Category: Politics

I’m all for people celebrating their varieties of cultural heritage, acknowledging their history, and so forth. But for me such things end at the school gates. I’m vehemently opposed to sectarian or religious schools of all stripes. (I’m not particularly enthusiastic about any kind of private schooling, but in practice there are always going to be children whose individual needs and aptitudes cannot be accomodated within the public system. But this should depend on the needs of the child, not the prejudices of the parents.) Once you allow bishops, priests, rabbis, and creationist car-dealers to dictate the curriculum, you’re going to wind up with situations like this:

The principal of an Islamic school has admitted that it uses textbooks which describe Jews as “apes” and Christians as “pigs” and has refused to withdraw them. Dr Sumaya Alyusuf confirmed that the offending books exist after former teacher Colin Cook, 57, alleged that children as young as five are taught from racist materials at the King Fahd Academy in Acton. In an interview on BBC2’s Newsnight, Dr Alyusuf was asked by Jeremy Paxman whether she recognised the books. She said: “Yes, I do recognise these books, of course. We have these books in our school. These books have good chapters that can be used by the teachers. It depends on the objectives the teacher wants to achieve.”

And what might those objectives be? Well:

[Mr. Cook] also alleges that when he questioned whether the curriculum complied with British laws, he was told: “This is not England. It is Saudi Arabia”.

To Christians and Jews who would argue that such books don’t belong in the classroom: I agree. And the same goes for your own religious texts, which also contain viciously intolerant language.

It looks as if the White House has found a worthy successor to Donald Rumsfeld. Spencer Ackermann reports here on the confirmation hearings for Admiral Bill Fallon, the new commander of US forces in the Middle East. After dodging most of the questions, Fallon produced this gem:

Perhaps most egregiously, when hawkish Republican Senator Lindsay Graham fished for an endorsement of his view that the US can win in Iraq, Fallon commented, “I don’t know what ‘winning’ is,” before pausing, realizing that he might have just made some unfortunate headlines, and backpedaling.

Even though I’ve lived in the US for the last 26 years, I’ve never gone through the process of acquiring US citizenship; I’m still a “resident alien”. When I’m filling out application forms, or checking in at hotels, I enter “United Kingdom” for the country that issues my passport. And for the most part I think of myself as British, not English. But according to this article in the Expat Telegraph, my position seems to be increasingly unfashionable. It’s unclear whether the Union between England and Scotland will survive – or whether it should.
It would be nice to think that this is the kind of issue that is clarified by a little distance. From over here in Seattle, undisturbed by the day-to-day bustle of British politics and media, surely I should be able to view the matter more clearly, more dispassionately. Unfortunately not. “On the one hand… on the other hand…”, and I rapidly run out of hands. For example: what do the Scots really want? The author makes a good point: “The dilemma for many Scots is that because the Conservatives are so weak there, those who want to get rid of Labour have nowhere to go but the SNP. The protest vote, by default, becomes an expression of nationalism.”
His conclusion: put the whole thing to a vote. If the majority of Scots really believe that they’d be better off on their own, so be it. But hopefully they won’t.

Andrew Sullivan just posted about “the terrible abuse of power and the constitution in the Padilla case, one of the most important cases in the history of American liberty”. He links to Dahlia Lithwick, who concludes that:

The destruction of Al Dossari, Jose Padilla, Zacarias Moussaoui, and some of our most basic civil liberties was never a purpose or a goal—it was a mere byproduct. The true purpose is more abstract and more tragic: To establish a clunky post-Watergate dream of an imperial presidency, whatever the human cost may be.

And I found myself wondering whether the deliberately inflicted mental breakdown of Padilla was simply a distraction: a way of getting people arguing whether sensory deprivation and isolation deserves the label “torture”, and thereby overlooking the far more far-reaching constitutional question. I ask myself whether this administration is capable of such a deeply cynical and amoral move – torture as a PR ploy – and it’s hard to resist an affirmative answer.

Olbermann skewers Bush:

(Hat tip to Jesus’ General.)

From the Baltimore Sun, via Daily Kos, via Majikthise

Better armor lacking for new troops in Iraq
By David Wood
Sun reporter
January 10, 2007
WASHINGTON — The thousands of troops that President Bush is expected to order to Iraq will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said.

And why was that? Simple:

“At each step along the way for the past four years, the key policymakers have assumed we were just months away from beginning to withdraw.”

Up until recently, I felt that there was no point in impeaching the organ-grinder’s monkey instead of the organ-grinder. However since Cheney appears to have left the building, it’s time to nail the monkey.

As a relatively successful product of the old, selective system of British secondary schooling, I used to toe the Labour party line on the virtues of comprehensive education. I wised up after I arrived in the USA. After seeing the practical results (including the mess that US public education has become), I can’t say I’m surprised to read that “More than three-quarters of people believe bright children would do better if taught separately, a poll suggests.” I don’t think anyone – even the most devout social democrats – ever believed that this idea was false; the difference is that now people seem willing to admit that bright kids ought to have the opportunity to do better. Elitist? Maybe so – but meritocracy certainly seems preferable to plutocracy….

Must-read: Terry, on Torture, and what it is. Remember: Terry knows what he’s talking about. He understands interrogation in the way that no politician or pundit can. He’s a professional.

Padilla’s treatment is an outrage. Not just that it happened (secret prisons aren’t really that hard to make, nor even to keep secret) but that when the details come out, no one seems to care.

On the eve of the US mid-term elections, Michael Kinsley diagnoses the problem at the heart of American (and, sadly,British) politics. Money quote:

The biggest flaw in our democracy is, as I say, the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty. Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don’t believe. There is no reward for logical consistency, and no punishment for changing your story depending on the circumstances. […] And it seems to me, though I can’t prove it, that this problem is getting worse and worse.
A few days before the 2000 election, the Bush team started assembling people to deal with a possible problem: what if Bush won the popular vote but Gore carried the Electoral College. They decided on, and were prepared to begin, a big campaign to convince the citizenry that it would be wrong for Gore to take office under those circumstances. And they intended to create a tidal wave of pressure on Gore’s electors to vote for Bush, which arguably the electors as free agents have the authority to do. In the event, of course, the result was precisely the opposite, and immediately the Bushies launched into precisely the opposite argument: the Electoral College is a vital part of our Constitution, electors are not free agents, threatening the Electoral College result would be thumbing your nose at the founding fathers, and so on. Gore, by the way, never did challenge the Electoral College, although some advisers urged him to do so.
Of all the things Bush did and said during the 2000 election crisis, this having-it-both-ways is the most corrupt. It was reported before the election and is uncontested, but no one seems to care, because so much of our politics is like that. […] The only way it can be brought under control is if people start voting against it. If they did, the problem would go away. That’s democracy.

In other words, there are no consequences for exhibiting a lack of principles, for saying things that you don’t mean. The whole thing is like a high school debating club in which the arguments you advance have nothing to do with what you believe, or what the facts are, and everything to do with winning.

Olbermann tells it like it is. 10 minutes of straight talk about the politics of fear.