DAVE GWYDION

L’Exception Francaise (posted by Al.)

2005-08-24T01:28:00.000+02:00

L’Exception Francaise.

As a teenager living in the outskirts of Paris in the 70s I can remember when the machines came digging. I would hang off the Terrasse de St Germain as huge great things pushed slowly in, as the engineers popping in and out of the tunnels with their cool sideburns, consulted their plans. I remember their sideburns. And then after the engineers, hundreds of workers.

Meanwhile I was at boarding school in England, but when I returned later that year to my home outside St Germain en Laye, what a change! For some reason, that line used to have rubber tires, which gave it a particular smell.The Reseau Express Regional line from the Gare de Lyon and the Etoile came to my local station. From the suburbs to the centre of the city in 20 minutes. It seemed very impressive.

And now, as I take advantage of a particularly felicitous French transport node. The St Exupery/TGV station at Lyon, for example, I think back to the vision of those French transport planners and engineers and wonder why we in Britain can’t do the same.

Thameslink and Crossrail were meant to be the RER equivalents. The first happened, on a very low-key basis. The latter might happen in ten years’ time.

It really is a vision thing. And it is so important. Without proper infrastructure modern economic and cultural life cannot spread wings. And when Gordon Brown’s moronic PPP solutions for the underground come home to roost, we’re going to be stuffed for a generation.

Why are we so stupid? Why do we tolerate this crap when we see different effective solutions in France?

Muslim on Muslim Violence

2005-07-27T05:11:00.000+02:00

My most loyal correspondent, "Al-the-low-rent-biker-journalist," urges me to post the following. Reluctantly I agree (warning his links never work):

Our Muslim friends like to point out what they say are the double standards of the West but have a fair few themselves. Why, for example, is the usual list of grievances limited to those countries where the West is seen as attacking the Ummah? For example, far more Muslims have been killed in Darfur by other Muslims over the last three years than all the Palestinians and Kashmiris over the last 50.

When I point this out to the brothers or the sisters they say either that my figures are wrong, despite my willingnesss to provide evidence from a wide range of sources including the UN, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and others, or that its all a Western plot.

The conclusion has to be that for them, only a Muslim persecuted by a non-Muslim counts. Why? Because grievance against the West and victimhood is such an important part of their self-identity that any facts that contradict this beconme too threatening.

I see you picked up on the Aaronovitch article. David Goodhart also wrote an interesting piece on this in Prospect which was repeated in the Grauniad and Charles Moore wrote one of the best pieces I have seen recently on the real consequences of remaining in denial about the true nature of British Islam:

Integration, Nationalism, and British Muslims: Part One

2005-07-24T18:37:00.000+02:00

In a recent article in the Spectator, Boris Johnson calls for the "re-britannification" of Britain. Amongst his many arguments is the following:

In the wake of [Enoch] Powell's racist foray, no one had the guts to talk about Britishness, or whether it was a good thing to insist - as the Americans do so successfully - on the basic loyalty of immigrants to the country of immigration.

There is, I think, something in this. Britain has certainly made a hash of its efforts to integrate its Muslim minorities. Anyone who thinks otherwise need only examine the alarming results of the latest Yougov poll. This poll also undercuts the claim of many of the Guardian-type "apologists," who believe the terrorist attacks were acts of retaliation for British foreign policy. Consider, for instance, Mundher al-Adham's confident assessment:

Attacks there, as those in London, are not about hating anybody's way of life, but straightforward revenge: revenge for Falluja and al-Qaim - and for Palestine and Afghanistan, which have been subsumed in them. The pictures of Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, with their dust and grime, might be different to the pictures of the London bombs, but they represent a continuity. The war of revenge and collective punishment has arrived in London. And it has its own rationality. Don't give me the nonsense about why do they hate us. They don't.

Well, sorry Mundher old mate, you're flat wrong here, because many British Muslims do hate "us." Or at least many hate British society and western liberal democratic values.
Thus one per cent of British Muslims (that's about 10,000 adults) believe that "Western society is decadent and immoral, and Muslim people should seek to bring it to an end, if necessary by violence." I suppose there's something consoling in thinking that 99 per cent of British Muslims are not intent on armed overthrow of our way of life. But then thirty one per cent of British Muslims (that's approximately 310,000 adults) believe that "Western society is decadent and immoral, and Muslim people should seek to bring it to an end, but only by nonviolent means." These responses are truly alarming. No less alarming are the responses that suggest that 24 per cent of British Muslims sympathize with the "feelings and motives" of those who bombed London on 7/7. To say that Britain has a Muslim problem is an understatement. The task is to explain why integration has failed; and why British society is seeing more and more people like "Fazel," who--as an article in the Washington Post reports--finds British society to be sick. As "Fazel" puts it:

The evil programs on TV, the music, the literature, the magazines ... are all responsible for the terrorist attacks. People are becoming rebellious because they are against fornication, gambling, alcohol," Fazel said.

"Until they get rid of Eminem and Marilyn Manson, they can't get rid of our preachers," he added.

Fazel called himself a former "kafar," Arabic for an infidel who did not fear God, and said he once enjoyed drinking with his friends and the company of young women.

Then, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, he read about al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

Images of the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsing, he said, fueled his curiosity about the faith of his ancestors.

"Allah pointed me to him (bin Laden)," said Fazel, dressed in a white shalwar kameez, the traditional loose tunic-and-trouser common to men in South Asia.

Three years later, he said, an angel spoke to him.

"I needed change. Drugs and alcohol did me no good," he said.

Terrorists and their Grievances: The Case of British Muslims: Part Three

2005-07-24T00:57:00.000+02:00

The "grievances" that motivate much of the anger of British Muslims center on aspects of British foreign policy. In Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, and now Iraq, the British government condones, so this argument goes, the killing of Muslims. The recent London terrorist bombings can thus be seen as acts of revenge. Britain, if it wants to avoid further attacks, needs to apologize and change its foreign policy.

This whole line of argument has no merit whatsoever. Britain has almost no responsibility at all for what goes on in Kashmir and Palestine. These places are controlled by, respectively, the Indian and Israeli governments. Even if Britain wanted to intervene in these regions on the side of Muslims it couldn't. Furthermore, the two regions where Britain has intervened (Afghanistan and Iraq), the interventions were designed to serve the interests of Muslims. There's nothing pro-Muslim in leaving the poor bastards to be ruled by the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. And whatever misgivings one might have about the prudence of intervention in Iraq--and I think it was recklessly imprudent--no war launched against a tyrant can be described as unjust.

British Muslims may think they have legitimate grievances about British foreign policy. But they don't. True, the Umma is not faring well. But this is largely to do with pathologies in Arab and Muslim culture, it has next to nothing to do with Britain or its foreign policy.

There's another reason why the British government must reject appeals to apologize for or modify its foreign policy: it wouldn't do anything to deter the hardline extremists who object to Britain on the grounds of its infidel status. It's that hardline group that I wish to discuss in the next post (Part Four).

Terrorists and their Grievances: The Case of British Muslims: Part Two

2005-07-21T18:52:00.000+02:00

The previous post argued that Muslim terrorism will be difficult to combat, at least in part because the terrorists are not an isolated group of fanatics, but people animated by "grievances" that are shared by many people in the British Muslim community. These grievances center on the treatment by Western states in general and Britain in particular of Muslims around the world. Consider, for instance, Osama Saeeds's appeal--Saeed is an official spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain--for Britain to apologize for:

Britain's explicit roles in creating the injustices in the Muslim world - from the mess that colonial masters left in Kashmir to the promising of one people's land to another in Palestine. We need to recognise our past mistakes and make a commitment not to repeat them. Western leaders are outraged about London but show no similar anger for other atrocities across the world. What happens abroad matters to British Muslims as much as what happens here.

I stated, without providing any supporting argument, that this "grievance" does not warrant any remedial action by the British government or the British public. Let me say more in support of that claim.

First of all, I want to say something more about Muslim grievances. Again it is important to distinguish "extremist" (and more specifically Jihadi-Salafist) views from "moderate" views such as those expressed by Saeed.

Shortly after 9/11, the British Home Office estimated that there were 10,000 Al Qaeda sympathisers in Britain--perhaps up to a 1000 of which had trained in Al Qaeda camps in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The AL Qaeda symapthizers were likely people who subscribed to a Jihadi-Salafist ideology. To get a sense of the grievances of those who view the world from this perspective, see the following passage from a justification for the 7/7 bombings. Its author mentions the following specific reasons for targeting London:

1. The United Kingdom is an ally of the United States , and hence is part and parcel of the worst front of aggression Muslims are facing in present time. They are even worse than Pharaoh in his war against Moses. Pharaoh attacked Moses and his people on Egyptian soil, while the United States and the UK , through their Crusader alliance, attack or support attacks against the Muslims everywhere in the world. This is another reason to show happiness toward every tragedy in the West, like Moses and Muhammad did by ordering the fast of the `Ashura for their people (Yom Kippur in Judaism and the fast of 10 Muharram in Islam).

2. Britain is an infidel country since it is a Christian one, and hence an enemy of Allah and his believers. “As long as it remains an enemy, it is a Muslim duty to terrorize it…they are allies of the worst devilish idol ( Taghut ) of our times—the U.S. and the Jews—and do their utmost to support them.”

The interesting feature of this "extremist" message is that the first of these two points expresses a point that is present in the "moderate" message of Saeed: Britain is responsible for attacks on Muslims around the world. The second point ("infidel Britain") appeals, I think, only to a very small segment of the British Muslim community--members of Jama'at Al-Muhajirun, Hizb ut-Tahrir, and followers of people like Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal.

Terrorists and their Grievances: The Case of British Muslims: Part One

2005-07-20T16:16:00.000+02:00

Some terrorist organizations--the various RAF groups of the 1960s and 70s come to mind--have been animated by, what might be termed, "group-specific grievances." Other terrorist organizations--the Irgun, the ANC, for instance--have been animated by "community-wide grievances." Generally speaking, it is much easier to defeat terrorist organizations with group-specific grievances, because once the group-leaders have been killed, imprisoned, or "turned," the group tends to fall apart.

The distinction between "group-specific" and "community-wide" grievances is not meant to be binary, but to define two poles of a continuum. Few actual terrorist groups can legitimately claim to act on grievances shared by the entire community to which they nominally belong. Thus neither the IRA or ETA spoke for the entire Northern Irish and Basque community. Nonetheless, the grievances that animated these terrorist organizations were grievances shared by a significant segment of the wider Northern Irish and Basque communities.

Terrorists with "community-wide grievances" tend to be more difficult to defeat, because the community supports the terrorists--most importantly by supplying them with new recruits. The only sure way of defeating a terrorist organization of this type is to divide the terrorists from the community, either by removing the cause of the underlying grievances or by persuading the community that their grievances can be addressed through legal and/or democratic institutions.

I draw these elementary distinctions, because they underscore the difficulties the British government faces in dealing with homegrown Muslim terrorists. It would be consoling to believe that these homegrown terrorists act out of group-specific grievances. But enough has been said since 7/7 to show that many people in Britain's Muslim community, while condemning the terrorists' means, share their sense of a grievance. (For more on the topic of Muslim grievances, see David Aaronovitch's excellent column in the Times.)

But what exactly is the grievance that the community shares? The one we keep hearing on the news goes something like this: "We British Muslims feel a strong bond of solidarity with Muslims around the world. We can no longer sit by and see our brothers and sisters killed as a result of British foreign policy in Iraq, Israel, and Afghanistan."

That's the moderate version of Muslim grievances. The more extremist version goes something like this: " We Muslims, in Britain and elsewhere, wish to live in a transnational community governed in accordance with Sharia. In the interim, we will settle for a Britain that is far more sympathetic to our religious traditions."

Faced with these "grievances"--and personally I don't think either even warrants the word--the British government has two possible strategies:

(i) An Accommodationist Strategy: Here the Government mounts a PR campaign designed to show that British foreign policy, despite initial appearances, is designed to improve the well-being of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Leaving Muslims in the hands of Saddam Hussein or the Taliban is hardly conducive to their well-being. British foreign policy is, in short, good for your Muslim "brothers and sisters."

(ii) A Confrontational Strategy: Here the Government challenges the idea of British Muslims belonging to a global Muslim community whose duties to each other allegedly trump duties to Britain. This stratagy calls for a much more radical form of integrationism than Britain has hitherto adopted.

I tend to think that the Government ought to pursue both strategies fast. Unfortunately, I doubt that even this will solve the problem of homegrown Muslim terrorism. That's why I think that Britain (and Europe in general) faces a very difficult time ahead. 7/7 is more worrying than 9/11 ever was.

"Apologists," the Iraq War, and the London Bombing: Rajnaara Akhtar Independent Op Ed.

2005-07-18T17:55:00.000+02:00

Rajnaara C. Akhtar has an op ed in the Independent that makes the following point:

There is an argument which claims that Tony Blair's disregard of the unified dissent by a million people, who marched in solidarity on the streets of London, has culminated in an attack against us all from the very extreme elements of our society who saw no benefit from our peaceful protests against an unjust war. This needs to be seriously assessed.

OK, let's seriously assess this argument, which joins an empirical claim about the motivations of the bombers with a responsibility-shifting (i.e. an "apologistic") judgement about Tony Blair. It's worth noting that many people, including Tony Blair himself and Jack Straw, who are troubled by "apologists" --i.e. those who shift responsibility away from the bombers themselves-- feel the need to attack the empirical claim about the motivation of the bombers. But here it's important to recognize that it's possible to hold without contradiction the following two beliefs:

(i) UK involvement in the Iraq War increased the likelihood of it being a target for terrorists; and

(ii) UK involvement in the Iraq War was legitimate.

Claim (i) is clearly true. The Muslim bombers, like many in the UK Muslim community, were especially incensed by UK involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. This has been confirmed by the bombers' friends, family and acquaintances. The views of the UK Muslim community on the issue have been documented by opinion polls. These views were quite predictable back in 2002.

Yet to recognize the truth of claim (i) does not entail any sympathy whatsoever with those--Muslims or not--angered or incensed by UK involvement in Iraq. Nor does it entail that UK involvement was illegitimate or unjustified.

