And another one

Here is the latest video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Good title: Obama's so-called stimulus - Good for Government, Bad for the Economy. And which side would you rather be?

Keynesianism is not the answer

Another video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation that follows the history of Keynesianism and explains in useful detail just how wrong-headed and misguided that ideology is and how much harm it has done.

Gee-whizz!

The Czech Republic has taken over the EU presidency at a somewhat difficult time and has presented its priorities. EUBusiness sums it up as:

The key priorities are the three 'E's: Economy, Energy and Europe in the world. The motto is a 'Europe without barriers'.

Can't wait to see how that turns out.

The Dutch are reconsidering

As the article in the International Herald Tribune says, what a difference two years make, especially if they are full of unpleasant events.

Two years ago, the Dutch could quietly congratulate themselves on having brought what seemed to be a fair measure of consensus and reason to the meanest intersection in their national political life: the one where integration of Muslim immigrants crossed Dutch identity.

In the run-up to choosing a new government in 2006, just 24 percent of the voters considered the issue important, and only 4 percent regarded it as the election's central theme.

What a turnabout, it seemed - and whatever the reason (spent passions, optimism, resignation?), it was a soothing respite for a country whose history of tolerance was the first in 21st-century Europe to clash with the on-street realities of its growing Muslim population.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the Netherlands had lived through something akin to a populist revolt against accommodating Islamic immigrants led by Pim Fortuyn, who was later murdered; the assassination of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, accused of blasphemy by a homegrown Muslim killer; and the bitter departure from the Netherlands of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who became a member of Parliament before being marked for death for her criticism of radical Islam.

Suddenly, there is criticism of the failed policy from the Left.

Two weeks ago, the country's biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch "tolerance."
….
The paper said: "The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance."

Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of "loss and estrangement" felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.

Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid "self-designated victimization."

She asserted, "the grip of the homeland has to disappear" for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.

Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be "bringing our values into confrontation with people who think otherwise."

And so it goes. The paper insists that immigrants must engage with Dutch life and Dutch values; their best way out of their ghetto is through working; and criminality or anti-social behaviour has to be prevented or punished.

What is so depressing is that we all, including John Vinocur, the author of the article, should find it surprising that self-defined members of the Left should actually speak up against those who try to undermine the liberal values that they are supposed to hold dear: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, equality before the law, protection for the law-abiding, equality between the sexes and so on.

Back to Belgium

It was not my intention to make the first post-Christmas posting about Belgium but needs must be. There is a new development in that country’s permanent political and constitutional crisis.

The Wall Street Journal reports that King Albert has named a successor to Prime Minister Yves Leterme, who has resigned amid a financial scandal. (Are we surprised? Not unbearably.)

After more than a week of negotiation with the country's fragmented political parties, King Albert asked Herman Van Rompuy, president of the lower house of Belgium's parliament, to form a government. While the person chosen for this role doesn't always get the top job, "in this case, it's absolutely clear Mr. Van Rompuy will become prime minister in a few days," said Olivier Alsteens, a government spokesman.

Mr. Van Rompuy, 61 years old, is a member of the Christian Democrats, the same party that Mr. Leterme belongs to. He earned plaudits as a finance and budget minister in the 1990s when he gradually reduced Belgium's national debt so that the country would meet the criteria to adopt the euro in 1999.

All but one of the ministers will be those of the existing (since March) coalition government.

Happy Christmas

The BrugesGroupBlog has been a little thin recently for a number of reasons, one very important being that its role is now being questioned as the aim was to make it part of an integrated Bruges Group research programme. This may yet happen in the new year. I certainly hope so, as there is a certain dearth of well constructed research programmes among the numerous eurosceptic groups.

For the time being the blog will carry on with a little more attention than it has enjoyed recently. In the meantime, let me wish all our readers a very happy Christmas.

How very true

An excellent article by Matthew Kaminski on Forbes.com about the inevitable fading of the supposed love of America because Obama has been elected to be president.

