Blogoir: September

Mark Steyn in honour of this fine Day reruns his polemic on those Danish Cartoons, which gets off to a momentous start:

As Pericles told the war-battered Athenians, “To a man of spirit, cowardice and disaster coming together are far more bitter than death striking him unperceived at a time when he is full of courage and animated by the general hope.”

Yes, I know. Bit of a downer for an opening number, but that’s the way I feel. I am by nature a happy warrior, but in this last month I’ve seen way too much cowardice and disaster coming together...

And in case you want a top up of free media sharing with us yet more outlandish, morally doubtful and surely blasphemous drawings of the two greatest religious leaders of all time - in bed together - check out Jesus and Mo.

Give yourself plenty of time to scroll back through these cartoons, not least to see their deep philosophical musings over a couple of beers with ... the barmaid.

So you see, these days we are Free.

Religion - including Islam - can be mocked and derided.

It's just, well ... safer to do it on an Equal Opportunities basis.

Is narrated by the Anchoress:

Two Polish men.

Both artists. Both “brilliant.”

Both persecuted by Nazis, in their native land. One was a prisoner, one was a slave. When the Nazis left, the Communists came.

One, Roman Polanski, becomes a filmmaker. He encounters a 13 year old girl.

One, Karol Wojtyla, becomes a priest. He too, encounters a 13 year old girl.

...

Two men who suffered under the jackboot of totalitarianism and the disregard for human life and human dignity.

Both media geniuses.

One taught only what he had learned.

The other taught how to transcend it.

Beautifully put.

Reuters report some unhappiness in Brazil about the fact that former President Zelaya of Honduras is camping out in their Embassy in Tegucigalpa:

Government and opposition legislators in Brazil's Congress have urged President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to stop Zelaya from using the embassy as a political theater.

"Zelaya's political activities are unacceptable. They weaken Brazil's position and international image," Eduardo Azeredo, head of the Senate foreign relations committee, told Reuters.

Brazil should formally grant Zelaya political asylum and take him out of Honduras, Azeredo said. Brazil would still be seen as defending a democratically-elected leader without being directly involved in the dispute, he said.

Brazil is a country which takes seriously its diplomatic representation round the world. The Zelaya soap opera is indeed a bit ... undignified for Brazil's reputation?

We Brits of course have a soft spot for Brazilian Embassies, as the one in Belgrade generously served as our Interests Section while our diplomatic relations with Belgrade were broken off during the NATO bombing of Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia in 1998.

No need to dwell on the Labour Party conference. If somehow they crawl back from the living dead and make a respectable showing at the next election, so much the worse for the UK.

One interesting angle in the frantic attempts to prop up this Brezhnev-style corpse is new media erzatz-adulation given to the wife of the Prime Minister, namely Sarah Brown.

Where does it come from? How does it insinuate itself into the media?

We'll never be told.

Suffice to say that Alix Mortimer says everything that needs saying on this curious subject, in one of the best web-rants of its kind. Ever.

Complete with a brand new word: Bodenity.

Not being an expert I am not sure what exactly counts as ideologically 'feminist' female writing (or not) these days.

As one reader points out, Jennie Rigg is tackling the Polanski issue with vigour (and NB Naughty Words).

As is Laura Woodhouse at the F-word, linking to a blunt demolition of excuses for Polanski by Amanda Hess.

Meanwhile Ann Althouse lets fly at famous French thinker Bernard-Henri Levy, demanding that he explain in philosophical terms his defence of Polanski.

Still, the Whoopi Goldberg's ingenious creation of a new category of violent crime (rape-rape, as opposed to mundane rape) is surely an outlandish attack on core principles. But then maybe she is not a feminist.

All in all, this is going to be interesting in a Culture Wars way.

On one side a Hollywood-style elite backed by European hedonists - notably quite a lot of privileged, er, men.

On the other, more or less everyone else, with furious feminists and cantankerous conservatives just for once joining forces.

