Withdrawal method
Wednesday, November 30, 2005

A couple of new ideas seem to be forming inside the debate on the Iraq debacle.

The shift in public perspective on troop withdrawal from an abstract concept to its practical considerations is just beginning, it would seem. Jamie Kenny is following this one via this article from the American Jewish weekly, Forward (which was also discussed in the Guardian yesterday.)

When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.

Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all.

I wonder if many people have thought about just how you remove 150,000 troops (in a phased withdrawal, one would imagine) from a country. The "Troops Out" lobby seem to have offered little solution, which is typical of the anti-war crew (of which I'm a member), I suppose. It's all "do this" and "don't do that" but no "do it like this" and "don't do that, do this".

You'd think the troops were going to be beamed out of Iraq, Star Trek fashion. But with practical considerations now entering the calculation, and with only one apparent escape route, any withdrawal has a good chance of becoming a bloodbath. Every yahoo able to hold a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or fashion an Improvised Explosive Device will be lining the road between Baghdad and the Kuwaiti border.

The second idea is that any US troop withdrawals will be replaced by a ramping up of the air war in support of Iraqi troops on the ground. Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker, reports that:

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

Students of recent "humanitarian interventions" can tell you of countless cases where "smart" weaponry has been anything but. If Hersh is right then the current US military tacticians haven't learned much from the improvisatory and adaptable qualities of the Iraqi insurgency. Are roadside bombers attackable from the air? Are they going to obediently stand in an open space so you can strafe them? Not to mention that civilian hearts and minds are also harder to win from 35,000 feet.

There's also a chilling political aspect that needs to be considered now that it's been established that many within the fledgling Iraqi military establishment have divided loyalties. As Hersh says:

For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. "Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?" another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. "Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?"

It's a neat and darkly humorous reversal of who exactly the chumps usually are in proxy wars but probably won't do much for stability on the ground. The US air force could in effect end up as the hired muscle settling turf wars.

Where all this leaves the doctrine of humanitarian intervention is just about anybody's guess. Writing in the New Statesman a week or two back (reproduced on the Channel 4 news website), Lindsey Hilsum said this:

Many on the left would say realpolitik isn't dead, that all this talk of spreading democracy across the Middle East is a smokescreen for the real aim of securing Iraq's oilfields, testing American weapons and asserting imperial power.

I disagree. I think they really do believe their own ideology and are determined that everyone else should, too. A recent visitor to Washington told me how a CIA operative he met said the agency had been given three "strategic tasks" - counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and "bolstering the growth of democracy and forging relations with incipient democracies".

...

[I]n these dangerous times I find that realpolitik has a certain appeal. Realpolitik would have meant leaving Saddam in power. My Iraqi friends, all of whom welcomed the war, now wonder if that might have been better - those that haven't been kidnapped or murdered in the current chaos, that is.


As someone who gained much of his political outlook from reading about what the CIA got up to in Central America in the 80's, for me, realpolitik has always been one of the four horseman of the political apocalypse, more often than not accompanied by his comrades in arms, Acceptable Losses, Illegal Bombing and Death Squad. If, as Hilsum (and the "pro-liberation" camp) suggests, Iraq wasn't invaded for reasons of realpolitik (securing oil supplies) but according to a neoconservative/Humanitarian Intervention agenda (initiating a democratic domino effect in the Middle East), then we're up shit creek. It seems that Realpolitik's three mates have a conflict of interest and are now moonlighting for Humanitarian Intervention and, unless major lessons are learned from what's happened in the last two years, it may be necessary to reject both positions and search for something else.

As Jamie Kenny says:

I think this war, and the conflicts it will trigger will shape politics going forward in a fairly profound way, rather than just add information proving or disproving existing political beliefs.

Yes, but what terrible bastard political creation might crawl from the wreckage?

There's also more of this over at Jarndyce's place. It's treated with much more intellectual rigour than you'll ever find here and the comments are a must as well. I find a lot to agree with in the piece which is surprising as Jarndyce supported the war, but as he says: "[S]imilar principles can take you either way on this depending on how you make a couple of close calls."

Anyway. Am I presenting a false choice between realpolitik and humanitarian/neoconservative agendas when it comes to foreign policy? Is the conflation of so-called humanitarian intervention and neoconservatism valid? I'd argue it is in the case of Iraq but would it be the rule going forward? It's been said on many occasions that the anti-war faction left themselves wide open to accusations of abandoning ordinary Iraqis and being comfortable in their purely oppositional stance, providing no alternatives to war and the doctrines on offer. It's a trap to be avoided next time and ditching the ex-Stalinists and fundamentalists we allowed to lead us last time would be a start.

So what is the, ahem, Third Way, and would anybody with real power be interested in implementing it? Those with knowledge of Henry Kissinger's time at the helm of world politics (as Hilsum points out) will know that that's when Realpolitik got it's filthy reputation. Vietnam, Central and South America. Death squads and Pinochet.

But I pretty much defy anyone to deny that the doctrine put into play in "liberating" Iraq has led to anywhere else but the same foetid, stinking destination we would have arrived at if we'd let Kissinger do the job. Torture, death squads, acceptable losses ("So sorry, but..."). It's humanitarian intervention without the humanity.
New Blood Blog Roundup
Wednesday, November 30, 2005

In his fine piece on blogging at The Sharpener, Nosemonkey had this to say:

The better - or simply more popular - bloggers end up reading each other and linking to each other and, increasingly, finding themselves less able or inclined, due either to time constraints or the knowledge that their current blogrolls contain enough good people to find most things so they shouldn't be missing much, to pick up on newer blogs. Equally, the more people that link to you, the harder it is to notice new ones, or new good ones - especially as the likes of Technorati and the other blog search engines are currently having so much difficulty in keeping up to date and accurate.

I've only come across two new blogs in the last few months that I read regularly: the mighty Rachel from North London and the excellent Kitty Killer who hasn't posted since late September (if you're out there mate, give us a shout). So, to find out what other new blogs are out there, I'm inaugurating a one-off New Blood Blog Roundup.

If you run a political blog of whatever flavour that was created after August 1 this year or would like to recommend one, please email chickyog@gmail.com before midday on Friday December 9. I'll then present the list both here and at The Sharpener. As a further incentive to potential third party recommenders, other than the rosey glow of a good deed well done, I'll also give a hat tip link to your blog.

This isn't designed as a patronising, patriarchal pat on the head or beauty contest for the "little folk" from some kind of self-styled "big boy of blogging". It's a genuine attempt to broaden the circle of blogs that many of us are reading right now. There will be no judgements made and all recommendations will make the list. It'll then be up to everybody using the list to decide who's cool and who's fool.

