A recent post here, and several useful comments on it (worth reading if you haven’t already), discuss the dubious theory of ‘humanitarian intervention’ as a means for a state to intervene by force in another country to prevent or stop a ‘humanitarian disaster’, such as an act of genocide, if necessary (or if desired) by-passing the procedures laid down in the UN Charter for obtaining prior authority from the Security Council for the use of force in another country other than in self-defence. This of course has Iraqi and Kosovo (and Darfur and Rwandan) echoes. Prompted by this debate, Tony Hatfield has now posed an interesting and relevant hypothetical question on his admirable website about the action that a British prime minister ought to take when faced with an impending ‘humanitarian disaster’ in a central Asian country and the threat of French and American vetoes of any proposal in the Security Council for armed intervention to prevent it. I have described on the Hatfield blog the two alternative options for action (or inaction) that I would favour in the unlikely event of my being a British prime minister in this situation. What would you do? Tell Tony (Hatfield, not the other one. OK, tell the other one too).
Brian
http://www.barder.com/brian/
The government’s unlovely and unloved Bill for the introduction of (eventually compulsory) identity cards, and of the even more objectionable national database which will track all our movements and transactions from cradle to grave for the convenience of the security services, is about to be presented to parliament. The irreplaceable Bob Marshall-Andrews, back in the House of Commons by a providential whisker, has pointed out that the Bill – already estimated to involve public expenditure of nearly 8 billion pounds (yes, that’s billion with a b) – contains no provision for citizens to find out what information about them is held on the monstrous database, no way of checking that it’s accurate, and no way of getting it corrected if it’s not, as most of it assuredly won’t be. It will be interesting to see how ministers square this with the provisions of the European Union ‘Charter of Fundamental Rights’, as signed and proclaimed by the Presidents of the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the EU Commission at the European Council meeting in Nice on 7 December 2000 (the Charter was to have been incorporated as Part II of the ill-fated EU draft ‘Constitution’, now efficiently despatched by the French, but it remains a valid EU instrument accepted by the EU governments, including that of Mr Blair):
Article II-8: Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.
(My emphasis)
Even if the Bill is amended to incorporate these safeguards, such as they are, the whole scheme will remain a gigantic white elephant. No-one has so far succeeded in explaining what benefits it will confer to justify the enormous expenditure, and the home secretary has already dropped the pretence that it will somehow help to catch terrorists or even do anything much about benefit fraud. As for ‘identity theft’, the growing number of electronic transactions not involving the physical presence of participants will make the ID cards largely irrelevant. Already the cost of each card is estimated to be close to £100 a head, with some recent estimates two or three times this amount – and a condition of Gordon Brown’s acceptance of the scheme is that it must be self-financing. So it will be in practice both an onerous poll tax and also a gross intrusion into the privacy of British citizens, details of whose private affairs will be available to the government and all its agencies without the citizen’s consent and at his or her expense.
Fortunately there will be some protection against this Snoopers’ Charter in the extreme improbability of the government succeeding in setting up such an enormous computer system that actually works: it will be far larger than any of the catastrophic computer schemes that have failed successive government departments so far, and that much less likely to function, any more than most of its more modest predecessors have done. If it actually comes to full term (which will be many more than nine months!), the waste of public money involved will make the Dome look like a financial triumph and the poll tax an electoral bonus. However, even if Messrs Blair and Clarke succeed in getting their bastard baby past the massed objectors in both houses of parliament and onto the statute book, with a little luck the first thing that Gordon Brown will do on entering No. 10 will be to cancel it. It won’t be a day too soon.
Brian
30 May 2005
http://www.barder.com/brian/
In a Guardian article on 25 May 2005 (unguardedly headed ‘We must not give up on intervention’), Professor Brian Brivati, Professor of Contemporary History at Kingston University, appealed to the UK and other countries to bind themselves by their own laws to intervene militarily in other countries to stop or prevent mass killing, wherever it might be happening or likely to happen. “It is time,” wrote the professor, –
that the logic of the promotion and protection of rights through domestic legal codes be extended to the victims of state-perpetrated mass murder. The answer to the question of when Britain should go to war is contained in the text of the genocide convention: it should go to war to stop mass killing. Therefore, the genocide convention should be incorporated into UK law.
