BANFF 2009: MENSA IN THE MOUNTAINS

 

Roughly forty days till a superb Mensa gathering. Amidst soaring peaks and world heritage sites, visit the Banff Regional Gathering (September 11 through 13, 2009) where world-class scenery, unique fossil fields, the low Canadian dollar and top minds will create an experience you won’t quickly forget. Visit the RG web site at www.mensabanffrg.com for detail, but in a nutshell do you like music, the arts, math, science, politics, games? Book through Vicki (vherd@shaw.ca) to attend this superb RG, the best of the best.

 

        

 

 

In this month’s MensaMag, see how the military lulls reason with an avalanche of acronyms that disguise failure. The long-term goal, we’re constantly told, is to create a free and democratic Afghanistan. If you believe the re-election of President Karzai and an increase in foreign troops will move us closer to that end, there’s a wonderful bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to show you. And this reminds me that we seem to learn nothing from history. Everything we’re chewing on, ad nauseum, about the Afghan campaign was debated in Soviet circles during the nine years they took to lose their own war there in the 1980s. But analysis and scrupulous ethics or criticism of governments never sold a newspaper or TV ad. 

 

Then there’s the PR fraud that substitutes for reality in the business columns of newspapers. Nobody has the heart or time to research how the bankrupts and junk of today were lauded to the sky just last week. We’re asked to take seriously the jeremiads of self-interested bloggers without the slightest shred of self-disclosure, and the analyses of commentators who refuse to publish their record of accuracy or inaccuracy or who shrewdly avoid more precision in forecasts than any self-respecting astrologer. Business is entertainment, no more, no less.

 

In any western country, China’s policy toward the Uighur would be described as cultural genocide. How else to paint a deliberate effort to overwhelm a native population, formerly the healthy majority, with immigrants from the Han ethnic group? But heaven forbid that Canada would take a strong moral stand. Conservatives are cowards, it appears, at everything except struggling to make a buck, and the Liberals will flounder until they rediscover their own moral roots. It’s all so predictable to watch Tweedledum struggle in outrage to paint himself as utterly unlike that wretch and rogue Tweedledee. But we get the politicians we deserve.

 

Which takes us to Sarah Palin, the only politician who unashamedly pursues celebrity and doesn’t let truth or reason create logjams in her path. I suspect that’s her real attraction. We sense that she’s authentic. Whereas other politicians pretend that they’re serving the public, Sarah doesn’t bother. She lies and fabricates at the drop of a hat. She knows it and we know it. But the object of the game is fame, not truth. It’s the weaving of dreams, not painting the real world. Our shame is that Sarah is like our other politicians, only more so. Would we vote for her? Of course not, but the reasons are painfully thin to behold.

 

One reason not to vote for Sarah Palin is her woefully thin grasp of issues. We like a thick paper with our coffee in the morning. Sarah can’t tell us that America’s present health care costs were bankrupting the country, not the subprime mortgage crisis. We’ve skated clear of the crazy bubble in real estate, but can anyone tell me that Americans understand they have the highest health care costs in the world and results maybe below the top ten, certainly below the top half-dozen? Sarah just can’t command respect. Visceral appeal, perhaps, respect, no. But is politics about respect? Read further and find out.  

MOVIE MATINEE

 

Normally this Thrilla-from-Manilla event takes place on a weekend and thus we’ve booked August 3^rd (Heritage Day) for our movie at 3:30pm. The movie is called The Hurt Locker and we’ll see it at Eau Claire Cineplex (downtown). Meet-up is between 3:00 and 3:15 to get tickets and refreshments.

 

What’s the movie about? An intense portrayal of elite soldiers who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat. When a new sergeant, James, takes over a highly trained bomb disposal team amidst violent conflict, he surprises his two subordinates, Sanborn and Eldridge, by recklessly plunging them into a deadly game of urban combat. James behaves as if he’s indifferent to death. As the men struggle to control their wild new leader, the city explodes into chaos, and James’ true character reveals itself in a way that will change each man forever.

 

 

 

MENSA POOL NIGHT AT THE GARAGE

 

The Garage is in Eau Claire (downtown). We meet at 6:00, shoot some stick and unwind after a long week. Great food and bevvies are offered by the in-house restaurant as well. Please RSVP Robert at robertanddiana@telus.net by the 12^th. If we have a large group, we’ll reserve tables to avoid disappointment.

 

 

 

DINNER NIGHT

 

Dinner Night is back!!! We had a great time at Bolero’s earlier this year and there’s no reason not to repeat the fun. We’ll meet there on Monday, August 17^th at 6:00pm. The restaurant is located at 6920 Macleod Trail S, just south of Chinook Centre, about a ten minute walk from the Chinook LRT.

 

Located close to the corner of Glenmore and Macleod, this is Calgary’s first Brazilian BBQ style restaurant. At Bolero’s, the customer decides when food will arrive at the table, food in the form of a wide selection of churrasco (skewers). The customer chooses Green to signify bring on the food, while Red means stop. This is a perfect setting for festive occasions or just ordinary fun. Bolero’s also offers a wide range of different cocktails, wine, and beer. Dining with friends and family was meant to be fun, the Brazilian way! The restaurant has a 3 tiered buffet system or you can order from the menu. Please RSVP to robertanddiana@telus.net by August 14^th.

 

 

 

FLAMES GAME NIGHT aka PASSPORT NIGHT

 

This is always a night to remember. We’ll meet at Bottlescrew Bill’s on the 21^st. In July we had a new face (nice to meet you Bill!) and a good time was enjoyed by all, forecasting similar pleasures for August. Start a passport in the "Around the World in 80 Beers" plan. $5 gets you the passport and you have one year to sample 80 beers from all over the world. Every 20 beers you get a prize as well. If you don’t want to do that, they still have a fine selection of brewed bliss as well as a good food menu and TVs everywhere. 6:00pm on Friday, August 21. The bar is on the northeast corner of 10 AV and 1 St SW.