(Also posted at The Sharpener)
Christmas comes early
Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Feeling a little uninspired, as a blogger? Is the moribund state of British politics sapping you of your pith and vinegar? Has your fire, as Paul Weller once asked of himself, really gone out?

Well, help is at hand. Rejoice, for the Baby Jesus has smiled on us once more:

Brand Republic: Blunkett boosts media profile by joining Sun as columnist

The Sun has snapped up disgraced former minister David Blunkett as a columnist, just weeks after his resignation as Work and Pensions Secretary.

The Sun has announced that Blunkett's "forthright and outspoken views on life and politics" will be aired in a weekly column starting tomorrow and then every Thursday.

Every Thursday morning bloggers Left, Right and Centre can (finally) buy The Sunt with a clear conscience, make a nice cup of coffee, turn to their keyboards with a song in their heart and begin...

As Kelvin MacKenzie famously said to John Major: "I've got this big bucket of shit and I'm going to tip it all over your head." I do hope you'll join me.

(Hat tip: Tim Ireland)
The Sharpener - UK blogging: cliques and changes
We all started blogging as individuals, as independent as you can get. Now that inter-blog, cross-party networks are beginning to grow in the UK political blogosphere, we may be able to make our voices heard more by acting as a group - but are our individual voices and opinions being drowned out in the process?
Square peg, round hole
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

I wonder if this question couldn't have been phrased a little better:

Adam Price (Carmarthen East & Dinefwr, PC): To ask the Prime Minister what information he received on action that the United States Administration proposed to take against the Al-Jazeera television channel.

Tony Blair (Prime Minister, HM Treasury): None.

Scaryduck went to the Kevin Maguire/Wadah Khanfar pow wow last night at which Maguire was pretty unequivocal:

* A source (which Maguire will not name) approached the Mirror with details of a top secret memo, which had "accidentally" found its way into the papers of a certain MP. Noting that the memo contained, amongst other things, details of UK and US troop movements in Iraq, said MP turned it back to Downing Street.

* The memo also contains details of a conversation between George W Bush, and his London spokesman Tony Blair, in which the Leader of the Free World reveals plans to attack Al Jazeera TV, a civilian broadcaster financed by the government of Qatar. Mr Blair, for all his faults, tells him that this may not be a particularly good idea, and other, unnamed officials tend to concur with Tony's line of thinking.

* The Mirror, out of courtesy, informs Downing Street that they will be publishing details of this memo. Downing Street has a hissy fit, and the White House, according to Maguire "went beserk", leading to threats of the Official Secrets Act against anybody who is even considering publishing the document.

* Of course," said Maguire, "the government wouldn't be using the Official Secrets Act if the reports weren't true. This government will go to great lengths to keep this memo secret."

So how to parse Price's question so that it leaves a get out for Blair, assuming what Maguire says is true? I can't spot one - the two positions won't square for me - but then my mind doesn't work like a Number 10 press officer's.
Doing anything tonight?
Monday, November 28, 2005

This looks like it could be good. Shame I can't make it:

THE FRONTLINE CLUB INVITES YOU TO A BREAKING NEWS DISCUSSION

IN THE WAKE OF ‘THE BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ALLY’

With WADAH KHANFAR, Director General, al-Jazeera Channel, and KEVIN MAGUIRE, Associate Editor of the Daily Mirror

Moderated by MARTIN BELL

MONDAY, 28th November – 7.00pm

(Cheers to Scaryduck for the heads up.)
Poor Fractured Atlas
Monday, November 28, 2005

Here's fun:

The Guardian - Murdoch: I'm proud of my legacy, but BBC resents me

His influence extends across the globe: from Fox in the US to Star TV in Asia, and the Sun and Sky in the UK. He is courted by presidents and prime ministers, and his personal fortune is estimated at $7.8bn, or £4.53bn. But Mr Murdoch still does not feel he gets the respect his achievements deserve, using his first British interview in five years to complain about the "resentment" he inspired at the BBC and the "establishment forces" ranged against him.

Fantastic. More money than he can spend in the little time left to him before he's dragged, screaming, to Hades. Princes, presidents and prime ministers bend the knee before him. He has a global influence unlike anybody since Alexander the Great. And he still has room for a cute little martyr complex. Aw.

Sky is doing very well. It will do a lot better. And as it does, the resentment from the establishment forces will only grow stronger.

Look at that. He's still the plucky little Aussie battler - slogging away for little reward other than the scorn of his peers - he was all those years ago when he couldn't sacrifice his Australian citizenship quick enough on the altar of his ambition. Some things you never lose.
Educating the masses
Monday, November 28, 2005

This kind of thing is usually meat and potatoes at Chicken Yoghurt:

Austin Mitchell MP: Selling Educashun

The "Tool Kit" for Labour MPs shows what I should have done to sell the Educashun White Paper.

...

The follow-up Press Release: "Parents give schools plan the thumbs up". MP rushes back to Westminster to give Ruth Kelly the good news. "I have no doubt that they will get their message will be heard (sic) in Westminster loud and clear". There's even a quote provided to prove it: "<<INSERT PARENT NAME>> a parent at the event said "The government's plans are really ambitious. I'm pleased they want to give parents control ... but I was even more pleased the <<NAME>> MP and the head bothered to take time out to listen to my views". Democracy Works!

Clive, Jamie and Dave all have more.

This is classic New Labour astroturfing, as revealed by Channel 4's Dispatches in May this year, on which I said:

Propaganda techniques used by US pharmaceutical companies and political parties were imported. Letters were written by the press office bigging up New Labour or attacking the opposition parties and then sent to local activists who were asked to get them into the local press. Several identical letters appeared in local newspapers across the country. One letter appeared in one newspaper twice. In Leeds letters were printed in a newspaper from a woman who doesn't exist. All because New Labour deemed that readers "trusted" the letters page - the views of "real people" - in a newspaper more than any other part. Trust was just another commodity to be exploited and abused.


The New Labour website had a similar doohicky on its website. A visitor typed in their postcode and a page came up saying "Your local hospital has had £X pounds of investment" and "Your community has X extra policemen", the X's filled in by a clever little computer programme.

Which at least gave the impression of making a stab of informing voters. The astroturfing shown by Channel 4 and the latest wheeze outed by Austin Mitchell are deception pure and simple. Lies in other words.

Here's what WriteToThem.com, the nifty website facilitating communication between MPs and their constituents, says about sending cut 'n' pasted emails to MPs:

We know your issue is important to you, but we've spoken to representatives — and if you are not a constituent, or you send a "copied and pasted" form letter, your message will go straight into the bin.

...

[P]lease don't copy and paste the same message as everyone else. And don't encourage others to do so. It's worse than useless as we'll automatically stop your messages before they get through. Ask people to write in their own words. If they care enough about your issue, they'll do so.


