really

New one from Hitchens

Not too keen on Clinton H 

This post will begin and end with quotes from a recent book review by Peter Ryley. The book in question is not one that I would recommend you read. Life is too short, and there are surely better things you could do with your time. It is the debate surrounding the book that is most interesting. The idea of the book. The metabook.

Here is the first quote from Peter Ryley:

“There are plenty of blogs that reflect the orthodox left lunacy and ones that use seductively more ‘reasonable’ language to reach similar conclusions. However, there are two other broad categories of sites that can be found. Firstly, there are those that are firmly anti-totalitarian but have little or no critique of domestic politics. They have made their peace with the establishment and the legacy of Thatcherism. However dramatic their declarations of human rights, they are Tom Paines abroad but Edmund Burkes at home. Whilst the finely tuned English ear is quick to pick up the contented cadences of the privilege of class.”

These sentences encapsulate the thoughts of many of us on the left who despair at the degenerate state of political discourse in Britain today. This is a largely British problem, parochial in its self-centredness. While the largest part of the vocal left has sold its collective soul to reaction, organised religion, antisemitism and general paranoid lunacies, a minority has made its peace with those who dwell in the citadel of the English ruling class. New Left becomes New Burkeian, with a very blurred line dividing these two seemingly incompatible world views.

For two recent and particularly stupid examples of “decent left” thinking on the virtues of blameless bourgeois domesticity and the New Burkeianism, see here and here.

I was pleasantly surprised to read in yesterday’s Observer an essay by Jason Burke (no relation, as far as I’m aware!) that begins to deconstruct the new liberal-left, end-of-history thesis which states that with prosperity comes political moderation, increased tolerance and reduced conflict. Much as the living Burke would like to accept this theory, he can clearly see that history shows it to be bunk. Ironically, those who promulgate end-of-history ideologies – whether left or right – are those with the least historical awareness.

In his reaction to Burke’s Observer piece, Norman Geras goes further. Middle class people are not inherently ‘nice’ and ‘reasonable’, says Geras. They may have been responsible for much that is good in the world, but they are also at the root of many social evils. Let it never be forgotten that early 20th century “National Socialism” was a bourgeois ideology – the bastard child of a middle class whose cosiness was threatened by markets gone pear-shaped.

Geras concludes:

“The beginning of wisdom here is, in any case, an understanding that people sometimes behave badly (and – worse than badly – cruelly) just because they can. It’s the ineradicable downside of human freedom.”

And then there is Thatcherism and the political sanctification of selfishness, which commentators never tire of telling us was a necessary consequence of decades of stifling post-war corporatism. Only Thatcherism entrenched a new corporatism and managerialism, further centralised political power, legislated as if there were no tomorrow and displayed contempt for individual initiative, culture and creativity. And from its soulless suburbia of the mind the new bourgeois liberal-left appears to celebrate this.

But there is another left. The inchoate, anarchic, often inebriated band of activists, journalists, bloggers and others beloved of Peter Ryley:

“There are humanist Marxists, left libertarians, social democrats, Old Labour diehards, those who would combine Marx with Mill, querulous liberals, and others who place human emancipation at the centre of an ecological understanding of the diversity of the natural world. It is where I feel most at home and where the more interesting, and idiosyncratic, writing is taking place.”

I second that sentiment.

Via Bloomberg:

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has lost elections, the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party said, citing early results posted at polling stations. The official outcome hasn’t been announced.

The party, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, garnered 67 percent of the 30 percent of votes so far counted[.]

However,

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe says he is confident of winning today’s elections by a landslide majority.

Mugabe has threatened reprisals over the vote:

Mugabe’s camp said any announcement by the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, that he was the rightful president would be treated as tantamount to a coup and dealt with accordingly.

Update:

Election observers in Zimbabwe have expressed concerns over “delays” in announcing official presidential poll results, amid fears of rigging.

The head of one monitors’ group said he had “no doubt” officials now know most results. None have yet been released.

