normblog

Sordid history

That being the history of the UN Human Rights Council vis-à-vis Libya. 'For instance, at a council meeting in November 2010 for a universal periodic review of rights protection, country after country paid tribute to the Gadhafi regime's performance on human rights.' And more.

Golden pageant

'All peoples have their peculiarities and their enthusiasms': Sir Ralph Richardson and John Arlott give you a for-instance.

Cricket (1950) from British Council Film Archive on Vimeo. (Via Think of England.)

The Election Result in Ireland (by Sean Coleman)

Although counting continues in various constituencies across Ireland, the outcome of Friday's election is clear in its broad outlines - and the results are frankly astonishing. Fianna Fail has been reduced to a sullen stump of its former self. Regnant for decades in Dublin, the party now has only one solitary seat in the west of the city; one seat in the rural Republican bulwark of Donegal; one seat in Clare. Large areas of the country, for the first time in 80 years, will be without a Fianna Fail representative. Comparisons with similar demolitions in Canada, Italy and Japan are apposite. The party which has dominated Irish elections since 1932 - indeed, dominated much of recent Irish history - is suddenly, at a stroke, an irrelevancy.

And yet there is no dynamic sense of upheaval such as would normally accompany such defeats - this is not 1918 redux. In most of the country, the main beneficiaries of the collapse have been Fine Gael, who will become the state's largest party for the first time since the 1920s, and who will now lead the next Government. While ostensibly a dramatic shift, in ideological terms many people appear happy to have exhanged six of one for half a dozen of the other: votes have transferred, in great preponderance, from one large centre-right party to another. Indeed, the comparative ease with which this switch has taken place simply underlines the large areas of policy agreement between the parties. Angry with the status quo, yet fearful of change, much of the electorate decided to leave the edifice of Irish politics undisturbed. They have plumped, instead, for a new coat of paint.

Fine Gael have been loudly declaring their sweeping 'mandate' from the people - Taoiseach-designate Enda Kenny went so far as to position himself at the head of a 'democratic revolution' - yet in reality their share of the vote ended up at around 36%, a plurality but far from a majority. Labour return to the Dail with their share of the vote (at just under 20%), and their parliamentary representation (at perhaps 37 seats), almost doubled - a fantastic result. More importantly, they have now consolidated their support in all of the country's large urban areas - Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, North Leinster - giving them real institutional density where before they had none. The party, however, will rue the missed opportunity: if ever Ireland appeared poised for a radical break with its past conservatism, it was now. The necessary momentum for that kind of change, however, stalled early in the campaign. Labour, charged falsely with being a 'high tax' party, saw support from more middle-class voters gradually drift away. It was this that guaranteed that they would end up, in second place, behind Fine Gael.

The two parties are now likely to form a kind of grand coalition, a 'balanced Government', and while discussions have apparently not yet started as to ministerial allocations, the general tilt of the next administration will necessarily be more right than left. (As all budgets for the next four years will be prepared under the aegis of the IMF and the European Commission, this was inevitable in any event). Labour will, however, be in a position to soften the edges of whatever austerity is planned, and can place emphasis on the two areas - job creation and social protection - that are the main concerns of their supporters. This alone can be chalked up as a major victory for Irish liberalism.

Labour will be aware that there will be a loosely aligned band of nationalists and socialists to their left who will, naturally, excoriate every Government decision made. Their problem - not unlike that of the Liberal Democrats in Britain - will be in trying to influence the positions of the next Government, without being identified with the unpopularity that will eventually attach to it. As Nick Clegg is no doubt well aware, this is a difficult needle to thread. What is more, 'civil War politics' in Ireland, the national shorthand for the Fianna Fail-Fine Gael duopoly, has been shaken, but not removed altogether. Fianna Fail will, no doubt, find its voice in opposition. The cuts and taxes that are still to be levied on the Irish people will certainly give them plenty to shout about; that these exactions were necessitated by their own policies will be quickly forgotten. One thing that may be safely predicted about this election outcome is that it is unlikely to change Fianna Fail's penchant for utter shamelessness.

And so this has been an election where everything has changed but much remains the same. The party of government has been handed an historic repudiation - and yet its successor offers many of the same policies, sweetened only with vague talk of reform. The left in Ireland has made, by any measure, an epochal breakthrough - and yet it will remain tethered to a larger, right-wing partner in order to govern. The new administration has a huge task before it, and a popular mandate to take it on. What they make of it remains to be seen.