My emphasis. Cut 'n' pasted letters and emails from constituents are ignored and binned by MPs, and fair enough. But cookie cutter quotes sent in the other direction, to gull voters into thinking a policy (whatever its merits) is popular, are fair game from our elected representatives. I suppose that's what you call "building a consensus".

I always like to trace these things back to their roots and examine them from first principles. In this case, somebody sat in an office and decided that in order to paint the Education White Paper in a good light, MPs should tell lies, make up stories, puff up potential legislation that they clearly didn't feel capable or willing to defend and sell on its own merits. (Or weren't trusted to defend and sell on its own merits.) New Labour employs people to orchestrate campaigns of lies and propaganda because it's less effort than trying to get the real message through to voters who are obviously regarded as simpletons. Somebody said, "Alright lads, this is what we'll do..." His colleagues agreed with him and the deceit was formalised and filtered through the system to the sharp end where MPs were told: "You will lie to the press and your constituents."

The Education White Paper is supposedly about putting parents at the centre of the process. If that's the case, that they're to be trusted with influence on how our education system is run, why treat them with contempt when selling the policy? On one side you're saying that people should be given more power while on the other treating them like children.

This cuts to the heart of the criticisms of the "People Power" aspect of this White Paper. Educated, informed, energetic and enthusiastic parents will immediately jump up and seize the best for their children. Under-educated, lazy, working all hours God sends to put food on the table, and introverted parents will not. They will also be uninformed and misinformed because the Government are not explaining the issue in terms the latter group will understand and be able to act upon. Once again it's just a case of, "Trust us, it's gonna be great." Some bloke they made up said so, so it must be true.

It's all so dispriting; so difficult to find the energy to summon the anger to give these abject, contemptuous, contemptible bunch of tartuffes another poke. Yet another fundamental aspect of people's lives, their kids' education, boiled down polystyrene soundbites and fact-free facts pulled out of thin air. And I keep saying and saying it until I sound like a greatest hits collection: we wouldn't accept this behaviour from anybody else. If your partner or children lied on such a level and based all their decisions and behaviour on the say so of imaginary friends you'd be looking for a psychiatrist. But with the government, the people who control almost every aspect of our lives, we just shrug and say, "well that's politicians, innit?"

I sometimes think we've (I've?) nowhere left to go in describing this government. Their imagination is endless whereas mine is failing. That they are liars and bullies with contempt for process and The People now seems a given and hardly worth mentioning, much like the fact the sun came up this morning. "Morally bankrupt", while a useful phrase, is overdone and lacks the requisite sting, I feel.

Robust anglo-saxon is useful at times like this but I'm trying to cut down on the swearing.
Britblog Roundup No 41
Sunday, November 27, 2005

Natalie over a Philobiblon guest-hosts this week's roundup. Some cracking stuff this week.
Moving the furniture. Again.
Saturday, November 26, 2005

Another day, another redesign. Version 6034.5 was looking too busy and the bells and whistles were distracting, I felt. Not to mention that all the third party javascript doohickys and assorted junk meant the site was taking an age to load.

The three columns was crowding the writing and building Jarndyce's new look showed that simpler is best.
Moral flexibility
Saturday, November 26, 2005

The Independent: Britain gives approval to torture, claims Amnesty
Blair... told MPs: "We do not agree with the use of torture." Pressed over whether that was an absolute rule, Mr Blair added: "I mean absolute in this sense, that you say 'Look, it is simply the civil liberties of the suspect, or simply the liberties of freedom from terrorism'. You have to balance those two things."


That's a definition of absolute you'll be unfamiliar with. When we say absolute, we mean "not limited by restrictions or exceptions". What Blair means by it, well, you'd have to ask him. I think it means Tony condones torture, whatever the nauseating wordplay he uses for sake of appearances.

What a whacky topsy-turvy world the Blair household must be. "Fish for tea, Tony?" "Absolutely, in the sense that that you say 'Look, it is simply fish for tea, or simply pork chops for tea'. You have to balance those two things." "Oh darling, you are a card!"

How did it come to this? A bunch of arseholes blow themselves up on the tube and the next thing you've got the Prime Minister saying in public that we (well not we obviously, we let our tame thugs do the actual beating, mock drowning and sexual assualts) should take suspects, suspects mind you, and inflict pain on them to find out what they may or may not know. That's what "you have to balance those two things" means. Try and explain it any other way, please do. Tony Blair buys your "freedoms" with the pain of others.

BBC News: MI5 'given secret prisons data'
Security service MI5 has received information given by terror suspects held in "secret prisons" outside the US, the BBC has learned.

It costs two pounds a month to join Amnesty International. I joined this morning because suddenly we need to protest to the British Government about its human rights record. Our own government. I'd urge you to do the same.
Charlie Brooker: Supposing ... We observed a two-minute howl of despair
"Feeling trapped in the middle of a fight you didn't pick? Mad as hell? Not going to take it any more? Well hip hip hooray - it's venting time. At the allotted date/hour, stop what you're doing, put down your tools, step into the street and join us, the sane remainders of the human race, as we howl inarticulately at the skies."
Things they do look awful c-c-cold...
Friday, November 25, 2005

Kids are fun, y'know. Only the other night I asked my five year-old what she'd like for her tea. "I'm not bothered," she said, not looking up from her colouring. So off I toddled and whipped up a wonderfully piquant Spiderman pasta shapes on toast. "I don't want that," she said upon seeing my gastronomic tour de force, "I wanted a dippy egg and soldiers."

(Progressive parents don't slap their children. No, what you have to do these days is supress that anger and channel it towards your first duodenal ulcer.)

I was reminded of this after hearing that Gordon Brown isn't happy with Lord Turner's review of the state of Britain's pension system and his recommendations into how to fix it. Lord Turner is said to be livid at Brown's dismissal of his report. After all, he's only spent three years of his life researching and writing the thing only for Brown to turn around and say, "I don't want this, take it away," like a petulant child told to eat up. If only Lord Turner had thought to consult the Chancellor, all this unpleasantness could have been avoided. Or did Gordon say, "do what you like," only to regret this later?

This government has spent a fortune over the last eight years commissioning reviews into this and commissions on that only to bury them when the resulting reports didn't tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. It makes you wonder why they bother in the first place. What they should do at the outset of all the commissions, reports, reviews, or whatever these done deals are called these days, is get the fix in right at the start. That way, the government get what they want, all the money which might as well have been given to the Blairs for all the good it's done the public will be saved, nobody loses their temper, and we can all go back to hoping we get hit by a bus before we reach 65. Or 67.

Couldn't somebody have had a word in Lord Turner's ear right at the beginning and said: "Look Turner, don't want to interfere or anything old boy, but Gordon will be in a frightful bait if you suggest anything that he thinks might jeopardise his ascension to the throne."