There are various reasons why anti-Americanism exists. The most obvious one is that America is the strongest power and those are always disliked. As several people have told Mr Kaminski, that is something Americans will have to live with just as the British did for a while. Unlike previous empires, the American one is different as it is not based on direct rule, no matter what the anti-American crowd, both on the left and the right, scream. It is power projected through ideas and effects.

Yet America is different from those past empires, and I find our thin skin winning--to a point. The place attracts the hatred of assorted masses from London fine-dining table to the caves around Tora Bora because it is attractive at so many levels and isn't self-consciously a global Empire (which enrages some people even more). Our iPods, Harvards and Stanfords, Tiger Woodses and Michael Phelpses, Beyoncés and Philip Roths all constitute American power along with the dollar and the military.

America is different, an exceptional country, despite the efforts made by the politicians and the media to turn it into a class-ridden society like any other. The reason why Obama, with his unusual background, could be elected President, is that difference. Sooner or later those who are still dancing with joy will have to acknowledge this, as the fact that he was elected by the very same people who had elected Bush twice. How could they have become so smart in such a short space of time?

There will be the obvious reason for turning against Obama as soon as he starts behaving as an American President (as even he must on January 21 if the already raging scandals do not envelop him) and looking to his own country first. The idea that somehow under President Obama America will become the willing slave of other countries is fatuous. Just wait till he asks openly for more European troops to be sent to Afghanistan, the "just" war, sanctioned by the UN and still hated by the many America-bashers.

The most obvious reason for hating America is envy - not just for the material welfare but for the existence of a state in which the people (give or take a mendacious media and a certain number of corrupt politicians) can affect who is in government and what sort of legislation is passed. This is not true for most of the world. It is not true in Europe where elections have become a farce with the real power residing the untouchable and unaccountable eurocrats. No wonder we hate America.

Let's try again

With the world's leaders apparently going completely mad and competing with each other as to how much money they are going to spend supposedly to "stimulate" the economy and how far further they will expand government - where the roots of the many of our problems lie, a cool discussion of Keynesianism from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation is very welcome. Let's see if I can embed the video this time.

Remember when ...

... Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer used to lecture his colleagues in the European Union about sensible and prudent economic policies. A great many people (few of them in the meida) realized at the time that his own would not stand up to much scrutiny and a crisis would hit Britain badly.

Well, it has and Prime Minister Brown is now, rather humiliatingly, being lectured on his crass and irresponsible Keynesianism. German finance minister, Peer Steinbruck went for the jugular in an interview for Newsweek.

This bodes ill for the European Council (not Summit as the news story erroneously describes it) opening today. More on that, as it progresses and as I finish day jobbing.

Tax havens are a good idea

An e-mail from Dan Mitchell, Senior Fellow at Cato Institute and a co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, tells me that there are now numerous videos on YouTube that deal with such subjects as the Laffer Curve and tax reform.

There are three recently completed and posted videos on tax havens and why they are quite a good idea though, presumably, one would not need them if other countries had more sensible tax regimes.

They are called respectively The Economic Case for Tax Havens, The Moral Case for Tax Havens and Tax Havens: Myths v. Facts.

I haven't quite worked out how to embed videos in blog postings as the one piece of advice I was given did not seem to work out in practice. So, in the meantime, there are links to YouTube. Enjoy.

We have a problem

The Wall Street Journal carries an interesting article, translated from the German, about the activity of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism in Berlin. The Center's introductory paragraph is entirely praiseworthy:

The Center for Research on Antisemitism, founded in 1982, is the only scholarly institution conducting interdisciplinary researches and teachings focussing on prejudices and their consequences like antisemitism, Antiziganism, xenophobia and racism.

The interdisciplinary research on antisemitism is supplemented by research on related areas such as German-Jewish history and the Holocaust.