 

 

 

MONTH END COFFEE NIGHT

 

August 31^st for this adventure. We’ll be at the Good Earth Café, 31 Crowfoot Terrace NW. They have a patio, so we’ll hang outside as long as the good weather holds. 7:00pm – no reservation needed. Look for the table with the Rubik’s Cube on it.

 

 

 

GENERAL

 

1. The following letters comprise the entire alphabet. Well, in fact, a few letters are missing, and those letters are the focus of this puzzle. Without writing anything on paper, can you rearrange the missing letters and find the word that is spelled? D F G I J K M N P Q T U V W X Y Z

 

 

2. This is an easy one. There are eight coins and seven weigh the same while one is lighter. You have a pair of balance scales. Identify the light coin in two weighings. And one of the possibilities has an alternative solution. What is it?

 

 

The answers to July’s puzzles were supplied in the July issue.

 

Here are the answers to this month’s puzzles:

 

 

Answers:

 

1. Bachelors

 

2. Place three coins on each side of the balance. If they are equal, the light coin is one of the remaining two. Place one of the remaining two on each side of the balance and the light coin is quickly found. If the initial weighing isn’t equal, the higher side contains the lighter coin. Take two of the coins from the higher side. Place one on each side of the balance. If they’re equal, the third coin is the light one. If unequal, the lighter is the odd one out. In the initial weighing, however, if the three coins on each side of the balance are equal to the other three, there’s an alternative next stage. Instead of weighing the other two coins, you could weigh one of them against one of the known equal coins. If equal, you know that the final coin is the odd one. If unequal, you also know the answer.

In the fog, remember: victory is impossible in Afghanistan.

 

It’s easy to be blinded by the valiant effort, as well as the acronyms and euphemisms. But the harsh truth does not change.

 

It’s important not to understand. It’s important not to learn. In the total buggeration into which the world’s help for Afghanistan has now descended, it’s important not to know too much. Accept that somebody some day may understand, but it isn’t going to be you. Somebody some day may grab the Gordian knot and cut it, but it isn’t going to be us. Know only that. To know more is to know less.

 

It so happens that my week as Nato/Isaf’s guest here in Afghanistan has coincided with some big stories coming out of the country. There are battles; there are kidnappings; there came sad news of the deaths of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond. There’s a presidential election campaign under way. But my argument is that news like this is a distraction from the underlying story. The battle will ebb and flow. But victory is impossible.

          

I’m here as the guest of the International Security Assistance Force, which sort-of is Nato and sort-of isn’t — and, no, don’t try to resolve this: it can’t. My Isaf/ Nato hosts are welcoming and helpful; so I’ve been taking a courteous record of the many briefings by the clever chiefs they’ve been kind enough to arrange, though the swarms of acronyms began to defeat me. And yesterday I forgot my glasses. As I stared unfocused at my notes the acronyms swam forward, their small-print meanings swam away, and I saw only acronyms.

And in the meaninglessness I suddenly saw meaning. It is this. The entire operation is up its own bottom, lost in committees, strategies and initiatives. Forget what these monstrous letters stand for. Grasp, instead, the essential incoherence.

 

AFPAK, ANCOP, ANDS, ANP, ANSF, APPS, ASNF, AAQ/FF, APP, CARD, CDC, CISCA, CISTICA, CJTF, CN, CNPA (ANP), COMISAF, CPCC, CSOFC, CSTC, ECC, EUPOL, FDD, FTD, GPI, HIG, HIGHK, ICPT, IDLG, IGLC, INFO-OPS, IRCTA, ISAF, IU, MCN, NDCS, NDS, OCCC, OEF, OMLET, OPDIESEL, PC, PRT, SITC, UNODC, UNPOL, TB . . .

 

You’ll see lots of As there, sometimes standing for Afghanistan, but usually Assistance. The Fs are usually Force. Any contradiction between assistance and force is helpfully blurred by the reduction to acronyms. The infestation of Cs generally denotes Committee, Control or Command. The many Ds and Ns often stand for Drugs, National or Narcotics. Take the CJTF, which is the Criminal Justice Task Force, to be distinguished from the ANP (the Afghan National Police), partially overseen but not exactly trained by EUPOL (European Union Police something-or-other), who are not the same thing as bilateral police assistance, and who are assisted by the ASNF (the Afghan Special Narcotics Force), probably answerable to the MCN (Ministry of Counter-Narcotics) with help from the IU (Intelligence Unit), to be distinguished from SITC (the Special Intelligence and Counter Terrorism body) and operating according to the NDCS (National Drugs Control Strategy), a subset of the ANDS (Afghan National Development Strategy). If it weren’t so tragic, this would be a comic novel by Evelyn Waugh.

 

Acronyms are not the only refuge. Others lullaby their brains to sleep swathed in the acrylic blankets of a new language now suffocating the ministries, missions and shirt-sleeved development-wallahs in shiny white Toyota 4×4s: a hideous hybrid of NGO-speak, Whitehall-chic, political pap and military jargon . . .

 

“Across the piece”, “agent for change”, “alternative livelihoods”, “asymmetric means of operation”, “capability milestones”, “civilian surge”, “conditionality”, “demand- reduction”, “drivers of radicalisation”, “fixed-wing assets”, “fledgeling capabilities”, “injectors of risk”, “kinetic situation”, “licit livelihoods”, “light footprint”, “lily pads”, “messaging campaign”, “partnering- and-mentoring”, “capacity-building”, “strategic review”, “reconciliation and reintegration”, “rolling out a top-down approach”, “shake — clear — hold — build”, “upskilling”.

