Blacks and proles = wretches
Thursday, June 30, 2005

The Times: Concert line-up attacked for being all-white
It is believed that some urban artists requested payment for appearing, which the organisers said was a demand that they could not comply with.

The Guardian: Complaints force eBay to foil Live 8 touts
"The people who are selling these tickets on websites are miserable wretches who are capitalising on people's misery: I am appealing to their sense of decency to stop this disgusting greed," Geldof said.

Holy Moly, June 24
More on stars? charity work... Jonathan Ross is being paid 45k to present Live8. We presume he will be donating all of it to the charity?

The Guardian: Bands on the run for biggest show in town
The BBC, which will devote hours of its television and radio schedules to the event, has faced controversy over the fact that its big-name presenters will be paid to appear. Jonathan Ross, who will present from Hyde Park in a glass pod over the stage, is believed to be getting £50,000, forcing his agent to announce that he was giving the money to Comic Relief.
The Guardian: Blair aide hit bottom line with envoy
Tony Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, told Britain's incoming ambassador to the US to "get up the arse of the White House and stay there," according to the now-retired ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer's forthcoming memoirs.
Leave them alone and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them
Wednesday, June 29, 2005

BBC News: MPs narrowly back ID cards plan
Ministers have won a Commons vote over their controversial ID cards plan but their majority was cut from 67 to 31.

Was it ever in doubt?

Simon Hoggart, The Guardian: Berserk bees invade Clarke's bonnet
Few people like this bill - not even, it is said, Mr Clarke himself. It is one of the curiosities of New Labour that MPs make passionate speeches against, rave and bellow at the minister, and yet mysteriously the thing goes through anyway.

Some of these newly elected MPs seem to have forgotten how Rizla-thin their majorities are. Still, there's nothing like taking a dubious mandate and running with it.

The ID card debate really has brought out New Labour's vintage qualities. Unremittingly New Labour, you could say. After arguing yesterday that ID cards will drive a stake through Big Brother's heart, another turd tripped from Charles Clarke's downspout:

Earlier he branded a London School of Economics report estimating a cost per card of up to £300 "technically incompetent".

Technically incompetent. Like the study of medieval history, Clarkie regards scrutiny of his polices as "a bit dodgy". But then he's speaking from the high ground as the representative of a government responsible for the technically competent tax credit system, the technically competent Magistrate's Courts Libra system, the technically competent Child Support Agency system, the technically competent Criminal Records Bureau system, the technically competent National Air Traffic Services system, the technically competent passport system, and the technically competent Windows upgrade that froze 60,000 Department for Work and Pensions PCs for four days.

Tony Blair then chipped in:

BBC News: Blair 'will listen' to ID fears
At prime minister's questions, Mr Blair said: "We will have to listen to those concerns and respond to them."

It's beautiful conflation of his two most facile platitudes. A lot of listening and learning has been done but there is a lot of listening and learning still to do.

Alex, The Yorkshire Ranter, and Jarndyce of Fair Vote Watch are convinced we'll never see Clarkie's cards. I'm not so sure. With the clock ticking, Blair's spending his political capital like a terminally ill man and his life savings on a weekend in Vegas. He won't have to sweep up the trail of destruction. Charles Clarke is merely the floozy helping him to cash his chips.
The Safety Elephant slays Big Brother
Tuesday, June 28, 2005

So, you're worried about ID cards. That they're going to be expensive. That they're going to be implemented by a government with a long record of incompetence when it comes to computer systems - we've heard in the last week about the most vunerable in society being denied much needed cash because of an shabby computer system.

What if something similar were to happen to you like a doctor refusing to treat your sick child or a ticket desk refusing to let you board the plane for your holiday because the system, designed by the private company who made the lowest bid, has glitches and can't confirm your identity?

Maybe a government running out of revenue might be tempted to sell access to the database to private businesses. Or maybe you worry it's just a step too far, an unwarranted, unworkable intrusion into your privacy. In an age of loyalty and Oyster cards, CCTV and the logging of when and where you use your credit and ATM cards, don't we already live in a Big Brother society?

(How would Orwell feel about that overused metaphor?)

Don't worry. Don't fret. On that last point, Charles Clarke can ease your worried mind:

The Scotsman: ID Cards Mean Less of A Big Brother Society - Clarke

The introduction of identity cards would reduce the burden of the "Big Brother" society on their holders, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said today.

Making it easy for individuals to prove who they were would make ordinary events such as opening a bank account or boarding an aeroplane simpler, more convenient and less intrusive, he suggested.

Listen to the Home Secretary give vent to this postern blast of common sense on this morning's Today programme.

They will allow people to identify themselves and ensure that the data that is held about them is data held about them and not someone else.

In that sense, they are a means of attacking the ... Big Brother society.

So that's all right then. Ignoring the tautology in that what Clarke actually said there is ID cards are there to make it easier for people to find out what data is held about them on the ID card system, a massive, uncosted central database containing personal and biometric details of every adult in the UK is a move away from a surveillance society. Phew, that comes as a big relief.

You have to admire Clarkie. After all the various arguments he's wheeled out in defence of ID cards in the past few months it must have been killing him to have had to sit on his trump card all this time, saving it for the day of the debate. Don't be fooled for one minute into thinking that he and his special advisers sat around wondering how to both defuse the civil liberties arguments against ID cards and insult the electorate's intelligence at the same time. This is in no way an eleventh hour gambit designed to muddy the debate and sway the weak-minded.

Clarke: Hmmmm, critics of the system say it will lead to greater surveillance of the population. A "Big Brother" [makes air quotes as he says it] society, if you will.

Special Adviser: Yes. But wait... How about this... ID cards will actually take us away from a surveillance society!

Clarke: Genius. Write that down. Anybody got a fag packet? How long to the Today interview? Five minutes? Blimey, just made it.

Complete fantasy, of course. A conceit, as Boris Johnson would put it.
Fair Vote Watch: Latest Chavez poll
Everyone has an opinion about Venezuela. Even me, though I'm not sure what it is yet. This poll, carried out by this company ahead of December's scheduled elections, suggests Venezuelans themselves are pretty sure...
George Monbiot: Our very own Enron
How much longer can this farce carry on? Everywhere the chickens released by the government's private finance initiative are not so much coming home to roost as crashing into the henhouse and sliding down the wall in a heap of blood and feathers. The prediction made in 2002 by the Banker magazine - that "eventually an Enron-style disaster will be rerun on a sovereign balance sheet" - could be starting to materialise.
The Independent: Food agency accused of Stalinist tactics over GM maize cover-up
Britain's official food safety watchdog - which prides itself on its "openness" - is embroiled in a row over the blanking-out of large sections of a document relating to a banned GM maize illegally imported into the country.
Wide eyed and legless. And armless. And headless.
Monday, June 27, 2005

So anyway. I bunked off this afternoon to finally see Revenge of the Sith before it's taken off on Thursday.

Those of you who don't want to know the score, look away now.

With brain disengaged and belief suspended I actually really enjoyed it. The acting wasn't up to much again (I can't wait to hear Ewan McGregor slag off the whole trilogy in a few years time) but at least Anakin Skywalker had ditched his disturbing teenage stalker persona from Episode II.

And the bit where Darth Vader goes "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" was hilarious.

I don't really have much else to add to what's already been said about the film...

...except, that it didn't fit seemlessly to the older trilogy at all well. More like two mismatching pieces of jigsaw hammered together by an impatient child.

Where was the scene where R2D2 has the natty little rockets that allow him to fly removed? He doesn't use them in Episodes 4, 5 and 6. Or his James Bond oil slick dispenser either. He gets into all kinds of scrapes in 4, 5 and 6 where such doohickies would have been dead useful but he doesn't use them. Hmmmm.

And where was the bit where Anakin tells Obi-Wan to give his lightsabre to Luke as related by Obi-Wan to Luke in A New Hope?

And the conversation between Luke and Ben in Return of the Jedi where Luke says he can still sense good in Darth Vader and Ben says that he's "more machine than man, twisted, twisted and evil" will have a nasty resonance from now on. I won't be able to watch that scene without thinking, "Well you'd know, you old sod. You're the one who chopped his legs off and left him to burn to death in a volcano." Obviously, telling a young man who you want to save the galaxy that you once tried to off his dad isn't the best way to go about things but it turns out that Obi-Wan Kenobi has been a lying, conniving, murderous get all along.

And how does Leia remember her mother, as she tells Luke in Return of the Jedi? "She was very beautiful. Kind, but...sad," she says. But her mum was brown bread before Leia had barely opened her eyes.

And does Luke never mention to Chewbacca that he's being trained by Yoda? Like at the end of The Empire Strikes Back? At no point does Chewie ask where the hell had Luke been while him and the others had been shot at, frozen, blown up and tortured? Chewbacca could say, "Yoda? Hell, I know Yoda. Saved his life once, y'know. Give him my best, won't you?"

And George Lucas has a really creepy thing for amputations. Loads of them. By the end of the film there was hardly a character that hadn't had a bit lopped off.

Apart from that, it was really good.
Politics and the English Language
Monday, June 27, 2005

On Thursday last week, I had a very rare and blissful weekday away from my desk. In the sun, I read and re-read George Orwell's essay, Politics and the English Language.

(You can find it easily online, but I'm not going to link to it. I say you should go and buy it in a collection of Orwell's essays - everybody should have at least some Orwell on the book shelf. If you do decide to get the essay online, don't read at your desk - print it off and go and read it in the garden with a cold beer like I did.)

After finishing it, and after suppressing a panicky and almost irresistible urge to bury Chicken Yoghurt under the patio and retire to a life of online trappism, I was pleased to find I've reached some of the same conclusions as Orwell did on the subject of the use of English and political writing, just by my own route.

For those who haven't read it, Orwell sets out how poor, lazy writing, particularly in politics - the use of tired metaphors, the garnishing of verbs with operators (make contact with, be subjected to etc.), pretentious diction and meaningless words - leads to poor, lazy thinking. In turn, poor, lazy thinking leads to poor lazy writing etc. etc. until the end of time. Modern writing, he says...

...consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

Which is the new Chicken Yoghurt strapline right there. Orwell shows withering contempt for phrases like ride roughshod over, toe the line, give rise to, with respect to, phrases that this site is riddled with. My cheeks are hot with shame. It was a relief though, to read that good writing...

...has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style."

Hope for me yet.

Orwell's scorn for "pretentious diction" - not a sin I think I'm guilty of - is something that really gets me kicking the cat, particularly when it comes from the oh-so-superior and better-paid caste of newspaper columnists. Take Polly Toynbee and her fondness for the phrase bien pensant for instance (there are other examples). Revealing myself (yet again) as an ill-educated clot, I'll admit I have no idea what it means. And frankly, I respect neither Toynbee nor her writing enough to go and find out in order to understand the points she's making. I have enough French however to know that the first syllable of pensant is pronounced ponce.

Why use such phrases if not to boast of a superior education and flatter the egos of those readers fortunate enough to have had the same? Toynbee's columns become upper-middle class closed shops and hers are not the only ones. This isn't inverted snobbery on my part - if these writers would only resist the temptation to parade their vast intellects they'd then reach a wider audience and I (and others like me, I hope) would reach the end of the column, possibly with my views changed or at least my train of thought diverted, instead of turning the page in disgust.

