It’s an odd sort of a ceremony, the inauguration. Singing, poetry, praying and swearing-in. Grandiose, but without the hideous pomp and tradition of European equivalents, yet at the same time a bit thin and awkward. The word God gets used so often you’d think it was church rather than government. Obama himself, though, at least mentioned that there were faith’s present other than Christians, and, indeed, Atheists. Good man. But it’s all just background hiss really. It’s the speech we all wanted, and it was a goody. It’s tough time to become president. I’m glad he didn’t foolishly evangelise about hope for the future. Obama’s speech talked of crises caused by greed and irresponsibility, and many other problems caused or encouraged by his cretinous warmongering predecessor.

And so he talked about starting again. Not a call to arms. A call to work. He’s bracing the US, in my opinion, for lean times where their interests might have to be globalised. It he really does want to help other countries (as he said), he’s going to have to weather criticism at home, especially during economic difficulties. His obvious intension to scale down America’s military aggression will be a help, I’m sure. War’s expensive in both lives and money. But the only way he’s actually going to achieve the things he wants (especially regarding his health and energy policies) is to hugely increase tax on rich people and business – a very difficult thing to do in the US – in order to distribute capital. Of course, he won’t actually be saying that yet, because it sounds sort of socialist… but it’s the only thing that he can do, really. He has to undo decades of reinforcement of that most appalling American export – the idea that selfishness is good.

On the other hand, the US is probably the only country in the developed west where leadership and salesmanship can achieve almost anything, even when there isn’t so much money as there used to be. The citizens of the US are an odd bunch when considered as a people. They are often mocked by the rest of us for being somewhat devoid of the hard cynicism we’re used to over the pond. When enthusiasm is the result, however, we should all be jealous. If the American people are prepared to work towards a common goal – and that goal is humanitarian – the entire world may follow. We cynical Europeans often forget that America has always been about hope. Obama is just the latest symbol of this. American society often stumbles and fails, it can be brutal and awful, but there is huge optimism there to, an ambition, and an energy and hope that I have never encountered in gloomy old England.

But if this grand change never occurs, we are still bound to enter a better era, if only in small ways. Obama supports science. He opposes torture. It might seem obvious that he should, but Bush’s administration didn’t. Unless he suddenly decides to nuke Moscow, his foreign policy cannot help but be more responsible. Even if these are the only things he manages to put right, the whole world will still be a better place.

He stood there on steps of a building built by slaves. He stood there, a black president seen in the lifetime of people who lived in segregated communities in the US, who were still prevented from voting by hook and crook within my lifetime, come to that. A mighty achievement in itself. More than two million people heard that speech live in the mall. There must be billions of us watching it worldwide. I wonder if it’s some sort of a record. It feels odd to be at this moment, one that so many of us have wanted for so long. Obama’s in. Bush is out. The best bit, after Obama’s speech, was watching that idiotic germ of a man get into a helicopter and head back to Texas. The air tastes better somehow.

I can only hope that the energy Obama generates, and he, survives the months ahead. I feel a tiny taste of optimism upon my tongue. It’s odd, a flavour I’ve grown unused to in the past decade. I shall savour it for as long as I can.

Apologies for the lateness of this post. Tech problems and general business.

Today Israel tries to enter talks to start bringing an end to the awfulness in Gaza, whilst a UN compound it has shelled (probably with ‘white phosphorus’ rounds that are banned by international convention from being used anywhere near civilian populations, or, indeed, in and built-up areas at all) burns. In light of this, it seems foolish to talk about anything else. Yet I am.

I intended to write apiece about the possible opening of British courts to television. For the record, I think that turning peoples lives into entertainment is appalling, and can only lead to the persecution and destruction of people innocent and guilty alike. A court system has to be totally anonymous to have any kind of integrity at all. Sensationalism has no place in making fair judgements. It can only lead to people being judged twice – once in court, and then again in the court of public opinion. It’s awful that this happens already to a greater or lesser degree by means of the tabloids. Televised trails can only make this worse.

