Libya: deja vu all over again!

The O administration is becoming more and more like the W administration every day. O's recent speech re why we are confronting Libya employs words and phrases almost identical to those of W when he explained why we were confronting Iraq. Plus the ambiguity. Will we take out Gadaffi or won't we? Will we put American boots on the ground or not? Will we lead the coalition directly or via NATO or not at all? Are we fighting for regime change or not?

Plus the secrecy. O entered Libya without consulting more than a handful of Congressmen. Congress, of course, is irate. Hillary's star is rising and O's is falling; but these short term polls are highly mercurial.

As noted earlier, I am not in favor of this engagement. It will end in tears (ours). It will resolve nothing as we are not even sure who the rebels are. I read that O just issued a secret order commanding a group of CIA spooks to go into Libya, mix with the rebels and find out who they are. Odd, I thought that our embassy in Tripoli would have had that type of intelligence long ago.

Nor do I favor arming the rebels, unless our generals are intent on having these very weapons used against us in future. As for the rebels being trained by the USA in the use of our ordinance, no way. Let them continue to expend their firepower in the air.

Yet, the debate over arming and training continues. One retired ultra right general commenting on Fox news touched upon something I too was concerned about. Namely, the seemingly random and pointless firing of ammunition by the rebels. He noted that almost every news image he had seen of the fighting in Libya featured rebels firing their weapons into the air. He observed rocket launchers being fired at random, without proper anchoring and without targeting objects. He also mentioned men in 'technicals' wildly firing machine guns into oblivion.

His point was twofold. First, we must arm the rebels and second, we must train the rebels how to use the ordinance we supply. According to the NY Times, Defense Secretary Gates agrees with me and does not want to arm the rebels. So does Hillary who as our leading hawk is now reportedly having doubts about our efforts “because of the unknowns” about who the rebels are.

Now you guys have Moussa Koussa and according to some media he is having a long chat with MI6 at some unknown location. Breaking news indicates Moussa will not be given amnesty and that he has 'electrifying' information about the Lockerbie incident. We are not told, of course, what this electrifying news is, as the reporter claims not to know, although the same reporter does know it is electrifying, or perhaps could possibly be electrifying.

This type of journalism is tantamount to a news presenter advising the audience that the latest terrorism warning will be issued after the commercial break.

The Gravy Train hits the buffers....

The Great March against Government spending cuts drove Libya off the front pages for a day or so. I am surprised that none of the commentators has analysed the real position of public servants facing the chop, so here’s a few observations of mine culled from experience.

It is unlikely that they will be forced, starving, onto the streets to sell the Big Issue. Many senior staff will be on fixed term contracts with ‘loss of office’ compensation clauses. In the case of local government, over-50s will be able to take early retirement. Pensions are calculated on 40/80ths (i.e. the pension accrues at one 80th of salary for each year of service) so after serving 40 years there is a full pension of 50% of final salary. This is index linked. There is an ‘added years’ provision so that the employer can add up to 10 years to the length of pensionable service. Thus a person age 50 with 30 years’ service could retire on a full pension. In most cases severance packages should provide a fairly comfortable exit. (The exception to this is MPs, whose pensions are 20/40ths – nice!).

My guess is that the public service will not get a great deal of sympathy. It seems to have lost a great deal of respect in recent years. I can think of two possible reasons.

The first is that there seems to be a widespread feeling that it is no longer the apolitical sector of tradition. Some senior appointments have gone to political activists. Recruitment is often through the public appointments pages of the Guardian which on Wednesdays groans under the load of advertisements. There is some suspicion that the public service was politicised during the Blair years – there are now reports that Cameron is having trouble with his Civil Servants bordering on defiance.

There is also criticism of salaries and benefits. Years ago working in the public service meant lower salaries than in the private sector in return for job security, a good pension at age 60 and generous leave and other provisions. Now one frequently hears ‘fat cats’ as the description of senior officials because of salaries that have outstripped the private sector with little of the risk. Local authorities have attracted particular attention from the media.

A particular example is the Chief Executive of a large local council who has had the unforgiving attentions of Private Eye for ages and who has recently featured in the national press – very unfavourably.

The essence of the criticism is that this official earns around £250,000 a year, substantially more than the PM, plus all the fringe benefits, of course. To get an idea of how top salaries have escalated, years ago the top salary in a local authority would be about 6 to 8 times the lowest. This one is about 12 times; the relative salary has thus more or less doubled in recent years.

Over the past few years the media satirists have had a great harvest of non-jobs in the public sector – outreach advisors and the rest – and I deny any sentient human being to be able to comprehend some of the job descriptions, which appear to be words chosen at random and without any meaning. Having said which the DT today had a headline reading ‘City boys’ e-mail goes viral’. What does that mean? ‘Viral’ means caused by a virus. So perhaps it is not only the public sector that mangles language.

Quote of the week

Rod Liddle in the Speccie:-

‘There are a few lessons to be learned from Japan, mind – the obvious ones, I suppose.

1) Never trust a thing told to you by a large corporation.

2) Never trust a thing told to you by your government.

3) Never, ever, trust anything told to you by an “expert” being interviewed on a rolling news channel’

Exploding underwear.......

My reference to Niall Ferguson, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its lack of any real intellectual contribution to the world provoked an energetic debate.

One view was that the intellectual stimulus came from the Greeks and Jews who were forced to convert and integrate, the implication being that Arabs created nothing of value. The weakness of this, I feel, is, first that the Middle East was the cradle of civilisation – the great cities of Aleppo, Byblos, Damascus, and so on were centres of learning from time out of mind. Secondly, learning in the Arab world continued to influence Europe for 1000 years after the fall of Rome.

This led to another topic, the hatred between Jews and Muslims.

Some say this goes back to the Prophet Mohammed. I am not so sure. My feeling is that this is a modern manifestation arising from increasing Jewish emigration to Palestine from the late 19 Century until the present. If I have understood Paul Johnson correctly in his magisterial ‘History of the Jews’ both Jews and Christians were tolerated under the Caliphate as ‘people of the book’. Jews held high office in the Caliphate partly for their competence and partly because they were seen to be disinterested. In many instances Jews prospered mightily in the Ottoman Empire. Bankers such as the Rothschilds and Sassoons were Middle East businessmen who set up branches in London and Paris.

Are the current upheavals in Arab countries related to hostility towards Israel? Any connection seems tenuous to the point of invisibility. And another thing; since our gallant lads in Libya are enforcing a ‘no fly’ zone, why are they attacking ground targets? I only asked.

Another attitude is that Muslims are terrorists because they are Muslim. On this reasoning the Omagh bombers who blew to bits young mothers and children were terrorists because they were Catholic. I prefer to believe that they are terrorists because they are thoroughly evil.

My guess is that ‘alienated’ Muslim youth are candidates for exploding underwear because of frustration and envy. They see their kaffir counterparts having the life of Riley – binge-drinking, fornicating, producing illegitimate kids so they can live on ever-increasing state benefits that in turn finance the stock-in-trade of their drugs-dealing sidelines – and they want a slice of it but can never get it.

Biting the hand that stops feeding them...........

Predictably, NATO will now take over enforcement of the no fly zone in Libya. As the US largely controls NATO, there is not much difference between our air marshals or other military brass being in charge or NATO itself. The move does, however, take some of the pressure off O who seems to have committed to an engagement with Libya without informing Congress. Needless to say, Congress is pissed off and, as it now enjoys an opposition majority, is making a meal out of the situation.