And the Internet letting key material circulate very fast.

A new legal move in the Czech Republic to ask the Czech Constitutional Court to opine on the Lisbon Treaty is pretty damn big news.

The effect of this could be to delay final entry into force of the Treaty until after a UK general election, when a newly elected Conservative government might well feel inclined to give the British people a say on the subject via a referendum.

Here is a good Telegraph interview with Shadow Foreign Minister William Hague on the subject:

We hope we will come to a general election with the treaty unratified, of course we do. We think it is bad for Britain in the long term and we want to give the British people their say. The assumption that it's all over now on the treaty is a rash one," he says.

"The treaty has not been ratified by all 27 nations and in that situation a Conservative government elected at the next general election will hold as an immediate priority a referendum. I have asked the Foreign Office to have a referendum bill ready immediately after the election." A referendum would be held "within a few months".

Meanwhile the good election result of Chancellor Merkel in Germany looks to be bad for Turkey's prospects of EU membership.

Could the European Union be heading for a major redefinition of itself and its role in the world?

Nay, even a Convulsion?

With a new 'hard core' built around France and Germany, and the UK opting out in favour of a 'special relationship' of some sort?

The Polanski story is creating a buzz, as one might expect.

My friend Anne Applebaum has been criticised for not declaring an interest.

And as for Whoopi Goldberg who helpfully gives us a new feministic distinction between 'rape' and 'rape-rape'?!

More here.

This is an easy one.

What Polanski did was grotesque, albeit now a long time ago. He should accept the substance of that fact, behave like a grown-up, and allow himself to be escorted back to the USA to face the music.

A reader despairs of the teaching profession, citing this Teachmeet video as an example of the dumbed down way some teachers now communicate with each other: 

Meanwhile I am working on a presentation next week about Education, with a special look at language learning (I myself having had a good shot at French, German, Spanish and Latin at school, then Serbo-Croat, Russian, Afrikaans and Polish with the FCO - eight languages in all).

The hard facts about the busy work of this Labour Government in destroying modern languages in the state education sector are truly awesome:

Hundreds of schools have all but given up on language exams according to new figures, which suggest learning a language is increasingly becoming a privilege only private school pupils can enjoy.

This year's league tables, published today, reveal for the first time the proportion of pupils in every school who are getting at least a C grade in a modern foreign language. Across the country just 30% are leaving secondary school with a good grade for a language GCSE.

But figures compiled by the Guardian suggest this 30% is largely dominated by private schools. Nearly 100 schools are putting fewer than ten pupils in for languages meaning their results do not register. Furthermore, in 60 schools not one pupil got a good grade in a GCSE language.

Of another 60 schools where 100% of pupils got a language GCSE, only seven were state schools and all of those were selective.

This is of course a stunning model of Positive Feedback:

A system undergoing positive feedback is unstable, that is, it will tend to spiral out of control as the effect amplifies itself

The fewer pupils learning languages, the fewer go into teaching, so fewer learn, so fewer teach, so the subject declines precipitously.

As is happening.

Crikey.

Where indeed to start in putting all this right or even better?

Guido lauds the Spectator as the first UK current affairs magazine with an iPhone app:

This is the future of journalism, the sooner the mediasaurs grasp this truth the more likely they are to survive into the future. 

I checked out the iTunes link and the only review of the App says that it is terrible: clunky and dysfunctional. So it does not get my money (yet).

Update: not clear that this is an official Speccie product.

Whatever.

Let's take a wider look at the iPhone App phenomenon.

There are now tens of thousands of iPhone Apps created by people all round the world jostling for our attention, a superb example of focused but differentiated networked teamwork. Two billion downloads have happened.

What is going on here?

Basically, thanks to setting up a robust popular IT platform based on what millions of people want (namely music), Apple have worked out how to deliver reliable downloads on a mass scale. It delivers really fast, simply and well. And it looks nice.

