Posting held over from the weekend owing to partners birthday (Saturday) and not feeling too good yesterday. Today's blog will include the following:
1) Birthday
2) Iraq invasion anniversary (and morale-boosting)
3) Henry Kissinger on Iran
4) Denis MacShane on Pakistan
We had discussed marking the birthday with a trip out to Bodiam Castle but this looks like four hours of driving away and the weather wasn't looking encouraging first thing. In the end we went to West Wittering and it turned into a glorious afternoon - though the wind was strong. The tide was farther out than I've ever seen it. It looked as if two new islands had emerged off the shore of Hayling Island (close by the sailing club).
The wind was creating quite a sandstorm when we went up on to the dunes - like pins raining on your face. Altogether we were out there for two hours, loving it. it was even warm enough to prompt us to buy some choc ices. A contrast with yesterday when we lit fire in the evening.
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I've been following as much of the items about the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq as I can manage. A lot of it, Peter Beaumont in yesterday's Observer, for instance, makes depressing reading. He's good on the way in which the insurgency has skewed everything for ordinary Iraqis as personal security issues come to dominate every other consideration. Although he can only offer anecdotal evidence, there's no doubt that he's pessimistic about the future. The BBC/ABC opinion poll offers more objectivity but is puzzling in some ways. In particular the high poll (94%) in favour of the country not being divided up between Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites. I had supposed that, although the Kurds are a smallish minority, they would have been solidly behind a federated Iraq and that would have brought the pro-unity figure below 90%. The allies should take a modicum of encouragement from the poll's indication that, even though the majority of the sample would like the allied forces to be gone, only 35% wish them to leave straight away.
When the Today programme reported on the proportion of Iraqis who feel secure personally they lost objectivity with a turn of phrase. Only 26% of the poll were recorded as saying they felt 'very secure' so, we were told, nearly three quarters of Iraqis don't feel very secure. But surely the Today Programme understand that 'very' in expressions like 'I don't feel very (well/secure/happy)' changes its sense so that the phrases are laden with unease and distress in ordinary spoken English: better to say that 74% of Iraqis don't feel completely secure or fully secure.
British officials on the ground like Ambassador Dominic Asquith and Major General Jonathan Lamb are not surprisingly more positive than the media. that would not be difficult but it's noteworthy just how much more upbeat they are. And although it's their job to speak up for the allied cause, it's also worth remembering that these people are sufficiently high profile and savvy to know that their careers could suffer if in years to come the record shows them to have been out of touch with reality.
Generally speaking, although I have doubts as to whether the generals should be defending government policies in the media, I've been really impressed with the morale-boosting effect of what they have to say. Do cadet officers get lessons in this skill at Sandhurst? It's a good one to have because it can be put to good use in almost all situations.
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Also good for morale was to hear Dr Henry Kissinger interviewed on Saturday morning. He seemed optimistic about the possibility of negotiations with Iran over their nuclear weapons development and the situation in the Middle East. In particular he believes that President Bush is up for negotiating with the Iranians.
Incidentally, Ambassador Asquith was at the diplomatic talks with the Syrians and Iranians in Baghdad last week, we eventually learn.
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Yesterday's Observer also carried an interesting comment piece by Denis MacShane MP on the west's attitude towards Pakistan. This pointed out that Pakistan is strategically highly sensitive and that Pakistan is blamed too much for providing a refuge for Taliban and other extremists, and for not doing more about the leaky frontier with Afghanistan. He makes some telling points in regard to India, questioning the purpose of Indian consulates in provincial Afghan cities (which add to Pakistan's sense of insecurity)and the need to maintain such a presence in Kashmir now that President Musharraf has stated that Kashmir is not going to return to Pakistan. His argument is that fewer Indian troops in Kashmir might persuade the government of Pakistan that they can afford to re-deploy more of their troops to the Afghan border. I'm not sure that this would be enough to persuade President Musharraf that the eastern frontier is more secure and, in any case, he could be replaced by a Pakistani leader who still did have designs on Kashmir.
Pakistan should indeed be of grave concern to the allies in Afghanistan but I don't see that any country has a great of leverage over a nation affected by such strong tensions of its own. The most that could be achieved is a certain amount of assistance with security issues. Probably Pakistan is going to remain a massive problem of surveillance and interpretation for western intelligence services, especially the UK's.
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The stock markets still seem to be stuck in a choppy phase. This could either be the start of a long drawn out drift downwards or a brief interruption before new heights are achieved (as happened last May). After the 1929 crash the markets went down and down right through 1930 and 1931. I don't think this is going to happen now but it does look as if the sub-prime lending business in the US is NOT a problem that's going to go away. It seems extraordinary that US Federal Reserve didn't latch on to how serious a problem personal debt was becoming. Reading the business pages it seems almost as if lending has parted company with the discipline of mortgaging, taking collateral, credit checking etc.. Retail lending has become like a branch of the insurance industry with risks being shouldered as if they were potential natural disasters. Ominously, a piece in the NY Times supplement to the Observer said that the foreign exchange reserves of the People's republic of China included $100 bn of US mortgaged-backed securities.
the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board is going to publish its report on the Texas City refinery explosion tomorrow and there have been leaks that members of the BP board of directors knew that cost cutting was impacting on the smooth running of the refinery. Tomorrow will show whether the investigators are going to try to pin negligence on the BP directors by arguing that potential for disaster was the dark side of the interruptions to the refineries operation that had been going on for years.
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On the personal front I've been in touch with my source of freelance work and reluctantly I've come to the conclusion that it's not going to work out as well as I had hoped. I'm not sure what the problem although I guess that they've had less business than they were hoping. The cause doesn't really matter in one sense - I know I need to have a re-think now (and listen to that internal major general boosting my morale).
I'd like to finish this post with a salute to a young colleague of my partner who was tragically killed in a traffic accident recently and whose funeral takes place about now. Her name was Koula and she seems to have had a great gift of affirming other people.