As it happens, there have been numerous reports in various European countries that showed that Anti-Semitism was growing again, its sources are Islamic countries like Iran, the more extremist Islamist organizations around the world and certain left-wing groups who have decided to become Anti-Semitic in their sympathy with the "oppressed" Muslims of the world. They rarely talk about the Muslims that are oppressed by Muslim governments (such as Iran).

It seems that the Center has decided not to concentrate on these matters but to produce a report on growing Islamophobia in which, according to Matthias Küntzel, no difference is drawn between Muslims in general and political Islam or, as we refer to it, Islamism. It would appear that criticizing Islamists who want to destroy Israel, call for the murder of various opposing people and groups, frequently carry out those murders and generally want to destroy Western countries and their culture is the same as being Islamophobic, which is no different from being Anti-Semitic.

In taking up the fashionable vocabulary of Islamophobia and equating hostility to Muslims with hostility to Jews, the center also risks undermining the most important current task in dealing with anti-Semitism: studying and fighting hostility to Jews in the Islamic world, where anti-Semitism has reached an unprecedented level.

For example, one of the authors in the latest Yearbook, Jochen Müller, proposes a "revision of politics and history teaching" in German schools. Because the Holocaust has no "central meaning for migrants from the Arabic-Muslim world," one should consider whether "the colonial period and its consequences" would not be a better subject for "appropriate 'Holocaust education'" among Muslim students in Germany. This is a remarkable idea given the degree of Holocaust denial among many young Muslims.

Another article in the Yearbook, "Hostility to Islam on the World Wide Web," goes even further. Instead of criticizing anti-Semitism among Muslims, the author criticizes those who accuse Muslims of anti-Semitism. That's because such accusations provide "an apparently rationally based argument for rejecting an entire collective," writes Yasemin Shooman, a staff member at the center. Here, attempts to fight "hostility to Islam" threaten to turn into tolerance of anti-Semitic attitudes.

While the Berlin center concentrates on world-wide "anti-Islamic resentments," its Yearbook says not a word about the anti-Semitism of the Iranian mullahs. Thus, it hardly does justice to the demands for contemporary research on anti-Semitism. Never before has the elimination of the Jewish state been so loudly propagated. Never before has an influential power made Holocaust denial the center of its foreign policy, as Iran has today. Never before has a U.N. forum been misused for an anti-Semitic speech, as it was on Sept. 23 by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier criticized the speech as "blatantly anti-Semitic."

Presumably, one must not talk about Islamism in connection with the recent atrocities in Bombay, either. Or is that allowed?

It's Bombay and India is still an ally ... just

Still on the subject of the atrocities in India, an ally and a country that is or ought to be part of the Anglosphere, here is a very good article by Christopher Hitchens on Slate. Among other things, Hitch reminds us all that Bombay, which is still called that by many Indians, was renamed by Hindu extremists after a Hindu goddess. By calling it Mumbai, we collude with their desire to keep India away from the rest of the world, to destroy Bombay, one of the country’s greatest cities. So let us not give in to that and continue calling the place Bombay.

This may seem like a detail, but it isn't, because what's at stake is the whole concept of a cosmopolitan city open to its own citizens and to the world—a city on the model of Sarajevo or London or Beirut or Manhattan. There is, of course, a reason they attract the ire and loathing of the religious fanatics. To the pure and godly, the very existence of such places is a profanity. In a smaller way, the same is true of the Islamabad Marriott hotel, where I also used to stay. It was a meeting point and crossroads for foreigners. It had a bar where the Pakistani prohibition rules did not apply. Its dining rooms and public spaces featured stylish Asian women who showed their faces. And so it had to be immolated, like any other Sodom or Gomorrah.

The main point of the article, though, is an assertion of the importance of India in our world and in our fight against terrorists and the importance of the West, whose leaders have been making rather mealy-mouthed statements, to make it clear that we believe this to be so, despite the many problems India faces.

