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If you are not on Twitter, stop what you're doing and sign up.

Then find me at @CharlesCrawford and click 'Follow'.

Then run #popleveson through the Search facility and find gazillions of super barresterial jokes linking the Leveson Inquiry (British journalist ethics zzzzzz) and pop songs. All in 140 characters:

Leigh-Anne Perryman‏@laperryman

Mr Buggles, the radio star was found with your DNA on his clothes. Are you still claiming that he was killed by video? #popleveson,

Leaping Badger‏@ol_brock

None of us are particularly fond of Mondays, Mr Geldof. #popleveson

 

Graham Yapp‏@GrahamYapp

#popleveson I put it to you, Mr Jagger, that your double negative was intentionally misleading and you are in fact perfectly satisfied.

 

Charles Crawford‏@CharlesCrawford

Mr McCartney, you assert that "she" came in through the bathroom window. A clumsy attempt to shift the blame on to your editrix? #popleveson

Charles Crawford‏@CharlesCrawford

Mr Lennon, you say that "newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away". A banal attempt to avoid this enquiry?

 

Early tomorrow I head to Dubai, my first-ever visit there to give some workshops on Chairing, Negotiation and Cross-cultural Communication. Here's a press release about it put out by the organisers, Pinnacle PR.

If anyone out there wishes to get in touch with me while I am in Dubai next week to offer me lucrative work or just for a chat, please contact me at charles.crawford@adrgambassadors.com

I was talking to a former senior MI6 man today, as one does. He quoted a witty line on the basic principles of negotiation:

Know what you want - and remember that whatever your bottom line is, there's always another line below that...

It seems that in that part of the world things are very not like here. You can make sexist remarks, but you can't make jokes about gays or men and women having one-night-stands. So my presentations for once will be hugely appreciated.

I did a Webinar on Negotiation Skills with Dubai colleagues the other day. I was asked how I might approach the issue of the Greater and Lesser Tunb islands which Iran seized back in 1971 when the British withdrew, much to the UAE's indignation.

Islands of course are tricky. You're either in control of them, or you're not.  And once you are in control of them, you tend not to want to give control to anyone else. Why should you? They're MINE. See Falkland Islands, Kurile Islands, Cyprus etc.

In such circumstances what is there to negotiate about, directly at least? So the negotiation fragments off into different layers and timescales and maybe other venues/issues. Iran supports that faction in Syria? We'll support the other one.

I much look forward to this visit and seeing a quite different culture. Even if the people of Dubai perhaps are not as imaginative as their Saudi friends at getting around: 

I have linked here to many pieces first spotted for me by The Browser, a well designed site which does nothing but identify interesting bits of work and link to them. Like the simple and superb Arts & Letters Daily but in a posher outfit. Why, in its early halcyon days it even linked to some of my own offerings here and elsewhere. There was no obvious ideological top-spin.

But then the mood ... changed. It started to appeal to a more transatlantic readership, perhaps because the money to keep the site going was coming more from the USA than the UK. And, worse, a perceptible slant towards the sort of writing adored by New York Democrats and progressives/liberals came to the fore. Not that that is all bad. Much of it is still good. The slant is tedious, predictable - there is more than enough of that sort of thing about already.

Take this truly idiotic Browser summary of a piece not from New York but from our own Guardian:

Shocking report from London. Priced out of housing market, some are forced to rent garden sheds. One family pay to live in a walk-in freezer. Landlords happy to cash in. What does this say about free markets, capitalism, society?   

Here is that piece. It describes at some length the fact that in London pressures on housing primarily caused by immigration, illegal or otherwise, are creating all sorts of ad hoc solutions. The journalist has been doing the rounds with some local government officials checking on informal shacks and other improvised or sub-standard dwellings that are appearing profusely:

"We don't know where her toilet effluent is going to," Christine Lyons, the council's planning enforcement team leader, says, peering anxiously to the side of the building.

Converted sheds have become an increasingly mainstream – if illegal – part of the London property market. It's a logical development, given the explosion of property prices throughout the capital, and the huge shortage of supply. As central London becomes more expensive, people are pushed further out and rental prices even in Newham, which is the second most deprived borough in England and Wales, are rising fast.

Landlords are subdividing family homes into smaller and smaller units, haphazardly extending plumbing and electricity connections from the main properties into the garden sheds and garages, which they have no problem in renting out.

Newham's mayor, Sir Robin Wales, is dismayed. "It's big money. You get a few breeze blocks, sling up some crappy old shed in your back garden, and now you're making hundreds and hundreds of pounds a week. It doesn't take long for you to make a lot of money out of it, provided you are prepared to trade in human misery...

And so on. When Tony Blair allowed over a million Poles and other central Europeans to flock to London and the rest of the UK when Poland joined the EU, where did they all go? Now we know, but it's OK:

Planning officials are less concerned about the large numbers of young men, often from eastern Europe, who share rooms and rents, saving money to take home. It is when there are families crowded into unhygienic conditions that they become more agitated...

Shocking!

Lyons is still occasionally shocked by what she sees. "Sometimes you can't believe you are not in a third-world country," she says.

Well, what is a third-world country? A country with lots of people from the 'third world' in it. And when large numbers of such people come to parts of London, those parts of London may well start to look more like the newcomers' places of origin. Why so surprised?

Anyway, my main complaint about the article is not the article, which is fine as far as it goes, ie not far enough to make the obvious point that far too many poor foreigners are now living here illegally and that no conceivable policy solutions exist for this fact, other than to strive a damn sight harder to stop illegal immigration.

Rather it is the Browser summary, as above. The article itself commendably does not mention 'capitalism' or 'free markets'. Yet the Browser makes an explicitly sneering banal #occupy reference to them, as if they had caused the problems described in the article.

