King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

There has been fevered discussion about who was responsible for the killing of an Iranian nuclear engineer this week; click here for a news report, or click here, or click here or here.

I say discussion, but actually everything I have read has assumed that Israel was involved; the only point of discussion is whether America was involved too. That’s lazy journalism; I cannot work out why no-one has mentioned another player in the region – Saudi Arabia.

There are at least three reasons why they should have joined Israel and America in the list of possibles:

Wikileaks

It has been revealed by Wikileaks that Saudi Arabia has repeatedly asked the Americans to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. King Abdullah is reported to have ‘frequently exhorted‘ the United States to attack Iran and ‘to cut the head off the snake‘. Click here for a news report on that.

Bristol Council, in the South West of Britain, seems to have money trouble. It’s been revealed by the BBC that it is planning to raise £50 million in debt to finance a variety of projects – click here for  the BBC website report.

That’s £50 million for the ratepayers of tomorrow, and for years to come, to pay for.

It’s not clear from the BBC report how sensible or necessary the spending is, how it fits in with the Council’s debt reduction plans, how long future generations will be paying it of for or on exactly what terms, exactly what benefit it is expected to bring, how costed (i.e. audited) the proposals are, who selected the schemes, whether it’s a vote-winning plan or a necessity, and whether the debt has been agreed in principle before the council votes on the matter in February.

What is worrying is that this comes hot on the heels of the revelation that Bristol is seeking more controversial ways to raise debt – see here for my post on that, and how much debt those creative accounting schemes are expected to realise.

Someone needs to take a cold hard forensic look at Bristols accounts. And if Bristol could do with a strong spotlight shining on its accounts, how many other authorities in the UK need that too?

North Korea has, in Kim Jong-il, a second departed leader to add to its pantheon; I was in North Korea a few weeks ago and, while it’s difficult to pick out a single strand from the fabric of that experience,  nothing can prepare you for the extent to which Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il-sung, dominate the lives of the people.

Constantly brought up in conversation, constantly with them through loudspeakers extolling their virtues in every building and every street, constantly watching through photographs on the wall or statues, integrated into their thoughts through education and work teams.

It is difficult to separate this supposedly socialist cult of personality from religious imagery and mythology. Facts are changed to create legends, supernatural powers attributed, and miracles attested – click here.

According to Barbara Demick – click here – every school has a room devoted to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Certainly every place we were taken to had such a room. It was the first place, and sometimes the only place you were taken to; to hear paeans to the exploits, wisdom and self-sacrifice of the Great Leader (Kim Il-sung)  and Dear Leader (Kim Jong-il), and you must listen, and listen respectfully.

But even that cannot prepare you for the awesome drama, significance and sacredness of the Kumusan Memorial Palace where the Eternal Leader has now been joined by the Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love (click here for a full list of Kim Jong-il’s titles).

Rather than just vanity, it seems likely that Kim Il-sung (the Eternal President) recognised that people had a need for religious elements in their lives and that he could use that need. And use it his family has.

All the pictures below are selected to illustrate the cult of personality, they are split into galleries. If you click on an image it will open in an image viewer in a larger size.

Mansudae Art Studio

If you’re going to be an artist in the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) what better than to depict the sources of national inspiration?

Also appearing in these images is Kim Il-sung’s first wife, Kim Jong-suk; Heroine of the Anti-Japanese Revolution

Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum

Military prowess is perhaps the key attribute of leadership in DPRK. It’s why Kim Jong-un was so rapidly made a general, and why his powerful uncle, who is a party man, was shown in uniform after the death of Kim Jong-il. The defeat of the Japanese, the defeat of America (in the Korean War), and protection from what the people are told is a continuously imminent American invasion, are constant themes.

In the paintings below Kim Il-sung is single-handedly masterminding the Korean War (1950-1953) and giving guidance on the battlefield. The jeep is his.