There is already talk here of an exit strategy for Libya. The best comment I heard on that subject is that an exit strategy is not mandatory, cannot be predicted and for those reasons should be abandoned altogether. Let's stop talking about an exit strategy and begin using our common sense.

 Had that prevailed in the first place, we would not have become engaged in Libya. The administration here seems to believe that we are involved in a weekend war that will be over by month's end. Nobody that I have read or listened to spoke about the internal nature of the rebellion until recently.

Now, the more savvy pundits, are speaking about conflicts between the main Bedouin tribes of Libya and dissatisfaction by the have nots, i.e. people who are not from Gadaffi's tribe. What's more, a slight current of opinion is gaining momentum that the primary rebelling tribe, from Eastern Libya, is much more dedicated to Islamic fundamentals and more easily radicalized than the ruling tribe.

We shall see how that plays out, but what is absolutely clear to me is that as per usual the US has gotten itself involved in something it does not understand and with the highly plausible prospect that those who we are aiding will return to bite us. Indeed, the Arabs have a penchant for biting the hand that stops feeding them.

Japanese fall-out........or not?

My friend Douggie, the designer of the ‘Canute’ tidal power generator and possessed of an enquiring mind, is curious about reports of panic buying on the west coast of the US because of the prospect of radio-active fall-out arriving from the nuclear disaster in Japan, carried by the jet-stream. As the jet stream was there in 1945 also, he asks why was there no fall-out from Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the nuclear detritus was vastly greater? Ditto the many nuclear test explosions carried out in the Pacific in the ‘50s and ’60s? Or has the whole thing been yet another example of the breathless and semi-hysterical reporting style that is the current fashion?

The Japan coverage has also been notable for its non-reporting. There has been no looting. Well, fancy that! There has been no panic. Bless my soul! The people have been getting stuck-in to put things right. Would you believe it! Unfair to journos!

Outside The Economist it is getting increasingly difficult to get serious news coverage and comment. The print version of the Telegraph now looks like a tabloid with banner headlines and the rest. TV news is endlessly repetitive. Sometimes the various channels run the same story for four hours. Vast amounts of space are given over to stuff about selebs and other garbage. I suspect that one reason for this is that TV now has to provide 24 hours news coverage (why?) so it has a great deal of time and space to fill. Another reason may be that internet news has sharpened competition enormously.

We now watch Al Jazeera. AA Gill, the Sunday Times TV critic rates it as the best news channel with excellent coverage and quality reporting. I started to watch it last year because it was the only news service that reported the trouble in Thailand in any depth or detail – important to us because we were about to depart for Chiang Mai. It is not the PR department of Al Qaeda as Dubya seemed to believe.

Going green.

ActionAid and other campaign groups are claiming that, due to deforestation, emissions associated with the EU’s biofuel targets could be up to six times higher than fossil fuel equivalents, and will also create huge social upheaval with communities losing their land, homes and jobs.

It will all end in tears........ours!

My goodness, our Dear Janet is on thin ice today in her article about O wanting to keep our of the Libya fray. Like so many others, Janet calls upon the founding fathers to justify her position that America should be the promoter and savior of human rights, freedoms and democracy around the world. I seriously doubt that our esteemed founding fathers intended to propel future generations of Yanks into military action against all the human rights violators around the globe. Our lads formulated some romantic and ideal phrases about governance in their efforts to justify rebellion against the throne. According to Janet, these phrases were not only meant to soothe our collective revolutionary conscience, but also to prescribe future congressional behavior.

I do not regret having severed our umbilical cord to English throne, Neither do I believe the best way to preserve democracy throughout the world is to ferment, foster and materially aid revolutionaries seeking to overthrow their dictatorial, corrupt or megalomaniacal leaders. Efforts to this effect are to me examples of cultural imperialism by Americans who possess a rather botched culture, are not imperial and who have almost zero understanding of other peoples and their cultures. We really need to stop this sophomoric silliness of exporting the principles of our founding fathers and cramming them into whatever context suits our purposes. Yes, there are rare times when we need to act, but policing the world is beyond our mandate.

Or am I wrong and O and co are intervening not on the basis of human principles, but a need for oil. After all, we just witnessed some nasty object lessons on the subject of why nuclear power will not become the energy of the future and we remain highly dependent upon and addicted to Middle Eastern oil. If Gadaffi with all his Libyan oil threatens to upset the apple cart like Saddam did in Iraq, then we must act quickly and decisively; in principle that is.

Our intervention in Libya will end in tears. Ours. The new regime will suck on our resources until we tire of offering them and will then come at us like harpies because we stopped feeding them. Their leaders will emerge in an aura of humanitarian and democratic proclamations that will endure until the public finds out how much aid and oil money they are channeling into their own pockets. That's the nature of the beast as I have learned from being there and having felt confounded in my inability to understand their mercurial and often rough behavior. The Libyans are, an Egyptian once explained to me, Bedouin tribesmen whose recent history is one of wandering desert trade routes while seeking water during the day and warmth at night. They can be hospitable and generous one moment and short and cruel the next.

The $ in the poo?............

Anent the suitability of Newt to be POTUS, the Economist did a league table of the potential Republican candidates. Their estimation of Newt was about the same – not enough brains and too much baggage. All other possibilities got a similar thraping to a greater or lesser degree, Romney being classed as smart but erratic and lacking in any clear set of principles. All in all, it made for rather depressing reading and invited the reaction ‘none of the above’.

Would it be unkind of me to suggest that they have an IQ of 180? Between them?

At this time it looks as if the Republican Presidential candidate is another of those known unknowns.

There are some financial commentators who see the ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery in the US. They appear to base this view on a small rise in retail sales, some growth in industrial production, a tiny fall in unemployment and stabilisation in the housing market. Are they clutching at straws?

The Federal debt is $14 trillion. I find it difficult to visualise that sum. If it was all in dollar bills how big would the pile be?

The annual interest is about $200 bn. There is the awful prospect of the US having to borrow just to pay the interest. Isn’t that what bankrupted New York some years ago? And isn’t that the basis of Ponzi schemes? Irwin ‘Alka’ Stelzer in the ST says that the debt is increasing by $4.5 billion every day.

Strewth!

Not reported in the print media is the release of the Pakistan spook Davis by acquittal under Sharia law. However, contrary to my prediction, the US did not pay a large sum in compensation to the family. Hilary says it is not true that $2 million was paid to get the guy back. Yeah, right. Of course, Hilary is perhaps disingenuous, the money having been paid by the Saudis to keep the US clean.

Malthus is over-rated.....

Ages ago, in the shadows of my youth, I clearly recall having spent some of my scarce pocket money on a Boy Scout Handbook. The cover featured a tidily uniformed young lad gallantly helping an elderly woman to cross an urban street. There are two reasons this image stuck with me. First, I wanted to be that young man with his tidy uniform and good intentions. Second, when the time came to begin university, I had some questions about the elderly woman. such as; did she really need assistance and did she want to cross the street at all.

Often in my consulting life in Africa and Asia I reflected on these images while preaching caution about America's penchant for being a good scout and performing good deeds. By the end of my international career my allegiances were more correctly guided by Clair Booth Luce's quip, 'no good deed goes unpunished'. While I don't regard our intervention in WWI and WWII as good deeds, I am of the opinion that our campaign to stamp out the evils of communism as in Korea and Vietnam, our efforts to curtail a tyrant as in Iraq and our determination to keep the world safe from Islamic terrorism as in Afghanistan were symptomatic of our Boy Scout culture. Those self righteous deeds are still being punished.

