THERE’s a siege at the hotel. A gun is pointed at the baby’s head.
The footpath is full of reporters and cameras and fans shouting nationalistic slogans.
Turn off the sirens, put down the megaphone and proceed with the utmost caution. Don’t spook the horses. That’s a nervous finger on the trigger.
Give them a bus, fill it with petrol and let them cool down in the sea. For god’s sake don’t let them swim outside the flags.
We just don’t need another disaster.
Indian cricket is twitching and hasn’t been sleeping. It’s been up all night on the phone, talking across time zones. It needs to be treated with respect and taken seriously.
The Indians are deadly serious on this one.
Cricket needs to examine the Indians’ grievances, but it’s not easy. Trying to work out what the problem is here is akin to a game of Where’s Wally?
Where to begin?
The Indians are upset with the International Cricket Council over the conviction of Harbhajan Singh for racism.
They want him freed or the baby is going to get it.
They believe the bowler and Sachin Tendulkar told the truth and that Andrew Symonds, Michael Clarke and Matthew Hayden did not.
The match referee did not believe the Indians. Doubting Harbhajan is one thing, questioning Tendulkar is heresy.
Tendulkar has been a catalyst in this.
He has apparently sent a text message to the head of the Board of Control for Cricket in India backing the bowler and pushing for a boycott unless the conviction is overturned.
Feeding the Indian angst are a number of grievances arising from the Sydney Test. Grievances with the umpires and the Australian players.
They believe the umpires dudded them and they have fair cause. They wanted Steve Bucknor removed. The authorities have caved in on that one and that’s good as it seems to have calmed everybody a little.
One senior player claimed the Australians “cheated” in Sydney and the side contained “liars” over the issues of walking, or not, catching and not catching. India is peddling a fair line in hypocrisy here. Or shall we say, let those who have not sinned bat first?
Go to YouTube and type in “Dhoni” and “Pieterson” (sic) or “cheat”. You will see the Indian wicketkeeper, a man with a reputation for his good sportsmanship and for walking when he nicks, claiming a catch off Kevin Pietersen in last year’s Test series against England.
For all the world the ball appears to bounce before Dhoni claims it and umpire Simon Taufel raises his finger after Pietersen’s decision to walk. Pietersen then turns on his heel after urging from team-mates who had seen the replay. The on-field umpires then decide to refer the incident to the third umpire. Pietersen is given not out and the booing England crowd cheers.
Cameras can lie on these matters, but the Indians believe Clarke claimed to have caught Sourav Ganguly in similar circumstances. If it is such a heinous crime for Clarke why is it not so for Dhoni, the team’s leader-in-waiting?
The Indians are upset that Clarke didn’t walk until he was given out, but seem quite comfortable with Yuvraj Singh and a number of their batsmen taking an age to walk when actually given out.
And of course, India No11 Ishant Sharma also waited for the umpire’s decision after he, too, snicked to first slip for the match-deciding wicket.
Which crime is worse, waiting for an umpire or waiting after the umpire has told you to go?
Certainly Clarke should have walked when he hit it, but maybe, like Yuvraj said in his own defence in the first Test, Clarke was too stunned to move. It was, after all, a golden duck.
Ponting’s claimed catch is harder to defend when you know the rules of cricket. In his defence Ponting didn’t claim one that bounced in the first innings and perhaps his interpretation of the rule is that he had control of body and ball before hitting the earth.
As for Bucknor, well, that’s another interesting one.
It could also be argued that India won last year’s England series because the umpires did not give Sree Santh out leg before wicket in the last minutes of the first Test, allowing India to hang on for a draw.
Sree Santh was plumb, the umpire appeared to have made an error. Guess who was officiating? That’s right, Bucknor.
These events are not mentioned in the grievance list handed over to negotiators during the Sydney hotel siege, nor is the decision which saved Tendulkar when Clarke trapped him in front early in his big century.
These are just things you might want to think about but keep to yourself because nobody wants to upset anybody further. Nobody is in the mood to be reasonable.
Harbhajan’s defenders are claiming that there was no incident in Mumbai last October. They are also arguing that if it happened why didn’t Ponting take it to the referee then. And they’re arguing that Ponting and Kumble should have defied the ICC and dealt with it like men.
Oh, hang on, they are also arguing that “monkey” isn’t a racist term. Members of the BCCI have said this and it will be interesting news for the defence of people arrested for using the term in Mumbai late last year.
None of this, however, addresses the ongoing problem for Australian cricket. The Indians, despite all their announcements about fighting fire with fire and not taking a backward step, are screaming about how hard the Australians play cricket.
It appears, from a number of polls and blogs, that the majority of Australians agree with India.
Remember that there was no ill-feeling off the field in this match. The way the SCG crowd responded to Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid was extraordinarily warm and made you proud to be part of a cricket crowd that could treat visiting sportsmen so well. Especially having seen how Indian crowds treated Australia in the one-day series last year.
Australian cricketers have won the match but lost the public relations war on this one. India’s cricketers lost the Test but won the hearts and minds.
A crisis shines a harsh light on many things and perhaps brings peripheral matters into focus. There is an argument that Harbhajan was denied natural justice. If so, the ICC must address this.
There is evidence the umpiring was below standard and the ICC might want to think about its problems in this area.
There is an argument that Australia did not play fairly. The Australian players and officials must address this.
The team had a lecture on the spirit of cricket when they went into camp late last year. At it they were told “perception is reality”.
If that is the case, there is a lot of work to be done. It is no good being the best side in the world if nobody wants to watch you, or play against you.
India, for its part, has ridden roughshod over the ICC and the notion the game must go on.
If there is any realpolitik allowed into this situation it will be that India has the power to do what it wants and if upset it must be appeased, for the last thing cricket needs is India to pack its bat and ball and go home.
Right or wrong, the Indians hold the baby’s life in their hands.
Wednesday 9 January 2008
Some balance, please
True, India were sinned against in the Sydney Test, but they're no innocents, and the reaction of the media back home has been consummately over the top
Suresh Menon
January 9, 2008
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If India's media are to be believed, the Indian players are angels, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an unpatriotic Gandhi-hater and should be condemned to watching Navjot Sidhu expressing his views on a dozen television channels.
By hauling up a player for a racial slur (just as all who drink are not alcoholics, all who use racially charged words are not racists), the match referee has apparently called into question our manhood, nationhood, honour, Gandhian way of life, support for Nelson Mandela in the days of apartheid, and the sacrifices made by our martyrs.