The election commission said late on Sunday that no results would be announced until 0400GMT on Monday.

Riot police have been patrolling the streets of the capital, Harare, and residents were told to stay indoors.

Earlier tonight (Saturday) I watched BBC2’s “The Culture Show” - OK that admission has demolished my street cred amongst the thicker part of the proletariat but they can all fuck off anyway.

I digress, however, from my main point — which is … Mark Kermode a top man if ever there was such a thing.

Fuck it — I have digressed again. The point about this post, is that due to the Kermodemeister, tonight I discovered that Paris Fucking Hilton has a new fillum oot. What a Nazi piece of shit it is. Only a very sick society can produce such a form of art - although saying that, we here in the UK did manage to give The Weakest Link to the world. One other thing — Kermode has in the past recommended this fillum which I watched last night — naming the film as his best of 2007 in his end-of-year review on Simon Mayo’s BBC radio programme. Now — I am normally well disposed to the Kermode but on this occasion I have to say his judgment is somewhat askew to say the least. If you can get past the stupid southern drawl accents to actually udderstand what the fuck is being said, then the fillum is still the longest, most pointless waste of your time spenterated in front of your telly all year.

PS — Paris Hilton is not ‘hot’.

This is hot.

That is all. Communiqué ends.

PPS. Fuck it — I will allow opinions on this post. Regardless of the author’s proclivities.  I will then fuck you over.

The recent vote in Canada’s House of Commons to keep our troops in Afghanistan for three more years hasn’t improved public support for the mission, according to one poll released last week. Despite a joint Conservative government - Liberal opposition compromise on the resolution, 58% of the survey’s respondents opposed the decision. And 61% said the government has done a poor job of explaining why we are there.

As I’ve said before, Prime Minister Harper should stop waving the Manley report around and start talking like John Manley, the former Liberal cabinet minister who chaired the independent study which recommended both the extension and better communication about why rebuilding Afghanistan is important.

More here.

There’s a word for being forced to work without pay:

Migrant construction workers building the ‘new Beijing’ are routinely exploited by being denied proper wages, under dangerous conditions with neither accident insurance nor access to medical and other social services, Human Rights Watch said […] an estimated 1 million migrant construction workers, hailing from other parts of China, make up nearly 90 percent of Beijing’s construction workforce […] employers routinely force migrants to work, withhold wages for up to a year, then offer a lump sum payment which is considerably below the agreed wage rate and Beijing’s minimum wage rate. Some employers refuse to pay anything at all.

There have been scuffles in Athens along the route of the Olympic torch relay. Something to do with not embarrassing a state which allows no independent trade unions, no independent judiciary, where demonstrations and strikes are prohibited, where there is no freedom of movement or assembly, whose citizens are subject to arbitrary detention and torture and where elections are a sham, by mentioning nasty divisive things like politics. According to a not entirely serious column in The Times, officials are worried about expected protests along the torch relay route in London:

Our expert also criticised the proposed route for the torch: “Nelson’s Column, Downing Street, St Paul’s Cathedral–these are exactly the kinds of places protesters are expecting the torch to pass. If your priority is to give potential paint-slingers the slip, you need to think much more laterally about how you get the flame across South London.

“We’d be in favour of using a few taxi-driver’s rat runs, cutting across some of the less well-known parkland, ducking down some service alleys and going in through, for instance, the back of Marks & Spencer’s Simply Food on the Balham High Road.”

I use the term ’shithouse’ in the comments section of one of the posts below.  

What is a shithouse?   Try this;  and this;  or this.  

That is a shithouse. It is also the country where I was born. This is one of the reasons I don’t go back much at the moment.  

I think far better of the mass of Hungarians. Nor is the country to be summed up by this bunch of neo-nazis but while they continue to do brisk business and grow the whole building will smell of shit.   

Try putting ‘magyar garda’ in YouTube. I won’t do it for you.   Full David Dukes-endorsed flavour. Seen in the best public places.  

