Undermining democracy and diplomacy

We used to be told, “Don’t point your finger at someone, because you’ll be pointing three at yourself.” How ironic then that in a month when as a nation we’ve been pointing the finger fiercely at Russia, over their alleged involvement in the Salisbury poisoning, it should transpire that the most massive dirty political tricks originated in the UK and the USA. 

Channel 4’s newshounds have revealed that the British political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica, far from being an academic research outfit as its name suggests, became in fact a mercenary dirty tricks operation which specialised in covert manipulation and sold its services to political big guns. And their source of information? It’s none other than your chatty friend and mine, the multi-billion Facebook, based in the United States. So this narrative of a malign Russia conspiring to undermine western democracy loses some credibility. It turns out that much of the undermining is home-grown.

It’s surprising that other major news outlets such as the BBC have not been more interested in the story, seemingly confining themselves to the suspension of CA’s Chief Executive, Alexander Nix, Old Etonian, and the Prime Minister’s answers about the firm’s links to the Tory Party. The Guardian has run it as a main story. I suppose it’s not so surprising that newssheets owned by millionaires don’t major on the story. (The BBC has today given it more attention.)

Photos from Huffington Post; 2 experts in diplomacy

On Wednesday afternoon, another Old Etonian, our Foreign Secretary, once again demonstrated his mastery of diplomacy when asked about the similarities between Hitler’s 1936 Olympic Games and the forthcoming Football World Cup in Russia. “Yes,” said Boris Johnson, political boss of the Diplomatic Service, “I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right.” Aside from a hint of sour grapes for the UK’s ignominious elimination from the choice of host nation and the overwhelming support received by Russia, this comment surpassed Mr Johnson’s norm of buffoonish wit. He fires from the hip in a manner reminiscent of Mr Trump and for, one suspects, similarly populist purposes.

A couple of years ago I read Anna Reid’s Leningrad: the Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44, which recounted the horrific suffering of that blockade in which 750,000 died. I’m now reading Nobel Prize Winner, Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War. Both books rely on first-hand accounts, the latter almost entirely of women who were involved on or just behind the front lines of the Soviet army, as soldiers and pilots, radio operators, doctors and nurses. 

Their memories are vivid and painful, and are as intensely moving account of the “pity of war” as any I have read or viewed on screen. Both books serve as a powerful reminder that just in the Second World War the country which paid the highest price for defeating Hitler and Nazi ambitions was the Soviet Union with 25 million people killed. (By comparison, UK war deaths were 450,900: World War 2 statistics) We seem to forget that in European wars since Napoleon we have been allied with Russia (or the Soviet Union) and their part in those wars has been extraordinarily costly. Twice invaded from Western Europe by small men with imperialistic ambitions and powerful military forces one can understand their fear of history being repeated – and one can understand their finding a comparison with Hitler’s Germany “offensive and unacceptable”. I’m inclined to agree with the view that it is "unworthy of the foreign minister of any country". 

A Foreign Secretary should, I reckon, have less braggadocio and more circumspection. Sadly, in its desperation to appear decisive and strong, our government has seized upon the affair of the poisoning of our spy, Sergei Skripal, and becomes more and more demagogic and less and less statesmanlike. It’s a pity - a sad example of our proud history of the subtle art of diplomacy.

PS There's a fascinating set of unanswered questions about the Salisbury affair here:/30-questions-that-journalists-should-be-asking-about-the-skripal-case/

An Olympic cautionary dose

When I was at school, we all knew that the most unjust type of sanction was collective punishment – you know the sort: when the whole class is kept in detention for one person’s misdemeanour. It’s the last resort of the ineffective teacher. “I know someone’s been smoking in here, and if they don’t own up in the next minute, I shall keep the whole class back after school until I get the name.”

