Monthly Archives: February 2008

Symmetrical Outrage at Asymmetric Warfare

Blog, Foreign affairs, Middle East

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inexorably hotting up again. In summer 2006 the flashpoint was northern Israel/southern Lebanon, now it is mid-Israel/Gaza. The dynamic of the current conflagration is similar to the previous one: Hamas/Hezbollah firing missiles at civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon/northern Israel; Israel responding with missiles and a ground invasion that causes many civilian deaths. In the current flare-up only a ground invasion of Gaza is lacking and that could well be about to happen.

This style of conflict reveals the sheer hopelessness of this kind of ‘asymmetric warfare’ in which the weaker party fights with crude weapons and has not a hope of total victory of the battlefield. Hamas’s crudely produced rockets cannot beat the Israeli military machine but can and do cause terror, injury and death to the people of Sderot and now Ashkelon. Israel’s mighty army can cause devastation for the people of Gaza on a greater scale than Hamas can manage, but it cannot prevent the rockets (it’s worth remembering that rockets were fired, albeit on a smaller scale, even when Israel was occupying Gaza). The hopelessness lies in the impossibility of victory for either side. Insofar as Hamas has a realistic political strategy, it is that decades of low-intensity warfare will perhaps weaken Israel’s desire to fight. Israel’s more realistic leaders admit that re-occupation of Gaza presents no ultimate solution. Continue reading →

Can the Democrats win on numbers?

Blog, Foreign affairs, United States

CNN has an interesting look at how Democrat and Republican voters are shaping up:

Excluding caucuses, some 22 million Democratic votes have been cast in the primaries held to date. For Republicans, the number is 14.1 million. One reason Republicans cite now is the fact that the Democratic contest is highly competitive while the Republican race is all but over. But GOP turnout has been down since the beginning of the year — even when the Republican race was wide open.
…
But Republicans also see an upside: Despite the clear Democratic intensity advantage, Sen. John McCain still runs statistically even or better in most of the national polls looking ahead to the general election. The latest Ohio Poll also shows McCain very competitive in the state.

So there’s good and bad news. As long as Democrat voters across the US keep up their enthusiasm and vote in greater numbers than Republicans, they should be able to take the election.

Another interesting development is how Republicans look to be eschewing dirty tactics around Obama’s name. Hell, even the white supremacists can’t get themselves angry enough about him. How bizarre.

The talking politics of abortion

Blog, Civil liberties, Conservative Party, Health

This piece was first published two years ago at The Sharpener and in an edited form in this book (as “Talk amongst yourselves, we couldn’t possibly comment”). It’s main hope – that Westminster politicians stop ducking the abortion issue – has come to pass. That is a development I welcome; and I stand by (most of) what I wrote then (some of it now in lost, much missed links). The piece also tries to define “what’s so special” about 24 weeks, though perhaps less elegantly than Unity. So now’s a good time for a re-run. It does seem, alas, that what we’re about to get elsewhere is tabloid drivel (via) rather than proper debate. I guess that’s what happens when professional politicos get involved.

One word absolutely not on the lips of political hacks, not even Tory political hacks, is… Abortion. Not this week, not any week. It’s impolite conversation inside the beltway.

But a post here last year (picked apart here) attracted over 250 comments. Just publishing the word is pure Google-juice. Everyone in the real world has an opinion, so why does nobody in political Britain want to discuss abortion in public? It can’t be that 186,274 (2001 data; pdf) annual terminations don’t warrant justification or inquiry. Continue reading →

Trevor Phillips on Obama: not black enough

Blog, Foreign affairs, Race relations, United States

What on earth is Trevor Phillips up to? Britain’s most prominent black public figure has launched an attack on Barack Obama in this month’s Prospect, reported prominently in The Independent today, accusing the leading Democrat of ‘cynicism’ which will hold back black Americans and hold back the politics of race.

Trevor is entitled to his view, and clearly he is rooting for a Hillary Clinton comeback. But, whatever happens, he ought to acknowledge the Obama achievement and its extraordinary resonance.

