http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7516238.stm

I'm not entirely convinced about the whole 'Clash of Civillisations' theory. For one the theory requires a civillisation to clash with. Which modern civillisation executes women by burying them up their waists and pelting them with stones until the die a slow and lingering death? It's not just nuclear weapons which are unsafe in the hands of the mullahs; with their their worldview small stones can be a deadly weapon too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7508715.stm

Convicted child-killer Samir Qantar was today kissed on both cheeks by the Lebanese President and welcomed home as a hero by thousands of Lebanese civilians.

That’s nice isn't it?

I look forward to reading Robert Fisk’s next column.

As Obama and McCain slog it out over who plans to withdraw when, while Al Qaeda exhorts wavering Jihadis to launch one last fanatical push and StWC gathers a diminishing band of trots to denounce Bush and Blair, the situation in Iraq is quietly and quickly starting to outflank everyone.

In Iraq today three Baghdadi policemen were killed by a grenade attack, an off-duty policeman in Mosul was shot dead and seven dumped bodies were discovered across the country. Since 1st July two US soldiers have been Killed in Action; easily the lowest death rate for US troops since 2003. Each death represents a terrible individual tragedy yet the statistics illustrate that the violence has abated from the murderous levels of the last four years. Like a dying tempest the terrible violence has begun to blow itself out. The shootings and the IEDs will continue, perhaps for years, but it is no longer at a level that threatens the elected Government or the civilian population has a whole.

Some time soon the US Marines will hand over security responsibilities for Anbar Province, the very birthplace of the insurgency, to the resurgent Iraqi Army. British generals have advised that their troops will mostly be out of Iraq by spring 2009. A forthcoming Pentagon report will recommend that the US Army pulls out of Iraq even faster than even Obama has dared to suggest, with perhaps 50,000 troops left in Iraq by next spring.

Al Qaeda has been virtually defeated. It is cooped up in Mosul and limited to the murder of off-duty policemen and Sunni Awakening members. It no longer has the capacity to decimate the Shias with suicide bombings or terrorise the Sunnis with beheadings. Similarly the Iraqi Army has routed the Mahdi Army in its own backyard and installed the rule of law and Government. Iraq remains a powder keg and the future could easily herald a resurgent Al Qaeda, a dominant Mahdi Army or the return of civil war; yet there are reasons to feel cheerful about Iraq’s future for the first time since 2003.

Sunni Arab states are starting to talk about installing ambassadors and writing off Iraq’s enormous debts. Nouri Maliki suddenly seems like an assured statesman and in recent weeks he has been seen walking the streets and distributing thousands of dinars to needy Iraqis. The security situation hindered American development plans for years but with a newly pacified society and the price of oil at an all-time record high there is a chance for the desperately needed reconstruction efforts to take place. Iraq’s estimated oil revenues will be an enormous $70 billion this year; $100 million has been ear-marked to rebuild Sadr City, $100 million for Basra, $100 million for Amarah and $80 million to help re-settle refugees. Of course oil wealth can often curse 2nd and 3rd world countries through the temptations of corruption, nepotism and dictatorship. Maliki himself stated that “Money is not a problem, but we must put it in honest hands to spend."

Much can go wrong and predicting the future is a mug’s game but with the help of the US Army, Western technical knowledge and the institution of democracy one can hope that Iraq’s immense oil wealth may filter through to the people who need it most. Before 1990 Iraq was the most secular of all the Arab states and it used to have the strongest and best educated middle class in the region. The US will protect Iraq’s democracy, it has invested too much to do otherwise, and the Iraqi Government is now strong enough to contain the wretched insurgency. Iraq may limp on as a corrupt, petro-state with a low-level insurgency and ethnic tensions for years to come; equally it may become a beacon of what democracy and education can achieve for the people of the region. This outcome may displease many who had hoped against it but I suspect that, if their nightmare ends, the Iraqis won’t care.

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed."