Let's nonetheless answer the question posed:

Priced out of housing market, some are forced to rent garden sheds. One family pay to live in a walk-in freezer. Landlords happy to cash in. What does this say about free markets, capitalism, society?  

First, it says that we are not too far off getting a free market in people - that's what illegal immigration (or 'economic migration' as it is progressively known these days) is. Nursery school economics tell us that if more people chase after a more or less fixed supply of goods (here rooms in London) the price of those rooms will go up, and somehow the free market will start to find more rooms. Plus these immigrants don't have much money to pay on rent, so the rooms they get will be cheap and maybe even nasty.

All these things are happening just as basic economic thinking predicts. Indeed, without people converting sheds into informal living spaces, where would these immigrants in fact live?

It is trivially stupid to expect any society to absorb an unending number of new people from beyond its borders without considerable difficulty. The national arrangements in any country are created by the people who have lived there for generations for their own benefit. Housing stocks represent a country's investment in capital according to some sort of long-term rational basis. No-one can plan - or should be expected to plan - for a free-for-all.

In short, the answer to the Browser's snide question is that the article tells us that, as always, the free market and 'capitalism' are simply the mirror in which you see Reality. And whatever the problem here is, they are going to be the main way to solve it.

An honest Browser summary would have been:

Priced out of housing market, some are forced to rent garden sheds. One family pay to live in a walk-in freezer. Landlords happy to cash in. What does this say about Labour's reckless immigration policies aimed at wholesale social engineering of the British population?

But their prissy New York liberal sponsors and readers just might not want to see it all looked at that way.

Read this fascinating article about anti-semitism in Germany down the decades, and what factors have influenced it.

A banquet of food for thought. But this point about the way Nazis were dealt with after WW2 by the Brits and Americans respectively caught my eye:

If Germans could be influenced strongly in their beliefs during the Nazi period, is there any evidence of the opposite once racial hatred became an official taboo after 1945? We compare the level of anti-Semitism in the different zones of occupation. The former British zone today has by far the least anti-Semitic beliefs, even after controlling for pre-1945 differences. The American zone, on the other hand, has strong levels of support for anti-Jewish views.

Based on a detailed examination of occupation policies, we argue that these differences probably reflect different approaches to de-Nazification. The American authorities ran a highly ambitious and punitive programme which resulted in many incarcerations and convictions, with numerous, low-ranking officials banned and punished. Citizens were confronted with German crimes, forced to visit concentration camps, and attend education films about the Holocaust. There was a considerable backlash, and perceived fairness was low. The Jewish Advisor to the American Military Government concluded in 1948 that “... if the United States Army were to withdraw tomorrow, there would be pogroms on the following day.”

In contrast, the British authorities pursued a limited and pragmatic approach that focused on major perpetrators. Public support was substantial, perceived fairness was higher, and intelligence reports concluded that the population even wanted more done to pursue and punish Nazi officials...

This idea has huge ramifications for social policy and the way we look at it.

The piece suggests that simply going after Nazi Big Fish in post-WW2 Germany was far more effective at changing attitudes and instincts than going after Big and Medium and some Small fish, generally rubbing the Germans' collective nose in the vile crimes done in their name and massly supported directly or indirectly by millions of Germans themselves.

Such a policy of course has a direct cost - it allows plenty of people with dirt on their hands to tip-toe away from their misdeeds, and indeed to start to say or even believe that  the whole problem was nothing to do with them - somehow they all had got carried away or manipulated.

This was the line used by Pope Benedict XVI - himself a youthful Nazi supporter - at Auschwitz in 2006:

Yet on the one key issue, namely responsibility for the whole disaster Auschwitz represented, the Pope seemed to me to fall short:

... a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor of Pope John Paul II and as a son of the German people - a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honour, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power.

This contrives to portray the German people as bamboozled victims, rather than people who in their many millions voted for Hitler and otherwise supported him. Not everyone, for sure. But Germans en masse were not only used and abused. In good part they brought their suffering on themselves, and set in motion untold suffering for countless millions of others.

Pope Benedict might have dealt with this by saying a word about his own connection with the Hitler Youth and the power of temptation, or otherwise addressing each individual's accountability for mass wickedness committed in his/her name. But one way or the other, the formula used here did not, for me, do the trick.

Maybe even the Pope is unable to confess fully and frankly? And perhaps that's the point?

On the other hand, if people have done wrong maybe there is merit in letting them come round to thinking about the issues in a less confrontational fashion, while still punishing the very worst offenders. That arguably diminishes Justice but increases the prospects for longer-term Peace. See war crimes trials for former Yugoslavia - it's much easier to run high-profile punishments (many of them richly deserved) than address reconciliation in a deeper sense.

Which brings us to the present UK approach to most social issues, where the effective emphasis (racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination, bullying, drunkenness, obesity) trends towards the 'stamping out' or (even worse) 'kicking out' improper behaviur and thoughts.

Put to one side the explicit violent-quasi fascist nature of this sort of discourse (as seen on a poster talking about 'Kicking out Racism' seen on the wall in the Oxford DVLA offices - QED). It carries the implication that anyone thinking certain things has to be punished severely. It is not about persuasion - it is about fear.

If you want to change behaviour and attitudes over the long run, maybe a more subtle approach needs to be used? Or at least be more graceful about the way attitudes in many areas are changing, and stop screeching that anyone still who has not been converted to politically correct behaviour and thought is some sort of extreme lunatic? One for the forthcoming US elections...

This a superb example of one form of Addictive Stupidity - people who have lulled themselves to sleep on the ambrosia of past glory, demanding that Reality apply to anyone but themselves, fine and upstanding New York Times journalists as they most certainly are. You'll need a heart of stone not to laugh.

