UN Planes Bomb Darfur?

Not exactly, but that what the Sudanese government did.

On the fourth anniversary, as if it were needed there is further evidence of the Sudanese government's involvement in the support and funding of the conflict in Darfur, as reported by The Times:

"Britain and America threatened yesterday to impose new sanctions on Khartoum after a United Nations report accused Sudan of disguising its military planes and helicopters as UN aircraft and using them to attack villages in Darfur.

The confidential report says that military aircraft were painted white — a colour usually reserved for the UN — and used to ferry arms to the janjawid militia, for reconnaissance flights and bombing missions.

...

The Government is also accused of shipping arms and fighters into the province, which is subject to an international arms ban. It has further failed to enforce a travel ban or freeze the assets of suspected war criminals.

The report’s most astonishing revelation was the use by the Sudanese armed forces of white-painted military aircraft in Darfur. On March 7 a photograph was taken of an Antonov AN26 aircraft on the military apron of al-Fasher airport, the Darfuri regional capital. Guarded by soldiers and with bombs piled alongside, the plane was painted white and has the initials “UN” stencilled on its upper left wing. Another Sudanese military aircraft was disguised in the same manner. The report said that white Antonovs were used to bombard Darfur villages on at least three occasions in January.

A similar ploy was employed to conceal the identity of three Mi171 military helicopters which were painted white. The report said that from a distance the aircraft could be mistaken for similar helicopters operated by the UN and peacekeepers."

And still nothing happens to the Sudanese government, it make sure wonder:

what exactly would the Sudanese government have to do before the "international community" did something meaningful about Darfur??

Almost Sixty.

Well nearly.

The celebrations of the 59^th Independence Day in Israel are a reminder of diligence, tenacity, guile and humanity which brought about the creation of the State of Israel, in the face of concerted opposition.

If we turn back the clock some 60 odd years ago what would we find?

At the end of WW2, many European Jews had been languishing in British concentration camps for up to 5 years, as Britain enforced the MacDonald White Paper severely restricting immigration to Palestine, even in light of widespread Nazi persecution. Soon after the end of WW2, Britain had decided to give up the mandate for Palestine (or in reality the remaining one fifth, as the other 4/5ths had passed to Transjordan). There were many proposals for the shape of a new state in Palestine: bi-national, federated cantons and finally partition.

Although the UN voted to partition Palestine, allowing the creation of a Jewish homeland, this was bitterly opposed by feudal Arab rulers and local dictators. Whilst many in the region welcomed the return of Jews to Palestine the invading armies from five neighbouring nations sought to “solve” the quaintly named “Jewish question” by force.

They failed and in the wake of their defeat the conflict in the Middle East has been allowed to fester on, deliberately stoked by local rulers, but the existence of Israel is a constant reminder that the use of military force to solve political problems will not succeed, and how the perseverance of the Israelis in the face of constant and unnecessary conflict should be applauded.

Roll on 60!

[PS: Israel is that really small country, middle to top left on that map]

Countdown in France

Today's election in France and the choice of President may well have profound knock-on effects in Europe and other countries, so to keep up with the various stages see this handy schedule, printed in The Times:

"April 22 First-round vote. There are twelve candidates, seven on the Left, five on the Right. To win, a candidate must score more than 50 per cent of the vote. Otherwise the first two go to a run-off

May 6 Run-off between the two leaders from the first round. The presidency goes to the one who receives the most votes

After May 6 The new president appoints a prime minister and Cabinet to run the country pending parliamentary elections in June

May 17 President Chirac leaves office. The new president takes office in the Elysée Palace and the new prime minister is installed with a new, temporary, government

June 10 First round of general parliamentary elections. It is a straight majority system, not proportional, but candidates must achieve more than 50 per cent to win a seat

June 17 Second round of parliamentary elections to decide seats that were not won outright in the first round

June 25 (approximately) The president is likely to reshuffle the government in light of the outcome of the elections. If the new parliamentary majority is from the president’s opposition, it will chose a new prime minister, who will appoint a government in opposition to the president. No parliamentary election has yet produced such a “cohabitation” in the aftermath of a presidential election, although nothing rules it out."

