Blogoir: June

Imagine.

You fairly win an auction to buy a house. But having attempted to rig the auction the previous owner will not move out, and starts to attack you viciously when you come to claim the property.

Most of the others living on the street and further afield are dismayed, and want you to take possession peacefully. But then along comes a clever but shifty neighbour with what he says is a great idea.

That the violent previous owner and you live together nicely in the house, in the name of 'unity' and 'resolving the crisis'.

What a helpful suggestion.

And how lofty the Moral Authority and Wisdom of the neighbour, who himself once called in a lot of outside help when the previous owner of his house was behaving brutally towards him.

The scorpion sings lustily.

If you have been beaten up by someone for nearly fifty years, does that 'cloud your judgment' about the beater?

But however clear-eyed Lithuania's decison-makers claim to be about today's Russia, many seem myopic about their own country's past. Anger over 48 years of Soviet occupation clouds their judgment about the Communists' recent role.

Still, the scale of the monstrosities which went on under the Nazis in Lithuania and elsewhere in Europe - and the complicity of local people in complying with Nazi plans - is indeed a question.

The 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact next year should give these Twin Vampire issues a much-needed airing.

Should the EU's atom-sized sanctions on Cuba be lifted?

Why not? They do not matter, as they are a Silly Noise unattached to a policy.

The debate of course is not about whether these sanctions make a difference, symbolic or otherwise. It rather is about whether the EU should have a clear policy on regime change in Cuba.

The EU has no such policy. It does not call unambiguously for free and fair elections in Cuba, or do anything active and purposeful to support the pro-democracy forces there help secure a better future for their country.

Whereas the USA does.

Why does anyone think that an EU Foreign Minister as supported by an EU External Action Service will do anything other than give even more weight and respectability to collective spinelessness?

It's worse than that. By expecting that EU member states' policies be 'compatible' with collective positions, the aim of EU federalists is to dumb down the effectiveness and capacity of those member states willing to take some risks and commit resources in a situation like this.

The failure of the Labour Government to break free of the Guardianista Castrovian sentimentalists in its ranks and instead join the Czechs and Poles in press hard for democracy in Cuba is one of the first things a new government in London needs to put right on the foreign policy front...

Bring it on.

"You are being hierarchical."

"I did not know that that is a perjorative word!"

Mark Steyn in full flow.

What does it mean when it is said that the rate of inflation in Eurozone country X is greater than in countries Y and Z? Nothing?

The fact that prices are going up is not in itself inflationary. The market expects or even in fact is prices going up and down. That's what prices do, responding to myriad factors.

If house prices are going up in Manchester but down in Cardiff, we do not talk about 'inflation' in Manchester.

Thus if prices rise across the board in eg Italy but not France, that is not 'inflationary' unless the ECB starts printing money and pumping it into Italy to fuel it.

Rather we are seeing an important market signal that various process are under way in Italy which are not happening in France and/or vice versa - and citizens/investors/businesses should act accordingly. For some the rising prices in Italy might make it more attractive. For others not.  

Not a problem. In fact the only way to run things.

Or am I missing something?  

The Polish media are reporting that Polish local government employees dealing with applications for EU funds are quitting their jobs to join the private sector, where pay is much higher.

No surprise. The Polish Development Minister told me a while ago that the greatest problem Poland faced in spending its EU largesse was 'people'.

Poland not surprisingly finds it hard to mobilise and train the army of officials across the country needed to pick their way nimbly through the voluminous EU (and Polish) processes needed to get EU funds sent to (and spent sensibly in) Poland. And indeed we see a tendency for firms pitching for EU contracts to nab anyone in government who is any good at all this, since contracts can be large and anyone who understands both EU and Polish procedure is a highly valuable asset.

So, Poland will battle to spend all the EU funds available to it in the current Budget cycle. The basic sequence goes something like this:

• government agrees overall balance as between central and regional discretion in spending and priority sectors
• national/regional development plans are prepared
• project ideas emerge
• specific tenders are drawn up
• bids come in and are examined against financial/environmental and other criteria
• bidders win (or lose) - maybe rows and appeals break out
• specific contracts are then prepared
• work starts
• and is completed - checks needed that the job has been done properly
• with plenty of paperwork and checks still needed for the Brussels cheques to arrive once the work is nicely completed

Uuurgh.

