Chris Bertram

I see that the White House is calling the suggestion that George W. Bush suggested bombing the headquarters of “Aljazeera”:http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage in Qatar (a friendly state) “outlandish”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/22/AR2005112201784.html . Anyone who watched BBC’s Newsnight last night will have seen Frank Gaffney defending (indeed advocating) attacking “Aljazeera”:http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage as entirely legitimate on the grounds that the station is an arm of enemy propaganda. There is also the small matter of the fact that the civil servants who leaked the transcript of the Bush–Blair conversation are facing prosecution for doing so and that the “Daily Mirror has been subjected to pressure”:http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16401707%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=law%2dchief%2dgags%2dthe%2dmirror%2don%2dbush%2dleak-name_page.html . It is hard to see how someone could “leak” or could be prosecuted for leaking a document if it was other than genuine. One of the neocon themes has been the need for free institutions in the Arab world. Such institutions presumably involve a free and independent media. And yet the closest thing to such a media in the region is discussed as a possible target of attack (and indeed there have been numerous “accidental” attacks on “Aljazeera”:http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage staff).

Cheney “asks”:http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31120

bq. “Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with (Abu Musab al-) Zarqawi, (Osama) bin Laden and (Ayman al-) Zawahiri in control of Iraq?” he asked. “Would be we safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?”

Let me get this straight. At time _t_ you advocate a policy involving the invasion and occupation of Iraq on multiple grounds, none of which include the forestalling of an Al Qaeda seizure of power in Iraq (since such an eventuality is risibly improbable). At time _t+n_ , as a direct consequence of that brilliant policy, the only options are (a) its continuation or (b) an Al Qaeda takeover of Iraq. Genius. No wonder that man got re-elected.

“Orin Kerr at the Volokhs”:http://volokh.com/posts/1132357846.shtml has a link to an “ABC News piece on CIA interrogation techniques”:http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866&page=1 . Apparently these methods are “not torture”:

bq. 4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

Websites which regularly enthuse about the man are linking to “this quasi-interview with Hitchens”:http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1132354213654&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes in which he vaunts his atheistic credentials:

bq. He’s not just an atheist who doesn’t believe in God, he says, but an “anti-theist,” who actively denies the existence of same, a distinction he insists on making. …. His new book, _God is Not Great_ , is a call for people to grow up and abandon the self-comforting fantasy: “I personally think that’s the only answer. In the meantime, any government that allows any privilege to any one faith is preparing to commit cultural suicide.” And any state that retains even a quasi-connection to Christianity, he adds, will have to face Muslim arguments exploiting it. It is all gloomily predictable.

Last week “Nick Barlow pointed”:http://www.nickbarlow.com/blog/?p=574 to the website of the “Family Research Council”:http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=CU05K11 (“Defending Family, Faith and Freedom”) with a picture of a man looking rather like Hitchens who had given an address to the group. One can only suppose that evil biotechnologists from the idiotarian left have produced a clone of Hitchens which now goes around acting in a way that would discredit the real one. Somehow I doubt that such a risible scheme will discredit the “Dude” in the eyes of his faithful admirers.

I’m back in the UK after a trip to the US which included a week spent at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Thanks to Harry and everyone else who made it such a memorable and enjoyable visit, and to those Crooked Timber readers who made suggestions about what to eat. (The frozen custard was excellent, but I passed on the cheese curds.) One piece of good luck I had there was the following. Having eaten dinner and enjoyed interesting conversation with some of Harry’s students, I was wandering down State Street last Thursday when I saw a poster advertising a “Mary Gauthier”:http://www.marygauthier.com/default.aspx gig. When? I wondered. Tonight! I produced my $15 dollars admission and made my entrance. It was a terrific performance by Mary and her German guitarist Thomm Jutz, leavened by some great monologues including one about “Brits who listen to Radio 2.” Afterwards, I was able to identify myself as such whilst getting my copy of “Mercy Now”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000765IS6/junius-20 autographed, a memorable evening.

