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Over at the Daily Ablution, Scott Burgess informs us about ODD, the latest affliction to strike US teenagers. Here in Britain we’re also doing our bit towards clearing away those tiresome moral problems by redefining them as behavioural difficulties. Robert Whelan in the Times writes about the special needs scam:

Special-Needs education is booming. Over the past decade more and more children have been deemed to have these needs. Huge sums of money — £7 billion a year, according to one study — are spent on them. And it is, for the most part, a colossal racket.

Some children have what are called statemented special needs. That is to say, there has been a diagnosis of a definable condition, such as autism, dyslexia or physical disability. These children represent a tiny minority of the special-needs population, most of whom are “unstatemented”. The majority are deemed to have special needs because the school says so. And, no surprise, special funding follows these special needs. Delegates at the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) conference this week expressed dismay at the fallout from this explosion in the number of special little people in the classroom. […]

The rise in special needs also coincided with the introduction of league tables. Special needs thus enabled schools to squeeze more money out of the LEAs, while at the same time excusing their abysmal performance in these tables. Surely, not much can be expected by way of academic achievement from schools that are so caring that they take in large numbers of needy children?

There is also a familiar linguistic problem here. Bad behaviour has been redefined as an affliction from which children suffer, rather than naughtiness for which they are to blame. “Behavioural problems” is an unhelpful euphemism. Most teachers, whatever their ideological persuasion, know that children must observe certain minimum standards of behaviour in the classroom or life soon becomes hell for everyone. For this reason many schools have contracts that parents must sign, pledging themselves to uphold these standards. Friends of mine recently told me that when they complained that their child was suffering because of the bad behaviour of a handful of unruly pupils, they were told that these recalcitrants were registered as having special needs, so the contract didn’t apply.

dency to draw global conclusions about policy and identity from the mannerisms of a man who sometimes doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

It has always been open season on Americans. Too many people in Britain define themselves, in part, by being “not American”. Reflexive judgments are fine among the sentimental, self-regarding members of the Left, for whom (or for some) political views are fashion statements worn proudly in the salons of London.

The belief that Messrs Bush and Blair have so staunchly defended for so long, that both political and economic “freedom” (the very word jars on the Left) should be a global given, has traditionally been anathema to those parts of the British Left that subtler reasoning did not reach. It is the birthright of this unfortunately unreconstructed group to dislike America for itself: because as a nation it believes in free markets and popular democracy.

War in Iraq has simply given those who hold this view a chance to graft new discontents on to old, and attract new audiences as they vent. Alarmingly, this agenda of anti-Americanism has begun spreading into milieux which are not viscerally anti-American. An unholy alliance of Left and Right is taking the simplistic and intellectually lazy way out of solving the world’s problems by blaming them on American policies in general, and those of Mr Bush in particular. It is not uncommon nowadays to turn on the BBC and find speakers talking with contempt about “the Americans”. (Who are they? How many of them are there?) But nor is it uncommon to open the pages of right-of-centre newspapers and find views expressed there that cross traditional barriers of ideology.

A view expressed widely in Britain is that the rise in anti-American sentiment has been caused by Mr Bush’s “war mongering”, and that if he were not in power the older warmth between nations would flourish again. Yet this, like so much else, is a convenient misinterpretation. The resentment currently expressed towards America would not be dispelled simply by a change of face at the top. It arises, in part, from a broader geopolitical trend: the rise of America as a single superpower since the end of the Cold War, and the complex feelings arising from that change of role.

Bill Clinton’s warm’n’fuzzy, touchy-feely, presidency obscured the scale of the shift in sentiment towards America. He was media savvy and an unusually gifted speaker whose ability to charm exceeded his policy capability. But September 11, 2001 brought a fundamental change. For decades, the West could unite in defining itself and its culture as “not Communist”; with the Soviet collapse, that character-defining opposite disappeared. Increasingly, British and Europeans — especially those motivated by unexamined feelings of envy — have defined themselves as “not American”.

That shift becomes dangerous when people begin to distort and oversimplify not only the actions of the “other” whom they blame for unwanted change, but also to exaggerate their own selflessness. Yet tolerance has never been more vital. Those who choose to define themselves as “not American” rather than as “not theological extremist”, risk contributing to the toleration of intolerance.

Which all fits the HIGNFY demographic pretty well. But I’ll probably be watching it next week. It may be smug, but it’s funny. The only problem is one identified by that Times TV reviewer, on the prospect of a new host: “With the Spectator up for sale, [Boris] Johnson may soon be in the market for a new job. That would be icing on the cake.” Not for me it wouldn’t, but then again I’d be quite grateful for a reason not to watch any more.

