Nosemonkey's EUtopia

Look, sorry – I know everyone seems to expect that I’m a wishy-washy pinko liberal peacenik and stuff, but there’s only one way to describe this story – this is fucking cool! That’s what war should be all about – the sort of bollocks they always used to get up to in those late-1960s caper movies with the comedy Nazis and stuff. Quality! Especially check out the quote from the Ministry of Defence Spokesman, and imagine him being played by James Robertson Justice, leaving an extended pause before the last word and then tapping his nose and winking at the end and shit. War’s great.

(Normal service will be resumed shortly)

The Beeb, as ever, has a load of good info, including the wonderful bit “Mr Schroeder said he could not understand how the CDU ‘stakes a claim to political leadership from a disastrous election result'” – because, erm… they beat you by 1% and yet you’re still claiming power? Nice one, Gerdy…

Meanwhile Ostracised from �sterreich looks at some potential coalitions after liveblogging yesterday’s results, while North Sea Diaries points out that, despite the scare stories about the German economy and unemployment, comparisons to 1970s Britain (and thus Merkel to Thatcher) are not as accurate as many believe.

Medienkritik has the German electoral map – showing a rather hefty north/south, east/west divide. He’s also provided a similar map of unemployment figures, hinting at a correlation, as well as a bit more coalition speculation.

Over at Bildt Comments, in Berlin everything’s unclear except the weather – the only thing that’s certain is that “there are distinctly more losers than winners” – and the Dresden election in two weeks could end up decisive. Possibly. Depending on everything else that happens. Perhaps.

Whether or not this result is as bad as some seem to think (sections of the German press apparently calling it “fatal”) it’s simply too early to say. But if even the German press don’t know what to make of it, you can be sure that anything you read in the English language press will be even less helpful – not least thanks to the animosity with Britain and America that Schr�der’s managed to build up over the last few years (and that Merkel could, lazily, be mistaken for a Neocon).

Expect a load of punditry on potential German governments in the European press over the next couple of weeks, in other words. Most of it more or less ill-informed, all of it highly speculative and based in little in the way of knowledge or fact.

Update: Hysteria from the Commission. Well, not hysteria, exactly, but can’t we just let the Germans sort out their problems for themselves? It’s not like they actually WANT a political deadlock. Well, except for the fact that that’s what they voted for…

(Oh, and can someone tell Mandelson to shut up about “social models”? Whenever I hear that phrase I think of those little postcard adverts you get in the phone boxes around Soho. As such, a “new social model” appears to feel quite nice for a bit but then leave you feeling ripped off, broke and dosed up on clap. Not that I’d know, obviously…)

By the by, this should be read if you want to know what’s going on – a nice overview with good analysis, and even a few nuggets along the lines of “the F.D.P. served chicken wings in their car park”. Can’t be bad.

Well, well, well. Down to the wire, no obvious majority, and suggestions even appearing that Schr�der and Merkel should team up and form a coalition – much like Labour teaming up with the Tories. Yet both wannabe Chancellors have claimed victory, and neither is likely to want to compromise over their fairly significant political differences. It’s all gone a bit mad, in other words.

Best place for all the excitement appears to be Der Spiegel’s election liveblog (hat tip to MattGB in a comment here earlier this evening) and their special section on the elections, with Deutsch Welle’s funky graphic thing also worth a quick look. Its exit poll is currently (10:30pm) showing 1% in it – or a two seat difference – nowhere near enough for any one party to comfortably take charge. (Of course, a 1% difference in Britain can be enough to give a 60 seat overall majority… But more on that, no doubt, some other time.)

Lots of good stuff at Fistful as per usual.

Piss off, Murdoch.

Oh, and the latest Britblog Roundup is up. Go, read and stuff.

Note to anyone who cares (so that’d be no one, then) – the archives by topic are now slighly more navigable, having been divided by date. However, as they’re updated manually and I haven’t had the inclination recently, they’re a month and a half behind. For any August/September posts, use the Blogger-automated “by date” ones. Ta.

Here endeth the most boring post ever.

By way of the lovely KathyF (who may or may not actually be lovely in the real world – I refuse to take responsibility for said description having never met her, she could be a vicious psychopathic terrorist for all I know) I’ve found out a bit more info about this whole bridge blogging lark. As such, I utterly demand that we all start helping out with this promising-looking wiki of global blogs by country. Preferably avoiding the temptation simply to spam our own. If we all combine our brainsacks – especially my dear continental reader friends – we could help turn that into a rather handy resource.

