Israel Will Never Change - And Never Should

It never should, is my point, when its very existence is at stake. Now, I have to be careful what I say here because of my line of work. I can't afford to get too mixed up in the political side of this latest hooha over Israel's security policies and the nefarious activities of spurious 'aid workers' who themselves seemed to think they needed to be armed and travel in division strength to perform best in their capacity as putative angels of mercy. With that in mind, I think I'll stick to the historical dimension. (Possibly - we'll see how it goes ;)

In addition, I have to be careful because some pointless commenter on my last post has said that my writing style (I didn't think I had one) stinks and that I don't know how to punctuate. Now, I don't mind the first meaningless dig - that's about taste - but the second one is patently bollocks. Nobody know's how, to punctuate better than me. they really dont. It felt like I was being told off by Pee Wee Herman. What a weirdo. And all because the twit in question thinks that David Laws isn't a troughing thief who deserved all he got - and more.

Anyway, back to Israel. I would like to make a couple of points about this latest non-story coming out of that part of the world, and they mainly concern the British reaction to it and what history tells us the Israeli reaction to that British reaction will be. There is a prejudice against Israel that runs so deep in this country that it is pretty difficult to quantify. It emanates from several sources and comes in a number of varieties but it all amounts to the same thing: loathing. Powerful political, lobbyist and media blocs in the UK indulge a fairly private agenda that is driven by a desire to kick Israel, and to see Israel kicked, as hard and as often as possible. That Israel's desire to search 10,000 tonnes of 'humanitarian' gear being shipped to terrorist-run Gaza warranted such a vicious reaction from the suspiciously well-armed, boarder-repelling 'aid workers' was very telling to me.

That these terrorist sympathisers' film of the inevitable firefight, as Israeli soldiers sought to defend themselves from what must have felt like a deadly assault, was the footage preferred and shown over and over again on British televisions speaks volumes about the unconscionable bias of Britain's mainstream media, especially (naturally) the BBC. Just imagine if this had been the USA and ATF officers or the US Coast Guard had been violently repelled by a foreign ship's crew and passengers. "Nine dead?" people would say, "Uncle Sam must be going soft in his old age. They were lucky they weren't all shot!" No one would have batted an eyelid.

But oh no. This is the plight of the Palestinians, so we have to bring out the standard, Pavlovian hyperbole and hysteria. The Left, the George Galloways of this world, who hijacked this issue long ago as they do with all issues they think possess the required propaganda potential to further the Marxist cause and the coming dictatorship of the workers, make the worn-out, cliched Israel=USA=Zionist Conspiracy=Great Satan lunatic link and condemn both the Jews and the USA for just about everything in the entire world they can think of (and probably things they can't), while the Establishment blames Israel because that's been official Foreign Office policy since the end of WWII, when Britain was humiliated by the new Israeli state into very kindly buggering off.

Allied - or maybe alloyed - to these unsavoury truths is the role of a highly partisan and blinkered media, whose journalists fall into one of the two above categories: leftwing dogma on Israel (BBC, Channel 4 etc.), or Establishment dogma on Israel (Telegraph, Times and so on). I've ignored the Far Right anti-Jewish dogma because as far as I'm concerned, it's fundamentally so far beneath contempt that it's not worth contemplating seriously. Suffice to say, however, it does complete a rather ugly picture. And then there are the Arabs!

But both the key positions in Britain, Left and Establishment, are equally corrupt when it comes right down to it because both are motivated by the same thing: prejudice. And this grows from shared characteristics of basic dishonesty, ignorance and/or malice. Without fully appreciating the entire history of Israel and Palestine unadorned with propaganda, from the late nineteenth century onwards, for instance,and Britain and America's roles in the creation of the new state post-war - America leading, Britain marginalised - then no possible resolution of the situation is remotely possible today. Furthermore, it would be wise not to forget the events leading up to and during WWII that directly led to the creation of the state in the first place. The Jews certainly haven't. Nor should we because when nutters start talking about wiping Israel off the face of the earth, Israel takes it deadly seriously; she will defend herself, as would we if we were in the same boat. They have every right to do so. They will not just quietly go down to the gas chambers this time around.

Finally, a note about the moderate, objective, professional media voices who always make me think there might be hope for truth in this country, and, therefore, hope for Israel after all. Today, the two Iains, Martin and Dale, deserve a special mention. Their writing on the subject of this unfortunate incident has been right out of the top drawer so far, and both should be commended for showing the rest of UK MSM journo-land what real unbiased reporting and commentary looks like.