While we are on the subject of the events in Bombay, here is Neo-neocon writing about some people’s outrageously stupid reactions. Personally, I think she is being too kind to the morons who can see no difference between victims and murderers but she also links to a posting by Yaacov Ben Moshe, who is less kind. [Warning: some of the descriptions of what the terrorists did may well make you queasy.] I just wish they would all call the city Bombay.

Imprisoning the messenger

This news was passed on to me by one of the readers of both this and the EUReferendum blog. He sent me some links to a Russian-language newspaper in Latvia, Telegraf. The first article appeared on November 21, in which the newspaper reported that Dmitry Smirnov (or Dmitrijs Smirnovs in Latvian, though I suspect the man a Russian) a teacher of economics in the Ventspils University College was arrested by the Security Police and accused of undermining the Latvian financial system by taking part in a discussion about the ongoing crisis.

The story was confirmed three days later in which Mr Smirnov explained that he had been kept in solitary for two days but otherwise treated well. He had been arrested under Article 194 of the Criminal Code. Mr Smirnov added that it is clear from the conditions of his imprisonment that Latvia is now in the European Union though he does not actually want to return to the cell. I suspect Mr Smirnov does not know much about prisons in certain parts of France or Italy.

The Baltic Times, an English language newspaper had more on the story.

University College Rector Janis Vucans told the Baltic News Service that he did not know the exact reasons for the detention of lecturer Dmitrijs Smirnovs, but that he expected to receive a written explanation.

The rector said that the discussion that led to the lecturers detention was an ordinary talk in which each participant voiced his own opinion and vision.

Asked whether Smirnovs' detention should be taken as interference with a person's freedom of speech, Vucans said that Smirnovs is a lecturer at the Ventspils University College, delivering lectures on banks and monetary systems. "On what basis should we lecture? Not on examples of some Switzerland or the US, the situation in Latviais more important to us," he said.

"The question is whether we are teaching something abstract, what does not refer to us, or we are trying to educate our students on issues that are topical," said the rector. "As far as I understand, his statements are not populist, but based on analysis," said the rector.

It seems that Mr Smirnov argued that the lat may well be devalued very soon. It followed, according to the Baltic Times, a string of detentions connected with this rumour. One of those detained, according to the Telegraf, had been Valters Frïdenbergs, a singer with the group Putnu balle. And to think that the only thing our various singers and performers get arrested for is drunkenness, drug abuse and general bad behaviour. Something wrong here.

My informer wondered why the EU was not making any noises about Mr Smirnov’s rights to freedom of speech. I think I have the answer here:

Smirnovs said in the discussion: "The only thing I can advise: first, not to keep money in banks, second, not to accumulate savings in lats as it is very dangerous now. Convert them to the US dollars. The euro is an artificial currency, and what is achieved by the euro in a year, can be lost in a month. These are real threats to the value of the euro. Maybe some people do not understand it, but the main oppositionist and competitor to the US is the European Union (EU). The main goal of the US is to destroy the EU as it does not benefit from a strong and united Europe, strong currency -- the euro."

The man is not going to get support if he goes around saying that the euro is an artificial currency and is, therefore, very vulnerable. Then again, if he really believes that tosh about America’s main goal being the destruction of the EU then his opinions are hardly worth listening to, let alone paying him the compliment of arresting him.

Upon further enquiry I established this about Article 194:

According to the criminal code, it is against the law to disseminate “untrue data or information orally, written or in other ways regarding the condition of the finance system of the Republic of Latvia.” A person convicted under Section 194 could face up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 80 times the minimal monthly wage.

When it comes to disseminating information about the country’s currency true or untrue becomes hard to judge. According to Andris Straumanis in Latvians Online the arrest is likely to be in contravention of the Latvian constitution, which guarantees free speech.

