Ways to make Jews disappear / the campaign to boycott Israel

Alas, Stephen Hawking, if you think boycotting Israel helps Palestinians, think again.

Let’s hear from other academic voices. Raphael Cohen-Almagor explains the fallacy of a boycott campaign which no longer pretends to target only institutions, and now openly and predictably excludes Israeli individuals. Most Jews consider the boycott of Israel a threat to Jews, if not an active attack on Jews. Consequently boycotts exert strong introverting pressure on Jews. As an anti-Jewish strategy (which boycotting Israel often is) antisemites should understand why they fail to annihilate the object of their hatred. Norman Geras points out that antisemitism is interrelated with Jewish survival – it strengthens identity and mutual bonds between those who are designated and threatened as part of an ethnic group. Norm isn’t the first to note this paradox – unread as yet on my bookshelf is Dan Cohn-Sherbok’s book The Paradox of Anti-Semitism which contains many examples of Jewish leaders recognising this dilemma, from Rabbi Shneur Zalman and the spiritual dangers of integration to Theodore Herzl (“It is only pressure that forces us back to the parent stem”). In contrast, Moses Mendelssohn, Jewish Enlightenment  leader, set out to secure both the Jewishness and the participation. Robert Fine looks at the beginning of Jewish emancipation when the establishment extended a hand, if mistrustfully and conditionally, to German Jews. Ruth Wisse observes that throughout history where Jews suffered a deficit it tended to strengthen their collective resource and tenacity. Since emancipation, freed of the deficit and with a state of their own, but retaining a strong shared memory of persecution and a disinclination to take their continued success for granted, Jews are seen to strive and excel when taken as a group. Consequently in today’s prevailing (and I think ill-conceived) meritocracies, Jews have successful positions in greater proportions than their overall numbers indicate. Consequently it is easy for people affected by antisemitism to forget the obvious: Jews are individuals, not a coordinated group.

So are Jews out of the woods? It depends on the resilience of this society. At the heart of the boycott, political historian Jonathan Lowenstein explains, is envy, and this envy is sharpened by a shrunken economy. And after the Enlightenment came a global competition for resources and a related decision by a great power to do away with all Jews and appropriate their prosperity. So while I think speciesist, tribalist views of Jews about Jews belongs to desperate times, on the other hand to quote Hannah Arendt when attacked as a Jew it’s opportune to respond as a Jew.  Perhaps the desperate times have arrived.

Eve Garrard sets out the pleasures of antisemitism, (if you read nothing else, read that) which brought to mind Iain Banks’ lost tussle with antisemitism as his life reaches its premature end. In my trade union anti-Jewish activity I expected to be against the law has been found to be inside the law. David Hirsh and Sarah Annes Brown respond to the judgment from the legal action taken by Ronnie Fraser against the University and College Union on grounds of antisemitism related to anti-Israel campaigning. More on this from me in due course.

Stephen Hawking talked of pressure to boycott in ways which remind me of my MP’s appeal to populism in explaining that he is against gay marriage or protecting abortion rights because most of his correspondents have urged him to be. Perhaps Hawking represents a second phase, a mainstreaming of boycott. On the other hand, he has embraced the British Committee on Universities of Palestine, an organisation staffed by UK Israel eliminationists who, far from supporting a Palestinian call, instigated boycott themselves before any Palestinians had made call (takes your breath away, doesn’t it). There are so many reasons not to boycott.

Now, go and see if you can form some links with Israeli academics or cultural institutions, which despite all this acrimony are incredibly fertile, humane, questioning places.

Women bishops versus church and state

Next time somebody tries to tell you that this country has separated church from state you could cite this response to the e-petition – still open and in need of signatures – No women bishops, no automatic seats in the House of Lords. My emphases:

Dear [Flesh],

The e-petition ‘No women Bishops, no automatic seats in the House of Lords’ signed by you recently reached 10,519 signatures and a response has been made to it.

