I am giving up the “At 16.00 Today I Was…” post because Nadira thinks it is intrusive and about as intellectually valid as reality TV. I was quite enjoying it as a chance to reflect, myself, on how I spend my time. Anyway, I’ll have to think of the next gimmick.

The western media continue to scramble to re-heat stories of how terrible Gadaffi is. This is to set up a complete Aunt Sally – the vast majority of people in the UK and US who are against the Libyan war have no illusions about Gadaffi, who is indeed a brutal dictator. The questions are, is war for regime change legal? Will it make the situation in Libya better or worse? Will it cause blowback damage elsewhere? Is it a dangerous precedent?

You ought to be pretty sure of the answers to those questions before you attack another country, kill or wound thousands, and spend hundreds of millions of pounds you don’t actually have. War for regime change is certainly illegal – SCR 1973 specifically calls for a ceasefire and negotiations, which presupposes the existence of a Libyan government to negotiate. It specifically and deliberately does not call for a change of government by force. In fact anyone who tells you they are sure of the answers to the other three questions – either way – is a liar.

Meantime, the other side of the equation of death works its way through. I was the first to break the news that Clinton had done a deal with the Saudis and Emirates. In return for Arab League support for the attack on Libya, the US and its partners would turn a blind eye to the crushing by Saudi troops of pro-democracy protestors in the Gulf.

The blind eye has been duly turned. So effective is the de facto link between the Western political establishment and the mainstream media, that the killing of over 200 Bahraini pro-democracy and human rights campaigners since the Saudi Anschluss there has gone almost entirely unreported. The Guardian reports on disgraceful action against Bahraini students in the UK. Bahrain’s two largest political parties, both representing the majority population, have been outlawed.

William Hague is totally silent on the crushing of freedom in Bahrain, as is Jeremy Browne, the absolutely disgraceful Lib Dem MP who is supposedly minister for human rights in the FCO, evidently chosen because there is no evidence that he has now or has ever had the slightest interest in human rights.

Hague of course spends much time, in Doha and in London, in the company of the Emir of Qatar. Qatar is the base for the Libyan “transitional government” and the international “contact group”. It is an absolute monarchy where political parties are banned and executive power is reserved to members of the royal family. I think that tells us all we need to know about how genuine is the wsetern demand for Middle Eastern democracy.

The opening of the Turner Contemporary certainly attracted a moderate crowd of the curious. I entered the gallery at 2pm, and had to queue for precisely 8 mins (I timed it) to get in. So not quite the crowds the media are making out. I once queued for a couple of hours to get in to a Degas exhibition in the Met in New York. The queue at the Met wound through several wonderful galleries, which those queuing ignored completely. This included queuing past the Met’s own permanent Degas collection, which the vast majority of the noisily chattering queue failed to notice.

But once they got to the well signposted Degas exhibition which had been so publicised and queued for, they fell into reverential silence broken by loud stage whispers: “Fantastic, isn’t it!” “Wow, that blows my mind!”. This was art made easy; they had been told this exhibition was a record breaker, and switched on admiration at the signalled point.

I eavesdropped the crowd carefully in Margate. I genuinely did not pick up a single “wonderful”, These are comments I noted. This is a fair overall reflection of what I heard.
“Why don’t they have more books if this big bit is a bookshop?”
“No, it’s not pretty, but I think it’s meant to mean something.”
“They say £15 million of our Council Tax went into this”
“Well, it’s not what you’d want at home”
“It must be good or they wouldn’t have spent so much on it.”

I predict that a year from now the place will really be struggling for visitor numbers. I once saw (ready to groan) an episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson gave some devastatingly bad statistics for attendance at showpiece provincial art galleries. I am loathe to ally myself with Clarkson, but I have always thought it intrinsically improbable that putting an art gallery into an area of dramatic economic, social and educational deprivation like Margate, is going to make a positive impact.

