from The Independent: Mandela and Castro

I love this picture. Nelson Mandela giving the amandla salute with one arm, the other around Fidel Castro. I love it because it reminds us that he is not what most people would have him be. He is not a kindly old grandfather-Christmas, a Gandhi (who has been equally mythologised) who stands for whatever we thing of as ‘good’ this week. He’s a man, a great man. And like so many great men, he stands for things that will make many people uncomfortable.

He is a friend of Cuba and Libya more than he is a friend of Britain and North America. Up until recently, he was still on a terrorist watch-list in the US. and with good reason. He started as a freedom fighter and his ideology did not change over the years so much as adapt itself to new challenges. Like Jesus, he has been appropriated by mainstream politics as a symbol of heroism — alll fine and good. But real heroism, which he certainly represents, means standing against prevailing power structures in the same way Jesus often did.

Mandela was imprisoned, let’s remember, by the apartheid government that all the ‘good guys’ of international politics (Britain, America) continued to support for maaaany years. Now that apartheid has fallen they have ostensibly changed sides. The question today is: who are the mandelas of tomorrow? Who are the figures we today call terrorists and whose imprisonment and bombing we finance, who tomorrow we will hail as heroes and claim as our own beloved symbols?

As Mandela embraced Castro and Gaddafi — an aspect of the man that the west conveniently ignores when it praises him– so there may be other heroes who we cannot recognise because we are so blinkered and conformed by the ideology of our self-interest or the interests of the corporations that set news agendas, that we are unable to tell right from wrong.

For the Christian, these questions are made more complicated because, despite the similarities and analogous points, Mandela and Christ are not the same. Christ was not a revolutionary. As much as he opposed the social order he also ignored it. He would never take up arms. He would never plant bombs. But then, I think, neither would he condne smug and self-satisfied acceptance of the status quo, or support for those who are the architects of oppression, simply in the name of ‘maintaining stability’.

We need to be honest. Jesus is as far from realpolitik as he is from greed and sin. And the real heroes we choose to venerate, while flawed, are heroes precisely because they have opposed our own way of life, not despite that fact.

‘Stop dancing around the issue, it’s not file-sharing, it’s theft.’ That was a listener comment last week as Radio 4’s Today Programme discussed tough new measures to combat illegal file-sharing (where people swap copies of films or songs for free online). Disgusted of wherever he lives continued: “are we going to call shoplifting “grocery-sharing”? Car-theft, “car sharing”?’

Um, no, Mr Disgusted. Because groceries and cars do not yet magically self-replicate like electronic files do. But as soon as the magic pixie-dust that will make this possible is invented, be sure that people will be grocery-sharing a lot and world hunger will fade. Unless people like you decide it’s bad for business. In that case, I wonder how you would have reacted to Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and the fishes.

The consensus seems to be that we’ll never eradicate file-sharing. Like another invention (the printing-press) which infuriated authorities with its easy access to art and information, file-sharing can not be uninvented. Like another technology that the music world denounced as a threat (the LP), file-sharing has forever changed that world.

Forget pragmatism (we’re Christians, after all)! What about the morality? When someone steals a loaf of bread (which should, as I’m sure Mr D would feel, be punished with several years in the Bastille and absolutely no singing) the shopkeeper loses that loaf of bread.

When someone copies a song rather than buying it (as when Jesus multiplied bread), the person they copied it from loses nothing. The owner is still able to sell it. The only loss is in potential earnings. One person is now less likely to buy that product. That’s the same kind of loss that happens every time a preacher convinces you to live simply and buy less. Or when a competitor lowers a price or offers better service. That is the unfortunate way capitalism works. If the industry dislikes that, let’s nationalise it.

What record companies are complaining about is not theft, it is a diminishing of their ability to earn money ad-infinitum for a finite amount of work. A few months in a recording studio (and a few months’ promotion) certainly deserve payment. The worker is worthy of his wages as Paul said. But then, he also says that if you do not work you should not eat. Why should an artist, even one of my favourite artists, be in the privileged position of forever eating off a few weeks’ work 20 years ago? I cannot rest on my laurels like that. Can you?

Ah, says Disgusted, but that’s the way the industry works. Fine. But why should government prop up their archaic business model? More importantly: why should citizens, voters, be punished to protect businesses too lazy to develop alternative income streams and too self-important to accept that maybe their industry might downsize or fold, like so many other outdated ones before it?

