Deja Vu All Over Again

Remember how we were told that Saddam Hussain had been supplied with weapons by the US and UK when it served our purpose to keep him in power, only later to discover that nearly all of the arms recovered after the war were from Russia and France? Well another myth has been exposed.

Call it the 'war for oil' fallacy.

According to Reuters the US oil majors were largely absent from an Iraqi auction of oil deals snapped up instead by Russian, Chinese and other firms.

The Oil Ministry on Saturday ended its second bidding round after awarding seven of the oilfields offered for development, adding to deals from a first auction in June that could together take Iraq up to a capacity to pump 12 million barrels per day.

[...]Russia's Lukoil on Saturday clinched a deal to develop Iraq's supergiant West Qurna Phase Two oilfield after having failed to convince Iraq to bypass the auction and revive an old Saddam Hussein-era deal for the field.

[...]Only one U.S. firm bid in the second round, and of the four fields bid on by U.S. firms in the first round, only Exxon Mobil won a major prize, leading a group to clinch a deal for the supergiant West Qurna Phase One field.

U.S.-based Occidental came away with a quarter stake in a consortium that won a contract for the giant Zubair field.

By contrast, Chinese state oil firms were involved in every first round bid and made a strong showing in the second.

[...]"We haven't really seen U.S. companies, and that is because of intense competition ... The issue is financial and technical and not at all political. This confirms Iraq can manage its oil policy and activities without politicization," said Thamir Ghadhban, a prime ministerial advisor and former oil minister.

As Robin Simcox reflects: "So while the US barely figured, Russia and China - both of who(m) voted against the war - are now both (as they have every right) making finanical gains from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. However such facts rarely do much to puncture the depressingly prevalent idea that Saddam was overthrown by the US and UK due to an insatiable thirst for oil and financial gain. This blatant misreading of the facts seem to be increasingly accepted wisdom, and it is hard to see what Blair can say at the inquiry to change this."

Is war possible?

According to Professor Philip Allott writing in today's Times:

Wars should be preceded and accompanied by intense public debate about all aspects - strategic, moral, political, social, economic, legal.

Has there ever been such a war? Could there ever be?

Big Questions

 At the end of Chapter 1 of Celia Green's book The Human Evasion are some fiercely searching questions I seem never seriously to have asked before:

"The questions which remain are these. Are people, in fact, matters of ultimate concern to other people? And still more, can they be sources of "ultimate solution" to them? If they are not, what psychological force is at work to ensure that these questions are so seldom asked? Why, if you ask a question about man and the universe, are you given an answer about "man in society"?

Iraq War Inquiry Derangement Syndrome

That's what Melanie Phillips calls it.

She concludes:

"we all know beyond a shadow of a doubt, Blair secretly committed Britain to an illegal war on which he lied to the British public – and unless the inquiry concludes as such, its members will be consigned along with him to the first circle of hell.

"Verdict first, evidence nowhere."

Valentine

The patron saint of making sad, lonely, ugly people feel like crap.

(My last quote "Chequered" was, I think, original i.e. I made it up. This one I definitely heard somewhere.)

Chequered

The best thing I can say about my chequered past is that it exactly matches my chequered present.

Sounds unfamiliar

Labour MP David Anderson speaking in the debate on the Queen's Speech:

"I hope that John Chilcot asks people such as Bayan Rahman to give evidence. I hope that he asks Hangar Khan, from the regional trade union movement, and Abdullah Muhsin, who was exiled in the 1980s and became the international representative of the trade union movement, to give evidence too. They will say clearly what Bayan has said to me: "Some people seem to have forgotten the brutal reality of his long years of repression. Saddam conducted a campaign of genocide against the Kurds. His forces used chemical weapons to kill men, women and children including 5,000 people who were killed in an attack on the city of Halabja in 1988. They murdered innocent people including thousands of boys and men from the Barzan area who disappeared in 1983," never to be seen again, "and whose mass graves are being found today."

"Saddam's forces also "razed 4,500 villages to the ground, destroying" the agricultural heartland of Iraq. The suffering in other parts of Iraq was the same. The key question that people ask me when I am over there is not "Why did you come here in 2003?" but "Why didn't you come here in 1983? We might have had a very different way of life."

Is Tony Blair narcissistic?

