Back from a funeral

Much of Wednesday was spent in Oxford, at the funeral of that great lady, the Baroness Park of Monmouth. It was a very beautiful ceremony with fine readings and hymns, clearly arranged by people who knew and liked her.

Inevitably, however, one spends time thinking about the person who is being buried and eulogized. There was much to think about the great Baroness as the various obituaries (for instance here, here, here and here) made clear. Interestingly, the Russian media went to town on her. Mostly they translated obituaries from British newspapers but, clearly, this lady, so triumphantly British appealed to them. Here was an enemy one could respect and admire.

All of which reminded me of Daphne Park’s wonderful tales of her stint in the Soviet Union in the mid-fifties. In particular, I recall the story of the “people’s spontaneous demonstration” outside the British embassy at the time of the Suez crisis and the Hungarian events. Part of it was related in one obituary but I shall now attempt to recall the whole story.

Demonstrations outside “imperialist” embassies were not unknown and during the Suez events they happened with some regularity. This time round not everything went to plan. Daphne Park’s room was on the ground floor and one of her jobs was to provide the daily digest of the press, Soviet and Western, including the BBC Monitoring Service summaries. She, therefore, knew better than anyone what was happening not just in Egypt but in Hungary.

As the demonstrators approached her window with their slogans, all shouted in unison, and their carefully printed placards, Daphne Park leaned out and asked them in Russian whether they would like to know what is going on in Hungary. Naturally, they would. Some of them would have had sons or other relatives in the army, others had heard vaguely that things were not going according to plan in the previously liberated people’s democracy, a few may have felt uneasy at the thought of those Soviet tanks rolling against Hungarian workers.

So Daphne Park rapidly translated some of the latest news while the demonstrators gathered round and listened in silence. This was noted by the Ambassador who telephoned down to find out how she had managed to silence the people but also by some of those in charge who rapidly shooed people away from that particular window.

After a while the Ambassador became slightly worried. He had a luncheon appointment with one of the Ministers, possibly Yekaterina Furtseva, the only woman Minister in the Soviet government for the entire post-Stalin period. (Under Stalin there weren’t any at all.) Would the demonstrators depart in time to allow the ministerial car in or the ambassadorial car out – Daphne could not recall which way round the visit was going to take place.

The staff who were watching from their windows had noticed a certain gentleman in a colonel’s uniform who was standing in one corner watching the proceedings benignly. At the Ambassador’s suggestion the Military and the Naval Attachés donned full uniform and marched over to the gentleman in the colonel’s uniform. They enquired if he had any idea when the demonstration might end. The colonel looked at his watch and said very firmly: “The spontaneous demonstration of the working people of Moscow will end at quarter to one precisely.” And at quarter to one it ended, the flags and posters were rolled up and the people departed. The Ambassador was free to keep his appointment. One cannot help wondering whether the organizers of that spontaneous demonstration might not have known precisely what was in the Ambassador’s diary.

Well, well, well

Not only is it being officially acknowledged that the mass execution of Polish officers and civilians in Katyn and other places was actually done by the Soviet Union (more of that anon) but it seems that certain FSB documents indicate that Raoul Wallenberg may have been alive after his supposed execution for crimes unspecified.

This is not actually quite as suprising as Bruno Waterfield seems to think but then he, apparently, believes that the Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviets because of his supposed involvement with the American wartime secret service. I am not at all sure it has been acknowledged by anybody and the evidence for it is dubious to put it mildly. Could the arrest have had something to do with the fact that it was now the turn of the Soviets to commit atrocities in Hungary (and other countries) and they did not want an honourable witness whose word would be believed around? Just a suggestion.

And they're off

The least unexpected piece of news this morning is that Gordon Brown has gone to the Palace to ask HM the Queen to dissolve Parliament and to call a general election for May 6. Ever since Gordon Brown became Primonse Minister (completely legitimately and according to the British Constitution, despite the various ignorant and hysterical outbursts) this blog and EUReferendum maintained that he, just as his various predecessors in a similar position, will go to the wire. Or put another way, Gordon Brown was not going to call an election until May 2010. As there were local elections scheduled for May 6, it made perfect sense for him to call the general one for the same date and not for last autumn or March 25 or April 1. Nor was there anyh indication that he was going to postpone it this time or declare an emergency situation that would allow him to stay in government for another 2 years.

If Labour's opponents, particulary the Conservative Party, had spent less time on hysterical outbursts and more on producing some ideas why we should vote for them, their electoral position would be a good deal better now. Yes, the opinion polls give the Conservatives a lead but it is a surprisingly small one, considering that we are at the end of the third term of a highly unpopular government.

