Day 2839: Mum's Gone to Iceland… so slap her with a Section 44 Order

Thursday:


THIS is why Governments should not ever ever ever be given powers under the Terrorism Act… because they will use them, and abuse them and get us into a WAR with them.

I mean, okay, so why SHOULD Iceland expect to be treated any differently to the way the Government treats our own teenage kids, just because they've got, you know, a NAVY.

Still, the people of Iceland should be used to FROZEN ASSETS… oh, come on, SOMEONE was going to say it!


But HONESTLY, is it even LEGAL?

Even our own Government Ministers don't seem to think so.

Mr David Dimbledonkey tried asking the Secretary of State for Innovative Scams, Mr John Deadman on Questionable Time and the minister's reply was:

"Well, it looks like what Iceland did was illegal too!"

Doesn't he know that two WRONGS do NOT make a Jonny WRIGHT? And since when has "THEY STARTED IT" been an excuse fit for a Minister of the Crown? (Don't you DARE say "Poland"!)


Okay, so it is VERY annoying when you have accidentally misplaced getting on for a BILLION pounds. I can get quite cross when I lose a sticky bun down the back of my sofa so this must be a lot like that. You think you've put it somewhere SAFE and then Daddy comes along and SITS on it…

Anyway, it is, after all, basically Mr Frown's FAULT (again) because he was the one who ordered the Councils to put their money in banks with the best rate or return, and it was his FSA who failed to pick up on (Liberal Democrat) warnings that the Icelandic Banks AA rating might be less Fourth Emergency Service and more Alcoholics Spendaholics Anonymous!

But frankly, torpedoing the Icelandic economy when it's already sinking is really NOT going to help.

This sort of retaliatory action is the start of the kind of PROTECTIONISM that will sink the Global Economy and turn a recession into a depression.

Wouldn't it be a lot more sensible to see if the European Union or the World Bank can step in; wouldn't it at least be worthwhile organising the G7 to consider some rescue package for the Icelandic Banks; wouldn't at the very least enlightened self-interest tell you that freezing their assets is going to freeze OUR Councils' cash in there too? Starting a fight through the courts to get hold of the money is surely the longest, costliest and STUPIDEST way out of this mess.

Working together is the only alternative to falling apart.

The Prime Monster has called these "extraordinary times", and extraordinary times for the people and the state call for agents extraordinary…



…no, hang on, this leads to Sooty in a skin-tight leather cat-suit and then madness!


Let us instead try to BE extraordinary.

We can start by unfreezing the Icelanders' money, and sit down and talk to them, talk to other countries and see if we can't solve this TOGETHER. The old Labour/Conservatory approach of BLAMING others and throwing up barriers… we know that that doesn’t work; this is the LIBERAL solution, the internationalist solution, the reach-out-to-others-in-need-and-they-will-reach-back-to-you solution. But more importantly, it's the ONLY solution.

Day 2731: The Chihuahua That Roared

Monday:


And by "Chihuahua" I mean our esteemed leader, who is happy to be associated with the little dog that doesn't let its size stop it standing up for what it believes in.


Mr Clogg has made a KEYNOTE SPEECH to Chattering House about Liberal Democrat foreign policy and the need to get internationalism back on track after the disaster of the Monkey-in-Chief's administration.

The main area of the speech is, of course, about ZIMBABWE, but Mr Clogg does start out by mentioning EUROPE and THAT Treaty.

And you know what – it looks like I may have CONVINCED him that the consent of the people is more important than the process.

He says:

"Of course I am disappointed that Lisbon was rejected by the Irish people…"

Me too, Mr Clogg, me too

"But if you ask me what is more important at this stage: a strong sense of support and legitimacy for Europe, or the minor reforms of the Lisbon Treaty, I have to come down in favour of the former."

This is JUST what I was saying the other day! Particularly when he goes on to say:

"It is now clear that for the EU to have meaning, legitimacy and resonance with its voters, it will have to win respect through its actions, through its relevance to daily lives."

