Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Saturday

Alex Massie

Disappointment Deferred

Scott Brown #6 of Scotland celebrates after scoring the opening goal, with team mates Kenny Miller and Darren Fletcher during the  2010 World Cup Qualifier match beteween Scotland and Macedonia at Hampden Park. Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images. Oh dear. Scotland won a football match today. Ordinarily this is occasion for huzzahs and trebles all round. But, really, we all know that it's simply a matter of Delaying the Disappointment. To recap: for 50 minutes or so Scotland were dire. Against Macedonia. At home. Now all that's needed is victory over Holland on Wednesday, results elsewhere to fall into place and the trifling matter of a play-off against a better football team and we'll be joining England in South Africa next summer. And, hopefully, Northern Ireland too...

Alex Massie

Saturday Afternoon Country: Iris DeMent

Iris DeMent has only made four albums. And since the latest, 2004's Lifeline, is a gospel record it's fair to say that she ain't on the trendy side of Nashville. In fact her style could harly be further removed from the country-pap that you hear on country radio stations and the teevee. DeMent is proper old-school you see. Her songs are often filled with wistful sentiment and sometimes with outright melancholy in the grand old country tradition. But they're always humane and heartfelt. Plus, of course, her voice has got that terrific Ozark twang to it. Here she is performing at a Transatlantic Session (with Emmylou on backing vocals and Aly Bain on the fiddle) and singing her lament to small town life: Our Town.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Gordon Brown & The Smiths: Heaven Knows We’re All Miserable Now

Here we go again, folks! It's Plot Against Gordon time again. And so soon after the last one too! According to Martin Kettle, Labour's conspirators are contemplating an October move against the Prime Minister. Well, we'll see. Maybe this one will be different and actually come to something. Basically, however, the parliamentary Labour party's relationship with the Prime Minister is like a Smiths compilation album: Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now Me too. What are we going to do? Did you see Gordon's performance yesterday? That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore No I guess it isn't. Half A Person Sad but true; harsh but fair. Gordon will always only be Gordon. Panic I know it's not dignified but it's the only sensible thing to do in these circumstances. Did you see the latest poll?

Alex Massie

The Sun is Tasty, Venus is Very Green & Tom Cruise Was Japanese in a Former Life…

I don't know very much about Japan, but I hope we'll hear more from Miyuki Hatoyama, the new Prime Minister's wife. Japan's new first lady is enlivening the nation's grey-suited world of politics with colourful claims that she met a UFO in a dream and was whisked away to Venus. Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, the charismatic wife of the leader of the incoming Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), has also described how she met Tom Cruise in a former life and enjoys "eating" the sun for energy. Writing in a book published last year, she said: "While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.". . .

Alex Massie

A Nice Little War for Slow Learners: Is the Army Fit for Purpose?

Most arguments about Afghanistan this summer quickly became another opporturnity to bash the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defence. No surprise there and, of course, a good deal of the criticism about the shortage of helicopters and other equipment has some merit to it. But the government's failures, manifold as they are, ought not to be the sole focus of attention. They matter, but so too does the actual performance of the armed forces. Is the Army doing enough with what it's got? And can it legitimately be expected to do better? The political leadership in London matters, but that doesn't mean the Army top brass can deftly shift all responsibility for failure onto Ministers and civil servants.

Alex Massie

Lockerbie: Why Did the SNP Do It?

Party discipline can be a troublesome thing. Especially when insisting upon it actually works against you. Yesterday's votes in the Scottish parliament criticising Kenny MacAskill and the decision to release the Lockerbie Bomber on compassionate grounds would have had a much greater impact if members had voted their consciences, not the party line. That's why Con Coughlin is wrong to argue that the 73-50 vote against the SNP "heaps yet further humiliation" upon the Nationalists. That a minority administration loses a vote can hardly be thought shocking. But a proper free vote - as, actually, a matter such as this should be - would actually have been of some use since it would, for once, have given a picture of the parliament's true feelings.

