So farewell then UNMOVIC
Guardian Comment is Free
Friday, June 29, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Browning of America
The Browning of America
Two cheers and a 'Gordon who?' from the US for Britain's new prime minister.
Ian Williams
Full text of Guardian Comment is Free piece
June 27, 2007 4:10 PM
I greet the coronation of Gordon Brown not so much with joy and rapture unforeseen, but nonetheless with a restrained approbation.
Lots of my American friends and colleagues, a group that almost by definition is fairly savvy about foreign politics, have asked, "who is Gordon Brown?" What they mean is: "what does he stand for?"
For the reporters who went out to do vox pops on the streets of Manhattan, it was a literal question that produced a blizzard of dandruff as people scratched their heads in puzzlement. The incoming British Prime Minister is totally unknown to most citizens of the country with which he will almost certainly be preaching a special relationship. The Blue half of American will remember his fawning on Bush and wonder whether he could be any worse than Blair, while the Red half will wonder how perfidious Albion could replace such a staunch friend of America with a dour unknown Scot with so little pizzazz.
That is a shame, since Brown is the one who quietly and methodically has been financing and implementing the programmes that have made the Labour government attractive enough for British voters to support, despite the Blairish foreign forays and the attempts to treat George Orwell's 1984 as a desirable social programme rather than a dystopic novel.
Regardless of Tony Blair's best efforts at convergence, the political systems of the two countries are widely different even if they are conducted in the same language. Gordon Brown was elected, admittedly unopposed, by his party, and once Blair had been persuaded it was time to take a walk, it was a fairly short and bloodless process. But the British public knew who he was, as did the Labour Party.
In the US the presidential primaries drag on over a year and are effectively restricted to those who are very rich, or are connected enough to the very rich, to buy airtime. Of course, in some ways, that makes it politically less exclusive than British politics. Small-state governors, city mayors and passing millionaires can all put their hat in the ring. The president can be of the opposite party to the legislature, and several, Reagan, Carter, Clinton and Bush the latest, could all take office with no experience in congress at all, and indeed little at national, let alone international politics.
In Britain, the Prime Minister is elected by the majority party in parliament of which he has to be a member, and the constituency, theoretically at least, includes not only Members of Parliament but also ordinary party members and members of the affiliated organizations, like the unions.
So Gordon Brown did not have to be wealthy to get to No 10 Downing Street. But he did have to have the trust of the membership. To ensure unopposed re-election he played on his credentials as a solid party member, determined to rebuild an organization that his predecessor had reduced to a Clintonesque dropping off point for big cheques.
His credentials in the party are much more solid than the flibbertigibbet Blair. Not only did he write a biography of prewar left Labour icon James Maxton he also co-edited the "Red Paper on Scotland," thirty years ago which for American readers refers to Red as in Red Flag, not Republican.
But one of the things that is worth pointing out is the impact of the period in which he entered politics on his economic thinking. Harold Wilson's Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s were bedeviled at every turn by a hostile financial system, where international bankers imposed conditions on their social and economic policies which they enforced with runs on the currency and the usual panoply of measures that were later wielded against recalcitrant third world states.
Brown's cautious financial approach has led to fiscal and economic success unprecedented in post-war British governments - the much-vaunted growth rates of Margaret Thatcher were largely recouping the damage she did when she trashed British industry after taking office. Many of his measures, including the independence of the Bank of England, were designed to stroke the bankers and keep them purring while in effect maintaining public spending.
As chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown had far more power in Britain than any comparable figure in American finance. Despite the cosmetic independence of the Bank of England, he combined the prerequisites of the Federal Reserve chair with those of the Treasury secretary, and did not really have to share control of the budget with parliament.
The reductions in unemployment, the increase in the minimum wage, increase in health and education spending are not be sneezed at, either in the context of Thatcher's Britain, nor for that matter compared with the United States.
Which brings us to the question: Is he good for America? It is often forgotten that it was a Labour icon, Ernest Bevin, who invented Nato and the present form of the "special relationship." Harold Wilson the Prime Minister in the 1960s and 1970s wrestled with keeping LBJ happy - without sending troops to Vietnam, which would have made his party and electorate very unhappy.
Brown, a frequent sojourner in Cape Cod, is certainly an admirer of the United States. One can legitimately doubt that he would have been so effusive about the present president if he had been premier hitherto. Certainly the fate of Blair will keep the brakes on Brown's enthusiasm for supporting Washington's wilder adventures, but he will almost certainly maintain, albeit in more restrained form, the myth of the special relationship.
Two cheers and a 'Gordon who?' from the US for Britain's new prime minister.
Ian Williams
Full text of Guardian Comment is Free piece
June 27, 2007 4:10 PM
I greet the coronation of Gordon Brown not so much with joy and rapture unforeseen, but nonetheless with a restrained approbation.
Lots of my American friends and colleagues, a group that almost by definition is fairly savvy about foreign politics, have asked, "who is Gordon Brown?" What they mean is: "what does he stand for?"
For the reporters who went out to do vox pops on the streets of Manhattan, it was a literal question that produced a blizzard of dandruff as people scratched their heads in puzzlement. The incoming British Prime Minister is totally unknown to most citizens of the country with which he will almost certainly be preaching a special relationship. The Blue half of American will remember his fawning on Bush and wonder whether he could be any worse than Blair, while the Red half will wonder how perfidious Albion could replace such a staunch friend of America with a dour unknown Scot with so little pizzazz.
That is a shame, since Brown is the one who quietly and methodically has been financing and implementing the programmes that have made the Labour government attractive enough for British voters to support, despite the Blairish foreign forays and the attempts to treat George Orwell's 1984 as a desirable social programme rather than a dystopic novel.
Regardless of Tony Blair's best efforts at convergence, the political systems of the two countries are widely different even if they are conducted in the same language. Gordon Brown was elected, admittedly unopposed, by his party, and once Blair had been persuaded it was time to take a walk, it was a fairly short and bloodless process. But the British public knew who he was, as did the Labour Party.
In the US the presidential primaries drag on over a year and are effectively restricted to those who are very rich, or are connected enough to the very rich, to buy airtime. Of course, in some ways, that makes it politically less exclusive than British politics. Small-state governors, city mayors and passing millionaires can all put their hat in the ring. The president can be of the opposite party to the legislature, and several, Reagan, Carter, Clinton and Bush the latest, could all take office with no experience in congress at all, and indeed little at national, let alone international politics.
In Britain, the Prime Minister is elected by the majority party in parliament of which he has to be a member, and the constituency, theoretically at least, includes not only Members of Parliament but also ordinary party members and members of the affiliated organizations, like the unions.
So Gordon Brown did not have to be wealthy to get to No 10 Downing Street. But he did have to have the trust of the membership. To ensure unopposed re-election he played on his credentials as a solid party member, determined to rebuild an organization that his predecessor had reduced to a Clintonesque dropping off point for big cheques.
His credentials in the party are much more solid than the flibbertigibbet Blair. Not only did he write a biography of prewar left Labour icon James Maxton he also co-edited the "Red Paper on Scotland," thirty years ago which for American readers refers to Red as in Red Flag, not Republican.
But one of the things that is worth pointing out is the impact of the period in which he entered politics on his economic thinking. Harold Wilson's Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s were bedeviled at every turn by a hostile financial system, where international bankers imposed conditions on their social and economic policies which they enforced with runs on the currency and the usual panoply of measures that were later wielded against recalcitrant third world states.
Brown's cautious financial approach has led to fiscal and economic success unprecedented in post-war British governments - the much-vaunted growth rates of Margaret Thatcher were largely recouping the damage she did when she trashed British industry after taking office. Many of his measures, including the independence of the Bank of England, were designed to stroke the bankers and keep them purring while in effect maintaining public spending.
As chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown had far more power in Britain than any comparable figure in American finance. Despite the cosmetic independence of the Bank of England, he combined the prerequisites of the Federal Reserve chair with those of the Treasury secretary, and did not really have to share control of the budget with parliament.
The reductions in unemployment, the increase in the minimum wage, increase in health and education spending are not be sneezed at, either in the context of Thatcher's Britain, nor for that matter compared with the United States.
Which brings us to the question: Is he good for America? It is often forgotten that it was a Labour icon, Ernest Bevin, who invented Nato and the present form of the "special relationship." Harold Wilson the Prime Minister in the 1960s and 1970s wrestled with keeping LBJ happy - without sending troops to Vietnam, which would have made his party and electorate very unhappy.
Brown, a frequent sojourner in Cape Cod, is certainly an admirer of the United States. One can legitimately doubt that he would have been so effusive about the present president if he had been premier hitherto. Certainly the fate of Blair will keep the brakes on Brown's enthusiasm for supporting Washington's wilder adventures, but he will almost certainly maintain, albeit in more restrained form, the myth of the special relationship.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Browning of America
The Browning of America... in the Guardian
quite topical in conjunction with last week's prescient piece of Blair's move to represent the Quadriplegic Quartet in the Middle East
quite topical in conjunction with last week's prescient piece of Blair's move to represent the Quadriplegic Quartet in the Middle East
FPIF Commentary
Ban Ki Whom?
