J'accuse encore: how Christian Aid demonizes the Jewish state

The United Reformed Church is a significant Christian Aid donor. Through its "Commitment for Life" programme it raised over £400,000 for CA last year. It divides its donations into four equal parts, to be spent respectively in Bangladesh, Jamaica, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Zimbabwe. This arrangement already tells us something about the way propaganda shapes the perceptions of the most well-meaning. It results in Palestinians getting about five times more per head than Zimbabweans, and getting on for fifty times more than Bangladeshis - and this despite the fact that Palestinians are on average significantly less poor than either Zimbabweans or Bangladeshis. OK, the Jamaicans do best of all, and I admit I have no theory to explain how the URC worked that one out, unless it simply reflects where they like to spend their holidays.

Christian Aid have produced briefings for the URC on the countries which its donations benefit. The one for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is here, and it starts like this:-

'The past year has been dominated by the conflict in Gaza and its aftermath. On 27 December 2008 Israel launched an aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, followed by a ground invasion a week later. The violence continued for 22 days, until a temporary ceasefire was put in place on 18 January. Christian Aid’s partners wasted no time in responding to the crisis, with the provision of medical relief, food distribution and counseling for children. But Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza’s borders – which even before the conflict was severely exacerbating the poverty and suffering of the people of Gaza - continues to hamper the humanitarian response.'

Needless to say, it was entirely appropriate that Christian Aid should respond to the humanitarian emergency created by the fighting in Gaza. But humanitarian is never just humanitarian where Christian Aid's involvement in the Middle East is concerned - as the passage above demonstrates perfectly.

In this version of events there was no conflict, no violence until an Israeli bombardment began on 27 December. The rockets that fell in their hundreds in and around Sderot simply aren't part of the picture; apparently they fall outside Christian Aid's working definitions of 'conflict' and 'violence'. So, once the rockets have been excluded, Israel's actions in first blockading, then bombarding and invading Gaza become totally unprovoked, gratuitous acts of cruelty.

Argue that an invasion was the wrong response to the rockets and you potentially have my sympathy. Ditto if you argue that it took an unnecessary toll of civilian life. But if you present the invasion as unprovoked you've crossed the line in the sand. On the right side of the line what happens is the proper holding to account of all the parties in a long and complex conflict in which nobody has a monopoly of right. On the wrong side is the demonization of that state and the promotion of prejudice and hatred towards the people whose state it is. That there are a lot of people on the wrong side these days is no excuse for Christian Aid to be among them.

When you're looking from the wrong side of the line, you can see the children of Gaza need 'psycho-social support', but it doesn't occur to you to wonder what it's like to be a child in Sderot. You feel a need to support people who 'provide a supply of credible and up-to-date information to counter biased or misleading accounts in the Israeli media' - no need to worry about Gaza's media, which thanks to their Hamas minders always tell the truth, don't they?

And whilst you will be happy to associate Zimbabwe with images like this...

...("A man surveying his crops with pride" from this leaflet) your preferred imagery for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will be like this...

...accompanied by text like this:-

'It is 6am and Rasheed Mohammed’s hands grip the metal bars at the main checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Like the 2,000 other Palestinian workers coming through this morning, his short commute to work is now far longer and far more difficult. It takes him through these bars; past Israeli soldiers with rifles; through two ID checks; and a metal detector.'

(from this leaflet)

You will graciously concede to Israel 'the right and the duty to protect her citizens', but will have nothing to say about the cost of her pre-barrier inability to do so.

From the wrong side of the line in the sand you will not see any soldiers with rifles in Zimbabwe, and only your passing reference to 'bad governance' will hint at the realities of a country terrorized and reduced to penury by a despot. So you will have no thought of sending volunteers dressed in high-visibility jackets to monitor the country's human rights record. Save that for the evil Israelis.

I sometimes wonder whether 'Christian Hate?' was an overly provocative title for my blog. But not when I see material like this. And, yes, even the gentle souls of the United Reformed Church can be led to hate in the end, if they're fed enough lies. The evidence is for that proposition is in the long, bloody history of Christian anti-Semitism. If you don't believe me, it's time to do some reading.

Tongewatch

Here's the latest on the company kept by former Christian Aid trustee and current patron of Christian Aid partner Friends of Sabeel UK, Baroness Tonge.

