commentators

Commentators in the spotlight

The Independent: More chameleon than green

Joe Lieberman: America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists

Nicholas D Kristof: How Much Genocide Is Too Much?

Ferdinand Mount: The Tories and LibDems have become Natural Allies

Michael Ashcroft: The Rules On Funding Parties Are Clearly Mad...

John Stevens:  Police Killers Deserve The Death Penalty

Dr Roy Spencer: Growth and technology - not Kyoto - will answer the developing world's economic and environmental challenges

Melanie Phillips: The Whitehall Free-for-All

Wall Street Journal: Should America Ban 'Aggressive Interrogation'?

Nicholas Kristof: Bleeding Hearts of the World, Unite!

Dean Godson: The Tories' Molotov-Ribbentrop pact against anti-terror measures

The Independent: More chameleon than green

Newspapers are not exactly models of consistency.

The Daily Mail preaches family values in its leader columns but its feature pages are full of tittle tattle about celebrities and their lifestyles.  It is often editorialising in favour of true religion but Jonathan Cainer's horoscopes are used to sell the newspaper.

David Willetts once criticised the tendency of The Telegraph to tell the Tory Party to remain true to its core principles whilst it was constantly reinventing itself with more liberal and culturally leftish features.

For stinking hypocrisy, however, yesterday's Independent takes the biscuit.  This was one of the messages of its news pages in a feature entitled 'Ten things you can do at home' (to fight global warming:

"HOLIDAY IN THE UK

Giving up on foreign trips will help cut down aviation emissions. A flight to Athens emits 2,336kg of CO2 per passenger."

But The Independent isn't exactly putting its wallet where its editorial mouth is.  The image on the right is a reproduction of the contents guide to its Traveller Section.  The encouragement to holiday in Britain gets about 25 words.  Encouragements to travel around the world get 28 pages.  Adverts in the newspaper include...

Discover Syria...

Journey Latin America...

91 flights a week to Dubai...

Book now for festive fun in Lapland...

Smile!  You are in Spain...

Innsbruck-Tirol; Fly midweek from £79 return...

Sydney £569...

The list of adverts for foreign travel goes on and on...

Remember that hypocrisy next time you read The Indy and are faced with one of its poster frontpages urging governments to take Kyoto-style environmental action.

I wonder where its editor holidays?  Or Tim Yeo for that matter...

Joe Lieberman: America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists

"I believe we are fighting to create a tolerant and accountable democracy which will bring peace and justice to a country whose people have been denied both for so long.  Ranged against us is a ruthless foe, who knows he must break us in Iraq if he is to succeed.  If he does succeed, Iraq will plunge into a new era darkened by oppression and persecution.  It will be internally riven and fought for by its neighbours.  But more than that: a terrorist victory will feed the monster of Islamic extremism worldwide - opening every city from New York to Berlin and from London to Paris to a rejuvenated terrorist onslaught.  The terrorists don’t want to win in Iraq in order to begin a happy retirement.  They want to win in Iraq as a stepping stone to America and other free nations around the globe."

Those words come from a recent speech by Iain Duncan Smith.   Few people have a keener understanding of the terrorism that will be visited on neighbouring countries by a failed Iraq than the Jews.  Israel would be a number one target for a failed Iraq - just as Saddam paid money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Senator Joe Lieberman (David Davis lookalike?) is one of the few American Democrats that understands what is at stake in Iraq - perhaps because he is Jewish.  This is what he wrote in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal:

"It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority."

The Senator fears that the war is being lost in Washington as it is bearing fruit in Iraq:

"While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory."

Nicholas D Kristof: How Much Genocide Is Too Much?

I recently noted David Cameron's weak response to the worsening situation in Darfur, Sudan.  His reliance on UN-led action amounts to poseur multilateralism.  I can't believe that it wins the approval of DC's neocon supporters - Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey, George Osborne and the like.  I certainly hope not.

Nicholas Kristof's latest despatch for the New York Times (from Nyala, Sudan - subscription required) shows that the situation is continuing to deteriorate.  He writes:

"The international community has delegated security to the African Union, but its 7,000 troops can't even defend themselves, let alone protect civilians. One group of 18 peacekeepers was kidnapped last month, and then 20 soldiers sent to rescue them were kidnapped as well; four other soldiers and two contractors were killed in a separate incident.  What will happen if the situation continues to deteriorate sharply and aid groups pull out? The U.N. has estimated that the death toll could then rise to 100,000 a month."

His article notes that many natives of the region are only allowed to live/subsist in exchange for protection money or as slave labour.  'When will the world act?', he asks: 

"Will President Bush and other leaders discover some backbone if the killing spreads to Chad and the death toll reaches 500,000? One million? God forbid, two million?  How much genocide is too much?"

He recommends this blog - Sleepless in Sudan - from "a dazed and confused aid worker in Sudan".