Glass and Goodheart

I had hoped to avoid a post on the Middle East, but the Spring edition of Dissent carried an article on Hezbollah and I have been shocked by the number of (otherwise intelligent) people who wish to deny Hezbollah's antisemitism.

Eugene Goodheart exposes the underbelly of Charles Glass and the London Review of Books on this topic:

"The London Review of Books is an egregious instance of this one-sidedness. Almost every issue contains several articles devoted to attacks on Israel, and the target is not simply the governing party, but the whole spectrum of Israeli political life. Absent from the columns of the Review are the injustices and cruelties of political Islam. In an article by Charles Glass, Lebanon’s Hezbollah is eulogized for its capacity to learn from mistakes, its decency in treating prisoners, “its refusal to murder collaborators,” its intelligent use of “car bombs, ambushes, small rockets and suicide bombers.” Glass speaks of Hezbollah’s uncompromising political program, of which he apparently approves, without mentioning that at its core is the destruction of Israel. Any two-state solution requires a capacity and willingness to compromise, but compromise is anathema to Hezbollah. He claims that the movement had “jettisoned its early rhetoric about making Lebanon an Islamic republic, and [now] spoke of Christians, Muslims and Druze living in harmony.” Missing from this article (in the August 17, 2006, issue) is any reference to its anti-Semitism. In a letter to LRB printed in the September 7, 2006, issue, I pointed out that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is not simply a resistance fighter, he is also an anti-Semite with genocidal fantasies. I cited the following statements attributed to him: “If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” “They [the Jews] are a cancer which is liable to spread at any moment.” I also noted that the name “Party of God,” should worry anyone of enlightened, democratic persuasion, but does not seem to bother Glass. (Would he be equally indulgent of the religious fanatics in Israel who assert their divine right to Greater Israel?) Parties of God, wherever they are to be found, mean tyranny should they ever acquire power. In the article, Glass mentions the fact that he had been kidnapped by Hezbollah at a Syrian checkpoint. Wanting to prove that the movement was independent of Syrian control, he writes that when “Syria insisted that I be released to show that Syrian control of Lebanon could not be flouted [,] Hezbollah, unfortunately, ignored the request.” What virtue! In my letter, I wondered whether he had not succumbed to Stockholm syndrome.

His response, printed in the October 5, 2006, issue, focused on the anti-Semitic statements attributed to Nasrallah, which he dismissed as fabrications, “circulated widely on neo-conservative web sites.” Whatever the agenda of the Web sites, the original source of the statements, as Glass’s letter makes clear, is “an article by Badih Chayban in Beirut’s English-language Daily Star in 23 October 2002.” The newspaper sympathizes with Palestinian aspirations and is critical of American neoconservatism. Glass reports that the managing editor of the Star has “faith in neither the accuracy of the translation (from Arabic to English) nor of the agenda of the translator [Chayban].” The editor in chief of the paper refers to Chayban as “a reporter and briefly local desk sub,” who did not interview Nasrallah. Glass does not explain why, given its misgivings about the reporter, the Star would choose to publish Chayban’s article, nor does he say what Chayban’s agenda was, leaving it to the reader to assume that the agenda was somehow linked to neoconservatism, therefore discrediting the attribution of the statements to Nasrallah. The source of one of the quotations was a Web site of the Israeli government and therefore not to be trusted. To clinch the argument, Glass cites a spokeswoman for Hezbollah who denies that such statements were ever made.