I worked for a record company for five years (a small one genuinely at risk of folding, not one of the wolf-crying multi-billion pound behemoths doing most of the whingeing). I have many friends in the industry. But I can’t see the (decidedly unlikely) collapse of Hollywood and Pop music as an entirely bad thing. Can you, Mr Disgusted? Do you like the sex on MTV, the violence in the movies (or vice versa)? Is the Christian music industry so conformed to this world that they would choose profits over more people hearing their message?

Practically, alternative music and film business models are possible. Morally, file-sharing is not stealing anything from anyone. Christians, particularly net-active ones, should be writing to their MPs to complain about government siding against them. Not being once again uncritically convinced by arguments for unlimited profiteering.

from thirdwatch files

You know the drill. I start out talking about something that the tabloids are outraged about and then point out that hawkish elements in our government or history (or multinational corporations, the global arms industry, George Bush, Rupert Murdoch, David Cameron etc) are guilty of the same thing. We, or people we as a society are okay with, turn out to be bad guys as much as the popularly set up targets of social ire. That’s political honesty. But when it turns out that actual good guys did bad things, that makes it more complicated, less ideologically neat. That’s where our religion comes in.(Yes, I said ‘religion.’ Sue me. The ‘it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship with God’ thing is meaningless to everyone except other evangelicals and frankly it’s getting old.)

The good guys possibly doing bad things in last week’s news were Lithuanian Jews who are being investigated for possible war-crimes. That’s right: the heroes, the guys fighting the Nazis. There was a time when that was a pretty iron-clad justification: “Junior, I don’t want you playing that violent video game—it celebrates killing people.” “It’s okay mom, I’m killing Nazis!” “Oh, why didn’t you say? Shoot them in the knees!”

In Lithuania, that time appears to be over. Holocaust survivors who fought the Nazis (as 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered) are being investigated for allegedly killing a village of 38 people in a ‘punitive action’. The villagers were allegedly killed for refusing to give the Jewish Red Army fighters their food. There has, unsurprisingly, been an uproar.

Politically, assuming the claims turn out to be true, I have to say that I am stumped: who do you side with? The people investigating on behalf of victims of a massacre (but who are chasing down holocaust survivors, not perpetrators)? Or WWII Jews who may have slaughtered people in a way that would carry no ambiguity for us had it been perpetrated in, say, Rwanda, but who were fighting one of the most evil forces ever to have stalked the planet?

Let’s put aside the competing cries of: ‘anti-semitism!’ and: ‘the holocaust cannot justify everything!” for a moment. Let’s also recognise that even if this case is successfully prosecuted it in no way creates a symmetry of wrong-doing in WWII (one side was overwhelmingly wrong). But let’s ask ourselves a question more pertinent to our lives than events of 60 years ago: does being on the right side justify doing the wrong thing in its cause? Or, put another way: should our heroes be beyond scrutiny, beyond reproach and forever protected from the consequences of their actions, no matter how terrible? Should all those belonging to a class of victims be similarly canonised?

It’s easy, as news showed last week, to demand punitive justice for the likes of Sudan’s leaders who have allowed or possibly orchestrated terror and civilian killings. It’s less easy to see wrong in our own allies. It’s virtually impossible to see it in those we believe are doing good. Be they fallen heroes of our own armed forces who could conceivably be investigated for wilfully and knowingly killing or torturing civilians;or resistance fighters, standing against an oppressive force (insert your favourite here: Paletsinians in Israel, monks in Burma, Jews in Lithuania).

For Christians, good and evil do not depend on whose side you’re on. If we are to be the heart of Jesus, the Godly conscience of our society, we must be willing to be honest in our thinking, showing no favouritism. But we also need to remember that justice does not always end in punishment, that forgiveness, not wrath, is the cornerstone of our faith.

Bunnies are being beheaded in Germany. I just thought you should know. German burgers are waking up to discover someone has taken a hatchet to their hutches, and nobody has any idea who is doing it or why. Not exactly earth-shaking news, but interesting, no? That is the joy of Radio 4.

On Radio 4, that story was followed last week by news of Iran’s nuclear missile capability, friendly fire (otherwise known as ‘the most dangerous euphemism in the world’) injuring British soldiers, and a US air-strike killing 47 civilians.

