More on Ahmadinejad at Columbia

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein says Ahmadinejad shouldn’t have been allowed into the USA because he’s America’s enemy:

Unlike when I objected last time Ahmadinejad was to visit Columbia, my reason this time is that Ahmadinejad is the head of state of an enemy state, whose armed forces are killing American soldiers with equipment they provide to Iraqi insurgents. That makes Ahmadinejad an enemy of the United States, something that can’t be overcome with some questions.

I often hear the claim that Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents. But is there any evidence for it, from sources independent of the US government?

I’d genuinely like to know the answer to this. When I Google on “Iran helping Iraqi insurgents” I get lots of links saying things like “Iran Is Helping Insurgents in Iraq, U.S. Officials Say”, but nothing from independent sources.

Ahmadinejad at Columbia University

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is speaking at Columbia University today. Norm Geras questions whether he should have been allowed to:

Columbia President, Lee Bollinger, appeals to a number of different principles in getting behind the invitation, which was issued by the university’s School of International and Public Affairs.

One of these principles is ‘the development of freedom of speech’. On that score Bollinger says:

It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas.

He’s clearly right about this: listening doesn’t imply endorsement. On the other hand, there’s nothing in the principle of freedom of speech that requires you to help to promote or publicize views that you find deeply objectionable. Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust-denier and Holocaust-denial is one of the most poisonous forms of anti-Semitism, apart from being a brazen historical lie. Must Columbia, in the interests of ‘the development of free speech’, host avowed racists of every stripe, other genocide-deniers, men who think that women are, by their nature, born to be subservient, and people who think that homosexuality is a sin and should be punishable? Of course not. Would they host such people? I don’t know.

Geras is right that freedom of speech does not require one to facilitate speech you dislike. As to whether Columbia would host “such people”, they almost certainly have done in the past — such views were commonplace in the West in the mid 20th century.

(BTW I’ve no evidence that Ahmadinejad is a racist. If people are calling him a racist because he doesn’t like Jews, i.e. saying Jews are a race, then shouldn’t those people equally be condemning Israel as racist for being a Jewish state? Somehow I think they do not.)

As to whether Columbia should have invited him, the invitation came from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Since Ahmadinejad is a head of stat, he forms part of the School’s subject matter; it is thus as appropriate for the School to invite him as it is for the microbiology department to bring microbes on campus and study them.

Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust-denier. Frankly I don’t think that’s a particularly big deal. All he has achieved by this is making himself (and by extension, Iran) look stupid, and playing into the hands of those in the USA who want to attack Iran. It’s not as if Iran was responsible for the Holocaust; if it had been then for that country to deny it would be something much more serious. But Turkey still denies that what they did to the Armenians amounted to genocide; and Belgium has only recently come to terms with Leopold II’s genocide in the Congo. Somehow I doubt there would be as much fuss if a Belgian or Turkish leader addressed a US university.

OLPC: give 1 get 1

From November, you’ll be able to get an XO laptop…

The One Laptop Per Child organisation are announcing a “give 1 get 1″ initiative:

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home. If you’re interested in Give 1 Get 1, we’ll be happy to send you a reminder email. Just sign up in the box to the left and you’ll receive your reminder prior to the November 12 launch date.

(Link from Boing Boing)

Liberal Democrat strategy

Alex Harrowell’s been talking about the Lib Dem conference, and how that party can position themselves to do their best at a general election. It’s here:

First up, get a bloody autocue already. We could have a blogger whipround. Out of all the speakers I saw on TV, excepting Ming’s big finish, all of them were very obviously reading off a bit of paper. Danny Alexander’s entire TV appearance consisted of him staring down at a script; not good. Nick Clegg was little better. The best performance was from a ginger Scottish guy called Kennedy; concise, punchy, addressing the crowd not the lectern.

Maybe they should give this Kennedy bloke the leader’s job. What do you mean that’s not a useful suggestion?

And if you can’t remember your whole speech, memorise the bits you absolutely can’t leave out; then just deliver those.

In general, it’s best not to read a whole speech from a perpared text. Make brief notes about the points you want to cover, then speak about them without your actual words being written down. It sounds fresher that way.

Thirdly, we need to define the enemy, and this has never been easier. Here they are – The Party of Control. Labour thinks everyone can be zapped into being better people, the Tories think the poor can be zapped into immobility while the rich clean up.

As I like to think of it, the fundamental question of politics is who gets to kick who around. Labour want Whitehall bureaucrats to control you; the Tories want big business to control you. Both parties want privileged toffs to control you. (It’s notable that both Labour and the Tories have encouraged more female candidates to conterbalance the statistical over-representation of men in the Commons; but neither party has done anything to counter the much greater over-representation of those — like Blair or Cameron — who went to an expensive private school and Oxbridge. Could it be that Blair, Cameron, et al are rather keen on keeping a system that benefits them and their kind so much?)

1. It’s better to fiddle less
If you want to save fuel (and we do), tax it; don’t build a mass surveillance system.

Or for Home Information Packs. Without increasing fuel prices, there’s no point in taking other measures to stop people using fuel, since you will simply get people using outdoor speace heaters and other wasteful uses, unless they are priced out of it. There is a place for measures other than increasing tax of fuel — such as research into new technologies that reduce carbon emissions — but tax must be the main way of reducing carbon emissions.

4. You can’t rig the facts
Presentation, “sending a message” – it’s all crap. We should be keen on real evidence-based policy; the kind where the evidence changes the policy.

Indeed. Policies should as far as possible, be trialled in a limited area before being rolled out to the entire country. The trials should include stated objective criteria by with to measure their success. This would apply to policies such as ASBOs, the ContactPoint database, Home Information Packs, etc. On the subject of ContactPoint, one argument the Labour Party has made against private education is that it means that well-off parents don’t care about the state education system, and therefore don’t push for its flaws to be fixed, because their kids don’t use it. However, the children of MPs won’t get their records put into the ContactPoint database, giving MPs less incentive to fix security flaws in the system.