Here’s a tale of bosses spying on workers.

Lidl has been discovered spying on its staff. The German supermarket chain is accused of “Stasi methods”. I find it irritating that the Grauniad, in its sometimes patronising way, thinks its readers require a reminder that the Stasi were the East German secret police. Note to Guardian: we are intelligent people and we know who the Stasi were.

The story says

The detectives’ records include details of precisely where employees had tattoos as well as information about their friends. “Her circle of friends consists mainly of drug addicts,” reads one record. The detectives also had the task of identifying which employees appeared to be “incapable” or “introverted and naive”.

In the Czech Republic

A female worker was forbidden to go to the toilet during working hours. An internal memorandum, which is now the centre of a court case in the republic, allegedly advised staff that “female workers who have their periods may go to the toilet now and again, but to enjoy this privilege they should wear a visible headband”.

Recording how a German employee identified as Frau M spent her break, one report read: “Frau M wanted to make a call with her mobile phone at 14.05 … She received the recorded message that she only had 85 cents left on her prepaid mobile. She managed to reach a friend with whom she would like to cook this evening, but on condition that her wage had been paid into her bank, because she would otherwise not have enough money to go shopping.”

It is just wrong that any employer should snoop into the private lives of its staff. These practices breach laws on freedom of movement and freedom of expression. What makes management believe they can override the rights of workers?
Lidl said “the purpose was “not to monitor staff, but to establish possible abnormal behaviour”. So “establishing possible abnormal behaviour” makes snooping a legitimate management activity? What is “possible abnormal behaviour”? And could we have some more “abnormal behaviour”.

Far-right Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders‘ 15-minute film on Islam has been removed from the servers of London-based web forum LiveLeak.

LiveLeak decided to pull “Fitna” following threats to its staff “of a very serious nature”. In a statement the company explained its position:

“This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else… Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.”

A bit anodyne, perhaps, but I can understand LiveLeak’s position.

This may be a free speech issue, but only in part. It goes way beyond freedom of speech, and those who defend Wilders risk being co-opted to a dodgy political cause. Reducing this to an issue of free speech is politically infantile and deeply reactionary.

Wilders is a politician is of the extreme right – nationalist, populist and demagogic. The man is a racist, and no defender of the rights of individuals or groups with whom he disagrees. Wilders the fascist is as much a hypocrite as those on the left who object to his film on the grounds that they do not wish to offend Muslims.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film as “offensively anti-Islamic”, adding:

“There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence… The right of free expression is not at stake here.”

Ban is right. Free expression isn’t at stake here, and those who claim it is are either fools or wilfully serving a reactionary political agenda.

I have no views on Wilders’ Fitna, having not seen it, but doubt it is the type of analysis that helps. However, this message, where once the film sat, is totally unsurprising. CNN cover the dropping of the film here; note the UN Secretary General’s comments.

Trying to make sense of shit and shit like that:

So you can add the [1] “Iran is liquidating its no longer useful proxies” theory (which would fit this general line of speculation about Iran’s doubts about Sadr and preference for the simultaneously-US backed ISCI) to the generally most prevalent (in the Iraqi and Arab, not just Western, media) [2] “Maliki and ISCI are liquidating their more popular rivals ahead of the provincial elections” theory; the optimistic [3] “Sadr has lost power and now’s the time to take him out” theory (thus far not borne out by the course of the fighting, but who knows - it’s early, or it could be a miscalculation); [4] Maliki’s own “it’s time to establish state sovereignty over a ‘lost’ province” theory (which Bush, of course, has embraced, and is supported by the reporting that the Iraqi Army began its preparations for the attack months ago; but then why isn’t he taking on the other militias and warlords? and why would he start now, and in Basra?); and [5] Reidar Visser’s “Maliki is trying to build a power base in the Iraqi Army” theory.

Told you it was complicated…

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When will these posh boy cretins ever learn?