Another Friday, another pathetic column in the Times from Simon Jenkins. He is praising South Africa’s vibrant democracy, achieved without Western military intervention, and draws this important conclusion:

Were we now contemplating the South Africa of the 1980s, I have an awful sense that our responses would be different. Tony Blair and George Bush would be threatening military action “to enforce majority rule”. They would be targeting missiles at Pretoria. They would chant apartheid’s atrocities and blast its cities. Mr Blair would preach and thousands would die.

This is so ridiculous that it doesn’t require any comment, except to wonder how the Times’ chief columnist got to the point where he consistently writes drivel like this. A couple of months back he dismissed the threat of Al Qaeda in the Spectator, in an article published on the same day as the Madrid bombing, but nothing seems to dent his self-belief. Iraq seems to have unhinged a great number of people.

Can’t he be persuaded to do another of his books – “England’s Thousand Best Public Toilets” or some such – and leave the political commentary to people who have a clue?

myself, had I replied in kind, alluding to the pagan absurdities of the pilgrimage to Mecca, or to the gross, ignorant, and primitive superstitions of the Prophet with regard to jinn, I doubt that our friendship would have lasted long.

And this hits the spot, on the appeal of Islam to Afro-Caribbeans (or black Americans, drawn to the Nation of Islam):

As for Muslim proselytism in the prison—and Muslim literature has been insinuated into nooks and crannies there far more thoroughly than any Christian literature—it is directed mainly at the Jamaican prisoners. It answers their need for an excuse to go straight, while not at the same time surrendering to the morality of a society they believe has wronged them deeply. Indeed, conversion to Islam is their revenge upon that society, for they sense that their newfound religion is fundamentally opposed to it. By conversion, therefore, they kill two birds with one stone.

The old Dalrymple style still rubs me up the wrong way (“sluttish white working-class girls”), but it’s well worth a read.

lisation. The proper place for these terrorists is behind bars.

We believe that Muslims have a special responsibility to fight this evil that is distorting and eroding our culture and heritage. We were once the guardians of civilised values and behaviour, and we should not allow the immoral creed represented by al-Qaeda and its various offshoots to hijack Islam.

“Muslims have a special responsibility to fight this evil”. Yes indeed.

ts in toppling Saddam and promoting democracy in Iraq.

This article (again via Roger Simon) points the finger at Iran:

Iranian agents have been commuting back and forth to and from Iraq regularly, using different border crossings along the 900-mile frontier with that country. Tehran has, for instance, used the Mandali-Monthariya border in February to send into Iraq a significant number of intelligence agents, who specialize in operations and roadside bombings against the coalition forces. It has also used other border crossing for such purposes.

Sources with access to firsthand information said that a roadside attack by a five-member team of Iraqi Muslim fundamentalists against a U.S. convoy in late February was actually tied to Iran. Other pro-Iranian Iraqi extremists were apparently involved in attacks against Iraqi police vehicles last month, these sources added.

As many as 30,000 people a night were reported to have crossed into Iraq from Iran, ostensibly to visit the holy Shiite shrines; many Iranian intelligence agents were among them. The Iranian regime’s intelligence units as well as the Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the Revolutionary Guards often pose as pilgrims and blend in with ordinary people who travel from Iran to the holy sites and other regions of Iraq.

After the U.S. forces arrested a number of Iranian agents, Tehran is relying increasingly on its newly-recruited Iraqi agents, particularly for intelligence gathering operations. It assigned a number of the recruits from Najaf, Karbala, Al-Kazimiyah, Basrah and Ba’qubah to Baghdad where they have set up new intelligence gathering cells.

Iran’s intelligence agents are actually working under the cover of local businesses in Iraq. Several Iranian intelligence agents came to the city of Al-Khalis, north of Baghdad, recently, to meet with their Iraqi counterparts. “Islamic Propaganda House” in Ba’qubah acts as cover for the Iranian regime’s intelligence agents.

Iranian agents have also been recently spotted in Baghdad, offering Iraqis large sums of money, as much as $25,000, in exchange for information. Iran has already sneaked in large amounts of weaponry including mortars, anti-aircraft missiles, and RPG-7 rocket launchers, providing them mostly to Iraqi surrogate groups.