 

It’s so, so important not to understand the meaning but to hear the noise. For the curious, however, “reconciliation and reintegration” means talking to the Taleban, “lily pads” means teaching by example, and an “injector of risk” is a penalty. A “kinetic situation” is a fight.

 

Language says so much. The acronyms and the buzz-phrases tell you of a crazy-paving of assistance and command, with aid money leaking through the cracks in billions. It tells of baffled expatriates and aid workers — well-meaning, clever men and women — in flight from reality. It tells of an international effort chasing its own tail.

 

The “news” from Afghanistan this month will be of the new US commander, General Stanley McChrystal, and the surge of dollars and enthusiasm he brings. We’re meeting him soon and have been told to expect infectious optimism and crisp command. Perhaps he will persuade me that the security situation here can be stabilised. Surprising if with more than 80,000 troops it couldn’t be.

 

But put your eye to the other end of the telescope, step 40 paces back from the kinetic situation, and ask what it’s for. It’s to support the building of a secure, freestanding state in Afghanistan. This is not happening. The elections this summer cannot but return President Karzai, an arch survivor focused only on survival, in whom the world has already lost confidence and can have little reason for future hope. Mr Karzai’s paralysing chess game of alliances, stand-offs, jobs and favours does not represent a regrettable failure to do anything with the power he has won. It is the way he won it and the only way he can keep it.

 

Meanwhile, brute force can almost always hold its ground, and an American surge should bring a little more security. But for what? The ground may be cleared by guns, but there is no viable politics here waiting to occupy it. And until what? Until the Americans try to leave.

 

So the fortunes of war are irrelevant. To save your sanity, your solvency and perhaps your life, it’s important not to grasp the detail, or it will bankrupt you, kill your sons and break your heart. Don’t hunt for truth. Don’t dissect. Don’t delve. Don’t help. Don’t peer at the demented jigsaw puzzle of dollars, capital letters and committees, or shuffle the pieces around: they don’t add up to a country. Push aside your microscope, fetch your telescope and put your eye to the wrong end. The devil is not in the detail. The devil is in the whole damn thing.

 

So take a look at the whole damn thing; see that occupying Afghanistan was a mistake; then close your mind to further argument or entreaty; because of argument and entreaty there will be no lack, but it will never be conclusive; and in the end we will have to decide. We must harden our hearts against this beautiful country and these handsome, noble, crazy people; and all the rest is noise.

 

(matthew parris, The Times, 4 July 2009)

Normally, Lord Bilimoria’s appearance in a business publication would be as remarkable as a bottle of Hildon water in a conference room. The founder of Cobra Beer has, in recent years, become omnipresent, banging on at every opportunity about the early days of the company, when he was delivering beer in a 2CV so battered that you could see the road through the floor.

 

But two advertisements in a recent issue of Management Today, one informing us that he would be a keynote speaker at the Chartered Management Institute’s 2009 National Conference, and another alerting us to the news that his book, Against the Grain: Lessons in Entrepreneurship, was available for purchase, caught my eye, because in the gap between them being placed and being published Cobra went into pre-pack administration.

 

Most of the company, which not long ago was touting itself around leading brewers with a reported price tag of £180 million, subsequently re-emerged under the ownership of Molson Coors, having been sold to the American brewer for £14 million, with Lord Bilimoria retaining a 49.9 per cent stake. But unsecured creditors, owed about £75 million, got nothing. Painful.

                                                 

Something else quite painful: the way in which the business establishment failed to spot any problems. Here, in February 2007, we have the Press Trust of India reporting that “Bilimoria, one of the ten youngest members in the House of Lords, aims to make Cobra into a $1 billion retail brand by 2014”. Here we have Director magazine remarking in March 2007 that Cobra’s strategy “will almost certainly make [Bilimoria] a very rich man”. And here, just months ago, we have a trade publication reporting that Cobra reported a “20 per cent rise in beer volumes for its fiscal first half”, which “contrasts with an 8 per cent volume decline across the UK beer market in the last three months of 2008”.

No one seems to have picked up, until it was too late, that for all Cobra’s glitzy marketing efforts — it spent £40 million on marketing over 20 years — people rarely drank the stuff unless in Indian restaurants, that the company had never been profitable and that, in the year to July 2007, the latest for which accounts are publicly available, Cobra lost £13 million.

 

Indeed, the story of Cobra highlights a number of awkward truths for the business world, the first of which is this: business journalists rarely get the full truth about companies. The fact is that, despite all the awards we enjoy giving ourselves, with the exception of one or two individuals, we failed to predict almost all the crises enveloping us: the Ponzi schemes, the frauds, the credit crunch, everything in fact, including Cobra. Not that it’s our fault: journalists are only as good as their sources and if there’s one thing we’ve learnt this year it is that the people running businesses are as clueless as everyone else.

 

The second painful truth revealed by the Cobra debacle is that the business world is hugely susceptible to the influence of public relations. This is, in part, because business is overrun by PR people — and Cobra was more image-obsessed than most, announcing plans to sponsor this year’s Bafta awards as part of a £8.4 million PR and marketing drive only months before it went into administration — and, in part, because business is a bit boring and a good story, such as Cobra’s, gets seized upon.

 

I’m not guiltless in this respect. I was one of the hundreds of journalists who wrote positively about Bilimoria in recent years, penning a piece a decade ago that mindlessly cited growing sales without mentioning the lack of profits. Frankly, I should have realised when the company subsequently sent me some Cobra wine to try — a beverage that tasted like fermented mouthwash — that its attempts to diversify were going to get it into trouble.