Utterly thick, stupid, fucking penny pinching cunts that they are.

The Sauce have just stopped even fucking pretending now. Gene’s last post on the subject (first for ages on the subject) amounted to “cry.. sob.. cry.. — “yanks have been killed” — this is bad — all fault of Bush — bad for yanky world domination as well - fuck it - a new post by DT about the muzzies will be along in a moment to make you feel better” — that sort of shit. Pathetic cunts. I really hate these ignorant fucking fools. Bullet. Neck. Back of.

Can you get to this?

Apparently the event will also be webcast live at this address

To equip the bedraggled Afghan National Army, the United States has awarded $300 million to a shady little outfit operating out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, run by a 22-year-old, with a licenced masseur as a vice president. The result: Decomposing ammo, more than 40 years old, mostly from rotting Communist bloc stockpiles, which NATO has had to spend millions of dollars destroying. “This is what they give us for the fighting,” says Lieutenant Colonel Amanuddin. “It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk.”

I have finally had the chance to read Andrew Anthony’s The Fall-Out. It is the subject of a long and very generous review in Democratiya by Simon Cottee, which provides a fair summary of its contents. However, Cottee tries to place the book in a genre that he calls “left apostasy”, coupled with an odd categorisation of other writers, notably Christopher Hitchens. I think that this is mistaken. Anthony’s book covers little new ground that has not been explored in more detail by others, such as Nick Cohen and Paul Berman, but, like them, it is no act of apostasy. Instead it is written from the heart of a left commitment and is an angry denunciation of the apostasy of others. His analysis comes from a realisation that part of the left ’script’, learnt by every new recruit, was simplistic - and sometimes actually wrong - and that, critically, the events around 9/11 combined with unthinking left assumptions to produce the ultimate betrayal; a vociferous support for fascism and totalitarianism.

Anthony’s book is about a personal journey and does not have a wide analytical compass. It is lucid and gripping and, at times, I cringed at the remembrance of some of the awful positions that I took in the past. Rather than try and describe the contents I would like to pick up on three aspects that concerned me.

The first is that Anthony suggests that the cause of the alignment with Islamism is liberal guilt. This is the theme running through his book and I think that it is wrong. Guilt is an interesting emotion. It comes straight from our conscience. It can be misused as an instrument of control by those powerful enough to make us feel guilty about innocent acts (Catholic upbringing anyone?). Most of all, though it can generate a peevish defensiveness, it is intensely introspective and brings contrition and anxiety. Is this a description of the Galloways of this world? Is it heck! The emotion we are really talking about is self-righteousness.

Self-righteousness is at the heart of the struggle within the left between moral Puritanism, often the preserve of the ‘respectable’ social reformer, and the hedonism of the social libertarian. And Anthony isn’t above a bit of it himself. The only time he uses a personal epithet is in his demolition of the unpleasant Michael Moore and guess what it is? Yep; “fat“! More importantly, self-righteousness is a part of the creation of a self-identity that ‘fights’ for something worthy, often with ‘courage’, and usually against the powers that be (especially ones that are less likely to fight back – Anthony also rightly emphasises the motivation of cowardice). The self-righteous have a big problem with admitting error and grasping that the world they ’struggle’ against may not be as bad as the horrific nightmare that inhabits the minds of those who turn to arbitrary mass murder for political ends.

Secondly, Anthony describes himself as having become a ‘liberal’. In this book he gives us a truncated view of liberalism. Liberalism consists of three facets; indivisible rights and liberties, forms of democratic governance and a liberal political economy. One of the intriguing aspects of much recent writing about the ‘liberal left’ is that it strongly reasserts liberal rights and the defence of existing democracies, however flawed. It has less to say on political economy and the sharp inequalities that are NOT the ‘root causes’ of terrorism, but ARE of hunger, misery, environmental collapse and human despair. It is a telling omission.