Yep – our government does seem to think we’re that stupid. Or at least that enough of us are that stupid to make the old misdirection trick worth trying.

Yesterday, Charles Clarke launched his new Terrorism Bill, packed full of illiberal nonsense designed to grap our civil liberties by the hair, put a flick-knife to their throat and then skullfuck them mercilessly until their tears mingle with their blood as they curl, whimpering and broken, on the floor of the windowless cell to which Clarkie-boy has confined them for three months without trial thanks to his wonderful new discretionary powers.

But it’s been a couple of months since the nasty terrorists last tried anything, and since then there was a spot of bother with some foreign geezer getting capped by the police. Despite their best efforts, all the “he was running – he must have had something to hide” and “he was an eeevil illegal immigrant, and that’s nearly as bad as a terrorist” bullshit that was spouted was unable to hide the truth, and certain sections of society had begun to question the need for intrustive new laws. Yes, there were those relatives of that one London bomb victim who were screaming for revenge justice who the Sun managed to uncover – but they were conspicuously unsupported by any other grieving families.

“I know,” says Clarke, “We need to get everyone scared again! Then they’ll give me the power to whack any of them in gaol whenever I feel like it!”

Sure enough, yesterday morning, a few hours before the Terrorism Bill was unveiled – and conveniently just in time to make The Today Programme – seven Algerians were hauled off to the clink under powers granted by the last Terrorism Act. As Curious Hamster pointed out yesterday, it’s hardly very subtle… (Meaders, posting over at Lenin’s, has more details.)

But it goes further than that. After all, the government can’t risk pissing off Muslims or be seen to be focussing all its attention on eeevil Islamists, can it? That’d be discriminatory and stuff…

So back on Sunday there appeared the story that Israeli Major General Doron Almog had had a warrant issued for his arrest for war crimes he is alleged to have committed in the Gaza strip. Somehow he managed to escape being locked up and put on trial. By, erm… staying on a plane at the airport, which the British security forces sent to arrest him somehow neglected to enter…

But shhh! Details aren’t important – there was a warrant to arrest an Israeli General for being nasty to Palestians, and Palestinians are, like, Muslim and stuff!

See? The government don’t just go after eeevil Muslims – they can go after eeevil Israelis as well – and for war crimes against Muslims, no less! See how they don’t discriminate? See how it isn’t a war against Islam? Excellent! Now, back to putting out our crappy anti-terror legislation.

And then, as if by magic, along comes Friday evening – the best possible time to leak news you don’t want anyone to find out about (well, other than the afternoon of September 11th 2001, obviously), as the Saturday papers have all gone to the printers, the Sunday papers are pretty much done, and no one really bothers with the news over weekends anyway.

Sure enough, the arrest warrant has been withdrawn. It’s served its PR purpose. Sorted. (And in any case, they couldn’t leave it outstanding too long because Israel was already starting to kick up a fuss – they’d noticed, after all, that saying Almog’s order to demolish Palestinian houses was a war crime kind of… erm… suggests that much of Israeli policy for the past few years has also been criminal… And we can’t piss off Israel now, can we? Except temporarily, when it suits us, that is.)

I hope that the 22% of you who voted for these dickheads are pleased with yourselves.

A quick skim over the draft Terrorism Bill (.pdf) raises a number of concerns. Doubtless there’d be infinitely more were I to read it in full (especially were I to compare it to other anti-terrorism legislation from around the world), but I’ve got real-world deadlines for things that actually earn me money, so I’ll have to leave it to others.

I am, however, somewhat concerned that when you say that anyone who “glorifies, exalts or celebrates the commission, preparation or instigation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of acts of terrorism”* is committing an offence, precisely what is meant by “glorifying”, “exalting” or “celebrating” is left unclear.

I also don’t like the idea that “A person is guilty of an offence under this section in respect of a statement glorifying, exalting or celebrating anything occurring more than 20 years before the publication of the statement only if the statement relates, whether directly or indirectly, to conduct or events specified for the purposes of this section by order made by the Secretary of State.”**

This effectively wipes from existence any act of terrorism pre-1985 unless Charles Clarke specifically, officially declares it to be terrorism. So the 1984 Brighton bomb which nearly wiped out Thatcher and her Cabinet would – technically – no longer count as an act of terrorism unless the Safety Elephant specifically sets out a statutory instrument*** declaring it so to be. And if he did that, then anyone who ever jokes about it being a shame they missed risks five years in prison****.

