Intelligence blindspot
Gregory Treverton (June) is right that British intelligence had a blindspot in the 1980s about the Soviet Union. In 1984, I edited an essay by journalist Rex Malik to commemorate George Orwell’s 1984, titled: “Can the USSR survive 1984?” Rex’s inescapable conclusion was “No chance.” The people we talked with in Washington and London were dismissive. The only people who agreed were computer scientists inside Russia.
Treverton is also right that it is people that count, not written reports. It was Rex’s use of the internet to contact the Soviet science elite personally that illuminated his writing. Compare that with the lifting of a student’s thesis off the web to justify the British invasion of Iraq. The failures of the US and British services in Iraq in the 1990s were mainly due to the reluctance of officials to work in Middle East countries, regarded as inhospitable and career dead-ends. I see little evidence the British have become more knowledgeable since then.
John HowkinsLondon W1
Remembering 9/11
In the history of American catastrophes, fiction has often proved necessary and useful. In classics like Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a writer’s imagination makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of an immense tragedy.
But to understand the tragedy of 9/11 requires no fiction. As Adam Kirsch (June) notes, no novelist is necessary to conjure the ineffable horrors of that day. When writers try to reimagine it in fictional works, their projects can often seem perverse, as if they are claiming a primacy of their intellects over something we all witnessed. For me, the absence of quality writing about 9/11 is not, as Kirsch suggests, a failure of American forthrightness. Instead, it is due to the fact that, on that day, we all looked directly at it together.
Stefan Merrill Block, novelist More responses here
Backing winners
Peter Mandelson (June) is right that, in responding to events in north Africa, “we should not allow too much caution to cloud our judgement” and “join with others in the region by firmly supporting those putting their courage before their safety.” These incomplete revolutions carry both opportunity and risk. Egypt’s economy was a concern before the crisis, with over 40 per cent of the population living on less than $2 a day, and the International Institute of Finance predicts that real GDP growth across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia will drop from 4.4 per cent in 2010 to -0.5 per cent in 2011. The G8 at Deauville said that “multilateral development banks could provide over £12.2bn” for Egypt and Tunisia in the next two years, but it is unclear if new money on such a scale will be mobilised—or when. The international community must do much more to ensure that this spring’s winners don’t lose in the months and years ahead.
Douglas Alexander MPShadow Foreign Secretary
Peter Mandelson seems too optimistic. The Arab Spring came about not from a burning desire for democracy (a solution) but from a response to worsening standards of living thanks to geopolitical conditions, and years of built up hostility to the injustices of the incumbent regimes (the symptoms). Democracy is one solution, but in deeply religious societies by no means the obvious answer. In the same way that we boot out one government at the ballot box when we are unhappy, the Arab Spring could just as easily bring in new theocratic regimes to rule for another 25 years.
AuroVia the Prospect website Don’t politicise the law
James Grant (June) is right that the balance of power has tipped in favour of the judiciary over recent decades. Judges can, indeed, must make choices. It would be idle to pretend the invention of the super-injunction to protect errant footballers was compelled by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The right there enshrined is a right to “respect for private life’’: designed to outlaw the midnight knock on the door by agents of the state. But privacy has, in this context, become a legal euphemism for adultery.
Grant is also right that some judges are conservative and others are liberal. I am less confident he has allocated particular Supreme Court justices to the correct category. And I disagree that parliament should have the right to question candidates for the Supreme Court about their values. This risks politicising the judiciary. No one could pretend that the appointment of justices to the US Supreme Court is not intimately linked to their perceived politics.
With all due respect to my old pupil Lord Pannick (also quoted by Grant), parliament should stay out of the process. An
enlarged role for an appointing panel, with criteria elaborated in legislation, is as far as reform should go. Otherwise, the cure would be far worse than the disease.
Michael J Beloff QC Blackstone Chambers Correction
James Grant’s article on the Supreme Court (June) contained some editing errors. The title of Lord Bingham’s book is The Rule of Law; Binyam Mohamed’s case was heard by the Court of Appeal; and Jonathan Sumption gave an interview to The Lawyer.
Neuromania I agree with Raymond Tallis (June) that “not all wrong ideas are worth contesting.” When an idea is not just wrong, but an egregious misrepresentation of what it is attacking, it is usually wisest just to note this and hope others see it too. Sometimes people give the game away by inventing pejorative labels for what they fear, as a substitute for careful thought: biologism, neuromania and darwinitis speak for themselves.