I wrote back to the LRB, first noting that in invoking the nefarious neocons as the vehicles of fabrication, Glass reminded me of the apologists for the Soviet Union who denied the existence of anti-Semitism in their beloved country, because the reports of its existence came from the bourgeois press. I challenged the LRB to make a disinterested effort to determine whether these statements were fabrications. Its animus against Israel was clear and bad enough; a willingness to indulge anti-Semitism, a much more serious matter. If they are not fabrications, the journal has a moral obligation to say so and to repudiate the kind of article that Glass has written.

While waiting for a reply, I decided to look into the literature on Hezbollah, and what I found left no doubt about its view of the Jews. Here is Nasrallah in one of his diatribes against Israel: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.”[1]
Quoted in Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion, University of Michigan Press, 2001, p. 170. Original source, televised interview, Muhammad Fnayash. Wuhhat Nazar Future Television (FTV, July 2, 1997). Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary general of Hezbollah, author of Inside Hezbollah, which Charles Glass cites for its humane view of how collaborators with Israel should be treated, has this to say: “The history of the Jews has proven that, regardless of the Zionist proposal, they are a people who are evil in their ideas” (Quoted in Saad-Ghorayeb, p. 174; original source, Abbas al-Mussawi, Amiru’l-Zakira, Dhu al-Hujja 1406). Hezbollah’s denial of the existence of the Holocaust takes many forms. “The Jews have never been able to prove the existence of the infamous gas chambers.” Only “160,000 civilians died [and this was] as a result of US bombing of Germany.” Jews collaborated with the Nazis in killing their brethren: “From what we know about the Jews, their tricks and their deception, we do not think it unlikely that they partook in the planning of the Holocaust.” Saad-Ghorayeb, the source of these quotes, is a Briton of Muslim Lebanese extraction, who is sympathetic to Hezbollah. “As a Lebanese, I was appalled by the apparent ease with which this movement was accused of sundry terrorist activities by Western journalists and policy-makers, and on their insistence on referring to its guerrilla fighters, who were practicing their legitimate right to resist a foreign occupation, as terrorists.” She writes favorably of Hezbollah’s political evolution in Lebanese society, so there is no reason to doubt the scholarly accuracy of her representation of the movement’s unreconstructed view of Israel and the Jews. (As I write this, I am pleased to see a letter to the LRB from the distinguished lawyer and literary scholar Anthony Julius, citing Saad-Ghorayeb as evidence for Hezbollah’s anti-Judaism. Julius invited Glass to confirm the implication of his response to my letter that I am wrong in attributing anti-Semitism to Hezbollah and to comment on the “material assembled by Saad-Ghorayeb.” So far there has been no reply from Glass, nor any statement from the editors on the matter.)
...."

Blogs and France?

I don't normally comment on elections via this blog, rather I keep the blog for my occasional rambling thoughts at 03:00 in the morning, but the French presidential elections are different.

Irrespective of what this week's Economist thinks, Nicolas Sarkozy’s right wing popularism might go down well with ex-FN supporters, but I would argue that the election of Sarkozy would be a disaster for France and Europe.

Still, to keep an eye on events in French I might as well post some useful web sites:

French presidential elections 2007

The FT’s coverage

Some Reuter’s coverage of the election

Ralph's Point of View

Ralph Seliger comments are always worth reading and in particular his recent article, Politicization of the Holocaust

"These facts do not make Jews better than anyone else, but they do entitle us to recall the bitter memories of our past, and to consider the ongoing threats to our future, without apology. We are entitled to compassion and understanding from the rest of the world, not least being those who profess humanitarian and universalist values as activists on the left."

[Hat tip: Zionation]

How Will This Be Excused Away?

As the battalions of “anti-imperialists” rolled back the frontiers with every car bomb attack, kidnapping, gas attack and beheading there is news from Algeria.

According to reports, a statement has been released by the Al-Qaeda Movement in Islamic Countries of the Maghreb:

"We will not be in peace until we have liberated all the land of Islam from crusaders, apostates and agents, and we have retaken our Andalusia (in southern Spain) and our violated Al-Quds (Jerusalem)."