 

Which brings me to a third painful truth revealed by the Cobra debacle: Asian entrepreneurs get away with more than most. I don’t mean this in a way to suggest some kind of politically correct conspiracy. But in my experience Asian companies don’t get subjected to as much critical analysis as they should be because: a) a huge number of Asian entrepreneurs are very successful and it is just assumed that they all are; b) the rags-to-riches tale is a seductive and romantic one; and c) people want to write about and hear about Asian entrepreneurs doing well, as it is one of the things that shows that multiculturalism and immigration can work.

 

As it happens, Bilimoria is not the most extreme example of the phenomenon. This unhappy accolade must go to Reuben Singh, who, as a schoolboy, founded Miss Attitude, the fashion chain, and was listed as the youngest millionaire by Guinness World Records, publicly fêted by Tony Blair, made a government adviser, dubbed “the most powerful man in Britain under 30”, had his picture hung in the National Portrait Gallery and named entrepreneur of the year at various awards ceremonies, but who in 2007 was unmasked as a serial fantasist, branded a “liar” by a judge and declared bankrupt.

 

Also, as it happens, Bilimoria is not your typical Asian entrepreneur, arriving in Britain with £5 in his pocket and subsequently building a huge company. For all the talk of delivering beer in a 2CV so battered that you could see the road through the floor, he comes from a privileged background. His father was a general in the Indian Army, he left India for England at the age of 19 to train as a chartered accountant, attended Cambridge and speaks with an accent that would make the Duke of Edinburgh sound chavvy.

 

But his ethnicity was undoubtedly one of the reasons he had a profile that far outstripped his achievements and one of the reasons he was so ludicrously overpromoted, being enobled and, among other things, being made deputy president of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, chairman of the UK-India Business Council and Chancellor of Thames Valley University.

 

The massacre of Uighur demonstrators in the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar has been reported in every language, from English to Chinese to Portuguese to Arabic. While the intense repression against Uighurs is normally ignored by both the Chinese Government and the international media, the deaths of hundreds of protesters and the injuries of hundreds more has exposed the brutality of Chinese government actions toward Uighurs in a way that cannot be ignored.

 

Instead of taking action to recognise the cause of Uighurs’ demonstrations, or to acknowledge that the problems in East Turkestan [known by the Chinese as Xinjiang] derive from the Chinese Government’s inability to resolve discontent, Chinese officials have resorted to blaming “outside forces”, including me and one of the organisations I lead, the World Uighur Congress. Just as Chinese officials placed the blame for widespread demonstrations in Tibet on the Dalai Lama, they claim that overseas Uighur organisations “instigated” the demonstrations in East Turkestan. I in no way organised or called for any demonstrations.

 

I condemn the violence that has been carried out against the Uighur people. I also condemn the violence some Uighur demonstrators have committed. I am absolutely opposed to all forms of violence, and believe it is only through dialogue and attempts at mutual understanding that we may achieve peace.

 

At this point, it is impossible to confirm the exact number of those killed and injured. The organisations I lead have received reports from witnesses inside East Turkestan that more than 400 Uighur demonstrators were killed in the regional capital of Urumqi.

        

On Sunday, July 5, students in Urumqi began marching in the streets in a peaceful demonstration against the recent killing of Uighur workers at a toy factory in Guangdong province, in southern China. According to Radio Free Asia interviews of Uighurs working at the factory, a mob of Chinese workers and gang members from the local area stormed into the dormitory housing Uighurs, beating them and hacking at them with machetes. The attack was carried out in response to an unsubstantiated rumour that Uighur workers had sexually assaulted two Chinese workers.

 

According to the official Chinese media, two Uighurs were killed, but reports from Uighur factory workers who witnessed the mob attack say the number is much higher.

 

Had the top two government officials in East Turkestan taken steps to address the killings in Guangdong, together with local officials, the protest in Urumqi might never have happened. However, these officials were clearly not interested in investigating abuses against Uighurs, or in examining what caused the attack in Guangdong.

 

Uighur discontent over Chinese government policy started long before the killings in Guangdong. Under six decades of rule by the Government of the People’s Republic of China, Uighurs have been slowly suffocating from official policies aimed at eliminating our Turkic culture and mystical brand of Islam — much in the same way as official policies have destroyed the culture and customs of Tibetans. The killing and injuring of Uighur workers in Guangdong, and the lack of a transparent, just government response, was only the latest in a long line of abuses committed against Uighurs, though a particularly egregious one.

 

I have experienced first-hand the repression of Uighurs, through my own imprisonment and the imprisonment of two of my sons, Alim and Ablikim Abdureyim. Alim and Ablikim are currently serving lengthy prison sentences in Urumchi, in clear retaliation for my international human rights advocacy. There are reports that they have been tortured in prison, and that they have not been treated for serious medical ailments.

 

I was imprisoned from 1999 until 2005 for using my position as a delegate to a top Chinese governmental body to call upon the Chinese Government to change its policies toward Uighurs. Unfortunately, there is no place within Chinese officialdom for the expression of concern over ethnic policies. While in prison, I was subject to extended periods of solitary confinement and medical neglect. But far more horrifying were the times I was forced to witness torture of my fellow prisoners — those without an official government position, or the support of groups such as Amnesty International.

 

I am extremely lucky to have been given the opportunity to live a free life in the United States, beginning in 2005. Unfortunately, my fellow Uighurs left behind in East Turkestan face severe discrimination in the areas of healthcare and employment, as well as religious repression, forced abortion, and the removal of Uighur as a language in schools at all levels of instruction.

