The 80/20 Rule

Facebook | Name the Greenpeace Whale Mohammed

Greenpeace are holding a nice little public vote, inviting us all to 'name a whale'.

Alas, they've restricted the voting choices to a fairly pathetic list of 30, including:

- Gana: means 'song' in Hindi
- Manami: means 'love of the sea' in Japanese
- Nurani: means 'conscience in Bahasa Indonesia

Despairing at this load of tree-hugging rubbish, I've started a new Facebook group;

Facebook | Name the Greenpeace Whale Mohammed

The intention is to get everyone to write in to Greenpeace to encourage them to consider a new, more topical name.

I'm waiting for the email that informs me that my Facebook account has been suspended :-)

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Tags: GillianGibbons, Mohammed, Sudan, Greeenpeace

Gordon's mates...

So here's the new cabinet in full with their former careers in brackets:

Gordon Brown (Career Politician)
Douglas Alexander (Career Politician)
Jack Straw (Career Politician)
James Purnell (Career Politician)
Shaun Woodward (Career Politician)
Yvette Cooper (Career Politician)
Alistair Darling (Solicitor/Barrister)
Des Browne (Solicitor/Barrister)
Hazel Blears (Solicitor/Barrister)
Harriet Harman (Solicitor/Barrister)
Baroness Scotland (Solicitor/Barrister)
Geoff Hoon (Solicitor/Lecturer)
John Hutton (Lecturer)
Beverley Hughes (Lecturer)
Lord Grocott (Lecturer)
Jacqui Smith (Teacher)
Alan Johnson (Trade Union leader)
Hilary Benn (Trade Union advisor)
Peter Hain (Trade Union advisor)
Andy Burnham (Trade Union advisor)
Ruth Kelly (Journalist)
Ed Milliband  (Journalist)
Ed Balls (Journalist)
John Denham (Charity worker)
Baroness Ashton (Charity worker)
David Miliband (Think Tank Wonk)
Tessa Jowell (Social Worker)
Lord Malloch Brown (Career Civil Servant)

Truely, a cabinet of all the talent.

Clever Alex

No one should accuse Alex Salmond of lacking political smarts.

He's realised that his best chance of pushing Scotland to independence is to persuade reluctant Scots that they are no longer liked or wanted by the English. I think its a winning strategy.

Every time Scotland gets access to a new drug, reduced student charges, smaller class sizes or more investment that is paid for by the British (largely English) taxpayer, it increases resentment south of the border whilst boosting his ratings north of it.

With a recent opinion poll showing that a larger percentage of English than Scottish voters are in favour of Scottish independence, how long will it be before "let's get rid of the Scots" becomes a popular cry? How long before a UK political party wakes up to the challenge and gets serious about a settlement for England?

'That' logo

Those interested in the origins of the new Olympic logo (trust me, you are) should head over the the excellent blog of Tim Worstall, where the inspiration for the £400,000 mess is revealed. Be warned, a sense of humour is required.

Pathetic

From SeaPerson Arthur Batchelor's interview in The Mirror:

"When I'd calmed down, she asked, 'Do you need another hug, a mother hug?' and I said, 'damn right'..... Topsy said she'd always be there for me, to protect me and look after me."

How inspiring it must be for potential recruits to the Royal Navy to hear such tales of heroism. Potential foes must be laughing themselves silly.

What flag rank half-wit in the Royal Navy thought it would be a good idea to let spineless puppies like this idiot embarress themselves, the armed forces and this country by giving these interviews?

The UN is pointless - Part 2

It's now day 8 of the hostage 'crisis' precipitated by the Iranian seizure, in Iraqi waters, of one British female sailor (oh, and I think there might be 14 others involved though you wouldn't know it by reading any of the papers. Poor bastards, under-equippped and ignored, a search of the MoD's website fails even to turn up their names).

Let's review the state of play.

1. Nobody has died
2. Underfunding of the armed forces has, again, been highlighted
3. The Iranians have been shown, again, to be nuts.
4. The UN has been exposed, again, as the pointless shambles it is.

I'd say it's all going pretty well, wouldn't you?

All that's needed to send me off for a happy weekend is the news that the EU has joined other 'international organisations' in failing to do or say anything effective.

And all the while the British public learns again the age old lesson that you cannot talk reasonably to unreasonable people and expect a happy ending.

Connecting the dots.

Suddenly the media is full of stories of an impending US attack on Iran. US allegations of Iranian involvement in Iraqi terrorism (hardly a surprise) are presented as part of the pretext, normal rotation of carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf are portrayed as a build-up.

The Today program on Radio 4 jumps in and gives over the Thought for the Day slot to some loon who tries to draw parallels between silent pauses in Harold Pinter plays, supposedly suspicious US silence on the reasons for Iranian (Shia) involvement in a largely Sunni Iraqi insurgency* and the sayings of Buddha (really, I'm not making this up - go and find it on their website, its hilarious).