And this brings me to my third point. Anthony describes Marxism as inevitably totalitarian. Now I do not describe myself as a Marxist, but people I respect, and who are considerably better read in Marx than I am, do so and, as a result, I am uneasy at such a glib dismissal. This also chimes with the one line (apart from his backhanded compliment to Anarchism – but then not many people understand Anarchism) in Nick Cohen’s What’s Left that troubled me, his statement that socialism is dead. Instead, what this whole debate seems to me to be about is a reappraisal and re-invention of socialism.

This really moves us on from Anthony’s book but it is worth consideration here. The most vital debates are not happening in the Universities, and certainly not in the comments pages of the Guardian, but in the modern mirror of the pamphlets and independent newspapers of the first wave of 19^th Century socialism; the blogosphere.

There are plenty of blogs that reflect the orthodox left lunacy and ones that use seductively more ‘reasonable’ language to reach similar conclusions. However, there are two other broad categories of sites that can be found. Firstly, there are those that are firmly anti-totalitarian but have little or no critique of domestic politics. They have made their peace with the establishment and the legacy of Thatcherism. However dramatic their declarations of human rights, they are Tom Paines abroad but Edmund Burkes at home. Whilst the finely tuned English ear is quick to pick up the contented cadences of the privilege of class.

As for the other, it is a, sometimes fractious, cacophony. There are humanist Marxists, left libertarians, social democrats, Old Labour diehards, those who would combine Marx with Mill, querulous liberals, and others who place human emancipation at the centre of an ecological understanding of the diversity of the natural world. It is where I feel most at home and where the more interesting, and idiosyncratic, writing is taking place.

What will emerge is unclear, but socialism, in the broadest sense of the term as an emancipatory, egalitarian social movement, is alive, well and thinking. Come and join in.

Kenojuak Ashevak has been presented with the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts.

Kenojuak first came to the attention of the outside world in 1970 when her Enchanted Owl was used on a postage stamp to mark the centenary of the Northwest Territories. Back then, Kenojuak’s “name” was E7-1035.

The following year, Project Surname required every Inuit person to choose a full name ( first name, last name). Before then, Inuit people were required to wear a neck tag with a disc number on it.

Last night, CBC’s The Hour had an interview about Bill C-10 with the porker homophobe Charles McVety, the president of the Canada Family Action Coalition. Bill C-10 is a 600+ page document proposing amendments to the Income Tax Act, one of which would allow Canada’s Heritage Minister to revoke tax credits for films or TV shows “thought to be offensive or not in the public interest”. Our wonderful elected representatives seem to not have actually read the document in full before passing it in the House of Commons, and there’s now outrage in Canada’s artistic communities on how these proposed changes will effectively amount to censorship. McVety, reportedly “one of the most powerful leaders of the Christian Right in this country,” appears to have a fair amount of influence in the drafting of this provision in C-10, and the whole of the country should be very worried about this and the rise of the Christian Right in Canada in general. And, judging by his performance last night, this man is actually an idiot and his influence can bring nothing good whatsoever to this country. Watch the interview for yourself to see, and see if you can get anything meaningful from McVety. There are moments when it seems like he’s approaching coherency–on a couple of occasions he appears close to suggesting that the Canadian government shouldn’t offer tax credits to any filmmakers, but he’s not bright enough to even connect those dots–but he’s too dim to follow anything through. All that I got from the interview is that sex makes McVety very uncomfortable, and therefore sex should make all other Canadians feel uncomfortable. I’m certain his wife agrees.

Saddam’s intelligence services were using barrels of oil to pay charities to provide PR for his regime.

The former spokesman of a Detroit-area Islamic charity, who organized U.S. congressional delegations to Iraq, has been indicted for alleged conspiracy to spy for Saddam Hussein’s government.

Muthanna Al-Hanooti, who worked as a top official at Life for Relief and Development — a charity in Southfield, Mich. — allegedly coordinated U.S. congressional delegations to Iraq at the direction of the executed dictator’s intelligence service between 1999 and 2002.

