Harry's Place

In a reversal of recent history, an internal BBC memo has been leaked to Downing Street. In the wake of the Gilligan debacle, it seems new advice has gone out to frontline news reporters covering events in Iraq.

Harry’s Place has gained exclusive access to the details and the content is strangely familiar. The new working practices have been arranged in 1940s-style crooner stanzas to facilitate instant recall and are reproduced here after the appropriate legal advice was sought:

Accentuate the negative,
Eliminate the positive,
Blair to neo-conservative
And every war-monger in-between

Accentuate the subjective,
Eliminate the objective,
Crucify the executive
Remember that you're the BBC.

Rumours that attempts to insert the word “schadenfreude” had to be abandoned when the appropriate rhyming couplet eluded the greatest minds at Broadcasting House, have yet to be substantiated.

All complaints about ‘scanning’ to be directed to Michael Grade c/o the BBC.

Which LGF said it?

A powerful reminder of why I stopped looking at the execrable Little Green Footballs weblog, despite its ostensibly pro-Israel content. As I've said here before, Israel could do with less of that kind of support.

(Via Wonkette.)

Makes me wanna holler

The everyday frustrations of a pro-war leftist include trying to deal with an email message like this, from the Washington, DC, Labor Council:

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE: Upset and angry about what's happening in Iraq? Join the crowd Tuesday night as Solidarity DC and USLAW [US Labor Against the War] invite you to a "Not-So-Happy Happy Hour" at Cafe Citron. This fundraiser for Iraqi trade unions will help organize workers facing privatization of their industries in Iraq. But even more, in times like these we need each other, to talk about what's happening, meet others who feel like we do, and, while we're at it, enjoy music, poets and drink specials while we talk about how we're going to throw Bush and his warmaking administration out of office in November.

I'm as eager to replace Bush as they are. But don't these mostly well-meaning people understand that if it weren't for Bush and his "warmaking administration," there would be no independent Iraqi trade unions for which to hold fundraisers?

Orwell on defeatism

Recent comments from some opponents of the Iraq war can only be described as defeatist. (My dictionary defines defeatism as "acceptance or expectation of or resignation to defeat.")

George Orwell, writing for The Partisan Review in the winter of 1945, had this to say on the tendency toward defeatism of many on the Left during the Second World War:

Looking back through my diaries and the news commentaries which I wrote for the BBC over a period of two years, I see that I was often right as against the bulk of the left-wing intelligentsia. I was right to the extent that I was not defeatist, and after all the war has not been lost. The majority of left-wing intellectuals, whatever they might say in print, were blackly defeatist in 1940 and again in 1942. In the summer of 1942, the turning-point of the war, most of them held it as an article of faith that Alexandria would fall and Stalingrad would not. I remember a fellow broadcaster, a Communist, saying to me with a kind of passion, 'I would bet you anything, anything, that Rommel will be in Cairo in a month.' What this person really meant, as I could see at a glance, was, 'I hope Rommel will be in Cairo in a month.' I myself didn't hope anything of the kind, and therefore I was able to see that the chances of holding on to Egypt were fairly good. You have here an example of the wish-thinking that underlies almost all political predictions at present.

Yes, I know Iraq isn't World War II. But have attitudes really changed much?

Race and Nation

The issues examined in the report The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (published 2000) brought to public attention a debate over what it means to be British and the place of ethnic minorities in modern Britain. Orwell-biographer and academic Sir Bernard Crick has a contribution published in the Guardian today in which he considers the relationship between etnic-group and state.

Crick reminds us that according to the findings of the report "Britishness as much as Englishness" has "systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations".

That statement caused ripples at the time. Some wondered if it was an assumption that you had to be white to be properly described as British. The author of the report interpreted it as a call for the redefinition of the term British in light of the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nature of modern British society.

I think the assumption is wrong and a redefinition is unneccessary. Crick reminds us that Britain has always been a multi-cultural state.

There is no overall British culture, only a sharing of cultures. Britishness is a strong concept, but narrower than many suppose. Do we not speak of and recognise at once English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh novels, plays and poems? And whatever Fifa may think, we see nothing odd in fielding four national football teams.