I fear it's no use telling her that she'll be rubbing shoulders with Hamas supporters. We already know that that's not a problem for her. Will she have second thoughts, though, on learning that she'll be sharing a platform with one of Nick Griffin's chums? My breath is baited.

Christian Aid and Israel: some hard facts for Liberal Jews (and concerned Christians)

This post is cross-posted at Harry's Place


Who said that?

'[T]he pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party.'

Who said that? Answer: a former Trustee 0f Christian Aid, and current Patron of a Christian Aid partner charity.

'International law accepts that people living under illegal military occupation are entitled to fight against the occupiers with whatever means they have at their disposal. If the world does not like, for example, “terrorist suicide bombing” in Palestine (a weapon neither unique to the Palestinians nor invented by them), then, as one Palestinian exile said at a conference in December 2003, “Give us F-16s, Apache helicopters, missiles tanks and heavy weapons, and we’ll have a fair fight”.'

Who used these words to justify the deliberate killing of civilians? Answer: another Patron of the same Christian Aid partner charity.

Also on the roll of Patrons are a bishop who is currently a Trustee of Christian Aid; another bishop who was Chair of Christian Aid from 1998 to 2008; and his predecessor in that post. The organization claims that it 'works for a just peace for the people of Palestine and Israel' and 'promotes non-violence and reconciliation'.

Introduction

I'm a Christian and a one-time Christian Aid donor who believes there's a problem here. I started this blog to make the point (in 2005, having first raised the subject in a letter to Christian Aid in 2002 - the problem is not a new one). This is an update on these concerns which I've been encouraged to write having received an e-mail from a reader who belongs to a Liberal synagogue. He and others in the Liberal Judaism movement are unhappy that the movement is linking up with Christian Aid to campaign on climate change. They're not against the link in principle, but they do think Christian Aid should clean up its Middle East campaigning act first.

Blows have been exchanged in the LJ movement's magazine (here on page 4) but so far the debate seems just a little short on facts. Naturally it's not for me to tell Jews what to think, but I do think they ought to know what they're getting into. So I offer this post as a contribution to informed debate.

The Big, Big Issue

I started off my blog with a series of posts analyzing coverage of Israel and Palestine in Christian Aid News, the charity's magazine. This is how I summed up what I found:-

'Over the last seven issues [Summer 2003 to Summer 2005] of Christian Aid News more than 17 pages were devoted to Israel and Palestine. Most of this coverage involved political criticism of Israel. The most coverage any other conflict zone got was 4.5 pages for Angola – barely a quarter as much. Sudan, scene of more than two million deaths in the civil wars of the past two decades and, in the UN’s words, “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, got 2.5 pages. These include a full page feature about a woman who makes perfume. It tells you her recipe.'

Has anything changed over the four years since then? You can easily see for yourself. Go to the Christian Aid website. Click on the tab marked policy. Here you'll find policy papers filed under ten headings. Nine are for general and global issues - climate change, trade, and so on. One is for a specific area of the world: the Middle East. Click on this one: there are eight papers filed here, written between 2003 and 2008. One is a 2003 expose of alleged American theft of Iraqi wealth (did CA ever publish a 'hard-hitting report' on Saddam Hussein's regime?). The other seven all deal with Israel and Palestine.

You will search in vain for even one position paper on those conflicts in Sudan (and even if there was one, you could be pretty sure it would pull its punches when it came to apportioning blame; Omar Bashir's regime is touchy about what aid agencies say about it).

Sometimes slightly more subtle ways are found of justifying a preoccupation with a region slightly smaller than Belgium. During Lent this year Christian Aid led a 'virtual pilgrimage' around the Holy Land. Now the pilgrimage is of course a venerable Christian tradition, but pious tradition is not something that usually concerns Christian Aid overmuch. In this instance the pilgrimage furnished the perfect pretext for bringing sustained political criticism of Israel to a wider audience. Given a little imagination, a virtual pilgrimage could very well range across the entire world, but Christian Aid chose to do it differently, and that choice, it can scarcely be doubted, was very much a political one.

It's hard to see how this fixation with Israel and Palestine can be understood as (in the words of Liberal Judaism CEO Rabbi Danny Rich) 'seek[ing] to fulfil a humanitarian mandate'. On the contrary, its perverse consequence is that other areas of the world suffering human rights abuses on a vastly greater scale simply get ignored. You might expect that an international development agency like CA would be concerned to redress the neglect of many such places by mainstream media and political discourse in Britain. Instead it concentrates on the tiny scrap of land that's already a focus for relentless media overkill.