Three Revolutions Exhibition

An extraordinary complex of museums devoted to this and that. I had been warned, but nothing could prepare for the grinding tedium of a visit here. These photographs are in the Industrial pavillion. In every image a leader is within sight, constantly vigilant.

Kumusan Memorial Palace

The site of Kim Jong-il’s funeral. There are of course plenty of photographs, paintings and statues of the leaders here, but greater than that is the overpowering sense of Kim Il-sung. A truly awesome place. It also seems to be by far the best constructed building in the country.

Mansudae Grand Monument

We were prevented from visiting or getting close to this massive monument due to renovation. Photographs of repairs, buildings undergoing repairs, and photographs of images of the Great or Dear Leader that do not show the leader in his entirety are forbidden.

Golden Lane Bowling Centre

Even the bowling alley shows off the visit by the Eternal Leader. It may look like a shrine, but this is, of course, a communist country.

Grand People’s Study House

Everywhere a North Korean leader goes, he gives guidance. It’s not always easy to narrow down the guidance that has been given. In a celebrated dispensing of guidance Kim Il-sung objected to the uniform height of the desks here. For his next visit they had created adjustable desks.

The classrooms here are described as typical; stuffed with brand new computers. That may seem unlikely. But what is typical is the images of the leaders on every wall.

Kim Il-sung Square

A picture, a flag, a slogan. This building is in Pyongyang’s main ceremonial square, but in those respects it is a typical North Korean building.

Pyongyang Metro

The cult of personality continues underground, including musical accompaniment. Inspirational music or music the leaders were partial to. There is no other music. Newspapers are on display. The leader, and his guidance, on every page.

I have read that the scratches on the windows date from their time before the carriages arrived in Pyongyang, when they ran on the East Berlin underground

Hamhung

Tomhung Hill; an entirely man-made mound created by the people to demonstrate their love for the Leader. We were told the lengths they had gone to after the original concrete base had cracked and they had had to replace it with a 700 ton lump of granite.

One of the people I was with pointed out something obvious to all of us; the new base had a huge crack. They said it had just happened and they were dealing with it. Perhaps it was a portent?

This is the site of one of the miraculous events described in the aftermath of Kim Jong-il’s death;

“a Manchurian crane was seen flying around the statue three times before alighting on a tree. The crane stayed there for quite a long while with its head bowed and flew in the direction of Pyongyang.” Click here for that story.

Inspiration

The people need to be inspired to complete the revolution. These minivans, some of the most modern vehicles in the country, running on fuel rather than wood, broadcast speeches and martial music. They drive around towns at 6am to ensure the workforce is up and raring to go.

DMZ

This photograph comemorates a visit of Kim Jong-il to the DMZ (De-Militiarised Zone), the armistice line of the Korean War. It is in the room where the Armistice was signed.

Wonsan

A sea port – though with little sign of economic activity and we were kept well away from the industrial port area. The first image shows a square; even without a picture of one of the leaders there are slogans (often about them) and the visual symbolism of the regime.

There are then some pictures from an agricultural college (Wonsan Agricultural University) where we saw little beyond the room extolling the virtues of the leadership. The triangles mark the spots where the Dear and Eternal Leaders stood when they came to give guidance.

Then a couple of photographs from a children’s camp (Songdowon International Schoolchildren’s Camp); a statue of Kim Il-sung with some adoring children. There is also a view of it from the inside where the windows were freeing themselves from the building.

Finally the train station in Wonsan from where Kim Il-sung returned to Pyongyang. It has been entirely rebuilt elsewhere in the city, but they have located the actual train, and actual coach (including the actual seat) in which he travelled.

Side of the Road

A selection of images to illustrate the ubiquity of the leaders’ images. On every street, in every village; they are there. The picture of a little hut in the snow refers to the birthplace of Kim Jong-il, supposedly atop a sacred Korean mountain (rather than the reality of a town in the Soviet Union).

all photographs ©

Two Political leaders have died within a few hours and the contrast between them could not be greater: Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il.