But it's the awful, lip-licking euphemisms and the insulting low standards of writing and speech from politicians that I like to whine on about endlessly and it was very nice to have my prejudices confirmed by someone as eminent as Orwell. I, of course, didn't arrive at my conclusions via a perceptive analysis of the use of English but via the less worthy road of my obsession with the corrupt, febrile and rancid personalities of most politicians (don't blame me - they started it). Take one of my favourites, Peter Hain, and what he calls his "political journey" over the course of his life. What he really means by the term is that he now votes for and defends policies - like house arrest without trial, cluster-bombing civilians and the ban on peaceful protest - that 30 years ago would have driven him to blood-spitting fury.

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible," says Orwell. "Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

See also collateral damage - that's dead civilians to me and you - and the favourite of low-wage conservatives like Blair, Gordon Brown and Conferation of British Industry director general, Digby Jones - flexible labour markets. Which means employers should be able to sack workers more easily, pay them lower wages, make them work longer hours and not worry so much about providing a safe working environment.

Orwell's example is the use of the word democracy:

In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

This is demonstrated when you hear Tony Blair and George Bush talk about democracy in Iraq. The flavour of democracy on sale in Iraq right now is very different from the flavour we have here in the West. Blair and Bush can point to the brave souls in downtown Baghdad risking their lives to put a piece of paper in a box but they then ignore the fact that fatwas issued by clerics, vote rigging and intimidation affected the results. Hence the south of the country is now fast becoming like Taliban-era Afghanistan, but hey! the Iraqis got democracy.

The recent Iranian election result wasn't to the liking of Jack Straw and Donald Rumsfeld and so they expressed doubts of the legitimacy of the poll. Fair enough, I happen to agree with them. But I notice they didn't dwell on the reports of voting irregularities that were circulating at the time of the election in Iraq, including stories of our allies the Kurds preventing ChaldoAssyrian Christiansfrom exercising their democratic rights.

I'd like to think that, were he alive, Orwell would have a reserved special place in his heart for Tony Blair, him being guilty of what Orwell called "a lifeless, imitative style." You only have to look at the speech Blair made to the European Parliament last week:

It is time to give ourselves a reality check. To receive the wake-up call. The people are blowing the trumpets round the city walls. Are we listening? Have we the political will to go out and meet them so that they regard our leadership as part of the solution not the problem?

Reality check, wake-up call, part of the solution not the problem. And that was just in one paragraph. Is there an upper limit for the number of cliches you can use in one paragraph? Blair is fast approaching the Parody Barrier and once he breaks it will reach escape velocity and be beyond satire.

"Of course we need a social Europe. But it must be a social Europe that works," he said. Fine, but what is a social Europe? Were there any people in the pubs across Europe that night slapping their foreheads and shouting "My God! He's right. Of course we need a social Europe!"?

(This "The people are blowing the trumpets round the city walls. Are we listening?" shtick from Blair also shows his increasing separation from reality, not being one to listen to many trumpets himself. Whether it be a million people marching against war or 78% or the electorate either voting against him or abstaining at the general election)

But then, most people with even half an ear on what comes out of Tony Blair's mouth and the mouths of any New Labour hack will know what Orwell is talking about. In his essay he mentions not once but twice, a dying metaphor that Blair is particularly fond of: "stand shoulder to shoulder with". How many times have you heard Blair say that since September 11 2001? Politics and the English Language was written in April 1946. Considering how accurately it critiques Blair-speak, it could have been written at any point since Blair's ascendancy to the Labour leadership in 1994.

Another recent example is Gordon Brown's speech that he made at the Mansion House last Wednesday. It was widely trailed (itself another euphemism: it means "the media were told what he was going to say before he said it") and shown live on the 24-hour TV news channels. I came across it by accident and, after getting past the realisation that Gordon Brown always looks like he's just got out of bed and his hair looks as if it's got an accumulation of a week's worth of Brylcreem in it, I came to the conclusion that although he was talking, he wasn't actually saying anything. "Global Britain, Global Europe"? What does that mean? And how about this:

And in a global economy that requires not just entrepreneurial traders but all round flexibility, the Britain that will succeed will be the Britain that nurtures the spirit of enterprise from our classrooms to our boardrooms, and makes the long term decisions so that as a nation we will move up the value added chain and invest in science, skills and transport and infrastructure, not least by speeding up an all to inflexible planning system to speed up investment in housing and commerce – making Britain the premier location for R and D and the world leader in skills and the creative industries.

"all round flexibility", "spirit of enterprise", "the value added chain"? I've clearly missed the bus to the future where instead of nadsat we're supposed to speak in impressive-sounding snatches that can mean almost anything. But Orwell also says:

A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

Brown's speech was the oratorical equivalent of a Pot Noodle. I decided some other poor sod could try and digest it and headed for tastier dishes. The next day's Independent was able to sum up the Chancellor's interminable, nutrition-free message to Europe in just three words: "reform or stagnate."

And so I find, that when people talk about a phrase being "Orwellian", it is not the Newspeak and Doublethink of 1984 that they are referring to but this essay where Orwell tries to save a drowning language. Nothing much much changed since he wrote it almost 60 years ago but I find there's a personal satisfaction in listening to Orwell and trying to rescue the language oneself in some small way. There's certainly a smug thrill to be had in creating new metaphors.

If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse - into the dustbin, where it belongs.

Orwell has his detractors on both the Left and the Right. Being a latecomer to him and his writing, I'm not yet sure why this is so but I'm hoping the biography I've just bought will tell me. I'd argue however that what he says to writers in Politics and the English Language is nigh on irrefutable.

Most of us can't afford sub-editors or proof-readers to polish our prose and buff up our banter. But imagine having George Orwell looking over your shoulder, constantly encouraging you to come up with something new and find fresh ways of expression. Wouldn't that be something?

The challenge now, for me, is to put Orwell's words where my mouth is.

UPDATE: Yahoo News: An ice pack by any other name...
Tessa Jowell, Britain's secretary of state for culture, offered these examples of bureaucratic gobbledygook: "sustainable eating in schools" (more fruits and vegetables) and "regional cultural data feedback rollout" (getting new information from different regions).
Britblog Roundup # 19
Monday, June 27, 2005

More weekly blog goodness over a Tim Worstall's weekly Britblog roundup.
The Times: How the leaked documents questioning war emerged from 'Britain's Deep Throat'

Ministry of Defence figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that virtually none were used in March and April; but between May and August an average of 10 tons were dropped each month, with the RAF taking just as big a role in the “spikes of activity” as their US colleagues. Then in September the figure shot up again, with allied aircraft dropping 54.6 tons.

If this was a covert air war, both Bush and Blair may face searching questions. In America only Congress can declare war, and it did not give the US president permission to take military action against Iraq until October 11, 2002. Blair’s legal justification is said to come from UN Resolution 1441, which was not passed until November 8, 2002.

Last week one US blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, unearthed more unsettling evidence. It was an overlooked interview with Lieutenant-General T Michael Moseley, the allied air commander in Iraq, in which he appears to admit that the “spikes of activity” were part of a covert air war.

From June 2002 until March 20, when the ground war began, the allies flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq, attacking 349 carefully selected targets. The attacks, Moseley said, “laid the foundations” for the invasion, allowing allied commanders to begin the ground war.

The bloggers may have found their own smoking gun.
Jobs for the boys
Sunday, June 26, 2005

BBC News: Euan Blair accepts US internship

Euan Blair, the prime minister's eldest son, is to work in Washington DC as an intern for Republican politicians.

The 21-year-old will spend three months working for the Committee on Rules in the House of Representatives - the lower chamber of the US Congress.

The Observer: Mandarins on the menu at the Straws' cosy dinner

They say it's not what you know but who you know. And if you want to get on in Whitehall, what better person to have as your father than the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw? All the more so if he then invites you to dinner with the country's most senior civil servants - with the bill paid by the taxpayer.

New details of people entertained by Jack Straw at his official homes, released under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that on 3 July, 2002, he hosted a dinner at 1 Carlton Gardens in central London for Sir Richard Wilson, the retiring Cabinet Secretary. On the guest list was his son William - now a fast-track civil servant and a Treasury press officer.
BBC News: Italy seeks 'CIA kidnap agents'

Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 13 people they claim are agents "linked to the CIA".

The suspects are accused of abducting an Islamic cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt for interrogation.
BBC News: GM crop bans survive Euro votes
A plan to make it more likely that GM crops are grown across Europe has been rejected by EU ministers - despite UK support for the idea.
BBC News: Ex-MP's doubts over Kelly hearing
The chairman of an MPs' committee that interviewed weapons inspector David Kelly two days before he killed himself says he should not have been called.
BBC News: Ex-minister pay-offs 'grotesque'
It is "grotesque" that outgoing ministers can take severance pay even if they return to government months later, says a Lib Dem frontbencher.
BBC News: Minister slammed on napalm error
It is a "disgrace" that British ministers say they did not know US forces had used napalm-style fire bombs in Iraq, according to an ex-Labour MP.
New Statesman: Iraq - the issue we have chosen to forget
The law of inverse proportions applies to Iraq. The greater the death toll, the less we in Britain seem to care. Each report of violence, each new piece of evidence of pre-war miscreance by our politicians produces the same shrug of the shoulders. And yet nearly six months after elections that were supposed to herald a new era, that were (very briefly) seized upon by a cheerleading clique as "vindication" of the Blair-Bush 2003 adventure, the situation deteriorates on a number of fronts.
The mean Green crass on homos
Friday, June 24, 2005

This morning, Radio 4's Today programme gave Stephen Green of ignorant bigots and humourless killjoys Christian Voice more helium of publicity. This time he's in a frightful pickle because the Co-op bank have asked Christian Voice to close their account with them.

You see, Stephen believes in a petty and vindictive God who hates queers. No doubt the Co-op has many customers who hold such views but they don't behave like Green and try to force their spittle-flecked rape-anxiety onto others. The Co-op aren't happy with the peddling of views like:

The police seem to have done a deal with "the gays". They were finding it hard to investigate crimes carried out within the homosexual network because no one from the homosexual milieu would talk to them. Investigations into crimes of paedophilia were also being hampered. In return for giving in to the demands of homosexual activists, the police in return (sic) secured the co-operation of homosexuals for their enquiries. But the cost has been a new public perception of the police spending much time on political correctness that ordinary policing has gone out of the window. Our streets are not safer as a result of their cosying up to homosexual activists, they have become more dangerous.

(I'm not linking to it - find it yourself if you want to reduce your quality of life a tiny bit.)

Note the same old tired, statistically unsustainable conflation of homosexuality and paedophilia. Wince at the logical contortion that says crimes weren't being investigated before the "deal" with "the gays" but also that our "streets are not safer as a result".

Listen to the interview for the full hilarity (Realplayer required). At one point Green said:

It's a matter of whether our nation believes in a God who brought us victorious through two world wars.

