May 2013
4 posts
5 tags
A tragic approach to same-sex marriage
Oliver Kamm
The Times supports same-sex marriage. It’s an editorial stance that I’ve had a role in formulating and a position that I strongly favour. One particular feature of our case ought to appeal to a rational conservative. As argued in our initial leader last year in support of reform, formally acknowledging the validity of homosexual unions “has encouraged gay couples to commit to...
3 tags
Britain should welcome, not oppose, immigration
Oliver Kamm
The Conservative Party has an important and historically sometimes dominant strand within it that is internationalist (including pro-Europeanism), pragmatic and in, the broadest sense, liberal. It’s dismaying that, on the evidence of the Queen’s Speech, that current appears to be in abeyance.
I’m not so worried about the absence from the Speech of legislation for same-sex...
5 tags
Why Nigel Lawson is wrong about the EU
Oliver Kamm
Asked about Lord Lawson’s argument in The Times today that Britain should leave the EU, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary replied that Lawson was “a terribly clever guy but he’s often wrong on the big issues, like climate change, and this”.
That’s well put. I admire Lord Lawson’s huge memoirs on his time as Chancellor (it’s an outstanding book on applied economics). I’ve...
4 tags
A questionable partnership
Oliver Kamm
Peter Oborne, the Telegraph columnist, complains on the Spectator blog about virulent misrepresentations and innuendo. Oddly, he names me as a culprit, for noting sceptical comments made by one David Morrison about the Srebrenica massacre. Morrison is co-author of a recent slim volume with Oborne purporting to explain the pacific character of Iran’s nuclear programme.
I asked...
April 2013
4 posts
5 tags
Khomeini or Thomas Jefferson? Who did more for...
Oliver Kamm
In a post last week I noted a new book that purports to expose Western propaganda about Iran’s nuclear programme. Its co-authors are Peter Oborne, the Telegraph columnist, and David Morrison, an obscure figure whose denial of the demonstrated historical facts of the Srebrenica massacre places him on the sinister fringes of political opinion.
Even so, before reading the book, I was...
3 tags
Attlee's farewell was no less grand than...
Daniel Finkelstein
During the debate over Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, there was quite a bit said about the simplicity of Attlee’s.
The basic idea is that he had been given a 15-minute service in front of 150 people in contrast to the public ceremonials for Lady Thatcher. But this is a deeply misleading account.
Lady Thatcher had a public funeral followed by private interment....
Peter Oborne's co-author is a Srebrenica-denier
Oliver Kamm
Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph columnist, has a new book out, written with David Morrison. It’s called A Dangerous Delusion: Why the Iranian Nuclear Threat is a Myth. The publisher contacted me this week to ask if I would like a copy and I readily accepted.
I haven’t yet received or read it and therefore reserve judgment. But I’m a hard sell. I don’t believe that the...
4 tags
Thatcher was world-class on foreign policy
Oliver Kamm
“As an unapologetic supporter of our transatlantic alliance, she knew that with strength and resolve we could win the Cold War and extend freedom’s promise.”
Those words, from President Obama’s statement on the death of Margaret Thatcher, are gracious and accurate. They encapsulate her singular political achievement, which ought to transcend debate on her domestic policies.
I...
March 2013
3 posts
11 tags
Noam Chomsky's admirers should consider these...
Oliver Kamm
Noam Chomsky the theoretical linguist, visited the UK last week to lecture on politics. Some of the admiring commentary has crossed the line to credulousness (see, for example, Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian).
It’s an open question how far Chomsky’s writings on politics and linguistics are linked. The principal commonality seems to be that, in both fields, Chomsky makes grand...
4 tags
Why Ed Miliband is wrong on immigration
Oliver Kamm
Though I believed Gordon Brown was unsuited to high office, I voted Labour at the 2010 election. I usually do, depending on the merits of the candidate (there are various Labour candidates I wouldn’t vote for and some, such as Ken Livingstone, whom I’ve voted to defeat). Among the limited number of positive reasons for my preference is that, in government, Labour has presided over...
3 tags
What Venezuela should have learnt from Brazil
Oliver Kamm
A Times leading article this week contrasted the experience of Venezuela under the late Hugo Chávez with that of Brazil in the past decade. It’s an instructive comparison, in my opinion, because it considers alternative models of Latin American development. It’s clear which is the more effective.
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected President of Brazil in 2002, many observers...
February 2013
2 posts
1 tag
Magazine Rack
Mike Dash in The Smithsonian on a Russian family of six who escaped to Siberia in 1936, and only re-established contact with the society in 1978http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact-Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html In GQ, Wells Towers takes his dad to Burning...