But something else has happened today that’s made me sit up a little and smile the kind of grin that only a cynicism fathered by constant disappointment can produce. There are many ways to understand politics – lots of competing theories and trends, some of which are simultaneously good ways of analysing things, sometimes bad. Here’s one way of looking at it that I think might be useful. It is, sadly, not the only way to lead yourself to the same conclusion.

During the eighties, you got the feeling in the UK that one side of parliament (the Conservatives) was populated by people who had gone into politics as a career because they thought they ought to be in charge, whilst the other (Labour) was largely made up of people who’d got into politics because they feared what would happen if they didn’t. Ex trade-unionists and socialist firebrands mixed with genuinely concerned, principled men (and a few rum buggers, doubtless). Sure, they became jaded, and some of them certainly didn’t seem equal to the task, but you at least got the impression that they gave a damn. But the conservatives, with their arrogant swagger and two-faced morality (perhaps because of it) were the party that consistently won. The people didn’t want integrity, concern and principal. They wanted authority and professionalism. They wanted their politicians to appear slick, and didn’t seem to care that much that they were almost the definition of corruption and self interest.

Enter Tony Blair, spin, and the career politician. The heritage of Maggie and her despicable, slimy little gang of opportunist and liars was this: That people had steadily being joining the Labour party for much the same reason that people had long been joined the Tory party. They were graduates who’d decided to have a ‘career’ in politics, in much the same way that they might have gone into banking or law. People who no longer saw success in terms of pursuing policies that they truly thought was worthy and necessary, but in terms of promotion and the raw success of the party they ‘worked for’ in terms of votes and majorities. A steady trickle for a couple of decades became a flood in the late eighties and early nineties. And because of the way the party was restructuring itself to make itself more electable (i.e. more like the Tory party) meant that people like this were promoted. They didn’t care about anything in particular – they didn’t even care what they said in public. New Labour Inc soon had its board. Soon, in comparison, even the Tories seemed to be a species less professional. So successful was this, in fact, that now the Tories have been forced to restructure to copy Labour, and are now being led by possibly the two most insincere men in England.

But the upshot of all this is that we now have nobody worth voting for. There seems to be an absolute absence of any kind of integrity at all in the houses of parliament. Perhaps always was an illusion, to a greater or lesser extent. I don’t think principal ever been spread as awfully thin across the seat s of the commons as it is now, though. I am left with wondering whether-or-not it’s better to have principals I disagree with rather than no principals at all. Not a pleasant place to be, and it takes away all of the plesure I might get from hearing people say the right things when I strongly suspect that they are saying them for the wrong reasons. I suspect that even they no longer know whether-or not they believe what they are saying. It has ceased to matter. The career is all. Whenever I hear one of the members of the house issue a statement of dubious sincerity, it seems to simply add yet more mass to the weight of my disgust. Like today.

Let’s imagine for a minute that you are one of these ambitious career politician in the UK. You know that your government is essentially only ever going to follow the policies laid out by the American administration with regard to foreign affairs. After suffering under the yoke of the policies of a Texan imbecile and his hawkish cronies for a decade, it looks as though the incoming president might finally be bringing the odd principal to the table. An opportunity to discredit the decisions made by your leader, curry favour with public opinion (that saw the ‘War on Terror’ as a ludicrous and counter-productive exercise from the start) and identify yourself with the higher moral good.

I think, if you were, you might very well say something like this:

From The Guardian:

“The foreign secretary, David Miliband today argues that the use of the “war on terror” as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused “more harm than good”.

In an article in today’s Guardian, five days before the Bush administration leaves the White House, Miliband delivers a comprehensive critique of its defining mission, saying the war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot “kill its way” out of the threats it faces.

British officials quietly stopped using the phrase “war on terror” in 2006, but this is the first time it has been comprehensively discarded in the most outspoken remarks on US counterterrorism strategy to date by a British minister.

