These are all the Blogs posted on Saturday, 29, 2007.
Saturday, 29 December 2007
A British-led Anglosphere in world politics?
 From The Telegraph, something I have been sensing myself and regard as a GOOD THING.
This week Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of the Australian, (I missed this in the original, I do visit the Australian’s site but I can’t read everything) began with his research for a book, The Partnership, on the US-Australian military and intelligence relationship, which is close and growing closer. The more Sheridan examined this relationship, the more he was struck by something else: namely, "the astonishing, continuing, political, military, and intelligence closeness between Australia and Britain".
Even though Australia has little at stake in Europe and Britain only limited interests in the Pacific, everywhere Sheridan went in the US-Australia alliance, he found the Brits there, too: "Our special forces train with theirs, as we do with the Americans. Our troops on exchange with the Brits can deploy into military operations with them, an extremely rare practice, but something we also do with the Yanks. (We are cousins, in many cases literally cousins, even 2nd or 3rd generation keep in touch)
"Australian liaison officers attend the most sensitive British intelligence meetings and vice versa, in arrangements of such intimacy that they are equalled only in our relationship with the US."
Well, an interesting little story, you may think, but hardly earthshaking. And if AUKMIN were an isolated incident, that would be a sensible response.
As Sheridan's account makes plain, however, AUKMIN merely brass-hatted an existing system of military and intelligence co-operation between Britain, Australia, and the US that was unusually intimate and extensive.
But the story rang several bells. I had recently been reading a Heritage Foundation study by the American writer James C. Bennett, in which he argued that such forms of developing co-operation were especially characteristic of English-speaking, common law countries such as, well, Britain, Australia and America.
There is a definite pattern to them. Citizens, voluntary bodies, companies, lower levels of government form their own networks of useful co-operation for practical purposes across national boundaries.
Such network commonwealths may end up being more integrated - psychologically and socially, as well as economically - than consciously designed entities such as the EU.
If you want to know which countries the British feel really close to, check which ones they telephone on Christmas Day (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, America... but you knew that). Network commonwealths don't demand surrender of sovereignty, either.
The idea, lagging well behind the reality, is now seeping into politics. Last year Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, delivered an eloquent speech to the Australian parliament that praised the common British heritage linking both nations.
Even more significantly India's PM, Manmohan Singh, gave a speech at Oxford in 2005 that neatly stole the entire concept for New Delhi: "If there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set, it is the world of the English-speaking peoples, in which the people of Indian origin are the largest single component."
That raises a painful question. If Australians, Indians, Canadians, and even Americans can recognise the Anglosphere as a new factor in world politics, why is it something from which the Brits themselves shy?
Is our reluctance because we fear to touch anything that smacks of the empire? No such timidity restrained Singh.
Are we nervous that anything "English-speaking" might be thought incompatible with multiculturalism? Well, the first multicultural identity was the British one; today the Anglosphere spans every continent.
Is it politically dangerous as an alternative to Europe? That would only be true insofar as "Europe" failed to meet our needs - in which case we would need an alternative. And boy, do we need that alternative. Posted on 12/29/2007 2:40 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Al-Qaeda is blamed as Pakistan burns
Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest before tens of thousands of mourners yesterday as Pakistan’s Government accused al-Qaeda of killing her and a furious row erupted over precisely how she died.
More than 30 people were killed as riots erupted across the country. Banks, police and railway stations, shops, factories, foreign fast-food outlets and vehicles were set ablaze in cities throughout Pakistan.
Demonstrators exchanged gun-fire with police, aircraft were grounded, railway lines severed and roads blocked. Troops were on the streets of the main cities and, in Karachi, Ms Bhutto’s stronghold, they had orders to shoot rioters.
The country was braced last night for even worse violence after Ms Bhutto’s burial in the family mausoleum in the town of Larkana, in Sindh province. Approximately 100,000 weeping and wailing supporters attended her funeral, many of them chanting anti-Musharraf slogans.
Posted on 12/29/2007 2:44 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Old Year Resolutions
I just can't face another chocolate.
Anyone who knows me will not believe this, but it's true. The fact is I have been stuffing myself with chocolates and all manner of rich food for the past seven days, and, incredible as it seems, I don't want another one. I have eaten my fill, and while Phil hasn't had enough, I have.
Overindulgence does strange things to the brain. As well as the "no more chocolate" blasphemy, I have been thinking some very un-Jacksonian thoughts, viz:
- Teetotalism is a valid option.
- Vegetarians are not cranks at all.
- I respect vegans. They are not whey-faced cadaverous lunatics.
- The EU is a wonderful institution, staffed by people who have our best interests at heart.