Ian Williams | June 27, 2007
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
People used to equate the vice-presidency of the United States with a "pitcher of warm spit." Since Dick Cheney occupied the position, the spittle has become more potently venomous and the office consequently more important and noticeable. Similarly, the secretary-generalship of the United Nations is a very malleable office. The contrast with a predecessor’s personality can make the successor’s style more or less noticeable. Ban Ki Moon's tenure so far has been on the low decibel end of the scale, even compared with Kofi Annan, who always spoke softly, realizing that there was no big stick at hand.
Technically, the secretary general is the UN’s office manager, and on the official protocol totem pole only equates to a foreign minister. In fact, the frequently overlookable President of the General Assembly officially outranks him. (Until now, only men have served as UN secretaries general.)
However, like his predecessors, Ban can phone heads of state, confident that they will answer his calls. His real powers derive from his ability to put questions on the agenda –which can mean putting the great powers on the spot by raising issues that they would rather see buried. That’s an integral part of his real power – it’s the practical leverage by which he can symbolize the UN Charter and the world community for the peoples of the world.
It’s a power that recent incumbents have under-used rather than abused. One of the reasons for this is that the role of the world's conscience contradicts the other role that has accreted to the office, which is to be the global Arch-Envoy. It’s difficult to remain the public keeper of the global conscience when shaking the bloodstained hands of the statesmen of the world is an essential part of your job description. And it’s difficult to keep shaking the hands of people that you may name and shame.
First Six Months
So where does Ban Ki Moon fit into the pattern after six months in office? One suspects that his neophyte Korean-dominated team doesn’t really realize that there is a pattern. In some ways, his tenure is reminiscent of the initial intellectual arrogance of Boutros Boutros Ghali, who ran the show peremptorily and autocratically until experience taught him differently. In Ban's case, it’s more oligarchic than autocratic. His team of Korean advisors is collectively running the show, but these advisors really do think they have little to learn from the existing office-holders, many of whom they have cleared out.
Indeed, so thoroughgoing has been their exclusion of most of Annan’s personnel that one can only presume they believed the John Bolton/Fox TV image of the Annan administration as hopelessly anti-American and incorrigibly corrupt.
That lack of institutional memory leads to a reinvention of the wheel. The fractious ending of their terms of office obscured the fact many Non-Aligned delegations regarded both Boutros-Ghali and Annan as being pro-American to the point of being tools of Washington. Ban has, naturally, declared that U.S.-UN relations are to be a major priority, but his Korean back up staff seem to think that they are being innovative with this. In reality they are marching briskly into the same prejudiced swamp as their predecessors.
Annan and the United States
Indeed, Annan, a U.S. nominee, went as far as possible in constructive engagement of Washington, and, realizing its importance on Capitol Hill, to bring in Israel and American pro-Israeli organizations into the United Nations.
However, Annan realized that there was some considerable dissonance between what American politicians wanted and what the UN Charter and international law mandates. He didn’t ostentatiously flaunt disagreements, but when he was pushed there were lines he would not cross. In the end, he had to admit that the invasion of Iraq was illegal – but no one could accuse him of being ostentatious in his delivery of the message. Similarly, even as he worked to get Israel fully participating in the UN and accepting a role for the UN in the Middle East, he occasionally reminded the world that there were relevant and important resolutions to consider.
Unlike their predecessors, the Ban's team seems unaware that maintaining some distance from Washington – especially when it is scoffing at the UN Charter and International Law – is essential to keep the rest of the membership happy. That’s nowhere more apparent than on Middle East issues, where in his leaked confidential report on his resignation as the UN Representative for the Peace Process, Alvaro de Soto revealed an almost complete capitulation to the American/Israeli positions. De Soto complained of the "unprecedented access" Israel had to the Secretary General's office, which insiders confirm, and which goes as far as helping choose officials as well as determining positions on the Palestine conflict.
Ban and the Middle East
Some of this results from the historical experience of Ban and the South Koreans, who after all, are more likely to see the United States as guardian angel than predatory superpower. In fact, UN officials report that Ban sees Israel as South Korea and the Palestinians as North Korea, with the United States backing the good guys. That misconception is reinforced because South Korea simply has not had a dog in the Middle East fight, which has been an almost entirely peripheral issue for Seoul. Ban and his team simply don’t appreciate the significance of the issue for the UN, for international law, and the diplomacy of most of the rest of the world.
Ironically, sources inside the UN suggest that the under-secretary general for political affairs, former U.S. diplomat B. Lynn Pascoe, has been more objective over the Middle East than some of the Europeans that Ban's team appointed and is taking his responsibilities as an independent international civil servant more seriously than many expected when Ban announced the appointment of an American.
However, by aligning himself with the United States and Israel, Ban is making it difficult for him to woo and work with the Non-Aligned and Muslim majority in the General Assembly. Their defensiveness against Washington and its allies is being reflected in voting in, for example, the Human Rights Council.
No Trained Poodle
Ban is a person of principles: if he panders to the United States and Israel, it’s because he has chosen to, not because he is a trained poodle. He has publicly supported a global moratorium on the death penalty, and supported the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect, which certainly are not playing to the Texan gallery in Washington. He has shown signs of a deep and abiding interest in Africa, and as we go to press, his persistence in nagging Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir – admittedly backed by increasing Western exasperation and Chinese embarrassment – may have secured a UN/African Union force with teeth in Darfur. If he succeeds, it will be because he has refused to grandstand on the issue but rather just work away on Al-Bashir without fanfare.
It’s not impossible that faced with the continued arrogance of Washington and Israel, Ban Ki Moon will soon realize that there are limits to cooperation if he, his office, and the UN are to maintain any integrity. If he sticks to UN decisions, then he will soon discover that the race in Washington is not always to the nice. It will be his call.
One issue could be the continuing refusal of the U.S. Congress to release the funds the legislators promised to pay for the U.S. share of UN peacekeeping, and of the White House to expend any political capital on the issue, even as the United States mandates more and more peacekeeping operations.
The other issue is, of course, the Middle East, in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Israel, Iraq and Iran.
Ban will discover, in de Soto's words, how much of a "heavy burden" he has: that much of the world will judge his independence, and hence his efficacy, on the mark he leaves in the Fertile Crescent.
Ban Ki Whom?
Ian Williams | June 27, 2007
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
People used to equate the vice-presidency of the United States with a "pitcher of warm spit." Since Dick Cheney occupied the position, the spittle has become more potently venomous and the office consequently more important and noticeable. Similarly, the secretary-generalship of the United Nations is a very malleable office. The contrast with a predecessor’s personality can make the successor’s style more or less noticeable. Ban Ki Moon's tenure so far has been on the low decibel end of the scale, even compared with Kofi Annan, who always spoke softly, realizing that there was no big stick at hand.
Technically, the secretary general is the UN’s office manager, and on the official protocol totem pole only equates to a foreign minister. In fact, the frequently overlookable President of the General Assembly officially outranks him. (Until now, only men have served as UN secretaries general.)
However, like his predecessors, Ban can phone heads of state, confident that they will answer his calls. His real powers derive from his ability to put questions on the agenda –which can mean putting the great powers on the spot by raising issues that they would rather see buried. That’s an integral part of his real power – it’s the practical leverage by which he can symbolize the UN Charter and the world community for the peoples of the world.
It’s a power that recent incumbents have under-used rather than abused. One of the reasons for this is that the role of the world's conscience contradicts the other role that has accreted to the office, which is to be the global Arch-Envoy. It’s difficult to remain the public keeper of the global conscience when shaking the bloodstained hands of the statesmen of the world is an essential part of your job description. And it’s difficult to keep shaking the hands of people that you may name and shame.
First Six Months
So where does Ban Ki Moon fit into the pattern after six months in office? One suspects that his neophyte Korean-dominated team doesn’t really realize that there is a pattern. In some ways, his tenure is reminiscent of the initial intellectual arrogance of Boutros Boutros Ghali, who ran the show peremptorily and autocratically until experience taught him differently. In Ban's case, it’s more oligarchic than autocratic. His team of Korean advisors is collectively running the show, but these advisors really do think they have little to learn from the existing office-holders, many of whom they have cleared out.
Indeed, so thoroughgoing has been their exclusion of most of Annan’s personnel that one can only presume they believed the John Bolton/Fox TV image of the Annan administration as hopelessly anti-American and incorrigibly corrupt.
That lack of institutional memory leads to a reinvention of the wheel. The fractious ending of their terms of office obscured the fact many Non-Aligned delegations regarded both Boutros-Ghali and Annan as being pro-American to the point of being tools of Washington. Ban has, naturally, declared that U.S.-UN relations are to be a major priority, but his Korean back up staff seem to think that they are being innovative with this. In reality they are marching briskly into the same prejudiced swamp as their predecessors.
Annan and the United States
Indeed, Annan, a U.S. nominee, went as far as possible in constructive engagement of Washington, and, realizing its importance on Capitol Hill, to bring in Israel and American pro-Israeli organizations into the United Nations.