By covering all three of those stories, listeners to Radio 4 news analysis programmes could form opinions slightly more nuanced than “Aaaa! Iran’s got a bomb! We’re all going to die!” That’s not to say most listeners did. But when you realise that the UK (a nuclear power for some time now) shoots it’s own soldiers with conventional weapons and the US (greedily hoarding more nukes than it or any other country could use before the earth was wiped clean of all life) kills 47 wedding-guests by mistake, you’ve got to ask: how much less safe could Iran make the world? You may of course not agree with me. But the fact is, because I have the facts at my disposal, I can make up my own mind and political debate can thrive. And the reason I have those facts is because of the BBC.

The danger to journalistic independence (and therefore to the integrity of news and information we receive) is well documented. In fact, last week in the USA, 3,000 journalists, bloggers and media critics gathered in Minneapolis to discuss the threat that increasing corporate dominance of media outlets (among other things) poses to our understanding of the world and our ability to behave responsibly in it. But as the BBC last week released its annual report there were calls for it to be downsized, possibly scrapped, for the sake of ‘competition’.

That is something we must never allow to happen.

I’m not talking about the rubbish reality shows or silly quiz games. People who love Big Brother-style drivel or are obsessed with makeover shows cannot blame their social illiteracy on the BBC. But if that kind of rubbish serves to support quality programming, I say it has justified its existence.

But here’s the thing: people are complaining. They don’t want to pay the licence fee. So I say: abolish the licence fee. That’s right, get rid of it. And replace it with a tax, on everybody, that will go towards supporting public broadcasting.

We are not given the option of opting out of supporting other services in the public interest like roads, the police or our defence force. Surely in the ‘information age’ when we are more aware than ever of the importance of free, unbiased facts, everyone can see the benefit of a broadcaster that is not primarily concerned with producing popcorn plastic programming? Surely we can all agree that having news filtered through the political views of a few business interests with no independent alternative would be bad? Because private enterprise media naturally shoots low and wide to catch the most people. No BBC? Get ready for non-stop celebrity/reality sex-shows with Jesus in a diaper, not just the occasional one.

We are blessed in this country to have a quality public broadcaster. Yes we should call for higher quality. But as with most public services, shrinking it down, breaking it up and selling bits off to private enterprise will only make things worse, not better. And as Christians with a great deal of free access to the airwaves to broadcast our unpopular ideas, we should fight to keep it out of the hands of Mammon.

from filefront.com

advert

‘Sexist’ was the word Sarah Sands of The Independent used to describe coverage of Wimbledon last week. I’d make a joke about it, but I’m afraid she might read The Baptist Times. And might kill me.

Ms. Sands’ comments are of course, fair. There is a hideous discrepancy between how we react to women and men on the court. Men are always judged on ability, while women seem to have to deal with not only lower pay but also comments about their appearance that have little relevance to their blah blah blah… I’m sorry, I nodded off while I was writing. Who cares?! It’s tennis!

Tennis is not important. If people are being discriminated against (and I think some probably are) we need to keep in mind that these are people who play tennis for a living. If there is undue pressure on them to look pretty, let’s keep this word in mind: tennis. Inequality? Tennis. Voyeuristic exploitation? Tennis. Almost any objection or irritation whatsoever? Tennis, tennis tennis! It’s hardly the miners strike or the suffragettes. Emmeline Pankhurst would, I think, be as likely to push Ms. Sands in front of a runaway horse as one of the Russian lovelies she wishes to defend. Tennis, like most sport, is, as several commentators have pointed out, a distraction for the masses, something to put their energy into so that they’re too tired to change the world.

But even in tennis there are limits. Justin Gimelstob, a member of the Board of Tennis Professionals, was quoted last week as having said some stuff that even I think crosses the line (a foot-fault, if you will). He apparently revealed in public that he wished to serve balls at Anna Kournikova’s stomach (weird and misogynistic enough) and that was the least offensive of his lewd suggestions. If one laughs, it’s in the same way you laugh at Prince Philip abroad: ‘No. Way. He did not just say that.’ Yes he did. Unacceptable.

You see, that is the kind of attitude that gets feminists (and I imagine all thinking women) angry. And makes it difficult to say appreciative but respectful things about the likes of Maria Sharapova, who is one of the few things about being forced to watch the head-slappingly dull game by friends and family that prevents me disembowelling myself.