So far it is reported that they have “... killed 33… with 222 people injured in the bomb attacks, 21 were still in hospital on Sunday.”

I shouldn't wonder that they will get a standing ovation from Respect/SWP delegates to the Cairo conference, or their killing spree will at least be excused away, has so often occurs in “anti-imperialist” circles.

[Enough sarcasm, I think I am going to be sick]

Update: John Rees welcomes a good chinwag with some very dubious company, according to reports in Al-Ahram Weekly:

"Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood..."

I wonder what the topics were?

Hamas and Hezbollah's expertise in bomb-making, organising suicide bombings or perhaps how best to place rockets among civilians?

The Muslim brotherhood probably lectured on the implementation of Sharia law and the caliphate? Or possibly how best to dispense with civil rights for women, gays, Jews or anyone disagreeing with them?

I'll bet that Comrade Rees was clapping his hands throughout their talks.

Another 300

No, not the film, but another 300.

I must thank adloyada for this link to OnTheFace, it shows us how a sense of memory and shared humanity has helped some Darfurians, far away from their home:

“Israel and Sudan are officially “enemies,” which makes the status of the 300 or so Darfur refugees in Israel very complex, because Israeli law does not permit the granting of asylum to citizens of enemy states. So when those refugees surrendered themselves to the Israeli authorities after crossing the border from Egypt, they were detained and jailed under the Law to Prevent Infiltration [from enemy states]. The stories of those jailed refugees, who had seen their families murdered and / or experienced horrible torture at the hands of the Janjaweed, were widely and sympathetically covered by the Israeli media, and many Israelis responded with horror: Given the all-too-fresh memory of what happened to the Jewish people during the Second World War, how could Israel fail to grant asylum to refugees fleeing genocide?

…

“Jeanine looked at me sternly. “Do you know what happened at the Evian Conference in 1938?” she asked. “When all the countries gathered to try to find a solution for the Jews of Germany and Austria but no-one was willing to give them refuge?”

Yes, I answered, of course.

“So that’s why,” answered Jeanine. “We knew that we had a moral obligation, after what happened to us.”

Did people mention that at the meeting? I asked.

“No,” said Jeanine. “They didn’t have to. It was understood.”

Map Darfur

Google has launched a very worthwhile project, along with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to publicise the terrible situation in Darfur.

Summer War in Lebanon

The BBC radio programme, The Summer War in Lebanon, is well worth a listen.

Taken For Granted?

It is a truism to say that, far too often we take for granted those things around us and that point was brought home to me last week with the passing of John Backus.

John Backus was the inventor of FORTRAN.

Now that may not mean a lot too many people, but FORTRAN was probably the first universal high-level computer programming language.

Without the advent of high-level programming languages there would be no browsers, there would be few wordprocessors and still less many of today's modern computer operating system.

As the Guardian observes:

“In 1954, IBM introduced the Model 704 Electronic Data-Processing Machine, the world's first mass-produced computer. Backus had worked on the design of the machine, but he was frustrated at the difficulties inherent in programming it. The machine only understood sequences of numerical codes, so programming was slow.

Backus decided that there had to be an easier way. It should be possible, he reasoned, to write the instructions for the computer in something resembling plain English, and have the computer translate that into the proper sequence of codes. He put this idea to his manager, who had the foresight to allow him to put together a small team to try it out. The result, announced in late 1956, was a "formula translation" language named FORTRAN, which enabled complex calculations to be expressed as a combination of English commands and mathematical formulae. Backus and his team confounded sceptics by demonstrating that programs written in FORTRAN were as efficient as those written in numerical codes. This was an important factor in ensuring the adoption of FORTRAN by the scientists and engineers who used the IBM 704.

Its success led to the creation of many other programming languages in the following years. …”

End Of The Drama ?

The theocracy in Tehran seems to think that it has milked the capture of the British Marines/sailors sufficiently.

