Freedom Institute

IRA Decommissioning: A sceptical note

2005-09-27T13:00:00.000+01:00

Once more the clichés are being rolled out; once more the media acquiesces in SF/IRA leaders hailing themselves as Mandela-like visionaries; and once more critical thought leaves the building. Let's take a step back and look at this sceptically. Richard is right that there remains much more to be done before Sinn Fein is fit for government in our state - quite apart from the fact that their lunatic policies would send us hurtling backwards. (If the Taoiseach's recent "Sure they'd have us like Ethiopia or Sudan in jig time" comment even remotely describes the policy platform of any major Irish party, it is Sinn Fein.) We still, for example, have no word on whether the PIRA is to dissolve or remain in place to back up the Mafioso-like behaviour of its Dublin sub-contractors. We don't know to what use the £26 million Northern Bank robbery of last December was put. It'd be buy a few nice houses in Donegal or the Costa del Sol for the top brass; or perhaps some more property in West Belfast for use by Provo front companies. In other words, the criminal empire that just 10 months ago flexed its muscles to carry out one of the biggest bank robberies in history remains intact. The Government has not showed any evidence to the contrary. Indeed amid all the talk of landmark moments and conflict resolution and peace in our time, our Government has gone quiet on this element. After all, the Provos were willing to get rid of their weapons caches last December. That deal stumbled in part because the IRA wouldn't sign up to (the actually very weak) statement that it wouldn't harm anyone's human rights. (There were other reasons too, of course, including calculations by both Sinn Fein and the DUP about the proximity of the general election.) You don't need surface-to-air missiles or heavy weaponry to engage in criminality. But what about the substance of what was announced yesterday to have happened at the IRA's numerous (illegal) arms dumps in rural Kerry, Armagh and wherever elsewhere in the presence of the IICD and the two clerical witnesses? I believe the general and his colleagues; I believe Father Reid and the Reverend Good. Every weapon the IRA told the IICD of is gone, never to be used again. Whether that last sentence means there are still some weapons in a bog somewhere - there seems some uncertainty as to whether any post-1996 weapons, such as the Florida import, were destroyed - is not really the point. There were never going to be any more bombings as long as the current SF/IRA leadership (which remains cohesive) was around. It's good that these weapons have been concreted over, broken up or however they were disposed of. But I am not thankful for it. For one thing, this is at least five years too late. Remember that even the Belfast Agreement's deadline of 2000 (six years after the first ceasefire, two after the agreement was adopted) was itself a compromise. That deadline being missed, the Provos then deliberately played cat and mouse with David Trimble's good intentions and ended up effectively ending his career in October 2003. My point isn't particularly that the Provos were duplicitous in their dealings with Trimble - although they were - but to illustrate that the Adams-McGuinness leadership has played these redundant arms for every political benefit they could. Indeed if it weren't for Ann McCabe and the McCartney women the situation might still be in limbo. The IRA could have issued its July 28th statement - or preferrably one showing a bit more humility - and got rid of its heavy weaponry years ago; it chose not to. Worse, it was allowed to make that choice by the approach of the British and Irish governments to enforcing SF/IRA commitments. The most charitable way to describe that approach is overly cautious. Others might call it timorous, misguided, appeasing. Given the mindset exposed by Tony Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell's comment that Ireland could become Sicily for all it bothered British policy, history might also call it a danger to Irish democracy. We must also keep in mind the consequences of the IRA being permitted to drag out this symbolic gesture for this long. The relatively forward-looking Unionism of Trimble's UUP is dead; instead we have the distasteful, bigoted DUP calling the shots. (On t.v. last night, William Frazer made no distinction between the IRA and Catholics in general: "I grew up with these murderers; I lived next door to them, went to school with them, played with them." If asked the DUP would call this a slip of the tongue. You decide.) On the Catholic-nationalist side, John Hume's politics of consensus, preached over three decades has been burned away; now Martin McGuinness, a politically reformed but morally unrepentant thug (and IRA Army Council member c.1979-2005) is the exemplar of Northern Catholic-nationalist political representation. The wider population of Northern Ireland is also more divided along sectarian lines than it was when the political negotiations became public in the mid-1990's. The IRA leadership was never interested in attempting any form of genuine reconciliation with Protestant Unionists. Even now that the guns are gone, as Keith has pointed out, real peace - rather than what Michael Howard among others calls negative peace - is not at hand, no more so than it is in Kosovo or Bosnia. If war begins in the minds of men, it ends there too. No, the IRA was spinning this political process out as it chose. This production - scripted as it has been by Adams and his allies - is only part way to its intended denouement. The final scenes remain to be played out. And they will not be played out shooting at Brits, but taking power here. If not in 2007, then a few years later. This was but a staging post.

