normblog

Happy ending

Here's something better (than this) to think about. It's the story of a large-scale operation to rescue a man from Shetland's highest hill in gale force conditions. The reader who sent me the link writes: 'I always feel heartened that our society can deploy large numbers of people to help others in trouble.' (Thanks: BrS.)

Questions you'd prefer not to answer

Here's something to worry about:

The Arrow is the successor to the American Patriot missile system used to shoot down Saddam's Scuds during the 1991 Gulf War. But where the Patriot attacks the incoming missile as it nears its target, the Arrow is designed to intercept a hostile missile much earlier, in the upper atmosphere.

From Israel's perspective this is a crucial advance, especially if the Iranians were to attempt to fire missiles armed with nuclear warheads. "There's no point shooting down a nuclear missile once it's over Israel - the devastation would be just the same," an Israeli military officer explained this week. "The idea is to take it out long before it hits Israel."

That would mean such a missile exploding somewhere over Iraq or Jordan, thereby potentially causing widespread devastation in those countries.

It's not a case of 'innocent shields' exactly, but it raises similar issues. To save its cities, its people, may one country defend itself by transferring the potential cost of an attack by a second country to third and fourth countries? Does the second country bear the full responsibility for what happens by obliging the first one to defend itself in this way, because there is no other technically feasible method of shielding its population? Or is the responsibility for the devastation in the third and fourth countries shared by the first and second countries?

The Australian Supremacy

In my book on the 2001 Ashes series I appended a few tables at the end, under the heading 'The Australian Supremacy', setting out some of the details of Australia's dominance of this contest since 1989. Now seems like a good time to update it.

In the English summer of 2005, a thrilling and unforgettable series made it look as if the period of Australian dominance might be over. But it turned out not to be so, the recent clean sweep in Australia making 2005 look like an exception, narrowly achieved, rather than the first light of a new dawn. But who can tell? The 2006-7 result, even in taking the general tendency of almost two decades to its extreme limit, may in the end turn out to have been a final flourish - with the retirement of Shane Warne an appropriate marker for, as well as one of the principal causes of, this closure. We shall see.

Whatever happens, the last 18 years of Australian cricketing superiority over England are now a part of history and - what do you know? - I think it should be recorded on normblog. Here are outline details of the results of the 53 Tests (numbered by me in chronological sequence) of those years.

Australia's results against England 1989-2007

01. 1989 Won by 210 runs
Leeds: Australia 601-7 dec and 230-3 dec; England 430 and 191

02. 1989 Won by 6 wickets
Lord's: England 286 and 359; Australia 528 and 119-4

03. 1989 Match drawn
Birmingham: Australia 424 and 158-2; England 242

04. 1989 Won by 9 wickets
Manchester: England 260 and 264; Australia 447 and 81-1

05. 1989 Won by an innings and 180 runs
Nottingham: Australia 602-6 dec; England 255 and 167

06. 1989 Match drawn
The Oval: Australia 468 and 219-4 dec; England 285 and 143-5

07. 1990-1 Won by 10 wickets
Brisbane: England 194 and 114; Australia 152 and 157-0

08. 1990-1 Won by 8 wickets
Melbourne: England 352 and 150; Australia 306 and 197-2

09. 1990-1 Match drawn
Sydney: Australia 518 and 205; England 469-8 dec and 113-4

10. 1990-1 Match drawn
Adelaide: Australia 386 and 314-6 dec; England 229 and 335-5

11. 1990-1 Won by 9 wickets
Perth: England 244 and 182; Australia 307 and 120-1

12. 1993 Won by 179 runs
Manchester: Australia 289 and 432-5 dec; England 210 and 332

13. 1993 Won by an innings and 62 runs
Lord's: Australia 632-4 dec; England 205 and 365

14. 1993 Match drawn
Nottingham: England 321 and 422-6 dec; Australia 373 and 202-6

15. 1993 Won by an innings and 148 runs
Leeds: Australia 653-4 dec; England 200 and 305

16. 1993 Won by 8 wickets
Birmingham: England 276 and 251; Australia 408 and 120-2

