Amusing how supposedly hard-bitten journalists go all weak at the knees and pre-pubescent girlish whenever any of the following magical spells are uttered – Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13872735
Yesterday on the ITV news the male reporter actually said that pictures of Mrs Obama and Mandela were “tender images”. How many other senior politicians enjoy such gushing press?
Derek Turner, 21 June 2011
This is my latest article, this one in The University Bookman, Russell Kirk”s journal.
http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/when-free-trade-is-not-fair-exchange/
My view on free trade has always been that it is a good thing between countries on comparable socio-economic levels which play by the same rules – such as within the EU, between European countries and North America, etc. The problems arise when you open your markets to another country which does not open its markets to you in return – or abuses your goodwill and fair-dealing to engage in dubious practices. Free movement of capital, technology and labour are also problematic for all kinds of reasons, for example when labour is much cheaper overseas and Western companies consequently outsource everything there, leaving domestic workers jobless and communities dying – and running the risk of losing essential skills. It is somewhat ironic that people who fervently defend political sovereignty seem perfectly relaxed about potentially losing their economic sovereignty. It is only relatively recently that Conservatism came to mean mere Manchester liberalism. Derek Turner, 20 June 2011
The BBC has been excited today by a report that “more than 700 complaints” were made by illegal immigrants against G4S, a company which polices immigration removal centres. Shock, horror, UN resolution, send in the warplanes.
But the story deflates with a faintly unpleasant odour as soon as you begin to examine it. The angel is in the details.
There were 773 complaints – “240 more than during the previous year”. (Where ARE those warplanes?) However:
Nearly 640 of the cases were found to be wholly unsubstantiated
Of the just under 130 cases that were wholly or partly upheld, most were about lost property or “poor communication” – very minor offences by any standard, and the fault may not all be on one side
Only three of the 48 assault claims were substantiated, and again one might guess that the fault may not always be on one side. No doubt some detainees put up spirited resistance to being placed aboard a plane that they do not wish to board, and if one was a security guard being kicked, punched, bitten or spat on, perhaps even the saintliest of us might become slightly peeved.
Only two complaints of “racism” were even partly substantiated. We are not told the details, but “racism” is of course a slippery concept, so we should be wary about taking these at face value
Reporting alleged abuses has recently been made simpler so there has been a rise in reported incidents
However, the number of genuine complaints has fallen over the last three years
Around 65,000 detainees passed through the three centres concerned during those three years, so the total number of complaints is small.
All the complainants were of course illegal immigrants. Over 50% of the complaints emanated from one centre, which houses convicted criminals – arguably not the most credible complainants.
We have here a perfect “race” storm – vexatious complaints from people who should not be in the UK anyway, a vexatious Freedom of Information Act request for this information from someone who wanted to stir up trouble and journalists trying to fill a space quickly and with minimal effort. Utterly inconsequential as all this is, stories of this kind if unchallenged can pass into myth (or eventually even legislation). Derek Turner, 17 June 2011
This is a letter QR American editor Matk G. Brennan sent to the New York Times today
June 15, 2011
Dear Mr. Zeleny:
I am writing in reference to your (mis)use of the word “isolationism” in your article “Candidates Show G.O.P. Less United On Goals Of War” in today’s New York Times.
As a working definition, “Isolationism” can be defined as a foreign policy adopted by a nation in which the country refuses to enter into any alliances, foreign trade or economic commitments, or international agreements in hopes of focusing all of its resources into advancement within its own borders while remaining at peace with foreign countries by avoiding all entanglements of foreign agreements. None of the presidential candidates offered any such policy prescription in the debate Monday night, even though you characterized their comments as “a renewed streak of isolationism among Republicans.”
In the postscript to his important 1966 work Isolationism in America 1935-1941, Manfred Jonas concluded, “True isolationism…survives only as “old nostalgia.” As a positive, defensible policy it is dead. The years from 1935 to 1941 were the years of its swan song.”
The word you should have used was “non-interventionism.” This word better captures the notion that the United States will not intervene in foreign wars that have no bearing on the American national interest. To categorize the Republican debaters’ positions as “a renewed streak of isolationism,” plays on mythological historical fears while at the same time pushing for more American military debacles like the current ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. And perhaps I should add Yemen to that tragically long list.
When the United States cuts off all commercial trade, cultural exchanges, and diplomatic relations with foreign nations, then you might correctly write about “a renewed streak of isolationism.” In the meantime, please note that your description is historically inaccurate as well as rhetorically incendiary.
Sincerely,
Mark Brennan
New York
Posted by Derek Turner 15 June 2011
Iain Duncan Smith’s think-tank the Centre for Social Justice is examining the issue of human trafficking, which apparently affects 6,000 unfortunates every year. BBC report here –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13775276
This is just one of the many ways mass migration has altered British culture – importing antediluvian mores as well as poverty and extraneous ethnic feuds. No doubt the CSJ will shortly be calling for limitations on Third World immigration as the easiest, quickest and cheapest way of eliminating this disgrace from British life… Derek Turner. 15 June 2011
Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty, which supposedly supports freedom of speech, has maintained a studied silence in the case of embattled LSE lecturer and alleged racist Satoshi Kanazawa.