He's right. The state we live in - The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - to give it it's full title, has always consisted of different groups of people with different cultural, religious, legal and literary traditions. Neither do people on these islands share a common ethnic background. Anyone who watched the BBC television series Blood of the Vikings will have little difficulty recognising that the inhabitants of inland Ulster, Western England and the Scottish Northern Isles are descended from entirely different races of people.

But what's holding the whole thing together ?

Britishness is, to me, an overarching political and legal concept: it signifies allegiance to the laws, government and broad moral and political concepts - like tolerance and freedom of expression - that hold the United Kingdom together.

Again, spot on. As a mongrel and very ethnically-mixed nation from at least as far back as the Fifth Century Britain can never define itself by reference to racial purity. Nor, in a land where Welsh-speaking Methodists, Gaelic-speaking Catholics and English-speaking Anglicans have been fellow citizens for hundreds of years and more can we point to a central cultural tradition to which we all owe allegience.

Britain, like the United states, is an Eighteenth Century creation. the Declaration of Independence is more famous than the Act of Union even to British people but the latter document deserves closer study by those who want to understand what Britain actually is.

Until the birth of the United Kingdom in 1707 England and Scotland were seperate countries with all that state of affairs entails. Different governments, foreign policies, weights and measures, taxation. seperate armies, churches, legal systems and literary traditions.

What the Act of Union did was dissolve some of the seperate institutions of each country and replace them with new institutions. Thus we have a Brittanic Majesty as head of state (not the Queen of England as some believe) and a British parliament at Westminster (which assumed the powers of both the English and Scottish parliaments which were simultaneously dissolved as sovereign bodies at the very moment the British parliament came into being).

Other seperate institutions survived the merger. The Scottish and English legal systems were so different in the Eighteenth Century that no compromise was possible and each country retained their own system. That's why I - despite being born in Scotland to Scottish parents - can't appear in the courts of Scotland without sitting an awful lot of exams, though I can appear in those of England, Wales or even Hong Kong without doing so because I studied English law.

A similar arrangement was made with regard to the incompatible national religous and educational practices of the two soon to be ex-states.

The purpose of this diversion into constitutional history is an attempt to unravel what is at the heart of the idea of Britain. It's not an easy thing to grasp because at the centre lies, as Crick points out, a series of abstract legal and political concepts. It's worth reminding ourselves that Britain is not a state based on the folk traditions of a common people. The fact that constitutionally speaking the Queen changes her religion just north of Berwick upon Tweed when travelling to Aberdeenshire every summer gives a glimpse of the nature of the Eighteenth Century legal compromise which lies at the heart of the British state.

Being British is not a question of the colour of your skin, nor is it being a member of a particular ethnic group, having a certain faith or behaving in any particular way - it's actually an umbrella which shelters a diversity of people of very different origins and who do everyday things in very diverse ways. To be a useful umbrella though it does require that those underneath it agree to hold it up together.

For example a person born in the Indian sub-continent who holds a British passport is perfectly entitled to call himself British despite his race, cultural traditions or religion being different to his English-born white Anglican neighbours. He is no more a foreigner than a Welsh-speaking chapel-going native of Swansea. Anyone who denies him his Britishness because he is different to them is revealing their own cultural or religious prejudice but that does not alter the fact that the man is British by law and is entitled to the benefits and rights of living in this country.

He would, however, forfeit these benefits and rights if he decided to blow up the House of Commons. Forfeiture would occur not because he and any fellow bombers had brown skin and not because they worshipped a different God but because he broken the laws which protect us all. This very simple point needs to be made clear to those who say the war on terror is a war on Islam or a war on people with brown skin. It isn't. It's worth remembering that those who insist it is have an ulterior motive.

Britain is not a racist state. In saying that I wouldn't want to minimise the suffering of those who have had to overcome threats and violence from thuggish gangs or racial discrimination by other more subtle means. That type of behaviour is appalling but it is important to realise that it is not authorised by the state - in actual fact it's discouraged by the state on public policy grounds.

The very concept of the United Kingdom - born, as it was in the Age of Enlightenment - was designed to minimise the strife inherent in bringing groups of people - who had almost nothing in common - into one administrative unit.

The fact that it has done so reasonably successfully for nearly three-hundred years and the related fact that the United States has made a similar success of absorbing much larger numbers of mutually hostile groups is testament to the strength of the ideas of the Enlightenment and their expression in the form of constitutions, written or unwritten. This is especially so when we consider the way ethnic, religious and cultural differences are exploited by unscrupulous strongmen and their hate-filled followers in parts of the world where people don't owe allegiance to anything above their own religious, tribal or ethnic group.