No doubt the spectacle of that British officer admitting culpability for being in Iranian territorial waters played very well with the Iranian domestic audience, and further enhanced the Iranian leaderships’ “anti-imperialist” credentials.

Had this drama continued on, I was about to suggest a radical solution: a prisoner swap.

But a swap with the difference, in the vogue of contemporary “anti-imperialism” I was about to suggest that George Galloway be exchanged for the captured service personnel.

Sadly that is not on the cards now. Shame, though.

The UN and Darfur

Adam LeBor's article in The Times on the failure of the UN over Darfur raises important questions:

"The slaughter in Darfur could be curtailed or even brought to a close without military intervention. Measures might include: deploying UN troops in Chad to prevent cross-border raids; targeted sanctions on Sudan’s oil industry; using trade to pressure China to stop its support for Khartoum; and even threats to boycott the Beijing Olympics.

If there were sufficient political will. It seems there is not. If we cannot act to help to stop the killing, at least we could provide a safe home for Darfuris here. On January 27, on Holocaust Memorial Day, government ministers once more pledged “never again”. How empty those words sound now. The Home Office organised the first Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies. Now civil servants in the same ministry are overseeing the deportation to likely imprisonment, torture, even death, of refugees fleeing the 21st-century’s first genocide. Have we no shame?"

Darfur Denial on Tape

The denial over Darfur is shocking and the complacency of the UN is highlighted in this video clip, where Sudan’s allies tried to block any meaningful UN report on the catastrophe going on in Darfur.
(Hat tip: Gene)

Arab Peace Plan on CiF

Jonathan Freedland beat me too it. I had intended to write a small piece on Arab League peace plan but Jonathan Freedland got there before me. Whilst I don't agree with many of his sentiments he has started some debate on the issue which is good.

What I found more interesting and somewhat predictable was the discussion on Comment is Free. You might imagine that as CiF is connected to The Guardian, Britain's leading liberal newspaper, that the debate would be informed, pluralistic, considered and even a bit “liberal”?

Well no, that's not how it turned out.

When CiF articles discuss Israel it seems that some of the commenters stop off at BNP HQ for inspiration first, as the discussions are invariably heated, bigoted and often express a barely concealed loathing for the existence of Jews. Of course nowadays CiF commenters habitually use the word “Zionist” when they mean “Jew”, but that just tells us how low the debate has sunk.

The problem is illuminated by EnglishroG’s comment (March 28, 2007 1:13 PM):

“Israel "always says it wants peace."

The reality is that Israel wants land at a reasonable price in blood and treasure.

Palestinians supply the blood, the United States provides the treasure.

Until Israel has ethnically cleansed the entire West Bank it won't agree to peace, just whine about anti-semitism and the holocaust blah blah blah.”

It is fairly typical of the filth now found on CiF, which seems required reading amongst aged Mosleyites and BNPers.

I am glad the HOPE not hate, the Anti-Fascist Fortnight, has started.

However, next time I wish that they would extend it to an anti-fascist month of activities at The Guardian.

Chance would be a fine thing?

Sudan Blocks the UN again.

The UN and the Sudanese government have a strange relationship: almost supplicant and master.

You might think that the constant contempt expressed by Sudan’s political elite for the UN might just sink in? But no. 

A few months back, the UN had to grovel to the Sudanese government to accept a UN force in Darfur and even that was rejected out of hand. Instead a rather feeble and over stretched African Union contingent provides what limited support they can to the Darfurians.

A further expression of the Sudanese government's disregard for the UN and humanitarian work is reported by the BBC:

“The UN's new emergency relief coordinator John Holmes has been turned away from a camp in Darfur for those fleeing the Sudanese conflict.

The UN envoy was refused entry by Sudanese soldiers to Kassab camp in northern Darfur, says the BBC's Karen Allen, who is travelling with him.