The Wall Street Journal, still the best newspaper around for news as opposed to discussion of rock music, fashion and obscure health problems, has caught up with the story. Apart from explaining why the Latvian authorities are so worried about unfounded rumours (though, perhaps, they should not assume that all economic discussions are that) Andrew Higgins makes an interesting point about the whole saga:

Virtually no one here worries that Latvia is reverting to the ways of the Soviet Union, when the KGB hunted down dissidents and kept the population in cowed silence. Unlike Russia, where state-controlled media largely ignore bad news, Latvia has a vibrant free press. Mr. Smirnovs's detention was front-page news and created an uproar. This, says the economist, "shows that we are still living in a democracy."

Indeed, a quick check on the internet confirms that the story is being vigorously discussed in various languages, though, for some reason it does not seem to have been picked up by the British media.

Change we can all believe in

President-Elect Obama has announced a "new dawn" in American foreign policy and appointed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as his Secretary of State, leaving Robert Gates in Defence. As I said in an interview for the BBC Russian Service this afternoon about future Anglo-American relations, I cannot see any reason to expect many changes.

Here is the list of the latest appointments.

Does the media endanger people's lives?

From Gateway Pundit we get this story, which comes from Wales Online via Free Republic of a British couple describing their lives being endangered by CNN actually pinpointing their whereabouts for the terrorists that had taken over the Taj hotel to see. Power without responsibility, you see.

And more on the torture story. It would appear that the Jewish prisoners in the Chabad House were tortured before they were murdered.

Andrew Breitbart describes the opening of a new film in Mumbai and everybody's favourite cricketer (not!) and political hero Imran Khan, wearing a t-shirt that shows Bush as an international terrorist just about the time the real terrorist were rampaging through buildings a few streets from the event. Mr Khan is a Muslim and it would not hurt him to condemn those who justify their crimes by the religion they share with him. What will he and his colleagues do after January 20, 2009?

UPDATE: Mea culpa. I had not appreciated that American writers will care next to nothing about the Imran Khan we all know and are seriously bored with. The idiot in Andrew Breibart's story is a different Imran Khan, younger, not so good looking, not a cricketer but a Bollywood star. For the time being, anyway. Mind you, the rest of my comments apply.

The prodigal returns

Not that I have been away all that long but blogging has been a little light (or lite as the blogosphere keeps calling it to my dismay) recently as other matters interfered. Time to pull up one’s socks, probably with a very quick disposal of the Damien Green affair, which seems to have excited journalists and commentators a great deal more than events in India did.

Innocent until proven guilty applies to an MP as much as anyone else but so does another important part of democratic existence (in so far as we have one but more of that later): nobody, not even an elected member of the House of Commons, is above the law. Parliamentary immunity applies to what they do and say in the House; it does not apply to their speech and actions outside it.

The story is, and I had better be careful until there is more information, that a junior civil servant in the Home Office has leaked certain confidential documents to Mr Green for various reasons, mostly, it appears, to do with the desire to promote the Conservative Party and Mr Green’s standing with the media. Such leaking of information has been against the law since the passing of the Official Secrets Act in 1911.

However, runs the argument, those documents were needed for Mr Green to do his job as a legislator who holds the executive to account. So they would, if Mr Green had used them in the House, the proper place to hold the executive to account. Apparently, he preferred to leak them on to various newspapers and these are fighting for their recently acquired position as the co-legislators in this country. Let me add that no newspaper appears to want to fight for its right to reveal names of people who are on the Interpol list of known terrorists because they might be sued for libel. That far they do not go in their love of freedom of speech.

Allow me to remind people what has really undermined democracy in this country and destroyed people’s faith in politicians and the political system. (Incidentally, my colleague on EUReferendum has written extensively on the subject so I need to add very little. His recent and best summary is here.)

First, we have the undoubted fact that something like eighty per cent of our legislation comes from the EU. Most of it does not even touch Parliament for various reasons, such as they are Regulations that are directly applicable. Even when Parliament is generously consulted there is nothing those self-important elected Members of the House of Commons can do about it because European legislation cannot be rejected. I must admit I have not heard Damien Green MP complaining about that or demanding that he should be paid 20 per cent of his present salary as he does only 20 per cent of the job that he was supposedly elected to do.