Britain went to war after a parliamentary vote and at a time when a majority (admittedly a slim majority) of the British public were in support of the war. The unified dissent of a million people--and they were not that unified, as I recall--is of no more relevance than the unified dissent of the pro-fox hunting lobby is to the law prohibiting blood sports. (A damn silly law, in my opinion, but no matter.) No government worthy of the name ought to trim its policies to the whims of street demonstrators, no matter how sincerely and solidaristically they rally to their cause. In a parliamentary democracy, a parliamentary vote alone settles the legitimacy of governmental action.

Perhaps what Rajnaara Akhtar really meant to say is that "the unified dissent of a million people" tips the scales in any overall assessment of the justification of the Iraq War. But that argument also has little validity. Whether you approach the Iraq War from a just-war perspective (like, say, Norman Geras) or from a consequentialist perspective (like, say, John Quiggin), the million marchers do not count for much. Seriously assessed, there's nothing in Akhtar's argument.

Three Wishes for the Future

2005-07-04T19:35:00.000+02:00

Just came across Alex Mckie's brilliant new website. She is travelling around the country asking people to make three wishes. She asks you to make one wish about yourself; one about the world; and another free wish. I think she then intends to examine these wishes from a philosophical/social scientific perspective.

I've been thinking about my three wishes, but haven't yet come up with any. I think I need to settle some preliminary matters first.

One obvious distinction is that between object-directed wishes and character-focused wishes. Do I, in other words, wish for the attainment of some object--wine, women, song, health, wealth, fame etc. Or do I wish to develop a particular type of character--wise, temperate, cheerful, benevolent, etc.

Another obvious distinction is that between realistic wishes and utopian wishes. Do I, in other words, take my character, my situation and social scientific laws for granted when I make my wishes; or do I relax all constraints of character, situation, and social scientific laws. Realistic wishes are, I think, the more interesting; and I think that these are the wishes Alex Mckie is looking for.

Britain as a Nation

2005-06-27T18:45:00.000+02:00

We often hear that the EU won't work, because Europeans lack a sense of common nationality. Recent squabbles over the budget might appear to confirm this view. But the more general claim that any effective state needs a robust sense of shared nationality is probably false. Doubtless, a state needs some minimum form of solidarity. Absent that, you get an Iraq: a place that can be held together only by a despot. But Britain shows that a state can survive and flourish while riven by all manner of petty national rivalries.

Anyone who still thinks that the British share a robust "we-feeling" should take a look at the discussions going on amongst Britain's exasperated rugby fans. Talk about sticking together in the face of adversity, I give you the unedited Molly Bloom-like thoughts of one Dylan Morris:

Why We Lost:

--1. we lost due to picking to many english players who have been playing poorly since the world cup. 2 wilkinson cant run or pass he is just a no go shame it was not him that got speared 3 typical english dirty play danny "hannibal" grewcock, what is the point 4 everyone knows if we play like england we are bound to loose the game has moved up a few levels since the 2003 world cup the style of game has changed someone tell stupid clive woodward. 5 all the players that are being called up for injuries should all have been there in the first place. 6 clive was not happy about not being approached to be the lions manager of 2001 in australia, im glad he never had it and i wish henry was our manager now, henry is a much better coach than woodward and henry and hansen know how they can be beaten and that is playing a WELSH game. Stuff all the english i have had a guts full of them we are in this state because of them, all the welsh , scottish and irish boys should pack their bags and leave if woody had his way he would have 45 english guys over there.

A Fellow Celt replies:

--spot on dylan, but I don't think the celts should pack up and go home. celts have never been quitters and they shouldn't be now. I'd like to see the celtic lads take it upon themselves to play expansive rugby when the opportunity arises. obviously that won't happen all that often considering how slow neil back gets the ball. but Peel can take quick tap penalties when he can and get the team going forward. this is when the quick running and passing of the celtic players can overcome the slow bovine plodding of the english.

An Englishman responds:

--didn't know they were installing internet in council houses these days.

Andrei Shleifer Defrauds the Government and Harvard Buries the News

2005-06-20T19:21:00.000+02:00

I think Harvard needs to get a better PR dept--or someone inside its administration does not like Andrei Shleifer--author of, get this, The Grabbing Hand:

Harvard and its star economist Andrei Shleifer ’82 said on Monday they had reached a tentative settlement with the U.S. government in a five-year-old fraud suit that has spanned two continents and embarrassed both the University and the professor.

The terms of the settlement were not announced, and the parties said several details still need to be resolved. At a hearing in U.S. District Court on Monday, Judge Douglas P. Woodlock gave the parties 60 days to ink the deal.

The agreement came nearly a year after Woodlock found Shleifer, who is the Jones professor of economics, and Jonathan Hay, a former Harvard employee, liable for conspiring to defraud the government. The two men made personal investments in Russia while advising a U.S.-funded program to privatize the economy there in the 1990s.....

Yesterday’s hearing, originally scheduled for March, was postponed four times, most recently on the first of this month. That delay, according to a Harvard official who has been briefed on the case, was a public-relations move intended to push the settlement announcement until after Commencement, when the news would receive less attention.

This story has, rather mysteriously drawn very little coverage from the mainstream press. The best coverage is David Warsh's economicprincipals blog--especially here.

A Tale of Two Bus Drivers: A Note on Comparative Economic Well-Being

2005-06-03T18:20:00.000+02:00

David Brooks' latest column in the NYT has sparked a blogospheric debate about the relative economic well-being of Americans and Europeans. People are flinging around lots of statistics. But the underlying issues are these (i) what metric best measures well-being? and (ii) whose well-being do we measure? I don't have the answers to these difficult questions. I offer instead Tom Friedman's best friend--an anecdote.

Travelling on the Heathrow to Oxford Express Bus last month, I overheard a conversation between the bus driver and a friend (also a bus driver), who had just returned from a visit to New Hampshire, USA. The British based Oxford bus drivers were commenting that they earned the same in pounds sterling (25,000 p.a.) as a bus driver in New Hampshire earned in dollars (also 25,000 p.a.). They were further led to comment that the New Hampshire bus driver appeared to have a much higher standard of living. Let's say they were right about the numbers, then 25,000 dollars--which is slightly less than half of median family income in New Hampshire--buys bus drivers a higher standard of living in New Hampshire than 25,000 pounds sterling--which is roughly the median family income in the UK--buys bus drivers in Oxford. Both the Oxford bus drivers said they'd move to New Hampshire in a heartbeat.

I draw no conclusions from this anecdote. I note only that neither in Oxford nor in New Hampshire could you raise a family on a bus driver's salary.

Mark Cuban and Joseph Schumpeter

2005-04-09T04:47:00.000+02:00

Next time I teach Joseph Schumpeter, I'm going to quote Mark Cuban's account of "the sport of business." (Cuban is the billionaire founder of Broadcast.Com and the current owner of the Dallas Mavericks.) This revealing testimony distills everything that Schumpeter had in mind when he lauded the entrepreneur as the life-blood of commercial society. The death of this type of character--a death that Schumpeter prematurely foretold--spelled the death of commercial society. Next time I teach a class on the critics of commercial society, I'm also going to quote this passage. Can a society survive, cohere, flourish, if this type of character came to predominate? Would it be an attractive place to live? I doubt that Adam Smith, a man with a fine appreciation of tranquillity, would think that it was.

Relaxing is for the other guy. I may be sitting in front of the TV, but I’m not watching it unless I think there is something I can learn from it. I’m thinking about things I can use in my business and the TV is just there.

I could take the time to read a fiction book, but I don’t. I would rather read websites, newspapers, magazines, looking for ideas and concepts that I can use. I spend time in bookstores because 1 idea from a book or magazine can make me money.

I’m not going to go to dinner with you just to chat. I’m not going to give you a call to see how you are. Unless you want to talk business. Other guys play fantasy sports. I fire the synapses to get an edge.

That’s what success is all about. I’ts about the edge.

It’s not who you know. It’s not how much money you have. It’s very simple. It’s whether or not you have the edge and have the guts to use it.

The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought it was a couple hours.

The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there.

The edge is knowing is knowing that when the 4 girlfriends you have had in the last couple years asked you which was more important, them or your business, you gave the right answer.

The edge is knowing that you can fail and learn from it, and just get back up and in the game.

The edge is knowing that people think your crazy, and they are right, but you don’t care what they think.

The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business

The edge is knowing that you are getting to your goals and treating people right along the way because as good as you can be, you are so focused that you need regular people around you to balance you and help you.

The edge is being able to call out someone on a business issue because you know you have done your homework.

The edge is recognizing when you are wrong, and working harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The edge is being able to drill down and identify issues and problems and solve them before anyone knows they are there.

The edge is knowing that while everyone else is talking about nonsense like the will to win, and how they know they can be successful, you are preparing yourself to compete so that you will be successful.

That’s what makes business such an amazing sport. Everyone plays it. Everyone talks about how good they are or will be at it. Just a small percentage are.

Every single day someone has an idea. Every day someone talks about some business they want to start. Every day someone is out there starting a business whose entire goal is to beat the hell out of yours. How cool is that.

Every day some stranger from any where in the world that you have never met is trying to come up with a way to put you out of business. To take everything you have worked your ass off for, and take it all away. If you are in a growing industry, there could be hundreds or thousands of strangers trying to figure out ways to put you out of business. How cool is that.

The ultimate competition. Would you like to play a game called Eat Your Lunch. We are going to face off. My ability to execute on an idea vs yours. My ability to subvert your business vs your ability to keep it going. My ability to create ways to remove any reason for your business to exist vs your ability to do the same to me. My ability to know what you are going to do, before you do it. Who gets there first? Best of all, this game doesn’t have a time limit. It’s forever. It never ends. It’s the ultimate competition.

How to Stop the Rolling Maul

2005-04-04T03:18:00.000+02:00

Due to the miraculous powers of Google, the Dave Gwydion website is now the first port of call for anyone interested in Rugby Union's "Rolling Maul." I won't bore readers with the reasons--they can read them here. I was thus pleased to read that someone else--someone who actually knows something about the laws of rugby union--had the same idea of how to stop the rolling maul. The laws suggest that the old Arsenal-style offside trap would work quite nicely against this abomination to the game of rugby union--although some of the contributors to the Newcastle Falcons website remain quite skeptical. Anyway over to Duncan Madsen of Newcastle's Evening Chronicle:

As the laws currently stand, the advantage lies almost totally with the attacking side who are allowed to obstruct at will, while the defenders are denied any legitimate ploy of counter-acting as they cannot legally pull down or collapse the maul, nor come round the side of it to get at the ball carrier.

This is the only legalised form of obstruction allowed by referees - and the quicker the lawmakers of the International Rugby Board outlaw it the better.

Until they do, we shall witness more of the same as the big packs like Bath, Leicester and Saracens throw gay abandon to the winds in a bid to strangle their opponents - unless and until someone has the wit to put a stop to all this nonsense by using the laws as they currently stand to the defender's advantage.

To understand where I am coming from, a little knowledge of the laws themselves is required.

Law 22 states: `A maul, which can take place only in the field of play, is formed by one or more players from each team on their feet and in physical contact closing round a player who is carrying the ball.'

Please note the words `each team' because if players are from one team only are involved, it is not a maul, so the offside law does not apply and the law of obstruction does.

Law 26 (1) (b) states: `It is illegal for any player: who is in an off-side position willfully to run or stand in front of another player of his team who is carrying the ball, thereby preventing an opponent from reaching the latter player.'

So if instead of engaging their opponents at a lineout, the defending side back off one or two metres, a whole new scenario opens up.

The attacking pack can either go forward to engage their opponents but then the ball carrier must expose himself to be tackled. However, if he isn't and tucks himself behind as he would in a so-called rolling maul, it is obstruction - the old flying wedge - and under Law 26, the offenders must be penalised.

Equally, the other option open to the defending side would be to come round the side of their opponents wedge and tackle the ball-carrier as there is no offside line as there would be in a maul.

This is not tosh and I have put it to a top Premiership referee who confirms my interpretation in its entirety.

THE EU CONSTITUTION

2005-04-04T02:25:00.000+02:00

Let me recommend an excellent new website devoted to debates over the EU Constitution. I've just added my two cents to a debate sparked by Raphael Paour's comments on the appropriate "left-wing" perspective on this Constitution.

Your anti-EU Constitution argument rests upon the unwarranted assumption that a more integrated European market is at odds with “social justice” (or some other set of left-wing values). Let’s assume, however, that social justice involves, at a minimum, improving the material well-being of Europe’s poorest citizens—who, for the most part, are now to be found in Eastern and Central Europe. An integrated market will likely benefit these Europeans quite substantially. (This is why "leftists" ought to lend their support to Bolkestein's efforts to open up the market for services in Europe.) It is thus not clear why we “leftists” must reject the EU Constitution, especially since this Constitution, if properly implemented, might help dismantle the many local national monopolies and corporatist rent-seekers (pharmacists, for instance—ever tried buying a bottle of aspirins on the Continent?) that currently prevent Europe from developing a robust, globally competitive economy. Your type of “leftist” makes a great mistake in thinking that Europe’s poorest citizens need redistribution rather than economic growth. Clearly they need both. But they will get neither if people like you have their way.

There is a further problem with your argument: you seem to suggest that the EU Constitution privileges one economic philosophy (market liberalism) over others. But this is clearly false. The EU Constitution reads as if it were written by a fractious committee (I wonder why?). It contains a confused rambling compendium of contradictory economic commitments. Compare the following:

The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security, and justice without internal frontiers, and a single market where competition is free and undistorted. (Article 1-3: 2)

The Union shall work for a Europe of just development based on balanced economic growth, a social market economy, highly competitive and aiming at full employment and social progress.
(Article 1-3: 3)

If the EU Constitution fails in France (as you hope) and in Britain (as it most certainly will), this failure will in large part be due to these confused and contradictory commitments, which allow left and right eurosceptics to present the EU as, well, confused and contradictory.

