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See also BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Bin Laden threatens new attacks Nobody knows the right answer to international terrorism, but we now have proof positive of what one of the wrong answers is. ‘War on terror’ has done nothing but strengthen Bin Laden - he has refined his public relations machine, and, buoyed by the example of Spain, is making a play to be seen by the Arab world as the crucial factor in the choice of US president.

He said in a video aired on al-Jazeera television today: “Despite entering the fourth year after 11 September, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.”

Bin Laden’s pronouncements may seem as off keel as ‘comical’ Ali’s to Western audiences. But to many Arabic speaking viewers, his comments make eminent sense. This difference of perception is not because Arabic speakers are naive. It is because their world view is fundamentally different from the Western secular view, and because we in the West have never bothered to try to understand it.

It was instructive that during the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was able to put up a minister every day who could make statements in English. We were unable to put up a single elected politician from anywhere in the coalition who could speak Arabic.

‘War on terror’ has strengthened Bin Laden because it has elevated him to the status of Official Opposition to the Western world. What is more, it has enabled him to lump us in the minds of his adherents with what he describes as corrupt Arab regimes.

Nobody is so foolish as to be able to claim they have the answer to international terror. But we are clearly not working hard enough at identifying the issues, pointing the questions and working towards the answers.

We continue in this course at our peril. Genuinely, at our peril.

By their very nature, Conservatives look back to the good old days. Since the glory days of Margaret Thatcher, there hasn’t been a great deal to look back to. But probably the Tories’ finest subsequent moment was the 1999 European campaign message ‘In Europe but not run by Europe’. Ever since then, they have been trying to find a soundbite to rival it.

So Michael Howard must have thought he was really on a winner when he came up with “Countries have constitutions and I do not want to be part of a country called Europe.” Well, was he?

The The Advertising Standards Authority did some research a couple of years ago into what makes advertising messages really work. Looking at the most successful advertisements across the entire industry, they came up with three things.

First, the messages that worked were informative - and of course, accurate. Second - and this only worked if the first was fulfilled - the messages that worked were clever. And third - and this only worked if the first two were fulfilled - the messages that worked entered popular culture. Winning messages are things like ‘Ronseal - it does exactly what it says on the tin’ and ‘Carlsberg don’t make room-mates, but if they did they would probably be the finest room-mates in the world’.

So how well does Michael Howard’s sound-bite do? In reverse order, it hasn’t exactly entered the popular culture. “In Europe not run by Europe” caught the public imagination. Nobody but Michael Howard and his cronies ever say “Countries have constitutions and I do not want to be part of a country called Europe.”

But, of course, this is less important than the question ‘is it clever?’ Well, not exactly. Not in the same league as the red billboards that say “You can so tell the people who like don’t read the Economist”. It doesn’t quite have that ring to it.

But, again of course, this is trivial compared to the question ‘is it informative and accurate?’

Well…

No, no, no, no, no, Mr Howard. Clubs have constitutions. Baptist churches have constitutions. The Liberal Democrat party has a constitution. The Labour party has a constitution. Interestingly, the Conservative Party does not have a constitution. Oh yes, and Great Britain doesn’t have a constitution either. At least, not a written one.

But now, of course, the European Union does have a constitution - signed today, by every one of the Union’s member nations. It has yet to be ratified, but it has been signed.

It’s probably a good thing that political party messages are not governed by the Advertising Standards Authority code.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Concerns over Windows cashpoints and BBC NEWS | Business | UK report says Linux is ‘viable’

Recently the organisation I work for decided to switch its telephone network back to a Unix rather than Windows server basis. The feature set is basically comparable, and there was already an investment in Windows server equipment. The reasoning, though, was compelling: if a virus disabled our NT servers, it would leave us without telephones and without email. By adopting a second operating system, we spread the risk.

This, of course, bucks the trend of ever increasing integration and more and more generalised systems.

It’s something that repays wider consideration. Over the years, commercial concerns large and small have been working to reduce the number of different computer systems they operate because of the overheads in terms of support and licensing. One of the hidden costs of any corporate takeover is the cost of getting the two company systems to talk to each other. At the same time, sales driven businesses have been diligently buying into the upgrade cycle because they want the competitive advantage of the latest database, the latest direct marketing tools, the latest… well, you get the picture.

As the dominant player in the marketplace, Microsoft has been able to leverage all these considerations to put its client software on the desktop and its server software in the back office. This is despite the fact that, for most applications, Microsoft was not offering the best product. Remember OS/2? Never a hit with its original target of the desktop market, it has been the mainstay of ATMs for a long time. Ever considered using Linux? You may be leary of running your business on a free operating system. NASA, though, run all their systems on it, as they don’t consider NT to be sufficiently reliable for their mission critical programmes. Ever used an Apple Macintosh? For nine out of the ten most common tasks that desktop users want, the Macintosh is easier to use, requires less training and gets results faster. But 95% of computers still run Microsoft products. Remember Novell networks? Back in the 90s our Novell 3.11 network used to go for years without having to be reset. When we moved to Windows NT, we, like everybody else, got used to frequent downtime.

