What blogging can and can't achieve

Never Trust a Hippy has a good piece on what blogging can and can't achieve over at his place. He suggests that blogging in the UK has only managed to do two things. There are rumour and scandal mongering blogs like Guido Fawkes- who are attempting to become a British Drudge report. Then there are blogs which lead intellectual discussion- Matt Sinclair, Chris Dillow and others come to mind. Its an interesting point and to be honest I agree in part with Paulie about this- the best blogging I have come across has not been partisan but has been the thoughtful bloggers who work on a more interesting brief than those digging up new email systems in Downing Street, dodgy donaters to any party or racist activists. All that stuff is to me of limited interest- it has its place- because of Watergate and subsequent events the political landscape is obsessed with scandal. Actually scandal is pretty boring compared say to the discussions about how we can and should govern ourselves.

So I agree with Paulie largely- but I differ from him in one perspective and its something I don't think anyone in the UK blogosphere has really thought about. The Americans are obviously years ahead of us in readership and in the influence of blogging- and there are big differences in the market for political blogging- there is no Guardian website equivalent in the states- furthermore the British newspaper market has always provided partisan commentary in a way say that the New York Times or Washington Post in the States have never sought to provide. But the American example is fascinating- because its interesting to reflect for a moment on where and on what the blogosphere has had a real effect on politics.

To stick to one site on the left for a moment, consider Daily Kos. Kos performs a number of functions on the American left- but to caricature his biggest successes in terms of influencing politics have come in sponsoring or promoting candidates who are second tier in the states and have been neglected by others. You could think of Howard Dean's Presidential campaign, you could think of Ned Lamont's challenge to Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut senatorial primary, of Jon Tester's run for the Montana senate and of a number of other races. Kos and others like him have been effective at promoting people who were second tier, not known much and creating a momentum behind them. The Democrats have raised vast amounts of money and got large numbers of volunteers to work through the web. You could say the same thing has grown on the right behind the 'no hope' candidacy of Ron Paul: Paul would be nowhere without the millions raised on the net, the volunteers that he has produced through the net and is now running in high single figures in New Hampshire and Iowa.

It is hard to see how that might work in the UK. Central party organisation means that there is much less space for a grassroots campaigning support for people on the web. We can overestimate the degree of centralisation in British politics- local campaigns can work (say in Wyre Forest) and on both sides millions have been donated directly to the campaigns in marginal constituencies particularly between elections. I'm not sure though how directly this model will work in UK politics- constituencies aren't like states- politics in the UK is far more centrally directed than in the US. The donation of a thousand individuals might effect a local campaign, but they are nothing when compared to the money that a Mittal or Ashcroft can pour in to the central party coffers. Local MPs often lack identity beyond their position as lobby fodder- though again one can imagine mavericks or charismatic individuals getting support from the blogosphere which would help them in marginal seats. In general though the structure of politics is much less hospitable for bloggers in the UK- much more centralised, much more national than politics is in the US.

Obviously things can and might change- and will have to change if the British political blogosphere is to have more of an impact- but at the moment the British blogosphere is a pale shadow and imitation of its American cousin.

Crossposted at the Liberal Conspiracy.

The merits of Conservatism

Having spent my last post berating young Mr Sinclair, it feels appropriate to commend him and this post gives me a worthy opportunity. Matt argues that political competence can be defined thus

I would call someone incompetent if they make a policy decision that led to problems that could easily have been foreseen but that took them unawares (expected problems aren't incompetence, more often they are trade-offs).

Matt is entirely right and what he has captured here is a key strength of conservatism- caution. One of the main intellectual attractions of conservative thinkers from Burke to Popper is the emphasis on caution and thinking through change rather than implementing it swiftly. Amongst the major curses of Mr Blair's government and previous British governments have been their neglect of process, a good conservative understands that process is vital because it means that you go through checks so that hopefully you do think through the things that Matt discusses. Rule by whim exposes you to more of these errors- its not a good thing and Matt is entirely right to call it incompetence.

Public Sector Rich Lists

Matt Sinclair has gone on the attack about the Public Sector Rich list and my criticisms of it on his blog. I must clear up one thing- Matt points out quite rightly that the report got a heavy amount of media attention- I hadn't remembered that it had got that media attention and apologise to anyone who was offended by my statement that it hadn't. To be honest I viewed that as the least significant sentence of my argument- its far more important to be right than to be noticed but I retract that statement fully and realise that whatever the public sector rich list was, it was well covered.

Ok lets turn to Matt's more substantive points- the article is uncharacteristically full of sneers and jibes- more worthy of a lesser blogger than Matt who is more often a polite and interesting interlocutor. The average private sector CEO is paid less than many of the individuals on the public sector rich list- but ultimately that average is not comparable to some of the big organisations we are talking about here. Take the Royal Mail, it is a reasonably large organisation delivering to 27 million addresses in the UK. Its not exactly a small manufacturer- its chief executive deserves to be compared in terms of wages with the boss of a FTSE 100 company which undoubtedly it would be if the thing was privatised all together. The average FTSE 100 chief executive takes home 737,000 pounds worth of salary but added to other benefits takes home almost 3.2 million pounds.

If we believe that FTSE 100 chairmen have skills which make them good leaders of large organisations than we ought to be employing them in the public sector. If we argue they don't, it calls into question the fact that they are paid these massive wages to begin with. Now Matt can argue quite rightly that there is no obvious link between a large salary and good performance in the public sector, but neither is there necessarily such a link in the private sector- despite the fact that shares have only gone up 7.5% in the last year, salaries according to the Daily Telegraph have leapt 40% for the same period. The Remuneration committee at the Royal Mail seems to have as much of a good idea as how this functions as that of any major company. Ultimately if you believe that these guys make up 120 times the average worker in what they can add to a company, there is no reason not to recruit them to work for the state at the same wages. If you disagree with the salaries you must disagree at some point with the principle that these salaries are necessary to attract the best executives to run these companies both privately and publicly.

Lets put this in a more sensible form- Matt is completely right that just because someone is paid millions wrongly that doesn't mean it is right to pay another person millions. But that applies in both sectors- unless Matt is arguing that the public sector doesn't require the skills to run its extensive bureaucracy that a large company requires- and across many jobs. Perhaps the TPA should do some more focused work on where the wage of a particular public employee isn't justified- suggesting alternative models for recruitment that would produce a better person in the job. Perhaps the government doesn't need to employ the best lawyers, accountants, consultants, hospital chairmen, company directors, perhaps the public can settle comfortably for second best and pay that way- but doesn't that call into question whether the best really are the best.

In a society which awards high wages for particular jobs and skills, if the public sector wants to use those skills ultimately it will pay the appropriate market price. I'm not sure what bit of that sentence that Matt disagrees with.

Civilisation- the teaching aide

The game Civilisation for those who don't know it is incredibly addictive and great fun. In it you take charge of a civilisation- from a set of options including such noted civilisations as the Persians, Babylonians, Chinese, French, British and even Americans. You take your civilisation through the course of history, from the demise of nomadism to the age of the fighter jet. Its a wonderful game and has built into it all sorts of ideas about forms of government and economics and all sorts of things, it provides quite a useful intro for anyone playing it to all those ideas and to the idea that history could well have taken a different course- once you have built the Great Wall of China in Egypt and taken Mongolia to the space race you reall understand the idea that history is contingent, there is no plan and everything could have happened differently.

It is unsurprising therefore to me to find that educationalists have picked up on this and there are increasing efforts to use games like Civilisation and its cousin Simcity (where you build and govern a city) as teaching aides in the classroom. Aaron Wechel writes interestingly in the current issue of World History Connected about the way that teachers can use the games- both to introduce kids to concepts used in the game that they might not come across in other ways, and in making them think as though they were world leaders. Of course as Wechel notes there are problems with the whole concept of civilisation- world leaders don't choose to have Newton discover the laws of gravity and democracy doesn't emerge in a society just because someone says it ought to (if it did Donald Rumsfeld would still have a job!) There are additional detailed problems that Wechel doesn't really deal with- are the effects of particular governments and systems right for example- indeed kids need to realise that the effects of particular systems aren't neccessarily understood and are often a matter of dispute. Wechel rightly doesn't want teachers to teach kids to uncritically absorb the games they play but to critique them as well.