17. 1993 Lost by 161 runs
The Oval: England 380 and 313; Australia 303 and 229

18. 1994-5 Won by 184 runs
Brisbane: Australia 426 and 248-8 dec; England 167 and 323

19. 1994-5 Won by 295 runs
Melbourne: Australia 279 and 320-7 dec; England 212 and 92

20. 1994-5 Match drawn
Sydney: England 309 and 255-2 dec; Australia 116 and 344-7

21. 1994-5 Lost by 106 runs
Adelaide: England 353 and 328; Australia 419 and 156

22. 1994-5 Won by 329 runs
Perth: Australia 402 and 345-8 dec; England 295 and 123

23. 1997 Lost by 9 wickets
Birmingham: Australia 118 and 477; England 478-9 dec and 119-1

24. 1997 Match drawn
Lord's: England 77 and 266-4 dec; Australia 213-7 dec

25. 1997 Won by 268 runs
Manchester: Australia 235 and 395-8 dec; England 162 and 200

26. 1997 Won by an innings and 61 runs
Leeds: England 172 and 268; Australia 501-9 dec

27. 1997 Won by 264 runs
Nottigham: Australia 427 and 336; England 313 and 186

28. 1997 Lost by 19 runs
The Oval: England 180 and 163; Australia 220 and 104

29. 1998-9 Match drawn
Brisbane: Australia 485 and 237-3 dec; England 375 and 179-6

30. 1998-9 Won by 7 wickets
Perth: England 112 and 191; Australia 240 and 64-3

31. 1998-9 Won by 205 runs
Adelaide: Australia 391 and 278-5 dec; England 227 and 237

32. 1998-9 Lost by 12 runs
Melbourne: England 270 and 244; Australia 340 and 162

33. 1998-9 Won by 98 runs
Sydney: Australia 322 and 184; England 220 and 188

34. 2001 Won by an innings and 118 runs
Birmingham: England 294 and 164; Australia 576

35. 2001 Won by 8 wickets
Lord's: England 187 and 227; Australia 401 and 14-2

36. 2001 Won by 7 wickets
Nottingham: England 185 and 162; Australia 190 and 158-3

37. 2001 Lost by 6 wickets
Leeds: Australia 447 and 176-4 dec; England 309 and 315-4

38. 2001 Won by an innings and 25 runs
The Oval: Australia 641-4 dec; England 432 and 184

39. 2002-3 Won by 384 runs
Brisbane: Australia 492 and 296-5 dec; England 325 and 79

40. 2002-3 Won by an innings and 51 runs
Adelaide: England 342 and 159; Australia 552-9 dec

41. 2002-3 Won by an innings and 48 runs
Perth: England 185 and 223; Australia 456

42. 2002-3 Won by 5 wickets
Melbourne: Australia 551-6 dec and 107-5; England 270 and 387

43. 2002-3 Lost by 225 runs
Sydney: England 362 and 452-9 dec; Australia 363 and 226

44. 2005 Won by 239 runs
Lord's: Australia 190 and 384; England 155 and 180

45. 2005 Lost by 2 runs
Birmingham: England 407 and 182; Australia 308 and 279

46. 2005 Match drawn
Manchester: England 444 and 280-6 dec; Australia 302 and 371-9

47. 2005 Lost by 3 wickets
Nottingham: England 477 and 129-7; Australia 218 and 387

48. 2005 Match drawn
The Oval: England 373 and 335; Australia 367 and 4-0

49. 2006-7 Won by 277 runs
Brisbane: Australia 602 and 202-1 dec; England 157 and 370

50. 2006-7 Won by 6 wickets
Adelaide: England 551-6 dec and 129; 513 and 168-4

51. 2006-7 Won by 206 runs
Perth: Australia 244 and 527-5 dec; England 215 and 350

52. 2006-7 Won by an innings and 99 runs
Melbourne: England 159 and 161; Australia 419

53. 2006-7 Won by 10 wickets
Sydney: England 291 and 147; Australia 393 and 46-0

The most obvious indices of disparity here are that since 1989...

> Australia have won 9 Ashes series to England's one.

> Australia have won 34 Tests to England's 9, with 10 draws.

But here are some other points of interest...