Which is, one suspects, what this is all about. Gordon's pulling the ladder up - if only for a little while - until he gets the big chair. Screw the coffin dodgers, with the economy heading South, he's not going to have the cash to splash about to ensure that these economic drag factors don't freeze or starve to death. To do so would threaten his reputation for "fiscal responsibility" or whatever phrase he uses to induce a glassy-eyed trance in the public. Brown might be convinced that dark Blairite forces leaked the letter detailing his shafting of Turner in order to shaft him in turn, but I think we can be pretty sure sinister Blairites didn't put those thoughts in Gordon's head in the first place.

You see, you'll never become the head factotum by looking after the little guy, Gordon. There's no hearty slaps on the back from Digby Jones in worrying about the pondlife too stupid or lazy to get MBAs, seats on the board, and nice juicy pensions. I bet a third of Digby's or Rupert's or Paul's or David's phone calls don't go unanswered.

What's the public's future and piece of mind compared to Gordon's personal ambition? They say he's going to save the Labour Party for an encore. The Narnia branch, presumably.

As Peter Mandelson once (in)famously said, New Labour are "are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich." What the cosy middle classes seem to forget is that their government is also pretty sanguine about people being dirt poor as well. The minimum wage and tax credits might buy Guardian readers' votes but they don't buy much more. They certainly don't buy even remotely comfortable retirements.

And then the dismal John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, a man with all pith and vinegar of a rice cake, turned up yesterday to give us his five tests in a speech of such inpenetrable dullness and meaningless, I bet you could have used George Orwell's corpse to drill for oil. I mean, Christ, we're only talking about how the whole population is going to spend the final years of their lives.

..."the impact of these challenges", "challenges and opportunities", "a consumer led world that rationalises consumption today above saving for the long term", "maximising the contribution", "no magic wand solution". The dread "balancing rights with responsibilities" was in there as well, as if Hutton needed to reinforce his nutrition-free New Labour credentials.

Apparently Hutton was married for 15 years before separating from his wife in 1993. I'd have loved to have been there when he chatted her up for the first time:
Of course, my attraction to you presents challenges as well as opportunities. I, of course, want to maximise my contribution to the relationship and of course realise that with my rights within said relationship come responsibilities if I am to rationalise the initial romance with sustained companionship in the long term.

It's a wonder he's not the loneliest man on Earth, the soulless and uninspiring wafer of a man.

There was some guff about "consensus" in there as well. Ed Balls, Gordon Brown's Metatron, also used the c-word, while trying to take a bullet for his boss, as well as my personal favourite, "national debate". It's a great one, that is. Conjures up comforting images of Gordon nodding sagely while listening sympathetically to the personal concerns of everybody when, in actual fact, it means: "You'll die in penury set to a level of our choosing".

Anyway. Oh yes, five tests. I take it Hutton's speechwriters and political overlords who surely vetted the speech knew what "five tests" would make those paying attention (that is, those able to drag themselves away from "celebrities" shilling their "dignity" in some jungle) think of. Gordon Brown's five tests that he drew up so that he gets to decide whether Britain enters the Euro or not.

Yep, it looks like the Turner Review is not only being kicked into the long grass, but somebody's released a hungry tiger into there as well to make sure nobody goes and retrieves the offending dossier. The future wellbeing of every man woman and child in Britain at the mercy of a bunch of petulant, selfish, whining squits who, if they were yours, would be sitting on their beds right now thinking about what they had done.
Taking a leak
Friday, November 25, 2005

I doubt it'll come to it but I'll play.

If a Deep Throat would like to send me a copy of the Bush/Blair transcript, I and my clandestine network of urban intellectuals will publish far and wide.
Europhobia: The database state is one step closer

Courtesy of the EU, and we're now well on the way to bypassing the British parliament just as Blair and co planned (even if they did originally want the data to be stored for three years):

"An European Union parliament committee voted on Thursday to keep details of all EU-wide telephone calls and Internet use for six months to a year to help combat terrorism and serious crime."
Blog Reborn
Thursday, November 24, 2005

Fair Vote Watch has been remonikered as The Jarndyce Blog. Donald's stuff is always worth a butcher's, so go and have a look...
One to watch...
Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Early Day Motion 1088:

CONDUCT OF GOVERNMENT POLICY IN RELATION TO THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ
That this House believes that there should be a select committee of seven honourable Members, being members of Her Majesty's Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and in its aftermath.

You could use WriteToThem.com to ask your MP to sign the motion, if you were so inclined. Doesn't take long, you can keep it short and sweet. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Ms Barlow,

I was fortunate enough to meet you during the General Election campaign in April and noted your opposition to the war against Iraq. I would therefore like to ask you to sign Early Day Motion 1088 (Conduct of Government policy in relation to the war against Iraq).

If you do not feel you are able to sign the motion, would you please give your reasons for not doing so.

Many thanks and kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

Justin McKeating

If the motion gets 200 signatures it will be debated in Parliament, apparently. It's a bit like PledgeBank, only for special people.
Bombing the messenger
Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Yesterday, The Mirror broke the story that, according to a leaked government transcript, in April last year Tony Blair had to talk George Bush out of bombing the Al-Jazeera office in Qatar.

In the Mirror article, "[a] Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious". According to the BBC, '[a] White House official said: "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response."' The official response from the UK government was the stock "We don't comment on leaked documents".

Jump to this morning, and we find the Government throwing its weight about and threatening newspapers who print any further details of from the transcript with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Two men, a former Foreign Office official and an MP's researcher, have already been charged in connection with the leak. Whether "humorous" and "outlandish" or not, somebody thought the document worth leaking and the Government doesn't want the details published.

So how to process this information? White House communications director Nicolle Wallace apparently said, in connection with the leak: "[I]t is fanciful to think that the President of the United States of America, a champion really for free press all over the world, would ever have any serious notions to do anything of the sort."

Resisting the temptation to cite precedent and make myriad cracks about Bush being "a champion really for free press", his administration has previous when it comes to Al-Jazeera. The TV station's offices in Kabul were destroyed by a US missile in November 2001. This was a month after Colin Powell had asked the Qatar government to "rein in" the Qatari-based station.

In April 2003, the Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was hit by a US missile and a correspondent was killed. The office was close to the Iraqi Information Ministry so you'd be pushed to prove intent. It depends how generous you want to be with the burden of proof. "Reasonable suspicion" or "balance of probabilities"?

It occurs to me that this plays rather well for Blair. Even if the complete transcript doesn't see the light of day, the story shows him in a good light coming so soon after Christopher Meyer's assertion that Blair failed to exert any influence over Bush in the run up to the Iraq war. This leaked transcript (apparently) shows that Blair exert some influence, if only 12 months after the start of the war and on the issue of whether to bomb a TV station seen as hostile to the coalition's aims based in a friendly nation. And as Tim Ireland says this morning, "I still can't spot an outright denial from the White House or Downing St".