It is hard to appreciate art, particularly art which is in large degree conceptual rather than aesthetically pleasing, if nothing in your education and experience has given you a cultural context for it. Plonking down a gallery of modern art will have almost no effect on improving the cultural level of the lcoal population. To expect the same gallery also to contribute substantially to solving the economic and social problems is madness.

Still, hope springs eternal. Retail space in Margate is very cheap indeed: until recently 40% of retail space was empty -the worst in the South and Midlands of England. Suddenly little art galleries have sprung up all over the town. I have no doubt at all that 80% of these will shut again within two years.

The BBC cites the Guggenheim in Bilbao as an example of an attraction that can make a real difference. But that is a beautiful building people travel to see. The first thing to say about the Turner Contemporary is that the architecture itself is really, really ugly. It is the kind of brutalist blank that I thought had thankfully been left behind. It is so bad you could sit it down in Victoria Street, London and it would blend in perfectly. It reminds me of the Peterlees of my very early childhood. God, it is just horrible. And it is brand new. When all that white concrete and slab glass gets dirty, it will be even worse.

Also – and no art critic or journalist will tell you this – on the grand opening day, the lift from the ground floor to the galleries, rather a spectacular lift that takes a hundred people, broke down. So there was no way of getting a pushcahir or a wheelchair to the galleries. The building is not just ugly, it’s buggered already.

Sky News is reporting as its lead story that Gadaffi forces are using cluster bombs, fired as mortar rounds. They tell us that this will strengthen the hand of those calling for regime change. The layers of hypocrisy here are so thick it is hard to peel them back. But here are just a few:

The United States has the largest stocks of cluster bombs in the world and refuses to join the international ban

The United Kingdom joined the ban but entered a secret deal for US cluster bombs to be stored on British soil

“Middle East Peace Envoy” Tony Blair throughout his period as Prime Minister blocked UK agreement to a cluster bomb ban and until 2009 cluster bombs were manufacturedon a large scale at Raytheon in Northern Ireland

The cluster bombs being used by Gadaffi are Spanish and were sold to him with the active collusion of the Spanish government

Israel used more than a million cluster bombs in Southern Lebanon without a word of condemnation from Sky News. Sky are reporting that Gadaffi has used “at least three” as its lead headline.

There was no Sky News condemnation of the widespread use of cluster bombs by Israel in Gaza in 2009.

The use of cluster bombs by Gadaffi forces is wrong, and Human Rights Watch were right to break the story. But hypocritical whipping up of indignation, with the purpose of promoting a war that will kill many more people, is also wrong. Even more so when the wesrtern position on cluster bombs is so monumentally hypocritical.

UPDATE

“Gadaffi Cluster Bombs” is also the lead story on the BBC

on a train from St Pancras to Ramsgate, with Cameron.

Really a bad day today. Up till 5am with a family member who was being very sick; too early to know how serious this will be. Then after two hours sleep, off with Nadira to help out at a photoshoot in Southwark for the Edinburgh play, with some shots taken featuring Cameron as well, as one possibility for the poster. Did a number of things with my production assistant hat on, yes including the coffee, and picking up scripts from the printers. Then back home utterly exhausted.

I also got very worrying news about the power station project in Ghana, which I will tell you about next week after I have had a chance to confirm (related to the finances, not the physical project, which is great).

Would like to rant about the complete and utter divorce of the Sarkozy/Cameron/Obama policy article from UNSCR 1973, but really am too tired. Now just another illegal war for neo-colonialism.

I view Vince Cable as a genuinely decent man with liberal instincts. It is good that someone in the Lib Dems has the guts to stand up to Tory immigrant baiting. Cable was right on Murdoch, and his instincts are right on regulating the banks. On all of these – banks, Murdoch, visas – Cable theoretically had a position of power, but has simply been pushed aside by the Tories.

I think it is wrong to confuse Vince with Clegg. I don’t think Cable is hungry for power, and he doesn’t need the money. Clegg would happily sacrifice every Liberal principle to remain as Deputy Prime Minister – I am not sure Clegg ever believed any of it anyway. Following Cable’s open disagreement with Cameron on immigration, Westminster is asking how much longer Cameron will tolerate Cable. I am hopeful that is the wrong question.