Reflecting yesterday morning on the import of the results, historian Diarmuid Ferriter noted that, while outside observers deemed the absence of outward anger on the part of the population - no riots, no strikes - mysterious, in reality the electorate was simply biding its time. The people reserved their anger for the ballot box, he said, and their wrath has been visited upon the ruling party in high style. One can take no small measure of satisfaction that Irish democracy remains so healthy, and so responsive, as to perform such necessary vengeance. (Sean Coleman)

What about us?

On Tuesday I drew attention to an influence of Egypt's example in Zimbabwe, and suggested the thought 'So why not us?' as having a bearing on the geographical range of applicability of the ideas of freedom and democracy. A column in the Times tells of another country's interest in current developments in the Arab world. Aung San Suu Kyi has been reflecting on their relevance to Burma (£):

She said Burma's military government had attempted to block coverage of events in the Middle East - including the current crisis in Libya - from reaching ordinary people in the southeast Asian country without much success.

The 65-year-old pro-democracy advocate said the ousting of governments in Tunisia and Egypt - and importantly the confrontation between supporters of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and anti-government protesters - were being closely followed in Burma.

"They are comparing what's happening there with what happened in Burma in 1988, and one of the things they have noticed is that in Tunisia and in Egypt the army did not fire on its people, whereas in Libya it is different," Ms Suu Kyi said.

"The outcome also seems to be much more complicated and much worse in Libya than in Tunisia and Egypt. Everybody is waiting around to see with great interest what transpires because people were impressed with what happened, particularly in Egypt."
.....
"The people have stood in Burma before, as you know, and in those instances they were fired upon by the army and I think that makes a great difference," she said. "Now the situation in Libya is that the army itself appears divided in regard to how the situation should be handled. In Burma I don't think there [were] any noticeable divisions with regards to the policies of the military."

If Egypt, Tunisia and Libya are being watched from Burma, it appears that people in Libya had for their part been watching Egypt and Tunisia. As reported in The Age, a 24-year-old teaching assistant involved in organizing a demonstration there says:

"What made us brave? First we watched the revolution in Tunisia. Then Egypt. So then we said, 'What about us?'"

There you go. Obvious, I know, but why not celebrate the obvious for once? Let's all just agree, shall we, that people living in unfreedom as a rule prefer not to be.

Closer walk

This, people, is the real deal:

If you've got a way of watching Treme, you should do it, believe me.

Something hasn't changed

Amongst the various kinds of political madness on offer, one of the more severe is that which seeks to erode the difference between the democracies of the capitalist world and fascism. One might have thought that the price paid for this obfuscation by the 20th-century left, to say nothing of the peoples of Europe, had been a sufficiently savage one to discourage its repetition today. But here we have John Pilger reproducing the very thing - even though, were he himself to be transferred from the liberal-democratic milieu in which he moves and has his professional and other freedoms to the neighbourhoods of some genuinely fascist country, he would, as a person of the left, find out soon enough the stupidity of his confusion.

As generally with Pilger, the message he purveys is introduced with the assistance of someone supposedly in the know - to give 'verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative'. In this case, it's a former CIA officer who believes that the USA of Barack Obama may already be 'in a fascist mode'. Pilger doesn't baulk at the idea, he builds on it: 'fascism and imperialism are twins' and '[t]he people's triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism'. Still, the Arab revolt and protests against cuts in the US and Britain have ushered in a new era. 'Something has changed that cannot be unchanged. The enemy has a name now.' I don't know whether Pilger intends that that name is fascism. He doesn't say directly. But his column seems deliberately open to this construal. Whom the gods would destroy, and all that.

Pluralism up to a point

Commending to us the idea of cultural pluralism, Bhikhu Parekh says that 'Western thought has long been dominated by the view that while error is plural, truth is singular. We can be wrong in many different ways but can be right in only one way.' By contrast:

For cultural pluralism the world can be understood in several different ways depending on our conceptual apparatus, language, interests, purposes, the questions we ask and the kind of knowledge we seek and value. Like truth in general, moral truth or good... is also plural.