While I never quite met Havel, I got close to it and to adapt Cartier Bresson’s phrase about photography; it was a decisive moment.

It was 1989, a decisive year, when an Iron Curtain which until almost the moment it fell seemed impregnable, crumbled. I was a student, a politics student, passionate about the forces shaping my world. There’s a song that sums up that time, that feeling, perfectly:

Right here, right now,

There is no other place I’d rather be,

Right here, Right now,

Watching the world wake up from history.

Jesus Jones, Right Here Right Now - Watch the video here on youtube

Except I wasn’t right anywhere interesting things were happening. I was, so it seemed to me, wasting my time at university in a prosperous and peaceful British provincial city.

I had missed Tiananmen Square, Ceausescu had been despatched and the Berlin Wall had fallen without me. What interest could there be in student politics when the world was in upheaval? And then, towards the end of the year, the people of Czechoslovakia began to rise up, and I wasn’t going to miss it.

I persuaded a classmate, went to London, got visas and we took the first flight we could to Prague. There for several days, we joined a people shaking off decades of misrule. Our youth and foreignness gained us access we did not deserve. Although our attempts to address a crowd of 500,000 people as the representatives of the students of Great Britain were firmly rebuffed…

Still, we joined the press corps and had unfettered access. I remember a woman, petrified, rushing up to me and thrusting into my hand a sheaf of statements and photographs documenting the death and brutality meted out to demonstrators by the police, before merging back into the crowds. I had to tell the world, she said; it was my duty. I didn’t even have a student newspaper to tell.

One evening at the regular press conference of the opposition group Civic Forum at a theatre in Prague, I was determined to get some good photographs. I positioned myself between the stage and the back door and after the press conference Vaclav Havel came past, fast. I put my camera to my eye and took a photograph as he moved inches from me. And as the camera clicked, he looked at me. And I saw the reality, the enormity of what this playwright was doing.

With him was a student. Outside the back door was a family car, a Volkswagen Golf. No minders, no protection, no entourage. And the look he had in his eye said to me that harm was stalking him around every corner, behind every click. It was a question of when a Communist Party leadership that faced losing everything would strike, not if.

It was a sobering moment.

It was a moment that reminds me of the speech Martin Luther King gave the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, in 1968;

We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.

And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land.

I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Martin Luther King jr. , April 3, 1968. Click here to see a video clip from the speech

Havel seemed to me, in that moment of eye contact, to be someone certain that harm would befall him and despite that, he was doing what he felt he had to do. As it turned out he emerged from the Velvet Revolution unscathed to lead Czechoslovakia, then the Czech Republic.

Henri Cartier Bresson described photography as capturing the “decisive moment”. I caught it, but not as a photograph; I had left the lens cap on the camera, I had seen something important to me, but on paper all I had was a black frame.

Some of the images I did capture on film (with a borrowed camera I didn’t know how to use which I had on the wrong settings…)

At a Civic Forum press conference; Havel is the second smudge from the right, the current President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, is the third smudge from the left…

The front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people

Out of focus and overexposed…Vaclav Havel gives a speech

The staff of the Ambassador Hotel in Wenceslas Square watch from an upper floor window as demonstrators pack the square below

all photographs ©

It takes a throwaway remark by a part-time local politician in one of Britain’s smaller cities to illustrate that while the eurozone crumbles and the Western world’s economy  faces deep recession, no lessons have been learned.

They are still at it.

The councillor responsible for transport in Bristol was talking about a new scheme to charge visitors to park their cars where it currently is free. This is what he had to say to the local BBC:

“He hoped the move would raise some £200,000 per year – allowing £3m in capital to be raised.”

BBC News 26 November 2011 – click here for the report; Ashton Court Parking

So how does £200,000 turn into £3 million? I’ve already discussed how this works here and then here, and here it is in operation.

