All the Colours of the Rainbow - Ruth Murphy

I love you.
You are all the colours of the rainbow to me.
You are black and white,
day and night,
you are the summer sun
and the pale frosted pastel
of a winter dawn.
You are mist and sunlight,
dew and starlight,
you are the winter dark
that turns my brain
in spiralling circles close to madness,
you are the warmth of summer
breathing life into my brain
and strength to my heart.
I love you.
You are my mind
and my madness,
you are my new-found everything.

[I'm intending to publish a few of Ruth's poems here over the next few months on an entirely ad hoc basis. I hope you enjoy them.]

Abu Mazen's exit

Mahmoud Abbas has been a partnerless advocate of a negotiated settlement in the Middle East for years now, but having been left in the cold by Israel he began to look impossibly compromised.

In losing Abbas, Israel will certainly be losing the best hope of being able to negotiate a secure and sustainable solution to the conflict, but that is lower on their agenda now than it has perhaps ever been. They may in fact view his departure as a bit of a gift.

Still, if the Israelis are intent on creating facts on the ground, Palestinians can do likewise. This is not limited to violent resistance, and it does not require a retreat. The international community should encourage and support a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within 1967 borders, and if Salam Fayyad makes this his position it would surely be difficult for anyone except the U.S. to resist the manifest equivalence of this position to that of the Israelis.

It may bolster Hamas in the short term, because some would certainly see this as a surrender. But a unilateral declaration in no way undermines previous UN resolutions that give Palestinians their legal cause, it in no way dilutes the claim to refugee right of return, and it places the onus on Israel to actually wrest East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlements from the Palestinians.

Surely that wouldn't be allowed to stand?

Red poppies: a political statement?

What a tricky question.

On the one hand, for most people, it is not. Statements are heard precisely in so much as they stand out against the background noise of the status quo. In that sense, at least, it is not a statement.

Indeed, many people wearing red poppies will be against many of the specific military ventures in which Britain has and is engaged. They view Remembrance as simply that.

On the other hand, precisely in so much as it isn't heard as a statement that is exactly what it is: a statement of unity, of unanimity in many offices, churches and communities, in which the totem is the same even if its connotations are different.

That this is a form of statement is thrown into relief when such unanimity is impossible to assert, such as in Northern Ireland where the poppy became associated with Loyalism. Here the poppy and the flag are inseparable. The question is, are they ever?

The point for me is that those who wear the white poppy are often accused of making a political point on the back of an apolitical event. But for as long as people are still dying as a result of the system that they oppose, it's difficult to imagine how wearing a symbol so deeply embedded in the military economy can be acceptable to them.

Others' hostility to this betrays a totalising tendency among those who would prefer that, for one day, the monologue is unchallenged. This, in itself, is a reason to opt for the white poppy.

Things that go BNP in the night

A number of things gave me a vague unease about the debate, if you can call it that, surrounding Nick Griffin's appearance on Newsnight, which clarified a little as I watched the show. I'll mention two of these.

The first was the pomposity of the 'mainstream' politicians, who looked horribly exposed by their own bluster tonight. Watching Chris Huhne express reservations about immigration from eastern Europe, Baroness Warsi move (rather belatedly) to endorse civil partnerships, and Jack Straw defending British freedoms, I was a reminded of a time I asked a politician what their "big picture" was, drawing a complete blank. When I asked this question I wasn't expecting a totalising ideology, simply an allusion to some kind of vision, and like me the oft-referenced 'British people' are being denied any contest of ideas in favour of posturing, tinkering and selective moralising.

Which brings me to the second point, concerning this British people that apparently emerged victorious tonight, as their formal and informal representatives shredded Nick Griffin. In the words of one of my Facebook friends: "griffin looks like a moron and the great british public speak much sense".

Well, some of the questioners spoke good sense, others just spoke, or shouted. Why do we presume that somehow 'we' are sensible, and the population of interwar Germany or 1990s Rwanda were mindless drones? What essentialism drives this sense of our own collective wisdom, what guiding principles keep us "sensible" other than our own moderate comfort in global terms? Such a fragile shield. The speed with which the German people went from guardians of the treasures of progressive culture to advocates of supremacist tyranny should be instructive.

Yes, I'm glad that Nick Griffin was allowed to go on and be confronted with the reality of his own barbarous past. But this was obscured by the foaming of the sensible centre, who, when the noise died down, had offered nothing. Nothing at all.

Bonnie Greer's composed good humour occasionally made Nick Griffin look a fool. She mocked his recourse to the most arbitrary of categories to pursue his agenda, she subverted them, she brought in humanity at its relational best to show what a nonsense such devices are when the rubber hits the road.

So why couldn't the other politicians do likewise? Well, which of them can speak in anything but the most platitudinous terms when their precious democracy looks like a five year one-off outing for a special interest group, their idolised freedom is played out at the barrel of a gun (and a thousand CCTV cameras), and our civilisation, all embracing humanism, excludes whomsoever we wish to exclude for the purposes of security? Which of them could grab their last constituency newsletter and claim they haven't peddled emotive concepts to accentuate quite arbitrary divisions and thereby to reinforce structural violence?

When we are looking at the ugly face of the BNP, we are in a sense looking at ourselves getting older, the next logical step. If that's not where we want to go we'd better come up with some better ideas.

God the ineffable host

To speak of God: the necessary impossibility.

So imagine, if you dare, the triune communion in dynamic perfection, united in will, ever-giving in love, wholly self-sufficient. The circle dance of all there need be.

Creation, of which we are a part, appears as a mysterious and majestically unnecessary making space for another in this cosmic community. Critically it looks like a risk, taken by one who need not risk, because true hospitality is to trust, to concede rights, to relinquish control. Here God the totalitarian is dwarfed by this unfathomable God, who could still, in virtue of his own love, end up on a cross.

These days, alas, I just don't know what I can affirm securely. My faith has become a way of being in the world, but without the succour of propositional security.

However, one thought is sustaining me tonight, the thought of God the hospitable; and, the other side of the same coin, the thought of being created as a kind of eternal, unconditionally welcomed guest. It is a thought that begins in Trinitarian theology, but invigorates even as I lose my grip on such concretes.

My inability to stop pursuing God, despite the shredded feet and barren landscape, may be articulated as this irresistible sense of having been included in something, having been made space for. It is the sense of the unlikelihood of being alive at all, and the hope that I was not begotten of death but of dazzling life.

There are countless, impossibly challenging implications of this starting point, at least, to the one ready to walk in deed as the image-bearer of this host.

But for the weary pilgrim, who has walked and fought for too long without rest, the thought of it appears as the lights of an inn on the horizon.

Faisal Husseini poem

Oh God, the chest is replete with bitterness, do not turn that into spite.
Oh God, the heart is replete with pain, do not turn that into vengeance.
Oh God, the soul is replete with fear, do not turn that into hatred.
Oh God, my body is weak, do not turn my weakness into despair.

Oh God, I, your servant, am holding the embers, so, help me maintain my steadfastness.

Oh God, faith is love.
Oh God, faith is forgiveness.
Oh God, faith is conviction.

Oh God, do not put off the flame of faith in my chest.

Oh God, we wanted for the Intifada to be a white one, so protect it.
Oh God, we wanted freedom for our people; we did not want slavery for others.
Oh God, we wanted a homeland for our people to be gathered; we did not attempt to destroy states of others nor demolish their homes.
Oh God, our people is stripped of all, except for his belief in his right.
Oh God, our people is weak, except in his faith and in his victory.

Oh God, grant us conviction, mercy and tolerance in our ranks and do not make us war against ourselves.
Oh God, turn the blood that was shed into light that will guide us and strengthen our arms and do not turn it into fuel for hatred and vengeance.
Oh God, help us over our enemy so that we could help him reconcile with himself.

Oh God, this is my prayer to you, my invocation.
So listen to it and grant us our supplication and guide us to the Straight Path.

Faisal Husseini, October 1990

Loch Ness Marathon 2009

Who'd have thought it: I'm promoting exercise on my blog. However, after the most exhilarating Loch Ness Marathon on Sunday, I offer no apologies.

The conditions were about as perfect as they could have been. Glorious sunshine, a biting chill in the air, and not a breath of wind; meanwhile, the majestic scenery at the start line was enough to impart a sense of Icarian possibility. The shambles of transport to the gun (our bus broke down, some failed to turn up at all) was quickly consigned to history.

Piped and drummed from the start line, I soon realised that this would be of a different order from those interminable training runs as mile after mile fell off without any need to dig deep. Smiling faces along the roadside and momentary glimpses of the loch seemed to express human and Divine blessing for our folly, and there were moments of a quite palpable rush, an enveloping tingling unlike anything associated with exercise in my experience.

By the big hill at 18 miles I was still feeling good, and it was only on the descent into Inverness that I began to fade, quite rapidly, my last three miles taking nearly 90 seconds longer, each, than my earlier average mile. But with the turn onto the running track at Queen's Park Stadium the energy returned for a showman's sprint finish and the young lass who gave me my medal could have been Jacques Rogge for how on top of the world I felt.

My only regret was telling the Mrs to expect me half an hour after I actually finished. She was wandering the streets of Inverness at the time I crossed the line.

The profound anticlimax that many feel after a race hasn't really hit me yet. I had a slight dip on Sunday afternoon, but a pint of Bitter by the locks in Fort Augustus sorted that.

I know one of my friends is already dusting off her running shoes for Loch Ness 2010, and I'd say the more, the merrier.

I ran raising funds for Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy. To donate please click here.

Settlements: a choice of war over peace

Western political and diplomatic norms regarding the Middle East have a habit of reforming according to Israeli government whim, so it bears repeating that settlements are an act of war, illegal, immoral and indefensible.

Whether Obama's government will allow Israel to thumb its nose in their direction remains to be seen, but with the current preoccupation with healthcare reform it's quite possible that Netanyahu's scandalous move is shrewd opportunism. The US government will perhaps not be able to fight two unpopular battles at once.

Meanwhile, to remind ourselves of what this latest commitment to settlements constitutes, this is a useful quote from Michael Neumann's 2002 essay, 'What's so bad about Israel?'.

Settlement policy, "quite apart from its terrible effect on Palestinians, is outrageous for what it represents: a careful, deliberate rejection of peace, and a declaration of the fixed intention to dispossess the Palestinians until they have nothing left....

"Israel could claim, as a matter of self-interest if not of right, that it needed the pre-1967 territory as a homeland for the Jews. It cannot say this about the settlements, which exist not from any real need for anything, but for three reasons: to give some Israelis a cheap deal on housing, to conform to the messianic expectations of Jewish fundamentalists, and, not least, as a vengeful, relentless, sadistically gradual expression of hatred for the defeated Arab enemy."

This is the point:

"By the mid-1970s, Israel's crimes were no longer the normal atrocities of nation-building nor an excessive sort of self-defense. They represented a cold-blooded, calculated, indeed an eagerly embraced choice of war over peace".

Mr MacAskill's genius?

It has never been established that Mr Al-Megrahi had anything to do with the Lockerbie bombings, and in this I not only agree with the majority of Scottish legal professionals, but the legal academic who set up the Lockerbie trial, Robert Black, and a host of other interested parties. This is no marginal conspiracy theory.

That this makes the Scottish legal system look wholly compromised by the Lockerbie trial is a sad reality, but one which needs to be faced up to rather than drowned in high-pitched, self-righteous condemnations of a "mass murderer".

As well as any compassion or altruism Mr MacAskill's party may be demonstrating, it is also possible that the SNP are the only party whose political interests align with those of the families and the reputation of the Scottish legal system in outing the truth.

Why?

Well, with the original trial being set up without the involvement of the yet-to-be-reconstituted Scottish Parliament and Executive, any evidence of political interference would land squarely on Westminster. But the Scottish Government lacks the authority to open an investigation into the Lockerbie trial itself so is rather dependent upon someone else doing so.

The UN has this power and were the Scottish Government, backed by a measure of goodwill in the Arab world (recall the Saltires flying in Tripoli), to invite the UN to carry out such an investigation, the British Government could be bypassed. Plus, any attempt by the UK to block it or trivialise it would be viewed as an admission of guilt.

That Libyan Ali Abdessalam Triki is the next President of the General Assembly is also worth bearing in mind.

Such an inquiry of course suits the SNP's agenda, assuming that it is demonstrated that the US and UK governments interfered with or withheld evidence in order to implicate Libyan agents.

Imagine the headlines about Westminster's contempt for Scots law, their disregard for truth and justice, and the extent to which Scotland has been beholden to the interests of London.

Who would emerge unscathed? Tory and Labour governments would both be implicated. The Lib Dems should tread carefully, as I think they are doing. But, if all goes according to plan, the SNP will look like the innocent bystanders who rose to the challenge of restoring Scotland's pride and dignity as a nation.

As soon as any such investigation reported, emotional support for independence would rally.

Not only this, but even in the short term MacAskill's decision, and particularly the transparent meddling of Robert Mueller - whose interests as the original 'investigator' of the bombing may not lie in an inquiry being launched - will almost certainly galvanise domestic Scottish opinion in favour of the SNP as against perceived US bullying.

I therefore view Kenneth MacAskill's decision to release Mr Megrahi as the first step towards coming to terms with the travesty that took place in one of our courts. It may also be political genius.

For a good discussion of the Scotland-US fallout, check out MacNumpty.

Obama: no change in the near neighbourhood

Recently Qunfuz described Obama as a monster on this blog, the cosmetic surgery performed on the hideous face of American empire.

This article in the Guardian regarding Honduras makes those of us who hoped Obama's election would lead to an wholly different approach to foreign policy feel a bit foolish. Honduras is precisely the arena in which a foreign policy guided by principle rather than short-term self-interest would distinguish itself.

A quick word from the Camino de Santiago

I only have a few minutes on the internet here in Estella, but thought I´d post a quick thought on my first few days of pilgrimage.

Often, when walking in the hills or going for a run in Aberdeenshire, I look out to the horizon and wonder what it must have been like for those of old who had to traverse great distances by foot, gazing for miles at their next few days´journey.

It´s a bit like this. It begins by hearing others´ skeletal tales of a place not yet reached, before experiencing these bones being quickened, first as an embryonic dot on the distant horizon, then as the complex and uncontainable reality of imminent surroundings. Then, unavoidably, each place fades to simplified memory.

Doing the Camino gives me this experience every day, and in turn betsows a sense of unconditional relationship to the land - an irresistable, exhilarating subjectedness to the environment. It´s maybe this that makes the old cliche about pilgrimage being a living metaphor for life itself decreasingly trite and increasingly compelling as each day elapses.

Anyway, I´d better get off the net.

Andrew Philip

If you've been following Andrew Philip's cyber-tour of his collection The Ambulance Box, or if you've met the man himself, you will probably encounter the poems themselves as strangely familiar. 

For while they are deeply observational and experiential, such that he describes his approach as "use your ears, trust your ears and cut", it is the quiet, passionate insistence of his 'way of saying things' that stops the reader in his tracks. 

This poetic sensibility emerges whenever he writes as he does here on boxologies for the first time, and it is the crafted but relentlessly personal voice that I find most exhilarating about his poetry: a confident vulnerability that gives of itself because there's no doubt in his mind that it matters.

In this way his voice is not just the medium of these poems' transmission, rather it is the black ink that preserves the finger-prints of his experience, much as hearing Paul Robeson sing Ol' Man River imbues the song with meaning born of a thousand stories.