There are complex issues involved here and I don't propose to go into them; but every claim of this absolutely pluralizing sort is bound on some level to be self-defeating. There are indeed worse watchwords than plurality and pluralism, yet even they have their underlyling normative basis. Thus when Bhikhu says 'Every culture... requires others as its critical interlocutors' and 'In the cultural pluralist view, the dialogue is central to intellectual and moral life', he is giving his support to what he regards as quite general norms and norms, moreover, that he sees as superior to their competitors. Could he say they have no better claims on our adherence than the viewpoint he disparages under the labels 'monism' and 'singularism'? If he did say this, the very case made in his article would be undermined.

UCUbrator

'I consider it... fundamentally racist to identify a scholar, a private citizen, with the politics of his government.' So says Umberto Eco. (Via @MaxDunbar1.)

From Jew to Jew

God spare us the Guardian's pet Azzajews. A few days ago we had one more of them, Howard Cooper, lecturing other Jews on how they should receive the transformation under way in Egypt, and saying, 'as a Jew I celebrate... the movement of the human spirit towards freedom' - this rather than being impelled by fear of the possible consequences for Israel. Now, as it happens, there's a core notion that I agree with here, as I tried to make clear three weeks ago; make clear not in Azzajew mode, but just on my own behalf as someone with a viewpoint on the matter. Why, then, does Cooper's lecture get up my nose? For three reasons.

(1) Jews have no special obligations in how they should react to events in Egypt, beyond whatever obligations people in general may be thought to have. Jews are merely people. They may freely form their opinions like others do, and if they go wrong according to Cooper's judgement, that isn't an act of bad faith - a notion he appears to misunderstand - unless there's some dishonesty involved in what they think. Cooper would have done better to confine himself to saying how he thought the world at large should be reacting to Egyptian events.

(2) While I agree that people - not just Jews, as instructed by Azzajews - should welcome the democratic struggles in the Arab world, and to that extent give some place to hope for a change for the better in all the countries affected, no one can be forbidden from leaving room, too, for certain fears. Above all, Jews in Israel and Jews who care about the future of Israel have some grounds for harbouring fears about its prospects, in view of the history of enmity towards that country in the region.

(3) Cooper's little lecture would have been offensive wherever it appeared. But for it to appear in the Guardian, well-known for its lack of balance over - no, its animosity towards - Israel, makes it especially repellent. No doubt, because it comes from an Azzajew, the piece will have been seen in the relevant editorial quarters as kosher. My response to that is that the Guardian can stuff its lectures to Jews (those from Azzajews included) into a green teapot. There are few journalistic organs less qualified to deliver them.

Stopping and punishing crimes against humanity

Some editorialists are now mooting the prosecution of Colonel Gaddafi for crimes against humanity. There is also a piece in the Independent by Geoffrey Robertson setting out the grounds on which Gaddafi could be indicted by the International Criminal Court, following a Security Council direction of the case to that body. Two particular aspects of what Robertson says are of special interest to me.

First, regarding the possibility of a charge for crimes against humanity, he writes:

He [Gaddafi] can... be fixed with command responsibility for the crimes against humanity committed by his troops over the past few days as they have shot and killed innocent civilians in a number of towns and cities.

Under Article 7 of the ICC statute, a widespread lethal attack directed against a civilian population amounts to a crime against humanity and the wilful killing of civilians in a civil war amounts additionally to a war crime under Article 8.

This confirms the puzzlement I expressed yesterday over the supposedly far-reaching implications of the ruling of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Terrorism - at least where it is a policy of an organization and not a one-off incident - must surely be a crime against humanity since it is directed, like Gaddafi's present actions, against a civilian population.

Second, Robertson says - just like that - that there is now a duty of intervention on the international community, existing under international law, 'whenever it becomes necessary to stop or to punish crimes against humanity'. He sees this as resting on the doctrine of a 'responsibility to protect'. Good for him. His opinion chimes in with that of shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy that one shouldn't let anger about the Iraq war block the possibility of future interventions, in the right circumstances, based on a 'responsibility beyond [our] own borders'. One would have thought this was an elementary logical point, given that most of those angry over Iraq didn't believe the war was legitimate as a form of humanitarian intervention in the first place. It should therefore have left the validity of that concept intact. But it doesn't do any harm to remind people.