Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Sunday

Alex Massie

Obama, Reagan and the Falklands

From our UK edition

A follow-up to this post: sure, excitable Conservatives in Britain and the United States see the Obama administration's disinclination to take a position on the latest Falklands dispute as proof that the poor man really does dislike the United Kingdom and is quite happy to see the so-called Special Relationship consigned to the library of history, a splendid relic of a bygone age. Well, maybe. But since this is a bilateral dispute that doesn't involve any country hostile to the US it is, as Daniel Larison says, hard to see why we demand a public declaration of American support when there's no real need for this. Meanwhile, it cannot be repeated too often that the Reagan administration was also not always on board. This goes beyond Jeane Kirkpatrick's shilling for the Galtieri regime.

Alex Massie

Sunday Morning Country: Kitty Wells

From our UK edition

Kitty Wells was born in 1919 and she's the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. So it's well past time she featured here and, this being so, it's sensible to play her first big hit It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. If Hank Williams was the inspiration for everyone who followed him then, after the Carter Family, you can argue that Kitty Wells played a similar role on the distaff side of country.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Huge Earthquake in Chile, Not Many Dead*

From our UK edition

Not to trivialise the story too much, but if this ain't the headline** in every British newspaper tomorrow then, damn it, the subs should be ashamed of themselves. *So far & thankfully & given the size (8.8) of the quake anyway. UPDATE Sunday 7pm: It seems, sadly, that more lives have been lost than had first been thought. So, consider this flippancy withdrawn. **And no, it doesn't matter that it may be based on myth. As another man said, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".

Alex Massie

Six Tory Promises: How Impressed are You?

From our UK edition

Actually, there seem to be rather more than six promises Still, the Daily Mail reports on a series of Tory pledges that Dave & Co will roll out this weekend as part of their Get Back on Track plan. Let's have a look at them: Act now on debt to get the economy moving: Deal with the deficit more quickly than Labour so that mortgage rates stay lower for longer with the Conservatives. Get Britain working by boosting enterprise: Cut corporation tax rates, abolish taxes on the first ten jobs created by new businesses, promote green jobs and get people off welfare and into work.

Friday

Alex Massie

A New York Day

From our UK edition

Take 35,000 photographs, apply some tilt-shift fancyness and time-lapse brilliance and, hey presto, Sam O'Hare has this groovy film of a day in the life of New York City as seen in, well, miniature. Worth a few minutes of your Friday time and best viewed in full-screen mode: The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo. [Thanks to JPM for the tip.

Alex Massie

Anyone But England?

From our UK edition

Happily, I couldn't find a photo of Steve Nicol's miss against Uruguay in 1986. Could there be anything dafter, yet still wearisomely predictable, than the news that the polis have warned an Aberdeen shop that dares to sell "Anyone But England" t-shirts* in the run-up to this year's World Cup finals that said items might be considered "racist"? Quiet times in the Granite City, one trusts, if this is how the constabulary is keeping busy. It's inevitable that we'l hear much more on this front as the tournament draws nearer (just ask Andy Murray). So, for the record, this blog's Official England World Cup Position is this: I'd like England to do well but they can do well without actually winning the damn thing.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Obama’s Indispensable Man

From our UK edition

Increasingly I suspect that George HW Bush may be one of the most under-rated American presidents since the Second World War. Politically, sure, he wasn't the smartest, sharpest or smoothest and some of his greatest achievements - most notably the management of post-Soviet eastern europe - owed something to a policy of what was, in some senses and to some extent, benign neglect. But there's a certain old-fashioned, perhaps patrician, wisdom in that too. The first Bushies got some things wrong and they got some kinds of lucky too but their reserve also helped them avoid too many self-inflicted mistakes. It wouldn't be quite right to say that the Obama administration is Pappy's heir but its approach to foreign and security policy certainly borrows from the GHWB playbook.