So his tragic bereavement, his pursuit of truth, his experience of language as power are parts of his story but it is the voice that has been forged by these experiences, in which these experiences and observations are retold, and through which they are refracted which elevates them and makes them irresistible.

Q: The title poem 'The Ambulance Box' refers to those who, disabused of any notion of wholeness, and “huddled/ round our various wounds/ are at home with the box”. Is this a description of your own engagement with grief?

A: It certainly emerges from my engagement with grief, but it’s part of a broader life experience than that. The absence of wholeness in this world has been in front of my nose from the start, not least because my older brother is autistic. That meant I grew up having regular contact with people with physical and learning disabilities of various kinds and many levels of severity. Nonetheless, the death of my son Aidan shortly after he was born brought home to me in the strongest way possible how false any notion of wholeness in this world is. You could also view that poem as an exploration of the beatitude “Blessed are those who mourn.”

The line about being “at home with the box” indicates acceptance not only of our grief and brokenness but of the richer life that comes through engaging with it. I still rail against the unfairness of having had to bury my son—there are other poems in the book that explore that—but my life is all the richer for everything I’ve learnt, the people I’ve met and the greater closeness that I’ve developed with certain friends as a result of facing the loss head on.

Q: You've created a kind of internal dialogue between three voices in your use of English, Scots and Gaelic - three voices, one identity. Bearing in mind the global dominance of English and the decline of Scots and Gaelic, is there a political energy to this Trinitarian interaction?

There certainly is. There’s obviously the well-trodden path of trying to make the two lesser-used languages visible and grant them equal status to English in the poetry. However, there’s also the desire to disrupt the texture of standard English—the global language—with the Scots and Gaelic words. It’s a way of resisting that empire, to use a word that some may find controversial, and saying that I don’t identify with or belong to it entirely.

I like the way your phrase “Trinitarian interaction” anchors that element of resistance in a Christian context and gives a it spiritual underscore. Not everyone would recognise that or its relationship to the political, but that’s fine. It’s certainly part of the foundation for the writing.

It’s worth pointing out that English and Scots are part of my upbringing, so it’s natural for me to use them. Gaelic, by contrast, is a language I’ve been learning off and on over the past nine years, so its use is more conscious. I’m not yet anywhere near the stage where writing in Gaelic is as natural as writing in the other two.

Q: So has your work amongst politicians influenced your poetry?

A: You might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

My day job in the Scottish Parliament official report is very much focused on political language, and I don’t think it’s controversial to say that political language is somewhat lacking in poetry! Barack Obama is an exception, but I can’t think of anyone in this country who can match his oratorical skill. I’ve written two poems at most that have any direct connection to the day job, but if working in that milieu has done anything for my poetry, it has sharpened my desire to write with economy.

Q: “As we cool/we harden” you write in “The Road from Emmaus”. Motion, dynamism and journey together comprise a key theme of this collection, both in terms of form and content. What are the ‘cooling agents’ in your sights here, against which the poet or the pilgrim or the activist must remain hot?

A: Well, actually, that image is intended to communicate something more ambivalent: the comparison is to “red-hot iron hammered into shape”, which, although it must go through the red-hot stage to be formed, comes into its own only once it cools. There is an element of regret at passing from the red-hot stage to the hardened but there’s also a recognition that the hardening is a necessary part of growing and becoming what one is meant to be. So it’s still part of the journey, just a different phase. Those lines also reinvent or open up the Biblical image of the furnace, which is a commonplace of contemporary Christian worship songs.

Q: Your closing poem implies the necessity of saying the impossible-to-say. Is this a fundamentally religious position?

A: It’s a fundamental position for me a poet, certainly, and set in a deeply religious context, but I don’t find it easy or necessarily helpful to disentangle the religious from the aesthetic in the way your question might imply is possible. There’s also a lot of silence in the poems. “Poetry is only there to frame the silence,” says the poet Alice Oswald, and I imagine the Trinity as having silence at its heart: a profound, holy, loving silence that’s not the absence of noise but an intense kind of presence.

Q: How would you review Andrew Philip’s poetry?

A: At the risk of sounding evasive, I’d have to say it’s not for me to review my own work. But if asked to describe it, I would say I hope it’s poetry that engages the heart, the head, the eye and the ear; poetry that will draw you back with its music, its mystery and its power. And although there’s a strong religious element to it, I hope the non-religious reader can find pleasure and richness in it. So far, the reactions I’ve been getting indicate that it’s doing pretty much what I intended.

Andrew Philip's cyber-tour continues at Robert Peake's blog, 8 July.

Climate Bill redeemed?

A resounding endorsement of the finalised Scottish Climate Bill from Stop Climate Chaos Scotland:

I am delighted to report that the Scottish Climate Change Bill has now passed into legislation with most of our amendments and demands being met. I think it's safe to say we are delighted.

The Bill has its flaws, but lets enjoy the positives, it has 80% by 2050, 42% by 2020 (admittedly caveated), includes aviation & shipping (includes a multiplier for aviation), the energy efficiency amendment got through, the public engagement commitment, the lib dems cumulative reporting is in, the carbon impact of the full govt's annual budget, and the duty on public bodies. It is unequivocally the most ambitious climate legislation in the world today.

Perhaps this is now where the real work begins, and there is much still to do and achieve as a coalition. There has already been a back lash and sniping from various quarters. But in the bigger picture what the world needs more than anything is examples and thanks to SCCS' efforts it now has one.

Please help to get the message out to the rest of the world that the Bill has happened and lets hope others draw inspiration from it.

Thank you for your part in helping make this happen.

Mike Robinson, Chair of SCCS

From an email to all SCCS campaigners.

Andrew Philip on Boxologies, 2 July

I'm delighted to be able to give you a heads up that Andrew Philip's cyber-tour of his recent poetry collection will be stopping here a week on Thursday.

If you've not been following the tour to date, here are the details:

• 10 June - Our sweet old etcetera ...
• 17 June - The Crafty Writer
• 23 June - One Night Stanzas
• 26 June - Douglas Robertson
• 29 June - Dumbfoundry
• 02 July - Boxologies
• 08 July - Robert Peake
• 15 July - Cadwallender
• 22 July - Poetry Hut
• 29 July - Andrew Shields

Armed Forces Day: Soldiers of Peace trailer

Watch here.

Armed Forces Day: wear black

There's something deeply disturbing about the Government-endorsed Armed Forces Day, due to be 'celebrated' this Saturday.

We should however be encouraged that they feel the need to propagandise their wars in so vulgar a fashion. By concealing the context and reality of war from the people (for 'war' is a euphemism for unspeakable abuse) they also deprive their campaigns of the succour of popular support.

So they've contrived Armed Forces Day, promising to be the usual smokescreen: cloaking the dark heart of imperial greed in the innocent veil of individual heroism and bravery; disassociating our wars from our brutal imperial history and confining them to the eradication of an irrational recent evil such as the Taliban; ritually celebrating a blood sacrifice that puts a noble, human and familiar face on the bloodthirsty state deity.

Though individual soldiers endure pain and loss beyond most of our imaginations, it remains the fact that if people did not take up arms on behalf of their governments war could not be such an easy recourse. Therefore we should not celebrate the choices of those who, with whatever courage or selflessness, risk their lives at their government's bidding.

Wear black this Saturday.

Norman Finkelstein on Gandhi-ism in Palestine

Ezra Nawi - an article in Ha'aretz

"Bad times bring out the best in some people. Most of us remain passive, even willfully blind, in the face of great crimes that we see perpetrated on others, whether they are strangers or our next-door neighbors. But there will always be someone, probably just an ordinary decent person, to whom this rule doesn't apply - someone who will try to do the right thing at any cost, risking his or her well-being or even, perhaps, life itself. Ezra Nawi is such a man. He's a plumber by profession, a Jewish Jerusalemite, and he is also the unsung hero of the Israeli peace movement in the south Hebron hills. It's largely thanks to him that the Palestinian farmers in this area are still living on their land. Unless something happens to change the current prognosis, an Israeli court will sentence Nawi to jail on July 1."

Read more here.

An atheist reviews un|broken (and the cosmos)

I asked Rich Turner, an atheist friend of mine, to record his thoughts on the Exile Band's new un|broken album.

I never thought I'd ever be excited about the arrival of a Gospel album through the post, but then un|broken is a little different, and I'm even playing it on my iPod as I tap away at this keyboard. Let me explain. Track number 7, Love Song, is dedicated to “Rich and Wana”, and I'm the “Rich” bit. It's a great feeling having a song written for you, I can recommend it, and we were lucky enough to have Mark [Calder, songwriter] and his wife, Karen, perform it for us at our wedding celebration in Zambia in March 2008.

I'm referring to myself as an atheist in this piece and I'll try to clarify that later, but suffice to say that me and gospel music have never normally been great bed fellows. My wife is a committed Christian, and so my exposure to religious music has dramatically increased since we've been together, but even though I like to think that I'm open to all kinds of music and that I'm the world's greatest singer in the confines of my car – when alone, of course – on hearing it, I do find myself involuntarily reaching to turn the volume down. Not much, just below zero.

You see, when it comes to contemporary Christian music, and I can only really comment on this branch of religious music, I've found that I have a bit of a problem. It's always seemed to me that it's the lyrics that are the important bit and the music is an afterthought. Fair enough, I'm pretty certain they haven't been written for someone with my viewpoint, but I end up being able to concentrate entirely on the lyrics which I find hard to swallow to start with and then they're accompanied by a dreary tune. And they say the Spanish Inquisition was tough on non-believers! Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to get Christian people wishing they could swear at this, it's just my opinion, from my experience – I don't mean for it to sound sweeping. Hey, who could honestly say they didn't tap their feet to the great music in the film Sister Act?

Exile Band's un|broken is a refreshing change from the music I have come to dread. Now, I could be accused of being biased because of Mark Calder being a friend of mine, but there's not much I can do about that connection now, it's there. It's still a great album. Obviously, 'Love Song' is a track that's very special to me, and it triggers some amazing memories from our time in Zambia. As a result, I must confess that it does get played a little more than most.

The diversity of the band members is reflected in the mix of music styles on this album, but in every case the production is never neglected. 'Little by Little' delivers if you're into the Blues, 'Shining Light' provides a harder edge if you're in need of some rock ( I'm sure Mark once told me he was into thrash metal), and there's even a couple of tracks that wouldn't be out of place in one of Lord Webber's West End stage productions. I hope they take that as a compliment, the guy's very successful. So, despite my resistance, I now find myself singing along (ok, in the car) to these songs, and it's because they're good songs. 'Hallelujah' really is a stand out track, building brilliantly with layers of voices, oh, and mine over the top of it on the journey home from work. I don't even know what it means!

Will this album convert me to Christianity? No, I doubt it very much, but I don't think that's what it sets out to do. I get the feeling that these songs are personal to the performers, and I'm being allowed to just listen in on their thoughts. They'll be used to that though. And so I sing along, but I don't join in. That's atheists for you.

I suppose we're a little envious of the feeling of fellowship that sweeps through a group of people linked by a common belief, when they're belting out their songs of worship. Do the atheists have these opportunities? I'm not sure that they do – perhaps on the football terraces the common bond is felt, even if it is at the expense of the referee's optician. Of course, I should also acknowledge the audience at a Barry Manilow concert who manage to get themselves worked up to quite a fever. (And I should know, I've witnessed it – don't ask. Although I'm not sure that anyone has yet been prepared to die (or kill) just because some one didn't agree with the message of “Copacabana”.)

Again, I'm really not trying to offend people of faith by equating songs of worship with “Can't smile without you”, but that's how I, as an atheist, view it. I just don't get it. To me a fan is still just a fan, regardless of where their devotion is directed.

The thing is, even if atheists did get together for a sing-song, can you imagine what it would be like? What songs would they sing? A ridiculous scene springs to my mind of a bunch of people gathered in a leisure centre hall, with the Chief Boffin at the front (wearing of course, the ceremonial lab coat), introducing the next song. “And now we will sing hymn number 1 in your text books, a tune originally made popular by Ray Davies' pop combo, The Kinks. Please join in with me for 'I'm an ape man, I'm an ape, ape man'”.

It's not going to happen, is it? I do hope not.

So where can music play it's part in bridge building between people of opposing faiths or viewpoints? I'm not sure if it truly can. Unless it is that there is a recognition of the joy someone else can feel through the music of their faith, as they do from their own. The problem as I see it is that faith runs deep, and it's not much for bending, let alone breaking.

So when opposing views on religion meet head-on, no matter how courteous the exchange may be, each party is thinking to themselves, “Yep, that's all very well, but one day, my friend, you'll realize you've got it all wrong”. I am reminded of a discussion programme I recently saw on TV that had gathered together various religious leaders, which included amongst others, a Catholic Priest, a Muslim Imam, an Anglican female Vicar and a gay Priest, to discuss the role of religion, in front of a very vocal audience which included people from many other faiths also. Quite a debate ensued - “The Bible is the truth!”, “No! The Koran is the only way”, “U-uh, I think you'll find Hinduism pre-dates both of your books!”. And so it went on, and on. Eventually, the host (ironically, Terry Christian) calmed everyone down and went over to the end of the guests row to the guy who, through all the arguing, had sat very quietly. “You're an atheist,” said Terry,”what are your thoughts on what's been said so far?”.

He looked up to the host and very calmly said, “Well, I came here fully expecting a fight. I just had no idea that I wasn't going to be involved.” Brilliant.

I'm hoping that I don't give the impression that I'm Mr Grumpy-Pants just because I don't have a faith in my life, and I'd also hope that those that know me will vouch that generally I'm pretty happy with my lot in life – I consider myself very lucky. The reason I mention this is that as part of agreeing to share my atheist thoughts on theistic music, I was also asked to share my journey from agnostic to atheist as a result of the “Christianity Explored” Bible study group.

In truth, I was already an atheist, and had been for a long time. I have vague memories of saying my prayers at night up until I was maybe six or seven, but pretty soon I realised that either I was talking to myself, or He didn't much care for my problems – my dog didn't come back to life, the pretty girl at school still didn't love me, and West Brom were relegated again. So I managed to continue through life completely indifferent to religion, and yes, when I joined the cub scouts I did “promise to do my duty, to God and to the Queen”, but I didn't mean it. I just held on to one of the other promises - “I will do my best”.

To me, some people were religious, and some people weren't. It was all fine by me, whatever it took to float your boat (or Ark). This all changed when I met the girl who was to become my wife. As mentioned earlier, Wana is a committed Christian, it's part of who she is and the way
she is – and I love her.

Last year, Wana asked me if I would attend a bible study group that was being run by a couple from her church one evening a week for ten weeks. Oh. Initially I gave a flat “No thank you”, but she managed to change my mind with a subtle blend of constant pestering and the eventual promise that if, at the end of the course, I still couldn't see the point of it, she would never ask me to do anything like it again. My agreement also came with a condition from me; that she wasn't allowed to be angry with me for asking any awkward questions.

I hate fights. Always have. Confrontations get my insides into complete knots. So each Wednesday evening I could feel myself getting tense on the journey to the house where the meetings were held, then on the drive home I'd wonder what on earth I'd been so bothered about. The truth is, in general, I had a great time. The hosts were wonderful, they were open to my views, there was always some good banter between myself and the other seven attendees, and I couldn't fail to be impressed by some of the mental acrobatics used to try to answer some of the questions I had. A short DVD would be shown to us at the start of each session, where the presenter would usually recount something about his life and then relate it to something in the stories of Jesus or a section in the Bible explaining what God expects of us.