4 tags
Srebrenica denial just will not die
Oliver Kamm
The Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 was the worst single atrocity in Europe since 1945. Bosnian Serb forces murdered around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in a crime judged by the International Court of Justice at The Hague to be an act of genocide.
That was a sound judgment. The intention in killing every male was to ensure that the Muslim captives could not remain a...
January 2013
7 posts
4 tags
Apple's not-so-beautiful problem
Hugo Rifkind
So, what is Apple going to do next? Financial results released by the company last night showed revenues down to $54.5 billion in the final quarter of 2012. It’s a funny sort of “down”, this, because revenues in the same quarter of 2011 were, I think, a mere $28.3 billion, which eagle-eyed business analysts among you might notice makes them what, technically, we might usually call...
3 tags
Ditch the compassion, Republicans
Oliver Kamm
With the inauguration of President Obama for a second term, Republicans seek an idea that can win back voters. Conservatism in other advanced industrial economies is in a similar quandary. One answer is provided by Gertrude Himmelfarb, the historian, in The Weekly Standard. She argues that conservatives need “to recapture compassion from the liberals, de-sentimentalizing while...
8 tags
Goldmines dig up trouble for for Mongolia
Giles Whittell
Chilly? Spare a thought for the people of Mongolia. This is their minus 30 time of year. Since the age of the great Khans, the nomads of the Gobi Desert have coped heroically with the most extreme weather on earth. This year is no exception, but there are complications. Their frozen landscape is host to an over-heated economy, an undernourished democracy and a general sense that...
5 tags
Can 1,000 Catholic priests be wrong?
Oliver Kamm
The question answers itself, but here’s the context.
More than 1,000 priests have signed a letter to the Telegraph protesting against same-sex marriage. They maintain that the Government’s forthcoming Equal Marriage Bill heralds a return to religious persecution. The Bishop of Portsmouth maintains that “it is quite Orwellian to try to redefine marriage”, and terms the proposed...
3 tags
Is there anyone in charge?
Philip Collins
After the significant nothing of the mid-term coalition review, two points have survived two days of coverage. The first is that Nick Clegg committed his party again to coalition. For anyone who doubted that this coalition will last until the next general election, this week’s press conference surely dealt with the doubt. But another aspect of the choreography of the...
4 tags
A prominent pacifist
Oliver Kamm
We publish today a letter from Canon Paul Oestreicher criticising a leading article on the Falklands War. Oestreicher insists that, in the political controversy about the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s, the clerics who criticised Margaret Thatcher were motivated not by pacifism but by a wish for an “expression of compassion for the victims on both sides”.
In fact, we didn’t...
4 tags
An unreliable source in Syria
Oliver Kamm
The Daily Mail disturbingly reported this week: “Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists.”
Its source for this claim was Sister Agnès-Mariam de la Croix, a Carmelite nun in Syria. She maintains that Islamist militants are inflicting atrocities of scarcely conceivable...
December 2012
2 posts
7 tags
Crippling austerity and a euro break-up won't help...
Oliver Kamm
Political speculation and newspaper commentary this year have concerned the possibility and consequences of a Greek exit from the euro. I have long been sceptical that this would happen, owing to its immense costs. But I felt that the austerity programme required of Greece was so unyielding that it was counterproductive. While living standards have been collapsing, the debt burden...
7 tags
Angry Oborne's brush with pseudo-Cicero
Oliver Kamm
Peter Oborne, the Telegraph’s chief political commentator, is angry. He often is. The latest spark for his anger is The Times, which he thinks is not a properly run newspaper. Oborne’s criticism should be judged on its merits; so should Oborne’s qualities as a commentator.
I’ve never met Oborne but I did an ill-tempered radio debate with him once, on the tenth anniversary of the...
November 2012
16 posts
2 tags
Magazine Rack | selected longer reads for the...
Jon Rosen visits the pygmy Mbuti people of northeastern Congo, on Roads & Kingdoms Steve Danning analyses the fall of Michael Porter’s MonitorGroup consultancy, in Forbes Julia Phillips takes part in a dog sled race in Siberia, in The Morning News David Runciman reviews Nassim Taleb’s latest book in The Guardian
Compiled by @TomasRuta
5 tags
'There's no way of prettifying it. Legislation...
Oliver Kamm
Journalists committed gross intrusions of privacy. The press must be free. These two truths are at the heart of the debate over regulation of the press.