Alex Massie

Newspapers, Mrs Rochester and a Presumption of Literacy

From our UK edition

Sometimes, you know, stuff appears in the newspapers that offers just a smidgen of hope. Consider this tidbit from the Guardian's account of the oh-so-entertaining revelations in Andrew Rawnsley's new book. At the time of the botched 2006 attempt to topple Tony Blair: In the middle of the coup, the former welfare minister Frank Field went to No 10 to plead with Blair not to give way to Brown. "You can't go yet. You can't let Mrs Rochester out of the attic," he said. Rawnsley writes: "Blair roared with laughter." The grounds for hope, you see, lie in the fact that the Guardian doesn't feel it necessary to explain the Mrs Rochester reference. The New York Times, by contrast, does. Even on its books pages.

Alex Massie

Is Obama Betraying Britain?

From our UK edition

This is irritating but should not come as a surprise: Washington refused to endorse British claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands yesterday as the diplomatic row over oil drilling in the South Atlantic intensified in London, Buenos Aires and at the UN. Despite Britain’s close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain’s claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue. [...]Senior US officials insisted that Washington’s position on the Falklands was one of longstanding neutrality.

Alex Massie

Immigration: The BNP are Winning and Britain is Losing

From our UK edition

One of the odder aspects of contemporary politics is the amount of attention lavished upon the goons at the BNP. Anyone would think they were about to win the election. But they're not. Nevertheless, grant Nick Griffin and his pals this: they've managed to hijack the debate - such as it is - on immigration. Despite what the media might have you think, there is no party of open borders in this country. Instead both the Tories and the Labour party effectively concede the argument to the BNP. Labour boast that they have immigration "under control" and then the Tories complain that the government isn't "cracking down" hard enough. The dreadful Phil Woollas and the likes of Damian Green may be more sophisticated than Griffin and his mob but they differ from him in degree, not in kind.

Alex Massie

Charlie’s Angels

From our UK edition

Does it matter if this story is actually true or not? It's clearly going to be a movie soon. All that needs to be decided is the casting: A lingerie model is believed to be the mastermind behind an all-women drug gang that smuggles cocaine into Britain. An international arrest warrant has been issued for Angie Sanselmente Valencia, 30, who is said to only hire glamour models to transport the drugs from South America to Europe. It's believed that Colombian-born Valencia had been seeing a Mexican drug lord known as 'The Monster' but split with him at the end of last year to form her own cocaine-smuggling gang. [...] Her 'angels' were paid £3,200 for each trip they made and one of her gang is believed to have boarded a flight every 24 hours with the packages of cocaine.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Bush on Palin: Charisma Ain’t Enough

From our UK edition

Jeb Bush that is. And, it's fair to say that he doesn't seem enormously enthusiastic about Palin's political prospects: My personal belief is that for Governor Palin to be a successful candidate for higher office, she needs to take this charisma she has and also add to it some depth of understanding of the complexity of life that we're living in today. If she had the combination of that, she would be a formidable candidate." And: I mean, I don't know what her deal is, but my belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity. Well that all seems fair enough even if Jeb* has to be considered part of the party's establishment and thus suspect in the eyes of Palin's most fervent supporters. Full video of the Jeb interview here.

Alex Massie

Mars & Venus Revisited

From our UK edition

Bob Gates' criticism of european defence shortcomings yesterday was couched in unusually harsh terms. Then again, NATO faces an uncertain future and there's a growing sense in the United States, I think, that europe is failing to lift its weight when it comes to defence matters. As Gates pointed out just 5 of NATO's 28 members spend more than 2% of GDP on defence. Consequently: The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st. And: Right now, the alliance faces very serious, long-term, systemic problems.

