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Interpreting the asylum rules

One of the more depressing aspects of New Labour has been its tendency to pander to the tabloids on asylum. But if this Times report is to be believed, this case is scandalous.

Britain has hired 91 Iraqi interpreters to work with the army in Basra and the risks are considerable.

Some will have known as friends and colleagues the victims on whom we report today, among them Haidr al-Mtury, murdered with a bullet to the head after having holes drilled through his hands and knees and acid poured on his face; and Abu Kiffah, forced to telephone his wife on his mobile phone so that she could hear his final moments.

As Britain withdraws, in contrast to other countries, no special asylum regulations have been put in place to ensure their safety.

Britain’s Iraqi interpreters must somehow reach British soil under their own steam if they want asylum, and then apply for it. Each case is then “judged on its merits”.
This may sound scrupulously fair on paper. In practice it requires those who have risked their lives for Britain’s mission in Iraq to apply to the British Embassy in Jordan for a visitor’s visa, knowing that nine in ten such applications have hitherto failed. If lucky, they must then take their chances with an asylum system that so far refuses to recognise their unique circumstances.

More more blue eyes

The latest Slate column on faith based thugs.

Bonus: Image result for Anna Wintour

Sunday Morning Pointy-Headedness

The first thing that's striking about Michael Ignatieff's essay in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, as an event in itself, is the way it was ballyhooed and has been subsequently reported, pretty well exclusively as a matter of "Ignatieff says supporting Iraq War was a mistake", which is completely unremarkable and not in the least bit newsworthy.

He's been saying that for ages. Here's what he told me, almost a year ago: “But you’ve got to be careful with this stuff. Let’s be honest – I may be an object lesson in some of the perils of this. . . how far should intense personal experience, in this case the suffering of the Kurds and the Shia, impact your personal judgment? And it’s possible that it did. The point though is the sheer passion with which I felt the human rights case . . . I do think what I underestimated – and this is the object lesson here – is the unintended consequences of the use of force."

The second thing that's striking about it is that it's quite poorly written. Ignatieff is a fine writer, but much of this essay consists of clichés strung together in nearly metronomic recitation, with all the usual quotations about statesmanship dug up from Churchill, Roosevelt, Berlin, Beckett and Machiavelli.

Another thing I find striking about it is that it adds very little to the discussion about what to do now, and doesn't even add much to currently fashionable polemics (noticed in debates here), except maybe a new category - the zeal of the disillusioned.

Norm, being blessed with one of the pointiest heads on these matters, raises a couple of good questions, as politely as Norm will.

Personally, I'm fortunate to be untroubled by any duty of mea culpa in all this because I was in the anti-war camp in regards to Iraq - wrong president, wrong conditions, wrong time, and so on. But I can't claim to have exercised any better judgment than people like Norm or Ignatieff - I'm still not convinced that things would be better for Iraqis now had there been no invasion and overthrow back then. So I take no heart in all the recantation I've been reading from people like Ignatieff, and as a Canadian, it doesn't make me feel any warmer to him at all.

"I could feel the breeze as the bullets went by"

From a report in today's Observer by Mark Townsend on life in Helmand for comrades in arms of the Royal Anglian Regiment...

"Brigadier John Lorimer, the British commander in Helmand, is understandably proud of the young soldiers risking their lives. 'We are getting guys who are 18 years old who are making critical decisions within a split second; life and death decisions as part of a cohesive, professional organisation. Whoever says to me that the British youth is no good, I can show them 5,000 examples who can prove them completely wrong'. Yet the public's ambivalence to their efforts pains him."

Quite. Adversity can bring out the best in people, and at home we appear to be going soft. That may be true not only for population at large, but also keyboard warriors who now feel a need to rationalise and in some cases apologise for their support of military intervention in a humanitarian cause.

So here's to the British, ISAF and Afghan security forces. Thank you for your efforts.

It's there -- I'll post it...

For the completists amongst you...

More Youtubeness of Hitch. This time an older one -- but made more available because of where it is...

Part one here in six parts...

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Not very fond of the shirt worn in this one. I think his lass has had a word with him since this because he's improved the colour and cut of his gib of late.

Hitch and lass:



Carol Blue -- make me yours too.

Update: Also now available in twelve parts the Christopher Hitchens and Mark D. Roberts debate on the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show from a couple months ago.

Part one

Two

Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

Stupid donkey

Cuddly green 'Dave' and his band of merry toffs must have a sense of humour, because until recently Boris the Donkey was Shadow Minister for Higher Education. These days the former Spectator editor is a prospective Tory candidate for the London mayoral election next year. Black MPs and the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence have spoken against Johnson's candidacy:

Dawn Butler and Diane Abbott, Labour MPs for Brent South and Hackney North respectively, said his views on race harked back to the 1950s.