Meanwhile here is my more substantive piece over at Commentator on this theme, taking a brisk world tour from Beijing in 1860 as we burned down part of the city via 1960s New York and round to today's Athens and Paris, where if they are not burning down their own cities they may well be doing so soon:

… those seeking new ways to engage the Negro politically should remember that public resources have always been the fuel for low-income urban political organization. If organizers can deliver millions of dollars in cash benefits to the ghetto masses, it seems reasonable to expect that the masses will deliver their loyalties to their benefactors. At least, they have always done so in the past.

Get 'em hooked, on opium or on welfare. Doesn't matter which.

Then you have 'em. Never fails.

Wikipedia helps us in working out how fast Lord Reith is rotating in his grave as the BBC sinks lower and lower:

Rotational speed can measure, for example, how fast a motor is running. Rotational speed and angular speed are sometimes used as synonyms, but typically they are measured with a different unit. Angular speed, however, tells the change in angle per time unit, which is measured in radians per second in the SI system. Since there are 2π radians per cycle, or 360 degrees per cycle, we can convert angular speed to rotational speed by:

and

where

• is rotational speed in cycles per second
• is angular speed in radians per second
• is angular speed in degrees per second

The latest abomination is this absurd PR puff on the BBC website for a new record by Nelly Furtado:

The album has gone through two titles, half-a-dozen producers, and a mountain of songs - both old and new. "In the final stages I was getting really anal about it," says Furtado...

... Mi Plan sold well internationally, allowing the Canadian artist to tour South America for the first time, but she has been absent from the US charts for five years. So it's no surprise that The Spirit Indestructible revisits the pop hooks and colossal beats of Maneater - a song so incendiary it literally started a fire in the recording studio... (Stop .... what?! A song literally (sic) started a fire?)

... The pressure to document recording sessions was particularly difficult. "At first, I wasn't able to write a song with the cameraman in the room," she says. "I've always admired people who can write like that. I've been there at hip-hop sessions where Kanye West will walk in and write in front of all 20 guys in his team. I'd be like, 'oh my God!'"

... She says: "So many things have happened that have inspired me in a lot of ways to believe in humanity. "What a great year to write an album - the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement. So many things happened last year that are great fodder for songwriting."

Absolute Awfulness.

You remember biorhythms, the theory that our bodies operate according to varying biological cycles that periodically coincide, for better or worse?

The Wikipedia page on Biorhythms absurdly suggests that this idea is all pseudoscience:

Critics state that biorhythms are based only upon numerological associations. The plausibility of biorhythmics is contested by mathematicians, biologists and other scientists. The most basic assertion is that even if it is assumed that physiological rhythms do exist, it is not clear why they should necessarily begin on the day of one's birth ... The biorhythm theory is often presented as having scientific validity. Biorhythm critics' responses range from opposing it as harmful, to ignoring it, to treating it as entertainment...

Be all that as it may, there are moments in life when the collision of different events creates something extraordinary.

Over in the USA, for example, we have three women-related stories occurring at the same time:

• a bizarre if not quasi-fascist/communist election production for President Obama looking at how a eyeless mouthless female called Julia goes through life gratefully enjoying the miracles of a munificent state which Evil Romney plans to destroy
• an election campaign by Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren (hi-end Democrat) in which it emeges that she used her 1/32 Cherokee blood quota to get into senior Harvard academic circles as n ethnic 'minority'
• and a passage from Obama's own book about his early life in which he ran together various experiences with different females to create a 'composite woman', who in one case wanted to be 'black' but had to accept that she wasn't

The abruspt alignment of these strange phenomena in the political firmament coincides with Mark Steyn's brain to produce a new high-point in his already Himalayan analysis:

Hallelujah! In the old racist America, we had quadroons and octoroons. But in the new post-racial America, we have — hang on, let me get out my calculator — duoettrigintaroons! Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother’s wedding-license application. And now it’s here! You can read all about it in Elizabeth Warren’s memoir of her struggles to come to terms with her racial identity, Dreams from My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother.

Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran’ma as Cherokee, but let’s cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind — “people who are like I am,” 31/32nds white, and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America’s melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.

Just in case you’re having difficulty keeping up with all these Composite Americans, George Zimmerman, the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic white racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard. George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich’s Nuremberg Laws, Ms. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it’s the other way round. Progress!

Coincidentally, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission last week issued an “Enforcement Guidance” limiting the rights of employers to take into account the criminal convictions and arrest records of job applicants because of the “disparate impact” the consideration of such matters might have on minorities. That’s great news, isn’t it? So Harvard Law School can’t ask Elizabeth Warren if she’s ever held up a liquor store because, if they did, the faculty might be even less Cherokee than it is.

Good grief. Read the whole thing. And marvel at how the modern sprawling liberal state has so utterly lost its way.

I have never in these pages given you an (almost) full account of the expulsion from Moscow of a number of British diplomats back in May 1996 for - the Russians said - spying.

This was the first major spy row between Moscow and a 'Western' country following the end of the Cold War. And as today is the 16^th anniversary of these momentous diplomatic negotiations, it's time to share with you some of the drama. This expands on my account given to the Cambridge Diplomatic Oral History project:

My time in Moscow ended in a dramatic way in mid-1996.  I was due to finish my posting as Counsellor at the end of May, to move on to start as HMA Sarajevo. By then I was well in with the Russian MFA.  They liked me there and we were doing good work together, not least in supporting the Contact Group’s work in former Yugoslavia – it was the high water mark of Western-Russian post-Cold War co-operation. 

The MFA were in one of the Stalin skyscraper buildings in Moscow, and I offered them a leaving party deal. They had to provide the highest possible floor in the MFA building with a great view somewhere - the 38^th floor or so – for a party. They also provide the guests and I would provide the whisky. This was an easy deal to strike, subject to the Russians getting security clearance.

