Blood & Treasure

the Galbraith legacy

Staying on Iraq I think I’ve commented before on the amazing number of chancers thrown up by the conflict, but Peter Galbraith takes the drilling rights. Or maybe not:

...what the Kurds and DNO fail to realise is the extent to which the Galbraith legacy has created problems and not solutions for them. Recently, however, this has clarified a good deal as a consequence of Galbraith’s public comments subsequent to the first revelation of his “business interest” in the Tawke oilfield last month, and in particular through his emphasis of the assumed “congruence” of his actions. For example, according to the Vermont newspaper Rutland Herald on 13 November, at a recent public meeting “Galbraith said he had always been supportive of Kurdistan’s self-determination, which meant having control over its oil fields and establishing a Kurdish oil industry.” In cruder terms, oil contracts such as that entered into with DNO could do service as dynamite in a greater vision of Kurdish independence, something which in turn would be “congruent” with Galbraith’s advice and support to the Kurds to seek a maximum of regional power in the 2005 constitution as a prelude to independence. The problem for the KRG and the DNO is that because Galbraith’s prediction in 2006 of “the end of Iraq” failed to materialise, they are now left to pick up the pieces after what amounts to an aborted separatist attempt.

I’ll give you your country, you sell my friends the mineral rights, I get the commission. Awesome, in its way: almost Cecil Rhodes-ish. It certainly beats our own modest crop of security fantasists, turnip ghost jihadis and professional ex Islamists.

a surprise, he said

I haven’t really had the heart to look much at the Chilcott whitewash to be, but this struck me:

Sir William, the Foreign Office's director general for defence and intelligence between 2002 and 2004, insisted that the role of intelligence in the decision to go to war was "limited".

He also said it was a "surprise" no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ever found in Iraq. "It was not what we had expected," he added.

The reasons for going to war in Iraq - including the now discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could be used within 45 minutes of an order being given - remain a long-standing source of controversy.

The lack of weapons wasn’t a surprise to the substantial number of people who never thought they were there in the first place. But “what was expected” was the point behind the scarcity and sloppiness of the evidence collected. The whole subtext was that you just had to cobble some bollocks or other together and get on with it, because you were fighting Saddam Hussein, and for that reason alone there were sure to be chemical weapons. With chemicals in them. Chemicals, you naïve fool, chemicals! Do you want us all to die?

In a way, inquiries on the reasons why Britain went to war in Iraq miss the point. We went because the Americans wanted to go, and that’s really all there was to it. It’s the how that matters, the casual depravity that informed the whole process of fabricating the case. Maybe I’m being unfair in describing the Chilcott enquiry as a whitewash to be: after all, both the Hutton and Butler inquiries told us many cogent and deeply unpleasant things about how the Blairites went to war, albeit in passing. It’s just that an enquiry can’t get to the heart of these things. What you really need is a trial.

Paul Waugh's worth following on this, as of course is Chris Ames.

how to kill a rabbit with elastic bands

For food, of course. Over here, complete with instructional videos. Via this bit of neo survivalism.

the curse of seriousness

Responses to comment box crazies: Some step back, others allow them to take over and set the agenda.

Still, given Abu M’s explanation, I wonder if his blogging - or rather his “blog style”, off the cuff analysis - and his role as a staffer in an achingly fashionable security think tank weren’t seen as incompatible, as well as drawing loons. The two things tend to dovetail anyway – the pull factor of institutional seriousness, the push factor provided by the fact that if you draw flies, people conclude that you’re staging a shit flinging competition: see especially Harry’s Place. At any rate, Abu M notes that his boss had a word with him.

On the other hand, the kind of people hounding Abu M may eventually be the target of the USA’s first 21st century domestic counterinsurgency campaign, possibly even a suitable subject for analysis for someone no longer blogging so much.

seasonal libertarian fun

Ho ho ho.

As for that one lump of coal Scrooge allows him, it bears emphasis that Cratchit has not been chained to his chilly desk. If he stays there, he shows by his behavior that he prefers his present wages-plus-comfort package to any other he has found, or supposes himself likely to find. Actions speak louder than grumbling, and the reader can hardly complain about what Cratchit evidently finds satisfactory.