But I think what this whole discussion brings out though is the fallacy that many people still hold to, that computer games have no beneficial effects for children in terms of education. I think that they do- Civilisation is an obvious example where a game can teach kids about some historical concepts. But other games too are interesting in the way that they breed better cognition- for instance SimCity makes you really think about how to be a City mayor in America- how rising crime effects economic performance and prosperity for instance. Even a game that might seem not to have so much educational merit- Championship Manager (a game in which you are the manager of a football team and buy and sell players in order to create the perfect team) actually has benefits. The game teaches you to analyse massive databases of players- filter them- deal with psychology and most importantly deal with a budget. All of that is important for kids to learn. Of course all the games have presumptions built into them which maybe and often are faulty- but they shouldn't be dismissed.

Sometimes we can be too focused on being Jeremiahs, actually there is plenty of good in computer games and plenty that people can learn from them- especially when the game itself is treated with caution.

The History Carnival

Historians like to think that we are doing something for other people when we research- and to a large extent we are. Writing for a blog about history involves teaching others about their own histories and telling them why this particular story. Most of us emerged as historians when we first realised that stories were fascinating and that some of them were true, when we first as MarthaQ did with Alexander the Great thought about the differences between accounts of the past and tried to reconcile them. Martha's original questions might be naive, but soon historians and students of history begin to probe even greater questions- questions about whether people in the past felt about things in the same way as we do, or whether they even understood themselves in the same way. Well any reasonable history carnival ought to present some posts that consider some historical stories and their relevance to the modern day. This month's carnival is no exception- and in addition to the posts above there are plenty more which will make you think about your place in the world.

Place is a keynote for any historian, wondering around the streets of local towns or cities you can get a real sense of the past. Any historian of New York must know that he walks the streets that Alexander Hamilton once strolled. Sometimes that sense can be illusory, who would imagine wondering modern London, particularly Camden, that only sixty years ago those streets echoed with bombs. Historians though also need to look at things that stay the same- Poland's history has been shaped as David Frum argues by its geographic position. The shape of Poland has been used in different ways by different rulers: but the same goes for words, whose history tells us something about the history of the societies that use them- consider for example the word Tiger and the related Tigris river. Familiarity can often jolt us into understanding both the past's continuity with and difference from the present- moments of epiphany in which empathy seems stronger. For instance, dates are crucial in this. Over the last month, we have seen a number of anniversaries of executions pass us by, those of the murderer Dr. Crippen, six Greek politicians and an unknown allied airman. Each story has something vivid to contribute to us, because each story allows us to enter into a piece of the past.

Individual stories are often the best way of entering into history. They provide us with someone to directly empathise with. For years Americans recalled the events of the revolution whenever they saw Benjamin Franklin's ghost appear. We ourselves can have our own Franklin's ghosts to remind us of the past. The history of women for instance in the nineteenth century is illuminated this month by two wonderful articles about great women of the past: one about the French courtesan Ninon de Lenclos and the other about the early life of Emily Chesley. Entering into the past via a person often requires a hook for us to hang our thoughts on, sport can provide an interesting hook for comparison and thought about cultural differences between our times and times past. The great player revolt in Baseball in the late nineteenth century led by Fred Dunlap stands as one supreme example of sporting change accompanying cultural change. And of course the evolution of British culture can be charted in the videos of the teams that almost won the footballing treble (FA Cup, League and European Cup) over the course of the second half of the twentieth century. Without understanding the times in which people lived, it is very difficult to work out what they were doing- even the dates of marriages and births can be hard to comprehend, unless you appreciate that for instance in 18th Century America many wives went pregnant into the churchyard. But that is not the end of it, for understanding the way that culture and individuality interact gets incredibly complicated- as this paper by Eileen Joy on Saint Guthlac demonstrates.

So from the individual, we turn as historians to the collective, to the grand narratives, the grand frames into which we fit the individuals that we study. In order to start understanding the life of a medieval West African, it is vital that you know this kind of outline of West African history before you start. Evidence though sometimes is a problem- archaeologists for years made a mistake about how North America was peopled but are now going back to new types of evidence and reconsidering their earlier verdicts. Automatically as soon as we get into these broader questions, we get into issues which are even today political. The American Indians suffered greatly from their White Conquerors and at the Washita Massacre Indians were particularly cruelly killed by a future American hero. A genocidal hero- surely not, but the same thing is happening in Russia at the moment where Joseph Stalin is being used in advertising campaigns. History though can be inspiring- its worth remembering that there were Europeans who didn't massacre the Indians but instead met and engaged with them as human beings- worth remembering because it tells us a lesson treat your opponents as individuals and you stand a much greater chance of being merciful when they are in your power.

Political thought arises naturally from history- history is the only experimental ground for political philosophers and there are plenty of subtle ones out there. Take for example Ashok who provides this month an inciteful reading of Jefferson's inaugural. Some argue that we are approaching another crisis period in American history- if so strap your seatbelts tight. Others suggest that democracy itself depends on certain presumptions and that the modern West looks very like Rome in the late Republic.

All of those ideas depend on a historical basis- but of course historians disagree all the time- indeed the only thing that historians do more than read is disagree. At the moment there has been a right battle going on about English Civil War historiography- David Underdown took a shot at John Adamson and the blogs have been responding in force. Chris Bray is openly contemptuous of any argument that America was anti-military in the first decades of its existance and David Frum aims his guns at a series of second world war targets from Western Generals to Russian commissars, in a review of Max Hastings' latest book on the subject. However the outcome of a conference on gender and diet in the middle ages- did women eat differently from men- reminds us that much about history remains inconclusive- history is less about answered questions than unanswered ones, get ye back to the libraries. You can see this as well in the fact that we still don't understand whether a meteorite blew up in the atmosphere only a ninety nine years ago- if we don't know that, then its no surprise that we are ignorant of other things.

History, as I hope you are aware through surveying these links, is very much an alive subject. Money is being poured into lots of areas of the subject- Canada is seeing millions of pounds being spent on a new history of science network for example. Courses are now being constructed using the web and blogging as a tool, whether for discussing history or historiography. And the power of history can be seen in the way that others are reevaluating documents like the Bible in the context of historical discovery.

Whatever history is, it isn't history!

Israel

A very interesting bloggingheads on Israel between Daniel Levy, a former negotiator under Barak, and David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush, and very well worth watching and listening to.

Public Sector Rich Lists

I have just taken a look at the concept of a public sector rich list over at the Liberal Conspiracy- its an interesting idea and worth taking seriously, especially as regards its implications.

Moral Failings of Hearts and Minds

In a Yes Minister episode, Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker debate whether it is better to be heartless or mindless. The Minister argues for mindlessness, the civil servant for heartlessness. Perhaps it isn't surprising that Hollywood films have tended to laud the heartless over the mindless- but they and Sir Humphrey have a point. Its a point that goes all the way back to theology from the seventeenth century and earlier- where the leading argument was that anyone who was mindless risked losing their mortal soul, whereas heartlessness in the acheivement of God's purposes was a virtue to be encouraged. The great Hollywood film noir enables us to understand some of the virtues of such approaches- it enables us to see the contrast between a failed human and a flawed human.

The Big Heat is one of the great films made in the fifties, that came out of the film noir and gangster traditions. The film counterpositions the lonely cop, played by Glenn Ford against a vast criminal organisation. At its most fundemental though it plays off different types of moral behaviour, different types of moral individual against each other. I want to concentrate on two of those individuals- the main male and female characters, played by Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame, the cop Rick Bannion and the gangster's moll Debbie. Both encapsulate different forms of good character- Bannion is righteous, the kind of policeman who has no cares in the world except to locate and destroy criminals. Bannion's wife is killed during the film to leave him almost without adult ties. Bannion doesn't care whether he survives or not, heartlessly he is determined to destroy the criminal gang that he faces.

Debbie isn't heartless but she is mindless. She can see perfectly well that she has created a gilded cage, but she seeks to enjoy the cage and the moment. She is vivacious, mocking the gangsters even as she sleeps with one of them to make her way in the world. She is caring enough to know that when a gangster beats up a woman its a bad thing, and to talk to Bannion afterwards, but she still goes back to the gangsters. She lives in the world, sister under the mink, to anyone who lives in that world. She is one of the most lovable femme fatales in film noir because of that naivete and that feeling. She cares and ultimately she joins in with Bannion to destroy the criminals, ultimately she does that though through an act of heartfelt rage and she is the one that breaks the gang. But Bannion of course survives the film.

After Bannion's wife dies, he loses his heart, he cares for noone, manipulates a series of people to their individual disasters in order to destroy the villains. And these are no ordinary villains, a corporation of hoodlums produces sympathetic people- bosses with daughters, thugs who have a kindness about them. Bannion doesn't care- for him they are scum, he never even gives them names he just calls them thief. He identifies them by their job and by their evil, for him there is no forgiveness, for him there is no compromise. Debbie though is different, for her there is always compromise- thanks friend she says to a kind gangster and she is willing to talk to a policeman who is trying to put away her boyfriend. She takes risks and yes she is mindless in the way that she gets in bed (literally) with the gangsters, but she has a heart and sympathises with people. Bannion doesn't care- doesn't care when Debbie gets hurt, when people get shot, for him there is only the certainty of righteousness.