Secondly, we have the growing power of quangos, a subject that deserves several postings by itself. It was one of the issues raised by Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan in their recent booklet “The Plan”. Sadly, the Conservatives have already explained that part of their solution to the financial crisis is to set up another quango that would oversee the Treasury and, presumably, the elected Chancellor of the Exchequer. When I asked somebody from CCHQ about the need for it I was told quite pompously that sometimes quangos were good and necessary. I am glad to say that there was much laughter in the room about that form the non-ToryBoys.

Thirdly, we have a bunch of MPs who have no idea what they should be doing. I shall spell it out: they are supposed to be legislating but they can’t do that (see first point above) and they are supposed to be holding the executive to account. The place to do that is in the House of Commons, where they seem to do little but live-blog debates or pass messages on their pagers and blackberries; the executive is not held to account by feeding tit-bits of information gleaned from civil servants who were breaking the law for their own purposes, to the media. That is not what democracy is about.

Fourthly, we have a problem with the civil service, who has acquired far too much power with so much of the legislation not being enacted by Parliament and because its members have decided that they want to play party politics. How are Ministers to trust their civil servants if some of them have decided to pass on information of various kinds to members of the opposition? Are the Conservatives, who hope to be in government after the next election, going to be happy for junior bods in the Home Office to pass on correspondence between Ministers to a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet in order for him or her to further his friendship with some hacks in the media? I think not.

The ever more hysterical coverage of the Damien Green story, especially on the blogosphere and the internet in general, has convinced me that the political and media establishment (but I repeat myself) of this country is quite terminally frivolous. We are told at length that the fact that the Home Secretary did not intervene in what was operational procedure makes Britain a police state. Actually, quite the opposite.

We are told that this undermines Parliamentary privilege. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Parliamentary privilege stops outside Parliament. It protects members of the two Houses inside the building and its land. Constituency offices do not come under any kind of privilege and neither do negotiations with journalists.

We are told that this country has become like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. That is so fatuous and so insulting to the people of Zimbabwe that I do not need to respond to it. An inability to put things into perspective is the result of an inability to be serious on any matter. How can the arrest, done according to all the rules, of two people (one of whom is, as the phrase goes, singing like a canary) for definite law breaking compare in importance with what has, in the meantime, been going on in India?

Outside the fetid little world of self-important Westminster denizens and watchers, there has been a great deal of coverage of what was a horrific and still, naturally enough, unclear event. The storming of two hotels and Jewish centre in Mumbai, holding of hostages and killing numerous people was, on the one hand, a terrorist act but, also, like a miniature uprising.

It is still unclear how many people have been killed. The BBC says 172, another article in the Telegraph suggests that the total might be as high as 300. One story talks of bodies showing signs of torture but the doctor’s evidence is not worth a great deal as quoted in the article. The Daily Mail reports that one captured terrorist/insurgent told police that he had been instructed to go on killing until his last breath and that the plan was to kill 5,000. It is not entirely clear how the Daily Mail knows all the details of what the detainee told the police. There is much more to come out.

I am not going to waste any time expostulating about the evil of those who perpetrated this. I think that goes without saying. They were, as far as anyone can tell, Islamists though whether they were connected with Al-Qaeda is unclear. Nor is it clear what the immediate as opposed to the long-term aim was. The destabilization of India is clearly what these people want but were they also specifically intending to put off Western businessmen from investing in the country? Why were those particular targets chosen? Again, one can but hope that we shall find out more as time goes on.

There are a few points that need to be made. There is a persistent story that several of the gunmen were British. If that is so, we are back with the agonizing problem we have faced before: why does Britain continue to breed more terrorists than any other Western country? Surely, this is a more important question than the arrrest of Damien Green.