Of course I don’t know how exactly the plan would work but it’ll be something on these lines:

The car park at Ashton Court has seen in excess of 200,000 cars per year parking there for the past several years. If the council imposes a £1 parking charge and a similar number  keep parking there, it would raise £200,000 per year. £200,000 per year, every year coming into council coffers. Pretty good; bit of a windfall. But £3 million now is a lot more tempting and this is how you get that.

Step 1

Set up a company, this is called a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) but don’t get tangled up in the terminology. It’s a company, and companies needs assets so you give the company an asset. It’s not a physical asset, but more of an idea, it’s a right to something; it’s worth something so it’s an asset.

Step 2

You give the company the right to the net profit from parking revenues for, let’s say, 10 years.

Step 3

You create bonds to be issued by the company. This is the way you’ll get your £3 million. The bonds are investments that will pay out a percentage of their face value every year for a defined period until the bonds are redeemed; i.e. the bondholders lend you money for a certain number of years, you pay them interest on the money they are lending you until the fixed term comes to an end when you must repay them the original loan. These will be traded on the open financial market.

To maximise the revenue, the bonds are going to be broken up into different classes; A, B, C, D.

The A class of bonds will be the safest and D the riskiest. By safest I mean most likely to be paid out the interest and, at the end of the term, repaid the capital, and by riskiest I mean least likely to have interest and capital repaid.

Step 4

To decide exactly how safe or risky these are you have to go to a Rating Agency. They will look at the asset and the proposed terms of the bond and decide exactly how safe or risky the investment is. In straightforward terms; how much the parking is likely to generate, how likely that money is to be able to cover the interest and repayment, and where the bondholder would sit in the pecking order when it comes to a payout. The investment is in the parking charges only, none of the council’s other assets (or liabilities) are taken into account.

Ratings agencies love deals like this because they are so simple. There’s only one thing for them to look at; how many cars are likely to pay a fee over a period of time? If they have to give ratings to large companies or countries there is a bewildering, virtually limitless, list of things that might affect the credit-worthiness. Ratings agencies also like the fees. So do the bankers, lawyers, consultants, underwriters.

Step 5

Your bankers place the bonds with institutional investors and you get your £3 million.

Why doesn’t the council just borrow?

If the council were simply to borrow the money they would have to pay a higher rate of interest because they are borrowing from an institution that is taking all the risk and expects a commercial return. The council is already likely to issue general bonds, but they are based on the council’s credit-worthiness as a whole which is a much more complicated business and would achieve a lower return.

There are almost certain to be limits imposed by central government on the amount a council can borrow. This transaction would not be categorised as borrowing, even though it is borrowing.

Also, owing lots of money doesn’t look good. This deal doesn’t appear in the paperwork as a debt so the council, and specifically the party in power when the deal is transacted don’t look as bad as they otherwise would.

What’s the problem?

This idea is being proposed purely as way for the council to borrow money. That’s what Councillor Hopkins admitted to the BBC. It’s a pretty inefficient way to borrow money; setting up the infrastructure for parking, putting hundreds of thousands of people to inconvenience and expense and making them pay for something which they currently expect to use as of right.

Have a look at this map – This is a link to a map of the area (the parking is represented by the big ‘P’s). There are three disparate car parks; how much is it going to cost to rig them up for pay and display, how much to operate the system every year, to hire and equip the people to run it?

The contracts to install and maintain are likely to be outsourced, committing the city to an ongoing expense. And also a time burden. The proposals, reports, contracts will take an enormous amount of the time of councillors and council employees and consultants. Doesn’t it take the council away from its core activities? Does the council exist to regulate and improve the lives of local citizens, or is it a business?

This is a scheme that seeks to address a problem of now with the money of tomorrow. Filling a funding gap right now seems the most urgent thing to the councillor of today, but they are spending money today with the revenues from years ahead, and doing so in a complicated, expensive and inefficient transaction that restricts a council service, and contributes to the commodification of our daily lives.