> 6 of England's 9 victories occurred when the contest for the Ashes was already settled.

> Australia have won 9 games by an innings, 10 by 200 runs or better, and 9 by 7 wickets or better. And their other 6 victories were all by comfortable margins.

> Of England's 9 victories, one was by 2 runs, one by 12 runs, one by 19 runs, and one by 3 wickets.

As I've said, this is now history, and in one popular sense of that expression, it means it's over, gone. 'You're only as good as your last result' etc. But in another sense, history lasts forever. This particular stretch of it has been quite something, as the above data bear out.

[The second instalment is here and the third here.]

Anti-terrorism law

I've received this email from Martin Kuzmicki:

I thought that you might find the following interesting. The Court of Appeal gave judgement on Tuesday in the case of Regina v F (Terrorism). At present there is only a short summary of the decision in The Times Law Reports. F was charged with possessing documents/records containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism (an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000). The Act gives the following definition of 'terrorism' (I produce a summary of the essential points): the use or threat of force (e.g., serious violence against a person or serious property damage, endangering a person's life or creating a serious risk to public health and safety) designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public, and the use or threat of force is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.

F sought to argue that he had a defence in that the materials in his possession were to assist in the overthrow of the Libyan regime, which was a tyrannical and unrepresentative regime that did not allow for peaceful political change, and the only option open to persons was violent resistance. The Court of Appeal accepted that the Terrorism Act does not distinguish between actions or threats, that amount to terrorism under the Act, taken against 'tyrannical/oppressive' regimes and those of a 'democratic/representative' nature. The court did not allow F's purported defence.

The case brings to the fore a critical question of whether all violent acts (such as those defined in the Act) that are used for a policital purpose should amount to 'terrorism'? For the purposes of this example I exclude what I would consider the paradigm and always prohibited act of intentionally targeting civilians through acts of violence. It should be noted that the Act does not make any distinction in respect of the target of violence.

The State (generally speaking) has an obvious self-interest in proscribing violent acts that are intended to be used against it. However, is all such violence illegitimate and unlawful simply because it is the State (or States) that have a monopoly on the legal definition of terrorism? Should a court (and if not a court who else?) introduce an objective/normative standard into any such definition that does allow for violent response against particular regimes? I would suggest that the definition in the Terrorism Act is over-broad and does not take into account the proper or most important basis of a State's legitimacy: providing for a minimum level of human and civil rights to its population. One of those fundamental rights must surely be a representative democracy and the ability to seek the peaceful and political change of regime.

However, if one lived in a State that denied such participation and opportunity, would violent resistance be acceptable? Can a person in China use violence against the State apparatus for the furtherance of legitimate political change? Or will violent resistance be permitted (and therefore would not come under our normative definition of terrorism) only if the State (by this I mean its agents) acts directly against that person through the use of direct violence or more indirect oppression (e.g., the denial of food, housing and health care that make up the basic elements of State protection)?

One could use Zimbabwe as an example of a regime that would fall down on both counts in respect of being a legitimate government. According to the Court of Appeal's judgement the demolishing of a set of traffic lights (serious property damage) in Harare which was committed as an act of protest against the Mugabe regime could lead to someone's being labelled a terrorist. Moreover, if I was arrested in the United Kingdom and had in my possession a copy of the Harare A-Z that revealed the position of traffic lights and I was planning to send it to my Zimbabwean friend who would use it to find an acceptable target, might I also be guilty of assisting terrorist offences? Surely this example reveals the absurdity of the legislation.

Yet, I can see the very real difficulties in coming to any conclusion as to when violence for political purposes would be legitimate, especially when one goes beyond the easier example of resistance to State violence and begins to enquire whether the intentional denial of voting rights, foodstuffs, housing and health care would make a State lose legitimacy and therefore its ability to set the parameters for what constitutes terrorist activity.

(See these related posts of mine.)

Legacy of cruelty

On the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, here's an informative piece from the Economist. (And see this earlier post.)

Learn or else

People who are seeking to come to the UK to work or to join a spouse already living here should be required to learn English, an expert body says.