We were working away on this project happily when suddenly we got this strangled phone call on a Monday morning, demanding that Ambassador Andrew Wood come immediately to the MFA. A young desk officer who normally would have accompanied had just got back from seeing her fiancé in France and was feeling miserable, so I went with him.

As we drove from the Embassy building on the river opposite the Kremlin we noted a man in a leather jacket by the Embassy gates, videoing us. “This looks bad”, said the Ambassador. “Only a tourist!” I wittily replied. We arrived at the MFA. Another tough egg in leather jacket was videoing us.

We arrived in the office of the Deputy Foreign Minister. He got to the point: “We are expelling nine British diplomats for activities incompatible with their diplomatic status  They have to leave within two weeks”.  He (oddly) did not give us a list of the names but merely read them out and I noted them down – my own name (as it happened) was not on it.

“I assume this is some sort of stupid joke”, said the Ambassador angrily. “You must know perfectly well that to expel nine diplomats on this basis is absurd.” A vivid exchange ensued, but the Russian position was fixed. “It can not be excluded that the media will hear about this” said the Deputy Minister. This is diplomatic Russian for “Our new Xerox machine is glowing red hot as we run off the press releases!”

We went back to the Embassy and sent a flash telegram to London. Then called in the Nine and told them to their utter astonishment and in most cases dismay that they might well need to think about packing their suitcases within two weeks. The Russian side duly handed the media the story, which flashed round the world.    

It was a May Bank Holiday back in London. The system managed to crank up a letter from PM John Major to President Yeltsin remonstrating in strong terms about this unfriendly Russian move. This letter was passed by us to the Russian MFA for urgent onward transmission to the President.

Foreign Minister Primakov asked to meet the Ambassador to talk about this letter.  Andrew Wood wouldn’t let me go with him.  I said “I have my training needs – how can I learn to deal with this sort of crisis without training?”  He said “Forget your training. There are moments when Ambassadors deal with things privately”. And he was right.

The Ambassador reported back. Primakov had told him that the Prime Minister’s letter was putting Primakov in a difficult position: “If I show it to the President, I’ll have to show him various other documents, and he will be annoyed that Mr Major is wasting his time with this.  What do you want me to do?”

Andrew Wood grasped the point and agreed to get back to him on that one. Some spirited high-level exchanges between the Ambassador and No 10 followed. 

We retaliated by throwing out some Russians, and the Russians fudged on those of ours whom they had asked to leave; some of them were leaving anyway in the coming weeks and months as their tours finished. The Russian side ended up with an interest in downplaying the whole business, as their ‘external’ spies in London (SVR) did not want to be expelled just to help show how clever their internal intelligence (FBR) agencies had been. Old fashioned crass wedge-driving – it never fails.

I of course was leaving anyway, so a lot of people thought I had been among those kicked out.  It was a big Embassy, so there were always people coming and going or away on leave.  Journalists never found out the names of the people expelled.  The Embassy did a superb job in keeping the names private. I wonder how that would work nowadays in our social media blabbermouth world…

The fascinating thing about this story is the way the Negotiation was handled. It had many layers of Technique. The good relationship between Russia and Western countries following the end of the Cold War, now tipping into something very different. The exchanges between Major and Yeltsin, and Primakov and Andrew Wood. Divisions between the different Russian intelligence agencies, and indeed between ours. And so on.

But basically the Russians messed up here. They started 9-0 up and ended normal time at 4-4. Chastened by this experience they came up with a much better scheme under Putin: to name British diplomats accused of spying but not expel them and so invite retaliation, instead leaving them to twist in the bracing winds of Russian public humiliation.  Why had the Russians hit upon so many British supposed MI6 agents in one swoop? Explained (obliquely) here.

Happy days.

UPDATE    Comment from former colleague, who recalls the KGB playing a typical banal dirty trick:

Ah yes, I remember it well! I was foolish enough to offer a farewell party to two departing friends at the Embassy, and suffered the consequences. I returned home that afternoon from shopping with the family to find the lights of our apartment on and our voluminous fridge-freezer - full of British meat and other goodies from the Commissariat, to make up for the meagre Russian fayre - open, contents rapidly defrosting. Thank you, the Kingston Gas Board - aka KGB. Solution? Use it all that night in one humongous party for thirty people and toast in best Russian vodka those who had tried and failed to break our spirits at the Embassy! And how come they missed us both, my friend?

I have linked here previously to the wonderful smart writings of Professor Kenneth Anderson on some of the moral and legal issues arising from modern warfare. See eg here.

He now looks at legal and ethical issues facing (sic) future robot soldiers. See how he starts by cleverly framing the issues in an unexpected way, going to the very process of considering the subject:

The regulation of lethal autonomous weapons can be approached from two directions. One is to look from the front-end – starting from where technology stands today, forward across the evolution of the technology, but focused on the incremental changes as and how they occur, and especially how they are occurring now.

The other is to imagine the end-state – the necessarily speculative and sometimes pure sci-fi “robot soldiers” of this post’s title – and look backwards to the present. If we start from the hypothetical technological end-point – a genuinely “autonomous,” decision-making robot weapon, rather than merely a highly “automated” one – the basic regulatory issue is, what tests of law and ethics would an autonomous weapon have to pass in order to be a lawful system, beginning with fundamental law of war principles such as distinction and proportionality? What would such a weapon be and how would it have to operate to satisfy those tests?

This is an important conceptual exercise as technological innovators imagine and work toward autonomy in many different robotic applications, in which weapons technology is only one line of inquiry.