Week one was a cracker, it went something like this – The DVD began by showing us some sights of absolute wonder, from sunsets, waterfalls, snow topped mountains and newborn lambs playing in the dewy Spring morning, to rainbows, pretty flowers and migrating wildebeest on the African plains. Wow! Then on came the presenter to explain that all this was happening because of God.

Here goes, I thought. “Why then”, I asked, “didn't the footage then go onto plane crashes, disease, famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, or maybe even a child dying with a brain tumour (a friend of mine had just lost her three year old son to this awful illness).

The presenter could then go on to say “Oh yes, God is also responsible for all of this”?.

I never got a straight answer to any of my questions, always just a riddle, or “it was all part of God's plan”. Planning's not his strong point then. There was, however, one occasion when I asked why China had been struck by those devastating earthquakes, and the answer one guy gave me was that “they must have been sinners and so deserved to die”.

Mind you, he was the same guy who, at one meeting, announced that he'd read in the paper that a scientist had proved the existence of God. This was big news, world news, and I wondered why I hadn't heard or seen anything about it on the radio or TV. I inquired which newspaper I should buy on the way home even though, surely, they must be sold out now. It transpired, however, that it was a story in the “Good News” newspaper that gets handed out at church. That would explain it, he'd read it in the “religious man's Sunday Sport”.

I was always amazed at how, for some, the Bible, this immovable object, this truth, this word of God, suddenly became really flexible when faced with science. They would say things like -
“yes, I know it says seven days, but a day was probably the same as a thousand years back then”. Really? So why wasn't it so flexible before the boffins worked out that it couldn't possibly be true? Why were people being tortured for questioning it? How much of the rest of it is open to interpretation?

I'll be honest, I did become rather all consumed with finding out more and more ways to pick holes in faith and in the Bible, reading all sorts of books and scouring the internet for articles by like-minded people. I even thought, secretly, that once the people at these meetings had heard my concrete reasoning, that they would see that I was right all along. They didn't. I was the daft one for thinking that they would. I had to concede that logic and faith aren't even in the same room together, so they're never going to meet head to head. Science looks at the Bible, or indeed any of the Holy books, and it concentrates on the gaps. Faith fills the gaps in. I'm still with the scientists on this but I figure that's OK.

With all this research I was doing there was one thing I did figure out about myself. I found out that an atheist isn't someone who doesn't believe in God, but rather someone who doesn't believe a god. So, to a Hindu, a Christian is an atheist and vice-versa. Of course, this meant that I was going to these Bible study evenings with a whole group of atheists – the only difference being that I believed in one less god than they did. So what did that make me? Well, it turns out that I must be a Humanist, believing in the ability to lead a moral life without a deity or ancient scriptures. So now I find I've got a label too! How did that happen? When I first met Wana, she asked me if I believed in God. My answer was “No, but I do believe in good”.

I can feel a song coming on! Join in if you know the words -

“I'm an ape man, I'm an ape, ape man
Oh, I'm an ape man...

Free speech and scepticism

I was interested by Searchlight's repetition that "we don't support free speech for fascists" in the wake of the Nick Griffin egging event the other day.

At first I thought this was going to trigger an internal war between my irrepressibly liberal Mr Hyde and my communitarian (if anti-state) socialist Dr Jekyll. Turns out they agreed.

Contra Searchlight, my ideological opinion is that free speech should be an absolute right although I would also support the right of hecklers to intervene in anyway that does not pose any physical danger to the speaker. Eggs are most appropriate. Incidentally, and more controversially, I don't believe incitement should be a crime either, only the physical violence that it may provoke.

In any case, my main objection is that restricting free speech removes the opportunity to negate ridiculous, false and dangerous arguments. Of course there will always be some with bizarre views, and I do think all of us are inclined to believe some things simply because we want them to be true.

But, recklessly to adapt the adage, some of us fool ourselves some of the time but we all can't fool ourselves all of the time.

For example, consider the bizarre chunnerings of Bjoern Lomborg, a political scientist, economist and writer who became very rich by denying, audaciously with no relevant expertise, the overwhelming consensus of peer-reviewed climate science and who writes in today's Guardian that we shouldn't overemphasise man-made climate change because it scares kids.

The fact is, his views are relatively common despite all the evidence.

If there were scientific disagreement on the reason for the death of the canary in the mine, I would still be pretty inclined to take radical policy steps to avoid the 50% chance that it was all about to blow up. That there is barely any disagreement of this sort makes our governments' inaction - and our complicity - utterly scandalous.

We are a public that is willing to disregard the views of those who have actually studied this because the effects of climate change constitute, to coin a phrase, an inconvenient truth.

Now Searchlight may say: that's what happens when you allow people with dangerous views a platform.

I would counter that it's precisely because the relevant contextual facts about climate science are largely absent in the public discourse: not simply what's happening, but the how and whom of our arrival at these facts.

We may hear reports of another bleak climate forecast, and I have no reason to doubt it, but we are rarely given an insight into the extent the research behind the forecast conformed to academic standards or where it fits with the existing consensus - or the esteem in which a report's authors are held amongst peers.

Likewise, the current conflict in Iran. The internal politics of Iran isn't an area of particular expertise for me, and I was uncomfortable with the fact that, from listening to and reading the mainstream media, I had heard very few hard facts about vote-rigging. There seemed to be an automatic leap from 'Ahmadinejad is bad' to 'Mousavi represents the disenfranchised majority in the country', assuming that we don't need any evidence to make the leap. I became increasingly suspicious of the mainstream media's line, until I spoke to an Iranian friend who pointed me in the direction of some useful material which makes a pretty compelling case.

The fact is the evidence is there, and it ought to be presented. If it's not, scepticism is inevitable.

Is this too much to ask of popular news? No I really don't think it is. During the American elections I raved about the Truth-o-Meter at the St Petersburg Times. I'm glad to say they have kept it up. It provides pithy analyses of statements made by public figures with additional background information and research. It makes getting to the context easy, and gives enough information to allow me to disagree if necessary with their conclusions.

Whether regarding climate science, the EU, immigration or the economy, I believe people will in general ask of everything they hear on the news: why should I believe that? Because politicians and the media actively prevent us from having all the facts on contentious issues, we are denied them through habit on uncontentious issues.

In fact this sceptical question should be encouraged from the very youngest age. But, when we have good reason to believe something, it should also be answered.

What now for the one-state solution?

As Heathlander points out, Khaled Meshaal's two-state concession is way, way more original and significant that Netanyahu's widely-covered speech last week repeating the old Bantustan 'solution' - of which, happily, the non-Zionist Israeli blogosphere was unanimous in its derision.

Those who worry that Meshaal's statement undermines the binational one-state solution may have a point, and there are now no major parties in Palestinian politics calling actively for a binational solution. But it has long been my belief that if ever we are to reach a single democratic binational state, a Holy Land federation, the necessary interim is two states coexisting for some time, perhaps some considerable time.

That this preserves the current and historical conflict is undoubtedly true. But it also levels the playing field upon which future engagement can be carried out.

Hamas have again siezed the initiative and seem to be the only actor in the conflict currently making meaningful gestures towards a long-term and just peace.

Steph Macleod wins Troubadour

Delighted to hear that Steph won the Troubadour competition in Berlin last night. You can hear him play a couple of songs for free in Inverurie this Friday, from 8pm at the Acorn Centre!

Grassroots organisation within the system?

Ex-NF man, now community leader Phil Andrews, offers this useful reflection on stopping the BNP.

Belated reflections on Obama's Cairo speech

There is reason to be encouraged by Obama's speech in Cairo last week, and there are causes for concern. The fact that this sentence could have been written by Zionists, Islamists, militants, liberals, conservatives and pretty much anyone is testimony to his oratory if nothing else, but it's also evidence of the statement's truth.

The biggest thumbs-up from me is once again for his approach: respectful, dignified and humble. That the bemused Wall Street Journal could find nothing new in Obama's speech compared to Bush policy is worthy of further reflection, which I'll give below, but is largely to miss the point.

Few Arabs I spoke to ever despised Bush because he wanted to get rid of Saddam or Osama bin Laden, or even that he had a rather elevated absolutist view of parliamentary democracy. Rather, they hated his arrogant "New Middle East" agenda that failed ever to convey respect or esteem for the Middle East that already exists in its compelling diversity, proud history and rich culture. Bush's blinkered engagement with the region spoke only of American supremacy despite the very chequered history of US involvement in the region.

In contrast, from the outset Obama spoke in the careful but robust language of respect-despite-difference that one might encounter in one of Cairo's maqhas. He spoke of being honoured by the platform at Al-Azhar, he wished the audience (God's) peace in Arabic, he listed the achievements of Islam, the historical record of which for racial equality and religious tolerance soars above that of Christendom.

He avoided patronising generalisations such as Bush's "Islam is a religion of peace", and spoke eloquently of shared specifics. He quoted the Qur'an in a manner that took account of the context of the quotes, rather than simply as debate fodder.

This is not meaningless window dressing. To have made this effort is to invite engagement; to have delved into culture and history is to provide the kind of context, the necessary story, that moderates gut reactions and stalls prejudice.

When it comes to intercultural dialogue, the medium is probably the most important part of the message.

But, following the Wall Street Journal, we should certainly take note of the content. They are not correct to say there was no substantive difference in comparison to Bush. Notably, there was some sympathetic and quite aposite analysis of the troubled relationship between the US and Islam, tying it fairly to globalisation and American economic dominance. He also explained why American Islamophobia has strengthened in the wake of 9/11 whilst explicitly condemning it.

And then he addressed areas of difference specifically. This is of course where I become more ambivalent, and where the Journal's comparison becomes more valid. He began by looking at American 'engagement' in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then moved on to Palestine.

The juxtaposition was unfortunate:

We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case. And that's why we're partnering with a coalition of 46 countries.

Versus:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed... Hamas must put an end to violence.

Wince. If one excepts violence by states (which I don't) one can not simply dismiss violence by non-state actors. Were Obama to lay down American arms, cut American defence budgets and remove American imperial troops from strategic locations such as Saudi Arabia, then he could arguably legitimately lecture the Palestinians on violence (and, notably, would take the US out of Osama bin Laden's line of fire) but until then he would be better not to advocate nonviolence to the weak from a position of strength.

But it got better. His statement of support for Israel was a statement of fact more than anything, and with Ahmadinejad in his sights, he reiterated the importance of grasping the "tragic history" of the Jewish people. It is wholly fair to tie this to the Zionist impulse, whatever one thinks about Zionism itself. He was also relatively robust in his assertion of Palestinian rights, short of recognising the legal right of armed resistance.

He stated his belief in nuclear non-proliferation for all, and even more boldly decried the Arab regimes' use of Israel as a Macguffin and urged democratic reform rooted in common human aspirations rather than Western Enlightenment utopianism. "The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems" he had said earlier.

This delighted his audience, who burst into applause as soon as he came - conscious of his anti-democratic host - to points four and five, democracy and religious freedom.

The Wall Street Journal editorial stated that there wasn't clear policy daylight between Bush and Obama, and in so much as both called for democratisation, religious freedom and a rejection of non-state violence they're correct. In fairness, we shouldn't forget that Obama and Bush represent roughly the same long term economic interests.

However, the fact that Obama has forsaken the attitude of imperial bully means that it's far less likely that US interventions will lead to bloodshed, or that support will rally behind extremist groups.

A rant

I have never come so close to not voting. I voted half-heartedly in the end, and I would suspect that among the 34% of the registered electorate who voted last week, I was not alone.

The response from incumbent policy makers has been the usual: "The public are saying they are dissatisfied so we need to start listening..."

No, no, no. You say that after every election when the number of votes cast drops even further, and each time you maintain the status quo with a supposed mandate. You do not have a mandate either to govern or to oppose, you are all minority parties.

The current electoral regime cannot command a turnout even approaching a pitiful 50% for most elections, and little more than that for Westminster elections.

And don't blame the electorate for "letting" the BNP in. The fact is that half of the country doesn't seem to think a few BNP policy makers would be much worse than the current lot in the current system, so perhaps its worth pointing the finger back at yourselves.

If you were really listening to the voice of the absent majority, you would be doing some serious work on making the political regime relevant and decision making processes inclusive. You would empower local community groups, encourage participation in grassroots activity (rather than ignoring it in favour of vested party interests) and encourage those outside of your entrenched parties to participate in the policy-making process.

Resisting change won't benefit anyone in the long run, except those who feed off dissatisfaction. It's time to give a bit of power away. Please.

What Mandy would have told the waverers?

The parliamentary Labour party would be mad to dispense with Brown right now. A change of leader would make the calls for an immediate general election absolutely deafening, and holding one this summer would be infinitely worse for Labour than holding one in a year's time.

Were the Tories to take over now, a visionless and vacuous right would enjoy the political fruits of the now pretty inevitable economic turnaround, and Labour would be finished, perhaps for good. The left would be resurgent, the right would be intransigent, the party would become even more irrelevant.

Which is why the more intelligent Blairites have not jumped on the bandwagon of would be assassins, currently populated by - how to put it? - people of unproven ability. For Mandelson and others, the risk of a big swing left and political obscurity is just too great to be countenanced.

Of course, the press makes it look like Brown is just digging in because he's a control-freak oblivious to the popular will. In fact, his resolve is actually rather astute and, regardless of whether his own credibility can be restored, probably works in the whole party's favour.

All that said, Labour still have to do a huge amount of work if it is to restore to itself any semblance of a popular movement.

A couple of other things to reflect on in the light of the EU election results. Only UKIP and the SNP can really claim to have had a fantastically good night. The Greens' laudable 2.4% increase in vote share hasn't translated into seats. The Tories' progress is very limited. There is no rising tide of support for Cameron and no reliable thumbs up for anyone except Salmond's lot. (In fact, the SNP had a 0.72% rise in the share of the UK-wide vote, only 0.01% lower than the Tories' increase.)

The Tories have not really capitalised on Labour's predicament. It is therefore still conceivable that Labour will make up a hefty minority of MPs in the next parliament, providing it is their government that sees the UK through the next few months.

Teitur at King Tut's

My first introduction to Teitur was at the AECC last April where, as a support act to K.T. Tunstall, he managed to fill the cavernous arena with a larger than life performance delivered through the wholly irresistible persona of a jester-poet, a court bard, a wise fool.

His quirky stories and sparkling melodies shone more brilliantly than the affable and perfectly enjoyable headliner for me: just a solo performer, his guitar and keyboard, and a few thousand punters who'd never heard of him. It was spectacularly good.

Since then I've become pretty familiar with his music and was excited about seeing him in the far more intimate surroundings of King Tut's in Glasgow. Teitur could pretty much have shaken every audience member's hand from the stage, and gone was the theatrical artifice. Instead, sporting a Phil Collins t-shirt and cardigan, he was understated and chatty - even, boldly, at the expense of Scotland's football team.

Largely this worked well. He writes stunning songs and his eclectic musicianship is reminiscent of The Guillemots' Fyfe Dangerfield. Barring a hiccup during 'We still drink the same water' (which he could have covered, but instead chose to point it out with an appeal to the audience's patience) the ambitiously arranged songs taken from his latest album The Singer were full of dynamic intensity, delivered by a tightly rehearsed band. Amongst these, a meandering version of 'Don't let me fall in love with you' stood out.

But strangely, in this small club context, shorn of his more flamboyant persona which might indeed have been a little incongruous at Tut's, he came across as somewhat more distant and disengaged than The Singer character he used to such effect at the AECC.