But in addition to that, they have encouraged people to build on that platform using their own ideas: new Apps which meet Apple's technical standards can then be eligible to join the growing App family, however weird or useless or useful they might be.

I am not a great App downloader. I shy away from addictive e-games, and most of the Utility apps do not do much more for me than what I can do anyway. The apps for finding one's car in a vast Heathrow car-park are not yet (it seems, according to the reviews) quite accurate enough.

That said, BizExpense by Anishu is excellent. It allows me to tap all my expenses into the iPhone as they crop up (I can customise my own categories) and then email the lot to myself or someone else when the journey concerned is over. I can even take iPhone photos of the receipts and email them as attachments. A huge saving of time and messing about.

Plus I have been in touch with Anishu to suggest some refinements, and had nice replies. All in all, a superb, liberating and profoundly democratic and efficient Amazon Space (iPhone Space?) experience, based on the ultimate core of all market forces - human creativity.

At my talk last week to Conservative Friends of Poland I used the iPhone as a metaphor for a new vision of Conservatism. I argued that the madness of the New Labour project with its obsession with state meddling and control would have to give way to something lighter and better.

We do not know what education and health needs we are going to have, and how best to meet them. The task is now of a complexity far exceeding the capacity of politicians and bureaucrats to master it. Their ever more feverishly clever attempts to create order from uncertainty based on old ways of doing things are farcical.

So why not instead for education simply lay down some solid foundations (a two-page guide on core standards for running schools, plus a side or two for each subject describing the levels needed to be reached at GCSE and A-Level), then let all schools just get on with it?

This approach would get far away from the current obsession with targets by simply dropping the whole idea of targets. It would incentivise intelligent networked experimentation and managing the unexpected. It would bring to the fore at a huge pace the best educational ideas we can all come up with. The huge sums of money saved from slashing bureaucracy could be used to reward positive outcomes and boost teachers pay.

Having established the principle in education, similar ideas could be rolled out across all areas of government.

So here are my slogans for winning the next general election:

Put Labour out of Gordon's misery - and ours!

Set our people free!

Design your apps - design your lives!

And the whole campaign itself could encourage witty anti-Labour apps and be run via iPhones and other cool mobiles.

Bring it on.

Craig Murray boldly affirms that the FCO and MI6 knew that al-Megrahi was not the Lockerbie bomber.

I have posted this typo-strewn question on his site:

On what basis do you 'affirm' (presuably (sic) on the basis of your former professional FCO experience) that "the FCO and MI6 knew that al-Megrahi was not the Lockerbie bomber"?

Your posting of 8 September referred to possible intelligence reports to this effect, which you say you did not read. Anything else?

Basically, this is a very serious claim for a former UK diplomat to make, and I wonder what hard evidence you have to back it up.

Disclaimer: I never had access to any secret or other FCO/MI6 papers on all this story, so I have nothing to offer myself on the substance as seen from the 'inside'.

Charles

Let's see what we get.

Previous evidence he cited on this one comprised intelligence reports he said he'd not read...

I wrote about the British Embassy in Warsaw's encounters (and not) with Roman Polanski last year:

It turned out that Polanski has been invited 'privately' to lunch at HM Ambassador's Residence in Warsaw under a previous management. So UK taxpayer's money had gone to feed and water this fellow in some style.

An interesting situation under domestic and international law. Had R Polanski set foot in the UK he might well have been arrested and sent to the USA to face justice at long last. Yet he entered HM Ambassador's Residence in Warsaw and tucked in to steak and chips funded directly or indirectly by the UK taxpayer.

There is a great hubbub now from France and Poland and friends of Polanksi around the world that to arrest him now is unjust. He has lived 'in exile' for years. The child he abused has grown up and no longer wants him prosecuted. There were fishy things about the judge in the case. And so on.

Here (h/t Instapundit) is a thoughtful piece from Roger Simon on the case and the deeper feelings it evokes in him at least:

Lurking behind the stylish images and high art of The Pianist, I heard Roman Polanski talking to me. I heard him imploring me and saying – see what I have suffered, it was horrible beyond comprehension, you must excuse me anything I have done. I felt exploited and I didn’t like it.