 

Uighur resentment at government policy has only intensified with the razing of an ancient centre for Uighur culture: the Old City of Kashgar. The Old City, which has served as a cradle of Uighur civilisation for centuries and which was an important stop on the Silk Road, is being reduced to rubble, and its population of 220,000 Uighurs is being forcibly moved to cinderblock apartments on the outskirts of the city. Uighurs were not given a voice in the project, and are being forced to watch in silence as their homes, and their history, are bulldozed away.

 

This crescendo of the destruction of Uighurs’ culture is what brought Uighurs to the streets. Though they must have known they would be subjected to extreme force, the Uighurs’ desperation seems to have outweighed their fear. Theirs was a desperate call to be heard, in the face of an authoritarian regime that crushes any dissent. Theirs was a call for freedom and justice.

 

Writing about Sarah Palin always presents a quandary. Does one operate under the usual assumption that this is a rational figure, a serious politician, a rising Republican star . . . or do you acknowledge the copious evidence that she cannot tell the truth, has delusions of grandeur, has no policy record to speak of and quit her job as Alaska governor halfway through her first term because she is, in her own explanation, “not a quitter”? I think that you have to proceed under the assumption that this is a joke of a candidate and a symptom of a political party in the middle of a mental breakdown.

 

Mind you, I love the idea of Sarah Palin: a brassy, no-nonsense enemy of bloated government and corruption. That was probably John McCain’s rough idea of who she was in the five minutes his staff vetted her, and on the one occasion he’d met her, before offering her a chance to be leader of the free world. The idea of Sarah Palin, though, is sadly not the reality of Sarah Palin.

 

The reality of Sarah Palin is that politics is a means to her higher goal: celebrity. Every action she takes is designed to make sense . . . if you believe that government is really a version of a reality show. The remote, David Lynch-style location, the family often in trouble with the law, the pregnant teenage daughter and her impossibly handsome redneck boyfriend, the boyfriend’s angry sister, an ornery Alaskan trooper, a few moose and mysterious pregnancies . . . and, well, the mini-series never ends. The best guess I’ve heard of the real reason for her abrupt departure is: “I’m a celebrity . . . get me out of here!”

 

No one yet understands the real reason for a first-term governor just quitting on Friday, July 3, with no advance notice. If it were planned, why did her husband have to travel 300 miles to be there? Why do it all on a federal holiday before the Fourth of July? As Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous might note: “Who can say?”

 

A blog reader scanned every single governor of all the states for the past century to find precedents. There are plenty of examples of governors being arrested, being impeached or dying. But only two others in American history have just up and quit: Eliot Spitzer, New York governor, involved in a professional escort service after he had vowed to clean up the state; and Jim McGreevey, whose gay lover blackmailed him. Palin has quit for no apparent reason.

 

If it were to spend time with her family, it would be understandable, but she insists that’s not the case — and if you’re prepared to run for national office months after giving birth to an infant with Down’s syndrome, it’s a little odd to quit the governorship of a state when you have only a year and a half to go. It doesn’t make sense politically since it implies she could do the same thing at any moment in any future office. Why should anyone vote for someone who could quit for no good reason at any time?

 

But trying to makes sense of Sarah Palin is a fool’s errand. I spent a lot of time last year trying to figure out how her bizarre pregnancy story could make any sense at all — it doesn’t — and came up with nothing but a suspicion that large parts of it were made up. If you present the facts to Palin spokespeople, they seem offended and regard you as some liberal hater. But the facts reveal she lies all the time about almost everything and so is probably improvising about her reasons for resigning.

 

I’ve now compiled 32 incontrovertibly untrue statements of fact that she has uttered in the public record and never retracted. They are not the usual political lies — spinning or shading the truth; they are demonstrably, empirically untrue in the public record. Some are trivial: Palin said on television that she asked her daughters to vote on whether she should accept the vice-presidency offer; but that story contradicts details given by Palin herself, who said she accepted the offer on the spot.

 

Others are more serious: Palin lied when she said the dismissal of Walt Monegan, her public safety commissioner, had nothing to do with his refusal to fire Mike Wooten (her former brother-in-law, who was at war with her family) from his job as a state trooper; in fact, the Branchflower report concluded she repeatedly abused her power when dealing with both men.

 

Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to the famous “bridge to nowhere”, an expensive, pork-barrel government project; in fact, she openly campaigned for the federal project when running for governor. I could go on. But the truth is, she’s a reality-show star vaulted to national prominence by a Republican party now so devoid of talent and desperate for some kind of support that it gambled on the political equivalent of Susan Boyle. One who couldn’t even sing.

 

My own bet is that there is another scandal out there that would have forced her resignation if she hadn’t pre-empted it. Yet as plausible is the simple notion uttered by the only person in the melodrama who seems halfway sane: Levi Johnston, the teenage father of Palin’s grandson: “I think the big deal was the book. That was millions of dollars.” With a multi-million-dollar book deal, Palin can now become the darling of the right-wing media in America without the tedious duties of actually, you know, governing something. If the book contains scandals we have not yet learnt about, it could be explosively big in the mainstream; if it’s a hagiography, it could sell well with an adoring religious base.

 

And this helps explain the broader problem with American conservatism right now. It is less a movement than an industry. From Fox News to talk radio to conservative publishing houses, it has created an alternate and lucrative media reality that is worth a fortune to those able to exploit it. Alas, these alternative media thrive on paranoia, hatred of liberal elites and growing extremist rhetoric made worse by a hermetically sealed echo chamber of true believers. Anyone criticised by the left or even by the establishment right is a martyr in this world. In America, martyrdom sells. And Palin is a product worth lots of money.