All opinion polls show that there are around 12 per cent of the population that does not seem to want to support any of the three main parties. Nobody seems to know what will happen to this largish group - will they stay at home, vote for one of the small parties or grit their teeth and put a cross against one of the large ones. Nobody seems that bothered either, with the Conservatives veering between complete smugness about people "coming back" to them and equal smugness about not needing the core Conservative vote.

Meanwhile, the Boy-King tells us that he is a nice man, loves his family, wants to introduce something called a Big Society in Britain and has thought of the possibility fo 5,000 community organizers to ensure that people lead communal lives. Not one of those ideas would make real conservatives vote for him so he and his party have to fall back to their one and only argument: David Cameron is not Gordon Brown. A corollary of that is: Samantha Cameron is nicer than Sarah Brown, a slightly more doubtful proposition, apart from being completely irrelevant.

In the meantime, let us not forget, that the real government in Brussels is not about to change any time soon.

Happy Easter

The blog has not been updated as frequently as it ought to have been recently. Much of that has to do with internet problems but all will be resolved, I hope, after Easter. Indeed, maybe before since there are many stories that await discussion, not least the fact that Andrzei Wajda's Katyn is being shown in Russian cinemas and has even been on Russian TV, exciting, needless to say a good deal of discussion.

In the meantime, however, I shall simply wish all of this blog's readers a very happy Easter. And for those who have leanings towards or interest in the Orthodox Church who are also celebrating this week-end: Христос Воскресе.

Will the burqua be banned?

The Interior Affairs Committee in the Belgian Parliament has unanimously supported a Bill that would ban the burqua in public. The Bill is now going to a full debate and vote, probably before the end of this month. This may be the first step towards a European country actually banning face veils but there is some way to go.

In the meantime, as the Wall Street Journal points out, there seems to be little fuss in Belgium. Most of the Muslims there are from North African countries where women tend not to be veiled (thus making nonsense of the argument that the niquab is in any way a religious symbol).

Catholic bishops came out against the ban, citing freedom of religion, as did Muslim community leaders. But they were unable to muster a strong enough front—indeed, many of them agreed the ban could contribute to integration.

Belgian lawmakers argued that the veils can hide criminals, imprison women and segregate society. (One backer even compared women who wear face veils to dwarfs subjected to dwarf-tossing.) The ban would prohibit face veils in nearly all public places, except for special occasions such as Halloween. Violators could be fined up to €25 and imprisoned for seven days.

The European Commission

said that they were concerned at the move, but initially it was a matter for member states, but they would be watching the issue and examining any bill put before the Belgian lawmakers very closely as it may fall foul of EU anti-discrimination policy.

Well, we wouldn't want to discriminate against people who prefer gender apartheid to freedom and equality.

In France, where most of the Muslim population are also from North Africa, the debate goes on. President Sarkozy, backed by Prime Minister Fillon, has said that the burqua was not welcome in France. However, there has been a set-back to the proposals to ban this all-enveloping garment:

France's highest administrative body warned Tuesday that a total prohibition on full-body Islamic veils in public risks being found unconstitutional in a setback to President Nicolas Sarkozy's goal of an all-out ban.

Even a limited ban on the full-body veil would be difficult to enforce, the Council of State said in a study of the legal possibilities for a broad application of a ban on burqa-like garments that was commissioned by Prime Minister Francois Fillon earlier this year.

A total ban risks violating the French constitution and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the report said.

Once again, one has to wonder at the mentality of people who solemnly proclaim that the depriving Muslim women of basic rights or even of participation in the society around them is somehow an affirmation of human rights.

Updating the Russian story

It does not get any better. At least 12 people were killed when two suicide bombers struck in Kizlyar in Dagestan, the other Autonomous Republic apart from Ingushetiya that the Chechnyan war spread to a long time ago.

The dead included a number of police officers, including the town's police chief. According to the Russian Interior Ministry, one of the suicide attackers drove a car bomb in the direction of the town center. When traffic police attempted to halt the vehicle, the bomb was detonated. The explosion took place near a day-care center and a police station. The second blast occurred after a bomber dressed as a police officer joined the crowd of investigators, rescue workers and onlookers and then detonated the explosives.

Terrorist attacks are not unknown in the Caucasus and neither are ferocious reprisals by the Russian troops. Normally they are not reported in the Russian media, let alone the Western one but coming as they did 48 hours after the Moscow attacks, these explosions are seen as sinister harbingers of a wider campaign.

There is now a general assumption that the attacks are revenge ones for the military operation in Ingushetiya that I mentioned in the previous posting on the subect.