And on he goes from there. No point in lifting out slabs of it. You just have to read the whole brilliant thing, not least his explanation of why 'robotising' parts of a process (eg an unmanned flying platform) leads towards robotising other parts of it (shooting from the flying platform), as the robotised bits are capable of working faster than humans can  But see his core point:

The facts about how technology of automation is evolving are important for questions of regulating and assessing the legality of new weapons systems. In effect, they shift the focus away from imagining the fully autonomous robot soldier and the legal and ethical tests it would have to meet to be lawful – back to the front end, the margin of evolving technology today.

The bit-by-bit evolution of the technology urges a gradualist approach to regulation; incremental advances in automation of systems that have implications for weapons need to be considered from a regulatory standpoint that is itself gradualist and able to adapt to incremental innovation. For that basic reason, Matt’s and my paper takes as its premise the need to think incrementally about the regulation of evolving automation.

In other words, don't try now to fix a clear set of norms, as they are unlikely to match the best outcome and may even thwart getting to it. Watch what happens, learn what it means, evolve a response. Quite a good approach on 'climate change' issues too?

The Daily Express warns us that a new massive figure is set to take over Europe - just like the Holy Roman Emperor! And Napoleon! The UK will be scrapped!

A covert group of EU foreign ministers has drawn up plans for merging the jobs currently done by Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

The new bureaucrat, who would not be directly elected by voters, is set to get sweeping control over the entire EU and force member countries into ever-greater political and economic union.

Tellingly, the UK has been excluded from the confidential discussions within the shady “Berlin Group” of Europhile politicians, spearheaded by German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle. Opponents fear the plan could create a modern-day equivalent of the European emperor envisaged by Napoleon Bonaparte or a return to the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne that dominated Europe in the Dark Ages.

I have signed up to My Express to post a comment pointing out that the UK will have a veto on any such idea:

The article fails to point out that such a major change in roles would require a major revision of the UK Treaty system and the UK would have a veto as would many other EU states wthat for one or other reason might not like the idea.

Indeed, even if the UK government were minded to accept the proposal, the issue would have to go to a referendum under the new arrangements for sovereignty brought in by this government. And the almost 99% certainty of a UK No vote would serve to stop the plan ever getting very far.

It all might be different if a completely new structure emerges of an 'inner core' set of countries, but that too would need Treaty changes and a UK veto

So no real story here. Move along folks

Let's see if my comment makes it past their ungrammatical moderating system:

Your comment has been received and will be published to the DailyExpress website shortly. Please note that whilst we endevour to publish all user comments, we cannot guarantee your comment will be made visible to website viewers

Update       Fair's fair - duly published, a coracle bobbing in a Sea of Europhobes

Update  That one didn't take long. Chen has left the Embassy with the US Ambassador, heading for a medical facility.

It obviously suited both sides to cut some sort of quick deal, including the Chinese expressing strong dissatisfaction with the US willingness to take Chen in, and (according to the FT account) noting that the US side has expressed 'contrition' and "promised to take measures to prevent a similar event from happening again".

That, depending on what if anything has been promised, contritely or otherwise,, could be a moderately embarrassing outcome for the Americans: "we are an island of freedom - just don't try to get in!". Against that Hillary Clinton's visit to Beijing can go ahead without this issue being the main story, a vital outcome for Obama (and indeed Hillary).

If Chen ends up leaving China for the USA, it could be better for the Chinese leadership than having him in the country as a photogenic symbol of opposition. Once outside he can be dismissed as someone cowardly who 'ran away'...

* * * * *

Here is a piece I wrote for Telegraph Blogs on the different Shrekish layers involved in the flight of Chen Guangcheng to the sanctuary of the US Embassy in Beijing.

By the way, don't you just hate the word 'dissident'? It defines someone in terms of what s/he opposes (here communist one-party rule) rather than what s/he wants, and thereby subtly downgrades the cause. Here is the Guardian describing Chen as a 'dissident physicist'. I recall with honour how back in 1984 the overweight FCO HR woman in flousy peasant-style clothes ticked me off for being argumentative when I told her how senior Embassy colleagues had dismissed my conversation with Yugoslav 'dissidents':

I left the post in 1984. Back at HQ I went along to Personnel to discuss my future. ‘You are getting a reputation for being argumentative,’ said the frumpy HR lady. ‘Wouldn’t you argue if you saw disaster looming but everyone else ignored it?’ I replied in some exasperation.

‘See, you’re arguing again,’ came the smug response.

I still remember this conversation so vividly, not least the supercilious but unimaginative female on the other side of the table. I pointed out to her that it had been annoying dealing with senior Embassy colleagues who instructed me to go out and talk to Yugoslav dissidents and get their devasting observations on the fecklessness of the Yugo-communists, but then could not spell when they wrote afterwards that these people were 'obviously dissaffected'.

"I find that hard to believe", she sniffed.

Indeed.

Back to Chen:

You might ask why a host embassy does not simply smuggle such sanctuary-seekers out of the country. First, it is not that easy to do so: it took amazing preparation for the British embassy in Moscow famously to "exfiltrate" top KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky out of Moscow in 1985 under the noses of the Soviet authorities. More importantly, such a move would be a profound abuse of long-established codes of diplomatic privilege, and risk far-reaching retaliation from a furious host government, on a scale which would make normal diplomatic life for the embassy concerned impossible for a good time to come.

Similarly, host governments almost never storm an embassy to get back by force their errant citizen. Why bother? That citizen is going nowhere fast. And the new situation creates intriguing new opportunities for making difficult demands and stiffening existing positions.

What factors might influence how long he stays under US protection? It all comes down to Shrek's layers:

A more productive way to look at the problem is via Shrek and onions: it will have many layers.