UPDATE: here is Raphael's very revealing reply:

Thank you for your answer which is very interesting. You say:

“Let’s assume, however, that social justice involves improving the material well-being of Europe’s poorest citizens—who, for the most part, are now to be found in Eastern and Central Europe. An integrated market will likely benefit these Europeans quite substantially.”

Euan was making the same kind of point in explaining that in the UK, the social rights brought by European norms are an improvement.

So, let’s say that the question becomes: should we, in France, accept to lose some rights in order for others to gain some? It’s a difficult question for someone who isn’t nationalist and it’s true that put in those terms I wouldn’t know how to answer it.

Your remarks about the fact that the constitution contains contradictory economic commitments are also very true. But in my view that doesn’t matter too much because no matter what these types of very large provisions say, what counts are really the institutions that have the power to interpret and apply them. The institutions count much more than the general declaration of rights for what we likely happen to social rights. The power of the commission is therefore very problematic; I may be wrong but I don’t see it implementing very social policies.

Back in London

2005-03-17T02:34:00.001+01:00

It's good to be back in London. Grey and depressing though it is. I spent the day in London's wonderful Imperial War Museum, where I'm conducting archival research on the history of military costumes. I think I've got the makings of an "unputdownable" coffee-table book on the topic.

Back in London

2005-03-17T02:34:00.000+01:00

Dirk Hennig

2005-03-16T04:48:00.000+01:00

We now know that "Gustav Szathmary" was the invention-a brilliant invention, I would add (having invented a character or two myself)-of the mysterious artist Dirk Hennig.

Larry Summers Takes a Hit

2005-03-16T03:11:00.000+01:00

So the faculty at Harvard have voted (218-185) a lack of confidence in their esteemed leader. No doubt the press reports will get the story all wrong again. Here's the inside skinny from a friend on the faculty:

Dear Dave:

Thought you might be interested in today's vote. It was splendid theater--the faculty all packed into Loeb Drama Center on Brattle Street with a gaggle of reporters and cameramen outside. I arrived late and had to force my way past a bunch of them who tried to interview me. I was all set to vote against the motions of lack of confidence--a sweeping motion from Randy Matory and a more qualified one from Theda Skocpol. After a pathetic effort (probably orchestrated by our hapless Dean) to get the motions set aside on the grounds that they were "too divisive"--Stanley Hoffman nicely squelched that maneuver by arguing that if people didn't like the motions they could vote against them or abstain--we got down to business. I certainly expected both motions to fail. The trouble is that Larry's supporters are so politically inept and/or repellent. Basically the only people who got up to speak on his behalf were the economists, Steve Pinker, and the anti-PC right. The economists are rhetorically-challenged and no one likes them, so they weren't much help. (The most gifted speaker amongst the economists--a black conservative woman (don't know her name)--berated Larry at the last meeting for treating the faculty like shit.) This left right-wingers like Stephen Thernstrom and Ruth Wisse to carry the bag. I reckon they cost him thirty votes a piece. Thernstrom charged Larry's critics with "McCarthyism." He then managed to piss-off all the women by criticizing Nancy Hopkins and poo-pooing the idea that women scientists at Harvard are made to feel "vulnerable." Then up pops Ruth Wisse to blame all of Larry's troubles on the politically-correct left who wish to curtail academic freedom of speech. She quoted a great gobload of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty at us. (I wondered at the time why she didn't choose something from one of Mill's speeches censuring Governor Eyre, a man of not dissimilar temperament to our President.) Finally, Steve Pinker took the mike to tell us that Larry's critics were voting to reject the "truths" of science. By this stage, I'd decided that I wasn't voting on the same side as that lot. Their arguments all missed the point. Harvard faculty--despite what a lot of right-wing loonies outside Harvard believe--are not that PC. Most people object to Larry either because they think he's an arrogant prick who deserves to be taken down a peg, or because they think he's funnelling money in the wrong direction. A lot of junior faculty in the humanities and social sciences, for instance, voted against him simply because they're sick of earning 50,000 bucks in a job where there's little hope of tenure, no affordable childcare, and they can't pay Cambridge rents. The vote was taken and to everyone's amazement the motion passed. So what happens now? I don't think anything will change. Larry's going to promise to transform his personality (fat chance). But I suspect he will lie low for a few months, let the hapless Dean do something for a while, and then plus ça change baby...

And here's the perfectly reasonable opinion of Lubos Motl who voted the other way from my correspondent.

A Tale of Two Airlines

2005-03-15T03:39:00.000+01:00

I had to take two long flights last week. One on Alaskan Airlines and one on Nortwestern Airlines. I've long had a deep dislike for Northwest. In my extensive experience-I once lived in one of their hub cities-their planes were the oldest; their Flight Attendants (FA's) the ugliest; and their In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) the poorest. It richly deserved its reputation as "Northworst Airlines." Alaskan Airlines, in contrast, has an excellent reputation. I was thus dreading my long transatlantic flight from Amsterdam, and looking forward to my Alaskan Airlines flight to the West Coast. Boy, was I wrong.

Alaskan Airlines, I discovered, does not deign to serve its transcontinental passengers anything resembling a full meal. All we got on a 6 hour flight was a crappy sandwich. The IFE comes as a small portable DVD player that costs 10 bucks. But the particular feature of the Airline that pissed me off was the little Christian verse they include on each meal tray. I know this is America, where God-fearing zealots control the government. But inflicting Christianity on a captive audience of fee-paying passengers is just too much.

Northwest Airlines has finally bought some new planes. The planes they run on their domestic routes are still for the most part cruddy. But my transatlantic flight from Amsterdam was on a new A330 Airbus. More importantly. Northwest now has the best IFE currently available in Coach. You get to choose from about a dozen movies that you can play, pause, and rewind at your own pleasure. The wine was free; and the food wasn't bad either.

UPDATE: Here's some more from a column in Salon last year on Alaskan Airlines' Infliction of Christianity:

If you're inclined to send a complaint Alaska's way, be prepared for the following:

"The meal prayer card has been a simple tradition on our flights for over 20 years. The quotes have application across many Judeo-Christian beliefs and are shared as a gesture of thanks which reflect the beliefs of this country's founding as in the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, Pledge of Allegiance and every U.S. coin and dollar you handle. Alaska Airlines is an international carrier with very diverse customers, and we have no intentions of offending anyone or their beliefs. An overwhelming majority of our customers have indicated they appreciate the gesture, and those who don't are not forced to read it. We do appreciate hearing from you, and look forward to welcoming you on board another flight in the future."

The Joys of Bremen: Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler and Gustav Szathmary

2005-03-13T17:47:00.000+01:00

Just spent the weekend in Bremen on some travel industry related junket. You wouldn't think that a wet weekend in Bremen had much to recommend it. You'd be wrong. Bremen (about an hour south of Hamburg and an hour north of Hannover)is a city of about 650,000 people with a pretty decent football team (Werder Bremen), a great wooded park in the City Centre (Burger Park), a spectacular C16 Town Hall, and--best of all--a couple of very good art museums. The most interesting of these two museums is the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bottcherstrasse--a passageway off the Marktplatz. Most of the paintings are those of Paula Modersohn Becker herself. These are fine, if a bit derivative. Much more interesting are the paintings and drawings of Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (1899-1940) and the photographs of Gustav Szathmary (who was Modersohn Becker's lover). Chris Bertram has, I see, written something interesting and valuable about Szathmary. But Lohse Wächtler is equally deserving of more attention, particularly if you are interested in German expressionism. Many of her drawings--some graphically sexual in nature--focus on the life of prostitutes in Hamburg's red-light district. Lohse Wächtler led a brief and tragic life. Throughout the 1930's, she was in and out of psychiatric hospital. She was forcibly sterilized in 1935 and in 1940 was murdered by the Nazis in their "T4" euthanasia program. Her work remains on display at the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum until April 3 2005. It's well worth a visit.

The Rolling Maul and the Laws of Rugby Union

2005-02-21T17:47:00.000+01:00

Dr. Bleddyn Jones (Maesteg), the Dept.'s resident Welshman and leading expert on inter alia the history of military latrines, initiated a discussion at the departmental coffee hour this morning on the upcoming Six Nations Rugby matches--Wales play France at Paris next Saturday, England play Ireland at Dublin. Dr Bleddyn Jones (Maesteg) has been full of himself these days, because Wales have been playing well. A rarity apparently. In the course of the morning discussion, I pointed out what I believe to be a serious flaw in the laws of rugby. It concerns the "Rolling Maul." I've posted before on how a few changes in the laws of soccer (or football, as the British insist) and the laws of fox-hunting could improve those sports. Rugby seems to me to be in need of a similar fix.

For those who don't know much about rugby, the simple description is that it's like NFL football, except (i) you can't pass the ball forward, (ii) you can only tackle with arms (thus padding is neither allowed nor needed); and (iii) you can't oggle the cheerleaders, because there aren't any. The axiom of rugby--and that which makes it such an exciting spectacle--is that noone can be in front of the ball without being "offside." This leads to sweeping movements from one side of the field to the other with the ball constantly being passed backwards. It's a great game.

The rolling maul, however, contradicts the axiom of rugby, because it allows a team to bind together in front of the ball carrier. I'm not the only one to think that "the rolling maul" ought to go. The correspondent of Rugby Heaven (an Australian publication unfortunately behind a subscription wall) calls it "the last refuge of Neanderthal rugby that once dominated the game." He goes on to add:

Rolling mauls may be beautiful to tight forwards (past and present) and other ironheads, but they are ugly spectacles, especially for the uninitiated, and they are ugly for the game. In rugby, it is illegal for a player to "shepherd", or stand between the ball-carrier and the tackler. But shepherding is the essence of the rolling maul, which can rumble on and on because the defenders simply can't get their hands on the player with the ball.

If someone pulls the whole ugly edifice to the ground he is penalised. If a defender hits the deck, he becomes the rugby equivalent of road kill. Forwards built like beer barrels, with as much attacking flair, can hog the ball, leaning on each other, while slowly rutting in the general direction of the goalposts.

My worry is that in the current Six Nations tournament "the rolling maul" has been perfected by the least imaginative teams--Bernard Laporte's current embarrassingly pedestrian French team, for instance. The Irish also rely on "the rolling maul" a lot. They used it to beat a superior Welsh team last year. My worry is that the rolling maul will always work to the disadvantage of the more adventurous attacking teams like the Welsh.

Short of the legal abolition of the rolling maul, I think that the way to defend against it is for the defending front row on some prearranged signal to disengage en masse from the maul--in the rugby equivalent of the old Arsenal offside trap--and by doing so play all the people at the front of the maul offside. My colleagues in the Dept. of Peace and War studies were skeptical. Some think that under the current laws this would simply allow the team with the ball to continue binding together and march unopposed towards the tryline. Geoffrey ("Reader in Peace Studies") is popping over to Foyle's on the way home tonight to buy a copy of the latest "The Laws of Rugby Union," so that we can check the precise wording of the law. Others (including Dr. Bleddyn Jones [Maesteg]) think that my proposed offside trap wouldn't work, because the defending front row wouldn't be able to disengage from the attacking front row. Using the departmental teapot, we conducted an impromptu, if disappointingly inconclusive, experiment in the corridor. I now owe the department a new teapot.

Déformation Professionnelle

2005-02-21T17:07:00.001+01:00

I received a lot of outraged emails after that last post. People claimed I was being unfair--to "breeders," "economists," "sacred cows" etc. Let me add a couple of qualifications. Was I right to pick on economists for their arrogance?. Yes and no. I do think that in the modern academy, economists are generally the most unpleasant, socially-unskilled, and arrogant people. (Larry Summers is, I suspect, in hot water with his Harvard colleagues more for these traits than anything he said about women in science depts.) But I don't think that these are the worst faults. The redeeming feature of economists is that they like to argue and never (or at least rarely) get offended when you disagree with them. Indeed, they encourage and expect disagreement. The worst people in academia are the insecure. People who take offense when you disagree with them. These people tend to congregate in disciplines whose intellectual foundations are rather fragile. Political Scientists are, I think, among the worst here, because their entire discipline seems to be constructed out of authoritative figureheads (what would Marx, Weber, Rawls, Putnam, Waltz say about [fill in subject]?), typologies, and jargon. I know a few people from Grad School, who got booted out of the Political Science program for disagreeing with their Professors' pet "theory." I suspect that this happens much less in economics and history.

The Harvard President Larry Summers Brouhaha: A Guide For British Academics

2005-02-19T19:49:00.001+01:00

The departmental coffee hour at London's Peace and War Studies Dept. has been dominated of late by a debate over the merits (or not) of Larry Summers' speech on the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering. As the resident Yank in the department, I've been on the spot to explain how American academia functions. There are, I think, three general background factors worth keeping in mind: (i) the sacred cows of the Ivy League academy; (ii) the status of Larry Summers as an intellectual provocateur; and (iii) the intellectual standards of economics.

SACRED COWS

Having been an Ivy League Professor for a few years, I've been socialized into a particular academic sub-culture--"a politically correct mainstream," if you prefer--that places certain ideas beyond the pale of rational debate. Raise these ideas only at the price of grave professional danger. Idea (i) work trumps pleasure. Idea (ii) intellectual ability does not track gender or race. Idea (iii) Israel is a worthy recipient of unqualified US support. (In my own case, for what it's worth, socialization has beeen quite effective. I endorse all three ideas, even if I have some misgivings about (i) and would prefer it if all three could be opened for debate without provoking a shitstorm.)

It's against the background of these sacred cows that Larry's remarks must be understood. Initially, the controversy centered on his attack on (ii). Clearly, Larry has been spending too much time in the company of Steve "Blank Slate" Pinker and now shares some very controversial "intuitions" about the "innate abilities" of men and women. If Larry were an ordinary academic--like Steve Pinker--these "intuitions" would be merely eccentric, but he's no ordinary academic. People are, I think, legitimately anxious about a University President with such "intuitions," especially since these "intuitions" are likely--or at least would have been likely, prior to this particular shitstorm-- to color his response to the under-representation of women in Harvard's science and engineering depts.