Mathew 8:8

The Church of England will today hold a debate on the role of female priests and the ordination of gay clergy which is supposed to decide the future of the Anglican Church. Yet the very fact that it is even having the debate is evidence that the Church does not have a future in Great Britain. In an age when the British public are so highly educated, open, tolerant and savvy, a debate about the role of women and gays exposes the Church as being hopelessly behind contemporary attitudes, lifestyles and morals.

I’m fairly certain that there is no supreme being in charge of the universe, the same way I’m fairly certain that Stoke City won’t win the premiership next season. I did, however, have the dubious pleasure of attending Catholic schools for 14 years and I’m the proud holder of C grade in GCSE Religious Education. Now I’m certainly no theological expert but I can quote plenty of biblical examples that support the ordination of gays and women. Homosexuality may well be a sin, but aren’t all humans inveterate sinners? The message repeated again and again in the New Testament is that God forgives sinners whether they are thieves on the cross, Roman Centurions or tax collectors. If gays are banned from serving the church then surely all sinners, which means all men and women, should also be banned. Furthermore Jesus always made a point of helping those who were outcasts from mainstream society, such as gentiles and lepers. If a human wants to serve their God what does it matter whether they are gay or female? If God was so concerned about homosexuality why didn’t He mention it in the Ten Commandments?

When the scientific progress of The Enlightenment exposed the fact that the bible could not be taken literally, the Church conveniently shifted its position and posited that it was a work of metaphors and allegories. Yet the Church has consistently failed to follow Jesus’ underlying message of universal love and it is quite clear that many clergymen use the bible to cloak their own bigoted beliefs. Perhaps it is time that the clergy start to take lessons in morality from their own congregations, who certainly seem to be following Jesus’ teachings rather better than they do.

Queen Boudicca fought the might of the Roman Empire, King Alfred led the Anglo-Saxons against the marauding Vikings and Winston Churchill inspired Britain to stand alone against the unique evil of the Nazi Empire. David Davis, meanwhile, is making his heroic stand for British liberty by holding a by-election in the 100% safe Tory seat of Haltemprice and Howden.

There are several things that I dislike about Davis one-man-against-the-world civil liberties campaign. His decision is egregious and hypocritical; he is trying to bypass the bastion of British liberty, the House of Commons, and hold a definitive referendum on the subject in a town that would vote for a donkey if it wore a blue rosette. And what is it, exactly, that entitles the population of Haltemprice and Howden to speak with such authority on the subject of civil liberties? By the same token should we poll the residents of Hackney North for a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem? Or perhaps we could ask the voters of East Surrey how we should stop global warming?

Furthermore I would have a lot more sympathy for Davis' libertarian crusade if he was, well, more of a libertarian. The man consistently voted against the repeal of Section 28 and equal rights for gays and he has repeatedly spoken in favour of the death penalty, which is surely the ultimate intrusion of the state into a citizen's life. Davis also voted in favour of the 28 days detention law so he seems to appreciate that there is a threat to national security. He clearly accepts the logic of holding terrorism suspects for longer than seven days so why claim that '42 days' is part of the "the insidious and relentless erosion of civil liberties in Britain"?

Davis refers to the prevalence of CCTV cameras and the DNA database as evidence of this insidious and relentless erosion. But what exactly is wrong with CCTV camers? Have they not been used to solve inumerable crimes? No single body actually controls these cameras and what threat to they pose to our liberty? By the same principle one may also complain about the number of policemen, security guards or traffic wardens on the streets. The DNA database has been crucial in solving many horific and violent crimes as well numerous ‘cold cases’. Should the police be banned from holding the details of British citizens? What about finger prints and criminal records? What about the rights of sex offenders? There are countless public bodies that hold our private details; the DVLA, the NHS, the Inland Revenue, libraries; are they all part of the insidous erosion of our cherished liberties? Does that Data Protection Act not adequately cover the storing of private data? Where is the evidence that civil liberties are threatened?