All the while the story that could make sense of this, the progress being made in persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions is relegated to a slot on the bulletins usually reserved for talking dog stories.

Think of "America prepares for attack" stories as a stick waved at Iran and the North Korean settlement as a carrot waved in the same general direction and everything becomes a little clearer.

Of course, the stick is real. It has to be given the abject failure of the EU's "soft power" initiatives aimed at constructively engaging with Tehran (a failure the EU now seems ready to admit). However, given that the current Israeli policy of targeted assassinations of key Iranian nuclear scientists (non-subscriber summary) is still in its infancy, the chances of the stick being used soon are still very low.

*Iran supplies weapons. Americans die (death to America!). Americans leave Iraq, Iranian Shia client state springs up. Sunni-hunting becomes officially sanctioned Iraqi sport.

What Blair should have said...

About 'that' execution....

Q: What do you think of the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution?

A: Look, the place is a democracy, they have a democratic government. They want the death penalty, they've got it. It's none of our damn business.

It's especially hypocritical that we politicians in Britain get all puffed up about the execution. After all, all of the main UK political parties refuse to talk about the death penalty here despite poll after poll after poll indicating that the British people want it re-introduced. If we ever let them vote about it. Which we won't. So let's just shut up about it, before the proles figure out that something about this whole death penalty kerfuffle smells a bit fishy.

Q: How about the ...  

A: And another thing, that Jonathon Porritt. What an arsehole. I'll stack my carbon footprint up against that Al Gore's any day, at least I've got a proper job as an excuse.

He wouldn't, of course. Personally I found the whole Porritt criticism deeply satisfying. Serves Blair right for supporting all that Climate CHAOS! hype.

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The shortsighted Jean Kirkpatrick

Last week the US political blogosphere spent a fair amount of effort mourning the death of former US ambassador to the UN, Jean Kirkpatrick. Those blogs concentrated mostly on her closeness to the Reagan administration, despite her Democrat roots, and her championing of what could be seen as 'neocon' values in the early Eighties.

On this side of the Atlantic, she is remembered more for her support of the Argentinian dictatorship when it invaded the Falkland Islands, a small British democratic overseas territory, in 1981.

Writing in The Times blog, Daniel Finkelstein points out that she first came to public attention for her publication of a paper titled "Dictatorships and Double Standards" which attempted to draw a distinction between authoritarian regimes with which the US might work in furtherance of Cold War objectives and totalitarian regimes, with whom the US should never work.

It was a common Cold War theme that dictators could be split into 'our dictators' and 'their dictators'. Hence Kirkpatrick's support of Galtieri's regime at a time when Washington was inclined to see him as a buffer against communist forces in South America.

It was an idiotic policy then and it's an idiotic policy now.

It was such a policy (often commonly and incorrectly referred to as 'realism') which saw the US lend muted support to Saddam Hussein's regime as a buffer to Iranian expansionism after the Mullah's revolution. Kirkpatrick's death, so close to the publication of the Baker/Hamilton report on Iraq should, but probably won't, serve to remind us that cosying up to dictatorships is never a good medium or long term bet, even when there are short-term attractions to such a policy.

In the Eighties it was Galtieri, Hussein, Marcos and their ilk. Today the pressure to engage with Syria, Iran and a host of other dictatorships in the interests of regional stability and a quiet life seems to be gathering pace.

We seem doomed to repeat the Cold War mistake of thinking that there could ever be such a thing as a friendly dictator when history tells us that all we're doing is storing up problems for the future by engaging with those we should be helping to undermine.

North Korea's twin-track approach to weapons development.

The Belmont Club documents the history of the North Korean nuclear weapon program, or as it turns out 'programs' - one based on plutonium enrichment and one based on uranium (and based on information and material supplied by the 'father' of the Pakistani bomb, A Q Khan).

It concludes:

If North Korea's test involved a uranium device then Jimmy Carter's efforts, however well intentioned, were wholly irrelevant to Pyongyang's nuclear arms program because they only stopped, if they ever did, the Nokor plutonium weapon research. Then the North Koreans would have conceded nothing in fact to Carter in exchange for the billions of dollars he provided by agreeing to stop proceeding down a plutonium road that they had already abandoned. However, if President Musharraf is correct in claiming (how does he know?) that North Korea's bomb was in fact a plutonium weapon, then President Carter's diplomacy didn't stop the program he claims credit for derailing at all. Whether uranium or plutonium, Carter's trip seems to have made no difference.

You can (and should) read the whole thing here: The Belmont Club: You take the high road and we'll take the low road

technorati tags:north korea, nuclear, plutonium, unranium, AQ Khan, Pakistan, Jimmy Carter

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