Now that we have the transcripts of the NBER talk, attention has shifted away from idea (ii) towards idea (i). Here I think Larry holds fairly conventional views. Everyone in an Ivy League institution is something of a workaholic. Hedonism is much the most unpopular and controversial "-ism" in such places. (Just try yelling down the departmental corridor, "LET'S ALL GO CLUBBING" and see what response you get.) The sole exception to the tyranny of work concerns, what Larry termed, "legitimate family desires." For some reason, Ivy League academies give "breeders" special treatment--extended tenure clocks for parents (male and female), hand-outs for tuition fees etc. In our dept., we have to have faculty meetings at "family-friendly" times--i.e. at ungodly hours of the morning. The family-oriented feminists who have attacked Larry have failed to notice that on this issue he's one of them. (I am yet to hear a good argument that justifies the privileging of "family desires" over other allegedly less important "hedonistic" desires. But that's a topic for another post.)

INTELLECTUAL PROVOCATEUR

I'm all for intellectual provocation, but the idea--put forward by Larry's defenders--that he's some fearless intellectual iconoclast is quite laughable. As I've already noted, he endorses sacred cow (i) and he rejects sacred cow (ii). On sacred cow (iii), he's something of a zealot. Thus in Sept 2002, he said that he thought that critics of Israel were guilty of anti-semitism "in effect if not intent." This sacred-cow affirming comment led Theda Skocpol at the faculty meeting last Tuesday to accuse him--quite legitimately, I think--of making remarks in his NBER speech that were sexist "in effect if not intent." These modes of unpleasant ad hominem exchange are a direct consequence of "sacred cowdom." It would be better if universities had no such untouchable topics. Rational inquiry ought to roam freely--even so far as to cover the history of US support for Israel.

INTELLECTUAL STANDARDS OF ECONOMICS

For any non-economist, the most striking feature of Larry's comments on the released transcript is their low intellectual calibre. Remember, he is speaking from notes on an issue he claims to have thought a lot about. I'm not surprised he didn't initially want the transcripts released. It'is thus quite puzzling to find many economists (Claudia Goldin, Larry Katz, Ed Glaeser etc.) pat Larry on the arse for his intellectual brilliance, courage, and candor. Goldin, for instance, claims that Larry's talk displayed "utter brilliance." In God's name, why? Reading over the remarks, nothing comes through more clearly than a sense that here is someone who knows little about the topic at hand and lacks the right sort of smarts either to pose the relevant questions or to distinguish valid from specious arguments. All academics have their own déformation professionnelle--we historians are terrible pedants--but none more so than economists. Many of Larry's faults are the characteristic faults of economists: overweening arrogance, a wholly misplaced sense of their own intelligence, and an unwarranted confidence in their own reductive models. An eminent physicist who knows Larry well, once told me that Larry's very good at weighing two measurable variables, but he cannot handle the complex systems that "real scientists" confront. In support of this point of view, it is revealing to take a look--as one of Brad DeLong's commentators suggested--at the writings of the Harvard Physicist Howard Georgi, who unlike Larry understands the issues and--on the evidence of these writings--possesses a finer more discriminating mind.

UPDATE: Among the most interesting blog discussions of this brouhaha, see Brad deLong's (cited above), Kieran Healey (Crooked Timber), and Mark Kleiman, and Bitch Ph.D.--and a couple more--Elizabeth Anderson and Matt Yglesias.

A Crap Shag

2005-02-12T00:22:00.000+01:00

Sitting in a pub in Oxford yesterday waiting for Chris Brooke--the bugger was late--I listened in to the conversation of half a dozen British students at the next table. I heard an unfamiliar use of language--the words "crap" and "rubbish" as all purpose adjectives. "Ulysses" was dismissed by one of them as "a rubbish book." The students then discussed the extraordinary misfortune of a friend who had recently lost his virginity to his longstanding girlfriend. The following day, she dumped him on the grounds that he was "a crap shag." We live in a harsh and unforgiving world.

My Word of the Year: Extraordinary Rendition

2005-01-12T23:18:00.000+01:00

The linguists are meeting in Oakland, a wonderful place for a conference, to select 'word of the year': 'wardrobe malfunction,' 'reality-based,' 'Santorum,' 'improperly-sourced' were among the candidates. My choice: 'rendition.' Both the term and the practice reveal just how far we have sunk beneath liberal-democratic standards of decency in the conduct of our ill-fated 'war on terrorism.' The term itself is a piece of legal bureaucratic gobbledeegook designed to obscure the shameful practice it names: secretly dispatching some alleged terrorist into the clutches of foreign torturers. (For an account of what it involves, see the cases of Maher Arar (more here) or Mamdouh Habib or Khaled el Masri.) It would be satisfying to pin this practice on Bush. But it was introduced under the Clinton administration and has involved the cooperation of a number of European governments (including Britain, Sweden, and Germany.)

Adam Smith on Earthquakes--Part One

2005-01-03T20:27:00.000+01:00

Kant, Rousseau and Voltaire were not the only great thinkers to discuss earthquakes and the moral implications of such disasters. Here's Adam Smith (from the Theory of Moral Sentiments):

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

Just the type of thing one might expect from the founding intellectual father of commercial society. Heartless bastard. But there's more going on in this passage than initially meets the disapproving eye. Read in a broader context, Smith has something interesting to tell us about how and why we respond as we do to the miseries that befall ourselves, our friends and family, our compatriots, and "hundred millions of...[our] brethren".

To be continued.

BOOK REVIEW: Timothy Garton Ash, Free World

2005-01-02T01:06:00.000+01:00

Never judge a book by its cover, still less the author's mugshot on the inside cover. But in this case it's hard not to. I've never trusted a man who wears cuff-links. Add these to a pink shirt and a well-trimmed beard and Mr. Ash. . . . .or is it, I wonder, Mr. Garton Ash. Is Ash, in other words, the man's surname and Garton the second of his two forenames, or what? That's the trouble with Brits, you can never figure out their customs. Take tipping. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Mr. Ash (pink shirt, cuff-links, beard) starts out with one suspicious reader.

Mr. Ash wants to enlist his readers ("To the Reader," he begins) in constructing " a free world." He is quite chipper about the prospects--"the surprising future of the west" is the book's subtitle-- because he thinks that we only have to rid ourselves of "the walls of ignorance, selfishness, and prejudice that divide free men and women from each other (xiii)." And there Mr. Ash loses me. I don't think that free men and women are separated just by "ignorance, selfishness, and prejudice," I think they are separated by fundamental disagreements about the importance of such things as religion, nationalism, free market capitalism and even freedom itself. We disagree not just out of "ignorance, selfishness and prejudice," but because we are free people and that's what free people do. It's comforting to believe that that those who don't agree with us are ignorant, selfish, and prejudiced, but they probably think the same way about us. I think that Mr. Ash would really like to see people who agree with him--liberal internationalists--have more power and people who disagree with him have less. Since I tend to share most of Mr. Ash's liberal prejudices myself, I'm all ready to sign up--there's a spiffy website, I see--to his agenda, which includes more foreign aid and the spread of democracy. There remains, however, one particular fly in our liberal internationalist ointment. We don't have much political power.

Mr. Ash notices (in a more recent article) that we have just lost an historic election to a bunch of right-wing yahoos. Indeed, one way of reading his book is to see it as an extended answer to the question: "how ought Britain/Europe respond to a unilateralist and right wing US administration?" While I think that this is the right question for a liberal internationalist to pose. Mr. Ash's answer is remarkably weak and spectacularly impractical, as Mr. Fukuyama in a recent review (Commentary Dec 2004--unfortunately behind a subscriber wall) has commented. I think the answer is for Britain/Europe to come together--on the model of a United States of Europe--and throw their collective weight onto the scales that balance global power. Mr Ash is horrified at this proposal. "Euro-gaullism," he calls it. But whats wrong with "Euro-gaullism" as a means to a liberal internationalist end? A strong united Europe would be in a better position to shape the future, than a weak, divided and dependent Europe. Mr. Ash's own proposals appear--as Mrs. Thatcher would say--decidedly "wet". No exhortations from a pink-shirted man in cuff-links will turn the Bush administration into liberal internationalists. To pretend otherwise is silly. We liberal internationalists would do better to rally under the banner of a United States of Europe.

The Sexual Allure of Simon Hoggart

2004-12-19T20:24:00.000+01:00

So Guardian Columnists have been getting some action too.
I have never read anything written by Simon Hoggart. It's not that I wasn't interested in what he had to say. It was his picture on the Guardian website. Outside of the English football team, have you ever seen such an ugly bugger? Take a look at those moon-sized glasses. God knows what bizarre sexual fetish possesses my compatriot Kimberly (or is it Kimberley) Fortier Quinn. She's a good looking woman. Quinn, Blunkett, Hoggart. They're all physically repulsive.

And here's a useful update by Backword Dave on how Blunkett and Mrs. Quinn figured in Hoggart's columns.

Blunkett's Resignation Speech

2004-12-19T19:57:00.000+01:00

The Blunkett saga has quickly gone from tragedy to farce. Blunkett's resignation speech provided cast iron proof, if there was at this stage any doubt, of his unfitness for high office. Deciding to take the high moral ground--always a tricky route to traverse--he said that he acted out of paternal love for his bastard child. Hasn't he read any of the great eighteenth century novels? The powerful father--and Blunkett is (or at least was) powerful--is supposed to watch over from afar. A mysterious cheque in the post; a word in the ear of an Oxford Don; a prized job offer out of the blue--that's his role. You are not supposed to "hold him [the child]... in [your] arms." You are not supposed to go to the courts to ascertain paternity nor to demand visitation rights. Furthermore, you are not supposed to blubber on national TV and claim later that you have been stitched up by wealthy amoralists. Blunkett simply did not understand the role that he chose to play. The silly bugger does not warrant our sympathy.

Blunkett's Resignation

2004-12-15T02:09:00.000+01:00

Update (Dec 15) : So Blunkett resigned. About time. Hopefully Blair's next. I still think it's bizarre that some people sympathize with the conduct of his private life. If he conducts our public affairs as badly as he conducts his own private ones, we're really in trouble. I received a number of abusive emails over my previous post, including one from someone called Al--who describes himself as "a low rent biker journalist," whatever that means-- who accused me of embracing "Daily Mail morality."

As far as Blunkett is concerned, please understand that you only show
your naivete when you come down on one side in such a battle of
media-savvy titans. I'm reading stuff from people who have no
reason to love Blunkett who were disturbed when Mrs. Quinn
apparently said to them, "I wonder what it's like to sleep with a
blind man." Other expert Blunkett spinners point out her experience
and frivolity, starting the affair within a few months of marrying Mr.
Quinn. And they also say that apart from his wife, she has been his
only other sexual partner to date. Surely you're old and wise enough
to realise that in these situations everybody and nobody is to blame.

Sorry Al. But it makes no sense to say "everybody and nobody is to blame" in this case, for the following two reasons:

(i) Blunkett was the one who pressed the paternity issue. Absent this misplaced desire to claim rights to his alleged "love-child," nothing of this affair would have come to light.

(ii) Blunkett is a public servant, who abused the power of his office.

He ought to have resigned three weeks ago.

The Morals of David Blunkett

2004-12-02T07:25:00.000+01:00

I've been following with stupefaction the events surrounding David Blunkett, Britain's Home Secretary. "Leg-Over" Dave, as he''ll doubtlessly now be called by the British tabloids, has been mired in difficulties, all of his own doings, due to an affair with Kimberley Fortier Quinn, a married woman, who is--if Dave is right--the mother of one and maybe two of Dave's children. Needless to say, Mrs. Quinn's husband is none too happy about said events. Things have recently taken a turn for the worse, because (i) Dave's alleged to have given his married lover a rail pass for which she was unqualified; (ii) he is alleged to have fast-tracked a work permit for Mrs. Quinn's nanny: and (iii) Mrs. Quinn has been rushed to hospital suffering from stress-related pregnancy dfficulties.
Yet amidst all this, Dave had the following to say:

"I would like to thank so many people who have been in touch with me offering support and giving me their trust.

"I have done nothing wrong.

I'm the last person to raise a hue and cry over anyone's sexual morals, but even I find this a bit rich. So here's some suggestions for Dave concerning things he may have done wrong:

(i) Fucked another man's wife;
(ii) Impregnated her once and maybe twice--hasn't he heard of condoms?
(iii) Refused to accept her decision to dump him;
(iv) Insisted that she undergo a paternity test;
(v) Humiliated her, her husband, and their children;
(vi) Abused the power of his office;
(vii) Blabbed unnecessarily to the press; and
(viii) Generally made a complete and total prat of himself.

Ye Gods, I've just discovered I'm turning into MelaniePhillips.
(There's more on the press coverage from Backword Dave)

Leviticus and the American Creed

2004-11-26T18:36:00.000+01:00

It is easy for Europeans to think that Americans are just like them. Rarely do they travel into the red-state heartland and speak to the God-fearing dopes who live there. A friend of mine from Kentucky told me that just prior to the election the letters page of his daily newspaper was full of people quoting back and forth Leviticus (the third book of the Holy Bible) in support of George Bush's reelection. I doubt that many Europeans read Leviticus. They should. It reveals just how loony and pernicious Christianity is. Take a look, for instance, at Book 15. God is clearly nothing more than a repository of ignorant tribal folklore. Consider for instance God's teachings on ejaculation and menstruation:

And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.
15:17: And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.
15:18: The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.
15:19: And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.
15:20: And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.

It is depressing to think that my fellow Americans consult this sort of nonsense for spiritual and political guidance.

Russell Muirhead--Just Work

2004-11-25T02:08:00.000+01:00

It's a little out of my field of expertise--the aesthetics and philosophy of war--but I feel compelled to recommend an excellent new book: Russell Muirhead's, Just Work. I came across the book because of an interesting on line interview. Muirhead's book, a work of political philosophy, takes up the question of whether work is anything more than a job, a means of paying the rent. Most of the middle classes today like to view their work as a means of self-realization. At any middle class dinner party, it would be extraordinarily rude not to ask someone: "what do you do?" Muirhead's book--which draws upon Mill, Smith, MacIntyre, and Weber-- makes a compelling case for the claim that work ideally ought to form a central component of human flourishing. He suggests that we structure our economy and society to make this a feasible goal. I don't agree with his argument. It's too damned protestant for my taste. But it's certainly thought-provoking. The book, which is already flying off the shelves in the US, will likely make a huge splash amongst political theorists and sociologists.

