Even worse than we thought last night

I opened my e-mails and saw the following report from the Washington Times: 

Libyan officials say the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans have been killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi by protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

The officials say Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff. The protesters were firing gunshots and rocket-propelled grenades.

All of the officials — three in all — hold senior security positions in Benghazi.

They are deputy interior minister for eastern Libya Wanis al-Sharaf; Benghazi security chief Abdel-Basit Haroun; and Benghazi city council and security official Ahmed Bousinia.

This is not good news for President Obama. He ought to think about President Carter and Iran.

News from around the world - 2

Meanwhile we also have news from the United States where 9/11 is a day of solemn memory and many remember what they and others were doing on that day. Candidates in the forthcoming election have pledged not to campaign on this day. To be quite precise, they seem to have pledged not to put up negative ads on the day but most people took it as a pledge not to campaign.

Well, they may have pledged but at least one broke that pledge. President Obama decided that the day was of no real importance and sent his best weapon, Bill Clinton, to campaign in Florida.

No negative ads, so that's OK. Well, not really negative. Or maybe a little negative but nothing serious.

However, this may well annoy a lot of people though not, it would appear, those who can see nothing wrong with their great hero.

It seems that both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama tweeted just once each yesterday. Romney's said:

On this most somber day, America is united under God in its quest for peace and freedom at home and across the world.

Unexciting but also unexceptionable and suitably solemn. President Obama's tweet (the only one on 9/11) was somewhat different:

The election is in 8 weeks. Sign up to volunteer: OFA.BO/s3tXFz

Well, tweeting is there to say what is on your mind without a second thought.

Another action President Obama thought essential to carry out on 9/11 was to release a special message to the Arab Forum

Obama offers thanks to the Emir of Qatar--showboating some rather halting Arabic skills in addressing "His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani"--and praising the inspiring democratic example of the Arab Spring, which happened to leave the absolute monarchy of Qatar untouched.

He also offers support for his envoys, including Attorney General Eric Holder, who is attending the Arab Forum conference as the chief U.S. representative. The Arab Forum's goal is to recover assets stolen by formerly autocratic regimes, including Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. (But not Qatar.)

Still, one has to be fair to President Obama. He may spend every waking moment on thinking about his campaign (and has done so since the day he was inaugurated) but he does not care whether he gets the Jewish vote, until now solidly Democrat, or not.

Having, in the past insulted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel in a way one does not insult the leader of any foreign government, and certainly not His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, this time President Obama has simply refused to meet him, pleading some diary clash.

News from around the world - 1

Most of us probably spent some of the day remembering that fateful one in 2001. I can recall with extreme clarity what I did all day in what order. However, some people took a slightly unorthodox way of remembering.

In Cairo the anniversary was remembered by a group of, one assumes Islamist extremists and quite possibly Muslim Brotherhood supporters, storming the US embassy, tearing down the flag and burning it. It seems that they were protesting about a film that has been produced by a group of US-based Coptic Christians who, one assumes, escaped from the growing anti-Coptic violence in Egypt. It is said that the film "demeans Islam and the Prophet Mohammed". Whereas completely insane behaviour supposedly in Islam's name does not demean it, I suppose.

Many of the more Islamist-leaning protesters had answered calls by Salafist leader Wesam Abdel-Wareth – who is also the president of Egypt's ultra-conservative Al-Hekma television channel – to protest the film 'Mohammed's trial' at 5pm outside the US embassy in Cairo's Garden City district. 

Abdel-Wareth, for his part, denied that protesters had managed to breach embassy premises, claiming that the American flag had been torched in front – rather than inside – embassy grounds. 

The Al-Hekma channel's official Facebook page, meanwhile, has posted a photo of a group of young men removing the flag outside the embassy with a comment that reads: "Ultras Zamalek tear the American flag in front of the embassy." 

US embassy spokesman David Linfield, for his part, confirmed that protesters had been able to enter the embassy and remove the flag. He went on to deny rumours, however, that shots had been fired at demonstrators or that anyone had been injured or killed. 

According to one Ahram Online reporter at the scene, no one had been injured in the ongoing demonstration. Despite the tense atmosphere, security forces deployed at the scene appeared relatively relaxed, with many of them sitting on the sidewalk.

Right, that's Egypt. Then there is the other great example of the Arab Spring, Libya. Remember Libya? The country that would probably be still under Gaddafi's rule if it weren't for NATO forces, specifically American, British and French ones?

Well they had an anti-American riot as well. This one seems to have been a little more serious.

Militiamen in Libya have stormed the US consulate in Benghazi, the country's second largest city. 

Reports say they were protesting against a US-made film that is allegedly insulting to the Prophet Muhammad, and set fire to the building. 

The building is said to have burnt down. It is thought nobody was in the consulate at the time.

Reuters says that

Gunmen attacked U.S. consulate offices in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday, and fought with security forces in protest against a U.S. film they say is blasphemous, a security official said.

He said a fire was burning inside the consulate and that staff had been evacuated.

A Reuters reporter saw three injured members of the Libyan security forces taken away in an ambulance. A Libyan security official who declined to be named said one U.S. security guard was injured in the clashes.

AFP reports that one American was killed and one injured. The latest Reuters report confirms this adding that several staff in the Consulate have been injured.

Reuters reporters on the scene could see looters raiding the empty Benghazi compound, walking off with desks, chairs and washing machines.

Unknown gunmen were shooting at the buildings while others threw handmade bombs into the compound, setting off small explosions.

Small fires were burning around the compound.

Passersby entered the unsecured compound to take pictures with their mobile phones and watch the looting.