 . . .  a person who has been charged with acting as he did for reasons such as a desire to keep in with America, or to flatter George Bush, or because of oil, or of imperialism or colonialism or militarism, and who has also been charged with telling lies about his reasons for action, might quite legitimately say that he did what he believed was right - that is, he believed there to be morally compelling reasons for acting as he did, rather than the scurrilous reasons which are being attributed to him by others. There's nothing narcissistic about defending yourself against criticism. (Eve Garrard)

Chilcot Inquiry

As a corrective to the latest wave of anti-Blair hysteria please read John Rentoul's journal.

In particular you will learn that:

"in respect of this morning's front-page report in The Independent:

(a) It's not new;

(b) It fits at least one of several interlocking anti-war narratives;

(c) Nobody lied."

Read it and be demystified.

A Winter's Tale

It was dark. It was winter. But perhaps not too late.

A mother, no longer a young woman, had come to visit her son.

She had not seen him for twenty years. On Christmas Day 1989 he walked out on her in anger and never came back. She had not seen him since. Nor had she met his son, her own grandson, now ten years old. She had tried to communicate by letters and cards and presents at Christmas, but they had all passed without acknowledgement.

She rang the bell. The door was opened. Before her now stood a man in early middle-age she did not at once recognise. Their eyes met.

"Hi!", she said wistfully, then paused, and allowed the level of hope in her to rise.

"Go away!" he sneered.

There was nothing to add. And nothing to fight for. An end of sorts.

Without pity.

When you think of it

If all the questions that could be asked about life, the universe and everything were actually asked, the answer to nearly all of them would be:

NOBODY KNOWS!

At least that's what I think.

'I still can't see that I was wrong'

So says Fern Britton in a Times interview on the subject of staying schtum about her gastric band.

Later in the same piece she is asked about her own interviews with Tony Blair and in particular whether he admitted to feeling guilt about Iraq? She continues:

“I said, ‘What about those parents whose children have lost their lives, and will not shake your hand because you have blood on them? That must be painful?” And he said, much more painful to them — they’ve lost a child — and all of that. So I said, ‘But you are the person they will always hold responsible,’ and he said, ‘Yes, yes.’ But he still believes he was right.”

No one ever admits they are wrong, I observe. “No,” she says, “it would be interesting if they did.”

Gastric band? Iraq? How do you admit you're wrong if you believe you're right?

Which War?

Gnotalex, a Canadian blogger, has a go at what he calls this global-warming farce and in so doing makes the much maligned 'War on Terror' sound a more rational option.

"To declare war on '... the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known lifeforms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life. (Wikipedia)' is beyond parody; only a greedy, preening dolt (c'mon down, Al Gore!) could possibly believe it. The Canadian Government should boycott the upcoming Copenhagen conference and dare Gaia to do her worst."

Funnily enough

This young man was interviewed on the telly. He was said to be autistic.

He told us that he loves words; he's really good at learning languages; he just doesn't like talking to people.

He reminded me of the Yorkshireman who was asked by a visitor to the working-men's club whether the comedian was any good. He is if you like laughing, was his reply.

Whose side are they on?

An extraordinary and unintended comment on the ethic of public service was made today by a spokesman for the British police service. After a flood in Cockermouth, Cumbria, a police officer had been reported missing. Shortly afterwards a man's body was found washed up by the river. Although the corpse had not yet been identified the spokesman stated that they, the police, were 'pessimistic'.

They obviously feared that he might be one of theirs and not just an ordinary . . .

On choosing one's parents carefully

My mother was a troubled and tormented person, but she was not a deep thinker. She just found living life on the sort of terms that were available to her tremendously difficult.

My father by contrast was an incredibly resourceful man who would keep smiling through the worst that the world could do to him. He was the best kind of trickster. He did however entertain deep and troubling thoughts about human existence as such. He protested, philosophically, against what he saw as the supreme injustice that we human beings are not consulted about the two most important decisions affecting our lives: whether we are born, and whether we die.

A special man.

Cathedral Communion

I left the chapel where the service had taken place. As I waited for the celebrant whom I had arranged to meet for a chat afterwards, my attention was drawn to a board on which were posted prayer requests. At the top was a card inscribed with a message to David (my name). It said 'Please take care. All my love to you always. From your Mum.' I felt warm. As if it were for me. I reached for an empty card and scribbled a reciprocal solicitation: 'Mum, all my love to you too. From David'.

