Buckley's Bigotry

British OpeningsBy William F. Buckley
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/british_openings.html

An essay published in a popular American news website that touches on British history and identity. Basically, a disquieting piece concerning the "Muslim problem" in Britain that supposedly threatens our way of life and parallels Napoleon and the Nazis. In short, crudely disguised xenophobia of a rather unpleasant nature, considerably weakened by his citation of Enoch Powell as a source of wisdom. Some thoughts:

Firstly (and facetiously), trying to blow up/destroy London IS part of the British way of life. From Guy Fawkes to the Dutch to the Germans to Northern Irish it is a well established feature of London life and everybody worth their salt has at least tried it.

Secondly, Muslims trying to set up a school to promote extreme (?) values occurs much less than Christians trying to do so and the idea that Islam is intrinsically more violent than Christianity or any other religion (except maybe Buddhism) is absurd. In Buckley's own words: "But it is time for the mother of parliaments to look unruly, unassimilable creeds in the face and say: No more." However, I don't think the world is ready for an purely atheistic state. Then again Buckley does remark that "In the end, the English are not hampered by toplofty commitments to freedom of speech and of conscience" so perhaps it would be ok.

Bush Gets Historical

The US President on why withdrawal would lead to bloodshed, citing the precedents of Korea and Vietnam. The Second World War also features, to prove that democracy is possible in previously undemocratic states, such as Japan, as well as to invoke the imagery and moral clarity of that struggle. He concludes, slightly disconcertingly, with an evangelical tone: "The greatest weapon in the arsenal of democracy is the desire for liberty written into the human heart by our Creator." Disconcerting because democracy seems to be regarded not a fair and accountable political system but thr realisation of some innate disposition imputted as part of a divine plan. Playing to the base I suppose.

August 22, 2007

History Offers Lessons on Iraq - G. W. Bush

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/lessons_from_history.html

I want to open today's speech with a story that begins on a sunny morning, when thousands of Americans were murdered in a surprise attack -- and our nation was propelled into a conflict that would take us to every corner of the globe.
The enemy who attacked us despises freedom, and harbors resentment at the slights he believes America and Western nations have inflicted on his people. He fights to establish his rule over an entire region. And over time, he turns to a strategy of suicide attacks destined to create so much carnage that the American people will tire of the violence and give up the fight.
If this story sounds familiar, it is -- except for one thing. The enemy I have just described is not al Qaeda, and the attack is not 9/11, and the empire is not the radical caliphate envisioned by Osama bin Laden. Instead, what I've described is the war machine of Imperial Japan in the 1940s, its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and its attempt to impose its empire throughout East Asia.
GA_googleFillSlot("RCP_Article_Middle_300x250");
var zflag_nid="305"; var zflag_cid="202/1"; var zflag_sid="131"; var zflag_width="300"; var zflag_height="250"; var zflag_sz="9";