Lord Justice Leveson has gone to great lengths to balance them and stresses that any new regulatory body would be independent. It would, however, be supported by law. The required legislation would not itself establish the new...
3 tags
Leveson: pick of the comment from the web
The report on Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press ethics was published earlier today, calling for a stronger press regulator underpinned by new legislation. Soon afterwards, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, rejected the notion of enacting legislation that might impinge upon the freedom of the press - a position that is opposed by his coalition partner, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime...
5 tags
UKIP's empty libertarianism
Oliver Kamm
Having written yesterday that UKIP’s policies are unpleasant, I note with complacence that the UKIP candidate in the Rotherham by-election has been supported today by Neil and Christine Hamilton, whom the party apparently regards as electoral assets. Mr Hamilton once complained at my describing him as a disgraced former minister, but, as he is undeniably a former minister, I’m not...
6 tags
“If the press is to serve the people, Parliament should not seek to be its...”
– The report from the Leveson Inquiry into the conduct of the press will be released on Thursday. Today, James Harding, Editor of The Times, sets out his alternative vision for press regulation; a middle ground between self-regulation and statutory regulation. Click here to read the article for free
6 tags
Why is Mark Carney the new Governor of the Bank of...
Oliver Kamm
The appointment of Mark Carney as Governor of the Bank of England is a political coup not only for George Osborne. It has also given heart to conspiracy theorists (see here for a peculiarly silly example) who believe the world is ruled from Goldman Sachs, where Carney spent 13 years. Carney’s cachet in fact reflects not the power of Goldman’s but the reputation of the Bank of Canada,...
11 tags
A pact with UKIP would destroy Tory credibility
Oliver Kamm
Commentators and the odd Tory MP are proposing an electoral pact between the Conservatives and UKIP. That idea is crazy and dangerous. An arrangement with UKIP would destroy the Tories’ credibility as a party of government.
David Cameron has gone to some lengths to purge his party of elements once aptly described by Theresa May as the nasty party. An alliance with UKIP would resurrect...
2 tags
Magazine Rack | selected longer reads for the...
Joshua Foer learns a language in 22 hours in The Guardian Stephen Faris on cyberwar in Syria in Businessweek Carl Hoffman profiles Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX in The Smithsonian James Crabtree on the social responsibility of India’s new billionaire class in The Financial Times Magazine
Compiled by @TomasRuta
7 tags
With Roberto Di Matteo gone, who should be...
Joe Joseph
General David Petraeus: If there’s one place outside a battlefield where the skills of a military tactician come in useful, it’s on a football pitch: sneaking down the wing when the opposition’s attention is diverted elsewhere; throwing all your resources into the Big Surge around the 85-minute mark – all to ensure that you leave with a victory under your belt. But best of all, this is...
8 tags
Remember the Israelis living under a barrage of...
An Israeli policeman holds the remains of a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip towards Sderot, southern Israel, on November 11
Oliver Kamm
The Israeli town of Sderot, near the Gaza border, has a squat, reinforced police station. If you walk into the backyard, you see rows of spent rockets. Thousands of missiles have been launched at Sderot in the past decade, including 800 this year till last...
5 tags
The 10 golden rules of Twitter
David Aaronovitch
No week seems to pass without some tweeter or other having their handle felt by officers of the law. So if you don’t want to be one of them but you do want to communicate in 140 characters, here are my 10 Golden Rules:
Twitter IS publishing. Putting it out there for others to read is publishing. So don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t be happy to see on the newsagent’s shelf with...
2 tags
Magazine Rack | selected longer reads for the...
William Langewiesche in Vanity Fair on what it’s like to serve in the French Foreign Legion Misha Glenny on attempts at community policing in Rio’s favelas in The Financial Times Magazine In Boston Magazine, Patrick Doyle on becoming a priest in Boston amid the sex abuse scandal Cynthia Gorney reports from post-Fidel Cuba in National Geographic
Compiled by @TomasRuta
7 tags
The small mind of Sir Cyril Smith, paedophile
Oliver Kamm
We report today allegations that Sir Cyril Smith, among the most recognisable politicians of the past half century, abused young boys in the 1960s and 1970s. Smith won Rochdale for the Liberals in a by-election in 1972 and held it for 20 years. The charges against him were made in the Commons yesterday by Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale.
Danczuk deserves credit for attacking the...
3 tags
The new Archbishop should have no special say
Oliver Kamm
The Times’s top leader today welcomes the appointment of Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, to succeed Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. From what I hear of Welby, he is a thoughtful man who is likely to be an effective Church leader. Where I differ from our argument is the notion that Welby’s ecclesiastical leadership entitles him to any special say in public affairs.