I’ve been meaning to post on the issue of abortion and the European Union. Not to discuss the substantive merits of the case — I’m pro-choice, since you ask — but, rather, to get some reactions. The Portuguese constitutional court has now decided to “block a referendum”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4387406.stm to liberalize the law until September 2006. Naturally, I hope that the referendum, when it is eventually held, produces a majority in favour of reform. But I got to thinking about how outrageous it would be if the EU centrally, or the ECHR, decided what the law in Portugal should be rather than the Portuguese people themselves. It seems, though, that “not everyone agrees with me”:http://217.145.4.56/ind/news.asp?newsitemid=23897 :

bq. Finding ways to force countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Malta to liberalise their abortion laws was the focus of a meeting of 17 members of the European Parliament and representatives of various NGOs who gathered in Brussels on 18 October, LifeSiteNews reported.

bq. At a conference entitled, Abortion – Making it a right for all women in the EU, attendees heard testimony from abortion advocates from countries with restrictive abortion laws.

bq. Held at the European Parliament building, participants strategised about ways to make a right to abortion mandatory for all member states of the European Union. They discussed ways of arguing that guaranteeing the right to abortion falls under the European Union’s mandate because it is a human rights and public health issue.

The EU isn’t structually similar to the US (despite what some commenters at CT appear to believe), but there are obvious parallels here to the Roe v. Wade issue. Personally, I think that the right of a demos to decide these things after intelligent public debate should not be sacrificed lightly in favour of empowering a bunch of (foreign) judges, just to get the substantive result one likes. I would also imagine that if the EU starts to impose a view then that will have very damaging effects on the cohesion of the Union. But I’d be interested to get the views of others.

I’m in Madison Wisconsin for the week and enjoying my first experience of the US away from the east coast. As visitors are, I keep being struck by the micro-details of life and how they differ from the UK. Harry and I just had lunch in a student cafeteria. Having finished our sandwiches we got up to get some coffee from a machine and simply left our coats and bags by our table whilst we did so, even though they were not always in sight. The cafeteria was also organized with the tills at one end and the seating back in the same space as the self-service access to food. Everyone stands in line and pays before taking their seats. All of this is radically different from the UK where (a) one learns from an early age to hang on to all one’s property because otherwise it will be stolen and (b) where given an opportunity to take food from the university, sit down and eat it and not pay, many (even most) students would do so.

(On the downside, the built environment has far too much concrete, especially on roadways and pavements (flagstones would make such a difference) and people eat dinner barbarically early — 6pm!!).

(On the very downside, I tuned into Country Music TV in my hotel room and found no overlap whatsoever with the stuff that gets played by “Bob Harris”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/bobharriscountry/index.shtml : Emmylou, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch — forget it — it is all wall-to-wall pap by people wearing cowboy hats. Appalling.)

Over at Normblog, “Sophie Masson has been defending the French model against its detractors”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/11/riots_in_france.html , pointing out the France has successfully assimilated generations of Portuguese and Italian immigrants and turned them into French men and women. The funny thing is, that, leaving aside a bit of Napoleonic rambling around Italy in the 1790s, France never colonized Italy and Portugal. Nor did it fight a bitter war in Italy and Portugal as recently as the 1960s. Nor did it employ methods including massacre and torture against Italians and Portuguese in the recent past. Moreover those recent events have, as far as possible, been brushed under the carpet and France recently passed a law making schools teach the allegedly positive aspects of its colonial regimes in North Africa. Whilst the Algerian War was the subject of one of the greatest films ever made, French cinema (to mention just one popular cultural medium) has not faced up to the Algerian war in the way the Hollywood has addressed the American experience in Vietnam. I don’t assert that there is some direct causal connection between the Algerian war and the recent riots, but one cannot think seriously about the situation of the banlieue without noticing the unmentionable facts and silences. There has been no Truth and Reconciliation Commission for France, but until these wounds are acknowledged and examined, those of North African origin cannot be treated as just another immigrant group — like the Italians and Portuguese — they are not.

A friend alerts me by email that a new Rousseau biography is out in the US. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau: An Unruly Mind”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0618446966/junius-20 by Leo Damrosch is “reviewed in the books section of the NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/books/review/06schiff.html today. It is hard to see how this will better Cranston, although Cranston unfortunately died before he completed his final volume (it was finished by someone else and is the thinnest of the three). I’m off to the US tomorrow, and will get myself a copy of Damrosch’s book asap.

I don’t often just reproduce someone else’s post verbatim, but I just surfed over to the Virtual Stoa where “Chris has”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2005_11_01_archive.html#113096578158707788 the following from the “US Department of Justice”:http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/ppus04pr.htm

bq. ALMOST 7 MILLION ADULTS UNDER CORRECTIONAL SUPERVISION BEHIND BARS OR ON PROBATION OR PAROLE IN THE COMMUNITY

bq. WASHINGTON, D.C. — The number of adults in prison, jail, or on probation or parole reached almost 7 million during 2004, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The number has grown by more than 1.6 million adults under correctional authority control since 1995.

bq. The nation’s total correctional population was 6,996,500 in 2004, of which 4,151,125 were living in the community on probation; 1,421,911 were in a state or federal prison; 765,355 were living in the community on parole; and 713,990 were in jail, according to the BJS report on probation and parole. At year-end one in every 31 adults were under correctional supervision, which was 3.2 percent of the U.S. adult population…

As Chris says, wow.