And how about the film. Well the film leaves us with an interesting contrast. Ultimately we don't like Bannion, too ferocious and too hard, he leaves a sharp taste in the mouth- he gets 'his kicks out of insulting people'. We like Debbie, she is fun and flirtatious, vivacious and friendly. But Bannion gets the decisions right- Bannion is uncompromising enough to see that the gangsters are gangsters not human beings and deserve to be put away. He sees that the murderer is a murderer- Debbie thinks he is a human being and 'you gotta take the bad with the good'. In that sense the distinction between heartlessness and mindlessness becomes a distinction between two moral vices- the vice of indulgence and the vice of self righteousness. Debbie ultimately is over indulgent to her boyfriend and the others- perhaps for selfish reasons as well as unselfish ones. Bannion's crusade is irresponsible, leading others to their deaths, veers into self righteousness but is impecably moral.

The film illustrates the way that heart and mind must work together- to beleive in either on its own is to make a real moral mistake. Debbie makes one, but she redeems it by the end when she turns against evil and brings it down. Bannion makes one, but at the end of the film killing the evil outside enables him to rediscover the human within. Debbie though loses her life because of her compromises, Bannion is guiltless for losing other people's lives- I wonder if that's an image of the price of sympathy.

Screen Violence

Both Fabian and James have posted articles over the last few days about screen violence. I was meaning to respond immediatly but have been busy applying for jobs so left it. Both of them make interesting points. Both of them are worried about what violence does to the watcher. I learn some responses to others off the screen and so am more likely to repeat them. Casual violence breeds a culture in which casual violence is accepted- and possibly there is a truth to that. However I do think its worth in this context putting in two comments- the first is a historical one and the second a partial defence of violence.

Firstly it is worth recognising that as violence on screen has risen, society has got less violent. That might seem odd to many who see levels of crime which are higher than they were fifty years ago. But going back a hundred or two hundred years, violence is definitely diminished. Partly that is a result of urbanisation- anyone living on a farm is much closer to death than your modern day urban horror fan, they see a lot more of it a lot more realistically. Furthermore domestic violence was more common, though less commonly a crime all those years ago. Partly violence on screen may have replaced violence off screen. Don't forget that violent films began wiht the breakdown of Hollywood censorship in the sixties and seventies, a generation split by the experience of Vietnam came back to watch these films and partly that was an act of attempted remembrance and an act of communication- people wanted to communicate what went on out in the field to those that had not fought.

Secondly, as someone who has written about some of the most violent films ever made, violence can be indispensible to art of a movie. In all three of the cases I have just linked to (Casino, Bonnie and Clyde and Scarface) the violence is neccessary to convey the vision. Its neccessary for very different reasons. Scorsese wants to convey the results of corruption, Bonnie and Clyde is about the narcissm of its leading characters and their callousness and Scarface is about madness and its callousness. In all three cases the violence adds something- without it you wouldn't understand the point as well. One of the most violent films I have ever seen is Downfall- but its also a film for which violence is absolutely neccessary- because without it you don't understand the horror of the Third Reich. Ultimately I think films tell us something, often something important. They can corrupt of course. But the test of that I think is whether the violence is essential to the vision, there are very violent films where it is essential. There are others where it isn't essential and where violence seems to be the only point- the Hills have Eyes 2 would be a great example, a film which should never have been made.

I share some of Fabian and James's concerns but I think they are wrong to aim at all violence. Violence can do good things on screen, reminding us of reality or illustrating an idea. But it can be purposeless and a kind of masturbatory pleasure and then it deserves every denounciation. In truth it is the purpose behind the violence which matters, and whether the violence has a point to it, a context which explains it and something we can learn by it.

New thoughts on Curveball

I've posted a more analytical treatment of the Curveball case at the Liberal Conspiracy. Basically I suggest that what this case shows is that the defects in prewar Iraq intelligence were all to do with a lack of international cooperation and a lack of non-politically influenced discussion at the centre of government. Essentially Curveball demonstrates that we need more cooperation in international affairs, particularly intelligence upon which anything in modern warfare depends and we need to be more thoughtful about the politicisation of our civil service.

Bob Drogin, Curveball

In 2003 Colin Powell laid out to the Security Council a series of facts about the Iraqi program to build weapons of mass destruction that he claimed the United States and its allies had discovered. Powell's statement was at its most convincing when he referred to the construction of numerous trucks by Saddam to carry biological agent around Iraq. All of that depended Powell said upon three sources, but the three sources swiftly became one when it was found that two of them were frauds. Indeed as Bob Drogin proves in a recent book, almost everything Powell said about Biological weapons depended on things that the CIA had inferred from one source. Everything he said about chemical weapons depended on that evidence being so strong and the chemical analysts presuming that if Saddam had a biological program he must have a chemical one. Ultimately the conviction of the CIA and of Colin Powell himself in the case depended upon one source- one solitary man who was held not by the Americans but by the Germans in Munich. The man's name is still a secret and noone knows it- his codename was Curveball. Bob Drogin has just written a fascinating book about the case.

Curveball arrived in Germany in 1999 and claimed asylum. Once there as an Iraqi he naturally gravitated towards the German intelligence service, the BND, who interviewed him intensively about his past in Saddam's Iraq. They had noticed that he claimed on entry to Germany to having been a chemical engineer and when they interviewed him, he told them he had been part of Saddam's biological weapons program and gave them details of it. The Germans were persuaded and told other intelligence agencies about Curveball, though they refused to let anyone else interview him- particularly the CIA. The BND and the CIA had historically had awful relations with each other- since the second world war the CIA beleived that the Germans were filled with communist spies and the Germans resented the Americans' obvious lack of trust in them. Personal matters such as CIA privileges after 1990 in Germany and their efforts to force out a German attache in Washington didn't make things better either.

Bad relations between the intelligence services of the two countries meant that Curveball was interviewed by the Germans on their own- only one American came into contact with him until 2004. The Germans interviewed him over a two year period running from 1999 until 2001, by 2001 Curveball was going through a mental breakdown and his story was unravelling. He was inconsistant and seemed to be confusing things. The Germans told other intelligence agencies about him, they told them that he was unreliable and then let it lie. Things had gone cold- Curveball settled in Germany and everything went quiet.

Until that is CIA officers after September 11th and particularly in 2002 began digging up their own files about Saddam's WMD and came across Curveball. They found his evidence interesting and contacted the BND who were non committal, telling the CIA not to trust Curveball. The CIA analysts pressed ahead, what they saw from Curveball they asserted could work, the idea of biological weapons trucks had been referred to once before in 1995 by an Iraqi, there were other sources (later found to be fraudulent) even if they contradicted Curveball and it could be done. There were battles in Langley between the analysts and the operations people. The analysts asserted it could be done, the operations team wanted to know more about the source. Those battles went right up into the heart of the bureacracy and ultimately George Tenet's immediate staff decided that the analysts won, they needed to produce WMD for a White House which was readying for war and this was the peice of evidence they needed.

Collin Powell arrived in the beggining of 2003 to work over his speech with Tenet and his staff. Powell dismissed almost all the intelligence that he had received from the White House, he and the CIA thought it was laughable relying on evidence from the discredited Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Powell needed evidence and he wanted it to be rock solid, so he turned to Tenet and Tenet gave him Curveball. Tenet told Powell that Curveball had been checked out, that he had been passed as a good source despite the fact that Tenet's Director of European Operations, Tyler Drumheller, had phoned him that morning to tell him that the source was unreliable. Tenet assured Powell that it could go in the speech and Powell made the famous speech, using artist's impressions to convey the scale of one of these bio warfare trucks.

In the German intelligence agency the reaction was one of stunned fury. They sat there in absolute astonishment as Powell produced evidence that they knew was wrong and furthermore had told the Americans was wrong. The top German spy in Washington had gone as far as to phone his American contact- Tyler Drumheller- to tell him this. But Drumheller had lost the bureacratic battles inside the CIA, lost them because Tenet and his juniors knew that the message that Curveball was a fake would be unacceptable to a White House that was geared up for war. If the Germans couldn't beleive it then neither could the weapons inspectors- especially when they started looking at the sites Curveball had named. Curveball named seven sites and Blix's team went to everyone and found nothing. At the central site he named, they found a wall that prohibited the movement of any large vehicle- a wall that they knew had been there since 1997 because they had satallite photographs.

