Martin Meenagh blog

The Green Affair : David Kelly forgotten Trouble is brewing for the government, quite rightly, because the police have got above themselves and arrested a member of parliament for apparently being involved in the deployment of leaked confidential information to the press. Sundry other police officers have this been either explaining why they chose to beat up working class war heroes, hound an officer for exposing something trivial to his girlfriend, or shoot someone in Guildford. One of the things about English society these days, at least amongst the middle classes from whom the professional political class is drawn, is that no one has any manners. There is a way to do these sorts of things, which are probably essential to a democracy, without plunging everyone into some farce-version of the pentagon papers. Green should have left a note for the Speaker, or the Serjeant at Arms, then hightailed it down to the chamber shortly afterward and slipped in a question and supplemental to a Ho...

The Sunday Smoke Tonight's cigar was what one reviewer has called a 'good, solid smoke', an H.Upmann signature. It was buttery, and began with caramel tastes, then slipped into a sort of marbled granite and acid flavour that was unusual, burning through its tan leaf quickly. As I wandered through the drizzle in Putney, streets and restaurants as is usual now almost bereft of people, it helped me think. If these words should fall upon the eye of the redneck sensualist who gave me these, I am truly grateful. The synaesthesia cigars inspire is a revelation. This is not, I think, because the effect is unknown to me. It's because my body forgets. I wonder why that is. Letting smoke play about the palate is something most people rarely do these days, but it brings memories of situations in which an involuntary association--one I couldn't force--arose almost automatically. When I was little, for instance, I used to help my paternal grandfather clear out the ashes in the ...

The Mumbai Mysteries We could now be facing a moment as dangerous as the run-up to the Cuban Missile crisis. Roughly two thirds of the number of people alive in the whole world in 1962, if statesmen make the wrong decisions, might soon be manoeuvred into a nuclear confrontation. I find myself asking how people got into this rut. On one level, of course, there is no mystery. A group of militants have invaded a city, in a coordinated manner, and killed a very large number of people. They have done so with planning, well-known specialist tactics , and with widely available small arms. They were accompanied by what is now everyday technology. A number of questions have arisen. Some are more important than others. I have listed mine below. 1) Why and with what evidence are reporters able to say with confidence that the terrorists were 'trained' in or near Rawalpindi-- a 'garrison town' but also the home of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence? There appears to be a mism...

Mumbai It will be some time, no doubt, before the full number of those who have died in the Ummah's latest franchise operation becomes clear. Reports at the moment suggest that at least 195 people have died in coordinated attacks on hotels, hospitals, railway stations and areas associated with Jewish people. Mumbai, of course, when it was Bombay, was one of the great centres of Judaism. Its Jewish community was founded before the diaspora , by shipwrecked oil-pressers from Galilee, whose liquids could conceivably have touched the lips of Christ. Today, Mumbai has been racked by bombs, multiple sieges, and the assaults of young men weaponed with small arms. The raid has already given rise to much speculation. I make no pretence to know, from a military standpoint, what went on. What has happened suggests four things, of varying importance. The first is that, despite legitimate global concern about weapons of mass destruction, any weapon is a weapon; and the world is at the moment a...

The Arrest of Damien Green All I have to say for the minute has been said by Martin Kelly at the Devil's Kitchen. What a terrible thing to happen.

Mary Honeyball MEP For once, Ms Honeyball is right . Ryanair's behaviour over its calendar, its lost baggage, its anti-union policies, its contempt for its staff, customers and regulators, and its sheer badness must be weighed in the balance when I write that it ought not to be allowed to exploit some daft young women's bodies to sell its product. There's a time and a place for everything. Companies that aren't sex, porn or dancing sites shouldn't disrespect people--viewers and employees-- in the way that Ryanair is doing. Well done Mary Honeyball . God help us--now I know, when I agree with her, that the world's gone upside down.