Some slick marketing of crude stereotypes

2006-03-05T10:52:00.000Z

Killian Murphy wasn't nominated, so that pretty much makes George Clooney the closest thing to the great Irish hope for an Oscar tonight. He's nominated for two films - Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana, which are not just overtly political but extended campaign adverts against the Bush administration's anti-terrorism and foreign policies. In an article written together with Sacha Kumaria, deputy director of the Stockhom Network and published in today's Sunday Times, I give Syriana a fact-check and find it wanting:

In the Middle East it is borne of dictatorship and it is political. With free markets in oil shut down in favour of grasping state monopolies, corruption is inevitable, facilitated by the secretive middlemen operating outside the regulations that govern American and European companies.

The whole article is available online.

Dealing with comment spam

2006-02-10T16:56:00.000Z

Comment spam offering pills, potions and mail-order brides are a pain for anybody running a blog with comments. However, Guardian contributor Neil Clark seems to take a unique approach on his blog. Neil mananges to combine nostalgia for Slobodan Milosevic's supposedly "socialist" kleptocracy with writing for share-tip sheet The Fleet Street Letter and combating the neo-conspiracy with the help of Pravda and Pat Buchanan. The Guardian published his defence of Milosevic as a man whose only offence (with the minor exception of genocide) was remaining a true socialist. A few weeks back, I noted that he appeared to have tried to hold a conversation with a spam robot on one of his comments threads. Now that he's been embroiled in a controversy with Oliver Kamm over his review of Oliver's new book, Tim Worstall and others have noticed this. Well, at least, fair dues to Clark for not deleting the comment thread. Clark is probably the best illustration in the Guardian's pages of how the tendencies of the extreme right - xenophobia - and extreme left - mindless opposition - are uniting to hamper Blair's foreign policy. I have to wonder though, what on earth do you have to do before the Guardian refuse to feature you in their opinion pages?

Terrorist - Muslims insulted by being portrayed as terrorists, threatens terrorism

2006-02-10T11:23:00.000Z

First, we had a paroled crack dealer taking the British to task for their immorality and disrespect for traditional values. Now, Hizbollah terrorist leader Sheik Nasrullah lays out his views on the Danish cartoon controversy, the Irish Times reports:

The leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah guerrilla group pledged no compromise until there was a full apology from Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared, and European countries passed laws prohibiting insults against the Prophet.

Well, he'll have to wait until his friends in the Irish SWP - who think "the so–called 'cedar revolution' was viewed as US/Israeli manipulation aimed at disarming Hizbollah and preparing world opinion for a possible military strike on Syria" - win an election in Ireland somewhere other than a student union. He went on to promise "We will defend our Prophet with our blood, not our voices", which seems to me, coming as it is from the organisation that pioneered suicide terrorism in repeated attacks against US diplomats in Beirut and the US and French peacekeeping forces in the eighties, a pretty explicit threat of terrorism. Even though I'm fairly religious myself, I think the privatisation of religion and its steady seperation from politics in Europe has been the foundation of civil peace. The religious conflicts of the Thirty-Years War or England from Henry VIII onwards seem to have taught Europeans not to entangle the process of political compromise with the irreconcileable absolutes of religious disputes. For all their state-sponsored religiosity, yesterday's Ashura festival highlights the failure of such legal protections to stem intra-Muslim sectarian violence - Afghanistan and Pakistan saw more Sunni-Shia strife and in Iraq, only massive security prevented more massacres of Shia worshippers. Maybe we're not experiencing aclash of civilisation so much as the civilisation of clashes in the words of the German journalist Josef Joffe.

Rory Miller on the aims of Hamas

2006-02-11T11:01:00.000Z

Rory Miller writes in Saturday's Irish Times (subscription required) on the true face of Hamas:

No doubt our own political class don't know what all the fuss is about and are probably thinking "sure, haven't we been dealing with Palestinian terrorist groups as legitimate political partners for almost three decades". ... Contrary to what most Irish people assume, Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, does not view the battle for Palestine as a struggle for national self-determination by an indigenous population against a foreign occupier. ... Rather, it sees Palestine as but one battle in a worldwide holy war to prevent the fall of a part of the House of Islam to infidels."