Indeed, the American culture is depicted in so many contradictory observations that it is not even clear to us who we are. My generation of Yanks was raised on the western film tradition of letting the bad guy draw first. The guy in the white had always managed to issue some fatal shots and win the heroine's affection for his efforts. Much later, 'shoot first and ask questions later' gained popularity. Many observers of America's history claim that we should have initiated pre-emptive strikes against some of our enemies, like Hitler, and were most successful when we did, like in the Spanish-American War.

Did we in fact take the poor and destitute of the world and make them into gentlemen and women? Hardly, but we live with that myth as well. Consider, for example, the remark of an American correspondent in Northeast Japan a few days ago who noted an absence of looting during the earthquake/tsunami aftermath. Discipline and honor apply to Japan, but many elements of our population at large can still be depended upon to profit from disaster and the misfortune of others. I just heard a psychic comment on why we were unable to more quickly and effectively respond to hurricane Katrina. The presenter posed this question with his thought that we did not know how. The psychic replied no, we knew how, corruption was the real culprit.

We should have learned by now that implementing an international policing action is more often punished than rewarded. I for one argue that it is neither in our nor Libya's interest for us, or other world powers, to militarily intervene on behalf of the revolutionaries. It now looks as if we will stay away from the fray, but it is yet early days and besides, America and the world's attention is intensively focused on Japan. And for good reason.

Japan is the only country to have experienced a nuclear bomb. We did it and now, they are victims of another attack; from a tsunami. When the Emperor spoke a few days ago, I knew their situation was dire. While everyone with even vestiges of humanity are hoping for a successful turn around of the situation, things only become worse. Several countries, including ours, are evacuating their citizens not only from the Fukushima area, but from Japan itself. The government has lost much face, partly because of wanting to paint an optimistic picture, and partly because of misinformation. Meanwhile, everyone who ever questioned the plant's design or construction is crowing to the tune of 'I told you so'.

The prophets of doom are having a heyday. They are delighted with the prospect of an accelerating Armageddon. Too many natural disasters are occurring for them to be ignored as coincidence. Sun spot activity is increasing to the point where warnings have been issued about disruptions in electrical and electronic equipment operations. The Telegraph gives Fukushima 48 hours to manifest itself as in or out of control, the US is placing radiation monitors on our West Coast and the UN advises us to expect the first radiation plume within days. It is a wonder we are all still alive with the world appearing to take revenge on the ills of overpopulation and environmental abuse.

I am content to see all of this as works of nature and nothing more. As for overpopulation, I expect Malthusian laws will eventually kick in. In fact, I think they are long overdue. Perhaps Malthus was overrated.

Newt is a nerd....

Perhaps I am prejudiced, but likely presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich is a nerd. Has to be with a name like Newt. He is highly respected for his knowledge of government operations, rules, shortcuts, legal and practical limits, history and capabilities.

Pundits on the political right love him for his political genius and chat show personality. Yet, he recently explained his latest affair with an aide as having to do with being overworked at the office and unable to get home to his wife. That and his recent conversion to Catholicism remind me of a prudent Tony Blair.

I believe part of the reason America accepted John Kennedy as a Catholic was because he didn't behave like one. He was naughty, haughty and decidedly not doctrinaire. He was a Catholic by birth and not conviction which rather let him off the hook as far as the public was concerned.

Newt, on the other hand, has just found God, the true one? The only one? Newt has not yet confided these thoughts on the subject. I should think he should sit down and write a book and reflect on his past affairs rather than attempt becoming our head of state.

I would much prefer the Mormon, Mitt Romney who is not only brilliant but possesses common sense and a good measure of wisdom. He also has a sense of humor. When asked about the former Mormon practice of polygamy, he noted that he has had only one wife while some of our presidents have had more than that. He was undoubtedly referring to Reagan who had been divorced.

The heat is off the Libyan rebels as world attention is glued to Japan and the tsunami aftermath. One, possibly two of Japan’s nuclear power plants is seriously misbehaving giving rise to speculations of another Chernobyl scenario. In real politic terms, Japan has been downgraded with Dow Jones averages rising because a measurable chunk of demand for oil has been removed from the equation. With some demand pressure off oil, prices fall a bit and our stock market is happy with the prospect of Americans spending less on imported oil and more on consumer goods. The market shows no mercy while the final toll in human life is still being calculated.

Some American broadcasters panicked over the prospect of a tsunami hitting our West Coast, never mind Guam, Midway and Hawaii. Devastation was predicted by these few idiots and many Americans were in a dither over what might happen to our coastal resources. This was reminiscent of Orson Well’s 1930's radio broadcast depicting an invasion from outer space.

Most people, however, remained cool and were not overly concerned. Perhaps like myself, I could not see a huge shock wave maintaining its intensity all the way across the Pacific. At last count, we lost one life. A man in a group of three carried out to sea while they were taking pictures of the waves. Search and rescue efforts have been called off. Libya is off the map.

O continues to weigh his choices and options vis-a-vis Libya. Some of us feel that the rebels will all be dead by the time he makes up his mind. I still prefer to let the rebels fight it out without our material aid. If we do assist them, we will regret it. Arabs love us as long as we feed them and give them money.

Several stories have arisen over O and co being out of sinc with one another. Hillary says one thing, Defense Secy Gates another and both are chastised by O for not following the party line. The head of one of our multiple intelligence agencies was asked who he fears the most. He replied China and Russia. As he spoke, VP Biden was being entertained at the Kremlin in Moscow. A fine how-de-do.

I would be surprised if Hillary will be available for a go at a second term. It is difficult to find anything monumental that she has achieved as Secy of State. Indeed, she has been rather lackluster. Gates announced his intention to bail several months ago, so he should be leaving soon. Too bad, I think he is doing a good job and have consistently applauded O for carrying him over from the Bush government.

Gates recently gave a sensible reply to the press over questions about what we should do in Libya. He clearly replied that we need to carefully evaluate any action as the consequences could place us in an untenable position. One correspondent sighted the prospect of our sending humanitarian aid and having one of our ships attacked. ‘What would we do then?’ he asked.

I believe we are beginning to learn some lessons from the past, the past being Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I, Iraq II and Afghanistan. We must learn to think before we pull the trigger regardless of the emotions and pressures of the moment. I would put Gates in the luster category.

Libyan lash-up..........

It seems that my initial assessment of the Libyan fiasco was correct; another fine mess you’ve got us into, Willie. The whole episode was completely addle-pated. The SAS kill people; they are not Securicor minding some FO wallah from the Camel Corps. But the troops should have been on familiar ground; after all, it was only 2 years ago that the government sent a team of SAS to train the Libyans. Smart move.

I reckon our Foreign Secretary is due for an early bath. As Dave may well be if the Tories get monstered in the up-coming local elections.

With the country up the creek, the economy in the merde, and the public services down the drain, how is the Dear Leader responding? Why, he’s going to have ciggies sold in plain wrappings and under the counter, like rubber johnnies and dirty books when I was a lad. That should do it. At least the Nanny State has survived the budget cuts. Apropos which, we are told that 18,000 servicemen are to get the axe under the defence review. We are not told how many MOD civvies are to get the chop. Since there are more of them in the MOD and its satellites than there are people in uniform there must be enormous scope. Or not.

Question: What is Cameron’s ‘Big Society’? Answer: BS.