In remarks that were also made in a speech today in Mumbai, in one of the hotels that was a target of terrorist attacks in November, the foreign secretary says the concept of a war on terror is “misleading and mistaken”.

“Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good,” Miliband says, adding that, in his opinion, the whole strategy has been dangerously counterproductive, helping otherwise disparate groups find common cause against the west.

“The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common,” Miliband argues, in a clear reference to the signature rhetoric of the Bush era. “We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is.”

“Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology,” he says.

He argues that “the war on terror implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one – to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists”. But he quotes an American commander, General David Petraeus, saying the western coalition in Iraq “could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife”.

Instead of trying to build western solidarity against a shared enemy, Miliband argues it should be constructed instead on the “idea of who we are and the values we share”.

He goes on to say that “democracies must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating. It is an argument he links directly with the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. “That is surely the lesson of Guantánamo and it is why we welcome president-elect Obama’s clear commitment to close it.”

After the Al Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration presented the threat of a global terrorist onslaught as justification for pre-emptive military action, long-term detention without trial and severe interrogation techniques widely denounced by human rights groups as torture. The incoming Obama administration is expected to avoid using the term “war on terror” and adopt a more multilateral and less military-focused approach to global threats.

British officials are signalling, in increasingly public ways, that they cannot wait for the new team to take office next Tuesday, and wave goodbye to an eight-year administration with which they felt increasingly ill at ease, particularly following the departure of Tony Blair in 2007.

Miliband said last night that the incoming administration’s proposed use of “smart power” meshed with his arguments. “The new administration has a set of values that fit very well with the values and priorities I am talking about,” he said during a visit to Amethi, northern India.

Asked whether he had not left it late in the Bush era to make his criticism, the foreign secretary said British officials had stopped thinking in terms of a single war on terror more than two years ago, and had been putting a “more comprehensive approach” into practice.

British officials said the timing of the speech was dictated more by the Mumbai attacks than Bush’s departure, but added that the transition in Washington meant the language could be less cautious than it might otherwise have been.

UK-US relations have been particular sour in recent days after Washington reneged on a pledge to back a largely British-drafted UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The White House over-ruled US diplomats after a demand from the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.”

Prince Harry’s racist remark about a Pakistani member of his army platoon has prompted widespread criticism.

The prince issued an apology after the News of the World published a video diary in which he calls one of his then Sandhurst colleagues a “Paki”.

Oh my. Wow. Really? Well, yes, It’s on video.

Cabinet minister John Denham said it was “offensive”, while the Ramadhan Foundation called the prince a “thug”.

Indeed he is. Now the question I have is this – if you did that, would your friends ever forgive you? Even if you told them it was a joke (not that merely finding it funny makes it that much better)? How long before you forgive the prince, then? Well, lets see, shall we, maybe he’s got a good excuse…

St James’s Palace said he had used the term “Paki” as a nickname about a friend and without any malice.

Oh really? Presumably, then, he’s referred to as ‘Cracker’, then and he has two other friends called ‘Nig-nog’ and ‘Raghead’ – toether they are ‘platoon ironic racism? Pull the other one – it has bells on it.

The prince filmed parts of the video and in another clip, he is heard calling another cadet a “raghead”.

I stand corrected. Clearly ‘Raghead’ is indeed a close personal friend. As are ‘Wog’, ‘Dago’ and ‘Wop’.

He had to apologise in 2005 for wearing a swastika armband to a party, which offended many Jewish people.

In all fairness, that was just poor taste. I doubt if he was actually being anti-semetic there. It really isn’t the same. ‘Paki’ and ‘Raghead’, however, might be better qualified to answer that question than me, though.

‘Unfortunate timing’

when, exactly, would it have been a good time to call people ‘Paki’ and ‘Raghead’? The 50’s, perhaps? When it was all just jolly good fun? Oh no, it wasn’t jolly good fun even then, was it? It was racism.

The video obtained by the News of the World shows Harry while still an officer cadet at Sandhurst military academy.