.....

Ms Butler highlighted a 2002 article in which Mr Johnson referred to the Queen being greeted in Commonwealth countries by "flag-waving piccaninnies".

.....

She claimed he also said that he expected, during a mooted visit by Tony Blair to the Congo, that "the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief".

Such comments are business as usual for the traditional Conservative Party. Johnson's statements place him firmly in the Tory mainstream.

To read Johann Hari or The Prince? Tough one...

Shuggy has given a good an overview of the recent Hari / Harry’s Place spat – and there’s little there to disagree with, though I think that even Shuggy is making a small mistake by being drawn into a meaningless argument.

The reason I say this is because, I think, the real problem is the certainty that the likes of Johann Hari exhibits in debate. I recall his columns in 2003, upbraiding all-and-sundry for their objective alliance with fascists. Now he's equally certain that everyone who agreed with him about Iraq at the time is not only wrong, but was dishonest in the first place.

And he's threatening to sue bloggers into the bargain?

Shuggy focuses upon Hari's convert-like zeal, but I'd be more interested in his need to express certainty in all things. Like Hari, Shuggy also supported the war, but he did so, IIRC, along similar lines to the way I opposed it. He spent more time dealing with idiotic arguments that he disagreed with than saying exactly what various forces should be doing. Good bloggers rarely try to bluff expertise. Columnists depend upon such an illusion for their salaries.

If blogging has taught me one thing, it is not to express certainty on anything that you're not a real expert on - and even then, do so with tons of caution and lots of caveats. Or do it with a bit of tongue-in-cheek.

This tends to remove much of the needless venom from most arguments, and makes you less willing to look for reasons to call your opponents out on their personal integrity.

For instance, my own view on the Iraq war was, broadly, that I didn’t have any of the tools I’d need to decide whether it was a good idea or a bad one. I was inclined to think it was a mistake, but I found that all of the core arguments that the anti-war movement used not only had a huge degree of unwarranted certainty and simplicity underpinning them, and they all seemed to be geared to achieve a bigger, unspoken objection; To oppose the Americans and / or Bliar in all things.

This was obviously stupid. I’m not sure whether an PhD in International Relations and a peer-reviewed thesis on ‘Regime Change in Iraq’ would have made me much more qualified to comment on it than I am though. And as my main source of information on the region is journalists, discretion would seem a fairly sound position to take.

The only area that I DO feel qualified to comment on is that liberal democracies can often choose to cut-and-run when a long-term commitment is needed. That Bosnia had shown us that liberal democracies are not going to do what is obviously the right thing even when their nose is being rubbed in reasons to act. In 2003, I doubted that it would be all over by Xmas and felt that a job half-done could be worse than a job not done at all.

And this is an argument that I'd make with regret. I'd underline, again, my view that European liberal democracy isn't as robust as it likes to think it is, and Something Should Be Done About It.

As you will see from what is probably my only other comment in writing on this, I had a few other views on it. But the way things stand at the moment, this may turn out to have been as good a position as any. It wasn't a fantastically eye-catching insight then or now, and you’d struggle to turn it into a half-decent column. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Most of the things that are worth saying about public life are either too boring to print, or can’t be said at all.

Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ provides a good example here. It said the unsayable. There was little that anyone who had experienced the Florentine court would have disagreed with, but no-one would ever have expressed Machiavelli’s insights publicly at the time. It was full of inelegant truisms, and made a reasonably convincing moral case for an appropriate use of arbitrary brutality.

The book itself was only dedicated privately in Machiavelli’s lifetime, and wasn’t published until after his death. And unlike the over-published twits of our op-ed pages, Machiavelli is still worth reading nearly 500 years later, while there is no value in reading what Simon Jenkins, Johann Hari or Polly Toynbee wrote this morning.

The novelty of The Prince was that it uncoupled virtue and practicality. It made the point that very few commentators will make – even today: You don’t always to the right thing by doing the virtuous thing – often the reverse is true.

This has a valuable lesson for us though: Paid commentators – particularly the ones that routinely take polemical positions - are nothing but unqualified purveyors of elegant cant for the most part. There’s almost a formula here: If you write on a wide range of subjects and publish very regularly, and adopt eye-catching positions, you are almost certainly not worth reading.

It is time for us all to arise and drag them though the streets to a public scaffold to have their shoulders broken like poor Machiavelli. I say this, of course, with tongue firmly in cheek. In the meantime, we should all just ignore them for the most part.

Weekend You What Tube

Remember this one?



Here's another. "Something Spiritchwaal"

"How do you not get electrocuted when you take a shower?"

