Daily Archive

The World’s Greatest Newspaper Daily Express:

THE assassination of Benazir Bhutto yesterday raised fears of a surge in terror attacks around the world and the prospect of civil war in Pakistan.

She was shot twice at an election rally before her suicide attacker detonated his bomb, killing at least 20.

“Pakistan is in more turmoil – this will be the start of civil war,” warned Riaz Malik, of the Pakistan Movement for Justice…

A prospect that is truly frightening, especially for this reason. Reuters:

…Possible consequences of the assassination range from widespread street rioting by her followers to the nightmare scenario for Washington of Pakistan eventually becoming a nuclear-armed, unstable Islamic state…

How can we even begin to deal with that unbelievably scary combination?  First, the BBC reported, back in November 2005:

…[The former Roxy Music musician and producer Brian] Eno, who has a long history of political activism, told BBC World Service’s The Music Biz programme that all high-profile musicians had an “unfair advantage” and that they had a choice of how they used it.

“If you’re in the arts or some kind of celebrity, you get the microphone pointed at you,” he said.

“You can either choose to ignore that, and carry on talking about yourself, or you can say, ‘Here’s a chance to exert some sort of pressure for change.’

“I think if somebody doesn’t do something about it - even if its only a baffled confused artist - nothing’s going to get any better.”…

Curiously, speaking of “a baffled confused artist“, yesterday at about the same time Mrs Bhutto was being murdered in Pakistan, here in Britain during “Today” on Radio 4 (and although Pakistan went unmentioned by name) global armaments expert Mr Eno presented us with his scholarly prescription on the best method to deal with the dangers of a nuclear terror state. His insights will be available to be heard for about the next six days on the BBC web site.  Here, I’ve transcribed his most salient points (which start at about 1:47):

…One by one the non-nuclear countries are moving towards nuclear arsenals, seeking the mythical status and security that we can’t give up. As for Iran, the newest scary monster, well, that country’s surrounded by eleven states with American forces in them and America has already claimed the right to attack preemptively, as it did in Iraq. We’ve left Iran really with only one rational option. Right now Britain has the chance to become the first nuclear state to take genuine steps to get rid of nuclear weapons. If we did, we would have an authoritative moral position from which to talk to other countries about disarmament…

Thus Mr Eno.  The best means to deal with nuclear-armed jihadists is to win them over morally . . . by the West’s surrendering nuclear arms.  Britain, first.  An interesting theory that.  He proceeds then to clarify precisely why:

… The global nuclear situation can’t go on for much longer without something going badly wrong. We should recall the First World War: nobody knew why it started and nobody knew how to stop it. A nuclear war will be like that…

Yes, and also speaking of microphones being pointed, it is nice to see that Mr Eno thinks “nobody knew” how the Great War had started.  And that “nobody knew” how to stop it.

And it is particularly reassuring how he completes his commentary by managing not to delve at all into how the road to the subsequent, and far bloodier, WWII was paved with “global disarmament”.  The U.S., for example, reduced its AEF of several millions in 1918 to barely 3 semi-operational divisions by the middle of the 1920s – a unilateral arms reduction move perhaps unprecedented in all history, and one that clearly encouraged everyone else to join in the quest for “peace in our time”.  (Which is why I have omitted quoting Mr Eno’s digression into a professed nod, at the end of his first paragraph cited above, towards spending monies saved on nuclear capability on police salaries and conventional forces.  For, obviously, upping the numbers of non-nuclear tanks and planes is an illogical solution, given that if jihadists decide NOT — inexplicably, of course — to follow our moral lead, those additional weapons seem unlikely to achieve much against nuclear bombs; and, indeed, our having more conventional weapons must invariably also lead to others seeking increasing numbers of those, in their drives to achieve “the mythological security” of possessing . . . tanks and planes which, naturally, “we can’t give up“.)

Above all, it is wonderful how the BBC actually uses our licence fee to provide aging musicians unable evidently to so much as pull together even a good college-level presentation for “European History 102″, a platform to share half-baked drivel just before 8 AM with listening millions.