Barack Obama : Capitalism's Gorbachev? Over the past few years it has become abundantly clear in Britain and in other Atlantic societies that free-market capitalism of an extreme sort and democracy are incompatible. Ideologues from the right, weaned on the champagne crystal-precision of Hayek and Friedman, of course, would dispute this. To paraphrase G.K.Chesterton, they would suggest that free markets are a great idea, if they were ever tried. However, it isn't just the Iceland demonstrations last week that made me think of Poland in 1988 or so. Something is clearly moving underfoot. Governments elected with 22% support, like that in this country, are desperately throwing money at banks and madly moving their divisions across a non-existent future tax base. In America, those who let rip what will be seen as a disastrously unregulated and misunderstood financial experiment are taking their places at Barack obama's side, and insisting that the repair of infrastructure they p...

History as a Humanity The old notion of 'humanities'--studies of the nature of others that informed us about ourselves if we but had the understanding to forgive--has long gone by the wayside. Boris Johnson, for instance, was praised yesterday for an interesting new take on the crusades which he has broadcast because it was 'relevant' to modern society. I'm fairly sure that he didn't care if he was or not, and more power to him for it. This yearning for relevance is essentially a fetishized product of the social sciences. For the past one hundred and twenty years or so, the life of the mind has been assailed by two ideas. One is that no statement, behaviour or action can be taken on its own terms or as an insight directly to the soul of another, but that all are in some way deluding themselves. Christopher Lasch associated the mindset with Sigmund Freud, and it did reach its greatest extent of elaboration with him; but I'd look back to a misunderstood Vico ,...

American Secessionists The flag reflects a combination of urban myth and deliberate libertarian hoax. It was presented, with very little evidence, as the 'real flag' of the United States a few years ago on the internet. Its creators asserted that the flag--in truth a stylised confabulation of the early coastguard, customs and Treasury flags--was supplanted by a 'war flag' around the time of the Civil War. The notion has been fairly conclusively debunked , and of course, stands no scrutiny at all. I've blogged about it before . Secessionism--the idea of leaving a political organisation and becoming, independently, another--has a long history in the United States. The Union itself, of course, effectively seceded from the articles of confederation in 1787; New England, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and New York City have all at one time or another flirted with the idea. California, Vermont, Texas, Hawaii, and (arguably) Florida all had existences before they were part...

The World Crisis The picture is a representation of Steen's Dissolute Household. You can see Steen's work in web form here . As I've suspected for a couple of years now we are all sinking into a deflation and there is very little that can be done about it. Nevertheless, it is still shocking to discover the way what can only be called the political-media class massages reality and only holds those it maintains a distaste for to account. Sergei Diaghelev, the choreographer, once told his ballet classes to 'astonish him'. He'd be open mouthed at Mitt Romney. Romney was always a little soupy and creepy on the campaign trail, but here's how he pledged last January to 'save' Detroit. Here is how he wanted the city's main industries and millions of people put into bankruptcy once he failed to win the presidential nomination or to matter in the presidential campaign. Romney, of course, would dispute my characterisation and would say that he was merely ...

Oh, well done The ghost of Reggie Maudling is now on Myspace. Oh yes. He is, apparently, being disgraceful somewhere in Canadia.

Male and Female Leadership The picture is from a tapestry cartoon by Guyot in 1607, after Caron, and is a scene from the life of Artemisia, Queen and Admiral. There was a woman almost as great as Catherine the Great.... Amidst all the brouhaha that swirls around our probably ineluctable crisis, male and female styles of leadership have been on display. Men, such as Gordon Brown (whom I like) have allowed themselves to be portrayed as heroic, determined, and possessed of an answer to the troubles. There is a certain sort of British person, of course, who is never happier than when the toilet roof is falling in, as my leaseholder says mine might be. Many people on the continent don't quite understand this. Perhaps it is bred by the weather here. Perhaps it stems from the near instant suffocation of great ideas quite regularly by the political class. When you look around, there is a comfort in sitting on the rubble, striking a pose and hoping for a pineapple. We live in a country wher...

Martin in The Margins Thanks to the ever-excellent Bob from Brockley, I have discovered Martin in the Margins , to whom I have linked on the sidebar. As with all my links, there is no necessary agreement between myself and a fellow blogger, but I hope that you find them as interesting or entertaining as I do. Check the site out!

