War on Terrorism (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

I suppose there is some advantage in being blown up next year rather than this.

[Mick Harper]

The Israelis have been very unwise to embark on a policy in East Jerusalem that guarantees them permanent strife. They are essentially in the position the British found themselves in, both in Ireland and in India. They are forbidden by their own codes of behaviour from really 'cracking down' so are obliged to be passively reactive in a situation where every reaction they make not only earns them worldwide obloquy but where their opponents can do pretty much what they like without fear of undue punishment.

They will find, like the British found before them, that their opponents will be endlessly inventive in finding ways of harassing them. This weekend, for example, the Palestinians organised a half-marathon that went through all the most sensitive places and the Israelis were reduced to closing off routes and clubbing 'fun-runners' (and 'spectators') milling around 'not knowing where to go'. Everything being lovingly recorded by the world's press.

[Mick Harper]

This is quite unlike, say, the Intifada where the Israelis found themselves endlessly shooting teenagers throwing stones. There is a finite number of Palestinian youths prepared to be shot for throwing stones and the world's press has a limited appetite for filming it. Especially when people wearing a large flak jacket marked PRESS can so easily be shot by mistake.

This last policy was tested to destruction this weekend too when they arrested a motherly Al-Jazeera reporter filming the half-marathon for 'assaulting Israeli security forces' and then had to watch hours of footage as the world re-ran the entire 'assault' from every angle. Strictly speaking, the world's press are no longer needed now that every spectator possesses a mobile phone that records events in real time.

The Israelis cannot even rid themselves of the accursed Al-Jazeera. They tried closing their local offices, withdrawing their credentials, demolishing their Gaza HQ, only to discover that the world's press has a Prime Directive that supersedes all partisan positions: "Don't mess with the world's press." They had to allow the offices to re-open and the credentials renewed. The woman in question was released without charge and the footage continued from the hospital where the woman lovingly showed off the injuries she sustained while assaulting the Israeli security forces.

[Mick Harper]

The injuries were extensive. The Israelis are about to learn another lesson the British had to learn via Amritsar and the Black-and-Tans. Your own security forces are only human. They too get fed up with having to handle an insoluble situation and start taking the solution into their own hands, with the direst of consequences. The high-ups know only too well that in asymmetric warfare, one side can do things the other cannot. And it's much worse when the Big Battalions have the highest codes of conduct and the Little Guys are people that I for one regard as a useless and morally bankrupt bunch of arseholes.

It's just they are right and that supersedes all.

[Mick Harper]

Strange goings on in the Iranian energy sector. Iran's only nuclear power station closes down for 'two to three days' to make minor repairs. It leads the Al-Jazeera News. Why? Is this a fiendish Israeli plot? Al-Jazeera is very big on them. No, the closure has caused electricity shortages all over the country. Now you might be asking, why is a country stuffed to the gills with oil and gas operating a nuclear power station anyway? And you may or may not be surprised to hear it has nothing to with the ayatollahs' nuclear ambitions and all to do with the Shah and his determination to be modern at any cost.

It was so costly -- for a pretty backward country like Iran -- that only one was built and it isn't very important in the energy mix. So why is the Iranian government beseeching its citizens to economise on energy, the one thing Iran is stuffed to the gills with? Well, because it is all being used up in ... what? Go on, have three guesses. Betya didn't think it was 'mining for cryptocurrency'. You thought the ayatollahs were some kind of medieval holdover. Not at all, they're much weirder than that.

[Mick Harper]

PS The ayatollahs have doubled down. Traditionally, knowing how unpopular they are, they at least allowed liberal ayatollahs to run the government. But at the last election all the lib non-dems were disqualified and the 'Butcher of Teheran' was voted in as the next president. Well, would you have voted for his rival, the Deputy Governor of the State Bank who had run and lost three times? 'Butch', so they say, is in line to take over the real top job when the million-year-old present Chief Mufti goes off to claim his forty virgins in heaven. What did they do to deserve him?

The people of Iran -- remember them? -- made their feelings known the only way they can. Most of them didn't vote. Now having a hardliner in charge is not necessarily a bad thing. He could be bending over so far backward to be liberal (like Beria when Stalin died) that he might end up a liberal. And this time he'll have the power to make it stick. Butchers are very pragmatic.

Meanwhile the Americans -- a far more destabilising force in the Middle East than the Iranians have ever managed -- are trying to decide whether to do a nuclear deal with the present regime, wait till August when the new one takes over, or do no deal at all and see Iran continue to swing in the wind. All watched passively by those pathetic poltroons who signed up to the deal because it was such a good deal: the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China. Not powerful enough, I suppose.

I would award appropriate circles in hell for all these people but there just aren't enough to go round. Mind you the virgins up in heaven would quite fancy one of the higher levels. Vote Islam! It's a man's religion.

[Boreades]

It must be doubly confusing for the Iranians as well.

Back in the "good old days" (1979-1981) of the US Embassy being held hostage by the Iranians, they knew who their enemy was. It was no good doing deals with the Carter Democrat Doves (the little sons of Satan), it was the Republican Hawks they had to deal with (the big sons of Satan). So they kept the hostages until the day after Carter had been so humiliated in the US election that the Republican Hawks strolled into power.

But now?

The Republican Hawks have grown old and toothless, unable even to find a credible & controllable hawk of their own. The Democrats have become more hawkish internationally but, very scaringly for Iranians, seem to be heavily influenced by what they perceive as crazy dangerous women. And, even worse, there'll most likely be a female President some time soon. Difficult ideaological optics.

Better to deal with the Chinese instead?

I would have asked the only Iranian in our village for more recent intel, but rumour has it he's moved to Gloucestershire to be closer to Jeremy Clarkson. It was something about staying closer to crazy British hawks.