Huge scope at each stage for delay and muddle, even with good intentions and reasonable people all round.

That said, the fact that Poland has not spent much of its EU funding so far is no surprise - in the nature of the process the big spending comes at the end of the Budget period (ie in a few years' time) once all those steps have been completed.

Or is all this money in fact a resource curse anyway? Funding which is so hard to access that it skews national efforts in an unhealthy direction?

As the UN warns of mass starvation in Zimbabwe the time has come to stop talking about the 'Zimbabwe elections' as if they were/are elections.

What we are seeing are the deranged throes of a violent gang around and including Mugabe aimed at staying in power at any cost to their own country. No vote held under these circumstances can have legitimacy or credibility. Mugabe presumably is hoping to brutalise the Opposition into a boycott, so as to save himself the trouble of cheating and piously claiming victory.

Voting is a subtle process intended to give citizens a substantive choice in who runs their country. Just as voting was a meaningless farce in communist countries where only one party could take part, it also is meaningless in a country where the voters are being openly attacked and intimidated and the government is howling that its opponents are a deadly enemy to whom they will not cede power.

Mugabe in fact has a weird point when he rants that Western and especially British interest in Zimbabwe is racist.

Because of its sizeable and significant 'white'/European community and all the history involved, Zimbabwe attracts significant interest in our media. In a (patronising?) way we have notably higher expectations of this country. Perhaps they are being met. Compared to previous catastrophes in Rwanda and various wars elsewhere in Africa, Zimbabwe is still a model of decorum.

An intelligent Zim leader would be using the presence of this 'European' community to develop his country more speedily and creatively. Just as we could be doing far more to mobilise Zimbabweans in the UK and indeed in Zimbabwe against the collapse of their country, even if that would allow Mugabe to 'prove' that the Colonial Masters were back in business...

A few years back when Mugabe started to attack the farming community I talked privately to a British Cabinet Minister. I said that to my unexpert eye a likely course of events looked to be:

• ethnic cleansing of 'white' farmers
• speedy deterioration of the economy
• risk of widespread hunger/famine
• millions of people displaced plus countless deaths
• British taxpayers forlornly watching this fiasco, then being sent a large 'assistance' bill to try to repair some of the damage, much of which spending would do no good anyway

I urged the argument that HMG had to mobilise a vigorous intervention of one or other sort immediately to force Mugabe from power and so head all this off. Was that not the only 'moral foreign policy' way to go?

The reply: "I agree, but there would be no political support to do it..."

So much for the claim that HMG/DFID policy is all about lifting people from poverty - we have stood blinking unhappily as Mugabe has plunged Zimbabwe into ruin.

Whatever happened to our Moral Foreign Policy?

Or even Enlightened Self-Interest? 

Is Kosovo moving towards 'functional partition' (or more likely dysfunctional partition)?

The nub of the international problem in Kosovo is that on the one hand the EU/US claim to rule out on principle partition on 'ethnic' lines, while on the other they claim that the independence of Kosovo is not in fact such an ethnic partition of Serbia, when obviously it is.

Or is the argument rather that former Yugoslavia should be allowed to break up along the lines demarcated by its internal Titoist borders on some sort of idea of self-determination for the dominant local community?

If so, why not allow Serbia to make a measured case for the claim that (a) the borders of the communist Autonomous Provinces were 'different', and/or (b) that where Kosovo is concerned those borders should be tweaked in the interests of achieving some higher substantive fairness - and a settlement everyone can grudgingly accept?

Whatever one thinks about the myriad rights and wrongs of all this, is a Final Result which appears to give a degree of self-determination to every ethnic community in former Yugoslavia except the largest group (ie Serbs) self-evidently ... wise?  

Let's look a bit more closely at Will Hutton's arguments on the EU Treaty as published yesterday in the Observer.

He denounces 'Eurosceptic' celebrations at the Irish vote as a farrago of lies and disinformation.

OK. Let's proceed. WH v CC.

WH: The reality is that Ireland's 'no' voters have trashed an EU that is precious but weak.

CC:  No. The EU is untrashed, still as precious as ever and impressively strong - has anyone seen the Euro v Dollar rate recently?

WH:  Most 'no' voters, grabbing on to the worst fear rather than reasoned fact, have unknowingly set in train a political dynamic that, unless carefully handled, could lead not just to Ireland but Britain leaving the EU. Everybody will be the poorer.

