Reino Unido (Continuación)

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea, ,

Oscar Wilde insisted that “life imitates art far more than art imitates art”. What would he have made of the present hostage crisis? Twenty-four hours before Iran seized 15 Britons its mission to the UN issued a statement expressing outrage at 300, a movie based on the Battle of Thermopylae in 480BC. In this epic struggle between a small band of Spartans and a massive army of Persians, the ancestors of modern Iran have been painted, the protest ran, as the “embodiment of evil, moral corruption”. They have a point. According to Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History at Cambridge University, Persia was “not a one-dimensional barbaric despotism” but, then again, it was “by no means well disposed to Greek-style democracy” either.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Why, demanded Jeremy Paxman recently, should he feel "guilty" about the slave trade, given that he wasn't alive then and that his "ancestors were peasants"? He is not alone in asking this question. Many Britons wonder, not unreasonably, why and how they should "apologise" for a crime they did not physically perpetrate.Though driven by an honourable impulse, campaigners dressed up in instruments of bondage are in danger of reducing the complicated project of reckoning with history into a facile confessional moment. ("So Sorry" T-shirts are uncomfortably close to pastiche.) Similarly, the theological mode of "atonement" which defined the high-profile service at Westminster Abbey last week (challenged by a lone protester, Toyin Agbetu), might actually undermine the case for facing up to the past squarely.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión Europea, , ,

Un cuarto de siglo después de que, el 2 de abril de 1982, la dictadura militar de Argentina decidiera la invasión de las islas Malvinas, la escena actual revela que poco parece haber cambiado, a pesar de los dramáticos acontecimientos experimentados en el mundo. El archipiélago sigue bajo control británico y la cuestión de la soberanía está congelada, las comunicaciones con el continente son escasas y dificultosas, los desacuerdos entre ambos gobiernos se extienden más allá del protocolo y los posibles beneficios económicos de la exploración de recursos energéticos no representan incentivo alguno para las negociaciones entre dos bandos que entablan un diálogo de sordos.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea, ,

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea, ,

Tony Blair has been talking tough about Iran’s seizure of 15 British sailors and marines on the Shatt al Arab, the waterway between Iran and Iraq. Mr. Blair is deeply reluctant to apologize, as Tehran is demanding, for Britain’s alleged incursion into Iranian waters. Global positioning data shows that the British naval patrol was more than a mile inside Iraqi waters. It is gall and wormwood for a leader already politically crippled by Britain’s commitment in Iraq to find himself now also engaged in a confrontation with Iran.

As international incidents go, this is unlikely to prove a very serious one.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea, ,

It's right that the government and media should be concerned about the treatment the 15 captured marines and sailors are receiving in Iran. Faye Turney's letters bear the marks of coercion, while parading the prisoners in front of TV cameras was demeaning. But the outrage expressed by ministers and leader writers is curious given the recent record of the "coalition of the willing" on the way it deals with prisoners.Turney may have been "forced to wear the hijab", as the Daily Mail noted with fury, but so far as we know she has not been forced into an orange jumpsuit. Her comrades have not been shackled, blindfolded, forced into excruciating physical contortions for long periods, or denied liquids and food.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaEuropaUnión Europea, ,

We are in the middle of the biggest educational movement in history. Hundreds of thousands of young people are travelling to be educated abroad. They are led by the Chinese, for whom a foreign education is highly prized. There now are over 50,000 Chinese students in Britain - mostly the children of the elite and the rich - and the numbers studying abroad are predicted to double.So what happens to the beliefs and values of these young people when confronted by a culture so different from their own? Staying in Britain produces extensive reflection about both British and Chinese society, as a new study of recent graduates by the British Council has found.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Exterior, ,

Last week, while the European Union celebrated 50 years of peace, freedom and solidarity, 15 Europeans were kidnapped from Iraqi territorial waters by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. As I write, those 14 European men and one European woman have been held at an undisclosed location for nearly a week, interrogated, denied consular access, but shown on Iranian television, with one of them making a staged "confession", clearly under duress. So if Europe is as it claims to be, what's it going to do about it? Where's the solidarity? Where's the action?

Simply to describe the crisis in these terms is to see how far we are from the Europe of instinctive solidarity that European leaders like to believe we have - and especially when it comes to our armed forces abroad.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea,

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap".…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión Europea, , ,

This week Britain celebrates the feast of the empty gesture. Millions who had nothing to do with slavery will pretend to apologise for it, largely because the BBC has gone potty. Tony Blair will presumably find a black person and say: "I feel your pain."

Meanwhile, there is a more recent anniversary to commemorate, 25 years since the Falklands war. Should we apologise for that?

Last week, an Italian court eerily brought the Falklands war full circle. Alfredo Astiz, a former Argentinian navy captain, was convicted in his absence of the sadistic murder of three Italian students in the 1970s. He is also wanted for the deaths of two French nuns and a Swede, not to mention thousands of Argentinians.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Next Sunday marks the bicentenary of the abolition of one of history's greatest crimes - the transatlantic slave trade. The British government must formally apologise for it. All attempts to evade this are weasel words. Delay demeans our country. Recalling the slave trade's dimensions will show why. Conservative estimates of the numbers transported are 10-15 million; others range up to 30 million. Deaths started immediately, as many as 5% in prisons before transportation and more than 10% during the voyage - the direct murder of some 2 million people.