And if the Security Council could not be persuaded to authorise the use of force in the particular circumstances of the time, or was prevented from doing so by a veto or threat of a veto by one or more of its permanent members? No problem, says the Professor:
In Rwanda, the French and other powers blocked the UN security council from intervening. Today, China and Russia are blocking a proper response in Darfur. In such circumstances this act would force states to intervene.
A somewhat truncated version of my reply to this article was published in the Guardian on 27 May. Here, for the record, is the full text as I submitted it:
Professor Brivati's appeal to the UK and others to incorporate the genocide convention in our domestic law so that it "would force states to intervene… to stop mass killing" wherever it occurs, or seems about to occur, anywhere in the world (We must not give up on intervention, May 25, p.24), performs a useful service by exposing the fallacies and dangers in the neo-cons' and New Labour's proposed doctrine of humanitarian intervention, invented mainly to provide a fig-leaf of legitimacy for the NATO attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo. The professor implies that the doctrine could and should be used to override a Security Council veto, or the likelihood of one, but there is nothing in the UN Charter to permit this: the use of force without the Council's explicit authority is legal only in self-defence, which doesn't arise here.
Once we try to by-pass the UN, we're in the jungle: who decides what constitutes 'mass killing' in each specific case, or whether the use of force is the only way to prevent or stop it, and at what stage of a crisis, and which countries should launch the pre-emptive attack? Unless there is a single international body responsible for making these grave judgements and decisions, on which thousands of lives may depend, the interventionist doctrine will inevitably be exploited by strong countries to justify intervening in the internal affairs of the weak. The only body capable of performing this supervisory function is the Security Council, whose authority all UN member states agreed to accept by signing the Charter. Those who seek to circumvent it, however idealistic their motives, are helping to undermine the rule of law and the indispensable rules governing the use of force in international affairs on which we all ultimately depend for our security.
Brian Barder
http://www.barder.com/brian/
According to an article by Jonathan Green in the Financial Times’s excellent weekend magazine, there’s a sign over the entrance to Camp Delta, the American ‘detention’ centre for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, that reads: “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’. Can the irony in this be intentional? Were those who ordered this sign displayed really unconscious of its terrible echo: ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’? O Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name! [1]
* * * * *
Letters in the newspapers I wish I had written: In the Guardian of 19 May 05, Richard Newson of Whitton, Middlesex, pointed out that it’s not identity cards as such that are objectionable: it’s the huge computer data-base supporting them, with files on every one of us “designed to allow the state to observe and log almost everything we do”, that’s open to the most fervent objection. Knowledge is power, and such immense power in the hands of the state is certain to be abused sooner or later, if not by this government then by some future régime even less deserving of trust. Apart from the unconscionable snooping involved, how much confidence can we have that the information held on these secret files will be accurate, or capable of being amended if not? Or that the giant computer system, (under-)estimated already to cost £5.5 billion, will work at all, given the farcical record of most government computer systems? Perhaps, though, the best hope for the protection of our privacy will depend on the system not working.
* * * * *
From the waspish Guardian ‘Diary’ column of 19 May:
”Had we not ceased dwelling on New Labour ironies in about 1999, we may have found ourselves vaguely confused by the PM’s latest obsession with respect.”
”Having contacted a notable transport expert to pick his brains about rail privatisation, Andrew [Adonis] suggested they discussed it over dinner at Shepherds…”
”Were this not torture enough, … the real hokey cokey began with the arrival of the bill.”
(My emphasis.) A session on the conditional and subjunctive moods of English verbs would seem to be indicated. (OK, you could just about make a case for the last one.)