[Mick Harper]

The fad of declaring an election bent if you lose has spread from the warring hill tribes of America to reach new heights in the one ex-Russkie state that has always had free and fair elections, Armenia. The previous incumbent got 21% of the votes this weekend, the current one got 54%, but this has not stopped Yesterday's Man refusing to recognise the result because of 'voting irregularities'. Donald Trump must be green with envy: turning those numbers round would really have got his base fired up.

[Mick Harper]

Applying the Lessons of History

[slightly re-written for comprehensibility from here https://historyofyesterday.com/ten-amazing-true-tales-from-world-war-ii-7d5680d4e7be by Jennifer Lee]

On December 7, 1941, a Japanese pilot crash-landed on the tiny Hawaiian island of Niihau. Since they had no phones or electricity, the residents had no clue about that morning’s events, and they threw a luau for the injured pilot. He demanded the return of papers and weapons that a local ranch-hand had taken from the wreck, but he refused. The pilot spoke to Yoshi Harada, a Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American), and told him about Pearl Harbor, but Harada didn't share that information with his fellow-islanders. Instead, he and the pilot began terrorizing the residents.

Under fire, the islanders fled into the jungle. The ranch-hand rowed for 10 hours in a whale boat to Kauai. One of the islanders, despite taking three bullets, slammed the pilot into a stone wall and his wife bashed the pilot's head with a rock, and hubbie slashed his throat. Harada then shot himself. His alliance with the pilot had far-reaching consequences. “The incident was used to help justify the dislocation and internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans during the war,” says KT Budde-Jones, education director at Ford Island’s Pacific Aviation Museum - Pearl Harbor.

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Dunno about you but if a randomly selected second-generation Japanese-American can do this to people he grew up with, I wouldn't be allowing second-generation Japanese on the mainland to wander around entirely unsupervised.

[Mick Harper]

Afghanistan, The Lessons Learned Part One

[Mick Harper]

And yes, before you say it, I am using it as a metaphor for a wider critique of westernism. [Which by the way includes Marxism which many of the same people spent twenty years fighting tooth and nail and similarly got rid of without too much difficulty.] And in turn that is a metaphor for a wider critique: the fact that lots of people don't believe what you believe and they are going to fight tooth and nail if you try to foist your beliefs upon them.

I am not asking you to jettison your beliefs (and mine, if it comes to that) about the desirability of female education but I am asking you (and the Labour Party) to stop foisting their beliefs (some of which are my beliefs) on people twenty thousand miles away. You may acquire the right to do it in Britain but you will find that hard enough if you've only got twenty years. And don't be surprised if the people affected, and who didn't believe what you believed, might come after you. Though in gentler ways than the Taliban will be using with educated women of their country. And yes, Lise, it really is their country. You have no business foisting female education on them. Now fight tooth and nail to get that past Conference.

[Mick Harper]

Afghanistan, The Lessons Learned Part Two

I think Lise Nandy must be the silliest politician I've come across since... oh, last week at least. She actually uttered the words, "We must get them round the table." Well, as one side assassinated the spokesman of the other side yesterday (and publicly and proudly announced they had done so) it means the table will have to have sandbags stretched down the middle.

But the others round the Newsnight table -- all much older hands than Lise: General Reasonable, Rory With The Hair, Jack the Gormless American -- were just as breathlessly soppy. They were discussing what must be done without anyone (though Mark Urban came perilously close) pointing out that we won't be doing anything. The Taliban have won and they will be telling us what they are going to do. If we are wise we won't say anything because it will likely be the opposite of anything we do say.

The AE basis to all this is that nobody in the west seems able to comprehend there are people out there who are not Westerners. The general actually said, "What it boils down to now is a fight between the Afghan people and the Taliban." Good grief, no wonder we lost with people like that in charge. I say 'we' because what it actually boils down to now is a fight between the Afghan people and us. Just like it was the Afghan people versus the Commies. But one difference between us and the Russians is we never leave anywhere quietly. Plus we never get swept into the dustbin of history as the Commies did, so no respite for the Afghans there.

The irony of course is that left to their own devices they'll all become good Westerners just around the time we've decided to give all that materialist crap up and become Green. Or whatever. We get to choose, unlike some countries I could name.

[Mick Harper]

Early signs indicate we are at least not going in for The Syrian Solution. This is the one where you keep a civil war going indefinitely and ensure an entire country continues to be in melt-down mode indefinitely by making sure that the defeated side have safe havens indefinitely by putting enormous pressure on the winning side not to eliminate the safe havens but, on the contrary, allow in aid indefinitely to keep them going indefinitely.

We in the west are prepared to keep entire countries in this state indefinitely because we don't want to see pictures of ickle kiddies (and their mums if photogenic) suffering. But we don't mind ickle kiddies (and their mums and dads) suffering indefinitely in the rest of the country, in refugee camps, in western countries... hold on a mo', we'll get back to you on that one.

[Mick Harper]

It is noticeable that every time the Afghan government launches a counter-attack -- or indeed anything of military moment -- they use 'special forces'. I have been waiting for an explanation as to what these are after 8,648 different spokespersons, correspondents, talking heads and news anchors have used the phrase confidently but not explicatorily. Since I think we can say with some confidence that we are in 'careful ignoral' territory we can safely assume these are western mercenaries hired from the various western countries that maintain these sort of public/private agencies dedicated to keeping things going in various parts of the world.

N.B. 'Western' includes Russian. Very much it includes Russians whose mercenaries have been doing such a fine job in the Sahel, in Libya, in Syria, in the Ukraine and in Armenia/Azerbaijan.

[Mick Harper]

It seems I was wrong