The...
3 tags
So marijuana's going to be legalised in America?
Hugo Rifkind
Less noticed among the Obamarama of last night were a couple of fairly major American social developments. First, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota all voted, in varying forms, for same-sex marriage. And second, both Colorado and Washington approved measures to begin the legalisation of marijuana for recreational use.
The former is obviously a big deal. The latter may be a bigger deal...
3 tags
Why the Republicans failed to beat Obama
Daniel Finkelstein
So what happened?
Barack Obama could have been defeated, but he wasn’t. When the campaign began, the President had dreadful approval numbers and the economy looked bad. In these circumstances an incumbent should lose. But the President was lucky, because the Republicans didn’t do what they had to do to win.
What they had to do was to recognise that the forces...
October 2012
32 posts
6 tags
Media Lens: a warning
Oliver Kamm
This is a note for the record on a minor issue, for other journalists, but I hope it’s of use. Our profession is targeted by a small sub-Chomskyite organisation called Media Lens, whose supporters write periodically to accuse us of bias. As, contrary to the conventions of debate, they don’t disclose their affiliation, it’s easy to assume that they are legitimate if not especially...
8 tags
George McGovern was a good man with a flawed world...
Oliver Kamm
Our leader today about the US election refers correctly to George McGovern as a man of patriotism, courage and principle. McGovern was Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. He remains one of the most important postwar US politicians not because of his electoral record (he lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide) but because of the influence of his ideas. But these proved to be an...
2 tags
Magazine Rack | selected longer reads for the...
Sarah Maslin on cheap thrills in Queens in The New York Times Shane Bauer on solitary confinement on Mother Jones Evan Osnos on corruption in China in The New Yorker
Tom Sleigh reports from a Somali refugee camp in Nairobi in The Virginia Review Quarterly
Compiled by @TomasRuta
5 tags
Read The Times's award-winning columns...for free!
To celebrate The Times’s haul of seven gongs in yesterday’s Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, we’re giving one and all the chance to read the best from our winning columnists. But hurry, the doors are only open until 3pm on Friday, October 19…
David Aaronovitch wonCommentariat of the Year, the most highly-regarded award for a columnist:
Read his piece about Liam Stacey, the student...
7 tags
Plebgate: a storm in a Westminster teacup?
Daniel Finkelstein
Inside Westminster everyone agrees that the Andrew Mitchell issue is a nightmare for the Conservatives. Is this correct?
I do have my own views on this, but let me try instead just some cool voter analysis.
Well, it is certainly a nuisance. It is a distraction for the leadership, it depresses morale in the Commons, it undermines the whips’ office and, because the Westminster...
6 tags
“Classic was Jimmy Savile’s use of the cloak of authority and kindness. Savile’s...”
– Daniel Finkelstein on celeb power and the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal. Read more
7 tags
Memo to Obama and Romney: leave the Benghazi...
Giles Whittell
In the end it was about jabs, not jobs. Mitt Romney did a reasonable job of jabbing Barack Obama about the 23 million Americans who are unemployed and the difference between the current 7.8 per cent jobless rate and the 5.4 per cent rate that Obama once promised. But that probably won’t swing the swing voters Romney still needs to swing his way, especially in Ohio.
Unemployment is...
5 tags
Prime Minister's Questions Live
Join The Times politics team for rolling commentary on Prime Minister’s Questions from 11.50am.
<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=d47d6f3bc0” data-mce-href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=d47d6f3bc0”>Prime Minister’s Questions Live</a>
6 tags
9 tags
“Three years ago mephedrone was a legal high; sold as plant food. Possibly...”
– Remove criminality from drug-taking and treat the issue as one of public health instead: it’s the only way, says Hugo Rifkind. Read more
7 tags
The truth about Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian...
Oliver Kamm
Radovan Karadzic, the well-known quack doctor, began his defence today at The Hague. He is on trial, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It is already clear that he has particular hostility to Western journalists who exposed his crimes. Penny Marshall of ITN was among them, and she writes here that...
10 tags
The despotic demands of the anti-abortionists
Oliver Kamm
Mehdi Hasan, political director of the Huffington Post, caused a modest online controversy last week with an article opposing abortion. He said:
I consider abortion to be wrong because of, not in spite of, my progressive principles. That I am pro-life does not make me any less of a lefty.
In a riposte to his critics, he added:
“Pro-life” lefties do exist.
Well, yes;...
