December | 2008 | Liberal Conspiracy

Will ‘neocon rag’ Standpoint magazine fail?

by Newswire December 29, 2008 at 5:04 pm

The editor of Standpoint, a high-brow monthly launched in June, resists the comparison. Yet the first half of his magazine’s title is itself a nod to the American’s lasting influence on both sides of the Atlantic.

Almost four years in the making (Johnson was also writing a book on chess and the Cold War), Standpoint was launched to defend and celebrate Western civilisation from its apparently multiplying enemies. Every edition has high-profile writers, usually from the right (Niall Ferguson, Michael Burleigh, Melanie Phillips) but decorated with members of the left commentariat (Andrew Marr, Nick Cohen). They are paid “market rates” – meaning, at times, thousands of pounds per article.

Beautifully presented and intellectually aggressive, on seeing its first edition one former editor of a national broadsheet described it to The Independent as “a neocon rag”. “The neoconservative strain of thought has not been given a fair crack of the whip over here”, Johnson says.

…. more at The Independent

10 Comments ¦ 29th December

Israel: how to lose friends and alienate people

by Dave Osler December 29, 2008 at 4:56 pm

Israel is not behaving like a civilised nation; that inevitably raises the question of whether it should be treated as one. Even its strongest supporters must be finding it difficult to mount a positive case.

The third day of the bombardment of Gaza has taken the death toll to over 300, including four young sisters killed when a bomb aimed at a nearby mosque missed its target. Some 1,400 have been injured. Even as I write, warships are reportedly bombarding the strip’s rudimentary port facilities. Welcome to Operation Cast Lead.

There have been debates in many British trade unions – including my own, the National Union of Journalists – centred on demands for a labour movement boycott of the state of Israel. I now suspect that I have lacked clarity on this issue. Sadly, prevarication is no longer tenable.
continue reading… »

26 Comments ¦ 29th December

Our asylum seekers shame

by Neil Robertson December 29, 2008 at 11:54 am

You’ll have to forgive the wonkish legalese, but there’s a principle in international law called non-refoulement, which forbids the expulsion of refugees back to states where they might be subjected to persecution. Deeply ingrained within the 1951 UN convention (of which Britain is a signatory), it arose from the widely-felt shame of failing to provide an adequate safehaven from Nazi genocide, and a resolve that it must never happen again.

Increasingly, though, it’s hard to reconcile our country’s commitment to this deeply important principle with the reality of our actions.
continue reading… »

15 Comments ¦ 29th December

China exports farmers to Africa

by Newswire December 29, 2008 at 4:12 am

China has a shortage of land, Africa a shortage of food. So one entrepreneur had the bright idea of persuading Chinese farmers to emigrate.

Liu Jianjun is wearing a brightly coloured African tunic, the tall hat of a tribal leader, a string of red beads round his neck and carrying a stick with a secret knife in the handle. Beside him sits a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong. It is a slightly incongruous scene but one that mirrors the ever-closer relationship between Asia’s economic giant China and the world’s poorest continent.

“The African people yell, ‘Mao Zedong is all right’ and they are very warm-hearted when I’m there,” says one of China’s most prominent private sector ambassadors. “The minute Chinese people get off the plane, the Africans are friendly. Chinese do not bring rifles and weapons; they bring seeds and technology.”

China’s Ministry of Commerce triumphantly announced this month that its bilateral trade with the continent is set to hit $100bn (£67.8bn) by the end of 2008, two years ahead of schedule. Africa’s plentiful oilfields and rich mineral deposits are top of China’s imports, and in return the world’s most populous nation is exporting tens of thousands of its countrymen.

… more at The Independent

1 Comment ¦ 29th December

Israel: time for perspective and action

by Darrell Goodliffe December 28, 2008 at 10:39 pm

Conservative Home carries a couple of articles on the recent excesses of the Israeli military. Alex Deane loses himself in his eulogy to the State of Israel surrounded by “enemies who wish her ill”, this “sliver of democracy and decency has always held my sympathy” he informs the reader.

However, pick-up a Sunday paper and you can see that Israeli policy is pretty far from decency. If even the likes of Deane are feeling that supporting Israel is now “less straightforward” then serious questions have to be asked about how long the guilt-induced whitewashing of Israel’s actions can last.

Signs were emerging yesterday of a new consensus with all three parties criticising Israel’s recent air raids on the Gaza Strip. However, the crux of the question is what will emerge out of this new climate of criticism.
In other words, will we see concrete calls for increasing stringent sanction to be applied to Israel while it continues to violate international law with impunity?
continue reading… »

69 Comments ¦ 28th December

Israel has declared war on Palestine

by Sunny Hundal December 28, 2008 at 5:07 pm

Reuters reports:

Israel launched air strikes on Gaza for a second successive day on Sunday, piling pressure on Hamas after 229 people were killed in one of the bloodiest 24 hours for Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.
…
Saturday’s death toll was the highest for a single day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948, when the Jewish state was established.

Piling pressure on Hamas? These people really are stupid aren’t they? I would love to see Hamas become completely de-militarised but killing 229 people (so far) and injuring over 700 people is essentially a declaration of war.

Even Sky News points out that: “Dozens of people were killled when Israeli jets fired about 30 missiles into densely populated areas.”
continue reading… »

31 Comments ¦ 28th December

Basic income: good in Namibia, bad in Libertopia

by Don Paskini December 28, 2008 at 11:00 am

Namibia is piloting a Basic Income Grant, in which every Namibian citizen gets N$100 per month until they are eligible for the state pension, with no conditions and no strings attached, paid for through higher taxes on those in need or not in poverty. It seems to have been very successful, helping progress towards all eight of the Millennium Development Goals. It helps people pay their school fees and healthcare fees, and contrary to what critics suggested, hasn’t led to people sitting around doing nothing.

So why not, as many people on here and elsewhere, from both the right and the left have suggested, introduce a Citizens’ Basic Income in the UK? After all, no one believes that the current welfare system and society, with its bureaucracy, means testing, high levels of poverty and great cost, is perfect.
continue reading… »

74 Comments ¦ 28th December

But think of the kiddies!

by Laurie Penny December 27, 2008 at 12:12 am

One of the many things that royally pisses me off about this time of year is the endless slew of articles about ‘children of divorce’ at Christmastime. Commentator after commentator calling for us to think of the children and ‘make marriage work‘. Column after column sopping with souped-up stories of ‘suitcase kids’ being shuttled between mummy and daddy, clearly innocent victims of Broken Britain (c.Cameron 2007). This helpful Daily Mail article includes heart-rending testimonies from Tilly, Archie, Freddie, Cora and other improbably-named crisis tots, accompanied by laughable illustrations: a pixie-hatted munchkin kisses daddy goodbye; a ringletted white toddler moops mawkishly by a window, the epitome of Victorian chocolate-box fantasy; and everything is covered in a dubious blanket of perfectly crisp, white snowflakes. Gimme a break.

My fingers are balling into fists thinking of all of the women reading this arrant bullshit and feeling guilty for being unable to provide their loved ones with the perfect, industrial-capitalist, heteronormative nuclear family Christmas. My pansy liberal heart bleeds for the parents of both sexes currently ruining their own happiness and their children’s mental health by staying in bad marriages after buying this sick conservative propaganda. continue reading… »

46 Comments ¦ 27th December

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