That expert body is the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, whose chairman Darra Singh is quoted in the same report as saying:

Learning English is clearly the responsibility of the individual, but local authorities, central government and employers have a key role in supporting migrants to improve their language skills.

What he says is better, in that case, than what the Commission is reported as saying. Supporting people in learning English - encouraging them - is not the same thing as requiring them to do so, and requiring them to do so is an imposition and illiberal.

Belief anguish

She's an atheist and her husband isn't. He wants their son christened; she doesn't - nor that the boy should be taken to church. What to do? One can say, as the wife's parents do, that the two of them should have sorted this out before they got married. They surely should have, but even had they done so, the same problem could have arisen. People change their minds. Here's a case: two people marry on the shared supposition they will later have children. One of them subsequently comes to the view that he doesn't in fact want children. The difficulty now exists, and saying 'You should have thought of that' doesn't dissipate it.

The wife's parents write:

She believes that... the child should be allowed, when he is old enough, to decide for himself whether he wishes to follow his father's religion.

But, as one or two of the commenters point out, this looks like stacking the deck. To be able to make up his mind in due course, shouldn't the son be allowed to hear from both parents what they believe and what their beliefs involve? At the same time, each parent thereby goes along with the inculcation of what they take to be a falsehood. It ain't easy.

The normblog profile 179: Katy Evans-Bush

Katy Evans-Bush was born in New York and has been living in London since she was 19. In the 1990s she had three children in four years, and chose that moment to start writing again. Since then her poetry and essays have appeared on both sides of the Atlantic and online. She is featured in the anthology The Like Of It (Baring and Rogerson, 2005), and is a regular contributor to the online Contemporary Poetry Review. Katy writes the blog Baroque In Hackney. She is divorced, and her children make their own lunches.

Why do you blog? > I think I'm trying to make a delightful thing. I've always written in notebooks. The day I started my blog I looked at the blank space and suddenly realized it was the best empty notebook I'd ever had.

What are your favourite blogs? > I can't choose just a few! Maybe these: Non-Working Monkey for being fun; Madame Arcati, who has been compared to 'the News of the World getting off with the TLS at a drag ball'; and oh, too many to choose... That's So Pants... A Dress a Day...

What are you reading at the moment? > Paul Muldoon's Oxford lectures, The End of the Poem; Ruth Fainlight's poetry; and several books about Louis MacNeice.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > At opposite ends of the spectrum: Vanity Fair; and Nothing by Henry Green.

What is your favourite poem? > Among many, many others: 'Autumn Journal' by MacNeice; or something by Donne; or 'Supernatural Love' by Gjertrud Schnackenberg; and something by Michael Donaghy, maybe 'Caliban's Books'.

What is your favourite movie? > The Philadelphia Story.

What is your favourite song? > Well, I find myself singing 'Accentuate the Positive' quite often.

Who is your favourite composer? > Mozart. I love him with a passion.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > The need for a standing government, as Thoreau put it. Imagine my horror, as a hippie anarchist teenage poet, when he was appropriated by the ultra-right.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > There is no such thing as empirical reality.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > That there is only one true creed.

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > The Geography of the Imagination by the Modernist critic Guy Davenport. His essays roam cultural history and make connections, give significance to small things, trace lines of descent, map the landscape of thought. When I read it I was very young and didn't realize he wasn't mapping the whole history of thought. I thought he knew everything.

Who are your political heroes? > The suffragists. They were terribly brave and visionary. And Emma Goldman.

What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > All women and men are created equal.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The twisting up of religion with politics.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > Noooo... or someone with radically different aesthetic ideas. Or who didn't care about food.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Largeness of spirit.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Small-mindedness.

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > I hate people who eat chicken on the bus, people who sit on the outside seat in the bus and expect you to climb over them, and people who play music on the bus. I assume the worst about them.

What is your favourite proverb? > I love proverbs. Locking the barn door after the horse has bolted.

What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > Reality TV. Don't even get me started.

What, if anything, do you worry about? > My kids. Being burgled. Losing things. Falling down the stairs. Going blind. Not writing. Not getting published. Being single forever. Being poor when I'm old. Living too far away from my family. Reality TV ruining the world.

Who would play you in the movie about your life? > My dream is to become worthy of being played by Judi Dench, but my children have assured me this will never happen.

