Crimson Autograph

Governments of any stripe in the UK have a problem with science.

It's natural that those who are most certain if the right policies will reach the top in politics. However, in politics, to a large extennt that certainty must be based on faith rather than evidence.

A scientist is taught to examine the premises as much as the logical structure based on them. Political debate generally simply assumes a consensual set of premises. The people who insist on examining those premises or even rejecting them tend to be excluded from the political mainstream. So, left or right, those who apply a scientific mind set to politics are unlikely to have a successful political career since they'll spend too much time arguing against party orthodoxies to ever be influential.

That's why there's long been a class divide in what subjects are studied at university, which is reflected in the make up of the political establishment. To rise to the top you need the ability to develop a logical seeming argument regardless of the premises. That has led to a bias towards law and philosophy as subjexts studied by those who grow up woth an expectation of being the decision makers. That reinforces the whole problem.

Some people with a scientific mind set respons by settling for being political mavericks, others simply settle for not thinking very deeply about politics. Either way faith based politics has the edge, whether it's faith in God, Allah, Marx or the Free Market.

Fox hunting, smoking. Tell the truth Tony, it's a beagle thing isn't it?

I'm watching CNN's discussion of Europe's view on the Presidential election, View From Europe, and I'm REALLY angry.

I'm livid because of something said by an American journalist working in Germany, somebody who ought to at least have some perspective and historical knowledge. He's just said "not all Muslims are terrorists, but it seems like most terrorists are Muslim". This gets to the heart of something that seriously annoys me about a lot of American comment and policy.

The IRA, ETA, UNITA, Sendero Luminosa, and any mumber of other terrorist groups are or were NOT Muslim. They just didn't attack the USA. It's that self centred and unthinking dismissal of the entire rest of the world that upsets me. It isn't terrorism if it's Britons, Spaniards, Angolans, Peruvians or anyone else gets killed. It is only terrorism if Americans are the victims. If it doesn't directly impact on the USA it didn't happen.

Now there are Britons who are equally parochial and ignorant. However the difference is that they are generally seen as either cranks or morons. A few may manage to get work writing for the Sun, the Daily Mail or the Spectator, a small number make it into Parliament, but they are a tiny and frequently despised minority. In the USA it seems to be a respectable way to be amongst the intellectual elite.

I don't mind that John Doe in Power Cable Nebraska is barely aware of anything that happens outside of the USA. He's not setting US foreign policy or the news agenda. What scares me is that the people who decide how the USA interacts with the rest of the world have a quite astounding level of ignorance.

I've done this is conversation but it's long overdue writing up. It's a fairly complex point so bear with me.

What I can't forgive Bush, Blair et al for is this. The wrong lie at the wrong time. If there's any situation where there are moral absolutes it's when it comes to killing and being killed. It's the situation where all the complexities fade away and you are faced with absolutes. Kill or not kill. Do what it takes to stay alive or die. It's something that marks people for life. Whatever the war, if you listen to veterans of it you'll soon see it's stayed with them for the rest of their lives.

This is where you have to start. I've met a few people who have seen active service in the military, though I've not done it myeslf. Ranging from a chap who lied about his age to join an International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, through to knowing a couple of people who are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. they are all strongly affected by what they experienced, however there's something even more important. They are all affacted by how they feel about what they did.

Those who served in WWII on the allied side seem to be very proud of it. Justifiably so in my view. There may have been atrocities (Dresden, Nagasaki) but they have a clear understanding of what they fought for, what they risked their lives and lost their friends for, what they killed for. The same is not true for all of those who served in Vietnam, or for many who served in Northern Ireland in the early years. This is what upsets me. There are a huge number of Vietnam vets whose lives have been destroyed by the fact that they had to go to war and they now don't understand why. They feel they were lied to, that they were charged with a life or death mission for a pack of lies. A central event in their lives, a basic factor in what makes them an adult human being, is something thay can only associate with danger, suffering and deceit. This is not good for their mental health to say the least.

Which is what I can't forgive. Aside from the direct casualties we are looking at hundreds of thousands of people who will spend the rest of their lives fighting self doubt. A huge number of people who will be unable to justify to themselves the most crucial thing they will ever do.

Some will respond by simply blocking out reality. They'll simply cauterise the whole thing. They'll never attempt to apply politics to anything parctical and they'll never question "authority" and they'll be able to function. I don't know that I'd count them as more sane than those who sink into a suicidal depression or those who spend the rest of their days in a morass of drugs and alcohol.

That's why I consider it beyond the pale to lie about the basic reasons why we went to war. It goes beyond the moral question of whether it is ever all right to be dishonest. It goes beyond the practical consideration of whether a particular war is or isn't justifiable. What gives ANYONE the right to destroy the mental health of hundreds of thousands people?

I've just set up another blog at differentbadges.blogspot.com/. The idea being to have a separate place to indulge in musical nostalgia.

