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Monday 28 February 2011

Who is Keyser Soze? Saif Gaddafi.

Sorry to spoil the movie "The Usual Suspects" for you but I know who Keyser Soze was - Saif Al-Islam Al-Gaddafi. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist" said Kevin Spacey's character, Verbal Kint, during the film. Well, I think the world has just woken up to the magic that has been played upon them by the son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and I must applaud both father and son, it was magnificent. 

Last May Gaddafi junior gave a speech at the London School of Economics (LSE) outlining his vision of Libya moving towards a "participatory democracy" and a "free society". Last week, the same man gave a speech in Libya promising  that his father's regime would fight to the "last man, the last woman, the last bullet." Among those taken by surprise by this ideological U-turn were Peter Mandelson, Prince Andrew and Tony Blair. But it wasn't just these three - whom we know to be more interested than normal in money and/or power. It was, for instance, the entire management team of the LSE. How did he do it?


The story is laid out in this week's Sunday Times - In 2003, Saif Gaddafi enrolled at the LSE to study for an MSc, following his father's decision (negotiated by Tony Blair through Saif) to renounce terrorism and dismantle nuclear weapons after the West had shown in their invasion of Iraq what might happen to the so called "rogue states". Senior academics at the LSE have commented that he seemed committed to liberal principles, asking questions about democratic theory and human rights then forming a foundation to lobby for reforms inside Libya and pushing for human rights abuses to be addressed. 


He then wrote a PhD thesis which was submitted in 2008 entitled ""The Role Of Civil Society In The Democratisation Of Global Governance Institutions: From ‘Soft Power’ to Collective Decision-Making?" and included, on page 41 - the following passage, which is rather relevant to his present attitude:

"Locke saw people as being able to live together in the state of nature under natural law, irrespective of the policies of the state. This self-sufficiency of society, outside the control of the state, was given weight by the growing power of the economic sphere which was considered part of civil society, not the state. The state is therefore constructed out of, and given legitimacy by, society, which also retains the authority to dissolve the government if it acted unjustly. Other writers continued with this distinction of civil society and government. The state kept its function of maintaining law and order that Hobbes had stressed, but was considered to be separate from society, and the relationship between the two of them was seen to be subject to laws that gained their legitimacy from society, not from the state. For example, Montesquieu saw the state as the governor and society as the governed, with civil law acting as the regulator of the relationship. The importance of law in regulating the way the state and society interacted was obvious to many writers who considered that a government that did not recognise the limitations of law would extend to become an over-reaching tyranny similar to that described by Hobbes in Leviathan."

(OR, you might say, similar to Libya under his father)

The financier, Nat Rothschild, threw a party for Gaddafi to celebrate his PhD and through him he met Peter Mandelson and Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska - who was investing in Libya. Saif was also a front man for the Libyan Investment authority which set up a London Hedge fund which invested in a London Hotel, Deripaska's Russian Aluminum company, Juventus football club, Pearson (who own the Financial Times) and an Italian defence company. Through all this he met Blair again and also Prince Andrew - who hosted a Libyan trade function in 2007.

Politically he seemed committed to reform in Libya even up to last year where he claimed he wanted a "level of freedom like in Holland" in Libya and wouldn't take a role in his father's government unless he was democractically elected.

So what has gone wrong? Was the last 7 years just a conversion of convenience so that the West's eyes (and missiles) were turned away from what was really happening in Libya? Or was it internal pressure in Libya for him to change his focus. Or was it - as the LSE academic David Held suggested, that he has ditched his principles out of misplaced family loyalty?

I hope, to retain my faith in human nature, that it is the latter. I fear, because the motives and gains from it were so clear, that it was the former.

(Cue final shot of Saif Gaddafi walking off into the distance shaking off his fake limp and straightening out his deformed hand).

Sunday 27 February 2011

Does the 'Arab Spring' justify the Iraq invasion or provide further damnation for it?

The main question for me raised by the The 'Arab Spring' that has broken out across the Middle East is whether it proves the invasion of Iraq wrong or right.

Over the past few weeks I have heard from some that the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that resulted in the removal of the leaders of those countries and the ongoing attempts to do the same in Bahrain and Libya prove that eventually, the people of Iraq would have risen up against Saddam Hussein, so there was no need for an invasion on the pretext of humanitarian intervention.

