Tag: France

A VORTEX OF VIOLENCE OR LONG TERM REMEDIES

 

We may have to live with terrorism for generations but there are things that can be done to try and avoid us getting into the vortex of violence that the Parisian madmen want us to descend into.

It is not in any way to give a scintilla of justification to what happened in Paris to suggest that the massacre has historic links to Britain and France’s colonial past. History is a rolling story with one event linked to another. In the 1920s our two countries carved up the Middle East with no regard to the local Arab interest. Britain promised a homeland for the Jews whilst promising to protect the interests of the Palestinian Arabs.

When the colonial era ended and the Arabs became responsible for governing the Middle East themselves we saw the setting up of military dictatorships and even more significantly the hoarding of the vast oil wealth of the region in the hands of a few. If that money had been fairly distributed across the region, it might now have been an area of prosperity. Instead unemployment and instability has created a sense of anger and hopelessness on which terrorism has fed.

The last chapter of the recent history of the Middle East saw the western powers returning to remove the military dictators who’s only virtue was to keep a lid on the festering divisions. Following the removal of Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein all hell has broken loose. I’m not a spokesman for the Stop The War coalition who issued a tweet (subsequently repudiated) saying we were reaping the whirlwind, however it is true. But “we” includes not just western countries who made bad choices in the Middle East, but greedy oil sheiks and religious fanatics who ought to know that the true basis of both Christianity and Islam is to love thy neighbour and do good.

So what is to be done now? In the short term ISIL’s territory has to be conquered by local troops backed up by western air support. But that won’t be the end of them, there a re plenty of failed states where they will emerge again unless fundamental issues are resolved in the region. The most important is better wealth distribution. Then comes some really controversial changes. The creation of Palestine and Kurdistan (the least they deserve for being the only effective troops fighting ISIS) as nation states and possible boundary changes to ease Sunni and Shia tensions.

At home a massive “not in my name” demonstration by our British Muslim colleagues would help ease the worrying rise of entirely unjustified Islamaphobia. The Chancellor next week should protect funds for community policing. It is the height of folly to damage that part of the police service which is often the first to detect extremists. And finally the Prime Minister needs to be careful to avoid gloating when we, sometimes necessarily, execute terrorists without trial. His demeanour in announcing the death of Jihaddi John was in marked contrast to the remarks of some of the people who’d actually had relatives beheaded by the ghastly murderer.

By language and deed we must not be goaded into the vortex of violence.

 

JE SUIS CHARLIE,BUT…..

..

 

The crazy logic of the people who gunned down the staff of Charlie Hebdo is that it will bring nearer the day of a holy war between the West and the Caliphate.

As the shock and grief continues, we have to ask ourselves if that day is getting nearer.

 

It seems unbelievable in this hi tech 21st century world that I should be writing in language more appropriate to the age of the Crusades or the sixteenth century when the Ottoman Empire was at the gates of Vienna. More poignantly we can go back to 732 when the Umayyed Caliphate nearly took Poitiers in the centre of France during the incredible early expansion of Islam.

 

At the moment the conflict does not take the form of armies confronting each other. The British and American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has ended that for now. We prefer drones, air strikes and arming the Kurds to boots on the ground.

 

The dreadful events in France have left us in a very dangerous position. Islamophobia and anti semitism are on the rise, our civil liberties are under pressure, and parties of the right are gaining support. Meanwhile the causes of all this are hardly mentioned.

They are in no particular order, the post World War One colonial settlement in the Middle East; the grossly unfair distribution of oil wealth that should have benefited all the people of the region; our ignorance of the complexities of the Middle East when we intervened militarily; the mindset of some Muslims that their religion and way of life should be imposed on all of us and above all our failure to deal with the plight of the Palestinians. Barrack Osama should use the remaining years of his presidency, when he is less beholden to the powerful Jewish lobby in America, to achieve a two state solution for Israel and Palestine.