You’ve probably heard the old joke about Microsoft claiming that if they ran the automotive industry, cars would now have improved to the point where they did 638 miles to the gallon. Then General Motors (in the joke) counter that if Microsoft ran the automotive industry, all the lights on your dashboard would be replaced by a single ‘General Car Error’ light, and while you were driving along the motorway you would occasionally have to stop and reinstall the engine.

It’s only funny, of course, because it is partly true. Computers offer year by year increased performance beyond anything that is available to business in any other sector. But they offer a level of reliability that is below anything that businesses would accept from any other sectoral supplier.

IBM used to run an advertisement slogan “Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM”. This was in the 80’s and 90’s when a lot of small businesses got their fingers burnt when their local PC supplier suddenly went out of business, and their exclusively imported Malaysian computers were no longer supported. Microsoft has inherited the spirit of the IBM slogan: when choosing a platform, most companies may agonise over their hardware supplier, but they will choose Microsoft without seriously thinking over the alternatives.

But there is a fundamental difference between choosing a single supplier for a hardware offering and choosing a single supplier for software. Simply, there is no single catastrophe which could wipe out all of the hardware you ever purchased. Even if IBM had gone completely and irretrievably bankrupt without any warning (think of Enron), the hardware you had already purchased would continue to work. In fact, entrepreneurs would have quickly bought up the outstanding support contracts and business would go on almost as usual.

For software, the picture is very different. One virus could bring your network, your desktops, your phones, and anything else which is run on the same operating system. And in this case, going with the majority supplier puts you more at risk. 99% of viruses attack Windows systems, and the vast majority attack only Windows systems. Currently there are no known viruses for Unix based Mac OS X.

What’s more, software is supplied in only partially working condition - something you also wouldn’t accept from any other sectoral supplier. Bug fixes and, for Microsoft, security fixes are frequent. And they are not the kind of thing an entrepreneur could pick up if Microsoft ceased trading. Again, the lesson of Enron is that nobody is too big to fall.

The time has come, I think, for business to begin to disentangle itself from the Microsoft world. It may make sense to have the same operating system on your desktop as in your server, but it makes more sense to build robustness into your Information Technology. By all means keep Windows for the desktop (although Mac OS X has more attractions for me), but let us consider carefully the benefits of other options, especially open-source systems like Linux, which free us from a single supplier and take us back to the relative robustness of separating the front room from the back room.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Guardian ‘could support Lib Dems’

So, the Guardian could support the Liberal-Democrats. The Guardian! Actually, I always had the impression that the Guardian tried not to sell its soul to any party. Never mind. This of course follows the (to newish Labour) rather more alarming prospect of the Express switching back to the Tories. BBC NEWS | Politics | Express switches after Euro shift.

It’s a well-known - or at least, frequently asserted - fact that it was the Sun (and friends) wot won it for New Labour in 1997 and 2001. In 1997 The Guardian, The Mirror, the Sun, the Independent and the Daily Star all supported New Labour. Only The Daily Express, the Telegraph and the Times stood against them. By 2001 both the Times and the Express had climbed into Labour’s bed.

But another perspective is that Labour was going to win in 1997 and 2001 anyway, and the papers were savvy enough to go with the winner.

Which leaves us with the question, how powerful are the media really when it comes to influencing elections? We are still facing the repurcussions of Mohammed Karzai’s media-propelled victory in Afghanistan. Are we really in the same position with the print media in Britain?

Let’s hope not. But perhaps this time we will actually find out.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Barroso backs down over EU vote

Buttiglione has a right to his opinions. He must do - if not then we have succumbed to a new kind of censorship which does not remotely match our much vaunted views on human rights. But does this mean that he has a right to be Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner for the European Union? Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini certainly seems to think so. He has said that Buttiglione remains Italy’s candidate.

There’s a recent British comparison which no-one seems to have pointed out. Not so long ago a UKIP MEP was in trouble on a very similar issue. BBC NEWS | Politics | UKIP MEP in row over working women. After getting a seat on the Euopean Parliament’s women’s rights committee, he told journalists: “No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age.” He went on to say “I just don’t think they clean behind the fridge enough”. and “I am here to represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home. I am going to promote men’s rights.”

Of course, Godfrey Bloom later claimed that his remarks were humorous. Some of us, of course, believe that Bloom’s entire party is a bit of a joke. But I don’t think it’s the humour that saved him.

