Chris Bertram

Good 1 — Evil 0

Along with colleagues at Bristol I’ve been busy organising opposition to the AUT boycott, drafting motions, collecting signatures and so on. And I’ve been preparing myself mentally for our local association AGM on the 18th of May, since I’ll have to stand up and argue the case against the boycott. There’s bound to be a range of views on the other side: some will be anti-Israel obsessives but I suspect others will be more moderate. The component of the boycott that is going to have the most support is that of Bar-Ilan University, because of its ties to Judaea and Samaria College which is located in a Jewish settlement in the occupied territories. So what has Ariel Sharon done? He’s pushed a decision through the Israeli cabinet (against Labour opposition) to upgrade this college to full university status! I don’t know enough about Israeli politics to be able to “read” this with any degree of confidence, but it sure looks like a move calculated to undermine moderate opponents of the boycott. Perhaps an AUT that can be represented to Israelis as resolutely anti-semitic (and therefore emblematic of a general European disease) is more useful to Sharon than one which renounces the boycott? David Hirsh at Engage (the anti-boycott blog) has more .

Like other Timberites I pledged my Amazon Associates earnings to Tsunami relief. However in the intervening period the Disasters Emergency Committee have decided that Darfur is more of a priority and the button that previously went to Tsunami relief redirects to a page inviting you to donate to that cause. Unlike John H., my earnings were small, but I’ve sent £40 to the DEC today and will do the same with all future earnings.

Fully searchable Google Print is now out and there’s lots of valuable stuff. A fantastic resource!

Moves are afoot to get the AUT decision for a partial boycott of Israeli institutions reversed, and for local associations — including my own — to repudiate and refuse to implement the national decision. So far, I haven’t met a single British academic who will admit to supporting the decision which was passed by a very narrow majority after a rushed and unsatisfactory debate by delegates who had mostly failed to discuss the issues with their colleagues in universities across the country. Sadly, but understandably, their vote has been interpreted as being indicative of the attitudes of British university teachers. I hope that impression can be correctly quickly. Meanwhile, a blog called Engage has been started around the campaign to reverse the decision.

I was very pleased to get a copy of Nicholas Dent’s new <em>Rousseau</em> in the post today. It appears in the Routledge Philosophers series edited by Brian Leiter. There’s an endorsement from yours truly on the cover, saying that is is “The best general introduction to Rousseau’s life and thought in English…” I think that’s true. Highly recommended.

(BTW this is a completely different book from his earlier Rousseau: An Introduction to his Psychological, Social and Political Theory, which was published by Blackwell and is also excellent.)

I see that “George” in the comments to Daniel’s post immediately below is contending, in a manner similar to that of various pro-war British bloggers, that Blair’s decision to go to war with Iraq was overdetermined. The claim is that, although WMD provided a sufficient reason to go to war, there were other “planks” to the case, also sufficient reasons, that were advanced at the time and which provided an independent case for the decision. We need to be careful here. There’s no doubt that the blogospheric supporters of the decision to go to war believed then and believe still that the nature of Saddam’s regime was such that it should have been removed. There are certainly Parliamentarians, such as Anne Clwyd, who took such a line. Indeed, there’s some merit in such a view though it needs to be balanced against a realistic assessment of the costs and risks of war. But it was not Blair’s view at the time. Blair stated clearly that the horrible nature of the Baathist regime would not be sufficient to justify the war and that Saddam’s regime could continue if he satisfied the UN on the WMD question. The money quotes:

bq. I detest his regime. But even now he can save it by complying with the UN’s demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully.

and

bq. it takes no time at all for Saddam to co-operate. It just takes a fundamental change of heart and mind. Today the path to peace is clear. Saddam can co-operate fully with the inspectors. He can voluntarily disarm. He can even leave the country peacefully. But he cannot avoid disarmament. One further point. The purpose in our acting is disarmament. But the nature of Saddam’s regime is relevant in two ways. First, WMD in the hands of a regime of this brutality is especially dangerous because Saddam has shown he will use them. Secondly, I know the innocent as well as the guilty die in a war. But do not let us forget the 4 million Iraqi exiles, the thousands of children who die needlessly every year due to Saddam’s impoverishment of his country – a country which in 1978 was wealthier than Portugal or Malaysia but now is in ruins, 60 per cent of its people on food aid. Let us not forget the tens of thousands imprisoned, tortured or executed by his barbarity every year. The innocent die every day in Iraq victims of Saddam, and their plight too should be heard. [Emphases added]

Clearly, in the passage above, Blair is offering the ghastly nature of the Saddam regime not as an independent justification for war but as a reason to given additional weight and urgency to the WMD case. People should not retrospectively pretend otherwise.