Who knows what else might be in there - the transcript is supposed to be five pages long after all. Maybe Tony begged George to stop using torture as a weapon of war or warned against the use of thermobaric weapons in hearts and minds exercises but is too modest to have his heroism revealed in the press.

The conversation took place over 18 months ago. The war in Iraq has moved on and circumstances have changed. It'd be interesting to know what the vestigial national security implications are in supressing publication of the transcript beyond saving George and Tony's blushes.

This story might fizzle out or it might drip, drip, drip until the transcript is published, much like the Attorney General's advice on the legality of the Iraq war. The question is was the "threat" to Al-Jazeera the meat of the document or is their more?
2005: Blogged
Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Pages 89-91 and 148-50My copy of 2005: Blogged arrived yesterday morning.

It's a very nice object and not just because I'm in it, slipped in amongst all the quality, like a Sven Hassel in the Dickens section. I'm certainly a lot less sweary than I used to be, it would seem. I'm debating whether my grandmother gets a copy for Christmas ("Look Gran, here's the bit where I say kids couldn't give a flying fuck about what they eat".)

The, erm, idiosyncratic presentation of Tim Worstall's intros to each piece has already been noted. Having them in an uppercase faux dot-matrix font and between mock HTML tags (<ED></ED>) is probably meaningless to anybody other than geeks and I imagine sounded better in theory than in it looks in execution. And a (small) typo in one of my two pieces manages to reverse a point I was trying to make.

But that's minor griping. The book has two indexes, one general and one by blog, which allows you to see who exactly's in it (five mentions for Nosemonkey though? One to keep him quiet would have been enough). It was gratifying to see how many are on my blogroll and quite a few of those included that aren't on it will be soon.

I was sorry to see that one or two people (among others) hadn't made the cut but hopefully 2006: Blogged will rectify that.

The variety of bloggers represented is pretty impressive. The temptation for Tim could have been to go with what he knows. As a narrative of the past year it works as well. Structuring the book chronologically means that people will be inclined to read it from beginning to end rather than if the book had been arranged by, say, subject area.

It's certainly better written and informed than one of those "I Love 19xx" shows ("Wasn't Rhoobarb and Custard great?") and a row of such books will look very nice on the bookshelf in a few years' time, I reckon.

That really was an advertorial, wasn't it?
What did you do in The War Against Terror, daddy?
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Tim Ireland outdoes himself with his latest flash movie, The World According to Leo Blair.

Chicken Yoghurt had a visitor today from someone googling tim ireland bottle uzbekistan. You'll know why after watching the movie.
Question for Word Press bloggers
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Is there a way to stay completely spam free (comment, trackback, referral and email) with a Word Press blog?

I'm working on a revamp of The Sharpener and would like to build as watertight as possible anti-spam functionality into the new design. The current version of the site has been utterly battered by spam since its inception and the admin has been a pain in the backside for all involved.

It'd be also useful to know for if/when Chicken Yoghurt makes the break to a home of its own.

Ta in advance.
Webjunk: PocketMod
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

I'm not usually a purveyor of webjunk (time and cash permitting this kind thing will eventually go in a tidy little WordPress sidebar) but I was very taken with this - PocketMod - the paper PDA. Certainly kept me away from doing proper work for a bit.

Mine is eight pages of the game, dots. (I don't have much to fill a calendar with).

(Via Will Howells who I believe had a cheeky letter in the Guardian yesterday.)
Britblog Roundup # 40
Monday, November 21, 2005

Tim Worstall's self-explanatory tin.
Paul Routledge: OH, FOR GOD'S SAKE PAUL!
"Will you be working until you are 67, Prime Minister?" He is backing a Pensions Commission recommendation that other work people should slog on an extra two years after the current retirement age. "Oh, for God's sake Paul," he snapped.
I am just going outside and may be some time*
Thursday, November 17, 2005

The dogs are harnessed and I'm off Up North, land of my forefathers, for a few days.

* Back Monday
Pass the heliograph, says Geldof
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

More dangerous nonsense from Sir Bob:

The Register: Saint Bob Geldof blows gasket at email

Saint Sir Bob Geldof has advised delegates at a London innovation conference to ignore emails after revealing that they "get in the way of serious consideration of what you want to do".

Geldof said that emails "give a feeling of action, which is a mistake" and revealed his masterplan for business productivity: "Don't do e-mail."

It must have slipped his mind that the Make Poverty History campaign, the horse that his Live8 concerts rode in on, not to mention a thousand other laudable causes, largely consist of viral marketing spread by email. Needless to say, the Live8 website, asks people to email their leaders.

"E-mails get in the way of serious consideration of what you want to do," said Geldof. Looking at what little the mass emailing of the G8 leaders achieved, that's not something Tony, Jacques and the rest allowed to happen when they consulted their inboxes during the G8 summit.

What should I do the next time Oxfam send me an email asking me to sign a petition or email my representatives, Bob? Bob? Can you let Oxfam know that we "don't do e-mail" any more please. By pneumatic network or whatever other liberating method of communication it is you use to improve your business productivity.
Ill Met by moonlight
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Does Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police commissioner, have any time to do any actual, y'know, policing? He seems to spend so much time putting the wind up the public these days that, if he was in any other profession, his boss would be saying, "do that on your own time, Blair, not the company's."

He's been at it again tonight in his Dimbleby Lecture . (How many hearts must have sank at "During the next 40 minutes...")

Is this his job? What he's paid to do? I, and others, would argue that it is not.

And how about this?

The sky is dark...

Ring any bells? It's the same gothic imagery he used in his last piece of scaremongery, published in The Sun, during his failed attempt to interfere in the parliamentary debate of the new terrorism legislation.

He's obviously very pleased with the metaphor. Maybe it comes from a poem he wrote as a teenager ("Why do all the nice girls hate me?" or somesuch) and somebody said, "Oooh, Ian. I don't know how you do it but you paint the picture so vividly". That stayed with him and ever since he's been dying to use the phrase again. And again.

It makes you wonder what's next from Britain's Top Cop. Maybe he could embark on a busking tour (as long as he's got his busking licence) of the London Underground, regaling commuters with a rendition of "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall". Hours of fun to be had writing his set list. It's The End Of The World As We Know It.

'A' Bomb on Wardour Street?
Losing one's Wragg
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

I was only vaguely aware of the name Ted Wragg when his death was announced a week or so ago. Education is a subject I write about only when something bizarre is going on. As a parent with a child of school age, I'm quite aware that us parents are an element to be patronised, barely tolerated and, wherever possible, ignored by the school establishment and that any contribution I have to make is about as welcome as Jonathan King offering to open the School Fayre, whatever New Labour's spurious notions of "Parent Power" might say.