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > In a house. Seriously. If not in London, then in New York, either the City or the Catskills.

What would your ideal holiday be? > I don't really do holidays. Something with lots of books, a laptop, good internet and coffee shops.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > My what?

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I'd buy a house, work only three days a week, make sure my whole family was sorted out, and I'd also get a place in the Catskills.

What animal would you most like to be? > I always wanted to be a duck. I seem to have that in common with Geoffrey Chaucer.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

Wrong analogies, wrong conclusions

Further to these two posts of mine and this one at Dialectical Confusions, I'm posting (with his permission) the following email from Jeff Weintraub to DC of that blog:

Hi DC,

Regarding your post on Israel, Ireland...

In my humble opinion, the analogies you suggest here are misplaced, and so are the conclusions you draw from them. There are a number of reasons why this is so, but here are the two main ones.

You suggest that a Hamas recognition of Israel's right to exist could come at the end of negotiations, but doesn't make sense as a precondition. However, what many people seem to forget is that there already were negotiations about this, a decade and a half ago, which led to Israel's acceptance of a Palestinian Authority with control over parts of the occupied territories in return for (among other things) acceptance by the PLO/PA that the ultimate question to be decided was Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (implying the possibility of an eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state, as part of a two-state solution), and not Israel's existence.

This agreement was a fundamental breakthrough. That's why this position, which was the result (not the precondition) of long negotiations that followed decades of fruitless conflict, has to be treated as the starting-point for all further dealings with the Palestinian Authority. Otherwise, one side will be allowed simply to break the most fundamental agreements with impunity and go back to its maximalist demands any time it wants, without suffering any repercussions. And the negotiated agreement that you suggest letting Hamas tear up (again, this is not a precondition for negotiations, but a negotiated agreement) happens to involve, not a minor point, but the central issue in the last half-century of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In such a situation, what is the point of negotiating agreements at all? Furthermore, if extremists are allowed to outbid so-called 'moderates' and 'pragmatists' by tearing up negotiated agreements whenever they want and starting over, that cuts the ground out from under any Arab 'moderates' who are ever willing to take the risk of making concessions for the sake of negotiated agreements.

Second, the IRA never questioned the right of Great Britain to exist, nor was it ever committed to the destruction of Great Britain and the expulsion of its inhabitants. Nor was Britain surrounded by two dozen Irish-ruled states whose populations totaled several hundred million, in a situation where most of these states did not recognize Britain's right to exist and many were in a formal state of war with Britain. The existence of Britain (as opposed to the existence of specific political arrangements in Northern Ireland) was never at issue, even in fantasy. So there is simply no analogy here.

I confess that I still think the relevant arguments I made back in February (in Hamas - Drawing the Line) remain correct. At the time, Abu Mazen apparently agreed with me, and he was right then, too.

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub

Capitalism as the unpassable horizon?

This is in the same neighbourhood of the city as the previous post. Timothy Garton Ash has a piece on the global future in today's Guardian. It contains what appears to my eye as an interesting, if forgivable, vagueness.

The first part of the article is devoted to establishing a central reality of the present, 'the global triumph of capitalism'. Everyone, Garton Ash says, is now doing it, and he goes on to back that up with supporting detail. Then he poses the question which his preamble has led the reader to expect:

Does this lack of any clear ideological alternative mean that capitalism is secure for years to come?

Far from it, he says, because there are new threats to its future. However, when you examine what these are, you find just two types of very broad indication: one, some version of disaster, economic or environmental; two, acute political discontent in the face of the need for reshaped priorities, and the question whether this necessary change in priorities can be successfully accomplished.

What is interesting to me is that the future Garton Ash presents is: either, at the extreme point, a social blank (like 'barbarism' in the classic Luxemburgist formula 'socialism or barbarism', or else a change of priorities for the better but not spelled out in any detail as a societal model); or, nearer in so to say, it's just capitalism in an unstable, conflict-ridden condition. One way or another, there's no expressible alternative to capitalism.

Mapping out alternative futures, rendering them thinkable, is a difficulty not only for those of us who hope there is an alternative to capitalism.