However, Annan realized that there was some considerable dissonance between what American politicians wanted and what the UN Charter and international law mandates. He didn’t ostentatiously flaunt disagreements, but when he was pushed there were lines he would not cross. In the end, he had to admit that the invasion of Iraq was illegal – but no one could accuse him of being ostentatious in his delivery of the message. Similarly, even as he worked to get Israel fully participating in the UN and accepting a role for the UN in the Middle East, he occasionally reminded the world that there were relevant and important resolutions to consider.
Unlike their predecessors, the Ban's team seems unaware that maintaining some distance from Washington – especially when it is scoffing at the UN Charter and International Law – is essential to keep the rest of the membership happy. That’s nowhere more apparent than on Middle East issues, where in his leaked confidential report on his resignation as the UN Representative for the Peace Process, Alvaro de Soto revealed an almost complete capitulation to the American/Israeli positions. De Soto complained of the "unprecedented access" Israel had to the Secretary General's office, which insiders confirm, and which goes as far as helping choose officials as well as determining positions on the Palestine conflict.
Ban and the Middle East
Some of this results from the historical experience of Ban and the South Koreans, who after all, are more likely to see the United States as guardian angel than predatory superpower. In fact, UN officials report that Ban sees Israel as South Korea and the Palestinians as North Korea, with the United States backing the good guys. That misconception is reinforced because South Korea simply has not had a dog in the Middle East fight, which has been an almost entirely peripheral issue for Seoul. Ban and his team simply don’t appreciate the significance of the issue for the UN, for international law, and the diplomacy of most of the rest of the world.
Ironically, sources inside the UN suggest that the under-secretary general for political affairs, former U.S. diplomat B. Lynn Pascoe, has been more objective over the Middle East than some of the Europeans that Ban's team appointed and is taking his responsibilities as an independent international civil servant more seriously than many expected when Ban announced the appointment of an American.
However, by aligning himself with the United States and Israel, Ban is making it difficult for him to woo and work with the Non-Aligned and Muslim majority in the General Assembly. Their defensiveness against Washington and its allies is being reflected in voting in, for example, the Human Rights Council.
No Trained Poodle
Ban is a person of principles: if he panders to the United States and Israel, it’s because he has chosen to, not because he is a trained poodle. He has publicly supported a global moratorium on the death penalty, and supported the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect, which certainly are not playing to the Texan gallery in Washington. He has shown signs of a deep and abiding interest in Africa, and as we go to press, his persistence in nagging Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir – admittedly backed by increasing Western exasperation and Chinese embarrassment – may have secured a UN/African Union force with teeth in Darfur. If he succeeds, it will be because he has refused to grandstand on the issue but rather just work away on Al-Bashir without fanfare.
It’s not impossible that faced with the continued arrogance of Washington and Israel, Ban Ki Moon will soon realize that there are limits to cooperation if he, his office, and the UN are to maintain any integrity. If he sticks to UN decisions, then he will soon discover that the race in Washington is not always to the nice. It will be his call.
One issue could be the continuing refusal of the U.S. Congress to release the funds the legislators promised to pay for the U.S. share of UN peacekeeping, and of the White House to expend any political capital on the issue, even as the United States mandates more and more peacekeeping operations.
The other issue is, of course, the Middle East, in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Israel, Iraq and Iran.
Ban will discover, in de Soto's words, how much of a "heavy burden" he has: that much of the world will judge his independence, and hence his efficacy, on the mark he leaves in the Fertile Crescent.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Distilled essence of snobbishness
Distilled essence of snobbishness - full text
Never mind what it's made from: premium brand vodka is all about image.
Ian Williams
Guardian Comment is Free
The EU shouldn't be worrying about what vodka is made from, but about what the super-premium brands make out if it.
Anyone who has been in a bar late at night watching the staff refill the expensive designer brand vodka bottles with the cheap cooking vodka knows that the European Union was engaged in one of its more pointless debates last week. It was arguing about what distillers could use to make vodka.
There is an unimpeachable source: Dmitri Mendeleyev, the Russian scientist who invented the periodic table that adorned all our school chemistry labs. He defined it as 60% water, and 40% pure ethanol, three times distilled.
If it is properly distilled, vodka is a flavourless, odourless, colourless spirit. Indeed, most brands filter it through charcoal, just in case any residual taste is left in. It is just possible, although highly unlikely, as numerous blind tastings have demonstrated, that discriminating drinkers of neat vodka could occasionally tell what they were made with. However, it is inconceivable that anyone who has added tonic water or other cocktail mixers to vodka would be able to identify either the brand or whatever was fermented to fill the still.
As a militant champagne socialist I strongly believe that nothing's too good for the workers and will knock back gallons of the stuff - when someone else is paying.
But when not sniftering aged rums to promote my book, my usual tipple is vodka and tonic and I always insist on the cheapest brand, the Nockoff or whatever - the type of stuff my local liquor store sells in plastic half-gallon bottles. That's what I would almost certainly get anyway in half the bars, no matter what expensive brand I asked for, and it cuts out the late night decanting and reduces already-pricey bar bills by half.
In Puerto Rico I have had vodka that proudly proclaims that it was made from pure sugar cane. In fact, under EU and US regulations, that makes it rum, but it was indeed indistinguishable from the vodkas made with rye, wheat, potatoes, wood pulp, milk products, or sugar beets as the root feedstock for the still.
Of course I appreciate that in Eastern Europe vodka has developed an almost sacramental aura that is difficult to dispel. Red Army men in nuclear tests and at Chernobyl were given vodka to stave off the effects of the radiation. But they never showed any particular concern for where the stuff came from.
Super-premium vodkas are distilled essence of snobbishness. It is what is on the bottle, not what is in it that sells it. Sydney Frank, the late inventor of Grey Goose demonstrated that. He realised that Absolut was making an additional $10 a bottle simply because of its brand. So he had Grey Goose distilled in France, put it in an even fancier bottle and charged twice as much as Absolut. Vodka is bottled and sold hot from the still, with none of the aging and maturation of rums, brandies or whiskies.
Grey Goose, like Absolut before it, was a classic case of the emperor's new clothes. People are prepared to pay a huge premium for qualities that exist only in their minds. But gullibility has always been a major revenue source for astute brand builders. In fact, Frank sold the Grey Goose brand to Bacardi for over $2bn, which was highly appropriate, since it is a company that has done its best to make its rum as tasteless as vodka.
But there is no way to legislate against stupidity and cupidity. By all means list the ingredients in microdot form on the label, but in the end the people who suffer are not those who buy their supermarket vodka made out of industrial alcohol but those pay through the nose for a designer label. And I am all in favour of a tax on stupidity. If people want to be goosed, take their money, and leave me with the anonymous firewater and water.
Never mind what it's made from: premium brand vodka is all about image.
Ian Williams
Guardian Comment is Free
The EU shouldn't be worrying about what vodka is made from, but about what the super-premium brands make out if it.
Anyone who has been in a bar late at night watching the staff refill the expensive designer brand vodka bottles with the cheap cooking vodka knows that the European Union was engaged in one of its more pointless debates last week. It was arguing about what distillers could use to make vodka.
There is an unimpeachable source: Dmitri Mendeleyev, the Russian scientist who invented the periodic table that adorned all our school chemistry labs. He defined it as 60% water, and 40% pure ethanol, three times distilled.
If it is properly distilled, vodka is a flavourless, odourless, colourless spirit. Indeed, most brands filter it through charcoal, just in case any residual taste is left in. It is just possible, although highly unlikely, as numerous blind tastings have demonstrated, that discriminating drinkers of neat vodka could occasionally tell what they were made with. However, it is inconceivable that anyone who has added tonic water or other cocktail mixers to vodka would be able to identify either the brand or whatever was fermented to fill the still.
As a militant champagne socialist I strongly believe that nothing's too good for the workers and will knock back gallons of the stuff - when someone else is paying.
But when not sniftering aged rums to promote my book, my usual tipple is vodka and tonic and I always insist on the cheapest brand, the Nockoff or whatever - the type of stuff my local liquor store sells in plastic half-gallon bottles. That's what I would almost certainly get anyway in half the bars, no matter what expensive brand I asked for, and it cuts out the late night decanting and reduces already-pricey bar bills by half.
In Puerto Rico I have had vodka that proudly proclaims that it was made from pure sugar cane. In fact, under EU and US regulations, that makes it rum, but it was indeed indistinguishable from the vodkas made with rye, wheat, potatoes, wood pulp, milk products, or sugar beets as the root feedstock for the still.
Of course I appreciate that in Eastern Europe vodka has developed an almost sacramental aura that is difficult to dispel. Red Army men in nuclear tests and at Chernobyl were given vodka to stave off the effects of the radiation. But they never showed any particular concern for where the stuff came from.
Super-premium vodkas are distilled essence of snobbishness. It is what is on the bottle, not what is in it that sells it. Sydney Frank, the late inventor of Grey Goose demonstrated that. He realised that Absolut was making an additional $10 a bottle simply because of its brand. So he had Grey Goose distilled in France, put it in an even fancier bottle and charged twice as much as Absolut. Vodka is bottled and sold hot from the still, with none of the aging and maturation of rums, brandies or whiskies.