 

She wants some of it; and she has no actual interest in governing America (even though she’d love the title of president). She referred to giving up her “title” as governor, not her “office”. In this, she is the ultimate Republican of this degenerate moment: all culture war, no policy; all identity politics, no engagement with practical answers to difficult public problems; and all hysterical opposition to Barack Obama, no actual alternatives offered.

 

Since even epic scandals heighten celebrity rather than diminish it, Palin’s future is secure. Her party’s? Getting bleaker by the day.

 

Public confusion over the principal objectives of the military campaign in Afghanistan has forced ministers to try to explain why so many British soldiers are dying and for what cause.

 

Initially, the reason for the mission in Helmand province was to ensure that al-Qaeda was prevented from ever again using Afghanistan as a safe haven for terrorism which would be damaging to Britain’s national security.

 

Verdict: the presence of British troops in the province since 2006 has helped to reduce the threat posed by al-Qaeda remnants who stayed behind after the Taleban was toppled in 2001. But some of the insurgents killed in clashes with British troops have turned out to be Yemenis, Chechens, Saudis and other, non-Afghan, nationalities.

 

Al-Qaeda responded by switching its terrorist operating centre from Afghanistan to Pakistan. So the threat to British streets from terrorism comes from Pakistan, not from Afghanistan. No one, apart from President George Bush in a speech he made several years ago, seriously believes that the Taleban is threatening Britain’s cities and towns.

 

Rating: 7 out of 10.

         

The troops of 16 Air Assault Brigade who were the first to go to Helmand were all told that their principal mission was “reconstruction” — in other words, to help the Afghans to improve their lives after decades of war.

Verdict: the soldiers found themselves so caught up in fighting the Taleban who, until the British arrival, only faced 100 American troops running a provincial reconstruction Team (PRT) in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. The Taleban mounted a ferocious defence of what they considered to be their spiritual heartland. There was little time left for reconstruction, and when it did take place, it tended to be a new roof for a market here and a refurbishment of a school there.

 

Today, there is more development underway, but it’s largely in the hands of small teams from the Department for International Development, guarded wherever they go by armed private security men. The troops might want to build schools and roads, but they are still fighting to spread security and stability in key zones in order for work to start.

 

Rating: 5 out of 10.

 

The objective of Operation Herrick, codename for the British military campaign in Afghanistan, slowly began to suffer from mission creep. Tony Blair, when he was Prime Minister, emphasised that the troops were also there to tackle the heroin trade in Afghanistan. He warned the public that more than 90 per cent of the heroin that reached the streets of Britain and ended up ruining young people’s lives came from Afghanistan.

 

Verdict: Britain was given the responsibility under the so-called Bonn agreement to deal with counter-narcotics. But the achievements were limited in the first few years. Up to £20 million was spent putting money into the pockets of Afghan farmers to persuade them to turn to growing wheat and maize and vegetables, but to no avail. The poppy harvesting continued at record rates.

 

Today, progress has been made in targeting the opium traffickers and destroying stocks when found. But British troops have played no part in eradicating poppy fields; indeed they patrol through the fields during the poppy season in late April and early May and do nothing to stop the farmers from scraping the resin from the poppy heads which is then converted into opium. The yield from the last poppy harvest was down on the previous year but that had more to do with poor weather than successful missions by the international community to persuade poppy farmers to go straight.

 

Rating: 2 out of 10.

 

In addition to keeping out al-Qaeda, the Government has also stated the objective of spreading Afghan governance throughout Helmand, and ensuring that the presidential election on August 20 can go ahead without Taleban interference and intimidation.

 

Verdict: ask any Afghan official in Helmand whether he is able to do his job without fears for his safety. He will say that it is impossible to carry out all his responsibilities because there are areas which are still too dangerous. There also appears to be limited interest in Helmand development programes from within the government of President Karzai in Kabul. One district governor in Helmand told The Times that he had not been visited once by a ministry representative from the capital.

 

It is too early to know whether Operation Panther’s Claw, the mission to drive the Taleban out of central Helmand, will succeed in allowing the election to go ahead peacefully.

 

Rating: 4 out of 10.

 

Harriet Harman, the Leader of the Commons, introduced a further mission-creep objective to the British campaign when, last week in the Commons, she said that the provision of school places for children was a vital aim.

 

Verdict: although her remark was not totally incompatible with the objective of spreading governance and helping the Afghans to improve their lives, it helped further to muddy the waters over why 9,000 British troops are serving in southern Afghanistan. It is true, nevertheless, that millions more Afghan boys, and in particular, girls, are now going to school but often have to take classes in the heat of the day in makeshift tented classrooms.

 

Rating: 5 out of 10.

 

“There is barely an important piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” the commander said. “Nevertheless, much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centres, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory that we seize.”

 

He added: “Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land, where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.”

 

They could have been the words of a Nato general in the past few days. In fact they were spoken by Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, commander of Soviet armed forces, to the USSR’s politburo in the Kremlin on November 13, 1986.

 

The Soviet forces were in the seventh year of their nine-year war in Afghanistan and had lost about 12,000 men. Akhromeyev, a hero of the siege of Leningrad in the second world war, had been summoned to explain why a force of 109,000 troops from the world’s second superpower appeared to be humiliated, year after year, by a band of terrorists.

 

Akhromeyev explained about the rough terrain, insisted the army needed more resources – including additional helicopters – and warned that without more men and equipment “this war will continue for a very long time”.

 

He concluded with words that sound uncannily resonant today, in the eighth year of Nato’s war: “About 99% of the battles and skirmishes that we fought in Afghanistan were won by our side. The problem is that the next morning there is the same situation as if there had been no battle. The terrorists are again in the village where they were – or we thought they were – destroyed a day or so before.”