The difference, which Buttiglione and Frattini don’t seem to have grasped, is that there is a fundamental difference between an elected and an appointed office. In terms of mandate, a European Commissioner is exactly the same as a senior civil servant. Except of course that a senior civil servant actually had to go through a job interview to reach their position.

In some ways it is despicable for Godfrey Bloom to say the things he did, but, on the other hand, this may be exactly the kind of thing that the 14% of Yorkshirepersons who voted for him wanted to hear. And if not, they can vote for someone else next time.

We get no choice about Buttiglione - or, at least, we didn’t until now. The stand off engineered by the EU parliament has at last begun to swing the balance of power in favour of the elected assembly over the appointed bureaucracy.

There very definitely is a place for conscience and conviction in politics, whether it comes from faith, or from secular philosophy, or from being a very old-fashioned business man whose tongue moves faster than his brain. But that place is won through the ballot box, not through ministerial patronage.

If we are to learn one lesson from this constitutional crisis, it is that the current form of power vested in unelected commissioners is way past its sell-by date. It is festering on the shelf and should be dealt with before it turns nasty. Today the European Parliament came of age. It is high time that it be given the keys to the house.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Knesset votes to back Gaza plan

We don’t negotiate with terrorists. We don’t negotiate with terrorists. We don’t negotiate with terrorists… In these days of internet MPEG downloads, there has to be a new metaphore for what used to be called a broken record.

Sharon’s opponents - previously his allies - have argued forcibly that to pull out of Gaza would be to give the terrorists what they want. It would prove that Israel was weak. That Israel could be worn down.

The mood of the moment is to be tough on the terrorists. War on terror, as George W has put it.

Haven’t we been paying attention for the last two hundred years? As Buffy the Vampire Slayer put it, ‘Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them in summer school.’

We all recognise that no-one yet has the right answer to terrorism. But we should at least have learned what some of the wrong answers are. In any community that feels itself oppressed, there are a range of opinions. Some people want to make the best of the world they are in. Some want to work to improve the lot of all the oppressed. Some will want to protest peacefully. Some will resort to direct action. Some may resort to terror.

‘Getting tough on terror’ sounds fine in principle, but it usually results in getting tough on the whole population. ‘Surgical’ strikes kill more bystanders than they do terrorists. War on terror solidifies opinion. It pushes the whole population towards resistance, direct action, terror.

‘Getting tough on terrorr’ sounds fine in principle. But it is the wrong answer. And, knowing this, it is time that we realise that we need to peal off moderate elements, encourage them, negotiate with them.

This is a hard thing to do if you have taught your population to believe that they are all terrorists.

Sharon has taken a brave step. His allies - formerly his enemies - have done well to put the past behind to support him.

We can all learn from his example.

BBC NEWS | UK | Juries learn sex offenders’ past

An election is coming up. By all accounts it will be on May 5 2005. So we now face the cyclical clamour of the Tories and nearly-new Labour trying to prove that they are tougher on crime and kinder on health. Usually this comes down to promises for building more prisons, giving more money to the police, short, sharp shocks, and other repackagings of the same old solutions.

But this time one-careful-owner Labour has surpassed itself. Juries in trials for theft and for child sex abuse will soon be told of the offender’s previous convictions.

Mm. Interesting choice, that. Theft and Child Sex Abuse. Why not Car-jacking and Internet Scamming? There’s a strong whiff of which crimes the public is most cross about in this policy decision. More government by polling, but we will let it pass.

We will let it pass, because the core of my complaint against this particular popularity stunt is not that it is a typical second-hand Labour random act of policy, but that it is tinkering with the core of justice itself.

Figure it any way you like. If you’ve been fingered before, the police will already have you marked as a potential suspect. Fine. This is necessary for proper investigation. ‘Form’ as the coppers say. But when juries are told as well, your past convictions are, as it were, fed into the system twice.

If there is genuinely reasonable doubt about the evidence presented in a trial, the accused should go free. This is fundamental to justice. Can the quality of the evidence be improved by providing details of previous convictions? Surely not. But the jury’s mind might be swayed. Suddenly we are looking at a system where other considerations are influencing the jury’s mind about a question of fact.

And suddenly we are staring at the face of a completely different kind of justice.

It’s scary now God is back in the corridors of power

Let’s face facts - very few of us in Britain actually want George W Bush to be re-elected. This is partly cultural - given a choice between someone who was clever but a bit sly, or someone who proved his honesty by making a fool of himself whenever he opened his mouth in public, the British vote would tend to go against the idiot. Even Britons who still believe in the war in Iraq see George W as something of an embarrassment.