On the other hand, I have heard from others that these revolutions prove that the people of the Arab World hanker after democracy, which means the liberal interventionists who joined together with the neo-cons in the early part of the last decade to suggest that the process of democratisation should be hurried along in those countries that were or could be a danger to the West were also right. This was based upon the 'democratic peace theory' that no two democracies have ever gone to war, which has been around since the days of Immanuel Kant in 1795 and quoted by Presidents Clinton and Bush during their terms.

I find holes in both arguments. On the one hand, Tunisia and Egypt are very different from Iraq. Although the respective dictators in the former two countries were surrounded by the usual infrastructure of fear (secret police, records of torture etc) they had no where near the amount of control that Saddam Hussein did, as proven by the short length of time it took to get rid of them. Such was the fear of Saddam in Iraq, and such was the fear under which his people lived, that an attempt at a revolution would have resulted in far more bloodshed and taken far longer. In fact, you can see a bit of this from what is happening in Libya, where Colonel Gaddafi seems far happier to spill the blood of the rebels, and where it also seems some of his popular support is holding, although how much of that is due to money and fear we can't tell.

The point is - The Tunisian and Eygptian armies both refused to protect the regimes by cracking down on their own countrymen (also happening in Libya to some extent - although Ghaddafi's tactic of keeping the army weak to reduce the chance of military coup means this is less relevant). As Bobby Ghosh points out in a recent article in Time magazine "Saddam, on the other hand, could always count on two armed groups whose ONLY reason for being was their loyalty to him: the Republican Guard, and the paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam", which had proved themselves in putting down previous revolutions (e.g. the Shi'ites after the Kuwait War). Add that to the Ba'ath party infrastructure, the strength of the secret police and the way he allowed his people no cell phones, satellitte phones and internet access and there just wouldn't have been the apparatus for revolution. Ghosh quotes an Iraqi in 2003, who said ""If there were a million Gandhi's in Iraq, Saddam would send the Republican Guard to kill every one of them, and they would do it without any hesitation."

On the other hand, attempting to democratise Iraq in the name of 'democratic peace theory' was actually a misuse of the term. The problem with Iraq was two fold:

1) They were trying ot democratise a country surrounded by non-democracies - which many theorists argue actually INCREASES the risk of war. In 2004, Erich Weede said,  "Imagine the democratization of a nation located in the middle of a deeply autocratic area. Its democratization would generate a number of autocratic-democratic dyads and thereby increase the risk of war. By contrast, the democratization of a nation surrounded by democracies would certainly be desirable." This explains why democratising Poland (think about it's location) was so much easier than  Uzbekistan once the Cold War ended, and why Iraq has been much harder. There were no motivations for the surrounding autocratic countries to help Iraq's democratisation whereas Poland's neighbours saw a useful new friend and invited it in, politcally, economically and socially.

2) Like Eygpt, Iraq didn't have the infrastructure to become a democracy. No independent judiciary, no experience of a Parliament scrutinising a government's actions and no disinterested agents of social order - so, as Nils Petter Gleditsch, Lene Siljeholm Christiansen & HÃ¥vard Hegre pointed out in 2004, trying a forced democratisation of Iraq was only ever going to result in an unstable semi-democracy.

So, whether or not the Arab people want democracy is not the point - and certainly not a pretext for an invasion of a sovereign country, no matter how heinous its' leader is. Some argue now that the Arab people don't necessarily want democracy, but in fact just want a change in leader. We can all celebrate the changes and revolutions taking place if we want to, but I repeat again, we should be careful what we wish for.

In conclusion - Iraq, as I have found on many occasions whilst trying to teach politics - was a special case. There are major doubts the people could have achieved what has been and will be achieved in other Arab countries, but that doesn't make the invasion justified.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

You want fair access to universities? - Train the teachers.

So the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), which is supposed to be 'promoting and safeguarding fair access to higher education' according to their website, have come up with yet more ideas that do nothing of the sort. Their new idea is to try and make the top universities offer places to students from poor-performing state schools on much lower grades than others. We're not just talking about AAB instead of AAA, they are talking about Cs. This craziness has to stop. If you want to have fair access to universities you need to train teachers in state schools to do the job they need to do.

