Clarity

The jungle is cleared and a garden has emerged. However, the rumble over the Greek economic crisis continues. At village level, the bits that I manage to understand or are translated for me, range from delightful people picking gardenia flowers as gifts whilst expounding the most bonkers of conspiracy theories, the general idea that Merkel is the new Hitler (and the glee at the fact that the Germans poisoned themselves with their own bean sprouts, rather than with something grown by one of those recalcitrant Mediterranean types, is palpable), some pretty crude racism, whilst on the news protesters chant about the politicians being thieves. All have one thing in common, the sense that the cause of the crisis is a moral, rather than a systemic failure.

One of Adam Smith's most notable insights was his much misread notion that the strength of a modern, industrial society does not rest on the virtue of its citizens. Instead, small petty desires and self-interest drive economies and sustain civilisation. The target of Smith's writing was the same one that seems to animate popular debate today and thus leads us away from the major questions about the failures in the Eurozone. And, even if moral failure was a key factor, any system that has to rely entirely on the prevalence of human virtue has a major design fault anyway.

So, with the next tranche of bewilderingly terrifying austerity measures about to hit Greece, it was good to read these two posts from a new blog offering clarity about the systemic failings of both the single currency and the overarching economic model that informs it. This gets it spot on.

Without investment, or/and a dramatic structural change in the economy, to correct any trade imbalances everyone ends up working more for less. The promise is that this is for the short run. The reality is that, while the trade imbalance between the richer and poorer Euro members remain, it is for the very very long term. Under the austerity measures, the poorer states have even less resources to invest in structural changes to make their economies competitive. The ECB/IMF package is massive transfer of resources from the poor.

Instead the blog directs us to schemes such as this, Yanis Varoufakis and Stuart Holland's "modest proposal", and argues consistently that we are facing a EU-wide economic crisis that is not the result of the wayward behaviour of a few swarthy (or Irish) small nations, but an ongoing and inevitable consequence of the failure of the institutional architecture of monetary union. 

And so we face a choice between continuing pan-European austerity or a reform that will recycle trade imbalances to allow for investment and development in Europe's poorer nations. I know what my choice would be.

Hat tip - the ever useful KTG

It's a jungle out there

At least that is what the garden looks like. A month away and the combination of rain and sun has led to an explosion of greenery. Time to find a man with a strimmer - Niko!

The rest is more or less unchanging, a new greengrocers has opened and Stavroula comes to my gate to complain about life, speaking in Greek that I can't follow, to ask the usual questions and to warn me about the dubious behaviour and bad character of another of my neighbours before waving a cheerful goodbye. And of course, the moment I opened the patio doors the cat arrived expressing his deep affection and demanding food in return for the benefit of his company when he is not visiting other houses.

We are on the cusp between spring and summer, some of the wild flowers remain and a group of the last of the wild poppies are wearily hanging on amongst the grass and weeds. The most dramatic colour is provided by the pomegranate. The bright red flowers are starting to turn into fruit and it looks like there will be a bumper crop this year, though the bush is still small. Not that I will get to eat them as I will have returned to England for work by the time they are ready.

At least by arriving early this summer I got to taste the cherries. The crop is finished by this time of year but various neighbours had not been as ruthless in stripping the trees as previously and there were a few left.

It is warm, but not hot. The cicadas haven't started making their usual row and have left the cool nights to the nightingales and squabbling dogs. There is a strong gusting breeze and butterflies are flitting through the garden. It is good to be here.

The other delight is to taste real food. Today's simple lunch of tomato and cucumber with feta cheese and fresh baked bread was a gourmet delight. And that was one of the topics of conversation I had on the flight over. You know the years are advancing when a young woman anxiously asks you if you need help putting your rucksack in the overhead locker. Your self image as a young buck dissolves as you realise that you are well into the transformation from sex object to pity object. And when I finally sat down, slightly crestfallen, she, a Greek living in England, confessed that what she was really looking forward to on her return to her homeland was eating a tomato that actually tasted of something.

Yet that was not all we talked about. Our conversation ranged through art and architecture, radical education as well as history and political philosophy as she turned out to be a young and talented freelance animator and designer. She is just starting out, though I think you need to watch out for her name (or names - she seems to have rather a lot of them), she has the ability to go far.

So, summer beckons and as I type this I look through my open window under the klimataria, shaded by the vine, I get that familiar, startled feeling of not quite believing my luck in ending up here, in my own house on an early summer's day.

Far from the madding crowd

And crowds there are in Greece, gathered in city centres - with around three hundred thousand outside the Greek Parliament in Syntagma Square last night - to protest at the latest round of austerity programmes which are certainly depressing the economy but making no impact on the level of debt (See too Paul Krugman on the Helenization of a Europe-wide crisis).

Will I be parading my radical credentials at the forefront of a major protest movement? Of course not. I will be in Greece, but hidden away in rural Pelion indulging in escapism. And as I fly tonight, it seems that I will not be alone.

For sale

Human lives in exchange for a convenient escape.

First there is a little rehabilitation to help the sales pitch:

Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban figures to be lifted later this month in the strongest indication yet that the western powers are looking for a negotiated peace with the Taliban.

After all,  

Qalamuddin, the former head of the religious police, said however the Taliban had "changed". 

Like this?

Taliban gunmen have killed the headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said.

 As for the Afghan people? Well some have a more down-to-earth view:

The Taliban are not our brothers, they are our killers.

Cassandras

As more news seeps out about the crumbling of Gaddafi's army, it seems a good time to look back on some of the recent commentary on Libya from the usual suspects - a study in the pathology of pessimism, a peculiar trait of the Guardianista.

First up, here's Richard Norton-Taylor:

In Libya, there is no end in sight to a campaign which is not succeeding in its UN-sanctioned aim to protect civilians.

 Hang on a second. "Not succeeding"?  Have I missed something here? Did Gaddafi's tanks and mercenaries actually carry out their slaughter in Benghazi and then move on throughout the East or did the UN action end up preventing it? And even if the conflict is dragging on with its horrible human cost, doesn't stopping Gaddafi's advance and saving the East from his clutches, at the very least, amount to a success? Isn't it a little early to pronounce the whole affair a failure? The revolutionaries certainly do not agree.

And in the second example even Simon Jenkins admits as much. But being Simon Jenkins he is also always good for a bit of light relief.

Britain has done what it said it was going to do – it stopped Gaddafi visiting his wrath on Benghazi. It should then have left, returning only if he did. 

Did I read this right? The moment Gaddafi was forced back from Benghazi he should have been left to crush the revolution everywhere else, securing his power, reinforcing and re-equipping his army all the while? Is Jenkins really suggesting that British forces should have been withdrawn to let him get on with it as long as he didn't touch this one city? Extraordinary.