But Dr Kanazawa is not the only person to have been accused of damaging the reputation of the LSE. The record shows that the Director of Liberty was present at a Council meeting of the School on 20th October 2009 when the propriety of taking money from Libya was considered. (The gift had been officially accepted by the Council on 23 June 2009, at a meeting Chakrabarti did not attend.) See https://modernityblog.wordpress.com/tag/saif-gaddafi/
In the meantime, the LSE’s governing body had received a dissenting note from Professor Fred Halliday, an expert on the Middle East, which advised against acceptance of the donation. But David Held informed the Council that “having trawled traditional media and the blogosphere, no evidence had been found that LSE’s links with Libya had attracted criticism…” He also pointed out that with the exception of Professor Halliday, no member of the School community had questioned the decision to take money from Libya. The Council then resolved that the gift to the Centre of Global Governance, co-directed by David Held, should stand.
In other words, Ms Chakrabarti had an opportunity to demand the return of the gift from the Foundation chaired by Dr Saif al-Islam Gaddafi but she failed to take it.
Evidently, some are held to account for their action or inaction, some are not. And bizarrely, Shami Chakrabarti, in her capacity as a governor of the LSE, may eventually sit in judgement over Dr Kanazawa. Leslie Jones, 11 June 2011
Very sorry, if not surprised, to learn of the death of Patrick Leigh-Fermor, at the age of 96. He did history’s most enviable walk, and wrote about it in two of the 20th century’s greatest travel books. What a pity he never finished the trilogy.
His letters to and from Deborah Devonshire (which I reviewed some time ago for Chronicles) are also a delight. His other books were to my mind slightly less successful, but his polite patience in trying to unravel the junk theology that is voodoo (in The Traveller’s Tree) is a marvel of diplomacy. 10 June 2011
The BBC today reports an exodus of Syrian refugees into Turkey – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13710588 Of course I feel sorry for the refugees – I’d do just as they are doing if I were a Syrian – but this little episode should remind us what an extraordinarily bad idea it would be to admit Turkey into the EU.
If Turkey was an EU member, as David Cameron, Liam Fox, Boris Johnson, Barack Obama and many others advocate, then not only would Turkish problems (which are enormous) become Europe’s problems, but so would the problems of every country which borders Turkey, which include such utopias as Syria, Iran and Iraq. That this obvious fact should need to be pointed out shows the inadequacy of the “debate” on this topic, at least in Britain. And yet this is just one of many excellent reasons for saying thanks but no thanks to Turkey. If you’re interested in some of the arguments, I have written about this here – http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/euro-centric/turkies/
and here
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/a_bridge_too_far_turkey_and_europe/
It’s puzzling that Conservative politicians in the UK (with one or two notable exceptions, like Roger Helmer) have not thought of taking this up as a campaigning issue.
Apart from anything else, it would be a good means of bludgeoning Brussels politicians (again, with notable exceptions, like Frits Bolkestein), who have been angling to admit Turkey for at least two decades, without taking the trouble to consult European electors for their views on whether Europe should change from being 5% to 15% Muslim overnight, or whether they would care to assume the financial burden of securing the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Georgia, suppressing internal terrorism, subsidizing Turkish imports or improving the Cappadocian road network.
If they don’t do this, either UKIP or even Labour will co-opt Turkey as a populist vote-winner. The latter may sound unlikely, but it has already been advocated by Matt Cavanagh, a former Labour adviser on home affairs, writing in an IPPR booklet of last year called Immigration Under Labour. We should not forget that since taking office, Ed Miliband has been striking regular “man-of-the-people” poses about immigration, and it is would be easy for him to co-opt white working class voters by portraying the Tores as being “out of touch” on this. We shall have to watch and learn! Derek Turner, 9 June 2011
German-spealing readers may be interested in my latest column for the Berlin newspaper Junge Freiheit (3 June). It deals with Ken Clarke’s unfortunate differentiation between rape and “serious rape”. Derek Turner, 8 June 2011
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
EDITOR’S NOTE: The original QR always disliked the new poetry that emerged in the first half of the 19th century as a reaction against the stately poetry of the Augustan Age. The QR’s first editor, William Gifford, had first made his literary mark with a long poem called The Baviad, a vitriolic attack against the Della Cruscans, a group of sentimentalist poets briefly in vogue at the turn of the 18th/19th centuries. Later, the journal was even blamed by Lord Byron for the death of John Keats, whose Endymion was savaged by John Wilson Croker as being sentimental, bathetic, vulgar and implicitly subversive. Keats was termed a “Cockney poet” – and Croker appears to have regarded Tennyson in the same light. Croker (1750-1857) was one of the QR’s liveliest contributors for over 20 years, in between working as an Irish MP and a highly effective Secretary to the Admiralty. Apart from his QR writings, he is also credited with having introduced the word “Conservatives” into British politics. He is thought to be the model for “Rigby” in Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Coningsby. The first half of this review appeared in the print edition of the Autumn 2009 QR. DT
This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr Tennyson’s second appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first publication, which, if it at all resembles its younger brother, must be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius – another and a brighter star of that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of Endymion: We certainly did not discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on every table; and, what is still more unequivocal) familiarized it in every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge; and we request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats’s works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion in his prolegomena. Continue reading