... Suffering from the Holocaust is not an excuse for bad behavior – or perhaps even, as is more accurate in Polanski’s case – allowing your personal demons to be an excuse for that behavior.

So I’m feeling exploited again, angry at U. S. authorities for bringing this up after all this time and angry at Roman for not facing the reality of his actions...

Look, Polanski is weak like the rest of us. But in the end, there is something about him that is a metaphor for Hollywood – despite that he has been exiled from here these many years. A tremendously talented man, he is the emblem of special pleading.

If as many people think Polanski's case for lenient treatment or even a pardon is so strong, and maybe after all these years it is, let him get on a plane back to the USA and accept his fate with dignity.

Or maybe the facts of the case are just a bit too horrible and he and his supporters do not want them splashed all over his reputation - and theirs?

Also some might think that Poland's clamour for Polanski not to be extradited to the USA sits a bit uneasily with its shiny new policy on dealing firmly with paedophiles:

“I want Poland to have the strictest possible legislation against criminals who rape children. It is as simple as that,” said Mr Tusk.

Is there the basis of a deal here?

Polanski stays in Poland - but takes his medicine?

An elegant analysis from Scott at Blue Contrarian here on the problems we get by draining out from foreign policy analysis any idea of 'the national interest', with special reference to Afghanistan and the argument that by intervening there we primarily are advancing the cause of women's rights.

Are we replacing the intellect with 'emotions'? Thus:

... we are essentially being invited to empathise, not intellectualise, and that is something I find astonishing. Not only does this kind of emotional discourse have an infantilising effect on the public - the assumption being that we are incapable of grasping complex strategic arguments - the failure to develop the argument beyond these basic moral categories is hopelessly counterproductive.

At a time of heightened public concern, and considerable confusion about the purpose of the mission, it is important that the strongest possible case is made for our involvement there, and of all the arguments in support of the mission in Afghanistan, the humanitarian one is the weakest. There are a set of solid strategic arguments for our presence in Afghanistan, and they need to be laid out before the public with precision and focus.

Indeed.

As given by Richard Fernandez (emphasis added):

One of the least emphasized interactions between a forward defense and anti-missile capability is their ability to make actions against a rogue-state nuclear “bootstrap load” credible.

Rogue states seek nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them as a way of creating a safe space behind which to arm even further. It is not the first nuke which is so dangerous as much as the succeeding ones that can be built behind them. Like a boostrap loader in a computer, a small, fast-loading piece of code pulls in more libraries behind it until you have vast system staring at you from behind the computer screen. With aspiring rogue states it may be the same. A missile defense preserves the credibility of forward defense because it makes intervention, although unlikely, a feasible operation of war. Without it, any aspiring rogue power can simply acquire one nuke and build away.

If President Obama eventually decides to yield Afghanistan one would think that his strategic choices are stark as well: the alternative to preventing terrorists from obtaining the space to acquire nuclear weapons is to hunker down behind the US deterrent might and missile shield.

But it seems exceedingly difficult to square a circle in which missile defenses are eliminated because they undermine deterrence, deterrence is undermined in the name of Global Zero, and anti-proliferation is undermined by ceding space to rogue and terrorist groups.

That is the worst of all worlds. What is even more astounding is if all three are pursued in the name of each other. But we live in an age of miracles.

Yup.

Is here, hosted by peregrinating cyclist Nourishing Obscurity.

A lot of work has gone into this one with masses of links, so swing by to see all your questions answered:

• Brigitte Bardot - feminist? No.
• Is the aim of life to pass on one's genes? No.
• Are our institutions being colonised by creeping collectivist infantilism? Yes.

Get stuck in.

An exhausting week of historic top-level Summiting in the USA.

We had President Obama's historic speech to the UN General Assembly, followed by assorted other speeches of varying distinction.