I am a Liberal, and will remain so. I don’t have the emotional attachment to corporate solutions and high public spending which many of the valued commenters here do. I was a delegate at the Lib Dem special conference which voted for the coalition with the Tories. I voted for it myself. But the fact is that the government programme bears almost no relationship to the coalition agreement we voted for. Vince Cable cares about that, and he quoted the coalition agreement in attacking Cameron today. I really don’t think Clegg cares a hoot about the agreement; it served its purpose for him many months ago; just like the things he said at the general election.

working in my role as unpaid production assistant for Nadira’s next play, checking out the King’s Theatre in Ramsgate (now the King’s Church, originally a cinema) as a possible venue for rehearsals and previews in July to iron out the bugs. Nice space but currently lacks a proper lighting rig – they are in the process of looking for one. So I may have to explore further. I had offered our house as a good venue to workshop the thing because everyone can stay here (the producers are in shock – you don’t normally get all this when you hire an actress). So it makes sense to look for a theatre around here.

There appears to be a huge growth in this kind of evangelical church in the UK. As far as I can tell it is all based on a purely emotional appeal, aimed largely at the unfortunate. Rather a worrying phenomenon.

My house in Ramsgate is about three miles from Margate, and I see no way to remedy that. But this weekend sees, as every national newspaper has reported, the opening of the Turner Contemporary, which is magically going to reverse a century of decline and two decades of dumping of difficult social services and asylum cases from may score miles away, with no help or social provision.

Anyway, all the newspapers also say there will be a weekend of festival. I am not so mean as to ignore a celebration on my doorstep, so I am trying to find out what is happening. I may be stupid, but I don’t find that the Turner’s website actually helps much in telling me where to be when. And doubtless the wine and hors d’oeuvres are reserved for important people from London. I suspect this may be a fair portent of the coming relationship between the Turner Contemporary and those of us who actually live around here.

A difficult local election campaign is underway. Oh look! Cameron is making an anti-immigrant speech. What a coincidence! And is it not heartening to see this robustly liberal response from the Lib Dems:

“We use different language. But we all work in government to strike a balance to ensure Britain has a system people have confidence in.”

Cringe. Actually I do not disagree that those seeking standard immigration routes to this country should speak the language, but why English? Why not Welsh or Gaelic? Of course you cannot apply this to asylum seekers – a language test is not a sensible way to decide if someone should be tortured to death or not. In fact, I am willing to bet the effect on the ground of any of this will be limited. The core Tory is a visceral racist, and Cameron is simply engaging in a tribal bonding ritual to motivate them into the polling booths.

I need to access this article for purposes of genuine historical research for my biography of Burnes. Can anyone get me a copy?

eating Nadira’s chicken soup with Emily and Cameron

An article in the Guardian yesterday by Thalia Griffiths quite rightly pointed out the huge problems facing Alassane Ouattara in uniting and governing Ivory Coast. But the article is remarkably uncritical of Ouattara, and follows the common Western fallacy of promoting a “good guy” in a civil war when the leaders on all sides are “bad guys”.

This is the fundamental flaw in liberal interventionism. It inevitably leads to the imposition of governments like the ultra-corrupt coastal elite of Sierra Leone, like Bosnian and Albanian gangster mafias or like Alassane Ouattara. I wrote what I believe is the only genuine, full and eye-witness analysis of the truth of Blair’s Sierra Leone intervention in The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. The essential advice is simple. Follow the money.

That approach leads you quickly to note that Thalia Griffiths is the editor of African Energy. Ivory Coast is newly oil rich with extremely prospective deep fields under further exploration. That is why French army tanks finally crushed Gbagbo. That is why Sarkozy put such huge effort into establishing Ouattara.