John Reid lowers his sights

2006-02-08T17:57:00.000Z

John Reid, UK defence secretary gave a speech on Iraq last night. My impression of it is unfavourable. Set against the "stay the course" rhetoric of Messrs Bush and Blair, it paints a less impressive picture of coalition goals in Iraq. Some would say, of course, that no "happy ending" is possible at this point and that the victory rhetoric is a cover for an undignified exit from a failed endeavour. I don't accept such criticism. In particular, I don't think "failure" is inevitable. I do consider it possible though that the mid-term elections in the U.S. will precipitate a withdrawal of U.S. forces at a rate unjustified by conditions on the ground. And let us be clear. Conditions on the ground are not anywhere near sufficient to justify any substantial withdrawal. Reconstruction is behind schedule - around 20% of the money allocated to many projects has been used to pay for basic security; the counter-insurgency campaign has neither decisively succeeded nor failed. The metaphor of trying to pick up mercury with a fork may be overly pessimistic, but it contains a grain of truth. Arguments about the merits of the war are at this point for the historians. All that can be affected now is how history will record the resolve shown by the coalition powers (principally the United States and the United Kingdom) once they had made the fateful decision to oust the Iraqi dictatorship. The die is not cast either way at this point. We should look to the coalition actions more than its leader's words. Speeches require to be followed through on; they are of only intellectual curiosity on their own. Mr. Reid's words leave a degree of doubt as to whether coalition intentions have not been lowered to a level that would indeed lead to a disreputable exit. That may be the least bad outcome, given the political forces at play, but it would remain a bad one. A strategic failure induced by political myopia or lack of resolve at this juncture would be highly damaging. The benevolence and motivations behind American action are often questioned and speculated on - and used as the basis for criticism. But let it not be said of this campaign that they lacked the courage of their convictions. Let us look in this context at Mr. Reid's address to the Foreign Press Association. He began by stating what has become the standard baseline of coalition rhetoric:

"I fully understand that for you in the media the issues of troop numbers and dates are often the story. For what should be obvious security reasons we cannot respond to speculation about this. To do so would be to invite chaos. But all of this depends on the conditions we have drawn up and the circumstances on the ground being right. We will not cut and run. Our commitment to Iraq and its people is unchanged and we have made significant progress."

My question is whether, in the context of the rest of the speech, the italicised claim can be accepted. Mr. Reid set out the detailed conditions for withdrawal as follows:

"First, we need to see a manageable level of threat from insurgents, be they criminal or political. Second, the Iraqi security forces must be more able to deal with this threat themselves. Third, local government bodies need to be effective, while central government supports them. And finally we, ourselves, must be confident that we can provide support and backup to local forces if needed."

It is unclear what is meant by a manageable level of threat, but surely the only morally defensible goal is that the new democratic government have a monopoly on violence within its borders, in other words that the country be at peace. Mr. Reid went on to say:

"Our purpose in Iraq has never been to create a mirror-image of our own nation. That would never work, and it is not what Iraqis want. Our purpose has been to give Iraqis the tools to build the kind of nation they want. It is not for us to say how that nation should look. That is for Iraqis to decide. We must not lose sight of the fact that Iraq is a vastly different nation to our own in almost every way. It has never, and probably will never, look like a western European country. Alongside that is a different attitude to authority and allegiance. Very strong and ancient family, tribal and religious ties take this well away from what many Europeans and Americans would regard as our modern norm."

If by this he means that the coalition could only ever give Iraq an opportunity to build its own democracy this is correct. Anti-war derision of Anglo-American "imposition" of freedom has continuously missed the point that of course freedom cannot be imposed. All outside powers can do is create the conditions in which a democratic future can be built. They cannot build it on their own, by definition. However the statement that "Our purpose has been to give Iraqis the tools to build the kind of nation they want. It is not for us to say how that nation should look." can be interpreted in a less appealing manner, namely that it is not for the coalition to "build" the basic peace on which any democratic transition must eventually be based. The kernel of the speech is the following:

"Handing over security responsibility is not likely to be rapid or simple. It does not mark the end, only the end of the beginning. The extremists will attempt to step up efforts to derail this process as it unfolds. It is clear the Iraqis must stand firm, with Coalition support where needed. ... Every vote cast in December – some 11 million of them -represented a courageous determination to build a better nation that should humble those who take their democratic rights for granted. Our job is to help Iraq to reach that point. Our key task is not, as some claim, to defeat the insurgency ranged against Iraq. It is to ensure that Iraqis have the ability to do that. ... "Iraq will not be without its problems. Nobody is really expecting us to leave behind us a trouble-free society. No such thing exists. It will be a free nation, an equal nation, with a prosperous future, with great opportunity, with the goodwill of the international community, with our support. But the point at which Iraqis are fully in control of their nation again will not be the point when attacks cease, when infrastructure is without fault, when there is nothing left to do. The day we leave will not be the final step on the road for the new Iraq. It will be the first."

This language is disconcerting. The insurgency is a consequence of the invasion. Therefore the coalition is under a moral obligation to reduce it as much as it possibly can before any transition of security powers. There is no more basic duty of an occupying force. The test of success or failure is whether or not the coalition leave behind a better country than they found. That test will not be met by merely putting in place democratic political institutions. (Of course that very act goes much to the credit of the coalition and the elections have been held remarakably successfully.) But the elections, like the invasion itself, are in the past. The coalition's responsibilities are now to the future of Iraq. Talk of the impossibility of leaving behind a "trouble-free society" seems wilfully disingenuous.

Checking out of Great Southern

2006-02-08T06:33:00.000Z

The Irish Times reports today that the Great Southern hotel chain is to be sold off, as we recommended in April last year:

One aspect of the current problems which have befallen our national airports is the fate of the Great Southern Hotels chain. Founded in 1845, their continued ownership by the State defies credulity, given the absence of any compelling argument for not allowing the chain to become a private enterprise. With the Sunday Times having reported that the chain lost €2m in 2004, the question must be asked as to how nine hotels, mostly located in premier tourist destinations, could register such a poor performance in the fastest-growing economy in Europe. Given the State's repeated failure to use assets efficiently, we aren't surprised to see they managed to lose money in a bumper year for the economy.