The sheer volume of coverage would tend to create a false impression - of Israel as a rogue state without peer - even if it were all scrupulously even-handed (it isn't). Whenever that perception is created it gives rise to undestandable anger. Not everyone is sophisticated enough to maintain a strict distinction between anger against Israel and anger against Jews (nor indeed do the sophisticated necessarily maintain it). For some the natural outlet for anger is violence and abuse. For many more it leads to a gradual desensitization to the proposition that the Jews are a people afflicted with a fundamental moral flaw.

The Tonge Connection

I've already hinted that my objections to Christian Aid's coverage of the conflict have to do with more than its sheer volume. At this point I take up the thread begun with the two quotations at the start of this post.

The name of the Liberal Democrat politician Jenny Tonge, now Baroness Tonge, will be all too familiar to many Jews. In 2004 a comment suggesting that Palestinian terrorism was an understandable reaction to the conditions of occupation led to her being sacked by party leader Charles Kennedy from the Lib Dem front bench. Two years later her statement at the party conference that "the pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party." was denounced by Kennedy's successor Menzies Campbell as having "clear anti-Semitic connotations." She is someone who has plainly moved way beyond legitimate criticism of Israel.

Earlier in 2006 Baroness Tonge had been appointed a Trustee of Christian Aid. After her conference speech the charity sought to portray it as irrelevant to her work with them. However, her position had evidently become untenable and she resigned her Trusteeship soon afterwards. I have little doubt that this was a result of pressure put on CA by responsible church leaders, but Tonge was no less certain that the pressure had come from a different quarter. As she wrote in an e-mail to a student:-

'After criticizing the lobby in a fringe meeting at conference (just after the publication of the book I mentioned [i.e. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby]) I had to stand down from the board of Christian Aid because they had been warned by the BOD [Board of Deputies of British Jews], that my membership would endanger projects going ahead in the West Bank and Gaza.'

So was this the end of Christian Aid's association with this deplorable conspiracy theorist? By no means. The connection is now a little less direct, but it is nevertheless alive and well. Baroness Tonge is currently a Patron of Friends of Sabeel UK, a group which promotes the nationalist liberation theology of the Palestinian Anglican Canon Naim Ateek. Its declared aim is to work for a just peace, which it may or may not be doing; what is evident from its website is that it promotes a one-sided propagandist narrative of the conflict and its origins, and that it campaigns against the Israeli security barrier without acknowledging that the barrier is a response to the deliberate killing of hundreds of civilians.

Friends of Sabeel UK declares prominently on its website that it is a partner of Christian Aid. It can be assumed that the partnership is to FoSUK's advantage financially; Charity Commission records shows it raising barely half as much as it spends. The honour of being a Patron is one that Baroness Tonge shares with, among others, Professor Michael Taylor, former director of Christian Aid, Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter and a Trustee of Christian Aid, and John Gladwin, Bishop of Chelmsford and Chair of Christian Aid from 1998 to 2008.

The point of establishing this connection is that by now it would take pretty high levels of anti-Israel obsessionalism - and a pretty insouciant attitude towards anti-Semitism - to make anyone want to make common cause against Israel with Baroness Tonge. Two Liberal Democrat leaders have distanced themselves from her; the top brass of Christian Aid are doing quite the reverse.

A Connection Too Far

The Friends of Sabeel website reveals another connection that is, if anything, even more disturbing than that with Baroness Tonge. For also on the list of Patrons is Ibrahim Hewitt, "coordinator of the Palestine relief organisation Interpal".

The Harry's Place blog has made something of a speciality of researching Interpal and its relationship to Hamas. Rather than duplicate HP's efforts, I invite readers to inform themselves here and here, and specifically on Ibrahim Hewitt here. Follow the link to Mr Hewitt's pamphlet "What does Islam Say?" and note, for example, his opinions on the proper punishments for apostates (death) and homosexuals (one hundred lashes, or death). That he is comfortable with the proposition that those converting from Islam to Christianity deserve to forfeit their lives is not only ironic given that he is himself a convert with an at least nominally Christian background, but also makes him, one would think, a remarkable bedfellow for a brace of bishops.