Ultimately, the United States prevailed in World War II, and we have fought two more land wars in Asia. And many in this hall were veterans of those campaigns. Yet even the most optimistic among you probably would not have foreseen that the Japanese would transform themselves into one of America's strongest and most steadfast allies, or that the South Koreans would recover from enemy invasion to raise up one of the world's most powerful economies, or that Asia would pull itself out of poverty and hopelessness as it embraced markets and freedom.
The lesson from Asia's development is that the heart's desire for liberty will not be denied. Once people even get a small taste of liberty, they're not going to rest until they're free. Today's dynamic and hopeful Asia -- a region that brings us countless benefits -- would not have been possible without America's presence and perseverance. It would not have been possible without the veterans in this hall today. And I thank you for your service. (Applause.)
There are many differences between the wars we fought in the Far East and the war on terror we're fighting today. But one important similarity is at their core they're ideological struggles. The militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam were driven by a merciless vision for the proper ordering of humanity. They killed Americans because we stood in the way of their attempt to force their ideology on others. Today, the names and places have changed, but the fundamental character of the struggle has not changed. Like our enemies in the past, the terrorists who wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places seek to spread a political vision of their own -- a harsh plan for life that crushes freedom, tolerance, and dissent.
Like our enemies in the past, they kill Americans because we stand in their way of imposing this ideology across a vital region of the world. This enemy is dangerous; this enemy is determined; and this enemy will be defeated. (Applause.)
We're still in the early hours of the current ideological struggle, but we do know how the others ended -- and that knowledge helps guide our efforts today. The ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy are the same that lead us to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The defense strategy that refused to hand the South Koreans over to a totalitarian neighbor helped raise up a Asian Tiger that is the model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East. The result of American sacrifice and perseverance in Asia is a freer, more prosperous and stable continent whose people want to live in peace with America, not attack America.
At the outset of World War II there were only two democracies in the Far East -- Australia and New Zealand. Today most of the nations in Asia are free, and its democracies reflect the diversity of the region. Some of these nations have constitutional monarchies, some have parliaments, and some have presidents. Some are Christian, some are Muslim, some are Hindu, and some are Buddhist. Yet for all the differences, the free nations of Asia all share one thing in common: Their governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, and they desire to live in peace with their neighbors.
Along the way to this freer and more hopeful Asia, there were a lot of doubters. Many times in the decades that followed World War II, American policy in Asia was dismissed as hopeless and naive. And when we listen to criticism of the difficult work our generation is undertaking in the Middle East today, we can hear the echoes of the same arguments made about the Far East years ago.
In the aftermath of Japan's surrender, many thought it naive to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy. Then as now, the critics argued that some people were simply not fit for freedom.
Some said Japanese culture was inherently incompatible with democracy. Joseph Grew, a former United States ambassador to Japan who served as Harry Truman's Under Secretary of State, told the President flatly that -- and I quote -- "democracy in Japan would never work." He wasn't alone in that belief. A lot of Americans believed that -- and so did the Japanese -- a lot of Japanese believed the same thing: democracy simply wouldn't work.
Others critics said that Americans were imposing their ideals on the Japanese. For example, Japan's Vice Prime Minister asserted that allowing Japanese women to vote would "retard the progress of Japanese politics."
It's interesting what General MacArthur wrote in his memoirs. He wrote, "There was much criticism of my support for the enfranchisement of women. Many Americans, as well as many other so-called experts, expressed the view that Japanese women were too steeped in the tradition of subservience to their husbands to act with any degree of political independence." That's what General MacArthur observed. In the end, Japanese women were given the vote; 39 women won parliamentary seats in Japan's first free election. Today, Japan's minister of defense is a woman, and just last month, a record number of women were elected to Japan's Upper House. Other critics argued that democracy -- (applause.)
There are other critics, believe it or not, that argue that democracy could not succeed in Japan because the national religion -- Shinto -- was too fanatical and rooted in the Emperor. Senator Richard Russell denounced the Japanese faith, and said that if we did not put the Emperor on trial, "any steps we may take to create democracy are doomed to failure." The State Department's man in Tokyo put it bluntly: "The Emperor system must disappear if Japan is ever really to be democratic."
Those who said Shinto was incompatible with democracy were mistaken, and fortunately, Americans and Japanese leaders recognized it at the time, because instead of suppressing the Shinto faith, American authorities worked with the Japanese to institute religious freedom for all faiths. Instead of abolishing the imperial throne, Americans and Japanese worked together to find a place for the Emperor in the democratic political system.
And the result of all these steps was that every Japanese citizen gained freedom of religion, and the Emperor remained on his throne and Japanese democracy grew stronger because it embraced a cherished part of Japanese culture. And today, in defiance of the critics and the doubters and the skeptics, Japan retains its religions and cultural traditions, and stands as one of the world's great free societies. (Applause.)
You know, the experts sometimes get it wrong. An interesting observation, one historian put it -- he said, "Had these erstwhile experts" -- he was talking about people criticizing the efforts to help Japan realize the blessings of a free society -- he said, "Had these erstwhile experts had their way, the very notion of inducing a democratic revolution would have died of ridicule at an early stage."
Instead, I think it's important to look at what happened. A democratic Japan has brought peace and prosperity to its people. Its foreign trade and investment have helped jump-start the economies of others in the region. The alliance between our two nations is the lynchpin for freedom and stability throughout the Pacific. And I want you to listen carefully to this final point: Japan has transformed from America's enemy in the ideological struggle of the 20th century to one of America's strongest allies in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. (Applause.)
Critics also complained when America intervened to save South Korea from communist invasion. Then as now, the critics argued that the war was futile, that we should never have sent our troops in, or they argued that America's intervention was divisive here at home.
After the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel in 1950, President Harry Truman came to the defense of the South -- and found himself attacked from all sides. From the left, I.F. Stone wrote a book suggesting that the South Koreans were the real aggressors and that we had entered the war on a false pretext. From the right, Republicans vacillated. Initially, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate endorsed Harry Truman's action, saying, "I welcome the indication of a more definite policy" -- he went on to say, "I strongly hope that having adopted it, the President may maintain it intact," then later said "it was a mistake originally to go into Korea because it meant a land war."
Throughout the war, the Republicans really never had a clear position. They never could decide whether they wanted the United States to withdraw from the war in Korea, or expand the war to the Chinese mainland. Others complained that our troops weren't getting the support from the government. One Republican senator said, the effort was just "bluff and bluster." He rejected calls to come together in a time of war, on the grounds that "we will not allow the cloak of national unity to be wrapped around horrible blunders."
Many in the press agreed. One columnist in The Washington Post said, "The fact is that the conduct of the Korean War has been shot through with errors great and small." A colleague wrote that "Korea is an open wound. It's bleeding and there's no cure for it in sight." He said that the American people could not understand "why Americans are doing about 95 percent of the fighting in Korea."
Many of these criticisms were offered as reasons for abandoning our commitments in Korea. And while it's true the Korean War had its share of challenges, the United States never broke its word.
Today, we see the result of a sacrifice of people in this room in the stark contrast of life on the Korean Peninsula. Without Americans' intervention during the war and our willingness to stick with the South Koreans after the war, millions of South Koreans would now be living under a brutal and repressive regime. The Soviets and Chinese communists would have learned the lesson that aggression pays. The world would be facing a more dangerous situation. The world would be less peaceful.
Instead, South Korea is a strong, democratic ally of the United States of America. South Korean troops are serving side-by-side with American forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And America can count on the free people of South Korea to be lasting partners in the ideological struggle we're facing in the beginning of the 21st century. (Applause.)
For those of you who served in Korea, thank you for your sacrifice, and thank you for your service. (Applause.)
Finally, there's Vietnam. This is a complex and painful subject for many Americans. The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech. So I'm going to limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.
The argument that America's presence in Indochina was dangerous had a long pedigree. In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called, "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism -- and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."
After America entered the Vietnam War, the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. As a matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people.
In 1972, one antiwar senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?" A columnist for The New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: "It's difficult to imagine," he said, "how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." A headline on that story, date Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: "Indochina without Americans: For Most a Better Life."
The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.
Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."
There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."
His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."
Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet." Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently.
We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that "the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever." Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror -- but it's the central front -- it's the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it's the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (Applause.)
If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America. (Applause.)
Recently, two men who were on the opposite sides of the debate over the Vietnam War came together to write an article. One was a member of President Nixon's foreign policy team, and the other was a fierce critic of the Nixon administration's policies. Together they wrote that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be disastrous.
Here's what they said: "Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences." I believe these men are right.
In Iraq, our moral obligations and our strategic interests are one. So we pursue the extremists wherever we find them and we stand with the Iraqis at this difficult hour -- because the shadow of terror will never be lifted from our world and the American people will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator meant for all. (Applause.)
I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. I understand that. But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time. And we can learn something from history. In Asia, we saw freedom triumph over violent ideologies after the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives -- and that freedom has yielded peace for generations.
The American military graveyards across Europe attest to the terrible human cost in the fight against Nazism. They also attest to the triumph of a continent that today is whole, free, and at peace. The advance of freedom in these lands should give us confidence that the hard work we are doing in the Middle East can have the same results we've seen in Asia and elsewhere -- if we show the same perseverance and the same sense of purpose.
In a world where the terrorists are willing to act on their twisted beliefs with sickening acts of barbarism, we must put faith in the timeless truths about human nature that have made us free.
Across the Middle East, millions of ordinary citizens are tired of war, they're tired of dictatorship and corruption, they're tired of despair. They want societies where they're treated with dignity and respect, where their children have the hope for a better life. They want nations where their faiths are honored and they can worship in freedom.
And that is why millions of Iraqis and Afghans turned out to the polls -- millions turned out to the polls. And that's why their leaders have stepped forward at the risk of assassination. And that's why tens of thousands are joining the security forces of their nations. These men and women are taking great risks to build a free and peaceful Middle East -- and for the sake of our own security, we must not abandon them.
There is one group of people who understand the stakes, understand as well as any expert, anybody in America -- those are the men and women in uniform. Through nearly six years of war, they have performed magnificently. (Applause.) Day after day, hour after hour, they keep the pressure on the enemy that would do our citizens harm. They've overthrown two of the most brutal tyrannies of the world, and liberated more than 50 million citizens. (Applause.)
In Iraq, our troops are taking the fight to the extremists and radicals and murderers all throughout the country. Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year. (Applause.) We're in the fight. Today our troops are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against the extremists and radicals, into the fight against al Qaeda, into the fight against the enemy that would do us harm. They're clearing out the terrorists out of population centers, they're giving families in liberated Iraqi cities a look at a decent and hopeful life.
Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer is clear: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed. (Applause.)
Despite the mistakes that have been made, despite the problems we have encountered, seeing the Iraqis through as they build their democracy is critical to keeping the American people safe from the terrorists who want to attack us. It is critical work to lay the foundation for peace that veterans have done before you all.
A free Iraq is not going to be perfect. A free Iraq will not make decisions as quickly as the country did under the dictatorship. Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this. As I noted yesterday, the Iraqi government is distributing oil revenues across its provinces despite not having an oil revenue law on its books, that the parliament has passed about 60 pieces of legislation.
Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him. And it's not up to politicians in Washington, D.C. to say whether he will remain in his position -- that is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy, and not a dictatorship. (Applause.) A free Iraq is not going to transform the Middle East overnight. But a free Iraq will be a massive defeat for al Qaeda, it will be an example that provides hope for millions throughout the Middle East, it will be a friend of the United States, and it's going to be an important ally in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. (Applause.)
Prevailing in this struggle is essential to our future as a nation. And the question now that comes before us is this: Will today's generation of Americans resist the allure of retreat, and will we do in the Middle East what the veterans in this room did in Asia?
The journey is not going to be easy, as the veterans fully understand. At the outset of the war in the Pacific, there were those who argued that freedom had seen its day and that the future belonged to the hard men in Tokyo. A year and a half before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan's Foreign Minister gave a hint of things to come during an interview with a New York newspaper. He said, "In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will without question win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished, the democratic system bankrupt."
In fact, the war machines of Imperial Japan would be brought down -- brought down by good folks who only months before had been students and farmers and bank clerks and factory hands. Some are in the room today. Others here have been inspired by their fathers and grandfathers and uncles and cousins.
That generation of Americans taught the tyrants a telling lesson: There is no power like the power of freedom and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights for a free future for his children. (Applause.) And when America's work on the battlefield was done, the victorious children of democracy would help our defeated enemies rebuild, and bring the taste of freedom to millions.
We can do the same for the Middle East. Today the violent Islamic extremists who fight us in Iraq are as certain of their cause as the Nazis, or the Imperial Japanese, or the Soviet communists were of theirs. They are destined for the same fate. (Applause.)

The greatest weapon in the arsenal of democracy is the desire for liberty written into the human heart by our Creator. So long as we remain true to our ideals, we will defeat the extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will help those countries' peoples stand up functioning democracies in the heart of the broader Middle East. And when that hard work is done and the critics of today recede from memory, the cause of freedom will be stronger, a vital region will be brighter, and the American people will be safer.
Thank you, and God bless. (Applause.)

GSC Debate: Is the British Empire something to be proud of?

In this year marking the 60th anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence it seems fitting to pose the historical question of whether the ideologies and insitutions of imperialism that governed the subcontinent, and indeed at one point a quarter of the globe, were admirable in their form and acheivements or whether they were a cause of oppression and tyranny. The GSC this week will publish a series of essays on this subject in order to determine how this grand project should be viewed in a post-colonial age.

Whilst the impact of British hegemony will be a matter of contention its scale cannot be denied, stretching as it did, in some form, across centuries and continents. Even today the foreign policy of great world powers is seen in its shadow, whether in neo-conservative justifications for Middle Eastern intervention or former colonies' conceptions of political philosophy. Therefore, as the UK considers its place in the world, should it look fondly on those times when the sun never set upon its empire?

Genetically Capitalist - Is Britain's work ethic biologically determined?

England’s success may be in our genes - Gregory Clark

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2280334.ece

"the Industrial Revolution is more plausibly linked to a Darwinian process of “survival of the richest” that operated from at least 1250. Capitalist attitudes and economic growth triumphed in England because those with such attitudes came to predominate in the population by biological means. The modern English are the descendants of the upper classes of the preindustrial world, those who prospered economically. The poor disappeared. This process was most likely cultural, but we cannot exclude the possibility that the English may even be genetically capitalist."