The trrebling of losses since then, from Euros 2 million to Euros 6 million and the inflated wage costs of the chain highlight the broader principle that whatever the serives decides to operate itself when the market can alredy do so will be done badly - call it the Lada effect. At least the Soviet leadership built their own dachas rather than running a large hotel chain to stay in for their holidays.

The Root of All Evil

2006-01-31T16:32:00.000Z

It's especially ironic that the focus of this latest "Frankenfood" scare should be potatoes. Back when the plant was first introduced, it was seen as another obnoxious import from America that had to be resisted:

The potato was carried on to Italy and England about 1585, to Belgium and Germany by 1587, to Austria about 1588, and to France around 1600. Wherever the potato was introduced, it was considered weird, poisonous, and downright evil. In France and elsewhere, the potato was accused of causing not only leprosy, but also syphilis, narcosis, scronfula, early death, sterillity, and rampant sexuality, and of destroying the soil where it grew. There was so much opposition to the potato that an edict was made in the town of Besancon, France stating: "In view of the fact that the potato is a pernicious substance whose use can cause leprosy, it is hereby forbidden, under pain of fine, to cultivate it."

We usually laugh at people who fervently believed this kind of nonsense, or that anybody travelling faster than thirty miles per hour would suffocate, or that higher education led to sterility in women. Nowadays, this is called the precautionary principle.

Speaking Engagement

2006-01-31T11:10:00.000Z

I'll be in UCD on Wednesday evening as a guest of the Literary and Historical Society to speak against Hamas. It'll be in the John Henry Newman Building, also known as the Arts Block, starting sometime not too long after seven. If you happen to make it along, do say hello before or afterwards.

Forty Shades of Green

2006-01-27T15:19:00.000Z

The European Championship draws were this morning, but not being much of a football fan, the news of a new environmental policy report caught my eye instead. Columbia and Yale Universities, the World Economic Forum (who organise the Davos summit) and the European Commission have ranked the world's countries on various measures of environmental policy. Ireland comes in the premiership, tenth on the list, seven of our EU partners are ahead of us, with New Zealand heading the rankings and Malaysia and Canada also in the top ten. The detailed report identifies two areas of weakness, the most serious being air pollution, specifically microparticles from car exhaust that contribute to respiratory diseases, together with shortcomings in preserving rare wildlife. However, Ireland gets credit for being among the pioneers of sustainable energy among industrial countries - probably accounted for by our aggressive commercial construction of wind power by Airtricity and others - and top in the EU for energy efficiency. None of this will surprise those who follow the work of our small but growing community of environmental economists, such as UCD's Peter Clinch, whose 2001 survey I would strongly recommend to anybody interested in how economic growth and globalisation support environmental protection, an empirical relationship known to economists as the Environmental Kuznets Curve; Dasgupta et al. look at this relationship globally in their 2002 paper from the Journal of Economic Perspectives. You mightn't know this from the writings of some less rigorous environmentalists, like this fear green

Corrected:Rory Miller on Newstalk Saturday Morning

2006-01-27T00:27:00.000Z

Corrected Dr Rory Miller will be on Newstalk FM at 9am on ~~Friday~~ Saturday morning to discuss the Middle East political landscape after the sweeping victory of Hamas in the elections to the Palestinian Authority. Appearing with him will be Dr Hikmat Ajjuri, the new Palestinian representative in Dublin.

Exposing the immigration myth

2006-01-21T12:59:00.000Z

Recently Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte, eager to shore up his party's support, decided to pander to the lowest common denominator by having a crack off one of Ireland's most vulnerable (and electorally impotent) groups. His claim that "displacement" of Irish workers by immigrants was taking place was not only reckless, but an examination of the facts shows that he was being nothing short of dishonest with his comments. His fundamental claim was that cheaper overseas labour was undercutting Irish workers, thereby driving them out of work. For this to be true, wage inflation in areas where immigration is more prominent would have to be running at below the rate seen in sectors where it is less so. The CSO's current (Q3 2005) Quarterly National Household Survey reports that approximately 25% of the 40,000 immigrants who joined the labour force found work in the construction industry. Interestingly, the same release reports a 30,000 increase in employment in that sector in the 12 months to the end of Q3. That means that an extra 20,000 Irish people found work in construction, despite the influx of 10,000 "displacing" immigrants into the industry. So not only is construction employing more immigrants, it is also employing more Irish people too. In fact, despite the extra 40,000 immigrants who joined the labour force, the CSO shows that there are some 96,200 extra people in employment in Ireland than there were 12 months previously. An examination of wage inflation statistics further casts doubt on Rabbitte's claims. While construction absorbed the highest percentage of immigrant workers, wage inflation in this area stood at 6.0% in the 12 months to September 2005. One wonders how the effect of immigrant labour is undercutting wages in this industry. One obvious question is how do construction earnings stack up against other industries? The CSO provides the answer. Earnings in the Financial Services sector were up just 1.7% in the 12 months to September, below the rate of consumer price inflation. Indeed, average industrial earnings were up 3.0% in the 12 months to September, half the rate seen in the construction industry. Earnings growth in distribution and business services (3.5% in the 12 months to June) and also the public sector (5.5%) were also behind that seen in the "displaced" construction industry. While the evidence clearly doesn't support Pat Rabbitte's claims, and we haven't even mentioned the 5.1% growth in employment, or the fact that Ireland has the lowest rate of unemployment in the EU, it would appear that his comments suggest that this solo run was based on political opportunism as opposed to economic realities. Unfortunately, with Rabbitte having made comments like "There are 40 million or so Poles after all, so it is an issue we have to have a look at" when outlining his views on immigration, it is clear that some members of the Dáil are willing to be less than tactful in their choice of words when they speak on this important issue.