It also – again, technically – for the first time creates the concept of “official history” as historic groups who used tactics which could be considered “terrorist” (the Chartists etc.) would now only technically be considered such if they were on the Home Secretary’s official list. A perfect cop-out for any history students presented with “Were the Suffragettes’ tactics terrorist in nature?” type questions – just put “No – because Charles Clarke says so”.

* Part 1, Section 2, Subsection 1(b)
** Part 1, Section 2, Subsection 3
*** Part 1, Section 2, Subsection 4
**** Part 1, Section 2, Subsection 5(a)

In case you aren’t aware of them, I cannot stress how great soj‘s eclectic world news roundups are, providing a superb overview of stories of interest from all over the shop that you’re likely otherwise going to miss, from Haiti to Georgia, the US to Peru, Burundi to Nepal. Find them pretty much daily at Flogging the Simian or European Tribune. Today’s is here and here.

Following the news that anonymous dickheads have forced the premature death of an amusing and often insightful blog by spiteful blackmail, a roundup seems in order.

Crooked Timber – “I�ve alternately enjoyed and been infuriated by John�s blog and he�s certainly been a major irritant to the decent smug and self-satisfied former left and the samizdatistas. Both Daniel and I were regular commenters on John�s site and I�ll miss the mix of friendly repartee and ill-tempered invective there.”

Harry’s Place (rarely fans of John B) – “I would just like to take this opportunity say: what fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking scummy wankers…

“What sort of monumental, spectacular, loss of perspective can have motivated a SBBS reader to have grassed John up in such a shabby fashion.

“Fuck them.”

Chicken Yoghurt – “I just hope you shitweasels who made this happen have a glowing sense of well-being in your solitude this evening as you masturbate into your socks.”

Jim Bliss – “SBBS was never guilty of racism or sexism, but refused to bow to contrived notions of political correctness. If John was guilty of anything, it was of overestimating the ability of his readership to discern the real target of a particular barb.”

Devil’s Kitchen (hardly of the same political views, with a stirling defence of blogging anonymity) – “This is wrong; apart from anything else, it’s just not cricket. Honour comes in where boundaries are not legally set; and on blogs, honour dictates that�no matter how fucked off you are with someone in this medium�it stays in this medium. Whilst I often didn’t agree with John, the real life bleed-through barrier should be sacrosanct.”

Tim Worstall (again, hardly of the same political views) – “Bad news. Very bad news.”

Matt T – “bad news for British blogging, and probably a sign of the rut it is currently in.”

Ducking for Apples – “It would be nice to think that the web is a community of tech-literate, altruistic, friendly people who are proponents of free speech and generally getting on with life in a “do what you will but hurt no-one” kind of way.

“Unfortunately, there seem to be a proportional number of people who get their ya-yas by intimidation, bullying, power-games and trying to control other people.”

Third Avenue – “A chill wind blows through blogland”

Laban Tall (another from the opposite end of the political spectrum) – “This day there’s a gaping hole in the Blogring of Britain, where a precious if somewhat tarnished jewel once shone.”

Backword has another link roundup and ponders whether “Perhaps there�s no higher acclaim that being blackmailed by envious anonymous cunts.”

Finally, my own, more considered opinion – “it would seem that wanting to gas people who complained about Geldof swearing is fine. As long as they aren�t Jewish. Which, in my humble opinion, is significantly more patronisingly racist than anything I�ve ever read of John B�s.

“Shot by Both Sides was a satirical site � not always satire of genius, but satirical nonetheless. John�s whole persona on that site was, from everthing I can tell, merely that � a persona, an exaggeration of some of the worst excesses of the internet. To take that into the real world is less than pathetic. It�d be akin to trying to get Swift booted out of the Church for writing �A Modest Proposal� � after all, if he wrote that the children of poor Irish people should be used as food, he simply MUST have meant it�”

And now the 600+ average unique daily visitors of Shot by Both Sides have discovered a part of their lives, albeit small, destroyed by the actions of a selfish, self-righteous arsehole who thinks that their ill-thought opinions are more important than anyone else’s enjoyment. Aside from the massive damage this has the potential to do to the concept of free speech in the British blogosphere as a whole, as we all now have to live in fear of some felchlugger causing us shit if they don’t like something we write, this is effectively the blogging equivalent of terrorism – only the person responsible didn’t even have the decency of either killing themselves at the same time or taking responsibility for their pathetically childish actions. Whoever you were, nice one. I hope you’re proud.

Contradictions?: “Laws will be axed if legislation can be better left to member states, where there is an inadequate assessment of the impact on business, or where the measure is seen as too ‘heavy handed'” versus “Brussels has been given the power to compel British courts to fine or imprison people for breaking EU laws, even if the Government and Parliament are opposed.”