CC:  Actually the Treaty for the first time established a procedure to let a disgruntled member state leave. That hope has been dashed by the Irish rejection of the Treaty, a cunning ploy by the Europhiles to keep everyone trapped in the EU. Curses! And if some member states did leave, would they really be poorer?

WH:  Such is the flaw of referendums as a means to practise reasoned democratic decision-making that the only way voters will come to realise that the sceptics are wrong is to be forced to live through the consequences of their vote.

CC:  Fair enough. The Irish will do so. Likely negative consequences? Nil.

WH:  For although the first reaction in Ireland, Brussels and the rest of the European Union has been to say that the will of Ireland's voters must be respected, the wider political logic is that Irish voters are in effect saying no to the European Union ...

CC:  No they're not. 'In effect' and more importantly in real life they're saying they like this EU, not the one proposed.

WH:  ... a will that can only be respected by other states freezing their ambitions.

CC:  True, sort of. But in the EU rules the Irish were made to sign up to when they joined, it explicitly states that all have to agree on how future ambitions are agreed in legal form. The Irish do not agree. So no such ambitions! That's the precious EU way. Or is the suggestion that the existing Treaty rules should be broken? In which case, why sign up to new Treaty rules which in turn will be worthless?

WH:  Ireland's voters have primed a bomb.

CC:  Or a damp squib?

WH:  Eighteen states have already ratified the treaty, some for the second time.

CC:  Huh?! Are you saying that the British Government have been lying? That this Lisbon Treaty is the same treaty as the previous one thrown out by the French and Dutch referenda? Gotcha!

WH:  The first reaction of José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, was to ask the last eight member states, Britain included, to proceed with ratification. Gordon Brown has agreed; the final reading is on Wednesday and to stop the process because of the Irish vote would be unreasonable.

CC:  Or maybe it's unreasonable to expect the UK Parliament to ratify a Dead Parrot?

WH:  So the EU on 1 January 2009 will have a treaty that 26 states have ratified - but not the Irish.

CC:  Hmm. Ratification enthusiasm might dwindle somewhat between now and then?

WH:  What can't happen is that the treaty is scrapped, rewritten to accommodate changes to meet the will of Ireland's voters and then re-ratified in 27 countries. There are the practical questions of time and expense and there is no political readiness in the other 26 capitals to go through the whole interminable process again.

CC:  Indeed so.

WH:  On top of these there is the political problem that the treaty can't be rewritten to accommodate specific Irish concerns because it already does; Ireland's 'no' campaigners told lies. The voters' great concerns had been met. There is a specific protocol that guarantees Ireland's neutrality and excuses it from membership of any joint European defence effort, if any surfaces. There is no possibility of Ireland being told to enforce abortion.

CC:  A core point here folks, one which bothers the Poles too. Is it true that Ireland can not be told to 'enforce abortion'? What if one day one a European Court proclaims that member state laws limiting abortion are against a woman's 'right to choose' as per various emerging European human rights provisons individually and collectively? The dark secret at the heart of all the EU's development is that the European Court of Justice interprets and therefore trumps all, however ingeniously state-level drafters try to exclude it.

WH:  And all states have autonomy over tax policy.

CC:  Ditto. What if the European Court strikes down member states' individual tax policies as inconsistent with the spirit and practice of EU integration? HMG lawyers sweat profusely over this possibility...

WH:  Crucially, the treaty contains a clause that states that do not agree to its provisions are required to leave the European Union.

CC:  Where? See the FCO Guidance: "The Treaty recognises a Member State’s right to withdraw from the European Union and sets out procedures providing for such an eventuality." Do you mean Treaty Article 49A: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."? Not the same as being required to leave?

WH:  The EU will have to get tough and invoke the clause. It will have to ask Ireland to resubmit essentially the same treaty for a second referendum early in 2009, rather as Ireland held a second referendum over the Nice treaty in 2002. If Ireland votes similarly again, then it will have to accept associate status in the EU and not be a member of its governing structures. The EU will proceed without Ireland.

CC:  Actually, even if this clause does exist somewhere it can not be invoked, since the Irish have not ratified the Treaty, so the Treaty (with the clause) is not in force! Hoopla! Does anyone in their right mind think that Ireland will go for - or can be made to go for - a second Referendum? Why did we not lean on France and Netherlands to do that first time round?