If you would like to write to Denry about this post, you can send a message here;

Rowan Laxton apparently has a new role: Website mareeg.com is reporting that he has been appointed Senior Political Officer to UNPOS - see here. It’s the UN office for Somalia.

A search of the UNPOS site and press releases reveals nothing, and a search of the UN site reveals nothing. The news does explain why he was meeting Somalis in Starbucks recently - click here – although unfortunately the site is in Somali.

UNPOS’s press officer is Susannah Price, who was the BBC’s Islamabad Correspondent at around the same time Laxton was Head of Chancery for the UK High Commission there. She was recruited to the UN after working as the BBC’s UN Correspondent.

So…is he working for the UN permanently or has he been seconded from the Foreign Office? What’s he been doing for the past couple of years? When did he take up the UNPOS role? More questions about the senior diplomat who works in secret.

© Getty

Someone I’ll call Suzanne was on my mind recently, while society watched, horrified, as the certainty of order disappeared.

Throughout Britain, smiling as they smashed in shops to take what they felt like or simply burn the place down, I saw lots of Suzannes.

I first met Suzanne because she’d been charged with theft. The childrens’ home she lived in, or rather was based in, had called the police after she had demanded a pound for an ice-cream and, when they had refused because of some rule infraction, she had gone and taken the pound anyway. They called the police because she took a pound. And the police came. And they arrested her. And the CPS charged her. And she was sent to court. Because she stole a pound for an ice-cream.

She was fifteen and faced a slew of charges relating to similar petty offences; stealing things, breaking things, hitting and spitting at the police arresting her, that sort of thing. School was a distant memory, she’d disappear for days at a time. Older men had put her on the game. Her mother, who had been unable to cope with her, came to every hearing.

Suzanne taught me how profoundly society was failing her generation. Agencies and systems processed her with none really taking any responsibility. Social services became an adjunct to school, police to both and the courts to society. It wasn’t a lack of money; it was a lack of will and fixed purpose. The welfare of this girl, and, through that the welfare of society. That was the fixed purpose we should have all focused on, but targets, rights, careers and getting through the day got in the way of that.

She didn’t care when the police were called when she had a tantrum or stole a pound. It got her attention; isn’t that what tantrums are for? She didn’t care about going to court, where she met up with friends and was the centre of attention, she didn’t care about custody. She didn’t care about anything much.

If she’d thought about it she’d probably have taken delight in the thousands and thousands of pounds society spent on her misbehaviour, on getting her assessed, accommodated, arrested and tried. Agencies hobbled by targets and procedures, a confrontational legal system where rights and requirements trumped the best interests of a girl. A girl processed by the systems that society provides rather than concentrating on what she needed. And the hundreds of thousands like her.

A system that wasn’t working for her, for all the individuals whose jobs brought them into contact with her, or society in general.

There’s an anguished debate in the UK, and much puzzled scrutiny from abroad, about the nature of the recent civil disturbances in the UK; it’s usually referred to as ‘rioting‘, but they weren’t really riots.

People can’t see past political motivation for such disorder; the Syrian Ambassador to the UN was even crowing that they mirrored what was happening in Syria – see here. Well, he would, woudn’t he…

It’s very simple. They were Flash Mobs with looting and/or destruction;  a Flash Yob.

Italy has approved a tough austerity plan; the Euro is saved, the ECB will shore up Italian Bonds and Berlusconi can joyfully bunga bunga the rest of the summer away.

Even if parliament approves the plan (click here for details), brought in by emergency decree, the country does not have the political will to follow it. There is absolutely no chance that the austerity package introduced on Friday will be implemented.

The disorder in Britain recently (see here) was a reminder that there may be forces under the surface, lying dormant, but with the potential to emerge. The murder of economist Marco Biagi was the last time that happened in Italy – see here for details. Murdered by the Red Brigades in 2002 for daring to study the possibility of minor labour reform. The reforms were not implemented. There is no realistic possibility that the Italian political system has either the capacity or will to accept the consequences of any real austerity cuts.