I wanted to do a proper post on all this (analysis) but time available, events, the speed at which they move, and the sheer complexity of shite has worked against that ever happening today (I maybe thick as well). For now — make sense of the following if you care to. Iraq at the moment is a most complex set of circumstances — there is no proving of credentials needed, or likewise the shoving of an ideological ‘cultural code’ to like minded fuckwits; where Iraqi’s themselves are reduced to the level of baby seals and are thus ignored. Iraqis are also active participants — better to take note of that and what their struggles actually are then. if you please.

Some links further, and in addition to this post.

This…

I have failed to liberate Iraq, and transform its society into an Islamic society.” — Moqtada al-Sadr, Asharq Al Awsat newspaper, March 8, 2008

And this…

“The continued presence of the occupiers, on the one hand, and the disobedience of many on the other, pushed me to isolate myself in protest. I gave society a big proportion of my life. Even my body became weaker, I got more sicknesses.”

While also citing…

“the betrayal of some followers, whom he accused of falling prey to “materialistic” politics[.]”… for his stance.

And then this:

Muqtada’s motivations aside, his decision opens the possibility of a more genuine and lasting transformation of the Sadrist movement. In the months following his announcement, he sought to rid it of its most unruly members, rebuild a more disciplined and focused militia and restore his own respectability, while promoting core demands – notably, protecting the nation’s sovereignty by opposing the occupation – through legitimate parliamentary means. The challenge is to seize the current opportunity, seek to transform Muqtada’s tactical adjustment into a longer-term strategic shift and encourage the Sadrists’ evolution toward a strictly non-violent political actor.

However:

The fighting is the most serious sign yet that a cease-fire credited with helping to reduce violence nationwide may be unraveling.

And this:

And this:

And make sure to read the update ya’ll.

We’ll no doubt see very shortly as events unfold…

All of that lot should be read in conjunction with the following article that I got from IraqsloggerDOTcom (see sidebar) which has continual up to date information on Iraq but is frustratingly subscription-based (the bastards — the evil fucking bastards). However, (joy of joys) a copy of the article has been passed onto me by a comrade…remember — knowledge is not a ‘partially exlcudable good’ (or at least it shouldn’t be, for fuck’s sake — have I really got to explain that one to you?)…

For those with a keen interest, the Wiki page for the article’s primary source, ie Al-Akhbar newspaper is here. The paper’s site is here.

Arab Papers Sat: “Republic of Militias”
Newspaper Probes the New Iraqi Political Scene
By AMER MOHSEN 03/21/2008 6:23 PM ET
Al-Akhbar

In one of the best features prepared for the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, the Lebanese al-Akhbar daily devoted a special supplement this week to Iraqi affairs and to an assessment of Iraq five years after the invasion.

Contrary to the Western media, where much ink is being spilled nowadays discussing the circumstances surrounding the decision to invade Iraq, and who should shoulder the blame for the war’s mistakes, or conversely, what strategies should be adopted to end the Iraq debacle; al-Akhbar did not dwell much on the original event of the invasion or on future policy prescriptions. Instead, the paper’s editor said, the focus was on mapping the new political scene that has emerged five years after the fall of the dictatorship.

On the fifth anniversary of the invasion, the editor wrote, the Iraqi scene has become calmer … the number of casualties is significantly lower, but on the other hand, he said, a new political reality is beginning to solidify: contradictions between Iraqis are becoming wider, the country is divided into-quasi independent fiefdoms … where security is imposed by sectarian or ethnic militias, with the support of the government … and that of the occupation forces. Therefore, the supplement was entitled “the Republic of Militias” (a take on “the Republic of Fear”, by Makiya describing Saddam’s rule) and it probed, in a series of articles, the new political camps and fiefdoms that have emerged in post-Saddam Iraq.