Yes, we lost a Test. Yes, the umpiring was horrendous. Yes, the charges against Harbhajan Singh might not hold up in a court of law. But do we have to go overboard like this? One television channel dragged out Harbhajan's mother, that expert on racial slurs and leg-before appeals, to share her thoughts with us.
How do we drop so quickly into us-and-them mode? The media paranoia feeds itself. If one channel demands an apology from Australia, another displays greater patriotism by asking for the Test result to be nullified. Pundits push themselves to the head of a gathering trend. Or, if they are Sidhu, suggest that Indian bowlers should kick the umpires as they approach the wicket to bowl. If this is what a Test player feels, what of the regular effigy-burners and professional naysayers?
That mythical creature, the Average Man, wants the team to return home, we are told. Politicians speak for the Man in the Street (who is there because politicians, in their rush to defend the millionaires abroad, have omitted to build a house for him).
"This is not about cricket," Sidhu thunders, "This is about national honour." The President-elect of the ICC, Sharad Pawar, is upset. This is not something trivial like farmers committing suicide, which he can ignore in his other avatar as the Minister of Agriculture. This is the real thing. The BCCI runs the ICC and the media run the BCCI.
Brinkmanship is our national sport. The way India treats the ICC is no different from the manner in which the "veto powers", England and Australia, did in their heyday. When the cycle turns and the power base shifts, we will have at least nine countries waiting to get at us for all that we are doing to them now.
Pawar has the bogey of Jagmohan Dalmiya on his shoulder. Didn't that worthy threaten to split the cricket world more than once? Didn't he save India's honour, nationhood, manhood and all other hoods by annulling the result of a match in South Africa a few years ago? How can Pawar go one better? Can he annul Australia's nationhood?
The board could not have asked for a better chance to show its patriotism. The players could not have asked for a bigger distraction from their own pathetic display in the second innings at Sydney. Two batsmen got poor decisions. What about the others? Is batting through two sessions to save a Test beyond the ability of the greatest batting line-up in the world? As for the board, the criticism about pushing the players into Tests in Australia without adequate time to acclimatise themselves is now residing under a carpet somewhere.
It is all so convenient.
But what of the incidents? We have been mixing apples and oranges. The boorish behaviour of Ricky Ponting and his men is independent of the umpiring boo-boos, which have nothing to do with what Harbhajan Singh said to Andrew Symonds. By bundling it all together, and then garnishing the mix with almost plausible quotes and Peter Roebuck's unusually over-the-top reaction, the Indian media have taken breast-beating to new levels.
A clever lawyer can pick on anything Symonds said and give it a racial twist. Even honourable cusswords like "bastard" and "son of a bitch" can be seen as insulting the parental uncertainty or animal origins of all non-whites. Logicians call this reductio ad absurdum - stretching a proposition to its logical absurdity. But logic has been a casualty in this fracas.
Let's get a sense of balance. No Indian writing or broadcasting from Sydney mentioned that replays showed Sachin Tendulkar was out leg-before when he was in the twenties. He added roughly the same number of runs that Symonds did after being reprieved when he was first out.
| Brinkmanship is our national sport. The way India treats the ICC is no different from the manner in which the "veto powers", England and Australia, did in their heyday. When the cycle turns and the power base shifts, we will have at least nine countries waiting to get at us for all that we are doing to them now | |||
Ponting's integrity may be in question after he claimed a catch off Mahendra Singh Dhoni though the ball touched the ground. Just as you can't be a little pregnant, you can't be a little upright. Integrity is indivisible. But if the two captains had an agreement regarding catches close to the wicket, then Mark Benson was right in turning to Ponting when Sourav Ganguly was caught. After all, Steve Bucknor was further away from the action.
Indians are not innocents. The average number of Tests played by the Sydney XI is 65. That's enough time to learn all the tricks. Ishant Sharma, in his third Test, showed you don't need to have played 65. His ridiculous time-wasting tactic of walking out with two right gloves would have embarrassed a schoolboy.
For a team that is trailing 0-2 in a Test series, India are on top Down Under. This is remarkable. It is the result of a combination of the BCCI's financial arrogance and media-inspired jingoism. This is dangerous, however exciting and ballsy it might be for an Indian. For it is this combination that makes huge headlines of incidents that might otherwise be handled with delicacy and tact. Already the ICC has replaced Bucknor for the Perth Test (question: if India had long-standing disputes with him, why didn't the board object at the start of the tour?). This may be good PR, but it is a bad precedent to set.
Likewise with the Harbhajan case. The ICC can neither revoke the ban nor endorse it without getting into a bigger mess. The Indian media are probably getting ready to speak to Malcolm Speed's relatives even as you read this.
Suresh Menon is a writer based in Bangalore
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Bucknor's blackballing bodes badly
What will the dumping of umpire Steve Bucknor mean for attracting umpires in the future?
January 9, 2008
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He's umpired in a record 120 Tests, as well as five World Cup finals, but Bucknor's future is uncertain to say the least. Like Hair, he has attracted the opprobrium of a powerful member of the Asian bloc, but unlike Hair, his blackballing doesn't even come with the proviso that his actions were correct within the letter of the law. Instead, in the opinion of the BCCI, his crime was "incompetence" and even allowing for the shrill levels of outrage that have been doing the rounds this week, you'd be hard-pressed to disagree.
On one level, Bucknor's removal from next week's Perth Test is a blessing. His presence on the field would have been a distraction, and the scrutiny to which he would have been subjected would have been unbearable even for a man of his vast experience - umpires are only human, as this week's events have overwhelmingly demonstrated. Malcolm Speed's explanation of the ICC's decision was that it would "alleviate the tension".
Sanity in the short-term, however, is a heavy price to pay for the precedent that this decision sets. Only 24 hours earlier, the ICC reiterated that there would be no change to the umpiring appointments for the Perth Test. A spokesman even invoked clause 3.1.7 of the playing conditions that both teams signed ahead of the series: "Neither team will have a right of objection to an umpire's appointment."
That ruling is up in smoke now, sacrificed on the altar of expediency as is too often the case in cricket's convoluted world. The BCCI have expressed satisfaction with the outcome, as well they might, although arrogantly, their sights have already been on what they describe as the bigger issue, the racism charge that has been levelled against Harbhajan Singh. Bucknor doesn't even get to be the main event in his hour of humiliation. Instead he has been left with his wings clipped in a hotel-room in Sydney, waiting to be whisked away from the mayhem.