As this e-petition has received more than 10 000 signatures, the relevant Government department have provided the following response: The Government is committed to the Church of England as the Established Church in England, with the Sovereign as its Supreme Governor. We consider that the relationship between Church and State in England is an important part of the constitutional framework that has evolved over centuries. The Government believes that the second chamber should be more representative of the British people, which is why we introduced the House of Lords Reform Bill; however, the Bill was subsequently withdrawn when it became clear that it could not make progress without consuming an unacceptable amount of parliamentary time. While there continues to be an appointed element to the membership of the House of Lords, the Government believes there should continue to be a role for the Established Church. It is for the Church itself to decide whether it will appoint women Bishops and, if so, what arrangements are necessary to support those who cannot accept this change, but it is obviously disappointing that the Synod was unable to agree how to take this forward. The Government believes that the time is right for women Bishops – indeed it is long overdue. This e-petition will remain open to signatures until the published closing date and will be considered for debate by the Backbench Business Committee should it pass the 100 000 signature threshold.

View the response to the e-petition

Thanks,

HM Government e-petitions http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/

This is unsatisfactory. The Church of England can’t be such “an important part of the constitutional framework” that its primitive exclusions of women from high office should be overlooked. There may be “better uses of parliamentary time” but there are also many worse uses – this is a highly symbolic case of a faith group with a toehold in officialdom taking a position outside good progressive law by excluding women. See One Law For All for arguments against this kind of secession. Moreover this is not just some private members group we’re talking about – it’s the House of Lords, one of the highest governance forums in the land.

I’m for disestablishment but unlike the New Humanists I don’t think this reform-minded petition is tactical blunder. I think campaigning for the exclusion of 26 Lords Spiritual as a matter of principle rather than urgent redress is harder to warm to than arguing for the inclusion of women.

So how about that 100,000 signatures? Sign the petition.

US and UK murder – rate and weapon (updated)

This piece contains updated statistics for my most-read post. The comments under that post have been coming steadily since 2007.

In the US – population 311.5 million (1) – there were an estimated 13,756 murders in 2009 (2), a rate of about 5.0 per 100,000 (3). Of these 9,203 were carried out with a firearm.

In the UK – population 56.1 million (4) – there were an estimated 550 murders in 2011-12 (5), a rate of about 1.4 per 100,000. Of these 39 were carried out with a firearm (6).

References

(1) United States Census Bureau (undated). State and Country Quick Facts. Available from: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

(2) United States Census Bureau (2012) 2012 Statistical Abstract – Table 310. Murder Victims – Circumstances and Weapons Used or Cause of Death: 2000-2009. Available from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0310.pdf

(3) United States Census Bureau (2012) 2012 Statistical Abstract – Table 306. Crimes and Crime Rates by Type of Offence: 1980-2009. Available from:  http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0306.pdf

(4) Office for National Statistics (2011). 2011 Census Home. Available from: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html

(5) Home Office (2012). Historical Crime Data. Available from: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/historical-crime-data/

(6) Home Office (2010). Home Office Statistical Bulletin. Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2008/09. Available from: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb0110.pdf

Pro-sharia campaigners march through Walthamstow

You can tell Muslims Against Crusades are a tiny groupuscule because all their placards are done by a single person, there’s no report from yesterday’s mini march on their site, and their Media page doesn’t load. They’re expensive clowns and tossers, though – a lot of police, a lot of verbal (though the EDL mostly remained in the pubs), two arrests. Things are getting a bit bigoted round here.

Against religious bigotry stand – among others – the National Secular Society, One Law for All, Quilliam, the British Humanist Association, and British Muslims for Secular Democracy:

Against the far right of various stripes, Searchlight and Hope Not Hate but I should remark that I was recently told in infuriatingly sanguine tones that Hope Not Hate cannot treat the Islamists as they treat the BNP types because they will be called ‘Zionist’ and their credibility will suffer. The point was that HnH are better off sticking to fighting the white far right. If true, this is a disappointing kind of anti-fascism which will tie its own hands (though HnH is excellent at analysis and the absolutely crucial job of getting the anti-racist vote out – both indispensable), and why I will always appreciate Harry’s Place, which researches and fights all the authoritarian, racist, fascist or proto-fascist fuckers regardless of hue, don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world to be taken for a Zionist, and make surprisingly few mistakes while they’re about their business – LibbyT excepted (tosser). There’s also the Guardian’s Matthew Taylor who has been undercover with the EDL and recognises that they can’t be dismissed as thugs:

“At each demonstration I attended, I was confronted by casual racism, a widespread hatred of Muslims and often the threat of violence. But I also met non-white people, gay rights activists, disaffected working class men and women, and middle-class intellectuals. I came to the conclusion that the EDL is not a simple rerun of previous far-right street groups.”