Mr Clogg goes on to point out that the problem is NOT about Europe versus the people OF Europe, it is much wider (and WORSE) than that. It is a problem of DISCONNECTION between the people and ALL politicians. Far from being an endorsement of the anti-EU froth-o-phobes, it is a REJECTION of the ruling classes, whoever they are and whatever they say.

It stems from a growing sense of POWERLESSNESS, brought on by national governments that take decisions in their own interests but rarely in the interests of the people, and from the growth of globalisation, leaving us all as tiny grains of sand in the BIG cogs of the MACHINE.

What Mr Clogg wants is to turn the Union around and make it part of our ANSWER to globalisation, rather than seeming like another SYMPTOM of it!

It is a total misunderstanding of Liberalism to think that it is JUST about the freedom of the INDIVIDUAL to do whatever the heck you want. That is LIBERTARIANISM – and there is a reasonable question to ask whether there is a new Libertarian Party trying to squeeze its way out of the Old Conservatories. Mr Davis David might be a symptom of that.

But TRUE Liberalism is about empowering the individual AND the community AND the county AND the country AND the world… it is about creating networks that support each other, and finding solutions at the appropriate level. A European Union that works PROPERLY, works FOR the people than is imposed ON them, would be just another level in the network, the appropriate level for addressing regulation of the globalised corporations, or for tackling the urgent issue of pollution and approaching climate-geddon.

It is only by working TOGETHER that we can tackle international crises.

Mr Clogg refers to Mr Gladstone who was the first to say:

"the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows, are as sacred as our own."

A hundred and thirty years later, that is why we are in Afghanistan AGAIN.

Mr Clogg then looks at how, following on from Mr Gladstone, there gradually evolved a fragile and tentative framework of international laws and bodies, based on the idea that we could intervene on HUMANITARIAN grounds and not just for national self-interest.

True, we have a serious self-interest in Afghanistan too: we don't want to see it return to a Taliban theocracy pumping out terrorists and opiate as fast as poppies grow. But more importantly that that, the only way the world is going to get better is if we work to make it get better.

Wars these days, whether it is the brutal election-stealing behaviour of Mr Mugabe's forces in Zimbabwe or the perpetual civil wars in Somalia or the ongoing genocide in the Sudan, they are no longer between nations but between peoples. And you know, this is often driven by the shortages of resources that are brought on by the very changes in climate that can ONLY be tackled on a GLOBAL level.

Now Mr Clogg admits that we cannot know what the strategic situation will be ten years from now. But equally, he says, worrying about the war we don't know about is not a good reason to lose the war we DO know about, the one that's going on right now!

So, he says, it's time Great Britain had a Defence Review, time to stop spending billions on Cold War defences, and way past time to start spending on the equipment our soldiers need for peacekeeping.

But he wants to go much further than that.

Thanks to Lord Blairimort and the Monkey-in-Chief, Britain and Americaland have sacrificed a whole lot of their MORAL AUTHORITY for a great deal of nothing. So it's been left up to the Canadians to carry on the work of developing responsible international law.

Mr Clogg points to their work on "Responsibility to Protect" or the clunkily labelled "R2P". (Which sounds like it should be a droid from Star Wars!)

This principle would fit with the idea that somehow the NATO war in Bosnia to save the Bosnians from the Serbs was somehow GOOD while the Monkey-in-Chief's Middle Eastern Adventure was self-evidently BAD.

Mr Clogg laid out how it should work:

First, any intervention should be based on just cause.

Second, it must have the right intention, rather than serving hidden ends.

Third, intervention should always be a last resort.

Fourth, it must be sanctioned by legitimate authority.

Fifth, a response must be of proportional means to the breach.

Sixth – and this must not be forgotten – any intervention must have a reasonable chance of success.

This last one is why – in spite of the MORAL case for doing so – we could not consider a military intervention in Zimbabwe. There is simply no local support.