One layer is all about what happens to Chen Guangcheng himself. Another is the consequences of his new situation for his friends and family and supporters. Then there is the layer of what this episode might mean for wider moves towards or back from political freedom in China. And the layer of wider US and Western support for political freedom in China. And the layer of US/China bilateral trade deals, and Chinese support for the miserable eurozone. Did I mention tensions in the Korean peninsula and other Asian defence questions? And the layer of how to begin to tackle all these subjects and many more during the forthcoming visit of Hillary Clinton.

Not to forget the fat layer of domestic politics in both countries. Mitt Romney has been quick to urge President Obama to protect Chen Guangcheng, signalling that an outcome involving Chen being handed back to the unforgiving Chinese authorities will be a major US election Republican rallying cry. That is a cheap and predictable shot (and none the worse for that). It may help the Obama administration tell Beijing that for now Chen gets free board and lodging at the US taxpayers’ expense, allowing a more leisurely process to unfold as the two sides manoeuvre within and across different layers, maybe wrapping this problem up later as part of a wider inter-layer deal which can be presented by both as honourable.

Beijing too has its own political processes to manage in China’s seething online world. Whatever the outcome, the Communist leadership will not want to appear weak, the more so after so successfully belittling President Obama at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. This is not the China of 1989 which could, perhaps, be lent on by wily Henry Kissinger and persuaded to let Fang Lizhi depart. This is a tough, confident country aspiring to global leadership, determined to show the world and its own people that it can not be pushed around, under any circumstances.

So what next? It could all be over quickly if the Chinese and Americans both want it to be over quickly, and can find a way to get Chen out of immediate US protection which does not cause either side – or Chen himself – any lasting embarrassment. It could drag on for years. Or at least until after the US Presidential elections.

One thing is for sure. Chen soon will be heartily sick of bland US embassy frozen food.

Here is an excellent and readable analysis of a failed attempt by a Congolese national based in Brussels to persuade a Belgian court to ban the 1930s book Tintin in the Congo on (basically) the grounds that it promoted and still promotes racist hatred.

The legal move failed:

This is all the more important since the fundamental problem with the claims is that they would simply open the floodgates for innumerable additional prohibitions, if they were to be allowed. Tintin in the Congo is undoubtedly offensive to many people, but if its contents are brought under the prohibitions of the Anti-racism Act, then an endless list of other works would also wind up in the crosshairs. This is true for most religious books, as well as many of the great literary works, and the writings of virtually all great thinkers of early modernity. Allowing a legal ban on such speech therefore implies the abolition of freedom of expression itself.

All things considered, it is puzzling that the applicants opted to pursue a judicial solution in this case. In doing so, they could only lose. It was clear, from the start, that the comic’s contents – albeit offensive – did not amount to a violation of the anti-racism legislation; let alone that this would be the case for publishing and distributing it...

Meanwhile in a New York public library the book is kept locked away, so extraordinarily offensive are said to be its contents. Not only its banal and awful representation of Africans: also the passage where Tintin drills a hole in a rhinocerous - and blows it up with dynamite!

Here are some Google images from the book. It's safe to say that any such book is unlikely to be written now.

As the first article notes, all this negative 'politically correct' criticism is having the predictable effect: soaring sales for the book:

Precisely because Mondondo and the Cran opted for a legal solution, the applicants were routinely portrayed as overly sensitive, ‘politically correct’, and bent on censorship. Even the Centre for Equal Opportunities – the Belgian agency responsible for enforcing the federal discrimination legislation – warned against “over-reaction and hyper political correctness”. In other words, the legal approach has not given rise to the desired critical discussion about the comic itself.

On a separate but not unrelated note, what about the C19 German Inky Boys who spitefully teased the Black-a-moor and were turned as black as ink themselves?

It's easiest (and more importantly wisest) just to be realistic and honest. Attitudes and prejudices do change - let history do the job and gradually swallow up myriad earlier primitive prejudices and their written form.

All of which said, it might be thought a bit much to have clumsy colonialist racist iconography still proudly displayed in an Ambassador's residence.

While our political elite descends into fevered squabbling about who did what to which newspaper and vice versa, the United States and China are slugging it out in a battle for psychological (and military and commercial) dominance in the Pacific and South China Sea.

Knowing next to nothing about that part of the world, I defer to people like Walter Russell Mead who gives every impression of (a) understanding the underlying dynamics and (b) following a lot of detail. Plus he is no great Obama fan, so when he gives the Obama administration credit for doing a tough job well, it's worth thinking about what's happening.

The key theme in this energetic and interesting piece is that precisely because China is getting stronger, many smaller states in the region have an interest in cosying up to the USA in one way or the other:

Last fall, the Obama administration pulled off a diplomatic revolution in maritime Asia — the coastal and trading states on and around the Asian mainland that stretch in an arc from Korea and Japan, down to Australia and Indonesia, and sweep around through southeast Asia to India and Sri Lanka. Via Meadia has been following this story closely; it is the biggest geopolitical event since 9/11 and, while it builds on a set of US policies that go back at least as far as the Clinton administration and were further developed in the Bush years, the administration’s mix of policies represent a decisive turning point in 21st century Asian history.

The legacy press, still befuddled from drinking too much of the ‘US in decline’ Koolaid so widely peddled in recent years, has still not grasped just how audacious, risky and above all successful the new strategy is: the United States is building a Pacific entente to counter — though not to contain — the consequences of China’s economic growth and military posture in the region.

The US is lending its unequivocal support to the smaller Asian states who have boundary disputes with China in the resource-rich, strategically vital South China Sea. It has announced new deployments of troops and new military agreements as it extends its military network from northeast Asia (Japan, Korea, the Pacific islands) south and east to Australia, Singapore and beyond. It continues to deepen its strategic relation with India — Asia’s other nuclear superpower with a billion plus citizens and a country which openly states that the purpose of its (growing) nuclear arsenal is to balance China.