Because there is certainly over-sensitivity among the women’s equality movement. But you can kind of see why they become somewhat frustrated and angry about things. I, personally, am quite old-fashioned. I believe in some gender-specific sex-roles in marriage. I have no problem with wives submitting to husbands, for instance. But when I see many men who pay only lip-service to the Biblical requirements placed on them in such scripturally literalist relationships, using Scripture as a way to get out of housework and to always silence their wives’ opinions, I have to wonder. And I have to examine my own motives.

Because, as in the utterly irrelevant world of professional sports, the official line about equality often does not reflect the reality of our selfish and prejudiced hearts. So, I say to traditionalist Christian men who see themselves as custodians of unfashionable but traditional values: are you sure you’re not just a swine? And to women, angry at irrelevant sexism that only affects the privileged world of professional sports: are you really highlighting the bigger, more important issues? And to the poor C of E, debating women Bishops in the news last week? Good luck. I’m really sorry for the potential split, but I’m so glad Baptists, not being Anglicans, have no right to comment.

Dot com is over. Well, sort of. The internet’s ‘governing body’ has decided to add new, customisable suffixes (other than .com , .org , .net, etc) to web addresses. Soon we will no doubt be seeing www.playboy.xxx (well, maybe not we) or (and this is my personal favourite) www.eastenders.cotton – geddit? But when considering last week’s news, some other potential government and media addresses present themselves. For instance: www.despoticregimes.com-plicit , www.doublestandards.net-profit or the less catchy: www.officalattititudetozimbabwe.selectivemorality .

Robert Mugabe is again behaving like a lunatic and doing reprehensible things in Zimbabwe. News commentators have rightly condemned this, the Queen has withdrawn his knighthood and various politicians have started floating the idea of an ‘intervention’ in a manner that is eerily similar to the earliest calls for interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We can accept such suggestions with short memories and light hearts, happily lathered into a receptive state by the pleasant sensation of finding someone we can legitimately hate. On Radio 4 last weekend I heard a Christian suggest that God kill Robert Mugabe and encourage others to pray similarly.

But let’s pretend, just for a moment, that we are Christians (in the sense that we take at least some of what Jesus said relatively seriously). Forget that our master never told us to kill our enemies, render unto Caesar a crack SAS unit or to pray for death for those who despitefully use us (or Africans we suddenly started caring about a few years ago). Let’s just go on a plank-hunt in our eyes.

We’re appalled at Thabo Mbeki’s failure to publicly condemn Mugabe (‘it’s important that African leaders do this,’ we say, ‘because it doesn’t mean anything coming from former colonial oppressors,’ and then we demand a former colony do what we tell them to). We presume its efficacy as well as its morality. But is Mbeki’s ocular health really in a worse state than our own?

Last week an MP pointed out that while we’re condemning Zimbabwe, we’ve said quite a bit less about the government of Ethiopia. That’s the state that has invaded Somalia and whose army, according to Amnesty International and aid agencies, is guilty of large-scale killings and human rights abuses there. We are funding their leaders’ salaries. A week after we and the US gave Ethiopia $90,000 for famine relief, they raised their military budget by $50,000. That strongly-worded denunciation is coming any day now.

Or why don’t we look at a country regarded by many as perpetrator of some of the worst human rights abuses and civilian massacres of the 20^th century: Indonesia. Since we take our moral duty to condemn injustice and violence so seriously that we expect it from others, I assume Britain has cut ties with Indonesia? Oh, no, sorry. My mistake. The FCO website tells me that ‘The UK has strong bilateral relations with Indonesia,’ and details our significant trading relationship with them.

No strong condemnations there then. What about for the USA, since it has been accused of war-crimes recently not just by the former PM of Malaysia, but by one of its own retired generals? Hmmm… not so much. Perhaps we’ll encourage Mbeki by making our own strong statement about Israel in Gaza? No?

Perhaps, then, we’ll just apply anti-terror standards to Zim and freeze the assets of British companies (like mining giant Anglo American), who we read last week are propping up Mugabe’s regime with investment. Or maybe not.

None of this makes what Mugabe is doing right. But it makes our disproportionate rage at a man who has done only as much harm as many of our ‘friends’ and our presumption of moral high-ground as laughable as African leaders see it. www.moral-outrage.hypocrisy , anyone?

To watch our allies, Indonesia, talk about human rights to comedian Mark Thomas, watch this (genius!):

from blood for oil.com

I drive a diesel (thank you for your sympathy – you’re too kind). When I bought it off a friend of mine, he said to me: ‘the great thing about diesels is that even though the fuel is slightly more expensive than petrol, it gets better mileage, so you’re still better off.’ As he walked away, I thought I heard him laughing. And about thirty seconds later, the credit and housing bubbles burst, setting in motion the economic disruption that has resulted in what you read about in the news every day and I cry myself to sleep about every night: the upward-spiralling price of diesel.