Via.

supporting the sufis

Nick Cohen writes a fatuous column where he argues that the BNP vote rises or falls depending on which Muslim groups the government chooses to patronize. This is especially odd since the period in which the Muslim groups Nick likes were supported saw the BNP make its electoral breakthrough.

The piece does confirm that the odd public spat we’ve being seeing between various groups and individuals is basically part of some kind of Muslim musical chairs game. Ed Husain’s much commented upon funding has been bleeding into the water, and the sharks are circling.

Nick seems to have left Ed to it. Instead we have the Sufis:

Meanwhile, ministers are about to cut financial support for Sufi Muslims who, like the majority of Britain's Muslims, Sunni or Shia, are not represented by the MCB.

This is probably true. But how many Sufis are there to be unrepresented in Britain? And what do they represent?

The general argument here is that the Sufis should be supported because they’re moderates who promote democracy. That is, to say the least, debateable:

The Sufis enjoyed many freedoms when Saddam Hussein was in power. Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his vice-president and the current head of the banned al-Baath party, is a well known Qadiri Sufi.

The result of which being that there are – or were – at least three Sufi insurgent groups active in Iraq. What made Sufis appealing to Saddam, the Syrian Baathists, the Egyptian regime and the onetime military government of Turkey is that in each country they promoted absolute loyalty to the civil power, whatever form it took or takes. Here for instance is the response by  Sufi Sheikhs in Egypt to a recent call for strikes against the dictatorship:

A number of Sufi Sheikhs across Egypt have unanimously rejected the call to take part in the strike on April 6, as they said such call and the participation in any protests or sit-ins that day would be illegal.

They called all the Sufi community to foil the strike and said that the authors of such call were dissenters who just sowed the seeds of sedition between the people and the rulers.

... Sheikh Mustafa el-Safi said violence did not come not from Islam, as this religion sought to preserve the community from strange ideas downplaying Egypt's role and leadership.

He added that the Sufis rejected the idea of disobeying the rulers through strikes or sit-ins and other illegal means contrary to Islamic Sharia, which instead calls for obeying rulers.

Hey, community cohesion: and just the kind of Sharia to warm the hearts of folk like Hazel Blears. Now any minority sect has good reason to hitch its star to a local strongman. Christians too had it relatively easy in Hussein’s Iraq, in strictly comparative terms. And whatever you say about an Iraqi insurgency group that founded itself on the day Saddam Hussein was hanged, you can’t fault its secularism. So there’s logic here in the Sufis making common cause with Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, and, for that, matter Nick Cohen, patron of the National Secular Society. Partly it depends on where Sufis happen to be living.

But there’s no requirement for absolute loyalty to the government in Britain. Here groups can offer or withdraw their support with the same freedom that the government can choose to support or not support them. According to Nick, Shahid Malik is the black hand behind the refusal of the government to go on bankrolling the Sufis. Now the Sufis are going to tell his constituents not to vote for him. So there.

Personally, I think there’s a strong whiff of political racketeering in the government’s dealings with Muslim groups of all sorts, and in theirs with the government. But you could argue that the turn away from groups like the Sufis represents a setback for the most authoritarian strain in new Labour thinking, the kind that hungers for group obedience and rewards loyalty with money and patronage.

Though that of course just leaves the bog standard authoritarians...

a taste of honey, updated

November 7, 2009, 5 am in the morning, a 20-year-old girl gave birth to a brown-skinned mixed-race baby in the People’s Liberation Army 411 hospital in Shanghai.

trial, choreography, punishment

Cockburn’s right. Khaled Sheikh Muhammad’s forthcoming execution should dovetail very nicely with the 2012 election, especially given his self avowed eagerness for martyrdom.

Given the torture employed to get a lot of the evidence against him, the trial may well put a practical end to the “fruit of the poison tree” provisions in US law as well.

UN goes butch

Good cause but some branding difficulties:

The engagement of men and boys is integral to achieving an end to violence against women and girls.

In this vein, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced the formation of a Network of Men Leaders who will work to inspire men everywhere through their commitment to eliminating violence against women and girls.