The Moral and Aesthetic Failings of British and Spanish Football

2004-11-18T01:46:00.000+01:00

Discussion at departmental tea today finally turned away from Iraq and the lamentable state of American politics. We had a new topic to sink our teeth into: last night's football game (a topic, I see, that Chris Bertram and his commentators have broached over at Crooked Timber). Over the last few months, I've become something of an expert on soccer in general and English and Spanish soccer in particular. I'm still dismayed that the Greeks, an alarmingly retrograde and pedestrian team, won the European Cup. It was a great pity that the Czechs. clearly the best of the bunch, did not win. I wrote at the time that the English media were laboring under the delusion that England are a quality team who are on the verge of greatness. Portugal played them off the park. The same happened last night in Madrid. The gaping gulf in talent that separated the Spanish and English players was astonishing. The English team were an aesthetic disgrace. Added to the physical ugliness of the players (Rooney and the unfortunately named Butt are merely the ugliest of a repellent group), was the ugliness of their play. Beckham yet again demonstrated his limitations as a midfield player. Man U. are well shot of him.

In any case, I was holding forth on this topic to my new colleagues. Fred, the loyal and patriotic little Englander--and "Reader in Peace Studies," a title that always makes me laugh-- made a half-hearted stab at defending the team. He holds the truly bizarre view that whatever Gary Neville's failings as a footballer, he's not bad looking!!!! (Have you seen the conk on the guy?) In the course of the debate, Geoffrey--the departmental expert on nuclear proliferation--added the sage comment: "Better England's aesthetic failings than Spain's moral failings." Everyone agreed and we all went back to discussing Fallujah.

The Alliance of the Greedy and the Godly

2004-11-03T11:53:00.000+01:00

My earlier prediction of a narrow victory for Bush has made me the toast of the departmental tea room. My British colleagues, all democrats, allowed their hopes to lead them astray. British knowledge of American politics and society is, I've noticed, remarkably limited. Brits don't seem to understand that one-third of Americans are evangelical Christians. (Only 13 per cent of Americans, for instance, accept evolution.) The republican party under Bush is an unholy alliance of the greedy and the godly against beleaguered racial and intellectual minorities. If democrats are going to get anywhere in the future, they have two options:

(i) drive a wedge between the greedy and the godly via some form of economic populism. This strategy is, however, undesirable--at least if you care about the global least well-off--because it would require democrats to embrace protectionism.

(ii) go after the evangelicals. Since evangelical christianity is such palpable nonsense, democrats should highlight the absurd contradictions in the evangelical worldview. This strategy calls for democrats to stand outside churches and engage these God fearing dopes in a rational argument. I very much doubt that this brand of Christianity--or any other, for that matter-- could withstand the critical light of reason.

In Defense of Calixto Bieito

2004-11-02T01:10:00.000+01:00

Some people otherwise (so he informs me) politically on the left do not like Calixto Bieito. Consider the following from Bush supporter Oliver Kamm's remarkably misjudged review in the Times:

THIS MONTH the English National Opera begins a revival of one of the stupidest productions of modern times. It is Mozart’s Don Giovanni as interpreted by the Catalan director Calixto Bieito. When it was first staged at the Coliseum, in 2001, it generated copious news coverage on account of its depictions of drugtaking and oral sex. The ENO followed it a few months later with a Bieito version of Verdi's Masked Ball that opened with a scene of 14 men defacating. Bieito has since directed a Hamlet who rapes Ophelia in the nunnery, and a Macbeth that includes necrophilia and, inevitably, more oral sex.

Scatological, violent and sexually obsessive theatre is nothing new. The squalor and ugliness of the plays of Jean Genet are an obvious precedent. Rarely, however, can these characteristics have been deployed with such remorseless irrelevance and by a director of greater technical incompetence. Of the initial staging of Don Giovanni, the critic Michael Billington — who, on this evidence, will believe anything — marvelled that “however controversial Bieito’s version may prove, no one can deny that it’s based on close attention to the music and a clear-sighted view of character”. So close, indeed, that when the disguised Don Giovanni disperses by subterfuge his potential assailants, he does so by singing Meta di voi qua vanado (”Half of you go over there”) with nobody on the stage apart from himself. Perhaps it is Bieito’s way of conveying the Don’s anomie; it is impossible to tell.

It is not my purpose to advise Times readers to avoid this production, though I should sooner poke my eyes out and sell my children into slavery than sit through it again. I draw attention merely to the reasoning that the ENO deploys in its stated justification for reviving Bieito's work: “We cannot dispute that opera is interpreted as boring, 19th-century and out of date. Controversy happens in other art forms, why not the opera? It should be given a platform. Film and theatre reflect what is happening in the 21st century. It is violent, it is controversial, but it’s modern and will appeal to first-time attenders.”

The unmistakable defensiveness might be taken for cynicism, for however critically reviled, Bieito’s productions sell. Sex usually does. Yet the populist clichés of relevance and accessibility are ingrained in British public life. A year after new Labour came to office, John Tusa, the managing director of the Barbican, wrote in this newspaper: “I’m worried about the Prime Minister because he is signalling that Oasis is as important to Britain as opera; that chat shows are as important as novels; that soap operas are more valuable than live theatre . . .” What Mr Tusa omitted to mention, and perhaps could not believe, was that philistinism in political office has its counterpart among his fellow promoters of the arts.

In 2002, not long after the two Bieito spectaculars and a Marriage of Figaro that with pleasing symmetry was literally as well as metaphorically a load of rubbish (it was set on a scrapheap), the ENO’s artistic director, Nicholas Payne, resigned. Ructions ensued. Senior figures in the performing arts wrote a huffy letter to this newspaper proclaiming him a martyr for the cause of transforming opera from a “middle-class trophy art form”.

The strategy appears to be that audiences whose interest in being seen exceeds their desire for spiritual enrichment will be deterred if arts professionals vandalise the message in retaliation for the shooting of the messenger. What patronising nonsense. The arts are enjoyed predominantly by the middle class, but that does not make the arts middle-class. Social reformers from William Morris to Arnold Wesker have brought the arts to workers and trade unionists without belittling their audience in the manner of an “appeal to first-time attenders”.

There is nothing illegitimate in modern stagings of classic works. Opera-goers who complain that directors ignore the composer’s intentions commit the “intentional fallacy”: we do not know the composer’s intentions when we listen to music, or the author’s intentions when we read a novel, other than through the work itself. Even if we have an account of the artist’s own interpretation, it remains only an interpretation; an artist is no more a definitive interpreter of his work than he is a definitive judge of its quality.

What is wrong with so many modern productions is not that they are radical interpretations, but that they are not interpretations at all: they are accounts of the director’s own psychological states. In the case of Calixto Bieito, you know that whatever opera or play he is staging, it will come down sooner rather than later to sadomasochism and lavatories.

While I haven't yet seen the Don Giovanni production--I hope to when I get back to London next month--I recently went to see his production of Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail at Berlin's Komische Oper. This production involved most of the principals performing bollock naked. It included scenes of rape, violence, and lots of on stage rumpy-pumpy. The opera also does considerable violence to the Libretto. In many ways, the opera--which is set in a brothel run by a sadist--is very different from the opera that Mozart conceived. There is, for instance, very little left of the Turkish motifs that inform the plot-line and music. But so what? The Guardian's Michael Billington is right. What's wrong with "sadomasochism and lavatories?" The singing and acting were wonderful. The production--which owed a lot, I thought, to the influence of Almodovar's movies--was colorfully staged, imaginative, and provocative. Furthermore, it made you laugh, which opera rarely now does. I'm quite sure Mozart--a delightfully irreverent and vulgar man--would have enjoyed it. At the end of the performance, a royal battle ensued between those who applauded rapturously and those who booed vociferously. In the bar afterwards, a German threw a glass of Riesling at me so incensed was he on over-hearing my defense of Bieito. I responded (full disclosure) by trying to throttle him, knee him in the groin, and stuff his program down his throat. We had to be separated by two elderly security guards. All great fun.

Will Hutton and the Quality of the British Press

2004-10-31T04:45:00.000+01:00

One of the great pleasures of academic life in Britain is tea in the faculty common room. An elderly lady rattles a huge urn of tea down the corridor everyday at 4: and then we all assemble for tea and biscuits. This institution is wholly unknown in the US--at least in any of the departments I've known. Indeed if they instituted this practice in my home department, it would, I am sure, cause havoc. We only get along, because we do not have to speak to each other.

Perhaps not surprisingly, since I am the "visiting Yank" I am constantly on the spot to explain aspects of American politics and make predictions about the election. Since a vast number of my fellow Americans are God fearing dopes--70 million of them apparently reject the doctrine of evolution--I fully expect Bush to win by a larger majority than the polls are currently registering. (When confronted by pollsters, most God fearing dopes do not, I suspect, wish to reveal themselves as such.) I was explaining this point over tea last week to my new colleague Fred (Reader in Peace Studies). Fred went on to observe that the cause of American stupidity was the low quality of the US press. I fully agreed that this was a contributing factor. Fred then, however, added the astonishing comment that the British press was generally of a high quality. Other than Martin Wolf and a couple of his colleagues on the FT, I can think of no even semi-intelligent British political or economic columnist. (For a similar view of the lowering quality of the British press, see Chris Brooke's post and the ensuing comments.) When pressed to name one, Fred came up with Will Hutton, author of one of the stupidest books I have read in a very long time. The World We're In. Fred was absolutely astonished--indeed, he took positive offense--when I told him that Hutton was an idiot who couldn't write. I was therefore quite delighted to read Will Hutton's column in the Observer today. Not only is the content of the column pretentious and uninformed, just take a look at the following paragraph. The man clearly cannot write.

This is the genius of the conservative position. It is a crusade fuelled by a never-ending tide of complaint that is compelled to set itself unachievable objectives in its battle to reduce women's rights and against the commercial ethic that so beleaguers religion but their non-achievement only proves the malevolent hegemony of the liberal elite and thus the correctness of the right's analysis.

Fox-Hunting, Bull-Fighting, and Fair Play

2004-09-18T01:01:00.000+02:00

The debate in Britain on fox-hunting is puzzling. Like many Americans, I cannot see why the legal apparatus of the state is to be brought to bear on a few silly-buggers who want to chase foxes up hill and down dale. Norm is probably right to note that fox-hunting involves a form of cruelty to sentient beings. But the same might be said of fly-fishing. And no one has proposed criminalizing that. Clearly, these are "sports" and not comparable, as he suggests, to the mindless clubbing of animals just for the hell of it. Moreover, in an excellent post, Harry has pointed out the hypocrisy of a society of carnivores rallying behind the fox. It strikes me that a better solution to the whole problem is to recognize that hunting--like bull-fighting--is a sport with the wrong, unfair rules.

I have written earlier on how a few simple changes of the rules of football would improve the spectacle of the game. I think that a few similar changes ought to apply in both bull-fighting and fox-hunting. The problem with these sports is that they are unfairly one-sided. In bull-fighting, the Toreador rarely gets gored; the bull invariably gets killed. In the spirit of fair play, the answer is to limit the size of the Toreador's cape (or whatever it's called) to the size of a man's handkerchief (say, 6 inches square). This would make the Toreador's task incomparably more difficult--and give the bull a fighting chance of victory.

The rules of fox-hunting ought to be similarly re-jigged. The problem here is the beagle. It's much too large, has too much stamina, and there are simply too many of the damn things for the hunt to be fair. The rules ought to change in the following way: Only dogs of similar or smaller size to the fox are allowed to participate in the hunt. We could then look forward to the more equitable chase of the Corgi, the Yorkshire Terrier and the like . This simple rule-change would, in my opinion, make the sport much fairer and solve a lot of the current unpleasantness.

Iraq and the Failure of the Intellectuals--Part 2

2004-09-17T05:10:00.000+02:00

More and more people are coming out with explanations for why they got the war wrong. Here are two more. A disturbing and imp[ortant point raised by Nasi Lemak (or whatever his name is) concerns the implications for democracy.

But let us be clear where this gets us. Both Bush and Blair can go to war for reasons that turn out to be wrong and in pursuit of which they turn out to have at best systematically
exaggerated very patchy evidence. That war can turn out to be misguided strategically and mishandled tactically. Its consequence can be the systematic derangement of international institutions. It can turn from a war of liberation into a colonial war repressing nationalist insurgents (whom tradition dictates we call "terrorists"), while being a vivid recruiting tool for those who actually are terrorists. It can waste billions of pounds and tens of thousands of lives and leave the world worse off in pretty much every way. Despite all this the two major proponents of the war can have a fighting chance of re-election. In particular it's now difficult for me to see why any US administration should care about the consequences of its foreign policy.

While I'm deeply ashamed to have been on the wrong side of the debate about the war in advance, turning out to be wrong has rather shattered my faith in the effectiveness of democratic feedback as a useful (realist?) constraint on policy-making.

Nicely put.

Iraq and the Failure of the Intellectuals

2004-09-16T02:13:00.000+02:00

It now appears abundantly clear that the invasion of Iraq has proven to be a catastrophe--both for the Iraqi people and those in the West who encouraged it. Many military experts now think that the US has fallen into a quagmire more treacherous and harder to escape than Vietnam.

"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."

General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

The present state of affairs is particulalrly embarrassing--as some have now poignantly acknowledged-- for those 2002ers, who proposed war on humanitarian grounds. The 2002ers made a wager that the removal of Saddam Hussein would outweigh in benefits the risks and costs of Iraq descending into a civil war. The 2002ers (myself included) got the wager wrong. George Bush and the incompetent, arrogant ideologues in the Defense Department have made horses asses out of the intellectuals and journalists, many of them liberals, who supported the war. It would, I think, be helpful, if the 2002ers went back over their reasoning back then, and identified the factors that led them so astray.