And I have no reason to change my initial reaction to the Prince Andrew nonsense. He is being castigated for hobnobbing with unsavoury foreign politicians in pursuit of business for UK firms. That’s his job. He apparently does it very well – for free! The DT is now bellyaching about his ‘friend’ Epstein landing his private jet at a RAF airfield. Well, that has nothing to do with Andrew; it’s up to the pilot-in-command. Anybody can land at a service airfield with prior permission. I have taken a tiddly Cessna into front line fighter stations, amidst Phantom jets roaring around me. But, as they say ‘any old stick........’

What appears to be doubly disgraceful is that there has been briefing (i.e. muck-raking) against Andy from within high government circles. Not good politics to use dirty tricks against royalty. He may not be the most liked member of the Firm but I can’t imagine the public taking too kindly to the crooks in Parliament striking moral attitudes against him. One comment was that ‘he has done little with his life’. Apart from a full career in the RN including active service in the Falklands, retiring with the rank of Captain, that is.

Justice – Brussels style.

The Times reports that 22-year-old Andrew Symeou is due to appear in court tomorrow in Greece after being arrested in 2008 under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Symeou was extradited to Greece in 2009 and spent almost one year in a Greek prison awaiting trial, before finally being granted bail last year. A leader in the Times notes, “Others worry that a warrant that was designed to speed up the extradition of people suspected of terrorism or organised crime is increasingly being applied to ordinary citizens, with too few safeguards.”

So this young fellow has been held in Greece for 3 years awaiting trial – and on very dodgy evidence. Magna Carta said ‘To none will we deny, nor delay, justice’. But that was before Blair abolished it, along with many other ancient rights and freedoms like the ‘double jeopardy’ rule.

Euronomics.

The CAP is now costing € 120 bn a year, which is greater than the value of Africa’s entire agricultural output. This compares with $20 bn spent by the US government. When grain prices are rocketing and food is getting scarce world-wide, the EU is subsidising the conversion of wheat and maize into bio-fuels. That should save the planet.

Immigration? Pas de probleme.

Another helpful ruling from the ECJ. Illegal immigrants are entitled to residence and a work permit if they produce a child during their stay in the EU. Births of convenience in place of marriages of convenience, then.

And finally......

I have discovered a good reason for the famous neglect of their teeth by the English. It is to safeguard their driving licences. I own a breathalyser. By way of experiment I tested my breath for alcohol. It came up with a reading of 22, about one drink. I then rinsed my mouth with mouthwash and took a second sample. It read 200! QED. Mouthwash contains a quantity of ethanol. Tell that to the Old Bill and they won’t believe you.

Islamsham democracy...

Churchill had it right when he noted that democracy is an imperfect system of government, but it is the best we have. What will become of the world should the Islamic fundamentalists find a strong political voice in a country such as Pakistan, or Yemen, or Saudi Arabia or Iran? The recent assassination of Pakistan's leading Christian politician Shahbaz Bhatti for his efforts to retract his country's blasphemy law vividly illustrates a major weakness in democracy; the assumption that the electorate is enlightened.

I don't believe I am being anti-Muslim or culture-bound when I suggest that the logical conclusion of awarding fundamentalist Muslims their political will shall result in war. Indeed, the climate of opinion in the USA is rapidly moving from anti-Muslim fundamentalist to simply anti-Muslim. Pakistan, Iran and scores of other Islamic countries and political institutions contribute to this trend. Fundamentalist Muslims continue to be hard at work radicalizing the weak of mind here in the US. Islam is a growing institution here.

From a different perspective, it is not the religious beliefs of a nation that are at fault, but rather the people themselves. It could be argued that Bhatti was as fanatic a Christian as Pakistan's majority are fanatic Muslims. Perhaps we should be looking at some sort of social susceptibility index that would scientifically categorize tribes of people, e.g. the Gauls, the Masai, the Gujarati, the Saxons, etc. into levels of gullibility with respect to following religious dictates. I suspect this would result in placing Mr. Bhatti in the same category as the rest of his tribe.

A major domestic issue here is whether or not O should intervene in Libya.

 The Daily Mail claims that both UK civilians and military (Black Watch) are on standby to assist the rebels in ousting Qadaffi. I am tempted to advise Dave and co to not assume the posture of the world's policeman as we have done here in the USA. However, I strongly suspect that the USA is in some sort of alliance with the UK and Italy and other European nations on this score. Whatever the West does by way of intervention in Libya will be viewed by opponents of O and by Muslim extremists and undoubtedly by most Libyans themselves in a negative manner.

Perhaps we should consider allowing the Libyan revolutionaries to win over the country by themselves. Then they would not be beholden to foreigners for gaining power. Assistance to the rebels, however, could well come in the form of political statements, encouragement for Qadaffi to resign, freezing certain bank accounts and even diverting material aid to the rebels.

We should remember, however, that we do not know the rebels, they have no acclaimed leader, and they could, and most probably would, end up very much like Qadaffi after several years in power.

Foreign aid is dead aid.....

I am unsure what to make of Andrew Mitchell, the Minister at DFID.

He is undoubtedly the best informed and most widely travelled Minister ever in the job, so he has better qualifications than any of his predecessors. One of his first moves was to stop business-class travel for DFID staff which may curb some of their jollies, and he has reviewed the whole of the DFID programme. However, he was recently making a spirited defence of the UK aid programme to India; this was rapidly followed by a statement that aid to 26 countries was being cancelled – including India. This U-turn smacks of an edict from on high.

But now we learn that among the countries to continue getting a slice of UK taxpayers’ money are such deserving cases as Burma (I thought we had sanctions against the Generals there), Zimbabwe (to pay for Mrs Bob’s Paris shopping trips?), Somalia (as it doesn’t have a functioning government who is there to steal the loot?), Pakistan (do they have the Taliban’s banking details?). But the wowsers have complained that not enough is going to oil-rich Angola and Nigeria.

He says that everything is up for scrutiny and it is his intention to ‘follow the money’. It could lead him into some interesting places. He might even ask about the success rates of aid programmes and whether they do actually help the poor.

There was a lengthy piece on TV about aid to Sierra Leone. The rural areas where the bulk of the population lives are devoid of even the most basic amenities. The needs of rural areas are clean water, fuel, sanitation, food, heath-care, and money-generating opportunities. In particular, the greatest part of a woman’s day is spent collecting water and firewood from increasingly distant sources.

Since gazillions of aid has been poured in since the end of ‘the troubles’ we have to ask why they are lacking the basics?

Some years ago when I was working in Nepal I had to visit a remote mountain village – so remote that we travelled miles in our SUV along dry river beds and eventually we had to walk a long distance, including crossing a rickety rope foot-bridge over a ravine.

In this particular village they had done some basic improvements. They had installed gutters for the roofs of their houses. They had put in large concrete water tanks. Clean water problem solved. They had installed a tank for all human and animal excrement. Sanitation problem solved. They had capped the tank to capture methane. Fuel problem solved. And it also produced high-grade fertiliser. They had built a small clinic staffed by a health assistant who could give basic treatment and dispense contraceptive advice and condoms..

As we entered the village after a fairly arduous trek, incredibly I saw a bus go past. The village women had got so fed up waiting for the authorities to connect them to the outside world that they had built the road themselves. A consequence was that they could now get their produce to market and enter the cash economy. Some had also set up small shops.

For a number of years the emphasis of aid programmes has been on ‘good governance’. My experience suggests that this is unachievable as presently conceived. Aid itself might be a contributing factor to ‘bad governance’. In some countries it accounts for 60% or more of national budgets. The effect of this is to cut the nexus between political accountability and levels of taxation, so that politicians cease to be answerable to their electorates on public spending. Many politicians in developing countries are irredeemably corrupt, but they are stealing money from other than the taxpayer.