Erm… bad timing?

He was filmed in front of other cadets at an airport departure lounge as they waited for a flight to Cyprus to go on manoeuvres.

Erm… bad timing?

The newspaper said the prince, who is third in line to the throne, had called the soldier “our little Paki friend”.

Oh, I see… You mean it was bad timing that he was being filmed whilst he was being racist… I see

BBC royal correspondent Daniela Relph said this was an extremely embarrassing episode for the prince and the Royal Family.

She said the emergence of the three-year-old video was “unfortunate timing” for Harry, whose image had greatly improved since he served in Afghanistan last year.

Oh, sorry, I see now. You mean that it was bad timing that the palace had been given hope of people not finding out that he’s gives people racist nicknames. That means that the spin butlers have wasted their time. I’m sure they will be most put out. They’re quite busy enough already with Prince Philip.

“That was a real step up for him, a real sense of maturity that people could see,” she said.

Absolutely. Now he’s killed a few ‘Ragheads’, I’m sure he’s much more mature. Killing people for no other reason than they are told to do it does that to a guy – really makes them grow up. After all, that’s what the army is for isn’t it, to provide an environment where the ignorant and privileged children of hereditary rulers can boss a few proles around and shoot the odd native in some foreign climb so they can become men. This still true, right?

She added that as a member of the Royal Family, Prince Harry was held to a certain standard, and everything he said and did was scrutinised “regardless of whether it was banter among colleagues or something that was being used by lots of other people he was working with”.

Or when the news of the world have a fucking camera crew following you around…

Ok, Jokes are jokes, and best kept private if the reason that they’re funny is that they’re inappropriate. Some kind of minor infraction or inappropriate comment, if simply caught by accident might be forgiven as simply bad taste, like the armband. Giving a person the nick-name ‘Paki’ or ‘Raghead’ because of their skin colour… erm… how can I put this? Oh yes. It’s racist abuse.

‘Absolutely disgusting’

Politicians and Muslim groups are among those to have condemned the prince’s remarks.

The BNP are quoted as saying ‘Go on, my son’.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the words would have caused “considerable offence”, while Tory leader David Cameron said it was “a completely unacceptable thing to say”.

Erm… Is Cameron here implying that it’s OK to think these things but not vocalise them… presumably not. On the other hand, he did go to the same school as Harry. Maybe that’s what they’re taught there. After all, how would we know? The ruling classes even have their own school, you see. 9am – racism and dog-walking. 10am. Rugby. 11am, rifle training. 12, lunch. With the queen.

Aki Nawaz, musician and political activist, said: “It’s absolutely disgusting and I think he should be dismissed from the MoD. We don’t accept these things, we’ve had to live with this for 40 years.”

Too bloody right. We all know that the army is hugely racist. This will never change if things like this are not pursued. Just because he’s the prince doesn’t mean he should get away with it. He’s just a bloody person, and behaviour like this should not be indulged just because he’s a toff. In fact, he has less of any excuse – nobody else on earth has the educational advantages he’s had – he is not some barely-literate poorly-schooled grunt. He’s an officer – it is his job to lead and set an example to his men. If he cannot do that job, he should be sacked just like anyone else should be of us should be.

What a twat.

I’ve been away, (hence the lack of posts), but, as usual, the world has wobbled, in slack and appalling chaos beneath me. I’d thought that, initially, I’d have blogged today about awful and inappropriate Christmas mutterings of the pope. It seemed then that calling for a return to the pointless and poorly-reasoned castigation of homosexuality by the world’s most influential religious leader would be the most awful thing that happened over the period of my holiday (so, lets have ago at people who don’t do the supposedly ‘natural’ thing and breed, then, shall we? Let’s start with Catholic priests, then). Little did I imagine that the tinderbox in the Holy Land would be sparked once more on the tail fires of a rocket. 

I am like anyone on the outside of it, unable to fully appreciate the motivations behind either side. It’s easy to criticise. The open contempt written upon the faces of European leaders as Tzipi Livni spoke yesterday summed up most of our feelings, I fear. We should be disappointed in all concerned.