If only he'd claimed credit for Geoff Hurst's hat trick at Wembley in 1966 on behalf of the Creator as well, he would have been able to chant "two world wars and one world cup, doo-da, doo-da."

The interviewer, Jim Naughtie - clearly enjoying every second, was magnificent and allowed Green to supervise his own lynching. At one point, Naughtie said to Green: "it's may be coherent to you" and at the end of the piece he said: "I wish we could go on for ever on this."

Green attacked the Co-op for its "aggressive pro-gay stuff" in being present at gay pride events. And bless him, Simon Williams, the bank's director of corporate affairs replied: "We're really proud of taking part in gay pride festivals." Which, as far as I can see, is as close to saying "the likes of Green can stick their accounts up their arse" as he could get away with on national radio at ten to eight in the morning.

As cheering as it was to hear Stephen Green exposed as a whinnying fool yet again, I think it's a little unfair that such a small, highly unrepresentative group of yahoos are given all this airtime. What about the rest of us small, highly unrepresentative groups of yahoos? So I sent an email to the Today programme:

Dear Team

Why do you insist on continually giving such a small and extreme fringe group as Christian Voice a platform?

I run a small, obscure weblog. Granted it's not bigoted like Christian Voice but its tiny readership is about the same as CV's membership. Can I have five minutes on Today just before 8 o'clock, please?

Kind regards

Justin McKeating

It would be only fair, wouldn't it?
Iraq: Don't hold your breath
Thursday, June 23, 2005

Let me paint you a picture.

BBC News: Annan hails Iraq 'turning point'
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said international support pledged towards rebuilding Iraq marks a "turning point" for the country.

Bronwen Maddox, The Times: 'Show us the money' still the loudest plea
The figure in everyone’s minds yesterday, which on its own destroyed any chance of more financial pledges, was that the US has spent only $7 billion (£3.8 billion) of the $19 billion in economic aid that Congress appropriated two years ago. If the US cannot find ways of using that money, why should anyone else bother? The question is understandable. It can be no surprise, then, that only $2 billion of aid from other countries has materialised out of $13 billion pledged in Madrid in late 2003.

Robert Fisk: Sheltering Behind the Myth
If all those dignitaries and puffed-up politicos and self-important diplomats were so sure that Iraq was going to be a success story, why didn't they meet in Baghdad rather than Brussels? And of course, we all know the answer.

BBC News: Delivering the promise: aid problems
After Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998, a donor's conference in Stockholm the following year promised $9bn in aid.

According to Malcolm Rodgers, who wrote a report on the aftermath of Mitch, only about 30 to 50% of that money has been spent.

A year ago, the ancient Iranian city of Bam was hit by an earthquake and $1bn promised.

The estimates as to how much has reached Bam range from as low as $17m to just $115m.

Reuters: AFGHANISTAN: New code of conduct to regulate NGOs
According to ACBAR [Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief], a report from the Afghan Ministry of Finance indicated that out of US $13.4 billion pledged at the 2002 Tokyo conference, as well as the 2004 Berlin donor conference on Afghanistan, $9.1 billion had been committed by donors. Yet as of February 2005, only $3.9 billion had been physically disbursed to the country so far.

ReliefWeb: Six months after tsunami, aid questions linger
The devastation and loss of life caused by last December's tsunami triggered the biggest outpouring of financial contributions and the largest mobilization of aid resources the world has seen in response to a natural disaster. But six months later, a significant portion of the more than $6 billion pledged by nations and other donors has yet to materialize. Meanwhile, experts are warning of corruption and discrimination in aid distribution.

Can you tell what it is yet?
Admin: Links
Thursday, June 23, 2005

I'm slowly catching up on adding to the links list those sites that link to CY.

I'm sure I'm missing some people. So let me buy my round - if you link here and you're not on my list, give me a shout or leave a comment.
Joined Up Thinking
Thursday, June 23, 2005

News 24, South Africa: Take on Zim, Straw tells Africa
Speaking to reporters outside an Iraq reconstruction conference sponsored by the United States and the EU, Straw complained about "a lack of real commitment by all of Africa's leaders to recognise the scale of the horror that is taking place in Zimbabwe."

The Times: Don't send us back to Zimbabwe, hunger strikers beg Britain
HUNDREDS of Zimbabwean asylum-seekers held in detention centres have began a hunger strike over Britain’s decision to speed up their removal and send them back to face torture from Robert Mugabe’s regime.

(File under: )
The Guardian: Iraq creating new breed of jihadists, says CIA
The CIA believes Iraq to be potentially worse than Afghanistan, which produced thousands of jihadists in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the recruits to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida had fought in Afghanistan.
The Yorkshire Ranter: It Just Keeps Iraqing In Here
An enemy that can do suicide car bombing as well as break-contact drills is truly formidable; it's like the alpha and omega of war. The Americans have been talking about two kinds of enemy in Iraq, the calculated ex-Ba'athist roadside-bomber types who care deeply about living to fight another day, and the crazy-arsed jihadis who just want to die gloriously and couldn't care less about breaking contact in an orderly fashion. It looks like they're on their way to finding a Hegelian synthesis.
BBC News: Tax credits backfire on families

The government's tax credit system is subject to "completely unacceptable" errors, Citizens Advice (CAB) has said.

A third of recipient families have been overpaid - and many forced into poverty when HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) takes back overpayments, the charity said.

In another report, the Parliamentary Ombudsman accused Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo of failing to give a clear picture of the problem to MPs.
Jonathan Freedland: Yes, they did lie to us
In Washington Iraq remains close to the centre of politics while in Britain it has all but vanished. So the big news on Capitol Hill is the Democrats' refusal to confirm John Bolton, the man Bush wants to serve as US ambassador to the UN, in part because of suspicions arising from the lead-up to war. Meanwhile, RAF planes were involved last weekend in bombing raids in north-west Iraq - a marked escalation of their role - and British politics barely stirs. America has woken up; we are aslumber.
Bugger Basra
Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Friendly Fire from the mighty Today in Iraq drew my attention to this article in a comment on another post. I recommend you read it all because it's difficult to know which depressing fact to choose for my customary paragraph-sized taster:

Nation Review Online: Baffled in Basra
For every step responsible Basrans move forward - a gradually improving security situation, glimmers of economic development, some political leaders who are beginning to understand they must provide benefits for their constituents - irresponsible, ignorant, and frequently violent elements drag the city backwards. A race, or competition, exists between the forces of enlightened synergy and progress and traumatized entropy and decay. Basra teeters between the two, its future up in the air. And with Basra, so goes the rest of Iraq.

Or how about this from a different piece by the same author, Steven Vincent, on June 9:

Beneath the surface, though, this is not the easy-going municipality of 1.5 million people I recall. For one thing, I can no longer wander the streets, take a cab, or dine in restaurants for fear of being spotted as a foreigner: Kidnapping, by criminal gangs or terrorists, remains a lucrative business. Instead, for safety’s sake, I’m tied to my hotel, dependent on expensive drivers, unable to go anywhere without Iraqi escort. "You really shouldn’t be here at all," a British-embassy official warned me.

As the ever-perceptive David from Kitty Killer commented on Basra and the British forces' involvement there:

...our experiment in freedom and democracy is allowing a mini-Iran-come-Sicily to flourish

Here comes my now familiar rant. It'll be a cliche soon at this rate. Apart from a handful of stories, which I pointed out at the time, here, here and here there is virtually no mention in the British press of what's going on down there - a nascent, violent, theocracy and general lawlessness - and how the British either can't or won't help the situation. Daily reports of the carnage in and around Baghdad still feature heavily in the UK media but there's little or no word - other than news of the very occasional British casualty and the odd surfacing of tales of abuse of Iraqis by UK troops - from what the Observer described as "relatively stable" Basra.

If Basra is "relatively stable" then why aren't more British reporters filing stories from there? Or would reporting on how the British are failing in Basra lay newspapers and television networks (particularly the post-Hutton craven BBC) open to accusations from the Government of not backing our boys? The gutter press can ignore Iraq all together, the broadsheets and TV can report (from behind the wire of the Green Zone in Baghdad) on the Grand Guignol in the US-controlled north and we can all get on with the denial in believing everything to be tickety-boo in Basra.

Basra airport might be open to commercial flights but they're still having to corkscrew on their descent and ascent for fear of a missile attack. Rory Carroll wrote a somewhat glib piece about the city in the Guardian on June 4, but he talked more about how dangerous the place is for Western tourists than the Eastern residents.

According to the under-reported UN report, Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, three out of four household is in the Basra governate "suffer unsafe drinking water". 85% of the water is from tank trucks which are not regarded as a safe source.

The report says 63% of rural areas and 47% of urban areas are without adequate sanitation. The UN's UNDP 2003 report found that 93% of Iraqi households had access to adequate sanitation in that year. Of the children in Basra between the ages of six months and five years, the 2004 report found 8.4% were generally malnourished (underweight for their age), 18.2% were chronically malnourished (underheight or "stunted" for their age) and 7% were acutely malnourished (underweight for their height). The UN states that malnutriton rates have doubled since the war.

It may have changed since the 2004 report was commissioned, and one would fervently hope so, but nobody's telling if it has. The Government aren't usually backwards in coming forwards with a good news story. I know good news doesn't generally sell but even a cynic like me (and I'm not the only one) would be pleased to hear that levels nutrition, sanitation, clean drinking water and security were climbing. Isn't it in New Labour's interest to show the likes of me that they're trying to repair the damage they've caused?

Where exactly are the great and the good? Take Chair Blair. Two months after September 11, she spoke out against the "repression and cruelty of the joyless Taleban regime" and its oppression of women. She said:

The women in Afghanistan are as entitled as the women in any country are to have the same hopes and aspirations for ourselves and for our daughters - a good education and career outside the home if they want one, the right to healthcare and, of course, most importantly, a right for their voices to be heard.

Nearly four years later and has she no words for the women of Basra unable to leave their homes without their hejabs for harrassment "or worse"? I suppose it's difficult to speak out against a theocracy when your husband helped to install it.

Steven Vincent again:

"How can this be? We should be rich!" Saad, a former translator for the British army exclaimed to me. "Where is the money going, why is nothing happening? Tell your readers," he added in a distraught tone, "that we are willing to work to make Basra beautiful again - but we need their help, we need the world's help."

In the end it all comes down again to where you stood on the war and whether you've moved on or not. In the eyes of the British media at least, we've liberated Basra just enough for it to be a done deal. Its people may have to live in fear of a corrupt police force, fundamentalist clerics and their thugs but while us in the West can gloat at Saddam Hussein in his undercrackers it's mission accomplished.

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Telegraph: Blair's anti-terror Bill was 'an election ploy'

When the Prevention of Terrorism Act was going through Parliament, Mr Blair claimed that the orders were needed because "several hundred" active terrorists were plotting or threatening an attack in Britain, yet they fell outside the existing powers of the police and courts to prosecute them.

But in a progress report yesterday, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said he had made 11 orders since the Act was passed and each was in respect of individuals who had already been "certified" under 2001 legislation that was subsequently ruled discriminatory by the law lords.
George Monbiot: Bards of the Powerful

Far from challenging the G8's role in Africa's poverty, Geldof and Bono are legitimising its power.

