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Those who look for symbolism as a guide to events might like to note that ‘Evian’ spelled backwards is ‘Naive’. Whilst I would never suggest that that is anything except concidental I do reckon that even a casual observer of the latest G8 conference in that Southern French town would have noticed that idealism (to the extent that it ever existed at all) has given way to thorny realpolitik.
No amount of mutual backslapping and bonhomie can disguise the fact that this latest conference was little more than a cosmetic exercise in alleged unity of purpose where none, in fact, exists. Quite aside from the fact that US-EU tensions are hardly going to be settled by a couple of days of diplomatic chinwagging in the Alps, the early exit of George Bush illustrates pretty effectively where he feels his priorities lie:
President George W Bush was not present for the summit’s final session on Tuesday, having left the previous day on the Middle Eastern leg of his foreign tour.
Nothing could illustrate more clearly that the Americans regard the Middle-East as a more pressing concern than the latest round of plaintiff appeals for ‘international somethingorother’ from the likes of Chirac and Shroeder. The former demands attention, the latter can be safely stacked in the pending tray.
But even aside from that, there are cracks which just cannot be papered over with reams of polite communiques. Even a left-of-centre and devoutly internationalist British PM is pressing for a different worldview than the one assiduously promoted from Paris. The result will be no single worldview at all.
I suspect that this G8 malarkey has had its day and not because of the travelling circus of the ‘Great Unwashed’ wreaking havoc and gutting town-centres in its wake, but rather because the reasons for its inception just no longer hold true. This annual round of global group-hugging was only important when it was felt (perhaps not unreasonably) that the interests of the world’s great industrial powers were converging. They are not converging any longer and, if anything, they are diverging. This is not so much globalisation as polarisation.
This will likely not be the last G8 summit. There will probably be more in the future. But I suspect we have seen the last meaningful one and that the summits of tomorrow will be prove to be nothing more than an exercise in formality and politeness where the delegates exchange chit-chat whilst waiting for something bigger and more exciting to come along.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s this or nothing. Seriously, there’s been nothing here for nearly twenty four hours, so I’m going to write about Tesco moisturised and elasticated No Fuss 2 in 1 anti-dandruff shampoo and conditioner, because it’s a subject I feel strongly about. (Sorry, I can find a link to the Tesco enterprise as a whole, but no direct link to any information about this particular product.)
For the last few decades I’ve always assumed that shampoo, by its nature, is something that can’t be entirely convenient. Does the lid hold the shampoo in tightly? If so, it will be a bother opening it, by unscrewing it or by otherwise gouging it open, and that means you’ll tend to keep it open, and that means that it loses its moisture and gets stuck at the bottom of the container, and you have to hold it upside down for about a minute, waiting for it to appear, or perhaps dilute it, which risks diluting it too much and turning it into an uncontrollable liquid rather than a semi-controllable sludge (no disrespect intended). Then, once it has appeared, I assumed it to be a law of nature that not all of it would end up in my hair, but that some of it would assemble itself just outside the hole in the container from which it had emerged, where it would dry out and perhaps block the hole. Which is why I probably should keep the container shut, by screwing it shut again, or by forcing the lid back on. (Remember, a lid that is easy to force short is a lid that can easily fall open again, and that defeats the purpose of the thing.) But that’s so much bother that I can seldom be bothered.
Actually, the procedure I eventually got around to using was to put the lid back on, but to keep the container upside down so that I didn’t have to wait for it to journey laboriously to the exit every time.
I hope this is making sense.
So, let’s take those two adjectives that I apply (for they do not appear on the container) to the latest Tesco shampoo (and conditioner) one at a time. Moisturised, and elasticated. → Continue reading: Tesco moisturised and elasticated No Fuss 2 in 1 anti-dandruff shampoo and conditioner
It has been a while since I tripped over one of these. Let me state up front that I have no reason to think Richard Poe is a member of the tinfoil hat and black helicopter brigade, so I read his stuff with rather more respect that I do on some other sites I could mention. Thus I will try to examine his thesis without the usual clothespeg-on-the-nose I use when looking at conspiracy theories. He has written an article called The 9-11 Conspiracy: We Need a Truth Commission, in which he suggest that that:
Though cautiously worded, Judge Baer’s decision has implications beyond the 9-11 case. Dissident experts ranging from former CIA director James Woolsey to Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, have long alleged that America may be under “low-intensity” or “asymmetric” attack by foreign powers hiding behind “false flag” operatives such as bin Laden.