Finally, we have the star turn, Jonathan Steele.

The best way to protect Libya's desperate civilians is for Nato to reverse its mistaken policy of taking sides.

Leaving aside the obvious point that not taking sides is not an act of neutrality but is de facto support for the the side with the best military hardware - in this case Gaddafi - has his moral compass gone completely awry?  Should we not choose sides between, on the one hand, a popular democratic revolution and, on the other, a kleptocratic, murderous, family tyranny whose leaders have been indicted for crimes against humanity? Are they moral equivalents to be treated as equals? It is absolutely clear that this is precisely the time to take sides. We should support the struggle for democratic change against the systematic violence of fascistic autocrats. Studious and oh so reasonable sounding neutralism is, in reality, the betrayal of the hopes of people risking everything for the sake of freedom.

The least we can give to the revolutionaries is our solidarity, the best is our help when it is requested, the worst is our disdain for their incredible courage in demanding to have what we so casually take for granted.

Headline of the day

Severed head of patron saint of genital disease on sale

 A snip at around £1,000.

It's really all about ...

One of the many dubious arguments against liberal interventionism is the accusation of bad faith. Somehow, whatever the situation, the action is seen as illegitimate because the ostensible causes are not the real ones - the 'it's all about oil' argument. Chris Dillow nailed this in a post some time ago when he wrote that though there is much talk of 'collateral damage' we seem less willing to acknowledge 'collateral benefit'. In other words, the beneficial results of action are still felt even if the action was conceived for other than purely altruistic reasons.  Though this distinction is lost on some of the commentariat, it is not on the Libyan revolutionaries themselves, who continue to fully support the UN intervention. This is a typical example:

“Of course there are interests at play,” explained the man in the graffiti-covered tunic, listing oil and winning broader support among Arabs following the debacle in Iraq as possible reasons behind the intervention. “We’re not stupid, we know Western countries have their own interests when they finally decided to help us.” A man from Sirte who identified as being from Gadhafi’s tribe interrupted him, expressing a widely held sentiment: “It doesn’t matter what the West’s interests are, because we too have our interests—we want to survive and get rid of this regime and ultimately live like the rest of the world, without fear.” The crowd erupted in applause.

If at first you don't succeed ...

...make the same mistake again and again and again. There were those who said that the austerity programme imposed on Greece would induce a deeper recession, reduce government tax receipts (despite tax increases) and therefore increase debt rather than reduce it. Guess what has happened. So the next tranche of debt to pay off the increasing debt comes with ever more stringent austerity measures that some say will induce a much deeper recession etc, etc.

So what will happen? Political agreement is not forthcoming and Syntagma Square in Athens is being occupied in Greece's own Facebook protest. There is no sign of a challenge to the elite consensus, which, with supreme self-confidence, has lapsed back into economic orthodoxy despite its near catastrophic failure in the banking crisis. Politics and protest are confronting the powerful and there is no meeting point. So are we heading for a default in Greece? Who knows, though in a thoughtful article Aditya Chakrabortty argues that it would be no bad thing. I can't fault his conclusion:

So why doesn't Athens just give up? Surely not because its economy would do any worse, but because the banks, in Germany (which holds $26bn of Greek debt) and France (which owns $20bn) and in Greece, would then have another brush with insolvency. But the answer would be to deal with the banks – by giving them more money or just taking them over – rather than crucify an economy.

For Costas Lapavitsas, an economist at the School of Oriental and African Studies just back from Athens, the situation represents only one thing. "It's the triumph of the banks," he tells me. "The lenders in Greece and abroad are being given preferential treatment over the Greek people."

 I have a feeling that if the next tranche of austerity is enforced then both will be losers, though the ones that will feel the pain will, unsurprisingly, be the Greek people.

A sense of proportion

A retired merchant seaman who braved the fire of the Nazis in the Second World War says that was nothing compared to a noisy boiler causing him endless sleepless nights.

"My wartime experience was nothing compared to this – I could hit back then."


Good grief.







Thanks to Helen

"Syrian lives were now cheaper than a bullet"

Milia stayed out all night protesting. That night, people were chanting in the new clock square, the one that protesters had dubbed “The liberation square of the governorate of Homs”. Milia’s house is on Hamidia Street, right behind the Khaled Ben Walid mosque. But this Christian neighborhood also harbours one of the oldest churches on earth, the Church of the Holy Girdle and Milia lives right next to this landmark, visiting it every Sunday to receive the archbishop’s blessings.

 Read it all here. The courage...

Pride in the Lions

What a cup tie! We pushed Warrington all the way and you could see they were worried. The final score? Warrington 112 - Swinton 0.

666

We're all doomed I tell ye. The world ends tomorrow - perhaps.

Anyway, us sinners left behind are going to have one hell of a party:

Atheists have 'better sex lives than followers of religion who are plagued with guilt

"Did the earth end for you too darling?"

Virtuoso

A trombone solo with soul ...



There is no film of the performance, but the sound is better here.

No real reason for posting this other than to share the moment when I heard a clip of this on the car radio today and thought, I need to have this music. And now I do.

Goodnight

It is late here and I have been submerged in a tunnel of exam marking, one of the most dispiriting tasks known to humanity. Nobody in this time zone should be sitting in front of a computer, so, especially for the odd insomniac who has stumbled on these pages, here is something wonderful to lull you to sleep.

The Library of Congress now has a National Jukebox containing hundreds of historical recordings, which I found out about from Norm and George. So here is Brahms's lullaby, recorded incredibly in 1906 by Ernestine Schumann-Heink.



Even more extraordinary, there is film of her singing in 1927 on YouTube here.

And if you still can't sleep, browse through this amazing collection, listen to some of the gems and give thanks to the Internet for being able to bring you little delights in the middle of the night.

Paying the price

The death of a young woman; a Greek tragedy in Ireland, though one almost certainly being replicated in Greece and elsewhere.

This narrative of Ireland’s recklessness has been seized upon by politicians, ex-bankers, journalists and visiting emissaries from solvent countries like a life-ring in a cess-pond. It has the feel of Greek tragedy about it - we made mistakes and must be punished.

In this tragic narrative the Furies are represented by the implacable markets, and our great mistake, our hamartia, which Aristotle defines as ‘an injury to others’ and which later commentators came to call the ‘fatal flaw’, is to have become greedy. It must be remembered, however, that the hamartia is usually committed in ignorance of its evil nature or the likely consequences. It may even be committed against the best advice. Think of Oedipus who, in desperately avoiding the terrible crime that has been foretold for him by the oracle at Delphi, commits that very crime in ignorance if not innocence. Oedipus was a good man, but he misunderstood the role of oracles. We too have failed to understand that oracles are agents in our tragedy rather than disinterested commentators. Oedipus was blinded for his hamartia. Rachel Peavoy was frozen to death for ours.

