Been hearing this a lot lately

The most unexpected people, such as Oxford academics are beginning to mutter that, perhaps, there is something to be said for George W. Bush in matters foreign, particularly as one looks at his successor's ineptitude. Indeed, people are saying that maybe, just maybe, it is President Bush's freedom for the Middle East agenda that is being played out now, however awkwardly, through much of the Arab world.

Charles Krauthammer's article in The Washington Post may not come into the category of the unexpected ones but is, as one would expect, cogently argued.

Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.

A strange moral inversion, considering that Hussein's evil was an order of magnitude beyond Gaddafi's. Gaddafi is a capricious killer; Hussein was systematic. Gaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a "Republic of Fear."

...

No matter the hypocritical double standard. Now that revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush's freedom agenda, it's not just Iraq that has slid into the memory hole. Also forgotten is the once proudly proclaimed "realism" of Years One and Two of President Obama's foreign policy - the "smart power" antidote to Bush's alleged misty-eyed idealism.

It began on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first Asia trip, when she publicly played down human rights concerns in China. The administration also cut aid for democracy promotion in Egypt by 50 percent. And cut civil society funds - money for precisely the organizations we now need to help Egyptian democracy - by 70 percent.

This new realism reached its apogee with Obama's reticence and tardiness in saying anything in support of the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran. On the contrary, Obama made clear that nuclear negotiations with the discredited and murderous regime (talks that a child could see would go nowhere) took precedence over the democratic revolutionaries in the street - to the point where demonstrators in Tehran chanted, "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them."

Read the whole thing as it also provides the necessary links to the other articles.

I would, however, like to add one thing. Under President Obama the United States appears to have abandoned its role and there have been rather silly comments about power seeping away from it to .... well, nobody quite knows where. Europe is no longer the preferred successor, China and India have rather a lot of internal problems and the rest is nowhere. Yet, even with this inept politician at the helm (when he bothers to show up) there is no question in anybody's mind which is the only country that could, conceivably, make a difference in a tricky situation like the one in Libya.

Sir Humphrey at work

As it happens there is a good deal to be said about the House of Lords European Union Committee's 5th Report of the 2010-2011 session, published in January and entitled The EU strategy for growth and the UK National Reform Programme. Most of it will not be liked by the few people who will bother to pay attention.

However, just now I should like to leave you with a quotation from the oral evidence given by Lord Sassoon, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, a man who appears reasonably regularly in this blog.

In response to an admittedly fairly silly question from Lord Dear about who was and who was not consulted in the drafting of the UK National Reform Programme a.k.a. NRP (hands up those who knew we had one of those), Lord Sassoon said or, one assumes, read out what his talented civil servants concocted for him:

What I've described is essentially a top-down process, yes, that has gone bottom-up, as I've described so far, across official levels at Departments very widely. Now we have to make sure that nothing has fallen between the cracks in the stakeholder engagement process, but I think this issue of top-level Government buy-in to it is very important. I see it as a feature of the way that the new Government goes about its business. The approach of Cabinet Committees, with Ministers taking them very seriously, officials being energised by the fact that Committees will come back, rather than the Committee process being in any sense a formality, is something that in a lot of processes, not just relevant to the NRP, is galvanising much better across Government co-ordination in a very productive way. I think this applies to the NRP, as to lots of other things.

Quite so, Minister.

Time to stop laughing

Though it is rather difficult to do so. I don't know which is funnier, watching the Lib-Dims rubbing their collective behind where they were kicked soundly yet again, while insisting that somehow they have enough popular support to be in government or watching the Tories burying their collective heads in the sand yet again. Of course, they were not going to win in Barnsley. But to come third behind UKIP is not quite what the Boy-King had promised them. Given that it is UKIP that came second, it is reasonable to say that the voting was not just about student loans or possible cuts in the bloated NHS.

Nevertheless, it is time to stop laughing. The results are bad for the Cleggerons but not that good for the rest of us. First of all, as ever, over 60 per cent stayed away from the polling booths, saying, in effect, a plague upon all your houses. By all, they meant all, even the small parties. I find it hard to understand that people prefer not to cast their votes at all to casting them for a non-main stream party but that is the situation and it is not a happy one. If we ever have that in/out referendum (not under this government but it might happen one day) how many people will decide that they can't be bothered to cast their vote?

Secondly, UKIP did well but not quite well enough. It got 2,953 votes and as an American friend and supporter said to me, the gap between that and Labour's 14,724 is just too depressing. Not unexpected for Barnsley, I replied, without adding that a three-legged stool with a red rosette would win there.