Surfing over to “Nationmaster”:http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php — which uses the stats for 2003 and so has slightly fewer actual prisoners — I see that the US also has the highest absolute number of prisoners in the world (more than China!) , and the highest number per capita (715 per 100k). For comparison, the higher number per capita in the EU is 210 per 100k (Poland) and 144 for “older” Europe (Spain). For some reason the UK isn’t listed, but I think the figure works out at about 125.

I see that the left sidebar now has a permanent link to Eszter’s “Frappr Map of Crooked Timber”:http://www.frappr.com/crookedtimber readers (scroll down: under Frenzy of Renown). Add yourselves (if you want to and you haven’t already – especially if you come from Africa, South America, Eastern Europe or Antarctica).

Today’s Guardian “editorial”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1604944,00.html concerns the recent legal case involving “Hyperion Records”:http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/ . Hyperion are best know for their wonderful series of Schubert song recordings — Ian Bostridge’s Die schöne Müllerin being a case in point. Their survival is now threatened because the editor of the works of a rather obscure French composer was successful in “an action claiming musical copyright in the work”:http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/news.asp#1 . I offer no opinion on the legal merits of the case, though it is claimed that this effectively lowers the threshold on what counts as an original work. Hyperion will probably face small damages, but they must now meet their own and the plaintiff’s enormous legal costs. They are “appealing for donations”:http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/shop/donate.asp .

I went to see “Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage”:http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0426578/ (film website “here”:http://www.sophiescholl-derfilm.de/ ) last night, and came away with ambivalent feelings about it. On the one hand, it is good to see this extraordinary moment of heroism get a cinematic treatment, but on the other, it didn’t work especially well as a film. The film is supposedly based on Gestapo transcripts — but can it be true that Scholl and her interrogator engaged in lengthy speechifying against (and in defence of) the Nazi regime? These were the sort of exchanges that might work well in a stage play, but seemed stilted and artificial on the screen. There was also the matter of the film’s focus on Sophie as an individual rather than on her brother Hans when, from the point of view of their heroism, there seems little to choose between them. That seemed to exploit a tacit assumption that there was something specially noble about a woman resisting rather than a man. The film was good in bringing out their religious convictions, and the importance they had in motivating their acts. Certainly a film very much worth seeing for its moral and political qualities, but perhaps not for its aesthetic ones.

I got quite a bit of flak in “comments last week”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/24/birmingham-pogrom/ for using the word “pogrom” to allude to the parallels between the rumour-driven riots in Birmingham and the persecution of Jews in 19th-century eastern Europe. Insofar as “pogrom” suggests some kind of official sanction, the word probably had slightly misleading connotations. But I see that both the “conservative columnist Theodore Dalrymple”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/10/26/do2604.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/26/ixhome.html and the “Observer’s Nick Cohen”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1604791,00.html have also noticed the echoes. Dalrymple wrote:

bq. The rumour that a 14-year-old black girl had been caught shoplifting by a Pakistani shopkeeper in the Lozells area of Birmingham, and subsequently raped in revenge by a score of his compatriots, is highly reminiscent of the blood libels that used to sweep through Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century and led to vicious pogroms.

And comments:

bq. Of all the paradoxes of the situation, none is greater than that the Muslim traders of Lozells, among whom an unthinking anti-Semitism is probably widespread, should now find themselves in the position of the petty-trading Jews of Tsarist Russia, Moldavia and Romania.

And Cohen refers to Dalrymple and then generalizes the the work of Amy Chua:

bq. In World on Fire, published two years ago and which deserved far more attention than it received, Amy Chua showed how globalisation had created an explosion of racism in the anti-semitic tradition. The new wave of capitalism had raised the living standards of ordinary people by a little and the rich by a lot, her argument ran. The supporters of free markets and democracy thought everyone was benefiting and hadn’t noticed that their ideas helped fuel resentments in those countries where ethnic minorities dominated business.

Thoughts that are outrageous on Crooked Timber on Monday, are conservative talking-points by Wednesday and the conventional wisdom of the “decent” left by the following Sunday. Maybe I should be worried about that!