I would probably have never discovered Wragg's writing if I hadn't been on the train to London yesterday on a jolly and, having exhausted the rest of my Guardian, I turned to the education section and read the "best of" collection of Wragg's columns on Britain's education system. What a brilliant writer, with a turn of phrase that makes me green:

Kelly hours. What a cheek! Schools have run extracurricular activities for decades, but some government spinner decides the secretary of state needs a better image. Bingo, journalists are pressed to give this ancient idea her soubriquet. Imagine the scene in the DfES vomitarium.

"Look, Fortescue, what the hell can we do about Ruth Kelly? She's a complete disaster."

"I've got it, boss. Why don't we name something after her, you know, like 'Baker days'. What about that wheeze to open schools longer each day? We could call it 'Kelly overtime'. No, better still, 'Kelly hours'."

"Brilliant, Fortescue. This could mean promotion for you."

I offer Ruth Kelly a suggestion. Immerse yourself in what is happening in successful schools and classrooms, so that you can say, quite naturally: "The other day I saw a really interesting idea in a school in Swineshire." And send the spin doctors off for a long holiday in Albania.

June 21, 2005

If only I'd come across him earlier so many Guardian education sections might not have gone into the recycling unopened and I might be more engaged on an issue which, according to Wragg at least, is in a permanent state of flux, if not chaos, due to constant and unmitigated government interference. Indeed, he seems to have been a a man after my own heart:

The market is a useful servant, but a very cruel master. It doesn't take care of quality, for a start. The newspapers with the biggest circulation are not necessarily of the highest quality. Nor does it work in the best interests of the least powerful in our society. It often grinds them into a paste.

I'm now working my way through his Guardian back catalogue, something I'd recommend to others for, if nothing else, the love of good writing.
Posho blogger unmasked
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Breaking News: The prominent pseudonymous blogger, Nosemonkey, steps from the shadows.
More on Whiskey Pete
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Busy, busy, busy today so I can't devote as much to this as I'd like right now so I'll just give you:

The Independent: US forces used 'chemical weapon' in Iraq
The Pentagon has admitted US forces used white phosphorus as "an incendiary weapon" during the assault last year on Fallujah.

Scott Burgess at The Daily Ablution comes at the story from the other end which is well worth a look.
The Guardian: Lobby warning by Home Office was 'hypocrisy'
The Home Office was accused of gross hypocrisy last night for instructing senior managers in the probation service not to lobby against the government's reform plans for the service - in the same week that senior police officers were urged to lobby MPs on anti-terror laws.
Lickspittle hack talks cack
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Kitty Ussher: Blood on their hands
Let's be clear about this: this country is a less safe place because of the actions of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and, yes, a minority of our own side, last Wednesday. I very much hope that we will never have another terrorist atrocity in Britain. But if we do, and if it happens because the police have not had sufficient time to accumulate enough evidence to charge the perpetrators, then the Tories, the Lib Dems and our own rebels will have blood on their hands.

Ah, the rivers of blood moment. It seems somebody should be having a word with this water-headed harpy about moral agency. Not being the parliamentarian (New Labour to her very core it would seem), she should have plenty of time to read up on such matters.

Or do New Labour get to pick and choose the reasons for terrorist outrages? No, it's not our fault. Yes, it is your fault. We could never do anything that would bring carnage to the streets of Britain. Whereas you...

(Nosemonkey and Unity say it better than I can.)
On the side of the angels
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Last week I mentioned an Italian television documentary that showed evidence of the use of chemical weapons by US forces during its assault on Fallujah in Iraq.

Since then, despite coverage across the rest of the world, until this morning the issue has had one mention in the British mainstream media, in The Independent.

George Monbiot discusses the documentary today to debunk it in his column for The Guardian:

The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it
The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial.

Monbiot goes on to cite other evidence of the use of chemical weapons by US forces in Iraq.

Now, there were some of us who were all over this way back in June (Me, here, here, here, here; and Tim Ireland here) only to see the story fizzle out in the mainstream. We can only hope it catches light again this week although nobody seems overly bothered, not least the BBC who have been happy to let dead Iraqis lie on this issue.

This includes, as Monbiot points out in scathing terms, Ann Clwyd, special envoy to the prime minister on human rights in Iraq:

In May this year, she wrote to the Guardian to assure us that reports that a "modern form of napalm" has been used by US forces "are completely without foundation. Coalition forces have not used napalm - either during operations in Falluja, or at any other time". How did she know? The foreign office minister told her. Before the invasion, Clwyd travelled through Iraq to investigate Saddam's crimes against his people. She told the Commons that what she found moved her to tears. After the invasion, she took the minister's word at face value, when a 30-second search on the internet could have told her it was bunkum. It makes you wonder whether she really gave a damn about the people for whom she claimed to be campaigning.

A 30-second search on the internet could have told George that Clwyd is little more than a stooge or at best an unwitting mouthpiece for uncorroborated stories that were then shaped into pro-war propaganda, and there are many for who her opinion counts for nothing.

It makes you wonder what else British ministers, and by extension the British public, have been "lied to" about. The UK Government has stated repeatedly that "[t]he US authorities have repeatedly given us assurances that no terrorist suspects are being held on Diego Garcia, or have at any time passed in transit through Diego Garcia or its territorial waters." But I'd be keeping an eye on that.

As with the napalm stories that the UK Government had denied but were forced to belatedly confirm, there's been a steady drip of stories about Diego Garcia, an island owned by the UK and rented to the Americans, as yet unconfirmed:

The Guardian, March 19 2005: 'One huge US jail'
In June 2004, a senior counterterrorism official in Britain confirmed that Hambali (a nom de guerre) - accused of organising the October 2002 Bali bombings and unseen since Thai police seized him in August 2003 - was "singing like a bird", apparently at the US base on Diego Garcia.

I'd be prepared to put good money on Adam Ingram releasing a statement sometime soon (on a quiet day so it gets maxium coverage, naturally) that Diego Garcia is one of the CIA's so-called "black sites".

But these victims will never be seen. They will never feature on our TV screens to inspire millions to take to the streets. But they exist nonetheless.


You know who said that? Tony Blair in his speech to the Labour Party's spring conference in February 2005.

Torture and chemical weapons. Victor's justice I think they call it.

UPDATE: The Independent has more on the RAI documentary. The Pentagon's tactic would seem to be to rubbish the documentary while obfuscating with contradictory statements on the wider issue and other evidence.