Sorry, but if the EU is looking to Italy to save the Euro by introducing these austerity measures, they’re backing the wrong horse.

In 1987 The Italians celebrated ‘Il Sorpasso’ – see here; overtaking the UK economy and becoming the 6th largest economy in the world. They can now prepare themselves for a new Sorpasso for they will soon overtake the UK in terms of levels of civil unrest and social disorder. Bon Fortuna Italia, you’re going to need it. And bon fortuna Europa, and the world economy too.

Professor Roger Luckhurst

For academics to lure media interest their theories need to be catchy and controversial. Radio 3 had a discussion recently on the dangers that arise when academics appear on the media.

Roger Luckhurst is a good example of what can happen to scholarship when the media calls. He’s Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. See here for biography. The media calls him, a lot, and he has a theory that’s leakier than a wedding marquee on an August Bank Holiday.

He wrote an article in the Times Higher Education recently – see here –  justifying public funding for his research into the mummy’s curse

I am writing a cultural history of the ‘mummy curse’, its origins, spread and meanings in the late Victorian and Edwardian period.

Professor Luckhurst’s justification is simple. His work is not just about an interesting historical oddity: It’s ‘relevant’.

If you pay close attention to the narratives of popular culture – for instance, in order to unravel the origins of spooky superstitions such as the mummy’s curse – you might learn a lot about our social attitudes, the fantasies that structure our political life, and our diplomatic and military engagements with the wider world.

Unfortunately Prof. Luckhurst’s attempt to find relevance entails the kind of fast footwork that leaves cartoon characters hurtling past the edge of the canyon to momentarily hover before gravity asserts itself.

In Professor Luckhurst’s case it is history, logic and reality that reassert themselves over a reasoning that starts out interesting and ends up fanciful and dangerous. What Luckhurst manages to do, quite spectacularly, is to entirely undermine the logic of his own argument.

And here is that logical progression hurtling at full pelt towards the canyon’s rim:

This is not just a historical point. Rather, it helps us to read the hesitancy apparent in the West’s responses to the ‘Arab Spring’. You could hear the ambivalence about Egypt in the speeches of Barack Obama and William Hague earlier this year. Could the Egyptians be trusted with self-determination? As a symptom of doubt about their self-command, it was reported that mummies were being stolen from Cairo Museum. One can pull at the thread of why that story ran in our press and trace it back to late-Victorian ambivalence about a self-determining Arab Middle East. It is represented in the unruly mummy of popular culture, a superstition that has always done a lot of cultural work. You can see an undead version of this Victorian fantasy still shuffling through our foreign policy.

But it needs one more point, made in a BBC Radio 4 interview, to propel this argument past the point of no return:

Well it’s a very controversial area obviously but I think there’s always a sense in which there is an anxiety about Arab self-determination where there isn’t so much anxiety about Israeli self-determination

Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4, 8/8/11 – see below for clip

Whoa Professor Luckhurst. Look down; your argument is suspended only by empty rhetoric and incoherent fancy. An interesting point and idea pushed way too far.

Let’s start with the Cairo Museum point. He’s right that a common argument against the return of antiquities is that the West is better able to preserve them. But just because there is the possibility of dated, prejudiced, colonial attitudes underpinning that attitude does it automatically undermine the point?  Inconveniently for Luckhurst the Cairo Museum, which borders Tahir Square, was looted, including mummies.

Have a look here, or here, or here, or here or here.

There may be orientalist false assumptions and prejudice in comments about Egypt but there are also facts, and they ought to be at least considered before being dismissed because they don’t fit the assumptions of theories. There might be some people who are not simply out to denigrate the inhabitants of former colonial territories, but are genuinely interested in preserving artifacts that are treasured by all humanity.

And the museum’s director Dr Zahi Hawass who is invariably described as a ‘colourful character’ is under suspicion for using his role to enrich himself, and for closeness to the Mubarak family.