Via. Secretary General Ban went on to state that he hadn’t anyone finalized to lead the Network of Men Leaders, but he’d heard good things of some chap called Tom from Finland. You can always rely on the Scandinavians to take the lead on this sort of issue, said the Secretary General.

because they were worth it

I can’t find it right now but I believe I blogged about the pishtaco – legendary Peruvian human fat vampires – before, in connection with Shining Path. The Senderistas used to tell peasants in remote areas that rambling foreign backpackers were pishtaco, with the result that several were murdered, much to the detriment of the tourist trade. And now:

Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before killing them and extracting their fat.

The liquidised product fetched $15,000 (£9,000) a litre and police suspect it was sold on to companies in Europe.

At least five other suspects, including two Italian nationals, remain at large.

Police said the gang could be behind the disappearances of up to 60 people in Peru's Huanuco and Pasco regions.

One of those arrested told police the ringleader had been killing people for their fat for more than three decades.

The gang has been referred to as the Pishtacos, after an ancient Peruvian legend of killers who attack people on lonely roads and murder them for their fat.

The original Pishtaco myth was evolved by the indigenes as a way of rationalizing their exploitation by the colonial Spanish, especially through forced labour in the local mines and it later became a pretty obvious metaphor for exploitation when Marxism emerged in Peru in the early 20th century.

It’s also difficult to imagine people doing this without taking inspiration from the original myth, as the Senderistas did, but with more directly profitable intent. And nowadays there's an actual market for the product.

questions, questions

What makes an American lady and what makes a Chinese lady?

People’s Daily reader forums are fascinating. And check out this interview with the webmaster for the Chinese Ministry of Defence:

The Ministry of National Defense's website emphasizes more exclusive and authoritative information. When unexpected or major events occur, the relevant departments would promptly inform the Ministry of Defense website to ensure the significant information is promptly released.

For example, the news "13 million college students will become eligible for recruitment into the People's Liberation Army" was first reported by mod.gov.cn. And an exclusive report can bring over 10 million hits.

Yes, I’ll bet.

tracking back

By augmenting a low-cost Motorola phone with GPS and a battery of applications, Dominguez’s goal is to help illegal immigrants complete safe border crossings without being sent back by the Border Patrol or getting shot in the face by American “patriots.”

The primary goal of the Transborder Immigrant Tool is to increase safety during border crossing by directing heavy-footed immigrants to safe routes, shelter, food, water, and friendly sympathizers.

More here. Also applicable to the UK. And of course Myanmar, North Korea etc. Via.

crusty-on-trent

Arguably, Stoke is already England’s greenest city on the grounds that there isn’t much industry left, or that much employment of any other kind. Still, nowt wrong with making a virtue out of necessity:

This evening, in St Margaret Ward Roman Catholic high school, Stoke-on-Trent is set to become the first city to sign up to the 10:10 pledge to cut its carbon emissions by 10% during 2010...

... Out in the cavernous main hall, waiting for the bingo to start, members Dave Athersmith and Julie Hulme agree: "We car-share to come here. We've all got to do our bit, haven't we?" John Clowes, a retired ceramic tilemaker of 76 ("There's tiles of mine in the Houses of Parliament") has just had his loft insulated, and turns everything off at the mains at night. "It's the young people you need to worry about," he says. "Those electronic games. What happened to a kickaround in the street?" (In two days in Stoke, by the way, I met only three people prepared to dismiss climate change as a notion cooked up by a control-crazed government (or as one local put it, "absolute bollocks"). Most confessed to at least some concern.)

It’s conventional wisdom that the stout yeomen of the working classes will have no truck with all this environmental nonsense: conventional wisdom, that is, amongst rightwing or otherwise anti-crusty middle class types. Contra this, the potteries has had its own experience with anthropogenic climate change and its consequences well within living memory. Also, allotments:

The 40-odd families who make up the association's membership are doing their bit for 10:10, says Anderson. Most now harvest water in butts from their shed and greenhouse roofs, rather than use mains. "And quite a few are looking into using small wind turbines or solar panels, rather than paraffin, to heat and light the greenhouses in winter. Also, we recycle everything here; nothing gets taken off the site in a skip, nothing goes for landfill. We'll make our 10% target."

Of course, the more the membership grows, the less friends and family have to shop: Anderson alone supplies his 89-year-old mother and her eight children, 31 grandchildren, 64 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. That's a lot fewer trips to the supermarket.

