All The More Reason

Ever wondered what the front pages of 100s of newspapers looked like? Wonder no more.

Here’s a link to Nigel Kennedy playing a mean Vivaldi - the first movement to the Winter Concerto. Powerful stuff.

Here’s an interesting take on the West’s perception of Bhutto compared to some of her own countrymen.

How big, for example, is the gap between the Western perception of Hamid Karzai, the well-spoken, well-meaning, liberalizing president of Afghanistan, and the perception of his Afghan countrymen? So far, attention has focused on how Bhutto’s assassination might affect the course of events in Pakistan. My wish, for 2008, is that it not be a harbinger of what is to come elsewhere.

Mr. Richard Caborn (Sheffield, Central) (Lab):

I beg to move,

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:

Most Gracious Sovereign,

We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.

Interesting interview with Hirsi Ali on the French 20 heures this evening. She was accompanied by the French spokeswoman for human rights, whose name escapes me right now.

J.S.

I’m really surprised that Ingmar Bergman’s support of Nazism as a young man has not been mentioned more, if at all, in the obituaries of him. Really surprised.

J.S.

It’s hard to tell from this article whether this bank robber has escaped from prison two times or three via helicopter.

Pascal Payet, 43 ans, s’était déjà évadé de la prison de Luynes (Bouches-du-Rhône) en hélicoptère en 2001. En janvier, il a été condamné, en compagnie de trois complices, par la Cour d’assises des Bouches-du-Rhône à sept ans d’emprisonnement pour avoir organisé une autre évasion spectaculaire toujours en hélicoptère, de la même prison de Luynes en 2003.

In the headline though, it claims it’s his second escape. Either way, it’s time to put this man in a prison where there are power lines!

J.S.

Sometimes when I think about the vicious debates between liberals and conservatives I ask myself where the wonder has gone. Why do I have a knee? Why two eyes and one mouth? Not why is the sky blue, but why is there a bloody sky at all? I wouldn’t want someone to think that I’m suggesting that these political debates are not of importance, but it does raise an eyebrow when some of the more vociferous of them choose not to explore any other territory but “the left” and “the right”.

For example, I caught myself in mid–phrase this afternoon completely breaking the infinitive. “It would be better to not have that option”.  If you listen to anyone over the age of 50 talk I’d bet good money that that infinitve is as solid as a rock. How did that happen? Is there a subtlety that’s developed between “not to have” and “to not have” which didn’t exist before or is this indeed an example of the weakening of the language? Isn’t that just as worthy of a debate as any other?

J.S.

This map of France is interesting. I know that when the 2004 presidential elections happened a lot of people talked about the red and blue states. Clearly there are huge amounts of supporters of Royal in regions that voted for Sarkozy and vice versa. Still, are there greater social phenomena going on in France to explain this kind of division that I’m not aware of?

J.S.

It’s rather odd that throughout this campaign the British media has concentrated its focus so squarely on the domestic programmes of the French presidential candidates to the almost total exclusion of the one policy area that would directly affect the British interest: namely, foreign affairs.

In recent years, French foreign policy has been both unconstructive and unprincipled. Whilst Tony Blair found- triumphantly in Kosovo, and with mixed results in Iraq - that only positive engagement with the United States could bring any hope of influence, France has maintained the non-iste, rejectionist, attitude that has been so characteristic of the country in general under Jacques Chirac.

But this was not a principled rejection of unilateralism. The France of de Villepin that stood firm against American unilateralism in 2003 was the France that unilaterally sent troops into the Cote d’Ivoire, without one UN resolution, let alone two, in 2004 (and let’s not even get started on nuclear testing or support for Togolese despots). Her government’s irrational and wholly unreasonable intransigence was more a rejection of the country’s newfound irrelevance. At the table of international diplomacy, France became something of an irascible great uncle: a once mighty figure who, in the absence of any real clout, made his presence felt by stubbornly refusing to pass the gravy.

Foreign policy has thus far played only a negative role in what has been a highly introspective campaign. For Royal in particular, the question of international affairs has been more stumbling block than stepping stone, and sometimes unfairly so. When her opponents spend a disproportionate amount of time wondering aloud how a woman who does not know how many nuclear submarines the French fleet has at its disposal could ever be trusted as commander in chief, one catches the distinctive whiff of chauvinism in the air. Royal, though, has done herself few favours. She has appeared more or less ignorant of many issues of crucial importance, such as the Iranian nuclear programme, and has taking a breathtakingly glib approach to other matters that one would expect a socialist and internationalist to hold dear (most notably, praising the Chinese justice system for its relative ‘efficiency’ compared to the French model).

Nicolas Sarkozy, on the other hand, has made a good deal of noise about foreign policy, and some of the noises will sound rather good to Eustonite ears. Andre Glucksmann, for one, is a fan:

Nicolas Sarkozy is the only candidate today to place himself in this large-hearted French tradition. He deplores the sacrifice of the Bulgarian nurses condemned to death in Libya, he denounces massacres in Darfur and the murder of journalists, and then states a principle of governance far removed from that of Jacques Chirac: ‘I don’t believe in what people call ‘realpolitik’, which rejects values and still doesn’t win any deals. I don’t accept what’s going on in Chechnya, since 250,000 dead or persecuted Chechens are more than a detail of world history. Because General de Gaulle wanted freedom for everyone, the right to liberty is theirs, too. To be silent is to be an accomplice, and I don’t want to be any dictator’s accomplice‘

The history of short, zealous Frenchmen taking on Russia is not an altogether happy one, but if Sarkozy is true to his vow to stand up to the creeping authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, that will be all to the good. His rhetoric will doubtless resonate with some on the Le Pen right who see any exercise of French power as a display of virility, but it should also chime with those on the internationalist left who wish, or ought to wish, that it be a display of virtue.

Michael P