All of which makes the dramatic escape of Chen Guangcheng in the general direction of the US Embassy in Beijing so extraordinary:

Chen’s flight to the embassy will further deepen the angry paranoia in some circles; it will seem obvious to some that he could not have made this escape without more help than a handful of dissidents could provide, and the timing is so spectacular that it must be part of some secret, long prepared American scheme.

Put these ‘facts’ together with the new American assertiveness in the region, and many serious people in China will draw the conclusion that the US is trying to do to China what it did to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, they will think we are perilously close to success — so close, that any further concessions and retreats must be resisted as a matter of life and death.

Read the whole thing. Imposingly smart in looking at immediate diplomacy and Big Picture considerations alike.

My conclusion? Mr Chen will be becalmed in US diplomatic protection for some good time to come.

Should we all be 'altruistic'? And if so, why?

Some observations from me on this ever-fascinating subject over at Commentator:

Think too about the force of a morality founded in self-respect and free trade between free people. What’s the alternative? The beggar says: “I exist, and I have misfortune. Please give me money, even though I’ll do nothing for you in return.”

What do you do to such people by tossing some money to them? Do you promote their self-reliance and thus their self-respect? If some prissy Leftist appears telling you that basic morality compels you to help the beggar or else, does that not make you a slave - and the sly beggar the master?

Conclusion? Give away as much or as little of your wealth and energy as you like. Help elderly people across the road, if they ask for help. No-one compels you to be a selfish hoarder. If you have some good fortune, why not share it if that’s what you like doing? Be generous in spirit and deed.

But note that generosity has many forms, including commitment and creativity. Don’t let others define for you the form and limits of your generosity. And, above all, remember where any wealth comes from:

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan turns a beautiful insightful phrase - and is impossibly grand. She also knows a thing or two about public speaking:

An example of the power of plain words:

In late 1996 the writer Tom Wolfe made a speech in New York in which, according to a Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker, he raised doubts about the spirit and assumptions of modern science. He quoted Nietzsche and questioned whether science would not ultimately destroy its own foundations.

As Wolfe summed up his argument, reporter Jay Fieden wrote, "Wolfe's voice dropped to a stage whisper; 'Suddenly I had a picture in my mind of the whole fantastic modern edifice collapsing and man suddenly dropping -- stricken! -- into the primordial ooze. And he's there floundering around, and he's treading ooze and wondering what's going to become of himself. And suddenly something huge and smooth swims underneath him and boosts him up. He can't see it! He doesn't know what it is! But he's very much impressed. And he gives it a name: God.'"

This is the right stuff. You could never, in an audience, not listen to this, not hear it. Its driving-forward rhythm communicates the speaker's excitement. You can also see it in the swiftness of his imagery -- edifice collapsing, man dropping, force lifting. But for me the power of Wolfe's style is seen in two simple words: huge and smooth...

So when Ms Noonan came out endorsing candidate B Obama for US President it was a big deal.

How things have moved on:

But—and forgive me, because what I’m about to say is rude—has anyone noticed how boring he is? Plonking platitude after plonking platitude.

To see Mr. Obama on the stump is to see a man at the podium who’s constantly dribbling away the punch line. He looks pleasant but lacks joy; he’s cool but lacks vigor. A lot of what he says could have been said by a president 12 or 20 years ago, little is anchored to the moment.

As he makes his points he often seems distracted, as if he’s holding a private conversation in his head, noticing crowd size, for instance, and wishing the front row would start fainting again, like they used to.

I listen to him closely and find myself daydreaming: This is the best-tailored president since JFK. His suits, shirts and ties are beautifully cut from fine material.

This is an elegant man. But I shouldn’t be thinking about that, I should be thinking about what a powerful case he’s making for his leadership. I’m not because he’s not.

Ouch.

The more so for being so true. Can anyone out there quote from memory a single sharp line or new insight from any of Obama's multitudinous speeches since he became President?

What, you ask, are Honorary Consuls? The FCO gives the answer (ignore if you can the clueless gramar):

Honorary Consuls are volunteers who help our Posts overseas provide a more accessible and responsive service to British nationals and other nationals for whom we have consular responsibility for (sic), particularly in difficult to reach locations.

They provide information and assistance to people who get into difficulties overseas. They receive no salary from the FCO, but some are paid a small honorarium in recognition of their services, typically around £2000 p.a. Their duties can be expected to occupy a few hours a week under ordinary circumstances. They are typically appointed for a (renewable) five year period.

The Vienna Convention defines the difference between Honorary Consuls and career Consular Officers. Honorary Consuls do not benefit from the same privileges and immunities as diplomats and are not usually referred to as diplomats...

Fair enough. How do you track one down if you might need one?

In Germany that's easy. The helpful Embassy website points you straight at them:

British Honorary Consuls can provide some assistance to British nationals in Germany. They support the work of the British Embassy in Berlin and the Consulates General in Düsseldorf and Munich but they are not resourced to offer the full range of services offered by these posts. If the service you require is not listed below you should contact the British Embassy or British Consulate in whose district you are located.

In an emergency Honorary Consuls can:

• Contact relatives and friends and ask them to help you with money or travel tickets;
• Tell you how to transfer money;
• Help you get in touch with local lawyers, interpreters, doctors and prison authorities;
• Arrange for next of kin to be told of an accident or a death and advise on procedures;
• Give you a list of local lawyers

Honorary Consuls can also perform notarial acts (for example witness signatures, administer oaths, issue Certificates of No Impediment).

Honorary Consuls cannot:

• Pay your hotel, legal, medical or any other bills;
• Get you out of prison;
• Give legal advice;
• Issue any type of passports except Hamburg, which can issue emergency passports.