It’s not just trips to the shops at issue in a place like Stoke. While it’s unlikely that people will absolutely need whatever food they get from allotments, it’s also likely that a lot of it comes in very handy. Overall, the article reads like a city trying to organise itself around principles of economy rather than the environment as such, partly in the hope trhat maybe someday some jobs will come of it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this approach which sustained environmentalism in the future, especially if the recovery we’re supposedly on the verge of follows the pattern of the past, concentrating wealth upwards and leaving more tranches of the population behind.

it's piwo time!

Just to show you that I haven’t been completely wasting my time, here’s an assessment, a survey – nay, an overview – of Polish beer.

But where to begin? I’d like to say ‘they’re all good’, but sadly it wouldn’t be true. Actually, I’m not sure if any of them are actually good in the CAMRA sense. What they are is brazen: brazen as a bronze age bronze bust of Barbara Windsor’s bust outside Brasenose college. The principle seems to be ‘let’s get ordinary cooking lager and crank up the alcohol content until it produces a generally warming effect’. The result is halfway between an ordinary North German style pils and stuff of profane memory like Breaker and Colt 45, though usually stronger than either. Most of it seems to be pretty heavily malted, which if you’re old enough brings back memories of the seventies. In general I find it appealingly rough and ready, good in the same sort of way that people used to describe rough French reds as good, meaning bad but with plenty of wallop and satisfying for all that. At any rate, Polish beer has generally been a boon to Manchester. But onwards:

Tyskie: I’m not sure if this is my favourite but it’s the only beer that actually tastes like a conventional strong lager in a way familiar to the Western drinker. Stella with guts.

Lech premium. I think this is some attempt to formulate a kind of yuppie lager experience for young Poles on the way up. Fail. Curiously soapy but otherwise tasteless, and should lose the initial L for truth in advertising purposes. I’ve currently got their Pils in the fridge, but I sense it’s one of those brews you have to get drunk before sampling. Time will tell.

Zwiec. I understand this was the showpiece brewery for export under Communism, and I remember that you could get it in Safeways in Manchester city centre from way before the IRA blew it up. At 35p for half a litre of 5.6% lager, too. And it tasted very, very good indeed. I used to leave work in quiet moments, buy a couple of bottles and go up on to the roof of the arcade in St Ann’s Square to drink them. That’s where they shot the pigeon sequence in 24 hour Party People, though I never actually encountered any members of the Happy Mondays at the time.

Happy days. So imagine my disappointment to find that the curiously addictive malty substance of my late youth was forced into the international division of capital as a standard issue bland eurobrew. Zwiec in its current form is an argument for Jaruzelski, and you don’t get many of those these days.

Okocim: It’s surprising how a five and a half percent lager can be made so utterly bland.

Zubr. At six percent, Zubr tops out the Polish idea of a session beer. And it’s quite remarkable stuff. I’m just not sure it’s actually beer. I must experiment more.

Polish session brews seem to cluster round the five and a half percent mark. After that, you’re into the Mocnes, which cluster at around 7%. So:

Strong. Yep, there’s a beer called strong. And guess what? I like this kind of basic marketing. I wonder if they have a nine per cent beer called Puke.

Okocim Mocne: Now this is more like it. A bit like Carlsberg Elephant Beer of blessed memory. Robust yet curiously delicate, in the manner of an arm wrestling duchess.

Debrowie Mocne: Polish version of Tennants Special. Don’t they have tramps of their own?

Tatra Mocne. It’s got a picture of a man in a silly hat on the tin, so it’s really one to decant. But you won’t be disappointed. Nicely crisp for a swamp strength lager.

And there you have it, or rather what I made of it.

still on sabbatical

...but I just thought you should know.

got nothing for you

If you’ve noticed a slight lack of inspiration round here recently then you’re not alone. I’m off on holiday soon anyway, but I think it’s time as well that I took a short break from blogging. Or maybe not so short. We’ll see. I started doing this on impulse so I suppose I’ll start doing it again when the impulse returns.