An article was devoted to the Sunni political scene, discussing how, after being labeled as responsible for the Tikriti rule, Sunnis originally faced a policy of exclusion, that has been, now, replaced with a discourse of “reconciliation.” The report was a fascinating examination of the Sunni political parties that emerged as representatives of Iraq’s Sunnis after the invasion, and which have been constantly facing a dilemma: on the one hand, their participation in the US-sponsored political process, and on the other, their links to armed groups and the fact that much of their public supports the insurgency (and all the parties of the Sunni IAF have varying links to the insurgency, the report claimed.)

From that dilemma, emerged the Sunni Sahwa (Awakening,) the report said, which was described as “the event of 2007 among Iraq’s Sunnis”. The Islamic Party, one of the first Sunni factions to enter the political process, and one of the more tolerant of the US role, was undergoing a bloody confrontation with al-Qaida, which assassinated several of the party’s leaders, and accused it of aiding the occupation. According to al-Akhbar, the party exploited the growing hatred towards al-Qaida in Sunni provinces and the party’s influence among certain insurgent groups to design the anti-Qaida tribal militias that soon became the largest Sunni fighting force in Iraq. The report credits the party’s leader, Tariq al-Hashimi, for having an instrumental role in the formation of the “Awakening”, which, ironically, is currently clashing with Hashimi’s party in Anbar.

Another article focused on the Shia scene, still reeling from the fracture of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia electoral coalition that won the largest number of seats in the 2005 Parliament. The UIA’s demise is due to two main factors: the withdrawal of the popular Sadrist Current, and the splintering of the Dawa party into several competing wings. According to the report, the looming ‘Shia-Shia civil war’, which reflects an old rivalry between the leaderships of the Sadrs and that of the Hakeems, has dispelled earlier notions of a united Shia sect monopolizing the rule of Iraq.

Other interesting articles included a report on the Kurdish Kingdom in northern Iraq, which is currently ruled by the parties of Mas’ud al-Barzani and Jalal al-Talabani, who have been bound by a fragile alliance since the invasion. The two Kurdish parties have had a history of conflict since Talabani dissented from Barzani’s party in the mid-1960s, up to the Kurdish civil war in the mid-1990s. The two men, the article argued, have been more inclined to divide power among each other, rather than share it.

A report on the Iraqi left discussed the state of secular forces in Iraq: disorganized, fragmented, locked into intercinine conflicts and facing the dominance of sectarian groups that are actively working to impose a religious culture on citizens. The largest leftists force: the Iraqi Communist Party, suffered from major rifts when its leadership supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Most of the leftist forces eventually joined the list of Iyad Allawi during the 2005 elections, making it into an eclectic mix of nationalist, Marxist and liberal figures. But successive divisions within Allawi’s ‘Iraqi List’ have weakened the front, whose parties are likely to choose different allies for the next elections.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, appears to be making a calculated gamble to secure the future of Iraq. His decision to disarm and neuter Shia militias in Basra using Iraqi forces alone is, if the plan is carried through completely, the sister to the US troop surge.

When things started to go wrong in Iraq in late 2003-2004, many sagely heads wisely pointed out that the UK forces were doing far better than the US forces because of their past experiences in Northern Ireland. However, the US has since learned counter-insurgency the hard way in Iraq, and it has been clear for some time that the UK’s efforts in Southern Iraq, or more specifically Basra, have not been as successful as was hoped. While the surge further North has largely quelled insurgents, the South has become more lawless.

However, the religious zealots are much weaker than they once were. Many Iraqis no longer see religion as the answer, and the horrors of the past few years may have led many to yearn for security from a strong central government. The operation in Basra may be Iraq’s Altalena moment as al-Maliki, like Ben-Gurion before him, realises that there is no future for armed militias in maintaining the security of a state and determining political facts affecting the future of the state.

Even commentators normally blind to promising developments in Iraq note the signal this Basra surge sends:

So if the al-Maliki government is really having a big push on Basra with 15,000 of its own troops, then that is actually a very positive sign indeed in terms of the government’s subjective assessment of its own stability.