At the age of 61, there's no knowing whether he'll be back, or whether he'll want to be back. There has long been a suspicion that his best days of officialdom are behind him - India still hasn't forgiven him for an lbw decision against Sachin Tendulkar at Brisbane in 2003-04 - but for the rest of the world, the overwhelming evidence was provided at the World Cup final in Barbados in April. Admittedly, he was just one of five men to concoct that particular farce, although it was his passivity as the senior on-field umpire that truly exacerbated the situation.
This isn't how he deserves to go out, however, nor how the game should wish him to go either, given the dread it will instill in anyone who dares to follow in his footsteps. Mark Benson is counting his blessings not to have been scheduled to stand at Perth (although his card is clearly marked), while even an ego the size of Billy Bowden's will surely house one or two fears when he steps out to replace Bucknor at the WACA.
Even so, the madness of the past week does seem to be drawing to a close. The flames of righteous indignation are beginning to die down, and while it is hardly the ideal solution, Brad Hogg's tit-for-tat citation for the use of the word "bastard" (a term of endearment in Aussie circles, a term of grievous insult among Indians) could yet be the filter through which Harbhajan's alleged monkey slur can be seen for the naïve, unthinking remark that it surely was.
But the forensic teams will be sifting through the charred remains of this contest for several weeks and months yet. What will become abundantly clear is the need for greater protection for the next generation of umpires - which means more recourse to replays, more breaks between games, and more respect from the players, some of whom made a mockery of the spirit of the game at Sydney.
But before that can happen, the replacements for stalwarts such as Bucknor need to be identified and nurtured, and it's not immediately obvious where they will come from. Tellingly, for all its riches, passion and power, India has not produced a top-class official since Srinivas Venkataraghavan. It's become clearer this week why that is the case. It's a mug's game in this modern world, where a billion armchair critics are better informed than the men out in the middle. In a week of madness, that's possibly the maddest thing of all.
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Tuesday 8 January 2008
Dominic Lawson: Have the Australians been caught out?
It might have been an unwise remark, but this neutral finds it impossible not to sympathise with the Indians
Published: 08 January 2008
Is it racial abuse to call someone "a monkey"? Under the modern dispensation, it is if the person so described believes it is. The International Cricket Council subscribes to this interpretation and as a result has banned the Indian spin-bowler Harbhajan Singh for the duration of the current Test series against Australia, after he – allegedly – called the Aussie player Andrew Symonds "a monkey".
The president of the group representing Indian Australians, Raj Natarajan, protested – admittedly somewhat disingenuously – that "the Monkey God is one of the revered idols of Hindu mythology and worshipped by millions. It is surprising that it was considered a racist term."
As might have been expected, the Indian cricketing authorities, the BCCI, have furiously denied that Harbhajan, or indeed any of their players, is a racist, and – absent an official exoneration – have even threatened to abandon the Test series. If that were to happen, it would make this the most politically damaging cricketing encounter since the notorious "bodyline" series of 1932, in which a carefully executed plan of physical intimidation by the England fast bowlers caused an unprecedented diplomatic rift between Australia and "the mother country".
At the height of that conflict, the English team manager, Pelham Warner, visited the Australian dressing room to inquire after the health of the Aussie captain, Bill Woodfull, who had been struck several fearsome blows to the body by the lethally quick Harold Larwood. From his prone position on the treatment table, Oldfield delivered a devastating rebuke to the self-righteous Warner: "I do not want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is playing cricket, the other is making no attempt to do so."
Those remarks are as well known as any in the history of cricket. So it surely cannot be an accident that the studious Indian captain, Anil Kumble, declared in a press conference after the recent match in Sydney: "Only one team was playing within the spirit of the game. That's all I can say." Apparently the Indian press present stood as one to applaud Kumble's comment.
It might have been an inflammatory and unwise remark, but this neutral finds it impossible not to sympathise with the Indians. Regardless of whatever Harbhajan might have said in the heat of conflict, the Australians – not least Andrew Symonds – played the entire match in their usual unremittingly hostile spirit, successfully intimidating even the neutral umpires into making decisions which were scandalously unfair to the visiting side.
Above all, there is something deeply unappealing in the fact that the Aussies – the Aussies! – have been the ones to go running to the authorities to complain about verbal abuse on the field. I spoke yesterday to the former England captain, Michael Atherton, who had experienced as much abuse as any from Australian sides over the years. He told me that, when he started, " the Australians were a disgrace. They would just gob off at you all day long. Some of us could take it, some couldn't".
The point, of course, was to establish who couldn't take it and concentrate the abuse on those who were less impervious to the insults. The former Australian captain, Steve Waugh, openly admitted the purpose of the whole exercise – it was part of a policy, he said, to bring about " mental disintegration".
Atherton told me that, by Waugh's time, the cricketing authorities had already acted to reduce the worst of the abuse; but, he added,"the Aussies would still find ways of getting under opponents' skins, even if it meant saying things to each other that were clearly directed at the incoming batsman".
You might dismiss this as just the moaning of losers – which in practice has meant pretty much everyone who has played the Australians over the past 20 years. So, see if you like this bit of playful banter: when the New Zealand player Chris Cairns came in to bat against an Australian side shortly after his sister had been killed in a train accident, he heard – or so it was reported – some of the fielders making "choo-choo" noises at each other. Of course, this was nothing so crude as direct abuse – and since it involved no racial element, it was clearly of no great political concern to the game's governing body.
The current Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, is understandably sensitive to the charge that he is a "dobber" – Aussie slang for one who informs to the authorities. An article appears under his name in today's issue of The Australian in which he declares: "I was particularly disappointed to hear television commentators suggest during the Test that I was a 'dobber' who had opened a 'Pandora's box' by making a report of what I believed was racial abuse towards Andrew Symonds. Over the past two years, match referees have made it clear at the start of every series that it is the captain's responsibility to immediately report any form of racism from either the crowd or on the field.
"When I heard what had taken place with Andrew I immediately informed the umpires and then left the field at the end of the over to inform our team manager, which we are instructed to do. There is absolutely no place for racism in sport or society generally, and I fully support the International Cricket Council's anti-racism policy."
I wouldn't want to impugn Mr Ponting's journalistic skills or sincerity, but those remarks read as if they were copied out of some sort of ICC best practice manual. They are politically correct, in every sense of the term, but don't come near to acknowledging the genuine dismay that many feel at the way in which a relatively trivial remark – itself a response, even by Symonds' own account, to some ripe language on his part – has led to the banning of a great player by the game's authorities.