WH:  Irish and British Eurosceptics, in close alliance, will react in fury. I can see it now. This will be proof-positive of the Brussels elite's malevolence and anti-democratic intent. David Cameron's Tory party will say that Ireland is being treated disgracefully. I don't see how Cameron will be able to avoid a pledge to give British voters the same chance for a referendum on the treaty as the Irish, not least to strengthen the hand of the Irish 'no' campaigners in their second referendum.

CC:  Nor do I. But why is this further UK referendum meant to be bad? How many more No votes do you need before it sinks in that these changes are unpopular all over the place?

WH:  Battle is going to be joined in earnest because it must. Pro-Europeans everywhere must engage. We need this Europe - to fight climate change, to ensure security of energy and food, to underwrite our prosperity and to fight for our common interests.

CC:  Quite right. If only we had more CAP, more ill-conceived Kyoto Protocol ideas and more EU regulation, all would be well.

WH:  The world needs it too. The EU is the citizens' friend. If it did not exist, Europe would have to invent something similar.

CC:  Yes! Something similar. But not necessarily identical. And maybe what we have now is friendly enough anyway?

WH (crescendo):  Maybe pro-Europeans can win Ireland's second referendum and then, in 2010 or 2011, our own. But referendums work best for the demagogue, the dissimulator and scaremonger, as Hitler and Mussolini, lovers of referendums, proved. Increasingly, Ireland and Britain are heading for the European exit and that could portend further break-up of the Union. Pro-Europeans look out.

CC:  Puh-leese. Not the H&M words! We once had a referendum to confirm our own EU membership in a genteel unHitlerian way. The EU is not going to break up, precisely because so many member states including Ireland do very well enough out of it.

This whole business reminds me of an old joke:

A man walks down the road with a banana in each ear.

Kid: "Hey mister, why do you have bananas in your ears?"

Man: (Removing one banana) "Sorry, I can't hear because I have bananas in my ears."

Ireland has asked the EU to take the bananas out of its ears. Not such a bad idea?

Battle is being joined on what happens next with the Lisbon Treaty following the irish No.

The Irish are saying that there can be no quick solutions.

The French and Germans are calling for everyone other than the Irish to ratify.

The Czechs are saying that the Treaty is dead.

The Poles are surprised, but will respect the Irish decision.

The British are urging a new route. Lord Owen is calling for the UK Government not to proceed with the final stages of Treaty ratification. Will Hutton has experienced total melt-down and needs to be mopped up.

This is all in fact very simple.

There are now two camps among the EU member states.

Those who Really Want the Treaty.

Those (probably a majority) who Don't Really Want the Treaty, or Don't Care one way or the other.

Look out for the need to decode the tricky noises coming from the second group.

Many will say noisily that they really want the Treaty, safe in the knowledge that those who Don't Really Want the Treaty will stall it, even at the expense of being denounced as anti-European by those who Really Want the Treaty.

The political and legal ramifications of trying to set up a Two-speed Europe go beyond calculation. The UK pretends to be worried about it, but in private says "Bring it on! Try having a top-speed EU without our money oiling the engine!"

Which means that if we want to keep the whole show on the road we default back to the Nice Treaty which is working quite well enough, and try to make some ad hoc arrangements for implementing some of the Lisbon Treaty changes which make the most practical sense, whatever they might be.

To help the EU be more effective, do we for example need an External Action Service, fleets of expensive EU Embassies squeezing out member states' Embassies?

No.

There is plenty more the EU can do to be 'effective' within current arrangements and budgets. And what was so ineffective about the sophisticated high-speed (and bureaucratically 'light') diplomatic shuttling by Lord Owen and Cyrus Vance in the early 1990s in the Bosnia crisis? The plan crashed, but not for lack of EU effectiveness.

As John Redwood puts it:

What is it about these public servants that they arrogate the right to do the opposite of what the electors, their paymasters want? Why do they think they should be able to draw salaries and expenses of a generous nature in order to take more power away from us, and order us about in new ways, when we want the opposite?

If anyone in the European bureaucracy is listening, understand the mood of many people living in the EU. The economic performance is not good enough, taxes are too high for the amount of public service we get, and there are too many laws and regulations. Why, in such a context, do you think we want more of the same? We want change - we want more freedom. 

Crack open the Guinness!