Agreed, that is not directly relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not so the second of the quotes at the beginning of this post, also from Mr Hewitt's pamphlet and quoted in a recent Harry's Place post. Here it is again:-

'International law accepts that people living under illegal military occupation are entitled to fight against the occupiers with whatever means they have at their disposal. If the world does not like, for example, “terrorist suicide bombing” in Palestine (a weapon neither unique to the Palestinians nor invented by them), then, as one Palestinian exile said at a conference in December 2003, “Give us F-16s, Apache helicopters, missiles tanks and heavy weapons, and we’ll have a fair fight”.'

Hewitt further underlines this position by quoting approvingly from "contemporary Islâmic scholar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi", who has consistently upheld the right of Palestinians to resort to terrorism.

This is not, repeat not, about Mr Hewitt being a Muslim, nor is it about the fact that he sympathizes with the Palestinians. The issue is this: his argument that Palestinians are entitled to kill Israeli civilians is one which Christians must reject as morally intolerable. The claim that "international law" vindicates terrorism is of course preposterous; far less can it be vindicated by any credibly Christian ethic. I cannot justify deliberately murdering the unarmed and defenceless by appealing to a group identity which they share with others whose military might exceeds my own. To assert otherwise is, apart from any other consideration, inherently racist where the group identity in question is a racial one, as it plainly is in the case of Palestinian terrorism.

The principle I have just stated may or may not have been infringed by members of the Israeli forces in Gaza. If and to the extent it has been, that is deplorable. Where Palestinian terrorism is concerned no 'ifs' arise. That the infringement has occurred and that it has indeed been premeditated and deliberate is beyond question, and this infringement is precisely what Mr Hewitt seeks to vindicate in the quote above. And this presents Christian Aid and Friends of Sabeel UK with a choice. Either they can claim the moral high ground for their efforts on behalf of the Palestinians, or they can argue from political expediency that their tent should be large enough to accommodate Ibrahim Hewitt. But they cannot do both.

Christian Aid and Hamas

What, then, is Ibrahim Hewitt, a Muslim with extreme religious and political views, doing as a Patron of a Christian charity? It's just possible that the Christian Aiders are not aware quite how extreme his views actually are. On the other hand, it's not necessary to assume that they are ignorant of his and Interpal's stance towards Hamas. For Christian Aid itself seems to be by no means hostile towards Hamas.

It consistently offers no criticism of Hamas to balance its repeated criticisms of Israel. It consistently avoids use of the word "terrorism"; whilst its official statements condemn "violence" in general terms, there is never any suggestion that the deliberate killing of non-combattants deserves special condemnation. Nor is there any acknowledgement that Hamas has been one of the foremost sponsors of violence of this type, nor that it is intransigently hostile to the existence of Israel, which Christian Aid is officially committed to upholding.

There is more on this theme in my response to a Christian Aid parliamentary briefing produced in 2006 and typical of an approach which has been entirely consistent before and since.

Further evidence of Christian Aid's approach can be found on Friends of Sabeel UK's website. The FAQ page starts with the question "Is Sabeel anti-semitic?" - revealing a certain defensiveness, perhaps. The answer begins with "No" and ends with criticism of Israel. It contains no mention of the explicit anti-Semitism of Hamas.

The events page lists FoSUK as one of the supporters of the "Free Palestine!" demonstration in London on 16 May 2009. Also in the list of supporters are the Muslim Association of Britain ("the British franchise of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood", in the words of Harry's Place) and Viva Palestina, under whose auspices George Galloway made his way to Gaza to hand over a wad of cash to Hamas. Viva Palestina is under investigation by the Charity Commission following this escapade (it is, after all, illegal to fund Hamas even if you don't have charitable status) - see this Harry's Place post which also notes the organization's close links with Ibrahim Hewitt's Interpal.

The Charity Commission seems happy to grant charities a good deal of leeway for political campaigning, and only under fairly extreme provocation does it bestir itself even to launch an investigation. Personally, I believe that this degree of politicization makes nonsense of the very concept of charity; even if the Commissioners disagree, it really is not acceptable for the churches which sponsor Christian Aid to share their indulgence.

The security barrier

'Christian Aid has expressed unequivocal support for the security of Israel and the rights of all Israeli people to live safely and securely' writes Rabbi Rich. Indeed it has. The problem is that there is a large gap between what the organization says in bland official statements (largely to keep the Charity Commission and/or the Archbishop of Canterbury off its back, I suspect) and what it actually practises. For in practice its support for the security of Israel is hedged about by the equivocations that surface whenever Israel takes action to safeguard its citizens.