Alex Massie

An American View of the Tories

From our UK edition

You don't have to look too far here, or elsewhere for that matter, to find plenty of concern about the Conservatives' readyness for government. So it's useful, occasionally, to step back and notice how the party and, more broadly, the British right, looks like to outside observers. Here's Ross Douthat for instance: [W]hen you compare the British Conservatives with the American Republicans, what’s most striking isn’t the parallel pandering on Medicare and the N.H.S. It’s the relative specificity of the rest of the Tory policy brief, whose attempts at a localist, “post-bureaucratic” and pro-family agenda contrast pretty favorably, to my mind, with the Republican Party’s noisier but largely detail-free commitment to the same goals.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Our Localist, Tocquevillian Future?

From our UK edition

Although it's been overshadowed by the fiscal crisis, it remains the case that the closest thing the Conservatives have to a Big Idea is their twinned-commitments to a "Post-Bureaucratic Age" and a future in which local communities enjoy much greater control over their affairs. As Dave has put it, "There is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as the state." Nonetheless, it must be admitted that it remains to be seen whether Tory talk on these matters is matched by real action should they form the next government. It's easy to make good speeches and interesting promises in opposition; rather harder to translate that rhetoric into action once the government machine gets involved. And let's not get carried away by the rhetoric either. A degree of scepticism is sensible.

Monday

Alex Massie

Correction of the Day | 22 February 2010

From our UK edition

From a New York Times post on David Remnick's forthcoming Obama biography An earlier version of this post misquoted Mr. Remnick on his comparison between the book and a New Yorker article he had previously written. He said the book would not be a “pumped up” version of the article; he did not say that it would not be a “pimped out” version of the article. Actually, like many such books this, while likely to be rather good, will still be both a pumped and pimped out version of the original 12,000 word article.

Alex Massie

Even the Pakistanis are “Soft” on Torture…

From our UK edition

Meanwhile, today's missive from the Party of Torture is written by Dana Perino and Bill Burck, Press Secretary and Special Counsel to George W Bush respectively.  The Obama administration is working with Pakistani intelligence to interrogate Mullah Baradar, reportedly the Taliban’s number-two man. We’ve been a little underwhelmed by the Left’s reaction to this news. [...] The Left’s silence on Mullah Baradar is convenient. Gone are the hysterical cries of torture. Missing in action are the opponents of rendition. One searches in vain for impassioned denunciations of Obama’s outsourcing of interrogations to countries with long histories of torture.

Alex Massie

The Torture Party’s Desperate, Flawed Logic

From our UK edition

I'll say this for the Torture Advocates: they're increasingly creative in their justifications for torturing prisoners and in their attempts to suggest that anyone with any qualms about any of this secretly wants the Bad Guys to win. Granted, this leads them to some strange positions. Here, for instance, is Victor Davis Hanson: It is time critics made the case that targeted assassinations fall within the legitimate bounds of a war in which we are properly engaged, while the water-boarding of three confessed terrorists was morally unacceptable torture of no utility and contrary to any of our own past protocols concerning apprehended and non-uniformed belligerents.

Alex Massie

Bullying is the Least of Gordon’s Problems

From our UK edition

I assume, in accordance with the stale conventions of our time, that the Prime Minister's treatment of his staff will soon be dubbed Bullygate. But I think we all knew that Gordon Brown is, shall we say, a difficult man to work for. So I broadly agree with Jonathan Pearce's take: the character of the man matters but it's hardly the best reason for thinking a change of Prime Minister overdue. Meanwhile, as so often, there are few scenes more entertaining than the British press indulging its appetite for humbug and hypocrisy.

Alex Massie

Everyone wants to cut public spending, right?

From our UK edition

Fraser's back and forth with the estimable Danny Finkelstein about public spending and the Tories is excellent stuff. Fraser concludes by saying that, regardless of tactical differences, on a strategic level "we're all cutters now". And of course in one sense he's right: anyone who wins the election is going to have to be prepared to be unpopular. Perhaps very unpopular. And are we all cutters anyway? In the abstract yes, but not when it comes to any given project or department or priority. Consider this chart which though from a Pew survey in the United States would, I suspect, be mirrored by any comparable British poll.