1) Train teachers in how to teach  A-levels - there's a reason that 'A' stands for 'Advanced'. There is an emphasis on analysis and evaluation skills that students need to be specifically taught. They are not techniques that can simply be taught through the same spoon-feeding many teachers end up doing for GCSEs. They need to be explained, then practiced again and again by the students to make them repeatable, particularly on the vaguer A2 questions, where students have to work out what parts of their subject 'tool-box' to use. In my experience those who are excellent GCSE teachers may think they don't need to learn more about teaching to teach A-level.

2) Measure A-level results and act on them -  what gets measured gets managed, and given the emphasis on GCSE results to compare schools it is no surprise that management effort and concentration, and therefore teacher effort and concentration, is on GCSEs. This is sometimes at the expense of A-level teaching and sometimes at the expense of close scrutiny of A-level performance. I've seen great GCSE teachers take 3 weeks to mark A-level work if at all because it comes last on their priority list. I have no doubts about the importance of concentrating on GCSE results for the lower ability students to help them get the 5 good GCSEs that can get them a foothold in the workplace. But if you want to be engines of real social mobility, regardless of your political and educational ideology, you cannot get a poor student into the best university without good A-levels. By saying that students from poor performing schools can get in with lower grades you are saying that inadequate A-level teaching and focus is OK because you will socially engineer equality of outcome. Is that really the best long term solution?

3) Train teachers in helping students select A-levels - one of the great things about many comprehensive schools is that they offer, under the same roof, courses that suit all types of student. So, for those students who have a more vocational bent there are BTEC courses, and for those with a very academic focus there are the 'traditional' A-levels such as French, History and Maths. The BTEC courses have been a major factor in widening participation, allowing students to study courses in school that they are interested in and follow them through into higher education. But in the middle of vocational and 'traditional A-level courses' are those which the major red-brick universities, on whose back OFFA is climbing, see as falling too much in the middle. Universities such as Cambridge and LSE publish a list of these courses (which include A-levels in business studies, ICT and media studies for instance) which they do not regard as adequate preparation for universities. Other universities do not publish these lists but may be about to be forced to publish them. Whether or not you agree with this categorisation of A-levels, it exists, and every teacher (or at least every Year 11 tutor and Year Head and those in charge of sixth form) should know them. Never again should student not find out until their UCAS applications are rejected that their choice of A-levels automatically disqualified them from the universities they aspired to.

4) Train teachers in helping with UCAS applications - there is no reason why every teacher involved with sixth formers shouldn't be better trained in what makes a good UCAS application great. Teachers are involved all the time with writing subject references for the pupils, writing the actual UCAS references for the pupils and helping with personal statements. I would imagine that in most state schools they do this without any training. Given UCAS is a competitive process, isn't this letting their students down?

At the end of the day, there are loads of ideas for government intervention to try and solve the problem of inequality of access to universities. But why not try and offer equality of opportunity for students before you settle for equality of outcome. You can only, after all, get equality of outcome by offering inequality of opportunity (Oh, sorry, you go to a good school so your application doesn't get decided on merit).

There are many ways that do not cost a lot of money to solve this problem and I would hope this government don't get drawn into offering a politically expedient but shameful solution purely to assuage their tuition fee guilt.The answer is right in front of them.

Surely the teaching unions wouldn't argue against training their members to help students achieve their aspirations. Wouldn't they?

Egypt - "May God help everyone"

The words of Omar Suleiman, at the end of his terse speech announcing Hosni Mubarak's resignation as Egyptian President, could not be more poignant. I for one am praying for the people of Egypt - that they get what they want and that they are safe. Trouble is - they will probably need divine intervention to come out of this situation with either.

International Relations theory is dominated by the two main schools of thought, realism and liberalism. Both appear to accept that the international political system is anarchical. Realists believe that this anarchy neccessitates a self-help system in which states maximise their security and relative power position. Liberalists, however, believe that the best way to respond to anarchy is for states to co-operate, using international organisations and trade to create a situation where states have too much to lose if they enter conflict with each other.

As part of this, Liberalists believe in cosmopolitanism -  the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality - and a major part of that is democracy. This is why so many in the West have been so excited about what is going on in Egypt. From a military backed dictatorship we see the possibility of democracy emerging and it seems important to everyone that democracy is allowed to flourish.