Later that week I found myself recalling that although my father loved and was loving to me he had some difficulty understanding me. It was mother who really knew me though she did not always behave lovingly towards me.

The same evening we attended a performance of Ibsen's Ghosts. There Oswald Alving is asked by his mother whether he loves her. He replies rather, 'I know you'. I caught my breath.

Communion in more than one kind.

Goodbye cruel world

The wonderful Caitlin Moran perfectly captures the gracious quality of internet communication:

" . . . cyberspace has such a gentle civility to it as a method of communication that it makes all other alternative look like acts of borderline war. Telephones, for instance. My God, but as the days go by, they seem more and more brutal. How did we ever start using them in the first place?

"When you call someone, essentially you suddenly materialise in their life, screaming, “ME ME! ME ME! IT’S ME! TALK TO ME!” The telephone was first invented at a time when you could readily purchase cocaine in any chemist. I think we can draw our own conclusions. Using one is an act of superlative self-confidence — the kind of thing only contestants on The Apprentice would do; or, maybe, Bono."

Hath not a Jew eyes . . . ?

Susan Hill getting it right again about anti-Semitism, women priests, and so much else:

"I was reading some twitter by the Archbishop of Canterbury about climate change and other nonsense, and it struck me forcibly that the man is forever dodging the real and vital issues. Why do he and his fellow Bishops and all his clergy, never speak out loud and clear, reminding their congregations that Christians and Jews are merely separate branches of a tree with a common trunk, common roots and telling them that all forms of anti-Semitism are wrong ? Wrong, sinful, wicked, evil – use whatever word you like to get the message home. It matters but I sometimes wonder if they even realise how much anti-Semitism there is out there. They’d rather waffle on about women priests. And talking of which, Paul appointed quite a few women to active positions of authority in the churches he founded in a number of different countries so the next time an Anglican clergyman who is anti-the ordination of women starts, ask him about Prisca and Aquila, to name but two. Paul had more sense than the lot of them put together."

Lest We Forget

The British Soldier - Poppy Appeal

The average British soldier is 19 years old…..he is a short haired, well built lad who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears and just old enough to buy a round of drinks but old enough to die for his country – and for you. He’s not particularly keen on hard work but he’d rather be grafting in Afghanistan than unemployed in the UK . He recently left comprehensive school where he was probably an average student, played some form of sport, drove a ten year old rust bucket, and knew a girl that either broke up with him when he left, or swore to be waiting when he returns home. He moves easily to rock and roll or hip-hop or to the rattle of a 7.62mm machine gun.


He is about a stone lighter than when he left home because he is working or fighting from dawn to dusk and well beyond. He has trouble spelling, so letter writing is a pain for him, but he can strip a rifle in 25 seconds and reassemble it in the dark. He can recite every detail of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either effectively if he has to. He digs trenches and latrines without the aid of machines and can apply first aid like a professional paramedic. He can march until he is told to stop, or stay dead still until he is told to move.


He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation but he is not without a rebellious spirit or a sense of personal dignity. He is confidently self-sufficient. He has two sets of uniform with him: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his water bottle full and his feet dry. He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never forgets to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes and fix his own hurts. If you are thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food is your food. He'll even share his life-saving ammunition with you in the heat of a firefight if you run low.

He has learned to use his hands like weapons and regards his weapon as an extension of his own hands. He can save your life or he can take it, because that is his job - it's what a soldier does. He often works twice as long and hard as a civilian, draw half the pay and have nowhere to spend it, and can still find black ironic humour in it all. There's an old saying in the British Army: 'If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined!'


He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and he is unashamed to show it or admit it. He feels every bugle note of the 'Last Post' or 'Sunset' vibrate through his body while standing rigidly to attention. He's not afraid to 'Bollock' anyone who shows disrespect when the Regimental Colours are on display or the National Anthem is played; yet in an odd twist, he would defend anyone's right to be an individual. Just as with generations of young people before him, he is paying the price for our freedom. Clean shaven and baby faced he may be, but be prepared to defend yourself if you treat him like a kid.
He is the latest in a long thin line of British Fighting Men that have kept this country free for hundreds of years. He asks for nothing from us except our respect, friendship and understanding. We may not like what he does, but sometimes he doesn't like it either - he just has it to do.. Remember him always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.

And now we even have brave young women putting themselves in harm's way, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation's politicians call on us to do so.

. . . say a prayer for our troops in the trouble spots of the world.