...

I have yet to read a statement by either rock star which suggests a critique of power. They appear to believe that a consensus can be achieved between the powerful and the powerless, that they can assemble a great global chorus of rich and poor to sing from the same sheet. They do not seem to understand that, while the G8 maintains its grip on the instruments of global governance, a shared anthem of peace and love is about as meaningful as the old Coca-Cola ad.

The Telegraph: Leave Bush alone, Geldof warns stars

Bob Geldof has reportedly warned a top recording artist not to publicly criticise the White House during the worldwide television broadcast of the Live 8 concerts next month.

The warning came after Geldof insisted that President George W Bush had done more for Africa than any other American leader.
The Guardian: Blair asks to be excused court appearance
The prime minister, Tony Blair, is today expected to make an application to avoid a court appearance after he was summonsed by the mother-in-law of a sergeant killed in Iraq, as part of an anti-war protest.
Napalm: Ignorance is bliss
Monday, June 20, 2005

The Telegraph: Parliament misled over firebomb use

Ministers misled MPs about the use of a napalm-style firebomb in Iraq, John Reid admitted yesterday.

...

Claiming it was a "cock-up" rather than a conspiracy, he also sought to play down the significance of the Americans using MK77s.

"First of all, they didn't use napalm. They used a firebomb. It doesn't stick to your skin like napalm, it doesn't have the horrible effects of that," Mr Reid told ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme.


Notice the use of words. "They used a firebomb". A firebomb. Just the one then. That's not too bad. The Americans, in actual fact, used at least 30.

Not wishing to dwell on the workings of a mind that can peform the moral contortions over whether firebombs are better than napalm and whether you can really regard being burned to death by a firebomb rather than napalm as being less "horrible", Reid is wrong it seems on the facts on the different "effects" of napalm and MK77s.

San Diego Trubune, August 2003: Officials confirm dropping firebombs on Iraqi troops

During the war, Pentagon spokesmen disputed reports that napalm was being used, saying the Pentagon's stockpile had been destroyed two years ago.

Apparently the spokesmen were drawing a distinction between the terms "firebomb" and "napalm." If reporters had asked about firebombs, officials said yesterday they would have confirmed their use.

What the Marines dropped, the spokesmen said yesterday, were "Mark 77 firebombs." They acknowledged those are incendiary devices with a function "remarkably similar" to napalm weapons.

...

"You can call it something other than napalm, but it's napalm," said John Pike, defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a nonpartisan research group in Alexandria, Va.

Although many human rights groups consider incendiary bombs to be inhumane, international law does not prohibit their use against military forces. The United States has not agreed to a ban against possible civilian targets.

"Incendiaries create burns that are difficult to treat," said Robert Musil, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a Washington group that opposes the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Musil described the Pentagon's distinction between napalm and Mark 77 firebombs as "pretty outrageous."

"That's clearly Orwellian," he added.

No doubt somebody misinformed the Secretary of State which allowed him to go on to mislead the British public yesterday lunchtime ("more cock-up than conspiracy" and other hackneyed chestnuts, no doubt). It's quite a significant error though, maintaining that MK77 firebombs don't have the same "horrible effects" on human flesh as napalm when they do. Still, the impression is now sown in the minds of the people who watched Reid being interviewed: firebombs are not as bad as napalm and there's no need to dwell on what exactly firebombs do.

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The Guardian: WMD claims were 'totally implausible'

A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq's weapons programme were "totally implausible".

He tells the Guardian: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too".

Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the UN in New York during the run-up to the invasion, resigned from the FO last year, after giving evidence to the Butler inquiry.

Full interview here.
Britblog Roundup # 18
Monday, June 20, 2005

The gorgeous, pouting Tim Worstall lays on another bountiful Britblog Roundup.

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Napalm: Making it stick
Saturday, June 18, 2005

Tim Ireland has some excellent follow-up on the admission from the Government that they'd been lied to by the US administration over the use of napalm in Iraq.

Of course, as Tim can tell you, the stories about the use of napalm in Iraq have always been around for those of us who knew where to look (that is, not in the mainstream British media). In his admission, defence minister Adam Ingram states, according to the Independent, that "30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003". Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is a conservative estimate.

But then there are none so blind as those that will not see. The admission from the Americans that they'd used MK77 firebombs (napalm to you and me) in Iraq is two years old.

"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Col. Randolph Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. "Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.

"They were Iraqi soldiers there. It's no great way to die," he added. How many Iraqis died, the military couldn't say. No accurate count has been made of Iraqi war casualties.

It's no great way to die. Cheers, Sherlock.

"Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine," said Kim Phuc, known from a famous Vietnam War photograph. "Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius."

It goes without saying that this use of napalm didn't gain wide discussion in the salons of the British media. A brief story about its use in Fallujah appeared in the Sunday mirror last November but didn't gain wider currency. I think Abi Titmuss must have fellated another minor celebrity again that weekend.

These napalm stories are likely to be the tip of the iceberg and with Iraqi health official Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli's assertion back in March that banned weapons may have been used in the assault on Fallujah (a claim that nobody seems overly keen to get to the bottom of), it seems to me that this so-called war of liberation has been fought with precious little morality on either side (see also the lack of a count of the dead.)

We are, unfortunately, in the realm of Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknowns unknowns. Oh, how we laughed at the time. We know napalm was used in Iraq but not to what extent. We also have no idea of what else has been used. When a tactic of war is the use of the "free-fire zone" where everything in an area - soldier, civilian and journalist - is game, how would we ever know for sure? The likes of our strictly-impartial, envy-of-world, BBC aren't remotely interested in trying to find out.

Rumsfeld and his ilk will probably take what's really gone on in parts of Iraq to the grave, much like Henry Kissinger and his excesses. They'll be long dead when the files are finally released.

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The Independent: US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war

Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."
Strange bedfellows
Friday, June 17, 2005

Mark Thomas in this week's New Statesman:

The arms manufacturer General Electric, maker of the engines for the F-16 fighters that fly over the occupied territories, and recipient of US aid via foreign sales, owns NBC Universal. Universal bankrolls Working Title Films in a partnership deal. Working Title pays Richard Curtis to write its films. Richard Curtis is one of the founders of Red Nose Day and a fellow wristband-wearer . . . Love Actually? Er, money, actually.

In other news...

Red Pepper: Make Poverty History in turmoil over new wristband scandal
Clothing and shoe shops across the UK, owned by the Scottish multi-millionaire business tycoon and philanthropist, Tom Hunter, who is bankrolling the Make Poverty History campaign to the tune of £1million, are selling the coalition’s special white anti-poverty wristbands branded with the logos of companies campaigners accuse of violating workers’ rights in developing countries.

As lofty and above reproach as MPH's aims are, somebody in their upper echelons needs to get a grip and soon before wheels start falling off. This kind of stuff isn't exactly rocket science and MPH help nobody by continually giving their detractors (and yes, supporters) the sticks to beat them with.

Putting Geldof back in his box for a bit would be a start. They're queuing up to give him a going over - Claire Short and Andy Kershaw being just the latest.

I'd argue that the column inches devoted to Kershaw could have been better used by highlighting what arms sales and privatisation have done to Africa but I'm not an editor of a national newspaper and attacking Geldof clearly sells papers right now.

He's now the story and you don't have to be Alastair Campbell to know that that's bad news.
The Independent: Oil production falling fastest in Britain's North Sea
Britain suffered the steepest fall in oil production of any country last year, according to a report yesterday that will fuel fears of an end of the era of North Sea oil revenues.
BBC News: Illegal leg cuff probe 'delayed'
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has been accused of delaying an investigation into the alleged export of goods that could be used for torture, taped meetings with Customs officers reveal.
US Newswire: 540,000 Petitions Delivered to President Bush Demanding Truth About Iraq War; Downing Street Memos Trigger Public Outrage Over Deception
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) today will hand-deliver to the White House a petition signed by 105 members of Congress and more than 540,000 Americans demanding that President Bush provide a detailed response to the smoking gun evidence in the Downing Street memos of deceptions about the war in Iraq.
FT: MoD abandons £1bn PFI contract
The 30-year contract with the Landmark Training Consortium to provide training on tanks and other armoured vehicles is to be abandoned in favour of more "conventional procurement strategies", according to Lord Drayson, the defence procurement minister.
Look at her now, she's starting to yawn
Friday, June 17, 2005

The Independent: Hodge tells sacked Rover workers: get a job at Tesco
Margaret Hodge, the work and pensions minister, has come under fire from former MG Rover workers after she suggested the skilled workers should take jobs in a supermarket.

There's always been a whiff of the Mary Antoinette about Margaret Hodge. Who can forget her branding of a sex abuse victim as "extremely disturbed" when he dared to speak out about how he'd been abused while in the care of the London Borough of Islington in the late 70s. While Hodge had not been leader of the council at the time she had been when whistleblowers later approached her about sexual abuse in care homes across the borough. Hodge refused to provide extra staff to investigate the allegations and an independent report later condemned the "disastrous" council for not investigating. Hodge was defended in the press by no less luminaries than Polly Toynbee and Roy Hattersley.

And now it's the Longbridge workers who Hodge wants to eat cake. Along with those herds of miners and dockers who, sold out by Labour, ended up in call centres and as greeters at B&Q.

Margaret Hodge is 61.

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Adventures in the Forbidden Zone
Thursday, June 16, 2005

This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...it is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to THE DEATH PENALTY (or affect your parents' credit rating). Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you who do wrong things.*

Following on from Tim Ireland's excoriation of the Goverment's latest craven and underhand scam to stifle popular protest and dissent, there's more from Robin at Perfect along with another pledge which could be fun:

I will apply for authorisation to demonstrate in the vicinity of Parliament every day for a month from 1st August 2005 but only if 50 other responsible citizens will too.

Think of the exercise you could have touring the various police stations in London to deliver your protest applications or, if like me and don't live in the capital, enjoying a brisk walk to the post box to send them.

*Frank Zappa, Joe's Garage.

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Forgotten Gem: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Thursday, June 16, 2005

Released in 1974, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a gritty high concept thriller that seems to have escaped being awarded the plaudits given to other films of the same genre and from the same era such as The French Connection or Dirty Harry.

The film tells of the hijacking of a New York subway train with 17 passengers aboard(the Pelham One Two Three of the title) by four armed criminals, their demand for a ransom and the city leaders' inept attempts at getting the money to them within the one-hour time limit. With the hijackers threatening to kill one passenger for every minute the one million dollars is late, the clock is ticking.

Unlike Dirty Harry and The French Connection which depend on single charismatic lead actors (Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman respectively), Pelham has an enviable ensemble cast. The hijackers are led by the ever-intimidating Robert Shaw, who the following year would steal the show as the unforgettable Quint in Jaws, as a British former mercenary looking for a big payday. Two of his colleagues in crime are Martin Balsam, a famous face from a myriad of movies including 12 Angry Men and All The President's Men, as a digruntled fired railwayman, and Hector Elizondo playing a sexually predatory ex-Mafia enforcer of such irredeemable scumbaggery it's amazing to think he went on to play avuncular patricians in fluff like Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries.