After the war was over, the US eventually organised a team to start inspecting the sites that they had identified as possible stores for WMD. Some of those sites had been identified from satallite evidence- often the satallite images were just of circular chicken coops- so much so that weapons searchers had t shirts engraved with 'Ballistic Chicken Farm Inspection Team' on the front. At other times steel drums for drying corn had been identified as silos filled with missiles. The Vice President's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby woke David Kay, the chief US weapons inspector, up at 2 in the morning demanding that he search a place in Iraq for WMD- Kay looked at a map and the coordinates Libby had given him were in Libya. Everything kept coming back to Curveball and his evidence but no evidence for his point appeared (save for two trucks originally labelled by none other than George Bush as trucks for the transport of biological agent, and later found to be trucks used for the transport of seeds).

So David Kay and his team started to investigate Curveball himself and what they found stunned them. He hadn't been a chemical weapons engineer, he had been a chemical engineer working in agriculture. He had described meticulously the Iraqi method of distributing seed not anthrax and everything he said about trucks was true only they were never used for WMD, just for agriculture. He had been sacked in the mid nineties and had become a taxi driver. He had a reputation for lying, had spent time in jail for robbery and was an untrustworthy individual. He had made his way to Germany to claim asylum, and wanted to be there to get a mercedes and a nice lifestyle. Everything that they had presumed about him was absolutely and completely wrong. At least one CIA agent almost had a nervous breakdown over the story.

The fact that Drogin has got all this evidence and there is more is stunning. His work is truly impressive as is his skill in telling the tale. Commentators from George Will to Judy Miller have been impressed with what he says. The problem as ever is what it means. Largely Drogin is right in my view to draw attention to the fact that this was a crisis created by an institutional framework. The CIA's heirarchical bureacractic battlefighting meant that people were working towards the will of those at the top. They wanted to impress- finding WMD would impress in the Washington battle. Furthermore the CIA was in constant conflict within itself- operations and analysis despised each other and worked against each other. The Pentagon was seen as the enemy and quite frequently through this the Pentagon and CIA could have seen that Curveball was a fake had they only worked together. Furthermore the CIA was suspicious of the Germans- were they working against the CIA to embarrass it throughout was a question recurring through the minds of various CIA operatives.

This is a fascinating book and story, I reckon there is much more to say about it than we can probe here but it is something that needs talking about. Curveball was a disaster for the CIA, a disaster for the United States because he encouraged a false confidence that WMD were somewhere in the sands of Mesopotamia. The failure of American intelligence in this case not to follow the pictures that they wanted to see, to not fall in love with a story, is something that is very true about the Iraq war.

We are in an uncertain world- and this book reinforces how hard it is to gather good intelligence about that world, and furthermore how much the CIA and Western Intelligence agencies have failed up till now in doing so.

The Dickens Football Team

James Hamilton has just offered up his Wodehouse team, I think though they are good, they would come unstuck against this team that I offer up from the novels of Charles Dickens- it would be a good game, but for creativity and thuggery I think this team would have the beating of anything that the effete cricket playing toff Wodehouse could produce!

The team I have set out plays a 3-5-2 formation.

Goal: Always a difficult position but Joe Gargery seems an automatic choice. Dependable and thoroughly individual, Joe can be relied upon not to make any mistakes and to always take the simple option. A thoroughly modest man, Joe is not one for hissy fits or attempting fantastic saves at the wrong moment.

Left centre half- A problematic position but Ebenezer Scrooge is a natural in it. Miserly in the beggining of the game when he never misplaces a pass in possession, his game becomes more expansive as the game advances. He is always though keen to stop the other side scoring and his grim determination to win means that he is a ferocious competitor and absolutely merciless in the tackle.

Centre-half- Betsy Trotwood fits right in here- she is strong and stubborn and has an innate positional sense. She is also a great captain for the team- a leader of men and women who has the ability both to comfort those in distress and to be ferocious with fraudulent divers. She is tough but fair.

Right centre half- Bill Sikes the thug in this lineup. Sikes is the Norman Hunter of the team- he will bite your legs and leave you on the floor afterwards. He isn't adverse to aerial challenges either and has an ability to intimidate even the most seasoned striker.

Left Midfield- Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, so known because he picks the pockets of opposition fullbacks when they aren't looking, is a skilfull young player, he nips through the midfield and is very creative and cunning. Can send the ball through the smallest gap and is very good at getting away from trouble.

Right midfield- Sam Weller- on the right because of his attitudes to his master Mr Pickwick, this chirpy Cockney can run all day, he is athletic and good at saving situations. But he also poses an attacking threat, he has good vision, he can see the play develop.

Centre midfield- Fagin- the master tactician, Fagin controls the passing of the team, controls the tempo of play and receives the ball. He can pass long ambitious attempts right out into the country, but is happiest with the ball at his feet masterminding intricate moves with the artful dodger on the streets of London. The only player who can control Sikes's temprament, he is vital to the unit.

Centre midfield- Sir Leicester Dedlock stern veteran in the centre of the midfield. Very concerned with the team's shape and maintains tactical discipline. Not the quickest but a very good recycler of the ball from the defence. A traditional style defensive midfielder who minds his estate in front of the defence with the utmost skill. He also serves as Vice Captain.

Centre midfield- Mr Micawber whereas Fagin and Dedlock are masters of the pass and the intelligent positioning, Micawber is the Gerard or Lampard of this midfield. He bustles everywhere always with the same hopeful optimism. Sometimes he can be ineffective- but at his best he can destroy any heep of opposition possession and furthermore surrounded by a supportive team can set moves going towards the Antipodean side of the pitch.

Centre-Forward Ghost of Jacob Marley- a ghostly presence on the field, often people don't notice he is even there but when he arrives he can be absolutely devestating and change the storyline of a game. Has a habit of rising out of fireplaces right onto the pitch into great offensive positions- he is a vital player for the team, motivated purely by a duty to recover his career.

Centre Forward- Mr Tulkinghorn- operates again secretly but a real team player, sometimes too cunning for his own good, he ticks along in the centre of this team with his great authority causing opposition centre backs shock and awe when he arrives on the field. Deceptively fast, deceptively deceitful and always with enough knowledge of the law to bend it using his vast authority to deceive the referees and the courts. Tulkinghorn is absolutely vicious in sending the ball away into goal- he is an imposing centre forward.

Substitutes:

Sub Goalkeeper- John Jarndyce- cheerful and thoughtful Jarndyce is another who is totally reliable even when things are going badly. He always puts in 110% and he has mysterious resources of self knowledge to turn to when things are going badly. Not so good with a high east wind but apart from that curious liability he is a safe pair of hands.

Sub Defender- Ham Peggoty- Dogged and determined, Ham never gives up and is willing to toil against the most skilfull of strikers. He is courageous, rushing into flood and storm in order to get to the ball, he is also a team player, affectionate and friendly in a quiet way.

Sub Defender- Thomas Gradgrind- harsh and dogmatic in his ways, Gragrind is a useful defender. He doesn't regard fancy play as anything other than extravagance and is always able to detect the ball moving and tackle it. Perhaps not the greatest passer of the ball- though towards the ends of games he often improves, he is definitely a traditional stopper and as such can be relied upon.

Sub Midfielder- Nicholas Nickleby always willing to try, always willing to pick himself up after disaster and run towards trouble, Nickleby is a vital substitute who can come on in almost any position from wealthy inheritor to struggling actor in order to help the side. His versatility, knowledge of the game throughout the country and youthful enthusiasm make him the perfect substitute midfielder.

Sub Midfielder- Miss Havisham- one of the most thoughtful plotters of the downfall of men ever to grace the game. She is the mistress of the psychologicla arts, enticing opposition forwards into her imposing lair and then playing balls through to her pupil Estella Drummle. Miss Havisham is one of the great players of her day, if perhaps now a little traditional.

Sub Forward- Estella Drummle- beautiful and skilfull player of the game- if occasionally forgets strategy for tactics, Estella has all the skills you would want a fine player of the game to have. She fascinates centre halves with her intricate footwork before leaving them gaping in astonishment at the beauty of her play, she scores often and a lot and is absolutely heartless in her attacks. She is also supremely confident.

Sub Forward- Amy Dorrit- perhaps too shy and ascetic sometimes but her single minded devotion to the cause demonstrates that she has a talent worth developing. Is a hard worker and a team player and she contributes fully when brought on.

Manager- Jaggers. The formidable lawyer has the personality to intimidate even the strong personailities on this team. By nature he is cautious allowing players to play their natural game but his strong psychological insights into human frailty and his powers of perception are real weapons in the tactical game that modern football is today. Jaggers is quite simply the best in the world at what he does and he knows it.