I may be exaggerating a little. My friend, of course couldn’t have known that diesel would fast become more expensive and impractical as a fuel than gold-extract or panda-juice. And, of course, it’s about more than diesel.

But the fact is that the economic crisis hitting much of the first and developing world (but for which, in the UK, our Prime Minister is personally blamed) is making news because its implications affect everybody.

Fuel prices have shot into the sky like black gold from a new and profitable well (with Tories using the opportunity to parade greenwashed rhetoric while rejecting actual environmental measures in Europe and at home). Food prices have ballooned like the waistlines of the average western consumer and for weeks the news has focused on little else. Last week the chancellor asked workers not to demand pay-rises that keep pace with inflation (because those costs will be passed on to consumers, necessitating more pay hikes). Gordon Brown asked oil producing countries to dig deep and produce more. Analysts and economists all over the UK predicted ‘austerity Britain’, where lack of disposable income would cause a retail slow-down.

And, yet, according to news last week, shop sales last month increased by the largest amount they have done in 20 years. That is to say: people have been spending record amounts, despite economists telling us that they wouldn’t. What does this tell us? Well, for one thing, that economists are not always right. And the reason is simple. Economics, as it influences our lives, is a pseudo science, based on specific philosophical assumptions every bit as biased as if the economists we saw on tv were all raging Marxists.

This economics that tells us what is good for our society and our world is the same, neo-classical system that has for years been telling us that unlimited growth (in production, which means in how much we extract from the earth and pump into the atmosphere and dump in landfill) is not only eternally possible, but desirable. This economics has been telling us how well we’ve been doing as we poured more and more CO2 into the atmosphere, crippled developing countries with unfair trade relationships and employed slaves to make most of what we impulse-buy.

It has encouraged a headlong stampede into consumerist culture, where every experience is mediated by a commercial transaction, where consequently we measure happiness in possessions and individual potential in the extent to which we worship money. And now it has assumed that ordinary people, drunk on advertising, full of artificially created desires and ‘needs’, will let the invisible hand of the market direct their behaviour. What were people buying last month? Necessities? Food for their children? No. Bikinis; Grand Theft Auto computer games; flat-screen TVs and new mobile phones.

Obviously economists have some things right. But Christians should beware of trusting philosophies or systems whose entire existence is based on greed, self-interest, and ‘growth’ that means treating every earthly resource, including people, as disposable, for the sake of profit.

For an introduction to one of  several alternatives, watch this:

It’s a sad week when both the Tories and the Americans look better than you when it comes to civil liberties and terrorism. Last week, in part two of the ’42 days detention without trial’ saga (so called because it is old enough to retire and yet doesn’t seem to want to), David Davis resigned as shadow home secretary in order to fight a by-election that he says will be all about civil liberties in Britain.

Last week, a comic on a BBC radio show pointed out, the government spent much of its time in the news telling the public not to panic with regard to possible fuel shortages (some tabloids of course responded with headlines like: ‘Panic!’). The rest of the week was spent trying to drum up panic about terrorism so as to get their 42 days bill passed. It was an odd juxtaposition.

So was the oft-mentioned fact that America allows just one day, rather than 42. Being trumped by the Americans on civil liberties is a tad embarrassing, but then, we don’t have Guantanemo Bay and the convenient ruse of ‘enemy combatants’ allowing us to interrogate (or ‘bully’ as one Radio 4 caller put it) people under scarily permissive military law.

The big news was, of course, David Davis, a Conservative member of the shadow cabinet and a man not known for being terribly liberal himself (his parliamentary record, according to theyworkforyou.com, shows him to be pro Iraq war, against equal rights for gay people and only moderately against terror legislation), resigning because he wants to champion civil liberties.

This, in turn, prompted Sun journalist, Kelvin MacKenzie, to intimate that he might stand against Davis bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch.

And this is where yet another concern should surface for Christians. Many commentators said that the significance of MacKenzie (and, by proxy, Murdoch) potentially throwing his (pointy white) hat in the ring would be the ‘circus’ it would create, a sign that nobody was taking Davis’ gesture seriously. Would that that were all.