Definitions of Terrorism

2004-09-15T02:32:00.000+02:00

"Terrorism" is a concept that that causes a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness amongst bloggers and journalists. Some commentators completely avoid the term; others think that the term ought to be applied to those who deliberately target or terrorize non-combatants. My own view is that terrorism ought to be defined in the following way:

socially-resonant, politically-motivated violence committed by non-state actors.

This definition does not beg questions in favor of other forms of political violence (war, for instance) and it permits questions to be asked about the jus in and jus ad terrorism. It seems to me that we have to consider seriously the possibility that terrorism is sometimes conducted for a good cause--e.g. the formation of the state of Israel, the ending of the apartheid regime in South Africa; we also have to allow that some methods of terrorism are beyond the moral pale (shooting children in the back a la the Chechens in Beslan) while other methods are morally permissible (blowing up buildings after calling-in a warning).

I may, however, be wrong about this.

Justice, War, and Terrorism

2004-09-13T01:18:00.000+02:00

The following passage from London's Daily Telegraph (reg required) caught my eye:

The US air force has claimed repeatedly since the invasion of Iraq in March last year to be hitting hostile targets identified by US intelligence. During the war it made 50 air strikes to kill senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime some of which caused many civilian casualties. Only after the war did US Defence officials admit that all the air strikes had missed their target. On Sunday US helicopters fired rockets into a crowd in Haifa Street in central Baghdad killing 13 people including an Al-Arabiya television correspondent killed as he was reporting.

I was thinking about this passage, as I read Norman Geras's recent postings on the moral horrors of terrorism. The gist of these postings, as I understand them, are to assert the following: (i) terrorism is always morally wrong, because (ii) terrorists deliberately kill innocents; and (iii) those who favor a more restrictive or non-moralized definition of terrorism are apologists for evil.

Disagreeable though it is to take issue with one of the few intelligent bloggers still around, I think that this line of argument is deeply flawed and, in the present context, suspiciously self-serving.

A pacifist can condemn war and terrorism alike, on the grounds that they kill people. Pacifism is a coherent, if practically untenable, position. A realist can permit war and terrorism on the grounds that they are means to worthy ends. Realism, is a coherent, if morally untenable, position. Geras and others are in a more difficult philosophical position than either the pacifist or the realist. They seek to draw a distinction between "war"--which is OK when undertaken for worthy ends (such as removing Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party)--and terrorism--which is never OK no matter what its end.

The difficulty with Geras's position is that the criterion he identifies for distinguishing war and terrorism simply does not work. War, no matter how precisely waged--and the Iraq War, as the passage above makes clear, was not precisely waged--deliberately kills innocents. Lots of them. So does terrorism. Viewed solely as means of political violence, there is substantially less moral difference between war and terrorism than the Iraq War Party likes to think.

Why Blair Must Resign

2004-07-14T14:23:00.000+02:00

As a person who in 2002 supported the Iraq War, I have considerable sympathy with the stance of Tony Blair. Clinton does too. His recent apperance in Berlin last weekend was, I noted, most unsettling to Germans. Their love for Clinton is matched only by their hatred for Blair. Yet Clinton was in town and on all the TV political talk-shows telling the Germans that Bush's position on the war was the correct one. Clinton too would have intervened in Iraq, even if he would have waited a little longer for UN support.

Yet while I think Blair was right then to support the war, the fact that he pinned so much of his case for war on non-existing WMD's means that his position was always falsificable. If those weapons did not exist, then Blair had no case to go to war. We now know--as some people did back then, the heroic Robin Cook amongst them--that the WMD case for war was overblown. Blair was wrong. He led his country into war on false premises. In a parliamentary system--unlike the incomparably inferior Presidential political systems of France and the United States--there is only one action that a political leader can then take: to resign. Blair must resign. It is the only honorable thing to do.

Internet Censorship--Germany

2004-07-13T02:14:00.000+02:00

At an internet cafe this morning in Berlin, I encountered, for the first time, censorship controls on the internet. Oddly, the website censored was the very excellent Political Theory Daily Review. My access was blocked, so a pop-up page informed me, because of the word "female genital mutilation." Turning next to the Guardian, I doscovered that too was blocked. The reason? "Spanking." A word, I assume, that cropped up in an article on recent efforts to curb the physical beating of children, a child-rearing technique apparently still popular in Britain.

Crap Blog--Keep it Up-to-Date

2004-07-07T16:14:00.000+02:00

A reader writes:

My main objection was to the fact that you hadn't kept your blog up to date. That is such crap! You go to the effort of starting one and then your butterfly mind gets taken up with something else.

Your comments about English football are more than justified, it's the racial generalisations that really get me. English women are ugly. Berlin is so much more civilised than Spain. That is such a low rent American understanding of what is in reality in both cases quite a complicated scenario. It reminds me of my brother's experience in Texas last year, where a fat Stetsoned redneck told him in the queue at D/FW airport, on hearing his English accent, that Britain was crap and class stultified because he couldn't get any of the waitresses in his pub near Trafalgar Square to serve him at his table.

England and Portugal: A Spanish View

2004-06-25T12:48:00.000+02:00

Having watched the England-Portugal game on Spanish TV followed by reading a full complement of the Spanish papers, I have noticed a striking imbalance in the way that the English press and some blogs have reported the game. The English seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that this was a keenly fought contest between two evenly matched teams. Some reports seem to suggest that were it not for a biased referee and a dodgy penalty spot, the English would be safely ensconced in the semi-finals. El Pais offers a more scientific view: England shots at the goal = 3; Portugal shots at the goal = 23. The headline of El Pais' report "Heroic Portugal; Mean England." The paper goes on to excoriate Erikson's defensive tactics and to say that had Saez (the Spanish manager) followed such a strategy he would never be able to walk the streets again. No one thought that the Sol Campbell disallowed goal was any thing other than a foul.

The Ugliness of the English

2004-06-25T12:34:00.000+02:00

I have just learned that I'm not the only one to think that the English are on average physically the ugliest people in the advanced industrial world, but now there is a site devoted to this topic. A quick scan of that site suggests, however, a class explanation of the ugliness of the English. I doubt that this is either true or fair. Ugliness, I suspect, is spread equitably across the socio-economic strata of the country. A well-designed social scientific study ought to be able to confirm this.

The Beauty of Rooney

2004-06-22T13:32:00.000+02:00

In an important post, Chris Brooke has commented on the sheer physical ugliness of the English football team. I think he is partly right on this point. Rooney et al are repulsively ugly. But the point Chris misses is that the players are quite representative of the nation as a whole. Having spent time recently in five countries, I think it would be hard to deny that English men and women are on average the ugliest people in the advanced industrial world. Americans--at least outside of California--run the Brits close, but that's largely (excuse the pun) a function of their obesity. Unfortunately, Brits, poor loves, all appear to have squished up features with one of them--be it a nose or (in Rooney's case) ears--wholly disproportionate to the others.

English Football Hooligans:

2004-06-22T13:24:00.000+02:00

Sampling this evening the cafes of Vigo harbor, we discovered that the town—hardly a town with 300,000 people—is swarming with football fans: Dutch, Danes, and Germans for the most part. Auna--who looks like some Platonic form of the Scandinavian female—struck up a conversation with a doleful Dutch couple. Their team’s defeat at the hands of the Czechs seemed to have induced some sort of existential trauma. I tried to cheer them up by explaining to them my ideas about improving the rules of soccer. I’ve now come up with a couple of new ones. Doleful Dutch couple seemed doubtful these rules would catch on. They couldn’t see Edwin Van der Saar putting up with a Head Cam, even if, as I pointed out, Edgar Davids plays the game hiding behind a pair of cool looking shades. We departed with a heartfelt hope that the Czechs demolish the Germans—a dull and talentless team marshaled by the annoyingly competent Oliver Kahn.

In another quiet café around the corner, Auna and I were enjoying a glass of Albarino, the fine white wine of the region, when about twenty drunken singing Danes came in. Our quiet intimacy ruined we left. On our way out of the door, the owner came over to us and shaking his head at the noisy Danes uttered the word “Ingleses.” It made me wonder whether the term “English” has now acquired the new meaning of “any drunken violent behavior displayed abroad.”

The Thoughts of Trent "Helmet-Head" Lott

2004-06-20T12:14:00.000+02:00

It's good to hear that the former republican majority leader has not given up thinking about our nation's problems. Get a load of this interview and then thank your God that he's now no longer on our TV screens every day of the year

how do you think the war in Iraq is going?

There are terrorists in Iraq who have been drawn into that part of the world. Every day we eliminate some of them; that's one more that won't be coming here.

What do you mean by eliminate them? Where are the terrorists and insurgents going to go?

Well, they are going to be killed. When they attack our troops, 20 or 30 or 40 at a time are being eliminated.

We can't kill everyone who hates America!

We can kill a lot of them, particularly when they try to kill us.

And you think that will lead to democracy in Iraq?

It's kind of like the song about New York. If it can succeed in Iraq, it can succeed anywhere.

You recently created a stir when you defended the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib.

Most of the people in Mississippi came up to me and said: ''Thank Goodness. America comes first.'' Interrogation is not a Sunday-school class. You don't get information that will save American lives by withholding pancakes.

But unleashing killer dogs on naked Iraqis is not the same as withholding pancakes.

I was amazed that people reacted like that. Did the dogs bite them? Did the dogs assault them? How are you going to get people to give information that will lead to the saving of lives?

Terrorism Ticks Up

2004-06-11T16:08:00.000+02:00

Despite the earlier blundering effort of our government to persuade its befuddled citizens that our hapless President had turned the tide of terrorism, it turns out that they got the figures wrong. Terrorism is, after all, on the increase. As the BBC reports:

Global terror attacks are on the rise, says the US State Department, admitting an earlier report - which had claimed attacks were tailing off - was wrong.

The State Department reported in April that there were fewer terror attacks in 2003 than in any year since 1969.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said data in that report was misleading - but said this was an "honest" error.

Bush administration officials had cited the April report as proof that the US was winning its "war on terror".....

Opposition lawmakers had claimed the report downplayed the terror threat to suit the political needs of US President George W Bush, who faces an election this year and wants to show the public his anti-terror strategy is a success.

Democrat Congress member, Henry Waxman, accused the government earlier this week of distorting the initial report.

Mr Boucher said Mr Waxman's allegation was being addressed.

He added that errors in the report had begun to become apparent in May.

He said a revised report was being prepared and it would show a steep rise in the number of attacks compared to the original analysis.

Given the mounting dangers that we all face, it is rather surprising that the US and British press has paid so little attention to the arrest in Italy this week of Rabei Osman El Sayed ("Mohammed the Egyptian") who was the mastermind of the March 11 attacks on Atocha Station (Madrid). There are at least five important points--all taken from today's EL Pais (unfortunately not available without a subscription)-- to learn from this arrest:

1. The attacks on Spain were planned well before September 11 2001. They had nothing to do with Spain's involvement in the Iraq War.

2. "Mohammed" who had trained in explosives in the Egyptian army and who, in turn, had trained terrorists in camps in Afghanistan, was planning attacks throughout Europe including Britain, Germany, Holland, and France. Indeed, a plan to bomb the Paris Metro was in an advanced stage of planning.

3. "Mohammed" was heard on his tapped phone bragging of the number of female martyrs he had lined up to carry out future suicide attacks.

4. Mohammed had managed to recruit a number of Richard Reid ("the Shoebomber") types to carry out further attacks. These were, for the most part, a bunch of low level street criminals (Morrocans for the most part) who had become converts to a radical form of Islam while in prison.

5. Contrary to the claims of some of my more blinkered right-wing compatriots, the European police (including the Italian and Spanish police forces) appear to be arresting genuine terrorists rather than the hapless innocents the FBI keeps picking up.

Improving Soccer: Final Points

2004-06-10T14:45:00.000+02:00

The remaining improvements to the rules and watchability of soccer:

7. Require Players in the Wall to Keep their Hands on their Heads Until the Free Kick is taken.

Like a number of the earlier suggestion, this rule-change, which would be quite easy to enforce, is designed to hobble the defence. This rule would make the defending players much more reticent when facing a free kick in front of goal. Not only would players be unwilling even to form a wall, but they would likely turn their backs or dive to the floor when the free-kick is taken. The result? More goals.

Improving Soccer: Some Further Points

2004-06-09T13:37:00.000+02:00

A number of my correspondents have asked me to clarify further the reasoning behind some of the improvements I suggested in an earlier post. I'm happy to oblige:

1. A Thirty Second Rule

As in basketball, this rule forces a team to do something with the ball within a certain period of time of gaining possession. This rule would stop a team simply passing the ball laterally all afternoon. It would make for a snappier, more attacking game. Perhaps, given the fact that a football pitch is bigger than a basketball court, a one minute rule might work better. But these picky details can be worked out later.

2. Offsides in the Penalty Box Only

Try and ask a Brit to explain off-sides, it's like asking them to explain tipping: they haven't got a clue. Sure they can repeat to you the rule. But they don't know why it exists. As far as I can tell, it's to stop "goal poaching." It prevents a striker from standing in front of the goalkeeper the entire game and making a general pest of himself. Granted that this actually is a problem--and I can't personally see that it is--then offsides ought to apply only in the penalty box. This would create more space in the midfield and stop the annoying "offsides trap." I don't know the history of the offsides rule, but I suspect it was implemented by an organization of goalkeepers to further keep down the number of goals.

3 AND 4--These are no brainers; no further explanation of their advantages are necessary.

5. Require Goalkeepers to stay on their line the entire game.

This simply extends the requirement that goalkeepers are under when facing a penalty. If goal keepers had to stand on their line the entire game, they would be unable to narrow the angle when facing strikers. This would likely increase quite considerably the number of goals in any match.