Conditions imposed on survivors were unimaginable. Virginia made it lawful "to kill and destroy such negroes" who "absent themselves from ...…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

Of all the evasive arguments over the replacement of Trident, I find the “we don’t need to take a decision now” position the most dishonest. That it is the official stance of the Liberal Democrats shows just how pathetic that party has become.

The first bit of sophistry is the argument that today’s vote isn’t really about “replacing Trident”, but is about replacing the submarines that fire them. As if the submarines are much use for anything else. Alongside that, I would put Tony Blair’s demand that Trident’s opponents “need to explain why disarmament by the UK would help our security”.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

I can hardly believe that a majority of British MPs will tonight vote to renew the British nuclear deterrent. Almost all of them, of all parties, know in their heads that it makes no sense. They lack the guts to say so, Labour MPs because they want jobs under Gordon Brown, Conservatives because they love whizzbangs and want to embarrass Tony Blair by keeping him in power, for reasons that pass comprehension.

There is no surer sign that the Trident missile system is strategically obsolete than the archaic arguments ranged in its support. It is said to be the ultimate weapon.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

Roy Hattersley is a welcome addition to the anti-Trident majority now in this country (My unilateral conversion, March 5). I fear, however, that he still lacks the humility required from a real convert.He will, I hope, come to accept his share of responsibility for the ignorance and British hubris which has so contributed to the current dangerous global crisis. But he is also positively abusive about those who did not share his previous opinions. They constituted, he says, "the forces of unreason". Edward Thompson, eminent historian; Dorothy Hodgkin, distinguished scientist and Nobel prize winner; Martin Ryle, astronomer royal; Archbishop Thomas Roberts, courageous church reformer; Lord Fenner Brockway, active until his last days - are all these to be counted as "the forces of unreason"?…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

In a telling echo of the vote for the Iraq war, the prime minister's rushed enthusiasm for nuclear rearmament contains more holes than an Atlantic driftnet. The parliamentary majority for the invasion of Iraq was achieved without a Labour majority. Now it seems that the decision to renew the Trident missile fleet will also require the support of opposition MPs. Despite a brace of resignations, despite the large numbers of Labour MPs - as many as 70 - signing my amendment to delay a decision, Tony Blair seems determined to push through a vote tomorrow night. This legislation will not just cost billions of pounds, it will also send a signal to nations across the globe that if they wish to feel secure in an unpredictable world, they should beg, steal, borrow or purchase weapons of mass destruction.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

Students in the Irish literature seminar I teach latched onto some satisfying news last week, when this newspaper reported that scientists had found no significant genetic difference between the Irish and English. Midway through a semester spent wrestling with fictional representations of the troubled relationship between the two nations, here was scientific confirmation that an assumption long used to justify the inequality of that relationship was itself a fiction.

The discovery that the Irish and English belong to the same bloodline is probably more amusing than shocking to readers who have grown accustomed to understanding the history of Ireland in political rather than racial terms.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

The one sure way to irritate a Scotsman is to call him an Englishman. That happens to Scots all the time when they travel abroad, and many of them feel as strongly about it as Hercule Poirot felt when people called him a Frenchman. “Belgian,” the great detective would say, with polite emphasis, mustache bristling. And of course it would be unwise to call a man in green on the streets of New York City on St. Patrick’s Day an Englishman.

There’s an old Scottish toast, lightly ironic in its tone but reflecting quite a strong sense of Scottish specialness. It goes like this: “Here’s tae us; wha’s like us?”…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

The historic vote for radical House of Lords reform triggers a cluster of good thoughts. First, that it was an object lesson in realistic progressive audacity; what looked risky before suddenly looks inevitable and sensible, constitutional reform's equivalent of the congestion charge. Second, that it ought to put an end - though it won't - to the ignorant claim that today's House of Commons is a supine shadow of its supposedly glorious former self. And, third, that MPs ought to show their muscle again on Wednesday by refusing to renew the Trident nuclear missile system prematurely.

Next week's Commons debate about Trident ought to be a great existential political moment - and in some respects it cannot avoid being one.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

There is no space to rebut all the inaccuracies in Simon Jenkins' article, but the claims that the Olympic stadium will cost £630m, and the London Evening Standard's latest invention of a £10bn bill, are just false (Jowell and Coe have been duped by the biggest overselling scam in history, March 2).The games have already unlocked billions in new transport investment right across London; they have made the massive regeneration project centred on Stratford and going south to the Thames deliverable when it was not before. This offers unparalleled new opportunities to some of the most deprived communities in the country, bringing with it 40,000 new homes and 50,000 new jobs.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

The nuclear deterrent changed my life. In the early 60s - having been rejected by a dozen safe Labour constituencies - I decided that London and parliament were not for me. I would remain in the north, administer my small part of the health service, and guide the housing department of Sheffield city council. Then Hugh Gaitskill promised to "fight and fight again to save the party we love". Suddenly, all I wanted was to be a foot soldier in the battle against the forces of unreason demanding unilateral nuclear disarmament. So I set off again on the long and winding road that led to the Sparkbrook division of Birmingham.…  Seguir leyendo »