I also got my Hb1Ac results today, 6.3, which means I'm at least keeping the diabetes stable and under good control. Apparently my cholesterol is too hih at 6.6, so it's on to the semi-skilled milk from tomorrow. I feel knackered but not completely lousy, so I guess that's progress.

Also tomorrow I'm off to Sevenoaks to celebrate the wedding of two of my longest stsnding friends. They actually got married a few weeks ago whilst on holiday in California, but the important bit is tomorrow, the party. I'll be staying up tonight to watch the Presidential debate, but probably won't post anything about it until at least Sunday.

Lots of things bugging me at the moment. Chief amongst them that "global test" thing. What Kerry said seemed vary clear to me, it simply seemed to me to mean that before you act pre-emptively you should make sure you can carry your own people along and justify it to everyone else later. Hardly controversial. So the Republican response scares me. Either it's a level of deliverate misrepresentation that goes even further than the "flip flop" stuff, or the Neocons really do believe that America should rule the world. The scariest thing about that being that it would mean that Bin Laden would be as right in his aims as he is wrong in his methods.

Then there's Mount St Helens. Not so much in and of itself, but coming on the back of a run of hurricanes and typhoons it all makes me feel very small and ineffectual, and right now I REALLY don't need that.

Then there's somebody I may see next weekend for the first tim ein several years. It's very easy to deal with a good friend who used to be a lover when she's happily married and generally having a good life. It's not so easy when you know she's having a really rough time but she won't say anything about it. It sort of sits at the back of my mind itching annoyingly.

There are actually several people I care about who aren't saying a lot at the minute. One of them is me. I'm having to force myself to communicate. It must be something in the air.

I'd make a resolution to start talking, phoning and emailing people just because, but I know the main reason I'm largely keeping schtum is that by the time I've done the communication that has to be done in order for me to survive at all, and all the realy easy trivial stuff, I've run out of hours in the day.

I NEED to get healthy.

Latest medical bulletin is that my GP thinks I should stay away from work for a month or two yet. My initial reaction was no way, now I'm not so sure. I tried to get back in working mode last week and it's pretty much led to me losing several days to sheer exhaustion. A mass of blood tests on Friday morning didn't help though.

Now Blogger won't let me post. I'll try again later.

Testing times.

I watched the US Presidential Campaign debate last night. Something that struck me was how limited a range of subjects were discussed given that the subject was "Foreign Affairs". There was one question on Sudan and one on relationships with Putin (if GWB is going to try and present himself as a close friend of Vladimir Putin he might at least learn how to pronounce "Vladimir"). The Kyoto Protocol was mentioned in passing, but largely as something that if signed up to might help build a stronger coalition to deal with Iraq not as something of any importance in its own right, North Korea and Iran came up in terms of nuclear proliferation, Libya was mentioned as no longer a threat, Israel as either more or less threatened, and Poland, Australia and the UK mentioned in the context of Iraq.

It gave an impression that US foreign policy ONLY consists of dealing with nations deemed to be a threat, or with nations willing to ally against nations deemed to be a threat. I didn't notice a single mention of NATO, the European Union, poverty, or ANYWHERE in South or Central America. This worries me. It worries me in terms of how the US currently sees the rest of the world. It leads me to believe that Bush can't lose the election, because if the debate is purely going to be in terms of the US against the bad guys, for us or against us, then his absurdly simplistic views may make more sense than Kerry's more complex ideas. Unless the existance of the rest of the world is admitted to as part of the election campaign then Kerry pretty much must lose, and he can't set the news agenda.

I'm warming to Kerry. He's not trying to play the "great leader". Having lived under Thatcher and Blair I don't like "great leaders", they are just people who are good at getting their own way. That doesn't make for good government. A poor leader HAS to make good decisions, it takes a "great leader" to persuade and entire nation to mess up in a big way. I don't feel safe living under a "great leader" even though Blair hasn't been all that bad in most respects, the problem is that he can be.

Bush, on the other hand, continues to glorify stupidity. His whole campaign seems to be based around appealling to people as somebody who will be doggedly dumb, and who will refuse to accept that anything complex can be important. Especially as a lot of it seems to be based around ridiculing Kerry for going to a good university, for being fairly well travelled, and for attempting to express ideas that can't be encapsulated in a single sentence.

The USA used to celebrate cleverness. It used to be one of the things I believed the UK could learn from. I guess the lesson went the wrong way.

One thing that I haven't seen picked up in the media that exacerbates my fears of the direction the USA would take under a further Bush administration, it came up in the context of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

"But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be prosecuted."

All I can say to that is "Camp Zero you damn hypocrite!"

Of course since the first uncensored communications from the British captives in Guantanamo Bay reveal that prisoners there are routinely abused and (at least) threatened with torture, it's certain that there are US military personnel who are open to prosecution by the ICC. The question is does that include their Commander in Chief?

What really upsets me about all this is that those Americans who have a serious interaction with the world oustide their borders tend to be amongst the most open-minded, tolerant and morally upright people one could wish to deal with. I assume that a fair number of those who don't ever look beyone the USA would be much the same.