Corruption in the public service arises from slightly different motivations – less from insatiable greed and more from economic reasons. There is a cycle. Senior officials, who are in powerful ‘rent-seeking’ positions, are often appallingly paid (£150 a month for a top official?). They are badly paid because tax revenues are low. Tax revenues are low because economies are weak. Economies are weak through lack of investment. There is little incentive for governments to encourage investment when they can fall back on aid for no effort.

Therefore, governance will not improve until economies improve. (Economies are also weakened by corruption and dirigisme; for example, in Bangladesh I identified 32 rent-seeking opportunities involved in a simple licence application. Catch-22?).

In her excellent book Dead Aid’ Dombisa Moyo, a Zambian economist points out that despite nearly 40 years of aid programmes many ‘developing’ countries are worse off. She suggests that aid is a comfort blanket that shields incompetent regimes from reality. She proposes that aid should be time limited so that recipient governments will know that they have, say, five years of help after which they are on their own.

So while this weird coalition increases aid by 27%, soldiers serving in Helmand are told they are about to be made redundant.

That should do wonders for morale.

More Euroballs..........

On his Telegraph blog, Nile Gardiner notes that in 2009 the EU subsidised several US anti-death penalty groups to the tune of €2.6m through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). “It is bad enough that Brussels consistently interferes with the internal affairs of EU member states, but it is surely a bridge too far when it tries to intervene in the affairs of one of the world’s greatest democracies that isn’t even part of the EU,” he argues.

Are the recent decisions of the Fourth Reich on insurance (UK is by far and away the largest insurer in the EU), financial services (UK has the biggest market), and hedge funds (83% British) based on usual EU dottiness? Or could it be down to the age-old French policy of undermining Britain’s economic standing vis-a-vis France? I think we should be told.

Is Fairtrade a racket?

Fairtrade Fortnight will be here shortly. Despite its ‘do-good’ presentation it is really a marketing exercise. Fair trade is anything but. It offers only a very small number of farmers a higher, fixed price for their goods. Simple economics will tell you that these higher prices come at the expense of the great majority of farmers who are left even worse off because the Fairtrade subsidy unbalances normal market forces. It stands to reason that if you subsidise an internationally traded commodity to some producers but not all, the subsidised growers will be able to undercut the non-subsidised. This in turn encourages over-production and is a disincentive to agricultural improvement. Many of the farmers helped by Fairtrade are in Mexico, Argentina, and other relatively developed countries, and not in places like Ethiopia.

We recently bought oranges that we later discovered were marked ‘Fairtrade’. They came from Argentina which has a higher GDP PPP than Poland, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece and Portugal in the top 40 richest nations. And it is blindingly obvious that oranges in European supermarkets don’t come from poor peasant farmers. They come from large commercial estates. And Fairtrade wine? Where are all this impoverished wine producers?

It doesn’t help economic development. It keeps the poor in their place, sustaining uncompetitive farmers on their land and holding back diversification, mechanization, and moves up the value chain. Just 10% of the premium consumers pay for Fairtrade actually goes to the producer. Retailers pocket the rest. It’s a racket. Fairtrade arose from the coffee crisis of the 1990s. This was not a free market failure. Governments tried to rig the market through the International Coffee Agreement and subsidized over-plantation with the encouragement of well-meaning but misguided aid agencies. The crash in prices was the inevitable result of this government intervention, but coffee prices have largely recovered since then.

However, it probably helps addle-pated numpties feel that they have done their bit to save mankind without actually exerting themselves. For ourselves, we refuse to buy anything marked ‘Fairtrade’, ‘organic’ or ‘GM free’.

O is for 'Oil' - and 'Obama'............

Yes, there is an oil boom in North Dakota causing short-term accommodation, manpower and availability of women problems. This is not from a new oilfield discovery, but from new technology focusing on enhanced recovery methods using directional drilling and fractionation.

The latter involves actually fracturing the oil-bearing formation using chemicals, but more recently steam and just plain water. I am informed that fractionation tends to separate and lift up rock formations, such as shale, and thereby allow trapped fossil fuel to flow. Directional drilling allows lateral fractionation along the producing zone and thereby eliminates the need for multiple vertical holes.

As for weaning ourselves from oil, I am of the opinion that O is attempting to do just that. He has refused permission to drill deep wells offshore and has not budged on the prospect of opening up new Alaskan fields; much to the annoyance of our political right and oil patch executives.

I am not in possession of any inside information on this subject, but the facts would support the theory that O is attempting to dramatically reduce our dependence on oil in general, and foreign oil in particular. He is promoting investment in alternative energy through spending programs and tax incentives for investors. We see almost weekly convoys of 18 wheelers under escort each carrying a single propeller blade to wind farms in West Texas. New and improved energy transfer infrastructure is under development.

If I am correct and O's efforts are motivated to better prepare America for oil scarcity, to conserve what we do have for protracted and more narrowly targeted future use and at the same time to relieve us of the growing economic burden of procuring foreign oil, then I am delighted with him. Somebody needs to do this anyway and the task becomes more difficult with each passing year.

Never mind the environmental benefits, but consider the implications of this move on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Let the kings and emirs sell their oil to China and India and let these two countries struggle with balance of power politics and decisions of which corrupt dictator to regale and support. What we all desperately need are technical innovations, preferably in the direction of electrical energy storage and in alternative energy production cost savings.

Improved capture of solar and water and wave energy would also help. We could reduce our overall oil demand by an enormous amount tomorrow if we were to establish and enforce a 55 mph speed limit. All this and more needs to be assessed, screened and actuated in the face of screaming political oppositions.

The boys with the black stuff...........

Now there is the inevitable panic over oil prices, and delight amongst the oil traders (I read somewhere that a barrel of oil is traded 47 times before entering the consumer market).

So what’s it all about? Are we on the brink of huge price increases? Rationing? A new Great Depression?

We need to factor into the situation a few home truths to be able to form a prediction.

The largest oil producer in the world is not Saudi. It’s Russia.

The second largest is America.

My friend Jim Fideldy from Minneapolis , who drilled for oil for a living before selling his company a short while ago, tells me that there is such an oil boom in North Dakota that there is a huge shortage of labour and house rents are going off the clock. We don’t hear much of this in the media. The major new field in North Dakota produces so much oil that it has put US domestic storage under pressure. The surplus is so great that a wide gap has opened up between the world's two major benchmark prices, WTI (US driven) and Brent (mainly Asian demand-driven).

Horizontal drilling is one of the tech advances that have allowed global reserves to continue increasing despite very limited opening up of major new oilfields over the past 20 years.

If America only consumed the same amount of oil per head as Europe this would save the equivalent of the whole of Saudi’s annual output. So it’s time for the Yanks to wean themselves off the black stuff.

Saudi is the third largest producer BUT it is the only major oil exporter that has surplus capacity. Iran is only producing at about half the pre-revolution rate, so there must be plenty of spare capacity there that might be exploited when that domino topples, as it surely must before long. The oil industry in Venezuela is going downhill with the rest of the economy under the lunatic socialism of Chavez.

My take?

If the price spike is relatively short-lived, the impact on recovering Western economies will be manageable. But demand for Arabian oil will increase because of demand from the burgeoning Asian economies, so political upheaval in the Gulf States could be critical. We may be in for a bumpy ride. In particular, the US economic recovery is very fragile, and another oil shock could tip it back into recession.

Looking on the bright side.........