Remembering Ronald Reagan

2006-01-20T15:25:00.000Z

Twenty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan became the president of the United States of America. Writing a short time ago in the Claremont Review of Books, Ramesh Ponnuru noted a transformation in his historical standing over the last two years:

The extraordinary outpouring of public affection at the time of Ronald Reagan's death marked the moment when his loving memory ceased to be the distinctive property of conservatives and became the possession of Americans generally. All parties now claim him. Libertarians upset with the contemporary Republican Party recall him fondly by airbrushing away his social conservatism and treating his defeats as his desires. Liberals extol his compromises and accommodations. Even isolationists have claimed the old Cold Warrior as their own. All factions praise his optimism—a safe, non-ideological virtue.

Yet as the Wall Street Journal today notes of his economic policies:

More wealth has been created in the U.S. in the last quarter-century than in the previous 200 years. The policy lessons of this supply-side prosperity need to be constantly relearned, lest we return to the errors that produced the 1970s.

Ireland has lacked a Reagan, as no Irish politician has dared to take ownership of the Reagan-light economic reforms that worked so well here as they had a little earlier in the United States. Yet after the end of serious debate on a return to a state-led economy it is fair to say that Reaganite principles of limited government and low taxes continue to gain traction here, notwithstanding periodic reverses. It is reasonable to hope that in time the principles that guided Reagan's tenure as the fourtieth president of the United States will become not only the shared inheritance of the American people but of Ireland and Europe too.

Radio Update

2006-01-18T21:28:00.000Z

Today's radio spot was recorded, not broadcast. Apologies. In my defence, that wasn't clear from what I was sent, but the project is a very exciting one and I hope it gets aired soon. In any case, I'll be discussing the religious right in America, and religion in the media more generally, with Karen Coleman on her 'Wide Angle' from 11 on Sunday. Should be interesting.

On the Radio

2006-01-18T02:49:00.000Z

Yours truly is scheduled for Newstalk sometime around six on Wednesday evening. Immigration and labour standards are the starting point and it's hoped that a Green Party TD and a union representative will be on too.

Stuck in the middle with you

2006-01-15T23:13:00.000Z

Rory Miller writes in the Sunday Business Post on Israeli politics after Sharon:

Many traditional Labour and Likud voters were willing to support Kadima (meaning “forward'‘ in English) under Sharon as a reward for his success in uniting the country, ending the intifada, and withdrawing from Gaza over the last five years. It is uncertain whether this key constituency - the moderate right and left of the electorate - will stick with the new party in Sharon's absence. For now, Kadima appears to be holding its support. Recent polls predict that it will still win between 40 and 44 of the Knesset's 120 seats, more than the combined share of its nearest rivals, Labour and Likud, who are likely to get 16 and 13 seats respectively. However, Sharon was the glue that held the party together. Though Kadima's members are presenting a united front, this “patchwork of politicians'‘, as Caroline Gluck of the Jerusalem Post described them, have little in common other than a, now irrelevant, belief that Kadima under Sharon represented the future of Israeli politics. None of its leading figures - acting prime minister Ehud Olmert, Labour's elder statesman Shimon Peres and Likud defence and justice ministers Shaul Mofaz and Tzipi Livni - have anything like the popular support that Sharon had built up since becoming prime minister in 2001.