Professor Daniel Dennett Tufts University, Massachusetts
Salmond can go it alone
The SNP were told long ago that Scotland would never have home rule—now it has. They were told they could not rule as a minority government—they did. They were told they could not win a majority in an election based upon the existing PR system—they have. Now, according to Peter Kellner (June) they “cannot win a referendum on independence.” Forgive me for thinking Alex Salmond knows quite well how to campaign for the result he wants.
Andrew DougalVia the Prospect website
Don’t short sell Descartes
Were Spinoza’s theories a step forward from Descartes, as Rebecca Goldstein (June) claims? The answer does not depend on whether Spinoza’s thinking agrees with current popular science, still less on whether it vindicates “deep ecology.” Deep ecology is hard to formulate coherently, let alone believe. We still need Descartes to remind us of many things—the dangers of excessive naturalism and scientism, and of the autonomy of metaphysics. We also owe to him some of the beginnings of mathematical physics. It is madness to sell him short.
Professor Tom Sorell University of Birmingham
Lies and nonsense
In analysing lying, Julian Baggini (May) should have quoted Oscar Wilde: “The trouble about lying is there are an awful lot of untruths spoken on the subject. One example is the commonly repeated falsehood that lying is immoral, indefensible and altogether a bad thing. It’s this sort of nonsense, of course, which gives lying a bad name.”
Jeffrey Gold Via the Prospect website Terry Eagleton should not rule the world In outlining his plans for world rule, Terry Eagleton (June) has served up a jumble-sale of trivia and bad reasoning. If he is an honest man, he should submit to the following, under his own preferred regime. Brief custodial sentences for phrases like “an interminable amount of time”; double negatives; words like “gormlessly”; beginning a sentence with “And”; and the phrase: “for some unaccountable reason.” The deportation tariff for pundits who try constantly to correct their neighbours’ behaviour, and human sacrifice for critics who extol their own works and hatchet those of others. Oh, and a hefty fine for using the weasel word “abolish” when you actually mean “liquidate.” Ah, if only I were to rule the world.
Jim GroveVia the Prospect website
If I ruled the world, I’d have Terry Eagleton abolished. Not for looking so cuddly, but for all those awful books that have misled generations of students.
Darko JarnacVia the Prospect website
Churchill, KBO
“In fact” (June) notes that Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher was the first person to use the acronym “OMG!”—in a letter to Winston Churchill. Churchill himself would end phonecalls with his own acronym “KBO,” forced on him by his telephonist who told him he couldn’t keep saying “Keep Buggering On!”
Julian DareOxford
Have your say: letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk
Treverton is also right that it is people that count, not written reports. It was Rex’s use of the internet to contact the Soviet science elite personally that illuminated his writing. Compare that with the lifting of a student’s thesis off the web to justify the British invasion of Iraq. The failures of the US and British services in Iraq in the 1990s were mainly due to the reluctance of officials to work in Middle East countries, regarded as inhospitable and career dead-ends. I see little evidence the British have become more knowledgeable since then.
John HowkinsLondon W1
Remembering 9/11
In the history of American catastrophes, fiction has often proved necessary and useful. In classics like Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a writer’s imagination makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of an immense tragedy.
But to understand the tragedy of 9/11 requires no fiction. As Adam Kirsch (June) notes, no novelist is necessary to conjure the ineffable horrors of that day. When writers try to reimagine it in fictional works, their projects can often seem perverse, as if they are claiming a primacy of their intellects over something we all witnessed. For me, the absence of quality writing about 9/11 is not, as Kirsch suggests, a failure of American forthrightness. Instead, it is due to the fact that, on that day, we all looked directly at it together.
Stefan Merrill Block, novelist More responses here
Backing winners
Peter Mandelson (June) is right that, in responding to events in north Africa, “we should not allow too much caution to cloud our judgement” and “join with others in the region by firmly supporting those putting their courage before their safety.” These incomplete revolutions carry both opportunity and risk. Egypt’s economy was a concern before the crisis, with over 40 per cent of the population living on less than $2 a day, and the International Institute of Finance predicts that real GDP growth across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia will drop from 4.4 per cent in 2010 to -0.5 per cent in 2011. The G8 at Deauville said that “multilateral development banks could provide over £12.2bn” for Egypt and Tunisia in the next two years, but it is unclear if new money on such a scale will be mobilised—or when. The international community must do much more to ensure that this spring’s winners don’t lose in the months and years ahead.