Also:

"But why did this process advance faster in England than elsewhere? One advantage of England was how dull most English history is – there are plenty of villages where nothing of significance happened between 1200 and 1800. "

Notes from the end of history

Big business will pacify the clash of cultures - Francis Fukuyama

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2240415.ece

The end of history (as an A-level subject)

The end of history (as an A-level subject) - Joan Bakewell

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/joan_bakewell/article2851405.ece

"[History] is on one level a vast story of intrigue and machinations, rivalries and triumphs to outstrip any Bourne Inheritance-style plottings and counter-plottings. It is full of colourful people, challenging ideas, deadly betrayals, terrible tragedies, soaring achievements. Where's to be bored?"

Ashtead Hits the News Again

Row over wounded soldiers' house
By Sally Nancarrow

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/surrey/6918675.stm

Thousands of people have signed up to support plans for a £1.7m house in Surrey to become a "home from home" for families of injured service personnel.
A charity wants the seven-bedroom house in Ashtead to be used for families of people being treated at Headley Court rehabilitation centre near Epsom.
But Mole Valley District Council has said the proposal should be turned down after "overwhelming" local opposition.
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Dr Liam Fox, condemned the objections.
In a letter of support to the council he said they were "preposterous and offensive" and praised local MP Chris Grayling, who wants to see the plans go ahead.
A total of 83 residents have sent letters of objection to the council.
"I can't believe their attitude - it beggars belief," said Sue Norton, wife of Capt Peter Norton, an Army bomb disposal officer who was awarded the George Cross for bravery after losing a leg and part of an arm in Iraq.
"This sort of facility is something that should have been in place a long time ago - they have them in America and Germany, but in the British system we have to make do."

SOME RESIDENTS' OBJECTIONS
Increased traffic
Loss of privacy for neighbours
In view of local feeling house residents would not feel part of community
Harm to quiet residential area
Burglars could cruise area pretending to be visitors
House would be soft target for terrorists
Constant turnover of new people
Noise from children playing in street
Noise in garden
Emotive references to injured relatives designed to cloud issues

Capt Norton has been at Headley Court for a year and is shortly to leave to study for a Masters degree at the Defence Academy in Oxfordshire.
The couple have two sons, Tom, four, and Toby, two, and Mrs Norton has had to drive them to and from their home in Gloucester to visit their father or leave them with grandparents.
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) needs planning permission to convert the house in Grays Lane for use by up to six families.
It would be adapted to provide disabled access so men and women being treated at Headley Court could visit or stay overnight.
"You are talking about giving families a chance to be together," said Mrs Norton.
"It is so important for children to be able to build a relationship with their father.
"Toby was only seven months when Peter was injured and he didn't know him.
"Do people think that families visiting injured servicemen are going to be out partying?"

Headley Court has been expanded to cope with more casualties
A new 30-bed ward has recently been added to the existing 170 beds at Headley Court to cope with the growing numbers of forces personnel injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A report to Mole Valley's development control committee, which will consider the application on Wednesday, admits it is an "emotive" issue.
A Downing Street petition supporting the application had received 19,000 signatures from all over the world by Friday morning.
Letters supporting the application received by the council say a wider view should be taken of the proposal than the "nimby" attitude of local residents.
Council officers say it is for the committee to decide the weight to be given to opposing arguments.
But they say that based purely its planning merits, the application should be refused because it would "adversely impact the quiet, peaceful nature of the existing area".

Conctroversy Hits Ashtead

Legless boys' mammas? Not in Ashtead By Vicki Woods

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/07/28/do2804.xml

A fortnight ago the MoD opened a new, 30-bed annexe at Headley Court, the national Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC).
Veterans' minister Derek Twigg went down to open it. The extra beds were needed to cope with the increasing number of casualties coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, as Mr Twigg conceded in his remarks.
"Clearly there is some hard fighting taking place out there - with a great deal of courage and sacrifice - and we have to contend with more injured."

He says "injured", I say "wounded", but there we are.
Headley Court, a handsome Jacobean mansion set in 84 acres of well-kept parkland in Epsom, Surrey, is where the most gravely wounded servicemen and women go for rehabilitation, after Selly Oak has finished the surgical work: operations, skin-grafting, stitching-up.
Rehabilitation means learning to cope with amputations (sometimes multiple), brain injuries, loss of sight and hearing and psychological damage.
Many stay for months, some for years. There is only one DMRC in Britain, so family members have to get to Surrey from all over the kingdom to visit their wounded.
These are families who themselves are grieving: having waved goodbye to a fit young serviceperson, they must come to terms with daddy in a wheelchair, a son or daughter with grievous brain injury. The whole family must cope with a very different, and difficult, future.
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) is the leading British charity that helps the services and their families.
Daily Telegraph readers don't need to be told: you're rather fond of SSAFA (and vice-versa). This newspaper's Christmas appeal, which closed in January, raised just under £400,000 for SSAFA. (Thanks again.)
Recently, SSAFA, after careful search, found a house that it deemed perfect for families visiting Headley Court to use as a home-from-home for a few nights at a time. It's a no-brainer that we should have such a facility.
America (which hates its wars, but loves its troops) has a long-standing charity called The Fisher House, which provides similar accommodation for their legless boys' mammas to stay in. Britain has no such.
SSAFA chose a fairly modern house in Gray's Lane, Ashtead, because, according to spokesman Athol Hendry: "It's in a good state of repair. It's in a nice, quiet area. We don't have to do anything much to it, apart from putting a wheelchair ramp at the front access." On average, he would expect eight people to stay, and the limit is 12.
SSAFA applied for planning permission for a sui generis change of use (plus the wheelchair ramp), from Mole Valley District Council's planning department. I think they were surprised when permission was rejected.
Various near-neighbours, in Gray's Lane and three nearby streets, whanged in 83 crossly worded letters of objection to what they called a short-term, multiple-occupancy hostel. Some cited "increased traffic noise", others "additional pollution", one was worried about the increased risk of becoming "a soft target" from "these awful terrorists".
Mole Valley Planning Committee refused the application on grounds of "adversely affecting the character of this quiet residential lane".
"No Heroes in My Back Yard, say Ashtead Nimbys" became first a hot local story, then a national story, and - in the past fortnight - global.
One of my favourite websites, the Army Rumour Service (ARRSE), started boiling with rage over the Ashtead nimbys 10 days ago. It's a site for thousands of serving and ex-military and widely read by what you might call "friendly forces" (ie me, and most newspapers' defence correspondents).
Some of its members were so apoplectic they made wild calls for tanks down Gray's Lane - see how the nimbys like that, eh? But they were restrained at once, and told to keep tight military discipline. What we need, lads, is a campaign.
Remember the ARRSE campaign to bring Gurkha Pun VC to Britain? Let's do another: the appeal against the refusal is next Wednesday.
So ARRSErs and others from their sister sites (PPruNe, E-Goat, Rum Ration - I know, wacky names, wacky guys) e-petitioned the PM (over 21,500 signatures; go on, reader - sign up); built a lobbying website called www.36grayslane.co.uk; wrote, emailed and posted letters to counter the objections (Countess Mountbatten of Burma has sent one, so has Liam Fox); auctioned "The self-respect of Ashtead" on eBay (bids climbed a quid at a time to £48 before eBay's management removed it); and leafleted Ashtead's residents in a hearts-and-minds campaign.
This last is being done by Blue Team, all suited and booted and wearing campaign medals in the pouring rain (so as not to look like Jehovah's Witnesses).
They post up SITREPs on the website if they meet Red Team (Ashtead nimbys).
Last time I looked, Tigs2 reported CONTACT with OPFOR (Red Team), who asked if the chaps in medals were from that "scurrilous website". Tigs2 was very polite. "Red: I agree there is a need for such a facility but... Tigs2: Not in your backyard? Red: Yes, not in my backyard."
One very new member of ARRSE signs on as Wondermum. They've made her very welcome. She is wife to Captain Peter Norton GC, who is indeed a hero. He is pictured on www.36grayslane.co.uk in a wheelchair. One of his arms is prosthetic and the picture doesn't show his legs (one missing, the other badly damaged).
He has been at Headley Court since 2005. These are long wars we're in. He has a place at Cranfield University to study for an MSc in Explosive Ordinance Engineering and will take it up when he is fit. He'll be speaking for Blue Team next Wednesday at the appeal. Fingers crossed, eh?

The Yellow Peril in the Western Imagination

Polluting minds
There is something horribly familiar about the west's attacks on China for daring to develop: it's called racism. Brendan O'Neill

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brendan_oneill/2007/07/polluting_minds.html

"[P]eriodic transformations in dominant Western images [the East], from positive to negative and back again, indicate the tremendous malleability of perceptions of the 'other' in response to specific historical circumstances, and especially in response to circumstances in Western nations themselves."