Here is the problem though, and the best way to introduce how much of a problem it is would be by pointing out that George W Bush was a neo-liberal who also believed democracy and cosmopolitanism was best. Iraq after the 2003 invasion contained none of the institutions you need to grow a democracy from. There was no independent judiciary, no experience nor Parliamentary set-up where government could be held-to-account and scrutinized, and no distinterested forces for social order either (e.g. army and police). Hence the difficulties you see today.

The above three characteristics hold in Egypt too, and therein could lie a problem. We in the West could help them, but will they accept our help? Remember, we have (because of a realist belief that General Mubarak could serve our purposes in the region) supported the dictatorship they have shown to so detest for the last 30 years. So who would they trust?

Realists have spotted a further problem here. It's the "careful what you wish for" problem. If the Egyptian people get a free vote they could well vote in a government hostile to the West. This doesn't necessarily need to be an Islamist party such as the Muslim Brotherhood either, because there are new powers in the region that you don't have to be Islamist to get into bed with. Saudi Arabia threatened to replace every penny of aid that the US were threatening to withdraw last week, because they could. The US know that and the competing parties in what will hopefully be a peaceful upcoming election know that too.

Which is why need to turn to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hitherto banned in Egypt they have gone down the well-trodden line of working very hard on social projects to build up support all over the country - leading to them having something like 25% of the vote in their pockets already. This could grow should they offer a viable governing programme.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood what the Liberalists wanted? We don't know a huge amount about them. Knee-jerk realists argue that Islam is not compatible with democracy so the Muslim Brotherhood would go the same way as Hamas have done in Gaza (throwing opposition politicians off the top of buildings just doesn't count as allowing yourself to be held to account in my book).

BUT Indonesia has a thriving democracy and is a Muslim country, so we can't make generalisations. The Muslim Brotherhood have been making the right noises. Added to that, they will know the world is watching, and may want to show that Islam IS compatible with a fully functioning democracy. We will see. We certainly need to be careful about any interference in the election and need to work with whoever wins.

That leaves Israel. Binyamin Netanyahu started off making noises about putting his country on alert but was told in no uncertain terms by the UK and USA to tone down his rhetoric. The Muslim Brotherhood have promised to have a look at the treaty that Egypt has with Israel. They say they want to put it to a vote of the Egyptian people. They have never been able to vote for it before and for all we know Mubarak was essentially paid to support it instead of believing in it.

My advice to Israel is not to make the same mistake as I feel they have done with Hamas. Not negotiating with a group that don't recognise Israel is the wrong way round, you need to negotiate to persuade them TO recognise Israel. They should offer to work with whatever government is voted in across the Sinai border. The Liberalists in Israel should hold sway over the realists.

Whatever happens - Omar Suleiman is right - may God help everyone.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Forestry Commission sell-off - a Tactical Defeat?

I may be wrong about this, but I have a feeling we may be watching an interesting tactical move by the Coalition government in which they purposely float a policy for consultation that they know will be rejected in order to show they are prepared to listen and change course.

The aim according to the consulation is to transfer ownership of the 18% of land owned by the Forestry Commission to the private sector in order that they are "run more efficiently".

Many opponents fear that some of the most beautiful pieces of British heritage are to be lost to commercial developers who will make money from the change of those forests into, say, residential property. The Government argue that if the consultation is read properly people would realise that ownership would be transferred not to commercial developers but to 'community groups' and the Woodland Trust or the National Trust.

Where almost everyone is baffled (including a clearly unconvinced Damian Green (immigration minister) on Question Time this weeek) is why it is necessary. Announcing the policy, DEFRA argued it was about a 'new approach to ownership and management'. Green repeated this (from his notes) but, despite his responsibility as a Government Minister to support Government policies, he struggled to do so.

It has nothing to do with cutting the deficit.In fact, it could quite possibly cost money to do it. So there seems to be little reason to risk popularity over it.

Which has led me to think that this is an attempt at a minor tactical self-immolation on the part of the Government. Show the population you ARE prepared to listen. Show them a consultation is exactly that. Say that you have listened to the people and you are now prepared not to go ahead with this policy and you can look quite reasonable and decent for a little bit. Doing away with this plan to transfer ownership of 18% of our forests to into private hands won't harm deficit reduction so nobody loses.

Once that's done, full steam ahead with the next controversial policy. If the public or the opposition then say that the Government isn't listening to the will of the British people, the Coalition can point to this meaningless climb-down and say that's not true.

Simples!