* * * * *
It’s pleasant to be able to recommend an unpretentious, thoroughly enjoyable, undemanding film: A Good Woman, based fairly closely on Oscar Wilde’s comedy-drama Lady Windermere’s Fan, transposed to the Amalfi coast in Italy and the characters transformed into Americans (thus Mrs, not Lady, Windermere). That might suggest the dumbing-down or sentimentalising of a classic, but the director, Mike Barker, avoids either temptation. The film is beautiful to look at, both for its Italian location and some splendid interiors. And if that’s not enough to tempt you to go and see it, bear in mind that it stars that excellent actress Holly Hunt, and that ubiquitous, gorgeous young woman Scarlett Johansson. Tom Wilkinson is another genuine attraction. No violence, no sex, no nudity – but in spite of those shortcomings, excellent entertainment (and plenty of delightful, if already familiar, Wildeisms).
* * * * *
Few television programmes have been as relentlessly and enthusiastically plugged in advance by the BBC as the new political satire series, The Thick of It, which began with the first of three half-hour slots on BBC4 (yes, there is a BBC4) on 19 May. So one wondered whether it would live up to the expectations aroused, not only by the BBC’s trailings but also by the many previews in the national press. Happily, it satisfied expectations handsomely: funny, scathing, close to the bone, and convincingly acted. Comparisons with the brilliant Yes Minister, whose immense influence I have argued elsewhere has done great harm, are of course inevitable, and few would claim that The Thick of It is destined to become such an opinion-forming classic. But its commentary on the way Downing Street and Whitehall work (if that’s the right word for what happens), and on the treatment of ministers by special advisers, spin doctors and prime ministerial hatchet-men, seems just as harshly revealing as anything in the more genteel Butler Report. Two interesting points about it: first, the programme’s political adviser is Martin Sixsmith, the former journalist turned government information officer, who was at the centre of the immense row involving Stephen Byers and Jo Moore in February 2002 that resulted ultimately in the sackings or resignations of all three – so Sixsmith will have been an adviser who knew what he was talking about; and secondly, The Thick of It is currently going out on BBC4, a channel available only to digital television viewers, although it will later also be broadcast on the BBC’s thinking man’s terrestrial channel, BBC2. Now I wonder what the BBC meant by doing it like that (to adapt the famous remark probably made by, probably, Metternich, about the death of Talleyrand, or by Talleyrand about the death of the Turkish ambassador, or – oh, never mind)?
* * * * *
[1] O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom! – Mme Roland, before her execution on the guillotine, November 8, 1793
Mme Roland: O Liberty…! 
Brian
http://www.barder.com/brian/
Some snippets from the Queen’s speech at the opening of Parliament, Tuesday 17 May 2005.
‘The Duke of Edinburgh and I look forward to our visit to Canada later today and to our state visit to Malta in November which precedes the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.’
That’s funny. I thought it preceded December.
‘If London is selected to host the 2012 Olympic Games, legislation will be introduced as soon as possible to establish the necessary powers to ensure the delivery of the Games.’
Delivery? Of the Olympic Games? By FedEx, or the Royal Mail?
‘My government will continue … to support better standards of governance throughout the world.’
Starting here, we hope. And surely we can aim higher than this? What about the rest of the universe?
‘my government will continue to pursue economic policies which entrench stability’
‘Entrench’ stability? So that it will take a two-thirds majority to destabilise us?
‘My government will continue to play its full part in international affairs.’
If that doesn’t get us worried, nothing will. Don’t they ever learn?
More seriously:
‘Proposals will be brought forward to continue the fight against terrorism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.’
‘Proposals’, apparently as distinct from ‘legislation’, the term used in the Speech on other subjects where new Bills are foreshadowed (45 of them plus 5 draft Bills!). What has happened to the home secretary’s and the Lord Chancellor’s promises in parliament on 10 March 05, to get themselves out of the impasse over the Prevention of Terrorism Bill (now Act), introducing ‘control orders’, when the House of Commons repeatedly rejected amendments sent to it from the House of Lords, that in the late autumn of 2005 the government would publish yet another draft anti-terrorism Bill for public discussion and parliamentary scrutiny and that this would provide an opportunity to amend, even repeal, the control orders legislation?
