Category: Politics

Ukraine – finding an endgame

Ukraine – the separatists are gathering strength, and Russian troops directly involved, Putin talking of statehood for SE Ukraine.

It’s a confrontation that could intensify further. Support for Russia in the eastern Ukraine is historically and linguistically strong, so we kid ourselves if we see it simply in terms of Kiev government asserting its natural right to govern its territory. The history of ancient Kiev is rather more complicated than that. I see the Economist used the word ‘nihilist’ as something that might describe Putin. Anything but. We should always remember how different the world looks if you’re on different sides of a border.

We have, more locally, the current Scottish debate to remind us of that: it’s as if there’s a border within Scotland. Not so much a territorial border, it’s mapped out in people’s minds. They are one side or the other. There are I know don’t knows – but it’s hard to be a don’t know when so much is at stake.

Back to Russia.

We need  to focus on the endgame, and what that might be. This is one conflict where there has to be be a rational solution, where sabres need to be rattled less, and solutions worked out across tables. Shouting and sanctions are and will be counter-productive. Making Senator John McCain (thank God he lost to Obama) feel good is not the object of the exercise.

I’m not arguing for a moment that NATO shouldn’t be building up its forces or the Ukrainian army not given the material as well as political support to match what’s coming in on the separatist side from Russia. We must build and bolster our negotiating position. Putin would expect nothing less…

I was struck by Putin’s comment: ‘The West should have seen this coming.’ Indeed they/we should. What did we expect of Russia when a pro-Russian government was overthrown in Kiev? That Russia would simply smile and say ‘Fair cop, well done. We lost out.’

Putin holds the stronger cards in this conflict and short of all-out war that isn’t going to change. Finding behind the scenes (avoid public grandstanding) a formula that will satisfy both sides is the only way forward.

It will take wisdom to get us to a solution.  There is no substitute.

Capability – redefined

Once upon a time in a blog I talked about capability. Capability is a right to be enjoyed by everyone, a right to have the opportunity and the means to be the best that we can be. It’s easy to see this as a personal right, with the only limitation that we shouldn’t trespass on the similar rights of others.

But how do we define ‘best’ – is it to earn the maximum possible, to have a fulfilling job, to be a successful member of society? Could be. But to that I’d add being a contributing member of society. True capability opens the door not just to opportunity but to compassion. The highest human attainments are those shared with others – from great advances in science to simple acts of kindness.

How do we create a society where we all contribute, where we all expect to contribute? Empowering local government, certainly. David Marquand suggests citizen assemblies: could that be a more constructive more local less vituperative version of TV’s Question Time, but with ordinary people the panellists? I’m not certain about the idea – but it’s the kind of thinking we need.

How can we develop, over time, a simple expectation that we – all of us – take on a contributing or caring role of some kind?

The trouble is that cynicism rules, motives are assumed to be impure, anything politicians espouse gets hammered, as did the Big Society as a concept. Maybe the Big Society deserved to be hammered: old-style Tory paternalism doesn’t go down too well. But a society in which we all engage – that would be a big society.

Pipe dreams? If we stay forever cynical, then indeed that’s the way it will be.

So, another challenge, how to do away with cynicism?

The Fourth Revolution

What might the fourth revolution be? What are, or were, revolutions one, two and three? Not the Glorious Revolution or the French Revolution. But political revolution – changes driven by ideas developed and ingrained over time.

And what form should the state take in future – in what direction should it be evolving?  Political theory is too often disparaged: cognoscenti have to work behind the scenes and pretend they know nothing.  We prefer to deal in simple solutions, absolutes of right and wrong. Not sadly of now and then. More now and forever: the certainty of the believing moment dictates policy and attitudes. Not the wisdom of the past.

John Mickelthwait and Adrian Woolridge, respectively editor-in-chief and editor of the Schumpeter column on the Economist, make a pretty good stab at serious informed political theory. They sketch a brief history of the last four hundred years, from the rising nation state (and Thomas Hobbes) by way of the 19th century liberal state (JS Mill) to the welfare state (Beatrice Webb)… and then turn futurologists and with Woolridge’s omnivorous capacity for detail outline the brave new world of the smaller state. Private enterprise drives both the economy and the state, power is devolved, and initiative lies at the individual level. Friedman and Hayek would rejoice – but only to a point. California at the mercy of propositions (referenda) has made good governance almost impossible, and the authors have a more than sneaking admiration for Lee Juan Yew’s Singapore. And indeed China, dirigiste in most things save the absolute right to engage in making money and building businesses.