My ultimate point is that there is no contradiction between keeping your own customs, religion or other cultural traditions and calling yourself British. We've been doing it for a long time after all.

The two-front war

Like I suppose many readers here, I have spent the past days reading scores of news reports trying to piece together what has been going on in Iraq.

The most comprehensive and detailed account I have found was published in Sunday's Washington Post and comes from their Baghdad correspondents Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony Shadid.

I'll not cut and paste sample sections because it really does need to be read in full to have any value. But it does seem to reject the idea that things simply flared up this week.

Beyond Orwell and Hitchens?

A little while ago here at Harry's Place we discussed a new book by Scott Lucas, criticising the liberal hawk position championed by this blog and others. It's called 'The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyonng Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century'. Here's my review from today's Indie on Sunday:

When I first heard that Scott Lucas was writing a book-length attack on "public intellectuals including Christopher Hitchens, Michael Waltzer, David Aaronovitch and [he hem] Johann Hari, who have all invoked Orwellian honesty and decency to shut down dissent," I was excited. The British school of 'Cruise Missile Liberals' – lefties who backed the recent war on Iraq and, more broadly, the 'War on Terror' – have been an eclectic crowd, from John Lloyd to Nick Cohen. Our philosophy remains inchoate. Nothing helps to clarify thought like intelligent opposition, so I turned keenly to 'The Betrayal of Dissent' when it arrived on my desk.

Lucas' first chapter is a familiar attack on George Orwell, rehashed from his earlier biography. Orwell is a "policeman of the left", he argues, a man who defended the world's existing power structures aggressively while dressing his conservatism in progressive rhetoric. He merely adopted the pose of telling uncomfortable truths to his own side; in reality he belonged in the conservative camp all along. Orwell's ire, Lucas argues, was consistently turned to greatest effect against the legitimate socialist movements of his time. He blamed the poverty in Wigan on the failure of socialists and the rise of tyranny on the success of socialists. Presented with any given problem, he was more enraged by the failure of the left than by anything else.

Once he is seen in this context, we can see, Lucas believes, that the canonization of Orwell has occurred for two fetid reasons. Firstly, he provides right-wingers with a fake 'decent' left-winger they can use to bash and delegitimize any real opposition forces. Secondly, he provides lefties with an excuse – and indeed a vocabulary – for selling out while retaining a smug sense of moral superiority. This is an interesting (if flawed) thesis, albeit one Lucas has already outlined at length. The point of this new book is to extend this critique to the 'liberal hawks' who are, he believes, contemporary Orwells, defending the extension of ultra-conservative American power with neat slices of leftie rhetoric.

The problem is, having set himself this task, Lucas then doesn't follow it through. A dissection of the ‘liberal hawk’ philosophy – exposing its flaws, its contradictions, its errors – is totally absent. Much of the book is simple quotation, without any comment at all. It's the literary equivalent of gaping: he quotes the words as if they are so manifestly appalling that they need no answer. For example, he quotes Nick Cohen saying, "Just as the greater cause of anti-fascism led decent people to turn a blind eye to Stalin's atrocities in the 1930s, so the cause of anti-Americanism leads decent people to turn a blind eye to the plight of Iraqis." Surely this is not an argument so transparently dreadful that it needs no reply? Yet Lucas does not offer a single point against Cohen: he simply declares that "we [opponents of the war] are beyond this."

Lucas’ argument is honestly summarised in this review, even though I disagree with him. He does not repay the compliment. Indeed, he shows quite early on that he is not interested in having a serious argument with the liberal hawks based on an honest exchange of views; instead he wants to scream at a bogeyman of his own creation. For example, he liberally mixes quotes from people like John Lloyd with disgusting quotes from semi-fascist US right-wingers like Bill O'Reilly, as though there is no distinction between them. Somebody who was confident that he could rebut Lloyd’s arguments would not feel the need to do this.

Sadly, then, this is not a critical account of the liberal hawks’ philosophy at all. No; instead it is a series of vague, loosely connected (and often factually incorrect) ad hominem attacks. He has chosen this structure for a simple reason: The liberal hawk arguments are to him so obviously disgusting – and so impossible to take seriously – that their motives for supporting the war must lie elsewhere, in personal flaws.