Team: Gargery; Sikes, Trotwood, Scrooge; Weller, Dawkins, Fagin, Dedlock, Micawber; Marley, Tulkinghorn. Subs Jarndyce, Peggotty, Gradgrind, Nickleby, Havisham, Drummle, Dorrit.

Electability

Reflecting on my earlier post on Ron Paul, made me move to consider something else. Based on this rather interesting article on Powerline concerning how Republican voters should vote in a possible primary made me consider what it is that we actually request from our politicians. For example Paul Mirengoff on Powerline suggests that there are two Conservative candidates running for the Republican nomination (Thompson and Romney) and two Electable candidates (McCain and Giuliani), irrespective of whether you agree with the precise division of the candidates, his point boils down to how a Republican conservative primary voter should choose in such a case. The point could be transposed to the Democratic party too- and furthermore is universal to any political system. Conservatives in the UK in 2005 struggled with whether to vote for the electable David Cameron or the more ideologically hardline Liam Fox and David Davis, the question has bedevilled Labour party politics as well.

Some politicians seem to set a course which leads them to become perfect governors. Bill Richardson on the Democratic side would be a good example of someone whose career has been perfect for attaining high office- a cabinet member, foreign policy experience, a successful executive career and nothing to frighten the voters- Mitt Romney has also spent most of his career proving his competence in a variety of contexts. One thinks of previous Presidents of the United States- Richard Nixon for example or Dwight Eisenhower who brought formidable CVs to their roles. But others don't. The leading example in the UK would be the Labour MP for Birkenhead Frank Field. Field has only once served as a minister, he was number 2 at social security for a year just after Blair came in- but he has always been one of the more incisive and intelligent thinkers about social policy and in some ways has had more effect on UK policy than some of the ministers in that department have had. Field is respected and highly thought of and his contributions are intelligent enough to make ministers stop and think. Field's brand of politician seems to be a diminishing species, but in recent Parliaments investigative thinkers like Tam Dallyel or ideological animals like John Redwood also come to mind as people whose ministerial careers were limited by their influence.

Looking at Ron Paul in the US, what is interesting to me about it is that he looks like this second type of politician. Its probably a reason why he is so popular and it is the reason why inevitably he will fail to get either the nomination or the Presidency. He seems to me to be the kind of candidate who makes other people think. He has ploughed a lonely furrow in Congress- whether you agree or disagree with him. He has also argued with considerable skill for positions which I suspect very few people hold- if so he has perhaps forced people to evaluate why they beleive in the conventional wisdom, even if they still hold to it afterwards. That function is crucial to any political process- and just like Field, Redwood and Dallyel, he is a neccessary part of the political system. It also explains though why I think he could never become party leader- because ultimately following those arguments rigourously to their ends means abandoning the neccessary blindness that goes along with comforting a vast coalition and becoming electable. Paul's virtue is his uncompromising stand for libertarianism as an ideal and that is his ultimate vice as a candidate as well.

Turning back to the Powerline column for a second, it is interesting to think about what this implies for politics. I think what is going on here is a tension between the ideal of what political engagement is and the reality of what a political party is. Everyone involved in politics wants to do what they think is right for their country. That's why people get into politics and don't use their often impressive talents in other ways. But in order to do that people have to form coalitions, and the reality of politics is that none of us precisely agree with anyone else. Consequently most politicians and most people involved in politics look up to the principled evangelists but also look down on them- using words like irresponsible and luxury to describe the way that they express their ardently held opinions. To be consistant is seen as an indulgence because it doesn't reflect the fact that politics is about coalition building as well as being about describing the best way forwards. That tension I reckon will always be with us, so long as we don't slip into dictatorship and the dilemma that Powerline evokes is therefore one that will endure long after Messrs McCain, Romney, Giuliani and Thompson have become obscure footnotes in history.

Internet Fraud

is nothing if not imaginative. Here is a great example of a 419 scam (so called after the point in the Nigerian legal code which outlaws it) about the British National lottery- any British tv watcher will see its a scam, but its worth seeing just to how all these things work, are too good to be true and evaporate with any knowledge of what actually happens, in this case in the National Lottery.

Ron Paul's odd followers

Apologies for sparce posting this week has been in a lot of ways very stressful for me.

Right on to the main agenda of this post, which is Ron Paul. A controversy has blown up in the States about Paul's odder supporters- from white seccessionists to anti-semites to a whole bag of idiots and fools- Paul has attracted his share of weird and sometimes mad supporters. David Bernstein from the Volokh conspiracy and Mona Charen from the National Review certainly think that this support and the fact that Paul hasn't disavowed it create enough of a reason to vote for someone with saner supporters.

Its an interesting objection. To some extent they are wrong- all political movements are coalitions and contain vile and often seriously mistaken people. There are degrees though- and it is worth remembering that one of the best ways to know someone is by their friends. That's why for example the UK Conservative Party was so keen to jettison its former candidate Nigel Hastilow for racist comments and why Ken Livingstone should jettison Miranda Grell. Paul though is in the position of having supporters who he might wish to disavow, a slightly different category- should for instance John McCain or any of the other pro-life candidates explicitly stand up and say that they don't want any violent pro-life enthusiasts to vote for them, should Barack Obama say that he doesn't want the black power movement to vote for him.

To an extent I think Paul is suffering from this partly because he is seen as being an extremist himself. He has positions which he has never explained properly and not been questioned fully on- for instance withdrawing US troops from everywhere around the world that they are stationed at the moment, withdrawing the US from international free trade agreements, abolishing the IRS. Paul has made a career from being an iconoclast- and that's a good career but the point is that then in some cases you need to prove your orthodoxy. Paul hasn't shown himself to be very savvy either in avoiding odd and sometimes racist radio shows and films- as Charen comments- he has allowed himself to appear on them- furthermore he hasn't returned cheques from people operating in the Klu Klux Khan. Partly this is just mischief making from the Republicans as well- Paul is popular because of Iraq- somebody like Charen would scorn any Democratic tactic to use this argument against her 'guy' in November but in this context is quite happy to use the same argument to suppress a Republican insurgency.

I'd be interested to know more about this- whether there are links between Paul and the madmen- I suspect there aren't- how serious Paul is as a candidate- given what he's said I suspect his effect is more of a useful corrective on the Republican party than a serious Presidential prospect.

Werner Herzog eating his Shoe

A while ago, there was a young film maker called Erroll Morris who was struggling to make his first ever film. At that time he came across an older director, Werner Herzog, who encouraged him to make a film and pushed him into doing it. Herzog said to our young hero that should he make the film, he Herzog would eat the shoe he was wearing. Well Erroll Morris made his film, and therefore Werner had to eat his shoes at the first public American screening- this is a video of Herzog eating his shoes and thinking about film, art and politics. Incidentally Herzog is still with us, recently he made the great film, Grizzly Man about a man who goes off to live with bears in the jungle, and Erroll Morris has become one of the great documentary film makers. And despite that nobody else has eaten a shoe on live television since...

American Economic Mobility

Some fascinating data has been issued by the Pew Charitable Trust over the last couple of days. In particular I think its worth thinking about two reports that they have compiled, concentrating on black and white earnings in the United States and on male and female earnings.

The report on Black and White earnings and social mobility is fascinating, it is based on income but the conclusions are rather interesting. The report suggests that there is still an income gap between Blacks and Whites, in the United States at the moment the median family income of a black family is 58% that of a white family. Furthermore social mobility is very differently structured for Blacks than for Whites, you see much more downward social mobility from the middle Class. A majority of Black kids whose parents have middle class income drift downwards, only 31% end up with higher incomes than their middle class parents, whereas for Whites 68% of them end up with higher incomes than their parents. Almost 45% of kids born to black middle class parents will end up in the lowest tenth of the earning population, that compares to only 16% of white kids from middle class backgrounds. I'd be interested to read some work on why this is still true but there is definitely still a disadvantage to being born with black skin in the US, and it seems to be a disadvantage independent of class.

The report on male and female income is even more interesting- because it points out that since the 1970s male income has fallen from 40000 dollars a year to 35 dollars as the average, whereas women's income has risen fast. I wonder in part whether that is to do with the erosion of industrial jobs in the United States and the creation of service jobs- and whether therefore you would see a similar phenomenon in the UK. Social mobility is different as well. Girls from less well off families find it difficult to rise to the upper quartiles and more difficult than their brothers. The authors suspect that this is because of teenage pregnancy which takes a girl out of the educational system at a crucial time, a time which can make the difference between attaining qualifications which aid advancement and not attaining those qualifications.

