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Iraq has moved forward. It’s time we did too (The Times) By David Aaronovitch Imagine for a moment that you’ve woken up to the election results from North Korea. Or Syria. Or even China. The turnout is above 62 per cent, and millions of votes have been cast throughout the country for an exhaustingly wide range of candidates from all sorts of political parties and groups. No group will have a majority, so soon negotiations about forming a government will begin. You’d think it was a bloody miracle. And so it is, and it happened in Iraq at the weekend. The campaign was clamorous, with posters everywhere. There was, as far as we know, no widespread fraud, nor was there violence between supporters of the various candidates. One political alliance is reported to have done well in Baghdad, Najaf and Basra, another in Nineveh and Diyala. Followers of the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr — whose uprising was beginning when I went to Iraq in 2004 — went to the polls, as did supporters of a new Kurdish party, Goran, which is challenging the dominance of the two existing Kurdish parties on the ground that wealth should be better distributed. “The new democracy seems to be taking root,” said the man from The New York Times. We’re seven years after Saddam. Seven years in which, in this country at least, nothing seems to have shifted a millimetre. At the weekend, as Iraqis were about to vote, I found myself caught up in yet another Chilcot discussion. Seven years, I said, seven goddamned years of this stuff! Oh, said a woman writer whom I like and whom I want to like me back, but the Iraq war is the kind of thing that we should discuss for seven years. What, so that we can hear the same stock phrases, the same conventional wisdoms that now pass from brain to lip without encountering thought along the way? The war was illegal, immoral, the greatest foreign policy blunder since Suez or since Pharaoh spurred his chariot into the Red Sea, Blair lied or dissimulated, was Bush’s poodle, was driven crazy by his own messianism, didn’t tell the Cabinet anything, didn’t listen to the country’s clear opposition — all the sentiments that led to the bizarre spectacle of Clare Short being applauded at the end of her woeful evidence at the inquiry. Seven years in which (I say it not because it’s important, but because it illustrates something) those who supported military action to remove Saddam have had this support treated as if it were the only thing they did. I think of Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and among the most original and brilliant people in the country, who was told that one of his own members was “compelled to question [his] democratic credentials and commitment to the values of the RSA on that basis [of his views on Iraq]. There seems to be a fundamental conflict of principles.” We rightly make much of our violent shortcomings, as with the death of Baha Musa in 2003 at the hands of our troops. As The Times reported yesterday, his family may have received up to £3 million in compensation. It is true, but difficult to say, that had Musa been a victim of Saddam Hussein, not only would there have been no inquiries, no money, no apologies, but that anyone even whispering such things would have quickly ended up murdered. And yes, that difference matters greatly. It is (I am told) “understandable” that many sensitive Britons feel “wounded” by the circumstances of the war. Well, it certainly was understandable, but it isn’t any longer. Seven years on, it’s gone well beyond the original wound, and we’re at the stage where many folk twist the knife in their own scar to keep it bleeding. They want to stay wounded — they enjoy their wounds. And I’m not even talking about that corrupted part of our body politic that took sides with the murderous insurgents and described them as liberators. But the biggest reason for lamenting seven years of obsessive Shortism is not that it’s been horrid, but that there has been an intellectual and strategic cost to it. In the first place it has made it almost impossible to discuss the Iraqis themselves, to consult them or listen to them. They have become ghosts, invoked as (implausible) casualty figures, or seen on TV briefly lamenting a death or maiming. The Hurt Locker, however worthy of an Oscar it might be, is not a film about Iraq. It is a film about Americans. There has been no popular film yet made about Iraq. In the second, it means that we have had no discussions about what has been avoided in Iraq — the continuation of sanctions or their breakdown, the continuation of Saddam or his handing over to Uday and/or Qusay, what might have happened had there been a coup or an uprising. It means that our discussions have lacked realism. In the third, it has obliterated our ability to think about the future. At enormous cost we have exchanged one of the most exemplary tyrants — an emblem of the triumph of political violence — for what now may be a functioning (if idiosyncratic) democracy. This could make a huge difference to other countries in the region, and we have to discuss how we might help. My specific concern is that there is huge pressure from the re-wounders, the knife-twisters, for Chilcot and his committee not to learn the long-term lessons of Iraq but to emerge with a conclusion that would effectively hobble future governments in taking action abroad. I note the pressure that Shortists of both Left and Right have put on the historians, Lawrence Freedman and Martin Gilbert, because they haven’t grandstanded, cross-examined like barristers or got all arsey and sarcastic with Messrs Brown, Blair and Miliband. We know what the Shortists want. They want Chilcot to say, in effect, that it shouldn’t have happened and mustn’t happen again. Some explicitly want Britain to turn away from the troublous world and its bleeding peoples, and to isolate ourselves, leaving tyrants alone and hoping the resulting refugees can be stopped at Calais. Even years on they won’t want Chilcot, or anyone else, to look at Iraq now and say that there is definitely an important new democracy in the Middle East, and that its existence is one of the most hopeful changes in recent times. And yet, miracle that it is (Iraqi miracle that it is), it’s true. |
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The pound will rise as the euro heads south (The Times) By Bill Emmott The time to be greedy, the Sage of Omaha says, is when others are fearful, and the time to be fearful is when others are greedy. Warren Buffett has for years delighted in reusing old investment sayings, and they don’t seem to have done the world’s most famous investor much harm. Right now, that saying looks especially valid for anyone feeling nervous about their holdings of sterling. It is time to get greedy instead. Such thinking may sound merely wishful after the wailing and gnashing last week about hung parliaments, eternal fiscal deficits and credit downgradings. For sure, currency forecasting is a mug’s game, given the complexity of factors involved and given that all exchange rates are seesaws rather than absolute values, with one currency’s fall always involving others’ rise. Yet with the euro being one of the main currencies at the other end of the pound’s seesaw, this looks a pretty good bet to take. The British economy’s woes and weaknesses are news to no one. It has been plain at least since 2007 that we need higher exports and lower consumer debt, and plain for the past year that the huge rise in public borrowing can only be an interim solution. But that is why sterling has already fallen by more than 25 percent since mid-2007, reversing the roughly 25 percent rise that had occurred since the late 1990s. Could it fall another 25 percent? Well, it has fallen 4 percent in the past month, and could, of course, in theory fall even further if investors came to think of other currencies and economies... |