Now we must not make the reverse error of glorifying the Gbagbo side. Gbagbo clung to office and postponed elections too long. He played the ethnic card. He indulged in nepotism. His forces killed the innocent. He was one of those noble and longstanding opposition figures who becomes something of a nightmare in power. His side cheated, beat and intimidated just as much as Ouattara’s side in elections which it is farcical to claim were free, fair and properly administered, or were any kind of realistic guide to the will of the people of a deeply riven state. I hope that Gbagbo is decently treated, but do not regret his loss of power.

That said, the attempt by Thalia Griffiths to puff Ouattara is simply a symptom of the saccharine treatment he will get in future by all those connected to western oil interests, including western governments. There were massacres on both sides, but the most startling were carried out by Ouattara’s forces, by ethnic militias which Ouattara deliberately mobilised with French money, including fighters brought in from neighbouring Liberia.

This by Thalia is an absolute disgrace:

Recent reports of atrocities in the west have blamed Ouattara supporters, but while conflicts over land pit northerners against southerners, it is cruel but convenient to blame Ouattara for the latest flare-up of conflicts that have existed for a generation. It is land conflict coupled with a breakdown in state security – not urban Abidjan politics – that are behind reports of killings in the west. Clashes like these are vile, but nothing new.

That is simply untrue. The massacre of 800 people at Duekoue a fortnight ago is thankfully extremely rare, and was without doubt committed by Ouattara mobilised militias. To try to lessen this is crass.

Consider this about Ouattara. He was Prime Minister to a truly dreadful African despot, Houphouet-Boigny, who was dictator of Ivory Coast for 33 years. Houphouet-Boigny moved the capital to his home village and spent US$300 million on building the world’s largest church there. He looted US$9 billion from the people of Ivory Coast. Ouattara was his ally, his finance minister then prime minister, and has never disavowed him. All that Thalia notes about H-B is that he had a policy of ethinic inclusion. That again is disgraceful journalism.

But also Houphouet-Boigny and Ouattara’s Ivory Coast was the base for both French military and CIA operations throughout the continent and for promoting the very worst kind of western interests – which is why Africans view with huge suspicion Ouattara’s instalment by Western forces.

Ivory Coast was allied to apartheid South Africa and was the sanctions busting capital of Africa. Vast amounts of goods, including but not limited to oil, were consigned to Ivory Coast on their papers and trans-shipped to the apartheid regime to bust sanctions. Ivory Coast also provided all the logistic back-up to Jonas Savimbi and UNITA and it was in Abidjan that the CIA and apartheid regime worked together to promote the terrible Angolan civil war.

It was also in Abidjan that the CIA organised the coup that overthrew Kwame Nkrumah and planned the death of Patrice Lumumba. (Again, we should not fall into the goodies and baddies trap. The CIA and Ivory Coast regime were definitely bad. But Nkrumah too had become a cruel dictator – again, read The Catholic Orangemen of Togo.)

Ouattara became head of the african department and deputy managing director of the IMF in the 1980s when that organisation was forcing disastrous structural adjustment programmes all over the continent. African nations were forced to liberalise, reduce tariffs and open up their economies when no such constraints were placed on the developing nations with which they were trading. To give just one example of how this worked, which I personally tried but failed to counter: Nigeria was forced by the IMF to reduce tariffs on imported sugar. The EU then flooded Nigeria with millions of tons of sugar, at one third of the cost of its production, with the remaining two thirds paid to European farmers as export subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy. Nigeria’s sugar plantations – which were actually very efficient – collapsed under the unfair subsidised competition from which Nigeria was not allowed to protect them. That was Ouattara. France was very happy with him.

So not only does Ouattara need to heal the deep divisions in his own population, he has to prove to the rest of Africa he is not just a western tool. That will not be easy. I pointed out in an earlier posting that there is dislike between Ouattara and Zuma; I hope that this gives you some idea why.

I have suddenly become very impressed by Johann Hari, who I used to find OK but rather trite. His piece on Dubai was really good.