 And so we continue to offer human sacrifices to the gods of economic orthodoxy in the hope that their propitiation will return us to the good days of self-indulgence and rising property prices. Yet:

The end of tragedy, according to Aristotle, to whom we still turn in these matters, is catharsis. But our catharsis will be long in coming and our children’s children will share the punishment.

And as another Irish writer put it:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?

Hat tip to John

Talking allowed

To the despair of my friends, I am prone to big speeches. In fact, one of the reasons for this blog was to spare them yet another monologue when we are in the pub. And as for my poor students; a simple question can lead to a long peroration, sometimes relevant and amusing, but by no means always. And so I read this touching and eloquent essay by Christopher Hitchens, on the joy of speaking and its intimate relationship with writing, with great pleasure and empathy. Every academic should read this as Universities can be dedicated to the eradication of good written English by enforcing the use of the impersonal and passive voice that deadens prose. Not Hitchens though,

To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?” That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.

And so his illness is a particular tragedy and of course I feel sympathy, but the main emotion his essay evoked was fear; a deep terror that I should lose my voice, my unique link with the world.

I wish him well for the selfish reason that I do not want to be deprived of regularly reading his prose, whilst his own hopes, characteristically, reflect something more universal.

What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.

It's the economy, stupid

I certainly don't agree with everything that is in his article but these quotes from Will Hutton seem to sum up my views on the government's economic policy perfectly.

In a strict sense, the government's economic policies are not a gamble – a gamble has some probability of success ... it is now obvious that we are living through one of the great economic misjudgments of modern times; there were choices last May about how to handle the legacy of private debt, gross misallocation of productive capacity, financial fragility and the need to eliminate the structural public deficit. They were not made; If the Lib Dems had been true to the great social liberal thinkers ... they could never have signed the coalition agreement; The big story is of politics driven by ideas that are wrong.

And, to my despair, there is, as Hutton notes, little sign of any mainstream political party even attempting to breach the consensus, let alone putting forward an alternative political economy drawn from different intellectual roots. And here lies the causes of the failure of the Liberal Democrats in the local elections, the lost referendum on AV and Labour's defeat in the Scottish Assembly. No amount of progressive schmoozing will restore the centre-left to power unless there is a coherent philosophy to unite behind and not the desperately unimaginative, modified conservatism that Jackie Ashley thinks will do the trick.

Labour's revival has to be based on a robust pro-business plan to revive a "making things" economy. It has to build a new relationship with genuine entrepreneurs and tomorrow's employers. Beyond that, Labour needs to be stronger on core issues such as discipline in schools, crime and low pay, which will help win voters back.

And you can multiply this failure a hundredfold if you are to talk of Ireland or Greece. At least the Greeks have a new strategy, er, tourism. Oh well, this might not be that original, but at least I can say that I will do my selfless best to support the Greeks in their struggles. How about you?

Entertainment

I can't believe it. Watching Swinton Rugby League Club is now fun. Scintillating attacking rugby combined with dodgy defence and appalling discipline results in games with lots of points, thrilling finishes, a fight and a win. This is what happened yesterday when having been drawn away to a higher division club, Dewsbury, in the Challenge Cup, Swinton raced to an 18-0 lead before being pulled back to 24-all at half time. They slipped behind at the start of the second half only to rally brilliantly, cruising to a 44-28 lead with ten minutes to go before the obligatory punch-up, two Swinton players sin-binned and a couple of late tries by Dewsbury stretched the nerves. The hooter sounded before they cracked, the fans celebrated with a somewhat optimistic chant about going to Wembley and then Swinton were drawn away to the cup holders, Warrington, in the next round where there will certainly be a lot of points, probably a fight, but the other two ... I don't think so somehow.

Negotiating skills

At the last general election the Liberal Democrats were brilliantly placed to act as power brokers. I can understand why a coalition with Labour, despite a broad level of agreement on the main issues, did not get off the ground as it would not have commanded a majority in the House and Labour were not the largest party. But to form a coalition with the Tories, where there were huge policy differences, would mean a substantial revision of Conservative Party policy. Of course, this is precisely what coalition government is supposed to do.  So how did the Lib Dem leadership grasp this unique opportunity?

1. The single most important area of government is political economy. The Lib Dems vehemently opposed Tory plans to reduce the deficit through rapid cuts in public expenditure. So they agreed to support and actively implement Tory plans to reduce the deficit through rapid cuts in public expenditure.

2. Next in salience comes education. They pledged to abolish university tuition fees and then agreed and defended the policy which has seen them rise to up to £9,000 p.a.

3. Of course health is a big electoral issue. The Lib Dems were opposed to 'top-down' reorganisation of the NHS. They are now part of a government which is attempting a radical top-down reorganisation of the NHS. (Mind you the Tories were also opposed at the general election - just where did that one come from?)

4. Finally, on the constitution, proportional representation was the Liberal Democrat's big issue. This was surely the one policy that was not negotiable. They could hardly enter a coalition that was not prepared to offer PR. So they used this unique opportunity to win a commitment merely to hold a referendum with only one choice between the existing system and a replacement that was not proportional and which they and most other advocates of electoral reform, including myself, rejected. Holding a referendum on something that nobody wanted never looked a winner. And it wasn't.

A radical Tory government has emerged unscathed from deeply unpopular policies; the electoral system, whose unrepresentative nature has cemented Conservative power on minority support for most of the post-war period*, is now unchallengeable; Liberal Democrat support has crashed.

So my question is - you are going to a car dealer's showroom. Who out of our unsavoury political leadership would you take with you to help you negotiate?

*And if you doubt this, look at how ruthlessly the Tories campaigned to retain it. They understand the mechanics of power.

Human shields

Pausing from my marking for a little light schadenfreude at the expense of Clegg Minor, a sobering thought spoiled the pleasure. Whilst the electorate has been busy punishing Lib Dems for being Tories, nobody seems to have got around to punishing the Tories for being, well, Tories too.

Wind

From a travel circular,

"Whenever you feel that you need a second wind, let Greece charm you. Come out of your sloth and seek for the great passion that will upset your senses, will satisfy your devouring appetites and billow out your inner instincts. These passions are incurable!"

A second wind can certainly upset the senses, or at least one of them, especially after satisfying a devouring appetite. But a passion for Greece is incurable, I will give the author that. And though I am about to set off back to England to face a pile of marking, my return flight is already booked and I am smiling even as I leave at the promise of a long Greek summer, with only a passing grimace at the thought of those exam papers.