Grey Goose, like Absolut before it, was a classic case of the emperor's new clothes. People are prepared to pay a huge premium for qualities that exist only in their minds. But gullibility has always been a major revenue source for astute brand builders. In fact, Frank sold the Grey Goose brand to Bacardi for over $2bn, which was highly appropriate, since it is a company that has done its best to make its rum as tasteless as vodka.
But there is no way to legislate against stupidity and cupidity. By all means list the ingredients in microdot form on the label, but in the end the people who suffer are not those who buy their supermarket vodka made out of industrial alcohol but those pay through the nose for a designer label. And I am all in favour of a tax on stupidity. If people want to be goosed, take their money, and leave me with the anonymous firewater and water.
High Spirits in the Guardian
High Spirits in the Guardian.. why vodka is distilled essence of snobbishness
Rum of course is for more refined palates...
Rum of course is for more refined palates...
Hot Money - Responsible Investing in a Warmer World
My latest Speculator column in IR magazine
advises corporate and national responsibility - invade Antarctica
Hot Money
Ian Williams
It is very short sighted of some large oil companies to pretend that global warming is not happening – the way to make money is to embrace the concept, and exploit the consequences.
Where some people see crisis, we speculators see opportunity. Global Warming offers big openings for canny investors who refuse to let dogma blind them to genuine opportunities for big bucks. 'Nuclear Winter" was only a possibility, and it was difficult to cope with, business-wise. No one really rushed out to buy bomb-shelters or Geiger counters because, rightly or wrongly, they had decided that nuclear war was not that likely.
But all these scientists and analysts, and even most governments, now tell us that Global Warming is a certainty, and we all know that investment thrives on certainty.
Just think through the consequences. The hotter it gets, the more demand there will be for refrigeration and air-conditioners, which will create more demand for electricity which uses yet more coal and gas to fuel the power stations. Now is surely the time to buy into mines and utilities, not to mention appliances, like air-conditioners, and fans.
Indeed, as the world heats up, think of the possibilities for cold soft drink and bottled water sales! They even help create their own markets. The ships and planes and trains and trucks needed to ship bulky fluids will be making the world hotter, and customers thirstier, all the time. What is more, can there be a better way to sequestrate carbon dioxide emissions than to pump them into fizzy drinks? The utilities will pay bottlers to take the CO2!
Climate change is also a great opportunity for some global hedging. As one part of the world suffers a Dioxide Drought, and wants humidifiers, other parts will be suffering from Dioxide Drowning, and will want pumps and dehumidifiers. Indeed the wetter it gets, more people will want and need SUV's to traverse the washed out roads and shorelines. Some will take to the air to avoid the discomfort of land travel as temperatures rise. Those cars and planes need gas, lots of it. Buy oil, auto and aerospace companies. (A side bet on inflatable dinghies may not be a bad idea either. No house within fifty miles of the present shoreline should be without one!)
Buying aerospace is an extra good deal because global warming pessimists warn of increasing security threats: populations from the Third World are on the move and countries in the developed world are competing for scarce resources. Defense spending can only go up.
But the real prize is on the back burner, as it were. Antarctica is up for grabs. We have to think long term. As it gets hotter here and the ice melts there, this huge and hitherto wasted continent becomes a desirable cool residential place to live with several lifetimes' supply of clean glacial water, both for fortunate inhabitants and for sale to the hotter places nearer the equator.
But that is only the beginning. As the world's oil supplies run out, the melting of the ice sheet around the South Pole makes accessible the world's last untouched major reserves of oil and coal. Talk about intelligent design! This can only be Providence in action. Just as global hydrocarbon supplies show signs of failing, there we are. Bingo! A whole new continent just bursting with carbon to burn as the ice cap melts.
At present, all territorial claims to Penguinistan are suspended until 2048, but good old Texan ingenuity and creative approach to international law can surely overcome that. It's not even as though there are any natives there to cause problems, although, come to think of it, we have looked everywhere else for Osama Bin Laden and have not found him, so perhaps we should be sending a task force to go look…
advises corporate and national responsibility - invade Antarctica
Hot Money
Ian Williams
It is very short sighted of some large oil companies to pretend that global warming is not happening – the way to make money is to embrace the concept, and exploit the consequences.
Where some people see crisis, we speculators see opportunity. Global Warming offers big openings for canny investors who refuse to let dogma blind them to genuine opportunities for big bucks. 'Nuclear Winter" was only a possibility, and it was difficult to cope with, business-wise. No one really rushed out to buy bomb-shelters or Geiger counters because, rightly or wrongly, they had decided that nuclear war was not that likely.
But all these scientists and analysts, and even most governments, now tell us that Global Warming is a certainty, and we all know that investment thrives on certainty.
Just think through the consequences. The hotter it gets, the more demand there will be for refrigeration and air-conditioners, which will create more demand for electricity which uses yet more coal and gas to fuel the power stations. Now is surely the time to buy into mines and utilities, not to mention appliances, like air-conditioners, and fans.
Indeed, as the world heats up, think of the possibilities for cold soft drink and bottled water sales! They even help create their own markets. The ships and planes and trains and trucks needed to ship bulky fluids will be making the world hotter, and customers thirstier, all the time. What is more, can there be a better way to sequestrate carbon dioxide emissions than to pump them into fizzy drinks? The utilities will pay bottlers to take the CO2!
Climate change is also a great opportunity for some global hedging. As one part of the world suffers a Dioxide Drought, and wants humidifiers, other parts will be suffering from Dioxide Drowning, and will want pumps and dehumidifiers. Indeed the wetter it gets, more people will want and need SUV's to traverse the washed out roads and shorelines. Some will take to the air to avoid the discomfort of land travel as temperatures rise. Those cars and planes need gas, lots of it. Buy oil, auto and aerospace companies. (A side bet on inflatable dinghies may not be a bad idea either. No house within fifty miles of the present shoreline should be without one!)
Buying aerospace is an extra good deal because global warming pessimists warn of increasing security threats: populations from the Third World are on the move and countries in the developed world are competing for scarce resources. Defense spending can only go up.
But the real prize is on the back burner, as it were. Antarctica is up for grabs. We have to think long term. As it gets hotter here and the ice melts there, this huge and hitherto wasted continent becomes a desirable cool residential place to live with several lifetimes' supply of clean glacial water, both for fortunate inhabitants and for sale to the hotter places nearer the equator.
But that is only the beginning. As the world's oil supplies run out, the melting of the ice sheet around the South Pole makes accessible the world's last untouched major reserves of oil and coal. Talk about intelligent design! This can only be Providence in action. Just as global hydrocarbon supplies show signs of failing, there we are. Bingo! A whole new continent just bursting with carbon to burn as the ice cap melts.
At present, all territorial claims to Penguinistan are suspended until 2048, but good old Texan ingenuity and creative approach to international law can surely overcome that. It's not even as though there are any natives there to cause problems, although, come to think of it, we have looked everywhere else for Osama Bin Laden and have not found him, so perhaps we should be sending a task force to go look…
Sunday, June 24, 2007
The UN, Ban the Middle East
Following on the solid doubts about Tony Blair's ability to make peace in the Middle East, is is my piece in the Chatham House publication World Today worrying about whether the current policies of the UN have enough credibility to do so.
The World Today |July 2007
The United Nations Secretariat has become an uncritical instrument of Israeli and American policies in the Middle East, says a senior official in his resignation report, which also warns of much wider consequences.
From Ian Williams in New York.
Alvaro De Soto, the United Nation’s special representative for the Middle East Peace Process, resigned from his post and the organisation in May, for reasons he explained in his subsequently leaked end of mission report. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s spokeswoman refused to comment on the contents since, she said, it was confidential and represented de Soto’s personal views. That left unanswered the critical questions that the incisive, evenhanded and remarkably readable document raised about the role of the organisation, the Secretary-General and the Quartet – The European Union (EU), Russia, the United States and the UN – in the Middle East
De Soto claimed the tipping point for his resignation was when, on his visit to the region on March 25, Ban introduced ‘out the blue’, conditions for whether he would meet the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in future, thus sabotaging UN efforts to lead the rival Palestinian organisations Hamas and Fatah towards a solution.
Ban is a person of high principle – he has endorsed an international moratorium on the death penalty, for example, which is hardly music to Texan President George Bush’s ears – but somehow, with limited experience of the Israel-Palestine question. ‘He just does not get it. He sees Israel as South Korea and the Palestinians as the North. And the US as on the side of the angels’, one exasperated UN official suggested.
But that March visit had in many ways epitomised a qualitative shift in the UN Secretariat’s attitude to the problem. For example, attempts to get Ban to go to Gaza and see conditions at first hand, were thwarted by Israeli diplomats exploiting to the full their ‘unprecedented access’, as de Soto puts it, to the receptive Korean phalanx around Ban, which allows the Israeli mission input in sifting new appointees to exclude any hint of old-style, pro-Arabist thinking.