UPDATE

A commenter has pointed out that this Hari article, which I thought was fairly new, is a couple of years old. Still worth reading.

which might be good for him for a few months, anyway. Why on earth does the Independent employ this talentless hack, who other than occasionally being a mouthpiece for the security services, never writes anything of the slightest interest to anyone. Today he has an article about how difficult it is to be famous, sold on his poor sister Nigella sometimes receivng less than sycophantic media coverage.

A piece asking us to sympathise with Nigella Lawson and Nick Clegg over the moderate stress associated with their earning of huge incomes is bollocks journalism. I see his article has attracted 9 facebook recommendations. As compared to 723 for my equally ephemeral but infinitely better article in the same publication on the kilt.

Sorry, Dominic, for someone with your advantages, judged by your own crass standards, you are just crap.

Eating spaghetti bolognaise cooked by my brother Stuart, and drinking Chianti. Was up very early this morning to get into London for a meeting at which I was essentially acting as Nadira’s agent, discussing with producers and director who want to cast her in a very good play at this year’s Edinburgh fringe. A really positive meeting. Sometimes you meet new people and it is exciting and life-affirming. I ended up volunteering for a number of things myself as a kind of production assistant!

So Moussa Koussa, torturer in chief, has flown to Qatar – absolute monarchy, political parties illegal, condemned by the US for slave domestic labour on a massive scale – to meet with representatives of the Libyan rebellion – assorted subsidiary torturers, racially motivated, sprinkling of mad Islamists – to discuss the future of Libya as supported by Hague/Juppe.

That sounds worth killing for. Let’s fire some more million pound missiles. Let’s turn down any ceasefire proposals – Gadaffi is a very bad man, so he must be replaced by a number of his former hired torturers. You see it’s all about democracy and human rights.

On Ramsgate beach with Nadira and Cameron, playing with the sand, wondering why I had ever wasted any of my life living in London. Emily is with us but had gone off to buy materials for her A level Art project. Jamie is up in Glasgow organising this year’s Doune The Rabbit Hole Festival. I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He has taken to bin picking as a lifestyle choice, lifting just date expired sealed food from supermarket bins. I kind of approve in principle, but it is a somewhat alarming thought for a parent.

The major titles are now held by two South Africans, a Northern Irishman and a German. When was the last time no American was a current major champion? (I don’t know the answer, but I am pretty sure not in my lifetime. I would have noticed).

The laughably called “Independent Commission on Banking” has presented the great answer to the banking collapse that has cost every one of my readers in the UK and US at least £10,000 for every man, woman and child in your family. And the great answer is – do nothing to control the bankers. Or, in the words of the report:

“Rather than pursuing more radical policies towards capital or structure, the approach outlined above is a combination of more moderate measures.”

Moderate to non-existent. Retail banking and casino banking will still take place in the same bank, but in different divisions. Retail banking will be subject to a laughably low ten per cent equity requirement – ie you can only loan out ten times the money you actually have. In fact this will operate not as a floor but as a ceiling – banks will never have more than 10% equity against loans, because despite the so-called “firewall” any capital they have in excess of 10% will be able to be invested in the “casino banking” side.

On banks paying obscene salaries and bonuses when their gambles pay off, and then going to the taxpayer when their gambles fail, there are no proposals whatsoever.

UK governments routinely nowadays slouch off responsibility for policy making to “independent” reports, which are always set up to provide exactly the answer which the government wanted. The government then hides behind them. These are simply Establishment protection mechanisms in which “safe” figures forward the vested interests of the powerful and wealthy. Browne, Vickers, Butler, two Huttons, Chilcot – we all know the form.

It is therefore an astonishing reflection on the naivety of the parliamentary Lib Dems that they were duped into demanding in advance the full implementation of the recommendations of the Vickers report, in the expectation that it would be sensible and radical. The Tories have reeled them in like a fish. Clegg of course is a Tory on economic and particularly City issues and will almost certainly have played a part in fooling Cable and his own party.