But there’s a rumour going about that the Queen didn’t write the speech – it was Tony Blair! What a rascal!
Brian
http://www.barder.com/brian/
I was embarrassingly gratified the other day to receive an e-mail out of the blue from a complete stranger who had posted, anonymously, an interesting and supportive comment on one of my blog posts (about the Attorney-General’s advice on the legality of the Iraq war). As well as supplying his e-mail address, he mentioned that he had drawn on material in my blog (and also on my son Owen’s blog) in his own blog. Phil (for it was he, as they say in Private Eye) had quoted us in the post in question, well worth a visit in its own right (like everything else in a beautiful blog) but also for me an especially enjoyable read: it’s nice to be quoted. It’s presumably estimable modesty that causes Phil to omit from his separate website any reference or link to his own blog. Both are well worth a visit, for the original material and also for the wealth of links.
But when you visit, leave yourself plenty of time. Each seductive link leads to another blog which turns out to be generously seeded with more and equally seductive links, and so on ad (almost) infinitum, like those fleas with their lesser fleas[1]. By following link after link I happened, for example, on a wonderful resource on civil rights chronicling New Labour’s relentless attack on them. Several other compulsively readable blogs, too.
Another exchange of messages arising out of my blog led me to another interesting blog, Andrew’s, which led in turn to another, ‘The Sharpener’, a joint effort by several contributors (including Andrew), all politically and linguistically literate to an unusual degree, and all splendidly stimulating (polite word for ‘sometimes extremely irritating’). And this in turn has led me to quote with warm approval a Sharpener entry by Andrew in a new post of my own, part of my mini-campaign against the suddenly fashionable fad for proportional representation, lightly disguised as ‘electoral reform’.
And so it goes. There’s a huge amount of profitable reading on all these blogs, and it requires real self-discipline eventually to call a halt to the paper-chase through the links, each leading to dozens more, giving new resonance to the concept of exponentiality. Meanwhile there are unpaid bills and unanswered letters and e-mails piling up and the shopping to do and the bicycle in the garage a standing reproach, and (worst of all) the packed shelf of unread books and back numbers of the LRB still in their cling-film wrappers…
And I used to think that retirement would be an island of leisure and idleness.
[1] So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller fleas to bite ’em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet, in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind.
- Jonathan Swift, On Poetry (1733) l. 3
Brian
http://www.barder.com/brian/
I’ve just opened a bottle of Domaine de Gournier 2003, Vin de Pays des Cévennes, from the Languedoc et Roussillon area west of Avignon. It’s a merlot, and as a vin de pays it’s what the pretentious call an unpretentious little wine. It seems to me luscious. So I have done a little research on this delectable and inexpensive (all right, cheap) red.
“During September 2002, the Nimes area of southern France was absolutely deluged with rain, and the region suffered one of the worst floods in decades. The owner of Gournier, Maurice Barnouin, literally had to be helicoptered off the roof of his house to escape the torrential rain. His house, the adjoining winery, and most of the contents of his cellar, were carried down river.
Since December 2002, Maurice Barnouin, the passionate owner of Gournier, has committed himself to the reconstruction of his life at Gournier, and has re-built a beautiful winemaking facility to receive the excellent 2003 harvest. Now owning over 200 ha of vineyards between Uzes and Nimes, the modern vinification methods and controlled yields ensure the consistency and personality of the range.” – http://www.everywine.co.uk/invt/46503
So why has merlot suddenly got a bad name? Ah: it’s that movie. Of course!
