Part 1 of 9:

“Nah– I was the wrong age then”

The rest on the Utube — you’ll see ‘em, you’ll find ‘em.

…or how Iran is coming to love the bomb.

I refer to a US National Intelligence Estimate published a couple of months ago that was widely reported to clear Iran of involvement in developing nuclear weapons.

The man responsible for that judgement, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, is now back-pedalling, and refers to “confusion” in the way the media reported the original assessment. In testimony earlier this month before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, McConnell said that, in hindsight:

“I think I would change the way that we describe the nuclear program… I would argue, maybe even at least significant portion, was halted and there are other parts that continue.”

McConnell is not saying that the Tehran regime is continuing with the nuclear weapons programme described some four years ago by US Intelligence. The difference now is to do with definitions of uranium enrichment processes and weaponisation.

McConnell now tells the Senate committee that:

“Iran continues to pursue fissile material and nuclear-capable missile delivery systems… Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons. Iran continues its efforts to develop uranium enrichment technology, which can be used both for power reactor fuel and to produce nuclear weapons. And, as noted, Iran continues to deploy ballistic missiles inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and to develop longer-range missiles.”

David Horovitz of the Zionist entity’s esteemed organ The Jerusalem Post has his own spin on the story, and you can make of that opinion(ated) piece what you will. What is clear is that, journalistic selection effect aside, the US intelligence community tied itself up in its own syntax in the original estimate of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Horovitz remarks that you will be lucky to see the revised estimate reported in the mainstream media. That is a little over the top, as even a cursory web search shows, but McConnell’s recent pronouncements are most certainly not front page news.

Unsatisfied with missing Obama’s clear about-face on Cuba, Yank liberal blogger Steve Clemons has written this extraordinary post for Comment is Free. It’s clear that his advocacy for ending the trade embargo is moored to his twittish belief that life in Cuba is just peachy:

While few have yet come to understand the importance of his announcement and the manner of it in the US, the fact that Castro is concluding his term at the end of his constitutionally determined tenure demonstrates a respect for rule of law, at least in Cuban terms.

Actually, there is nothing in the Cuban constitution that determines the length of Castro’s “presidency;” all it does is stipulate that the National Assembly decides who occupies this post. As far as a “higher body of people’s power” is concerned, the National Assembly operates much like the Soviet Central Committee did. (One of the unfulfilled promises of the Communist revolutionaries was to restore the country’s 1940 Constitution, which Batista abrogated but which had previously been hailed one of the most “progressive” democratic covenants in the world.) Also, a “respect for rule of law”? How dare Clemons?

The current constitution legally guarantees “the enjoyment of political freedom, social justice, individual and collective well-being and human solidarity.” Now here is the introduction to Amnesty International’s 2005 report on the imprisonment and systematic abuse of prisoners of conscience in Cuba:

In March 2003, the Cuban government carried out the most severe crackdown on the dissident movement since the years following the 1959 revolution. Scores of dissidents were detained, seventy five of whom were subjected to summary trials and quickly sentenced to prison terms ranging from 26 months to 28 years. This crackdown came as a surprise to many observers who believed that Cuba might be moving towards a more open and tolerant approach towards opponents of the regime: the number of prisoners of conscience had declined and had been superseded by short term detentions, interrogations, summonses, threats, intimidation, eviction, loss of employment, restrictions on travel, house searches or physical or verbal acts of aggression. In addition, in April 2000 the Cuban Government began implementing a de facto moratorium on executions, which was broken in April 2003 with the execution of three men convicted of hijacking a tugboat to leave the island, in which no one was harmed.

[…]

According to the trial documents available, the evidence on which the March 2003 prosecutions were brought and the sentences confirmed included:

1. publishing articles or giving interviews, in US-funded or other media, said to be critical of economic, social or human rights matters in Cuba;
2. communicating with international human rights organisations;
3. having contact with entities or individuals viewed as hostile to Cuba’s interests, including US officials in Cuba, or members of the Cuban exile community in the United States or Europe;
4. distributing or possessing material such as radios, battery chargers, video equipment or publications, from the US Interests Section in Havana(2);
5. being involved in groups which are not officially recognised by the Cuban authorities or which are accused of conducting counterrevolutionary activity, including among others: unofficial trade unions; professional associations such as doctors’ and teachers’ associations; academic institutions; press associations or independent libraries.