The homepage of Friends of Sabeel UK features a photo of what is described elsewhere as an "armed Israeli lookout tower on the ‘Apartheid’ Wall". Another photo features "A Friends of Sabeel demonstration against the continued construction of the wall".

What has the security barrier meant for Israelis? Bearing in mind that construction began in 2003, the graph here tells its own story (I would not usually rely on an Israeli - or any other - government source, but the figures are not in dispute). To bring the picture up to date, one Israeli woman was killed by a suicide bombing in February 2008 (the bomber had come across the barrier-free border with Jordan). As I write that is the most recent suicide attack to have occurred in Israel. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have both acknowledged that their attacks have been frustrated by the presence of the barrier.

When Pope Benedict visited the Holy Land he described the security barrier as one of the saddest sights of his trip, and looked forward to a future in which it would have disappeared. But he also stated clearly that this was contingent on a renunciation of violence and aggression by all sides. That was an expression of 'unequivocal support for the security of Israel' and a model for Christians. It is sadly not the view of the Christian Aiders gathered together as Friends of Sabeel.

It might sound outrageous to suggest that the Friends of Sabeel want it made easier for Palestinians to kill Jews. But in June 2006 Baroness Tonge wrote complainingly in a letter to the Independent 'It should come as no surprise to anyone that suicide bombers in Iraq are Palestinians. Israel's security wall is forcing them to export themselves to another arena [...]' (my emphasis). Lest we forget, Baroness Tonge is a Patron of Friends of Sabeel UK and a very special friend of Christian Aid.

To be continued

This long post has been too long in the writing. For this I offer my apologies to the reader who asked me to write it, whilst leaving further thoughts for a follow-up post.

Update: the follow-up is here.


Appendix 1: selected past posts on Christian Aid

My June 2005 introduction to the blog

On the appalling 'Child of Bethlehem' Christmas appeal and its invocation of ancient tropes of Christian anti-Semitism

CA as Manichaeans

Demonizing imagery, and selective quotation from Rowan Williams

CA flies two MPs to Gaza - one of them just happens to be Jenny Tonge

A pat on the back for CA, for supporting a genuine peace initiative

On a student-oriented website which earned CA an award from the New Statesman

An open letter to the Director of Christian Aid (he didn't reply)

My reply to a comment from a Christian Aid employee

On episcopal politics and the beginning of CA's campaign against the security barrier

On Christian Aid advocacy for Hamas - with an update

On CA collaboration with War on Want and the Muslim Council of Britain

On Baroness Tonge's graduation to outright support for Hamas


Appendix 2: the charitable objectives of Friends of Sabeel UK

As lodged with the Charity Commission:-

(3.) THE CHARITY'S OBJECTS ARE:

(3.1) TO SUPPORT THE SABEEL THEOLOGY CENTRE IN JERUSALEM IN ITS WORK FOR THE PROMOTION OF RELIGION FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COMMUNITY

(3.2) TO SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGE THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN THE HOLY LAND (ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIAN AREAS OF GAZA, THE WEST BANK AND EAST JERUSALEM) IN THEIR LIFE AND WITNESS

(3.3) TO RAISE AWARENESS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM CONCERNING CHRISTIANS IN THE HOLY LAND AND TO PROMOTE LINKS WITH THEM.

Broadminded couple seeks...

Aside from mists and mellow fruitfulness, autumn is the season in which Curmudge is once again packed with nubile young freshers. So Frau Grumpy and I have been trawling the bars in search of a partner (gender immaterial) for a drug-fuelled threesome. Like you do.

I wouldn't bore you with this everyday tale of everyday folk, only - can you believe it? - some evil fascist hag has accused us of being sleazy. Our mortification knows no bounds. Honestly, doesn't she know what century she's living in? Thank goodness the heterosexual troilist community has protested on a scale which will hopefully ensure she never works again. Let her consume away like a snail.

(hat tip: the Dumb One)

Fake Aid

I'm still learning. I was aware that aid charities like Christian Aid derive a large slice of their income from the Department for International Development, and it goes without saying that I'm very much aware of their highly politicized 'advocacy' work, of which Christian Aid's Israel-bashing campaign is a particularly deplorable instance. What wasn't clear to me, though I had my suspicions, was how DfID cash goes specifically to fund propagandaadvocacy.