He dedicates two chapters to attacking Christopher Hitchens' character, with scarcely a reference to his views. Lucas seems to have read everything Hitchens has written but engaged with none of it.

Christopher has, for example, been a consistent defender of freedom of speech. Indeed, one of the main reasons he supported the recent war – and opposes Islamic fundamentalism so violently – is because he believed (correctly) that more people would enjoy freedom of speech as a result. Yet Lucas refers repeatedly to Hitchens trying to "silence" critics and "close down" debates. When has Hitchens ever done this? Wouldn't it be completely contrary to the philosophy he has consistently espoused (whatever other views have changed) throughout his career? Indeed, Lucas' chronicling of Hitchens' politics is based largely on quotes drawn from his performances in public debates. Why would a man trying to "close down debate" engage week after week in, um, debates?

Lucas' central thesis – that the liberal hawks (and Orwell) are trying to silence the 'real' left – is based on a fairly basic error. Disagreeing with somebody's view is not the same as disagreeing with their right to express that view. I am no more trying to silence Scott Lucas than he is trying to silence me. We simply disagree. Why must some parts of the left imply that every disagreement with them is a small step towards cutting out their tongues? How can Lucas refer to Noam Chomsky as "silenced" when he wrote one of the best-selling books in America last year? This is especially distasteful given that we are talking about a country, Iraq, where left-wing dissidents really were "silenced", in most savage way possible.

One sign of how little Lucas has understood his opponents comes in his conclusion. The pro-war left, he says, "wield a shovel which is not brought down on the heads of those with power, but on the heads of those confronting and exposing that power. [It is] a shovel that is not wielded against the state but for it." He seems not to have absorbed one of the most elementary arguments of the liberal hawks. We hgave argued that sometimes – very occasionally – the interests of powerful states and the interests of oppressed peoples will coincide, and when it does, the Left should cautiously support those states. It seems that this genuinely has not occurred to Lucas.

He works on the assumption that states and the oppressed are always at war – essentially an anarchist position. Yet it’s fairly easy to think of historical examples where this is plainly not the case. The most obvious, uncontroversial and tedious example is the Second World War. As Lucas’ nemesis Orwell argued, the interests of the British state coincided with the interests of oppressed Poles and Jews, and the Left was right to support the British state, for all his terrible flaws, on this issue. Is it inconceivable that such a coincidence of state power and the ambitions of the Left might occur again? Is it really "silencing the real left" to even suggest it?

Because Lucas makes no attempt to understand these subtleties, because he lazily assumes that we are simply following the powerful for the sake of it, reading his attack is a strange experience, like being beaten over the head with a marshmallow. This is a shame, because there is an interesting left-wing critique of the liberal hawks waiting to be written. This, however, is as simplistic and as trivial as a children's colouring book.

Easter Sunday with Karl Marx

An unusual Easter weekend for me with my family away for a few days, allowing me to return to my never quite forgotten pre-parenthood habits.

The rarity of a leisurely Sunday morning spent with three cups of strong coffee, a couple of croissants, half a packet of Benson and Hedges and The Observer. Followed by an excellent lunch, fine wine, more coffee and a Cuban cigar to finish off.

How else to then spend Sunday evening other than listening to music and, for some reason, feeling the urge to read The Communist Manifesto, for the first time in years?

So allow me to blog a bit of Marx and Engels, or at least the parts that seem to have long since been forgotten by some of those who call themselves 'Marxists', people who I might suggest spend a Sunday reading The Communist Manifesto some time.

For those who forget that capitalism is revolutionary:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

………..The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

For those who think 'globalisation' started in 1991:

The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

And last, but by no means least, for those who describe themselves as Communists or Marxists:

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Fallujah Factor

Of course Blair is right. Iraq is a battle that must be won and if the calls to bring home the troops were heeded it would indeed leave ordinary Iraqis to a terrible fate. But at the same time it is now strikingly clear that the American military and political apparatus in Iraq have made major errors. This week's terrible attacks on Fallujah could prove to cause far more problems than they solve.