[…]
Through the Clinton years, Big Media and Big Government systematically suppressed evidence of foreign involvement in such operations as the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 (probably by a missile). But the evidence continues to grow.
[…]
Moreover, the number of America’s enemies abroad may be larger than we have been led to believe. The alliance which George Bush named the “Axis of Evil” — minimally defined as Iran, Iraq, North Korea and their “terrorist allies” — may itself be a false flag operation under whose cover such envious powers as Russia, China — and perhaps even the European Union, under French and German domination — may have secretly cooperated to oppose what they see as the threat of U.S. global hegemony.
I will not even attempt to address Richard’s domestic issues as I cannot get to grips in my mind with his theory on why both the previous and current US governments would cover up what he is suggesting they are covering up, so I will just look at the other main thrust: the asymmetric attack by foreign powers.
It is very unclear what the objective of these shadowy people behind the ‘false flag’ gig would be, given the nature of the actual and putative attacks. Blowing up a US government building in Oklahoma City, of all places, would gain what for whom? For a born-in-the-USA individual such as Tim McVeigh, who may feel Oklahoma City actually features in the grand scheme of things, perhaps the attack made perfect sense as a strike against tyranny and day-care centres. But who outside the USA could find Oklahoma State on a map without considerable squinting, let alone Oklahoma City, or see attacking it as a stepping stone to overthrowing the hated hegemonic power? Did mission planners in Moscow, Paris or Peking know something about the importance of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to the global geo-strategic balance of power that is hidden from the untutored eye? I cannot see how blowing up a bunch of run-of-the-mill bureaucrats was going to bring Oklahoma to its knees, let alone the United States. → Continue reading: Ah, conspiracy theories!
Somehow I missed this item yesterday… Now we have never been all that timid about slamming George Dubya when he makes a dumb move, but to be honest, if he delivers what may prove to be the coup de grace to the UN as a source of so-called ‘moral authority’, then I will start collecting memberships for the George W. Bush Fan Club!
Michael Totten has written an interesting article about the difference between ‘liberal’ (in the US sense of the word) and ‘conservative’ views of the world, called Builders and Defenders.
If you want to find a person who knows the history of pre-war Nazi Germany, the Middle East during the Cold War, or the partition of India and Pakistan, you’re better off looking to the right than to the left.
I am astonished and dismayed to discover this. I’m a life-long liberal and I devour history like food. Not until after September 11 did I learn I’m a minority on the left.
But clearly as someone very well read in genuinely foreign history and affairs, Michael is a member of a pretty tiny minority everywhere, not just on the left. Perhaps he would be less of a minority amongst a certain species of neo-conservatives in the USA, but he would still be one. In my experience, Michael would also find the situation amongst American capital-L Libertarians more akin the one he finds on the left.
Which brings me to another point… Michael is certainly a thoughtful commentator but he suffers from that exasperating bipolar disorder common to those on both the statist left and statist right: there is a great deal more to the world than just ‘liberal’ (in the US meaning of democratic regulatory quasi-socialist) and ‘conservative’ (in the US meaning of democratic regulatory quasi-capitalist). That someone with a blog should fall into this meta-contextual trap is all the more grating for a libertarian such as myself, given the sheer number of neither ‘liberal’ nor conservative blogs there are within the ever expanding blogosphere. Even the mightily Sir Glenn of Instant Punditry describes himself as a ‘Whig’ rather than a ‘liberal’ or conservative.
The truth is that what Michael is describing is more of an American phenomenon than a left or right one, and even then it is only slightly less applicable to us ‘more cosmopolitan’ British and Europeans.