Alex Massie

Lock Up Your Children Before Obama Brainwashes Them…

Golly. Looks like Barack Obama is taking his campaign of intimidation to a whole new level. In a recent interview with student reporter, Damon Weaver, President Obama announced that on September 8 -- the first day of school for many children across America -- he will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of education. The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.

Alex Massie

Lockerbie: What Would Cameron Have Done Differently?

In the comments to this post, Iain Dale suggests I'm completely wrong to think that a Conservative government led by David Cameron would have been just as keen as Labour to assuage Libyan concerns and, if necessary, suggest that, yes, it would be a good thing if Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi did nto die in a Scottish prison. Well, maybe he's right. My confidence in my own suspicions was, I confess, dented by Roy Hattersley's column in the Times this morning. Any time one finds oneself in the unaccustomed position of thinking that the old blusterer has a point, you know it's time to have another look at the evidence... The luxuries of opposition make it very easy for Cameron to claim to be whiter than whiter on all this. Prime Ministers, of whatever party, tend not to be quite so pure.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

What If Megrahi Didn’t Have Cancer?

There's still plenty, I'm afraid, that needs to be said about the decision to send the Lockerie bomber back to Libya. But, since many people think that there was a determination, come what may and regardless of circumstances, to free him let's begin by asking how matters might have unfolded if Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi had not contracted terminal prostate cancer. Would he now be in Scotland or in Libya? Granted, this is a hypothetical but it may not be unreasonable to hazard that it might have gone like this: 1. The UK government and Libya would still have negotiated a Prisoner Transfer Agreement. 2. The Scottish government would still have sought to exclude Megrahi, or, specifically, anyone connected to the Lockerbie bombing from that agreement. 3.

Alex Massie

Does Donald Trump Need Your House?

Well, if he thinks he does you should be afraid. This has nothing to do with the absurd "Donald" being American and everything to do with the looming reality that folk will be compelled to sell their homes to accomodate his desire to own an even bigger part of Aberdeenshire. To recap: Donald Trump wants to build a couple of golf courses on the Aberdeenshire coast. He also wants to build nearly 1,000 "luxury houses" on the site. Apparently the main course is supposed to be the "Geatest Course in the World". Well, maybe. It is hard to see how the ghastly holiday village can even pretend to make such a comparable claim. But now the Trump organisation thinks they need more land. Which means they need to buy out a handful of owners who are, rather spendidly, opposed to selling to Trump.

Alex Massie

Clausewitz on Cricket

Further to this post, an occasional series exploring the relevance and application of Carl von Clausewitz's On War to the game of cricket. In Chapter Nine of Book Six the great theorist examines some of the problems faced by a side mounting a rearguard effort on a turning wicket: On the battlefield... it must be acknowledged that a turning movement is [often*] the more effective form. This is not due to the form of envelopment as such; rather it holds true only where the envelopment can be pushed to an extreme, when it can severely restrict the enemy's chances of retreat while the battle is still in progress. This is the very situation that the defender's positive counter-attack is designed to prevent.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Lockerbie Letters: No Smoking Gun

I know this won't satisfy anyone who desperately wants there to have been a shady, grubby conspiracy but a quick perusal of the correspondence on the Lockerbie Affair published by the Justice Department, the Scottish Government and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today gives no support to the notion that there was any such deal*.  The pattern is quite clear: the Scottish authorities weren't happy with a PTA being signed at all but if there was one they wanted the PTA to contain a provision specifically excluding Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi from its terms. London agreed and tried to make a deal with Libya excluding Megrahi. Libya demurred and London relented, permitting Tripoli a "victory" for its own domestic audience.

Alex Massie

Is Saving Face the Real Afghanistan Strategy?

Losing George Will on Afghanistan is not quite the same as losing Walter Cronkite on Vietnam. For one thing, Will's column today, calling for the United States to withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan, can hardly be considered a surprise. Will, less fashionable in recent years than in the past, has long been suspicious of, even hostile to, anything that could be considered "nation-building". Nonetheless, it is a moment. A minor one, but a moment nevertheless. Obama - and General Stanley McChrystal - can count on support from the neoconservative wing of the Republican party, but conservative support for the Afghan campaign can be expected to slowly ebb away.  The problem is that Obama might need support from conservatives.