Ferdinand Mount: The Tories and LibDems Have Become Natural Allies

In yesterday's Telegraph, Ferdinand Mount wrote that "the old abysses separating the Conservatives from the Liberal Democrats have narrowed or virtually disappeared".  He suggested that a "fresh axis" might establish itself, between the two parties.

Mr Mount noted recent parliamentary Tory/LibDem co-belligerence against the 90-day detention plan and, just last week, against Labour's amnesty for on-the-run IRA terrorists.  He also stressed both parties' interest in localism.

Mr Mount ends his piece by suggesting that a blue-yellow coalition after the next General Election might present a better option to the LibDems than "the alternative of propping up an exhausted and discredited Labour administration".

Listed below is my back of the envelope summary of where the parties are coming together - and where there are still big differences...

Where the Tories are moving towards the LibDems:

• On Kyoto where Oliver Letwin is co-operating with LibDem Norman Smith.
• On civil liberties where David Davis has been at one with LibDems on such issues as detention without trial.
• Cannabis where David Cameron's more liberal position is close to that of Charles Kennedy.

Where the LibDems are moving towards the Tories:

• Europe.  The Orange Book Liberals (Oaten, Cable, Webb, Laws etc) are pushing the party to a more "realistic" position following the problems of the eurozone and the French/Dutch rejection of the Constitution.
• On tax the LibDems have refined their policies and are now suggesting that the overall tax burden should (probably) not rise overall.

Where there are still big gaps:

• The Iraq war.
• Attitudes to marriage and the family where the Liberals remain wedded to the ideas of sixties socialism.

HAVE YOU VOTED IN CONSERVATIVEHOME'S EXCLUSIVE SURVEY OF TORY OPINION?

Michael Ashcroft: The Rules On Funding Parties Are Clearly Mad - So Let Voters Add Some Sanity

Writing for today's Times Lord Ashcroft, the former Tory Treasurer who rescued the Conservative Party from the financial ruins of the 1997 General Election campaign, has called for political parties to be able to "accept financial support — cash, benefits in kind and credit — from whomsoever they choose and without financial limit".

He criticises the existing rules governing party donations as nonsensical.  He highlights, for example, the fact that citizens of Gibraltar are only 'permissible donors' for the four months before a European election (in which they are entitled to vote) but that a "100 per cent foreign-owned, but UK-incorporated, company that has only foreign directors, none of whom has ever been to Britain, let alone speaks English" is permitted to donate to a British political party.  He also notes that Sinn Fein "is free to to receive money raised by republican sympathisers in the United States without restriction."

Lord Ashcroft calls for Britain's voters to decide whether a political party has been right to accept money from an overseas business person or a porn king, for example.  The political parties should be free to raise money from anyone they deem acceptable but must disclose any donations much more rapidly than at present:

"By allowing parties to take money from any quarter, so long as they are entirely open about whom is giving it, the onus would be on politicians to act reasonably and to exercise sound judgment. It would place an equal duty on the media to report donations responsibly.  But in the end, it will be down to Joe and Jo Public to judge. We should trust them. They usually get it right."

John Stevens: Police Killers Deserve The Death Penalty

Lord Stevens - former Metropolitan Police Commissioner - has used his column in the News of the World (not online) to call for police murderers to face the death penalty.  His intervention comes after Friday's killing of a Bradford WPC.

Lord Stevens begins his article by admitting that he used to oppose the death penalty because society should not take life that has been given by God and shouldn't reduce itself to the level of murderers.  But Lord Stevens has changed his mind:

"For the first time in my life, despite 40 years at the sharp end of policing, I finally see no alternative.  Such an extreme act of pure evil can only be met by the most extreme of responses - and that can only be death."

He says that the growing inadequacy of sentences has fuelled his change of heart.  Life no longer means life, he complains, and that imprisonment is an inadequate disincentive "to the creatures who inhabit the deepest depths of our society today". 

He continues:

"There must be massive safeguards to ensure the wrong people don't go to the gallows.  But those who can incontrovertibly be proved to have murdered a police officer should be killed... I now know that capital punishment is the only major way left for the majority of right-thinking people to fight against the minority of monsters in our midst."

Lord 'When he speaks, Britain listens' Stevens says that police killing is different from other killing:

"A police officer is someone you and I have chosen to defend and uphold the very basics of our society, our state.  We appoint them guardians of what we have decided is right and wrong."

Roy Spencer: It Is Impractical To Ask People To Suffer Economically For Unmeasurable Reductions In Future Levels In Global Warming

Opportunity cost is one of economics' most important ideas.  It refers to the cost of the lost opportunities that are involved in pursuing one course, rather than another.  If, for example, I have twenty pounds and choose to use it buying two DVDs the opportunity cost is the food I can no longer buy or the cinema tickets I can no longer afford.