Barack Obama, who will soon be representing the biggest supporter of Israel, the US, has remained cautiously quiet. I can’t say as I blame him – he has to deal with this when he’s in power, and defining his policies and opinions in advance of his influence will bring with it impossible expectations and a lack of flexibility. One thing that he has said in the past may well sum up a large proportion of pro-Israeli thinking, however -Visiting the Israeli town of Sderot in July, he suggested that he too would respond if rockets were being fired at his house. I heard this opinion echoed several times yesterday by various US spokespersons, one even going so far as to comment on what America’s response might be if the rockets were being shot from Canada. Ye gods. His name escapes me. That’s probably for the best.

All situations like this are unique, and ceasefires must be negotiated, but I assume that Tony Blair has been given the job, despite the obvious disadvantages he has, due to his supposed successes in Ireland and his clout with the US. Successful resolution of the conflict in Ireland (and, despite some of the remaining problems, let me simply state right now that anyone who tells you that it is not a success should think about the state Belfast was in during the eighties), however, was largely based upon an unwillingness in British Governments to escalate the conflict. I am not claiming here that the two situations are utterly alike. That would be idiotic, but I feel it might illustrate a point. The point is about dehumanisation and the identification of ‘the other’.    

It is, of course, entirely possible – if highly unlikely – that the UK could have bombed Eire into the stone age in response to bombings on the mainland. Thankfully, it didn’t (although ten quid says that Dennis Thatcher suggested it – he was well known as being one of the few people capable of occupying the slim sliver of space to the right of Margaret). The situation in Northern Ireland was probably too integrated, and international condemnation would have been too serious, it would have ruined ties with America, the British population would have hated it (sadly, of course, probably not as much as you might imagine – we could rename the bulk of the UK’s population as “string ‘em up Britain” with fair accuracy), finding targets would have been difficult… there are countless pragmatic reasons why it would not have been a good policy, but I like to think that the main reason it wasn’t done was because it was just obviously the wrong thing to do. It felt wrong because Irish people cannot be dehumanised in the eyes of most Brits (despite our rather chequered past) – they are not ‘the others’, they are not ‘the enemy’ – they are of ‘us’.

Eire just isn’t seen as a valid target for military action any more. Few people living in the 20^th century would ever have considered it so. Bombing Dublin or Limerick would feel like bombing Leeds or Bradford just because the ‘7/7’ terrorists were supposedly from there.  The situation with Hamas makes this politically very different, but the reasons why Israel shouldn’t respond in the way it does are essentially the same. Bombing the Palestinians – bombing anyone for that matter – should feel like what it is. It should feel like killing people, no matter how mad you are at them. And it should feel like that to us, too. What is happening in Gaza right now is a terrible amount of suffering is being inflicted on one group of people by another. You might argue that Hamas should consider the same thing, and you’d be right. But at some point one side or the other has to be the bigger party. If Israel wants to assert its moral superiority here, then let it do so. For sure it has the right to do something about the rocket attacks, but it must always consider exactly what that thing to do must be. Everyone has to live with the consequences of their actions. And at the moment, the action is the killing of many, many people, most of whom are in no position to defend themselves.

As for Obama suggesting that he too would ‘respond’ to rockets fired at his house, I hope that this means that he feels personal sympathy with the victims of rocket attacks in Israel, and not that this means he supports heavy military responses to terrorist strikes. Recognising the humanity of your opponents, and refusing to set them up as a dehumanised, enemy ‘other’, would, in my opinion, lead to treating terrorism as a criminal act rather than an act of war. ‘Wars on terror’ are a sick joke at best and an ill-told lie in the case of Iraq. And they have killed too many people already.

Whilst I’ve been writing this, the Israeli’s have, apparently, destroyed a UN-run school in Gaza, where civilians were sheltering. The moral high ground must look very distant from where they are now.