Free citizens must accept the rule of law and a certain amount of Government interference in their lives. If we had complete freedom we would be free to break traffic rules, disregard the wearing of a seatbelt, take illegal drugs, incite violence and racism and ignore the multitude of laws that govern a stable democracy. This is called anarchy. We are protected from our Governments by democracy and an independent judiciary. We accept that we must follow laws that allow us to exercise our own free will while at the same time preventing potential harm or injury to others. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to suggest that the DNA database or CCTV cameras have infringed on anyone’s liberty. Quite the opposite, it has made our society safer and more secure by helping to take some extremely dangerous people off the streets.

Yesterday The Independent reported that since the Government implemented the smoking ban that 400,000 people had given up smoking and 2 billion fewer cigarettes had been smoked. It is estimated that ban will help to save 40,000 lives over the next 10 years. At the time of the ban ‘libertarians’ protested that it was a threat to their personal freedoms. Yet what about the freedom of those people who had to share their cancerous smoke? The Government has the right to protect non-smokers from smokers and it also has the right to introduce laws that curb the influence of tobacco which is an insidous and relentless killer.

In the Declaration of Independence, a libertarian manifesto if ever there was one, Thomas Jefferson wrote that man was "Endowed with certain unalienable rights" including "Life, liberty and the pursuit happiness". The pursuit of happiness is man’s eternal goal and it is hard enough to achieve without being threatened by passive smoking, rapists and murderers or, for that matter, Jihadi terrorists. The DNA database, 42 days, seatbelts in cars, they all allow us to follow those unalienable rights. These truths are self-evident.

No-one can criticise the far left for lacking energy. In 2003 the SWC organised one of the biggest peace time rallies in modern British history and it has vociferously expanded its political demands ever since. Its central manifesto of ‘Troops Out!’ has swollen to include ‘Freedom For Palestine!’ and ‘Don’t Attack Iran!’ (slightly lacking in originality that one). Clearly SWC is not a one-issue organisation and it obviously strives to fight for people’s rights in various parts of the world. So what, you may ask, is SWC’s position on that highly topical subject of Zimbabwe? Hmmm, well I’m not quite sure because try as I might I couldn’t find a single sentence covering the events in Zimbabwe on SWC’s website. Nor could I find any stories about the repression in Burma or North Korea. So why the silence over Mugabe? Surely they could knock-up a few 'Free Zimbabwe' placards and bring them on the next pro-Hezbollah march? Now I wouldn’t be so glib as to insinuate that the stoppers don’t care about the plight of Zimbabwe; clearly that is not the case. No the real reason for its embarassing silence is twofold; firstly SWC is a counter culture organisation. It exists only to reflexively criticise the actions of its own Government. As the West is manifestly innocent of any crimes comitted in Zimbabwe the far left has little to say on the issue. Secondly and more pertinently the far left is intellectually bankrupt, (although not financially so, Galloway isn’t short of a penny or two). The far left offers only reactive slogans, (Don’t Attack Iraq! e.t.c.), it offers no positive ideas and hasn’t done since 1989. So the far left can offer nothing positive for Zimbabwe, apart from muttering about the fact that it’s an Arican problem and not much can be done about it. Effectively the far left doesn’t have the faintest what to do with Mugabe and it’ll be damned if it’s going to venture a constructive suggestion.

So it’s a straight choice then either we do something or we don’t. Either we accept that Mugabe is free to bully and to torture and to murder or we try and do something about it. And if we do accept that we are right to try and help Mugabe’s victims then we accept that free people have a moral right to help fellow humans toiling under political oppression. Whether it is a vocal condemnation, the voiding of a knighthood, ecnomic sanctions or military intervention, the principle is the same; free countries are morally right to intervene/interfere to help bring down dictatorships. The practical justification for the extent of that intervention depends on each individual case. Perhaps that is why SWC is so quiet about Zimbabwe and Burma and North Korea; it knows the international community is morally justified to intervene against dictatorships and it cannot offer an alternative way to help the world.