The Indian government’s immediate reaction was to blame Pakistan and to announce that it was raising security on the borders to “war level”. That is probably a good precaution but let us recall that this is not the first terrorist attack inside India this year. The people of that country have every right to ask what the security services are doing. Why are they finding it impossible to prevent attacks, even when they are large-scale, well co-ordinated ones like this latest one in Mumbai.?

The Home Minister, Shivraj Patil has resigned but the resignation of the National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan has not been accepted. Still, there are signs that the government is going to move towards an enquiry and, perhaps, some reforms. Possibly, it will now accept responsibility, not for the attacks as only those who carried them out are responsible, but for being unable to prevent them.

Scott Johnson on Powerline quotes a friend who knows India. The posting discusses these and other problems that the country and its government must deal with in a far more knowledgeable fashion than I can. (For anyone who wants to attack me, nothing I say about India exonerates the terrorists or makes light of the far worse situation in Pakistan. Nevertheless, some things need to be said and I am glad that Indians are saying it.)

There is the very curious story of the police officers who refused to shoot at the terrorists, again on Powerline but this time there is a link to the article in the Belfast Telegraph and an interview with the photographer, Sebastian D’Souza, who was there, took some superb pictures and saw the police in its inaction. This, too, will have to be explained. Neo-neocon tries to analyze. In fact, the American blogosphere is writing about Mumbai and all its aspects. I just wish ours did as well. But, hey, we have more important matters to discuss. I suppose I ought to be grateful for Damien Green taking “I am a celebrity…” off the front pages of all the newspapers.

After this longish rant normal service will resume.

Czech court clears treaty

Despite President Klaus's impassioned speech to the Czech Constitutional Court, its decision today is that the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty does not, in any way, undermine the Czech Constitution.

The Czech court ruling on Wednesday is especially significant because the Czech Republic will take over the six-month rotating EU presidency in January.

"The Lisbon Treaty... does not run counter to the constitutional order," said court chairman Pavel Rychetsky.

But the treaty's passage through the Czech parliament may not be smooth, as some Eurosceptic members of Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's party oppose it. Mr Topolanek has said ratification is unlikely to be completed before next year.

The court did not consider the treaty as a whole, but only the articles disputed by critics in Mr Topolanek's party.

We shall see whether those Eurosceptic members will amount to a large enough cohort. It is, however, unlikely that the ratification will happen before January when the Czech Republic takes over the EU Presidency (and we shall see a little less of President Sarkozy in the media).

In the meantime, Poland has not officially ratified the treaty as President Kaczynski has refused to sign it until the Irish deadlock is resolved.

The Swedish Parliament approved the treaty last week by 243 votes to 39 with 67 members absent or abstaining. What is particularly infuriating about all this absenteeism is the fact that another nine votes would have delayed the ratification.

In actual fact, Sweden is the 23rd EU Member State to ratify the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty, as the Constitutional Court has not yet decided in Germany whether the ratification should go ahead and President Koehler will not sign it until there is a ruling.

Vaclav Klaus's statement

As asked by the Czech Senate, the Constitutional Court of that country is looking at the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty in order to assess whether its acceptance is in accordance with the Czech Constitution.

President Vaclav Klaus made a statement to the Court. While concentrating on legal argument, he, nevertheless outlined in an introductory paragraph the general situation:

However, it is evident, that we must not lose sight of the wider context. If this treaty comes into force, the international position as well as internal conditions within our state will change. Also the influence of our country on the decisions of the European Union will be weakened. All this would change the terms of our membership, which were approved by our citizens in the referendum on the EU Accession Treaty. The democratically established authorities of our state will be deprived of the right to decide on many areas of public life and this administration will be turned over to the EU authorities, which are not subjected to sufficient democratic control. In addition, the European Union authorities will be allowed to expand their own competencies over life in our country and its citizens at their will, even without our consent.

Read the whole speech - it is well worth it.