The Association of University Teachers — the main UK union for university teachers, librarians, computer technicians etc — has voted at its Council to boycott Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities and the boycott may be extended to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem also. I think this is a big mistake and will not do anything to help the cause of Palestinian statehood. Critics — and Daily Mail columnists — will seize on this decision and claim that it demonstrates that British academics are obsessively anti-Israeli (and possibly anti-semitic). The truth is that the AUT is not particularly representative, that aforementioned librarians and computer technicians often play more of a role than academics, that poor attendance at union meetings means that single-issue activists find it easy to push through resolutions on political topics, etc. Will anyone pay any attention to the boycott? A few, perhaps. But most British academics will continue to work with Israeli academics as before.

There are many good reasons not to vote Labour in the forthcoming UK general election. Giving Tony Blair a bloody nose over Iraq, punishing the government for its pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment, withdrawing support over ID cards or the government’s handling of terrorists suspects: all are worth mentioning. Some will want to add the PFI and university tuition fees to the bill of indictment. I could go on. But I don’t find the fact that Liberal Democrat policies are more in accord with my own views than Labour’s are provides me with much of a reason for switching. After all, nobody, including the Liberal Democrats — currently 150/1 at bluesq.com — expects them to form the next government. And because of that, the Lib Dems can offer the voters they wish to seduce (Labour’s base) a portfolio of policies that are straight out of Guardian-reader central. In the circumstances it is a surprise that they aren’t offering philosophy lecturers in their 40s free beer on the NHS, but I suppose principle has to kick in somewhere. I’ll probably vote Labour (currently 20/1 on), but may vote Lib Dem for the aforementioned bloody-nose reasons. I certainly won’t be favouring the Lib Dems because they have better policies: talk is cheap.

Socialist Worker has an interview with Les Roberts who led the team which conducted the Lancet survey which estimated 98,000 excess deaths in Iraq since the war began. (via Lenin .)

The British Conservatives have been covering the country with horrible posters asking questions like “How would you feel if a bloke on day-release [from prison] attacked your daughter?” Some enterprising character has now produced a design-your-own-Tory-poster website. Here’s my own feeble effort:

(via Nick Barlow)

Avian flu sounds pretty nasty, and a pandemic would be a disaster. But John Sutherland, writing in the Guardian , is in the grip of statistical confusion when he asserts that it could kill 70 per cent of the population. As I understand it, the virus kills 7 out of 10 people that it infects, and the number infected is far below 100 per cent. Moreover, the 7 out of 10 figure may well be an exaggeration, since people who recover and don’t die are less likely to be be included in the figures than those who do. The WHO impact assessment isn’t encouraging (2 to 50 million dead, but could it be worse than that). I’m sure we have some epidemiologists among our readers. Any thoughts?

I’ve been working my way through the archive of Steve Earle’s radio show on Air America. The sound quality is variable, but the content isn’t and they’re great for burning to CD and listening to when driving places. My favourite so far is with Emmylou Harris as guest. She chooses a variety of political songs including Johnny Cash’s Ballad of Ira Hayes, Joan Baez’s Birmingham Sunday and Woody Guthrie singing Plane Wreck at Los Gatos. Plane Wreck is a good song to hear at any time, but, here in the UK, with the parties competing to stigmatize the “economic migrants” (such as the cockle-pickers who died at Morecambe Bay) it has an immediate relevance. Recommended.

[Update: the server for the archive seems to be down because of exceeded bandwidth. This is probably due to the link here — sorry! I’ve deleted the link, but those who want to should try googling for it in a couple of days.]

How many surveys can one man produce? Yet another Chris Lightfoot effort , which places you on two axes: “crime and punishment, internationalism” (where I’m apparently “very left-wing”) and “economics, etc.” where I turn out to be a “centrist”. Again, rather Britocentric I’m afraid. (You can see my position here . ) (Hat tip: Robin Grant – who is collecting results over at perfect.co.uk )