UPDATE: I tell a lie. The BBC did cover the story, online at least, last week. You'll need to use the search to find it. It doesn't get a mention on BBC News' dedicated page for Iraq. And the coverage of the story itself doesn't go beyond reporting what the documentary said and recycling a quote from the US State Department on the matter made last December.
The Times: Blair sets record for rewarding party donors with life peerages
ALMOST one in ten of the life peers created by Tony Blair since he became Prime Minister is a Labour party donor. Between them, the donors have contributed close to £25 million.
Britblog Roundup # 39
Sunday, November 13, 2005

Thar's gold in that thar Britblog Roundup.
Your democratic duty
Friday, November 11, 2005

"I will I will spend an hour researching, drafting and submitting an independent complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about Rebekah Wade's conduct and/or material published by the Sun before and after the 90-day terror law vote, but only if 50 other people will too."

(Full story here.)

UPDATE: I, like some others, haven't waited for the pledge to be successful before sending my complaint. If you fancy sending a complaint anyway, Jim Bliss has a great how-to guide.
No protestation without misrepresentation
Thursday, November 10, 2005

Well, now that the measure to introduce 90 day's detention has been defeated and those of us who were against it only have ourselves to blame if we're dead before bedtime, it's time to take stock.

I fervently try not to believe that this Government is truly evil but instead cling to the hope that the Prime Minister and his crew are in fact just emotionally-retarded inadequates desperately trying to compensate for being bullied as children. But it's so difficult some times.

"They will be held accountable," hinted Charles ("He orders two main courses for lunch") Clarke darkly about his opponents on Sky News last night. Tony Blair hopes those who were against him "do not rue the day".

The headlines, if there is another terrorist bombing, almost write themselves. In fact the Number 10 press office probably wrote those headlines this morning and put them in a safe place ready for passing to the New Labour in-house magazine. The intellectualism shown in The Sunt's (sic, copyright Larry) headline this morning ("TRAITORS!") will go right out the window. Oh yeah, it'll be "well if you'd only listened to me..." from Blair and "You bastard's might as well have pulled the pin yourselves" from the Sunt.

It looks like the arguments about moral agency that were brought to bear by Blair in the aftermath of the July bombings may have to be dusted off and turned against him and The Sunt. If Iraq wasn't a factor in the bombings, then neither will the call to safeguard civil liberties be in future ones. As much as Blair and Clarke regard "liberals" as a threat to national security, it's suicide bombers, not Guardian readers, who cause carnage.

Shrewd politicians know that the value of your public opinion can go up as well as down. The great unwashed were told to stick their objections over the Iraq war in their foxholes. Referendum on the EU constitution? Knack off. What about hanging? Joe Bloggs would have it back tomorrow apparently but politicians are not about to give it to them. (No, I'm not advocating hanging.)

But this week, Blair pulled the public to his sweaty bosom and declared: "It's you and me against the world, kidder", like an over-emotional uncle after too many pale ales. Sooner or later, the British public are going to find they've been fucked but never loved. Blair cannot be bought, merely rented (apologies to whoever I've stolen that from). Next time, "90%" of the public are going to find he couldn't give a monkey's for their pet peeve unless it complements whatever's bugging him that week.

It's a dilemma for us who want more direct democracy. It'd be great to have more say in the way the country's run but, to be patronising and misanthropic for a second, letting your average Sunt reader have the keys to the kingdom would be like giving Osama bin Laden a fast-breeder reactor for Xmas. Particularly if Joe Public's opinion is to be canvassed by some of the intellectually, if not actually mathematically, dishonest opinions polls we've seen in the last few weeks.

The stitch up of and - in this rare case - embracing of public opinion began last week and continues unabated. John Reid on The World at One on Radio 4 this lunchtime, accused the presenter Nick Clarke of using "precisely the kind of language that was used by the Tories". Drowning all their kittens in one bucket it would seem, Charles ("He orders two main courses for lunch") Clarke used exactly the same tactic with John Humphreys on the Today programme last week. And what does the BBC do in the face of this cunning gambit? It grabs its ankles. I suppose if the BBC cops it from both sides it must be doing something right but this conflating the Corporation with the Tories and painting it as being somehow anti-New Labour is laughable. But with the BBC wanting more money, public sympathy towards it is malleable.

As if this and the unseemly romancing of public opinion wasn't enough (the public not realising that all the Government wanted was a quick, grunting bunk-up before straightening it's tie and saying "I've never told her that I love her - except at those times when you've *got* to say something for appearance's sake" before getting out of the car and going back into the club) the crawling over the victims of the July 7 bombings was pretty stomach churning. Like a reverse Pontius Pilate, Charles ("He orders two main courses for lunch") Clarke, washed his hands in the blood:

Tony told me that families and victims were saying to him, 'Don't let the terrorists do this again, do whatever you can to stop them.' After that, when you listen to liberal London, you think they are pathetic. These kind of debates are too dominated by lawyers, both in the Commons and the Lords


Brave words from a man with a bullet-proof car and enjoying two lunches. Sympathetic as he is towards the victims of the bombings when he's pushing his own agenda, those reserves are as dry as the bottle of Burgundy after one of his gargantuan repasts ("He orders two main courses for lunch"), when it comes to making their lives more comfortable.

Now, the victims of the bombings deserve every sympathy but, with the greatest respect, their experience does not grant them special insight or confer on them a greater say in this argument than anyone else. If it was my kids, I'd be screaming for bloody retribution which probably isn't the best position for advocating new laws.

I was reminded of this sketch from the ace That Mitchell and Webb Sound:

Radio Presenter: Those are are the headlines at 5.09. And for an immediate reaction to today's events I think we can speak to Tom Hilton. Hello, Tom.

Tom: Er, hello?

Radio Presenter: Chris Powell here from Radio 4, thanks for speaking to us. Can I ask what your response is to today's announcement that Rail North East will not be funding the laser-assisted train early warning system?

Tom: Erm, well yeah. I personally think it's a shame.

Radio Presenter: So, it's shame on the management? Shame on the Government?

Tom: Well, I suppose, but look, can I just say I'm really not the best person to talk to about this, I mean it's weird you even had to call me. You see, by a spooky coincidence, I actually lost my wife in a train crash.

Radio Presenter: yes, we know.

Tom: One exactly this kind of system could have prevented.

Radio Presenter: That's why we're in touch with you, Tom.

Tom: Oh. Oh, right. Blimey. That does seem a bit, almost, ghoulish.

Radio Presenter: Well, no. It's because you've got personal experience of a rail tragedy that your views are so important.

Tom: Really? I would have thought that it was because I've got personal experience of a rail tragedy that my views should be dismissed out of hand.

Radio Presenter: No. No, look. Would you say, that to you, safety is by far the most important issue facing the rail network?

Tom: Well, of course I would. My wife just died in a train crash.

Radio Presenter: Thank you.

Tom: But you really should talk to someone else. It's impossible for me to have any objectivity at all.