Google Analytics tells me that around 3,000 people visit B&T more than fifty times a month; which is nice, as the chap off the Fast Show used to say. I’m only sorry that I’ve got nothing for you right now, apart from this:

“The top layer was Burroughs” writes Miles “the distinguished scion of an Old St Louis family. Below that was a nervous, possibly Lesbian English governess, with a prissy, self-conscious, simpering personality. Below that was Old Luke, the tobacco farmer, with the personality of a psychotic Southern sheriff. Beneath them all was an implacable, silent Chinese sitting starving and skull headed on the banks of the Yangtze, with no ideas, no beliefs and no words…

See you round.

a different kind of statement

US president visits dictatorship. Helpless dissidents stage forlorn gathering in order to reach out to last best hope of the world...or maybe not quite:

Beijing activist Qi Zhiyong, who was crippled by gunfire during the June 4, 1989 military crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen square, said Wednesday he was planning a different kind of statement. Qi said he will go to police headquarters in Beijing on Friday to protest Obama's visit because the trip will likely result in him being put under house arrest.

Chinese authorities routinely round up dissidents ahead of politically sensitive anniversaries such as June 4 or when foreign dignitaries visit to prevent them from demonstrating or meeting with foreign delegations.

"His arrival is a great inconvenience for many of us activists and petitioners and other people because we will end up waiting for it while under house arrest or being detained and locked up," said Qi.

I believe that protesting against Obama’s visit falls under Chinese law as “disturbing public order”. As Mr Qi made this disturbance by registering his complaint with the cops, he’ll probably get off with a warning. And a short period of house arrest.

His point’s a good one though. And his action might just push it into the news cycle. That said, I'm not sure if he's trying unorthodox means to get attention or is actually serious. Foreign leaders come and go from Beijing with nothing in it for dissidents but close encounters the cops, and as far as domestic opinion goes there's no advantage in being seen as too close to the Americans, or anyone else for that matter.

Chairman Cowell is great, glorious and correct

Her Excellency Madam Fu Ying wrote to The Sun newspaper in response to a report that the Chinese embassy had complained about the disturbance caused by crowds of screaming fans outside the neighbouring X Factor house.

Madam Fu Ying wrote: "It was fun finding myself caught up in X Factor fever and reading about the 'diplomatic row' involving my Embassy."

She continued: "I learnt about The X Factor in the neighbourhood from embassy colleagues living nearby who complained about the noise made by the young fans outside the X Factor house.

"My daughter emailed me wondering if she could fly in and join the screaming fans!

"I have to admit that I also enjoy watching The X Factor when there is time and have my favourite contestants.

"I think it would be unfair to mention who my favourites are, but I think all the acts have some great qualities.

"This kind of entertainment show, combining live performances and competition appeals to young people in China as much as it does in the UK.

"Good luck to the contestants of X Factor."

It has to be said that the X Factor combination of populism and regimentation is quite a good fit with official approaches to popular culture in China, as it is in Britain right now. And the local version of Popstars – the Rivals was very popular on Chinese TV a couple of years back.

formidable benches

UK youth parliament members so overawed by appearance in actual parliament that they apparently forget how to sit down:

The suggestion that "getting everyone seated on the green leather benches was a bit like herding kittens" is a shameful insult. Young people have never been allowed to sit on the formidable green benches before, and I imagine that some were daunted by the prospect.

Yeah, tricky one that. Anyway, our correspondent tells us how these young idealists got to their destination prior to the entirely understandable arse/seat confusion.

Many of the 300 young people attending the debate, including the young person I accompanied, left home at 5.30am during their half-term holiday to represent the views and opinions of their peers, and they did so with passion and integrity.

Little wankers. I used to hate kids like that when I was their age and I’m glad to say I still do. It makes me feel young, apart from anything else.

dowsing for bombs

A British company is selling dowsing rods to Iraq for use as bomb detecting devices, with predictable consequences:

The suicide bombers who managed to get two tons of explosives into downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25, killing 155 people and destroying three ministries, had to pass at least one checkpoint where the ADE 651 is typically deployed, judging from surveillance videos released by Baghdad’s provincial governor.

These devices are being sold through a British based company called ASTC run by a Jim McCormick. Unity has a full rundown and background to the scam.

Per the NYT, these devices seem to be especially popular with corrupt militaries looking for kickback opportunities, selling at a list price of US$18,000 but an actual price in Iraq of $60,000 per unit. They’re also very popular with the Thai military, where their deployment has had similar consequences and have also cropped up in Lebanon.

There are a number of blogs apparently dedicated to exposing the scam, of which this seems the most coherent.

The youtube video below shows what happened after Thai police used the device to declare a city street clear of explosive devices.