Perhaps the Indians' reaction has been excessive. It can never be a sensible reaction to threaten to abandon an entire Test series, however politically inept the decisions of over-fussy officialdom. Yet such criticism would not take account of the peculiar intensity of this particular cricketing battle. India increasingly feels its own emerging significance as a mighty economic power, as the "old" economies of the West fade in relative significance.
Moreover, India now sees itself, and not the apparently unconquerable Australians, as the true superpower in world cricket. It is not just that the intense love of cricket in India – as anyone who has been there to witness it can attest – makes the English obsession with football seem dilettante by comparison; on numerical grounds alone, there are more cricket fans in India than in the rest of the world combined.
If the cricketing authorities want to insult those billions, then they are free to do so: on the other hand, it is they, as a result, who might end up looking like monkeys.
Published: 08 January 2008
Is it racial abuse to call someone "a monkey"? Under the modern dispensation, it is if the person so described believes it is. The International Cricket Council subscribes to this interpretation and as a result has banned the Indian spin-bowler Harbhajan Singh for the duration of the current Test series against Australia, after he – allegedly – called the Aussie player Andrew Symonds "a monkey".
The president of the group representing Indian Australians, Raj Natarajan, protested – admittedly somewhat disingenuously – that "the Monkey God is one of the revered idols of Hindu mythology and worshipped by millions. It is surprising that it was considered a racist term."
As might have been expected, the Indian cricketing authorities, the BCCI, have furiously denied that Harbhajan, or indeed any of their players, is a racist, and – absent an official exoneration – have even threatened to abandon the Test series. If that were to happen, it would make this the most politically damaging cricketing encounter since the notorious "bodyline" series of 1932, in which a carefully executed plan of physical intimidation by the England fast bowlers caused an unprecedented diplomatic rift between Australia and "the mother country".
At the height of that conflict, the English team manager, Pelham Warner, visited the Australian dressing room to inquire after the health of the Aussie captain, Bill Woodfull, who had been struck several fearsome blows to the body by the lethally quick Harold Larwood. From his prone position on the treatment table, Oldfield delivered a devastating rebuke to the self-righteous Warner: "I do not want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is playing cricket, the other is making no attempt to do so."
Those remarks are as well known as any in the history of cricket. So it surely cannot be an accident that the studious Indian captain, Anil Kumble, declared in a press conference after the recent match in Sydney: "Only one team was playing within the spirit of the game. That's all I can say." Apparently the Indian press present stood as one to applaud Kumble's comment.
It might have been an inflammatory and unwise remark, but this neutral finds it impossible not to sympathise with the Indians. Regardless of whatever Harbhajan might have said in the heat of conflict, the Australians – not least Andrew Symonds – played the entire match in their usual unremittingly hostile spirit, successfully intimidating even the neutral umpires into making decisions which were scandalously unfair to the visiting side.
Above all, there is something deeply unappealing in the fact that the Aussies – the Aussies! – have been the ones to go running to the authorities to complain about verbal abuse on the field. I spoke yesterday to the former England captain, Michael Atherton, who had experienced as much abuse as any from Australian sides over the years. He told me that, when he started, " the Australians were a disgrace. They would just gob off at you all day long. Some of us could take it, some couldn't".
The point, of course, was to establish who couldn't take it and concentrate the abuse on those who were less impervious to the insults. The former Australian captain, Steve Waugh, openly admitted the purpose of the whole exercise – it was part of a policy, he said, to bring about " mental disintegration".
Atherton told me that, by Waugh's time, the cricketing authorities had already acted to reduce the worst of the abuse; but, he added,"the Aussies would still find ways of getting under opponents' skins, even if it meant saying things to each other that were clearly directed at the incoming batsman".
You might dismiss this as just the moaning of losers – which in practice has meant pretty much everyone who has played the Australians over the past 20 years. So, see if you like this bit of playful banter: when the New Zealand player Chris Cairns came in to bat against an Australian side shortly after his sister had been killed in a train accident, he heard – or so it was reported – some of the fielders making "choo-choo" noises at each other. Of course, this was nothing so crude as direct abuse – and since it involved no racial element, it was clearly of no great political concern to the game's governing body.
The current Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, is understandably sensitive to the charge that he is a "dobber" – Aussie slang for one who informs to the authorities. An article appears under his name in today's issue of The Australian in which he declares: "I was particularly disappointed to hear television commentators suggest during the Test that I was a 'dobber' who had opened a 'Pandora's box' by making a report of what I believed was racial abuse towards Andrew Symonds. Over the past two years, match referees have made it clear at the start of every series that it is the captain's responsibility to immediately report any form of racism from either the crowd or on the field.
"When I heard what had taken place with Andrew I immediately informed the umpires and then left the field at the end of the over to inform our team manager, which we are instructed to do. There is absolutely no place for racism in sport or society generally, and I fully support the International Cricket Council's anti-racism policy."
I wouldn't want to impugn Mr Ponting's journalistic skills or sincerity, but those remarks read as if they were copied out of some sort of ICC best practice manual. They are politically correct, in every sense of the term, but don't come near to acknowledging the genuine dismay that many feel at the way in which a relatively trivial remark – itself a response, even by Symonds' own account, to some ripe language on his part – has led to the banning of a great player by the game's authorities.
Perhaps the Indians' reaction has been excessive. It can never be a sensible reaction to threaten to abandon an entire Test series, however politically inept the decisions of over-fussy officialdom. Yet such criticism would not take account of the peculiar intensity of this particular cricketing battle. India increasingly feels its own emerging significance as a mighty economic power, as the "old" economies of the West fade in relative significance.
Moreover, India now sees itself, and not the apparently unconquerable Australians, as the true superpower in world cricket. It is not just that the intense love of cricket in India – as anyone who has been there to witness it can attest – makes the English obsession with football seem dilettante by comparison; on numerical grounds alone, there are more cricket fans in India than in the rest of the world combined.
If the cricketing authorities want to insult those billions, then they are free to do so: on the other hand, it is they, as a result, who might end up looking like monkeys.
Johann Hari: We're fixating on Barack and Hillary. Let's listen to the white guy from the Deep South
Alone among the Democrats, John Edwards has taken a stand against corporate power
Published: 07 January 2008
The world is gaping with awe – and disbelief – at the prospect of a black or female President of the United States. If George Bush symbolises everything we hate about the United States, Barack Obama seems to symbolise everything we love about the country: its warm openness to immigrants, its shimmering civil rights movements, its idealism. So it feels strange to say it, but reader, it's time to look away from the woman and the black guy towards the white man from the Deep South – because he is more left-wing, and more electable, than either of them.