Douglas Alexander MPShadow Foreign Secretary
Peter Mandelson seems too optimistic. The Arab Spring came about not from a burning desire for democracy (a solution) but from a response to worsening standards of living thanks to geopolitical conditions, and years of built up hostility to the injustices of the incumbent regimes (the symptoms). Democracy is one solution, but in deeply religious societies by no means the obvious answer. In the same way that we boot out one government at the ballot box when we are unhappy, the Arab Spring could just as easily bring in new theocratic regimes to rule for another 25 years.
AuroVia the Prospect website Don’t politicise the law
James Grant (June) is right that the balance of power has tipped in favour of the judiciary over recent decades. Judges can, indeed, must make choices. It would be idle to pretend the invention of the super-injunction to protect errant footballers was compelled by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The right there enshrined is a right to “respect for private life’’: designed to outlaw the midnight knock on the door by agents of the state. But privacy has, in this context, become a legal euphemism for adultery.
Grant is also right that some judges are conservative and others are liberal. I am less confident he has allocated particular Supreme Court justices to the correct category. And I disagree that parliament should have the right to question candidates for the Supreme Court about their values. This risks politicising the judiciary. No one could pretend that the appointment of justices to the US Supreme Court is not intimately linked to their perceived politics.
With all due respect to my old pupil Lord Pannick (also quoted by Grant), parliament should stay out of the process. An
enlarged role for an appointing panel, with criteria elaborated in legislation, is as far as reform should go. Otherwise, the cure would be far worse than the disease.
Michael J Beloff QC Blackstone Chambers Correction
James Grant’s article on the Supreme Court (June) contained some editing errors. The title of Lord Bingham’s book is The Rule of Law; Binyam Mohamed’s case was heard by the Court of Appeal; and Jonathan Sumption gave an interview to The Lawyer.
Neuromania I agree with Raymond Tallis (June) that “not all wrong ideas are worth contesting.” When an idea is not just wrong, but an egregious misrepresentation of what it is attacking, it is usually wisest just to note this and hope others see it too. Sometimes people give the game away by inventing pejorative labels for what they fear, as a substitute for careful thought: biologism, neuromania and darwinitis speak for themselves.
Professor Daniel Dennett Tufts University, Massachusetts
Salmond can go it alone
The SNP were told long ago that Scotland would never have home rule—now it has. They were told they could not rule as a minority government—they did. They were told they could not win a majority in an election based upon the existing PR system—they have. Now, according to Peter Kellner (June) they “cannot win a referendum on independence.” Forgive me for thinking Alex Salmond knows quite well how to campaign for the result he wants.
Andrew DougalVia the Prospect website
Don’t short sell Descartes
Were Spinoza’s theories a step forward from Descartes, as Rebecca Goldstein (June) claims? The answer does not depend on whether Spinoza’s thinking agrees with current popular science, still less on whether it vindicates “deep ecology.” Deep ecology is hard to formulate coherently, let alone believe. We still need Descartes to remind us of many things—the dangers of excessive naturalism and scientism, and of the autonomy of metaphysics. We also owe to him some of the beginnings of mathematical physics. It is madness to sell him short.
Professor Tom Sorell University of Birmingham
Lies and nonsense
In analysing lying, Julian Baggini (May) should have quoted Oscar Wilde: “The trouble about lying is there are an awful lot of untruths spoken on the subject. One example is the commonly repeated falsehood that lying is immoral, indefensible and altogether a bad thing. It’s this sort of nonsense, of course, which gives lying a bad name.”
Jeffrey Gold Via the Prospect website Terry Eagleton should not rule the world In outlining his plans for world rule, Terry Eagleton (June) has served up a jumble-sale of trivia and bad reasoning. If he is an honest man, he should submit to the following, under his own preferred regime. Brief custodial sentences for phrases like “an interminable amount of time”; double negatives; words like “gormlessly”; beginning a sentence with “And”; and the phrase: “for some unaccountable reason.” The deportation tariff for pundits who try constantly to correct their neighbours’ behaviour, and human sacrifice for critics who extol their own works and hatchet those of others. Oh, and a hefty fine for using the weasel word “abolish” when you actually mean “liquidate.” Ah, if only I were to rule the world.
Jim GroveVia the Prospect website
If I ruled the world, I’d have Terry Eagleton abolished. Not for looking so cuddly, but for all those awful books that have misled generations of students.
Darko JarnacVia the Prospect website
Churchill, KBO
“In fact” (June) notes that Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher was the first person to use the acronym “OMG!”—in a letter to Winston Churchill. Churchill himself would end phonecalls with his own acronym “KBO,” forced on him by his telephonist who told him he couldn’t keep saying “Keep Buggering On!”
Julian DareOxford
Have your say: letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk
