Georgia - the Blogroll of Shame

When the trouble in South Ossetia broke out, a title for a blog post floated into my mind - for about a femtosecond, before I dismissed it as hopelessly unoriginal, cliched, and above all irrelevant.

Other bloggers weren't so fussy.

There are literally thousands of bloggers who decided that "Georgia On My Mind" was a really cool post title (for those who wonder why, it's an old Ray Charles song in which he sees "in peaceful dreams" the road back to the Land of Peaches. Not terribly apposite for the Caucasian unpleasantness).

So I'll just give a dishonourable shout to those you can find on UK Poliblogs.

Shuffle forward, with eyes on the floor :

Samizdata

Paul Anderson

The Englishman ! I am truly shocked ...

Perspective

There is another famous - and much more relevant - song about Georgia - a song of war between two states which had been one, of avenging columns leaving smoke and flames to mark their track, the deliberate destruction of infrastructure as they went - but no UK blogger used "Marching Through Georgia".

At least anti-American Brit lefty blogger Devizes Melting Pot (sic) linked to this post by anti-American American lefty Chris Floyd. And a fair few US bloggers used it.


Stop ! I found one Brit blog using it - the hitherto unknown to me - or to anyone else - New Worker Features - which may or may not be the official blog of the New Communist Party of Britain. Kudos to said blogger, who'e'er s/he be. The NCP is an organisation of which I know nothing, apart from their terrifyingly efficient, Stalinist car-parking franchise. The full story is here. To an old lefty like myself it soundeth highly familiar.

Like the rest of the British communist movement the NCP from the beginning had to deal with what they saw as ultra-leftism and right-wing deviation. All were defeated at Congresses over the years and many were expelled for factionalism.

New Worker Features is currently getting 12 hits a day. Spread the rightish love and drop by.


UPDATE - what's so appealing about NWF ? The classic blogger template !

Summer Floodwaters From The Curate's Brook

More a collection of links, really - stuff I just haven't found the time to blog about :

This story is one of a number in the last couple of years about Muslim prison gangs. Wasn't someone killed by Muslims in Frankland in the last year or so ?

Prison authorities have compiled an action plan for dealing with a kidnap plot involving radicalised Muslim convicts inside Britain's jails. The dossier has been compiled in the past few months following rising tension in the prison system. Intelligence gathered from Britain's eight top-security prisons indicate that specific threats to kidnap and decapitate an officer first emerged at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire six months ago. However, a senior prison source said that the risk went beyond one jail.

Most primary school teachers have been women - and that's probably true even going back to Victorian days. It wouldn't be so bad that only one primary teacher in 50 is male - if so many boys didn't have a male role model / authority figure in their lives.

"The secret state that steals our children" - Camilla Cavendish on the family courts - a must-read. One family's story here. More here.

Rasputin's real views on homosexuality and Christianity revealed - it wasn't exactly a secret now, was it ? Like John Humphrys, Mary Ann Sieghart wishes he'd have the courage of his convictions.

Ross is posting some good stuff at the moment ... and Marko Attila Hoare - where did he get that name ? - is worth reading on the ex-Soviet Empire, even if you don't agree with everything.

Who's been stabbed or shot recently ? Public Perception has the stories.

They've got your phone calls. Now they want your email and browsing habits. Not just MI5/6, who one tends to assume already has that sort of thing. Your local council, health authority, etc. Surprise surprise, it's driven by an EU directive.

And for details of all such things, EU Referendum - in terms of adding to one's knowledge, it has to be the best Brit politics site on the Web. Also highly informative - the Yorkshire Ranter - he may be a lefty, but he knows an awful lot about technology, particularly the military stuff. A rattling good read.


So, he left her flat at 6 am, leaving - according to his testimony, the deceased still alive and well.

Her body was found two days later. I can see that, were she still alive, she might not have spotted him pinching her mobile and Oyster card, which he used on his way home. They're the kind of things you can slip into a pocket. But how in God's name, if they are alive, do you steal someone's DVD player and Freeview box without them noticing, leaving the flat with "a big bag" ?

You do have to wonder if the jury was made up of people who don't like pre-op transexuals like poor Kellie Telesford. Alleged illegal immigrant Shanniel Hyatt is very fortunate that the full weight of British law didn't descend on him. Had he been found guilty, he might have ended up doing two whole years for manslaughter !

She Always Did Like To Shock

"I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. "

Julie Burchill comes out ... as a Church of England Christian.

US Census Bureau Details

The report is here :

"By 2023, minorities will comprise more than half of all children" - they're more than half of all babies born in London now - and nearly a quarter of primary school children in England.

The Future Starts Here

White people of European descent will no longer make up a majority of the US population by the year 2042 - eight years sooner than previous estimates. The big change is among Hispanics and Asians, whose numbers are expected to double by the middle of the century to form 30% and 9% of the population. It is projected that black people will account for 15%, a small increase.