The airwaves are full of City types welcoming this “sensible” report. What more do you need to know?

I wrote this on 25 March:

As predicted, the military action in Libya is going horribly wrong. The bombs and missiles are consolidating an undeserved nationalist support for Gadaffi and motivating more people to actually fight for him. The rebels are on the wrong end of ground battles and there is precious little evidence what majority opinion in Libya actually now wants. The western bombing forces are more and more involved in ground attack on pro-Gadaffi forces, and not only armour.

Our policy in Libya is in such disarray that I confess I have no idea what the policy is. I am quite certain that the “humanitarian intervention” motivation is a ruse to dupe the public in general and stupid liberals in particular. Johann Hari is not one of those, and this may be the finest thing he has ever written.

But NATO’s bombing has, as I predicted, only served to strengthen on nationalist grounds support for Gadaffi and the morale and activity of his forces. The vaunted ability of the rebels to sell oil will prove a short lived phenomenon as Gadaffi’s men sweep back through the oil installations.

Having achieved bugger all militarily, NATO are now out-manoeuvred comprehensively on the diplomatic front. Jacob Zuma and the African Union have negotiated a ceasefire deal and transitional government arrangement with Gadaffi, which Gadaffi has accepted and the rebels have refused.

Now, it is essential to bear in mind – which nobody in power is doing – that the aims of UNSCR 1973, from which NATO draws its mandate for the no fly zone and dubious claim of a mandate for attacking Gadaffi’s forces, are a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. These are operative paragraphs 1 and 2:

1. Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;
2. Stresses the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people and notes the decisions of the Secretary-General to send his Special Envoy to Libya and of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union to send its ad hoc High-Level Committee to Libya with the aim of facilitating dialogue to lead to the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution;

Nowhere does UNSCR 1973 mandate regime change or insist that Gadaffi must go as the end result of negotiations. If Gadaffi has accepted an AU-brokered ceasfire, then he is in compliance with the UN Resolution. If the rebels have refused such a ceasefire, then they are in breach of UNSCR 1973 and it is they who are endangering civilians. It is the rebels who NATO should be attacking. Perhaps they will work out that it would be much better if they stopped attacking anybody, but I doubt it. They have chosen a side in this civil war, and military macho will propel them to continue to try to make that side win.

Let me be plain – I have no time for Gadaffi and would have been delighted if he had been overthrown by moral force, or even with a little violence, by his people, as in Egypt and Tunisia. But what we have now is a civil war in which it is by no means clear that Gadaffi’s opponents – including blood drenched senior ex Gadaffi regime members motivated by opportunism and possibly ethnicity – are going to put “good guys” in power.

NATO have no mandate to take sides in a civil war and propel their forces to victory. The aim of UNSCR 1973 is a ceasefire and negotiation.

There is no doubt that the CIA and MI6 are actively strengthening the determination of the rebels to resist a negotiated settlement, with promises of continued NATO air support and training, spotting, intelligence and other military assistance. They are therefore in direct violation of UNSCR 1973.

One sad thing in this is the complete lack of moral stature of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon. He is mandated in UNSCR 1973 to be arranging negotiations, and those who enforce the no-fly zone are obliged under UNSCR 1973 to consult and cooperate with him. In fact he has done almost nothing and possesses absolutely none of the moral stature or personal charisma of Kofi Annan. Moon has no interest in anything but his stature and perks (UN staff call him the vainest Secretary General ever), and in making many millions from networking with the West for his retirement employment.

As NATO argue with complete illegality in Libya, I would call Moon the dog that did not bark. But that would be an insult to dogs.

All of which leaves Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama wedded to a policy which is completely contrary to UNSCR 1973, illegal, and still failing on the ground. They face a gigantic loss of face which can only be reversed by boots on the ground. My FCO sources tell me that they are already considering the officially unsanctioned provision of mercenary forces to the rebels. I asked whether there had been any discussion with Tim Spicer, and received a “I couldn’t possibly comment” response.