Big Sticks and Small Carrots

Back from that London after a thoroughly enjoyable trip.

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Tim has all the details of the anti-Christmas carol service outside parliament. If you want to hear some merry bloggers singing badly, click through. As you might be able to tell, we had a lot of fun while proving the point.

Beforehand, I met Tim and Justin for the first time and has a great time being a small town boy in the big city. Thanks guys!
(Clearly, this public statement provides further proof - as if it were needed - that Iain Dale was right to call me one of Tim’s “sockpuppets” and part of a vast left-wing conspiracy…)

It was also great to meet Davide, Mat and D-Notice at the carol service and also John who brought his sax.

Bah humbug, one and all!

Gordon Brown made his last major public appearance before the Christmas break at his monthly press conference earlier today.

Although it annoys me immensely that politics has become so shallow and trivial, this needs to be said: Gordon Brown should NOT smile in public. Ever.

To see Brown switch on and off that smile, if you can even call it a smile, is an unsettling and slightly frightening experience. I can imagine children all over the country scurrying behind the sofa in terror after catching a glimpse of the PM’s unique rictus on the Six O’Clock News. Either that, or they’ll be expecting Doctor Who to appear and unmask the alien imposter and rescue the real PM.

For the sake of the children if for no other reason, please don’t smile Gordon.

Anyway, Brown’s line today is that:

Many of the things that have been written about for the last few weeks would be forgotten quickly

Is it just me or is that very dangerous attitude to express publicly? It may be a cliché but isn’t it possible that this could be looked back on as his Jim Callaghan moment? Crisis, what crisis?

Brown didn’t say those exact words, of course, but neither did Callaghan. It woz the Sun whot spun it. It’ll be interesting to see how the Sun report Brown’s comments tomorrow.

On the plus side for Brown, for all the economic worries, the doom-mongering and the opportunistic spin from the Tories, the UK in 2007 is nothing like the UK in 1978-79. They had proper great big disastrous crises in those days. (And when we got home, our father would slice us in two with a bread knife. If we we’re lucky!)

All the same, Brown’s words, particularly with regard to the huge data loss and the economy, could come back to haunt him.

No blogging tomorrow as I’ll be down in that London protesting against Christmas (with permission from the Metropoliticians).

Man flu! Bah! Sniff, cough, splutter…

Fortunately, this decision by the Metropolitan Police doesn’t really need much in the way of comment. You just need to sit and think about it for a moment.

If you wanted to support Christmas by organising a counter-demonstration against our demonstration, would you need permission for that?

Over the last few days, there has been much said about Dean Godson, Policy Exchange’s “Research Director”. His appearance on Newsnight to defend P.E.’s report into extremist literature was quite extraordinary. Here are some interesting facts about Mr Godson.

Most notably, he holds the extraordinary distinction of having lost his position at the Daily Telegraph because of his political views. Back in 2004, Martin Newland, former Telegraph editor, explained to the Guardian:

It’s OK to be pro-Israel, but not to be unbelievably pro-Likud Israel, it’s OK to be pro-American but not look as if you’re taking instructions from Washington. Dean Godson and Barbara Amiel were key departures.

Dean Godson was too pro-Likud and too subservient to the US government for the Telegraph. Given the writers they happily still employ, you’ve got to wonder just how extreme his own views must be.

Mr Godson has also been reasonably open about the need for the US and UK government’s to deploy covert propaganda techniques. In an article for the Times in 2006, he wrote that:

During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals. And magazines such as Encounter did hand-to-hand combat with Soviet fellow travellers. For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence. At the moment, the extremists largely have the field to themselves.

The Information Research Department was a secret Foreign Office propaganda organisation which operated mostly in the developing world during the Cold War. It’s practices were modelled on psychological warfare operations. Typically, it covertly spoon fed “slanted” anti-communist stories to journalists to achieve the desired effect

Encounter magazine, on the other hand, was funded by the CIA. Based in London and initially edited by Irving Kristol, it too was a covert Cold War propaganda tool. It’s primary function seems to have been to attempt to steer European left wing intellectuals down the “right” path (no pun intended). The “right” path was the path deemed most acceptable by right wingers in the CIA. The CIA funding was kept secret in order that readers wouldn’t know that attempts were being made to manipulate their views from across the pond.

Neither of the government funded organisations operated in a transparent manner. Quite the opposite in fact. Mr Godson, who worked for the Reagan administration, will almost certainly be aware of the covert nature of these organisations. In true neo-conservative style, this does not seem to bother him in the slightest.

This suggests rather strongly that Mr Godson is a believer in the idea of the political noble lie as a means to achieve social cohesion and national security.

And he is the “Research Director” of Policy Exchange, an organisation which purports to be “an independent think tank… committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development”.

Right…

I’m no expert but I’m not sure that Dean Godson is the best man for the job.

Given what I wrote about the Policy Exchange report into extremist literature in Mosques when it was published, I can’t say I was at all surprised to see Newsnight’s report on the subject last night. It appears that there are serious questions over the “evidence” used to construct the report. Osama Saeed has more on the Newsnight broadcast and on the implications of what was discovered.

I don’t think I’ll be having any second thoughts about my original post title on the subject.

Dean Godson, the Policy Exchange shouter sent to defend the report on Newsnight, adopted an all too familiar strategy to deal with criticisms of this so called academic report. He played the man, not the ball, accusing Newsnight’s editor of “disastrous editorial misjudgement” and of “appalling stewardship of Newsnight”. Textbook.