The US Census Bureau's latest projections are based on birth, death and current immigration rates. According to the bureau's statistics, ethnic and racial minorities will become the majority by 2042 and account for 54% of the population by 2050.

I'm not terribly hung up on the whiteness, or the genetic inheritance. By a tragic accident of history most Europeans, who have hitherto made up the majority of US immigrants, have been white. It's not their fault.

America has been taking in immigrants and turning them into Americans for two hundred years. But starting - where else ? - in the 1970s, the idea of the melting pot, of integration, became unfashionable. The idea of maintaining and celebrating difference - for the recent arrivals, anyway - became increasingly acceptable. Sounds familiar ?

"In the current immigration wave, something markedly different is happening here in the middle of the great American "melting pot."

Not only are the demographics of the United States changing in profound and unprecedented ways, but so too are the very notions of assimilation and the melting pot that have been articles of faith in the American self-image for generations. E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One) remains the national motto, but there no longer seems to be a consensus about what that should mean.

There is a sense that, especially as immigrant populations reach a critical mass in many communities, it is no longer the melting pot that is transforming them, but they who are transforming American society.

...

In fact, the very concept of assimilation is being called into question as never before. Some sociologists argue that the melting pot often means little more than "Anglo conformity" and that assimilation is not always a positive experience – for either society or the immigrants themselves. And with today's emphasis on diversity and ethnicity, it has become easier than ever for immigrants to avoid the melting pot entirely. Even the metaphor itself is changing, having fallen out of fashion completely with many immigration advocacy and ethnic groups. They prefer such terms as the "salad bowl" and the "mosaic," metaphors that convey more of a sense of separateness in describing this nation of immigrants."

Hmm. Isn't the "salad bowl" what they've got in Kenya ? Or Bosnia - before the ingredients shook themselves apart ? Or South Ossetia ?

Not that I can quite see how the BBC can separate "whites" and "Hispanics" anyway. While Diego has traditionally been somewhat swarthier than his sherry-swilling, beef-eating cousins, the difference isn't massive as far as melanin's concerned.

Culturally there ARE some differences. Like their Spanish relatives, the Mexicans went in for bloodshed on a fairly hefty scale - indeed you can't but wonder if the persecutions which triggered the Cristero War didn't inspire the slaughter of the faithful during the Spanish Civil War, only a few years later. Indeed, the whole history of Latin America isn't a terribly inspiring one, although some would put that down to the baleful influence of US foreign policy.

There's also the small matter of large chunks of the SW United States being originally Mexican territory. The lovely church we attended at San Luis Obispo last year was founded by the Spanish in 1772. Some Mexicans are calling the repopulation of Texas, California and Arizona la Reconquista. There's mucho talk of "Aztlan" and even "La Raza" - these chaps don't seem to have been told that race doesn't exist.

Like the UK, the US is importing large numbers of people from a very different culture without attempting to integrate them. (Even 20 years back people were moving out of California into Washington State because they didn't like the scale of Hispanic immigration into California, and I was reading complaints in the Seattle press about the influx of Californians. The Californians complaining about Hispanic immigration were of course racist bigots, while the Washingtonians complaining about Californians were concerned citizens seeking to maintain the unique character of their state) .

Just as in the UK, this importation is supported by the major parties of both left (who see more voters) and capitalist right (who see cheap labour). George Bush's amnesty plan for up to 12 million illegal immigrants was torpedoed by his grass-roots supporters - but the plan was championed by his business supporters.

The question is - what will America be like by 2042 ? Will it be less like America, and more like Mexico ? The answer has implications for us.

Matthew Syed - He's At It Again

Mr Syed is either obsessive or lazy.

This time last year the former international table-tennis player and failed Labour candidate was using his Times column to attack one Jon Entine, American author of a book about why black athletes dominate sport - well, some sports, anyway. Laban gave it a bit of a shoeing on the grounds that he was attacking Entine for things he hadn't actually said.

One year on and he's substantially repeated the same article - again in the Times.

August 2007

The men’s 100m at the World Athletics Championships in Japan this month will be won by a black athlete. This is not so much a prediction as a statement of fact.

August 2008

Pundits are sharply divided as to the outcome. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the winner will be black.

August 2007

There is a natural conclusion to be drawn from all this: blacks have an inbuilt superiority over whites when it comes to sprinting. Many scientists and writers have made this claim, to the fury of equal rights campaigners who fear that any acknowledgement of natural differences between the races might usher in a new wave of racism.

August 2008

What conclusion should we draw from all this? That blacks have a genetic advantage over whites when it comes to sprinting? It would seem a natural inference except for a nagging voice giving warning about the consequences. If we were to acknowledge systematic genetic differences between the races, where would it lead us? To the conclusion that the superior performance by whites in education is genetic? These are deep waters indeed.