The idea of opportunity cost is at the heart of the Copenhagen Consensus.  The CC team of economists examined some of the world's greatest challenges and decided which most merited today's resources.  It concluded that combating HIV/AIDS was much more deserving of scarce economic resources than Kyoto-type action on global warming (recently adopted by David Cameron).  The Consensus proposes that more lives could be saved by providing micro nutrients, liberalising trade and controlling malaria than acting against climate change.  The Consensus concluded that expensive action against climate change should be one of the international community's lowest priorities.  Better to wait until technologies provide both cheaper and more effective remedies.  The Economist magazine sponsored and welcomed the CC's findings.

This whole analysis was taken up yesterday by Dr Roy Spencer on TechCentralStation.com.  He begins by noting a University of Wisconsin-Madison paper that global warming is killing 150,000 people every year because of warming-related increases in flooding, diarrhea and drought, for example.  Many Kyoto fundamentalists will use these findings to deplore the Kyoto sceptics but the world is blighted by other - bigger - killers.  More people are being killed by the protectionism of western nations.  In both protectionism and Kyoto environmentalism the same 'selfish garden instincts' are at work.  We have our prosperity and happy lifestyle - the poor third world mustn't ruin our party. 

Spencer's key belief is that "wealthier is happier":

"There is a reason poor countries are much more concerned with achieving a decent standard of living than whether there might be some environmental consequences. Haven't you ever wondered why environmental concerns are almost exclusively restricted to people with a good standard of living? Those that have access to abundant refrigerated food, clean water, and health care? They can afford to spend some of their wealth to reduce pollution. Much of the world can not. As it is, many areas of poor countries have been mostly deforested as people forage for wood to cook and heat with. Is this what environmentalists want? Also, the poorest countries have the greatest rates of population growth. Is this what environmentalists want?

...Two billion of the Earth's inhabitants still do not have access to electricity, leading to massive death tolls from problems such as food-borne illnesses (due to a lack of refrigeration) and pneumonia brought on by breathing air contaminated by the burning of dung or wood for heat and cooking."

None of this means that climate change isn't a real concern but it will only be tackled by a blue environmentalism of technological advance.  The poor southern nations and newly industrialising countries are not going to sign up to a growth-cooling Kyoto-type treaty.

Melanie Phillips: The Whitehall Free-For-All

Sir Christopher Meyer may have earnt some money from his DC Confidential book but he has undermined the standing of Britain's diplomatic and civil services.  That is certainly the view of Melanie Phillips.  Writing on Monday she said that Sir Christopher had "behaved badly":

"Revealing the content of private conversations almost immediately upon leaving office is indeed a betrayal of trust and wholly unacceptable between any employee and employer, whether in or out of government... If ministers or officials fear that their words are being recorded in a diary for eventual publication, they will simply refuse to speak freely, and government will then become paralysed."

Most public attention has focused on Sir Christopher's criticisms of Tony 'starstruck' Blair, Jack 'intimidated and tongue-tied' Straw and John 'Balklands' Prescott.   But DC Confidential also allocates space to poking fun at John Major with references to his underpants and morning habits.

Melanie Phillips is unimpressed with Labour's complaints at Sir Christopher, however, and writes:

"He has hardly pioneered the indecent sprint from the corridors of power into the arms of the publishing trade. There has been an unending stream of ministers and former officials rushing into print as soon as they leave office, and yet with barely a head turned.  Clare Short, Robin Cook, Geoffrey Robinson and Mo Mowlam all published memoirs and diaries shortly after leaving office, while David Blunkett, John Prescott and Gordon Brown are understood to have co-operated with the production of biographies, with colleagues queuing up anonymously to dish the dirt on their political opponents."

Wall Street Journal: Should America Ban 'Aggressive Interrogation'?

There is much popular anger directed at the USA because of its alleged use of torture in interrogating combatants detained in the war on terror.  On this blog 'Selsdon Man' has been a persistent and articulate advocate of that anger.

A 'hot topic article' in today's Wall Street Journal argues that there is a difference between the 'aggressive interrogation' used by America's military and what might popularly be thought of as 'torture'.  The WSJ also says that the continuation of AI techniques is essential to pre-empt future terrorist threats.

Here are the two relevant quotations:

(1) "It is simply perverse to conflate the amputations and electrocutions Saddam once inflicted at Abu Ghraib with the lesser abuses committed by rogue American soldiers there, much less with any authorized U.S. interrogation techniques. No one has yet come up with any evidence that anyone in the U.S. military or government has officially sanctioned anything close to "torture." The "stress positions" that have been allowed (such as wearing a hood, exposure to heat and cold, and the rarely authorized "waterboarding," which induces a feeling of suffocation) are all psychological techniques designed to break a detainee."

(2) "It is hardly far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which our ability to extract information from a terrorist is the only thing that might prevent a bioterror attack or even the nuclear annihilation of an American city. And we know for a fact that information wrung from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others has helped prevent further attacks on U.S. soil."

Discuss...