Its interesting to note though that equality between the sexes in terms of income, is not that far away. But equality between the races is a long way away from being acheived and indeed that situation is not even getting better. It will be interesting to see how these figures change in the years to come as well.

Disarmament

A very interesting Bloggingheads episode involving Jackie Shire and Jeffrey Lewis about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq and Iran. Both Shire and Lewis know what they are talking about- there are some really interesting titbits for example that intelligence that the US gave the IAEA specific leads to investigate, and none of them turned out to be true, and noone ever went back and questioned the intelligence even if it rested on one source. Intelligence that was disputed within the CIA with agents in the field and analysts fighting over what the intelligence about WMD meant and the fact that the German BND knew that the intelligence was wrong and had repeatedly warned the CIA that the intelligence they were using about biological weapons was unreliable. Furthermore the BND's German scepticism was softened by translators in the CIA. They also discuss events in Iran and Syria- I'm going to try and write a piece on Iranian nuclear armament later- but their views are very interesting and worth listening to.

Outbreak of Ego

Its my birthday, I'm 27 and therefore ancient!

Also worth noting that today is World Philosophy Day- so everyone get those thinking caps on!

American Gangster

Iago is one of Shakespeare's most interesting characters, a motiveless malignity according to Coleridge. We should be interested in Iago and his motivation because it brings up the question of what evil is, why men do evil and why they seek the fruits of evil. Ridley Scott's new film, American Gangster brings that question to the fore as well. Based on the life of the first generation of black drug barons in Harlem, Scott focuses on Frank Lucas, a key player in the late sixties and early seventies. Scott though presents us with not one but two characters, much in the mould of Scorsese's Departed, we have the cop and the criminal. And here, again as with Scorsese, they are presented as two sides of the same coin, but what we come back to again and again is their motivation.

Lucas is played with charismatic elan by Denzel Washington and the cop, Richie Roberts by longtime Scott colaborator Russel Crowe. The film concentrates on their stories- particularly that of Lucas and explicitly contrasts the two men. It shows how Lucas arose from the backstreets of Harlem, using South Asian heroine to finance his rise. He sold it cheaper and purer than the competition, effectively breaking the mob's control on it. He used his family to courrier it around and sell it themselves as he trusted noone else. Lucas was not taken in by the glamour of the criminal lifestyle, he sought to hide. He enjoyed his wealth to a limited and covert extent, finding a beauty queen Puerto Rican wife and houses for his mother and brothers to match his new riches. Ultimately Lucas is always in control in every shot of the film that he bestrides.

Roberts, the cop, is not so much in control of his private life. His most important moment there is an admission that he can't cope, not a declaration that he can. He sleeps with anything he can find- the audience of film critics visibly tittered at one unintentionally funny moment when his lawyer begged him to 'fuck me like a cop' and child support officers are always likely to turn up just as he has finished screwing an air hostess! But like Lucas he has rules to which he adheres. Whilst on the job he is a cop, nothing more, nothing less and is defined by his job. So he will hand in his partner if his partner commits a crime. He will give a million pounds back to the police department even if there would be no consequences to taking it. Everything he does in searching for Lucas is methodical, is cautious and thoughtful. Like a master spider, you know throughout the movie he will catch his fly simply because of his policing ethics.

The two men though share something else- and its a question asked of both of them- why? For Lucas the moment comes just after a boxing fight. He realises that he has become a target, because he yielded to his affectionate wife and wore a fur coat to the fight, he became conspicuous. He tosses the fur coat into the fire and watches the flames lick around it. His wife stares at him, uncomprehendingly, asking in her eyes the question why have you done that? For Crowe it comes towards the end of the film and this time its Lucas asking the question. Lucas points out that the million pounds that Crowe handed in would have ended up in the hands of corrupt police officials anyway, he points out to Crowe that whatever he does to Lucas the world will continue to operate and heroine will continue to be sold, why, Lucas asks, bother with this methodical investigation? Why not just take the money and head into the distance, taking back your wife, and living the high life?

Does the film give us an answer? It does through the words of an old mafia boss that Lucas arranges his distribution through. That boss turns to Lucas and says you have a choice, you can be successful and find enemies or you can be unsuccessful and have friends, but you can't be successful and have friends. What he points out is what for Lucas is quite clear, being a successful gangster has a price, the price is the ability to enjoy the fruits of success. The price of victory is eternal vigilance. Ultimately both for Lucas and Roberts ambition has conquered their souls. Lucas could of course run to enjoy the fruits of his success, but he doesn't because he wants to make the final deal. Roberts could leave with his wife and child, but that isn't even in question. He'll stay to catch the villain.

This is a well acted film. Washington commands the screen with a presence unlike most other actors of this age. In one scene, a confrontation between Lucas and Roberts outside a church, Washington stands with all the command and poise of a Spanish aristocrat, a sneer of cold command twisting his lips looking down on this wreck of a man below. Crowe gives a much less overstated performance, but he captures the private shambles and public purity of the cop he plays. It is worth noting that neither man was quite like this in real life- Lucas liked the high life more than Washington did, and Roberts didn't sleep with anything in a skirt. But dramatically the contrast- the tension between desire and ambition makes more sense- its something that Scott and his actors can explore.

That tension is explored less often than it deserves. More films explore the tensions say between family and relationships and ambition- take A Devil wears Prada, superficially a very different film but actually about a similar subject. Scott though is more realistic in the way that he explores family ties and ambition and their confluence. On the one hand, both Lucas and Roberts risk losing their families because of their ambition, but on the other their ambition, we can see, is what allows them families in the first place. In Lucas's case the Puerto Rican beauty that he marries is someone who he never would meet without his nefarious success. There is something of the American Dream here. Both Characters aspire to bring the money home for doing a good job. However in neither case does the model work. Lucas seeks to employ everyone else in his family in his business but ultimately is deserted by them when he falls. Roberts works all hours for his job, only to lose his wife and kids partly because his dedication to being a good man means that he won't take bribes to establish them in life. Again what we see is this contrast- ambition creates a situation where you can help your family, but letting it let rip means that in the end you neglect them or lose them.

There are some problems here too. Ridley Scott loses his complexity when he puts in a corrupt police officer, whose only role in the film seems to be to act with his buddies as a bully and provide a focus of villainy. In that sense Scott offers understanding to the real villain, Lucas, and not to those corrupt enough to be seduced by Lucas- he focuses on Eve and Adam not the snake. Russell Crowe does do his performance rather well- but he is becoming a caricature as well- this performance drunken, manly, tough is becoming the signature tune of an actor who has more interesting work within him. The women characters aren't sketched out well either- neither Lucas's wife nor Roberts's wife are really given any character.

Turning back to the central dilemma, what is interesting about it is the way that American Gangster reflects a society in which doing your job has become the substitute for an ethic. We all know why that is- in the longterm it is sensible not to be pettily corrupt- but that doesn't work obviously with all levels of potential income and the truth is that if you discount public service, there is no reason not to aim for what you can collect. The ethos of ego clashes in this film with the ethos of the job and it isn't obvious that the job wins- its clear that in the long run letting your ego rip leads to disaster, in the long run we are all dead, but it is also clear that not doing so leaves us with the question we would like to ask Iago:

What is the motive of a motiveless malignity?

Poor Novels, Great Films

A fairly interesting article in the Guardian today about the writer behind Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin. Xan Brooks notes that it is often the worst books that produce the best films- with the exception of Rebecca Hitchcock adapted mainly material which was not classic. The same goes for many of the film noir films, one of the great and productive American genres, which were adapted sometimes from the highly literate work of Raymond Chandler but often from lesser known authors whose reputation today has vanished. We could go on- the same is true perhaps of Truffaut and the French new Wave.

There must be a reason that bad novels make great films- I think it partly rests in what Xan says. That great films expand on the novels- directors get a good story and then expand on its complexity and psychological impact after they get it. In that way they are the authors of the complexity and the interest, but they have a plot provided to them for their use. It simplifies that bit of the work that involves subtle research into plotting, whereas it allows them to concentrate on developing plausible characters on screen. A good novel doesn't allow you to do as much as a director to interpret the book in the same way- because the author has already done that bit- so either you react to the author and show a different motivation, or you follow the author, but you aren't being handed a blank slate.

I do think that that blank slate argument is important though and it accounts for the fact that great novels tend not to produce great films!

The Bungling of Bunglawala

Free speech is a value often abused and misunderstood. A curious case came up earlier this week which made me question some of the statements of that much maligned organisation the MCB.