The worst part of his argument, especially since he heads the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is his implication that Obama is a less legitimate black leader because he isn’t descended from slaves. What happened to opportunity for all? Trevor Phillips has been controversial because he has challenged and criticized the tendency of multiculturalism to stress differences and create inter-ethnic tensions. Why retreat to the old politics of race, and this discredited question about whether Obama is black enough, when black voters have made it pretty clear what they think?

Phillips doesn’t really present much of an argument for the claim that Obama will set back the cause of post-racial politics. Yes, Obama is a politician. He isn’t the new messiah. He has been out looking for votes, and stirring up hope. But if anybody can think of a less cynical political campaign in the last thirty years, I would be surprised.

We need a shift in the politics of race, as Sunny Hundal and the New Generation Network have argued. The challenge to race leaders is to remember that they should be trying to put themselves out of business. Trevor Phillips has wanted to champion that cause. It would be a great shame if, just as we got there, he decided that to see change, after all, as a threat.

Kay Burley on Sky News—Incompetent, ignorant or just malicious?

Blog, Media

Imagine finding out that your husband that you’ve been living with for a few years is actually the serial killer that has been terrorising your town. You’re invited to appear on a supposedly reputable national news programme for an interview and to put your side of the story, only to find that the most significant question you face is this:

Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?

In all seriousness, is that even a valid question to ask? Is it in any way relevant? Is Steve Wright excused for killing at least 5 women because his wife didn’t put out enough? As Jennie puts it:

I’ve lost count of the times I have objected to this infantilisation of men – that they can’t be held responsible for their own actions; it’s all the fault of their mother/lover/grandma/female school teacher/murder victim/whatever – on feminist grounds, but surely it’s wrong from a male point of view as well? Don’t men want to be grown ups? Do they actually want to be mothered and smothered into irrelevancy?

Can’t speak for the entirety of the gender, naturally, but this one sure as hell doesn’t. Both Iain Weaver and comedian Mitch Benn give more details on this loathsome excuse for an interviewer, and it has enraged Debi Linton so much that she has started a petition to sack Kay Burley from a position she is palpably unsuitable for.

I have no real belief that such a petition will be effective, and I’m equally uncertain about the efficacy of OfCom, but it can at least be used to highlight the issue. The comments on the Sky News website are gratifyingly negative about the interviewer and the question, so there may be a chance.

Your opinions: is there any justification for asking this question at all? Isn’t it about time the media grew up about sex and relationships and stopped trying to blame crimes on innocent bystanders?

Casting the net – You wanna get high?

Blog

Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily web review. As always, please feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments section.

The “War on Drugs”
Jock’s Place – Jacqui Smith: how many have you condemned to death today?
Obsolete – How to lose the war on drugs.
The Daily (Maybe) – Dole not dope
Steve Rolles/CiF – Policy narcosis

MSM Picks
Peter Riddell/Times – Blairism loses its grip as old Labour is back on song
Steve Richards/Indi – The shadow of Mrs Thatcher still hangs heavy over the party of David Cameron
Michael Bloomberg/NYT – I’m Not Running for President, but …
Economist EuroBlog – Bill Gates should ask for EU voting rights

Elsewhere
James Graham – Why Ed Davey is wrong about the Lisbon Treaty
Don’t trip up – Rational reform
Big Sticks and Small Carrots – No More Progress [Donal Blaney update]
Cobden’s Comments – The return of nationalisation
Jon’s union blog – Fed up with falling pay :(
Never Trust a Hippy – Consumerism and Exitism

UPDATE: Unlikely I’ll get chance to post a review tomorrow. Back Monday.

If you would like your blog or site to be considered as source material for future reviews, drop me an email at aaronh [at] liberalconspiracy [dot] org with the relevant url. I can then enter it into my RSS reader and monitor it for suitable content to be included. Likewise, if you have a specific article/post you feel deserves a little more traffic, get in touch.