So Ban’s restricted vision is unlikely to be challenged by alternative advice from within. Israel’s view, backed by the US, and effectively unchallenged by other major powers, has led to decisions on the Middle East that will further cocoon him.
De Soto himself complains in his report that he was excluded from the meetings that Ban’s team held in the region, and that he was so far out of the loop that the Israelis were informing him about Secretariat discussions in New York. He complains that ‘the Israeli mission to the UN has unparalleled access in the Secretariat even at the highest levels, which leads to ‘a seeming reflex…to ask first how Israel or Washington will react rather than what is the right position to take’.
Ironically, one of the new appointees who seem to have a more objective and even-handed view is B Lynn Pascoe, the former American Ambassador to Indonesia whose appointment to head the United Nations Department of Political Affairs caused fears of unmitigated American dominance.
Potent Leverage
For many years, at Israeli insistence, the UN was excluded from the Middle East peace process. In part this was an understandable Israeli reaction to the 1975 ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution 3379 and the marginalisation of the country inside the organisation, for example its exclusion from regional groupings that are essential to hold any elected positions.
On the other hand, it was Israel’s prevarication about acceptance of UN decisions, on the occupation of Palestinian areas, the Israeli settlements, the return of refugees, the status of Jerusalem and similar issues, which contributed both to its isolation and also to its determination to marginalise the organisation’s role.
On the other side, in the 1990s the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) mission in New York realised that it was precisely the legitimacy and force of UN decisions and international law that provided the Palestinians’ most potent leverage in negotiations. The absence of all but a handful of embassies from Jerusalem is a reminder to both Israelis and Palestinians that, no matter how marginal it may appear at times, the UN does indeed have, in former Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s terms ‘a unique legitimacy.’ Israel’s borders and claims even to West Jerusalem will never be recognised without a UN decision.
The Palestinian mission secured restatement and expansion of those UN positions, for example with a meeting of states which are party to the Geneva Conventions on Occupied Territories to rebut the Israeli position that these were ‘disputed’ territories to which the Conventions did not apply, and most importantly, securing an advisory judgment from the International Court of Justice on the illegality of the separation wall in the West Bank.
Above all, the Palestinians looked to the UN to hold the green line, as it were. Their negotiators were prepared to haggle about the final borders, but only from the secure base of acceptance of the 1949 armistice line. Indeed, they felt that even this was a painful concession, since it involved abandoning the 1947 partition lines, which in turn, most Palestinians had regarded as inequitable whatever the legality.
Washington’s Wants
Almost in parallel with the PLO’s efforts, Annan worked hard to legitimise Israel’s position within the UN system, in part because he thought it was the right thing to do, but also as part of his efforts to construct a supportive constituency for the UN in the American political system.
He was relatively successful in this, and it certainly stood him in good stead when most influential American Jewish organisations refused to join the witch- hunt over abuses of the Iraq Oil-for-Food programme. De Soto decided the Quartet was a ‘vindication and culmination of SG Annan’s risky but successful effort…to regain Israel’s confidence.’
No Secretary-General can work successfully without reasonable relations with Washington, but Washington’s unreasonable demands of total fealty would test the skills of the most adroit tight rope walker in balancing between UN decisions and international law on the one hand, and Washington’s wants on the other. That is particularly true when the US and Israel so often stand in total isolation, apart from a few dependent island microstates.
In general, despite the pressures, Annan maintained a degree of impartiality, even if it sometimes had to be extracted as painfully as a wisdom tooth, as when the BBC wrested from him an admission that the Iraq war was ‘illegal’.
In the case of Israel, Annan’s balance took the form of gentle reminders that there were indeed UN decisions, and that the rights of the Palestinians did have to be taken into account. Even so, de Soto points out that it was Annan who initially restricted his contacts with Syria and the Palestinian Authority.
Free Pass
Certainly since September 11 2001 and the ‘war’ on terror there has been a global shift of support. Israel is now committing acts in the Territories, implicitly condoned by the EU and the Quartet for which it came under Security Council censure before 2001.
The role of Britain has also changed. While once it would support resolutions condemning Israeli actions even in the face of an American veto, it now abstains or opposes. That has had an effect on EU policy as well: German diplomats have complained that they cannot be seen as being more critical of the Jewish state than the British, so the former European even-handedness has also shifted towards a pro-American, pro-Israeli position.
As a result, de Soto says the Quartet’s statements have transformed it from ‘a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by…the Road Map, into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue.’ He adds, ‘There is no getting around the reality that the Quartet – Russia and the UNSG – provides a shield for what the US and the EU do.’
‘The absence of any complaint or criticism by the Quartet has in effect given Israel a free pass, enabling them to argue that withholding these monies [Palestinian tax revenues] is in conformity with Quartet policy’, he argues, even as he demonstrates that it is not. In contrast, he asserts that Quartet policy has taken ‘all pressure off Israel,’ and the ‘settlement enterprise and barrier construction has continued unabated’.
That was already the case under Annan, but even so, Ban’s team seems to have fallen off the rope on the Middle East issue. De Soto sardonically claims that ‘A Sherlockian magnifying glass’ is needed to ‘detect the allusions to Israel’s total non-compliance with its Road Map obligations’, in the Quartet’s February 2 statement, which obliquely urged ‘the parties to refrain from taking any measures that could predetermine the number of issues that will be resolved in negotiations.’
This, he says is ‘the high point of evenhandedness of 2007 so far,’ which ‘began to wane toward the end of 2005 and continued to wilt throughout 2006,’ but he adds, ‘has been pummelled into submission in an unprecedented way since the beginning of 2007.’
Question of Trust
In his conclusions de Soto warns that if the Secretary-General ‘is swayed, or seen to be swayed, by one or the other member state, other members, and indeed any party to a conflict susceptible of being entrusted to the Secretary-General’s good offices will justifiably hesitate to deposit that trust in him.’ As he says, the Secretary-General ‘has the duty to uphold international law, and more particularly UN resolutions.’ De Soto points out the wider implications for his role on other conflicts and for UN staff working in the region if he does not. It is ‘a heavy burden on the SG, for which he will be accountable to history,’ he warns.
It is possible that as reality intrudes into the cocoon on the 38th floor of the UN headquarters that the Secretary- General can see the implications. Someone who has spent months in conversation with President Omar Al Bashir of Sudan over Darfur, despite his clear role in crimes against humanity, must surely appreciate that he should not exclude talks with Hamas leaders simply because of western and Israeli refusal to accept an elected government.
The World Today |July 2007
The United Nations Secretariat has become an uncritical instrument of Israeli and American policies in the Middle East, says a senior official in his resignation report, which also warns of much wider consequences.
From Ian Williams in New York.
Alvaro De Soto, the United Nation’s special representative for the Middle East Peace Process, resigned from his post and the organisation in May, for reasons he explained in his subsequently leaked end of mission report. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s spokeswoman refused to comment on the contents since, she said, it was confidential and represented de Soto’s personal views. That left unanswered the critical questions that the incisive, evenhanded and remarkably readable document raised about the role of the organisation, the Secretary-General and the Quartet – The European Union (EU), Russia, the United States and the UN – in the Middle East
De Soto claimed the tipping point for his resignation was when, on his visit to the region on March 25, Ban introduced ‘out the blue’, conditions for whether he would meet the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in future, thus sabotaging UN efforts to lead the rival Palestinian organisations Hamas and Fatah towards a solution.
Ban is a person of high principle – he has endorsed an international moratorium on the death penalty, for example, which is hardly music to Texan President George Bush’s ears – but somehow, with limited experience of the Israel-Palestine question. ‘He just does not get it. He sees Israel as South Korea and the Palestinians as the North. And the US as on the side of the angels’, one exasperated UN official suggested.
But that March visit had in many ways epitomised a qualitative shift in the UN Secretariat’s attitude to the problem. For example, attempts to get Ban to go to Gaza and see conditions at first hand, were thwarted by Israeli diplomats exploiting to the full their ‘unprecedented access’, as de Soto puts it, to the receptive Korean phalanx around Ban, which allows the Israeli mission input in sifting new appointees to exclude any hint of old-style, pro-Arabist thinking.
So Ban’s restricted vision is unlikely to be challenged by alternative advice from within. Israel’s view, backed by the US, and effectively unchallenged by other major powers, has led to decisions on the Middle East that will further cocoon him.
De Soto himself complains in his report that he was excluded from the meetings that Ban’s team held in the region, and that he was so far out of the loop that the Israelis were informing him about Secretariat discussions in New York. He complains that ‘the Israeli mission to the UN has unparalleled access in the Secretariat even at the highest levels, which leads to ‘a seeming reflex…to ask first how Israel or Washington will react rather than what is the right position to take’.
Ironically, one of the new appointees who seem to have a more objective and even-handed view is B Lynn Pascoe, the former American Ambassador to Indonesia whose appointment to head the United Nations Department of Political Affairs caused fears of unmitigated American dominance.