So I'm indebted to 'Fake Aid', a new report from the International Policy Network, for putting me in the picture. In an executive nutshell:-

'In 2008–092 DfID spent £140 million on
“communications” activities by NGOs whose primary
focus is often not the delivery of aid. Spending on such
communications has rocketed in recent years: starting
with an initial budget just under £38 million in 2000–01,
the total cost of these programmes will reach £1.1 billion
by 2010–11.'

It's a lot of money not being spent on what one might expect to be the raison d'être of both the DfID and the charities. The Times had a piece on the report; I missed the agencies' letter in response and can't find it, but some of the comments make the noises characteristic of a vested interest being rubbed up the wrong way. There are some good samples of the oh-so-you-want-us-to-leave-starving-babies-to-die-do-you straw man tactic. Perhaps somewhat spoiling the effect of these is the contribution from someone who can't see what the problem is because he got an all-expenses-paid trip to Ghana and jolly interesting it was too. I'm glad that he had a good time at my expense, but since at present my personal finances won't run to a holiday in Ghana I can only live in hope that the DfID will decide I am a particularly urgent case for re-education.

It's not hard to work out that the IPN is a robustly right-of-centre outfit. But there's a principle at stake which one would hope had at least some lingering resonance with the non-Stalinist Left: the principle that the state is not entitled to take my money and spend it on telling me what to think. But it's hard to find any section of the Left which has not been corrupted by the power conferred by its status as the new Establishment.

A question of some interest to me is whether Christian Aid's Israel-bashing, Hamas-legitimizing political campaigning has been supported by the taxpayer. There's no direct evidence in the report, and it may be hard to disentangle the answer. As the report notes:-

'When DfID funds are bundled together with money for
aid work in the field, it is impossible to know precisely
how the money is spent by recipient organisations or
how much is spent on aid delivery rather than advocacy
and public relations.'

This, though, is anything but reassuring:-

'The NGO War on Want, for example, was issued
an official warning by the Charity Commission over its
overtly political activities which included calls for the
cutting of all cultural, academic and sporting ties with
Israeli people who they deem “complicit at worst and
acquiescent at best” in relation to the Israeli
government’s alleged “apartheid policies.” The warning
did not affect DfID’s continued funding of the
organisation, to which it granted £980,119 via the CSCF
in 2007 and 2008.'

It is, indeed, fairly hard to imagine that you could bung a million quid at War on Want and not be making a substantial contribution to the demonization of Israel. It was certainly never going to get spent on campaigning against the Sudanese regime. It's also hard to believe that the DfID's functionaries don't know this.

I'm very much in favour of schoolkids (and others) learning about development issues. They should learn through proper educational materials devised by reasonably impartial educationalists, not from consciousness-raising sessions run by political commissars. What the DPI report uncovers is that a large and growing chunk of the aid agencies' business is effectively state propaganda by proxy. It's illiberal, it's corrupt, it stinks.

Official: Nobel judges now certifiable

A billion bloggers will be speaking as one but what the heck, why shouldn't I be the billion-and-first? Nobel Peace Prize now definitively worth one bent halfpenny.

I hope that in ten/twenty/thirty years' time we will look back and say they were right. Really. Though actually, on a more visceral level I also hope they will look as foolish as their predecessors who picked Kissinger. So I can't be disappointed either way.

Even the Beeb's man has to admit that the award "might be regarded as more of an encouragement for intentions than a reward for achievements". So prizes for everyone motoring down the highway to the big bonfire, then. Hurrah!

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population" saith the committee. Where do you start with that one?

Remember Tony Blair and his ethical foreign policy? Shame he couldn't have got his gong as a reward for pious words spoken in 1997. Why did the Nobelity have to hang around and pass their judgment on him after he'd quietly shelved the whole concept in favour of old-fashioned national self-interest?

No risk at all of history repeating itself, is there?

I'd say it would even have been a shade premature to pick Morgan Tsvangirai. But at least he can point to some solid achievements in hauling Zimbabwe out of the abyss. Not to mention stuff like getting his skull cracked by Mugabe's thugs and losing his wife to what may well have been an assassination attempt.

But who actually gives a monkey's about Zimbabwe and its people's empty stomachs, anyway? In a world of hype, nothing breeds hype like hype. And as of today, that's all the Nobel Peace Prize is about.

Here endeth the rant.

Dead right

Death as lifestyle choice: at the Torygraph fluffy Anglican Pitcher is of one mind with the bracing if slightly alarming franquista Catholic Warner. And they're both dead right.