Who is now at serious risk of becoming a collateral casualty of the Fall of the House of Gaddafi? Step, forward Comrade Bob Mugabe, bwana m’kubwa of the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Zimbabwe. Good Old Bob has been a bosom buddy of the Libyan loony from early days. His barbaric regime has been propped up by repeated grubstakes in money and oil in return for massive diamond concessions. When this is removed – like, with immediate effect – we can expect to see ferocious infighting amongst the various pimps, whores and comic-singers who have utterly destroyed a wonderful country.

But don’t expect a jacaranda revolution there. The next tyrant will be whoever is the nastiest and most blood-thirsty of the Generals and Party bosses.

Eurotrash

The EU has funded a Spanish sex shop, with money coming from the European Social Fund. The shop received €611.15 in order to "improve the employability of the unemployed".

The British must be in despair about their political masters.

The British must be in despair about their political masters. The last lot were bad people determined to do anything to keep themselves in power. This new lot has the same intention, and will be pushing ahead with a new voting system that will almost inevitably lead to coalitions doing dirty deals to keep themselves in office regardless of the wishes of the people.

What makes them worse is their cynical incompetence.

The defence review was a shambles that will cost billions. The scrapping of the Ark Royal, Nimrod and the Harrier leaves UK perilously exposed.

And if you thought Cameron had abolished the nanny state, we have the official wowsers telling us to eat less red meat, and Tories – yes, Tories – suggesting that companies should be forced to have a minimum of 25% women directors. To add to the crime sheet, Dave has reneged on most of his civil liberties promises, so Britain remains the Stasi state created by NuLab.

They have failed again in the Middle East. When Libya was going up in smoke what was Cameroon doing? Well, he was on a tour of the Gulf on an arms selling mission to the remaining oligarchs as if nothing had changed and the old villains were going to be in charge for ever. Cleggover was on holiday and said that he hadn’t realised that he was in charge during Dave’s junket.

You couldn’t make it up!

The Foreign Office has f****d-up completely. The Camel Corps at the FO was caught with thumb in bum and mind in neutral. Time was when the FO recruited the brightest and best via a daunting competitive examination. That was before the public service was debauched by Blair. The press is full of tales of the shambles of the evacuation from Libya.

The height of incompetence is their failure to predict what was coming. It stuck out like a greyhound’s gonads. Weeks ago the blogs were full of predictions about the domino effect. Why did the professionals fail to see what to ordinary Joes was blindingly obvious?

So where next? This is what the admirable site Big Brother Watch has to say:

‘Eritrea seems an obvious candidate. It’s been governed by President Isaias, without any hint of democracy, since 1991. The Mo Ibrahim Index ranks Eritrea as the worst country in the world for human rights. (Even Somalia was better.) Reporters Sans Frontieres put Eritrea at the bottom of their press freedom index. The country is now second worst in the world for education provision according to the Global Campaign for Education, and the Global Hunger Index rates Eritrea as one of only four countries in the world where the levels of hunger are extremely alarming’.

Chatterati asleep at the Mahgreb wheel.....

 If had I my wits about me, I could have predicted the defenestration of Middle Eastern regimes. It is a bit untidy that I am not more proactive in anticipating and predicting what is going on there, especially when the facts are so apparent and compelling. While I meet each day in anticipation of what events might befall the world, I really should be checking to find out which of my expectations are about to mature. In addition, there are countless journalists and political pundits who have a lot to account for in their failure to highlight antecedents to revolution.

Fareed on CNN, in retrospect I might add, contributed some insights into the ME situation that I had not considered. He first spoke of the massive youth populations approaching and sometimes topping the demographic halfway mark. Given the global economic situation, large numbers of these youth are unemployed. Secondly, he noted the pervasive use of social networks such as Facebook. These, he stated, were not only sources of information, but sources of leadership. Instead, Fareed continued, of only listening to national leaders on social, economic and political matters, the social networks offer a viable and refreshing alternative to controlled and scripted dictatorial statements.

Performing routine and mundane tasks such as making concentric circles in my pastures on my tractor offers plenty of time for processing current events. My latest is projecting the global role of social networks on human behavior. The town crier has gone not only regional and national but global. Hear ye, hear ye world, our esteemed leaders and their minions have amassed billions in national wealth and stashed it safely abroad while we pee-ons go hungry. While dictators' wives have closets full of shoes for their social jaunts to glitterati hot spots, many of the people, especially youths, are jobless, frustrated, alienated and hostile toward their leaders.

The less numerous older and elderly people, I believe, remain emotionally attached to their leaders as father figures and national icons. I saw this personally in Indonesia when Suharto's regime went belly up. After all the nasty things people said about him and his corrupt family, tears flowed when he announced his departure from office.

The events in the ME have not gone ignored by American youth. Although they are far from fomenting a revolution, they are beginning to ask why so many people enter politics poor and idealistic and retire rich and cynical. Our public media, in the meantime, is busy lauding or condemning O for having won or lost in his efforts to manage the latest crisis.

Dave on a sticky wicket

The overwhelming vote by the House of Commons against the ECHR ruling on prisoners’ votingrights hopefully shows that the EU worm is beginning to turn, even if less than a third of MPs bothered to turn up for the vote.

Dave now has a real problem.

If the Government defies Strasbourg there might follow stiff fines and even stiffer claims for compensation. There would be resignations from Ministers and an end to the coalition. There could even be resignations from the Disneyesque Supreme Court – no bad thing, since Judges these days appear to be administering political correctness rather than the law.

If Dave defies Parliament, he risks a backbench revolt that could do for his leadership, and it would be an open admission that Parliament is no longer sovereign, a situation that has existed for a long time but which politicians have refused to face. The fissures in the Tory Party that did for Maggie would reopen and the Party would once more be hopelessly divided on Europe.

Now we have the farce of the Attorney-General saying that the ECHR does not have the last word and the Justice Secretary saying that it does.

They are all missing the point. The ECHR is right.

Prisoners were not disenfranchised before the Blair Reign of Terror. Blair took the vote away from them. No government has the right to do this. If any government can remove a citizen’s voting rights at will then goodbye democracy.

Almost simultaneously the EU published the results of a poll on public perceptions of it. A majority of people in Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Latvia, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden mistrusted the EU. But a massive percentage of Brits distrusted it to the extent of about three times the next highest level of distrust. When asked whether they thought that the EU was a ‘good thing’ all other countries voted ‘yes’, although in many cases by only a tiny margin. The UK gave a resounding ‘no’.

Sooner or later the tipping point will be reached. The imposition of shed loads of European law by non-elected, corrupt, self-seeking bureaucrats in Brussels who are loathed in Britain can’t go on forever, surely.

In addition, there is the monstrosity of the European Arrest Warrant under which Brits can be hauled off to face ‘justice’ in a jurisdiction which is thoroughly corrupt for something which is not an offence under English law, such as ‘holocaust denial’. As for European Court of Human Rights, 23 out of 47 judges had no judicial experience before being appointed. They are there to implement Brussels diktats, not to dispense justice. They also get tax-free salaries of £180,000 a year, plus 3 months annual holidays and index-linked pensions.

The latest loony Brussels nonsense is to create Europe-wide regulation of financial services, so goodbye to the City, the ambition of the French since time out of mind.

In the last referendum in 1975, we voted to join the Common Market, a trading bloc. We did not vote for ‘closer and ever closer union’. I rarely agree with Wedgie-Benn but when he said that he would not obey any law passed by people he could not vote for, I said ‘Amen to that’.