 

Of course that is very difficult to achieve, but it could be the beginning of unwinding the mounting crisis between the West and elements of Islam. If the terrorists could no longer point to the plight of the Palestinians, then one of the major causes of tension would be ameliorated. This might then lead to a waning of real and tacit support for terrorism upon which organisations like ISIS and Al -Qaeda rely.

 

Finally let me go back to the title of this blog and my thoughts on publications like Charlie Hebdo. Whilst we must all defend free speech, we must recognise that it is not absolute in France or here. There are laws curbing racial hatred and obscenity. Much more widely people of a religious belief are entitled to be offended and angered by blatant mockery of Muhammed or Jesus. Emphatically it does not entitle them to kill or intimidate those that publish such material, but we must acknowledge its effect on the heightened tension we are all feeling.

NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES HORRIFIED BY SARIN GAS

SYRIA

I share everyone’s disgust at the sight of children dying on our TV screens from the effects of chemical weapons. They were made illegal in 1925. But napalm isn’t illegal. Agent Orange ( used by America in Vietnam) isn’t illegal and nor is the most poisonous and indiscriminate weapon of all, nuclear bombs. The latter is possessed in large number by the United States and France who look most likely to “fire a shot across the bows” of President Assad of Syria sometime soon.

 

I have always had a problem with rules of war. It makes the whole ghastly business seem like a game. I suppose we need rules on the treatment of captured servicemen but we had better realise that war is bloody where awful things can and will happen. Trying to regulate it is going to be increasingly difficult now that people in the West are heartily sick of kicking over hornets nests in the Middle East.

 

Britain and France share historic blame for carving up the Middle East in the way we did in 1919. We hadn’t a clue about Sunni and Shia. T.E. Lawrence had a better plan for Greater Arabia. But we are where we are. On the one side Assad who’s very ordinariness personifies the blandness of evil. On the other a mixture of liberals, religious fanatics and terrorists. Removing dictators is problematic. For instance Israel is not seriously threatened by Assad but if Syria is taken over by an Iranian friendly regime a general war could break out from the flashpoint of the Golan Heights.

 

Russia rather than America offers the slimmest possibility of sorting this out. Will Putin rise to his responsibilities or stick with being a well buffed semi dictator?

 

MEAN BROTHERS

We probably have Ed Miliband to thank for stopping David Cameron and President Obama firing “shots across the bow” of President Assad last weekend. But no sooner had Ed got the credit for reflecting public unease on action against Syria than he was facing a big problem back home. The GMB union has cut its affiliation fees to Labour by a million pounds. This follows Miliband’s decision to try and make membership of the Labour Party honest. At the moment it is padded out by trade unionists who are deemed members unless they opt out of the political levy part of their membership fee.

 

The leader’s move will cause Labour huge financial problems and he is likely to get a cool reception at the Trades Union Congress in Bournemouth next week. But ultimately there is a lot in the idea of getting people either to engage with the party properly or walk away and take the consequences of continued Tory governments.

If Labour is impoverished and the election battle becomes unfair as it tries to fight a well funded Tory Party perhaps pressure will build to limit donations to them too. That would be a good thing for politics, after all much of the money raised is wasted in a poster arms race at election time.

 

THE NEXT STRAW

They don’t do dynastic succession in Blackburn. There was a possibility that Jack Straw would retire and hand the seat to his son Will in 2015.Instead Will is taking on neighbouring Rossendale currently marginally held by the Tories. Let’s hope we have the benefit of both generations of Straw speaking up for the North after 2015.

 

THE LAST FROST

When I interviewed the late Sir David Frost about his book on the Nixon interviews, I asked him if he had reflected on the fact that in the autumn of 1962 while Frost was launching That Was The Week That Was Nixon lost the governorship of California following his Presidential defeat two years earlier. He bitterly remarked to the press “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more”.

 

However he did come back and they did kick him around over Watergate which provided Frost with his greatest interview. David smiled at me and said no he hadn’t “That is a special Jim thought”. Nice man. We will miss him.