Last night the highlights were his chokingly beautiful rendition of 'Josephine', taken from his most radio-friendly first album Poetry and Aeroplanes, and other more accessible tunes such as 'Louis, Louis' and 'Catherine the waitress', which he played with joyful abandon.

Alas, I wonder if the caricaturial artifice that is demanded by a larger arena is a necessary vehicle of real vulnerability ("People break into tears for reasons I don't know/They want to understand me but I sing to be loved.") rather than the emphasis on unpretentiousness in the ostensibly more authentic setting of a small rock club.

The Tut's staff did a great job of keeping a lid on the drunken heckling of the less receptive in the audience, but this shouldn't be necessary for a talent such as Teitur.

Maybe the ideal venue for Teitur would be small seated theatres, where we'd have the benefit of intimacy but where he'd be more liberated to be whichever character the songs demand.

I'm increasingly convinced that vulnerability is often best communicated through the intermediary of a performance persona, rather than through the self-conscious proclamations of a 'bloke with a guitar'.

All that said, taken purely as a musical performance, Teitur was brilliant last night. I do want to understand him, but I love him too.

To fear the BNP?

It would be a genuine shock if the bravado talk of the BNP were to materialise as electoral gains this Thursday. While the odd councillor here or there may get in, the fact is their record as councillors is atrocious and, to some extent, speaks for itself.

However, being a Black Countryman I know that shocks happen. Searchlight shows how small changes in turnout could dramatically increase BNP influence in British politics. I even received a BNP leaflet up here in Inverurie of all places.

What's more, things change very quickly. Remember how rapidly the Nazis went from a bunch of brown-shirted thugs in German inner-cities to the popular government of Europe's largest population and the rulers of swathes of this continent?

The absurd Westminster circus is being shown for what it is, while the system of global capital is increasingly looking like an Emperor in the nude. Unsurprisingly people are insecure and looking outside of the discredited mainstream.  Alas, when fear prevails so does evil, and the BNP's beliefs are irredeemably evil.

However, there's a tendency to counter the politics of fear with fear. We shouldn't fear. The fact is that the BNP's heritage and essence is manifestly vicious and vile, and our society is not yet so degraded as to embrace it wholesale.

I say this only as a call to ploughshares:

• Identify and remove the shoots of hatred in every conversation in which they emerge.
• Conspicuously embrace the racial and religious Other such that we stand in the majority with those who would bear the violent brunt of a BNP ascendancy: ethnic minorities, asylum seekers, homosexuals, gypsies, and indeed those who most vociferously oppose the BNP such as anti-fascist campaigners.
  
• Actively campaign against the BNP wherever they stand for election, even if you don't vote for another party.
  
• Recognise the real hardships and legitimate complaints of those who are considered 'natural' BNP voters, particularly in neglected and impoverished housing estates where much of the burden of supporting immigration is endured.
  
• And crucially, fight for local grassroots democratisation such that politics is not confined to the distant arenas of our parliaments, because an irrelevant regime is much easier to hijack.

There is some useful information on this Facebook group page, as well as on Searchlight's website.

Scottish Climate Bull

No policy debate was of more importance to Scotland's future than that around the Scottish Climate Bill, voted through this week. But to describe it as a missed opportunity is a gross understatement.

In failing to set annual targets now it ties the current government to nothing much at all. Annual targets for the government in power in 2020? Hoorah!

This is the landfill mindset of policy making, the temporal 'out of sight, out of mind' short-termism of parochial conservatism, and also constitutes a scandalous betrayal of previously expressed beliefs by supposedly social democratic members of parliament, such as our First Minister.

That Labour joined the SNP in this is, I suppose no surprise. In fact, I read this from Bob Thomson, the former chairman and treasurer of the Scottish Labour Party, in the current Scottish Left Review:

In my view Labour has actually been saved in Scotland by being forced to go into coalition with the Lib Dems. In my view, if they had been able to, they would have been even more cautious and New Labour. If you look at how Labour in Scotland talks about things it mainly seems to be about how little they could get away with doing before anyone would start to complain.

Amen.

Credit to Alison McInnes and Patrick Harvie for fighting for something a bit more robust at the committee level.

boxthejack on Mars Hill

Paul Burgin has very kindly asked me to answer his now legendary 20 Questions to a fellow blogger on his Mars Hill blog. I am number 123.

Please don't hold me to my answers about favourite songs and all that though.

Scott Rennie etc.

First off, I want to disown a couple of arguments that have been made in defence of Scott Rennie's appointment as a minister of the Kirk.

1. God made him homosexual therefore homosexuality can't be wrong therefore it's not an issue. This isn't really an argument unless you are happy to say that every sexual inclination, or even every behaviour to which one may be genetically predisposed, is legitimate. People are born with all sorts of traits, some positive, some negative some neutral. It's just as intelligible to say: 'God made him prone to fits of temper therefore...' or 'God made her a paedophile therefore...' or 'God made them racist therefore...'. Of course, I'm not equating homosexuality with any of the above - I'm just pointing out that innateness isn't proof of rightness.

2. Christian unity is too important to sacrifice therefore we must put aside our personal convictions. This is another argument that few would follow to its logical conclusion. If I belonged to a church organisation and it were to nominate a leader who believed that the unfettered pursuit of wealth was legitimate - as many, many do - I would speak out, and if I wasn't heard I may have to leave. It's not a takfir against the church or the leader. In an organisational expression of church in which you allegedly belong to something more than each other (a post for another time!) you can't last long pushing against the tide, whatever the issue.

So. The basic question is this: should a church accept homosexual practice among those who identify with it, and among those tasked with leading others under its auspices? 

My thoughts:

The big texts

Those who say 'no' would likely reach for proof texts such as this from 1 Corinthians and this from Romans. I'm not satisfied by this approach. For a start, as some have explained it with reference to the Corinthian sex market, male homosexuality in New Testament times was an expression of domination over the vulnerable, such as slaves. Paul doesn't condemn female homosexuality, you Greek scholars may notice, but arsenokoitai, a male homosexual practice. What is in his sights here? Two men in lifelong covenant one to another? I hardly think so.

Similar arguments can be made even more easily when looking at Lot, Sodom and all that.

The bigger Text

But before we know it, we've moved from exegesis to hermeneutics, and that's where most of my energies will be directed. There is a tendency in the evangelical churches in particular, but actually throughout the church whenever it suits us, to take texts on a supposed 'face value' that actually deprives them of meaning. 

Whenever you hear of 'plain literal meaning' or 'face value', beware. This is almost always selective. For example, I have never once heard a Christian say that eating rare steak is wrong. That verse about blood is 'cultural' apparently, as if other verses are acultural, and carry their full meaning even when isolated and embroidered onto a flowery wall hanging. 

In fact, all scripture is the product of and in dialogue with a specific culture - aye, even the 10 Commandments. Perhaps the truth and beauty of some texts seem closer to the surface, but there's always some mining to be done. I don't dismiss the 10th Commandment because it aims at those who covet their neighbour's donkey rather than me. Of course not. I attempt to ascertain what attitude of the heart is being challenged, or what attitude is being promoted.

So for example, in a game of proof-text tennis I could win an ace against divorce because Jesus said: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

Job done. Divorce is wrong. 

Nonsense. Surely we should bear the question in mind as we read the answer. Jesus is responding to a manipulative question by saying: 'you're using the law to legitimise your selfishness at whatever cost to the woman you abandon. If you want to know what that selfishness looks like to God, it's the same as the adultery you'd be so quick to condemn as deserving of death.' 

And the challenge is this, in full resonance with the bulk of scripture: you who are so quick to attack sexual deviance, actually it's your use of power in the most intimate relationships that is deviant. 

He holds a mirror up to his interlocutors and stops them in their tracks. Taken in the context of the dialogue with the Pharisees, the most obvious truth of this statement is not in fact 'divorce is wrong', regardless of whether it is in fact right or wrong. That doesn't seem to be Jesus' point. The truth of this statement is in his exposing the attitude of those posing the question. 

Jesus, laws and the law

Incidentally, that is why it is also missing the point to suggest that Jesus overturns the Old Testament law. He doesn't. Jesus just points out that the law is not a transcendent thing at all, but a localised expression of the transcendent God's broken heart for his creation. When Jesus tells people effectively to ignore the law, it's not a problem with the law he's got, but a problem with their use of it, which elevates adherence to laws above adherence to the law as an expression of God's heart.

The New Testament writers therefore follow Jesus' lead in saying: 'OK, this isn't about law, it's about grace.' How should we live if we are seeking first the Kingdom, the heart of God for his world?

God's best?

Here we may encounter the most compelling argument against the appointment of a homosexual pastor. An argument can be made from biology that, if sexuality is at all related to procreation, God's 'best' is covenantal and exclusive heterosexuality. Lifelong monogamy. Now, from scripture you could argue against the exclusive bit. The patriarchs had a few wives to choose from after all. But this notwithstanding, let's say God's original design was heterosexual marriage.

We do not live in Eden. From scripture, it was not God's design that we should eat the dead bodies of other animals, that we should wear clothes, or that we should ever have to struggle. However, I think feasting on meat can be a great thing, and something that can honour God. Likewise our fashion choices. Likewise our struggling.

Likewise monogamous homosexuality. Is it not possible that the God of the Bible can be pleased by a homosexual covenantal relationship, by love lived out sacrificially and exclusively? Does God not delight in a relationship between two men or two women where love such as that described elsewhere in 1 Corinthians is outworked? Is it not abuse that grieves him, the subjugation of the vulnerable by the powerful, the exploitation of intimacy for the satisfaction of one's own desires? 

From the sheer weight of texts from every possible context, and with all necessary exegetical mining undertaken, these things are seriously dark, and seriously everywhere.

And aren't these the things that we are all in danger of missing in our own relationships when we focus on law enforcement? What would be Jesus' reply to our question: is it lawful?

This all may or may not mean that Scott Rennie is an appropriate pastor for his church. That's not for me to say. But I agree with the Kirk's provisional decision: his current living arrangement is not to be a barrier.

Qunfuz

Regarding Obama's forthcoming visit to Cairo, I thought this comment by Qunfuz on Maysaloon was worthy of a post of its own:

Here comes the Grand Obama Muslim World Peace Hug Initiative, in which backward peoples will proclaim in concert the righteousness of zionist claims to Palestine, and Israel will allow the establishment of a thriving Arab state on a football pitch outside Nablus. Hoorah!

un|broken: personal reflections

So the album's out, and I am well pleased. I knew the songs were carefully chosen and the production team (of Colin Peckham, Dave Biddulph and Euan McRae) highly creative, but there were no guarantees the album would work as a unit.

It really does. Rebecca Hardie's Do you not know? made me weep; Steph's Little by little almost caused me to veer off the road in Dundee. My songs - well, I spend my whole time critiquing the vocal performance so can't really judge. But that it holds together so well is remarkable.

Euan put hundreds and hundreds of hours into making this happen in a matter of weeks, and he will get a pint the next time I see him. Dave takes enormous credit for making the thing happen in the first place, taking the songs and suping up their engines with his band of beat mechanics, and for keeping the project together.

Meanwhile Colin's arrangements are truly awesome - at times breathtaking. They don't just add depth and nuance, they are hugely sensitive interpretations of the originals that demonstrate a poetic sensibility as well as simply a keen grasp of harmony. His arrangements accentuate and elaborate the songs' meanings as well as adding depth to the sound.

But more than anything it's a collaboration wherein ownership over the music has been very widely shared. For some songs, the arrangers list could have been seven or eight people long; sometimes arrangers became almost co-writers. My song Thirteen, for example, owes much to playing versions of it with Steph acoustically last year.

Hence, in letting go of our songs, they've come back to us richer. They may have individual names next to them, but they're the product of a creative engagement that must be pretty rare indeed.

Anyway, you can buy it here. Hope you like it.

Euro elections: check or bet?

Scandalous as the expenses debacle has been - and so much more scandalous following the indignant response of so many of the dramatis personae - this is not in itself a reason to wash one's hands of the entire system. It is by no means inconceivable that parliament will now reform itself such that this can't happen again, and perhaps the MPs returned at the next general election will do less to dishonour the reputation of the House than the incumbents.

That said, it does no harm to the views of those who would argue that our UK liberal democratic system is a sham, wherein the process is symbolic, the decision-making distant, and the arena of debate restricted and inaccessible. These are views put most robustly by libertarian communists and other anarchists who would wish either to live regardless of the law or to engage the system towards its downfall.

These are views for which I have some considerable sympathy. Having worked in the office of an excellent MSP, I would nevertheless struggle to affirm the process in which she works. Political parties representing membership cliques set the agendas, such that well-meaning politicians direct their energies towards the promotion of an already finished programme, rather than towards fulfilling the expressed aspirations of their constituents. A robust contest of visions in the political arena is quite unheard of - it's rather more like listening to a bunch of mechanics discuss how best to tinker with an under-performing engine.

It might be argued, then, that voting provides a bankrupt system with the dinner dress it needs to maintain the sham.

Abstaining is the equivalent of holding onto one's cards believing that aspirations for an wholly differnt polity are worth retaining against the shoddy hand of the status quo. But there are a couple of reasons why I may yet vote in the Euro elections:

• It is possible, particularly at European Parliament elections, to vote for parties that believe in a transfer of power away from the centre towards decision-making strata at which more people can exercise power effectively.
• The aspiration of genuinely local, democratic and organic grassroots organisation is something that can happen extra to the system that discourages it, so we are not yet at a position of no compromise with the system.
  
• We may, by not voting, allow out and out fascists into positions of influence because they're willing to play the game. Perhaps we should swallow our pride.

Statist socialism or liberlaism isn't for me. As such, I expect I will be voting Green next month, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.

Speaker/silencer

Last week, in conversation with an outraged friend, I expressed my thoughts much along the lines of Stephen Fry's opinion regarding this whole expenses fiasco.

So politicians are much like everyone else - it's just they haven't regulated themselves to the same extent as they've regulated the public. That's what happens when power is located in so few hands.

But the last couple of days' parliamentary proceedings have been something else. The politician who suggests that it's rather missing the point to investigate a leak revealing widespread malpractice, gets personally attacked by the institution's supposedly aloof figurehead. It reminds me of the attitude of the NHS in the Margaret Haywood saga.

Then, when a veteran colleague implies that the Speaker spoke out of turn, he's told to consider resigning.

Michael Martin is a very, very appropriate public face for our parliament just now, and while it's perhaps appealing to imagine him dragged from the chair, it may be better to leave him there - that would surely hasten the day we can convert Westminster Palace into a profitable museum.

un|broken: what's it all about?

I've contributed five songs to an album due out next month released by the Exile band. I wrote this initially for the new un|broken Facebook group.

ON A THUNDERY day in Mull, while the rest of the band were in the studio laying down similarly thunderous drums, growling bass lines, and tuning Steph's guitar, Colin and I sat down to discuss the message - what's this album about?

A number of key themes characterised the material that made it onto the album: light and dark, hope and doubt, repentance and resistance, elation and despair, God's presence and absence.

As we discussed what brought these themes together the image of Jacob wrestling God at Peniel was in my mind, alongside the words of Jesus quoting Isaiah: "a bruised reed I shall not break".

For me, these scriptures speak of a God who engages with the honestly wrestling, the honestly doubting, the honestly praising.

What could it possibly mean that God "could not overpower" Jacob? Perhaps it has something to do with Divine refusal to break the bruised - his preference for the seeking, knocking, and hungering over the Pharisee with only unbending legalistic certainty.