Behind all the lamentations about the end of European civilisation as brought about by a selfish micro-number of Irish voters, there will be lots of secret smiles.

One of the key issues in the whole Treaty saga has been reweighting the voting as between EU member states. The Nice Treaty was a serious bamboozling of the Germans by almost everyone else, as somehow the Germans agreed that they and the French, Brits and Italians would have 29 votes each, whereas Poland and Spain would have 27.

In other words, Germany with some 80 million people got only two more votes than Poland/Spain with fewer than 40 million! Lisbon corrected that significantly.

The French have always been keen to keep voting parity with Germany for We Are The Axis of Europe vanity reasons, so they will shed few very tears if the Nice voting formula stays around for rather longer. Ditto Italy.

Poland will be secretly (or not so secretly) delighted with the Irish result - the Nice Treaty really suits Poland.

The Brits have to pretend to be disappointed and make unconvincing 'business as usual' noises. But there are very few people in the UK who actually want the Lisbon Treaty, even if some people can gloomily go along with it and most people do not want it. Not to mention the (for some) politically awkward fact that the Irish vote vindicates the position of those who demanded a referndum in the UK too.

Meanwhile all sorts of other structures and people in Brussels will pretend not to be be happy that the treaty has hit another rock, but privately cheer the Irish - too much disruption was looming.

Germany ends up looking frustrated, wanting the Treaty for voting reweighting reasons and because they had invested such an effort in trying to achieve this.

And the Real Losers are ..?

... the European Parliament who were set to extend their influence - and their evil ambitions to regulate blogging - as their moral legitimacy dwindles.

Boo. Hoo. 

The EP Culture Committee blogging menace nonsense (below) points up a factor in the Lisbon Treaty which is not really discussed.

Namely that as more and more 'areas' become subject to voting rather than consensus at the EU level, member states lose two things:

• the right to block at the end of the road ideas which are utterly fatuous; plus, even more importantly ...
• ... the right to stop such ideas gaining credibility and bureaucratic momentum in the first place

Just say some proposal to qualify our basic freedoms (in this case the right to write what we damn well please on a blog without being subject to the pathological attentions of an EU Ombudsperson) starts to run around the European Parliament or EU Commission. Various Euro-busybodies take it up.

What can the UK do to stop it? If it is in an area which falls under consensus, we can simply say NO in a loud voice at the start and then wearily tell everyone that we mean it when we say that we will block it.

Then we hope that it crawls away to die.

And we also hope that if it lingers on, our willpower won't be eroded as the gruesome thing trundles towards a final decision. Because once it starts to trundle, it takes on a pseudo-legitimacy of its own.

Even if as in this case only a seemingly modest 'voluntary code of practice' emerges as a 'fair compromise', a key principle will have been conceded (and winning that concession was actually the point - establish the principle, then haggle over the price) This opens the way to future inroads as and when the EU gets round to it.

However, if a proposal comes under a Qualified Majority Voting heading or can be tweaked to do so (ie just as the odious Working Time Directive was smuggled in via 'Health and Safety' provisions), we immediately have to start rallying opposition in the hope of defeating it in a vote.

Much more risky on the substance as zany 'trade-offs' start to appear, not to mention debilitating and wasteful. And all untransparent to citizens.

The answer comes, "Er yes, but so what? We can propose things which other MS don't like, so it all balances out. And the threat that a big and tough MS like the UK will mobilise a blocking minority deters a lot of nonsense anyway"

To which I say, "Er no. There are too many MS out there who have quite different attitudes to basic human liberties and the balance of power between citizens and the state. The tendency in practice is to dumb down competitive differences for the sake of the European Social Model and Generalised Harmony. See eg the various Directives seeking to limit by EU fiat the number of hours we all work, and giving agency staff many of the rights of permanent staff, an explicit drive to kill off a flexible British success story." 

So, European bloggers.

Hit back. As hard as you can.

The tragedy is that Euro-processes have forced you to waste more than a second of your busy and productive lives thinking about how best to do so. 

Irish voters!

Read this terrifying piece describing how the Culture Committee of the EU Parliament wants to deal with Bloggers "with malicious intentions or hidden agendas" who "pose a danger".

Then go and vote.

You know which way.

This is indeed a bad security breach by a senior official.

What on earth was he doing taking Top Secret STRAP material of this sort out of the building?

One of my first Blogoir posts described a grisly experience I had with FCO Security twenty years ago after a I passed a journalist a rather banal but Confidential document I had written.