How Ireland Can Help In Iraq

2006-01-15T14:17:00.000Z

Neither success nor failure is preordained in Iraq. Arguably, the most important variable over 2006 is the extent to which hitherto recalcitrant US allies are prepared to put their resources behind the fight for democracy in that country. Ireland can and should help, and can do so in some very specific ways. First, Ireland should push for debt forgiveness for Iraq's Saddam-era fiscal hangover. Larry Goodman is the best known among a series of Irish businessmen who stand now to reap multi-million euro returns on their dealings with Saddam's Iraq. The Irish government should take a lead to persuade domestic and international creditors to fore-go these funds as a gesture of good-will to the new democracy and as material assistance for its defence and consolidation. Second, government public relations officials and Irish editors and producers should be proactive in opening the Irish media to Iraqi voices. As Noam Chomsky prepares for a full week of coverage and the new Palestinian Delegate-General finds his way onto radio, television, and the opinion pages, those controlling the news cycle should take account of the almost total absence of the voices of those Iraqis working in the Iraqi government and security services. Their contributions, and contributions from any of the large majority of Iraqis opposed to the terrorists in Iraq, have been missing for far too long, a disservice to brave democrats on the front line. Third, the Irish military should begin to train the Iraqi security forces. Though quite heavily stretched as it is due to persistent underfunding, the Irish military has two specific capabilities that would map well to the counter-terrorist needs of the new Iraqi security services. The first is the benefit of twenty-five years of experience of operations against the IRA, and whatever continuing intelligence work is still underway. The second are the specialist skills of the Irish Army Rangers, an elite unit that is well respected internationally and was conceived specifically as an anti-terrorist capability. Needless to say, the Irish army has a valuable contribution to make, albeit on a limited scale, to the formation of the new self-defence capacity of the new democracy. Without placing Irish forces in the fight, which is not feasible politically, these three concrete steps would constitute a meaningful, if minimal, contribution to democracy in Iraq. It is now 2006, not 2003. The struggle in Iraq is conducted with UN backing and the support of many previously anti-war countries. No civilized people stands to gain anything from a coalition defeat or premature withdrawal. It should be possible for all but the extreme fringes of Irish politics to support involvement along the lines outlined above.

An EU Tax?

2006-01-12T17:16:00.000Z

The EU finance commissioner Joaquin Almunia has an idea. He wants an EU tax, though prefers to call it a "community resource": "It would allow for further institutional autonomy and co-responsibility. The more important own resources are, the more difficult it becomes to speak about net balances" The EU has bigger problems with the constitution right now without having to worry about the politics of a "community resource". That said, the idea has one thing going for it. The EU budget doesn't just materialize out of thin air. Taxpayers in European states foot the bill, but without getting any feel for what it costs. The problem of linking taxation to results in a way that allows taxpayer to assess value for money is a longstanding one. So here's a suggestion. To give Europeans a better feel for how their tax money is doing, why not make the whole of the EU budget contingent on a single 'EU tax'. Citizens would then be able to weigh up the funds they're forking out against the job the institutions are doing. What's more, steady spending increases would be highly visible, showing up in tax returns. Don't hide the taxes. A closer relationship between the average European's pocket and the EU budget means closer oversight and accountability. In the midst of Commissioner Almunia's "community resources" lies the seeds of real reform.

Stop Iran: Time for a Serious Debate

2006-01-11T18:25:00.000Z

At the end of 2004, the Freedom Institute published a report on the politics of Iran's nuclear program. Our report concluded: The absence of effective mechanisms for the IAEA means the onus is on preventing states from building or acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomatic choreography. In the fourteen months since, international diplomatic efforts to forestall Iran's nuclear program has been fitful. Iran yesterday again broken faith with EU3 (Britain, France, Germany) diplomacy and that of the IAEA by removing the international seals at its nuclear facilities. It must now be accepted that diplomatic has grave limitations. The seriousness of the situation is reflected in international responses to Iran's announcement. Mohammed ElBaradei stated that he is "running out of patience" with Tehran. Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy called on Iran to immediately and unconditionally reverse the decision. Germany's warned that the continuation of nuclear research by Iran could not happen "without consequences". These sentiments are all fitting, but they are also insufficient. They are also not unanimously shared. The current EU President undermined this apparent unity, stating that it is premature to discuss sanctions. On the contrary, this is quite possibly the last point at which the available options can be discussed before it is too late to take effective action. A serious debate is required. The timescale is unknown, ranging from months to years, though the recent failure to foresee the successful development of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan exposes the imprudence of assuming a best-case-scenario. A rogue state and state-sponsor of Islamic terrorism stands on the verge of acquiring weapons. The president of the country has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, mullahs have echoed the desirability of doing so, and the theocratic regime has a history of belligerency. The precise degree of risk is unquantifiable but even an optimistic analysis posits an unacceptable situation. On deterrence, it is clear that Iran intends to acquire the bomb and that international disapproval will not change this. What is required is a plan of action that encompasses all scenarios, from further diplomatic stop-start stalling, through to imminent success in the research program. This means a transatlantic discussion on coercive options. It also means a debate on military contingencies and the possibilities for destroying the relevant installations through air strikes and special forces operations, bargaining with the regime through the threat of comprehensive and sustained punitive strikes on industrial and economically valuable targets, through to attempts at destabilization or regime change, in the absence of superior options. Iran's position is strengthened by popular fatigue after the war in Iraq, the already considerable deployment of Britain and American forces in other theatres, its good relations with China and Russia, its oil wealth, and dithering in Washington and other capitals. Israeli pre-emption, an increasingly credible possibility according to reports over the last four or five weeks, is not an ideal outcome, though it would certainly be justified given the Iranian President's stated position. Europe currently has the lead, with Washington's blessing. It is now imperative that Europe does, indeed, lead, and that a plan of action is debated and articulated in the next number of weeks. This may not happen. If it does not, Europe will have no grounds to complain if Israel or the US step into the breach caused by European inaction. After Europe's failure in the Balkans, failure in Iran, the second major international relations in a decade in which it has held the lead, would be disastrous for European credibility. The West has the power to make the price of the bomb too high for Iran to bear. It must resolve to do this and decide exactly how - and do so immediately.

Corporate Social Responsibility in Ireland

2006-01-10T17:52:00.000Z

Does corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Ireland actually mean anything? Yes, according to the Chamber of Commerce of Ireland (CCI): "There is growing awareness of the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in business. Through CSR, companies are working to integrate social and environmental concerns into their everyday business operations and into their interaction with the community in which they operate on a voluntary basis. While the term CSR has become increasingly part of corporate parlance, businesses in Ireland have long been engaging in various forms of socially responsible activities for their local communities from sponsorship for sports and cultural activities to employee volunteering in local schools or partnerships with not-for-profit organisations." This is commendable, but is it distinct from the standard understanding of a corporation's responsibility, namely, to maximise profits for its shareholders? For the most part, it's not, as recent CCI awards demonstrate. In 2005 the CCI award for CSR went to five Munster-based Johnson & Johnson companies. According to the citation, they "took ownership of a particular sports event", providing for competitions. Vodafone have won in the past for sponsoring a campaign for the Blood Transfusion Service. Bupa paid for a fundraising drive for the charity GROW a commissioned a marketing study for the group. IBM cut energy use by 8% though an-house work practices campaign. Similarly, Musgraves cut waste. Intel won for surpassing minimum statutory requirements on safety. But what exactly is the role of CSR? More specifically, are these projects happening because managers have decided to use shareholders money for 'good works' or do these projects simply fit in with corporate self-interest? Cutting waste and energy saves money. Many of the citations for CSR awards in Ireland appear to reward projects that are little more than advertising. When a corporation sponsors a sporting event, they're only doing what marketing departments have done for generations. Only now it's called Corporate Social Responsibility. Indeed, CSR policy statements, press releases, and industry awards offer further publicity - free advertising - all part of branding strategies. Indeed, this ties in with the theory of CSR as elaborated by Kevin Jackson of Fordham University. In his book, Building Reputational Capital, Jackson writes that CSR is essentially a matter of brand control, or, as the Harvard Business School said in a review, a matter of "common sense". The trouble with CSR is not that it promotes such good works. An intrinsic value of capitalism is the importance of reputation. In the marketplace, individuals and firms can exploit a comparative advantage in reputation, encourgaging them to act in a way that meets with approval. Where the trouble kicks in is when people expect more of corporate responsibility than self-interest. First, as the Economist puts it, it is "philanthropy at other peoples expense". Managers and activists decide how shareholders money gets spent. Of course, that's what managers do anyway, but with the crucial difference that shareholders hand over their capital as an investment, not a donation. Charities exist for charity; businesses for business. An investor who decides to maximise his returns rather than his largesse has a right to expect those he entrusts his capital to to work to that end, not some other that makes the manager feel good about himself. Second, asking managers to decide what causes are worth funding is surely a mistake. Elected politicians are the people who should be deciding which projects are worth funding and, as importantly, which are not. Were CSR to be taken seriously and a requirement on Irish corporations to engage in, for example, the '1% solution' (1% of profits, equity, and employee hours go to CSR), a large shift of GDP would be at managers disposal for charitable purposes. Apart from the considerable depressive effects of increasing taxation on corporations by about a tenth - the point of the law, after all, would be to ensure spending happens over what managers would freely choose, or the law would be superfluous - the move would disincentivise individuals, particularly investors, from donating privately, as they would see that already happening, and would effect a switch in donations from voluntary private giving to legally mandated giving by managers, which can only be bad for the charity, eliminating the culture, particularly in Ireland, of close relations between individuals and the charities they support, replacing it with a culture of giving designed to maximise name exposure for the manager's corporations. CSR is another of those well-meant theories. Its proponents for the most part want only the best. But as with many slightly woolly ideas, its more valuable for the sentiments it represents than the consequences it would have. Let managers determine what amount of CSR is in their shareholders interests. This is something for the law to steer clear of. Update 1: Worth adding - the 'one percent solution' isn't the only 'thick' vision of CSR out there. Amnesty Ireland doesn't think a firm has CSR unless it: 1. Has human rights education and training; 2. An independent procedure for investigating "any complaint about security procedures "; 3. Meets with voluntary organization and community leaders; 4. Refuses to hire someone because they can't speak any given language. "This should include recruitment, promotion, remuneration, working conditions, customer relations and the practices of contractors, suppliers and partners"; 5. Has a programme to prohibit slavery; 6. Prohibits verbal abuse; 7. Guarantees the right to collective bargaining, the right to form trade unions, and the right to strike "if such rights are not protected in a particular country's national law", something they would also have apply to suppliers wherever they are; 8. Provides "an adequate standard of living for employees and their families... [and] ensures that suppliers and contractors do not infringe such rights", whatever that means; 9. Has a human rights monitoring program. Clearly CSR means different things to different people. While no one could argue with, for instance, the prohibition on slavery, how long is it before Amnesty attempt to use CSR as a vehicle to change the law on linguistic hiring practices, a 'living wage', mandatory human rights training, an sectoral trade union practices? Richard Waghorne's personal blog is at Sicilian Notes.