Lord Black: Butcher, Bloodsucker, Destroyer

I invite you to ask any journalist who worked at the Post between 1990 and 2004 to give their opinion of Conrad Black as a newspaperman. I can guarantee what the spirit of the answer will be: As a newspaperman, he was a butcher. A bloodsucker. A destroyer. He wasn't a newspaperman, he was an anti-newspaperman.

School for scandal

At the Edinburgh Festival -- making some spondooliks while he can.

His Respect buddies are masters at comedy as well of course.

(Tip to his Bobness for the last link).

Johann Hari: the zeal of the converted

Perhaps you like a wee drink. Maybe the odd hand-rolled cigarette. Perhaps you might even take some E or an occasional line of cocaine. Not necessarily very wise, but you know this can be done without finding yourself slumped in a public toilet with a rope tied round your arm and a needle dangling from your vein. Then you're confronted with someone who did find themselves in this state - before they saw the light and joined Narcotics Anonymous.

You're confronted, in other words, with a convert. And converts are often pretty annoying. It isn't so much the stridency of the position they invariably adopt, or the noisy self-congratulatory fashion with which they do so. It's their evangelism - and it is over this that I want to take issue with Johann Hari.

Not that there isn't plenty of other sources of irritation in the piece linked above. There's the repetition, for example, of the falsehood that the Euston Manifesto is a prowar document. I wouldn't accuse Johann of lying here - merely of being ignorant of the facts.

Then there's the whole 'Orwell's mantle' dispute between Hari and Cohen. I'll restrict myself here to pointing out that if Johann Hari was as familiar with the Old Testament as he likes to pretend, he'd understand that citing someone as an inspiration and influence, or even forerunner of one's own ideas, does not constitute claiming a mantle.

I'm not going to waste my time with an exegesis of p27 in Nick Cohen's Pretty Straight Guys either. Suffice to say, even if the charge of inconsistency could be sustained, it's a rather odd one to be coming from someone who has made such a virtue out of changing one's mind.

No it's the evangelism I can't be doing with. For what is evangelism but a demand that others become replicas of yourself? Johann responded with bemusement and affected amusement that Norman Geras had described him as 'religious'. "Who me? The fearless scourge of theocrats everywhere? Surely not?" Well, he didn't mean it literally but since you mention it - all this "come hither to the pool of recantation" sounds pretty religious to me. But Johann Hari makes the same assumption as the heroin addict who is saying, in effect, "Repent ye - believe the truth of my words because I too used to be like you". Here I must decline - one of the reasons being a disagreement over this last point.

Take the issue of oil-supplies, for example. Johann's new revelation is, apparently, that this is what the war was all about. His lack of nuance here has been dealt with by Norman Geras but a more general point is that his demands for recantation shouldn't be made on the assumption that everyone is as ignorant of economic history as he is. It's a bit like when Robert Fisk said he didn't believe America would be so interested in Iraq if its main export was beetroot. To which one can only respond with the American dismissive: no shit, Sherlock. Is this the sort of breath-taking insight that gets you a column in the Independent?

There's more in this sort of vein. Sometimes I think it's unfair to cast up the stuff people have written in the past and no longer agree with. We all say stupid things, ill-considered things, inconsistent things - but most of us are in the fortunate position of not having them in print so that they can be referred to again. But it's salient in this case to point out that Johann Hari has come along way from advocating not only the invasion of Iraq but North Korea too because some of us were always more circumspect, sceptical, less quick to use the epithet 'fascist', and frankly less self-righteous in our support for the war than Johann Hari ever was.

And less confident in our ability to predict the future. In his columns Hari has explicitly stated his support for the war rested on a utilitarian calculation. Given this was so, his moral certitude at the time must have been based on a certainty as to the outcome. But since human beings can't predict the future and that wars in particular have uncertain outcomes, I can't see where he got his confidence from in the first place.

In this sense, then, Johann's reconsideration of his previous views is not entirely unwelcome - it's just the assumption of sameness that grates. Some of us supported the war, not because of what we thought we could know about the future but because of what we knew about the past. Some of us supported the war without convincing ourselves that Bush and co. were quite nice people, really. Some of us certainly did not impute consistency to the Bush regime. And unlike Johann, some of us supported the war even though we knew the outcome was uncertain; neither did we share his enthusiasm for extending the policy of 'regime-change' to North Korea.

I could go on but you'll have got the point by now. I like a drink, so I do. I even like to get rat-arsed on the odd Friday night. But I won't be joining Alcoholics Anonymous because thus far I've enjoyed these Glaswegian customs without getting to the stage of pouring vodka over my cornflakes in the morning. So I feel disinclined to take advice from someone who has. Recant? Enough of this cant.

Synchronicity

Latest Hari Independent column

Hitchens Vs Shouty Egg In a Bun and such like

Further to this.



Part two:

Johann Hari is a big daft cock!