Thanks to Tim

The future of adult education

The current model that sells higher education for its economic benefits will eventually run aground on the rocks of reality. My campaign would be for an inclusive system that sees education as of intrinsic worth, rather than simply a route to a bigger payslip, and central to that would be adult education as community engagement. Doing this would mean abandoning the patronising language of aspiration raising and, instead, getting down to the hard work of meeting the aspirations that already exist, changing the institution to fit the people, rather than people to fit the institution. To my mind, this would be a progressive agenda that should be a part of any contemporary, progressive political movement and a starting point for the renaissance of an adult education that this time round will not be lost because of the whims of politicians.

From my contribution to Harry Barnes' May Day meeting on the future of adult education. I was invited to it, but Greece just won out over Chesterfield. Read the whole piece here.

Signs of the times

Matters Cromwellian

I am glad to be in Greece.

Thought for the day

Monarchy, you see, is a hereditary disease that can only be cured by fresh outbreaks of itself.

Anyway, here are some pretty pictures from my afternoon walk yesterday.

Opportunity

Jason Burke, whose book on Al-Qaeda is one that I would recommend, has sometimes been misread as minimising the threat of Jihadi Islamism.  In fact, what he has always emphasised is its danger. That danger is, paradoxically, the result of what he sees as its organisational weakness and ideological strength. He argues that Al-Qaeda as an idea has not built a conventional underground network, instead it has spread an ideology of terror that has attracted adherents capable of acting semi-independently, which makes it hard to detect and stop. So It was good to read this from him today.

The events of this spring have shown that Bin Laden and his cronies are definitively drifting to the geographic, political, cultural and ideological margins of the Islamic world. Their attempt to radicalise and mobilise hundreds of millions of people has failed. Crowds shouting slogans of democracy, not of violence, have succeeded in forcing the departure of two dictators and shaken several more. The Arab spring started with a public self-immolation, an act of spectacular violence which impressed because it harmed no other and was thus a clear repudiation of the suicide attacks of the last decade. The few statements from al-Qaida's leadership or affiliate groups have sounded tired and irrelevant.

Whilst in no way minimising the possibility of murderous mayhem emerging from the ideologically deranged, or of the continued threat of organised groups such as the Taliban, the decline of the attraction of Jihadi ideas is to be hugely welcomed. And this is the key point. The Arab spring marks a rejection of both the dominant narratives in the Middle East. A new generation has experienced nothing but corruption and oppression from all the variants of pan-Arab nationalism and now the minority, dissident Islamist narrative is seen as a bitter opponent of the liberties the people are desperate to experience. These revolutions represent the defeat of Islamism not its opportunity.

So why then the caution, why the 'we do not know who these people are' cliché, why do we give credence to the desperate claims of tyrants that they are the ones holding back the forces of terror? Every day we are seeing people displaying the most extraordinary courage to try and win ordinary, democratic freedoms. This is democracy's moment in the Middle East and we should be supporting it by whatever means possible.

Easter

It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency.

I'm still going to enjoy the Easter festivities mind you. Spit roast lamb - yum, yum.

Useless idiots

It has been often noted that one of the consolations of religion is the pleasure it affords in the contemplation of the eternal torments of the non-believer. As an atheist, I do not have that to fall back on. Instead I have Greece. From here I can post items about glorious weather and the beauties of nature, hoping to annoy everyone I know back in the urban drizzle of England. Except that from Saturday onwards, as England basked in glorious sunshine, a cold wind has brought torrential rain and has covered the mountains in snow. This has not put me in a good mood.

My irritation increased when I saw the prominence given to this group in the Guardian. I don't know where they come from these 'useful idiots', the dupes who crawl in obeisance to every grotesque tyranny, who take their 'fact-finding' tours with sanctimonious seriousness and make solemn pronouncements that they 'have seen the future and it works', whilst blocking their ears to the screams emanating from the people. They have no need to take pleasure in the torments of the afterlife when they can perceive those inflicted on the living as both exaggerated and understandable.

However grotesque and murderous a regime, however obvious its attempt to create an hereditary kleptocracy, it will always find its apologists and they will invariably dignify their language by describing themselves as campaigners for 'peace'. The peace they advocate is one where a regime can systematically rob, torture and murder its own people unmolested and out of sight. They make the categorical error that Solzhenitsyn described brilliantly in his essay Peace and Violence,

The 'peace-war' opposition embodies a logical fault. The whole of the thesis is opposed to only a part of the anti-thesis. War is a mass phenomenon - concentrated, clamorous and clear-cut, but it is by no means the only expression of unceasing world-wide violence. The logically balanced and genuine moral opposites are peace-violence.

And the worst is often "systematic state violence" against its own people. And so,

Peace will then be served not by those who count upon the good nature of the men of violence, but by those who are incorruptible, unbending and tireless in their insistence on the rights of the persecuted, the oppressed and the murdered.

These people are no peace activists and they are not just apologists, they are warriors. They are part the battle of language, partisans fighting for the Gaddafi regime with the weapon of words, something that Syrian protesters have pointed out is a key element of any struggle.

The more killings and brutality there is in the street, the more the lies and misleading information. It’s like they are interconnected in a way. Kill, then lie to justify the killing, then lie again to set the stage for more killing.

Mind you, despite being undermined by the farcical blindness of their own propaganda, the cautious hesitancy and the bureaucratic legalism of the UN mission might just do this group's job for them.

Ah well, at least the sun shone briefly this morning until the clouds gathered once more, threatening rain.

Deflation

With all the focus on the Middle East, the continuing economic crisis in the Eurozone has taken a back seat, but the recession is still taking its toll. Now the women of Greece are rising up, which is apparently more than their men are.

More and more of my female friends increasingly complain about the deceasing performance of their husbands and boy friends. These women, whether married, in relationship or singles, they all unanimously blame the economic crisis and the austerity measures for the poor libido performances.

The solution? Sue the IMF and various assorted politicians for the "physical and emotional stress" of "limitations on activity". And they should beware. As far as politics and sex are concerned, Greek women have form.

The serious point is that as the Arab peoples risk all for political freedom and the sort of life we take for granted, there is another struggle going on. This may be more about subsistence and security in prosperous societies, rather than the desperate courage being shown to bring down regimes built on systematic torture and murder, but it is none the less significant - a challenge to the economic consensus that should be the counterpart of the fight for political liberty.

In the meantime, there seems to be a problem with the celebrated Greek male machismo. You have to worry that the economic crisis isn't making them a little bit, well, English.

Drink

I say this to everyone who turns their nose up at my favourite €2 for 1.5 litre bottle of Retsina. You can't tell the difference.