           

The Soviet campaign in Afghanistan is a largely forgotten war. Few strategists from Russia or the West seem to think anything can be learnt from it. But study Soviet archives and many lessons become clear.

As the world was not watching, the Soviet troops could be brutal, yet massive air raids and the destruction of villages, which killed 800,000 Afghans, did not work. Tactics changed over the years, each time accompanied by a “surge” of new troops that temporarily improved security for the Russian-backed communist government in Kabul.

 

Much of the fighting was in places that have become familiar to us. Soviet troops were sent on sweeps in the most troublesome areas on the border with Pakistan, through which most of the guerrillas’ weapons flowed, and the southern provinces of the country, such as Helmand. As soon as they left their fortified bases, the troops were in danger of ambush from bands of mujaheddin – the army of God.

 

That war, like today’s, was characterised by disputes between soldiers and politicians. As newly revealed Russian documents show, the Communist party bosses ordered the invasion against the advice of senior commanders. This caused continual friction in Moscow for many years.

 

Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, the chief of the Soviet defence staff, and Akhromeyev, his number two, raised doubts shortly before Soviet forces were dispatched on Christmas Day 1979. They suggested to Dmitri Ustinov, the defence minister, that the experiences of the British and tsarist armies in the 19th century should encourage caution.

 

Ustinov told them to “shut up and obey orders”, according to politburo minutes.

 

Ogarkov went further up the chain of command to Leonid Brezhnev, the party boss. He warned that an invasion “could mire us in unfamiliar, difficult conditions and would align the entire Islamic East against us”. He was cut off in mid-sentence.

 

“Focus on military matters,” he was told. “Leave the policy making to us and to the party.” Not long afterwards the marshal was fired.

 

The Soviet troops realised soon after they entered Afghanistan that they had blundered, but Kremlin officials felt trapped. When Mikhail Gorbachev became leader in March 1985 he declared privately that ending the war – “our bleeding wound” – was his priority. But he could not do so for fear of losing too much face. Withdrawing the troops took a further four years as they searched for that difficult prize for armies on the run: peace with honour.

 

It was an agonising process that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire and eventually the USSR itself. “How to get out of this racks one’s brains,” Gorbachev despaired to his fellow Soviet magnates in the spring of 1986. He told his generals later that year: “After all this time we have not learnt how to wage war there.”

 

When the last troops left on February 15, 1989, about 15,000 of their comrades had been killed. It was the only war the USSR lost. To Gorbachev, one vital issue was how to “spin” it correctly. As he wrote to his key aides during the last phase of the retreat, presentation was key: “We must say that our people have not given their lives in vain,” he said.

 

What do you call a black man with a PhD? The answer begins with an “n”. Yes, it’s an old and bitter joke about the resilience of racial bias in America, but it got a new twist last week. The black man with a PhD was Henry Louis Gates Jr, one of the most distinguished scholars of African-American history and culture at Harvard. His unexpected tormentor was a local policeman called James Crowley, a white, well-trained officer called to investigate a possible break-in.

 

The facts we know for sure are as follows. Ten days ago Gates got home from China in the afternoon to find his front door jammed. He forced it open with the help of his cab driver, another black man. A white woman in the area called the police to report a possible burglary. Crowley showed up and saw a black man in the hallway of the house through the glass door. He asked Gates to step out onto the porch and talk to him. Gates refused.

 

The police report — written by Crowley — says he told Gates he was investigating a break-in in progress and Gates responded furiously: “Why? Because I’m a black man in America?” Gates tried to place a call to the local police chief, while telling Crowley he had no idea who he was “messing” with. The interaction quickly degenerated. After Gates had shown his Harvard identification, Crowley said he would leave. Gates then followed him to his front door, allegedly yelling that Crowley was racist. On his own porch, at his own property, Gates was arrested for “disorderly conduct”, handcuffed and booked in at a local station.

 

The incident clearly struck a nerve. Boston has a fraught racial history. Gates, of course, is no underclass black man but among the country’s elite, friends with the president, chums with Oprah Winfrey, a man given a small fortune by Harvard to build one of the best departments of African-American studies in the world.

 

The affair got another lease of tabloid life when President Barack Obama was asked for his reaction to the incident and said that while Gates was a friend and he did not know the full facts, the police acted “stupidly” by arresting someone when there was proof he was in his own home.

 

So was this an example of excessive racial grievance on the part of Gates or excessive racial insensitivity on the part of Crowley — or a little bit of both? Such moments are fully understood only by the individuals involved — and even then the truth is murky in such emotional circumstances. But it is indeed unusual to arrest someone for “disorderly conduct” when he is on his own property.

 

Massachusetts law defines the perpetrators of “disorderly conduct” thus: “common night walkers, common street walkers, both male and female, common railers and brawlers, persons who with offensive and disorderly acts or language accost or annoy persons of the opposite sex, lewd, wanton and lascivious persons in speech or behaviour, idle and disorderly persons, disturbers of the peace, keepers of noisy and disorderly houses and persons guilty of indecent exposure”. Apparently Gates’s loud accusations of racism on a street in Cambridge at one o’clock in the afternoon in front of at most seven passers-by and neighbours was a qualification for the charge. It’s no big surprise that it was swiftly dropped.

 

Crowley gave an interview on Thursday after Obama’s remarks, refusing to apologise. When asked what he thought of the president’s comments, he smiled, paused and said: “I didn’t vote for him.” The way he said it, the contempt in his voice and pride in his actions, helped to illuminate for me why Gates might have perceived racism. But the second police report — from an officer called Carlos Figueroa — testified that Gates initially refused to provide Crowley with any identification, yelling, “No, I will not!” and, “This is what happens to black men in America!” and, “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”

 

Gates is not a merchant of racial grievance. He is a scholar who has won wealth and fame and respect for his work and who tends to eschew the kind of bald racial accusations he made that day. Maybe he was exhausted after a long trip and irritated by being unable to get into his home; to be confronted by an officer of the law asking if he was a burglar may well have been the last straw. He lost his cool. A black man should never lose his cool with a white policeman in America. Obama explained in his autobiography the unwritten code for black men in such situations: no sudden moves.