(Incidentally, I don't "do" unbiased because this is my blog and these are my thoughts. If you don't like them, or how they are presented or expressed (or punctuated, grrr), then vote with your feet, do, there's a good punter.)

Alexander Avoided Capital Gains Tax

Next!

You really couldn't make it up if you tried. Now Danny Alexander, bad (very bad) choice of replacement for trougher David Laws at the Treasury, has been caught avoiding Capital Gains Tax - you know, the tax he'll be responsible for ramping up as part of his new job. Sorry, but Cameron has set a precedent, has a principle he must (and I think will) follow, and so has to fire Alexander too. There'll be fewer tears over his loss I imagine than there were for 'rising star' and 'genius', David Laws.

Some will be asking why this is happening. It's very simple really and it has nothing to do with homophobic witch-hunts, Labour sting operations (lol) or right wing, anti-coaltion smear conspiracies. That's loony stuff. The reason is that while they were the no-hoper, hotchpotch third party that generally behaved like weasels in a sack behind the scenes (still do), during the expenses scandal they were basically ignored by the Telegraph in what was a target rich environment. There were only so many pages in the paper each day, and the editors rightly preferred to focus on the major players and the yellows got away with it, even to point where Clegg actually thought he could boast about it in the Commons! This is the hubris. Now that senior Lib Dems, to their huge surprise and thanks to a rare general election outcome, have found themselves doing real government jobs, they are subject to that delayed scrutiny. Moreover, it is all the more intense because they are being picked off one by one instead of en masse, as the Tories and Labour MPs and ministers were. So much the better.

It goes without saying - for me at least - that the Lib Dems fully deserve everything they get, and so the sight of senior MPs and some well known mainstream political bloggers defending one of them, often on the most ridiculous of grounds, is damn well nauseating. One good thing will come out of this new wave of expenses revelations, however: pretty soon, the Conservative government will run out of Lib Dems to put in the vital Treasury Chief Sec. role (they'll be on the Sarah Teather human mouse pretty soon).

Then maybe the country will get the person it really needs in that job - John Redwood - and, I predict, with the coalition still more or less in tact.

Every "cloud" as they say...

Danny Alexander's Challenge

This is the global lending merry go-round as explained for the general public by two leading Australian economists, wisely employing a variation of the Socratic method.



There is an answer to all this, you know, and it's called 'cuts'. I wonder if young Danny Alexander is up to the challenge. Ha! Fat chance.

Remember John Redwood? We might have had a chance with him.

Hat tip: Tangled Web

Laws Gone

Iain Dale and others are reporting that David Laws has gone. One thing: if true, it is important to establish the precise reason for his 'resignation' (sacking by Cameron). Having said that, it is also important to establish what were not the reasons too. For instance, certainly not the reason would be the one David Blackburn has just supposed in a uncharacteristically shoddy and pretty wrongheaded piece for him:

According to Con Home and several other sources, Laws has resigned. This is hugely regrettable as Laws is a star performer and I feel he has been the victim of a media gay-hunt that belongs to a bygone era. The sums of money involved are slight in comparison to some, and there are arguments that other ministers should resign for having committed similar or worse offences and for having shown markedly less contrition. But it is refreshing that a minister would resign over a personal transgression with haste and dignity.

This is wrong on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. First, Laws has had little or no chance to demonstrate he was a 'star performer'. He was starting to look promising and seemed to be grasping the wisdom of the Tory policy on the debt and structural deficit. Well done for that, but stardom it hardly warrants. Second, to 'feel' that he was the 'victim' of some mythical 'media gay hunt' is arrant nonsense. His sexuality had nothing to do with it, aside from the fact that he was clearly embarrassed about it and this provided him with a motive for being so incautious with his expenses and then concealing this potentially damaging fact from his new boss. There was and is no 'media gay hunt'. Outrage about his public/private hypocrisy, yes - bigotry and prejudice, no. That is in Blackburn's imagination and, I think, was uttered because of some kind of personal disappointment rather than any genuine understanding of the sequence and significance of events [like I have, lol]. Again, I've got to say that I find that surprising from this writer.