Wine costing less than £5 a bottle can have the same effect on the palate as those priced up to six times as much, a psychological taste challenge suggests.

People might just be able pick out the home made stuff in an old plastic Fanta bottle that I bought for very little in Argalasti market one day, I will give you that. But for anything else you need a real expert.

Spring colours

Greek philosophy

“We must go from this life saturated with fun, sex and food”.
Eleonora Meleti, a Greek TV entertainer.

Treading in the footsteps of Epicurus.

Via

Storm

Stolen from Paulie, ta.

Looking backwards

It appears that Madeleine Bunting wishes to emotionally bond with Ed Milliband, something that gives me a brief pang of sympathy for the man. However, I could see where she was coming from when she wrote,

But there was – and is – another account of betrayal in which a liberal elite, smugly superior in their metropolitan progressivism, championed globalisation and sold ordinary working people down the river.

Although she skates perilously on the thin ice of a patronising view of the now mythologised white working class, she does see the landscape of insecurity and exploitation on the horizon before crashing through the surface into the freezing waters of 'Blue Labour', to my mind a weird combination of William Cobbett, G K Chesterton and Catholic guilt. This mélange of collectivism and social conservatism is the latest 'big thing' and has depressingly attracted the main spokesman for the social democratic left, John Cruddas. As for Bunting and her key theme? It’s nostalgia.

What does a politics of nostalgia amount to? Cruddas, again, offers pointers: "People yearn for respect, belonging, identity, tradition. They yearn to fight against their insecurity." Jonathan Rutherford talks of a "conservative socialism". What they look back to are strands of early Labour thinking that shared much with Toryism – Romantic, popular, rooted in working-class experience of dispossession and English. But these strands fell by the wayside, marginalised by both liberalism, technocratic statism and internationalism.

Yikes, there is a lot of contradictory stuff packed in there but rather than try and untangle it, I want to explain why I think that nostalgia makes for lousy politics.

1. Nostalgia is not history; it is not even memory. It is a fiction, an invented past. And it is a confection created in the image of a present ideology. A politics rooted in make-believe is hardly convincing.

2. Nostalgia can be totalitarian. The imposition of a fabricated past can be more oppressive than the attempt to create a futurist utopia. Al Qaeda is a perfect example – hey guys, we had so much fun back in the seventh century.

3. It matters what you are nostalgic for: loon pants, Doris Day, the Third Reich? One person’s nostalgia is another’s nausea.

4. We are all nostalgics. We all look back on better times, at least we do when we reach a certain age. We long for our lost youth; and they were better times – we had energy, libido and hair. The trouble is that our personal nostalgia is rooted in our particular era. A politics that offers us eternal youth in a time of our choosing is hardly practical.

5. The reason many things have changed is because they were crap. It is called progress because it is, er, progress.

6. The beneficiaries of change are hardly likely to opt for nostalgia. Oops, there goes the women’s vote.

7. Nostalgia tends towards either an acceptance or a minimisation of conflicts, injustices, hierarchies and oppression; not because they are right, but because they took place in a mythical past that can now be presented to us as something inherently superior to the present.

Instead of nostalgia we need to grasp its opposites. These aren’t futurism and modernism; the opposites of nostalgia are history and experience, both of which require judgement and analysis, not a cosy warm glow. These certainly have an emotional resonance – their own celebrations in custom and music, their own literature - but don’t mistake that emotional attachment with the morass of Chestertonian nostalgia. It is sharp, analytical and angry. And, above all, it is real.

This then points to two things in Bunting’s article that are worth exploring, resistance to change and security.

Resistance to change is important, it can defend what we value, but it is always selective. It is an old cliché that people don’t like change. Human beings are actually very good at accepting change that benefits them and rejecting it when it does harm. Many working class struggles against change were not against 'progress' per se, they were fought against innovations aimed at breaking their power or reducing their standards of living in order to benefit others. Handloom weavers did not fight to preserve the picturesque, they wanted to keep their independence and income and in losing they were plunged into the wage slavery of the factories. So a politics of resistance to change is one that has to be based on a sharp analysis of competing interests and has to ally itself to reform, change for the better, as well. Many of the great political struggles of our times have been for change - civil and political rights, female emancipation for example - not against it.

Her identification of the problem of insecurity is also interesting. However, Bunting seems to be talking about it in terms of anomie, whereas to me, security is not predominantly a social or cultural concept, it is economic. Health care, housing, welfare, education, good pensions – all eminently affordable in rich societies – are what create security. And economic security does not necessarily reinforce conventional values; it gives us freedom. With security we lose the fears that keep us subservient and beholden to others, we can choose the ways we wish to live. Anyway, it is no place of a political party to lecture us about our private lives and besides, any political initiative trying to promote a particular way of life is doomed to failure. Remember 'Back to Basics'?

I can’t help feeling that this whole malarkey is a way of avoiding hard analysis in favour of an undifferentiated conservatism. Change is not a single thing; it is contradictory and deeply embedded in the everyday conflicts of our lives. It is based on the real interests of real people and they may not be identical. Once you accept that, nostalgia, rather than being a basis for a revival of the left, instead becomes a soggy ideological blanket that smothers the important political choices that we should be making right now.



Hat tip Steve

Marketing degrees

It appears that the government is floundering as its policy of allowing flexible university fees up to £9,000 is not leading to a competitive market, but to a cartel. Most are going for the maximum amount and threatening to bust the budget for the payment of up-front fees.

With an inelastic demand currently exceeding supply, this would be likely. But there is more to it than that. A university education is being marketed as an economic asset and price is not just a measure of demand, but one of quality and status. A lower fee is a symbol of low status. If you are going to dress to impress would you wear Armani or Asda?

Once again we see the contradictions inherent in seeing universities as diploma factories for the purpose of individual gain for a minority of young people. And the big losers are things like adult education, incapable of sustaining higher fees, and those who want a more open, egalitarian university system, addressing a whole range of new markets rooted in access and social equity. This unseemly scramble for maximum income is at the expense of diversity and imagination. Sadly, the dreamers have been defeated - for now.

Pelion spring

Spring is the best season in Greece. There is a little chill in the breeze, but the sun is warm. Evenings are cool and the weather can be changeable, though when the sun is out everything comes to life, insects, goats, birds and chainsaws.

There is nothing timid about spring here, it doesn't leave dusty, half open buds lingering around, waiting for the occasional bout of snow and frost to pass. It goes for it with vigour; all the trees rush into leaf and blossom at slightly different times, as if each is waiting its turn so as not to overload the senses.