In the past six months the BBC has reported on mass rapes of women and young girls at the camp.

Mr Holmes is on a tour of Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic.

It was the former British diplomat's first visit to Darfur since taking over from Jan Egeland as UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs on 1 March.

The Kassab camp is in northern Darfur, the region of western Sudan in the grip of a conflict which has seen 200,000 people killed and more than 2.5 million people displaced.

Difficulties

Within hours of arriving in Darfur, Mr Holmes was stopped at a checkpoint. His convoy was sent back and television groups covering the visit had their video tapes confiscated, our correspondent says.

The UN envoy told journalists travelling with him that the soldiers' actions illustrated the difficulties the UN is facing working in the area.

The Kassab camp, a few miles outside Kutum, is sanctuary to more than 20,000 people.

Our correspondent says that the camp has increasingly found itself cut off from the humanitarian community, which, she says, has effectively been forced out of the area.

Last week, Mr Holmes held talks with senior Sudanese officials in Khartoum and stressed the need for the government not to interfere with the humanitarian work, according to reports.

Aid agencies are trying to help some two-and-a-half million people who have fled from their homes after attacks from pro-government militia - the Janjaweed.

Our correspondent says that the fact that humanitarian access is being to denied to one of the UN's most senior envoys will do little to ease the diplomatic pressure to impose tough sanctions on Sudan.

After leaving Sudan, the UN envoy will travel to Chad and the Central African Republic, countries where tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur have fled, to escape the violence.”

Fresh Coat of Ubuntu?

The first betas of Ubuntu 7.04 have just been released.

I have been testing most of the alpha releases (the first rough codings) of Ubuntu and Xubuntu for weeks now.

I can say without a doubt that, if Microsoft's, operating systems were half as good as Ubuntu Linux then the world would be a different place.

As it is M$'s, crappy and fully paid for, software is full of bugs and liable to crash at a moment's notice, unlike Ubuntu.

During the complete testing period for Ubuntu I never encountered one, not one crash.

There were a few very minor setup issues, but once they were fixed nothing else needed sorting out. Ubuntu ran and ran and ran, without crashing, which is testament to how solid the alpha code was.

Recommended, but as always, do a complete backup before playing with any operating system!

No Dissent?

In an age when there seems a premium on political cretinism and vulgar “anti-imperialist” thinking, it is nice to have a fresh humanist, secular and dissenting point of view, so I look forward to reading the rest of the latest Dissent, a magazine.
 
There are many online articles at Dissent, but in particular Fred Halliday's The Jihadism of Fools is worth a second read.

I have highlighted some of the points that he raised:

“Over the last few years, and especially since the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, there have been indications across the world of a growing convergence between the forces of Islamist militancy, on the one hand, and the “anti-imperialist” left on the other. Leaving aside widespread, if usually unarticulated, sympathy for the attacks of September 11, 2001, justified on the grounds that “the Americans deserved it,” we have seen since 2003 an overt coincidence of policies, with considerable support for the Iraqi “resistance,” which includes strong Islamist elements, and, more recently and even more explicitly, support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the Middle East itself, and on parts of the European far left, an overt alliance with Islamists has been established, going back at least to the mass demonstrations in early 2003 that preceded the Iraq War, but also including a convergence of slogans on Palestine—supporting suicide bombings and denying the legitimacy of the Israeli state.

….


More important, of course, and separate from support for Islamist guerrilla groups, has been alignment at the state level: Iran, for example, has received increasing support from Venezuela. Hugo Chávez has been to Tehran no less than five times. This partnership has been made all the easier by the shift noticeable over the past two decades whereby solidarity based, at least formally, on class or socialist grounds has been replaced by identity politics as the basis for political activism. Inchoately perhaps, a new international united front is being created.

…

Even more relevant to the situation today is the early record of Hezbollah, which, in its bid to establish itself as the dominant force within the Lebanese Shiite community, not only engaged in a fierce attack on a rival, more moderate group, Amal, but also assassinated a number of left-wing Lebanese politicians and writers who stood in its way.