There is obviously a point where a stronghold or safe haven for Saddamites and terrorists has to be dealt with and those of us with no military experience are on weak ground when discussing the best ways of doing these things. But it really is hard to escape the conclusion that the 400 or more deaths in that city will hardly 'pacify' those who already feel the wounds to their pride that occupation inevitably brings. Or that it was justified. Or that it will help the cause.

As David Aaronovitch notes today in his second report from Iraq: In Falluja the Americans who, in many ways, have acted in Iraq with extraordinary restraint, have delivered a myth gift-wrapped to many Iraqis. Expect the 'hero' city of Falluja to join the people of the intifada as one of the Arab world's great delusions. It was the last myth that anyone needed, least of all those who loathe the notion of intractability.

The Sunday Telegraph has an interview with a senior British Army officer who is highly critical of the approach taken by the American military:

"My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.

"Our objective is to create a stable, democratic and safe Iraq. That's achievable but not in the short term. It is going to take up to 10 years."

It is of course hugely tempting to fall back on the view that if it wasn't for the 'trigger-happy Yanks' then all would be well in Iraq – things are clearly more complicated than that. But we should digest those words from a senior British military figure.

Only time will tell how much long-term damage has been done in the past week. Already we have seen several political allies of the US on the Governing Council, the people who are expected to carry out the transition to democracy, resign their positions in protest. And what about the wider level of support among the population? What impact has the last week had on them?

Perhaps this report might give us a clue:

On television, the children are unmoving, dead in the streets, blood pooling and spreading underneath them.

Others echoed that sentiment.

And there are plenty of reports where it is recalled by Iraqis how the Coalition authority called for calm after the terrorist attacks on Shia festivals in Baghdad and Karbala on March 2nd that cost 150 lives and how that call was observed.

Blair meets Bush this week to discuss Iraq – I hope he makes it clear that if the goal of a democratic and independent Iraq is to be achieved there needs to be a major change in the military and political approach to occupation.

The nature of the battle

Tony Blair has a long opinion piece in The Observer today

Here are a couple of excerpts:

So what exactly is the nature of the battle inside Iraq itself? This is not a 'civil war', though the purpose of the terrorism is undoubtedly to try to provoke one. The current upsurge in violence has not spread throughout Iraq. Much of Iraq is unaffected and most Iraqis reject it. The insurgents are former Saddam sympathisers, angry that their status as 'boss' has been removed, terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda and, most recently, followers of the Shia cleric, Muqtada-al-Sadr.

I have come firmly to believe the only ultimate security lies in our values. The more people are free, the more tolerant they are of others; the more prosperous, the less inclined they are to squander that prosperity on pointless feuding and war.

Compare and Contrast

Andrew Sullivan uses the V-word to attempt to understand what's happening in Iraq

Yes, we may be seeing a strange replay of Vietnam. But in reverse. And quite possibly with an entirely different ending.

Read the article for an analysis that avoids the usual weary comparisons.

Sullivan also considers what would happen in Iraq should the Democrats win in November and attempts a spot of ventriloquism by turning this recent statement made by John Kerry

“Right now what I would do differently is, I mean, look, I’m not the president and I didn’t create this mess so I don’t want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven’t made.”

into this

“Thank you, Mr President, for your leadership in difficult times. You took some tough decisions in good faith. I disagree with you but I will not let our troops down and I will not abandon Iraq. But you, Mr President, are now part of the problem.

“One of the advantages of a democracy is that we can pursue the same goals over time with different leaders and different strategies. I intend to win the war in Iraq because we cannot afford to lose it. But I also intend to bring our allies centre stage into the task, to increase troop levels in the country, to appoint Richard Holbrooke (the sole exponent of diplomacy with a mailed fist in the Clinton administration) to oversee our co-operation with the incoming Iraqi government, and ask former president Clinton to reopen peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. I will be tough on terror and tough on the causes of terror. I can complete what you started. In fact, I alone can complete what you started.”

The article also suggests a possible rationale for such a before and after transformation in Kerry's words.

Well, history shows he can say almost anything if it’s to his political advantage.

I think there is a lot of truth in that statement even if it does paint an unflattering portrait. If Kerry wins in November he'll have to come up with something more constructive and statesmanlike to say (and do) about Iraq than last week's quote. There is also some evidence to show that Kerry will graduate from merely criticising the Bush strategy to replacing it with something else which doesn't let the people of Iraq down.