The War on Terror Chinese Style

Beijing’s ‘war on terror’ hides brutal crackdown on Muslims - Michael Sheridan

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article2116123.ece

Beware the Ides of March

Move over, St Patrick!
Tampering with Ireland's most cherished tradition, the Catholic church has changed the date of St Patrick's day. - Malachi O'Doherty

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/malachi_odoherty/2007/07/move_over_st_patrick.html

A New Credulity of Metanarratives

To know yourself, get to know the dead
Every child should discover the sweep of history - Ben Macintyre

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article2106450.ece

"history is becoming a potpourri of facts crammed into a few key periods, the past as buffet: a few Romans, some Tudor bloodletting, a soupçon of Classical Greece, a taste of Victorian urban squalor, with a massive serving of Nazis, again."

Laissez-faire Is More

A revisionist history of the Depression - John Updike

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/07/02/070702crbo_books_updike

The Empire and the Middle East

This heat is a recipe for Armageddon - Niall Ferguson

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=JAMRQI2CUFACLQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/06/17/do1701.xml

The Politics of Museums

Why museums must stay free - Ben Russell and Jerome Taylor
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2669895.ece

"Senior figures from politics, education and the arts leapt to defend free admission to Britain's most famous museums and galleries after a senior Tory suggested that charges could be reintroduced. "

Trouble in the Conservative Party

People power is at our core - David Cameron

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1875733.ece

"The changes I am leading in the Conservative party today have two vital characteristics: modernity and long-term thinking. "

Historians on Blair's Legacy

How will history judge Blair? - Ian Kershaw, Andrew Roberts, Anthony Seldon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6636091.stm

The Scramble for Africa Part II

Sudan using Chinese, Russian weapons in Darfur

http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/the-week-in-review/20070508-darfur-china-russia-arms.html

"China and Russia are supplying arms to Sudan, which is using them in war-torn Darfur in violation of a UN embargo, the human rights group Amnesty International charged Tuesday."

ID Cards: An Unhealthy Development for British Democracy

Security is on the cards - John Reid

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_reid/2007/05/security_is_on_the_cards.html

"It is about enabling the public to feel safe, secure and confident in their daily lives. As our society changes, so do our liberties. "

Oil, China and the Darfur Crisis

A century on, the new scramble for Africa - Camilla Cavendish

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article1769266.ece

What Rhymes with Blears?

Thirty more years? Is that a promise or a sentence? - Armando Ianucci

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2073479,00.html

"In the olden days, immortality seemed a perfectly respectable ambition; so why is it today if someone says to you that you can live 30 years longer, you're instinctive reaction is to say: 'Really? Do I have to?'"

This man is a genius.

Nuff Said!

The Terminator says go green - Arnold Schwarzenegger

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1752345.ece

"Global warming is not something we are fantasising. It is real. The science is in. "

Tony Blair's Legacy

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1617511,00.html

Why You'll Miss Tony Blair - Tony Elliott

Agree but:

"But we have learned the hard way that it is not for the West to say what is imperialism and what is liberation. When you invade someone else's country and turn his world upside down, good intentions are not enough."

Bomb, Bomb Iran (Second Verse)

Romney's Remarks at Yeshiva University - Mitt Romney April 28, 2007

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/mitt_romneys_remarks_at_yeshiv.html

"Today, America faces a number of critical challenges. In my view, at the top of the list is the threat of radical, violent Jihad and the associated threat of nuclear proliferation...

Jihadism - violent, radical, fundamental Jihadism - is this century's nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century's nightmares: fascism and Soviet communism....

First, we have to sharply increase our investment in national defense. I want to see at least 100,000 more troops in our military. I want to see us finally make the long overdue investment in equipment and armament, weapon systems, and strategic defense. That's going to require that we spend at least 4 percent of our GDP on defense....

Others believe that frankly back in the logic of deterrence, which served us through the Cold War - that that will protect us. But for all of the Soviet Union's deep flaws, they were never suicidal. A Soviet commitment to national survival was never in question. And that assumption simply can't be made about an irrational regime that celebrates martyrdom like Iran."

"America must truly be the greatest society of all"

Rosen: True measure of society - Mike Rosen

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5507191,00.html

I almost feel like saluting.

"Perhaps a truer measure of a society is to observe which way the guns are pointed: inward to keep captive subjects from escaping (e.g., the old Berlin Wall) or outward to keep too many hopeful immigrants from entering (U.S. border security - if we had any). That's the objective market test. And by that standard, America must truly be the greatest society of all."

The History of Shock and Awe

70 years of 'shock and awe' :The 1937 air raid on the Basque city of Guernica ushered in the modern concept of total war. - Mark Kurlansky, historian

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kurlansky26apr26,0,5552374.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

His histories of the Basque people and Cod were good but I am a little sceptical whether the US invasion of Iraq can be compared too much to Nazi/Fascist assistance to Franco...

The US and Eu

Hands across the ocean: EU-U.S. summit - Jose Manuel Borroso

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/25/opinion/edbarroso.php

Belgium receives four times as much US investment as China? Who'd have thought?

A Classical Historian on the Iraq War

Is the War on Terror Over? - Victor Hanson

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/is_the_war_on_terror_over.html

Not quite convinced that Al-Qaeda are more of a threat than Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia...

Also:

"And when we kill jihadists abroad, we are told it is peripheral to the war or only incites more terrorism." = killing people doesn't incite violence?

"Fifth, everything from our 401(k) plans to municipal water plants depend on sophisticated computers and communications. And you don't need a missile to take them down. Two oceans no longer protect the United States - not when the Internet knows no boundaries, our borders are relatively wide open, and dozens of ships dock and hundreds of flights arrive daily." = Al-Qaeda are going to attack through the internet? (= greater infringement of our civil liberties as the FBI start monitoring all emails)

The 'war on terror' was useful as a means of mobilizing opinion (and generating money) but used the language of moral crusade a bit too much and thus is now counterproductive. Even the 'Long War' is not much better - surely wars only occur between states?

Just in case you weren't sure

I will vote for Gordon - David Milliband

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2062797,00.html

The 'Inevitability' of Collapse in Iraq

A Hell of a CountryAli Allawi's new memoir shows Iraq's collapse was inevitable - Chirstopher Hitchens

http://www.slate.com/id/2164824/

Interesting to compare this to Niall Ferguson's article on inevitability listed below.

George McGovern...Remember Him?

Cheney is wrong about me, wrong about war - George McGovern

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcgovern24apr24,0,4084076.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Handbags at dawn!

And in other news...

The BBC have been going downhill a bit I think.

Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat - BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4740000/newsid_4748200/4748292.stm

"A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal. "

Environmentalism is dead, Long Live Environmentalism!

Forget the whales -- save the Earth, Hall Clifford
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-clifford21apr21,0,1537344.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Why climate change is different to toher types of environmentalism.

Niall Ferguson on the Difficulties of Causality

Niall Ferguson - We can see the causes of Cho's rampage now, so why not before?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/04/22/do2201.xml

"Having been completely caught out by some random event, we human beings are wonderfully good at retrospectively predicting it."

Taleb's 'The Black Swan' and the Virginia massacre. Argues that our retrospective models of reality never fit the real thing. Interesting if not terribly convincing.

An Interesting Article From the Archbishop of Canterbury

Down with godless government - Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1687465.ece

This article raises the interesting question of whether morality, or rather morality in government, is possible without the Church. Would there have been an end to slavery without Wilberforce? Does an absence of religion lead to moral nihilism/relativism? How would politics safeguard the intrinsic value of an individual? (Apart from groups that the Church is happy to discriminate against e.g. gays)

However, a closing paragraph reveals another, more politick, concern:

"And I make no apology for saying that the nature and extent of religious representation in the upper house — a bigger issue than the number of Anglican bishops holding seats there — is not a marginal question at all in the light of this discussion. "

The Church of England gets free (i.e. unelected) seats in the House of Lords (26 I think), under threat, no doubt, from current reforms. Why do we not have representatives from other faiths? (NB This might mean a Jedi Lord in the near future) What about atheists (a significant proportion of the populace)? The Church of England needs to go a long way to justify deserving these freebies.

My Historian's Spidey Sense is Tingling

Gun control isn't the answer - James Wilson, LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wilson20apr20,0,4514008.story?coll=la-opinion-center

"For historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English, even when they can't use a gun. This fact sets a floor below which the murder rate won't be reduced even if, by some constitutional or political miracle, we became gun-free."

This is set in an argument AGAINST gun control... Surely if it's true (which I very much doubt) America should have STRICTER control on guns. And knives. And sharp poking things.

I Can't Tell if this is Satire...