We were, at least in part, ABLE to invade Iraq because we could start from bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In part because of Iraq, we can't do that in Southern Africa. (Plus there's that whole business of stealing their continent for a century or so.) So even if we wanted to put an army on the ground in Zimbabwe, we wouldn't have anywhere for them to STAND.

Having mentioned Zimbabwe, Mr Clogg also went on to reiterate what he said on the Politics Show, that while we can't intervene militarily, we should still do all we can to defeat Mr Mugabe's evil reign of terror. In particular, we should be cutting off the regime's access to foreign cash (even though we know it will also hurt the ordinary Zimbabwean). We should put pressure on South Africa to come off the fence. If the South Africans cut off the electricity supply then Mr Mugabe will be dramatically weakened.

But, Mr Clogg would go even further than obvious cases of violence and oppression like Zimbabwe. He said that he thought that the INaction of the Burmese Junta after the cyclone earlier this year was ALSO cause for a "R2P" intervention.

Personally, I think we would need to be VERY VERY careful before we start to consider THAT sort of intervention. But really that is what Mr Clogg is proposing: VERY VERY careful consideration, so that we can set up the bodies that COULD intervene and the terms that would govern HOW they could intervene.

In conclusion, then, he said how strongly he believes in Britain's role as a force both for PEACE and for JUSTICE in the world. Of course we should continue to defend our own national interest robustly; but we should also seek to lead the debate on how to develop Responsibility to Protect and the United Nations, and how to do the best for the whole world.

And do you know what, I think maybe HE has persuaded ME too!

Day 2700: Mr Ban Lifts Air-Lifts Ban

Friday

Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon, has managed to persuade General Feng Shui, head of the Burmese military dictatorship, to let foreign aid workers in to try to save lives in a (much delayed) response to the Cyclone Nargis tragedy.

This comes as a great RELIEF to me, since there have been people actually suggesting that the Junta's apparently indifferent response to their own people's suffering is justification enough for the West to INVADE. As if "spreading democracy by force" wasn't bonkers already, let's try "spreading disaster relief by force" and see how THAT works out!

Much has been made of the contrast between the actions of the secretive rulers of Burma and those of the regime in China following the just-as-terrible earthquake disaster. While the Burmese have tried to keep their secret state locked up tighter than Mr Frown's wallet, the Chinese have surprised everyone with their openness and admission of where they cannot cope and need help.

(Of course, you could get CYNICAL and say that with the Olympics coming they really couldn't try a "deny everything" tactic; and some people have suggested that this is really good PR that has drowned out all of the protests about the ongoing occupation of Tibet. But the important issue is getting rescue and relief to the people suffering, and it's worked so that is GOOD.)

What would have happened if it had been the other way around, though? Would people have even SUGGESTED the idea of invading China in order to provide humanitarian relief? No, of course not, because China would kick our fluffy bottoms if we tried.

And this is the CLUE: people saying we should invade are confusing MIGHT with RIGHT. Just because we COULD invade Burma, that would NOT make it a very clever thing to do.

Now, I'm NOT saying that the Burmese military are not treating their own people very badly indeed, but that's not the point. WE can't just go around invading places JUST because we don't like the way their government treats them. That is the old BRITISH EMPIRE reason for invading places: "We know better than you hignorant natives!"

This doctrine of intervention stems from the time of the BALKAN WARS when NATO and the United Nations stepped in to separate the warring parties, in particular to stop the ethnically Serbian side from committing genocide against the ethnically Bosnian side.

We were right to do this.

But it's had CONSEQUENCES. One of which was, obviously, the Monkey-in-Chief's Middle Eastern Debacle. And this sabre-rattling over Burma is another.

What we need is to pin the international law down with a framework that we can use to judge future cases against.

What can we say about the Balkans: a) the parties could be separated into identifiable sides; b) there was an active military campaign of genocide being conducted; c) we could intervene with sufficient force to stop the war.