So what’s the answer for Zimbabwe? Clearly we cannot sit back and do nothing. Military intervention would be morally justified but is it the best form of intervention for Zimbabwe? Military intervention by the Viet Cong in Cambodia stopped the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, similarly Tutsi rebels deposed the genocidal Hutu regime. But military intervention is risky and Mugabe’s supporters, the army and the war veterans, would be sure to wage a bloody insurgency campaign. I have much sympathy with the view that military intervention is only justified in cases of genocide. The trouble is how do you define genocide? Hundreds have been killed in the last few weeks; is there a magic number of deaths that legitimises intervention? To my mind military intervention would be morally legitimate but too risky to implement, at the moment. Yet the international community should continue to pile on the pressure. Perhaps an African intervention force could be setup with Western logistical backing; the threat of this force might just be enough to intimidate Mugabe out of power. This is unlikely given Mugabe’s stubbornness and the lethargy of African politicians but surely it is worth a try? If Mugabe remains in power the moral pressure for military intervention may eventually come to outweigh the practical risks.

Having said all that perhaps the SWC are right to ignore Zimbabwe after all, maybe they do actually have one constructive policy. Perhaps if we put Bush and Blair on trial for war crimes, allow the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons and give Hamas a free reign in Palestine then maybe, just maybe there will be peace on earth and Mugabe will step down from power. If not they could always have a quick demo.

I’m sure there have been some great British albums released in the last five years, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I don’t care where my favourite music comes from but recently my record collection has come to be dominated by North American groups, be they of the folk, indie, rock or dance varieties. The NME inspired British music scene may excel at producing ‘haircut bands’ or supremely overrated pub/dad rock, but for truly original music with depth and edge North America is a veritable goldmine.

Fleet Foxes, the fearsomely bearded Seattle group with hippy pretensions are no exception and their self-titled debut album is one of the year’s best records. Perhaps it’s the wide range of indigenous styles in the U.S. that gives American groups their edge and Fleet Foxes pull together influences ranging from folk, bluegrass, Appalachian, classic rock and Californian pop to produce a glorious synthesis of Americana. They may have impeccable references, Dylan, Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys to name but a few, but Fleet Foxes are not a pastiche or a homage to the past. They pull together complicated harmonies, simple melodies and traditional instrumentation to create a sound that references the past but soundtracks the present. Fleet Foxes bring the clarity of a crisp New England dawn and the warmth of a glorious West Coast sunset to the wettest English summer's day.

Yesterday came the news that the stoppers, the trots and the Arab street had long been waiting for. The Iraqi parliament announced that foreign oil companies had been given the go-ahead to start work on Iraq’s oil fields. The Americans had finally started plundering Iraq’s latent oil wealth, just like everyone said they would. Sure it took them five years, but it looks like they finally remembered why they had invaded in the first place. Perhaps they were too polite to take all the spoils for themselves though. Of the four oil companies given entry rights, (Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Total) one is British, one is Anglo-Dutch and one is owned by the cheese eating surrender monkeys. Mind you the suave Atlanticist Monsieur Sarko is in charge of said monkeys now, so I guess Bush has got to keep him sweet.

Of course it has cost America over three trillion dollars to get this far but Bush and Co. are only concerned about their own bottom line. I’m sure Bush considers that eye watering sum a nice little investment in return for a decrepit oil infrastructure patrolled my maniac Jihadists, in the most unstable place on earth. It’s all profit, profit, profit from now on for Bush and Cheney. The presidency of the United States was, after all, just an excuse for the multi-millionaire Bush to fill his already bloated coffers just a little bit more.

Of course Bush could have cut a deal with Saddam in order to get his grubby hands on all that oil, just like the French, the Russians, the Chinese and Kofi Annan did; but that would just be too easy wouldn’t it? He could also have negotiated a better deal with Sudan or Saudi like the Chinese are doing, but I guess he wanted all that lovely oil for himself.