Meanwhile, President Prime Minister Putin has put on his tough guy act again and using the language he usually employs at times like this has announced that "the accomplices and the masterminds" of these attacks had to be "scraped from the bottom of the sewer and into the daylight". All well and good but as a number of Russian and Western commentators and, indeed, Russian security service spokesmen have noted, the war, which was supposed to be over some time ago is continuing unabated. Gutter language (in this case, quite literally so) has made little difference to reality.

Doku Umarov, a Chechnyan separatist who has proclaimed himself to be a fighter in the global jihad and a firm supporter of Sharia law in Chechnya has claimed responsibility for the Moscow and Kizlyar explosions though, obviously, not personally. It is one of the major tragedies of that twenty-year old conflict (apart from the tens of thousands dead, tens of thousands maimed and mentally scarred on both sides) that what had started as a possibly soluble question of national self-government has been taken over though only to some extent by Islamist extremists. Doku Umarov would not have been given the time of day by the first Chechnyan leader, General Dzhokhar Dudayev, killed by the Russians in 1996 or by Aslan Maskhadov, the last leader to be elected in anything remotely resembling a free and fair contest, also killed by the Russians in
2005.

As the same article in the New York Times describes the reaction to the attacks has been quite similar to previous ones. President Medvedev has called for "far more cruel tactics" in dealing with militants. Indeed, the Ministry of Interior will be overhauled with that particular aim in view.

The head of Russia’s Federal Security Service said that authorities knew who planned Monday’s attack and the double suicide bombing on Wednesday in Dagestan that killed 12, and that they were interrogating suspects and carrying out search operations.

This has worked so well before.

Smart diplomacy

Apparently the Boy-King of the Conservative Party is unhappy about President Obama, hitherto the man he admired and sought to emulate, taking, well sort of, the Argentinian side in the latest uproar over the Falklands. Well diddums. I recall large swathes of the Conservative Party drooling over the election of this wonderfully charismatic new personality who was bringing hope and change to ... well, it is not quite clear to whom. In fact, the Conservatives have half-adopted the slogan but they talk only about change, not hope. But let us look at the bright side: at least the Boy-King has noticed that there is something going on in the South Atlantic. I must admit I was not absolutely sure.

On the other side of the Pond they look at these things differently. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds we get a link to an expert filleting by Walter Russell Mead of the Obama foreign policy.

The health care win has given the President his mojo back at home, but things overseas are still looking grim. We are neglecting or quarreling with our friends and reaching out to our enemies — but neither policy is yielding much in the way of results.

The latest case is Canada; on a visit to Ottawa to discuss Arctic policy with Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly criticized the Canadians for failing to invite all eight members of the Arctic Council to the consultation. Iceland, Finland and Sweden were miffed at being excluded. This was all very well and no doubt deserved; the next day, however, the Canadian Foreign Minister rejected Secretary Clinton’s pleas and announced that Canada will be ending its Afghan mission next year.

I don’t blame any American diplomat for seizing the opportunity to criticize Canada for its lack of sensitivity and inclusiveness; they do it to us all the time and I don’t see why the Canadians should have all the fun. Let’s criticize them for riding roughshod over the rights of small countries and native peoples now and then just to let them know how pointless and infuriating that kind of self-righteous and empty posturing can be. Even so, lecturing one day and begging in vain on the morrow isn’t the most dignified diplomatic posture an American secretary of state can assume. And the pattern of poor relations with close allies is disturbing. Currently embroiled in a quarrel with Israel over Jewish housing construction in East Jerusalem, the administration recently angered the EU by refusing to attend a summit in Madrid, embarrassed Britain by seeming to side with Argentina over negotiations over the Falklands Islands, canceled an invitation to Afghanistan’s President Karzai, and cheesed off Brazil when President Obama made his last minute, ill-fated dash to Copenhagen to snatch the 2016 Olympics from Rio. And where the administration hasn’t figured out a way to insult an old ally, Congress steps in — this time by passing another version of the Armenian genocide resolution through a key House committee.

Actually, I am not at all sure about that mojo back home. The popularity ratings say otherwise and the fact that the Democrats are spending their time shrilly and viciously attacking the Obamacare opponents instead of explaining what a wonderful development it is do not make one feel that the mojo is at all well. But when it comes to foreign relations Walter Russell Mead is spot on as even our own Boy-king of our own Conservative Party has noticed.

As Professor Reynolds says:

Where’s that “smart diplomacy” we were promised?

Indeed. As the rest of the Mead blog explains, Obama is ending up with many of Bush's old policies as far as Iran, China and Cuba are concerned. One day he might return to Bush's policies towards America's friends as well.