobody has any business asking to see them unless you are driving a car or travelling abroad. You are not required to carry them. Even a driving licence does not have to be produced on the spot, but can be taken - on police request - to a police station within a reasonable time.
Personally I have always refused requests from hotels or traders to produce a passport when registering or paying. They have no legal right to request this and if everyone simply says 'no' then it cannot be imposed. The trouble is, of course! that so many people are ready to be pushed around in this way.
It is this misguided meekness that has allowed many of the attacks on our liberty which we have endured during the last century . World War One was the point at which the state in England began to recover powers it had lost in the previous four centuries, simply because states naturally do this, as plants grow towards the light. The supposedly unanswerable pretext of national peril always seems to work, perhaps because the mass media are always so horribly willing to go along with it.
Patriotism, which once included a pride in our unique freedom, was perverted to support the extinction of freedom. The interesting process by which our right to bear arms was whittled away by bureaucratic action is described in my book 'A Brief History of Crime'. The chapter involved was deemed so shocking that I removed it. From the book's paperback incarnation, 'The Abolition of Liberty'. I learned during that experience that many modern men and women find actual human liberty too gamey and strong-flavoured for their sensitive taste-buds. I quite understand this. Freedom *is* frightening, and people often don't like it as much as they claim to do - the same is even more true of freedom of speech, hated in fact by millions.
The deepest difficulty for friends of liberty is in fact the attitude of people such. Mr 'Bunker', who can see nothing wrong in being required by the state to 'prove ' who they are. Of course, the possession of state-issued documents proves nothing of the kind. States can be defrauded and often are. All such people are doing is conceding to the state a weird monopoly on identity, and allowing it to take a power which it ought not to have. If people such as Mr 'Bunker' subscribed to private organisations which offered to provide documents giving their names, addresses, personal details and pictures, it wouldn't trouble me , as long as such things were entirely voluntary and conferred no advantage. The truth is that we have quite enough ways in commercial organisations can make reasonable checks on our ability to pay (some would say too many) and anything else really needs to be left to the criminal law.
....
But it wasn't a day for lengthy reflections on assisted dying, cabinet reshuffles, women Bishops or other subjects I might have got round to. They'll have to wait (though I would stress once again that the supporters of women Bishops could ahve had their way *years* ago, had thye been ready to be kinder to those who oppose the idea. the general impression given by media coverage, that the delay is caued by obdurate traditionaists, is misrepresentation. I should also record my regret at the departure of Ken Clarke form the government. I do not agree with Mr Clarke about anything much, but he represents a tstarnd of opinion which deserves a hearing, and he is a human being with a sense of proportion and an understanding of real life.
Can I ask readers not to moan about those posts which draw readers' attention to my new book? I have absolutely no shame about doing this - there is no point in a book if nobody reads it, it is in my view a very good book, and my experience is that you have to keep on adrawing people's attention to something again and again before most people will even notice it. I am also quite enitled to point out that I have difficuties in getting such material published not least to deal with the incessant moans of the other lot, who say annoyingly that they won't buy it until it's in hard covers, which will be at about the same time we get Middle East Peace. Guys, I published it as an e-book only after I was sure it was the only way to do so. The only tiny chance of a three-dimensional book would come if it broke all records as an e-book, which won't happen if people hold off from buying it. A paradox, but there you are. So many true things are paradoxes.
Peter Hitchens's Blog
- Peter Hitchens's profile
- 299 followers