I know he's Amnesty International's Journalist of the Year, but still it has to be said: the Independent columnist Johann Hari is a big daft cock.

Despite being not long out of short trousers, Master Hari has a bit of a history as a journalist, and many in the trade question his thoroughness and attention to detail. Here I have to choose my words with care, as Hari has recently come over all litigious, and chosen a easy target in the form of blogger David T of Harry's Place.

Back in March 2003, Hari was featured in the Hackwatch column of Private Eye magazine. The Eye claimed that Hari was, in effect, a fabulist, and had made up stories about (a) being an ecstasy user in an attempt to look cool and hip, (b) witnessing the scene of the Genoese police killing of a demonstrator at the G8 summit, and (c) a one month working visit to Iraq, complete with tales of dialogues with the natives. The latter was, we were told, actually a two week holiday tour of archaeological sites in the cradle of civilisation.

Hari protested that "even the slightest factual analysis of Private Eye's retaliatory accusations causes them to immediately crumble into dust." Hari has never to my knowledge addressed the specifics of these charges. He was accused of lying, but never sued.

And there is more, much more.

Cut to 2007...

Hari's review of Nick Cohen's book "What's Left?" caused a bit of a stir, with a number of political bloggers (including our very own Eric) weighing in to denounce the boy wonder for his woeful ignorance.

So far, so good, but then David T yesterday published his own take on the affair. The link here is to a screen grab of the piece taken before the article was pulled following threats from m'learned friends, and posted here earlier today by Will. Much of the offending article is in the form of quotes taken from Nick Cohen's response to the Hari's review. There are no new allegations made by David T against Hari, only a regurgitation of what has been written elsewhere (e.g., in Private Eye).

Hari, however, took it like the petulant brat he is, and squealed to the Independent's legal department. David T today posted another blog in which he explained a little of what happened, and asked for understanding from the readers of Harry's Place. Some very strongly worded comments followed, almost all anti-Hari, and at around 19:00 this evening this second blog was removed.

While English libel laws do not apply to websites hosted on servers located in the US, the laws are such that a litigant with money (or corporate backing) does not have to win the case in order to ruin the defendant. The onus in a libel case is on the defendant to prove his innocence, not on the plaintiff to show that they were libelled. David T is himself a lawyer, and clearly understands the dangers involved.

There is more to be said about this case, and I hope that before long I will feel able to say it. Public interest dictates that it should, but for the time-being human interest encourages restraint.

The truth will out, I am sure, but if Johann Hari sues David T, I have promised the blogger a donation to his defence fund. I swear this on my NUJ card.

I would also advise Johann Hari to watch his (metaphorical) back.

"Johann, get out of my office. You're weak. I don't like weakness and you're fired!"

So why did he threaten legal action? Would Hari have a case against HP Sauce? Is resort to legal methods because DT said he has a reputation for making things up? (Standard rough and tumble of politics in my view). Could it possibly be the case that Hari does indeed make things up and is a shoddy hack and a fraud? Or is the problem one where Hari takes offense at being called a tabloid journalist?

There is always a "fair comment" and "public interest" defence and I doubt that Dave T was any more aggressive than Kamm. Defamation is usually resorted to by (fat) rich people seeking to frighten less rich people, who have some discernible assets but not enough cash to mount a defence, so are forced to retract. Err just like happened here.

Hari follows in a long line of similar litigants - Maxwell, Fayed, Galloway etc. (good company for him these days).

To win -- I think Hari would have to prove that the post was designed to "damage reputation with your peers" - can't see him doing that. It's already common knowledge that he's a self-righteous, two-faced weasel anyway -- neither interesting nor trustworthy.

When all's said and done David T has made Hari look like a proper twat -- so win win situation I reckon.

What a load of self indulgent crap.

A twisty little git. Cohen says 'nowhere in my book did I say "x, y, z"' and Hari's response is 'I know from private conversations etc' and then doesn't refute an accusation of distortion -- he confirms it by perpetrating a new distortion of a different book.

Getting back to Hari's original Dissent review -- There is also the matter of a level of carelessness about History -- History isn't something to inform opinion in Hari's hands; it's a club to beat square pegs into round holes.


*This post is dedicated to Chris Bertram's Mini-Me (I don't like to disappoint anyone).

Blogdom will not be free till the last smug Guardianista is strangled with the mouse-lead of the last bullshitting academic - or something like that.

"This has to stop, and it has to stop right now."

Hitchens in Slate:

Before me is a recent report that a student at Pace University in New York City has been arrested for a hate crime in consequence of an alleged dumping of the Quran. Nothing repels me more than the burning or desecration of books, and if, for example, this was a volume from a public or university library, I would hope that its mistreatment would constitute a misdemeanor at the very least. But if I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business. When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter. Why do we not make this distinction in the case of the Quran?