Did the Devil Make Him Do it? - Lauren Green, FoxNews

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266860,00.html

"Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic … psychotic … manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan … good against evil … lightness and darkness?"

cf 'How to Spot a Psycho'

On the Dangerous Anachronism that is the 2nd Amendment.

Only the names change. And the numbers - Gerald Baker, The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article1662949.ece

Slightly worrying is the response from one that the problem can be solved by students being armed.

"there is a lot to be said for militarism" (!)

Global leaders need to rule the seas - Niall Ferguson (imperial and imperialistic historian)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ferguson16apr16,0,1130365.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

(NB Highly selective quotation)

The New Axis of Politics...?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2057060,00.html
Or, the Pope has a pop at postmodernism...

Arms Race in the Far East?

An interesting article by historian Paul Kennedy:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/05/opinion/edkennedy.php?page=1

Far Eastern states are building their navies at a time when European states are mothballing their fleets. This includes the two Koreas, Vietnam, a nationalistic Japan and China, the "next superpower."

George Bush Takes an Interest in History...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a5b7ebd2-dd4c-11db-8d42-000b5df10621.html


The historian shielding Bush from reality

By Jacob Weisberg

Published: March 28 2007 18:35 Last updated: March 28 2007 18:35

President George W. Bush is sometimes a boastful anti-intellectual, but in the past year he has been touting his reading lists and engaging in who-can-read-more contests with Karl Rove, his chief political adviser. There is even a White House book club.
The most recent selection was A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 by Andrew Roberts, the conservative British writer. Mr Bush invited Mr Roberts for a discussion over lunch at the White House earlier this month. The author was joined by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Mr Rove and a variety of other neo-conservative intellectuals, officials and journalists. Mr Bush’s embrace of Mr Roberts’ book is hardly surprising, given how it glorifies his presidency. But it does suggest that all the reading he has been bragging about lately may not be opening his mind.

Mr Roberts’ book picks up in 1900, around where Winston Churchill’s four volumes of a similar title left off. It also takes up Mr Churchill’s pet idea that the Anglo-American alliance is uniquely responsible for the survival of liberty in the world. Though Mr Roberts does not favour the term, his framework closely tracks the notion of an “Anglosphere” – a natural alliance among the English-speaking former colonies of Great Britain that serves to spread civilisation in the form of democracy and capitalism.

His own idiosyncratic definition of the English-speaking world, which includes New Zealand but not Bermuda, Canada but not Ireland, and Australia but not India or South Africa, explains the book’s curious cross-cutting from London to Wellington to Washington to Canberra.
At the core of the book is Mr Roberts’ notion of what might be called the “super-special relationship”. When Britain could no longer rule its empire in 1946, it handed the responsibility for mankind over to its successor, the US. Mr Roberts views British colonialism and American hegemony as alike in their benevolence and effectiveness. Like Mr Bush, he is peevish that the recipients of such generosity are not more grateful.

As a historian, Mr Roberts is present-minded in the extreme, returning at every stage to justifications for Mr Bush’s actions in Iraq. The neo-conservatives who want to spread democracy in the Middle East are the heirs to compassionate Victorians who sought to civilise India, China and Africa. While the reader is still choking on his casting of Richard Perle as Lord Macaulay, Mr Roberts is already at work grafting Mr Bush’s head on to Mr Churchill’s body. The president’s prosecution of the war on terror is “vigorous” and “absolutely unwavering”. The Iraq war has provided “excellent value for money” to the British taxpayer. That Mr Bush has brought “full democracy” to Iraq is stated as unequivocal fact.

Mr Roberts has written several other well-regarded works of history, but it is hard to see how this form of assertion qualifies as scholarship, as opposed to polemic. A true historian explores questions; a great popular one can spin a yarn while revealing complexities. Mr Roberts musters a muscular narrative, but examines nothing. All charges against the Anglo-American imperium are dismissed, from the “supposed ill-treatment” of women and children in Boer war internment camps to Dresden, Nagasaki and the prison camp at Guantánamo, which he declares Mr Bush is “right” to keep open. The abuses at Abu Ghraib, he writes, were overstated and resulted from “the fact that some of the military policemen involved were clearly little better than Appalachian mountain-cretins”.

Mr Roberts is as sloppy here as he is snobbish. Charles Grainer, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib and the only such “cretin” named, grew up in California. I am seldom bothered by minor errors from a good writer, but Mr Roberts’ mistakes are so extensive, fatuous and revealing of his basic ignorance about the US in particular, that it may be worth noting a few of them.
The San Francisco earthquake did considerably more than $400,000 in damage. Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in 1941, did not write for Encounter, which began publication in 1953. The Proposition 13 tax revolt took place in the 1970s, not the 1980s – an important distinction, because it presaged Ronald Reagan’s election. Michael Milken was not a “takeover arbitrageur”. “No man gets left behind” is a line from the film Black Hawk Down, not the motto of the US Army Rangers. Gregg Easterbrook is not the editor of The New Republic magazine. In a breathtaking peroration, Mr Roberts points out that “as a proportion of the total number of Americans, only 0.008 per cent died bringing democracy to important parts of the Middle East in 2003-05”. Various issues aside, 0.008 per cent of 300m people is 24,000 – off by a factor of 10. If you looked closely enough, I expect you could find an error on every page.
With this book, Mr Roberts takes his place as the fawning court historian of the Bush administration. He claims this role not just by singing its achievements but by producing a version of the past century that confirms its assumptions and prejudices.
He favours Mr Bush, but does him no favour, by feeding his preference for the unknowable future to a problematic present, assuring him that history will vindicate him if only he continues to hold firm.

An Interesting way to waste a few minutes

www.politicalsurvey2005.com

Response from Professor Rob Dunbar, Stanford Expert in Climate Change

My own opinion is that there is now a great deal of consensus among climate scientists that man-made global warming exists. My views on this are identical with a recent letter published in the New York Times by Jim McCarthy at Harvard (see below).........

The fact is, that in the peer-reviewed literature there are almost no papers that dispute this view. The few that are there are mainly taking issue with methodologies rather than results (although the credibility of the latter depends on the former....but this is a different kind of criticism than providing evidence that global warming does not exist or that it cannot be tied to anthropogenic forcing......

I did have a look at "swindle" movie you refer to below. My view? Almost entirely recycled and discredited opinions provided mostly by well-known skeptics that do not publish their ideas in the peer-reviewed literature. There are a few folks in the "documentary" that have credibility and in at least one case (Wunsch) there is a claim that his comments were taken out of context or were edited to promote the notion that he supports a view that he says he doesn't......The long and short of it is that in my view there is no comparison between the backgroun research and credibility of the Gore film and the "swindle". The "swindle" is junk as far as being a reasonable and balanced view of the science......

The Gore film may also appear to some to lack balance but in fact is a reasonable representation of the near consensus views held by most climate scientists. I think he overstated a few things but it is, for the most part, on target.

Cheers,

Rob

Letter published on March 17 by the NYT.To the Editor:The <http://www.webmail.ucl.ac.uk/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftopics.nytimes.com%2Ftop%2Freference%2Ftimestopics%2Forganizations%2Fn%2Fnational_academy_of_sciences%2Findex.html%3Finline%3Dnyt-org%3ENational Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorology Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all issued statements stating that <http://www.webmail.ucl.ac.uk/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftopics.nytimes.com%2Ftop%2Fnews%2Fscience%2Ftopics%2Fglobalwarming%2Findex.html%3Finline%3Dnyt-classifier%3Eclimate change is: a) occurring, b) largely caused by humans and c) likely to continue with large negative consequences for natural and human socioeconomic systems unless we rapidly decarbonize our global energy systems.

People who have evidence that contradicts these statements can publish their findings in scientific journals, after which the public might expect to see this work discussed in Science Times. In the meantime, if you feel obligated to publish what are simply opinions, please use the opinion pages rather than the science section.James J. McCarthyCambridge, Mass.The writer is the president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Response from Richard Linzen, MIT Expert in Climate Change

Attached is the only recent survey I know of. There was also an earlier Gallup-Mark Mills Poll of members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society who listed climate as their specialty. It showed minority support for the proposition. Also attached is popular paper I have prepared on my views. The notion of consensus for such a complex multi-faceted issue is actually borderline insane. It is, however, an excellent propaganda tool for influencing people who either can't or won't consider the science itself.
Best wishes,
Dick
PRELIMINARY DRAFT

The Nature of Arguments for Anthropogenic Global WarmingRichard S. Lindzen

Given, the ever more frantic insistence that doubters must concede that anthropogenic global warming is an established fact with dire consequences, it may be helpful to review what exactly the arguments for global warming amount to. For this purpose, I will initially restrict myself to the issue of global mean temperature. Other issues like alpine glaciers retreating, major ice sheets collapsing, infectious diseases spreading, and polar bears scrambling for ice floats will be considered briefly later, but they are largely devices to promote alarm with little basis in fact, and frequently at odds with the IPCC, itself.