So their model in more measured, more cautious, less neo-liberal than we might have expected. The closest to their ideal they find in Scandinavia. The Nordic model marries clear direction from government to social responsibility, and in Sweden, since big changes back in 1991, it seems to have worked.

Maybe it’s all a bit glib. This is the way the authors believe it should happen, but how can you create circumstances where it really will happen? The Tea Party fragments rather than encourages responsibility. Traditional political parties as agents of change aren’t listened to or respected. Pressure groups as matter of pride and preference keep their focus narrow.

It is a valiant and impressive and entertaining (well almost) attempt to point a way forward.

But making it happen – there lies the challenge.

 

Martin Buber

I mentioned in another post that he was a hero of mine. Rather than paraphrase, best to quote from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

“In debates following violent riots in 1928 and 29 on whether to arm the Jewish settlers in Palestine Buber represented the pacifist option; in debates on immigration quotas following the 1936 Arab boycott Buber argued for demographic parity rather than trying to achieve a Jewish majority. Finally, as a member of Brit Shalom Buber argued for a bi-national rather than for a Jewish state in Palestine. At any of these stages Buber harboured no illusion about the chances of his political views to sway the majority but he believed that it was important to articulate the moral truth as one saw it rather than hiding one’s true beliefs for the sake of political strategy. Needless to say, this politics of authenticity made him few friends among the members of the Zionist establishment.”

There were I must assume, many outside the Zionist establishment who saw the world as he did. He was a man with a big reputation in Germany before he moved to Palestine in 1938, as an educator, philosopher and religious thinker. He also had a major role in building a Jewish cultural awareness within Zionism, not least by his wonderful Tales of the Hasidim.

Like so many I discovered Buber when I encountered his essay, I and Thou, in my college days. An ‘I-it’ relationship refers to the world of sensation and experience. In an ‘I-thou’ relationship sensation and experience are abandoned, the relationship with the other party is paramount. He called it the dialogic principle, but let’s skip that. For Buber, God was the ultimate relationship, ever-present in human consciousness.

Back in the 60s, I and Thou resonated. Some question it as philosophy but as an instinctive truth it still resonates today.

I’ll end with another quote, which for me makes a connection between Buber the Zionist and the Buber of I and Thou.

(Jews and Arabs must) “develop the land together without one imposing his will on the other. We considered it a fundamental point that in this case two vital claims are opposed to each other, two claims of a different nature and a different origin, which cannot be pitted one against the other and between which no objective decision can be made as to which is just and which is unjust.

“We considered and still consider it our duty to understand and to honour the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims… We have been and still are convinced that it must be possible to find some form or agreement between this claim and the other; for we love this land and believe in its future; and seeing that such love and faith are surely present also on the other side, a union in the common service of the land must be within the range of the possible” (quoted in Mendes-Flohr, 1994).

Which newspaper to read?

Which paper to read? Does it even matter these days when so much news is online, and we can switch (firewalls permitting) at will, and link to sites and sources around the world.

Let’s assume it does, for some of us anyway.

Compassion and a natural liberal instinct dictate the Guardian but I’m almost too much at home there. I am from Manchester after all. As it’s too easy for the opposite reason to read the Daily Mail: every article makes the hackles rise, apoplexy only just contained.

But I must be objective…

Middle ground, campaigning on key issues … maybe the Independent. Neo-liberal, small state… the Telegraph or Mail. Respectable, establishment, with several fine columnists… The Times.  But The Times is the tame face of Murdoch,  the not so fantastic  Mr Fox.

Social welfare, social justice, yes, we need a big state, and a spending state. And yet, the welfare budget is too big, and benefits can act as a big disincentive to finding work. I accept both arguments. And so…

Read everything, or dip into everything. Try the Huffington Post online. Specialise a little and read Foreign Policy magazine. Go weekly and read the New Statesman, the Spectator or the Economist. Read The Week and be bombarded from every point of view.

Be brave and watch Fox TV. Restore your faith in humanity and watch Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. Try out salon.com   My true colours show I’m afraid – but don’t dismiss the arguments of the other side. Avoid easy answers. Capitalism and compassion can and must exist side by side.