It would be naïve to rely on the “goodwill” of Iranian clerics. To prevent Iraq from further sinking into chaos, the United States must take drastic action to curb Iranian influence by stopping the free flow of Iranian intelligence agents into Iraq and warning Tehran of the dire consequences of its continuing meddling in the affairs of its neighbor to the west. The ultimate solution, however, is for the United States to beat the Iranians at their own game by relying on the well-trained anti-fundamentalist Iranian opposition groups, which are working to unseat the clerics. This is not a luxury; it’s a prerequisite.

y. ”We did support a racist army, and didn’t take the necessary distance at the moment of the genocide. I think France would do a good thing in accepting its responsibility.”

Also (via Roger Simon) here:

Nothing the outside world has learned in the intervening decade dilutes the guilt of those who stood by and allowed the killing to go on, when (as Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire pointed out) 2,000 Western troops could probably have stopped it in its tracks.

Indeed, the two big things we have learned are:

* The Rwanda genocide was no spontaneous outburst of traditional tribal hatred, but a carefully planned mass murder operation. And,

* France played a key role in enabling that operation. […]

What eventually brought the massacres to an end was the victory of the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front.

But the killing continued even after the RPF took control of the capital Kigali – thanks to a belated, U.N.-authorized intervention by French troops. One of the most cynical and immoral acts of the 20th century, this French intervention (“Operation Turquoise”) was actually on behalf of the Hutu murderers in the “Interhamwe” militia and the (French trained and equipped) Rwandan army.

The French troops created a “safe area” where the old Hutu government retained control – and there the slaughter of Tutsis continued under the noses of the so-called peacekeepers until July.

Which makes it all the more sickening that the American Left and much of European opinion now hold France up as the bulwark of international law, multilateralism and morality in international politics.

raig Murray, Britain’s Ambassador in Tashkent, told The Times last week: “No reasonable person could argue in good faith that there is any sign of improvement in the human rights situation. It’s still appalling.” […]

President Karimov’s morbid fear of religious fundamentalism is fashionable in the age of al-Qaeda but also deeply Soviet, and Sovietism preserved in aspic is Uzbekistan’s real problem. The country has not survived the past 12 years completely unchanged — Tashkent has its Sheraton; cell phone signals are impressive — but opposition parties are banned, all media is censored and Karimov’s delusions are beginning to rival those of his neighbour, President Saparmurat “Turkmenbashi” Niyazov of Turkmenistan. (In September Karimov’s historical and political writings will reportedly become the core of the Uzbek national curriculum.)

As for the economy, it makes Stalin’s five-year plans look nuanced and enlightened. Over the past two years Karimov has sealed his borders, slapped a 70 per cent tariff on all imports and shut down the bazaars. Soviet-era collective farms are unreformed and pay their workers the equivalent of $2 a month. Technically, private farming is allowed, but those who try it are told what to grow, whom to sell it to and at what price. Last month a Western researcher visited a “private” farm southwest of Tashkent whose “owner” had dared to sell his apples on the open market. He received a ten-year prison sentence while his neighbours were ordered to cut down his apple trees, and did so.

“Miserable poverty combined with a total lack of solidarity is producing a social vacuum,” this researcher said. “And it’s precisely this vacuum that militant Islam is filling.”

he spirit of Man U, Sir Alex Ferguson.

The Guardian and the Independent share a headline in a mood of schadenfreude as the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr threaten the coalition forces.

Naomi Klein has no doubt as to where the responsibility lies:

Make no mistake: this is not the “civil war” that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the US occupation authority and waged by its forces against the growing number of Shia who support Moqtada al-Sadr.

Considering that al-Sadr’s supporters include Hamas and Hezbollah, and that they’re threatening to use terror to turn Iraq into another Iran-style theocracy, you’d think Klein might just manage a little understanding – sympathy even – for the situation of the occupation forces, but apparently not.

Back in the real world, Andrew Sullivan is guardedly optimistic:

Of course, Sadr doesn’t represent all Shiites. Far from it. But the more mainstream Shiites are still obviously leery of siding openly with the CPA against him. We should expect – and actually demand – a very effective display of military power and authority from the coalition in response to this provocation. Arresting Sadr is a start – and certainly worth doing now rather than in four months’ time. The optimist in me hopes that this confrontation – threatening for months – can be resolved effectively before June 30. The pessimist in me worries about the propaganda value in this kind of unrest in deterring investment, polarizing ethnicities and sects, and making democracy even harder.

At USS Clueless, Steven Den Beste is also looking on the bright side:

One could easily come to the conclusion that the situation in Iraq has gone into the toilet in the last two weeks. But there’s definitely a silver lining in the dark cloud. Our enemies are making a tremendous blunder, and have given CENTCOM a priceless gift.

Worth reading as a corrective to the “Brink of Anarchy” stuff.