I must confess that I thought it was Chinese and other Asians who had superior performance in education - certainly in Britain. No matter.

August 2007

The prototypical argument for black athletic superiority can be found in Taboo: Why Blacks Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk about it by Jon Entine. Entine’s central assertion is that it is not blacks as a whole that are good at sprinting but rather a subset who can trace their origins to western African coastal states. Indeed, he makes the point that “no white, Asian or East African runner has broken 10 seconds in the 100m” (my italics).

August 2008

The most famous argument for the reality of black genetic superiority is to be found in Jon Entine's Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It. Entine's principal argument is not that all blacks are gifted at sprinting, but rather those that can trace their ancestry to West African coastal states. Indeed, Entine makes the point that “no white, Asian or East African has broken ten seconds in the 100 metres”.

And so on and so forth - the Kenyan distance runners, the pygmies and their unique ability to cope with low ceilings, a morph from "the problem for the “racial scientist” is his yearning to generalise" to "Entine's error lies in his compulsion to generalise". Indeed there's only one new piece of evidence for Mr Syed's theory, if it can be dignified as such, that race doesn't exist except in the minds of white men.

It is surprising that Entine fails to spot his error when he goes on to discuss the success of the Pacific Islands in producing rugby and American football stars. He seems to think this supports his argument that blacks have a genetic superiority at such sports because they have been “bred to run”. It actually does the reverse: there are few populations more genetically distinct from sub-Saharan Africans than Pacific Islanders.

It's lazy, lazy, lazy. If you google "taboo jon entine", this Kenan Malik piece pops up at #1. I hope he's getting reprint rights.

Entine points out that a cluster of South Pacific Islands, such as Samoa and Fiji, have in recent years produced an extraordinary number of American football and Australian rugby players. Such islanders, Entine argues, 'tend to be large and explosively fast', implying that their success somehow gives credence to his 'blacks are bred to run' thesis. In fact it does the opposite: genetically there are few populations in the world more different from sub-Saharan Africans than Pacific Islanders.

My conclusion of last year still stands.

"Mr Syed seems to be afraid of anyone saying that there are any differences between anyone at all. "

"Now we see the violence inherent in the system"

I don't pretend to be a student of Caucasian politics and strategy ... a few impressions of the current unpleasantness in Georgia :

a) you might think it's all about oil

Local police recorded 51 strikes. "I have no doubt they wanted to target the pipeline, there is nothing else here," said Giorgi Abrahamisvili, a policeman who witnessed the attack. "It was terribly intense, the smell of cordite spread everywhere. I had to abandon my car and hide in a ditch but the jets weren't interested in other targets."

BP operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports one per cent of the world's oil needs, or one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. A spokesman played down the impact of the strike, pointing out that pumping was suspended last week because of a terrorist attack in Turkey. "At the moment the pipeline is not running at any capacity, because there was a fire," the spokesman said. Georgia is a crucial link in a three country energy corridor vital to Western Europe's oil and gas supply. The £2 billion pipeline is the only major conduit for Central Asian resources not under Russian control.

b) but South Ossetia and Georgia were in conflict long before :

On March 15, 1918, the Ossetian peasants rose in rebellion and managed to hold off an offensive by a Georgian People’s Guard punitive detachment commanded by an ethnic Ossetian officer, Kosta Kaziev. The fighting culminated in the town of Tskhinvali which was raided by the rebels on March 19, 1918. Tskhinvali’s Georgian population was massacred and the town was looted. The People’s Guard regained the control of Tskhinvali on March 22.

On May 8, 1920, the Ossetians declared a Soviet republic in the Roki area on the Russian-Georgian border. A Bolshevik force from Vladikavkaz crossed into Georgia and helped the local rebels to defeat a Georgian force in the Java district. The rebellious areas were effectively incorporated into Soviet Russia. However, Lenin’s desire to keep peace with Georgia at that time and eventual military failures of the rebels forced the Bolsheviks to distance themselves from the Ossetian struggle. The Georgian People’s Guard under Valiko Jugheli crashed the revolt with great violence. The insurgents were defeated in a series of hard-fought battles. Several villages were burned down and some 3,000 to 7,000 were killed during the hostilities. About 20,000 Ossetians were forced to seek refuge in Soviet Russia.

c) A Fistful of Euros has - or had - some bloggers on the ground in Georgia.

d) I must confess I can't quite see the driver behind the push for surrounding Russia with NATO members. NATO was set up as a mutual defence pact aimed squarely at the old Soviet Union. While Turkey, on the borders of Asia, has been a member since 1950, the alliance was, as its name (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) implies, created to defend the democracies of Western Europe and to keep open the sea and air lanes between Europe and the USA. Georgia is a very long way from the Atlantic coast.