Obviously Bush could have started to expropriate the black gold much sooner if he’d installed a Sunni strongman as Saddam’s replacement and declared martial law in 2003. He certainly had a justifiable pretext and he could have had all oil he needed that way. But no, Bush had a better plan. He decided to pretend he’d invaded Iraq to, get this, depose a brutal regime and build up a beacon of freedom and prosperity in the democratically-challenged Middle East. That way no-one could claim that he was after Iraq’s oil; and what if this delightful ruse cost his beloved country the lives of five thousand of its best men and women? So be it. Bush is only there for the oil after all. He doesn’t care about America, does he?

Bush evidently isn’t too bothered about spending all that oil wealth just yet, as Iraqi oil production since 2003 has been lower than it was during the days of sanctions and Saddam’s rule. The man from Texas also kept up the ruse that America’s cause was altruistic when he cunningly allowed the democratically elected Government to nationalise the oil industry. Everyone knows that the oil revenues will be channelled into Dubya’s savings account.

You can also bet that the coalition of the willing will be taking the share of Iraq’s black gold. I mean why else would such oil consuming giants as Poland, Denmark, El Salvador, Slovakia, Honduras and Iceland risk their soldiers' lives in Mesopotamia?

The good news is that Iraq’s parliament still controls oil production and they have are only allowing foreign engineers in so that they can rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure. So at least we can rest assured that the wicked oil companies won’t be getting Iraq’s vast oil fields up and running just yet. I mean I can’t think of anything worse than the second biggest oil field in the world coming online helping to relieve global poverty and providing the Iraqi Government with enormous revenues in order to provide electricity, clean water, housing, infrastructure and security for its wretched inhabitants. Urghhh, that really is the stuff of nightmares!

Although we thought that McCain and Obama didn’t have any connections with the oil industry, both are now pledging to keep American troops in Iraq for years to come. Why would they do that? They couldn’t be arguing that for moral reasons America has a duty to protect a democratic Government from fascist terrorists could they? No it couldn’t be that. They must be after a slice of the oil money too! Ah well, maybe one day Kofi Annan will be able to run for president. He couldn’t possibly be interested in any oil money, could he?

I dislike using macabre milestones to make political points but as the tragic deaths of three paratroopers in Helmand seem to have at last roused those with a conscience into justifying the Afghanistan mission, I felt I should do the same. The moral argument is, for me at least, a no-brainer but there are certain groups that cannot fathom the fact that altruism and military intervention can be one and the same.

So for their benefit:

1. The invasion of Afghanistan was backed by a UN Resolution.

2. Al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base from which they could plan attacks on U.S. targets in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan and its terrorist activities were actively supported by the Taliban Government. In 2001 the U.S. had been attacked by Afghanistan based militants for four years. If it allowed Al Qaeda to continue to operate with impunity from its Afghan bases then it would undoubtedly suffer further attacks on its citizens. The invasion of Afghanistan in order to destroy terrorist operating bases was a bona fide act of self-defence.

3. Aside from Al Qaeda the Taliban hosted numerous other terrorist groups. Tens of thousands of people attended the dozens of terrorist training camps that were openly run in Afghanistan.

4. Operation Enduring Freedom was winnable, with clear political objectives and the loss of life was kept as minimal as it could be.

5. The Taliban regime was a brutal theocratic totalitarian dictatorship involved in torture, mass murder, persecution and political oppression. The removal of the Taliban Government struck a blow for the emancipation of human kind.

6. The coalition forces are in Afghanistan under a UN Mandate to protect the democratically elected Government, provide security and help with reconstruction.

7. The Taliban murder civil servants, policeman, Afghan soldiers, reconstruction engineers, doctors and journalists amongst many others. They burn down schools and shoot teachers in front of their pupils. They murder Afghans who work for the Government or for foreigners. They murder women and children in cold blood for ‘crimes against Islam’. The Taliban destroy Afghan infrastructure and do everything they can to stop the reconstruction of the country. The Taliban are hated by the vast majority of Afghans.