…

To this history of jihad against the left, over many decades, must be added one further fact, namely the deep differences that should separate any conceivable program of the radical left from that of Islamist parties. Whether on the rights of women, on secularism, or on free speech, the two political currents are radically opposed; they espouse what should be incompatible positions. So too are they opposed on another issue: the complete absence from the Islamist program of any inclusive internationalism. Instead, while appealing to the community or umma of Muslims, the Islamists, be they al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, appeal only to particular communities and pour out the venom of an unrelenting chauvinism toward nonbelievers, Jews, and even toward Muslims of a different sect than their own. Their rhetoric against Jews far exceeds anything of which the earlier generation of secular Palestinian nationalists was capable. Few today seem to recall the remark of the German socialist leader August Bebel, that anti-Semitism “is the socialism of fools.” Presumably those on the left today who ally with Islamists do so by reference to some concept of false consciousness. It is open to question, however, whose consciousness is the most mistaken.”

Well said Fred!

Have You Got the University Gene?

Paul Anderson pointed me towards Rod Liddle’s article on the proposed “change” to University admission policy.

Now leaving aside the fact I noticed that nearly all of the aggrieved comments on the issues went across the traditional Right-Left divide, pointing to the fact that the agitated Middle Classes seem united irrespective of some supposed political differences.

I don't want to get into an argument as to whether the Middle Classes, or large chunks of them, make a conscious effort to pull up the ladder behind them or just apply more grease to the already greasy pole, no, instead what took my eye was a comment by Rod Liddle, which seemed to sum up a subconscious middle-class belief:

“It’s a sad fact that raw intelligence is largely inherited. Penalise those whose parents got themselves into university and you are probably penalising Britain’s brightest young people.”

Which seems to suggest, not too subtly, that Britain's brightest people only ever go to University and always have?

But does going to University mean that people are intelligent or the brightest ? Have they intelligence in raw amounts? And do they even inherit it genetically from their, presumably, intelligent parents? Is it part social, cultural, a lot of training and pushy parents? Or is the financial capacity to go to University crucial?

I think the answer to that is obvious.

It seems like a dangerous way of thinking and it reminded me of the Bell Curve, the notion that IQ is primarily genetic, and following Rod Liddle’s argument, is it the case that people that haven't attended University are somehow lacking in raw intelligence or somthing else?

I wonder if Rod Liddle has considered that intelligence is randomly distributed across a population and that the opportunity to go to University is generally proportional to the ability to pay for it. In the age of loans, successful undergraduates tend to come* from wealthier backgrounds**, but not necessarily one’s possessing more raw intelligence.

So Rod Liddle’s comment sounds like one of those subconscious middle-class prejudice that seeps out when you least expect it, although I could imagine that most of the chattering classes would be nodding their heads in agreement with his point, irrespective of some supposed egalitarianism or sense of equality on their part.

It is that ugly spectre of class and wealth raising its head again, surprise, surprise: "quick grease the pole before the proles get here!"

*[The study also found that the rapid expansion of higher education during the late 80s and 90s had not benefited the worst off. During that time the proportion of people from the poorest 20% of society getting a degree rose from 6% to 9%, but for the wealthiest 20% it rose from 20% to 47%.]


**[Young people from middle-class homes are now six times  more likely to go to university than students from working-class backgrounds, the gathering of MPs, headteachers, university leaders and education experts heard. Poor students would not have a fair chance to attend university until there was a radical reform of the school system to ensure that poor children got better access to good schools."]

Site(s) of the Week/Month 21

A bit of a cheat, not just web sites but free software:

I recommend the following freebies:

Orbit - the download manager - in a word - bril

SystemRescue - need to fix a disk or an XP crash - this will do it

Belarc's Advisor - need to audit a PC or just get the serial numbers?