Follow the middle way, as the Buddha taught.  Wisdom does not inhabit the extremes, it seeks to balance them.

Read often, read widely, read wisely. That is the zenpolitics way.

Israel and Palestine

I’m white, Anglo-Saxon, pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, and bitterly opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

I’ve been pro-Israel since I was 8 or 9 years old, and first read of the fight to establish the modern state of Israel. Some of my best friends at school were Jewish, my father’s friends likewise, the finest teachers I ever had (postgraduate work at the Warburg Institute) were Jewish (Aby Warburg was Jewish), my best friend in book publishing was Jewish. The remarkable world of early 20th century Vienna, with Mahler and Freud prominent, was one of the great intellectual and cultural moments in history. My professor at the Warburg, Ernst Gombrich (also a Jew from Vienna), suggested my PhD subject might be the Jewish ghetto in Venice. Visiting Cordoba many years ago and seeing the bust there of Maimonides was a reminder of that remarkable Jewish culture that shared cultural supremacy with Islam back in the 12th century. And I could go on.

As for the bible (the Old Testament as Christians know it), for me it is the most remarkable and inspiring record of any people in history.

Opposing Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza is not anti-semitism. It is the reverse. I’m passionate about Israel. I wanted to work on a kibbutz when I was in my 20s. But other angry, intolerant and and often fundamentalist forces have taken government in Israel in another direction. There is talk of ‘deligitimising’ the Israeli state. My fear for Israel is that if they continue on their current path that may in many eyes be just what happens.

Talk of double strandards – why oppose Israel when violence elsewhere is as bad or worse – is wide of the mark. Israel was in its early days a society predicated on Western values of tolerance, individual freedom and natural justice. It is its departure from those values, and its massive devaluing of each Palestinian life compared to an Israeli one, which may yet undermine it.

Back in the 1930s there were those who argued that Jew and Arab, already fighting each other at a local level, could still live side by side. I’ll mention Martin Buber, an early hero of mine, in another post. They imagined then a worst-case scenario but could they ever have anticipated the current reality?

America is not united in its support for Israeli actions. Liberal Judaism is more critical, the 18-25 age range opposed, but the old consensus still holds sway, and Hilary Clinton’s loading of blame on to the Palestinians in Gaza doesn’t bode well for sanity in post-Obama American policy.

A two-state solution need not be far away. But there are powerful forces arguing against it, for whom repression is the only answer. How it will work out in time I doubt even if God knows.

The perils of intervention

Just one word this morning – intervention.

When to intervene and when not to? The right (and it’s true, not only the right) would have us intervene in Syria, as we did in Libya, but not, for America at least, in Gaza, where the intervention is already happening, and longstanding. But the USA doesn’t have proxies in other parts of the world. The reverse is true. Intervention couldn’t be by subtle diplomatic means, in the current state of things, so it would again be by bludgeon.

And when did bludgeon last work? Melanie Phillips, way off-beam as so often, describes the West as being ‘rudderless’ and ‘leaderless’, and blames Obama for no longer being prepared to defend Western interests. What are Western interests? Can we win favour by more violence? Can we import democracy into countries unwilling to accept it, and unable to define it as we do? Even Turkey – what of Turkish democracy reinterpreted by Erdogan?

What chance intervention working had it happened in Syria in 2011? Fragmentation and violence as is now the fate of Libya would have been the likely outcome. The same result as non-intervention. But that’s another story, and I wouldn’t want to oversimplify it by anything I write here.

As for intervening by way of wider sanctions in Ukraine, they have a poor history. When applied against Saddam Hussein they were riddled with holes. Against Iran in recent years they have put big pressure on the economy, and arguably had an impact. But Russia isn’t Iraq or Iran, and Putin knows it. He’s recently been, after the shooting down of MH17, in Latin America, signing deals. Likewise recently (before MH17 ) with the Chinese. The Russian economy may suffer from sanctions the West imposes but he has too many friends elsewhere for sanctions to have a chance of bringing him down, or even changing his policy.

I’m not opposed to sanctions per se, but I doubt the efficacy of further sanctions. They will polarise, drive both sides further part, they will not advance a solution.