However, coming a distant second in a by-election and even being, possibly, the biggest party in Brussels in 2014 as Ed West says in today's Telegraph is not enough to make a real difference either to the political structure of this country or to introduce a real debate about freedom, democracy and sovereignty. We have a long way to go and campaigns for a referendum that we might or might not win is not the right way. Neither is a change to the AV system.

Crikey!

All I can find about the full results of the Barnsley by-election is Martin Wainwright's twitter on the Guardian site and it says: "It's Lab, UKIP, Con, BNP, Ind, Lib Dem, and Eng Dem in that order". Is Ind the Monster Raving Loony Party?

BBC tells us that Labour has a majority of 11,821, a majority of over 60 per cent on a turn-out of around 36 per cent. UKIP definitely second.

Update from Martin Wainwright:

Lab 14,724, UKIP 2,953, Con 1,999, BNP 1,453, Independent (Tony Defoy local man) 1266, Lib Dem 1012, Eng Dem 544, Loonies 198, Ind 60

Not a good night for the Lib-Dims or the Tories. Heh!

Even I'm speechless

But not for long. Still, momentarily, this piece by Nile Gardiner silenced me.

It would appear that the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (err, what?) is giving millions of euros, which they do not find on trees, to American anti-death penalty campaigns. Oh goody. Not only they are using our money for purposes hardly intended, they are also interfering with the domestic politics of another country. Indeed, they are interfering with individual State politics within the United States. This is, of course, the sophisticated soft diplomacy of the EU that is so different from American interference in other people's affairs. Oh, I suppose that was only true under President Bush.

Apparently, this organization's key objectives are:

Enhancing respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in countries and regions where they are most at risk;

Strengthening the role of civil society in promoting human rights and democratic reform, in supporting the peaceful conciliation of group interests and in consolidating political participation and representation;

Supporting actions in areas covered by EU Guidelines: dialogue on Human rights, human rights defenders, the death penalty, torture, children and armed conflicts and violence against women;

Supporting and strengthening the international and regional framework for the protection of human rights, justice, the rule of law and the promotion of democracy;

building confidence in and enhancing the reliability and transparency of democratic electoral processes, in particular through monitoring electoral processes.

The United States being a particularly bad example of all these bad things, in the EIDHR's estimation.

Nile Gardiner gives some details:

Here is a list of US recipients of EU EIDHR aid in 2009, which amounted to €2,624,395 ($3,643,951). The recipients of EU aid include the rather wealthy American Bar Association, whose annual budget approached $150 million in 2008.

American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education: EU grant: €708,162 ($983, 277)
Project: The Death Penalty Assessments Project: Toward a Nationwide Moratorium on Executions

Death Penalty Information Center: EU grant: €193,443 ($268,585)
Project: Changing the Course of the Death Penalty Debate. A proposal for public opinion research, message development, and communications of capital punishment in the US.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: EU grant: €305,974 ($424,829)
Project: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Intensive Assistance Program

Reprieve LBG: EU grant: €526,816 ($731,591) (some of these funds also went to “European countries”) Project: Engaging Europe in the fight for US abolition

Murder Victim’s Families for Human Rights Non-Profit Corporation: EU grant: €495,000 ($686,608) (some of these funds also went to other countries, including Japan and Taiwan). Project: Voices of Victims Against the Death Penalty

Witness to Innocence Protection: EU grant: €395,000 ($548,538)
Project: American DREAM Campaign

Time to ask a few questions on both sides of the Pond, methinks. (Oh and the issue here is not the death penalty as such. I am not expressing any views on that.)

Just shows what propaganda can achieve

It is now an accepted geopolitical theory that the West, particularly the United States, wages war on Muslims. How that squares with the opprobrium flung at the West, particularly the United States, for intervening after the European countries failed miserably in the war of Yugoslav disintegration, is anybody's guess. However, it would appear that some Kosovan Albanians know as little history as the western media does. How else can one explain the fact that the murder of two American soldiers in Frankfurt and the wounding of two others, was carried out by a Kosovan Albanian?

Fair trade or free trade

As Fair Trade fortnight kicks off and we are subjected to yet more emotional blackmail advertising on the subject, Philip Booth sounds a useful warning in the Daily Telegraph. He does not dismiss Fair Trade completely but points out the many problems with it and the very limited effect it has on poverty, adding that only free trade will help producers in developing countries. Hear, hear.

Incidentally, when those "fair" prices are set, who decides whether they are fair?