This is the BBC..........

The BBC reported on newly-weds who had their reception at Colonel Saunders. We really needed to know that, didn’t we?

The former boss of Radio 4 says that there should be more blacks on ‘The Archers’ (‘an everyday story of farming folk’). On radio.

But to be fair, the Beeb has rejected complaints by (white) parents that a cartoon show called ‘Rastamouse’ is racist because the dialogue is in patois. Dey baan backacow, man. But Rastamouse must be on the weed or he is not a true Rasta. That ought to worry parents more.

BBC TV News reports ‘a large rat was seen scuttling along Downing Street’. Leaving the sinking ship of state, then. (No rats have been seen in the House of Commons. A lot of vermin and parasites, though)

I think we should be told.

Why are Wikileaks disclosures only from the west?

More EU nonsense

‘EUobserver notes that in a report published yesterday the House of Lords EU Committee concluded that the EU’s police training mission in Afghanistan has achieved “very little” in the past four years due to understaffing. The mission, which will cost €54.6m for the year 2010-11, is described as “woefully inadequate” and “has the wider effect of bringing EU Common Security and Defence Policy missions as a whole into disrepute.” The report notes that after four years of work, around 70% of Afghan police cannot read or write and process basic paperwork. The report also highlights “the slowness of EU bureaucracy” to get the project off the ground and the lack of cooperation with NATO forces. The Committee's Chairman, Lord Teverson, is quoted by the BBC saying, “there is no formal agreement between the EU and NATO in Afghanistan, which we find utterly unacceptable.”

'As the Torygraph sinks slowly in the west, we say farewell to journalism..........'

I find these days that I am reading less and less of the Torygraph. The same is true of the Sunday Times; I generally get to around page 22 before I start reading. Most of the DT is worthless. I persevere because of a handful of outstanding columnists.

The best is Jeff Randall, but he only does one column a month. His TV business programme is a ‘must view’.

His partner as the ‘Essex Two’, Heffer gets it right about one in three times. His piece on the alternative voting system was absolutely spot-on. Well, I would say that because he reprises my own views on this which I set out here when the idea first came up, which was not on the publication of the Tory Election Manifesto because Dave didn’t mention it – or that there would be a referendum.

I don’t read him when he bangs-on about education. When he keeps campaigning for the rehabilitation of the grammar schools he is farting against thunder. It is just not going to happen. But he is right about universities; there are too many of them and too many are not only surplus to requirements but totally useless.

Janet Daley is never short of brilliant. Mary Riddell is as out of place as a pork chop in a synagogue. The women columnists are largely a waste of space. There is even a ‘celebs’ section.

Lord Fartwell must be revolving in his grave.

Commenting....mystery solved!

Well, it's not exactly obvious; the answer  is to click 'comments' at the foot of the blog, or to go to 'links' at the bottom tothe right,  where you will be invited to 'post a comment'. It has taken me only 6 months to  work this out.

Perhaps we might get the odd comment - or even an ordinary one.

Brown was a bully, Dave is a bore.....

'Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, and its salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment’.

Broon and his unspeakable gang were a constant and rich source of amusement because of the sheer dottiness of much of their programme. The present coalition is about as amusing as genital herpes. It is smug, dull, earnest, self-important and totally out-of-touch, but it is also very, very boring. I feel for the Parliamentary sketch writers who have to make something entertaining out of such dull material.

Even the loony lefties and council jobsworths seem to have gone into recess (but see below). Nothing to laugh at all.

But there was an amusing story on BBC World TV News about a prison in California teaching cricket as a means of rehabilitating thugs. That should do the trick.

Well, kiss me neck, as we would say in Jamaica. The House of Commons has voted by a ten-fold majority to tell the European Court to get lost over its ruling that prisoners should be able to vote. Whether this will be of any effect remains to be seen. Refusing to follow the ECJ ruling could lead both to fines and to compensation claims.

From memory, in my time prisoners were not amongst the disenfranchised, but they had some difficulty in getting to the polling station.

This may be the beginning of moves to extricate the UK from the ‘human rights’ nightmare. There is certainly great pressure from Tories and many others. A possible answer to the current dilemma would be to wipe out Blair’s postal voting reforms that debauched the system, like so much else he did, and opened the door to voting fraud.

Just to demonstrate that all is not lost, here is another corker from Big Brother Watch.

Barmy Britain. ‘A 64-YEAR-OLD grandmother says she was made to feel like a criminal after stooping to pick up a cigarette wrapper in Coventry city centre that she’d just dropped. Lesley Apps was hit with an instant £50 fine when a council officer swooped. Lesleysays a piece of the wrapper had accidentally fallen out of her pocket and she was picking it up when she was fined. She said: “I was doing the right thing but I was still punished.“Maybe I would have been better off if I had left it’.’

The incident happened at 9.45 a.m on January 14 after the retired café worker bought a pack of cigarettes at a newsagents. She said: “I was already bent over to pick it up.I was probably a bit slower than usual because I was having back trouble but even then it was clear I wasn’t just going to leave it there.I tried to explain but she didn’t give me a chance.

And there was the mother of a student with schizophrenia. When he went missing she phoned the University for information about him, she was told that they could not release information without his permission under the Data Protection Act

Publishing comments..........

Out of 1500 hits on this site we have only received a handful of  comments, which is something of a mystery as we publish the same blog on another site and it gets plenty. We got an e-mail from a reader enquiring if we had received his comments. We have not. We posted a comment from ourselves and this was published OK. Anyone out there who has sent a ccomment is asked to re-send; there may be a technical problem or there may be a recuurring error in publishing the comment. Please remember to click 'publish'.

Never let a crisis go to waste.......

The dilemma of the month is what to do with Egypt. The country's situation is like a Rorschach test for diplomats and political pundits the world over. Everyone has an opinion forged from their own view of the situation and each is a bit different. I am learning all sorts of things about Egyptian politics that I did not know or had forgotten. Farheed Zacharia has been helpful in clarifying things, and so has the world press. Mubarak was so smooth and entrenched that I forgot he was but a cog in the military regime that actually calls the plays. I do believe, however, that many observers had also neglected this important point owing to how swimmingly relations between Egypt and the West have been going.

The US and the West are enduring a delicate dilemma. At issue is whether we should firmly express our self interest and publicly outline a transition strategy at the expense of Mubarak and the military, or to refrain from anything but the most innocuous proclamations and, like a free market economy, let the social and political forces at work manifest themselves. We are under heavy pressure to both intervene and stay aloof and such pressure comes with a myriad of instructions on how we should behave in our selected strategy.

The Saudis want us to refrain from embarrassing Mubarak. The Muslim Brotherhood wants us to keep entirely out of the situation. Israel seeks a stable and pro-Israeli government not unlike what Mubarak and Sadat had practiced in the past and would like the US to do everything in its power to ensure that happening. Dick Cheney and what remains of the Neo Cons want to maintain Mubarak in power and continue to feed the Egyptian military. Meanwhile, back at the White House, O is praying for world peace and tranquility which, in retrospect, is most certainly his studied approach to the unfolding situation. While O has not thrown Mubarak under the bus, he has issued a few nudges in that direction.

I continue to believe that Mubarak will go and strongly support the Saudi appeal to assist him in doing so without embarrassment. Saudi and Egypt together are the heart and head of Islam respectively and, as the two foremost Sunni Muslim nations, they need each other to maintain dominance in the Arab and indeed the Muslim world. To be sure, the transition away from Mubarak and his strong arm style of government will take time whether he oversees the transition or not. Moreover, the taste of power experienced by the protesters will linger and expand not only in Egypt, but in other Middle Eastern and quite possibly African and Asian countries as well. The urban youth of Egypt who rebelled against the military regime have had an addictive experience and are unlikely to be satisfied with going home satisfied that there is nothing more to do.