Russia thinks that NATO expansion is aimed squarely at surrounding and isolating her. Speaking without much knowledge, it certainly looks that way. Anyone know what's going on, if this is in fact true, and if so why ? After all, there's another former Communist state that's both expanding economically (and by extension, in military capability) at an unprecedented rate - a state that is also starting to project its power on a global scale. What's so dangerous about Russia ?

There is, IMHO, an inherent problem with expanding an organisation like the EU or NATO beyond what might be said to be its 'natural' borders. As long as you're using air power to zap an opponent without retaliatory capability - as in Kosovo and Serbia - no worries. Except for the people being hit. But when your opponent has the ability to give you a hard time, and you need to put boots on the ground, then questions about Pomeranian grenadiers become relevant. Although we may not have liked it, it was probably generally accepted that had Red Army tanks rolled across the North German plain or into Italy, we would fight. I'm not at all sure how people would feel about fighting for Latvia or Lithuania, who are already NATO members. Who in Western Europe, let alone America, is going to fight for Belarus or the Ukraine ?

e) it wasn't as if you couldn't see it coming. April 2008 :

Officials from Georgia are embarking on a major diplomatic offensive in Europe, fearing that Russia will do everything possible to destabilize the country before NATO membership talks can begin in December. David Bakradze, the Georgian foreign minister, who met Friday with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said his country was becoming caught in a bitter struggle between the West and Russia as it tried to anchor its political and security institutions solidly in Euro-Atlantic organizations and rid itself of Russian influence.

At stake in the coming months, Bakradze said, is whether the West will bow to Russian pressure and possibly trigger a domino effect or stand firm until Moscow backs down. "If you draw lines and give Russia a free hand here, it will never work," Bakradze said in an interview with the International Herald Tribune. "If Russia is given a free hand, it will extend to other parts of Europe. Russia thinks it still has the right to interfere. But we say to the Europeans, if there is any appeasement towards Russia over the way it deals with us, it will have repercussions for other countries."

f) from the same IHT piece, the baneful influence of the Kosovo settlement :

Germany, in particular, strongly opposed offering Georgia the fast track. In interviews at the time, Steinmeier said Moscow had already had a hard enough time accepting the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, whose unity Russia had supported.

Kosovo has had two repercussions. The dismemberment of a chunk of Serbian territory at NATO and EU behest - if not gunpoint - has both cheesed off Russia and given her a blueprint for intervention in South Ossetia and Abhkazia. After all, like Kosovo, the two territories contain lots of people who wish to leave the parent state, a minority of (if you like) loyalists, and a history of bad blood and ethnic strife. Russia can claim to be protecting the majority Ossetian community against the Georgians, just as KFOR protected the majority Kosovo Albanians against the Serbs.

g) so far the US /EU offers of NATO membership have given Georgia the great benefit of Russian invasion, and given the US/EU the great benefit of the third largest coalition force in Iraq - 2,000 men - being withdrawn. While the game is not yet played out, we can say that so far the process hasn't done much for either party - or their relationship. Is America going to do anything ?

In recent years, Bush has lavished praise on Georgia — and the so-called Rose Revolution that brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power — as a model of democracy-building. The feeling was mutual: when Bush visited Tbilisi in 2005, the authorities estimated that 150,000 people showed up to see him. He famously climbed up on a platform and wiggled his hips to loud Georgian folk music.

Those exuberant days seemed very distant around Gori on Sunday, as people fled, leaving behind corn fields and apple orchards. A group of men tried mightily to push a truck with a blown-out tire, but it got stuck on the road, and they finally abandoned it ...

The grimmest among the Georgians were the soldiers, haggard, unshaven and swinging their Kalashnikovs. A group of them had piled onto a flatbed truck, crowding on in such numbers that some were sitting on the roof, their feet dangling over the windshield. One, who gave his name as Major Georgi, spoke with anger.

"Write exactly what I say," he said. "Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us."

h) I don't see Russia as a major long-term imperial power as long as her demography is still pretty disastrous. While the number of births is rising, the number of early deaths is more than keeping pace - and those Russian citizens who ARE having babies tend to be, like the Chechens and Ingush, Muslims near the periphery of Russian territory - perhaps more of a problem than a solution to Moscow. Russians still abort more children than they give birth to each year. Furthermore, the culture of many educated Russians is becoming more ... individualistic ? European ? - well, whatever makes psychology students get purple hair and a stud in the chin. What I think we may well see are attempts to gather more ethnic Russians back into the Russian State. I'd be nervous if I lived in an ex-Soviet state with a large ethnic Russian minority - and there are a few of those.

i) where are the anti-war left ? I don't see them here in any numbers. Or here. Or here. Or here. Looks like those Georgians shouldn't have cheered for Bush so wildly.

