Monthly Archives: September 2003

The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth

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Today, the British government has once again been cleared by an Intelligence and Security Comittee (ISC) report [600kb, pdf] of the alligation to have deliberately “sexed up” a report on the state of the former Iraqi regime’s Weapons of Mass Destruction programme. Really? It has? Well, I guess that will depend on what your definition of “is” is…


On a philosophical level, there might be room for discussion regarding the inter-subjective differences of meaning between truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For any practical purposes, there should not. Obviously, I am saying this against better knowledge: scores of people are making a living by creating precisely this kind of confusion, especially in politics.


Whatever really happened to Joint Intelligence Comittee’s Iraq Dossier – today’s report claims that its chairman, John Scarlett, assured the investigators


“… that he did not at any time feel under pressure, nor was he asked to include material that he did not believe ought to be included in the dossier…’ (page 31) –


has likely already fallen in the cracks between the different versions of truth mentioned above. Legally, the dossier might have been corect. But it was obviously slanted in a way that was supposed to increase the credibility of the government’s rather unpopular Iraq policy. By accident? Well, if it was really just an accident, some organisational changes in the British administration appear to be overdue. In this case the British government cannot avoid to explain such a severe administrational failure in all the detail available. No one on Whitehall can possibly believe they have the benefit of the doubt in this respect. Quite to the contrary – cleared or not, what is one supposed to make of the Comittee’s statement that the dossier’s


“… 45 minute claim, included four times, was always likely to attract attention because it was arresting detail that the public had not seen before. … The fact that it was assessed to refer to battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack, should have been highlighted in the dossier. The omission of the context and the assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning. This was unhelpful to an understanding of the issue.? (page 43) –

– or that –

“Saddam was not considered a current or imminent threat to mainland UK, nor did the dossier say so. The first draft of the Prime Minister?s foreword contained the following sentence:
?The case I make is not that Saddam could launch a nuclear attack on London
or another part of the UK (He could not).?
This shows that the Government recognised that the nature of the threat that
Saddam posed was not directly to mainland UK. It was unfortunate that this point was removed from the published version of the foreword and not highlighted elsewhere.” (page 43, hightlighted by me)


Unfortunate, indeed. Neither this report nor the Hutton Inquiry are going to end the affair. The Blair government is facing a credibility crisis that spreads like metastasizing cancer. Maybe a quick surgical removal of Geoffrey Hoon, singled out in today’s report for explicitly not mentioning a part of the truth, will buy time. With the next election years away and still no opposition to speak of it is clearly to early to tell what the consequences will be for Labour. Tony Blair still has reason to hope that the cancer of mistrust has not yet spread too far in Britain.


But he will have to seriously change his government’s communication attitude. The British public might not know whether technical details in intelligence reports relate one or another category of weaponry. But it evidently has a very clear idea under which circumstances it should be willing to enter into a philosophical discussion about truth with its government. What might still be acceptable with respect to NHS-waiting lists is apparently not in order when it comes to sending soldiers to the desert.


And rightly so.

Some thoughts

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Scott said in comments to the Anna Lindh post: “They also claim that Sweden has a fairly high murder rate by European standards. Considering how often reports on this murder have evoked how safe Sweden is, and how politicians hardly need bodyguards, I found this claim very surprising.”

It turns out we’re at the EU average, but his comment did spawn these thoughts of mine:

Perhaps it wouldn’t be that surprising. The difference between crime frequency between the US and Sweden surely is huge, but I suspect the difference in how safe people feel is even greater. I know that crime was a much bigger election issue in for example France and other countries than in Sweden last year. It’s possible we have somewhat more crime than a some other countries, but feel a lot more safe and unconcerened than them.

An interesting thing I read is that residents of the poor immigrant suburbs of Stockholm felt much, much more unsafe than residents of neighbouring middle class neighbourhoods, to the point where it was seriously detrimental to their quality of life, even though the incidence of violent crimes was rougly similar.

People’s perceptions are (in this regard) more influenced by the media, by prejudice, and by the mood of the culture, than they are by actual facts.

As to not using bodyguards; we already had the Palme murder, and still it’s only the prime minister that always uses bodyguards. From what everyone tells me, most countries are different, I would guess that includes even ones without comparable experiences. It’s a cultural issue.

Partly it’s a question of our self-image and what I discussed above, but I believe it’s also because in some ways the political elites aren’t as far apart from the electorate as they are in many other countries. And what’s worth noting is that I’m not talking about the electorate’s attitude, but that of the politicians. To stop shopping in department stores and taking the train, etcetera, to stop living more or less like an ordinary middle class person, is an intolerable sacrifice for many Swedish politicians on the highest level. I’m only speculating here, but is that really as true of say French politicians?

This isn’t a minor thing, but a great strenghth of Swedish democracy, and that’s one reason why this is so horrible. On the other hand, again looking at the Palme case, maybe things will mostly stay the same after all.

Anna Lindh 1957-2003

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She passed away in the early morning.