There is an old joke, which like so many is all the more amusing because it is essentially true…
The French think the world revolves around Eiffel Tower, the British think they own the world and the Americans think they are the world
On Channel Four News tonight it was reported that the UK government is to ban childminders from smacking children from the autumn. What I found odd in the report was that apparently the UN thinks the government should go further and prevent parents, not just childminders, from smacking.
I don’t have strong feelings either way on whether smacking should be allowed. What gets me is that the UN thinks it is its job to decide whether or not it should be legal. Surely the UN’s role – if it has one at all – is to provide a forum to discuss disagreements between countries, helping to prevent wars. It should not be for deciding the domestic policies of individual countries.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses,
And all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
– Traditional English rhyme
Vladimir Putin, the hero of Chechnya, has in essence told Tony Blair to take his attempt to paper over the disagreements regarding Iraq, now that the allied takeover is a fait accomplis , and stick it where the sun does not shine.
Moreover, the French, Germans and Belgians are going to continue to work towards a new ‘European’ alternative to NATO aimed at reducing US influence, whilst all the time keeping a straight face and claiming they have no hostility to the USA, of course.
This is all truly excellent news.
Now whilst it was clear that Tony Blair was willing to go a long way in the interests of a return to the ante-bellum political status of seeming harmony with ‘Europe’, the USA is highly unlikely to have much desire to take such a conciliatory position. Blair however was obviously willing to let slide the fact the French and Russians hurt him quite badly politically by scuppering his attempts to get a UN imprimatur for the liberation of Iraq.
My big worry post-Iraq was that the Axis of Weasels and their Russian cohort, having failed in their diplomatic objectives of safeguarding their economic sweetheart deals with the Ba’athists in Iraq and pandering to domestic anti-Americanism, would avoid paying a price for these positions. I thought the key to their ‘damage limitation’ would be to play on Tony Blair’s manifest desire to “be at the centre of Europe” whilst at the same time remaining best buddies with the United States in his ‘warrior prince’ role.
They would use this huge psychological weak spot to get Blair back on-side and eager to be a ‘Good European’, leveraging the fact the US manifestly ‘owes Tony a big one’ to mitigate any political and economic cost to them of their placing the wealth of the Elf Aquitaine Oil company and its Russian counterparts over the lives of Iraqis living under Ba’athism, not to mention US geo-political interests.
Well I am delighted to see that are not nearly such devious political operators as it is so often claimed. Putin in particular continues to confirm my views far from being the wily fox that pundits describe; he is in fact a true dunce with delusions of his own importance as he presides over a basket case economy with an imploding society that is drinking itself to death on homemade vodka.
That Tony Blair’s world view has received such a public kick in the bollocks from the people who should logically need his good will and support at this point in time is…simply splendid news. It may even start to break through the cloying desire in the Prime Minister’s head for logic-free €uro-harmony, that the world changed forever on September 11th 2001. He can stay with the dynamic Americans and spend his political capital wisely or he can piss it away with sclerotic Old Europe. He cannot do both and maybe even he will start to see that now as he heads back from Russia with his tail between his legs.
Events appear to be developing rather faster than I thought they would. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that they are snowballing.
I doubt very much whether either Monsieur Chirac or Herr Schroeder have spent any time in the blogosphere but, judging from the news in the UK Times their reaction to the ‘Axis of Weasels’ slur was to take it deadly seriously:
At a meeting in Brussels with the Prime Ministers of Belgium and Luxembourg, President Chirac and Gerhard Schroder, the German Chancellor, want to clear the way for a common European defence system that would start with a core of volunteer states.
To be honest, I am trying very hard to suppress my natural inclination to double over in hoots of derisive laughter. Perhaps they will rent a seedy, run-down office, kit themselves out with a set of overalls and call themselves ‘Yankbusters’. It is hard to imagine what else they could do with armies that consist of time-serving pensioners and conscripted students.
There is nothing new about the idea of a common EU defence pact, of course, only now the French (and it is primarily the French) appear to be driving the issue with an unseemly haste. It bears all the hallmarks of panic and, given the growlings emanating from Washington of late, that panic may be more than a little justified:
Although the Germans have qualms about a confrontation with Nato, the French are not hiding their aim to achieve their long-standing goal of unhitching the United States from European defence. This has become more pressing with the reported plans of the US to punish France for its stand on the war in Iraq by excluding it from Nato decision-making.
I don’t suppose that the French are under any real illusion as to the capacity of Belgium to ride to their rescue. No, this is just the French doing what the French have always done; desperately seeking alliances in order to advance their own national interests. Not having the sufficient wherewithal to rule the world (as they believe they rightly should) they seek instead to project their influence by building blocs which must be configured in such as a way as to enable the French to dominate them. Mock we may, but for the French political classes this is as serious as a heart-attack and, possibly, a last throw of the dice.
Panic, however, is not merely confined to Paris. Tony Blair can see exactly where this is heading and it’s giving him the the big-time jitters:
“I don’t want Europe setting itself up in opposition to America. I think it will be dangerous and destabilising.”
Mark those words. Blair has a very clear idea of the stability he wants and knows every bit as surely that this isn’t it. Blair, being neither pro- nor anti- anything, is the consumate internationalist. Harmony is what he seeks. At home he has adroitly neutralised all opposition by gathering everybody into a big tent of consensus. Abroad he hoped to be the golden bridge that brought the USA and the EU together to sing melodiously from the same hymn-sheet in a global choir of co-operation.
It’s all off-key now and the discord is grating harshly on the ears. The American Star Tenor that Blair adores simply cannot work with the pushy European falsettos he hopes to please and now everyone is about to flounce off in a huge huff, leaving only the Fat Lady. She isn’t singing yet, but she’s clearing her throat.
If you haven’t come across it yet, I recommend (as does Michael Blowhard to whom my thanks) William Shawcross’ 2003 Harkness Lecture, delivered on March 27th, in other words just as the public bit of the war was getting seriously under way, but before it had been successfully concluded. It is a very good brief summary of the state of the world now, as seen through the eyes of the USA’s neo-conservatives, and it is particular good as a brief introduction to neo-con ideas and attitudes:
I don’t want to say that they all believe the same things. They don’t, but there are some common threads in their views.
They tend to believe that we live in a special moment of history, one which is characterised above all by America’s unparalleled military power and the opportunity to expand the boundaries of democracy around the world. This is the time for a grand strategy to assert Pax Americana. This is the decisive decade in human liberty.
They value strategic thinking and the setting of priorities. They are wary of permanent alliances and are attracted to bold geopolitical moves for the expansion of American values. They are not wedded to stability. Conversely, they are not afraid of challenging the status quo. As we are seeing in Iraq.
They see American values as universal values and believe passionately in the special mission of the United States to bring American style democracy to the rest of the world. That is particularly true since 9/11. They, like President Bush, tend to see the world in very straightforward terms – even in terms of good and evil. They do not believe that evil governments can be reformed. Sovereignty is relative – the more evil the state the less sovereignty to which it is entitled.
They are particularly close to the state of Israel, in some cases to the Likud party, and they see the defence of Israel as a test of America’s willingness to defend American values. They believe that Israel will achieve peace not through compromising with her enemies, but through a grand re-ordering of her environment, through overwhelming force, and through daring strategic moves.
Even before the agonising rows over Resolution 1441 and Iraq’s lack of disarmament, they had no great regard for the United Nations. They see it as filled with undemocratic or anti American nations which seek to use it to constrain the United States.
In other words, it won’t end with Iraq.
We live in interesting times.
The United Methodist Church are calling on Methodist George W. Bush to repent for overthrowing Saddam Hussain’s regime in Iraq. He is enjoined to:
…repent from domestic and foreign policies that are incompatible with the teaching and example of Christ.
Ah yes… the eleventh commandment… “Thou shalt not overthrow tyranny but shall instead give aid and succour to murderers and rapists”. Oops. Sorry. I guess silly ol’ Dubya was reading the abridged version of the Bible.
(Link via Joshua Claybourn)
A few days ago, I spent a pleasant evening at chez de Havilland enjoying a sumptuous dinner consisting of a selection of char-grilled endangered species washed down with a delightful bottle of Ultra-Extreme-Right-Wing cordial.
After dinner, we retired to the drawing room to smoke cigars (hand rolled by grossly exploited third-world children) whereupon the discussion turned to matters of international affairs. It was during the course of our deliberations that I struck upon what I considered to be a quite promising strategy for dealing with the ‘Axis of Weasels’ (France, Germany, Russia)
Since the basis of their informal ‘alliance’ appears to be the shared concern about the vast amounts of money each is owed, then would it not constitute a masterful stroke in the machiavellian art of ‘divide and conquer’ to ensure that one or more gets reimbursed while the other is told to take a hike? Then sit back and watch while the gang breaks apart and they start turning on each other.
To me, this was a screamingly obvious manoeuvre. And not just to me because I note that Brian Micklethwait has made a similar suggestion in one of his comments below:
What if an “illegitimate” world just cries all the way to the bank? – leaving France as the only one in step, and broke?
For all the reasons discussed here (and there) I think the Americans could break such a strike, indeed are already starting to.
Indeed they are, Brian. No sooner had I finished reading Brian’s comments, and marvelling upon how they echoed my own thoughts on the subject, than I notice this article in the Financial Times:
The difference in approach was evident on Friday in a newspaper interview in which Tony Blair, prime minister, said the failure to secure a second UN resolution had put British soldiers’ lives at risk.
Downing Street believes that Mr Chirac’s threat to veto such a resolution made difficult negotiations with countries such as Russia and Germany “impossible”.
Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice, the US president’s national security adviser, was reported this week to have said that France should be punished, Germany ignored and Russia forgiven as the US readjusts its relations with European allies.
The world, and it would appear the French in particular, is about to be reminded of an old axiom: to the victors go the spoils.
By the way, if any influential members of the US Government happen to be reading this, let me just say that the Samizdata Team are available to provide free-lance consultancy on International Relations. Please e-mail us for a resume.
Phil Bradley shows us what a wonderful institution that carnival of thieves called the United Nations is
I can hardly turn on the TV without some talking head from the UN, one of its many agencies and adjuncts, or a European diplomat talking about the UN’s legitimacy or credibility. This is a recent phenomena and I am curious as to where the UN has acquired its supplies of legitimacy and credibility. Certainly not from its member states – many of whom can hardly keep the road to the airport open without help from French paratroopers. Nor does it get it from the work of its agencies, which while on paper are well intentioned, in practice are dens of corruption, incompetence and cronyism, relegated to ‘coordinating’ roles because they are incapable of doing any thing useful.
Perhaps it is from the UN’s work in intervening in crises and helping states achieve legitimate democratic government. OK, the UN did pull its troops out of Rwanda prior to perhaps a million people being massacred, failed to anything about Kosovo and left NATO to intervene, and appears to be making a complete mess of ‘helping’ East Timor transition to democracy. A state of affairs which even the UN’s senior person in East Timor admits to. Sorry, no signs of legitimacy and credibility here!
I must therefore conclude that United Nations has discovered a means of manufacturing these precious commodities. This is a major scientific breakthrough, a philosophers stone for the twenty-first century. The UN is keeping tight-lipped on the details of this breakthrough. So it’s not clear as to how much legitimacy and credibility they can manufacture. But think of implications if they can produce a large supply (doubtless it is expensive to produce, but then everything at the UN is vastly more expense than it should be). Clearly the UN and its member states constitute a major market for both products, but the potential is huge, especially for credibility which the recent war in Iraq has shown there is a world-wide shortage, notably in the news-rooms of CNN and the BBC, as well as in some European and Arab capitals.
And to think, I always thought the United Nations was a complete waste of time and money, filled with corrupt bureaucrats only interested in first-class air travel and their expense accounts. Shows how wrong you can be!
Phil Bradley
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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