Basically, fighting an anti-Muslim alignment like the EDL entails disrupting anti-Muslim views, and there is plenty of material via the links above. Depending on whether policing is sensitive to the communities targeted by the EDL, it can require some bodily obstruction to prevent EDL types intimidating Muslim communities. It also entails arguing and lobbying against sharia – not because Muslims Against Crusades are any good at what they do – they’re an embarrassment to Muslims – but because the authoritarian and chauvinistic religious right – Christian, Muslim and the rest – feed on each other and the work to keep them from taking power is never done. Harder, it requires circumstances in which a moderate majority exists and turns out to vote to keep the far right out of the seats of power.

World War

There’s a bloodless world war going on over Wikileaks (background from Modernity – search for Wikileaks). US government sympathisers are trying to run Wikileaks off the web. A hackers group called Anonymous is responding by attacking the various companies complicit in this. As of now, Amazon is coming down (and sometimes back up) across Europe.

Comment on the conflict from these academics (by the way, in the proposed English funding regime for higher education, these thinkers would not get state funding for teaching about this social side of the Web):

• Lilian Edwards  from Uni of Sheffield – against extrajudicial cyber-bullying
• Jonathan Zittrain’s Wikileaks FAQs – begins with background, progresses to discussing the conflict
• Patrick Philippe Meier on Julian Assange’s plan.
• Clay Shirky on the tension between different requirements for democratic statecraft.
• Anonymous decide to advocate for Wikileaks by actually reading the leaks

Nothing sensible from me at this time, except I am glad Wikileaks exists, and that I find it provoking that Wikileaks vigilantes have done more damage to capitalist enterprise in a week than anti-capitalists have achieved in the last year.

Update: I hear on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today Programme that Amazon say their downtime was due to a hardware fault.

The enormous collateral damage of the Digital Economy Bill

Dear [MP's name]

As your constituent I would like to alert you to key problems with the Digital Economy Bill currently being debated in the Lords (1). Specifically I’ll address those parts which relate to combatting copyright infringement through file sharing. I do not defend breach of copyright, which I recognise as an infringement of civil law. However, I would like to point out that this bill is the product of intense lobbying funded by multinational rights companies who are prepared to compromise the civil rights of their entire customer base for the sake of a holding pattern for their obsolete business model.

I have three main concerns, which I’ll outline briefly below.

1. The need for proportionate punishment which avoids collateral damage.

Under the current terms, the account holder is held responsible for the actions of each person who uses their connection, and everybody who uses the connection is punished along with the transgressor. Moreover, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are subject to heavy fines if they refuse rights holders’ demand for the personal details of infringers. ISPs oppose this bill (2).

Society is dependent on internet to the extent that we can reasonably consider it a utility comparable to water, gas or electricity. We pay our bills, access services, and shop on it. We learn on it – I work in a higher education institution which, under current terms, could be disconnected from the internet, a devastating collective punishment. Universities oppose this bill (3).

My neighbours, two teachers, could be disconnected if one of their two school-age sons were to illicitly share files over the family internet connection. Disconnecting the many small businesses along Barkingside High Street which depend on internet access could be fatal. The Federation of Small Businesses opposes this bill (4).

2. Low standards of evidence and poor appeals process.

Currently the bill permits unspecified technical measures – most likely involving a period of disconnection from the Internet – to be levelled at individual accounts holders on the basis of three letters of accusation from a rights holder. Infringers take measures to mask their identity; frequently the account holder is not the infringer. Because the courts are bypassed, there is no recourse to legal aid in an appeal.