Contact details ... [7 HonCon cities are listed with adresses and telephone numbers]

Fine. Thanks. How about Brazil? No problem there either - a good website gives local HonCon email addresses too.

How's about the website of our Embassy in Poland?

There are 7 Honorary Consuls in Poland - in Gdańsk, Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Szczecin, Lublin and Poznań.

If you need assistance in a consular matter, please check first information available on the Embassy website www.ukinpoland.fco.gov.uk

In case of emergency, please contact the British Embassy in Warsaw. Please note that it is not possible to contact the Honorary Consul directly on a Consular assistance matter

It's not 'possible' to contact them only because you don't provide their contact details! So you don't say what they do, or how to contact them even if you have a consular problem in the city where they are. Yet we taxpayers are paying for them.

This does not amount to providing the "more accessible and responsive service" proclaimed on the FCO website.

In fact I'd boldly go so far as to say it's a less accessible and less responsive service.

#fail

News that Chinese democracy supporter Chen Guangcheng has sought asylum in the US Embassy in Beijing prompts me to link again to a piece I write for DIPLOMAT magazine about famed episodes of Embassies sheltering people fleeing from their own government.

Not forgetting the diplomacy of Wonder Woman:

This theme features in The Hiketeia, a graphic novel turning on the moral responsibilities of asylum. A mysterious young woman arrives at the Themiscyran embassy and seeks asylum under hiketeia, a ritual of the ancient Greeks involving mutual obligations of supplication and protection. Princess Diana (aka Wonder Woman) uneasily accepts, only to find herself dragged into a dark struggle of vengeance and justice – and a fierce battle with Batman.

These Embassy asylum issues can drag on. The world record is 15 YEARS:

The world record for someone staying inside an embassy – to the vexation of the host government – is 15 years, set by fiercely anti-communist Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty. In 1956 in Hungary he was freed from prison during the brief pro-democracy revolution, but when Soviet forces invaded the country a few days later, he sought sanctuary in the United States Embassy. There he stayed until 1971, when he was allowed to leave the country under Ostpolitik, never to return...

Even communist leaders have tried the Embassy escape route:

One excellent case was the peregrinating disgraced East German communist leader, Erich Honecker. Notorious for his unwavering confidence in Marxism even as it crashed around him in 1989 – ‘the Wall will be standing in 50 and even in 100 years, if the reasons for it are not yet removed’– he ended up in Moscow after East Germany collapsed in 1989, only to find the Soviet Union too collapsing. With the German authorities calling for him to return home to answer for communist crimes, he fled to the Embassy of Chile where he knew the Ambassador. After months of undignified tomfoolery, he was finally sent back to Germany by the Russian authorities to face trial, but then was allowed to travel to Chile to die as his health failed.

This one has the potential to turn into a vast diplomatic and political sensation, with unfathomable implications for US/China relations.

How can the Americans bundle him out of the door to face certain abuse? Smuggling him out of the country in a diplomatic bag would be a grave abuse of international law and cause more trouble than it solves. And why should the Chinese leadership even consider making any concessions to someone who is embarrassing them so determinedly?

Maybe a dirty quick deal will be cut to find a face-saving formula for all concerned. Or not.

Back to Vienna today to give a course on Advanced Negotiation to a distinguished international organisation. Away all this week, so blogging may well be light.

One of the points I make is that issues are like Shrek - they have layers. So part of any negotiation is working out what layer is being discussed and how to make trade-offs between one layer and other layers.

Another is to point up the range of outcomes of any negotiation, including these:

Everyone is  more or less happy - hurrah

Everyone is equally miserable (see EU Budget negotiations passim - no-one can readily gloat at the expense of the others)

You win - they lose, but for now can glumly accept the outcome (OK, but what about next time - will they want revenge?)

You win - they think they've won, but they've lost (nice work, until they find out)

You win - they do badly, but you help them present the outcome as a success for them. This is an important option - sometimes the main issue for a negotiating partner is not the outcome of the negotiation but wider reputational concerns; you can trade substance for presentation. Here is a super example of Robin Cook helping Republika Srpska leader Biljana Plavsic (later sent to prison for war crimes) manage her media problems.

This is just another way of looking at the layers point, which in turn is all about helping parties identify and articulate their real interests, which is at root all about Good Listening plus Imagination. Then skilfully Reframing issues in a way which encourages progress towards a deal.

And so on. Good stuff.

The key thing about Vienna is that it is impossible to stroll past the classy cake-shops and high-end boutiques in the city centre without thinking about the way it used to look.

And then there's always ... this (after the ad):

Here is my former FCO colleague George Fergusson, characteristically standing tall after a wretched mugging attack in which he lost an eye:

The old Etonian and Oxford graduate, whose family has a proud history in the British Army and diplomatic service, underwent surgery on Saturday at Western Eye Hospital in London, but doctors failed to save the sight in his left eye.

He also sustained several fractured bones in his face.

“I have been lucky,” he told The Daily Telegraph after he was discharged to his terraced house in Stockwell, south London on Sunday.

“There are still lots of things you can do with one eye – normal day-to-day things.

“It will not stop us going to Bermuda. We are still thoroughly looking forward to it.”

... Mr Fergusson’s career has included work in the Soviet Department, which became the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office after the collapse of Communist Russia.

That was when I first met George - he was head of the Russian Section of the old Soviet Department where I was Deputy Head under another Old Etonian, Rod Lyne. Here is how it changed its name to Eastern Department - Northern Department with its echoes of Burgess and Maclean was deemed a bit too, ahem, awkward.

Back then George led his team with unwavering courtesy and good sense. And that's how he'll deal with this ghastly setback now.