8. Western countries left Afghanistan to its own devices in 1989 and the country was torn apart by war, famine and drought. If NGOs are to redevelop the country then they need to be protected from the Taliban who would be happy to drive them out of the country.

9. There is no oil in Afghanistan.

The strategic goal of making Afghanistan secure and democratic is the right one. That is not to say that we are using the right tactics or that the coalition tactics are above criticism.

Is the campaign morally justifiable? Absolutely.

Is it worth the cost? Perhaps only the soldiers who have served there and the Afghans who live there have the right to answer that question.

It gives me no pleasure to comment on the estimated death toll of the conflict in Iraq yet I came across a website today, justforeignpolicy.org, that claimed that (at the time of writing) 1,219,596 Iraqis had been killed since March 2003 and I felt compelled to write a short note about the matter. Clearly this is a difficult and emotive subject and let me make it clear the death of any innocent human being is an unquantifiable tragedy.

It will be a source of eternal shame for the US that its Government deliberately avoided cataloguing the deaths of civilians that occurred after the invasion of 2003. I am not sure that the numbers of violent deaths in Iraq prove or disprove the moral legitimacy of that war or any war. Some sixty million people died in World War Two, but that does not mean the war should not have been fought. Iraq has seen enough tragedy in the last thirty years to last an eternity and I do not mean to diminish the undoubted suffering of the Iraqi people.

Yet when it is claimed without shame that one and a quarter million people have died since 2003 it is perhaps morally right to question these figures.

If we accept that 1,219,596 Iraqis have been killed since 2003, then that means that around 243,919 people have been killed in Iraq each year since the invasion. That would involve the violent deaths of 668 people every single day for five years straight. Iraq has had some bloody periods over the last five years but there has not been a single day in the last 5 years that anything close to that number of violent deaths has been recorded. Iraq Body Count has conducted an exhaustive survey of deaths in Iraq, including the number of bodies dumped on the streets and delivered to morgues. Even between March 2006 and March 2007, by far and away the bloodiest period, an average of 73 civilians were killed every day, that’s 595 fewer than Just Foreign Policy’s estimates. Now Iraq Body Count must be taken as a low estimate, some civilians undoubtedly died of their injuries unreported and forgotten, and some violent incidents will undoubtedly have been missed by the researchers. Yet Iraq Body Count is pretty scrupulous and it is inconceivable that it has missed the equivalent of the violent deaths 600 people every single day for more than five years. Iraq Body Count estimates that between 84,000 and 91,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003 and this to me seems a more likely figure. Undoubtedly the real figure is slightly higher, casualties will have succumbed to their wounds and some incidents will have slipped through the net. However it seems impossible to me that the true figure could be anything more than double this amount. According to Just Foreign Policy however, Iraq Body Count has underestimated by a factor of around twenty.

During World War Two every single city in Japan was flattened by the US Air Force, atomic bombs were dropped on two cities and a densely populated island was bitterly fought over. The Japanese civilian death toll for the entire war was 580,000 less than half the figure quoted for the war in Iraq. Similarly every single city in Nazi Germany, (a country with a population three times that of Iraq) was decimated by allied bombers, the country was torn apart by four enormous armies during a six year long ‘total war’, yet the civilian casualty figures for Nazi Germany are similar to those quoted for Iraq. In Britain 67,800 civilians were killed during the blitz and the V bomb raids. The total military casualty figures for Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand during the entire war put together are far lower than those quoted for Iraq by Just Foreign Policy.

As I say I have no wish to diminish or belittle the immense suffering of the Iraqi people and I do not wish to use the number of dead to make a political point about the rights or the wrongs of the conflict. For those that do wish to use the number of deaths in Iraq to emphasise the evilness of Bush and his allies, I only ask that they subject their claims to rational analysis. It seems that too many jump upon the most ghoulish predictions in order to make their arguments seems all the more watertight. One should be careful what one wishes for.