Charles Krauthammer (National Review), in the context of Ukraine: ‘History doesn’t act autonomously. It needs agency.’ Responsible leaders, he argues, have a duty to try and shorten the time span of dictators. ‘History inevitably sees to the defeat of their [the dictators’] malign policies.’ But does it, and if it does, what replaces them? Misplaced agency is a fool’s errand. Follow Krauthammer and you’ll follow more of such errands.

Obama is playing a longer and wiser and braver game. It requires patience, and a determination to work with local people, local agencies, local parties. Think Pakistan, where we can all understand American policy toward the Pakistani Taliban, but the great majority of Pakistanis view America as the great satan. World opinion outside of the West is weighted against America. Obama is trying to readjust that balance. It will be a long game, and there are and will be shrill and foolish voices crying against it.

The appalling violence of the jihadists in northern Iraq is a mighty challenge to that policy. Stopping that violence is a necessary intervention, and it could have come sooner. But, beyond that, Obama’s aim is to work with and support the Iraqi and Kurdish goverments and military.  Reclaiming territory must be handled by local and not American forces.

Where we might intervene, and with success, is in Gaza. Intervention would be to stop violence, engineer peace, seek a two-state solution, but with Israel a proxy for the USA, what chance is there of that?

 

 

 

 

 

‘Not some sort of illuminati lizard creature’

… this being what, in Russell Brand’s view, Barrack Obama is not. But it is, in his view, how Judge Jeanine on Fox News would have us perceive him.

Russell Brand lost my vote when he ranted on about democracy in his TV discussion with Jeremy Paxman, but he’s clawed back my favour with his online TV show, The Trews, to which my kids (very grown-up kids) have alerted me.

Check out ‘Is Fox News More Dangerous Than Isis’ on YouTube. His interlocutions are brilliant. He sums up: ‘That attitude [Fox News] is more dangerous than ISIS.’

He feels a little sorry for Obama and the flak he’s receiving, and that’s where the crazy ‘not some sort of illuminati lizard creature’ comment comes in.

We need Russell Brand, as we need Jon Stewart.

Farmageddon – the evils of factory farming

I attended the Farmageddon event organised by the charity Compassion in World Farming (CWF) at the Royal Geographical Society yesterday, 12th July, with my daughter. It focused on the evils of factory farming….

Around 65 billion animals reared globally every year, they argue, most of whom spend their lives in conditions which are confined and cruel.

[For info on the extraordinary Farmageddon book see end of this post.]

CWF has real achievements it can be proud of over the last 45 years: ending the use of veal crates, battery cages for egg-laying hens, the close confinement of pregnant sows. They’ve also been instrumental in persuading the EU to consider animals as ‘sentient beings’, so the idea that animals don’t have feelings and so can’t suffer cruelty has been consigned to the wilder crueller corners of the human psyche.

But has it? Maybe in Europe, or in western Europe, and among some people, but what of factory farming USA, with its vast mega-dairies.

Animals are taken off the land and confined, and the land is given over to growing the food that feeds them, or to cash crops, while the grain that feeds them is imported. An irrational and crazy system. It allows animal farming to be carried out on a vast scale, but the grain loses much of its nutritional value converted into cattle feed. And the farms generate a vast amount of toxic waste. Proximity to mega-dairies is no place to be. In addition keeping animals in unhygienic conditions requires the use of vast quantities of antibiotics, radically increasing the chances that infections becoming antibiotic-resistant, in humans as well as animals. Witness David Cameron’s concerns about the development of drug-resistant superbugs early this week.

Issues:

Mapping out the food chain. Tracing the path from the emptying of the land and the construction of mega-dairies, piggeries and chicken farms, to our supermarkets and tables, and demonstrate where the diseconomies appear, and the damage the system does to animals, to humans (not least by pollution) and the environment.

Lining up with other charities, including environment and development charities, focusing on the implications of a big-company, corporatist, factory-based approach for poverty, pollution and the environment.

How can a charity combat the muscle, marketing, mega-bucks and self-promotion of big farming companies, for whom an animal is simply a unit of production?