Another Cold War?

2006-01-11T00:07:00.000Z

A new article by me on the Russia-Ukraine gas keruffle is now up at Tech Central Station. The sheer stupidity of Putin's behaviour - making such serious threats for such small rewards - shows a perennial Russian tendency towards authoritarianism as a substitute for accountability. The double standards over Russia's behaviour, especially in the Caucusian region and European silence deserves highlighting:

"Russia has looked at Saudi Arabia and decided that it likes the model. Nobody criticises the Saudis - they are too important as a supplier," the Financial Times quoted one Moscow banker as saying during the Belorussian crisis. Conspiracy theories denouncing Operation Iraqi Freedom as a grab for Iraq’s energy (even though foreigners remain barred from owning fields by the new constitution) are widely held among the EU’s politicians and public. Meanwhile the silence has been deafening as Putin has systematically dismantled Russia’s nascent democracy and killed a quarter of a million Chechens (out of a population barely over a million) in the indiscriminate military bludgeoning of the oil-rich region.

Senators McCain and Lieberman are sponsoring a motion to strip Russia of its membership of the G8 group of advanced industrial countries. Otherwise, we'll see them hosting the group's conference, which this is year is to discuss energy security, so putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

Happy Christmas

2005-12-24T15:40:00.000Z

Just a short post to wish all of our readers a very Happy Christmas. We trust that you enjoyed reading this blog in 2005, and look forward to returning to posting once the imbibing and eating is out of the way ;-) At this time of year we remember those who campaign against injustice and tyranny. Let 2006 be yet another year when freedom is on the march, and let the light of liberty shine brightly in the countries where citizens do not have the rights that are all too often taken for granted elsewhere. Our thanks go to the brave men and women in the Irish Defence Forces who will be having Christmas dinner tomorrow in bases throughout the world where they are serving on UN peacekeeping missions.

Posting Resumes

2006-01-06T01:59:00.000Z

We're back from the break, refreshed, and hope our readers are too. Posting has resumed but is liable to be intermittent at times over the next while as we rework some of the technical ends. In the meanwhile, FI members are publishing both here and at: Blackline Blog, The Conservative Dubliner, and my own new blog, Sicilian Notes.

Rory on the radio

2006-01-06T01:01:00.000Z

Rory Miller discussed the impact on Israeli and Palestinian politics of Ariel Sharon's illness on RTE Radio on Thursday night. John Downing of the Daily Star and Trevor Sargeant of the Green Party also took part. The discussion begins at 5 minutes 20 seconds and ends at 21 seconds 40 seconds.

Going Critical

2005-12-21T17:20:00.000Z

Owing to space constraints, my recent TCS article on nuclear power in Britain didn't mention Chernobyl. In part, I wanted to keep this until the twentieth anniversary of the accident in April next year. Also, I had read in the press of a recent scientific consortium report(WHO press release is here, via Wikipedia) painting a less apocalpytic view of the consequences, but I hadn't followed the debate around this.

"As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004."

The other obvious issues left out are Sellafield and the performance of the British nuclear industry, both of which need a great deal more research before I'd feel comfortable in commenting on them in any detail. I suspect that nuclear weapons manufacturing rather than the civilian energy programs may have been a greater source of waste and accidents. Also, the financial health of the British nuclear industry - including British Nuclear Fuels Limited and British Energy - which owns the power stations - has been fragile, to put it politely. For my part, I suspect that most of the hostility in Ireland to Sellafield is a combination of the environmentalist scare-mongering together with "green" politics of a more traditional sort, namely that if our wicked colonial overlords across the water are doing it, it must be immoral. After the Good Friday Agreement, this gives a rare opportunity for Brit-bashing while remaining politically respectable. If you're really interested in the whole subject, the Westminster Energy Forum is running a conference on the regulation of the nuclear power industry in London on January 19th. Nevertheless, the question remains to be answered: Given this safety-obsessed, nappies-within-nappies society that they've done so much to foster, why aren't Greenpeace being held to account for their publicity stunts, given that they're more dangerous than the nuclear power industry? Feel free to discuss among yourselves....