So un|broken? Colin suggested dividing up the word to convey the core tension - unbrokenness being a function of brokenness. Restoration arises out of the very brokenness that invites and presages engagement with God.

As it happens, the next day Colin opened his Bible for personal devotions to find both Genesis 32 (Peniel) and Matthew 12 (bruised reed) on the menu. The name stuck.

[Advance copies of un|broken will be available from www.inexile.net from 18 May, and from Wesley Owen and the Faith Mission bookshops in Edinburgh.]

Holy Saturday: Be Afraid

So the stone has been rolled over the entrance to the tomb, and we have walked away: the final failure of God.

With our rabbi we buried our hope, and without hope there's only the voice of Empire, unchallenged, saying: "Be afraid, be afraid."

Be afraid of terrorism. Do not risk freedom.

Be afraid of moral degradation. Do not risk engagement.

Be afraid of economic meltdown. Do not risk an economy of grace, justice and codependency.

Be afraid of losing. Do not risk walking with the last.

Be afraid of poverty. Do not risk self-sacrifice for the whole.

Be afraid of Them. Do not risk hospitality.

Be afraid of death. Do not risk life to the full.

Be afraid of anything that isn't this. Do not risk anything else.

On Holy Saturday, there is no Psalm 46.

ADL: Puh-lease!

Those chaps at the Anti-Defamation League have excelled themselves. Apparently this is "hideously anti-semitic".

As the Angry Arab points out: "it is not anti-Semitic if you even demonize and denigrate Israel, just as it is not anti-Islamic to demonize and denigrate Saudi Arabia. Personally, I demonize both states and call on everybody to join me, the sound bites of Zionist hoodlums notwithstanding."

Quite. In fact, seeing as I've mentioned him, check out his (As'ad Abu Khalil's) book The Battle for Saudi Arabia. 

Textual Occupation

I was chatting to a Palestinian Christian the other day who said she had stopped going to church because "they use the Old Testament". This was in the context of a discussion about Zionist, especially Christian Zionist, uses of the texts to justify and sanctify a colonialist endeavour.

It was not possible for me to pursue this further with her, but it broke my heart. The occupation of these texts by the oppressor is a violence of far more consequence that that of material theft - it is a seizure of part of her community's heritage, her story. It is profoundly disempowering.

What's more, from a Christian perspective, it is a bitterly ironic victory of Babylon over the dispossessed Covenant people.

Rob Bell's latest book is a wonderfully accessible presentation of a hermeneutic that unleashes the transforming power of the whole Bible as a story of liberation. He also critiques the dominant hermeneutic of Christendom, in which injustice, power and satiation are justified by manipulating the voices of the oppressed, powerless and impoverished.

I wonder whether there exists an indigenous Palestinian hermeneutic that can reclaim this territory for the people on behalf of whom these texts speak? Naim Ateek's Justice and Only Justice may come close to presenting one. I should possibly read it again. 

After all, those Palestinians who read the Old Testament as their story are liberating the texts from the shackles of power and oppression, and are restoring holy land to its rightful inhabitants.

Who broke the Gaza ceasefire (part 2)

The full UN report is here.

Interesting closing recommendation that: "It be recognized that the Palestinian right of resistance under international law within the limits of international humanitarian law continually collides with Israeli security concerns as occupying Power, requiring basic adjustments in the relationship of the parties premised on respect for the legal rights of the Palestinian people; and that sustainable peace in Gaza requires the permanent lifting of the blockade in the short term, and a diplomatic process that seeks peace in accordance with the requirements of international law in the long term."

The return of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad

If the US hadn't backed Ethiopian troops who toppled Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad in 2006, Somalia might have arrived here rather sooner.

Activist abducted by Egyptian secret police

From the Middle East Times:

"A German-Egyptian arrested by security forces near Cairo following a non-violent march in support of Gaza has sparked an international conundrum and left protesters and rights groups frustrated over the state's maltreatment of peace activists.

Philip Rizk, a filmmaker and postgraduate student at the American University in Cairo (AUC), had joined 14 others in a 10 kilometer (six mile) march on the outskirts of Cairo on Friday, but his whereabouts are a mystery after he was arrested and transferred to an unknown location.

The activists, part of the "To Gaza" campaign, had been marching in solidarity with Palestinians and to raise awareness about the effects of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Rizk had spent two years working in Gaza before returning to Cairo to study one and a half years ago."

See Ben's blog for more.

There's a great deal of insecurity at the top in Egypt. Favour with the US has been bought at a very high cost.

Fear wins Israeli elections

Dr Avishai, Haim Watzman and, in particular, Heathlander have more to say.

Who broke the Gaza ceasefire?

I thought it was generally accepted that Israel broke the ceasefire having allegedly discovered a suspicious tunnel, 4 November, but I've seen the opposite asserted a number of times on article comment threads.

Here's Mark Regev conceding that Hamas hadn't broke the ceasefire at this time.

Rubeiz on Palestinian resistance

In a very brief article Dr Rubeiz has gotten to the heart of the matter: Palestinians pay the price for Israel's existential fear. Exacerbating it is counterproductive.

Effective resistance will remove the straw man, it will be nonviolent, it will transcend factionalism, it will not be dominated by big men, it will be utterly invincible.

Thank God, some people believe it.

Obama: an optimistic interpretation of silence

The world's disappointment with Obama's silence during the ongoing conflict in Gaza is hardly surprising, bearing in mind the burden of expectation upon his shoulders. 

However, when the alternative to silence appears to be feeble expressions of concern and pledges to "work harder" towards peace, such as those proffered by our own Prime Minister, we have grounds to hope this is judicious. 

As we saw from Lebanon 2006, in the case of Zimbabwe and that of the Congo, impotent bluster is ridiculous and arguably counterproductive. 

And despite worrying portents, we shouldn't write him off yet. We shouldn't lose hope that the president elect has the wherewithal to advance the legal and moral rights of the Palestinian people upon acceding to office.

However, he doesn't have limitless moral authority. Ultimately, we shouldn't care whether he condemns the violence or not. Palestinians and Israeli children deserve more. What is he actually going to do for their sakes?

Intifada?

Notwithstanding any personal grief Hamas leaders may be feeling this evening, their organisation has been given a new lease of life by today's Israeli slaughter. Israel will have of course anticipated this.

The P.A. meanwhile looks like the Neville Chamberlain Society of the West Bank, and their tough rhetoric looks like so much hot air.

However, Hamas will struggle to rally Palestinians, whatever help Israel may lend. The injuries both sides inflicted on Palestinian unity during the debacle of June 2007 must surely be too recent to be forgiven.

And even if we are on the threshold of a third intifada, there is little chance that Palestinians will be able to pass on the cost of today's violence to Israel's political class. They will pay the full price of the sickest electoral stunt in democratic history.

Our governments, and particularly Mr Obama's regime in waiting, must present a clear, measurable ultimatum to Israel - rejected at the cost of it's already blood soaked aid package.

The US has sponsored this violence and more Americans will see the link today than saw it yesterday. If any good comes out of today's notable brutality, it is that Israel's PR mask must surely have slipped a bit.

Ties and goodbyes

As many of you know, my days on the parochial periphery of politics are numbered. I am returning to my songs and studies and I am thrilled at the prospect.

Except. Except, what to do with my ties? The neck tie is, of course, utterly ridiculous. Pointless. Delightful. In a utility-driven, time-driven culture, millions of men nevertheless take a minute's pause every morning to choose the four in-hand or the half Windsor, or something more exotic from among the 85 ways to tie a tie.

(I like the Nicky myself - a self-releasing Pratt - although today I'm wearing a St Andrew.)

And guess what, the end product of each of these wildly different processes is, as near as makes no difference, the same.

Oh yes, my anti-imperialist comrades think that ties are the embodiment of the wage slavery yoke. To reject the tie in the 20th Century was to reject the capitalist machine or express solidarity with the two-thirds world struggle against Western decadence, whether in the peaceful primitivist communes of England or in the Iranian revolution. The Taliban, of course, banned the tie and made the beard mandatory. (As it happens, I think a bow tie goes rather well with a beard - just imagine al-Zawahiri with a nice paisley number.)

Meanwhile, the empire itself has turned its back on the tie - and no wonder. It produces nothing. Walk the corridors of Holyrood, meet up after work with friends who've come from the big corporate offices, watch the news - the tie is clearly on the way out. Too fussy, too time-wasting, unnecessary.

And that is why we must salvage it from the sartorial and cultural scrap heap. The tie should not be worn if you leave it tied from the night before, putting it on in a hurry as part of a uniform. Rather it should be the focus of a subversive morning ritual. A moment to reflect perhaps, but certainly the chance to take time over something that is an end in itself.

So will I actually wear one when I'm sitting in the library reading or rehearsing in my living room? Maybe I will.

Given the chance, we should wear ties in the face of a dogma that the only thing that matters is output, destination and utility, rather than process, journey and being.

Brethren, wear a tie.

Amen.

"Belief in" and 'Usool

Anthropologists and Christians talk about "belief in" rather than "belief that", and both generally ascribe more value to the former.

An anthropologist may be tempted to say that adherence to a particular mythology is an outworking of belief in something - namely the community defined by that mythology. This, then, is the fundamental, essential 'belief' that under girds all human interaction.

I have often heard preachers, meanwhile, say something along the lines of: 'It is not enough simply to assent to certain propositional truths; the key is lived fidelity to the heart of God.'

If both are correct, my faith struggles are largely western modernist preoccupations, largely secondary. If I could be sure I believed 'the right things', that in fact my hoped-in narrative is the case historically and metaphysically, I would eagerly embrace the associated praxis. In fact, I do embrace this praxis.

But for as long as it is predicated on me being mostly sure of things I seriously doubt, I can only do so with limited enthusiasm. Still, my desire for belonging, however essentially human, is not a reason to surrender one's self-criticism, is it? After all the unexamined life is not worth living. Is this really just a western modernist angst?

Maysaloon's latest blog post may be instructive.

He defends 'tradition' from the self-consciously post-tribal sneers of western relativism. Referencing some elegant etymology he also suggests that the Arabic understanding of tradition is both a means of managing social relationships and a connection to the Source itself.

Perhaps wholeheartedly embracing praxis or traditions whilst unconvinced that they are straight from the Source is a valid way forward. It is unconditional without being dishonest or superficial. Anthropologists would say it's what everyone does. It is at least a concession that the individual is not the measure of all things and that there is wisdom in the community that is rooted - anthropologically at least, perhaps absolutely - in the Truth.

For me there is no more attractive narrative than the one of God's redemption of the cosmos through his covenants and incarnation.

It is therefore right that I should live as if this is the case even if my highest hopes are blasphemously base when confronted by the Truth of that which we can not know for sure.

British cheese review: Devon Oke

It wouldn’t top any of my favourite lists but I was gently won over by Devon Oke.

It smelt a little bit like a Jarlsberg but (fortunately in my opinion) tastes somewhat more interesting. The first thing I noticed was its not-too-heavy creaminess, that of a decent medium cheddar, followed by an invigorating winey tang.

This pleasant freshness gives way to an intense salty aftertaste which sticks around for ten minutes or so. This finale is a bit reminiscent of the rustic feta-like cheeses they fry in olive oil in the eastern Med.

It never entirely flows from one flavour to the next, alas. If I had another shot at it, I’d get hold of a bottle of Alsace Riesling to tie it all together.

Written for the Great British Cheese blog.

Baby P: please, no hasty legislation

It is quite natural that policy makers, practitioners and media are clamouring for changes that will ensure Baby P's horrific death was not entirely in vain.

We should be careful not to draw the wrong lessons however. Baby P was on the radar and still he was killed by abusive carers. Lord Laming has said that abusers "become very clever at diverting attention away from what has happened to the child. Therefore people who work in this field - whether health visitors, police officers, social workers, whatever – have to recognise this in their evidence gathering. They have to be sceptical; they have to be streetwise; they have to be courageous."

Two things to note: children will fall through the net if the abusers are good enough at concealing the abuse. There can be no way of eliminating all cases, however sceptical practitioners may be. Secondly, this scepticism, in attempting to eliminate the worst, may harm functional family units by removing children unnecessarily - the one thing we know rarely results in positive outcomes. Certainly, if practitioners are concerned that they will be in serious trouble if they make a call that is insufficiently sceptical, there could be a great deal of unnecessary damage caused to children and their families.

So much of our legislation today is designed to prevent the worse - from school targets to health and safety regulations - and so much of it serves to restrict the best. I hope the Government is cautious, even in the face of the Sun's screaming rage.

Red, white and blue

Verdun
Lest we forget
Heroes' blood and worthless mud

Somme
Lest we forget
Two hundred innocents per yard

Ypres
Lest we forget
November's icy victory

Victors absent.

Higton review of Pappe's 'Ethnic cleansing...'

Tony Higton very evidently loves Palestinians and Israelis, and he has been fastidious in his attempts to tackle Western Christian prejudices and misinformation relating to the Middle East.

His desire to empathise with both side's narratives makes him wary of being polemical himself, and as such it is perhaps no surprise that he resists Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which presents arguments that, if true, fundamentally undermine the dominant narrative.

His review is worth a read and makes some constructive points about Pappe's book, particularly where it draws attention to simple factual inaccuracies.

However, at times these claims are simply rebutted with reference to unsupported counter claims. There are a number of other points he makes which I think are problematic, and stem from his desire to show respect for a narrative that I believe is culpable in 60 years of bloodshed.

Firstly, echoing Efraim Karsh, Rev. Higton implicitly equates Pappe's preference for intersubjectivity and his polemical bent with a lack of rigour, suggesting that a failure to have an open mind at the outset of his research leads necessarily to summoning falsehoods in support of his position.

In support of his case, he cites Pappe's own introduction to the book: "My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers."

Note, Pappe does not say that he is dispensing with facts because they are meaningless. Merely that one can't start with a blank state, knowing nothing, hoping to extract depoliticised, denarrativised truths with which to spin together a definitive, uncontestable history.

In my reading, he drags evidence that has not been given due consideration from beneath the rubble of the minority narrative and gives it a greater profile than the evidence that has been relied upon to date. He proceeds to disect Plan Dalet and other primary source documentation such as Ben Gurion's diary in forensic detail in order to demonstrate that there was an implicit will behind the transfer of Palestinians.

Higton writes, with characteristic gentleness: "His critics say that it was not a plan for expelling Arabs but for defending the Jewish population, including the temporary removal of civilians in specific cases, for strategic reasons, rather than wholesale expulsion. Having read the plan I have to respond that it certainly reads as Pappe’s critics claim." [My italics.]

Higton's objectivist analysis asks the wrong question, or an inadequate question at least. He wants to know whether Ben Gurion and Zionist leaders wanted to rid the land of unclean Arabs in order to repopulate the land with clean Jews, as Pappe suggests, or whether they simply wanted to defend the fledgling Jewish state from attack.

The fact is, the latter entails the former. A Zionist state, as it was conceived and continues to be understood in Israel, requires a Jewish majority. Obviously, this could not be secured without reducing the population of non-Jews. To have accepted this is already to have committed ethnic cleansing. Ben Gurion himself put it: "Judea [belongs] to the Jews. In our country there is room only for Jews. We say to the Arabs: ‘Move over.'"

As I have written elsewhere on this blog, Pappe does not claim this all proceeded through force, but of the fact that there was a conscious will behind the transfer of Palestinians from their land, he leaves no doubt.

