October 9, 2007 RJH
I will admit to being a sucker for any building that sports a portrait of HM the Queen in the foyer. Rhodes House in Oxford is one such building, and much more.
Part of the joy of living in Oxford is that you can chase obscure books in various faculty and college libraries. (Just ordering it from the Bod stacks is boring.) Yesterday I needed a book on slavery, and Rhodes House had a copy. So in I went, past the Queen, past the grand ceiling memorial to Rhodes men who died in the wars, past the various imperial antiques that decorate the polished floor, past the portraits of various dark-skinned Rhodes Scholars (just to prove Cecil Rhodes’ heirs have shared the lottery winnings beyond the white Englishman), and through to the library.
Any of you Yanks who fancy some time in Oxford should go for a Rhodes. Failing that, just come to Oxford. It’s a singular place.
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October 9, 2007 Peter
If you don’t want the latest generation of nuclear reactors in your backyard (or the French to build them), then lodge your protest by tomorrow! It’s not just the Golden Anniversary of Britain’s biggest nuclear disaster, but also the end of public consultation on the more or less inevitable future of Britain’s nuclear program.
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October 6, 2007 RJH
On the whole, I find the British political system far healthier than its American counterpart. I loathe the fact that the partisan US president is also Head of State and Commander-in-Chief; I find the staid deference of Congress stultifying and uninspiring; I think the programmatic four-year term, and its attendant lame-duck lameness, is an exercise in elected dictatorship; and I find US TV journalism to be lazy overseers of this lazy system.
But the power of a British prime minister to call an election at his whim — when he thinks he can win it — is madness. In Britain we currently have the farcical situation where newly-minted Labour leader (and thus Prime Minister) Gordon “I’m from Scotland where Westminster has little power” Brown spun a November election when the polls were looking good, and backed out when faced with a resurgent Tory party. Pathetic.
This is not a government of which I am a big fan. I note the Clunking Fist is now also playing the terrorism card, telling the BBC that Labour is best able to fight the war on terror.
Get lost, Brown.
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October 2, 2007 RJH
In March I wrote about the beefed-up security surrounding the US embassy in Vienna. Seems like they need it, although there may not have been much they could have done had the bag detonated.
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October 1, 2007 RJH
Given an advantageous alignment of the stars, you could mentally solve all of life’s problems if you spent enough time at the dentist. Lying there under the light, I tend to feel perilously vulnerable yet strangely amniotic, thinking all manner of profound thoughts as the dentist drills, the nurse uses her vacuum-thingy, and the radio announces the traffic report for the M5 at Worcester.
Here’s what I realised during a filling last week (naughty RJH does not floss properly):
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September 28, 2007 Peter
Everyone knows that scoring sweet jobs is all about linking up with the right people at the right time, right? Well, let the sad story below be a lesson to us all–sometimes there are situations where even Facebook can’t help.
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September 26, 2007 Hellmut
The Burmese protesters in Burma cannot prevail unless they divide their opponents and obtain support from parts of the military and the police. Street protests do not generate enough of an incentive to split the armed forces. Shutting down the economy with concerted strikes would induce serious hardship on the military establishment but I have not seen any indication that the opposition has the capacity for labor actions. George Bush’s threats of sanctions, however well-meaning, are empty because the United States already restricts trade with Burma.
When the wall fell and many Germans were still concerned that the Communist government might lash out violently, economics professor Johannes Welcker had an interesting idea.
May be, it is time to pay military leaders off. Just as golden parachutes persuade managers to surrender to hostile take over bids, spending a couple of hundred million dollars to remove the military from government might be a good investment. It’s certainly cheaper than sanctions or civil war. The investment would eventually be recouped by the benefits of trading with a free country and free people.
Of course, such an arrangement would have to indemnify the military dictators from responsibility for their crimes against humanity. However distasteful amnesty may be, it is worth it if it prevents more inhumanity.
To render any commitment by the military credible, the officers ought to receive monthly rents that will be paid out only as long as the armed forces stay out of politics. It is then up to the Burmese people to re-negotiate and re-design civil-military relations.
When the dictators know that they will be safe, it ought to be possible to buy them off. The costs would be a pittance compared to the benefits of peace, liberty, and democracy.
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September 25, 2007 Peter
The BBC was on hand as the world gathered in New York for the opening of the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly. Reporting from the front lines, Jonathan Marcus noted that hot temperatures had caused the “almost ubiquitous secret service agents,” in place to protect the arriving dignitaries, “to wind down the windows of their black Jeep Suburbans.” What the heck? Chevy makes Suburbans, while Jeep makes Liberties and Patriots (with optional Freedom Drive) and other more or less off-road capable vehicles, all of which would fit in the, ahem, boot of a Suburban.