Swampy Don't Surf ....

Nightjack - an environmental protester in his youth - on the Kingsnorth Climate Camp protesters :

Swampy is basically Middle Class with a smattering of intellectuals and minor gentry trying to p*** off mater and pater ... Swampy and his mates have more cameras per head than the paparazzi pack following Amy Winehouse ... Never, ever engage Swampy in debate. It’s like dealing with a troll. Swampy has a world view that only family, age and a job has a chance of moving. Swampy or someone near him is likely recording whatever you say. The 50 reasonable words used as warning will never come to public light but when after 2 minutes of trying nicely you say “Look just **** Off”, Swampy has his jackpot recording of personal police oppression.

The Guardian :

Other equipment seized since the camp began on Thursday included bolt croppers, climbing ropes and padded suits, which police said suggested that protesters were intending to break into the power station.

Isabelle Michel, another camper, said demonstrators had not made any secret of the fact that they intended to take direct action at the power plant. "This in no way justifies the way the police are treating the camp," she said. "It is disgraceful to suggest that the campers have criminal intent.

Well, call me naive, but it sounds like criminal intent to me. I suppose they'd say it was for the Greater Good :

On Saturday August 9th, the climate camp will go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!

Labour 'descending into chaos" ?

I don't know. Maybe.

Stephen Byers, a former minister, said Mr Brown's policies were more appropriate for "a Sunday afternoon stroll" than for scaling the mountain facing Labour before the next general election, expected in 2010. Mr Byers, a close ally of Tony Blair, former prime minister, said: "We must come forward with bold and ambitious policies." They could include giving cash to tenants in social housing to buy private homes in an effort to revive Britain's moribund housing market, he said.

I think they'll have a job to dig up many bold and ambitious policies. Because their idea of a bold and ambitious policy is to spend lots of money on something, and then stand up in Parliament and reel off the sums of money. Whether the money has done any good or not doesn't seem to matter. The spend is the deed.

"A billion pounds to prevent truancy, which hasn't prevented it !"

And they've run out of money. Now they're frantically trying to think of something that sound good and costs nowt. But they've never had to think like that before. I'm not sure they can do it.

A Russian Patriot

(Bernhard Frye/The Associated Press. Pinched from the International Herald Tribune site)

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts"

The great man is gone. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died aged 89.

I wrote about my favourite book of his, "August 1914", here.

"At a time like this, ensign, party political differences are just ripples on the water."

"Then what differences mean anything at all ?"

"The difference between decency and swinishness, ensign !".

I would have been interested to know what he thought of Putin's Russia. We know he detested Yeltsin's kleptocracy - but while Putin is undoubtedly a Russian patriot, would he have approved of his brand of gangster crony capitalism, where you can be as great a villain as you like as long as you don't interfere with what are seen as State interests ?

According to the massive IHT obituary (and what a good news site that is - I find I'm using it more and more these days) :

Solzhenitsyn was heir to a morally focused and often prophetic Russian literary tradition, and he looked the part. With his stern visage, lofty brow and full, Old Testament beard, he recalled Tolstoy while suggesting a modern-day Jeremiah, denouncing the evils of the Kremlin and later the mores of the West. He returned to Russia and deplored what he considered its spiritual decline, but in the last years of his life he embraced President Vladimir Putin as a restorer of Russia's greatness.

I can understand that. "Our" capitalists - if indeed any British capitalists can be said to be "ours" any more - would mostly sell their grandmothers for a few million more. Judging by the kicking BP are getting - predicted two years ago here - and I don't approve, btw - "their" capitalists have a different agenda.

His rare public appearances could turn into hectoring jeremiads. Delivering the commencement address at Harvard in 1978, he called the country of his sanctuary spiritually weak and mired in vulgar materialism. Americans, he said, speaking in Russian through a translator, were cowardly. Few were willing to die for their ideals, he said. He condemned both the United States government and American society for its "hasty" capitulation in Vietnam. And he criticized the country's music as intolerable and attacked its unfettered press, accusing it of violations of privacy.

Many in the West did not know what to make of the man. He was perceived as a great writer and hero who had defied the Russian authorities. Yet he seemed willing to lash out at everyone else as well — democrats, secularists, capitalists, liberals and consumers.

That's true (the lashing out - not the references to America) .

In October 1994, Solzhenitsyn addressed Russia's Parliament. His complaints and condemnations had not abated. "This is not a democracy, but an oligarchy," he declared. "Rule by the few." He spoke for an hour, and when he finished, there was only a smattering of applause.