Never let a good riot go to waste, say I, but use it to furnish your home. 

Defiance!

Some logic in this

Hungary has decided to display a certain amount of logic in its prosecution of past war criminals. I am not saying that Hungarians do not display logic at other times (it is, after all, a country that has produced more first-class mathematicians per head of population than any other) but when it comes to matters of this kind, burying of heads in the sand is the order of the day.

Having detained and put under house arrest "97-year-old Laszlo Csatary, the former police chief of the Jewish ghetto in Kosice, who oversaw both the ghetto and the deportations to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944" the Hungarian authorities have finally got round to arresting former Interior Minister Bela Biszku, who

is accused of responsibility for ordering the security forces to open fire on crowds in Budapest and Salgotarjan in November and December 1956. About 50 people were killed in those two incidents alone.

Further charges, relating to his role in allegedly interfering with the courts to ensure heavy sentences, including the death sentence for the revolutionaries, may be added. At least 226 people were executed.

There is more on the story here and on Xinhuan.

It is, of course, logical to deal with Communist criminals as harshly as with Nazi ones but one does wonder why it took the Hungarian authorities quite so long to do so.

One of the mysteries of the case is exactly why it has taken so long. It is 22 years since the fall of communism, and 44 years since Hungary signed the 1968 New York Convention on bringing those responsible for war crimes to justice.

In 2011 the so-called Biszku Law was drawn up, allowing for the 1968 New York Convention to be incorporated into Hungarian law.

In February this year, the Budapest Prosecution Service began an investigation, in reaction to an individual complaint against him.

Asked by the BBC to explain the timing of Mr Biszku's arrest, the chief prosecutor mentioned the change in the law.

That merely rephrases the problem. Why did it take so long for the New York Convention to be incorporated into law? By now, Mr Biszku is practically the only man alive who could be held responsible and he, like the arrested former Nazis is very old.

How very true

This is a phenomenon we are all acquainted with but I was interested to read a pithy summary in R. C. Woodthorpe's The Public School Murder, which was published in 1932. (It was apparently dramatized for the BBC in 1969 as part of the Detective series.)

Mr. Smith thought it strange that Fleet Street should not know the difference between an O.T.C. and a mere cadet corps. But then Mr. Smithy often wondered whether the papers got anything right at all: they were so often wrong on subjects with which he happened to be acquainted. And friends of his who were expert in other subjects, had remarked on the same phenomenon. 

Time has passed and we have many more media outlets than they did in 1932 though, probably fewer newspapers and definitely fewer magazines. But the same interesting phenomenon remains.

Shocking news: party leaders listen to members

Yes, I know. You must all be shocked. Because the media is shocked. I hasten to add that this is not a story about any British or European party leaders but the peculiar way the media on this side of the Pond reports the American presidential election.

There is a definite suggestion that the Republicans are going beyond the pale by challenging Obama for the presidency. The American Constitution may have proscribed presidential elections every four years but surely that was just because the Founding Fathers could not envisage a true embodiment of perfection taking that position. That, actually, is true: they could not envisage any human being, let alone a politician as an embodiment of true perfection and understood the need for a constitution that would or should control all of them. That is something President Obama and his supporters find hard to understand.

At this stage the outcome is unclear. The two candidates seem close and much depends on a few swing states as well as what the economic news might be in the next couple of months.

However, it seems certain that Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan is someone the GOP can be very pleased with, not least because he is a genuinely inspiring speaker, apparently without the constant aid of the teleprompter. His speech to the Republican National Convention  caused ructions on both the right and the left, the first pleasurable, the second somewhat annoyed.

The reaction to it on this side of the Pond was muted, possibly because it was not clearly understood or because our hacks are embarrassed by a politician of apparent conviction. Gregor Peter Schmits of Der Spiegel had no doubts: he hated Ryan's speech and everything about Ryan. The man is more dangerous than Sarah Palin, still a highly influential lady, ever was. Really? Why?

Four years ago, Sarah Palin energized the Republicans with her convention speech. This year, it is Paul Ryan who has found a common cause with the party's grassroots. His stark brand of conservatism is bad news for the socially weak.

Well, Heavens to Murgatroyd, as the great Snagglepuss used to say. Imagine that: a party leader or second to him who makes common cause with the party's grassroots. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. As for the Romney-Ryan policy being bad for the socially weak, it comes as news to me that an economy in which unemployment is growing while the number of businesses is decreasing would be good for the socially weak.

I have been told by people who actually read the Times that Ryan's speech was reported as wanting to slash government spending and to leave people without a safety net to the vagaries of the free market, which is not exactly true. It is true that Ryan talked about cutting government spending and encouraging people to build their own businesses and make their own money without government intervention. Whether that is what will happen if Romney wins in November is irrelevant. The point is that a supposedly conservative paper like the Times that even the very suggestion of self-reliance as opposed to reliance on the government is a bad thing and Ryan by articulating such thoughts of those who are likely to support the Republicans is clearly no better than King Herod.

Meanwhile, the Evening Standard, the freebie paper handed out at tube stations and street corners in London, has added its own little screed of hatred for the Republican nominees. It seems that not only Paul Ryan but Mitt Romney himself is also pandering to his party, which has become completely unelectable. It's not clear whether that is because Romney is pandering to it or the other way round. Then again, I recall the then American correspondent of the Standard, James Fenton assuring all and sundry that the Republicans were a joke and Obama had regained whatever popularity he may have lost about a week before the mid-term elections that gave the GOP the biggest landslide in history.

One thing we must be grateful for: there is no chance of any party leader in Britain or on the Continent of falling into the heinous error of listening to the members. .