Potent Leverage
For many years, at Israeli insistence, the UN was excluded from the Middle East peace process. In part this was an understandable Israeli reaction to the 1975 ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution 3379 and the marginalisation of the country inside the organisation, for example its exclusion from regional groupings that are essential to hold any elected positions.
On the other hand, it was Israel’s prevarication about acceptance of UN decisions, on the occupation of Palestinian areas, the Israeli settlements, the return of refugees, the status of Jerusalem and similar issues, which contributed both to its isolation and also to its determination to marginalise the organisation’s role.
On the other side, in the 1990s the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) mission in New York realised that it was precisely the legitimacy and force of UN decisions and international law that provided the Palestinians’ most potent leverage in negotiations. The absence of all but a handful of embassies from Jerusalem is a reminder to both Israelis and Palestinians that, no matter how marginal it may appear at times, the UN does indeed have, in former Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s terms ‘a unique legitimacy.’ Israel’s borders and claims even to West Jerusalem will never be recognised without a UN decision.
The Palestinian mission secured restatement and expansion of those UN positions, for example with a meeting of states which are party to the Geneva Conventions on Occupied Territories to rebut the Israeli position that these were ‘disputed’ territories to which the Conventions did not apply, and most importantly, securing an advisory judgment from the International Court of Justice on the illegality of the separation wall in the West Bank.
Above all, the Palestinians looked to the UN to hold the green line, as it were. Their negotiators were prepared to haggle about the final borders, but only from the secure base of acceptance of the 1949 armistice line. Indeed, they felt that even this was a painful concession, since it involved abandoning the 1947 partition lines, which in turn, most Palestinians had regarded as inequitable whatever the legality.
Washington’s Wants
Almost in parallel with the PLO’s efforts, Annan worked hard to legitimise Israel’s position within the UN system, in part because he thought it was the right thing to do, but also as part of his efforts to construct a supportive constituency for the UN in the American political system.
He was relatively successful in this, and it certainly stood him in good stead when most influential American Jewish organisations refused to join the witch- hunt over abuses of the Iraq Oil-for-Food programme. De Soto decided the Quartet was a ‘vindication and culmination of SG Annan’s risky but successful effort…to regain Israel’s confidence.’
No Secretary-General can work successfully without reasonable relations with Washington, but Washington’s unreasonable demands of total fealty would test the skills of the most adroit tight rope walker in balancing between UN decisions and international law on the one hand, and Washington’s wants on the other. That is particularly true when the US and Israel so often stand in total isolation, apart from a few dependent island microstates.
In general, despite the pressures, Annan maintained a degree of impartiality, even if it sometimes had to be extracted as painfully as a wisdom tooth, as when the BBC wrested from him an admission that the Iraq war was ‘illegal’.
In the case of Israel, Annan’s balance took the form of gentle reminders that there were indeed UN decisions, and that the rights of the Palestinians did have to be taken into account. Even so, de Soto points out that it was Annan who initially restricted his contacts with Syria and the Palestinian Authority.
Free Pass
Certainly since September 11 2001 and the ‘war’ on terror there has been a global shift of support. Israel is now committing acts in the Territories, implicitly condoned by the EU and the Quartet for which it came under Security Council censure before 2001.
The role of Britain has also changed. While once it would support resolutions condemning Israeli actions even in the face of an American veto, it now abstains or opposes. That has had an effect on EU policy as well: German diplomats have complained that they cannot be seen as being more critical of the Jewish state than the British, so the former European even-handedness has also shifted towards a pro-American, pro-Israeli position.
As a result, de Soto says the Quartet’s statements have transformed it from ‘a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by…the Road Map, into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue.’ He adds, ‘There is no getting around the reality that the Quartet – Russia and the UNSG – provides a shield for what the US and the EU do.’
‘The absence of any complaint or criticism by the Quartet has in effect given Israel a free pass, enabling them to argue that withholding these monies [Palestinian tax revenues] is in conformity with Quartet policy’, he argues, even as he demonstrates that it is not. In contrast, he asserts that Quartet policy has taken ‘all pressure off Israel,’ and the ‘settlement enterprise and barrier construction has continued unabated’.
That was already the case under Annan, but even so, Ban’s team seems to have fallen off the rope on the Middle East issue. De Soto sardonically claims that ‘A Sherlockian magnifying glass’ is needed to ‘detect the allusions to Israel’s total non-compliance with its Road Map obligations’, in the Quartet’s February 2 statement, which obliquely urged ‘the parties to refrain from taking any measures that could predetermine the number of issues that will be resolved in negotiations.’
This, he says is ‘the high point of evenhandedness of 2007 so far,’ which ‘began to wane toward the end of 2005 and continued to wilt throughout 2006,’ but he adds, ‘has been pummelled into submission in an unprecedented way since the beginning of 2007.’
Question of Trust
In his conclusions de Soto warns that if the Secretary-General ‘is swayed, or seen to be swayed, by one or the other member state, other members, and indeed any party to a conflict susceptible of being entrusted to the Secretary-General’s good offices will justifiably hesitate to deposit that trust in him.’ As he says, the Secretary-General ‘has the duty to uphold international law, and more particularly UN resolutions.’ De Soto points out the wider implications for his role on other conflicts and for UN staff working in the region if he does not. It is ‘a heavy burden on the SG, for which he will be accountable to history,’ he warns.
It is possible that as reality intrudes into the cocoon on the 38th floor of the UN headquarters that the Secretary- General can see the implications. Someone who has spent months in conversation with President Omar Al Bashir of Sudan over Darfur, despite his clear role in crimes against humanity, must surely appreciate that he should not exclude talks with Hamas leaders simply because of western and Israeli refusal to accept an elected government.
Friday, June 22, 2007
The Middle East doesn't need Blair - full text
The Middle East doesn't need Blair
Guardian Comment is Free
Appointing Tony Blair as peace envoy to Palestine would be futile, given the prime minister's track record.
Ian Williams
June 21, 2007 10:30 AM |
In response to a news story, Tony Snow, Bush's spokesman, denied that Tony Blair was being considered for a position of special representative for the Middle East quartet. So, based on Snow's record for obscuring issues, it must be true.
It would be the final epitaph for a quartet that has already proven to be a quadruple diplomatic paraplegic.
To be fair, Blair does realize the primacy of the Israel-Palestinian issue for peace in the region. It is indeed the blockage in the regional U-bend that needs clearing before any other issues there can be seriously addressed.
But knowing what the problem is, does not translate into knowing the solution, let alone being the solution. He has tried to tell George W. Bush this repeatedly - but with clearly limited success.
Blair has consistently done whatever Bush wanted him to do. When he took British forces into Iraq, it was with clear knowledge of the ineptitude of the White House but he nursed the fond illusion that his support would give him a hand on the steering wheel - and then he found that runaway trains do not have steering capacity, and no working brakes either.
His behaviour since he forced Robin Cook out of the foreign office follows a similar track, of coupling his wagon to the runaway Bush train. Once upon a time, even during the Reagan era, Margaret Thatcher had no compunction in having Britain vote with the rest of the world against the US on Middle East issues. Since Blair chopped Cook, on any occasion when the US has vetoed a resolution in the UN security council, British diplomats have abstained.
In the EU, that has translated into tacit support for the American-Israeli positions. Diplomats from countries like Germany complain that even when Israeli depredations horrify them, they cannot be more critical of Israel than the British. That has shifted the formerly even-handed EU consensus into the American camp.
The invertebracy of the EU has, as UN Envoy Alvaro de Soto demonstrated, helped the UN fall into the American-Israeli line. That accounts for three legs of the quartet and has left the Russians, who no longer really have a dog in the fight, as the half-hearted hold-outs, making the quartet a fig leaf for American positions.
But consider also Blair's personal position. One of the reasons he is leaving office is that he accepted the fund raising talents of Lord Levy, whose imaginative dangling of peerages for pounds attracted the attention of Scotland Yard. One should remember that his lordship was originally enticed to finance Blair's leadership campaign with the promise that it would be good for Israel for him to do so. And in return Blair made him Britain's special envoy for the Middle East.
When it came to the Lebanon war last year, Blair stood alongside with the US and Israel in resisting a ceasefire for a month during which millions of cluster bombs rained down on Southern Lebanon.He not only backed the wrong side in moral terms, he backed the losing side. This does not augur well for his announced career path.
It has been reported that Abbas has accepted Blair's nomination. That would be the beleaguered president of Palestine whose party lost the legislative elections and has accepted Israeli and American aid to oust the victors.
Blair has shown consistently that he has no influence with the White House on any important issue and will not even try to influence the Israelis. In the unlikely event that he has a blank cheque from the White House, he could do something useful. But it looks much more like the White House tossing him a diplomatic dime because there are vestigial memories of him doing them an occasional good service.
Guardian Comment is Free
Appointing Tony Blair as peace envoy to Palestine would be futile, given the prime minister's track record.
Ian Williams
June 21, 2007 10:30 AM |
In response to a news story, Tony Snow, Bush's spokesman, denied that Tony Blair was being considered for a position of special representative for the Middle East quartet. So, based on Snow's record for obscuring issues, it must be true.