- "May have" or "might have"? What does it matter?
- Esperanto is an excellent idea. English, you see, is like London: old, sprawling, poorly designed and saddled by history with strange street names like "Pudding Lane". Esperanto is better. It is like Milton Keynes: the cows are concrete and don't smell; the streets are designed as an efficient grid system and the houses all look alike.
- Hugh was quite right about "reference". I was utterly wrong about this and about so many other things, and it was very presumptuous of me to debate him.
- Apostrophe's in the wrong place's? Who cares?
- I don't mind America being Top Nation instead of us. It means we can adopt all those wonderful words like "transportation", "obligated", "favor", and "train station" and we can write y'all and debate y'all about them.
- Don't you just love the French? I wish Napoleon had won.
And don't imagine that these un-Jacksonian notions are merely passing fancies. I will hold to them for the rest of the year. Posted on 12/29/2007 2:48 PM by Mary Jackson
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Turkish Paper: New Year Celebrations Are Rebellion, Treason, Waste
 MEMRI Blog: Radical Islamist Vakit continues to attack new year celebrations for being Christian. Under today’s front-page headliner that read “Rebellion, treason, waste”, Vakit wrote, “ Celebrating new year which is a Christian custom is rebellion to Allah, betrayal of our martyrs, and a consumption craze and waste”.
Vakit criticized the decorations in shopping centers, colorful store windows that incite people to shop and waste, adding that the most popular products were alcoholic beverages banned in Islam. It also lashed at Turkey’s mainstream, secular media for criticizing the practice of sacrificing animals during the Muslim holiday but not saying much about the murder of pine trees used in decorating.
Chairman of the Islamist Happiness Party [SP] Recai Kutan told Vakit that new year celebrations were against Muslim Turks’ customs and traditions and that they should all be cancelled.
Chairman of the ultranationalist-Islamist Alperen Association Eyup Gokhan Ozekin said that he found it unacceptable that many institutions are organizing entertainment and celebrations, despite repeated statements by Islamic authorities’ that say celebrating new year is Christian belief, and ways it is celebrated are based on customs and traditions of Christians.
Santa Drops Gifts Through The Chimney Posted on 12/29/2007 7:20 AM by Rebecca Bynum
Saturday, 29 December 2007
More Blessed To Give
According to this article in The New York Sun giving really does make you happier:
As we approach year's end, your mailbox is filling up with fundraising appeals from various charities and causes, hoping to capitalize on your holiday cheer — or at least, your effort to avoid a bit of 2007 income taxes through deductible contributions.
This is not a false hope: Americans gave nearly $300 billion away last year, and some charities claim to collect as much as a quarter of their annual contributions in the month of December alone. But there is one special reason to give, beyond the noble goals of helping your favorite charity and beating back the voracious taxman. It is that your gifts will give you a happier new year.
It is a fact that givers are happier people than non-givers. According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, a survey of 30,000 American households, people who gave money to charity in 2000 were 43% more likely than non-givers to say they were "very happy" about their lives.
Similarly, volunteers were 42% more likely to be very happy than non-volunteers. It didn't matter whether gifts of money and time went to churches or symphony orchestras — givers to all types of religious and secular causes were far happier than non-givers.
People who give also are less sad and depressed than non-givers. The University of Michigan's Panel Study of Income Dynamics reveals that people who gave money away in 2001 were 34% less likely than non-givers to say that they had felt "so sad that nothing could cheer them up" in the past month. They were also 68% less likely to have felt "hopeless," and 24% less likely to have said that "everything was an effort."
The happiness difference between givers and non-givers is not due to differences in their personal characteristics, such as income or religion. Imagine two people who are identical in terms of income and faith — as well as age, education, politics, sex, and family circumstances — but one donates money and volunteers, while the other does not. The giver will be, on average, 11 percentage points more likely to be very happy than the non-giver...
Just a gentle reminder about that donation button on the left from the staff at NER.
Posted on 12/29/2007 7:35 AM by NER
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Dozy bint of the year contest
I have drawn up a shortlist of two, and it will take the wisdom of Solomon to choose between them.
In the Red Corner, we have Yvonne Ridley. She's a veteran dozy bint, having won Dozy Bint of the Year ever since 2001 when, following her capture by the Taliban, she converted to Islam.
This interview (hat tip Esmerelda) could mean she retains her title. Note the blue headscarf, matching her eyes. Note also the vacuity in those eyes:
When initially reading the Quran, Yvonne recalls, she intended to find out "how it teaches men to beat their wives". But she emerged entranced. "The Quran makes it crystal clear that women are equal to men in spirituality, worth and education," she realized.