You might remember John Edwards as the plastic vice-presidential candidate standing at John Kerry's wooden side in 2004. Back then, he offered anodyne Clintonian soundbites and centrist platitudes – but losing to Bush yet again did something strange to him. It turned him into an angry whistle-blower, exposing the corruption consuming both of Washington's parties.
He explained: "I have seen the seamy underbelly of what happens in Washington every day. If you're Exxon Mobil and you want to influence what's happening with the government, you go and hire one of these big lobbying firms. This is what you find. About half the lobbyists are Republicans, and about half the lobbyists are Democrats. If the Republicans are in power, the Republican lobbyists take the lead, passing the money around. If the Democrats are in power, the Democratic lobbyists take the lead. They're pushing the same agenda for the same companies. There's no difference."
He announced that "the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken". The failures of US politics – not just under Bush, but under Bill Clinton too – can only be understood as a result of this endemic corruption. Global warming? It will never be dealt with while presidents and senators have to suck at the oil pump for campaign contributions. Forty-seven million Americans without health insurance? Thank the lavish campaign contributions of the drug and medical companies. Iraq? Look again to the oil donors, the defence donors, the "private military contractor" donors. And on, and on. Edwards adds, "This is personal for me. When I see the lobbyists all over Washington taking our politicians to cocktail parties, the picture I get in my head is of my father and my grandmother going to a mill in South Carolina every day. Where is their voice in this democracy?"
When ordinary American voters hear this, they love it. For decades, the US has been soaked in a fake right-wing populism, where the likes of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly claim to be "looking out for the little guy". In reality they have pushed a corporate agenda that has ramped inequality up to levels unseen since the Depression. But when the voters hear real populism, its appeal is vast. When they are shown clips of the major candidates, Edwards beats the Republicans by a larger margin than either Obama or Clinton.
So why won't he be the candidate? It's not inverse racism, or sexism. It's because the corporations are not giving money to a candidate committed to finally curbing their power, and Edwards wouldn't take it anyway. As a result, he can't afford to run much further, or much harder. Barring a pretty unlikely political breakthrough in New Hampshire or South Carolina, he's out.
This is a political parable that tells us a lot about how US politics works – and about what to expect realistically from the successful Democratic candidate. Both Clinton and Obama have chosen to make accommodations with corporate power that will severely curtail any progressive instincts they have. Hillary has inhaled more cash from defence and union-bashing corporations than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican. Her most senior adviser is Mark Penn, a corporate PR man whose firm has represented a slew of monsters, from Shell to the fascist Argentine junta to Union Carbide in the wake of the Bhopal catastrophe. He was fired by Al Gore in 2000 for being too right-wing.
Obama has made similar accommodations. His biggest contributors include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and the telecoms and defence investment firm Henry Crown and Company. It is possible these corporations have suddenly set aside their sole motivating principle, profit, and become interested in liberal progress – but it is more likely they expect a return on their "investment". Obama didn't even have to do it. As the investigative journalist Allan Nairn notes, "Obama has the ability to get all the money he needs from the internet, through $50 donations. He actually doesn't need to go to the hedge funds and Wall Street, but he does anyway, because he fears if he doesn't they might think he is on the wrong team, and start attacking him."
Obama, as a state senator in Illinois and then in Washington, has taken lots of important, progressive steps. He managed to build unlikely coalitions to end police torture in Chicago, ban loan sharks, introduce tax credits for poor families, and increase funding to secure Russia's loose nukes. But these are not antithetical to corporate interests; whenever he would have to take them on, he has largely changed the subject.
You can see clearly how corporate donations have skewed Obama's politics. After receiving a fortune from ethanol companies, he became a cheer-leading champion of ethanol. Even though the biofuel has caused a disastrous rise in world food prices. Even though it is worse for global warming than petrol, once you factor in the use of carbon-spewing nitrogen fertilisers.
It is visible, too, in the shape of his foreign policy team. His most senior adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State oversaw the funding and fuelling of al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. "What's a few riled-up Muslims?" he asked. Obama is also advised by Richard Holbrooke, who was in charge in the 1970s of shipping weapons to the totalitarian Indonesian military so that they could systematically slaughter a third of East Timor's inhabitants. And as a finishing touch, he has on board Dennis Ross, who led the recent assault on Jimmy Carter for stating simple facts about Israel's abuse of the Palestinians.
Don't misunderstand me: Barack would be a far better President than Hillary, and both would be far better than any of the Republicans. They would represent symbolic victories over racism and misogyny. But they will still be in hock to a system of corporate power that will make it very hard to deal with the world's major crises, whether it's global warming, or developing a foreign policy that actually undermines Islamic fundamentalism.
As Edwards puts it, "All the nice ideas in the world won't make a difference if they have to go through this broken system that remains controlled by big business and their lobbyists." For stating this honestly and trying to fight back, Edwards has been priced out of a Presidential race he would – and should – have won.
Published: 07 January 2008
The world is gaping with awe – and disbelief – at the prospect of a black or female President of the United States. If George Bush symbolises everything we hate about the United States, Barack Obama seems to symbolise everything we love about the country: its warm openness to immigrants, its shimmering civil rights movements, its idealism. So it feels strange to say it, but reader, it's time to look away from the woman and the black guy towards the white man from the Deep South – because he is more left-wing, and more electable, than either of them.
You might remember John Edwards as the plastic vice-presidential candidate standing at John Kerry's wooden side in 2004. Back then, he offered anodyne Clintonian soundbites and centrist platitudes – but losing to Bush yet again did something strange to him. It turned him into an angry whistle-blower, exposing the corruption consuming both of Washington's parties.
He explained: "I have seen the seamy underbelly of what happens in Washington every day. If you're Exxon Mobil and you want to influence what's happening with the government, you go and hire one of these big lobbying firms. This is what you find. About half the lobbyists are Republicans, and about half the lobbyists are Democrats. If the Republicans are in power, the Republican lobbyists take the lead, passing the money around. If the Democrats are in power, the Democratic lobbyists take the lead. They're pushing the same agenda for the same companies. There's no difference."
He announced that "the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken". The failures of US politics – not just under Bush, but under Bill Clinton too – can only be understood as a result of this endemic corruption. Global warming? It will never be dealt with while presidents and senators have to suck at the oil pump for campaign contributions. Forty-seven million Americans without health insurance? Thank the lavish campaign contributions of the drug and medical companies. Iraq? Look again to the oil donors, the defence donors, the "private military contractor" donors. And on, and on. Edwards adds, "This is personal for me. When I see the lobbyists all over Washington taking our politicians to cocktail parties, the picture I get in my head is of my father and my grandmother going to a mill in South Carolina every day. Where is their voice in this democracy?"