You might like to compare and contrast Godson’s approach to another response to criticisms of the report. Back in November, over the course of three posts, Dr Marranci of the University of Aberdeen raised a number of serious concerns regarding the methodology and ethics of the P.E. report. The report’s author, Dr MacEoin, responded. Here are the two quotations which illustrate the central theme of his response:

“I’ll read your remarks in more detail later. But I already see denial writ large on what is there.”

“As it is, you all seem to think this sort of thing is OK. You bring nothing but shame on yourselves by giving it even tacit approval. The materials are all entirely genuine, they are all available.”

In reality, anyone reading the posts on Dr Marranci’s blog can clearly see that these stock accusations are entirely without foundation. Dr Marranci’s primary concern, as an academic himself, is the fact that his study was being presented as an academic work when it is clearly nothing of the sort.

To conclude, I’ll repeat what I wrote last time round:

None of the above is to deny that there is extremist literature to be found in some British Mosques, of course. Nor is it to deny that the Saudi government actively seeks to promote its intolerant version of Islam in other countries including the UK. The point is merely that headlines generated by flawed reports masquerading as academic surveys should not be taken at face value.

Unlike almost all of the rest of the British media which reported the P.E. headline grabber unquestioningly, Newsnight actually investigated the veracity of what they were being asked to report. Like, you know, journalists. And the Policy Exchange study, unsurprisingly, came up short.

Respect to Peter Barron and Newsnight. Can we have more journalism like that please?

Do you need permission to hold an ANTI-Christmas carol service in Parliament Square? Is that, the exact opposite of a Christmas carol service (no permission required), a demonstration? We’ll find out soon.

I’ll be down in that London for the first time in a very long time so I’ll be there. Be prepared to be underwhelmed. I’m much less clever when I’m unplugged from the interwebs and don’t have five minutes to consider every sentence.

It’ll be fun though.

Rupert Murdoch has decided to put his son, James, in control of a large chunk of News Corporation. News Corp’s British newspapers, including the Sun, are part of James’s Christmas present.

Who says Murdoch is evil? He’s obviously a very generous man…

The Sun did report this on Friday but for some reason, the”Add Comment” and “Join Discussion” functions were not available on the article. I thought it was a bit sad that the Sun wasn’t letting their readers join in the celebrations so, after checking that their article was indeed listed under “news”, I submitted a new topic to their news forum:

Best man for the Job

James Murdoch is clearly the most qualified man to take over from Rupert Murdoch as chairman and chief executive of News Corporation. As his father said, “James is a talented and proven executive with a rare blend of international perspective and deep, hands-on experience in improving operational results”.

Glad to see the Sun’s parent company supporting the meritocracy of the market once again. Clearly, only the most deranged leftists would see any sort of nepotism in this decision.

How long do you think that post was visible for before it was deleted?*

I’ll give you a clue. It was less than three minutes.

* Note for the record. It didn’t fall off the bottom of the page or anything. It was definitely deleted.

There’s been a slight problem with comments in that I marked a whole wad of the most recent one’s as spam by mistake. Much as I’d like to blame Spam Karma, I’m afraid it was my own fault.

It’s been a bit of a pain but I think I’ve managed to restore them all and remove all the relevant IP and website addresses from the blacklist. If you do encounter any problems trying to submit new comments or notice a missing one, please it me know and I’ll try to sort it out.

(For the record, I’ve had to restore the two most recent comments manually so the date/time stamp on them isn’t accurate any more.)

If I believed in karma, I’d say it was payback for my lack of posting recently. But I don’t. Not that sort of karma anyway.

I will be back up to speed as of Monday though. Huzzah!

As you’ll probably know, the latest US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear programme came to an astonishing conclusion. The antagonistic relationship between Tehran and Washington could escalate the situation at any time (as could “events” on the Iran/Iraq border) but this new report dramatically lessens the likelihood of a major military confrontation between the two countries before the end of the Bush presidency. It’s a really rather refreshing bit of good news.

Bush, of course, continues to insist that “all options are on the table”. John Bolton, who may well be the commander-in-chief of all armchair generals everywhere, has taken to the airwaves to cast doubt on the conclusions of the NIE. He even went as far as to suggest (in the form of a question, of course) that the report was the result of politically motivated attack on the Bush administration:

I think there is a risk here, and I raise this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgements in a way contrary to where the administration was going.

Because in Bolton’s world, if you don’t agree with him, you’re clearly a mendacious leftist and a terrorist loving traitor. I give it another 24 hours before he starts publicly agitating for a war against the US intelligence community.

In reality, the volte-face in the conclusion of the National Intelligence Estimate (pdf) appears to be based on an objective analysis of the available facts. It suggests that US intelligence agencies are attempting to rectify the failures which led to the invasion of Iraq.

The report was not the written based on the assumption that the Iranian regime does intend to acquire nuclear weapons. It was, rather, an attempt to “assess Iran’s capability and intent (or lack thereof) to acquire nuclear weapons”.

More importantly perhaps, the conclusions of the report appear to be untainted by political pressures. Clearly, the NIE discredits claims made by many of Bush’s supporters and damages the “Iran is going to kill us all” narrative being pushed from the Whitehouse. The Bush administration will not have welcomed these conclusions but they’ve been published all the same. It is possible that lessons really have been learned from the Iraq debacle.

(Can we same the same in the UK, I wonder?)

The most interesting conclusion of the NIE is this:

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might—if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible—prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.

A cost-benefit approach? But that’d imply that the Iranian regime were behaving, gasp, perfectly rationally. Surely some mistake…