Everyone's mood is lifted, all is a brilliant green and the light is clear. Soon the nightingales will arrive filling the cool air with song to set against the barking of the dogs as one person walking past a house sets off a chain reaction, echoing round the hills.

Peace and quiet? Whoever thought the countryside is quiet. Certainly not on a perfect day in the Greek spring.

Spring flowers

I'm off to Greece and it makes me feel like this.

The cruellest month

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Which just goes to show that T S Eliot was, at heart, a miserable bugger.

April is here, with light and promise and ... er ... cool grey skies. Never mind, on Sunday I will be off to Greece again for a month, yet another sign of the privileged existence of someone with an occupational pension and a part-time job.

For the first time in ages I will be sorry to miss watching Swinton Rugby League Club as us Lions fans have the culture shock of a winning team playing dazzling rugby. Last week's 68-24 win away at Oldham was a treat. And there is spring in the air for Widnes as well, as the Rugby League has announced that they will be promoted to Super League at the end of this season. They might even promote Halifax too. It has yet to be decided where the chill wind of relegation will settle. Sports fans may note that this is a rather odd decision to announce at the very beginning of the season, before we know who has won or lost, but this is Rugby League after all and the game has always shown a certain administrative flair.

And as my thoughts turn to Greece with the news there of continuing strikes, small acts of terrorism and economic gloom, I am reminded of our own problems, vastly overshadowed by the events in the Middle East. The extraordinary rebirth of treasury orthodoxy has been joined by structural adjustment in the Eurozone with predictable consequences. But I shall sit in the warm sun with cheap wine amidst blossom and wild flowers and be grateful for the accident of my birth, a baby boomer, the generation that had it better than most.

Hopes and dreams

I suppose crass Second World War analogies have a new lease of life as Libya produces its very own Rudolph Hess. One can only hope that this time it really does presage the collapse of the regime. Elsewhere, there is greater uncertainty. The courage shown by those confronting the Syrian regime is breathtaking, born of the same hunger for change and liberty, with no sign of the regime cracking under the pressure. This is from a new web site that should be essential reading.

Like all his fellow dictators, the Syrian president speaks to his public as if addressing children. So Assad does not talk sense or logic. Instead he discusses reform priorities and gives the example of bread and freedom to convince us that food is more important than liberty and to tell us that he won’t lift the emergency law.

He neglects to recognise that the regime stole people’s food through instituting the emergency law. The absence of freedom legitimised and helped the robbery. If Assad had to chose between a daily luxury meal in prison – the Saidnaya military prison, for instance – and regular food in liberty, what would he chose? But his regime does not give us a choice. It steals the people’s food and keeps them in a big jail at the same time.

We only hope that Assad’s speech is not the opening shot in a series of large-scale massacres and arrests, because that seems to be the subtext of his message.

Burkes and Paines

As the Arab rebellions continue across the region, it is as if a legion of Tom Paines are sweeping through the Middle East. I haven't seen the demonstrators waving copies of The Rights of Man, but their sentiments seem to match entirely Paine's support for democratic revolutions to destroy the old autocracy; "Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government".

For every Paine there seems to be an Edmund Burke*; anti-revolutionary, distrusting radical enthusiasms, advocating slow, incremental change. They are becoming more visible as a result of the UN intervention in Libya, though they had always been there, expressing reservations about the revolutions themselves, often making their governments hesitant. They don't ostensibly support the existing regimes, but would prioritise stability over rapid change.

A few Burkes are drawn into denial if not outright apologism. For example, Richard Falk can actually write,

The main pretext given for the intervention was the vulnerability of Libyan civilians to the wrath of the Gaddafi regime. But there was little evidence of such wrath beyond the regime's expected defence of the established order, although admittedly being here undertaken in a brutal manner, which itself is not unusual in such a situation.

But mostly they produce this sort of stuff from Abdelkader Benali - it could be seen as a Western plot, it looks like a tribal war between rival regions, better to have a broader coalition, more Arab involvement is needed, etc., etc. Sometimes the sceptics give credence to regime propaganda, raising the spectre of Al Qaeda or the risk that something could go terribly wrong in the aftermath. Thankfully in Libya, the Paines seized the day at the last minute, though the Burkes still rumble on about not exceeding the UN resolution or not backing regime change, rather than accepting that whilst Gaddafi remains so does the threat to civilian lives. This caution produces talk about a cease fire or even partition, both of which would cement Gaddafi's position in the west and allow him to regroup and rearm. Neither policies have a great pedigree, though both are wonderful excuses for inaction.

And so the debate over Libya is much the same as the one Burke and Paine had over France in the 1790s; the radical, democratic activist against the cautious, conservative reformist. One of the odd things is how conservatism seems to have infected the left, whilst some on the right have become revolutionary sympathisers.

I am temperamentally disposed to be a Paine, so I dislike this cautious conservatism. In Libya it played for time when there was none left, hoping for a fait accompli, meaning that western governments could wring their hands over the coming repression without having to actually do anything about it. And what really strikes me is that the whole critique is based on a pessimistic assessment of what might be, not what actually is. They are fearful, when reality often tells a different story.

There are strengths to a Burkean analysis. Revolutions can go very wrong indeed, especially when informed by impossibilist ideologies. Yet this is not what is happening in the Middle East. What is being demanded is something humdrum, the dignity of an ordinary life lived in the sort of polities that people have seen on satellite TV, on YouTube, or experienced as students in the west. A type of regime where 250,000 people can march against a government policy and even indulge in some minor rioting, without deaths, shooting, arbitrary arrests and torture. They want something that we live with and take for granted, usually grumbling about the harshness of our lot all the while.

This maybe our everyday reality, but we tend to forget that it too needed to be fought for. Here in Manchester we remember our own massacre, nearly two hundred years ago, of peaceful demonstrators demanding the vote. Far more recently we have experienced fascism, war and genocide. We know that there is much that can go wrong, that victory comes with imperfections. We can be certain that once new regimes are in place that there will be a longer struggle for women's emancipation, something that always lags behind when male public freedom often means continuing female public and private oppression. Women's liberation needs its own activism and mobilisation. Even so, today, when we see people struggling and dying to bring down the nasty police states that they were born into and to claim their own imperfect freedom, their own slice of normality, the least we can do is offer some practical solidarity, abandon faux neutrality and search for the Tom Paine inside us.

*Sometimes this should be confused with a berk. For those that don't know, the word 'berk' comes from Cockney rhyming slang - Berkeley Hunt ...

Remember

"No matter how vast the skyscrapers and powerful the cannon, no matter how limitless the power of the State, no matter how mighty the empire, all this is only mist and fog and - as such - will be blown away. Only one true force continues to evolve and live; and this force is liberty. To a human, to live means to be free."