The primary argument for the attribution of recent warming to anthropogenic increases in CO2 is due to the Hadley Centre, the UK Met Office’s climate research group. Their argument is quite simple. It begins with the assumption that their climate model is correct. They then subject their model to forcing by volcanos and solar variations, and find that they can replicate the observed global mean temperature until about 19761, but that the increase in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree since then could not be reproduced without additional climate forcing. This additional forcing, they assert, is due to man. The argument is based fundamentally on the assertion that the model is correct. The confirmation for this assertion is that the model was capable of replicating earlier changes in global mean temperature in the instrumental record for the period 1880 to 1976.

Hence, they are confident that the attribution of the recent warming to man is correct, and that the forecasts for future warming are correct as well. Although this sounds simple enough, the problems with the argument are huge, and leave one without any logical grounds to stand on. The following are the major problems (and all of them have already been noted by the IPCC):

1. Forcing by volcanoes and solar variability are essentially unknown. Hence, the ability to replicate observations prior to about 1976 depends on arbitrary choices which are tantamount to ‘tuning.’ The claim that models are capable of replicating the past record is really a statement that the models can be adjusted to replicate the record. Even with such adjustments, the models fail to replicate regional changes in climate (such as the fact that much of the continental US has been cooling over the past 60 years)..

2. Although it is claimed that models cannot replicate global mean surface temperature since about 1976 without additional forcing, it is found that the model response to increasing CO2 is so sensitive that anthropogenic greenhouse forcing leads to several times as much warming as1 Although the Hadley argument pertains to the past 30 years, somehow this got transformed into 50 years in IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The use of the 50 year time frame allows one to clearly distinguish those parroting the Summary from those who read the text.Page 2 of 5needed to replicate the data2. This presents a political problem. Even if the warming since 1976 were due to greenhouse gas additions to the atmosphere, it suggests relatively low sensitivity. On the other hand, high sensitivity is needed to produce alarming scenarios. Modelers at the Hadley Centre dealt with this by replacing anthropogenic greenhouse forcing with just plain anthropogenic forcing which they claim includes aerosols sufficient to cancel about two thirds of the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing. However, the community of aerosol scientists maintain that aerosol forcing is thus far unknown. Thus, aerosols too form an arbitrary adjustment designed to bring models and observed global mean temperature into agreement. In order to maintain the politically crucial alarm, it is proposed that aerosols will cease cancelling greenhouse forcing shortly.

3. Finally, in what sense does the fact that a model cannot duplicate a warming of a few tenths of a degree constitute evidence that anthropogenic forcing is necessary? The alternative hypothesis is that the warming is simply natural unforced internal climate variability. It is well known that the climate does indeed fluctuate without any external forcing. There are several reasons for this. At the most fundamental level, the atmosphere and oceans are turbulent fluids, and it is a general property of such fluids that they can fluctuate widely without external forcing. There are moreover specific features of the oceans and atmosphere that lend themselves to such changes. The most obvious is that the oceans are never in equilibrium with the surface. There are exchanges of heat on all time scales between the abyssal oceans and the near surface thermocline region. Such exchanges are involved in phenomena like El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillations, and produce large variable forcing for the atmosphere.

In addition, the turbulent motions of the atmosphere randomly deposit heat in locations having varying water vapor and cloudiness (the two main greenhouse substances in the atmosphere) thus potentially leading to fluctuations in global mean temperature. In general, models simulate such phenomena rather poorly. Thus, it should be no surprise that they might fail to replicate a natural cause for recent warming, and this constitutes no meaningful demand for anthropogenic forcing. How do modelers deal with this logical problem? In general, the response consists in the embarrassing assertion that they cannot think of any alternative to anthropogenic forcing. This was explicitly the response of Alan Thorpe, head of NERC, the main UK funding agency for climate research.The issue is thus reduced to essentially religious faith.

It is no accident that various agencies refer to the fact that scientists believe that recent warming is due to man. In point of fact, there appear to have been numerous occasions in the past of significant climate change occurring without anthropogenic or any other known external forcing. Most notable was the so-called medieval optimum. As late as the first IPCC Scientific Assessment, the climate community was2 The fact that models predict that we should already have seen much more warming may come as a surprise to some readers. It should not. A doubling of CO2 would give rise to a climate forcing of about 3.5 Watts per Square Meter. Interestingly, the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing at the moment is about three quarters of this. About 1.5 Watts per Square Meter comes from CO2 while the remainder comes from methane and other gases. Note that the impact of CO2 per unit CO2 goes down as CO2 increases. The impact goes logarithmically rather than linearly with the amount of CO2. Note as well, that the current IPCC invokes uncertainty about even the magnitude of radiative forcing to reduce this embarrassment by reducing its estimate of current forcing to something closer to about half of what would be associated with a doubling of CO2.

In general agreement that the middle ages were characterized by significantly warmer temperatures than we currently have. Thus, there did indeed exist factors unknown to modelers that had led to substantial warming in the absence of human contributions. What was done about this inconvenient truth? As David Deming, a paleoclimatologist, noted, the word went out that one had to get rid of the medieval warm period. Sure enough, in a notorious paper by Mann et al, a few handfuls of proxy data (primarily from tree rings) were used to assert that there had been no medieval warm period. This paper served as the key result for the Third Assessment of the IPCC, and was the basis for the oft-repeated claim that current global mean temperatures were unprecedented for the last 1000 years. To be sure, this claim did nothing to change the fact that observed warming was much less than models predicted we should be seeing. However, it did eliminate the inconvenient fact that models were incapable of replicating past warming, and permitted defenders of climate attribution to continue to claim that unknown causes were ‘unlikely to exist.’ Unfortunately, as noted in two extensive reviews of the Mann et al work, the methodology was severely flawed and would produce similar results from random inputs. Under the circumstances, Thorpe’s claim is unsustainable, and the basis for attribution disappears. It should be noted that one of the reviews was by the National Academy. Although the text of the review was clear on this matter, the front end was intentionally misleading. This practice of attaching misleading front ends to otherwise reasonable documents is ubiquitous in climate science.In point of fact, Mann’s claims could have been dismissed on simpler grounds. Even if their methodology had been reasonable, it would nonetheless have required the regression of the small number of proxy records on the present climate. In order for such regressions to be valid tools for estimating past Northern Hemisphere temperature, it would have been necessary for the geographic pattern of temperature change to have been invariant.

Now, the documentation of the Medieval Warm Period for Europe and the North Atlantic is pretty solid. Mann et al, however, argued that this was a local climate change and not characteristic of the whole Northern Hemisphere. For this to have been the case, the geographic pattern of temperature change would have to have changed. Such a change, itself, is sufficient to invalidate the analysis. Unfortunately, logic has ceased to be a significant factor in the so-called climate debate; neither is data integrity.

In normative science, there ought to be healthy conflict between observations and calculations. In climate science, one sees a remarkable attempt to bring data into agreement with model calculations.A particularly illustrative example is the matter of atmospheric as opposed to surface temperature change. Few issues better illustrate the exploitation of widespread ignorance, and the avoidance of basic physical questions. Beginning in 1979, atmospheric temperatures were measured by microwave sensors on NOAA satellites. In contrast to surface temperature data, these atmospheric measurements failed to show warming. Immense pressure arose (sometimes explicitly from Al Gore) to ‘correct’ the atmospheric data. This is a much easier task than one might suppose. All data analyses have errors. The basic assumption is that these errors are accidental and hence likely to be random. If, in searching for genuine errors, one selectivelychooses only those that change results in one direction, one relinquishes any claim that the remaining errors are random

3. Rather, one has introduced a bias into the analysis. Thus, a recent review of the temperature situation by an NRC panel, now found that the satellite data could be made to show some warming. This, it was asserted, meant that there was no fundamental discrepancy with surface thermometric records. However, despite the bias that was likely introduced into the ‘corrections,’ the resulting analysis still actually failed to address the science. The scientific question was not whether there was warming in the atmosphere, but rather whether there was more warming in the atmosphere than at the surface as required by both greenhouse theory and modeling results – especially in the tropics. This was not found – even with the biased corrections. This result further contradicts the attempt to attribute surface warming over the past thirty years or so to greenhouse gas emissions. More precisely, greenhouse warming should correspond to the warming found in mid troposphere, and the warming trend found there is about one third of what is found at the surface, thus profoundly reducing the already small response. The confusion between well focused scientific questions and the mere citation of the sign of a trend is typical of the dumbing down of the public discourse.Befuddling the public has become a primary activity of warming enthusiasts.