Although Sadr’s men are fighting back in Basra, Sadr’s initial response appears to betray a lack of confidence in his own position. He has threatened a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience. What next harsh language?

Six days ago, Seamus Milne wrote:

only when the occupation forces make an unequivocal commitment to leave will Iraq’s main political and military players be compelled to come to an accommodation.

Milne is correct that Iraq’s political and military players will have to come to some accommodation. The nature of the accommodation in al-Maliki’s eyes is becoming clearer. We can only hope that the Basra surge succeeds.

UPDATE: Michael O’Hanlon, and others, are less convinced.

ignore the stupid fucking Yank adverts at beginning and end.

This week’s New Scientist magazine carries an interview with Brown University anthropologist Richard Gould, who moonlights as a “disaster archaeologist”.

Gould describes the practice of disaster archaeology:

“We clear up the human remains and physical effects left behind following a disaster after everyone else has gone home, so the victims can be identified, giving closure for their loved ones and also for forensic and legal purposes. We bag up all of the remains and record exactly where, when and how they were found.”

What Professor Gould and his colleagues do is similar to the work carried out by Israeli volunteers who recover body parts from vehicles, roads, walls and trees following terrorist atrocities. I have often wondered what kind of person can do this kind of work and remain sane. In the interview with Richard Gould we have a character portrait of just such a man.

Gould was involved in the cleanup following the 9/11 attack in New York:

“I went down to ground zero and found fragmented remains all over the place. Lower Manhattan was covered in grey ashy stuff we call “kitty litter”, and amidst it I saw things like pieces of human scapula. No-one had prepared me for this. I knew that something had to be done.”

So Gould made a nuisance of himself with the authorities, and eventually – though unfortunately after much of the evidence had been cleaned away – they agreed to cooperate. The result was the foundation of the group Forensic Archaeology Recovery.

How does one train to be a forensic archaeologist?

“We once dressed a 90-pound sheep cadaver in a vest bomb and put it in a car and blew it up. We then did a full recovery of sheep bits. We found hundreds of pieces incredible distances – up to 150 metres – outside the crime scene, so it was like ground zero on a smaller scale.”

With 9/11 in New York, paper containing human bloodstains was found as far afield as Brooklyn, which is several miles from Manhattan. And human remains were even found underground in pipes. Three thousand souls are thought to have been lost in the twin towers, and today some 1200 people remain unidentified or unaccounted for.

“We are very careful with how we treat human remains: our job is to do this with respect. It is a tough thing to deal with, and it is not for everyone. I never know how I will feel about the next disaster. Disaster archaeology is incredibly rewarding, but it is stressful. One day I may have to stop.”

Richard A Gould is professor of anthropology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He is the author of “Disaster Archaeology”.

I really don’t go out of my way to write about that serial gobshite, the exploderating orange Napoleon™, but some bugger sent me a link. Having already shown himself to be dumber than a box of rocks–unable to grasp a theory as simple as Natural Selection, which any 9 year old can understand–he’s been displaying his intellectual gifts again, writing that hybrid human-animal tissue cultures are ‘monstrous’ and ‘blaspheme[s] against the very idea of God’–as if he expects to see little dog-headed babies crawling around his constituency.

What is monstrous is his suggestion that the first loyalty of Roman Catholic MPs is to the head of a mystery cult–a god-king for life appointed from a self-selecting elite–who is not elected by constituents in this or any other country. What is monstrous is worshippers of a celestial Stalin interfering in research to find drugs for the most terrible maladies. Then again, partisans of a heavenly dictatorship see a child screaming in agony with an incurable disease, or an adult wasting away to a shadow of their former self, as evidence of god’s ‘divine plan’–suffering is character building don’t you know–or even more perversely, ‘divine punishment‘. This gladdens and reassures them–and gives them a little holy hard-on.