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The scandalous history of Cyprus (The Guardian) By Robert Ellis Last week at a House of Commons event on Cyprus, Europe minister Chris Bryant called the fact that within the EU we have a divided capital and a divided island “a scandal and a tragedy”. It is difficult to disagree. But as Greek Cypriot leader Demetris Christofias has pointed out, Britain bears much of the blame. When Britain refused to grant self-determination to Cyprus in the 1950s, the Greek Cypriot demand for enosis (union with Greece) led to the campaign and threatened British control of this strategically important island. The British countermove was to invite both Greece and Turkey to a conference in London in 1955, ostensibly to discuss political and defence matters affecting the eastern Mediterranean. However, as defence minister Selwyn Lloyd explained to the cabinet before the conference: “Throughout the negotiations our aim would be to bring the Greeks up against the Turkish refusal to accept enosis and so condition them to accept a solution which would leave sovereignty in our hands.” According to the 1923 treaty of Lausanne Turkey had renounced all claim to Cyprus, so it had to manufacture a series of arguments – historical, geographical and above all strategic – to justify its interest in the island. In 1956 Nihat Erim submitted a report to prime minister Adnan Menderes, which can be considered the blueprint for Turkey’s strategy over the last 50 years. The Erim report clearly states that the only solution for Cyprus consists of partition under Turkish control and mentions ... |
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Malaysia’s rabble rouser (The Guardian) By Wajahat Ali The long-running political drama starring Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s relentless campaign to democratically reform Malaysia’s government of its corruption and nepotism recently took another absurd turn with his criminal prosecution for allegedly sodomising a former aide. “The charges levelled against me have to be seen in this broader context. The fact that the same plot that was hatched in 1998 is being repeated reflects a certain bankruptcy and lack of creativity on [the government’s] part,” says Ibrahim in my exclusive interview with the 62-year-old rabble rouser. Ibrahim, whose political party won significant seats in the 2008 election, is a veteran of such accusations, having spent six years in prison for corruption, which he and many others maintain was solely fuelled by a malicious government campaign to silence him for his vocal protests. In 2000, he was sentenced to nine years on sodomy charges, which were later overturned by the supreme court in 2004. He says: “Since our unprecedented victory in the March 2008 polls, there have been relentless attacks to destabilise our state governments, to threaten and intimidate our elected officials and to undermine public confidence in our ability to govern. You name it and it’s been hurled at us.” Such harassment, if true, is certainly exacerbated by Ibrahim’s pointed critique of the government. Most recently, Ibrahim blasted the government’s official response to the highly publicised 31 December cou... |
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Clinton’s Latin American clangers () By Mark Weisbrot Hillary Clinton’s Latin America tour is turning out to be about as successful as George W Bush’s visit in 2005, when he ended up leaving Argentina a day ahead of schedule just to get the hell out of town. The main difference is that she is not being greeted with protests and riots. For that she can thank the positive media image that her boss, President Obama, has managed to maintain in the region, despite his continuation of his predecessor’s policies. But she has been even more diplomatically clumsy that Bush, who at least recognised that there were serious problems and knew what not to say. “The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion,” Clinton said in Buenos Aires, adding that “it was done without violence.” This is rubbing salt into her hosts’ wounds, as they see the military overthrow of President Mel Zelaya last June, and subsequent efforts by the US to legitimise the dictatorship there as not only a failure but a threat to democracy throughout the region. It is also an outrageous thing to say, given the political killings, beatings, mass arrests, and torture that the coup government used in order to maintain power and repress the pro-democracy movement. The worst part is that they are still committing these crimes. Today nine members of the US Congress – including some Democrats in Congressional leadership positions – wro... |
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The BBC’s retreat may yet turn into a rout (The Times) By David Elstein The BBC is not just one of Britain’s best-loved institutions, but also one of its most political. After a year of sniping from both the Labour and Conservative front benches, the Ross-Brand affair, uproar over executive pay and expenses, pressure to reveal talent costs in detail, jaw-dropping overruns on big capital projects and a fierce battle over possible top slicing of the licence fee, the BBC has pulled its tanks back to a more defensible line, ready for a possible second onslaught after the election. The strategic review published on Tuesday attempts to secure some high ground. No longer will every outpost of imperial expansion be supported. The damaging thrusts by the BBC into vulnerable territory held by local newspapers, commercial radio and online investors will be withdrawn. Token sacrifices will be left on the field of battle: a couple of obscure digital radio services, a thousand little-visited programme websites, unduly expensive US programme acquisitions and sports rights, magazine publishing in the UK, and Lonely Planet-style deals by BBC Worldwide. The planned regrouping is cleverly designed. Quality will be put first (where was it previously?). BBC websites will carry click-throughs to their beleaguered rivals. Overheads will again be cut (or rather, new Labour-style, cuts announced in 2008 and again in 2009 are reannounced). Eventually, £600m a year will be added to the BBC’s programme- making budget, concentrating on the core activities that one always imagined were the BBC’s prime purpose anyway: journalism, factu... |
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