You see yesterday, Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the MCB, condemned the imprisonment of the lyrical terrorist (so called because she is a girl who likes writing poems about killing people like me on the net) because of what she had said and because she had downloaded manuals to make bombs from the internet, because it was a violation of free speech. Fair enough I thought, there is an absolutist argument about free speech that might suggest that conclusion.

Then I got rather confused. Because I was browsing, as you do, the socialist worker website and I came across a familiar name. That's right twas young Inayat and he was writing about that bill on religious hatred that everyone got up in arms about. Now I'd presumed that Inayat would be taking the same absolutist stance, but oh no. Look over here at the bottom section of the article and you'll find our friend's views about freedom of speech, it is important apparently to balance that against the potential harm and public good of the speech in question.

An interestingly contradictory set of statements one might think! Inayat believes and does not believe in absolute freedom of expression depending on the moment- it is my fundamental right to say that I want to bomb you, my fundamental right to download materials from the internet about bombing and to write poems about how nice your brains would look if only they were blown from your skull, but if I criticise a hegemonic religion and religious establishment that should be banned. Somehow I get the impression that Inayat is more worried about the power of priests than the sensibilities of people, somehow I get the impression that Inayat doesn't really care about Muslims, he cares about Islam as an institutional and ideological reality.

Somehow I think he is opposed to the very set of ideas which promote freedom of speech in the first place- to liberalism itself. Or perhaps its because Inayat just doesn't think blowing up people (Muslim, Christian, Jewish and atheist) is as important as the dignity of his particular Church.

The Salon

Jesse Browner has written a fascinating article in Bookforum tracing the social origins of the salon in early seventeenth century France. A Salon was the indispensible forum for the French Enlightenment- authors like Rousseau owed their importance in part to the charm they exercised in a salon. Browner shows that the earliest salon was that linked to Catharine de Vivonne, a leading aristocrat in early seventeenth century France and patron of arts. Catharine de Vivonne withdrew from the court early on in her life, setting up an aesthetical court nearby to which she attracted writers, artists, noblemen and wits. Her influence grew and even notables like the Prince de Conde, a plausible contender for the French throne in the mid century, went to her to pay her court. In doing so they entered a realm in which wit was the only passport, commoners and women found themselves treated equally at the table so long as they were entertaining conversationalists.

Browner links this phenomena to the rise of the epistolary novel- something that he is surely right to do. He should though link it to a greater extent to the rise of French philosophy- from Pascal to Voltaire, French philosophers relied on the salon for finding patrons and evaluating rivals. Furthermore Browner is too literary in his dating of the Salon's ending. He finds its end in a satire written by Moliere in 1658 which mocks the pretensions of the aristocratic patrons and their literary clients. Moliere's satire may well be devestating but the salon outlasted it- surviving right into the eighteenth century and becoming like the English coffee house a model which spread across Europe. Tolstoy mocks the artificiality of the salon in War and Peace, where Pierre is seduced by the beautiful Helene in the superficial surroundings of the Salon. The Salon like Helene is we are allowed to infer superficial and rests upon the pretence of civilisation and not its reality.

The Salon therefore survived, despite attacks on it right up until the nineteenth century. It survived as a locus of aristocratic female patronage of the arts, particularly in France and those places which emulated the French model of enlightenment. Consequently it gave birth to an ideal of female intellectual engagement and conversation that was one of the motors behind the enlightenment and the emancipation of women. Madame de Stael, the formidable patroness and thinker, would have been impossible without the Salon's creation. It was accused of fostering a society that had left behind martial virtue for female wiles, but its historical consequences were much less obvious than its opponents suspected. Martial virtue, for all the jeremaids of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has not evaporated and indeed coping with its excesses seems to be one of the major tasks of our own time. The Salon though aided the cultivation of an intellectual revival which is one of our main tools to resist chaos and disorder, it also strengthened the position of women within aristocratic society, something that may have contributed to the great acheivement in the West of this century, the emancipation of half the human population.

The article, with which we started is worth reading, there are further implications to be drawn as I suggest about the Salon form, but its interesting to discuss the seed from which so much art and thought grew.

Terrorists and Gangs

I'm linking to an article I've written for the liberal conspiracy on Terrorism and its relationship to Gang Violence- I think there is something interesting lurking there about the nature of the terrorist threat that we face. Increasingly I have to say I'm coming to a very pessimistic conclusion. Not that we won't defeat Al Qaeda, I think that eventually Bin Laden and his cronies will be caught. But that we will increasingly see this kind of violence repeated all over the world by different groups from different cultures. There is a huge mixture of things going on with terrorism- but I think investigating the nature of violent so called third generational gangs is the way to go. Can I make a plea incidentally that people don't comment here but go and look at the broader article on the Liberal conspiracy site- I think the point is made with more evidence over there and its probably easier to argue if everyone has seen the evidence.

Lions for Lambs

Lions for Lambs is one of many films to recently come out and explore the meaning behind events in the War on Terror over the last couple of years. It has a three foci, three meetings between two people each time that it profiles and seeks to use to explain the disaster that the war on terror has become over the past couple of years. In Washington we see the experienced and canny reporter Janine Roth coming to interview the young rightwing senator Jasper Irvine, in a West Coast University, the academic Professor Stephen Malley has invited along a good but cynical student for a pep talk and out in Afghanistan two friends who studied under Malley get ready to fly out on a doomed mission. All three of these meetings interweave with each other. Irvine is the man whose plan is sending those two soldiers out into the rugged mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. The reason that those two are there though is that Malley encouraged them to think of a life of public service, something he is now encouraging Todd Hayes to think about as well. The contrasts and the connections are supposed to make us think- but they don't and the film fails because they don't.

One of the problems is that dramatically only one of these encounters actually works. The encounter between Meryl Streep playing the journalist and Tom Cruise playing the Senator is wonderfully handled- Cruise has never in his career been this affective or frightening, Streep is at her typically perfect level of performance and the meeting is a real battle of wits and personalities. The two actors throw themselves at the roles- interepreting them with a wonderful degree of subtlety and of course neither of them are ever completely innocent. Were that degree of balance true of the other two meetings then the film would work, but it isn't there. Robert Redford is just too good an actor for his counterpart, playing the student, Andrew Garfield to cope with. Redford dominates their discussion. Furthermore the two soldiers who are swiftly shot down and left alone on the field don't really have much to say to each other, they just suffer and shoot in the darkness, their scenes become purposelessly monotonous (not even obviously monotonous because the director intercuts them with the other scenes) and the audience swiftly gets tired of the lack of action.

The pity is that there is a really interesting film struggling to get out of this not so good film. The encounter between the journalist and the senator is about as good as political film making gets. One could imagine something with the psychological depth of Interview coming out of the dialogue between Streep and Cruise and there is something most definitely there. Their encounter is filled with passion- anyone who has seen the more polished supporters of the war in America will recognise Cruise's character. He blasts Streep off the stage at times with his prenouncement that America cannot lose, cannot lose the war on terror, that there are only two choices and one of them is defeat. You feel the sophistry but find it difficult to resist as does Streep. The point of the dialogue though is that often it is subtle, it requires thought to follow what is happening and were it to be abstracted from the film it might be the most intelligent thing yet filmed about the war on terror, with nuances on both sides.

But the problem is that the director, Redford, doesn't want us to think. He wants to hammer home his points. So we have the other two segments which are meant to remind us of the Senator's indifference to human life. We see young soldiers sent to war and dying in that war, in their countries' service. We see their ex-Professor discuss with a student the injustice of a country which sends the poorest off to fight and die for their oppressors, we see him argue with that student's modish cynicism. And somehow those two lecturing stories seem not to work. The deaths of the soldiers are sad and terribly sad. The lecture of the Professor is impressive to some extent. It is true that I think as I'm sure many others think of the bravery of those off in the wars of our world. But ultimately all those questions are dealt with without nuance. Ultimately the most affecting moment about the public interest is in observing not the virtuous cardboard characters of the soldiers, nor the sophistical sparring of student and teacher, but in the conversation between journalist and senator when the senator reminds her of her responsibilities as a journalist and how she has failed the nation. That is the moment at which it bit home to me that there was a public interest- not in the sermons but in the revelation that she too was a sinner.

We can see it as well in the argument about the war on terror too. One of the major issues about Cruise's character lies in the way that he uses emotion to make his arguments- the emotion of September 11th 2001, the emotional appeals against the evildoers and terrorists. The point that is being made is that we should use our reason- but then that point is lost through an emotional battering ram as crude as Cruise's. Soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, but people were dying before we got there and would definitely die if we left, their deaths are as legitimate. Emotion gets us nowhere- we need to work out the wisdom of courses of action using reason. We might get to the same conclusions as the film makers- indeed I think we would but the emotional appeal cheapens the argument and makes the film a counterpart to the appeals from the right that it seeks to satire.