Well that was true too. But he was a marginal figure in his own country - his TV show flopped. Like a heroic-scale Peter Hitchens, his words, steeped as they were in the past, meant little to a generation unaware of their heritage. Ah - here we are :

In 2007, he accepted a State Prize from then-President Putin — after refusing, on principle, similar prizes from Gorbachev and from Yeltsin. Putin, he said in the Der Spiegel interview, "inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible — a slow and gradual restoration."

To do what was possible. I see what he meant.

(Update - the Times has the facsimile page of his 1976 speech "A Warning to the Western World")

"It’s our home, but we feel like moving away"

"About 20 years ago, this tiny Caribbean twin island state was a nation where you could feel relatively safe"

Aye. And about 40 years ago you could say the same of this island.

"Regardless of the criminal's place of birth is, they should be punished severely. I long for the day when capital punishment would be put in place. The police force and the defence force are going to have to step it up. The good book says, “He who kills shall be killed.” Some of these bad men walking the streets of Antigua and Barbuda need to learn a lesson. They’re destroying our society"

Antiguans on the people deported by the US and UK :

“Each year the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada deport thousands of people convicted of various crimes to their countries of citizenship in the Caribbean. There is a widely held belief in the Caribbean that recent crime troubles can be tied directly to the activities of deportees who have learnt criminal behaviour in the developed countries,” said a report issued last year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Latin America and Caribbean region of the World Bank.

The Antiguan government says almost 300 have been returned to the island in the past 10 years. A few were from Britain, but the majority came from the United States. “They are sending back these violent guys. Some left here as babies; they come back as criminals after their graduation from American prison,” said Andy Liburd, editor of the Antigua Sun newspaper. “These people don’t know anyone; they don’t know our culture. Most don’t have family here or if they do, say, have an aunt here she doesn’t want to take them in because of their criminality. Crime is entirely out of control.”

It's one of my pet themes that, where immigration is associated with increased crime, it's not the first generation immigrants who turn out to be bad boys, unless they come from an already dodgy culture like that of Kosovo or Somalia. It's those (a minority, but a significant one in some cultures) who grow up in the new culture (or in our case, and probably in the case of the great American cities, in the lack of culture) who present a problem to the natives. Some of those people then cause a problem 'back a yard' when we kick them out.

She said that Antiguans did not know how to cope with the extreme violence of those who are essentially foreigners ..

The working class natives of London, Birmingham, Manchester face the same issues.

“We’d never seen such ‘bad-mindedness’. It’s beyond control. It’s our home, but we feel like moving away.”

Ain't it hell ...

... being attractive ?

I don't know why, but I'm reminded of the clever girl standing outside the school after the exams - "I'm sure I've failed - I didn't do any work ...", while someone who's really afraid they've failed bites down the ungracious words ...

A few obvious points. Perhaps tops that crowd the balcony when you lean forward aren't the best way to stop chaps looking. Your mother really should have explained that sort of thing to you a while back - and maybe papa too.


"I can't avoid presenting as sexual if I take any care over my appearance"

Perhaps you need to deconstruct that sentence - unpack it a little and tease out the meaning of 'taking care'.

"There is no freedom, for the young women of my generation, to define beauty in the way we want it, particularly not in the working world where a reasonable level of conventional dressing is expected."

Does conventional dressing equal Nell Gwynne ? And of course, you're as free as a bird to leave, start your own media organisation - or to dress as you wish. What are they going to do - sack you ? Not if you're any good they won't.

I guess Ms Red wants to have the cake and eat it - or, to put it another way, to be able to dress as if there are no other people in the world. Alas, dear reader, there are. And half of them are chaps. And unless they start putting something in the tap water, chaps will look - as they've been doing for the last several thousand years.

(And pretty girls will have advantages over their plainer sisters - as they've had for the last several thousand years. I predict a CiF column for Ms Red - all their young female columnists are fit (who chooses them ?), whereas some of the young chaps hit every branch in the ugly tree.)

I Merely Report ...

The British government faces a potential diplomatic row with Antigua over the shooting of the honeymoon couple Catherine and Benjamin Mullany after demanding that anyone convicted of the crime will not face the death penalty. Antiguan officials told The Daily Telegraph that the Foreign Office attempted to make such a pledge a condition of allowing Scotland Yard detectives to fly out to help in the investigation. One senior Antiguan source said British officials initially demanded a signed guarantee from the country’s Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer.

The Antiguan interior minister told the Foreign Office that the government could not make any such pledge as the death penalty was decided by the Caribbean island’s judiciary, which is technically independent. The British demand to its former colony is understood to have annoyed Antigua’s leadership. Eight years ago, the two countries clashed diplomatically with its former colony after the UK tried to stop the execution of Steadroy McDougal for the murder of a Scottish woman and her boyfriend.

You almost have to admire a government that has such a dedication to the interests of everyone except their own citizens.

