What’s left?

I didn’t know much about Nick Cohen before picking up What’s Left? from the Swiss Cottage market book bloke. Here’s what Google told me:

First, Craig Murray:

Let me summarise Nick Cohen’s book for you. ‘If you are against eating Muslim babies, you are a supporter of Islamofascism. If you are perturbed by Guantanamo Bay, you would not have fought in the Spanish Civil War, are probably a fan of Hitler and have no right to call yourself a Liberal. Neo-Conservatism is the New Left.’

There, now you don’t have to read it. Believe me, I have done you a favour.

Or how about  Peter Wilby?

Cohen appears to think this book shows he has put infantile leftism behind him and attained a new maturity. Alas, it shows that he is, and always was, a political innocent.

Johann Hari?

…once Cohen’s blind faith in neoconservatism becomes clear, many of the accusations he makes against the left begin to look like acts of psychological projection rather than serious political arguments.

What’s left?

Here are some examples elaborated in the book which might help you decide whether you want to read it:

• Companies from West Germany supplied Saddam Hussein with “one of the largest chemical weapons manufacturing industries in the world” (p. 47). East German communists provided Saddam’s forces training.
• France built a nuclear reactor for Saddam, which was blown up by the Israeli air force before the nuclear fuel arrived.
• The slow response  of Europe, including the then UK Tory government, to Slobodan Milošević, Butcher of the Balkans – leading to the Srebrenica genocide.
• Some evidence that Virginia Woolf might have been a “screaming snob” who hated the working class. Here’s an example, to give you a flavour of his argument, of what she said: “What rather appals me… is the terrible conventionality of the workers. That’s why — if you want explanations — I don’t think they will be poets or novelists for another hundred years or so.”
• A quotation from George Galloway saluting Saddam Hussein: “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory until Jerusalem.”
• Evidence that the reason for war in Iraq was a lie, Cohen writes: “If Blair had levelled with the British people he would have said that he couldn’t be sure if Saddam was armed, and even if he was there was no imminent danger, but here was a chance to remove a disgusting regime… Instead he spun and talked about chemical weapons…”

I don’t agree with everything in the book, but I am deeply suspicious now of those who think leftish people should avoid it.

A cup of coffee and a tent

“Can’t they be about… sorry… we… er… eh… no no no no… it’s just so obvious I can’t be bothered…

“You don’t have to want to return to a barter system in the stoneage to complain about the way the financial crisis affected large numbers of people in the world, do you? Even if you’re having a cup of coffee and you’ve got a tent!”

– Ian Hislop responding to Louise Mensch on Have I Got News For You, 23/10/2011

Authority

“… all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts…”

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891

Moral appeal

“… politics is politics, and Labour’s rhetoric has to offer something to middle class people, if it is going to be elected. But it doesn’t have to offer to them what suits their own reflective self-interest without qualification: being human beings, they are open to a degree of moral appeal.” GA Cohen, in “Socialism and Equality of Opportunity”, Red Pepper, 1997

… trying to do the right thing …

Republican New York State Senator Roy McDonald changes his mind and decides to support same-sex marriage legislation in New York:

You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing.

I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.

(From the Star Spangled Staggers)

Iraq: the biggest journalistic failure in recent memory

“Look at Iraq. The biggest journalistic failure in recent memory. A series of lies, evasive manoeuvres, half-truths, concocted documents and also, a dishonest binary decision at the heart of it that went completely unchallenged: You’re either with us, or you’re for Saddam. Bunfight journalism did nothing to stop 600,000+ Iraqis losing their lives. In fact, I clearly remember Andrew Marr being openly contemptuous of those of us who marched against the war and saw it for what it really was: The most right-wing US administration in years staging a land-grab. “

—Graham Linehan talks sense (comment over here)

Nigel Inkster on US policy

Nigel Inkster appeared on BBC World News today.  He’s former senior British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and currently works for the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Inkster caught my attention as today he opened by defending Gitmo, claiming that some of the intelligence collected there might have turned out to be useful.

This immediately caused the alarm to sound, given the human rights catastrophe Gitmo has turned out to be. I was curious to know if Inkster is a regular voice of the propaganda machine.

I was surprised to read that some of his writings have been quite sensible, e.g., Inkster and Whalley (2009) wrote:

“… for Europeans Pakistan, in contrast to Afghanistan, is not part of a designated combat zone. In the (admittedly unlikely) event that a European intelligence service had access to location intelligence on senior al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan, passing such intelligence to the Americans in the knowledge that this would result in a lethal attack might render them liable to prosecution as accessories to an unlawful killing.

“… there is in Europe a strong though largely unspoken concern that, in the event of another successful al-Qaeda terrorist attack against the United States, the Obama administration may be unable to resist an upsurge of domestic pressure to adopt a disproportionate response such as deploying US ground troops against al-Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

“[Europe is reluctant] to be associated with what many see as a disproportionate response to the attack on the twin towers in the years that have followed. Washington may feel justified in arguing that this response has had the effect of making European states safer. But for many Europeans the perception is that US behaviour has inflamed opinion among their Muslim minorities and further afield and made them more vulnerable to attack.”

I do wish he had said more of this on the news today.

I also wonder if the UK had killed Bin Laden, whether it would have been illegal, as Inkster and Whalley appear to be saying here. In which case, isn’t it odd that Cameron is so in favour of the assassination.

Reference

Nigel Inkster and Robert Whalley (2009).  Law and Order.  Survival, 51(3), 55–61.

Think aloud: brains and politics

This study (Kanai, Feilden, Firth & Rees, in press) is doing the rounds on the blogs.  They measured political orientation using a five-point scale of very liberal (1), liberal (2), middle-of-the-road (3), conservative (4), and very conservative (5).  Gist: liberals have a bigger anterior-cingulate cortex (ACC) than do conservatives; liberals have a smaller right amydala than conservatives.

There are a bunch of problems interpreting brain volume, e.g., does bigger mean better or does it mean less efficient?  Also we know volume can change over time, so finding something in the brain doesn’t imply an initial cause of anything.  See more in an earlier post over here.

Interpreting what causes these kinds of correlations is a nightmare.  There’s a rather large gap between brain volume and self-reported political orientation.  Still, something maybe interesting going on.

First thought about this: hmmm, ACC, that’s to do with dealing with interference which loads on little g.  Openness to experience also loads on g.  I wonder is this liberal scale tapping into Openness/intelligence?

Here’s a table (from Carney, Jost, Gosling & Potte, 2008) summarising theorized personality correlations.

Lots of high Openness on the liberal side there.  Their data also supported the correlation (standardised beta of -.4).  Question remains, what causes this?  (End of think-aloud for now.)

References

Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind, Political Psychology, 29, 807-840.

Kanai, R., Feilden, T., Firth, C., Rees, G. (in press). Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults. Current Biology.

How to save Labour

One of the central problems with politics, particularly Socialist politics as they are currently constructed, is that on a day to day basis they are incredibly boring.

This is not an accident but is a process designed to ensure that only a particular type of individual, specifically those with borderline personality disorders centred around extreme issues to do with the control and manipulation of the behaviour of others are attracted to the business of government and activism. All those with a different view are automatically locked out of the process.

One way to counter this exclusionism is to have balloons and music at all Labour Party meetings and possible an all-you-can eat buffet offered at a nominal cost. I would suggest £3.50-£4.00.

—Alexei Sayle

[Thanks Carl Rowlands for the reminder]

Interview: person who most recently tried a citizen’s arrest of Blair