 

Would this have happened to a white man? That requires some unpacking. A white man seen breaking through the front door into a house in an affluent section of Cambridge, Massachusetts, might not have prompted a police call. Any suspected break-in, though, could justify a call to the local police station.

 

More importantly, a white man seeing a policeman call him onto his porch for identification would probably not have exploded the way Gates allegedly did. Nor, one might add, would a poor black man arrested on the streets of the largely African-American neighbourhood of Roxbury in Boston raise such a ruckus about “racism”. Gates’s response was a classic example of how successful black men in America feel when treated by the police in a manner used in the ghetto. That was also perhaps the reason for Obama’s solidarity. What do you call a black man with a PhD again? Equally, I’d wager that if the policeman had seen an older white man wielding a cane through the glass door of a posh house, he would not have demanded that the man come out onto his porch and identify himself. He would have knocked, explained the reason for his visit and instantly accepted a white man’s explanation. Is this racism? If it has never happened to you, no. If it has, yes.

 

On the web, the comments sections on various blogs and stories were the most honest. Here is one view: “Butt the hell out Obama. You don’t know the facts of the case, you weren’t there, you’re friends with the douchebag, you’re black. Taking Obama’s word is the same as judging a criminal by a jury of his fellow gangster peers.”

 

Here is another: “Professor Gates might not have been arrested if he’d been more submissive — let the cop win the masculinity contest. Every brotha has played that game as well: you don’t look the popo in the eye, you do say ‘sir’ a lot and maybe you won’t get locked up. Then you go home and stew in the stuff that gives African-American men low life expectancy.”

 

Yes, America has a black president. But some things haven’t changed that much, have they?

 

In any country other than the United States, it’s hard to feel the intensity of the national dispute over healthcare. It’s consuming Barack Obama’s presidency, and so it should. He’s right to have told Americans that they can’t afford their medical system (that is genteel understatement) and that it’s going to bankrupt their Government soon.

 

But he’s wrong in the way he’s trying to solve it — including his curious detachment from the details of the plan that will make or break his presidency. Why has his grand notion gone so badly adrift?

 

At last, yesterday afternoon, Obama was plunging into the high-profile advocacy that he has avoided for months, fielding questions from pensioners’ groups. He wants to salvage some kind, any kind, of legislation. The best guess at this point is that he will indeed get something from Congress by the end of the year. But as the efforts in both Houses stand, they address Obama’s demand for cover for the 47 million Americans without insurance — yet do nothing to say how the US will pay for this.

 

Obama’s bald statement that the Bills in the House of Representatives and Senate are, or will be, “revenue-neutral” is simply untrue. Voters are not fools, hence his plunging poll ratings — and hence the chance that Congress will throw the Bills right back at him.

         

My colleague Anatole Kaletsky, in a superbly blunt article on June 18, pointed out that “healthcare, not bailouts, could break America”. Premiums have risen by 58 per cent since 2000, although average wages have edged up only by 3 per cent. The result is an erosion of living standards. “America’s ‘excessive’ consumption, widely seen as the most fundamental cause of world economic instability, has been due entirely to health spending.”

 

The White House has made this case well enough to jolt the Democrat-controlled Congress into an attempt at reform. But here, Obama made his first mistake. His team clearly was thinking (and his Secretary of State could remind him) of the debacle of Hillary Clinton’s efforts to redraw US healthcare. She and President Clinton drew up the plans, in hundreds of pages, and dropped them on an unprepared Congress, as if they were playing at think-tanks, not politics. It failed, and Clinton got his punishment in the midterm elections, when Congress turned Republican.

 

Obama has gone too far the other way. He has declined to draw up a detailed plan himself, but lobbed a few general principles in the direction of Capitol Hill, and left it to his former Senate colleagues.

 

The New York Times yesterday carried a hagiographic sketch of Senator Max Baucus, of Montana, together with two Democrats and three Republicans, working for hours a day to devise a compromise. That’s justified only in that the most likely version to emerge from any door of Capitol Hill is the Baucus one. But that doesn’t make it a good one. It answers Obama’s desire for more coverage for poorer people. It doesn’t cut the cost or choices of existing healthcare — too painful. Obama doesn’t say in credible detail how the $1 trillion over ten years should be funded.

 

Americans have evidence in front of them of how the postwar healthcare systems of Medicare and Medicaid ballooned beyond original estimates of costs. Massachusetts, which extended its coverage and is now faced with costs it cannot meet, is another case.

 

Congress looks as if it will either pass something so expensive as to be unworkable — or throw it back at the White House. Either way, without a radical change in the script, the most important and expensive policy of Obama’s presidency is heading in a direction that he won’t want.

 

The following is an extract from a story by jonathan landreth published in The Times, 30July2009:

 

China plans to reduce the number of death sentences it hands out each year to “an extremely small number” and to reserve executions for only the most serious offenders.

 

In an interview published yesterday in the state-run Legal Daily, Zhang Jun, vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court, said that China would not abolish capital punishment but would restrict the number of executions and increase the use of a “death penalty with reprieve” sentence.

 

The newspaper said that the high court had been working to ensure that the death sentence was given only to those who have committed extremely serious crimes that lead to “grave social consequences” such as murder resulting from disputes.