We had an historic UN Security Council vote on nuclear weapons: .

Then a probably historic G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, complete with the usual globalised rent-a-peaceful demonstrator attacking globalisation.

Phew. Lots of brand new history in such a short time.

Thoughts?

First, the President's speech. Some good passages, and some not so good or even bad. Its core underlying thought was probably this:

...power is no longer a zero-sum game.  No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.  No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.  No balance of power among nations will hold.  The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War...

... Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect.  Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people and in its past traditions.  And I admit that America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy.  But that does not weaken our commitment; it only reinforces it. 

Hard not to see all that as the surrender of Western/US-led Change to some sort of amorphous "let's all get along" relativistic Hope?

Michael Gerson in the WaPo thought it dangerously narcissistic:

Twice in his United Nations speech, Obama dares to quote Franklin Roosevelt. I have read quite a bit of Roosevelt’s rhetoric. It is impossible to imagine him, under any circumstances, unfairly criticizing his own country in an international forum in order to make himself look better in comparison. He would have considered such a rhetorical strategy shameful -- as indeed it is.

...The speech had nothing to do with the confident style of Democratic rhetoric found in Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. It insulted that tradition. And no one is likely ever to quote the speech -- except to deride it.

Mark Steyn did not like the smell:

Half a decade or so back, I wrote: “It’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog feces and mix ’em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That’s the problem with the U.N.”

... When you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn’t that they'll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. That’s what happened in New York last week...

Of course, Mark is a notorious reactionary extremist and so just would be unhappy with such a speech. But if you are a rabid opponent of pluralism and freedom in Moscow or Havana or deeper parts of Africa or Tehran or Pyongyang, will you be in a more cheery mood after a speech like that which gives an unmistakeable impression that while the USA will always 'stand up' for oppressed people it will be much less inclined under current management to do anything much to help them? Surely yes.

What about that UNSC vote on nuclear weapons? Have you read it? It calls upon, it urges, it encourages, it affirms, it stresses, it reaffirms and so on at great length. Its one demand is that countries do what they are already obligated to do, namely comply with other UNSC Resolutions. No wonder it was unanimous. It said nothing new.

The problem here is very simple.

Once upon a time nuclear weapons were very expensive, so only big powers could afford them. Many other lesser powers sulked as the Bigs imposed 'non-proliferation'.

Now nuclear weapons are relatively cheap. So the Big Powers are claiming to be keen to get rid of them, just when other powers can acquire them.

By pulling back from the Missile Defence deployments in Poland/Czech Republic, the Obama Administration will have hoped to draw Russia into a sterner stand on these subjects - and against Iran.

Russia, of course, is not planning to get rid of its nuclear arsenal any time soon - especially the amazing Perimeter Doomsday system. And here is a brilliant piece of analysis from Belmont Club:

The most likely reason for Russia’s objections to US missile defense is not that it degrades their vast and unstoppable arsenal, which remains effective in any case, but it reduces the effectiveness of sock puppet proxies who threaten the US.

Russia is not about to threaten the US directly. But wouldn’t it be convenient if others would? And wouldn’t it be even more convenient if the US could not defend against them..?

All of this expensive and unbelievably historic top-level pronouncing and cameraderie leaves us none the wiser.

If (as anyone who has followed it would expect) Iran trundles on towards getting its own nuclear weapon in defiance of 'world opinion' (but with many countries enjoying watching Western uncertainty), what if anything will the rest of the world do about it?

Maybe last week was historic.

Because until this week the grown-ups at least pretended to have a credible policy.

And now ..?

On Tuesday I had the honour of addressing the Conservative Friends of Poland at the fine Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London.

My attempted and vast unmanageable theme was European Conservatism: What's the Big Idea? Namely a romp through a few centuries of history and the ideas underpinning contemporary politics, especially the differences between the many different US intellectual niches of 'conservatism' and the more nostalgic/romantic and ultimately uncertain European approach we now see.