It would be the final epitaph for a quartet that has already proven to be a quadruple diplomatic paraplegic.
To be fair, Blair does realize the primacy of the Israel-Palestinian issue for peace in the region. It is indeed the blockage in the regional U-bend that needs clearing before any other issues there can be seriously addressed.
But knowing what the problem is, does not translate into knowing the solution, let alone being the solution. He has tried to tell George W. Bush this repeatedly - but with clearly limited success.
Blair has consistently done whatever Bush wanted him to do. When he took British forces into Iraq, it was with clear knowledge of the ineptitude of the White House but he nursed the fond illusion that his support would give him a hand on the steering wheel - and then he found that runaway trains do not have steering capacity, and no working brakes either.
His behaviour since he forced Robin Cook out of the foreign office follows a similar track, of coupling his wagon to the runaway Bush train. Once upon a time, even during the Reagan era, Margaret Thatcher had no compunction in having Britain vote with the rest of the world against the US on Middle East issues. Since Blair chopped Cook, on any occasion when the US has vetoed a resolution in the UN security council, British diplomats have abstained.
In the EU, that has translated into tacit support for the American-Israeli positions. Diplomats from countries like Germany complain that even when Israeli depredations horrify them, they cannot be more critical of Israel than the British. That has shifted the formerly even-handed EU consensus into the American camp.
The invertebracy of the EU has, as UN Envoy Alvaro de Soto demonstrated, helped the UN fall into the American-Israeli line. That accounts for three legs of the quartet and has left the Russians, who no longer really have a dog in the fight, as the half-hearted hold-outs, making the quartet a fig leaf for American positions.
But consider also Blair's personal position. One of the reasons he is leaving office is that he accepted the fund raising talents of Lord Levy, whose imaginative dangling of peerages for pounds attracted the attention of Scotland Yard. One should remember that his lordship was originally enticed to finance Blair's leadership campaign with the promise that it would be good for Israel for him to do so. And in return Blair made him Britain's special envoy for the Middle East.
When it came to the Lebanon war last year, Blair stood alongside with the US and Israel in resisting a ceasefire for a month during which millions of cluster bombs rained down on Southern Lebanon.He not only backed the wrong side in moral terms, he backed the losing side. This does not augur well for his announced career path.
It has been reported that Abbas has accepted Blair's nomination. That would be the beleaguered president of Palestine whose party lost the legislative elections and has accepted Israeli and American aid to oust the victors.
Blair has shown consistently that he has no influence with the White House on any important issue and will not even try to influence the Israelis. In the unlikely event that he has a blank cheque from the White House, he could do something useful. But it looks much more like the White House tossing him a diplomatic dime because there are vestigial memories of him doing them an occasional good service.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Ya Blair, ME Envoy
Blair as Middle East Envoy in the Guardian Comment is Free
click to join the fray.
click to join the fray.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Who won the election? - full text
Who won the election?
By continuing to punish Hamas, Israel and the US are ignoring the democratic will of Palestinians.
Ian Williams
June 20, 2007 3:00 PM Guardian Comment is Free
If Israelis want peace, they have to talk to the people the Palestinians want, not those anointed and armed by Israel and the US.
One of the points about democracy is that sometimes the "wrong" people win. Many Americans and British looking at their present leaders can ruefully relate to that. Indeed, Ehud Olmert has popularity ratings within a statistical range of zero. Nonetheless, other governments and the political institutions inside their own countries continue to talk to them and recognize them. The rest of the world continued talking to, indeed pandering to Israel, even while the butcher of Sabra and Shatila was its prime minister. That's democracy.
The purpose of the Palestinian elections was to elect a government the Palestinians wanted, not one that Israel liked. Hamas won, fair and square, and did so against a background of Fatah incompetence and corruption that had been connived at, and indeed tacitly encouraged by the west and Israel, in return for Yasser Arafat's pliability at the negotiating table.
Now as a born-again atheist, whose last book was an ode to rum, Hamas would be very low down in my list of preferences for voting - indeed somewhere alongside a teetotal born-again Christian from Texas for US president in my ranking order.
Even so, Hamas has been demonized by Israel, the US, and the EU, which should give pause for thought. A rule of thumb suggests that Washington and its allies may not be entirely accurate in their depiction of events.
Firstly, we need to consider the historic shifts as opposed to the expedient amnesia of politicians. At a time when the US and Israel were marginalizing and refusing to recognize Arafat and the PLO, as Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, baldly stated: "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO." At that time, the PLO was seen as representing the secularist, leftwards-inclined factions so a dose of good old time religion seemed to be called for.
As Hamas developed, a secondary point was that the last thing that hard-line Israeli factions, of the kind who seem to be running the security services, wanted was a partner who will negotiate. There is no conceivable negotiated solution that does not involve withdrawal from the occupied territories and recognition of genuinely independent Palestinian statehood that even now, few Israeli politicians have unequivocally supported.
That is why, of course, there is a suspicious, what one could call a statistically significant correlation, between Hamas's acceptance of cease-fires, and Israeli assassinations of its leadership. There are times when Israeli security forces to seem to function as as if they were the militias of right-wing Israeli factions.
In response to the Hamas victory, and despite its unilateral ceasefire, Israel illegally withheld the taxes it had collected on behalf of the Palestinian authority and led a boycott of the new Hamas government, an example followed naturally by the US, cravenly by the European Union, and implicitly endorsed even more shamefully by the UN Secretariat.
As the former UN representative Alvaro de Soto revealed, the US tactic was to get Fatah to sort out Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is being represented as if it were a Hamas coup against the Palestinian government. But Hamas won the election and has a majority in the parliament - even if 40 of their representatives have been interned by the Israelis. It is almost as if Blair dissolved parliament and sent the army against Brown supporters.
The Palestinian authority forces that Hamas inherited were in effect a group of militias responsible to various factions of Fatah. Israel happily agreed to them being armed to quell Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is above all the responsibility of the gun-worshippers on both sides. There is little to choose between the assorted armed militias now shooting it out. But those who crammed a million and half people into a ghetto, restricted their water supplies, bombed their power stations, cut off funding for government services and occasionally lob shells and "precision" bombs into their apartments cannot escape their responsibility for the carnage.
Just as those in Washington and London who let Israel continue to rip up the road map, expand settlements and build a wall were far more effective campaign managers for Hamas's election victory than Saatchi & Saatchi could have been.
A credible Palestinian partner for peace negotiations is one that can represent Palestinians and bring them along. Anointing Abbas as the chosen one of Israel and the US has likely ensured that he is not that partner. But the Palestinians have to choose their negotiator, not Olmert or Bush.
By continuing to punish Hamas, Israel and the US are ignoring the democratic will of Palestinians.
Ian Williams
June 20, 2007 3:00 PM Guardian Comment is Free
If Israelis want peace, they have to talk to the people the Palestinians want, not those anointed and armed by Israel and the US.
One of the points about democracy is that sometimes the "wrong" people win. Many Americans and British looking at their present leaders can ruefully relate to that. Indeed, Ehud Olmert has popularity ratings within a statistical range of zero. Nonetheless, other governments and the political institutions inside their own countries continue to talk to them and recognize them. The rest of the world continued talking to, indeed pandering to Israel, even while the butcher of Sabra and Shatila was its prime minister. That's democracy.
The purpose of the Palestinian elections was to elect a government the Palestinians wanted, not one that Israel liked. Hamas won, fair and square, and did so against a background of Fatah incompetence and corruption that had been connived at, and indeed tacitly encouraged by the west and Israel, in return for Yasser Arafat's pliability at the negotiating table.
Now as a born-again atheist, whose last book was an ode to rum, Hamas would be very low down in my list of preferences for voting - indeed somewhere alongside a teetotal born-again Christian from Texas for US president in my ranking order.
Even so, Hamas has been demonized by Israel, the US, and the EU, which should give pause for thought. A rule of thumb suggests that Washington and its allies may not be entirely accurate in their depiction of events.
Firstly, we need to consider the historic shifts as opposed to the expedient amnesia of politicians. At a time when the US and Israel were marginalizing and refusing to recognize Arafat and the PLO, as Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, baldly stated: "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO." At that time, the PLO was seen as representing the secularist, leftwards-inclined factions so a dose of good old time religion seemed to be called for.
As Hamas developed, a secondary point was that the last thing that hard-line Israeli factions, of the kind who seem to be running the security services, wanted was a partner who will negotiate. There is no conceivable negotiated solution that does not involve withdrawal from the occupied territories and recognition of genuinely independent Palestinian statehood that even now, few Israeli politicians have unequivocally supported.
That is why, of course, there is a suspicious, what one could call a statistically significant correlation, between Hamas's acceptance of cease-fires, and Israeli assassinations of its leadership. There are times when Israeli security forces to seem to function as as if they were the militias of right-wing Israeli factions.
In response to the Hamas victory, and despite its unilateral ceasefire, Israel illegally withheld the taxes it had collected on behalf of the Palestinian authority and led a boycott of the new Hamas government, an example followed naturally by the US, cravenly by the European Union, and implicitly endorsed even more shamefully by the UN Secretariat.