When ordinary American voters hear this, they love it. For decades, the US has been soaked in a fake right-wing populism, where the likes of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly claim to be "looking out for the little guy". In reality they have pushed a corporate agenda that has ramped inequality up to levels unseen since the Depression. But when the voters hear real populism, its appeal is vast. When they are shown clips of the major candidates, Edwards beats the Republicans by a larger margin than either Obama or Clinton.
So why won't he be the candidate? It's not inverse racism, or sexism. It's because the corporations are not giving money to a candidate committed to finally curbing their power, and Edwards wouldn't take it anyway. As a result, he can't afford to run much further, or much harder. Barring a pretty unlikely political breakthrough in New Hampshire or South Carolina, he's out.
This is a political parable that tells us a lot about how US politics works – and about what to expect realistically from the successful Democratic candidate. Both Clinton and Obama have chosen to make accommodations with corporate power that will severely curtail any progressive instincts they have. Hillary has inhaled more cash from defence and union-bashing corporations than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican. Her most senior adviser is Mark Penn, a corporate PR man whose firm has represented a slew of monsters, from Shell to the fascist Argentine junta to Union Carbide in the wake of the Bhopal catastrophe. He was fired by Al Gore in 2000 for being too right-wing.
Obama has made similar accommodations. His biggest contributors include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and the telecoms and defence investment firm Henry Crown and Company. It is possible these corporations have suddenly set aside their sole motivating principle, profit, and become interested in liberal progress – but it is more likely they expect a return on their "investment". Obama didn't even have to do it. As the investigative journalist Allan Nairn notes, "Obama has the ability to get all the money he needs from the internet, through $50 donations. He actually doesn't need to go to the hedge funds and Wall Street, but he does anyway, because he fears if he doesn't they might think he is on the wrong team, and start attacking him."
Obama, as a state senator in Illinois and then in Washington, has taken lots of important, progressive steps. He managed to build unlikely coalitions to end police torture in Chicago, ban loan sharks, introduce tax credits for poor families, and increase funding to secure Russia's loose nukes. But these are not antithetical to corporate interests; whenever he would have to take them on, he has largely changed the subject.
You can see clearly how corporate donations have skewed Obama's politics. After receiving a fortune from ethanol companies, he became a cheer-leading champion of ethanol. Even though the biofuel has caused a disastrous rise in world food prices. Even though it is worse for global warming than petrol, once you factor in the use of carbon-spewing nitrogen fertilisers.
It is visible, too, in the shape of his foreign policy team. His most senior adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State oversaw the funding and fuelling of al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. "What's a few riled-up Muslims?" he asked. Obama is also advised by Richard Holbrooke, who was in charge in the 1970s of shipping weapons to the totalitarian Indonesian military so that they could systematically slaughter a third of East Timor's inhabitants. And as a finishing touch, he has on board Dennis Ross, who led the recent assault on Jimmy Carter for stating simple facts about Israel's abuse of the Palestinians.
Don't misunderstand me: Barack would be a far better President than Hillary, and both would be far better than any of the Republicans. They would represent symbolic victories over racism and misogyny. But they will still be in hock to a system of corporate power that will make it very hard to deal with the world's major crises, whether it's global warming, or developing a foreign policy that actually undermines Islamic fundamentalism.
As Edwards puts it, "All the nice ideas in the world won't make a difference if they have to go through this broken system that remains controlled by big business and their lobbyists." For stating this honestly and trying to fight back, Edwards has been priced out of a Presidential race he would – and should – have won.
The Churchill wannabes destroy any hope of a violence-free life in Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto's death is just the latest evidence of the disastrous legacy of western involvement in the country's politics
Pankaj Mishra
Tuesday January 8, 2008
The Guardian
Last week the portrait of Benazir Bhutto as the last great hope for democracy in Pakistan had barely received its finishing touches in the world media when it was muddied by accusations that the former prime minister had sponsored jihadists in Afghanistan and India-held Kashmir.
Neither assertion is without a measure of truth. Yet both obscure the major events that have rendered Pakistan unstable, even ungovernable, for at least two generations: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979; the American decision to turn Pakistan into the frontline state for a global anti-Soviet jihad; and, more recently, the Bush administration's corralling of Pakistan into the so-called war on terror.
Like many Asian countries, Pakistan stumbled from primeval chaos into postcolonial life, with an army as its strongest institution - which grew even more formidable after enlisting on the US side in the cold war. Six decades later, it is possible to see how in a less exacting climate Pakistan could have moved durably to civilian rule, as happened in Taiwan and Indonesia, two other pro-American dictatorships frozen by the cold war.
Such, however, was the scale and intensity of the CIA's programme to arm the Afghan mujahideen that it couldn't but retard political processes in Pakistan. General Zia-ul-Haq, who faced disgrace domestically and internationally after his execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, abruptly became a prestigious ally in Washington and London. Emboldened by American patronage, Zia brutally suppressed all opposition, which included some of the country's greatest writers and artists.
Pakistan's military strategists had long plotted to install a friendly regime in Afghanistan, which shares a fiercely autonomous and traditionally volatile Pashtun population with Pakistan. The CIA's generosity gave them the perfect opportunity to impose their will in Kabul through proxies like the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who, like many Islamists feeding off US largesse, spent more time building private armies and bullying women than fighting the Soviets. Military officers seeking revenge for their humiliation by India in the war over Bangladesh in 1971 redirected US resources more radically to anti-India insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir.
Pursuing their separate agenda, western cold war adventurers and their local allies deeply damaged Pakistan's frail society. Three million Afghan, mostly Pashtun, refugees poured into Pakistan, along with cheap guns and drugs. Furthermore, political Islam - until then a marginal force in Pakistani politics - acquired buoyancy, and a radical edge, from the anti-communist jihad in Afghanistan. Pakistan knew a spell of civilian rule after Zia's death in 1988. But elected leaders such as Benazir Bhutto could hardly supervise, let alone restrict, the cherished ventures of the all-powerful military intelligence elite, such as the backing of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban in Afghanistan's destructive civil war, and the training of extremists for jihad in Kashmir.