Third, and most significantly, Blackburn makes some sort of point about the relative scale of previous incidences of irregular expenses arrangements with a frankly childish 'they didn't so why does he?' argument. Well, if he thinks that that false equivalence will wash with anyone then he hasn't understood idea-one of what's been going on here. Cameron stood on a ticket of cleaning up parliament and being tough with his ministers if they step out of line in principle. The amounts involved (and 40k seems like a lot to me) are not important. The way the money was channeled is. Laws bent the rules in a deeply suspicious way, far more even, if we are to entertain Blackburn's relativist argument for a moment, than your average trougher who simply took advantage of those rules but did so by the book, i.e. without adding their own, personal interpretation that advantaged them, or, indeed, a loved one, even more.

As to his mention of 'other ministers', who, I wonder, does he mean? Cameron? Labour ministers? Cameron can hardly fire Labour ministers who've already lost their jobs, for heaven's sake, so what on earth does he mean? Your guess is as good as mine. Suffice to say, it's the most muddled-up post of his I think I've ever read.

So much for the Blackburn gay witch-hunt theory. The real reason why Laws had to go is because Cameron is keeping his word. He has always understood the scale of anger at the expenses scandal. He also realised that Laws could not be talking about painful cuts in public spending one second and defending his own venality another. That's called an 'untenable position'.

In other words, the only thing Laws' sacking has demonstrated to me is not that he is dignified - I'm sure he is - but that David Cameron really does mean what he has says and that, dear readers, is the really 'refreshing' thing about this new government and about this incident.

But what follows is crucial. A sound, imaginative replacement must be found. Blackburn says, alarmingly, that it might be the lunatic Huhne. That would be a disaster not just for this government but for the entire country and Cameron must intervene to stop it instantly.

The only man with the gravity and intellect for a job like CST in a time of economic trauma and dislocation is John Redwood. Whether the Prime Minister likes it or not, Redwood is the right man for the needs of this country at this parlous point in its history.

What the Libdems want simply doesn't matter.

Update:

Well, they've got it badly wrong and given Danny Alexander the job according to ConHome. That is a disastrous decision and it will come back to haunt this coalition. You cannot compromise on the economy for the sake of the coalition and certainly not with someone as wet behind the ears, untested and lightweight as 37 year-old Alexander (yes, I know, he's been bigged up over the past few weeks because of the negotiations. Big deal).

Too many Tories are going to be too pissed off too quickly with any more appointments like this one. This may even be the one that tips them over. I think this is the first real sign that this coaltion cannot and will not last long. For one thing, unlike the corrupt Labourists, as amply demonstrated by Brown, Conservatives do not believe in the idea of clinging on to power at any price. The coalition could soon be toast.

Quite frankly, after the promotion of another Libdem lightweight to a cabinet role for which he is most certainly not qualified, especially at such a crucial moment for the British economy, I'm not sure how I feel about that prospect yet. Maybe, after all, it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Friedman Wisdom

You can find the rest of this dazzlingly wise, vitally significant interview by clicking on the video.

I truly hope it provides you with as much optimism as it's inspired in me. We haven't lost yet.

Who Will Fire David Laws?

Shaping up as a half-decent, expensively-educated, millionaire Chief Treasury Secretary though he might have been, I'm awfully sorry, but David Laws' political arse is grass. He can't argue the case for public spending cuts when he, apparently, has been pretty happy to sponge off the state on behalf of his partner for the longest time.

So the only question to me is: who will fire him? His party leader, Clegg, or his boss, the Prime Minister?

My view? Cameron must pull the trigger immediately because what Laws did particularly is just the sort of troughing, fiddling, pocket-lining, venal rule-bending Cameron has been condemning in principle and often for over a year. He fought the election on that platform, for heaven's sake!

Frankly, Laws fired himself the moment he chose not to reveal any of this as being a potential problem to his boss before he was appointed (I do not for one moment believe he didn't realise or didn't understand the rules - in fact it's surely hard to believe that of a double first Cambridge economist - and it won't wash regardless, even if he sticks to that lame line).

But who to replace him? Well, how about John Redwood? I think it's high time Cameron picked someone like him for the cabinet anyway. Besides, he's much smarter and more experienced even than Laws in many ways, and genuinely believes and can explain the Friedmanite solution to Labour's debt crisis that we now so desperately need. He'd also be a handy bulwark against the economic mixed brew that is Saint Vince and his presence would vastly help to shore up the Tory back benches. A win-win scenario potentially, then, both for the party and, in my humble, for the country.

Oh, and sucks to the bloody Lib Dums. They can either suck it up and stay in government, or they can destroy this blessed coalition in a fit of indefensible pique.

I just can't wait to see how Deputy Nick decides to handle this one.