The murderer is still not caught. They have the murder weapon though, so maybe this won’t be another giant screw-up like the Palme investigation.

Apparently they think it was premeditated. The murder may or may not have to do with politics, but the circumstances, especially using a knife rather than a gun, suggest to me a lone perpetrator, nothing organized.

Lindh was seen as an unusually talented foreign minister and politician. Apart from everything else, it’s a great loss for the Social Democrats. For all Swedes, I suppose.

Anna Lindh stabbed

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Anna Lindh, our foreign minister (and G?ran Persson’s heir apparent) was repeatedly stabbed this afternoon in a exclusive department store in Stockholm. She’s seriously wounded. The assailant is unknown and still at large.

Palme all over again. God…..

Update: According to the latest report, “Her condition was serious but not life-threatening, police spokeswoman Stina Wessling told AFP Wednesday.” Thank God.

Update 2: As far as political implications… It will have an effect on Sunday’s referendum insofar that all campaigning is supended for now. I’m sure it’ll boost the yes side to some degree, (she was a leading proponent, and the anti-establishment sentiment that has propelled the no side might be turned to its opposite) but probably only marginally, at least now that it appears she’ll survive.

Update 3:

I don’t really have any idea at all. Whatever.

The UK as number one

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Since the 1960s Germany has had the largest economy in the EU but Nigel Griffiths, the UK trade minister, thinks all that might change :

“I think that construction and manufacturing alone as sectors could ensure that within 10 years we [the UK] overtake the German economy. We’ve got to see whether we cannot become the third biggest economy in the world* in terms of gross domestic product. I think that is feasible.”

Now before our British readers start singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and waving their Union flags, an important point. He’s talking rubbish.
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The European Military project at a cross-roads

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There’s a good article in today’s Le Figaro (a conservative French national newspaper) about the recent summit on a European military project in Arcachon. It’s titled L’Europe militaire ? la crois?e des chemins, and it is pretty pessimistic about the whole project.

A l’actualit? d’une loi de programmation militaire tangible, g?n?raux, ing?nieurs, chefs d’entreprise, parlementaires et experts en strat?gie ont pr?f?r? consacrer leurs interventions ? une Europe militaire encore tr?s virtuelle. C’est le seul consensus qui ait ?t? d?gag?. Car les Etats-Unis n’ont pas de souci ? se faire: si la r?union d’Arcachon devait servir de barom?tre ? l’Europe de la d?fense, l’avenir de celle-ci appara?trait des plus maussades.

Given the present lack of any tangible legal mandate for a military programme, the generals, engineers, CEO’s, members of parliament and strategists prefered to focus on a still highly virtual European military. That was the only consensus to come of all this. America has nothing to worry about: if the Arcachon conference is any measure, the future of a common European defense is gloomy indeed.

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European Quote of the Day

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“Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.”

     – Albert Camus

Supply-Side Economics takes root in Belgium

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Today’s Brussels Metro (bilingual FR/NL – registration required), reports that Belgium’s social security budget deficit may pass the €2 billion mark in 2004, although the relevant Belgian minister claims that these figures are not definitive. The socialist union FGTB/ABVV wants to shift social insurance payments from being a payroll tax to an income tax, because non-salaried workers – independents and the like – pay into a separate fund.

What I find surprising in this short, front page article is towards the end, when Pieter Timmermans, head of the Belgian Chamber of Commerce, claims that:

Il ne faut pas plaider pour des recettes suppl?mentaires, le taux d’imposition en Belgique est d?j? trop ?lev?. Il faut plut?t diminuer les imp?ts pour red?marrer l’?conomie et garder la r?duction des charges de €800 millions pr?vue par le gouvernement. Ce genre de mesure permettra de cr?er de l’emploi et d?gagera des recettes suppl?mentaires pour la s?curit? sociale

We shouldn’t be asking for more taxes, they’re already too high in Belgium. We should lower taxes to get the economy moving and keep the €800 million tax cut that the government has already passed. This kind of measure will create jobs and lead to higher social security revenues.

That certainly sounds to me like supply-side economics. It hasn’t worked terribly well elsewhere, as others have pointed out. Europe has largely been free of this sort of thinking and I certainly hope that it doesn’t spread beyond the employer’s associations. Either cut taxes and accept lower spending, raise them and accept the consequences, or run deficits with the knowledge that you have to pay them back. This doctrine of painless tax cuts is not going to help anyone.

Bermuda triangle to swallow EU savings tax directive?

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Well, not quite the Bermuda triangle – but the Cayman Islands might do just that.

In what is likely going to become a case study regarding the complexities of European multilevel governance, pooled sovereignty, and the complex relations of institutional Europe and the world, it seems a legal challenge brought forth by the government of the Cayman Islands, a British dependency, and thus an EU associated territory, could at least severely delay the EU savings tax directive‘s implementation – after a mere 13 years of negotiations to come up with a common solution to taxing capital gains without tampering too much with the capital’s mobility and important privacy issues.

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