6. Require Goalkeepers to Wear Head-Cams

This suggestion has the merit of both increasing the number of goals and enhancing the pleasure of the TV audience. Goalkeepers never head the ball, so requiring them to wear head-cams--in the form of something like old miner's helmets--would not be too much of an imposition. Perhaps the head-cam would limit their mobility, but that's no loss. It simply means more goals. The TV audience would enjoy seeing penalties, corners, and free kicks from the goalkeepers' perspective. This suggestion should be implemented as soon as possible.

10 Ways of Improving the Spectacle of Soccer

2004-06-07T21:09:00.000+02:00

The last time I spent any extended time in Britain the whole country was in the grip of World Cup fever. I now fear the entire place is about to come down with an even more virulent bout of a related disease. I have nothing against sport. I’m an avid fan of NBA basketball, women’s tennis, and beach volleyball. Like any man, I’ve spent a good portion of my life in front of the TV cheering on my teams. But soccer (as we call it in the States) bores the pants off me. There are simply not enough goals. I’ve been giving this problem a lot of thought over the last few years and have come up with some solutions.

Here are ten ways of making soccer a greater spectacle. Some of these suggestions (1 through 3) are direct borrowings from US sports, including (3) which is taken from the US Major League Soccer. Other suggestions (5 through 8) are designed to hobble the defence and, in particular, goalkeepers, the bane of the modern game. Limit their ability to make saves, and we could always enjoy high-scoring matches. The last three suggestions (8 through 10) do not involve changes to the rules of the game, but aim only to spice things up a little for the TV audience.

1. A 30 Second Rule.
2. Abolish offsides outside the penalty area.
3. Shoot-outs rather than penalties to ensure that each game has a winner.
4. Extend the goal posts two meters.
5. Require goalkeepers to remain on their line throughout the entire game.
6. Mandatory Head-Cams for Goalies
7. Make all players forming “a wall” place both hands on their heads until the kick is taken.
8. Abolish half-time.
9. Topless cheerleaders.
10. Bottomless goalscorers—players ought to celebrate by taking off their shorts rather than their shirts.

FURTHER CLARIFICATION:

A number of my correspondents have asked me to clarify further the reasoning behind some of the improvements I suggested in an earlier post. I'm happy to oblige:

1. A Thirty Second Rule

As in basketball, this rule forces a team to do something with the ball within a certain period of time of gaining possession. This rule would stop a team simply passing the ball laterally all afternoon. It would make for a snappier, more attacking game. Perhaps, given the fact that a football pitch is bigger than a basketball court, a one minute rule might work better. But these picky details can be worked out later.

2. Offsides in the Penalty Box Only

Try and ask a Brit to explain off-sides, it's like asking them to explain tipping: they haven't got a clue. Sure they can repeat to you the rule. But they don't know why it exists. As far as I can tell, it's to stop "goal poaching." It prevents a striker from standing in front of the goalkeeper the entire game and making a general pest of himself. Granted that this actually is a problem--and I can't personally see that it is--then offsides ought to apply only in the penalty box. This would create more space in the midfield and stop the annoying "offsides trap." I don't know the history of the offsides rule, but I suspect it was implemented by an organization of goalkeepers to further keep down the number of goals.

3 AND 4--These are no brainers; no further explanation of their advantages are necessary.

5. Require Goalkeepers to stay on their line the entire game.

This simply extends the requirement that goalkeepers are under when facing a penalty. If goal keepers had to stand on their line the entire game, they would be unable to narrow the angle when facing strikers. This would likely increase quite considerably the number of goals in any match.

6. Require Goalkeepers to Wear Head-Cams

This suggestion has the merit of both increasing the number of goals and enhancing the pleasure of the TV audience. Goalkeepers never head the ball, so requiring them to wear head-cams--in the form of something like old miner's helmets--would not be too much of an imposition. Perhaps the head-cam would limit their mobility, but that's no loss. It simply means more goals. The TV audience would enjoy seeing penalties, corners, and free kicks from the goalkeepers' perspective. This suggestion should be implemented as soon as possible.

7. Require Players in the Wall to Keep their Hands on their Heads Until the Free Kick is taken.

Like a number of the earlier suggestion, this rule-change, which would be quite easy to enforce, is designed to hobble the defence. This rule would make the defending players much more reticent when facing a free kick in front of goal. Not only would players be unwilling even to form a wall, but they would likely turn their backs or dive to the floor when the free-kick is taken. The

The End of Comments

2004-06-05T18:08:00.000+02:00

I´m afraid I have had to disable the comments. Like a number of other leading and influential political blogs, my posts attracted an unhealthy number of nationalists, racists, and just plain loonies. Sadly, many of my fellow Americans refuse to accept the lessons of Abu Ghraib. I stand by everything I said. And just to rub salt in the wounds of misplaced patriotism, I cite again the offending passage:

The Chuck Graner argument. The torture, humiliation, and brutality of Abu Ghraib are not, as Don Rumsfeld protested, "Un-American." They are quintessentially American, as today's FT reports. Chuck Graner and Ivan Fredericks are standard issue US Prison Guards. We brought our particular form of homegrown horror to the Middle East. And there's plenty more where that came from. While we Americans like to pretend that we are a force for good in the world, there are many features of our society--features that we don't like to discuss--that are sick. We remain, in many ways, a violent, vulgar nation of religious bigots. It is hardly surprising that other peoples do not wish to be occupied by us.

People are free to email me, I will try to incorporate replies into future posts.

More on Tipping

2004-06-04T22:49:00.000+02:00

I have received a slew of emails in support of my earlier post on tipping. Admittedly, most are from expatriates, who also feel shafted by the British double-tipping con.

And for a learned and brilliant discussion of the undemocratic nature of tipping, see Daniele Archibugi´s new piece in Dissent. As Daniele further points out: the best discussion of tipping is to be found in the opening scene of Tarantino´s Reservoir Dogs.

Democratizing Iraq? The Intellectual Failures of the Intellectuals

2004-05-30T00:01:00.000+02:00

As we enter the endgame of our catastrophic intervention into Iraq, it is helpful to remind ourselves how we got into this shameful mess. In earlier posts, I have been examining some of the errors that informed the pro-war left. I now want to say something about the pro-war right.

Under this rubric, there are two interesting--and any number of plain loony--arguments: one, a geopolitical argument; and two, a Leninist (or democratic) argument. (These, please remember, are the non-loony arguments.)

The geopolitical argument--apparently believed, if not openly proclaimed, by Cheney (our de facto President)--was premised on the need to secure "our" oil supplies and bolster "our" Middle Eastern military bases. The underlying assumption of this argument--again never openly proclaimed--is that Saudi Arabia is an unstable regime likely soon to implode. There are two aspects of this argument worth mentioning. First, this geopolitical argument is but one of a number of different arguments put forward (and probably believed) by the architects of the war. It would, however, be difficult, in advance of further interviews and archival investigation, to gauge the precise causal significance of this argument. Those, like the omniscient Noam Chomsky, who believe that these geopolitical considerations were the principal reasons for the war have yet to prove their case. Second, the geopolitical argument might actually have some prima facie merit. In other words, (and contra Chomsky et al ) there might conceivably be a case for ensuring, through military means, a stable supply of oil. The geopolitical argument certainly merits some debate.

Yet while I think we ought to debate the geopolitical argument, it faces, what I believe, are two overwhelming problems. First, this argument requires an open commitment to Realpolitik: our interests are more important than others merely because they are ours; and might makes right. No one I know-with the possible exception of Niall Ferguson--has made this argument in justification of the Iraq War. No one, I think, seriously wishes to live in such a world. Second, this argument rests on the assumption that a stable supply of oil requires foreign direct intervention. It is not, however, obvious why we in the west cannot buy our oil from whatever regimes takes shape in the Middle East. Even Mullahs need mullah.

If the geopolitical argument for the Iraq war thus fails, this leaves the Leninist" argument (a term and argument I have borrowed from Ken Jowett). For much of the 1990s, the US government pursued a Marxist policy towards the rest of the world. It thought that the spread of global capitalism would lead to a global convergence around "Western" values. Tom Friedman's writings offered a vulgar, simple-mided version of this optimistic position. 9/11 rang the death knell for the Marxist strategy and the birth (following Jowett's terminology) of a Leninist strategy. From this perspective, the US decided, post 9/11, to set itself up as a revolutionary vanguard and spread democratic capitalism by military force. The neoconservatives are in this respect all Leninists. These Leninists drew ideological support from a number of intellectuals on the right (most New Republic contributors) and the left (Christopher Hitchens and Michael Ignatieff amongst others) who saw a democratic Iraq as the precondition for stability and order in the Middle East.

How sensible is this Leninist strategy of constructing a democratic Iraq? Many observers in 2002 and 2003 always argued that this strategy would never work. And yet a number of politically-connected Middle Eastern experts--including Fouad Ajami, Kanan Makiya, and Bernard Lewis--promised us that a democratic Iraq was fully within our grasp. A number of these alleged Middle Eastern experts have now issued embarrassing and shameful mea culpas telling us that they didn't really know much about Iraq.

Oddly, a number of intelligent and thoughtful right wingers--including Dan Drezner and Andrew Sullivan--still believe that a democratic Iraq remains a viable (and perhaps even the best) current policy option. I believe that they are wrong. The arguments recently, for instance, put forward by Dan Drezner in support of democratizing Iraq are nearly all specious. (In a later post, I will carefully explain why.)

There are five arguments that suggest that the USA and its allies cannot transform Iraq into a democracy. If these arguments are valid, then the current mess in Iraq is less a failure of implementation (as Drezner, Sullivan, and others maintain)than a failure of conception. I will name these five arguments as follows:

(i) The Millian argument: John Stuart Mill (last seen on a lawnmower) once argued that multinational states could not support representative institutions. The clamor of the Kurds for their own independent sovereign state suggests that he is right. Unless a state possesses a fairly substantial conception of nationality (or "we-feeling"), democracy does not work. (This is not to say, however, that democracy cannot work in a multi-ethnic state like Canada, Britain, or India. It is simply that multi-ethnic states need some overarching conception of nationality.)

(ii) The Tocquevillean argument: democracy presupposes a period of social leveling, a period that destroys tribal and feudal hierarchies. The so-called Middle Eastern experts (cited above) told us that Iraq was a modern secular state--quite unlike Afghanistan--we now know this not to be the case. Saddam, as it now turns out, was no Stalin, no Louis XIV--he simply bought off without transforming the tribal leaders. It is extraordinarily difficult to democratize a tribal society.

(iii) The Miltonian Argument. Milton's Satan (in Paradise Lost) says that he would prefer to rule in hell than serve in heaven. There are, it would now seem, enough Miltonian Satanists in Iraq to suggest that they will never accept a form of government that is perceived as foreign. To accept such a form of government would be to accept that there is something deeply flawed in their own religion, customs and traditions. This line of thinking informs all nationalism, a political ideology that remains, for better or worse, the most potent in the modern age.

(iv) The Moqtadr al Sadr argument. One of the most naive beliefs of the pro-democratizers--evident in Drezner's articles, for instance--is that "an open society" will in Iraq yield a democratic regime that is not anti-American and not anti-Israel. The problem with this argument is that if most Iraqis hate America and Israel--as now seems to be the case--then an open society will yield a democratic Iraqi government run by people with views not too different from those of al Sadr. Anyone under any illusions about the "enlightened" views of the more moderate Ayatollah Sistani should take a look at his webpage. This leads to the question (put poignantly by Cheney's hapless underling): "Why do they hate us?" And this in turn leads us to argument number (v).

(v) The Chuck Graner argument. The torture, humiliation, and brutality of Abu Ghraib are not, as Don Rumsfeld protested, "Un-American." They are quintessentially American, as today's FT reports. Chuck Graner and Ivan Fredericks are standard issue US Prison Guards. We brought our particular form of homegrown horror to the Middle East. And there's plenty more where that came from. While we Americans like to pretend that we are a force for good in the world, there are many features of our society--features that we don't like to discuss--that are sick. We remain, in many ways, a violent, vulgar nation of religious bigots. It is hardly surprising that other peoples do not wish to be occupied by us.

Democratize Iraq? It's enough to make one weep. Yes, America has been failed by its incompetent leaders. But it has been failed too by its intellectuals. All who supported the war on the grounds of democratizing Iraq should apologize to the world for their hubris.

Failures of British Multicultural Education

2004-05-28T18:52:00.000+02:00

There is noone more tiresome than The American Abroad. Well, actually, there is. The American Abroad Who Criticizes Host Country's Customs. Ever since I've been here (now almost two weeks), I have been extraordinarily careful not to utter a word of such criticisms (apart from the tipping issue). I have been especially reticent when it comes to passing judgments on British higher educational practices. Let a man spend a sabbatical in your college, the least you can expect is that he carry himself with a certain grace and gratitude. Who wants a belly-acher on their corridor? One educational matter does, however, merit, not so much criticism, but at least comment. Some people in higher education--whatever they might know of dead socialists and country singers--do not appear to know their Celtic mythology. The shape-shifting abilities of my ancestor Gwydion mab Don, descendant of Math, are not, so it would seem, part of the British educational canon. I think that this is a hole that warrants plugging.

On "Brits," Tipping, and Tipping Points

2004-05-28T02:43:00.000+02:00

Britain--London at least--has changed so much since I last lived here. It seems so much more affluent now than back then. It has also somehow managed to become both more American and more European while remaining distinctively itself. Still, there are a lots of things about the place I just don't get. Take tipping. My British friends are always happy to explain their customs to an outsider. Except when it comes to tipping. No one can explain tipping. If you ask Brits how it works, they always look embarrassed, change the subject,or just plain refuse to answer. Do you or don't you? And how much?

On the face of it, there would seem to be two stable equilibrium positions: (i) always tip; and (ii) never tip. The US has adopted stable equilibrium position (i). Continental Europe has gone for (ii). Thus in the US everyone tips 15% for every service delivered by a non-salaried employee. It's simple. On continental Europe, in contrast, no one ever tips anyone. Thus waiters (I know I used to be one) get a percentage in their weekly salary of their sales . Sometimes customers will leave their loose change or a little extra if the waiter has exceeded role expectations. But if the customer does not tip, no conventions are broken, no feelings hurt. It's simple.