3. Poorly-defined measures and secondary law-making powers.

Currently, the bill entitles law-making on the fly independently of Parliament and the Lords. It is unreasonable to expect the public to accept this bill on the understanding that the Secretary of State will decide the law later by Statutory Instrument. We cannot leave UK law open in anticipation of future, hitherto uninvented forms of transgression; this is particularly absurd given that the bill singles out broadband users and ignores mobile phone connections and established forms of file sharing such as disc and USB drive. It is particularly strange that a sliding scale of fines is not under debate. A fine would limit the collateral damage, and the terms of payment could be negotiated according the the income of the account holder.

I’d like to make the following urgent requests prior to the Commons debate on this bill:

• Read the Open Rights Group’s briefing for MPs (5)
• Back EDM 1997
• Campaign for proportionality in this bill, and for a fine rather than disconnection.
• Call for legal safeguards for individual internet users, including a clear appeals process with access to legal aid, be written into the bill before it is passed.

I have left a message to arrange an appointment, and look forward to discussing this further with you.

Yours sincerely,

[My name and addresses]
(1) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldbills/001/10001.i-ii.html
(2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7079982/TalkTalk-would-fight-Digital-Economy-Bill-in-court.html
(3) http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/~/media/Files/members/consultations/2010/DEB_response_Puttnam%20pdf.ashx
(4) http://www.fsb.org.uk/policy/trade_and_industry
(5) http://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/pdfs/p2p-briefing-print.pdf

(N.b. this omits the privacy concerns – ISP’s being forced by OfCom to divulge personal details of account holders to rights holders; possible end to anonymous file sharing.)

Anglican vicar uses police to intimidate blogger

Stephen Sizer, a blogging Reverend who espouses anti-Judaic theology, who associates with Holocaust deniers and antisemites, and consequently who I’m not going to link to, managed to persuade the police to pay a visit to one of his blogging political opponents, Seismic Shock, as he relates on Engage.

The Sarge made it clear that it was an “informal chat” but the Reverend has suggested otherwise:

Dear Vee,

You must take a little more care who you brand as anti-semitic otherwise you too will be receiving a caution from the police as the young former student of Leeds did recently. One more reference to me and you will be reported.

Blessings
Stephen

With blessings like these who needs cusses?

To echo the incongruous but rousing cry of another opponent of free speech, Michael Cushman: “We will not be intimidated!”

Read Alec on Stephen Sizer’s recommendations for preaching about blogging. They don’t reflect well on the author. Read also Modernity on why it is important to respond in this way to intimidatory attempts at censorship. Rosie probes around the policing.

Honduras elections, a bit more

New Centrist reviews the elections and responds to some of Bob’s concerns.

The conclusions I’m drawing is that the clampdown on coup opponents Bob is rightly worried about could reasonably be pinned on their violent acts; at least, few commentators consider it profound enough to invalidate the elections. Like New Centrist, I’m inclined to see this election as a triumph of Honduran democratic structures over a power hungry president, his undemocratic ally and neighbour, and the lawlessness and repression of coup. There was a reportedly good turnout (still waiting for news of spoiled ballots) and voters overwhelmingly supported two candidates who rejected the idea of changing the constitution (but there were no international observers). Basically, looking at the news from the concerned writers I trust, nobody is saying that this election has been invalidated by a clampdown, so I’m glad that European powers are recognising the election.

However, there was a coup. Maybe the coup and elections passed off peacefully because Zelaya was the only person threatening the political elite, and he was not doing so in a transformative way but as an elitist, and in a manner which consolidated the elitist, strongman values of the elite. He became the common enemy of both Liberal and National Party. All that was necessary for Honduras’ political elite to return things to (bad) business as usual was Zelaya’s removal. In fact, the coup was political inertia reasserting itself. This is a poorly-substantiated idea, I realise. I don’t really understand how elites with political differences work when they perceive a common threat.

Goodbye and good riddance to Zelaya – now it’s necessary for Honduras not to simply move on, but to bring the coup perpetrators to book.

Greg Weeks, whom I read because he’s above all interested in democracy and law rather than writing as a partisan, has his eye on recognition of the new Honduran government. As a pre-condition, anti-coup governments broadly agree that Zelaya should be briefly reinstated prior to Porforino Lobo assuming presidency. But Congress has voted against this reinstatement (ignoring the wishes expressed in Honduran opinion polls). Nevertheless Brazil’s Lula is acknowledging that the passing of the election puts a different slant on things.