One idea I put forward was that whether we all like it or not, the EU has redefined political life in its member states. The whole point of the EU became to strike an historic post-democratic 'balance' between a pretty strong market-based economy ('Right') and a redistributionist 'solidarity' impulse (Left').

That done, domestic politicians in member states were left to footling scraps of competence under the dull heading of 'subsidiarity'. And the devil made work for idle hands.

It followed, I said, that there were now only two significant political themes in EU member states these days:

• More Europe/Less National Government, or Less Europe/More National Government 
• Collective v Individual

By drawing those as two axes of a graph and plotting the different spaces which political parties occupy accordingly, much of current politics became clear.

The European Parliament alliance between the UK Conservatives and the Polish Law and Justice party made sense. It focused firmly on the idea of rather Less Europe (a position very popular with voters across the continent). Plus it had a reasonable degree of overlap as between the two parties on Individual v Collective (albeit with Law and Justice being rather more 'collective' and even socialist than some of us might like).

One other consequence of all this was (I asserted, to tumultuous applause) the total irrelevance of the Labour Party as currently constituted. It appeared to hanker after some retro-collectivist socialism which no longer made sense or was even allowed by EU rules, plus the UK Lib Dems articulated the More Europe and more Individual positions better than Labour did.

Thus the best result at the next election would be the utter obliteration of the Labour Party as a serious force (applause), which in turn would bring about a clearing of the decks and the merging of a sensible two-way choice for British voters:

• Less Europe, more Individual (Conservatives)
• More Europe, Individual shading towards Collective (rebooted Lib Dems, incorporating intelligent refugees from Labour) 

Will it happen?

Who knows.

Maybe (alas) Labour will have just enough reserves left to survive as a credible force and try to reinvent themselves once again in years to come, after memories of their current catastrophic incompetence have faded. In other words, they will be defeated but not wiped out, so will be able to avoid being absorbed by the Lib Dem tendency. Which in turn will stop the major modernisation and realignment of politics this country needs.

Let battle commence:

Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, Hold, enough!

Lieutenant-Commander Tadeusz Lesisz has died aged 91.

Here is a sense of what he achieved and witnessed in his extraordinary life.

People like him built the social and moral capital which today's enfeebled generations do not even understand and are frittering away.

So civilisations flow and ebb.

Dziekuje.

Somehow this site has been linked to by Bill Ellsworth's.

Go and look at what happens when you are over-exposed to Hippy Eastern Philosophies.

And assorted paradigms. And CD covers.

He shares with us this magnificent quote from Richard Fernadez:

... the differences between a society which organizes itself around stern lessons administered by bureaucrats preaching to schoolchildren and a society of free men who hire bureaucrats to take out the garbage is profound.

A pleasure to be cyber-linked to such beautiful work. Isn't the Internet just lovely?

The latest and not too long Britblog Roundup as hosted by Matt Wardman is here.

It dwells on that central subject of political phenomenology, the close links between the UK Lib Dem Party and Nazis - all with a Yugoslav angle to make it all the more fascinating for readers of this blog at least.

And it looks at that Baltimore Hoax and how a UK blogger bamboozled far too many media people.

Check it out.

Wrinkled Weasel asks:

My line of late has tended towards the very position you are critical of - the concerns of Russians about "encirclement"

Can you explain to me why the USA, which has far more form when it comes to "encirclement" than Russia has had in the last 50 years is not a source of legitimate concern to Russia? Why, when the USSR has been dismantled at the behest of the USA, that Russia does not legitimately fear a further incursion?

Just asking. I understand that what Russia says and what Russia does are two different things, that they routinely lie, that they practice state assassination and that the country is run by bandits, but I fail to see what their intentions are, beyond their old satellite countries.

What am I missing?

Where to start?

First, the USSR did not collapse at the 'behest' of the USA. It just collapsed.