I’m backing the Daily Mail

Blog, Environment

Well there’s a headline I never thought I’d write. It may normally be the epitome of all evil, but yesterday I was taken aback by a front-page campaign in the Mail calling for a ban on plastic bags. No really, they’re being serious about it.

There were pictures of animals dying because of plastic bags, like above, in the paper and on its website. I’m impressed. There’s even a petition I’ve signed (though I did feel slightly dirty after).

Could the Irish and M&S lead the way here? [updated]
Continue reading →

The Sun’s attempt to puncture its own emotional balloon

Blog, Media, Our democracy

It’s interesting, these days, watching the Sun (No, please, come back!). Last year after the failed patio gas canister bombings it clearly didn’t have the slightest idea how to respond to them: first with hackneyed blitz spirit type defiance; then scaremongering, and the resurrection of its demands to scrap the human rights act; and finally, resorting to patriotism, ordering everyone to fly the flag. This remember is the paper which over the 80s and up until recently was often considered the weathervane of the nation, or symbolic of how a majority of how it was responding, typified by how when it changed from supporting the Conservatives to New Labour that it was considered the final, death blow against John Major.

Since then of course we’ve had the online revolution; now the most visited UK newspaper website is the ‘loony-left’ Guardian, closely followed by the Mail Online. Circulations continue to plunge, with the Sun recently slipping below the 3 million mark, only rising back above it because of price cutting. The real success story of today is the Daily Mail, and by far the most despicable, distorted press coverage of late, directed at asylum seekers and immigrants, has come not from the Sun but from the Express and Mail.
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Casting the net – The Day after Tomorrow

Blog

Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily web review. As always, please feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments section. So, did you feel the earthquake? Clearly the work of Islamic Terrorists if you ask me, that or Climate Change…

Highlights
Chicken Yoghurt – HMP Blunkett
If you listen to the Tory bloggers, you’d think Justin was a Labour apparatchik (and therefore to be ignored), yet if you actually read his writing, you’d realise he’s one of the country’s most important bloggers. You see, this is the rub: there are a number of liberally-minded bloggers who don’t toe any particular party line. I know, baffling isn’t it?

Cassilis – This weeks Think Tank Roundup…
Liam Murray posts this week’s review of what’s going around in the heads of the political brainiacs.

Bishop Hill – How to lose readers
Giving Accountancy 101 to Nick Clegg.

Jonathan Calder/LDV – Top of the Blogs: The Dirty Dozen #2
Calder’s picks from the Labour and Tory blogosphere – from a Lib Dem perspective, naturally.

Elsewhere
The Daily (Maybe) – [Film] Review: there will be blood
Indigo Jo Blogs – The death penalty in light of the recent murder convictions
Mike Ion – Hospital car park charges really are a tax on the sick
Kerron Cross – Are The Germans To Blame For UK Earthquake?
TMP Online – Bright in hot water at the Statesman
Jamie C’s Political Hotspot – Jamie C’s Political Hotspot
politicalhackuk – Murder in mind

If you would like your blog or site to be considered as source material for future reviews, drop me an email at aaronh [at] liberalconspiracy [dot] org with the relevant url. I can then enter it into my RSS reader and monitor it for suitable content to be included. Likewise, if you have a specific article/post you feel deserves a little more traffic, get in touch.

‘Call Me Dave’ and the argument from viability

Blog

It nice to see Kate Belgrave exhibiting her usual deft touch when it comes to polarising opinions, this time in relation to ‘Call Me Dave’ Cameron’s announcement that he’s be backing amendments which seek to reduce the upper time limit for legal abortions from 24 weeks gestation to 20 weeks gestation – I do enjoy a good, sparky debate.

Cameron’s got it wrong for several reasons, not least of which being that he appears to be taking Nadine Dorries seriously rather than treated her with the derision she so clearly merits; if this is any indication of Cameron’s view of science then I look forward to the day he appoints Mad Mel Phillips as his Chief Scientific Advisor, but until that happy day arises I think it best we take a look at Cameron’s stated reasoning, on this occasion, and explain precisely why it is entirely unsatisfactory.
Continue reading →