He has after all made a pledge to increase the number of troops in Iraq and to attempt to broaden the coalition by bringing in more non-US troops.

Anti-War people should perhaps tone down any expectations they might have of a Kerry victory in order to avoid potential disappointment come the Autumn.

Where the fighting isn't

Ralph Peters reports from Suleimaniye in the New York Post:

At a time when elements within both Sunni Arab and Shi'a Arab Iraqi society are trying to kill the Americans who liberated their country and when there is no sense of gratitude for our sacrifices, how can the Bush administration fail to grasp that the future of the region lies in what the Kurds have done successfully, not in the Arab cult of failure?

Almost 100 years ago, Lincoln Steffens, an American charlatan, returned from the brand-new Soviet Union. Disembarking from his ship on a New York City pier, he told a great lie. A radical socialist, he said, "I have seen the future, and it works." I hope I'm more honest than Steffens was, but I'll paraphrase his words and say, "I've seen what the future of the Middle East could be. And we should all hope to God that it works."

Barham Salih

Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Sulaymaniyah and someone whose opinions we have tried to relay regularly throughout the past year has written a piece for the Washington Post looking backing on the past year in Iraq.

Just as (and perhaps more) interesting are his comments in a live web discussion on the Post site (reg required)

I believe that most Iraqis want the Coalition to stay. This is based on many independent polls. Regrettably, a vocal minority is able to dominate the airwaves-- it seems true that bad news sell better!

But, it is important to remember the context. A failed state, a society tormented by decades of tyrrany in the heart of the Islamic Middle East-- why should we expect it to be easy. The stakes are high, and there will be an ardous journey ahead of us.

And on the position the Kurds find themselves in, or could find themselves in:

It is understandable that Kurds would desire independence. But, many of us here understand that a Kurdish state is difficult to attain-- this is painful-- but instead of just cursing history, we are focused on something tangible-- a federal Iraq that will alloow for self-government for the Kurdish people. We are telling our Arab comptriots in Iraq: we are willing to be part of a democratic federal Iraq-- but if Iraq were to revert back to tyrrany or becomes a fundamentalist state, we have no part in such a country.

Ironically, the Kurds are not the threat to Iraq's unity. Rather, it is the Arab nationalists and the Islamist fundamentalist who threaten the viability of the Iraqi state.

America is losing its only allies

One of the frustrations of trying to follow events from afar is that the only voices heard are the rants of the Jihadis and the blustering of the American occupation officials. We haven't heard enough from the democratic forces within the Iraqi governing council.

Well that's certainly all changed now:

Iraq's interim human rights minister Abdel Basit Turki has offered his resignation, alongside the interior minister who has also quit, interim health minister Khdeir Abbas said Friday.

"Yes it is true. Mr Abdel Basit Turki tendered his resignation yesterday because he felt that he could not carry on his mission in light of the latest escalation in which he sees a clear violation of human rights in Iraq," Abbas said.

Abbas said the interim Governing Council and the transitional government are determined to save Iraq, following the military escalation and events in Fallujah, a reference to the US offensive on the bastion of Sunni opposition to the US-led occupation.

Senior coalition spokesman Dan Senor said he was unaware of the resignation.

Abdel Karim Mahud al-Mahamadawi said Friday he has suspended his participation in Iraq's interim Governing Council after a meeting with insurgent Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr.

"I suspend my participation in the Governing Council and I will not go back because we have failed the Iraqi people after what happened," he said in a statement.

"I call on everybody to start constructive dialogue to resolve the crisis with peaceful means and to reach a solution which satisfies the Iraqi people," he said.

Those who are staying are also criticising the US actions in the past week:

Members of Iraq's U.S.-backed Governing Council today criticized the U.S.-led military operations in the Sunni-dominated city of Al-Fallujah, begun after the slayings of four U.S. civilians there last week.

Another council member, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawir, told the AFP news agency that he will resign from the council if the crisis in Al-Fallujah is not resolved peacefully.

Another IGC member al-Yawer said: "We all agree that those who did that (killed the four Americans) were criminals who deserve to be arrested. But the result was the mass punishment of a city. ... And that we refuse."

The most telling point of all was made by Haider Abbadi.

A senior member of the Shia party, Dawa he contrasted the US response to the slaughter of four American security guards in Falluja with the multiple bombings on the Shia holy day of Ashoura last month, which killed 150 worshippers and were designed to spark a sectarian war.