See here, here, and here.

It might also be the case that Western leaders had  reasons other than the irrational for concerns about what would happen in a post-Mubarak Egypt. Real concerns about an army takeover and Salafist manoeuvring. See here for context.

And consider the findings, of the Pew Research Center, that Egyptian society has some pretty hardline attitudes on stoning, delimbing and executing apostates;

% of Muslim Egyptians in favour of;

Stoning people who commit adultery:      82

Whippings/cutting off hands for theft and robbery:      77

Death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion:      84

Click here for the source

additionally, 85% of people feel that Islam’s role in politics is positive and 2% negative. Click here for the source.

see here for full research

But Prof Luckhurst is not talking about how the political system functions; his point is a wider one. It is about ‘self-determination’. It is not entirely clear what he means by this; whether he is referring to what type of government a country has or whether it should be an independent country at all. On a natural reading of the phrase it must include the latter. Which would be ludicrous. No-one is suggesting that Egypt does not have the right to be an independent country.

But Prof. Luckhurst’s point is wider still; this persistent Victorian fear extends to and determines policy towards all Arab countries; 21 states with 280 million people covering 5,000,000 square miles (Click here for source).

Is he seriously suggesting there is a western intellectual and political conspiracy against them stemming from Victorian fantasies? Yes, that is exactly what he is suggesting;

Professor Luckurst has a PhD in literature and while his early research seemed to concentrate on science fiction,  he must surely be familiar with L.P. Hartley’s phrase ‘The past is another country: they do things differently there’. To talk in such terms as he does is as ludicrous as talking about a Georgian British ambivalence about a self-governing North America. Or Roman ambivalence about a self-governing Britain.

There was of course an ambivalence in Victorian times about a self-governing Middle East, sorry, self-governing Arab Middle East much as there was an ambivalence about a self-governing Ireland and pretty much everywhere that showed pink on the globe.

And now the stony cherry on top of his inedible cake:

I think there’s always a sense in which there is an anxiety about Arab self-determination where there isn’t so much anxiety about Israeli self-determination.

Prof Luckhurst seems to think that the default academic comparison for the Arab world is Israel. It is not clear why that should be. In terms of academic study it’s difficult to see clearly the basis on which you ought to compare the Arab world with a country of c. 8 million people and 8,000 square miles. The Arab world has more than 600 times the space and 35 times the people.

And politically there is little point in comparing them because, of course, Israel is a liberal democracy. And the Arab world isn’t. Let me clarify; not a single one of the Arab countries qualifies as having political liberty according to Freedom House, a New York based monitor of human rights and democracy see here and here. Not a single Arab country qualifies as a democracy according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index – see here. Israel comfortably makes it onto both lists.

Prof Luckhurst also fails to consider, or perhaps realise, that the majority of the Jewish population of Israel comes from the 800,000 – 1,000,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries, or their descendents. Add in the 20% non-Jewish Arab citizens of Israel and Israel is an overwhelmingly Arab country. Many of those Arabs just happen to be Jewish. See here and also here.

In terms of his own thesis, and that is the basis he is discussing the matter, if he wants to look at Israel while he’s considering the Middle East, he would be better served by considering Victorian British superstitions, fantasies, and prejudices held about Jews, and how they affect current policy. There was certainly no lack of those views in Victorian Britain.

Or if he wants to frame his argument in terms of colonial prejudice affecting post-colonial regions it would make more sense to look at non-Arab Iran as a point of comparison for Egypt, or the Indian subcontinent. The one he chose does not make sense.

Prof. Luckhurst has a fantasy of his own in his Times Higher Education article; that of cornering the British Universities Minister in a stuck lift and browbeating him on the relevance of his research and why it is imperative it continues to be funded. I hope that conversation does take place and that once the lift starts moving again the Minister asks him for his, for our, money back.

Click below to hear Professor Luckhurst on BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed from 8/8/11