The US cancelled its aid programme to Pakistan before the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan in 1989; it went on to impose sanctions on Pakistan for its nuclear programme. Visiting Pakistan in early 2001, I was struck by the anger Pakistanis of all classes expressed toward the US. Far from being a generalised Islamist hatred of American women wearing miniskirts, anti-US sentiment was rooted in particular grievances. Diplomats and ex-generals raged against US selfishness in leaving Pakistan to sort out the post-Soviet mess in Afghanistan; journalists and NGO workers described in anguished tones how the CIA-sponsored jihad strangled Pakistan's democracy, endowing the military intelligence establishment with a sinister extra-constitutional authority.
In late 2001, George Bush's resolve to eliminate al-Qaida and the Taliban with the help of the very same establishment inaugurated another cycle in which Pakistan's long-delayed tryst with civilian rule would be again postponed by US priorities in neighbouring Afghanistan.
It is clearer now that Pervez Musharraf's promises to the US could only be empty, no matter how sincerely he believed in them. Military and intelligence officers who had staked their careers on making reliable Pashtun friends were unlikely to launch more than a few token assaults on the Pak-Afghan borderlands, which even the British Indian Army couldn't subdue.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration has persisted for almost seven years in the hope that the Pakistani military could be bullied or bribed into scoring successes in the global war on terror.
Many generals and spies probably couldn't believe their luck as they received billions of US dollars for yet another phoney war. Paranoid western visions of crazy Islamists getting hold of Pakistani nukes ensured a steady flow of cash, which, as the New York Times recently revealed, the military mostly spent on objectives not remotely resembling those drawn up in Washington.
In any case, the Taliban and their sympathisers can't be "eliminated". The web of strategic tribal and ethnic alliances has represented the strongest Pashtun claims in recent decades as traditional rulers of Afghanistan's ethnic mosaic. Even today, as the writer Rory Stewart has pointed out, "many Pashtun clearly prefer the Taliban to foreign troops". In actuality, the Taliban can only be contained. But even that may remain a fantasy if foreign occupation continues to radicalise Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Musharraf has himself only just escaped assassination. Even though he grudgingly accepted Washington's choice, Bhutto, as a civilian facade for military rule, he can't be unaware that Pakistan's stability depends on successful deal-making in the Pashtun heartland rather than in the White House. This lesson is not entirely lost on western policymakers. EU diplomats expelled from southern Afghanistan a day before Bhutto's assassination were trying to reach out to the Taliban. But such peacemakers face their most influential adversaries among those who think that errant natives respond best to a bit of stick. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, the Tory MP Michael Gove warned the west not to betray any "sign of weakness" to the Taliban.
Doubtless the Churchill wannabes that have proliferated since 9/11 would fight on their laptops to the last drop of Afghan and Pakistani blood. Intoxicated by their own cliches, they remain blind to how their warmongering in the cause of democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has boosted the most militaristic elements there, ruining even the basic hope of a violence-free life, not to mention the grand ambition of democracy.
The CIA's anti-Soviet jihad not only ensured the dominance of the military intelligence establishment over elected government in Pakistan; it also spawned a new radical force, which now menaces military as well as civilian authority in Pakistan. We may praise or blame Benazir Bhutto for what she did or did not do, but as long as Pakistan remains hostage to failed western policies those aspiring to lead it can achieve little apart from personal power - along with a high risk of martyrdom.
· Pankaj Mishra is the author of Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyon
Everything in one place. All new Windows Live!
Friday 4 January 2008
How Britain Became Party To A Crime That May Have Killed A Million People
How Britain Became Party To A Crime That May Have Killed A Million People
By George Monbiot
03 January, 2008
Monbiot.com
If you doubt Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC last Friday. The Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not the country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I have heard how Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million people.
Guthrie argued that parliamentary approval would mean intelligence had to be shared with MPs; that the other side could not be taken by surprise ("do you want to warn the enemy you are going to do it?"), and that commanders should have "a choice about when to attack and when not to attack". Tebbit maintained that "no prime minister would be able to deploy forces without being able to command a parliamentary majority. In that sense, the executive is already accountable to parliament". Once the prime minister has his majority, in other words, MPs become redundant.
Let me dwell for a moment on what Guthrie said, for he appears to advocate that we retain the right to commit war crimes. States in dispute with each other, the UN charter says, must first seek to solve their differences by "peaceful means" (article 33). If these fail, they should refer the matter to the security council (article 37), which decides what measures should be taken (article 39). Taking the enemy by surprise is a useful tactic in battle, and encounters can be won only if commanders are able to make decisions quickly. But either Guthrie does not understand the difference between a battle and a war - which is unlikely in view of his 44 years of service - or he does not understand the most basic point in international law. Launching a surprise war is forbidden by the charter.
It has become fashionable to scoff at these rules and to dismiss those who support them as pedants and prigs, but they are all that stand between us and the greatest crimes in history. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ruled that "to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime". The tribunal's charter placed "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" at the top of the list of war crimes.
If Britain's most prominent retired general does not understand this, it can only be because he has never been forced to understand it. In September 2002, he argued in the Lords that "the time is approaching when we may have to join the US in operations against Iraq ... Strike soon, and the threat will be less and easier to handle. If the UN route fails, I support the second option." No one in the chamber warned him that he was proposing the supreme international crime. In another Lords debate, Guthrie argued that it was "unthinkable for British servicemen and women to be sent to the International Criminal Court", regardless of what they might have done. He demanded a guarantee from the government that this would not be allowed to happen, and proposed that the British forces should be allowed to opt out of the European convention on human rights. The grey heads murmured their agreement.
Perhaps it is unfair to single out the noble and gallant lord. The British establishment's exceptionalism is almost universal. According to the government, both the Commons public administration committee and the Lords constitution committee recognise that decision-making should "provide sufficient flexibility for deployments which need to be made without prior parliamentary approval for reasons of urgency or necessary operational secrecy". You cannot keep an operation secret from parliament unless you are also keeping it secret from the UN.
Tebbit appears to have a general aversion to disclosure. In 2003, the Guardian obtained letters showing he had prevented the fraud squad at the MoD from investigating allegations of corruption against the arms manufacturer BAE, that he tipped off the BAE chairman about the contents of a confidential letter the Serious Fraud Office had sent him, and that he failed to tell his minister about the SFO's warnings. In October 2003, under cross-examination during the Hutton inquiry into the death of the government scientist David Kelly, he revealed the decision to name Kelly was made in a "meeting chaired by the prime minister". That could have been the end of Tony Blair, but a week later Tebbit sent Lord Hutton a written retraction of his evidence. No one bothered to tell parliament or the press; the retraction was made public only when the Hutton report was published, three months later. Blair knew all along, and the secret gave him a crushing advantage.