Monday

Alex Massie

Megrahi Release Explained: He’s a Rangers Fan

Roddy Forsyth deserves our congratulations for revealing this: One of the unforeseen consequences of Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi's incarceration in Greenock Prison was that, by his own account, in whiling away the hours by watching live football on the now-defunct Setanta network he became a Rangers supporter. No surprise that a man convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in British history would forsake his local team - Morton - to support one of the Gruesome Twosome*. He and Rangers deserve one another. This, mind you, could run and run.

Alex Massie

Good News for Armenia! And Turkey!

Turkey and Armenia are planning to establish diplomatic ties and open their shared border. There's still a long way to go, of course, and it owuld be wise to remain cautious on this but, nonetheless, the signs are encouraging. Normalising relations with Armenia will be another small step towards Turkey establishing its credentials as a candidate for EU membership. And it's good news for Armenia too. Since I argued that Barack Obama might have been tougher on Turkey and the question of recognising the Armenian genocide, one should admit that staying relatively quiet was probably a sensible move.

Alex Massie

President Cheney

Dick Cheney, surely now confirmed as the worst Vice-President in American history, produced a cracker, even by his miserable standards, during his interview with Fox's Chris Wallace on Sunday. The subject was "harsh interrogation techniques": WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it. CHENEY: I am. Well, you can't get much clearer than that, can you? The contempt with which Cheney views the rule of law is quite breathtaking. Not that, given everything we know about the Vice-Presidents' term in office, it should really come as any great surprise. But still... Now that George W Bush has retreated to Crawford to clear brush and write his book, it's striking how the field has been left to Cheney.

Alex Massie

Torture: You Know It When You See It

I watched Tunes of Glory again last night. It's one of my favourite films*. During it, Basil Barrow, the newly-arrived Colonel of the battalion, played by John Mills, mentions his experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War: Oh they gave me time, all right. Again and again. When I was in the prison camp, they nearly drowned me, then they brought me round. Then they put a wet cloth over my mouth and kept it wet until I nearly drowned again. And the only thing that pulled me through was the thought that one day I'd come back and sit in the middle of that table as colonel of this battalion, like my grandfather and his father before him. Only I was going to be the best of the lot. In other words, he was waterboarded.

Sunday

Alex Massie

Men of Harlech

It's a bank holiday weekend, so what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than by watching Zulu one more time? Granted, the movie is riddled with historical inaccuracies but so what? 'Tis grand, stirring stuff. And the "sing-off" between the Zulus - "Well, they've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that's for sure" - and our Welsh heroes is splendid, ranking behind only the superb rendition of the Marseillaise in Casablanca.

Alex Massie

Lockerbie-for-Oil?

Pete suggests there's little more to say about the Sunday Times story on the UK government's attitude towards the release of the Abdelbaset ali al-Megrahi. The suggestion given by the paper - and increasingly assumed to be true by everyone else - is that Megrahi was freed for fear that keeping him in prison in Scotland would jeopardise potentially £15bn worth of business for BP in Libya. The implication is that, like the war in Iraq, it's all about the oil. Well, we had to reach this point eventually, I guess. Nonetheless, though it's written by my old friend Jason Allardyce, there's a little less to the Sunday Times's story than first appears. That's because the letters the paper has obtained have nothing to do with the decision to actually release Megrahi.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Who Cares if Torture Works or Not?

Ann Althouse argues that Critics of "harsh interrogation techniques" — they, of course, call it torture — bolster their moral arguments with the pragmatic argument that it doesn't even work. How unusual it is for the media to disillusion us about that and force the moralists to get by on moral ideals alone! Responding to this, Publius reminds her that these "non-torture" techniques have killed people and Lindsay Beyerstein picks apart the Washington Post story that Althouse claims vindicates Dick Cheney.  All of which is all very well and good. I don't doubt that torture - or whatever euphemism you want to give it - can work. But so what? The efficacy of the matter is not the only, or even the sole, issue to consider.