Greg Weeks points to a salutory and reorientating article in Foreign Policy by Kevin Casas-Zamora – Democracy Loses the Honduran Election. Again, who will bring the coup perpetrators to book?

Honduras seems poised to return to politics as usual, instability as usual, inequality as usual, and elitism as usual. It is a deeply conservative country. Where is the left?

Honduras elections under a coup

The Honduras elections are today. The question is, can there be free and fair elections under this coup?

• My attempts to make sense of the Honduras coup.
• A letter calling for restoration of President Zelaya or else non-recognition of the election results, signed by British musicians, polemical authors and politicians such as Lowkey, Brian Eno, Caroline Lucas and John Pilger, as well as some more credible people.
• What the Honduras people have been found to want – an end to the coup and the reinstatement of Zelaya in advance of elections as scheduled in the electoral calendar (i.e. now). That poll was in early October – by the end the majority had increased to three quarters.
• The coup leader Micheletti isn’t on the ballot; Zelaya couldn’t be on the ballot because he has reached the end of his term. The coup government look unlikely to win and are polling 16 points behind the National Party.
• Honduras’ Congress was due to vote on Zelaya’s reinstatement on the 2nd (i.e. after the election – how does that work?) but the Supreme Court (which is said to support the coup) has since ruled that he can only return if he faces charges (yes, the charges which he wasn’t permitted to face when he was bundled out of the country at gunpoint in his pyjamas). This is a mess. Well, it’s a coup. Expatriating Zelaya was unambiguously unconstitutional – if there were allegations against him he should have been impeached.
• The feeling is that because keeping Zelaya’s supporters down has involved violent repression, these elections will be violent, and will not end the upheaval in Honduras nor the heart wrenching poverty which makes Hondurans vulnerable to populists like Zelaya. However, the coup has endured and the elections are now here. Can they be a reset button for Honduran politics? Can they be free and fair, is the question.
• For some reason I can’t find predictions, just silence on this, or what seems to me to be dogma, along with impotent outbursts about setting precedents.

Soon we’ll find out.

Update: The National Party won comfortably. Scroll down this New Centrist post a bit for more.

Update 2: the coup and election outcome is being blamed on the Jews.. British and Spanish media (yes, The Guardian) are muttering about a concentration of power in the hands of “Jewish families” or people “descended from Jewish and Palestinian immigrants”.

Update 3: Amnesty is investigating some detentions.Nobody is reporting that there was mass unrest or intimidation on polling day.

Update 4: turnout was comparatively high, no reports of large numbers of ballots spoilt to register protest.

Two climb-downs

Copious updates on Honduras in italics – but as of July 6th I’m stopping because this has more mainstream attention now, so hopefully the truth will out. But as Andrew Sullivan wonders, “Can you remember a story where pundits have varied so widely on the basic facts?”.

President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya of Honduras aims to return on Thursday (Update: Thursday became Saturday) from his brief exile in Costa Rica, to which he was removed by the military in his pyjamas. He has pledged to abandon plans to ignore the law of his country and carry out a non-binding referendum on setting up an assembly to rewrite it (in order to run for a second term). The constitution can be changed, but not in the way he went about it (update – or was it? What is the difference between a non-binding referendum and a constitutional, binding one? Is one answer that going about things the Zelaya way is either a waste of money, because in order to be constitutional there would have to be another binding referendum, or that he is in fact abusing the constitution in a way which makes him seem distinctly despotic? The Honduras constitution is available in Spanish, and running this through Google Translate suggests that Articles 4 and 5 regarding the constitution, and 237 regarding the Presidential term, are operative here.)

His political opponents perceived distinct shades of Chavez, the military performed a coup and moved to exile him before he could install himself as emperor-for-life. He had got as far as having the ballot papers shipped from Venezuela and distributing them himself, having sacked his Attorney General and despite a Supreme Court ruling against his conduct. Now he has abandoned the referendum and is asking to see out his term in office, which ends in January.