Vasily Grossman
Everything Flows

Choosing sides

In another restatement of conservative isolationism, Simon Jenkins writes,

It is a mystery why Cameron chose Libya for his exercise in neocon "destiny shaping". There are a dozen other candidates that might have succumbed sooner to his aggression.

There is no mystery at all. There is one reason and one reason alone. It is simply because the people who made the popular revolution against Gaddafi asked for it. Once it became clear that the response to anti-regime protests in Libya was to be a massacre of the demonstrators, they asked for western intervention, without troops on the ground or an occupation, to support and protect them. After they had taken up arms as the dictatorship declared war on its people, faced with certain defeat by superior fire-power and only too aware of Gaddafi's promise not to be merciful, they begged for it.

There were only two possible responses that could have been given. Yes, we will offer support on precisely the terms you have requested, with all the uncertainties and difficulties that may follow. Or no, you are on your own, with all the terrible certainties about the consequences for the people.

Cameron, Sarkozy, Obama and the United Nations did not choose Libya, the Libyan people chose them. There are people I know, like and respect (this does not include Simon Jenkins by the way) who think we should have said no. But I, for one, was overwhelmingly relieved that we said yes.

UPDATE
Read Faud Ajami here

The warrant came from the Libyan people who pleaded for help and made a case for that help by their own bravery. These were not people sitting on the sidelines, or idling their time away in exile. They were men and women in a long captivity anxious to reclaim their tormented country.

Bureaucracy

Misery

Apparently the misery index is now at its highest point since ... er ... the last time the Tories were in power. Here is Faisal Islam of Channel 4 News:

The concept of the “Misery Index” is a simple economic concept that adds the ills of inflation and unemployment together into a single measure of our financial despondency. Today’s figures mean that in February 2011 it hit the highest level since Oct ’92 just after Britain was forced out of the ERM (and the then Chancellor was advised by a young Tory hotshot called David Cameron).

So at a time of gathering gloom, international crisis and natural disaster, compounded by deeply irritating news coverage and someone filling my wheelie bin with builder's rubble, how about some reasons for me to be cheerful.

The Arab revolutions are hanging on in there (with a little belated help from their friends). Hull has displayed its best republican traditions by being the only city in the UK not to host a street party for the royal wedding (actually, to be precise, nobody has applied for a license - good Yorkshire folk won't waste money on a bit of paper allowing them to get pissed when they can do it for nowt). Swinton Rugby League Club are on the up, winning again, with supporters coming back and being fun to watch (a grand old club is reviving; we just need that new stadium). I already have my pension. And finally, there is a very welcome new life in the world.

Yep, I can find reasons to be cheerful - hope you can too.

Cuckoo

It is like the first cuckoo in spring. Any action by the west, NATO or the UN is inevitably heralded by a batty column from Robert Fisk. Today's is a pearler.

As far as I can follow the tortuous logic and weird non-sequiturs, he asserts that the intervention is all about regime change (hmm... I thought that is what revolutions were usually about), oil and western hypocrisy. Then ... oh yes ... these are only "rebels" in scare quotes, it is really all about tribalism, Gaddafi has support in Tripoli, it could all fail as well, something worse could follow and, finally, he asks why don't we deal with other tyrants (when, if we did, we would see an identical column from him condemning it in the same terms) etc., etc., etc.

This is lazy blogging, fish in a barrel stuff, but he isn't alone and it seems to me that he is typical of the critics of the UN decision on Libya. They abdicate judgement in favour of cynicism.

Non-intervention in any conflict is not an act of neutrality, it ensures the victory of the strongest. Though there have been unsuccessful and only partially successful interventions in the past, there have also been some catastrophic non-interventions. Every situation involves risks and requires judgements to be made. There is the utilitarian calculation as to both the possible effectiveness and feasibility of intervention. However, the most important one is not merely a calculation of self-interest, though that always plays a part, but a moral, political and humanitarian one - the need to stand with those who demand liberty and democracy in the face of fascism and to oppose the mass murder of citizens by their own governments. The judgement made by the UN was undoubtedly, if belatedly, the right one. Let us hope it works.

From the jaws of defeat

Libyans in Benghazi demonstrate their agreement with the Stop the War Coalition.

More scenes from the Libyan Youth Movement here.

And just in case you wonder why, read this from yesterday:

The global community must act to stop Gaddafi and his forces reaching Benghazi. If he gets here, he will kill everyone.

At last

The UN Security Council has backed a no-fly zone over Libya and "all necessary measures" short of an invasion "to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas".

Arse

Marc Abrahams writes:

In 1995, the Ig Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to two surgeons who painstakingly assembled a study called Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature. Those case reports involve, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; 11 different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweller's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.

Which, rather worryingly from a psychoanalytical point of view, brought to mind this item from Greece.

That’s a really huge radish! It weights seven kilos! Farmer Stavros Stavrianoudakis grew it in his farm in the Agioi Deka area on the island of Crete.

Now that would bring tears to your eyes.

Shame

So after the great Arab revolution comes the great Arab repression. The catalyst is the failure to support the Libyan uprising. If the USA can not only stand by and allow such an unambiguously evil act to take place, but also block others' frantic attempts to secure help, then dictators the world over can sleep soundly and let loose their security forces. We still don't know what the final outcome will be yet, though it seems clear that thousands of brave people who wished to live in dignity and freedom will die cruel deaths simply for wanting something that we take for granted.

This was a great historical opportunity, a chance for a momentous transformation of the Middle East. The failure to understand this, welcome it without reservation and then to take action to support it is a crime. Obama is not the first Nobel peace laureate to have blood on his hands.

Black comedy

I now realise that Pontius Pilate was showing solidarity. Marvellous.

Solidarity with those fighting for their democratic and national freedom is our obligation. We can best discharge it by demanding that the government at long last takes its hands off the Middle East and its people, leaving them to settle accounts with their own rulers.

Surely that should read, 'leaving rulers to settle accounts with their own people' (ed).

The Middle East doesn't seem to agree:

The Arab League endorsed the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya on Saturday and recognized the fledgling rebel movement seeking to topple Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi as the country’s legitimate government, increasing pressure on Western powers to intervene

Crime news

Bill Neely reports:

The town, 30 miles from Tripoli, fell to Gaddafi's son Khamis, who runs the 32nd Brigade, described by US diplomats as the best trained and best armed of all Gaddafi's forces. They're also known as the Deterrent Battalion and they are now involved in a second and rather more chilling clean-up operation.