Ultimately films don't stand or fall by faulty politics- great films were made in the service of hideous regimes, one thinks of Eisenstein's masterpieces in the 1920s. They stand or fall by their cinematic quality- the problem with Lions for Lambs is that the cinematic quality of the film falls short. Ultimately the stories don't mesh well together- the film is too obviously didactic, too emotional in its appeals. The pity is that there is a really good film embedded into this- if only Redford had let Streep and Cruise do their bit we could have had something fascinating, examining both politician and journalist and all the other themes he wanted to bring out. Instead we have a mess, in which the good and the bad coexist and you are left shaking your head at the end, knowing that so much talent went into this, seeing at least three good performances but emerging from the cinema dissatisfied.

This film tries to be great, but it fails. Its a worthy effort but it isn't a successful one.

CORRECTION Both Matt Sinclair and Lord N thought that I really enjoyed the film. I should highlight I didn't. Maybe this review doesn't convey enough what I thought but I thought that the film was preachy and over emotional, not reasoned. The thing is I thought there could have been an interesting film made of the conversation between Streep and Cruise- but that was not the film that came out in the cinemas. I hope that makes sense of the above- and apologise for not being clear.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

Henry's Cat

This was one of my favourite cartoons as a kid- and this is its theme tune- it is the Casablanca of Kid's cartoons.

Greek Homosexuality

An interesting article about ancient Greek homosexuality. Its interesting- I can't vouch for its accuracy as this is a subject on which I'm woefully ignorant but have always been partly intrigued by given the many references in Plato to the practise. It turns out as you would expect that homosexuality in Greece evolved over the years- particularly by the end of the Athenian democracy you had people who were as the author suggests what we would recognise as homosexuals. Homosexuality for some men was a stage in development between asexual youth and the marriage bed- but others seemed to delight more in the company of men than of women. Its an interesting subject and if anyone knows more please enlighten me as to whether the assessment in the article is right or not.

The Tomb of an Emperor

The first Emperor of China is a historical character and his legacy defines in many ways what China is today. He originally was not Emperor of China, but the Prince of a powerful western Kingdom Qin. During his reign as King of Qin, he conquered the other kingdoms which constituted ancient China. The King of Qin became an emperor in 221BC over a vast landmass, stretching perhaps over a third of what is modern China today. His power was extensive- Chinese histories credit him with an almost totalitarian ideology, an aim of unification which stretched to the elimination of any possible rival, including the massacre of 460 scholars and the destruction of older feudal patterns of service and government. He brought in a single currency and connected together the walls that previous Chinese governments had constructed to the north, to build the first defensive Great Wall. The Emperor's dynasty lasted a very short time- within years of his death in 210BC, his son the second Emperor was killed and chaos descended before the rise of the Han Emperors beggining in 202BC.

The Emperor though left much behind him. The Han reigned to some extent in conformity with his principles especially of unity- and the shape of the currency that he had originally drafted remained the same right up until the early 20th Century. Much of our account of his acheivement comes from the Han historian, Sima Qian, who was born in 145BC and whose histories cover the whole of Chinese history from its mythical origins to his own lifetime. Sima Qian was hostile to the Qin Emperor partly because his dynasty replaced that of the Qin, and his history is not a history as we would recognise it in modern terms. Sima Qian writes fables and chronicles and treatises on subjects, the past for him is a set of exempla and a set of dates. He doesn't dwell as we might like him to on subjects relevant to us, but rather has the preoccupations of a Han civil servant: so his book tells us of stories about assassins, stories about how to govern and how not to govern, chronicles of dates and all from a perspective that denegrates the Qin. Despite that Sima Qian is one of the great historians of the ancient world- his name deserves to be up there with the great classical historians.

However we are incredibly lucky when it comes to the Qin Emperor, for in the mid-1970s a peasant in China came across a stupendous find. In the soil his spade hit a terracotta head, and archaeologists coming across to work on the site found not one but thousands of terracotta bodies and artefacts scattered in the soil. Having reconstructed what the site must have been, they worked out that these terracotta bodies constituted a seperate state that the Qin Emperor hoped to rule in his afterlife. At the British Museum in London at the moment, some of those finds are being exhibited. You see all sorts of people that the Emperor required in his afterlife: he has strong men, acrobats, musicians, civil servants, soldiers of all types and even a royal charioteer. Some of these artefacts bring to life stories from Sima Qian's accounts. For example on the Emperor's death, his senior civil servant Li Si kept the Imperial demise secret. He did so by maintaining the illusion that the Emperor was still alive giving orders from his Imperial chariot- and to some extent when one sees the chariot, one can imagine how that worked. The Emperor closeted and secretive and Li Si and a couple of others conspicuously running in and out to receive orders.

The terracotta army itself is shown in all its glory. It is incredible what the craftsmen (probably conscripted) could do. The skill with which the faces in particular are rendered is stunning- the visual impressiveness of what you see makes you reel back, considering that these are faces looking straight at you from thousands of years ago. The picture in particular of a fiery Turkish looking light infantryman stayed in my mind all of last night. The Museum have organised the exhibition in a very proffessional way- first they show you some Qin artefacts and describe the role of the Qin Emperor in Chinese history, avoiding much of the detail but trying to give a non-sinologist a good understanding of what this man was and what he represents. Then you proceed to see the terracotta army and court itself- which is a stunning experience and having it put in context before you see it, it becomes more impressive. The Emperor constructed this army to protect him in his afterlife- it appears they were stationed on the only open access route to his tomb in order to guard it. His tomb itself has never been opened and apart from Sima Qian's fantastic descriptions and some scientific work above the site on concentrations of metals found underneath, noone knows what is there. What we have though is these soldiers- we know they were painted and so their rather mundane colours today aren't as impressive as the gaudy way they were decorated- we know that irises for instance were painted in the eyes and we can tell all this thanks to chemical analysis of the surface of the statues. They are beautifully vibrant and vital. Each has its own character and facial expression, beard and overall look.

China is one of the hardest societies I have ever tried to understand. I have only been there once- but that's once more than most Westerners. Reading its literature and looking at its art is a very foreign experience in the way that reading Islamic literature or even Indian literature is not. Through accidents of history, China seems like another region of the earth from Europe. But its an increasingly powerful and important place- from films by great directors like Zhang Yimou to its economic importance, China is not merely an object of curious interest for the West, it is a place we have to understand. This exhibition therefore is a wonderful opportunity to learn something about China and the way that it was created and its history. The terracotta warriors are so impressive that they are a reminder of the grandeur of Chinese civilisation. They are also an incentive because of their beauty to try and understand more about the culture from which they sprang, seeing their beauty inspired me to buy translated fragments from Sima Qian's history. An exhibition like this is precisely the thing that the world's museums should increasingly engage in- if there is to be dialogue between our cultures then this is a wonderful way of expressing it and I hope some British treasures make their way temporarily to Beijing.

The Museum's exhibition reminds one of the importance of Chinese civilisation and the importance of cultivating an understanding of it. It also reminded me very visibly of the difficulties of historical research. There is so much that we do not know and will never know about the first Emperor. The history that we have is fragmented and written long after the Emperor's death. We have these artefacts but with many of them we are not sure of their use- and we have not yet seen inside the tomb of the Emperor to see what clues lie there.

One thing I do regret about the museum's exhibition is that there was not more outside or inside from historians of the era, Chinese and Western, discussing the Emperor. There wasn't even a good academic biography for sale- an unpardonable lapse! Another gap was that the First Emperor's attitude to religion was left untouched. We were invited to see the army as a simplistic guard for the afterlife or as a manifestation of the Emperor's meglamania: but I would have liked to see something more about what Chinese people of that time beleived about the afterlife and how that connected to what the Emperor did. One interesting question that wasn't touched upon was why none of his successors made this kind of tomb- it could be that they did and the tombs are lost waiting a farmer to discover them, it could be that his example discredited the practice, it could be that beliefs had shifted, it could be that this is one of many such tombs, leaving the exhibition I was none the wiser. One felt like screaming for more information. But having said that, that is possibly the churlish attitude to take. The exhibition is wonderful- the fact that these statues have left China must have been a great diplomatic acheivement and the museum has arranged them suitably well.

The First Emperor is one of those figures whose actions had momentous consequences spreading out through time, doubling and redoubling until his creation, a unified China, became one of the great powers of a globalised world in the 20th Century. Seeing the terracotta warriors, seeing the artefacts he collected around himself in his afterlife, one gets a sense of the immense power that he wielded, the creative wills that bent to his commanding will and the strength of his shortlived imperium.