Instead of even the barest acknowledgment of this gruesome reality, Clemons chooses to regale his readers of his own good-natured run-in with the authorities:

I even tried to get into a major national event where vice president Raul Castro and National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcon were giving away awards for the 50th anniversary of a student revolt against former Cuban President Fulgencio Battista. I was in my running attire and tried to sneak through, telling the guard that I was an American observer (I was just a bit obnoxious to tell you the truth). The guard laughed it off and gave me credit for trying - but no man-handling, nothing of the sort that has become commonplace in American cities when mayors in DC or NY tell their police forces to arrest first and ask questions later when a WTO meeting or political convention is being hosted.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb smile beatifically on the American observer in his sweaty jogging wear. Of course, given that all opposition in the caudillo’s island paradise has either been murdered or jailed might account for the shrugging indifference with which one useful idiot was met.

Clemons is more than a bit obnoxious, to tell you the truth.

One of the questions Norm asks in his profile series is: do you have any prejudices that you’re willing to acknowledge?

The ‘willing to acknowledge’ forms a crucial part of the query. Simply to ask if one had any would be a pointless question; anything than an answer in the affirmative would be a lie because we all have them. Chris Dillow acknowledged his in this post ‘in praise of class hatred’ where he displays an animus towards posh twats that only my friend Will can match. The response, if you read the comments below the post, was almost uniformly condemnatory. This struck me as disproportionate for two reasons:

1) The blogosphere is full, on a daily basis, of barely-concealed hatred towards various groups in society - immigrants, Muslims, Jews - sorry, Israelis - the unemployed, the poor, the young… People for the most part who don’t have any power. Chris, on the other hand, chooses a representative from a group that does.

2) He was honest about this, which is more than can be said for quite a lot of other people. I’d suggest to you all that, for example, under the average post you get about education in the blogosphere you often get comments displaying prejudices of quite an extraordinary nature - ranging from the need to ensure less eligibility in the welfare system to concerns about the dysgenic breeding of the feckless poor. Persistent, Victorian, unacknowledged is what they are.

In any event, the incensed commentators missed an important point that I thought implicit in the post, which is that prejudice - if we can dispense with the narrow PSE definition of the word - does not always have a malign influence. Or at least it is something we all have and shouldn’t be understood as a phenomenon that only shows its face when confronted with foreigners or people whose lifestyles we disapprove of.

Let me give you the following example to try and explain what I mean. The death penalty: I oppose it and there has never been a time in my life when I’ve thought differently. But the thing is, I don’t find the arguments against it anything like as persuasive as I used to.

While others who know more about this will no doubt correct me, as far as I understand it most of the anti-death penalty arguments are based on utilitarianism, which I don’t agree with in general and with this particular example I don’t see why it would exclude the death-penalty anyway. It isn’t even obvious to me how a utilitarian philosophy would proscribe executing the innocent and letting the guilty go free, if that increased the happiness of the greater number.

You could argue that it is simply wrong to kill people, period. But this would require pacifism, which is to say one would have to give up any notion of self-defence - which I couldn’t agree with either.

The only argument I’m left with is that it can be, and is, unjust in its application. But this is an argument for justice - which is to say greater equality - not against the death-penalty per se and this does not, in any event, provide the emotional basis on which people passionately argue this issue.

Yet I’m still against it. Maybe this is because I dislike the sort of people who support it - people I imagine to be hangin’ and floggin’ Daily Heil readers who not-so-secretly hate the poor. No-one denounces me for being prejudiced for feeling like this. But I am nevertheless.

Shuggy Vs Intellectual Midget.

Notes:

No. 1

No. 2

Tipping point re: silly pic — Ben’s joint