They are sweeping through Zawiya, rounding up young men they suspect might have been involved in the rebellion. As we left, we saw one young man inside a speeding jeep, bloodstains on his shirt and a soldier virtually standing on him. Troops are going house to house, according to one resident, rounding up dozens of suspects. We talked to one man who said: "People are being arrested for no reason, people who stayed in their homes for the whole seven days of the fighting. You cannot imagine what is happening here."

And as the rebels beg for assistance, NATO and the EU, taking their lead from the United States, have boldly and resolutely decided to do nothing.

Whereas a former US Air Force Chief of Staff thinks replicating the successful no-fly zone over Northern Iraq would be "easy", the Obama administration sees nothing but difficulties whilst, "The director of national intelligence declared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a chilling example of self-fulfilling prophecy, that 'over the longer term Qaddafi will prevail.'"

One can only hope that Neely is right when he says, " Zawiya may prove a pyrrhic victory for the Great Leader". If he is wrong, heaven knows what horrors will be unleashed on the Libyan people.

The failure to grasp the significance of the revolutions sweeping the Arab world is bad enough, but the fatalistic acceptance of the triumph of violence over liberty is shocking. There is no sense of America remotely understanding where its real interests lie.

And if Gaddafi does win you can see it all now. There will be a brief period of quarantine and then respected journals and earnest editorials will pronounce that there are signs of reform, that a new generation is in charge, that there are 'moderate elements' gaining ground. And whilst this blather smothers the screams emanating from the torture chambers, trade deals will be done, the regime will be 'brought in from the cold', universities will, no doubt nervously, eye the offer of money for prestigious new buildings before snatching the cash and making some self-righteous pronouncement about 'building bridges'.

All the while Arab eyes will be turned towards this masquerade, filled with hate. They will have learned one thing from this woeful inaction; that the West is an enemy of freedom and a friend to tyrants. And they will not forget.

Reality

"My wife scored zero points ...The test was a total waste of time; it was all physically orientated, nothing about her mental state. They asked things like 'Can you brush your teeth?' How that relates to mental health issues is beyond me. It was overthrown at tribunal. I can only describe it as mental torture; she was a mental wreck after it."

"I am waiting for a tribunal, but I'm told that it won't be before June, because there are so many people waiting. I'm stuck on the £65 benefit until then," a woman with ME said, and began to cry.

Just a few quotes from evidence given to the work and pensions select committee at a public meeting about the new work capability assessment for eligibility for disability benefits. This is just the latest in a long series of media reports about the way the test is failing comprehensively. Here we have a toxic mix of outsourcing, incompetence, lack of expertise, spending cuts and a loaded political agenda about 'ending the sick-note culture' running up against a determination not to lose political face by actually listening to the truth. I can't help feeling that a 'scrounger' driven agenda is little more than institutional cruelty.

In the meantime the select committee has come up with a startling new idea:

The chair, Dame Anne Begg (Labour, Aberdeen South), said this was the first time in her nine years on the committee that MPs had ventured out and talked to real people. "We should do this kind of thing more," she said.

I always like the notion of "real people". It makes you wonder what the others are. Surreal people probably, after all we currently have government in the style of Dali.

Resistance

Tonight I watched the superb film, Sophie Scholl, about the arrest and execution of members of the White Rose Group, part of the German resistance to Hitler. It is an intelligent, understated and beautifully written film.

As I viewed it, I could not help but think of the hundreds of similar dramas being played out in prison cells and torture chambers across the globe - right now - as I type this. I also watched the news tonight with irritation and frustration as a foreign policy 'expert' talked of the danger of a no-fly zone in Libya. He said that immediately Gadaffi knew about it he would place human shields by the anti-aircraft guns or move them near to schools or hospitals, preventing an attack on air defences without which a no-fly zone could not succeed. He failed to explain how an anti-aircraft gun in Tripoli could stop planes from protecting the rebels from air attack in Benghazi.

I have seen and read so many excuses for inaction in recent days whilst Gadaffi uses the time to cement his power and organise his security forces to defend the regime. Yet, as Christopher Hitchens puts it,

Doing nothing is not the absence of a policy; it is, in fact, the adoption of one. "Neutrality" favors the side with the biggest arsenal. "Nonintervention" is a form of interference. If you will the end—and President Barack Obama has finally said that Qaddafi should indeed go—then to that extent you will the means.

And in this vacuum of inaction who knows how many brave protesters, Libyan Sophie Scholls, are facing their own premature deaths or incarceration in unspeakable places for the crime of demanding freedom whilst the democracies dither.

Academic affairs

He's not the first and no doubt not the last,

It’s evidence of a towering intellect at work – an aspect of Saif’s personality we know escaped people who met him and even tried to teach him.

And the odd million quid made no difference at all, obviously. The tangled morality drama continues with revelations about Anthony Giddens' jolly to Libya, the fruits of which you can read here.* He won't be the only one cringing at the moment, Benjamin Barber's "recipe for peace and partnership" will be a piece he will regret for ever more.

This is much more than a story about gullibility, it reflects the difficulties faced by universities as they are driven to find funding from ever more dubious sources and an associated abandoning of an academic ethic in favour of a commercial one. The dilemmas are often real enough, would I have turned down that sort of money for adult education? Mind you, I doubt if the proceeds of the systematic looting of a nation would ever be offered to anything so humble and this points to something else.

The use of prestigious educational institutions to enhance the reputations of dodgy regimes is a lot cheaper, and far more respectable, than buying a football club and is an opportunity made more available by the amoral temptations inherent in unpredictable and inadequate funding. But this is not all. These deals only come to those at the top of the system and are grasped often as a way of keeping the elite in the elite. I can't see a queue of Russian oligarchs and Gulf State potentates lining up to buy Swinton Rugby League Club. Morals are being abandoned to hold on to status as much as to maintain financial viability. After all, status and power are such comfortable bedfellows.

At least one leader has fallen, yet the main one clings on and no PR company will help him, only Western dithering and available fire-power matters here.

*And if you think that is embarrassing try reading The Third Way.

"An old-fashioned revolution"

Salman Rushdie on moving beyond the politics of religion.



Via

The Barcelona of the North

That was one slogan the marketing people dreamt up to sell Hull to the world. Yesterday, on a grey, cool early spring day it was more Alfred Hitchcock than Luis Bunuel.

But, my, was it good to be back and see all my old friends. Hull is a great place, lovely people, distinctively quirky.

When I left my old job over a year ago I was distraught at what I had lost - not just leaving behind a long career in adult education, but the 'troika nights' in a local curry house, the chats about jazz and rugby league in the house of a friend instead of doing what I was supposed to do and teach him how to use his computer, the early evening meals at Pave in splendid company. I needn't have worried. They are still there, as are my friends, waiting to be enjoyed. And today, back in Manchester, I'm still smiling.