Cigars and Whiskey The British press have been warning of imminent disaster for some time. The occasion of their hysteria has been a little bit of cold, which has apparently blown in from the arctic or some broken conservative hearts in America or somewhere. I have to say that nothing much seems to have happened. I made a sort of soya and turkey kibbeh bread with some melted mozza for myself and a friend tonight, put my friend on a train, and went for a wander in this freezing wilderness that Putney was meant to have become. Who'd have thought it; you can't believe everything you read in the press. It was perhaps the Por Larranaga cigar whose creamy tastes made their way through my palate--and will, I guess for days--or the honeyed whiskey that some students bought me a few days ago running through my bloodstream, but I have to say, London is weathering this big freeze rather well. I love Larranaga gold label. They're very good, smooth cigars, and the variety I smoke is Do...

Fighting Pirates; is Obama being set up for a test stranger than fiction? The painting is Breughel's Fall of Icarus. Sometimes, history is much better than science fiction. All of the following facts and most of the arguments are true. Two hundred years ago, international shipping was menaced by the growth of a piratical federation centred upon Tripoli. Previously, the pirates had been kept in check for the better part of a millennium by an old order of Knights . The charismatic general, Napoleon, on his way to becoming Emperor, betrayed and broke the Knights in their island stronghold, Malta, in 1798. France and England then turned to their own world-struggle. The American Vice President, bitterly opposed to his President and who had negotiated a way of living with the pirates, became concerned at their freedom of manoeuvre. One of history's great secularists, he saw the menace of criminals who stole, killed and enslaved Christians on sight for what they were. On becoming pres...

Random Thoughts The picture, is of course, a representation of a Jackson Pollock work. It is called Moby Dick, and is from 1942. You can waste time and muck about by making your own expressionist art with your mouse at this site. It is very relaxing. I love the internet. One of the reasons I do so is its capacity to enhance and augment the random associations that go on inside my head in the absence of disciplined thought. That latter process always slides away in November anyway. This morning, for instance, I read about a case in Canada in which an individual was being allowed to sue wal-mart on the basis that the company was using 'brain-scanning technology' to steal his ideas . His case has been allowed to proceed by a Judge on the basis that tort cases centred upon acknowledged CIA 'mind control' experiments known as the MK-ULTRA programme had previously been heard in the Dominion. You can hear one of the lawyers involved in the earlier case here . In Canada . Wha...

Just Two Questions The New York Times and others have been involved in a bit of anti-Detroit mischief these past few days. Neoliberal and neoconservative ideologues everywhere are suddenly touting the collapse of British Leyland and the failure of government attempts to revive it in the 1970s as conclusive evidence that state intervention in the auto industry can never work. The usual suspects are in play. Often, they were amongst the loudest supporting the rise in the US debt ceiling to nearly twelve trillion, the seven hundred billion bail-out of their coked-up gilded pals, and the four hundred billion British bail-out. I have just two questions; If the banking bail-out was right, why is helping a functioning industry that has in the past loaned billions to the US government, and which is mired in a cyclical downturn, possibly with incentives towards clean-car technology, wrong? Why is a productive US sector being compared with a basket-case Britain that was suffering from poisonous ...

OIL; the UK is setting itself up for failure Barack Obama has characterised attitudes to oil as 'shock and trance' . Prices soar upwards; people get shaken; prices fall, people get careless. Such is everyday life. Yet recent reports confirm that existing oil fields are declining , and at an accelerating rate. This means that new sources of oil need to be developed. But there are none at cheap prices. In addition, with banks in the state they are in, and with investors drawing in their horns, there is no money to build the new rigs, or even to do the drilling tests, to locate and extract new deposits. This situation could become critical with any improvement in the global economy, anywhere, or indeed sooner. It could become important sooner because countries are not squeezing as much oil as possible out of existing fields. The Biggest offender is the UK. England is a country prone to short-term and faddist attitudes, and always has been. At the minute, that means no new investm...

The Macho language of International Gangsterism The image on this blog post is from the brilliant Leonard Rossiter's portrayal of King John, by Shakespeare. One of the things that has happened in recent years--and it is largely the fault of the outgoing American administration, but not wholly so--is that a white man's fantasy language of gangsterism has replaced any pretense of international law. Here is, via Glenn Greenwald , a verified report of what Putin and Sarkozy had to say about the prospect of hanging enemies during the late negotiations over Georgia; Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” — a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace. . . . The Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared. Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Ame...