It seized up, like a primitive motor starved of lubricants and even fuel by insane mechanics. Any hopes and plans Ronald Reagan had to 'win' the Cold War were overtaken by the Contradictions of Socialism which went far beyond anything we  puny Westerners imagined.

This meant that when USSR-style communism collapsed, the USSR itself also broke up, ending what had been a sprawling de facto Tsarist/Russian empire and leaving Russian power and esteem much diminished.

Second, the fact that Russia is so vast means that in fact Russia 'encircles' much of the world. So anything which happens across nine+ time zones somewhere near Russia which the current management experts in the Kremlin dislike can be presented by Russian paranoids as 'anti-Russia encirclement'.

Third, we might expect that the fact that Western pressure did help liberate Russia from Communism and so allow light to be cast on the Soviet regime's crimes against Russians themselves would be a source of eternal gratitude in Russia.

But no! Exposing Soviet crimes is all part of an endless anti-Russian plot! (Note: funny that that line of argument emits so strongly from former KGB people?)

Finally, it is all about basic attitudes.

India, China, Nigeria and other big countries do not bang on about 'Western encirclement'. Because they know it's nonsense.

Russians of course are entitled to be proud and tough people. They have good reason to fear that their unfeasibly large country has to go through further spasms of de-imperialisation, and must eventually disintegrate into many smaller units. Russia does not have the people to deal with the Chinese/Asian 'colonisation' of its eastern reaches which is slowly happening.

The current leadership attempts to deal with those deeper issues by psychological force expressed through the threat and reality of actual force - how else (it asks itself) can we keep those far-flung territories under our control? Moscow smashed (again) the Chechens (Russian citizens!) just to show everyone else not to mess with the country's integrity.

My point is simple.

There are a lot of 'sensitivities'. out there these days.

See Wrinkled Weasel's own posting about a Christian B&B couple arrested for (it seems) upsetting a Muslim, and the row about the Home Office Islamic Network (sic) advice that people should not munch hamburgers in front of fasting Muslims.  

How far should the rest of us go to deal with 'sensitivities' of others, when what those others want/expect might be absurd and/or have the effect of limiting our own freedom and/or bear down on other people trying to mind their own business?

If a person takes on a belligerent, truculent, unpleasant snarly attitude, either deliberately as a persona or as an unconscious result of childhood trauma, everyone else has a problem.

How to deal with that person's odious behaviour? What is the right balance between understanding his 'sensitivities' and 'concerns' (thereby reinforcing the said bad attitudes) and being firm if not forceful in response?

What about the innocent victims of that person's bullying, who themelves have had a tough time down the years but are trying hard to live normally now? Do not they deserve more attention and protection than the bully?

It boils down to taking a basic view on what we think we are dealing with here. And then behaving cleverly.

Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?

Former President Zelaya has made it back into Honduras and is basing himself at the Embassy of Brazil.

Since there is no obvious prospect of his being restored to power by lawful or normal political means, he evidently plans to try a popular power push of some sort. Which, one assumes, could easily end in disaster for Honduras.

What struck me in these developments was the fact that he has 'taken refuge' in the Brazilian Embassy. A bit hard to imagine that he did this without the Brazilians letting him know in advance that that would be welcome?

If so, this appears to be a unique case of a country allowing and maybe even wanting its Embassy to be used for political purposes against the wishes of the host government.

Even if the argument is used that Mr Zelaya is the host government, the fact that he is using the Embassy in this way is also remarkable - whoever heard of the leader of a government skulking behind another country's diplomatic immunity in his own country?

All in all, a handy move by Zelaya who had been drifting into irrelevance. Not obvious what Honduras might do - in that part of the world breaking diplomatic relations with Brazil and closing down the Embassy to force him out won't be easy.

As previously reported, the Honduras Constitution had a number of measures in place designed specifically to stop the banana republicanization of the country by a reckless leader. These provisions led to Mr Zelaya's original ouster. 

Even the toughest laws won't deter those bent on breaking them, either to make a point - or to bring down the system.