Secondly, Rev. Higton's attacks drift into ad hominem and ad populum territory, along the lines of: 'We can't trust Pappe's nonmainstream views because, well, he's not mainstream.' For example, Higton suggests that Pappe's membership of Hadash is a reason not to take him seriously, when what Pappe is effectively doing is arguing for a historical narrative that is essentially that of Hadash. Bizarrely, he cites Benny Morris's argument that Pappe isn't as trustworthy as Benny Morris because he votes for the anti-systemic left whereas Morris remains within the Zionist fold by voting Labor.

Finally, I would challenge Higton where he (after Morris) attacks Pappe for drawing frequently on oral eyewitness reports. To discount these and to rely, as Morris puts it, on primary written documents, is to concede the contest to the victorious history from the start. Writing and preserving documents is always easier for the powerful.

I would suggest that this illuminates the flaws in Higton's objectivity in general. It assumes the established norms and looks for proofs of any alternative. Laudably, he remains unwilling to be appropriated by either side for their own banner waving parades.

But I agree with Pappe that it is a folly to deny that we are all, tacitly or otherwise, retelling one narrative or other, and I fear Rev. Higton inadvertently retells the dominant narrative, a history that fails to recount Israel's fundamental need for the transfer of Palestinians from their ancestral homes.

boxthejack's last word on the US elections

I will remember, remember the fifth of November.

I suppose I didn't allow myself to believe it could happen. The polls, it turns out, were pretty much bang on. The Bradley effect never reared its head. My sweepstake prediction looks laughably cautious now.

And I admit it. I wanted Obama to win more than I let on. In fact, I didn't know how much I wanted him to win until he gave his acceptance speech this morning.

Relief, an overly sensitive sense of history and tiredness conspired to make me highly susceptible to 'soaring rhetoric' and he had me close to tears.

OK, OK, I admit it again, when I saw Jesse Jackson sobbing, I welled up.

On the one hand I thought of the blood that has been shed to make this possible. On the other, I considered the embrace of quite radical otherness that Obama's election represents (symbolically at least) which was so poignantly reflected in the celebrations in Obama's ancestral village. This goes way beyond colour. To use a musical analogy it's as if the painful dissonance of 500 years of European engagement with Africa is resolving via an elegant suspension.

And more than anything I dared to hope that Obama's America could kick start a revolution of conflict resolution unlike anything in the modern epoch.

I then watched Palestinian paramedics tending to the injured in Gaza, which brought me up sharp. Obama will need to act quickly if cynicism is to be starved and hope is to be nurtured.

Israel breaks Gaza ceasefire

A disgrace that has a touch of warped genius.

Hidden amid the distracting theatre of last night's election, with its detractors and benefactors drunk on election party champagne, Israel broke its truce with Hamas in Gaza, and will no doubt get the pretexts it needs to start turning the screw again. The timing is sickeningly perfect.

A skirmish over a tunnel, grave as it may be, does not require an all out aerial assault. There have been skirmishes before, but neither side has launched full scale military attacks on the other. This escalation marks the end of this refreshing parenthesis.

Do not forget who broke this fragile but resilient truce when Israel tests Obama's professed loyalty to the Zionist project, claiming as justification Hamas rocket fire.

Certain moments of Obama's acceptance speech restored my hope that he could conceivably be the person to unite America behind costly changes at home and abroad. Whether such change will touch the wretched lives of Gaza remains to be seen.

Nader or Obama?

I generally prefer Nader's policies to those of Obama and the suggestion that a vote for third parties is wasted is self-defeating.

But I think this time I would probably vote Obama. He does seem to be an exceptional individual worthy of the chance to lead.

He is not, however, the messiah. Good article here.

The Vyard Sweepstake

Vyard has challenged his geek list to predict the electoral college votes.

He called Obama 353; McCain 185. Tomasky puts his faith in the polls to call 338-200. My gut reaction is similar to Vyard's but on reflection I think I can nail my colours to an entirely different mast:

Obama: 306
McCain: 232

In this analysis Nevada will go to poker-playing Obama. McCain gets Montana along with Indiana, North Dakota, and Missouri. I'm going to put my money where my mouth is in the belief that the polls have been kind to Obama in Florida - and give it to McCain.

Which leaves North Carolina and Ohio. N.C. should be safer for the GOP than Florida and Ohio, but Obama's campaign there has been persistent and the Bradley effect could be weaker.

And I still think Ohio's a toss up - to ensure I'm the most pessimistic participant in Vyard's sweepstake, I've given it to McCain.

So how can McCain win? Well I'd guess the most likely outcome would be a repeat of the 2004 result. But the interesting thing about this election is the number of wildcards.

First up, let's give McCain North Carolina. Probable according to the polls. If Obama-lites stayed in the Bellagio rather than voting Nevada could go McCain's way. Virginia has voted Republican in each of the last ten elections. But even if Obama took it with battleground Colorado, a catastrophe in Pennsylvania - huge Bradley effect, or the youth vote celebrating prematurely - could still see McCain win. That, fortunately, is unlikely.

See you on the other side.

Reality check

Geoffrey Wheatcroft thinks it's inconceivable that Obama can be stopped. Betfair.com agree, putting the odds of a McCain victory at 11-1.

Certainly, Obama should get millions of first time voters out and he is a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime candidate, on paper attractive to moderate conservatives. He is a pseudo-radical providing cosmetic change without any real risk. The change is purely in the supposed superior character and insight of the man, not in his political positioning, which makes him well placed to win.

But, there are a few jokers in the pack, which may make a flutter on McCain less reckless than it seems:

• According to the Toronto Star: "In Florida, where 3.4 million people have already voted, an Orlando Sentinel study found only 15 per cent of them were under age 35." Biding their time or staying in bed?
• Despite record low approval ratings for the incumbent Republican regime, McCain led in the polls both ends of September - and by a considerable margin. The 'Bush Mark II' label was not sticking until McCain pandered to the right with his VP selection, and the bail-outs shone the spotlight on the wretched state of the economy.
• The left, which a few weeks ago would have voted begrudgingly for Obama, are now likely to vote for third parties, confident that Obama's change is really just a rebranding of the status quo.
• They won't be the only ones with Obama fatigue - some conservatives will be sick to death of Obama's slick infomercials and his "soaring rhetoric", and will have swung to McCain with his affable grandpa persona of the last few days.
• McCain and Obama are not that far apart on paper - or at least they weren't until they both secured their respective nominations - which throws the bipartisan conservative vote up in the air. It may come down to gut feeling, although McCain's new found extremism will probably have harmed his cause in this constituency.
• Though they were unlikely to vote for a McCain-Lieberman 'moderate' ticket, the evangelical right is mobilised because of Palin.
• As Nixon showed, negative campaigning can work.
• Obama is black.

On balance, the most likely result is a close Obama victory. 2% would be a respectable margin of victory and a huge relief.

Alternatively, an Obama landslide is plausible, doing what Reagan did to Jimmy Carter, if the 'Bush Mark II' message has stuck.

But there's the rub - the ifs persist and ascribing a value to each of the jokers is very hard indeed.

If a good number of those newly registered millions don't vote, if blue collar America decides they've had enough of the 'elitist' orator, if the 50+ Democrat vote swings to McCain, and if colour matters at all, 11/1 sounds quite attractive for a two horse race.

And after all, if he does win you'll want some beer money.

Existential threat, liberalism and perpetual war

I've linked a superb article in this week's New Statesman. In it, Edward Platt writes of Israeli incursions into Hebron to seize assets of charities who have cooperated with any branch of Hamas.

Mr Platt concludes:

"There is a danger that the current campaign might backfire - each time Israel or the PA dismantles a charity committee and destroys a source of essential services that cannot be replicated, it increases dissatisfaction with Israel and its so-called "partner for peace". Rasheed Rasheed believes that the army's actions are the best advertisement that Hamas could hope for."

I fear that may be the point. Israel has not and is not going to perpetrate another holocaust, as some commentators at the foot of the article suggest. Israel's worst actions pale compared to those of Hitler, Stalin, or, say, the LRA or Sudanese janjaweed.

But Israel as we know it surely depends on perpetual war.

Would Israel be Israel if it lacked either a Jewish majority or control of sufficient resources to maintain a European standard of living? Many Zionists would say no, and both of these require a state of war.

In peace time, it would be harder for Israel to prevent legal migration of Palestinians into Israel, at least, so long as it wants to be accepted as a liberal democratic state. Migration would of course affect the demographic balance in favour of non-Jews, ultimately leading to Jewish minority status.

Likewise, how could a liberal state justify wilful appropriation of resources, other than in a conflict scenario?

Neither the Jewish majority nor control of resources would be secure in peace time. This poses a far greater 'existential threat' than Iran or Hamas to the Zionist dream. In fact, bellicose rhetoric from Iran gives Israel just the justification it needs to keep its people in a state of existential fear that feeds support for this necessary war. In return, incidentally, Ahmadinejad gets the benefits of a handy distraction while he hopelessly mismanages his country.

Arguably, then, the self-image of Israel as a liberal, Western state both feeds and restrains its aggression. The only way out seems to be designing a constitution that can cope even if it loses its Jewish majority, and even if it does not have unfair access to Palestinian water supplies. And for that you'll have to consult Bernard Avishai.

Scarcity and entropy

If you remember this phrase you could probably get above a U grade in A-Level Economics: "The basic economic problem is unlimited demand for scarce resources."

Reading Boris Johnson in the Torygraph today makes me wonder if we need this pithy nugget scrawled on the walls of City Hall.

He's not alone, of course. As we've been reminded recently, Keynes promoted increased spending as a way out of recession, with government leading the way.

But if we affirm the basic entropy at the heart of the economic problem - that there is a maximum level of resource use - this solution appears highly spurious, at least in the long-term. There is, after all, a peak in the supply of oil, and by extension a peak in the availability of those resources derived from its extraction. We have to start believing that resources really are scarce and start looking instead to limiting our demand.

At some point we will have to abandon growth as a measure of well-being - after all, is it really better that we buy eight incandescent light bulbs rather than one energy saver, simply because we've increased trade?

GDP is just a speedometer really. We need to look at the road we're on.

Introducing Blogacheese

Yes! There's a blog dedicated to British cheese.

Now, I've been impressed by classy Swiss Gruyere, seduced by the caresses of a good Roquefort, and lifted to the gods by Fontal's epic arias. I keep my oatcakes happy.

But having lived in a house with many foreigners, I have too often had to defend great British and Irish cheeses from sneering derision.

No more. Blogacheese to the rescue.

And what's more, I get to contribute, thanks to a monthly sample of British cheese - does it get any better than this?

Here's my first offering, a review of Berkshire's award winning Barkham Blue:

My oatcakes came over all giggly when they met the charming but oh so irresistibly muscular Mr Barkham Blue.

Excitingly unpredictable, sometimes he would introduce himself with a refined, caramel smoothness, leaving the bite for later; other mouthfuls would begin with a flex of his blue-veined muscle and then quickly mellow.

As a result, the flavours seemed to wrestle each other for a few seconds, holding my palate in suspense - before resolving into the tangy, mouth-warming reverb I was left with for several pleasing minutes.

I am a cheese ponce people. And I am in heaven.

From Treasury Questions, 13 Nov 2003

Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham): May I add my best wishes to the Chancellor and his family? I also extend a welcome to the new Conservative Treasury spokesman, with the personal hope that he has a happier fate than an earlier commuter from Rothschild's to the House of Commons, Norman Lamont.

On the housing market, is not the brutal truth that with investment, exports and manufacturing output stagnating or falling, the growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level? If the Bank of England is correct in its expectations of a market correction and rising interest rates, what action will the Chancellor take on the problem of consumer debt, which is rapidly rising, with 8 million annual visits from the bailiff?

Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman has been writing articles in the newspapers, as reflected in his contribution, that spread alarm, without substance, about the state of the British economy. As the Bank of England said yesterday, consumer spending is returning to trend. The Governor said:

"there is no indication that the scale of debt problems have . . . risen markedly in the last five years."

He also said that the fraction of household income used up in debt service is lower than it was then.

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman look at the overall picture of the British economy. Yes, during the period of world downturn, when the rest of the European economy was not growing at all, it was necessary for both consumer spending and public investment to contribute to the growth that we have achieved in Britain; but he can see that business investment and manufacturing output are starting to return and that the export position will improve over the next period. What the Bank of England said yesterday about the prospects for growth, compared with what people said when we gave our Budget forecast in April, suggests that we have been right about the prospects for growth in the British economy, and the hon. Gentleman has been wrong.

The money and the power

Though the Government's £400bn-ish financial rescue package has been well received by analysts who welcome the recapitalisation as an invigorating cool breeze blowing through a musty economy, there's a sinister chill in the air that suggests a collapsed roof rather than an open window.

Yes, the thought that the government is injecting cash to the tune of £2000 per household is scary because it looks as if they're simply printing money. I'm no economist, but surely as banks, businesses and then individuals recognise that their liabilities are secured on thin air, there will be a dramatic adjustment in the value of money to more accurately reflect the inherent value of assets and securities, and injecting more money will be an inflationary catalyst. That's without even considering Tuesday's rates cut which see interests rates going negative in real terms.

Meanwhile, it annoys people when they see public services struggling and overstrectched while this amount of cash dances gaily around the financial ionosphere like aurora borealis.

But both of these arguments are, ultimately, outweighed by the sheer urgency of jump-starting a banking system that has ground to a halt.

What concerns me more is how this massive government intervention reframes - or reveals - the location and nature of the principalities and powers.

Successive governments have worked with business and individual avarice to create a culture of instant gratification via cheap money - that is, debt. This does, of course, fuel growth, but the other side of this is deeper integration of local economies into the global economy allowing the free flow of money - rendering local and regional economies completely vulnerable, and therefore in increasing need of the state.

(If you're interested in initiatives aimed at making local economies more resilient, check this out. And note, it has nothing to do with big government.)

So when central government bounds to the rescue in this fashion, it gives itself a justification for being, based on the ills it has helped to cause. And, it ultimately makes vulnerable economies further dependent and reasserts its power, etc. ad totalitarium.

Perhaps illustratively, we now have Icelandic assets being frozen using anti-terrorism legislation. 'Function creep'. Now I'm not urging sympathy for massive Icelandic financial institutions, but is there not something sinister about anti-terror legislation being used against the competition on the spurious grounds of financial security?

Isn't it grotesquely coercive to take legislation aimed at protecting flesh and blood from bombs and use it to safeguard economic well-being? I think so. And I think it sets a frightening precedent. For once, 'slippery slope' may be a valid cliché.

This whole mess has served one purpose: it has given us a glimpse of power - its size, nature, and its protagonists.

Finally, this from the FT:

Asked if the government saw the Landsbanki case as constituting a kind of financial terrorism, one official responded wryly: “The question is: who are the terrorists?”

Cameron's speech: murder he may get away with

Cameron's speech was vapid but it may have resonated enough for him to get away with it.

Unfortunately, old certainties having been undermined by the current economic and political turmoil, no-one's really sure what the correct fix is. So perhaps people want someone who articulates their frustration with the status quo, more than someone with a clear idea of what to do about it.

But by any reasonable criteria his speech was a train wreck of garbled social conservatism, vapid platitudes and self-indulgent naval gazing. He said he'd be willing to sacrifice personal popularity in order to take tough decisions - but never indicated which decisions these might be.

There was a hearty dose of phoney militarism, mixed in with a patronising 'let us just jolly well put things right' refrain that looks good and means nothing. He even had the audacity to imply David Milliband was arguing against the existence of society, and then went on to laud Margaret Thatcher.