The latter’s not actually as bad as it sounds, aimed largely at cross-border breaches of (mostly) environmental regulations which would be tricky to prosecute via national courts, but even so it’s rather tricky to work out how the Commission can reconcile their claims that they’re pushing for deregulation while simultaneously gaining a significant increase in power via the European Court of Justice. Not to mention the PR insanity of both stories appearing on the same day – because we all know which one will get the most press…

And you know what? It’s going to achieve fuck-all. There’s no point in even bothering to write about it, despite the fact that this blog generally tries to focus on international relations. There’s no point even though I love the concept of the UN, and genuinely believe it can be a force for good in the world. These days there’s never any point in writing about the UN – which is why the section of the archives about that organisation is so sparsely populated – after a couple of posts I realised that no idealistic proposals to make it better would ever have any chance of taking effect, so the whole thing became incredibly depressing.

Because, at the moment, the UN is about as influential and important as its League of Nations predecessor was. It’s been about as good at stopping genocide and slaughter as the League was at stopping Mussolini invade Abyssinia or Japan rape Nanking. Its Security Council is manned by two countries which the UN Secretary General has declared to have acted illegally, and two more countries with a less than adequate devotion to democracy and human rights. Yet without the US, Russia and China (and let’s have no illusions about Britain’s relative importance) the entire organisation will be even less effective than it is now, so booting them out or slapping them on the wrist (so making them withdraw in protest) isn’t even slightly an option.

So instead we have watered down attempts at institutional reform, and ineffective compromises over poverty reduction. And the only real way to explain it is by blaming the United States – which, due to the nature of this here interweb, if I do means I’ll instantly get inundated by irate Republicans accusing me of anti-Americanism and “decent left” morons saying I’m only saying that because of my views on Iraq (even though I still don’t really HAVE any views on Iraq).

So don’t bother paying any attention to what’s going on in New York: the entire exercise is a pointless waste of time and – especially – money, all of which would be better spent elsewhere. A global force to fight poverty and injustice is – at the moment at least – only going to piss about and fail to agree on anything.

That’s why Superman is such a great idea – he’s basically a benevolent dictator, able to act on his unswerving belief in what is right – truth, justice and the (idealised) American way, without ending up debating in committee for weeks and months while people die all around him. Because democracy, for all its benefits, is crap at acting quickly – which is precisely what the UN needs to do whenever a crisis appears, and precisely what it always fails to do.

Whatever the solution, until we have actual superheroes (no doubt genetically-engineered mutants or something, so more like the X-Men than the Justice League or Teen Titans), whenever something needs to be done we’re screwed – because nothing can be done via the UN these days. And you have no idea how much that pains this idealistic internationalist to type. But look at Sudan, Rwanda, Kosovo, Iraq, those mentalist central Asian dictatorships – look at all the times and places where fucked-up madness has been going on and the international community has failed to act. Despite the best efforts of Kofi Annan, he’s no Superman.

If the UN can’t mobilse the nations of the world to do some fucking good, it’s a failure – even if it is down to the stubborness and self-interest of those nations that it fails. Because if, after sixty years, the UN hasn’t managed to build at least some kind of sense of global responsibility and unity (the clue’s in the name), there’s very little hope.

Or we could do what we do at the moment and simply pray that America will somehow get around to sorting everything out, even though there’s tit all real evidence that she has the capability, let alone the will to act as the world’s superhero. The idea of humanitarian intervention – revived post facto to justify invading Iraq (“because, like, getting rid of Saddam was really good and stuff”) – is actually, I believe, a good one. (But then, as my belief in the EU should demonstrate, I don’t buy into all this sovereign nation bullshit.)

But any such humanitarian intervention needs to be conducted with restraint and – most importantly – consistency. Remove Saddam? Fine – get rid of Saparmurat Niyazov, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, Islam Karimov and all the rest of the world’s psychotic dictators as well. Act to free people from the oppression of dictatorship? Fine – act to free them from the oppression of poverty and disease as well.

Under the current UN arrangements that’s never going to happen on a large enough scale – the limited group that is the Security Council couldn’t even agree on removing Saddam, a well-known mass-murdering nutter. But the US is likewise never going to bother removing dictators when it can see no direct benefit to its own national interest. People are selfish – nations doubly so. And fair enough – why the hell should they have to sort out everyone else’s problems just becuase they’ve got the money and the guns?

So what’s the fucking point of even cunting trying, eh?

Yours, a disillusioned and depressed internationalist, currently fucked off with the state of the world.