‘Live by the fad, die by the fad. That could conceivably go down as the postmortem assessment of the Merlot Boom, which began in the 1990s for largely fortuitous reasons and is now threatened by a stroke of bad fortune: a profane slur leveled against merlot by the lead character in the movie "Sideways”. … merlot is in fact a potentially great grape, as has been proved countless times over many decades by conscientious vintners, especially those in the Bordeaux communes of Pomerol and St. Emilion. Nevertheless, merlot’s profile set it up as a bubble prone to pricking when "Sideways" began showing in theaters last year. The bubble is lanced in a scene outside a restaurant when the character Miles, played by Paul Giamatti, delivers an incensed warning to his friend that "if anyone orders merlot, I’m leaving. I am not drinking any [expletive] merlot." That line got the biggest laugh of the night when I saw the film, but vintners heavily invested in merlot are not laughing. As Washington Post business writer Margaret Webb Pressler reported on April 10, sales of merlot declined 2 percent in the 12 weeks after "Sideways" was released, whereas pinot noir (Miles’s favorite) increased by 14 percent. … The grape retains all of its strong potential, and though I’ve tasted plenty of unremarkable bottlings during the past few weeks while checking the current crop, I’ve also tasted some standouts in the key price range, between $9 and $18.
‘Here are my top 10 in order of preference: …
[No. 7:] Domaine de Gournier (Vin de Pays des Cevennes, France) 2003 ($9, Kacher): Ripe and intensely fruity, this is bursting at the seams with notes of red and black berries. The juicy fruit notes are effectively balanced by some ripe tannins that contribute structure but no harshness.’
– Michael Franz, Washington Post, Wednesday, May 4, 2005; F05 –http://tinyurl.com/b58tj
Or, a shade less enthusiastically:
Un bon vin sec au nez discret et frais, soyeux en bouche.
http://www.auberge-des-cevennes.qc.ca/cartevins.htm
I think it’s delicious. I enjoyed Sideways, too, amusing prelude to a memorably vinous tour of the Sonoma and Napa Valleys in California a few weeks later, the area where the film is set.
I hope this doesn’t label me a champagne (or chardonnay) socialist, or, worse, a merlot marxist.
PS: My one solitary bottle of Domaine de Gournier 2003 came in a case of discounted bin ends from the admirable Wine Society, source of so many good things, including this. Three cheers for merlot, and three more for the brave M. Barnouin, passionate owner of Gournier!
Brian
http://www.barder.com/brian/
Electoral ‘reform’? No, thanks. The growing clamour for Proportional Representation ignores some powerful counter-arguments. Some of them are summarised in my comments on the report by Lord [Roy] Jenkins in 1998 which recommended a new hybrid form of PR for elections to the House of Commons. Click here to read them.
And I have just sent the following message to ‘Andrew’, author of a splendid comment on someone else’s blog:
“I just wanted to say hurrah in response to your lethal and wonderfully pithy demolition of the case for PR in elections to the House of Commons, in your Comment at http://www.thesharpener.net/?p=24: that whatever the results of any particular election, it would always allow the LibDems, with fewer votes than Labour or the Tories, to decide whether the prime minister and most ministers should be Labour or Conservative, with the power to put either of the bigger parties in power at any time, even between elections (as indeed has happened in Germany in real life).
“There are of course other objections to PR, such as the fact that the government that emerges from the secret horse-trading after polling day in which all the parties seek to construct a coalition is always one that nobody at all voted for, since it’s impossible in any system to vote for a combination of parties that hasn’t yet been formed; and the programme of that coalition emerging from a PR election is similarly one that not a single voter has voted for, since no-one can foresee what compromises and deals will be made in the process of putting together a coalition or alliance of parties after the election is over. The PR enthusiasts complain that under first-past-the-post we always get governments which only a minority of the electorate voted for: but under PR, we would always get governments that no-one at all voted for. There’s also the defect that since under PR no one party alone would ever have a majority in the House of Commons, no party would ever be able to carry out a controversial constitutional or other reform programme that was unacceptable to other parties which had won fewer votes but whose support was needed for a majority in parliament. There’s a lot to be said for the common-sense, rough justice principle underlying FPTP that the party with the most votes (almost always) gets to form a government and usually with a sufficient majority to carry out the programme it had offered to the electorate.”
Brian
12 May 2005
http://www.barder.com/brian/