Thus, when trends are absent, one speaks of record breaking years. For example, there has been no significant trend in global mean temperature for almost ten years. However, we have been at a high value for globally averaged surface temperature since about 1997. Thus, the normal year-to-year fluctuations in temperature are expected to produce record breakers. This has nothing to do with trends. Indeed, the absence of a sequence of record breaking years since 1998 argues strongly against the existence of any trend during this period. Even with trends, the fact that such quantities as global mean temperature and total land ice are always changing, gives rise to emphases on which direction any of these quantities is going at any given moment. However, in science this is not, in general, the issue. Rather we are interested in the magnitude of the trend and whether it is larger or smaller than natural fluctuations and, most important, how observed3 The business of inadvertent bias is both obvious and extremely difficult to deal with.Consider a difficult measurement: for example, equatorial sea surface temperatures during the last glacial maximum. A program called CLIMAP determined some 20 years ago that these temperatures were indistinguishable from today’s. At the same time, it was the practice of the modeling community to assume that glacial maximum was due to reduced CO2, and they concluded that equatorial sea surface temperatures should have been considerably colder than those at present.

As I have noted, all measurements involve errors (errors in actual measurements, errors in sampling, errors in assumptions underlying measurement techniques, etc.) An implicit assumption in such situations is that the errors – even if unknown – are random so that we can hope that they will largely cancel out. Let us imagine that we have all these errors in a box. We take out each error and examine it to see if it will help reconcile the models with the observations by decreasing the estimate of equatorial sea surface temperature. If it does, we apply the correction; if not we throw it back in the box. At the end of the process, the observations agree with the model, and the errors that were corrected were genuine errors that were genuinely corrected, but it is pretty safe to assume that the errors remaining in the box are no longer random, and that applying them will lead to increasing equatorial sea surface temperatures and increased differences between models and observations. The difficulty with the situation in reality is that the errors are often unknown at first, and so any error identified has a legitimate claim to be corrected.

However, the fact that in climate science, such corrections inevitably lead to reconciliation of observations with the models leads one to strongly suspect bias. Demonstrating such bias is, nonetheless, difficult unless one has the expertise and resources to search for and examine other sources of error trends compare to alarming forecasts. Moreover, climatically relevant trends can only be determined over long periods – typically 100 years or more.

As in any issue dominated by propaganda, there is a focus on ‘show stoppers.’ Here, changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree tend to lack caché. Retreating alpine glaciers, starving polar bears, hugely rising sea levels, invasions of infectious disease, even when false or irrelevant to global warming, are obviously more impressive and more telegenic. There is nonetheless something profoundly pathetic about some politician or movie star being flown to a remote location in order to witness a retreating glacier (even when that glacier may have been retreating since the early 19th century or when a few miles away there is another advancing glacier, or when the retreating glacier is associated with decreasing rather than increasing temperatures), and proclaiming to the world that they have seen ‘global warming’ with their own eyes.

Just for the record, polar bear populations have been increasing for decades – largely because of curbs on hunting. Malaria is still found in Siberia and was once common throughout the US; it is a disease more associated with poverty and inadequate disease control than with climate. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the beginning of the 19th century, though since 1970 they are advancing again in some parts of the world. The earths major ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica are in near balance between accumulation at their centers and ablation at their edges. The net impact on sea level is anticipated to be no more than millimeters per century. One could go on at length, but the point is simply that the earth is a very dynamic planet, and its dynamism has little to do with man. Clinging to alarmist scenarios for which there is no evidence, is simply exploitation of public gullibility.

Iran Feels Threatened by 300 Half-Naked Greeks

As astute readers may be aware, I have rarely let the stifuling oppression of historical accuracy interfere with the writing of a good argument. It seems a number of media publications have adopted this philosophy too, no doubt as a gesture of solidarity.

For proof of this please consult the coverage of the release of the recent blockbuster '300', which depicts the efforts of Spartan soldiers at Thermopylae in 480BC, who all died fighting the Persian invasion of King Xerxes. Stirring stuff, indeed. However, this battle, it has been claimed, stands as a metaphor for the tensions between the US and Iran, the country now cited as being the successor to the infamous ancient region. Greece, the birthplace of democracy etc. stands in place for Bush's armies fighting his war on terrorism/for oil. But wait! Are we not forgetting something? Greece, did not exist back then, save for a vague clamouring that the disparate city-states of Hellas should unite against the threat of the East. Sparta itself was not democratic, in fact far from it. It had a militaristic monarchy, with state-run slavery and a rather nasty secret police force. Every year 'war' was declared against its slaves - the helots - in which any act of cruelty or murder was legal. Now read on the 300 website how Thermopylae was "drawing a line in the sand for democracy"(!). I think the Spartans would beg to differ.

Furthermore not all Hellenic city-states were opposed to Xerxes' Persia and in Athens, symbol of democracy, suffrage was far from universal and its behaviour far from exemplarary. Not a terrible good metaphor I would say.

Some poor knowledge of the Classics going on here, I think. In fact I would be rather worried if ancient Sparta and its complete barbarity towards the majority of its population is supposed to stand for the US. What next? George Bush stripping down to his pants to throw spears at Iranians in mimicry of the Spartan king Leonidas. Not something I care for, perhaps that's just me.

Before you make you mind up about Trident...

'The War Game' by Peter Watkins, available on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxKkLsYICYY

Powerful stuff, made by the BBC and banned by the government.


On a completely unrelated subject, www.archive.org has 'Salt of the Earth', made by American communists (something of a rarity).

A Copy (Simulacrum?) of Baudrillard's Obituary

The Shadow of His Formere Self


http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/julian_baggini/2007/03/the_shadow_of_his_former_self.html

News of the death of Jean Baudrillard provokes mischievous and possibly disrespectful thoughts about how he would have reported his own passing. "It never happened" would be the obvious choice. For those of us who didn't know him personally, the "death of Baudrillard" is an entirely media event, one which we only observe through the filter of news, the internet and television. To believe otherwise is to fail to recognise the nature of our "hyperreal" society, in which we are no longer able to distinguish between reality itself and its simulation.
Some readers who have learned to dismiss anything that has the vague whiff of postmodernism about it will probably be snorting at the absurdity of all this. But it actually makes quite a bit of sense to me. Not complete sense, but then that's probably because, like almost everyone whose training in philosophy took place in a British university, I've never seriously studied Baudrillard. That sort of stuff isn't considered bona fide by most of our team, which is why a group of Cambridge academics tried to stop their university awarding Jacques Derrida an honorary degree in 1992.
It's certainly true that France is a philosophically foreign country: they do things differently there. You could say they adopt a different style, but that would be to imply that Anglo-American philosophy has any style at all, when most of its arid writing is actually the literary equivalent to Alan Partridge's sports-causal fashion collection. What our breed of philosophy has is a method, and with it supposed rigour.
The French, in contrast, have, if anything, too much style. The grand rhetorical sweep of many of Baudrillard's pronouncements - the Gulf war never happened; history has become its own dustbin; the west, in a sense, wanted 9/11 - sound to our commonsensical ears like absurd exaggerations.
Yet, if you get past the hyperbolic flourishes, thinkers like Baudrillard are actually saying things that have more resonance and relevance to contemporary society than the majority of what is written by more sober Brits and Americans. That's why, although shunned by philosophers, the likes of Baudrillard have been taken up by other social sciences and humanities.
The recurring theme of Baudrillard's work is that we live in a world in which representation and simulation have come to dominate over what was once thought of as reality, to the extent that our reality now often is our simulation of it. That's why it is now not only possible to be "famous for being famous", but it's what many young people actively have as an ambition. Because of thinkers like Baudrillard, we have come to think better and deeper about such issues, which is why we should be more prepared to forgive him for his many excesses.
There is some irony in the fact that many of those quickest to dismiss Baudrillard don't actually have any knowledge of his philosophy at all, but only secondhand representations of it. Perhaps the oft-derided Baudrillard got the last laugh, after all.