(en passant, our new DPP, Keir Starmer, was instrumental in getting mandatory death sentences abolished in Jamaica, and reprieving 100 death row prisoners in Trinidad.)

Where's He Gone Now ?

"He" being James Hamilton. As I was trolling my way from post to post this arvo, I came upon Paulie's (not Wolfgang, the other one) repost of a James Hamilton classic from way back. James had then removed his old blog and created a new one devoted to the psychology of sport.

Now that's gone as well, unless he's moved and my links are out of date, which they generally are.
But the power of Google didn't find him on the first couple of pages, anyway.

Anyone know where his work has gone and where he is ? He's such a good writer, 'twere pity to lose his work. And I'd like to retrieve a comment I posted a while back - about the amazing Harry Sharratt.

UPDATE - both Paulie's and my links are indeed out of date. Thank you Blognor. James is still very much with us here.

The Age Of Political Consent ?

Twenty-one today, twenty-one today,
I've got the key of the door
Never been twenty-one before
Mother says I can do as I like
So shout Hip Hip Hooray!
I'm the King of the Castle,
Twenty-one Today!

That song - and how old fashioned it seems now - was, up until 1970, when the voting age became 18, sung at 21st birthday parties, which marked the transition to adulthood. The key of the door meant the freedom to come and go as you pleased, an adult in the house. And of course it meant becoming a full member of the community, with all the rights - and all the responsibilities - entailed thereby.

The last Labour policy meeting at Warwick, in between rearranging the deckchairs on RMS Titanic (G. Brown, Capt.) has decided to "back extending the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds" .

They're putting the cart before the horse. Instead of asking - 'what's the meaning of the age of political responsibility ? is it the same as adulthood ? does adulthood imply independence ?' they're asking 'how can we engage the young in politics' and 'how can we increase our vote ?'.

40 years ago it was much simpler. 21 was adult, full stop. The day you became entitled to vote was the day you became liable to be sent to an adult prison (although some Borstals took people up to 23), the day (pre-67) when you could be hung for murder. I'm not sure what the laws were regarding student grants - whether a 21 year old (say at medical school) with rich parents got less of a grant, but except for medics most education was over by 21, so the question of still being dependent didn't apply.

Lowering the voting age to 18 started to create anomalies - different responsibilities at different ages. Criminals under 21 had previously been dealt with as 'Young Offenders', over 21 as 'Adult offenders', but 18-20 year olds continued not to be dealt with as adults despite the lowering of the voting age, and the income of parents was taken into account when deciding on the level of maintenance grants for students.

Now we have a host of laws restricting the activities of 16 to 18 year olds - for what may or may not be considered good reasons. They can't buy cigarettes, alcohol, knives, guns, fireworks. As a child of seven or eight I bought fireworks - and like the other boys at primary school, I nagged my mother as to when I could buy my first knife (my ninth birthday, as it turned out). The 'age of responsibility' has increased for many things. (Some other things which would then have attracted a prison sentence are now legal for sixteen year olds. Just don't offer them a cigarette afterwards.)

The Government are planning to make school attendance compulsory for 16 to 18 year olds - with their parents going to jail if they don't go. See this blog for details. EMA and other allowances are based on parental income - implicitly declaring the child to be dependent on their parents.

How does this square with giving them the vote at 16 ? I'd suggest it doesn't. The liberal policy wonks seem to be engaged in a process of lowering the age of political responsibility while simultaneously raising the age of responsibility for everything else.

A consistent approach to votes at 16 would be to :

a) abolish educational conscription - how dare you force a 16 year old adult to attend school

b) adult prisons for 16 year old criminals.

c) adult sentences likewise

d) no compulsory parental contributions for education or anything else. Parental income not to be taken into account when assessing grants etc. like the 'staying at school' grant (ECA ?) . Remember, these are independent adults you're talking about. The 16 year old child of a millionaire and the 16 year old child from a council house both have zero income and should both get that £30 a week. They should also get full grants at university.

e) no more nonsense about fining parents for what their children do

f) that law about adults in authority fiddling with their 16 year old (adult !) charges needs to go. And 16 year olds will be able to buy pornography. And act in it. And buy cigarettes. And fireworks. And knives. And alcohol. And air rifles. And ammunition.

Now I think the above sounds somewhat foolish. But so are votes at 16. In fact, given the contradictions still unaddressed from 1970, I'd either raise the age to 21 again or resolve those contradictions.

Can This Be True ?

Valerie Grove, in a Miliband portrait.

"Until George W. Bush beat Al Gore, the US had never voted in the shorter candidate"

Really ? Never ? Anyone know ? Comments are open on this post.

Polly Toynbee comes out in support of Miliband

The David Miliband CiF piece which launched his 'leadership bid' received over 850 comments, nearly all negative. The polls say Miliband would be less popular than Brown. As I've already said, Miliband is one of the the few people compared to whom GB looks like Mr Ordinary Bloke.