In Britain, in contrast, there does not seem to be a clear and settled convention. Sometimes the menu will say--often in suspiciously small 8 point print--"service included." But even then, the credit card slip the waiter brings to the table invariably has a line for "gratuities." Up until now, whenever I was presented with one of these credit card slips, I dutifully tacked on 15%. Just recently a Brit broke ranks and told me that I'd been double tipping. I was pissed. I suggested to my friend that in future we ask the waiter to tell us whether service is included. He looked shocked. I got the sense that asking waiters would not be the done thing at all.

I've decided that from now on, I'm not going to tip. Ever.

I suspect that I'm not the only one confused and resentful about British tipping practices and if enough of us stand up and stop, we can achieve, what Malcolm Gladwell has called, "a tipping point". Although in our case, it will be a tipping point that terminates tipping. Await further news on how this campaign unfolds. I'm having lunch tomorrow with a former student in Leicester Square. I'm going to try it out.

Of Thresholds, Thought Experiments, and Lawnmowers: A Provisional Reply to Norman Geras

2004-05-27T01:23:00.000+02:00

In a delightfully spirited response to some fellow 2002ers, the always thoughtful and wise Norman Geras has clarified his position on the Iraq War. I agree wholeheartedly with his reply to Michael Fisher: the civilian deaths, torture, and the other Goya-like miseries of war do not themselves undermine the case for intervention. Indeed, if they did humanitarian intervention would always be a non-starter. Both Norm and I saw the war, first and foremost, as a project to remove a genocidal ruler. We based our justification for the war partly on the facts of his slaughter and partly on a probabilistic calculus that the regime that emerged after the war would be beneficial to Iraqis, their neighbors, and the world at large. I, unlike him, now fear we might have got the probabilistic calculus wrong.

Consider the following counterfactuals:

(i) It is May 2004. The invasion of Iraq in April 2003 is, as is now clear, a surprising success. True, no WMDs were ever discovered; no one could turn up any reliable information that Saddam had been in cahoots with Al Qaeda; and the whole thing cost the US taxpayer a boat-load more money than initially suggested. But we discovered lots of mass graves—more than we had thought—and the Iraqis were overwhelmingly, if begrudgingly, grateful for our intervention. Putting together a post-intervention government proved more difficult than we imagined, but under the astute leadership skills of Viceroy Clinton a government was cobbled together out of old Baathists, army officers, Kurds, Sunni tribal leaders, and Shiite clerics. By the end of the month, plans had been laid for elections, which were to take place under UN supervision sometime within the next five years. Furthermore, George Bush and Tony Blair were enjoying record approval ratings in the polls. Those people who opposed the war in 2002 and 2003 felt like damn fools.

(ii) It is May 2005. The US and Britain declared "Mission Accomplished (Really)" at the end of 2004 and then packed up. But now there is a civil war raging throughout Iraq, fought, in part, by armed proxies of Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The numbers of Iraqis killed this month exceeded the number killed in any single month under Saddam Hussein. Elsewhere in the world, things are not much better. The Taliban have taken over again in Afghanistan. The world was recently shocked at the beheading--carried live on Al-Jazeera--of the late President Karzai. The US and Britain have now embraced a form of splendid isolationism. They would not even stir in the face of the humanitarian catastrophe in the Sudan, where the people of Southern and Western Sudan are dying in the hundreds of thousands at the hands of the Janjaweed.

I'll come back to these two counterfactuals. But first back to Norm's argument. One of the most helpful features of Norm's pro-war argument was that he recognized that the case for humanitarian intervention (whether in Iraq or elsewhere) had to meet a very high moral threshold. While I agree that his proposed moral threshold is a necessary condition of any justified case for military intervention, this threshold is not itself, at least in the form he has stated it, a sufficient condition. The threshold must be supplemented by a further threshold: a probabilistic threshold of success. For military intervention to be justified, it must be the case that there is a reasonable probability that the intervention will bring about the desired outcome. Did the pro-war camp of 2002 think hard enough about the prospects of ending up in something akin to situation(ii)? Did they fail to take into consideration evidence (already available in 2002) that suggested that situation (i) was never an option?

These are, of course, very tricky questions. They take us into the difficult conceptual terrain of decisions, judgments, and justifications that take place under conditions of "risk" and "uncertainty." But let me just say, for the moment, that it is possible to make political judgments that, no matter how pure one's intentions, can be (to quote Norm) "shameful," "dishonest" and "reckless." He does not believe that 2002ers have anything to answer for. I'm not so sure. But to take this argument any further, I need to say something more about "reckless" decisions. I will return to this in a later post. But what's that I see coming down the road? Four elderly buggers on a lawnmower? Two wearing frock coats, by the looks of it. Crazy. And what's that fucking awful music they're playing?

The Logic of Narrative Blogs

2004-05-26T05:31:00.000+02:00

A Free Man in Preston recently posted something very clever:

Confusion

It’s been one of those non-linear days.
I drove to work bleary eyed, got up and had a shower. At lunchtime I thought about going for a jog, but it was raining by the time I got back so I didn’t bother.

On the whiteboard in Neil’s office there was a graph depicting next year’s disappointed figures. It resembled a craggy mountain range. The outlook was positively downhill. The graph staggered down from the whiteboard and onto the wall, round the back of a filing cabinet, out of the room and with one final jaunty squiggle, hung a right up the corridor.
I said to Mike “Hard times are just around the corner.”

When I eventually got home there was a note saying “You look tired. I’ve ran you a bath.”
I said “I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.”

Neil came sliding into the room in his socks and said “How much do you have left to give?”
Mike said “Are you two on fucking drugs?”

Neil said “We need to turn these figures on their head.”
He’s trying to rope us into some inter-departmentalist bash in the Peak District. They’re going dis-orienteering.

Not only is this a wonderful piece of writing, but it captures a point that will have occurred immediately to anyone--except me, because I've just noticed it--who reads or writes narrative in the form of a blog. The narrative proceeds (if that's the right word) backwards. To follow a story, the reader must scroll down. Characters undevelop rather than develop. All narrative blogs must, in this respect, follow the form of Harold Pinter's wonderful play about adultery Betrayal.

Norman Geras and the Case for the Iraq War

2004-05-23T19:41:00.000+02:00

In a series of typically thoughtful and intelligent posts, Norman Geras has restated the case for military intervention in Iraq. Like me, Geras is a 2002er: someone who favored war in 2002 and 2003. Unlike me, he does not seem to recognize that the Iraq intervention has proved to be a catastrophe and anyone who had earlier favored intervention ought to apologize to the world. Geras's recent posts suggest that he is still clinging to the illusion that intervention was the right thing to do. But any argument that appeals, as his does, to the desirability of removing Saddam and the institutions that sustained a genocidal policy has also to weigh the prospects that military intervention will ultimately lead, whether directly or proximately, to even greater loss of life. If the United States simply declares victory on June 30 2004 and "cuts and run"--as I think is now a very likely outcome--then there is a very real prospect of civil war in Iraq, military interventions from both Turkey and Iran, and the wider disintegration of Muslim-Non-Muslim relations throughout the world. Of course, none of these dire outcomes can be predicted with any degree of confidence. But since the Bush administration has shown itself to be utterly incapable of formulating or implementing even minimally adequate policies for Iraq, there is no good reason to think that the situation in Iraq can go anywhere than further to hell. Intellectual honesty demands that the pro-war camp admit that they were wrong in supporting the war. No arguments about "the moral threshold" for intervention make sense in the absence of a competent intervening agency capable of securing a desirable post-intervention outcome. The Bush administration, as we all know now--and as we all had good reason to know before--certainly does not qualify.

'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' "

2004-05-23T03:09:00.000+02:00

The Washington Post brings fresh news of America's favorite couple. Specialists (in what? one wants to ask) Charles A. Graner Jr and Lynndie England. The Becks and Posh of Abu Ghraib. Asked whether he had any qualms about his brutality, Graner--a Prison Guard in Pennsylvania State Prisons--replied:

"The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'"

(I will definitely be using this line when I teach my next class on role morality and professional ethics.)

Update: Ron Davis has more on Graner here

In 1996, he took a job at State Correctional Institution Greene, a new maximum-security prison near West Virginia that housed some of the most hardened criminals in Pennsylvania. Within a year, the state had investigated accusations that guards at the prison routinely beat handcuffed inmates, used crude racial slurs and falsified reports of inmate misconduct.

Specialist Graner, who worked the overnight shift, was not implicated in the investigation. But in 1999, he was sued in federal court by a Greene inmate who accused Specialist Graner of beating him on at least two occasions.

The lawsuit, filed by Horatio Nimley, who was serving a five-year sentence for burglary, claimed that Specialist Graner and three other guards had slipped a razor blade into his potatoes in June 1998 and then beat him when he complained about not being allowed to see a nurse.

Specialist Graner and three other guards "picked me up and slammed me to the floor head first and then started hitting me in the (my) face and head with their closed fists, giving me black eyes, bloody nose and worsening the razor injury I was already suffering in my mouth," Mr. Nimley wrote.

A federal magistrate in Pittsburgh found that the complaint "has a reasonable opportunity to prevail on the merits."

But Graner's military lawyer says that's not the client he knows. Maybe Graner could have abused Iraqi prisoners, his lawyer says, but only if someone had ordered Graner to do so.

Graner actually sounds more like the sort of guy who enjoys his work:

The soldiers pulled seven Iraqi detainees from their cells, "tossed them in the middle of the floor" and then one soldier [Graner] ran across the room and lunged into the pile of detainees, according to sworn statements given to investigators by one of the soldiers now charged with abuse. He did it again, jumping into the group like it was a pile of autumn leaves, and another soldier called for others to join in. The detainees were ordered to strip and masturbate, their heads covered with plastic sandbags. One soldier stomped on their fingers and toes.

"Graner put the detainee's head into a cradle position with Graner's arm, and Graner punched the detainee with a lot of force, in the temple," Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits said in his statements to investigators, referring to another soldier charged, Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. "Graner punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked the detainee unconscious."

"He was joking, laughing," Specialist Sivits said. "Like he was enjoying it."

When he wasn't allegedly busting heads, Graner was busy with his girlfriend, Lynndie England. Sometimes they allegedly got busy in front of Iraqi detainees. Or in front of other troops:

Sex and alcohol were commonplace, and soldiers frequently set up candlelit rooms for voyeuristic sex shows, said a soldier who served at the notorious prison.

"There were lots of affairs. There was all kinds of adultery and alcoholism and all kinds of crap going on," said Dave Bischel, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police unit, who returned home from Abu Ghraib last month.

"There was a bed found in one of the abandoned buildings. There was a mattress on the ground. They had chairs all circled around it and candles all over the place," said Bischel, adding the chairs were "obviously for an audience."

England says she's not good for such horrible things as committing an indecent act; assaulting Iraqi detainees on multiple occasions; conspiring with Spc. Charles Graner to "maltreat Iraqi detainees" and committing acts "prejudicial to good order and discipline and were of nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces through her mistreatment of Iraqi detainees."

She says she acted on orders from civilian intelligence officials and persons up her chain-of-command. Graner, as a corporal, outranked Pvt. England.
.

Humanitarianism, Sudan, and Private Military Contractors

2004-05-21T03:35:00.000+02:00

Chris Bertram over at the excellent Crooked Timber has noticed that the Muslims in the North of Sudan are butchering the non-Muslims in the South and West. In the aftermath of the Iraq debacle, we cannot expect that any western state will intervene militarily to put an end to this particular chapter of human misery. Nor can we count on any form of non-military multilateralism to be of much help. Sanctions, anyone? Soft power? (What a crock that concept is.)

My suggestion is that we rely upon private military contractors. While PMC's have been controversial in Iraq, not least because of their role in Abu Ghraib, their is no reason to think that, if properly controlled, they cannot be used for humanitarian purposes. Why don't liberal humanitarian interventionists simply club together, raise the cash, and send a bunch of PMCs over to Darfur to protect women and children from the Janjaweed currently butchering them? Doubtless the wishy-washy liberals will object. But in the future PMCs will probably be our only option for projecting power abroad for humanitarian purposes. The Iraq debacle certainly brings to an end the brief period in the 1990s when humanitarian intervention was advertised as a central component of a new global order.

The Iraq War--A Rueful 2002 Perspective

2004-05-20T05:53:00.000+02:00

Every reasonable observer must now conclude that the Iraq War is a catastrophe. Polls show that 90% of Iraqis consider the US occupiers. Had we known in 2002 and the early months of 2003 what we know now, very few of us--zealots apart--would have supported this war. It is thus surprising that some intelligent people that I respect still seem to think that going to war in Iraq was a good idea. Things we know now, but did not know then: there was no stock of ready to hand WMD; Saddam Hussein was not about to attack us or his neighbors; Saddam Hussein had no significant links to Al Qaeda; the Iraqis do not wish to be governed by the USA or its puppets; and--hardest of all to fathom--the US Defense Department (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith et al) had no plausible plan for governing post-war Iraq. Taken together, these things now make the decision to invade Iraq an act of reckless folly. The 2002 pro-war camp--of which I unfortunately was a member--can at least console itself that these were things that could not then have been known. Knowledgeable experts had assured us that the possession of WMDs was a slam-dunk case. The 2002ers must still, however, answer for neglecting facts that were already known in 2002: the incompetence, arrogance, and venality of the Bush war-camp; the failures in Afghanistan; the lack of either UN or NATO support; the refusal of the Bush administration to discuss in any detail the post war plans for Iraq; the fractious nature of domestic groups in Iraq; the desire of the Kurds for self-government; Rumsfeld's "war-lite" plans; and the Bush administration's craven deference to Prime Minister Sharon. Given these facts, we 2002ers have every reason to feel foolish. The 2002 anti-war camp has every reason to gloat. We 2002ers ought to join with the anti-war camp in ridding ourselves of the political leaders who got us into this fucking mess. The difficulty here for us 2002ers is that the Democratic candidate is one of our own. Like all of us, Kerry ought to come clean and identify where exactly--and why--he got it so disastrously wrong.