On the side of the angels, the laconic wisenheimer traffic cop, Lt. Zachary "Z" Garber, out to thwart Shaw and his crew is played by the excellent Walter Matthau. His sidekick Lt. Rico Patrone is played by Jerry Stiller, father of Ben, who went on to play George Constanza's hilariously unhinged father in Seinfeld. Another cop, Inspector Daniels, is played by Julius Harris who, the year before had played the metal-armed henchman Tee Hee in the only halfway decent Roger Moore Bond film, Live and Let Die.

One thing that's striking when watching the film is that most of the cast, if not exactly dog-ugly, have the kind of characterful faces that you just don't see in movies these days. If starting out today, Matthau and Shaw would be Ugly Thug #3 and #4 in Gone in 60 Seconds 3, standing behind bland, sand-blasted pretty boys like Clooney and Pitt.

You can see why such fine actors were attracted to Pelham. The script is sharp, without an ounce of fat but with great moments of dialogue that retain a sly, wry wit.

Mayor: Will you stop bullying everybody, Warren? This is supposed to be a democracy!
Deputy Mayor: Wise up, for chrissake, we're trying to run a city, not a goddamn democracy! Al, quit farting around - we've got to pay!
Mayor: Jessie, Jessie, what do you say?
Mayor's wife: I know a million dollars sounds like a lot of money. But just think what you'll get in return.
Mayor: What?
Mayor's wife: Eighteen sure votes.

The script also toys with notions of racism but shies away from the fascistic undertones of Dirty Harry and the uncomfortable police harrassment of the "Poughkeepsie" scene in The French Connection. Matthau's Garber is casually racist (of a kind) in two scenes - once with Japanese dignitaries visiting the rail network and once when he expresses surprise at meeting the black Inspector Daniels. On both occasions however it is Garber who is shown to be the fool.

And it gently pokes fun at the counter-culture: Garber mistakes a long-haired male undercover cop for woman and while the hijacked train hurtles down the track, the female hippy hostage "ooooommmmmms" to remain calm. The film also takes time to land a few low blows on authority figures in its portrayal of the whining and effete, beleagured and unpopular city mayor, laid low with flu and at the mercy of his domineering attack dog of a deputy.

The influence the film would have on later movies is apparent from the outset. The hijackers are all referred to by colour, Mr Blue, Green, Grey and Brown, to disguise their identity - an idea cinematic magpie Quentin Tarantino borrows in Reservoir Dogs. The washed-out realism of Pelham is a look they now pay a fortune to achieve in films like The Bourne Identity and Payback (another film that harks back to the hard 70's thrillers in its sensibilities and soundtrack.)

The multicultural cast of hapless citizens hurtling to their doom in a tin tube turns up again in Speed which also has it's own subway chase. Pelham's list of ethnically, sexually and religiously diverse hostages throws its net as hilariously wide as Speed does, the cast list simply reading "The Mother, The Homosexual, The Secretary, The Hooker, The Old Man, The Pimp, The Alcholic, The Spanish Woman..."

As I said at the beginning, the film is high concept: "Colour-coded criminals hijack a subway train and threaten to kill a passenger for every minute the one million dollar ransom is late." It goes without saying that these days we're awash with high concept thrillers - the term, frankly, becoming one of abuse - with scant few showing the wit and verve of Pelham.

The villains are bastards with a fiendishly clever plan and no compunction, the hero gets by on his wits not his gun (indeed, Garber is in the subway control room negotiating with the hijacker via radio for most of the film). The hapless city police operate by good luck more than good management.

Throw in a hard-as-coffin-nails Schifrin-esque score by David Shire (put the brass-driven opening title theme on your MP3 player and you'll feel like a titan the next time you stride out for a pint of milk), a cheeky twist of an ending and a final freeze-frame shot that will have you grinning for days, and you have a tight, perfectly plotted and acted thriller that they really don't make any more. No doubt a remake is in the pipeline with Ben Affleck in the Matthau role (but now with a broken marriage and a drink problem) and Vinnie Jones in the Shaw one (but now with a caring side that allows him to bond with one of the child hostages). Set in space.

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Compare and Contrast
Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Observer, June 12: Ministers' diaries stay secret as Falconer stalls again
Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, was under fire this weekend for backsliding on a pledge to publish ministerial diaries under the government's new freedom of information legislation.

The Times, June 16: Falconer attacks culture of secrecy
THE LORD Chancellor will mount a strong attack today on the “culture of secrecy” in Whitehall as he announces that up to 200 laws are to be repealed to let more information be released.

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Hit me baby one more time
Thursday, June 16, 2005

I'm not interested in getting into a another debate about voting systems and electoral reform. Here are the facts:

New Labour were re-elected with a majority of 67 by 22% of the electorate.

Have people forgotten this? The supine British press certainly seem to have. The paucity of humility shown by the Government in the face of such antipathy is stomach-churning.

And yet, in the face of ID cards, imprisonment without trial, the supression of protest and continuing death and destruction in Iraq (to name only four issues) the "great" British public just shrugs and mutters "shit happens", likening this travesty to being struck by lightning.

Where's the outrage? Where's the anger? How can we sit back and let such mediocrities lower the standards? The way we've been conditioned to just accept any level of atrocity and mendacity is staggering. Go back to sleep Britain, you are free to think what they tell you.

Contempt is a word I use a lot in connection New Labour and Tony Blair but it cannot be overstated in my opinion. Cataloguing the population and charging them for the privilege? The government think the public are dickheads. Banning political protests up to one kilometre from parliament? These people are public servants - we're their employers, we pay their wages. They should hang on our every word not find increasingly Orwellian methods of shutting us up. (Not that the vast majority of the slack-jawed and bovine public would drag their leaden arses out of their chairs to march in defence of civil liberties. Maybe if they put Abi Titmuss in Belmarsh or Alfie Moon went to prison in Eastenders...)

And as for the war, even most of those people who were vehemently against it no longer give a monkey's and the government must just love it. The proscecution in the Michael Jackson trial would have killed for evidence as watertight as that against Blair, Bush, Straw and the rest of the crew over their conduct before the war. But its shrugged off by the press, public and parliament as if the news was "the sun came up this morning".

The government demonstrably hates the public and the public don't care. New Labour have learnt that it can ride out any scandal of any magnitude by simply waiting for the press and public's attention spans to elapse.

One of my favourite sticks to beat John Prescott with is his putting the low turnout at the 2001 General Election down to a "culture of contentment". A lazy, despicable way of covering up the lack of enthusiasm for the New Labour project. But I'm coming to the conclusion that he's right. Look at ID cards. New Labour said that 80% of the public were in favour of them. That number is slowly heading south. Not because we've woken up to the fact that ID cards would mean the repression of minorities, or the civil liberty implications, or that the consequences of such a complex system being implemented by such an incompetent government will very likely be catastrophic.

No. We're going cold on ID cards because the week we have to put our hands in our pocket to buy one it'll mean less Pot Noodles and scratchcards. The NO2ID campaign would be best served by agressively appealing to people's basest instinct. They should produce a poster showing how many tins of baked beans or football matches on Sky 93 quid buys. As Lisa Simpson said, "You will never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator".

The piece I wrote this week about the Downing Street Memo, garnered this comment over on The Sharpener from Jarndyce:

The trouble is, shouting from the pages of newspapers or the interwebnet about Iraq has become like screaming at the ref from Row Z or at the TV from the sofa: you may well be right, but They can't hear you, and anyway aren't listening anymore.

In the Simpsons episode, Homer at the Bat, Mr Burns hires a bunch of professional baseball players to work at the nuclear power plant and then puts them on the plant's softball team in order to beat a rival team and win a bet. His place on the team taken by one of these ringers, Homer despairs...

Marge: What makes you think this Darryl Strawberry character is better than you?

Homer: Marge, forget it. He's bigger than me, faster than me, stronger than me, and he already has more friends around the plant than I do.

Bart: You make me sick, Homer. You're the one who told me I could do anything if I just put my mind to it!

Homer: Well, now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's a crock! No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you.

Bart: Gotcha. Can't win, don't try.

Now, I'm clearly in Row Z - my visitor count makes Robert Kilroy-Silk's election result look good. The NO2ID and Make My Vote Count campaigns might be shouting louder and be nearer the pitch in this analogy, but "They" aren't listening to us on these issues either. So what's the point - shouldn't we just pack up and go home? If not why not? If we can't win, why try? Because it flatters middle class egos to soldier on? Because the fights against ID cards and for electoral reform are in front of us and Iraq behind? Using that logic, why chase murderers and thieves? Somebody burgled you? Let it go, it's all in the past.

Life in Britain is like lying under the duvet on a cold Saturday morning when you've nothing to get up for. Hmmmm, isn't it great? Don't think about torture, until the needles are being pushed under your fingernails. Forget war, until it's you on the wrong end of the bayonet. Poverty is a distant concept, until it's you scraping to get by.

Most people in Britain will never, ever experience torture or war or (real) poverty. This "shit happens" to other people.

I'll leave the last word to Warren Ellis:

The lesson of the 1930s is that, in a time of encroaching conservatism and creeping repression, the correct response is not to flush your fucking spine down the toilet.

What's Wayne Rooney been up to this week?

(And just so you're extra sick of me crapping on about Iraq, here's more from Greg Palast:

Still today, the State and Defense Departments and White House continue to stonewall our demands for the notes of the meetings between lobbyists, oil industry consultants and key Administration officials that would reveal the hidden economic motives for the war.

What are the secret interests behind this occupation? Who benefits? Who met with whom? Why won't this Administration release these documents of the economic blueprint for the war?

And with that...)

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If you read only one more thing today...
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

...read this:

Peak Oil: Beyond Optimism and Pessimism by Jim Bliss

Statistically speaking, I am due to live another 40 years. During that time, I will witness the complete collapse of free-market capitalism. The project of globalisation will fail, and the consumer culture within which recent generations have been raised will end. A massive reduction in living standards, unlike any other readjustment in history, will be experienced by 99% of us living in the industrialised world. A hundred thousand things that we all take for granted today will have ceased to exist by the time I reach my allotted lifespan. This will happen. And it is perhaps unsurprising that this pronouncement was not joyously embraced by the people I informed of it.

I'm a late convert to the Peak Oil issue, thanks almost entirely to Jim. I've now read enough of, and around, his excellent writing on the matter to be cast-iron in my certainty that this is going to happen.

I've been looking for some time now of a way of explaining what's about to happen to us to family and friends without it sounding like a conspiracy theory or something so far off as to be dismissed. Jim's piece does it eloquently, admirably. Read it and then go to Google and read some more. If like me, you've got kids (and if you haven't for that matter), it should give you a chill like you've never felt before.

(Long past) Time to get the message out there.

(File under: )
From TheyWorkForYou.com:

Sarah Teather: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what percentages of households in Iraq have access to (a) clean water and (b) electricity. [2539]

Hilary Benn: The most recent reliable source of data on living standards in Iraq is the "Iraq living Conditions Survey 2004" conducted by the Iraqi Central Office for Statistics and Information Technology in April and May 2004. The following information is drawn from this survey which can be found at http://www. iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm.

Access to clean water in Iraq varies significantly between urban and rural areas. In urban areas, 66 per cent. of households have reliable, safe drinking water; 33 per cent. have access to safe water but the supply is unreliable; and 1 per cent. of urban households are receiving unsafe drinking water. In rural areas, 43 per cent. of Iraqi households have reliable access to safe drinking water, 22 per cent. have access to safe drinking water but the supply is unreliable, and 34 per cent. have access only to unsafe drinking water.

Almost all Iraqi households are connected to an electricity network, with little variance between urban and rural areas. However, only 15 per cent. of households report their electricity supply to be reliable: 85 per cent. of households experienced low voltage supply or a supply of less than 12 hours per day. 31 per cent. of households use a private generator to improve their access to electricity.

DFID has committed over £70 million to infrastructure programmes in southern Iraq which are helping to improve water and electricity supplies for more than five million people. DFID is providing advisers to work with the Ministry of Electricity in Baghdad on developing a national energy strategy. Water and electricity projects are also being financed by other donors, including the USA, Japan, the United Nations and the World Bank, as well as from Iraq's own budget.
Washington Post: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.

Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces. The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief.
Media Guardian: Guardian resizes ahead of schedule

The Guardian is to relaunch in its new, smaller format in the autumn, nearly a year ahead of schedule.

Guardian Newspapers confirmed the move today, adding that the Observer would switch to the new "Berliner" format early next year.

...

The "Berliner" format is already used by a number of European newspapers, including Le Monde, and is slightly larger than a tabloid but smaller than a broadsheet.




We have found a witch. May we burn her?
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

The ever-fragrant Barbara Amiel, writing in the Telegraph about Michael Jackson (via John Harris):

But guilt or innocence of what? Is there really any doubt that he had children in his bed for his pleasure? Child molestation of any sort is to be deplored, but in the absence of violence, fear or physical coercion, in the absence of penetration, what actual harm has he done? These children have received millions for their moments in his bed. Before they were told it was a crime, they couldn't wait to get back to Neverland.

...in the absence of violence, fear or physical coercion, in the absence of penetration, what actual harm has he done?

Read on for the full, stinking, mutton-headed, scum-drenched idiocy of it all.

I'd like to go into detail about how she's as wrong as it's possible for a corrupt, venal scrap of a woman to be but I've been trying to limit the use of obscenities on CY of late as it frightens the horses.

Inveterate scumbag.

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I'm leaving this galaxy for one less complicated.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Rochenko (or should I say Captain Swing?) over at Smokewriting has passed on the poisoned chalice of another meme. I've been invited to elucidate on my personal power fantasies.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why? (Assume you also get baseline superhero enhancements like moderately increased strength, endurance and agility.)
The ability to produce really good pork pies. Because I like pork pies and I'm hungry. Alright, purple pork pies. That can fly and stuff.

Which, if any, "existing" superhero(es) do you fancy, and why?
Jakita Wagner from Planetary seems a very personable young woman. She can dropkick a rhino. Apparently. Not that I look for that in a woman.

Which, if any, "existing" superhero(es) do you hate?
Probably Night Owl II from Watchmen. He was a whining get who could only get his winkie to stand up when dressed as a giant owl. And at the end of the book he thought a blonde mullet and moustache was a good disguise.

OK, here's the tough one. What would your superhero name be? (No prefab porn-name formulas here, you have to make up the name you think you'd be proud to mask under.)
The Procrastinator, Thief of Time.

For extra credit: Is there an "existing" superhero with whom you identify/whom you would like to be?
The Brown Bottle. HADAWAY FRIGGAAAS!!!

Pass it on. Three people please, and why they're the wind beneath your wings.
Jim Bliss, who I'm still in awe of for his understanding of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. Nick Barlow, founder of CRACCA. And Nosemonkey at Europhobia, just to shut him up about CAP and EU rebates for five minutes.
Putting money where mouths are
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Chris has a great piece about today's Live 8/eBay collision over at qwghlm. In it, he quotes Sir Bob:

The people who are selling these tickets on websites are miserable wretches who are capitalising on people's misery. I am appealing to their sense of decency to stop this disgusting greed.

Sir Bob Geldof, ladies and gentlemen, hostage to fortune.

I'd be quite interested to know, when Bob and Elton and Robbie and Madonna and the Pink Floyd chaps get their royalty cheques this year, whether, upon noticing a spike in album sales correlating with their appearances at Live 8, they will donate the difference to Make Poverty History or a similar charity.

If not, they are miserable wretches who are capitalising on people's misery. I am appealing to their sense of decency to stop this disgusting greed.

(File under: )
Observer: UK arms sales to Africa reach £1 billion mark
Many exports approved by the Department of Trade and Industry involve selling arms to some of the most deprived states and to countries with poor human rights records.
Dispatch Online: Global arms spending near Cold War high
Spending ranged from $18 per person in Africa, $45 in Asia, $112 in Central and Eastern Europe to $248 in the Middle East, $530 in Western Europe, and $1435 per person in the United States, SIPRI said.
The Guardian: Liberal Basra pushed to the right

Sheikh Abdul al-Bahadli, a firebrand cleric with an artistic bent, drew a tree on a notepad. It was not a bad sketch. After a pause his pen returned to the pad and drew a box around the tree. "Is it not more beautiful if it is put in a frame?" he asked.

This was not an invitation to discuss aesthetics, but an argument for women wearing the Islamic headscarf known as the hijab. It was also a justification for the transformation of Basra and southern Iraq.
Tony Blair knew my father, Father knew Tony Blair
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Sunday Times: Blair axes watchdog set up to stop honours for donors
The move comes as research shows a strong correlation between Labour’s donors and the honours awards. The research found that three-quarters of people giving more than £50,000 had been honoured.

Sixteenth century pope, Leo X*, gained notoriety by establishing the practice of selling indulgences, whereby people could pay a sum to the Church, have their sins forgiven and thus gain guaranteed entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. He then used the money to fund the lavish rebuilding of the Vatican. This shilling of salvation was one of the catalysts of Martin Luther's fulmination against the Roman Catholic Church and lit the blue touch paper of the Reformation.

In Dante's Inferno, the avaricious clergy were consigned to the Fourth Circle of Hell: "Popes and Cardinals, in whom avarice practices its excess... the undiscerning life that made them foul, to all recognition now makes them dim."

Needless to say nobody's nailing their theses to any doors in protest at Blair's patronage or immortalising the greed of our leaders in intricate romantic allegories. I would only my hammer's broken as is my grasp of symbolic representation.

*Apparently, restive cardinals appalled at Leo X's profligacy plotted his assassination. The plan was to inject poison into his hemorrhoids. Really.

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Computer Weekly: Whitehall says no to Freedom Act requests

Whitehall officials have refused requests under the Freedom of Information Act to publish the results of Gateway reviews on high-risk IT-related projects at the NHS, the Child Support Agency and on a national ID card scheme.

...

Gateway reviews are six-stage independent assessments during the life of high-risk projects conducted by the Office of Government Commerce.

The OGC's refusal leaves Parliament with no reliable means of receiving regular reports on the progress of risky IT-related schemes, which can cost billions of pounds.

...

The OGC's refusal to publish reports came in the same week the government admitted that a problem-laden IT implementation of tax credits in 2003 contributed to about a third of all awards, covering 1.9 million families, being overpaid in 2003-04.
The Memo Hole
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Like Blair and New Labour, the British press have drawn a line under Iraq and moved on. Just as many of us suspected, Blair's piss-poor victory at the General Election was enough to sweep his mendacity under the carpet.

Sure, we still get coverage of the various bombings and carnage but the reasons for all the death and destruction? Well, we've put all that behind us. The British media are now too busy bashing the Frogs, arguing the toss over the EU rebate and, as of this morning, ruminating over whither now for Michael Jackson (boy, watch what other stuff slips under the radar today).

The UN's Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004 and its description of the depradations facing the Iraqi people in the post-war period sank without trace with barely a mention in the mainstream. The New England Journal of Medicine's report that suggested 13% of American troops believe themselves responsible for the death of civilians in Iraq, as far as I can ascertain, has been mentioned not at all.

And after the flurry of leaks before the General Election showing that Blair had promised Bush in 2002 he would go to war with him and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" (as then MI6 big cheese, Richard Dearlove put it), we now have silence. Nothing. Stoking Little Englander antipathy towards Europe is shifting units now not the past lies and mendacity of our bent-on-war elected leaders.

Almost. The matter broke the surface again, briefly, in the Sunday Times on June 12 when it published a leaked briefing paper that was circulated at the meeting (whose minutes were leaked to the Times prior to the General Election) "at which Blair discussed military options having already committed himself to supporting President George Bush’s plans for ousting Saddam". It then slipped quietly beneath the roiling waves of EU shenanigans. You can see why, there's nothing of interest in the briefing paper, as these excerpts show:

* The US Government's military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace. But, as yet, it lacks a political framework. In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it.

...

* When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine Crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq's WMD through the UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted.

...

* Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law. But regime change could result from action that is otherwise lawful. We would regard the use of force against Iraq, or any other state, as lawful if exercised in the right of individual or collective self-defence, if carried out to avert an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe, or authorised by the UN Security Council.

...

* It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject (because he is unwilling to accept unfettered access) and which would not be regarded as unreasonable by the international community. However, failing that (or an Iraqi attack) we would be most unlikely to achieve a legal base for military action by January 2003.

...

* A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the US military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden.

...

* Time will be required to prepare public opinion in the UK that it is necessary to take military action against Saddam Hussein. There would also need to be a substantial effort to secure the support of Parliament. An information campaign will be needed which has to be closely related to an overseas information campaign designed to influence Saddam Hussein, the Islamic World and the wider international community. This will need to give full coverage to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, including his WMD, and the legal justification for action.

...

* Although the US military could act against Iraq as soon as November, we judge that a military campaign is unlikely to start until January 2003, if only because of the time it will take to reach consensus in Washington. That said, we judge that for climactic reasons, military action would need to start by January 2003, unless action were deferred until the following autumn.

Apart from the revelation (obvious to most observers but now confirmed) that the US had no post-conflict plan, that it was necessary to "prepare public opinion in the UK" (that's black propaganda, dodgy dossiers and lies to me and you), that the British government coinsidered "an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject" (that is, installing a fix in UN resolutions to ensure the fait accompli) and that war would only be considered lawful if it was in self-defence (nope), to avert an "overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe" (the coalition have killed more in the last two years than Saddam did in his) or if authorised by the UN (get Goldsmith to fudge it), the briefing paper is nothing more than paper aeroplane material. Not worth the bother, clearly. Boring.

As far as the mainstream British press are concerned, Blair is off the hook. There seems to be little else that could come to light that could be more damning. But hey, we've moved on from dead wogs to crazy frogs. Jacques Chirac is now the threat to our way of life that we must deal with, hadn't you heard?

The story of the "Downing Street Memo" has had wider coverage in the US. Eighty-nine members of Congress have written to Bush demanding an explanation - George is still looking for his pen at this moment in time. The American mainstream press has found a little backbone and given the minutes and briefing paper of the 2002 meeting copious column inches. Needless to say, the voracious US blogging community are all over it (unlike us lot over here - let me know if I'm wrong and I'll link to you). With the Bush presidency seemingly rapidly running out of steam, the likes of the formerly supine Washington Post and New York Times are giving the story ink.

Maybe they were shamed by criticism from Hillary Clinton of all people, when she said:

It's shocking when you see how easily they fold in the media today... They don't stand their ground. If they're criticized by the White House, they just fall apart. I mean c'mon, toughen up, guys, it's only our Constitution and country at stake.

Can you imagine a public figure standing up and saying something like that in the UK? The gamut of newspaper editors from Alan Rusbridger to Rebekah Wade would spit on them from a great height.

(With thanks to Matt Sellers)

(Also published at The Sharpener)

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MIT Survey
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

MIT's Cameron Marlow of Blogdex fame is running an academic survey of blogs. Doesn't take long and tries to get to the bottom of how and why we blog.

Find it here.
Islamic Republic News Agency: UK supplying over 90 per cent of arms transfers to Iraq
Britain supplied over 90 per cent of major conventional weapons delivered to Iraq in 2004 following the lifting of the UN arms embargo last June, according to the latest figures from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
New ID Cards Pledge
Monday, June 13, 2005

The "I will refuse to register for an ID card but only if 3,000,000 people will sign up" pledge has been withdrawn and replaced with another one requiring less signatories but additionally requiring a small cash outlay:

"I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge."

Sold. Get over there and stick your John Hancock down.

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Bolton Wonderings
Monday, June 13, 2005

Back in May 2002, on my old blog, Bar Room Philosophy, I wrote this:

And if more proof were needed that the current American administration aren't exactly paid up Citizens of the World, along with their disdain for climate control and the international criminal court, we have this:

The US led a successful vote last week to oust Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Britain helpfully backed his dismissal by being the first country to co-sponsor the resolution. The Americans maintain that Bustani was mismanaging the organisation but have so far been unable to produce any documentary evidence to this effect.

In reality, it looks like there were two different reasons why the Bush Administration wanted rid of Bustani:

1. The Americans were angered at Bustani's attempts to have Iraq join the OPCW even though the agency's mandate is to ensure, in Bustani's words, "universality without exception."
The Bush Administration, in case you haven't heard, are looking to go to war with Iraq later this year.

For £1 million pounds, do they want to go to war with Iraq because:

a) the Bush's have unfinished personal business with Saddam?

b) the American administration has a huge military budget burning a hole in its pocket?

c) they need to install a more malleable military strongman to protect their oil interests (they've long since given up any pretence of installing a democratic government in Baghdad.)?

d) the US Government are concerned about the oppressed minorities inside Iraq?

Would you like to ask the audience?

So, Iraq freely joining a weapons inspection program and, y'know, having their facilities inspected, might give the US less reason to roll into Iraq next Christmas.

2. The Americans accused Bustani of threatening to inspect five unspecified countries "for political ends".
Now, let's just say for argument's sake that maybe, just maybe, the US was on Bustani's list. After reports that the anthrax virus used in attacks in Florida last year were sourced from an US-based laboratory, wouldn't the US government be a little bit worried about Bustani's team discovering that security at America's chemical and biological facilities was a bit lax? (The Bush Administration are quite happy to accuse others over breaches of the Biological Weapons Treaty but refuse to commit to measures giving the Treaty teeth)

It seems the Americans went to great lengths to torpedo Bustani and in contravention of international law too. If the allegations against him are true, why did the Americans feel the need to use dirty tricks to get him?

In this instance, whatever else you can say about Bush and his crew, they knew what they wanted and they sure knew how to get it. And they say George can be a bit of ditherer when it comes to foreign policy.

Back in 2005, the Bustani debacle has come back to bite the Bush Administration and has put something of a spanner in the works of John Bolton's nomination to be US Ambassador to the UN.

Political Affairs Magazine: John Bolton and the Bustani Affair
According to AP, Bustani had tried to send chemical weapons inspectors to Iraq in early 2002. The motive was to help "defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons," undermining the Bush administration’s rationale for war.

Bustani’s moves infuriated the Bush administration, and according to Bustani, Bolton initially threatened him by telephone and then eventually orchestrated a special session vote, later determined to have been conducted improperly, in which less than one-third of the members of the OPCW voted for Bustani’s removal.

Bustani was fired during the special session based on US-orchestrated charges of "mismanagement."

Bolton's tenure as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security was hardly auspicious as the above example shows. And his fingerprints on the knife that did for Bustani are just for starters.

On his watch, the US also withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia and refused to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He also effectively torpedoed the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention by undermining attempts to enforce the agreement. And this after the anthrax used in the attacks in the US in 2001 was sourced back to American laboratories.

Revelations about Bolton's personal style also reveal him to be, well, a bit of a dick. With allegations of bullying and control freakery against him, he's a man you wouldn't want to be trapped in a lift with let alone putting the US's case at the UN for any possible future conflict.

It now remains to be seen how long Senate Democrats will tough it out with their their current filibuster on Bolton's confirmation. In the other corner though, the White House are unlikely to give ground. You don't have to be a fan of the West Wing to know that failure to seal Bolton's place at the UN will be a serious blow to a presidency that, with public approval ratings rapidly heading south, already has a whiff of the lame duck about it.

Bolton, however, is the merely the bridgehead to a coup d'etat at the UN, if Sky News' political editor Adam Boulton is to be believed:

Discontent focuses on Kofi Annan's continued tenure as secretary general. In the Republican world-view, the UN's failure to take a stand for "freedom" in disputes around the world - from Iraq onwards - makes his position untenable.

...

These matters may well come to a head before the Millennium Summit at the UN in September, when Annan will present his own plans for institutional reform, notably to expand Security Council membership. The US position is shaping up to be "reform yes, Annan no".

Anyone who witnessed the alacrity with which George W Bush kicked the chair out from under Yasser Arafat while standing next to Blair at a news conference in Crawford, Texas, knows what this could mean for the PM. He realises that the Americans can now block both his goals for the G8. He has been told that if he wants progress on aid and climate change, or support for the UN, the price is likely to be the head of Annan.

No doubt Blair will tag along under both the strict terms of the special relationship and his increasing desperation to secure a historical legacy for himself. Bolton, on the other hand, presents a problem: He and Jack Straw have clashed in the past over Straw's conviction that Bolton was responsible for attempting to derail negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. Straw, always one to mince his words, described Bolton as "extremely disobliging".

Which should make for fun when Bolton finally gets the nod. The one - extremely small - saving grace of having Bolton calling the shots at the UN will be watching Straw bow and scrape before the man.

(File under: )
Quick roundup
Monday, June 13, 2005

A bunch of stuff I've been storing up over the last week:

There's a new Get Your War On up wherein the question is posed, "Is Adobe Photoshop actually a better judge of character than President Bush?"

***

Khaleej Times: "Swift Saddam trial could reduce insurgent attacks"
Bringing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein swiftly to trial could weaken members of his ousted regime now engaged in carrying out insurgent attacks in Iraq, a newspaper on Tuesday reported Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani as saying.

Hopefully more successfully then the fall of Baghdad, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the capture of Saddam, "free and fair" elections and the swearing in the a new "democratic" government - all of which we were told would herald the end of the insurgency - did.

***

A lovely exchange from Hansard:

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): What steps his Department is taking to foster a culture of respect. [1970]

The Minister for Local Government (Mr. Phil Woolas): The Office of the Deputy Minister is responsible for the creating sustainable communities policy—communities that are thriving, well run, active, inclusive and, importantly, safe. We are working hard to develop that culture of respect to which the question refers.

Mr. Robathan: The Government have placed fostering a culture of respect at the centre of their legislative programme in the Queen's Speech. Does the Minister agree that leadership by example is important? If so, does he think that the Deputy Prime Minister thumping people in the street and swearing at and insulting people in the Corridors of this House helps in fostering the culture of respect that we all wish to see in this country?

Mr. Woolas: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has just contributed to an increase in respect for Members of Parliament, and his party in particular. I thought it very unfortunate that the young thug attacked my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, who is of course of pensionable age, and I would have thought that such thuggish behaviour would be condemned by the hon. Gentleman. The Government are working hard to foster the culture of respect across our society, and that is necessary because it was decimated in the previous 20 years.

The "young thug" threw an egg, Prescott a left-hook. I would have thought that such thuggish behaviour would be condemned by the hon. Gentleman. Much like Tom Cruise in Magnolia, Woolas would urge us to respect the cock.

***

In other news, in some kind of Einsteinian circle-jerk, the Americans are now shooting at each other in Iraq...

The Telegraph: Shootings may lead to security guard curb
Iraq's interior ministry said yesterday it wanted to impose legal boundaries on the private security business after American contractors twice opened fire on US marines.

***

A worrying precedent set by the police in Falmouth and their attempt to interfere in the freedom of the press:

Hold The Front Page: Editor's outrage after woman is arrested for talking to a journalist
Earlier this year the Falmouth-based Packet Series ran a story about a woman found dead at the bottom of a cliff. She had been having an affair with a married man and had allegedly borrowed thousands of pounds from him.

Following her death the man confessed to his wife - who wrote to the dead woman's family to ask for the money back.

The wife also told her story to a reporter at the Packet, but hours before it was due to publish a policeman called the paper and asked if it could be "hushed up".

When the paper refused and the story appeared on its front page the woman was arrested and charged.
Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun
Monday, June 13, 2005

Back again, "new and improved", we return to our irregularly programmed schedule.

Rested and refreshed (my local had a beer festival over the weekend), I also started reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy which, as I have no formal experience of philosophy, is baking my noodle. Highly readable and recommended.

The site has had another another coat of paint and it probably won't be the last, little tinker(er) that I am. I've also been prompted to freshen up my blogroll. If you link to CY and I haven't returned the courtesy, drop me a line or leave a comment.

Loads of stuff to talk about, both large and small so come back soon.

On y va!
The Last Post (until the next one)
Sunday, June 05, 2005

One more thing - Tim Worstall's latest weekly Britblog roundup is out, wherein he says very nice things about me.
Hiatus
Saturday, June 04, 2005

I'm having an off week and hence a week off. I've struggled to find a hook since the general election and have been churning out some pretty stale, one-note stuff.

So, I'm taking a break, reading a book and hopefully building up a new head of steam.

Back in ten days or so. Hope to see you then.
I know nothing stays the same, but if you're willing to play the game, it's coming around again
Saturday, June 04, 2005

AP: Intelligence Sees Terrorists in Iran
Mounting evidence gathered over several years has U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies increasingly convinced that leading terror suspects have been living in Iran. Their existence in the Islamic republic poses an ongoing problem to top Bush administration officials, who have warned Middle Eastern countries against providing shelter or other aid to terrorists.
...
U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies also have evidence stretching back to the late 1990s that indicates Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil remains in hiding in Iran. He is wanted as one of the masterminds of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans.

Where is this evidence then? Where's the basis of this story other than the leakings from unnamed sources? And how about this:

U.S. intelligence this week has been checking some reports, still uncorroborated as of Friday, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader of the Iraqi insurgency, may have dipped into Iran, officials said.

Uncorroborated as of Friday but still worth telling the press about. Who repeated it unquestioningly. But connections are forming. Iraq. Al-Qaida. Iran. Al-Qaida. Any day now, expect Bush to make an announcement from the Denis Leary playbook:

I think we should take Iraq and Iran and combine them into one country and call it Irate.

When are these stupid bastards going to learn? Isn't this where we came in, for Christs sake? Isn't journalists taking intelligence handed down from on high, at face value and without question what got us into trouble the last time?

I'm not questioning whether Iran is and has been a sponsor of terrorism. It's got the track record in the past. But Jesus, haven't journalists learned anything in the last three years? Hello? Do the words Weapons of Mass Destruction ring a bell? Does nobody remember a certain Prime Minister and his assurances:

The intelligence picture they paint is one accumulated over the past four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative.

Or what about stories of premature Kuwaiti babies being murdered by invading Iraqi soldiers?

In the week when Watergate has been in the news again, the journalists who have swallowed this hook, line and sinker without a "but..." or a "wait a minute..." ought to be fucking ashamed of themselves.
Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I'm doing.
Saturday, June 04, 2005

Had to share. I've just bought this on eBay for my youngest.


I can't wait to get her in it. What Bill (who, shall we say, had his reservations about children) would have made of it we can only ponder.

Me though, I'm even more pleased than when friends bought us this for our eldest:
The Guardian: Visa bar on singles is illegal, says watchdog
If you are young, single and "of marriageable age", don't try to visit Britain because you won't be allowed in.

That at least is the illegal policy which has been operated by British immigration staff based in India and Jamaica according to the independent watchdog whose job it is to monitor the work of UK Visas.

The immigration lawyer Fiona Lindsley, who uncovered the practice, has told ministers that it is no more than an illegal attempt to limit the opportunities for Indians and Jamaicans to meet British citizens as it might lead to marriage. She says it should be stopped immediately.
Is that good or bad?
Friday, June 03, 2005

Who Should You Vote For?

Electoral Reform

Key: FPPTP = First Past the Post; AMS = Additional Member System; SYV = Single Transferable Vote; JAV+ = Jenkins Alternate Vote Plus; PLS = Party List System; CC = Cellular Constituencies. For explanations of these systems, please read the electoral reform FAQ.

FPPTP -15
AMS -9
STV 9
JAV+ -19
PLS 38
CC 45


You should support: Cellular Constituencies (CC). Each voter casts a single vote for a party with the number of seats in the House of Commons a party wins being directly proportional to its share of the vote. The country is split into constituency cells for each party, their size dependent upon the number of MPs the party has, and the local parties within these cells select the candidate to represent them. Every voter therefore has an MP representing their area from a party for which they have voted. CC is certain to deliver coalition governments.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

***


I know I want an ice cream. I really, really want an ice cream. But there's so many flavours and people keep crowding around me and shouting which flavour they think is the nicest. The room's spinning and I feel a bit queasy.
GM: Crossing Continents
Friday, June 03, 2005


The GM Contamination Register is a joint venture between Greenpeace and GeneWatch UK that catalogues instances of GMO's escaping into the wild.

The incompetent manner in which corporations handle potentially dangerous GMOs will make you shake your head with the weary familiarity of it all.

(Via politics.co.uk)
The Guardian - U.N.: Weapons Equipment Missing in Iraq
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.
The ragged edge of technology
Thursday, June 02, 2005

The Guardian: Two million families hit by tax credit clawback
They were launched in April 2003 amid chaotic scenes at government call centres when millions of families queried payments and phone lines jammed. One computer error last year caused 455,000 people to be overpaid. The windfall was paid directly into claimants' bank accounts and many spent the money before discovering it had to be returned.

I've got some personal experience of this. My family and I have been on working tax credit. Last year we received a letter notifying us that we were due a back-payment of £900. Big money, to us at least. Before we got too excited, we checked and double checked with the tax credit agency that we were entitled to the money. Yes, we were assured, every penny.

Then, wouldn't you know it, just as the money was spent - some debts paid, some none-too-extravagant treats - we were told that we weren't entitled to the money after all. A "computer error" had created a phantom child on our account - the back-payment was for a child we didn't have. Our weekly benefit was then garnished to claw the overpayment back but not before we'd endured endlessly stressful weeks of unreturned phone calls and apathetic, under-trained and, on one memorable occasion, distressingly rude call centre staff. Happy days.

You'll understand then why impending ID cards fill me with dread. Particularly, as it looks like one of their uses is going to be to ascertain benefit entitlement. The tax credit system plus a fledgling ID card system equals a sick double whammy. This isn't just about arguments about civil liberties and state control - laudable and meaningful as they are - real people are going to suffer in real ways.

Don't worry though, it's just a few proles at the bottom of the heap who'll be struggling. At least two million proles with jobs and families. We have no interest in politics and don't vote anyway so why should anybody care about us? Or at least that's the perception most people have of benefits claimants. We should be bloody grateful. Turn the page, move on.

But there are millions of us out here and we're not all drinking wifebeater in front of Tot's TV.
Live 8: The point being what exactly?
Wednesday, June 01, 2005

I'm probably in a (soon to be vilified) minority here, but what exactly is the point of holding another Live Aid concert if it's not going to be a fundraiser?

The set list for the Hyde Park concert is a mixture of some of the most monstrous egos on the planet (Madonna, Robbie Williams, Elton John) and the worst of anodyne nonentities (Muse, Razorlight). It reads like the playlist for the iPod I'm going to be forced to wear when I'm finally consigned to Hell.

The opportunity to appear before an audience of millions of course has nothing to do with mediocrities like the Stereophonics signing up. I notice "Sir" Bob Geldof is on the list as well. I suppose him being the organiser it would be churlish not to let him groan through "I Don't Like Mondays" one more miserable time.

And why the hell are Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol on the bill? Don't they cancel each other out in the maudlin, piano-driven, why-do-the-nice-girls-hate-me angsty shiteness stakes? Two of these bands are redundant for the purposes of this concert. Can't they draw straws and two of them stay at home and the winner play three sets - it'll be no different from what you're going to get anyway. Or why not combine them into a beige, ulcer-inducing supergroup. And do you know anybody who actually likes Dido? Everybody who owns one of her albums was bought it as a present by an unimaginitive relative.

There's nothing more unedifying than multi-millionaire popstars lending their talents for free. Like the ubiquitous charity record, if this isn't about bolstering their careers then why can't they just chuck in a few spare millions quid each into the kitty and stay at home?

Geldof, in actual fact, says the concerts aren't to raise cash but awareness and political pressure instead. Which still isn't a good enough excuse. If this isn't about feeding already bloated egos then why can't Elton John, Madonna, McCartney et al put their money where their mouths are and pay for a massive advertising campaign instead. Think of the television slots, internet ads, radio ads, mailshots, newspaper pages, billboards, magazine ads, text messages and emails they could buy. It'd have a much bigger, widespread and sustained effect than a one-off event. No doubt a lot of people will find the concert an ecstatic moment of communion but it'll get coverage for one day, a few headlines the next day and then turn up again on the "I Remember 2005" shows in a few years.

But without the concert our entertainers would be denied their great big back-slap while us mere mortals are pushing our noses up against the screen. As it happens, 150,000 proles will be generously allowed to be in Hyde Park in person on the day. Tickets are to be allocated via some convoluted mobile phone lottery (which excludes Elton John's fanbase for starters). £1.5m of the funds raised through the competition are going to that well known famine relief charity, The Prince's Trust. The rest will be spent on the event itself so that no massively wealthy popstar will be out of pocket.

The naivety behind the venture that thinks any of this is going to sway the G8 would be hilarious in any other setting. Almost as naive (and hilarious) as Tony Blair thinking he's going to be able to have a similar effect.

I also wonder if Elton John and his peers are going to march on the G8 meeting at Gleneagles as Geldof is exhorting the rest of us to do. The security at the conference complex is going to be airtight. The marchers will be lucky if a single delegates hears them let alone see them. People power hasn't had a great record for bringing about change in our leaders' thinking of late and the merest whiff of trouble at Gleneagles is going to get heads busted. I somehow doubt Madonna will be there getting tear-gassed. Are George Bush's bodyguards going to ask for shoot-to-kill privileges as they did (but didn't get) when Bush made his state visit? Only then would I be pleased to see the sludge of popular culture, arms-linked, at the head of the march.

In a final analysis, if people in general didn't need to be coaxed and emotionally blackmailed into showing human feeling for their fellow man, there'd be no need for this and Bono would be polluting our lives just a little bit less.

Those who care are already engaged in some fashion. If starving black children sold as many papers as copulating celerities, Africa would be quids in.

UPDATE 02/06: And another thing. The set list for Hyde Park as it currently stands features white artist only. Black and Asian culture features not at all. With rumours of the Spice Girls reforming for the event, it looks like they might be able to shoehorn one black face in, if only one who's most recent impact on popular culture was three years ago. It's also worth noting that the seven people sitting around the table at the Live 8 launch press conference were all white, middle-aged men. I doubt it's intentional but the continuing white man's burden schtick is just ugly.

UPDATE 02/06: The Times - Concert line-up attacked for being all-white
Organisers say privately that there are not sufficient British black artists who can deliver ticket requests in volume and meet the expectations of a global audience of two billion.

Message to black artists: try to be more whitebread - white artists like Eminem are allowed to appropriate black culture (it sells better to white middle class wannabes if it comes from the likes of him) but the black man needs to be more like Chris Martin. Wait, there's more. How about this for an unsourced, unsubstantiated smear:

It is believed that some urban artists requested payment for appearing, which the organisers said was a demand that they could not comply with.

"It is believed". By who? The journalist or the organisers? The Times didn't have the balls to say which urban artists or just who has this "belief". No names so no libel but the message is clear: there'd be black artists on the bill if those that have been asked weren't grasping bastards.
New York Times: Facing Chaos, Iraqi Doctors Are Quitting
In the past year, about 10 percent of Baghdad's total force of 32,000 registered doctors - Sunnis, Shiites and Christians - have left or been driven from work, according to the Iraqi Medical Association, which licenses practitioners. The exodus has accelerated in recent months, said Akif Khalil al-Alousi, a pathologist at Kindi Teaching Hospital and a senior member of the association. A vast majority of those fleeing, he said, are the most senior doctors.
Tomacco, anyone?
Wednesday, June 01, 2005

The Independent: The 'strawmato': equally good in a salad - or with a little chocolate
FIt is a fruit, looks like a strawberry, tastes sweet and you can, apparently, dip it into melted chocolate. But it is, actually, a tomato.


Lisa: You're about to launch a terrible evil on the world. You've got to destroy this plant!
Homer: I know, honey. But what can I do as an individidual? I wouldn't know where to begin.
Lisa: Just burn that plant right now and end this madness.
Homer: I wish i could make a difference, Lisa, but I'm just one man.
Lisa: Grrrr!
Homer: I agree, but how?

Tomacco, anyone?