"There was no retaliation. Iraqis have more restraint than Americans," said Mr Abbas.

"Unfortunately, America has allowed itself to be drawn into this unnecessary conflict."

Moqtada's uprising: better now than later

Noam Scheiber of The New Republic makes a reasonable point: As bad as things are in Iraq with the Shia uprising, it's probably better that it's happening now than later. As Scheiber points out, if Moqtada al Sadr had been savvy enough to wait until the handover of sovereignty and the withdrawal of a substantial number of coalition forces, his capacity for mischief would have been virtually unlimited. Now, at least, the coalition has no choice but to deal with him.

Iraqi CP statement

Statement of the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party:

Red Ken on Sharon, etc.

Mayor Livingstone doesn't just long for the day when the Saudi royals are swinging from lampposts. With admirable evenhandedness he wants to see Ariel Sharon incarcerated in the cell next to Slobodan Milosevic. (No mention of what he thinks Yasser Arafat deserves.)

Livingstone was pleased to provide yet more reasons for Blair to cringe:

He praised Blair for running "the government of my dreams" on issues such as race, female equality and sexual orientation. "If you come out [as gay]" he says, "it almost guarantees you a junior ministerial post. It's wonderful."

Ain't Never Gonna Be Respectable

The toytown Trots who have been trading under the name of Communist Party of Great Britain since the previous holders decided to abandon it back in 1991 have officially committed themselves to building the Respect coalition.

The position doesn't seem to be at all popular amongst the letter writers to the party's official organ The Weekly Worker though. Here are some excerpts from this weeks selection of published letters

I am increasingly finding any ‘inspiration’ for campaigning for a vote for Respect comes in the fact that a better alternative is yet to materialise. Nagging doubts about our intervention remain

writes Bob from Cardiff. I think he means he'll play along until it all falls flat after the June elections.

The letter most supportive of Respect comes from Comrade Gonzalez who writes

If the whole of the British far left were to put everything it has got into building Respect, there is a undoubtedly a possibility of success. But my fear is that a part of the left is congenitally incapable of doing so.

A possibility of success is at least something worth clinging to even if Gonzalez suspects it's all going to end in tears.

Even that glimmer of optimism that small is more than Louise from Brixton can raise though.

According to the report-back from the South West Respect convention, the West Midlands prospective candidate, Majid Khan supposedly endorsed ‘gender segregation’. As a socialist feminist I just cannot stomach voting for a bunch of people who are willing to ignore these kind of offensive views being made in the name of Respect.

Someone called Jim also seems pretty pessimistic about the working class rushing in great numbers into the arms of the Respectoids. He observes

The chance of Galloway, Rees and Lavalette being elected as MEPs is pretty much zero, and the Weekly Worker should say so. The real danger of Respect is the high level of demoralisation that might take place after the June elections.

Finally a representative of the type of person Respect should really be appealing to has decided to thumb his nose at the coalition. Peter Tatchell (I presume it's the famous Tatchell and not someone who just shares the same name) writes

As a socialist, gay and human rights campaigner, I have decided to join the Green Party, which, unlike Respect, is grassroots and democratic.

With 'support' like that I can't see a hope in hell of Respect breaking out of the ulra-left ghetto come June.

Update: Not even the 'CPGB's' own members appear to be able to stomach voting for RESPECT.

They don't need our arguments any more

David Aaronovitch went to Iraq last week and has written a long and fascinating account of his journey and his conversations.

It really is a case of read it all and please do but here are his conclusions:

A year on, and in the west we still tend to think that everything in Iraq is about the occupation and the Americans. But it isn't. It is mostly about what comes next, with the occupation forces as a medium of political exchange. The various forces haven't yet dared attack each other openly on any real scale, though it is hard to imagine Sciri and Sistani tolerating Sadr's takeover of the holy shrine in Najaf. The US-led occupiers, it is true, are not loved or thanked, and often blamed. Neither are they, incidentally, universally hated. But it is hard to know whether the occupation has frozen Iraqi rivalries, so they will break out when it ends, or - as I hope - has permitted these possible emnities to be politicised.

Salih doesn't need our arguments any more. He needs our help.

Errm.......

Mo Mowlam has called on the British and American governments to open talks with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

(Hat tip Hak Mao)