For obvious reasons – it’s a coup! (update – the US is avoiding ‘coup‘ – there are strings attached to that designation, the US is calling it ‘coup’) – here is little support for this coup, however. The UN is backing the Zelaya. Hugo Chavez backs Zelaya (update – Honduras is an important oil customer; Chavez threatens military intervention). The International Coffee Organization isn’t sure. Although the US President and Secretary of State have declined to meet Zelaya, the Wall Street Journal‘s Americas columnist is very frustrated with the double standard:

“Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.”

It does indeed seem unsuitable for Chavez and Castro to be castigating Honduras for breaches of democracy.

Zelaya has already been replaced: Roberto Micheletti was sworn in yesterday as Interim Executive, strictly according to the constitution.

I’m not sure if Zelaya is being mistranslated or unsympathetically translated, but his words suggest he’s a bad combination of silly and tyrannical. Ah, OK – perhaps badly translated, that post had him referring to how on his return people would call him “Commander”, but this one, the less silly but still slightly pathetic-sounding “‘At your command, Mr. Constitutional President”. Update: aha – Wikipedia says: “The President is also Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces”, and it was of course the armed forces who expelled Zelaya.

Like the worst of the left with respect to Iran, he is referring to his deposers as “elites” and himself as against “the system of privileges they upheld”. Update: but Roberto Micheletti comes from the same political party – the Liberal Party – as Zelaya. His supporters also lapse into dusty dialectic:

“It was a coup, Mel Zelaya did not resign,” agreed Amilcar Umanzo, brandishing a human rights manual in his hand. “The political and economic class united to overthrow the constitutional president.”

Update: the coup supporters are also sloganeers. Update 2: The coup’s new Congress has removed fundamental freedoms from Hondurans. This is not looking at all good.)

It is genuinely difficult to figure out what is going on in the time I have available. Update: disappointing that you can pretty well predict who supports the coup (mostly self-declared conservative sites). On the other hand Chavez supporters support an unconditional reinstatement.

The reinstated (according to Supreme Court Ruling) Honduran Attorney General insists Zelaya will be prosecuted for, among other charges, abuse of authority and violation of the constitution.

This leads to the obvious question: military coups suck, are totally undemocratic, so why was Zelaya exiled rather than impeached? There is a curfew and unrest in Tegucigalpa. How many of his supporters have been arrested, how many hurt and how many killed?

Update: it seems to me that Zelaya claimed undue power unconstitutionally and contra to Supreme Court ruling, that it is very ominous that he was exiled at gunpoint instead of being impeached which would have been the democratic way to deal with him, that calls for him to be unconditionally reinstated make little sense when he has fucked with the constitution, and that four years is a short amount of time but he left his attempts to change the constitution too late in his term to be credible. As you can see from the above, I have very little other context to go on.

Further update: Zelaya wasn’t unconstitutional and the coup was conducted by an undemocratic elite says Alberto Valiente Thorenson in a Counterpunch article you can find for yourselves; I don’t link there. He removes one motive for Zelaya by introducing the information he wasn’t going to contest the November 09 election, and gives a motive to the orchestrators of the coup:

“It is evident that the opposition had no legal case against President Zelaya. All they had was speculation about perfectly legal scenarios which they strongly disliked. Otherwise, they could have followed a legal procedure sheltered in article 205 nr. 22 of the 1982 Constitution, which states that public officials that are suspected to violate the law are subject to impeachment by the National Congress. As a result they helplessly unleashed a violent and barbaric preemptive strike, which has threatened civility, democracy and stability in the region.”

Final update: read Greg Weeks, academic and editor of the journal Latin Americanist. He is asking good questions and, speaking Spanish, equipped to get some answers. Good. Facts first, ideology later.

More – a photo essay, a chronology.

It’s bedtime now, so this post is about to reveal itself as obscenely imbalanced, much too internationalist, much too unprepared to engage with the complexities of far better-reported stuff here at home. I have really got to sort this out, and I take Barkingside 21 as my inspiration. But for now, the other climb-down is that it’s No to ID cards. Alan Johnson could simply have said “We can’t afford it” – instead he properly shafted it by admitting that the government had found it convenient to present ID cards as a panacea to solve terrorism. Update: excellent. If I had time I’d try to find out which lobbying worked and how.