What if the step, even just the statement of intent, was a toe in the proverbial water for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.? What if uncle Rupert wants more direct control of our lives than he already enjoys?

‘Paranoia!’ you cry, ‘ridiculous!’ Really? Murdoch’s News Corp. owns The Times, The Sun, News of the World, The London Paper, Sky, Fox News, MySpace, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, Harper Collins publishers, and a raft of other content providers with unparalleled access to the minds of virtually every demographic in the western world. His willingness to dictate the content of the news is legendary and has been widely reported. His papers, tv and web presence create opinions and influence news agendas more than any other individual in Europe or America, and now he’s thinking of fielding a candidate? Do you see how very frightening that should be?

You may say that New Labour has been in his pocket for years. I would say you’d be right. But Labour is still, in some respects, Labour. It is still answerable to institutions that stand for the rights of the poor like trades unions. It still occasionally acts like a party set up to represent the workers in a world too often biased towards the rich, however many compromises it makes with the media devil.

But imagine a country run entirely on the knee-jerk politics, fear-mongering and anti-Grace philosophy of the tabloid press. Imagine The Sun not only forming opinions but acting on them. Imagine the effect on immigrants, young offenders, international relations. Imagine that and then pray. Pray fervently that News Corp. is not making a play for parliament.

Just found the link for my appearance on Premier radio. They trailed me with the immortal line: ’should we even listen to him?’ But they were awfully nice.

I’m on 26 May. Here’s the link.

(plaintext: http://www.premierradio.org.uk/shows/weekday/premierdrive )

The ‘clash of cultures’ is more than just throwing Danone Fruit Corners or Muller Light in a food fight (in an attempt to put the ‘hurt’ back in ‘yoghurt’). Its convenient short-hand for giving titanic moral and emotional weight to conflicts whose motivations are a little more prosaic, like say those between Al Qaeda and the West. At least that’s how Observer columnist Khaled Diab saw it last week in a piece that outlined how many of us, on both sides of the Islamism vs Democracy ‘struggle’, have been duped into believing that a fight over natural resources, land and political power was in fact a fight between good and evil.

It’s particularly tempting for Christians to believe this, because Islam is, of course, The Competition, if not The Enemy. And if we believe that Jesus is the only way to God in the afterlife and a truly fulfilled existence in this one, we can logically not be in too much sympathy with Islam’s plans for taking over the world. At the same time we also need to remember that we ourselves wish to see the entire world become Christian and should realise that such an idea is as profoundly distasteful to many secularists as the idea of a Muslim world is to the BNP.

It is falling into clash of cultures thinking that has meant that while many Christians believe that the Iraq war is about oil more than freedom, they still somehow believe it’s not such a bad idea, because at least it’s fighting our enemy, Islam. A popular t-shirt depicting the war said we were ‘freeing the %*#$ out of them’. The death and suffering caused by this mental laziness is easy to imagine, if not to calculate (Allied forces in Iraq do not count Iraqi dead).

The fact is, as Mr Diab points out, Iran has better democratic credentials than our ally, Saudi Arabia (and is lower on the Open Doors list of top Christian persecutors), and yet is denounced as the enemy of democracy. Despite many such inconsistencies, we often lazily bvelieve the rhetoric of both George Bush and Osama Bin Laden: that this is a simple fight between concepts of good and evil.

Some aspects are simple One culture worships money, that parades licentiousness and sex as base commodities, despising its poor and glorifying the rich, is the first culture in history where trade dominates all other aspects of society. The other is conservative, simplistic and governed by a strict moral code that demands personal restraint and public acknowledgement of the importance of religion. Obviously there are other factors at play, particularly from a Christian point of view, but it is certainly not a done deal (if we are really experiencing a clash of cultures), that we are on the side of right. Ignoring that fact, regardless of the side on which you generally fall, will allow lovers of freedom to embrace regime change and lovers of the religion of ‘peace with God’ to endorse suicide bombers.

Similar things have been happening in domestic party politics over the last week. The beleaguered Brown government has been pushing its MPs to vote in favour of its proposals to extend detention without trial to 42 days. Failing to do so, it has intimated, will damage the party as a whole. Now, I’m no Tory. Personally I was cursing my luck that the disgraced Tory MEP was called Den and not Ben Dover, just for the sake of a cheap joke. But further denigrating the protection from detention without trial (that has been in British law since Magna Carta) is something that is worth opposing, even if it sinks the Labour Party. Domestic culture clash or no.