Politics… CWF is considered to be political by the TV companies so it can’t advertise. How can it get its message across? Raising public consciousness has always been central to its work, but then as now it cannot be propagandist. It has to allow both sides of the picture to be presented, the factory owner and the dairy cow, and let the public makes up their own mind, as they did in previous campaigns over veal crates. We have to be thankful for TV programmes like Countryfile, which will talk to traditional dairy farmers – but also a farmer planning a more factory-based approach, but nothing on the scale (yet) of the USA.

Mega-dairies in the UK. We came so close to having our own mega-dairy at Nocton in Lincolnshire. [See http://www.countryfile.com/news/news-plans-lincolnshire-mega-dairy-withdrawn] The outcry was intense, and the application was rejected. What of the future – can we be sure that similar mega-businesses won’t get planning permission in other parts of our green and pleasant land?

But… it’s one thing to take on British and European farmers. To take on American agri-business is something else. Vast sums of money, a deep-rooted lack of sympathy for animals and the environment, bred in from the days of the early settlers, and now with a big-money expression, where once it was settlers fighting for their livelihoods.

How to get supermarkets on board? There are regular conversations, forums where the issues are discussed, but it’s only public opinion that will really drives changes, as they did after ‘Horsegate’ last year. And how do we get the wider public involved, so they bring their influence to bear on farmers, and the politicians who could legislate? The public would rather not know about the farms or abattoirs.

What of education? CWF sends speakers into schools, but even in geography lessons factory farming itself isn’t major focus. Today’s kids are very much aware of the environment and recycling. The arguments are presented in a non-controversial way. In the case of factory farming, the CWF can’t engage in propaganda. It has to present the arguments and let students decide. Climate change is a similar issue in this respect. Good economic arguments and powerful science maybe should carry the day. But vested interests insist they be listened to, and in that, protest as we may, CWF and all supporters have to acquiesce.

Food waste and cheap offers on food. Both need to be outlawed, by supermarkets and in the public mind. If costs employing traditional methods are higher, then better we reduce our meat consumption and make up for the reduction by wise consumption of fruit and veg. Easy to say but…

Poverty is a major issue, cheap food keeps people alive, so how do we address these issues without impacting on the diet and welfare of the poorest amongst us? That’s a balance we have always to keep in mind.

And, thinking crops, Monsanto genetically modify grains, and drought-resistant strains might, for example, bring areas of the Sahel into production. But the seed would be supplied by the seed companies, and farmers would be tied to the company seed, and in time big companies would buy them out. Monopoly rules again.

Don’t let being a vegetarian or vegan cloud the argument. That’s not what Compassion is about. It is not opposed to meat-eating, but the lives and deaths of animals need to be humane. Animals must be allowed to live as nature intended them, ruminate or snuffle, and die, as our position higher up the food chain has always dictated (that is a brute fact of life) – but by the civilised humane methods that characterise modern society at its best.

Compassion… it is Compassion in World Farming. We are focusing on animals as well as human beings. We are all sentient beings. Compassion for animals can’t be a substitute for compassion for humans. It’s an attitude to the world – our world. Meeting the people from CWF was impressive. They aren’t as I saw them an angry charity (though anger has its place) – they are passionate.

THE BOOK Farmageddon: Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat, by Philip Lymbery (CDEO CWF) with Isabel Oakeshott, Bloomsbury, £12.99.

 

IPCC report – understanding the evidence

A letter to the Economist about the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report encourages us to see climate models not as ‘a prediction machine’ but as ‘living maps, drawn up by scientists with the most recent evidence available…’

It’s the phrase ‘living maps’ I like. Wouldn’t it be great if policy discussions generally could use living maps, mapping out options and actions and consequences, with full context, and a decent attempt at impartiality?

The press would hate it, and so too the politicians. Maybe I would too, to be honest. Democracy as we know it is all about confrontations. But a few occasional living maps are useful, so well done the IPCC.

And, yes, the IPCC is impartial. Errant reporting of the movements of Himalayan glaciers doesn’t vitiate reams of irrefutable evidence. How we respond is a different matter: are consequences manageable, how much does it matter if they’re not, what on balance is best for the world? But we need to accept the evidence before we can have that debate. Increasingly acidified oceans and retreating ice sheets and, yes, glaciers, are there to remind us.

We need those living maps, to work out our options. There are different routes to take and we may get lost. Routes we can argue. But we’re mad to challenge the contours. When the deluge comes we don’t want to find ourselves in a river valley all the while claiming the mountains don’t exist.