The discussion also reveals that Guthrie and Tebbit appear to have learned nothing from the disaster in Iraq. They are not alone. Just before he stepped down last year, Blair wrote an article for the Economist headlined "What I've Learned". He had discovered, he claimed, that his critics were both wrong and dangerous and that his decisions, based on "freedom, democracy, responsibility to others, but also justice and fairness", were difficult but invariably right. He called his article "a very short synopsis of what I have learned". I could think of an even shorter one.
We have yet to hear one word of regret or remorse from any of the main architects - Blair, Brown, Straw, Hoon, Campbell and their principal advisers - of Britain's participation in the supreme international crime. The press and parliament appear to have heeded Blair's plea that we all "move on" from Iraq. The British establishment has a unique capacity to move on, and then to repeat its mistakes. What other former empire knows so little of its own atrocities?
When people call our unwritten constitution a "gentleman's agreement", they reveal more than they intend. It allows the unelected gentlemen who advise the prime minister to act without reference to the proles. Britain went to war in Iraq because the public and parliament were not allowed to know when the decision was made, what the intelligence reports said, and what the attorney general wrote about the its legality. Had the truth not been suppressed, Britain could never have attacked Iraq.
Real constitutional reform requires much more than the timid proposals in the green paper on the governance of Britain, which are likely to appear in a bill in a few weeks' time. Yes, parliament should be allowed to vote on whether to go to war, yes the royal prerogative should be rolled back. But the prime minister, his diplomats, civil servants and generals would still decide which wars parliament needs to know about, which crimes could be secretly committed in our name. Real constitutional reform means not only handing power to parliament but also confronting the power of the hard, unaccountable people who act as if it is their birthright.
By George Monbiot
03 January, 2008
Monbiot.com
If you doubt Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC last Friday. The Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not the country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I have heard how Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million people.
Guthrie argued that parliamentary approval would mean intelligence had to be shared with MPs; that the other side could not be taken by surprise ("do you want to warn the enemy you are going to do it?"), and that commanders should have "a choice about when to attack and when not to attack". Tebbit maintained that "no prime minister would be able to deploy forces without being able to command a parliamentary majority. In that sense, the executive is already accountable to parliament". Once the prime minister has his majority, in other words, MPs become redundant.
Let me dwell for a moment on what Guthrie said, for he appears to advocate that we retain the right to commit war crimes. States in dispute with each other, the UN charter says, must first seek to solve their differences by "peaceful means" (article 33). If these fail, they should refer the matter to the security council (article 37), which decides what measures should be taken (article 39). Taking the enemy by surprise is a useful tactic in battle, and encounters can be won only if commanders are able to make decisions quickly. But either Guthrie does not understand the difference between a battle and a war - which is unlikely in view of his 44 years of service - or he does not understand the most basic point in international law. Launching a surprise war is forbidden by the charter.
It has become fashionable to scoff at these rules and to dismiss those who support them as pedants and prigs, but they are all that stand between us and the greatest crimes in history. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ruled that "to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime". The tribunal's charter placed "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" at the top of the list of war crimes.
If Britain's most prominent retired general does not understand this, it can only be because he has never been forced to understand it. In September 2002, he argued in the Lords that "the time is approaching when we may have to join the US in operations against Iraq ... Strike soon, and the threat will be less and easier to handle. If the UN route fails, I support the second option." No one in the chamber warned him that he was proposing the supreme international crime. In another Lords debate, Guthrie argued that it was "unthinkable for British servicemen and women to be sent to the International Criminal Court", regardless of what they might have done. He demanded a guarantee from the government that this would not be allowed to happen, and proposed that the British forces should be allowed to opt out of the European convention on human rights. The grey heads murmured their agreement.
Perhaps it is unfair to single out the noble and gallant lord. The British establishment's exceptionalism is almost universal. According to the government, both the Commons public administration committee and the Lords constitution committee recognise that decision-making should "provide sufficient flexibility for deployments which need to be made without prior parliamentary approval for reasons of urgency or necessary operational secrecy". You cannot keep an operation secret from parliament unless you are also keeping it secret from the UN.
Tebbit appears to have a general aversion to disclosure. In 2003, the Guardian obtained letters showing he had prevented the fraud squad at the MoD from investigating allegations of corruption against the arms manufacturer BAE, that he tipped off the BAE chairman about the contents of a confidential letter the Serious Fraud Office had sent him, and that he failed to tell his minister about the SFO's warnings. In October 2003, under cross-examination during the Hutton inquiry into the death of the government scientist David Kelly, he revealed the decision to name Kelly was made in a "meeting chaired by the prime minister". That could have been the end of Tony Blair, but a week later Tebbit sent Lord Hutton a written retraction of his evidence. No one bothered to tell parliament or the press; the retraction was made public only when the Hutton report was published, three months later. Blair knew all along, and the secret gave him a crushing advantage.
The discussion also reveals that Guthrie and Tebbit appear to have learned nothing from the disaster in Iraq. They are not alone. Just before he stepped down last year, Blair wrote an article for the Economist headlined "What I've Learned". He had discovered, he claimed, that his critics were both wrong and dangerous and that his decisions, based on "freedom, democracy, responsibility to others, but also justice and fairness", were difficult but invariably right. He called his article "a very short synopsis of what I have learned". I could think of an even shorter one.
We have yet to hear one word of regret or remorse from any of the main architects - Blair, Brown, Straw, Hoon, Campbell and their principal advisers - of Britain's participation in the supreme international crime. The press and parliament appear to have heeded Blair's plea that we all "move on" from Iraq. The British establishment has a unique capacity to move on, and then to repeat its mistakes. What other former empire knows so little of its own atrocities?
When people call our unwritten constitution a "gentleman's agreement", they reveal more than they intend. It allows the unelected gentlemen who advise the prime minister to act without reference to the proles. Britain went to war in Iraq because the public and parliament were not allowed to know when the decision was made, what the intelligence reports said, and what the attorney general wrote about the its legality. Had the truth not been suppressed, Britain could never have attacked Iraq.
Real constitutional reform requires much more than the timid proposals in the green paper on the governance of Britain, which are likely to appear in a bill in a few weeks' time. Yes, parliament should be allowed to vote on whether to go to war, yes the royal prerogative should be rolled back. But the prime minister, his diplomats, civil servants and generals would still decide which wars parliament needs to know about, which crimes could be secretly committed in our name. Real constitutional reform means not only handing power to parliament but also confronting the power of the hard, unaccountable people who act as if it is their birthright.
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