That third one is important. It's part of the old "Just war" justifications of the church, of course, but the point is a sound one. I'm not actually going to claim that anything makes a war "just", but at least with sufficient resources to "win" you stand a chance of making things better rather than worse by just adding to the chaos.

It does seem that we have LOST something, somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and our response to September 11th. It was the MORAL HIGH GROUND. There used to be things WE DID NOT DO. We learned the lesson of post-colonialism: we COULDN'T boss other people around JUST because we had better guns and a superior attitude. We believed in human Rights and the Charter of the United Nations – great goodness, we in Britain WROTE most of those! – and in the power of persuasion and of time and of the insidious strength of the desire for Disney DVDs and McDonalds.

I am glad to say that the head of the UN clearly STILL believes in those things, and is able to show us that they still WORK.

Thank you, Mr Ban!

PS:

And, while I'm on the subject, why in the name of all that's fluffy are we trying to justify asking for a get-out-of-banning-them-free card for the use of nasty horrid indiscriminate cluster bombs?!

Day 2605: The Changing of the Old Guard

Monday:


The elections have taken place in Pakistan – and, in spite of the troublingly low turnout, they have passed off without major terrorism – and it looks like President Mustbehavingalaugh has been DEFEATED.

And in Cuba, the old rogue President Fidel Castrol GTX (Grey Thatch eXtreme) has bowed to the inevitable and admitted it is time that he retired to spend his remaining years with his remaining organs.

These unrelated world events are linked by the brief flowering of HOPE that they might offer a chance of a better way, before the crushing boot of CYNICISM stamps down saying "get real"!


Mr Jonathan's take on Pakistan is on the PESSIMISTIC side. And you can't blame him.

Circumstances may have changed in Pakistan, with the Pakistan People's Party of Ms Benazir Bhutto offering a coalition deal to the Pakistan Muslim League (N) of Mr Narwaz Shariff, leaving President Mustbehavingalaugh and his Pakistan Muslim League (Q) out in the cold, but by how much?

The REAL test for the new government will be whether they reinstate the JUDGES who President Mustbehavingalaugh deposed and had put under house arrest.

But you've got to worry when the election hasn't stopped the government there from deciding to BAN YouTube as BLASPHEMOUS. Worse still, the reason for getting their theological panties in a bunch was those Danish cartoons, surfacing again. And worst of all, they decided to tackle the perceived blasphemy by HIJACKING the entire site and bringing it down.

So, a victory for modern secularism?

Actually, for a glimpse of something more positive, the secular parties DID win in Pakistan's most religiously CONTROVERSIAL province: the border with Afghanistan where the Taleban roam like predatory WRAITHS!


Meanwhile, for all that absolutely EVERYONE in the American election declared universal joy and hope for Cuba, the likelihood of change there is SMALL, for although Mr Castrol's BROTHER – Rule Castrol! – has said he will hear the complaints of the people about food shortages and, er, lack of Internet access, the appointment of HARDLINER, Mr Jose Ramon Machado Ventura (Pet Detective), as his deputy does not suggest any early abandonment of the Cuban Communist project.


Elsewhere in the world, Britain and America (but NOT Russia) welcome the Earth's one-hundred-and-ninety-third country, as Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.

The Serbs, you might guess, ain't happy. And this is BAD news. Not because they managed to cause two major wars in Europe inside of a hundred years… though actually that IS worth worrying about… but because the recently elected pro-EU Serbian government now looks a bit STUPID and might fall back under the sway of President Vampire Putin, ruler (as of next weekend, from beyond the grave) of Russia.

And I have to say that, since I do not for example fancy SCOTLAND splitting off from Great Britain, nor Britain splitting off from Europe, I can't be ENTIRELY happy about this either.

While I wish the Kosovans nothing but success in their new country, it would be nice to see people trying to work TOGETHER a bit more, rather than just splitting apart all the time.