Fair Trade not Fair Enough?

http://money.independent.co.uk/personal_finance/invest_save/article2298342.ece
Fairtrade is booming - but is it still a fair deal?
Trade justice at last or a perpetuation of a rotten system? Decide for yourself, says David Prosser
Published: 24 February 2007
Fairtrade is booming - but is it still a fair deal?
It's almost 11 years since the first Fairtrade bananas went on sale in Britain, and on Monday the Fairtrade Foundation will launch a fortnight-long celebration of the movement. The foundation, the umbrella organisation of Fairtrade groups active in the UK, wants Fairtrade Fortnight to be a showcase for more than 200 products that now bear the movement's kitemark.
There's certainly plenty to celebrate. More than a million developing world producers of everything from commodities, such as coffee, tea and fruit, to essentials, including herbs, spices and cotton products, to luxuries, such as ice cream and biscuits, are now signed up to the scheme.
To bear the Fairtrade mark, a product's retailer must be able to show that local farmers have been paid a higher price for the goods than local markets stipulate, and that workers involved in production have been paid fairly.
The fact that an independent organisation strictly polices the award of the Fairtrade mark - and beyond these two basic criteria, there are all sorts of other tests - has meant consumers in the West have been able to buy with confidence. As a result, business is booming.
Fairtrade sales have been growing at 40 per cent a year over the past three years. Market analyst Mintel estimates sales reached £230m in 2006 and predicts they will continue to grow to as much as £550m by 2011.
It helps that mainstream retailers are embracing the scheme. Marks & Spencer last year began selling a range of Fairtrade cotton clothing. Sainsbury's has plans to switch to selling only Fairtrade bananas.
But should consumers really be so confident they're doing the right thing when buying Fairtrade? Is the scheme, now a hugely powerful voice in many parts of the world, really as fair as it seems? There is no doubt that Fairtrade has helped many farmers in countries that have suffered at the hands of the inequities of a world trade system dominated by developed countries. But at the same time, there is a small but vocal band of Fairtrade critics who insist the scheme has many serious flaws.
Claire Melamed, the head of trade and corporates at Action Aid, the charity that works on a broad range of issues in developing countries, says: "The Fairtrade movement has worked wonders in making consumers think about world trade, but it is very much the start of a journey."
Action Aid's main concern about Fairtrade is that it does nothing to address the fundamental injustices in world trade systems. "While it's great for those farmers in the club, millions are left on the margins scraping a living," Melamed adds. "What Fairtrade does conclusively prove is that markets can be rigged in favour of poor people - and that consumers do care where their products come from."
Put another way, the argument is that Fairtrade is not sufficiently ambitious; it helps a few people to cope with an unfair system, rather than tackling the system itself. It's a point that is taxing French trade justice campaigners such as Jean-Pierre Boris and Christian Jacquiau. Both argue that by working within the current system, Fairtrade undermines the chances for radical reforms.
However, Ian Bretman, deputy director of the Fairtrade Foundation, is fiercely critical of such arguments. "It's too cynical to say that because you can't help everyone you shouldn't help anyone," he argues. "We do what we can and in any case, the system is changing, partly because Fairtrade has encouraged many people to become more engaged with the need for reform."
Bretman is concerned about other criticisms, in particular the arguments first put by Tim Harford, the populist academic who two years ago published The Undercover Economist. Harford says that by subsidising the price of commodities, Fairtrade is sending the wrong message to farmers. The fact that the price of, say, coffee is so low, he argues, is a sign there is too much of the stuff on the market. Rather than relying on a subsidised price, farmers should be diversifying into other markets.
Fairtrade itself says it agrees with this argument - to a point. "We recognise farmers need to make changes, whether it's improving productivity or diversifying or developing in another way," says Bretman. "But all of those changes require investment, which people can't do when their goods sell for below-subsistence prices."
Then there's the issue of who is really benefiting from Fairtrade. Consumers are prepared to pay a premium for Fairtrade goods because they like the concept. But how much of the premium ends up with the end producer? Are supermarkets charging higher prices for Fairtrade goods and exploiting consumers' good nature?
Harford, for example, believes that just 10 per cent of the premium that Fairtrade customers pay for coffee in a coffee bar ends up with the producer.
Bretman says it is impossible to say whether Western retailers are pocketing fatter margins on Fairtrade produce because prices vary so much. He believes the danger of this will recede as growing demand for Fairtrade goods encourages price competition among retailers. Even so, Bretman admits: "The scheme guarantees a minimum price for the producer, but we don't feel it's practical to set controls further down the road."
That represents a challenge for ethical consumers because they want the end producer to benefit. Many have deep-seated reservations about supermarkets, and would be reluctant to buy goods that swelled their coffers further. Nor does the moral maze end there. Nestlé, the food giant, is one of the most disliked and boycotted companies in the world by ethical shoppers, yet last year it launched Partners' Blend, a Fairtrade certificated coffee.
Bretman describes Nestlé's decision to seek Fairtrade certification as "a victory that shows a huge company is recognising this growing market". But is Fairtrade selling out to big business, signing deals with the sort of companies many people believe are responsible for trade injustices in the first place?
Ruth Rosselson, a director of campaigning group Ethical Consumer, remains a fan of Fairtrade. You don't have to buy Partners' Blend, she points out; there are plenty of other Fairtrade coffees to choose instead. Nevertheless, she says many people have been concerned by the Nestlé development. "There are a large number of consumers who wouldn't buy from Nestlé for all sorts of reasons and there has certainly been a backlash," she warns. "Fairtrade should not just be about whether a product qualifies for certification."
The final worry some campaigners now have about Fairtrade is an environmental one. While there are plenty of Fairtrade goods that British shoppers have no choice but to source from abroad - it's tricky growing cotton here, for example - there are others where local produce does exist. Should people support far-flung providers of honey or green beans, say, given the environmental costs of transporting the goods to this country and the fact they are already available locally?
Bretman says such issues are never black and white, but that ultimately consumers have to make up their own minds about any purchasing decision.
Nevertheless, he remains convinced of the power of Fairtrade - and that the brand will continue to grow. "There are more opportunities all the time," he says. "What I've seen over the past 10 years has been a move from us knocking on the door of businesses, trying to get a foot in, to them knocking on our door; that's down to the power of consumers."
How fair trade works
* The Fairtrade Foundation is an independent certification body that awards the Fairtrade mark to products that meet international Fairtrade standards. These are set by Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International.
* The label guarantees consumers that disadvantaged producers are getting a better deal. More than five million people - farmers, workers and their families - across 58 developing countries benefit.
* Fairtrade itself describes its mission as "addressing the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest providers".
* Producers must be paid above market prices for their goods, and workers involved in production must be paid minimum levels of wages.
* The organisation urges consumers to be sceptical about suppliers that claim to pay fair prices if they have not applied for Fairtrade certification.
* Full range of Fairtrade products: coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa, sugar, bananas, apples, pears, plums, grapes, lemons, oranges, satsumas, clementines, lychees, avocados, pineapples, mangoes, fruit juices, smoothies, quinoa, peppers, green beans, coconuts, dried fruit, rooibos tea, green tea, ice cream, cakes, biscuits, honey, muesli, cereal bars, jams, chutney, sauces, herbs, spices, nuts, nut oil, wine, beer, rum, flowers, sports balls, rice, yoghurt, baby food, sugar body scrub, cotton products.
* In recent times, other such schemes have been developed, such as Equitrade, Rainforest Alliance and Utz Kapeh. All have different standards, to which Ethical Consumer (www.ethicalconsumer.org) publishes a guide.

The Internet and the 'market revolution'

Hamish McRae: The internet has shifted the balance of power

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/hamish_mcrae/article2296811.ece

Published: 23 February 2007
It is what in theory ought to happen - but it is good to know that it is indeed happening. In theory the development of the internet is hugely democratic. It gives all of us the access to knowledge that a decade ago would have required a research department in a multinational. But it takes a while for people to figure out how to use the new technologies and for the services distributed through those technologies to be developed. Email, broadband, Google, eBay, Youtube, Skype and other ventures are changing the balance of power between the individual on the one hand and the state and big companies on the other.
The past few days have seen examples of this shift of power. The ability of consumers to compare gas prices has combined with market liberalisation to enable us to switch to the supplier which can offer the best deal, as Centrica has found to its cost. The power of the net has given bank customers the confidence to complain about charges, plus the mechanism for so doing. The easy access to email has enabled 1.8 million people to protest to No Ten about road charges.
This shift of power has happened as part of a wider market revolution. There would be less point in being able to compare gas prices if, as in many countries, you could not switch suppliers. But even where there is a monolith on one side of the equation, the very fact that individuals have access to global information changes the balance of power between them and it.
We are still in the early stages of this shift. But already we can pick out some of the consequences.
One is a sustained increase in the power of the consumer. We are already able to seek out good deals and compare quality as well as price but it takes time to do so and poor suppliers are not immediately punished. In the future they will be, forcing up the quality of goods and services further.
A second is a decline in the power of the expert. For example, doctors' prescriptions can be checked for their effectiveness - and checked globally. Incompetence can be spotted, challenged and punished.
A third is a decline in power of politicians, or more accurately, much more pressure on politicians to do what their electorate wants.
On the other hand the benefits of this "net democracy" only accrue to those individuals who are well-educated enough to take advantage of them. We have to have access but we also need to know how to use the flood of information now available. As with all advances - and this is a huge one - there are people who are left behind. Society needs to look after them too.