This episode is far more serious. Really secret stuff left lying around.

In one way we should expect more breaches, simply because there are far more documents sloshing around now; the likelihood of some fathead losing one now and then is therefore all the higher.

The incompatibility and technical ring-fencing of the various top-level security computer systems round Whitehall (at least this was the case in my last time in London a few years ago) likewise mean that actual papers need to be carried from one building to another. And they can be mislaid.

Some top officials also have specialist laptops available for carrying Top Secret material, which melt into malodorous jelly if an unauthorised attempt is made to open and read them.  

It all boils down - as ever - to the human factor. Once upon a time the FCO Resident Clerk was sunning himself on the FCO roof when a Secret message came in to Churchill from Stalin on the FCO system, and was brought to him to action on to No 10.

Imagine his consternation when a gust of wind blew said message away over the parapet and into St James's Park.

Life - somehow - went on.

Note: sign of the times that the plucky citizen finding these Top Secret papers on the train yesterday handed them to the BBC, not the police. Dipstick.

Somehow this profoundly depressing posting by Instapundit back in January about the state of eduction in wealthy America stuck in my mind:

Many of my students—entirely too many—come into my 9th grade classroom woefully unprepared for even the most basic rigors of high school science. They do not study. They do not do homework. They do not get the direct connection between how much effort you put into something and the quality of the results. They do not know the difference between an inch and a centimeter. They have trouble with the simplest algebraic calculations (like f=ma).

They pay no attention whatsoever (beyond the Al Gore school of bad science) to what is going on in the universe, so much of what I teach has no brain Velcro to stick to.

Worst of all? They are embarrassingly incurious. They really don’t care, and if what I do isn’t magically fun, they’re not interested. I work very hard to make what I do interesting and relevant, but they can’t be bothered.

Then this comes along:

America might be the first country in recorded history whose culture celebrates not only indolence but also the sheer absence of ability ... It is hard to think of a comparable case in social history: a country borrows from foreigners to lend money to its young people to spend four years binge-drinking at a university that pretends to prepare them for the world ...

More:

Families that expected to take cash out of appreciated homes had a rude awakening this year. Most American banks have stopped allowing mortgage borrowers to refinance and take out additional cash. So-called home equity loans, or second mortgages on homes, are the cause of the crash of US bank stock prices during the past few weeks.

The well is dry. That leaves the youngsters in the lurch, which is precisely where most of them deserve to be.

Coming our way too?

The Belmont Club look at Michael Totten's impressions from Sarajevo. This captures my attention:

Sarajevo has largely recovered from the physical scars of the 1990s battles. The one thing that has changed -- ripped apart by ethnic powerplays -- is the easy sort of intercommunal tolerance of 30 years ago. In its place is a simplified map consisting of more or less homogenous ethnic groups. It's as if the ingredients in a stew suddenly agglomerated themselves together until you had lumps instead of a mix.

In a telegram from Sarajevo to London back in 1997, I used a similar culinary metaphor: Bosnia had been an ethnic omelette, now after the conflict it was three hard-boiled eggs.

I was a British Olympic Attache at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, living in the Olympic Village with, among others, Torvill and Dean, who then stormed to a rare British gold medal with Bolero.

What was Sarajevo like then? It had a new Yugo-cool atmosphere, a place where young people from across the country would go to hang out. The fave Yugo-rock group Bijelo Dugme (White Button) came from there, to deserved acclaim.

Yet there was a much darker side. Because of political tensions between the different ethnic factions unresolved since WW2 within the League of Communists, both within Bosnia and more widely, local tolerance for 'anarcho-liberalism' and 'clero-nationalism' was nil.

A group of alleged Muslim nationalists including future BH President Alija Izetbegovic was imprisoned in 1983 on charges of wanting to create inter alia an ethnically pure Bosnia.

Also into prison around then went future ICTY indictee Serb Vojislav Seselj, a talented law scholar, jailed for 'counter-revolutionary activities'. Biljana Plavsic, another Serb who ended up being sentenced for war crimes by the ICTY, told me with tears in her eyes how she had listened to the prison doctor describing the appalling torture injuries inflicted on Seselj by Muslim prison authorities - "his extremism came from that". 

Another more lowly Serb was jailed for singing an allegedly nationalist song in a bar.