This means that in response, the Egyptian government must either redouble its policy of suppression or mete out a few concessions to the people. The trick is to follow both responses with some measures for controlling the more outspoken protesters and to relax the rules just enough to satisfy public demands, but not enough to empower the people. Perhaps a new head of state will suffice; one who promises reform and who is not heavily tainted with the Mubarak brand of governance. I doubt that al Baradei will fit this bill and I suspect he knows it. He talks as if he wants the military regime to relinquish its dictatorial powers in favor of a civilian government. If that were to occur, which is highly unlikely, the result would be less of a civilian government and more of a Muslim Brotherhood led regime.

The role of the Muslim Brotherhood cannot be neglected. They are not only strong in number and influence, but capable of bringing in outside assistance in the form of moral support, political leverage, money and weapons. The price they would pay for this would be heavy indeed, but like most Muslims I have met, the price would be accepted in the name of Allah.

In conclusion, I suggest we talk softly and carry a big stick; i.e. pray for peace and tranquility and quietly put our heavy allies together to form, together with the Egyptian government, a solution with as limited consequential damages as possible. The heavy allies include Israel, the UK and Saudi Arabia for a start. A major concern should be interest groups seeking to take advantage of the crisis.

Lockerbiegate: US Senators to get stuffed?

Is there no end to the arrogance of US Senators?

They have put Lockerbie back on the front page by ‘demanding’ that former Ministers in the Brown cabinet should appear before them to explain the decision to release Mehgrabi.

Is this just grandstanding or do they seriously expect anything more than the ‘get stuffed’ reply that they had when they tried to get the Scots to kow-tow to them?

 They have got the horse and cart in the wrong positions.

They should be inquiring into the safety of the guilty verdict and the conduct of the trial.

 They should be inquiring into the role of the CIA in bribing their chief witness and coaching him in court.

They should ask about discrepancies in the body-count.

They should determine whether or not there was a CIA intelligence team on board the flight.

They should ask to see all the depositions that would have been submitted to the second appeal hearing.

They should read the full report of the UN observers who described the trial as ‘a complete travesty’.

US Foreign Policy? What policy.............?

The concept of US foreign policy is a fallacy. We have no foreign policy as such, but rather foreign policies and the immediate problem with them is they are often contradictory. For every applied example of our policies, we can easily find examples of similar circumstances in which they were not applied. I find it all a bit confusing at first blush, but given a bit of study and retrospection there are threads of sanity; self interest being a major one.

Even worse, are the critics of our policies and chief among them is the political opposition at any given time.

The sitting government is condemned for efforts to be the world's policeman on the one hand and for not intervening in a crisis on the other. We do nothing in Zim, but intervene in Iraq. But yes, Iraq has oil and are our policies not all about oil as so many pundits claim? Yes, of course, but then again Afghanistan is not all about oil, nor is Cuba, but Venezuela certainly is and we have chosen to tolerate their slings and arrows. So forget oil, our policies also include retribution, especially for the likes of al Qaeda.

That is why we are in Afghanistan. Yet al Qaeda is no longer there and has not been for some time. Did we not know that? I guess not, but never mind, since al Qaeda has moved over to Pakistan and has spread to other snake pits of jihad, we can go home, n'est pas? Wrong again, we can't go home. After all there is the Taliban to contend with and everyone knows they don't educate their women, they stone female fornicators and they sever the left hands of common thieves.

Reminiscent of America's hang up with the need to civilize the Japanese, we are again shouldering the white man’s burden as filtered through our particular brand of ethics, morality and values. Plus, as everyone knows, if we leave Afghanistan, al Qaeda will move right back in there.

In essence, we have bribed Egypt to the tune of a billion odd dollars a year to behave as a defender of America's pro Israel stance in the Middle East. At least, this is what I have consistently read ever since I began studying world affairs some umpteen decades ago. So we added Mubarak's name to a long list of dictators we supported for reasons of self interest.

This has been part of our foreign policies beginning in Latin America and eventually extending throughout the world. We are even getting accustomed to the dictators we support abusing our hospitality and pocketing the lion's share of our foreign aid. We even live with the rage generated by the knowledge that we throw billions into dictators’ Swiss bank accounts and endure an expanding poverty problem here at home.

The Egyptian hens have come home to roost and we are worried whether or not Mubarak's successor will be so cheaply influenced. It would help if we could identify a successor, but to date, no name has come into focus other than that of our old tormentor, Mohamed el Baradei, of IAEC fame, the one who said some years ago when he was the IAEC Director, there was no hard evidence that Iran is upgrading uranium for weapons use. We had a hissy fit over that statement, although I believe him and I also believe that he was correct in his assessment.

The hard liners under Bush wanted al Baradei to condemn Iran's nuclear program and thereby provide credible evidence for Iran's crucifixion. What's more, al Baradei is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood which, to Americans, is like a cross between the Gestapo and al Qaeda. Never mind he espouses a secular state; he sinned by telling what he considered the truth to power and the power became incensed. We could not bend al Baradei to our wishes and that makes him a loose cannon.

This may all be academic as Mubarak is clinging to power like a mussel sticks to a rock. I have no illusion that he will keep his word about leaving in September as he has claimed. More important, nor do the Egyptian protesters. Mubarak is history and I believe history will not wait until September to manifest itself.

Afghaniscam again...........

Washington seems to be getting in a terrible muddle over Egypt.

Jo Biden says that Mubarak is not a dictator and should not stand down. O made a particularly vacuous comment on TV news. He said that problems are not solved by violence.

Then what are we doing in Afghanistan?

And how do you change a brutal and oppressive regime except by violence when everything else has failed?

The US gives $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt each year but $1.3 billion of this is military aid. This might suggest a rather skewed approach to ‘aid’ for a country in which 30% of the population lives below the poverty line. It might also suggest that the US has an arm-lock on the key player in any future political settlement.

On Afghanistan, the Beeb did an excellent documentary on the preparations by the Queen’s Royal Lancers, a cavalry regiment, for their deployment to Afghanistan and then followed them through the next six months until they returned home minus two.

At the training camp in Norfolk, a complete Afghan village has been created. It has a complement of real live Afghans and is highly realistic. An interesting aspect was that the Regimental Sergeant Major was black. He is clearly an outstanding soldier, because this is one of the most difficult ranks to attain. It is regarded as the most important rank after the Commanding Officer. Racial stereotyping is a fruitless undertaking, is it not?

The war has now been going on so long that the British army is the most battle-hardened since WW2.

So why are we there? The original pretext was to deny Afghanistan as a base for Al-Qaeda. They are no longer there. They have scarpered to Yemen, Somalia and other fundamentalist hell-holes. We were told that the deployment of British forces would be for 18 months. That was 10 years ago. We are mired in a war that is the longest fought by Britain since the Napoleonic Wars. We are fighting the Taliban who have never done us any harm. What are NATO’s War Aims? We have never been told.

It is abundantly clear that foreign military adventure in Afghanistan must fail. This has been the lesson of history from the 18th century to the Russian disaster. ‘The Great Game’ should be compulsory reading for every politician from every NATO country.

Kipling had it right:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Daft DT headline of the week

‘Women in Britain are the fattest in mainland Europe’.