As the former UN representative Alvaro de Soto revealed, the US tactic was to get Fatah to sort out Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is being represented as if it were a Hamas coup against the Palestinian government. But Hamas won the election and has a majority in the parliament - even if 40 of their representatives have been interned by the Israelis. It is almost as if Blair dissolved parliament and sent the army against Brown supporters.
The Palestinian authority forces that Hamas inherited were in effect a group of militias responsible to various factions of Fatah. Israel happily agreed to them being armed to quell Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza is above all the responsibility of the gun-worshippers on both sides. There is little to choose between the assorted armed militias now shooting it out. But those who crammed a million and half people into a ghetto, restricted their water supplies, bombed their power stations, cut off funding for government services and occasionally lob shells and "precision" bombs into their apartments cannot escape their responsibility for the carnage.
Just as those in Washington and London who let Israel continue to rip up the road map, expand settlements and build a wall were far more effective campaign managers for Hamas's election victory than Saatchi & Saatchi could have been.
A credible Palestinian partner for peace negotiations is one that can represent Palestinians and bring them along. Anointing Abbas as the chosen one of Israel and the US has likely ensured that he is not that partner. But the Palestinians have to choose their negotiator, not Olmert or Bush.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Full text of Farewell Then Kurt Waldheim
Here's the full text of the Guardian CiF piece
So farewell then, Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim exemplified the banality of bureaucracy: he was one of the greyest eminences ever to grace the world stage.
Ian Williams
June 14, 2007
In general, the big powers want a safe, anything-but-boat-rocking bureaucrat to head the United Nations. Their perfect choice would be Pontius Pilate, but he did not apply, so they got Kurt Waldheim, one of the greyest eminences ever to grace the world stage.
It would be a stretch to believe that the various permanent members had not had their spooks do due diligence on him and discovered his war record with the Nazi military. The thought that they all had this eminently suitable blackmail material to hang over his head could have been very reassuring for them.
The process of appointing Secretaries General is so mysterious that one cannot resist speculation. For example, almost certainly the first one elected, Trygve Lie, was acceptable to the Soviets because in 1936, as Norwegian justice minister, he had given the exiled Leon Trotsky the bum's rush from Oslo and so sent him to Mexico for his date with destiny and the sharp end of an ice pick. The honeymoon did not last. Joseph McCarthy denounced Lie for hiring "disloyal" Americans while the Soviets refused to recognise him because he supported the Korean war.
In contrast, the dapper Waldheim managed two terms, from 1972 to 1982, without ruffling anyone's feathers, and would have made a third were it not that the Chinese were in a third-world-ist phase and told him - nothing personal - that they wanted a diplomat from the developing world to get the job.
The UN veteran Sir Brian Urquhart, who worked with him, confirms that no boats were rocked during his tenure. He was a hard-working bureaucrat who kept the ship afloat and avoided waves. In fact, Sir Brian recalls a classic bureaucratic moment after an interminable meeting on whether to issue a statement about the American bombing of North Vietnam. Waldheim, challenged to make a decision, declared: "There will be no decision. That is the decision."
He scarcely deserves the infamy that has been heaped on him since. Even in his criminality he was not outstanding. Firstly, he was economical with the truth. His first autobiography was going to skip blithely from 1938, when the Nazis took over, to 1945, when he joined the foreign service. In anticipation of Basil Fawlty, he did not mention the conflict at all, telling Sir Brian that "no one is interested in the War".
Of course everyone was, and he continued skimping veracity by only describing his war career up the gates of Moscow.
Afterwards, during the election campaign for the Austrian presidency, his service in the Balkans - for which his commanding officer was later executed - was revealed, not to mention his membership in the Brownshirts.
But it probably helped him win the presidency, since Waldheim was the Ur-Austrian. Despite some very honourable armed resistance against Engelbert Dollfuss and the homegrown Nazis in 1934, most Austrians were not happy with the Versailles-enforced independence. Even the Nazis' enemies supported Anschluss in 1938, and while Hitler, the local boy made good, was winning there was no great independence movement.
In 1945, it suited the Allies to go along with the newly assumed Austrian posture of aggrieved innocence. They were the first victims of German expansionism and occupation, and so they never really bothered with de-Nazification, war crime trials and all the German sort of stuff. No wonder Austrians supported Waldheim in an act of collectively self-absolving amnesia.
As a gesture, a lot of fair weather friends took him off their invite lists - except the Vatican, which made him a papal knight. Presumably he had confessed and been absolved.
But you can see why no one really pursued the former Nazi officer on a global scale. A commission of inquiry decided that he had not committed war crimes, but had only witnessed them and done nothing to prevent them.
No one was going to get too excited about that, since almost every statesman in the world shares some similar guilt. Just look at Iraq, Darfur, Gaza, Lebanon, Rwanda, and many more instances of ineffectual clucking while pretending not to see. There are a lot of politicians who firmly decide not to make decisions in the face of barbarity, and almost as many deciding to commit crimes, so it seems unfair to single out Waldheim just because he was on the losing side.
So farewell then, Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim exemplified the banality of bureaucracy: he was one of the greyest eminences ever to grace the world stage.
Ian Williams
June 14, 2007
In general, the big powers want a safe, anything-but-boat-rocking bureaucrat to head the United Nations. Their perfect choice would be Pontius Pilate, but he did not apply, so they got Kurt Waldheim, one of the greyest eminences ever to grace the world stage.
It would be a stretch to believe that the various permanent members had not had their spooks do due diligence on him and discovered his war record with the Nazi military. The thought that they all had this eminently suitable blackmail material to hang over his head could have been very reassuring for them.
The process of appointing Secretaries General is so mysterious that one cannot resist speculation. For example, almost certainly the first one elected, Trygve Lie, was acceptable to the Soviets because in 1936, as Norwegian justice minister, he had given the exiled Leon Trotsky the bum's rush from Oslo and so sent him to Mexico for his date with destiny and the sharp end of an ice pick. The honeymoon did not last. Joseph McCarthy denounced Lie for hiring "disloyal" Americans while the Soviets refused to recognise him because he supported the Korean war.
In contrast, the dapper Waldheim managed two terms, from 1972 to 1982, without ruffling anyone's feathers, and would have made a third were it not that the Chinese were in a third-world-ist phase and told him - nothing personal - that they wanted a diplomat from the developing world to get the job.
The UN veteran Sir Brian Urquhart, who worked with him, confirms that no boats were rocked during his tenure. He was a hard-working bureaucrat who kept the ship afloat and avoided waves. In fact, Sir Brian recalls a classic bureaucratic moment after an interminable meeting on whether to issue a statement about the American bombing of North Vietnam. Waldheim, challenged to make a decision, declared: "There will be no decision. That is the decision."
He scarcely deserves the infamy that has been heaped on him since. Even in his criminality he was not outstanding. Firstly, he was economical with the truth. His first autobiography was going to skip blithely from 1938, when the Nazis took over, to 1945, when he joined the foreign service. In anticipation of Basil Fawlty, he did not mention the conflict at all, telling Sir Brian that "no one is interested in the War".
Of course everyone was, and he continued skimping veracity by only describing his war career up the gates of Moscow.
Afterwards, during the election campaign for the Austrian presidency, his service in the Balkans - for which his commanding officer was later executed - was revealed, not to mention his membership in the Brownshirts.
But it probably helped him win the presidency, since Waldheim was the Ur-Austrian. Despite some very honourable armed resistance against Engelbert Dollfuss and the homegrown Nazis in 1934, most Austrians were not happy with the Versailles-enforced independence. Even the Nazis' enemies supported Anschluss in 1938, and while Hitler, the local boy made good, was winning there was no great independence movement.
In 1945, it suited the Allies to go along with the newly assumed Austrian posture of aggrieved innocence. They were the first victims of German expansionism and occupation, and so they never really bothered with de-Nazification, war crime trials and all the German sort of stuff. No wonder Austrians supported Waldheim in an act of collectively self-absolving amnesia.
As a gesture, a lot of fair weather friends took him off their invite lists - except the Vatican, which made him a papal knight. Presumably he had confessed and been absolved.
But you can see why no one really pursued the former Nazi officer on a global scale. A commission of inquiry decided that he had not committed war crimes, but had only witnessed them and done nothing to prevent them.
No one was going to get too excited about that, since almost every statesman in the world shares some similar guilt. Just look at Iraq, Darfur, Gaza, Lebanon, Rwanda, and many more instances of ineffectual clucking while pretending not to see. There are a lot of politicians who firmly decide not to make decisions in the face of barbarity, and almost as many deciding to commit crimes, so it seems unfair to single out Waldheim just because he was on the losing side.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
So Farewell Then, Kurt Waldheim
So Farewell then Kurt Waldheim
perhaps the greyest eminence ever to strut the world stage
Click on the link for Comment-is Free in the Guardian
perhaps the greyest eminence ever to strut the world stage
Click on the link for Comment-is Free in the Guardian
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