In 1983 I joined a group of other (mainly Eastern bloc) Olympic Attache diplomats on a tour of the Olympic facilities then busily being finished. We were given a long and ridiculous lecture by a senior Bosnian Communist on the glory of Bosnia-style democratic 'Brotherhood and Unity'. I eventually lost my patience and asked about the trial of Izetbegovic and others - where did that fit in?

The Commie looked at me intently. "When you are shown a rose, do you see only the thorns?" he sneered, not exactly answering the question.

So, yes, there was a fairly normal and even positive human ethnic 'getting along' in Bosnia in the 1970s and 1980s. But at the price of not challenging in any way the explicitly repressive and vicious local communist regime.

Belmont Club again:

What is truly scary about the experience of the former Yugoslavia is how quickly a multicultural society could turn in an historical instant from harmony to savage intercommunal violence.

Maybe it turned because that apparent multi-culturalism was at root not 'organically' harmonious but rather ideological, phoney and synthetic, indeed imposed by violence, with too few ways available for people to express different and more pluralist views?

I completely agree with Belmont Club on this:

Maybe the real threat to multiculturalism are the demagogues who see identity politics as the road to power, even if that process involves the destruction of the larger polity. Under the color of multiculturalism, the ship of separatism steams majestically on.

Exactly.

Some noteworthy statistics from Iraq, compiled by AP:

OIL PRODUCTION:

Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day.

May 25, 2008: 2.52 million barrels per day.

TELEPHONES:

Prewar land lines: 833,000.

April 4, 2008: 1,360,000.

Prewar cell phones: 80,000.

April 30, 2008: More than 12 million.

WATER:

Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.

April 30, 2008: 20.9 million people have potable water.

SEWERAGE:

Prewar: 6.2 million people served.

April 30, 2008: 11.3 million people served.

Plenty of less positive indicators of course still out there (displaced persons, electricity generation). But look at the explosion of access Iraqis have now to modern communications, plus the millions of people enjoying better water.

Hard work. But moving in a good pluralist direction.

All we need to do is stick with it. 

The BBC last night led its top news programme with warnings of a new famine in Ethiopia, "caused by two factors - drought, and rising food prices".

The main 'deeper' cause is in fact the long the reign of Marxist terror by dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, which killed a million people plus and seriously weakened the country:

Although the Red Terror affected thousands, it was Mengistu's dismissive response to events in 1984 which arguably caused most deaths. An estimated one million people died in a desperate famine which grabbed the world's attention. News footage, shot by the cameraman Mo Amin, spawned LiveAid and a global fundraising drive.

Yet through it all, Mengistu was consumed with preparations for the 10th anniversary of the revolution. Dawit Wolde Giorgis, the member of Mengistu's central committee responsible for drought relief, claimed in his memoirs that Mengistu referred to the prospect of a serious famine as "petty human problems".

During his 17-year reign, tens of thousands of people were killed, tortured or detained and about 700,000 peasants were forcibly resettled in an effort to cut off support for rebels in the north. Those rebels, led by Meles Zenawi, took power in 1991...

My earlier post on the Cost of Mugabe and Milosevic and Castro was run by B92 in Serbia, prompting a series of mostly weird comments purporting to demonstrate that I am 'anti-Serb' or otherwise a crazy neocon.

My point is simple.

It may not be easy to show what exactly causes what, when it comes to the weather. But if you deliberately burn down your own house, it is fair to say (a) that you have 'caused' your own rooflessness. And (b), that that rooflessness will persist until someone builds you a new one.

Massive sustained blunders at a national level have massive consequences, which echo on down the decades and bring about future disasters.

Run the figures. If Ethiopia had not had Mengistu and grown at a modest 3% per annum since the mid-1970s, there would be no mass famine now. 'Drought' is the cause of famine in poor societies primarily because they are poor - they lack the technology and productivity and flexibility to deal with it. And Mengistu's terror made Ethiopia far poorer than it should have been.  

And yes, the Mengistu misery in Ethiopia and the Mugabe misery in Zimbabwe are indeed related.

A neat article about the (erroneous) idea that a twitching butterfly wing can be shown to unleash a chain of events culminating in a hurricane:

 ... a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

Well before this chaos theory notion started to get popularised, Ray Bradbury (of course) gave us the defining idea.

Maybe a little more humility is needed from eg the Climate Change industry?