I was about ready to brush off the error as the honest mistake of someone who calls all vehicles with a vague whiff of off-roadiness a jeep (though surely his editors would have noticed the capital “J”?) until Mr. Marcus did it again towards the end of the article, kind of like it was on purpose: “The seniority of their cargo is indicated by the number of vehicles in each line and their allocation of those black Jeep Suburbans.”
You know, that reminds me of an old saying in Tennessee, I know it’s in Texas and probably in Tennessee, that says, “Fool me once, shame on you…,” you can’t get fooled again! So take your Jeep Suburbans and park ‘em next to the Jaguar Defenders in your style guide, BBC, and let truth prevail.
Although my confidence was shaken by the BBC’s inability to get basic, if unimportant, facts straight, coverage of this important event did have a silver lining. Indeed, in a rare instance of completeness, Mr. Marcus actually mentioned the other 66% of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s business, the boring part that gets overshadowed by its more glamourous safeguards and verification role:
The IAEA oversees nuclear safety and promotes civil nuclear power (as well as its more familiar watchdog role).
This kind of reporting will be right up the alleys of Ahmadinejad, Cuba and the rest of the Non-Aligned Movement, who regularly get bent out of shape by the media’s frequent referrrals to watchdogs and the ensuing public misconception that the Agency has nothing better to do than badger developing countries over unwarranted allegations of abuse of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, like provide technical assistance.
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September 24, 2007 john f.
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will take questions and answers at Columbia University while in New York for the occasion of his third annual speech to the United Nations since he took office.
In anticipation of his visit to Columbia University — a leading university in a society that values freedom of the press, academic freedom, and critical thought, including thought that is critical of the concepts and abuses of religion — President Ahmadinejad has explained that “[t]he United States is a big and important country with a population of 300 million. Due to certain issues, the American people in the past years have been denied correct and clear information about global developments and are eager to hear different opinions.” Apparently, President Ahmadinejad believes that one problem with America is that the population is being prevented from getting accurate information about the world from its press. One confusing aspect about President Ahmadinejad’s statement is that it is actually Iran, and not the United States, that employs policies of censorship of the press, lack of academic freedom, lack of freedom of conscience (i.e. freedom to criticize religion as well as freedom to belong to any religion or no religion) and other illiberal policies that suppress thought and speech and inhibit the pursuit of happiness and liberty generally.
President Ahmadinejad hopes to teach the American people something through his question and answer session with students at one of the world’s top universities where academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and other virtues of Western society reign supreme. This observer remains skeptical whether he will be successful in this ambition.
What would you ask President Ahmadinejad if you were in the audience at Columbia University?
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September 20, 2007 Peter
The eternal rounds of Viennese diplomatic nightlife–balls, receptions, dinners, concerts–are noted for fostering a general commitment to making decisions by consensus, the so-called spirit of Vienna.
All this shoulder-rubbing bonhomie might be good for crafting consensus, but apparently it’s good for spreading misinformation and skewing perspectives too.
You see, many non-nuclear-weapons states believe the US and other keepers of WMDs are not making good on their disarmament commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and what better forum to raise the issue than at this week’s 51st General Conference of the IAEA?
Not so fast, US ambassor G. Schulte told the plenary this afternoon, putting the kabosh on what he termed the misconception that the nuclear-weapon states weren’t disarming by citing Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman’s statement from this Monday. The US removes more metric tons of HEU and plutonium from its arsenal before breakfast than other countries do in a lifetime, which means that by 2012 when the provisions of the Moscow Treaty come due (as well as expire), the US will possess fully half the 2001 number of warheads–the lowest level since the Eisenhower adminstration.
Gosh, that sounds pretty cool, like history-in-the-making or something. Practically pre-Cold War levels of nukes just twenty years after the demise of the Cold War–sweet!
But there’s better news–the US arsenal is already (!) at its lowest since the Eisenhower administration, as this graphic makes clear. As a matter of fact, the US arsenal has been lower than Eisenhower levels since, um, the early 1990s and has remained pretty level since the mid 1990s.
And it turns out that Eisenhower was a major proliferator of nuclear weapons (and Kennedy kept the ball rolling). On Eisenhower’s watch the total stockpile increased from around 1,000 to a respectable 20,000 warheads, making scoring lower than Ike on the proliferation scale an accomplishment that ranges in difficulty from shooting fish in a barrel to threading a camel through a needle (to say nothing of rich men getting into heaven), but pretty meaningless without additional information.
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