I remember well the first time I was on the receiving end of this sort of sanction. I have no idea what the offence was. I was still in junior school and I remember the class being lined up at the top of the basement stairs, prior to being marched down to have the cane administered by the ex-army-captain headmaster. In fact, I’m ashamed to say, I was so scared I feigned sickness and avoided my fate and so was launched into a propensity to intelligent deceit. I did later get my fair share of rapped knuckles from Fido, the length of quadrant wielded by my moustachioed Maths teacher.

Graphic showing estimated civilian casualties in WW2, Memorial Civiles

When we were away on holiday in France this summer, we visited the moving Memorial des Civils museum in Falaise which records the civilian cost of World War 2. There was an exhibit there which listed something like 20 men from a village, taken to concentration camp, after German military trains had twice been blown up nearby by the resistance. One man came back. A pattern repeated thousands of time in war, no doubt. The museum reminded us that our Soviet allies lost 36 million civilians in the defeat of Nazism, far more than the rest of Europe put together. Which is, by the way, one reason why I consider our officially sponsored populist anti-Russian narrative so misconceived.

You may surmise from this that I rate collective punishment as a very low form of life. And I was sorry when the Olympic authorities, almost, and the Paralympic totally imposed a blanket ban on athletes from the Russian federation. It seemed to me a denial of natural justice. Whatever the rights and wrong of the McLaren report on state sponsored doping in Russia, it’s clear that some innocent athletes were barred from competing by the bans, and I suspect guilty ones from elsewhere competed, perhaps making intelligently deceitful use of TUEs (Therapeutic Use Exemptions).

Whatever the case, it seems that the whole affair was hurriedly and clumsily mismanaged – which of course worked to GB’s advantage. True, GB did wonderfully well in both Olympics and Paralympics in Rio, and their medal haul exceeded even the London Games. But then they would have won more, wouldn’t they, with their main competitor for second, third or fourth place removed from the picture? I wouldn’t want in any way to rain on their parades. They deserve our very great admiration, but let’s keep it in perspective and hope that by 2020 Russia will be back in the mix.

Eleven one eleven

I'm refraining from writing this at eleven minutes past 11 this morning, because I'm not into the fashion for numerology which seems to fascinate some people on Facebook - who pointed out, for example, that today is 11.1.11. So what? I tend to think. Our calendar is not that significant - just a convenient way of recording events. But of course we are obsessed with clocks and dates in our culture. Punctuality pips even cleanliness to the post in our hierarchy of virtue. I sometimes think that we'd be a lot happier if we lived by "African time" or, as I'd prefer to call it, natural time. Chill out, guys!

2nd WW destroyer, ?HMS Paladin

That's all by the by.... Since they couldn't get to us for Christmas, Jane and I drove down to stay overnight with her parents in Devon - and a lovely time we had. 70 years ago, Jane's father signed up as a 19-year old recruit in the Navy. In the evening he told us some of his wartime experiences. His memories are very vivid. He began on the destroyer, HMS Paladin, in the Clyde and spent a lot of time on minesweepers in the Mediterranean. He'd be the first to say he was  just one among many. However naturally to us he's special and it's moving to listen to him.

Then we went on to meet up with most of my generation of Wenhams, in Bristol. We drove in through Clifton where there was a reminder of the saddest home news story of the Christmas period. Parked on the Green outside Christ Church was a police incident van and a number of police cars. It was a shock to see them on the green I'd frequented in my teenage years. I hope Jo Yeates' murderer is soon brought to justice.

And meanwhile on the other side of the world came the news of England's series' victory in the cricket tests, which assumed, in my opinion, disproportionate importance over the unfolding story of the flooding around Brisbane in Queensland. We have good friends on the outskirts of Brisbane. They are as yet among the fortunate ones who have escaped this year's devastation - although last year they were flooded. I came across a series of photos from the Brisbane Courier which give a great picture of the extent of the floods, for example one of a woman wading away from her abandoned 4-WD.

It occurs to me that news comes to life for us when we have personal connections in some way.