Rhetorically, it was disjointed and incoherent, providing one was looking for some kind of logical flow.

Alas, if you were counting buzz words it was perfect.

Of the policies he mentioned, the only original one was restoring the Bank of England's power to limit government borrowing - removed, I'm informed, by a Tory government.

Other than that he said he'd increase the number of health visitors, an old Tory policy; open 1000 academies, a Labour policy; and ditch runway three for rail investment, a Lib Dem policy.

The rest was just a list of bland aspirations. He announced he'd "rein in borrowing", "deal with" social problems, "fix" the broken society.

He also said he's proud of his wife Samantha and what she does: sells luxury bags of air. Hmmm.

Really, this speech was outrageous. On the brink of recession he's presented the electorate with nothing. Sadly we'll probably buy it.

Cameron's conference speech

Blimey, all he had to do was list a few policies in order to get his enormous poll lead back. I've counted one!

He's spouted complete guff. We learned that he's a 41 year-old father of three who cares passionately about his family.

To borrow from Vince Cable, Cameron has gone from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin in a matter of weeks.

Time for a freer market?

“My fear is that today the government will be forever changing the face of the American free market. Because I believe so strongly in the principles of the free market and the belief in freedom, I will be opposing this bill.” Gresham Barrett (R - South Carolina)

Perhaps the current deadlock in the States is a blessing in disguise. The US affords corporations the inviolable rights of persons, and therefore it is unsurprising that corporate welfare has been part of the entente between government and big business.

However, the real cause for surprise is that many policy makers seem oblivious. People such as Congressman Barrett really believe in free markets - and that annual corporate welfare is estimated at around $92bn seems thus far to have escaped their notice.

But corporate welfare is the elephant in the room of free market ideology. Capitalism has not really been based on free markets. We have rarely seen reduced barriers to market entry or perfected price information - two prerequisites of a genuinely free market. What capitalism has achieved is a reduction in the restraints upon corporations under some supposed abstraction of freedom, but often at the cost of competition, entrepreneurship and innovation.

In fact, US big business promoting free markets is reminiscent of the way the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia promoted austere Islamic piety from the casinos of Monaco. One of the results of his hypocrisy was a surge in support for the militants who actually believed the stuff Fahd promoted, and who decried the Sauds' hypocrisy - young Bin Laden for example.

So it could be that this congressional wrestling match, which necessarily brings policy makers face to face with a serious contradiction in the practice and theory of supposed free market capitalism, actually results in a genuine liberalisation, where the US reasseses the contest between corporate, individual and community freedoms.

So in fact it may be congressmen such as Mr Barrett who are "changing the face of the American free market" by rejecting the bail out - and it could be a change for the better.

Article for Garioch Community News

For hundreds of years the church was in control. Some people still call Scotland a Christian country. Certainly, ‘official’ Christianity has had a huge influence on our history.

Maybe the church had power because people found certainty in church – answers to the big questions. Scientists and philosophers who posed questions to these answers weren’t popular because they shook people's certainty.

These days, in a great reversal, it’s science we look to for certainty. We look to medical science to keep us from dying. We look to political science and economic science for security. We look to climate science to ensure we don't end up under water. We read scientists’ paperbacks to find out how we’ll improve our self-esteem – we even watch Trinny and Susannah telling us there’s a science to how we should dress.

We trust science to guide us to the Promised Land of long life and prosperity, and away from the threat of catastrophe. If politicians or advertisers want to sell us something, they’ll tell us that science is on their side, just as they once claimed that God was on their side. In science we trust.

But in the face of all this certainty, some still doubt. They doubt, mainly, because all is clearly not well. Many live without security, good relationships and purpose, unable or unwilling to play by the rules.

Once it was scientists who doubted the official line, and tested it. Well today my church is my lab.

That’s one way of thinking about Garioch Church anyway. Like other churches, it's also a support network, a ragtag band of disciples who like to eat cake. But for me, whereas a preacher out front answering ultimate questions is the stereotype, I look to my church to challenge my assumptions about the way things are. Not to answer my questions as much as to question my answers.

I don’t think this is a new thing. Despite the certainties of nearly 1700 years of Christendom, it was not always so set in stone. Before the Romans stopped feeding Christians to the lions and began making Christianity an entry requirement amongst the elite, the church was a bunch of dissidents who wouldn’t accept that Caesar had the final word. That’s, after all, why they were fed to the lions.

They followed the teachings of someone who would answer almost every question with a question, who would challenge every norm with a life-giving alternative, and about whom they made claims that didn’t fit with those of Caesar’s empire.

In my experience, churches struggle to reflect these characteristics of Jesus. A few years ago I had almost had enough of churches. Despite the fact that I had seen people’s lives transformed in the pursuit of this Jesus, I was still getting too many unquestioned answers. Sometimes it felt as if certainty was required before I could fully belong.

But for me at least, Garioch Church is a bit different, consisting of people with varying degrees of hope and of doubt. Being a Christian church, there’s a shared hope that the life Jesus modelled and the sacrifice he made have the power to liberate all people, even from death. They hope that the world – from the corridors of power to the living rooms of Aberdeenshire – will be restored to a place of justice and peace. They hope that they can be the agents of this transformation.

Personally, I doubt a great deal. But I also make room for hope.

***
I was asked to write an article introducing my church for the community newspaper and hastily agreed. Blimey, it's tough! To make it worse, they also added that they wanted me to describe why I think faith is relevant to people living in the 21st Century.

Not only am I acutely aware that I can't speak for my church, but I also realised that I needed to present something that that is accessible without being trite, honest without being idiosyncratic, and personal without being indulgent. I also wanted to hint at good news for Garioch.

This is what I came up with.

Brown at his biggest

Brown is no thespian, but I think the seriousness thing worked.

He came across as worthy of the job. Worthy (and perhaps capable) of defeating the vacuous but popular new Conservatives. It will be interesting to see how Cameron and Osborne respond to today's speech and Darling's performance yesterday. I imagine they will come up with something more relevant to the average Joe than last year's raising of the inheritance threshold to £2M.

Brown also managed to look a whole lot more real than either Cameron or Nick Clegg (who I thought detracted from an attractive bundle of policies with his on stage wanderings) precisely by avoiding the whole stage-managed, note-less, podium-less thing.

But, despite his reassurances, it was still very clear that New Labour is about big government working with big business to deliver small change.

***

Stalin moment:

"So across the board, we will create rules that reward those who play by them and punish those who don't. That's what fairness means to me."

Mr Bean moment:

"With Britain's great assets - our stability, our openness, our scientific genius, our creative industries, and yes our English language - I know that this can be a British century and I'm determined it will be."

Best policy?

"And because we know that almost every British family has been touched by cancer, Alan Johnson and I know we must do more to relieve the financial worry that so often goes alongside the heartache. And so I can announce today for those in our nation battling cancer from next year you will not pay prescription charges."

Best rhetorical flourish?

"And we should never forget one thing - that every single blow we have struck for fairness and for the future has been opposed by the Conservatives. And just think where our country would be if we'd listened to them. No paternity leave, no New Deal, no bank of England independence, no Sure Start, no devolution, no civil partnerships, no minimum wage, no new investment in the NHS, no new nurses, no new police, no new schools.

And so let's hear no more from the Conservatives - we did fix the roof while the sun was shining."

Olmert's 1948 'apology'

In a sense Ehud Olmert's apology for the suffering of Palestinians was worthy of the complete disregard with which it was received in the British press.

First of all it is the impotent rhetoric of a has-been. Secondly he says nothing substantive except reiterating Israeli objections to the return of refugees. And thirdly, though I don't know Hebrew, it isn't clear he actually did any more than "express sorrow".

But if, as I have argued, any sustainable peace initiative must begin with Zionist recognition of the validity - or even just the reality - of the other's narrative, then this is perhaps more significant that it appears.

Too often, explicitly or implicitly, Zionists attempt to invalidate the stories told by Palestinians.

Menachem Begin recognised in crude terms that there were two irreconcilable claims to the land and that Zionists had to be the mightier if the land was to be theirs. Since then it has become common to hear people deny any relevant Palestinian narrative pre-1948 - even the obvious fact of Palestinian land use and ownership.

They will assert that most of these supposedly nationless Arabs left voluntarily and thereby forfeited their right to the land of their forbears, suggest that it was the Palestinians' leaders' (note the contradiction) unwillingness to compromise that was responsible for any human suffering, or argue that there wasn't really much suffering in any case.

The elephant in the Zionist room, of course, is the presence of Palestinian refugees, many with British or Ottoman-signed deeds to land now owned under Israeli law by Jewish immigrants. I met an old man at the Balata refugee camp outside Nablus with his stamped British deeds who talked as if he'd soon be able to return to his house and plot of land and that, after a bit of weeding, all would be well.

To recognise the suffering of the refugees is to recognise their status as victims and the betrayal of their title deeds. And to recognise the victims as victims is to start creating space within the victor's story for moral counterargument and ambiguity.

I once asked an Israeli settler at Karnei Shomron whether she saw parallels between the European conquest of America and the establishment of Israel. She said: "Yes, but we [Zionists] are the Indians."

In the recognition of Palestinian suffering there is no room for this kind of preposterous (if expedient) denial of one's own victory.

Of course, the bad news for my Nabulsi acquaintance is that his recognition is also his denial. The recognition of his victimhood is a eulogy to the legal regime upon which his hope is based. But we already knew that.

Perhaps the victor's acceptance of victory is the beginning of the end of the myths used to secure that victory. The story of the past becomes, in this recognition of Palestinian victimhood, demystified, resecularised - and the conversation about the future can begin.

500K Robin Hood

Check out this.

Some guy who's amassed considerable 'credit' - half a million euros - fraudulently, in order to pass it on to community organisations, and then refused to pay it back.

What do you reckon?

Quote of the day

On Sarah Palin's talk of attacking Russia:

"I'd rather she stuck to moose hunting. Bear-baiting is way out of her depth." Simon Giles

Anarchism and the Kingdom

The similarities between scriptural 'Kingdom of God' ideas and anarchism are striking.

Reading the New Testament in the light of Old Testament economic ethics and the imperial arrangement of the day, a serious ambivalence towards the idea of the state is apparent, both from Jesus and from the early church.

However, there are verses that qualify this which lead one away from revolutionary zeal towards a simple modelling of the Kingdom in our communities. Meanwhile, in conversation with some anarcho-communists I was told that there could be no anarchy, no genuinely free organisation, without revolution - universal revolution at that.

This doesn't seem to fit with an idea of the Kingdom being as yeast in dough. In the NT, God is building his church and his Kingdom, not us. In our radical freedom, we must love our enemies, hold things in common, etc. and we are simply to live in the hope of the Kingdom's fulfilment.

So I'd half given up on anarchism as the definitive Christian political position. Until I happened across this quote:

"The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently." Gustav Landauer (a pacifist who was stoned to death by German troops in 1919).

Dare we?

[By the way, Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is within you, is now on Google Books so I may make a start.]

Palin's scarier faith

OK, so in the blue corner we have a candidate who seems to be standing against 60 years of pre-emptive military intervention, coming to a head with the so-called 'Bush Doctrine'. In the red corner, as the Daily Dish points out, we have a VP candidate who's never even heard of the Bush Doctrine but just assumes that it must be OK.

Nothing throws the stakes for which they're playing into such stark relief.

Arguably, every US president since Truman has subscribed to a form of pre-emptive military action - it's just most of them had the nous not to let on.

But the simple faith of Sarah Palin in American benevolence may just be a reason for voting Republican in the minds of some Americans. It's as if they apply a doctrine of salvation through faith to international security.

God help us.

Unicum

I've just discovered an old bottle of Unicum I've had on the shelf for ages.

I still can't work out if it's nectar of the gods or utterly bogging. I would recommend it simply for the bliss of this paradox.

Is 'national interest' legit?

I always wince when I hear 'national interest' given as a reason for anything. But when Bill Clinton bemoans the lies of the election campaign simply because it harms national interest it really does seem like a bizarre moral trump card.

Since when was selfishness a good reason to do anything? In this case, since when was telling the truth not a good enough reason in itself? Call me naive but it's weird that we as accept this whilst advocating individual selflessness.

I'm not suggesting, necessarily, that one can automatically transpose personal morality into the world of statecraft, but when politicians win votes by talking about patriotism as the highest virtue and national interest as sacred, you have to wonder how far we've actually travelled from the genuinely sacred and the truly virtuous.

The last word goes to Einstein: "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -how passionately I hate them!"

Understatement of the day

"We have created a system where there is not a lot of shame in stretching the truth."

Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, in today's Washington Post.

Google documents

I've just discovered Google Documents. Very handy.

If you're interested in the political heritage and importance of Christian Zionism, I've posted my undergrad dissertation to it.

Asexual visibility

Check out the article linked. Arguably it's about the only remaining sexual taboo.

Certainly, I have never heard it discussed, either in popular culture, amongst family, during school sex education, or anywhere else. Lack of sexual desire is always portrayed as a problem to be fixed.

Kudos to the Guardian for publishing this.

Why peace hasn't emerged in the Middle East

This is a useful article quoting an Israeli top brass which I saw first on Wassim's blog. It gives us an insight into how the existential threat narrative plays out in practice. The General says, in short, that Israel will have to bomb all its neighbours some day in order to survive.

That this is geopolitical balderdash, and that the Israeli establishment surely knows that it is balderdash, is ultimately irrelevant if enough Israelis and Americans believe it.

They do.

McCain concedes!

"Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd: change is coming."

22-year senator and presidential candidate representing the governing party, John McCain.

After Palin's well-received offering on Wednesday, Dems will be sleeping more peacefully right now.

When McCain delivered the predictable jingoistic sound bytes they sounded barely believable, even from him; then his audacious foray into Democrat territory, such as the laughably implausible quote above, lacked any of Palin's distracting fireworks. It was a bit embarrassing to watch, a bit like a scene from About Schmidt.

And as for those 'Peace' signs, Jeremiah's got something to say.

But who knows how these things play stateside.

Don't sell the one-state solution short

By referring to the bi-national option as a second best, Palestinian negotiators may be under selling what may be the most sustainable long-term solution.

A two-state solution is really a stop gap, a way of defining the arena of conflict to limit bloodshed.

But a bi-national state would require that two hostile narratives actually engage each other - the only way, ultimately, a 'deep' peace can prevail.

So to present this as a kind of punishment for Israeli intransigence is to reaffirm in Zionist minds the idea that the one-state solution equates to the demise of their highest national aspirations.

More women please

The Sex and Power report is out today, and makes depressing reading if we use the number women in positions of public influence as a litmus test for wider social equality.

But if the performances of the (75% female) lead protagonists at FMQs today were anything to go by, we should not despair.

Nicola Sturgeon was a bracing change from Salmond - inverting the usual bluster-to-content ratio and, I thought, doing so in a robustly personable manner.

Paradoxically, her adversary Cathy Jamieson also had a winning performance, avoiding the cringe worthy sanctimoniousness of her erstwhile boss (of which we were reminded shortly thereafter with Rhona Brankin's pathetic question). Jamieson was not just a better performer than Wendy - which would be to say not much - she came across as serious, thorough and authentic. Crucially, she looked like she could lead a party, even a governing one.

Of course, Annabel played her usual straight bat, and Tavish (not, incidentally, a woman) continued yesterday's form with a constructive question well posed. He represented the minority gender well.

So the Labour party should return Jamieson as leader, Salmond should take some time off in Westminster, and our parliament might start looking like a serious legislative body even at FMQs.