This is not exactly news but ...

... it is always useful to be reminded that the famous European acceptance of something grandly called an international order is patchy. When it suits European governments and EU institutions they accept it; when it does not they disregard everything from UN sanctions down. I am not complaining, you understand, but hypocrisy riles others, not just Americans.

Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner, experts on international law, give examples.

Heads ought to roll

I don't know who briefed Lord Tunnicliffe for Thursday's Starred Questions but that person or those persons should be fired forthwith. As nobody actually gets fired in DfID they should be demoted to making tea or collecting and sorting rubbish into various recycling bins. Presumably they would be able to manage that.

It is embarrassing to have a Minister replying to questions in the House of Lords and not knowing the answer to a single one of them. Lord Judd asked a question, which might or might not have been intended to be intelligent.

What support and encouragement they [HMG] are giving farmers in poor countries in view of the pressures on world food demand.

As one would expect from politicians and DfID the support seems to consist largely of government to government aid, that having proved itself to be a worse than useless solution. Lord Judd followed this up with:

My Lords, I take the opportunity to congratulate the Government once again on their commitment to overseas aid. Does my noble friend agree that in our response to the global economic and financial crisis we must keep the plight of the world’s poorest people constantly in focus? With 75 per cent of the world’s poor still living in rural areas, and with most of them utterly dependent for their livelihood on agriculture, do the Government agree that for appropriate agricultural technology to be sustainable the farmers themselves have to be genuinely involved and that this means ensuring that extension programmes reach the poorest and the most excluded, including pastoral people, women and those living on subsistence farming? Can my noble friend reassure us on that point?

Why exactly should continuing commitment to a policy that has done little good and a great deal of harm by keeping corrupt, oppressive, bloodthirsty kleptocrats in power, be a matter for congratulations is a mystery. The rest of the question as the reply to it is what one might call incomprehensible.

Other questions were of greater interest. Sadly, Lord Tunnicliffe did not know any of the answers. He had not read the article in the Financial Times, referred to by Baroness Northover but did acknowledge, in general terms, that trade was a good thing for developing countries. Whether it applied to the specific example the article called attention to remained hidden.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch asked:

My Lords, remembering the 25,000 deaths every day in the developing world caused by malnutrition and associated causes, have the Government made any progress with the analysis that we discussed during our Lisbon debates of the contribution made to those deaths by the common agricultural and fisheries policies and by US grain policies?

He was even supported by Lord Tomlinson but the answers were rather vague. Yes, of course, we want the Doha Round to succeed but no, as it happens we have not really agreed on any position on the CAP and when it comes to the Common Fisheries Policy that destroys whole communities and prevents the countries in question from developing their industry, it is not even worthy of being mentioned. At least, Lord Tunnicliffe did not bother to mention it.

On and on it went. The Countess Mar wanted to know if the government supported a particular small-scale scheme in Kenya, which appeared to be successful in that it increased productivity (though without proper trade productivity is of little value). Lord Tunnicliffe did not know but if it is part of the government programme, which we give money to, then we do support it.

A more detailed question from Baroness Rawlings on wheat stem rust (she clearly does get briefed) brought forth bafflement. A particularly stupid and ignorant question from Baroness Tonge who, in true left-wing fashion has no clear understanding that non-Western countries might have different problems from Western ones, was swiped aside.

So what do we gather about the help we are giving to the poorest parts of the underdeveloped world? Clearly we are continuing with the insane policy of government to government aid without bothering to check out what the money is spent on.

In a general way we are in favour of the Doha Round being completed successfully but we do not want to look too closely into the problems of trade restricitons or CAP and CFP undermining the economy of developing countries. We do not care much about the fact that DfID and attendant NGOs also undermine the local economy of countries they invade and have not the slightest intention of helping them to be more successful economically.

Oh and we also know that DfID officials are incapable of briefing a minister well. Sack the lot of them, say I.