That has to be the non sequitur of the year. The Koran does indeed teach men to beat their wives. Does Ridley even deny it? And if it does, how can her second statement be true?
Gradually, she began adopting Islamic practices and cutting out un-Islamic customs like alcohol and cigarettes. "I had a battle with cigarettes which I finally won - at last," she jokes.
Yvonne also began covering her head, finding it "liberating not to be judged by the size of her legs".
A strange turn of phrase. If, as I assume, she means that Western women are under pressure to have thin legs, then Islam gets round this by allowing marriage with nine-year-old girls, whose legs are generally on the thin side compared with an adult's. (I am put in mind of Lolita's Humbolt Humbolt calling Charlotte Hayes' legs "fat", which, compared with those of twelve-year-old Lolita, they may have been.)
But then it was her own society that she felt oppressed by. "I've always been outspoken," she says, referring, for instance, to her critical views against the way detainees in the war on terror are held captive without charge, and often tortured.
And what exactly has our society done to Yvonne Ridley? Tortured her? Forced her into marriage? Stoned her for her less than chaste past?
Yes, Yvonne Ridley looks set to win. But there is a challenger. In the Blue Corner we have Salam Al-Mahadin, writing - where else? - in The Guardian. Ms Al Mahadin:
teaches at the English Department at Petra University in Jordan. Her research has focused on media discourse, identity formation and women's issues in both Jordan and the Arab world. She holds a PhD degree from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh in Translation and Discourse Analysis Studies.
The D-word, "discourse", rings alarm bells. Can it be coincidence that the word "dozy" also begins with a D? Let's hear some of Ms Al-Mahadin's discourse on Western hegemony:
Feminist agencies of western origin are, in the eyes of many Muslims, a post-colonial legacy. In the present climate of distrust between the west and the so-called east, there is hardly room for debates surrounding women if the sources of these emancipatory attempts are western feminist agencies. Human rights are hardly universal and, honour killings and stoning aside, there is a plethora of "rights" of profound cultural nuance rendering it almost impossible to decontextualise them; what one western culture deems a gross violation is not so in another culture.
And back to problematic term "Muslim woman", it is essential not to lose sight of the political context that breeds forms of oppression. In Jordan for example, Jordanian women cannot pass on their nationality to their husband or children. The delicate demographic balance between Palestinian-Jordanians and Tranjordanians underlies this gross violation. It is not a question of misogyny nor oppression but rather a matter of political expediency. Indeed, even crimes of honour in Jordan are part and parcel of such a political balance.
The western left may be able to catapult some of these issues into mainstream politics from the confines of academic discourse but I agree with Ghannoushi that the politics of resistance can only be formulated by those "who wish to be otherwise than they are", as the French thinker Michel Foucault once argued.
First the D-word and now the F-word. It's a close call. Photo-finish?
She's prettier than Yvonne Ridley, and doesn't look quite so dopey, but that stuff about "discourse" and "catapulting"? Still, I suppose "catapulting issues into the mainstream" is not as bad as catapulting stones at rape victims. Posted on 12/29/2007 3:21 PM by Mary Jackson
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Bin Laden on Iraq and Hezbollah
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused the United States of plotting to take control of Iraq's oil and urged Iraqis to reject efforts to rebuild a U.S.-backed national unity government.
In a statement posted on the Internet on Saturday, the militant leader said Washington wanted to build military bases in the country and dominate the region.
Bin Laden urged Iraqis to reject a plan which he said meant "to give the Americans all they wish of Iraq's oil" and said those who take part in a unity government would be turning their backs on Islam.
He urged Iraqis not to join counter-insurgency patrols -- predominantly Sunni Arab tribal police funded by the U.S. military to fight al Qaeda and reduce violence -- and criticised the Saudi government for backing U.S. policies in Iraq.
"The government of Riyadh is still playing its wicked roles," said the Saudi-born bin Laden.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden vowed that Islamist militants will expand their holy war to liberate Palestinian land and said his group will not recognize Israel.
The Saudi-born militant also criticized Iran-backed Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah for accepting the deployment of United Nations forces in south Lebanon after the Shi'ite group's war with the Jewish state in 2006.
He said in a recording posted on the Internet on Saturday that peacekeepers dispatched to expand a U.N. force in Lebanon after the war were there to "protect the Jews". Posted on 12/29/2007 3:48 PM by Rebecca Bynum
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Savage vs. Council on American Islamic Relations
For those interested, here is the suit by Michael Savage against CAIR. It is more nuanced and complicated than I originally thought. This could go on for a long, long time. Posted on 12/29/2007 4:09 PM by Rebecca Bynum
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