More on Obama character assassination

I have been disappointed by Obama's u-turns and (irrelevantly) could not vote for him with any great enthusiasm. Still, I am genuinely afraid of a McCain world and am distressed by the apparently 50-50 chance that an irresponsible and dangerous man is going to replace a incompetent and dangerous man in the White House.

Further to the previous PolitiFact post I've had a wee look on Snopes and am stunned by the meticulousness with which falsehoods about Obama have been peddled.

Check this email out. It's brutal. The 90% lies give the 10% truth the appearance of being but the tip of the iceberg. "Oh, so he's not actually a Muslim, but his middle name is still Hussein" is, I assume, the desired response.

The question is, what's the source? Most likely it's Republican activists with too much time on their hands. But there are almost certainly those deep in the establishment who would really benefit from Obama failing in his presidential quest - those spooked by Obama's multilateral foreign policy rhetoric, those who don't like his esteem for international law, those who simply don't like his emphasis on the grassroots rather than D.C.

It's popular suspicion of Obama that will prevent him winning in November election, and this kind of gutter email is the establishment's best chance of stopping him.

Politics journalism at its best: the St Petersburg Times truth-o-meter

Check out this from the St Petersburg Times - I love it! All televised political speeches should have one of these in the corner of the screen.

That said, the amount of complete falsehood being peddled, the amount of mud being flung - particularly at Obama - is distressing, because mud sticks. As my colleague points out, it's "classic Nixonian tactics" for the activists to engage in outright slander whilst the candidate himself behaves in a statesmanlike fashion, and works beautifully.

Although, this is a perhaps too generous to McCain who lies more than he tells the truth. Obama doesn't.

Anyway, enjoy the most outrageous lies of the campaign so far here.

Tav's debut

I was pleased by the line Tavish Scott took this morning in response to the launch of the Government's legislative programme.

The understanding the SNP have with the Tories has lead to a rightward swing and is based, I hope, on the belief that a more progressive understanding with the Lib Dems is impossible because they're too close to Scottish Labour. Tavish certainly helped dispel that idea.

He avoided the shrill piety that often disguised the fact that the SNP and Lib Dems quite often agree on things, he hammered Labour (oh the relief!) and he asked good questions about Westminster-Holyrood cooperation.

The highlight, however, was Salmond's reference to the SNP's "hysterical concordat" with local government.

Ministrels?

The word minister has the same Latin root as the word minstrel.

Imagine a community of musicians and singers who travel the world with nothing but each other and our music, spending our days learning, serving and making music. It's a very simple idea. We could:

• Couch surf, stay in churches, protest sites or community centres.
  
• Perform for free wherever we're invited, or busk, accepting any donations to pay for food and onward travel.
  
• Plug in to local projects or just pick up litter if we can't find anything else to do.
  
• Take on new participants as we go, and as people return home.

This would model an exhilarating reciprocity and downwardly-mobile interdependence, and could lead to some extraordinary encounters - as well as some great musical cross-pollination.

Of course, we'd have to be really good, otherwise we'll get hungry.

Any takers?

Fasting

Interesting reflections on fasting from Maysaloon here.

One of the many things the western churches should rediscover.

David Cameron on South Ossetia

I'm still fizzing from hearing David Cameron piously pronounce on Russia and South Ossetia, repeating on this morning's Today programme the wholly disingenuous mantra that it all began with Russia's invasion of a sovereign state.

Meanwhile, amid the bellicose rhetoric, the Russians have come up with a suggestion that should suit any reasonable western policy maker keen on avoiding a new cold war: giving the reckless egomaniac Saakashvili the armaments cold shoulder. It is barmy that we continue to sustain Mr Saakashvili in the light of his arguably brutal and certainly idiotic bombardment of South Ossetian nationalists and their largely supportive civilian population. It makes a mockery of the lofty human rights rhetoric with which we whitewashed Nato involvement in Kosovo.

It is even more barmy now that the Russians have so clearly demonstrated their unwillingness to see its hostile and fawningly pro-Western neighbour bully separatist provinces into remaining Georgian - a quite legitimate response in the light of the west's involvement in Kosovo, and with similar resulting bloodshed.

The real scandal is that, having taken such a hard line when the blame clearly lay at Tiblisi's door, it's become harder to criticise the genuine abuses that have taken place since Russia invaded. That Russia is punishing Georgia, and Georgians, is not in doubt. But the west has lost all moral authority.

Self-interest prevails, of course. Establishing a Nato column in Russia's near neighbourhood would be just dandy for 'our' economic and geopolitical interests. But how much are we prepared to pay?

I can't see western leaders, who have to a person slammed Russia and pitied Georgia, suddenly doing an about turn, but less hypocrisy, less opportunism, and a little collective humility would be by far the best response for everyone, not least the Georgians and South Ossetians.

I fear we depend on the Germans to moderate today's laughable emergency summit.

The real P21 challenge

When I was down in Edinburgh the other week, someone raised P21 again.

He pointed out that hundreds of people will be able to sit in the new church building and say to their kids: 'See this - this is why we didn't go on holiday last year".

Notwithstanding that supporters wouldn't see the building as an end in itself, he also pointed out that it was hard to imagine hundreds of people saying: 'Kids, the family over the road had their first ever family holiday this year. That's why we didn't go on holiday this year.'

What a challenge - not to P's and G's. To me.

If we criticise, as I have done, we are holding ourselves to a very high standard. A standard which, to date, I haven't begun to attain, and a standard which some people who have also given to P21 probably have attained.

Settlement expansion (continued)

There was a sharp pain in my stomach when I read this from Tzipi Livni in the Chicago Tribune:

"The peace process is not and should not be affected by any kind of settlement activities. The role of leaders is to try and find a way to live in peace in the future, and not to let any kind of noises that relate to the situation on the ground these days to enter the negotiation room."

Huh?!

Settlement expansion

Peace Now reports dramatically accelerated settlement building in the West Bank.

The extent of settlement expansion in Palestine reflects better than anything else the status accorded to the Green Line by Israeli policy-makers. By extension it is a useful gauge of the extent to which they are willing to co-exist on equal political terms with a Palestinian state.

Whilst refugee return and the division of Jerusalem are thorny practical and ideological issues respectively, Israeli appropriation of land beyond that recognised as Israeli in international law amounts to an effective opting out of any meaningful peace process.

Settlements are not some kind of abstract background noise of violence, they are acts of war. They make a Munich Agreement out of any peace deal, and turn constructive Palestinian leaders into hapless Neville Chamberlains.

House prices rise (sic?)

No, it's not an error. The Lloyds TSB Scottish House Price Monitor tells me that the quarterly price index for the average domestic property in Scotland rose by 1.6% in the three months ending July 2008.

I thought we were all about to die of recession?

Rumbles afoot

OK, the Lib Dem leadership contest should be a foregone conclusion. Tavish Scott has the vast majority of the parliamentary party on board, and members' fondness for Ross Finnie does not necessarily translate into a belief he can lead the Lib Dems into a strong and sustainable third party position.

But Mike Rumbles - despite only having Mike Pringle's backing out of 16 MSPs - could spring a surprise. He's been aggressively canvassing and he will claim to be a more natural choice for disaffected liberals: he's the dissenting voice, the "least consensus based" as one supporter of his described him to me, and his line on the key constitutional issue makes far more sense to liberals than that Nicol and Tav have promoted.

What's more, he has popular appeal and enough witty ripostes to compete with Salmond. This time tomorrow he could be a happy chappy.

All that said, his election would be bad for liberalism and social democracy in Scotland. How the parliamentary party will be able to rally behind him I have no idea. He seems to contribute mostly contention to debate, rather than radicalism - there is more than a hint of reactionary conservatism to him that may reflect the aspirations of an aging activist base but will not do much to shore up support among younger liberals.

More immediately, his election would drive a wedge between the parliamentary party and an already disparate and dwindling membership.

AHA! #5: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification, Guatemala

Linked is a harrowing write-up of the abuses perpetrated by the Guatemalan state during the civil war. Though Jimmy Carter halted military aid to the country in 1979, the official US line on Guatemala remained rather ambivalent, as can be seen in these fascinating documents.

Arguably, it all began as early as 1954 when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Jacobo Ardenz because he was a social democrat: “the poison arrow that pierced the heart of Guatemala's young democracy" as Kate Doyle writes here.

Guatemala is by no means out of the woods, as described in a print-only article in the New Statesman about ongoing efforts to exhume those massacred in the 1980s ('Guatemala: Unearthing the past', NS, 18 August 2008, p. 22).

So what?
Well, it's interesting to see how the rhetoric against left of centre governments in Latin America has been cranked up again, despite their apparently frustrating ability to get elected. This Henry Jackson Society article reflects a prevailing suspicion and hostility towards left-oriented power that could easily contribute to a cycle of belligerence.

Recent news on: Paraguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua.

AHA! #4: Mugabe's one party state

Linked is a 1985 editorial from the Times relating to Robert Mugabe's plan to form a one-party state in the wake of elections and the purging of Joshua Nkomo's Zapu supporters in Matabeleland.

It majors on the bizarre white turn-out in favour of Ian Smith, but criticises Mugabe for responding in an "ill-tempered manner".

It reveals a familiar Mr Mugabe who takes politics personally.

Farcically, it seems more interested in Mr Mugabe's "laudable" treatment of whites than the "brutal" violence in Matabeleland. In Operation Gukurahundi, Mugabe's men killed more than 10,000 Ndebele (some sources say 20,000). I can't imagine the Times would have described raprochement with Nkomo as "laudable" had 10,000 whites been slaughtered.

This notwithstanding, it has chilling foresight:

"However much Mr Mugabe may find it frustrating, the [election] results give him neither a mandate for a one-party state nor any justification for tampering with the constitution. To force the issue now, as Mr Mugabe has threatened to do, would inflict on Zimbabwe irreparable harm ."

Indeed.

BBC misquotes regeneration report?

The linked article quotes the Policy Exchange report as saying certain northern cities are: "beyond revival".

This phrase does not appear in the report.

It infuriates me that a useful piece of writing is being savaged thus. With the failure of regeneration policies, politicians on all sides should be grateful for any coherent advice they can get.

boxthejack endorses 'right-wing' think-tank, shock!

I rarely leap to the defence of right-wing think-tanks and I didn't expect to when I heard that the Policy Exchange had recommended evacuating the north because northern cities are beyond hope. Or at least, that's how the BBC and the Guardian seemed to report it.

"Do you live in Sunderland?" writes Peter Walker on his Guardian blog. "Are your bags packed? Well, the Policy Exchange thinks that perhaps they should be."

I smelt a rat when I heard who'd written the report. The economists in question are not nutty pro-business radicals. They're not all Tories either - Tim Leunig is a Lib Dem I understand. In any case, we should at least do them the service of actually reading their recommendations, linked above.

There are certainly aspects of the report that come across, at first, as a little defeatist:

"Just as we can't buck the market, so we can’t buck economic geography either. Places that enjoyed the conditions for creating wealth in the coal-powered 19th-century often do not do so today. Port cities had an advantage in an era when exporting manufactured goods by sea was a vital source of prosperity; today the sea is a barrier to their potential for expansion and they are cut off from the main road transport routes."

Concluding therefore that government should sit by whilst people just pack their bags and leave makes little sense. Investing in an integrated anti-Beeching transport system is surely a requirement in the climate conscious era anyway, subject to which the periphery will become effectively closer to the core.

What's more, these towns still have unique heritages, unique demographics, and - assuming some sense of communal belonging - the potential to turn these into unique selling points. When I read the BBC report I thought: 'The real problem here is centralisation - which would be compounded if everyone just upped and left.'

And this, in fact, is precisely what Leunig et al are saying. They do not suggest we should dismiss Sunderland and Liverpool, or let them stagnate as peripheral non-Londons. Rather, they suggest that pumping money into regeneration towns simply won't work unless there is more robust local organisation and accountable local government.

No wonder the Tories aren't going to adopt the report's recommendations.

In the short term, the authors anticipate some migration to the South East, and suggest that this should not be artificially resisted. They argue that the policy of dedicating so much land in London for industrial development rather than residential use makes it too cheap for business to locate in London, and too expensive for people to live there. Were this not the case, businesses would relocate to cheaper peripheral areas and trigger a virtuous cycle.

The summary compares Britain unfavourably with Germany and the Netherlands because of the peripheral nature of our old industrial towns. I would add here that both Germany and the Netherlands benefited from the absence of an anti-society demagogue who encouraged individuals to abandon all sense of belonging and pursue personal wealth at all costs, just at the point that the increasingly integrated global economy was acting as a powerful catalyst upon this process of fragmentation. Germany, in particular, did not promote cheap money and labour mobility as the panacea, but rather allowed a gradual liberalisation of markets. Critically, the Netherlands is small, and Germany has maintained regional autonomy.

And just because the report's writers don't necessarily share my antipathy towards Maggie, their recommendations are as un-Thatcherite as it gets:

"The relative weakness of local government [in the UK] has compounded this disadvantage; our studies of cities around the world – in Germany and the Netherlands, in Poland, Canada and Hong Kong – demonstrate that local communities manage their affairs better than a distant central government can ever do."

The article goes on to advocate:

• Devolution, because it leads to diversity which in turn reveals what works and doesn't work.
• Rolling up central regeneration funding, and giving local authorities that cash based on a progressive formula - the inverse of average income levels. Hardly right-wing.
• Allowing local authorities to set their own priorities, rather than adopting central priorities which lead to "identikit towns".
• Improving local government accountability: "That means much better scrutiny by the Audit Commission and local media and greater rights for local people to investigate what the town hall is doing. It also means ensuring that the voting system makes elections truly contestable".
• Maintaining central funding only for exceptional (presumably exceptionally expensive) circumstances, but giving local authorities responsibility for presenting and implementing the regeneration plan. They would be directly accountable to the local electorate.

Spot on I'd say.

AHA! #3: Hillary Clinton's strategy

Not so historical this time. A series of memos published in today's The Atlantic magazine, sent by Hillary Clinton's advisors in the two years running up to her defeat - just click on the title.

Whether they could damage Obama remains to be seen, but they certainly make HRC's campaign look fractious, negative, and ultimately self-defeating.

The Atlantic's Joshua Green reflects on the material here.

AHA! #2: Gandhi's eulogy to Emily Hobhouse

Click on the title and scroll to document 37. It's Gandhi's obituary of Emily Hobhouse, an English activist who was described by the government as "hysterical" for her campaign against Britain's latest invention, the concentration camp, during the Anglo-Boer war.

The reflections of someone who would soon become an icon of struggle against assumed power upon a lesser known veteran of struggle makes this short obituary wonderfully dynamic.

There's also a good Wikipedia article on her here.

Eddie Mair on South Ossetia

Just listened to PM. Eddie Mair's handling of the Russia-Georgia situation was less than fair. He was pretty much sarcastic with the Russian representative, whilst treating the plucky little Georgian with great sympathy.

The points that seem to have eluded him are that Russia does not claim South Ossetia, that there is a difference between a nation and a state, and that Georgia fired the first shots. Is Russian protecting its geopolitical self-interest? Of course. But it was Georgia's frustration with separatism that pushed the button.

The lack of any attempt at dispassionate analysis was infuriating, and our leaders seem to relish the opportunity to criticise Russia's lack of respect for a country's territorial integrity. Something we'd never do.

Have a wee shufti at MacNumpty's analysis, as well as that of James Poulos in the Guardian.