Now Poll Pot has come out for Miliband, sounding pretty much like she did a year ago, coming out for Gordon Brown. Perhaps more breathless and girlish, if anything :

Suddenly everything changed. The burst of optimism was so startling it dazzled those too long trapped deep in a dungeon. In that one moment it was all over for the old leader who had plunged them into these depths. Suddenly here was the chance of escape everyone was waiting for.

David Miliband stepped up as the man with a plan to take the fight to the Tories, the man to free the party from the bondage of disastrous leadership. With the deftest of brush strokes in his Guardian article, he painted the policies of optimism ... here was a sketched outline of radical policies. Judging from an avalanche of emails pouring in, out there Labour people are ready to return if the party offers something better.

He set a small stone rolling down the hill, its effect unpredictable: already it has become a boulder. His press conference and performance on the Jeremy Vine Show gave his party the chance to look at him in a new light. His breezy ease ... he dismissed suspicion that this silver-spoon-fed political princeling hadn't the guts to reach for the sword in the stone, nor the muscle, the will or the street-fighting canniness for power.

Downing Street's crude retaliations - "immature self-serving traitor" - were tossed away with a smile.

Blimey. A new champion steps forth. Dungeons, princelings and swords. Who is that lonely maiden in the tower, her fair hands embroidering a Trades Council banner ?

Polly, Polly, let down your long hair !

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

Or maybe :

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

As usual the comments are the best. This one is perfect :

If one believed Pollyana, (a far-fetched notion, I admit), Brown was a winning combination of Solon, Merlin and Max Planck. I and many others at the time pointed out the absurdity of Pollyana's analysis. That Brown was just more of the same. He was a man who had marched in lock-step with the discredited Blairite Project every inch of the way. But, alas, Pollyana was giddy with love and wouldn't listen.

Now the scales have fallen from her eyes to reveal...another set of scales. Is there any limit to this wretched woman's foolishness?

Doesn't seem to be, does there ? I do start to wonder if the CiF writers are just in it for the page reads now - under orders from the editor to attract as many hits as possible by writing indefensible nonsense - thus attracting a swarm of angry comments.

HMG Fail In Attempt To Sell UK's Nuclear Industry To French Govt

British Energy's nuclear power stations are seen as some of the best sites for new reactors in the UK. EDF, which is 85% owned by the French government, is the biggest nuclear power generator in the world.

I wonder if the French government would be keen on selling its nuclear power to a foreign government ? I wouldn't have thought so, somehow. But to Brown's bums, everything is up for sale. I doubt Cameron would be much different.

At least Charles II actually got the French to sign the Treaty of Dover.

I Thought It Was Only Men

... who do this sort of thing ?

A mother killed her five year old son to spite his father before taking her own life, an inquest has heard.Emma Hart, 27, force-fed Lewis Dangerfield a lethal cocktail of pain killers and antidepressants at their home then fled to her mother's flat nearby and slashed her wrists.

In a note to the little boy's father, Shaun Dangerfield, which she left by his body, she wrote: 'I told you I would make you pay, enjoy your life now, nothing is stopping you, ha ha ha. Just remember it's your fault.

Another Day ...

Another Home Office strategy overturned by the courts :

The regulations required people not legally settled in the UK to seek special permission to marry. These rules applied to couples even though one of them might have a legal right to be in the country. They were brought in by then-Home Secretary David Blunkett in 2004, amid concerns that thousands of people a year were using sham marriages to stay in the UK.

However the regulations were ruled as illegal by the High Court in 2006 and then Appeal Court last year. Yesterday the Law Lords agreed, saying they were an "arbitrary and unjust interference" with human rights. Baroness Hale said: "Denying those benefits to a couple whose relationship is genuine is neither a rational nor a proportionate response to the legitimate aims of a firm and fair immigration policy."

I love the way that Baroness Hale feels able to assess the proportionality of a law to the evil it's designed to address, and to conclude that requiring a foreigner to request permission to marry in the UK is a disproportionate response to several thousand fraudulent marriages each year and a significant contribution to illegal immigration. In the bad old days we used to have elected politicians to make those sort of judgements.

Whereas requiring a mother to undergo criminal record checks before escorting her disabled 14 year old son to school ? Obviously perfectly proportional.

A mother has been told she cannot travel to school with her severely epileptic son because she has not been police checked. Jayne Jones, of Aberfan near Merthyr Tydfil, used to travel with her son Alex, 14, in the council-provided taxi when she feared he may have a fit. But Merthyr Tydfil council has told her this must stop until she has undergone a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check.

Baroness Hale does of course have a fair bit of previous.

UPDATE - the Dumb One finds the words that I can't find. Read please.