But there’s also a deep philosophical discomfort with senior politicians who appeal to divine guidance to justify their policies. Between Bush, Kerry, Buttiglione and Blair, people like the Sunday Times’s Jasper Gerard are getting seriously worried. In case you haven’t bothered to click the link, Gerard says: “43% of Americans are born-again Christians; fanaticism fans across the Muslim world; a devout Catholic who fears gay rights is set to become the European Union’s justice commissioner.”

I’m not very happy about all this either - but for different reasons. I’ve been a Christian for 32 years (we used to call this ‘born-again’, but this phrase is now either another label for fanaticism, or can be loosely applied to vaccuum-cleaner salesmen and computer company CEOs). During this time I’ve had a fair share of people who have come up to me and said ‘God has told me to do this’, or, worse, ‘God has told me to tell you to do this.’ This was then followed up with what I would expect that particular person to say anyway. Which is why I never paid any attention to them.

I don’t really see how politicians who appeal to divine authority for what they were going to anyway are that much different.

What I would be interested in was a politician who had the opportunity of getting away with something scot-free and owned up because they were a Christian (or any other religion or philosophy for that matter). Or if they made a policy U-turn to something which was morally superior but less convenient. There are of course some notable examples. But precious few in the lifetime of any American government since Carter, and any British government since - well - before my time.

Integrity speaks for itself. It doesn’t have to be supported by a lapel badge saying ‘I’ve got integrity’.

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Early results show Karzai victory

It looks fairly certain that Mohammed Karzai will win the first elections in Afghanistan since - well, since for ever. In the wake of the Iraq debacle it’s easy to forget how much has changed in Afghanistan. Remarkably, the widely trailered Taleban violence never really materialised. By Sunday night Karzai had secured 4,219,569 votes - more than the 50% he needs for a straight win, and of course therefore a much better mandate than those enjoyed by Messrs Blair and Bush.

George W, of course, famously told the world that ‘they hate us because we love freedom’. Well done, George. You have a talent for stating the blindingly obvious and still getting it completely wrong. But is freedom what Afghanistan really got? The process of democratic election seems to have worked, which bodes well for Iraq. But looking more closely, it was the closest ally of the USA who won. And, what’s more, there were widespread protests that he got the lion’s share of coverage in the media. In addition, of course, to the advantage that the incumbent always has in a many-horse race.

All this sounds eerily close to the situation in the ’70s and ’80s in South America. Nicaragua and El Salvador should not be forgotten. When governments friendly to Western interests were fairly elected, all was well. When the result seemed to be at risk, US advisers to their allies magically appeared. When the result actually went the wrong way, things turned nasty.

The test for the nascent democracies which the coalition is trying to plant in the Islamic world will come when local populations attempt to elect governments hostile to US interests.

What price, then, freedom?

This week the European Parliament is split over the prospect of Rocco Buttiglione taking on the role of Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security after his remarks about homosexuals and single mothers. Everyone except Buttiglione seems to agree that he should never have said what he did, but the answer to the underlying question is more troublesome. At the same time, theologians are discussing the position of another Roman Catholic who is running for a rather higher office. John Kerry’s position on abortion has caused some scratching of the head in Vatican circles. During the presidential campaign, both Bush and Kerry have pushed their Christian credentials. Meanwhile, in the UK, Tony Blair, a man who has also made a lot of his faith (although he has denied rumours that he is about to become a Roman Catholic), is preparing a new set of gambling laws which have been denounced by many church leaders.

Let me say that I’m not a Roman Catholic. But as a committed Christian, the issues do concern me.

In apologising to European Commission president Barroso, Buttiglione closed by saying: “The only thing I cannot do is to change my principles against my conscience for political convenience.” The Italian press do not share his conviction. Rome’s right wing Il Messaggero said: “It is a mistake to mix religion and politics. Europe does not want to hear about this mixture of State and Church, which is part of our history.”

At the same time, across the wide water, Kerry is under fire for failing to adequately combine his faith with his politics.

In the Spring I took part in a debate with Evan Harris MP on the subject: “Does faith belong in politics?” Evan, a dedicated secularist, of course put forward the case that it does not. I took the opposite view.

It seems to me that the dilemma caused by trying to separate faith from politics is greater than that of trying to combine them. In fact, fundamentally I believe that that dilemma is irresolvable. Separating them means the institutionalising of a kind of hypocrisy - a politician may appeal to his faith when standing for election, but cannot be held to it when making policy. The dilemma is no less resolvable for someone who arrives in public life with a secular philosophy.

Which is a long way from saying that I have much sympathy with Buttiglione.

When I first heard about his remarks I was forcibly reminded of the words of Jesus: “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | European press review: “Buttiglione”

Martin Turner is Chair of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum