Two weeks ago
Sean Penn should pack up his lavish , pull out of Hollywood and relocate to Buenos Aires. He’s already become Argentine president Cristina Kirchner’s de facto chief propagandist on the Falkands matter, so he may as well make it official. As far as the Argentines are concerned, Penn is no doubt the modern day equivalent of a medieval court jester, dancing his little jig for the amusement of the Kirchner administration.
But Penn is also successfully playing the role of the modern-day "useful idiot" so beloved of Latin American regimes,oakley, from Cuba to Venezuela to Nicaragua – the clueless Westerner acting as the international mouthpiece of some very unpleasant authoritarian rulers. Penn has been close to Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez for some time, and has now set his sights on ingratiating himself with Cristina Kirchner, who, like her compatriot in Caracas, has embarked on and media independence. Penn himself has even called for American journalists for calling his hero Chavez a dictator.
Two weeks ago, Oscar-winner Penn over the Falklands, and urged UN-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the islands in that was laughable, even by Hollywood standards. Now he’s taken to the pages of The Guardian accusing Britain of (whatever that means) of Argentina with the deployment of Prince William to the Falklands. He also attacks the British press as a “transparently corrupt and non-diligent propaganda machine”. In , which I imagine even The Huffington Post would baulk at running, Penn writes:
With the deployment of the prince, whose task is helicopter search and rescue missions from an island colony with a population of about 3,000, there is the automatic deployment of warships. It is difficult to imagine that there is no correlation between the likely discovery of offshore oil reserves and the message of pre-emptive intimidation being sent by the UK to Argentina.
… The "Falklanders'" slogan is "Desire the right". Indeed this is a human desire and not the exclusive domain of Falkland Islanders. And it is the same desire for which so many Chileans and Argentinians suffered and ultimately triumphed. The recognition that the diplomatic process of the 1970s gives to some of the legitimacy of Argentinian claims should not be dispelled or denied by the great United Kingdom through the exploitation of a more recent past, or for the greed of superpowers desperate to control the natural resources of the world. God save the Queen.
One can only guess what Penn’s next move will be � offering himself as a human shield for an Argentine "retake the Falklands" flotilla, chaining himself to a British nuclear submarine, or perhaps forming a pro-Kirchner LA coalition of the willing with Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins and Oliver Stone. Whatever he does end up doing, Sean Penn’s madcap crusade over the Falklands will only reinforce the image of a Hollywood has-been who?is being used as a marionette.
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while Southern Cyprus enjoyed lavish Euro-subsidies
Jack Straw's analysis of the Cyprus problem (invisible behind the Times paywall) ?is spot on. The two sides had been inching towards a "land-for-peace" deal, whereby Turkish Cypriots would surrender a chunk of territory in return for recognition as equal partners in a bizonal and bicommunal federation. Not that these things are ever simple: there were unresolved disputes about the rights of refugees, compensation, relations with Turkey and the balance of power between the national and the communal authortities. Still, both sides had an incentive to settle: Greek Cypriots wanted to return to their homes, Turkish Cypriots to end their international isolation.
Then, just as it seemed that a deal was within reach, in blundered the EU. In defiance of common sense, equity and, for that matter, the 1960 accords which form the basis of the Cyprus constitution (and which prohibit “political or economic union with any state whatever” unless such a union is agreed by the three guarantor powers: Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom), Brussels decided to allow the Greek Cypriot administration to join the EU on behalf of the whole island.
Had the EU made membership contingent on an internal settlement, such a settlement might well have been reached. Instead, Euro-negotiators stupidly accepted a unilateral Greek Cypriot application,Mulberry handbags, and deferred the question of reunification. This, of course, removed from Greek Cypriots any pressure to reach a deal. They had got what they wanted: while they would be recognised as the legitimate government of the entire territory, their Turkish Cypriot neighbours would continue to be subject to international embargo.
Unsurprisingly, then, when the deal was eventually put to the two populations, Turkish Cypriots – including those in the areas that were to be ceded – voted to accept it, while Greek Cypriots rejected it. EU negotiators complained that they had been betrayed by Greek Cypriot leaders, but no sanctions followed. On the contrary, Northern Cyprus continued to be blockaded, despite having done what was asked of it, while Southern Cyprus enjoyed lavish Euro-subsidies, despite having voted “No”.
Jack Straw is, as I say, correct about all this. So why did he do nothing about it at the time? All the errors took place on his watch. As the British Foreign Secretary, representing one of the guarantor powers, he wasn't simply one among 15 EU foreign ministers: it was his particular responsibility to ensure fair treatment for both communities and compliance with the 1960 constitution.
I suspect that, as with most bad decisions, it was taken by officials and then presented as a fait accompli to the minister. Sir Humphrey is more interested in strengthening the EU than in embroiling Britain in a row about a small Levantine island. This is why the movement is campaigning for parliamentary control of foreign policy. It's why Douglas Carswell and I want to scrap the treaty-making powers that the executive enjoys under Crown Prerogative, to make foreign treaties subject to annual re-ratification by Parliament, and to allow the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to approve ambassadorial appointments ().
I know Jack Straw a bit: he's a decent and honest man who is in politics for all the right reasons. Yet it was striking to see how quickly the FCO got its claws into him. Having begun his career at Barbara Castle's side, and organised?the "No" campaign in 1975, he soon became one of the most vocal Euro-integrationists in the Blair government. Now that he's out again, of course, he may return to his democratic roots. Let's hope so.
I'm afraid it all goes to prove : no party is ever Euro-sceptic while in office.
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to incentivise saving and boost competition.
The past four years have seen governments throughout the West turn to a ghoulish corporatism, in which selected private companies are bailed out with public money. Understandably, people from across the political spectrum have reacted angrily. The Tea Partiers and the Occupiers are both protesting against the same thing, viz the rescue of large banks by taxpayers.
But whereas the Occupiers, in a slightly inchoate way, believe they are complaining about capitalism, free marketeers point out that, in a capitalist system, bad banks would have been allowed to collapse, their assets sold to more efficient competitors. Bondholders, shareholders and some depositors would have lost money, but taxpayers wouldn't have contributed a penny.
When we make that argument in full – as I did in a direct exchange with some Occupy LSX types recently () – the typical response is 'Yeah, well that might be your theoretical capitalism, but we're dealing with the one that actually exists'.
This is a reasonable objection. We capitalists mustn't become like those student Trotskyists who were forever insisting that the USSR wasn't really communist, and that proper socialism had never been tried.
What, then, is genuine capitalism? Where can you find it? What changes do we need to make to the present system to get there? I was planning to write a lengthy blog about it, but then I discovered that Jesse Norman, the cerebral MP for Hereford, had got there first. His paper, , is worth reading in full. Having worked in the City before becoming a philosophy don, he?understands in practice as well as in theory where the system has gone wrong. And he proposes concrete steps to put it right, to make shareholders?think of themselves as owners rather than investors, to incentivise saving and boost competition.
Above all, Jesse grasps that freedom is more than just an absence of rules: that it also implies responsibility and?(in the absence of external restraints) self-control.?Herein lies,Mulberry handbags?.??Jesse's paper is consciously conservative, yet underlines once more that, in practical terms, the differences between conservatives and libertarians can be .
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