Policemen with Criminal Records It now seems possible that British policemen could have convictions for crimes of dishonesty or violence and still remain policemen. How is this? It may be that, in a debased system in which the name of the game is to convict as many as can be charged on the crown prosecution service's probabilistic calculations, getting a conviction is not a serious thing. In a society with no shame , people cannot be deprived of jobs for shame. After all, if social work departments can spend their time harassing and stealing the children of innocent parents whilst flaunting their incompetent handling of the clearly guilty, why should policemen be embarrassed about past shoplifting? If the some intelligence group or the army can shoot illegal immigrants on a full tube fifteen times on the underground and then get the police to confabulate the details, why should policemen be embarrassed? It may also be the case that so many crimes are on the statute books now that...

Christmas Last year, I suggested some Christmas purchases to people which a few took me up on, and which I certainly enjoyed. Vincent Bugliosi's history of the Kennedy Assassination, for instance, is clearly the definitive work in the field, and Dan Howe's What Hath God Wrought an excellent addition to the history of the American Republic. Even the Marvel Defenders were the source of not a little escapist amusement. So, I thought that I might occasionally repeat the trick this year, as it were, by making suggestions for people of things that have caught my eye. Blogs are commonplace books where we can put just about everything and anything, after all. Just by way of illustration, I found a recipe for scouse, which is a form of Liverpool stew, on The Exile's site last night that I followed and enjoyed with a good bordeaux. That isn't what you would have expected from that great polemical site. One thing I have also noticed, which it's probably trite to mention, is...

Fox News and Arthur Laffer Thanks to Andrew Sullivan, here's a chance to see Fox News and right-wing economists make berks of themselves over the non-existence of a coming recession a couple of years ago. I don't normally do this sort of petty thing but I feel like a laugh at their expense in the midst of all today's gloom.

Looking for Bin Laden This is curious. The CIA Director, Mike Hayden, told a reporter two years ago that he thought Osama Bin Laden wasn't dead, even if rumours were sweeping Washington. The rumours seem to have been started either by the French or the Saudis. Then information was put about of the mountains where the terror chief was thought to be. Now, the CIA Director has limited his words to the Atlantic Council to remarks about the residual terror threat from Al-Qaeda whilst mentioning a continuing hunt for Bin Laden almost as an aside, and a prompted one at that. The main thrust these days is to openly formalise an ongoing Pakistan war and to note the corporate restructuring going on amongst salafists. John McCain should pick up the telephone and make good on his much-touted promise to tell the Defense department how to get Bin Laden, since nobody else seems to have a clue.

The End of the Phoney Recession When World War Two began, people were girded, by all accounts, for an immediate war in England. Instead, they became a little complacent. England waited for Hitler's invasion fleets and so, as Churchill noted later, did the fishes. It took almost a year for the battle of Britain to begin. This period became known as 'the phoney war', which it was certainly not in Eastern and Central Europe. It has been obvious to the dogs in the street for some time--at least two years--that an awful shabby financial crisis of great proportions has been brewing. This broke some two months ago. Here in London, a strange and slightly tense period of bad news but trickling job losses in the real world has accompanied a sort of delusional optimism that the crisis would only touch bankers, or Americans, or someone else. The shops have still been overpriced, the same old foetid identity arguments have gone on in blogland. The Phoney Recession is over. Over ten thou...

Straws in the Wind 2 The European Commission, perhaps far too late, perhaps just in time, has proposed a coherent energy framework for Europe. Europe is at the moment torn between different but pressing national interests, the pull of Russian and North African gas, and crazy schemes of future reliance upon central Asia via the Caucasus. This Green paper may be the most important it ever issued. In it, the EU's executive arm proposes a mixture of energy investment, Baltic, Mediterranean, North Sea and conventional power generation, the expansion of capacity and trillions of Euros in investment. The plan is a considered response to dependence on Russia. But it may be too late. Germany is plunging into a deep recession . The UK is falling into the dark and going deeper. The eurozone is approaching a crisis point ; and Russia is, beneath the surface but approaching to the water's lid , in a crisis of ten dollar oil and Kremlin manoeuvres that could bring Putin back to the presi...