Radio Presenter: Right, but if spending the three billion on system could bring back your wife that would be worth it?

Tom: Well, obviously. Although I must stress I lack any objectivity.

Radio Presenter: Nevertheless, what would you say to the minister? What would your message be to him?

Tom: My message would be, "Minister, good luck in judging how to allocate your finite resources given the many competing demands you face."

For many people who've lost relatives or been injured in such circumstances, campaigns and media appearances can be part of the grieving process or, in some cases I'm sorry to say, a way of avoiding the grieving process. But being caught up in such terrible circumstances doesn't make them any more qualified to form public policy.

Not all the people injured in the July bombings allowed themselves to be used for party political ends. Did Clarke and Blair canvas all of them? Rachel from North London put it eloquently on her blog ("I cannot, and do not speak for all the victims, and nor can, and nor should Tony Blair and Charles Clarke.") as did John Tulloch in today's Guardian about the exploitation of his experience by The Sunt:

This is using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation. Its incredibly ironic that the Sun's rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don't actually ask the people involved, the victims, what they think. If you want to use my image, the words coming out of my mouth would be, 'Not in my name, Tony'. I haven't read anything or seen anything in the past few months to convince me these laws are necessary.

I'll leave Larry to comment further (I'm trying to moderate my potty mouth) other than to say if you take lessons in anything from a woman who frightened her partner to the point that he felt compelled to dial 999 and then used her position to bury the story, you're pitiable. To read Tulloch's story and then for Rebekah Wade to use it to score the cheapest of political points makes her little more than scum. Tulloch shows more compassion and humanity in this one paragraph...

Two photographs, he says, struck him particularly forcefully: "One of the suicide bombers, Germaine [Lindsay], with his wife and babies. Here was this loving woman with her children, their faces pixillated out to protect them. It brought tears to my eyes. I just felt sad for her and what's going to happen to her."

...than Wade has shown in her entire miserable existence.

That's the level to which the so-called debate from these people has sunk. Putting words in people's mouths. The (libellous) cries of "TRAITORS!". Sympathy when expedient, hard words when not. Listening hard when what's said is affirming, deaf when it's not useful. The intimations of dissenters' culpability in any future atrocity. All in all, a graceless spectacle (and that's said without any schadenfraude).

It seems to have been forgotten that the current detention period is about to be doubled to a lengthy 28 days and getting legislation renewed after the lapsing of a sunset clause never troubled any government. It's the old boiling frog again. This is the second doubling of the detention period in three years. If New Labour are prepared to wait it out, they'll get their 90 days within six years if they play it clever (just ask for wildly inordinate periods every couple of years and then meet the opposition halfway). But no. They want it now. NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW!

It's like watching the spoilt kid who throws a strop when he doesn't win pass-the-parcel at his own birthday party: nobody knows quite where to look and pointing at the huge pile of presents stacked up in the corner (this is, after all, Blair's only defeat in eight long years of getting his own way) counts for nowt.
I've changed my mind about the Surveillance Society
Thursday, November 10, 2005

The Guardian: The editor, the actor, the (ex) cabinet minister and a night behind bars
The editor of Britain's best-selling daily newspaper became embroiled in controversy yesterday after being arrested on suspicion of assaulting her soap star husband. Rebekah Wade, 37, who recently launched a campaign in her newspaper, the Sun, to stamp out domestic violence, found herself in a police cell in Battersea, in south-west London, after being subjected to fingerprinting and DNA testing.

But what about your civil rights, Rebekah?
Jim Bliss: Internment
The police do not make the laws. They enforce those laws that we, the people, believe are required. They work for us and they do what we tell them to do. They do not tell us what powers they should have. We grant them such powers as we choose to grant. If they cannot fulfill their duty using their existing powers, then I suggest we fire them and hire some who can.
28 days passes
Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Aye: 323
No: 290

Passed by 33 votes.

That's still a long time but I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. As I've said before - your yearly holiday entitlement might just cover it. Dark-skinned men with beards should cancel that fortnight in Lanzarotte now.
90 days defeated
Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Aye: 291
No: 322

The detention for 90 days is defeated by 31 votes. The first defeat in the Commons for New Labour.

MPs now move on to vote for 28 days detention...

UPDATE: 41 Labour MPs rebelled according to PM on Radio 4.

UPDATE: Make that 49

UPDATE: The chaps at The Public Whip have stayed late to bring us the break down of the vote.
Rachel From North London: 90 days and 90 nights

As everyone reading this knows by now, I was on the bombed train at Kings Cross, in the first carriage. So yes, I am not surprised that terrorists seek to do what they can to attack my democratic society, to destabilise and threaten my liberties, to spread fear, to seek to divide us.

I do not expect my democratically-elected government to do the same. I cannot, and do not speak for all the victims, and nor can, and nor should Tony Blair and Charles Clarke.

But I know one thing: to defeat terrorism and hate-filled individuals we need to draw strength from each other, to co-operate and talk with each other, whether white or black, Muslim or Christian, Sikh, Hindu, Jew or atheist. Just like we did went the lights went out and the tunnel filled with smoke and we heard the screams of the dying; we drew together, we held hands, we prayed and we did not panic.

I do not see why this ill-thought out macho posturing, which can only destabilise and divide us, by robbing men and women of the ancient and fundemental right of habeas corpus, and making sections of the community afraid, is going to defeat terror...

(via Nosemonkey.)
Booking the Crooks
Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Something to do today, if you fancy joining the terrorism debate, via Tim Ireland:

1. Use this facility to look up and contact your MP:

http://www.writetothem.com/


2. Tell them that 97% of Sun readers do not support Blair's 90-day detention plan and/or send them this link:

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2005/11/the_sun_newspap.asp


3. Publish steps 1, 2 and 3 on your own weblog (or send/post these details to your usual community/messageboard).


Can't hurt, can it?

UPDATE: The Sun: 'Government whips told the jubilant PM the votes to win the day were "in the bag".'

That'll be Jack Straw's and Gordon Brown's votes then.

UPDATE: I turns out that Gordon Brown was paired with the Lib Dem's Vince Cable and didn't need to be there. So why come back unless he's been told to twist arms?

Charles Clarke has also said at the start of the debate that it will be guillotined. This means not all of the bill will be debated before it proceeds to the House of Lords, notably the issue of the definition of terrorism which is apparently last on the order paper.
Supping with the devils
Wednesday, November 09, 2005


Hu's on first.
Somewhere we lost the key...
Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Another email from Charles Clarke, arriving nice and late in the day. Amongst the self-justifying pretence at compromise there was this:

I would like to apologise for the questionnaire which was attached to the message that I sent out to party supporters on Friday. It was not intended to gauge public opinion but to start a political debate around the proposals currently being debated in Parliament. Many people have raised with me perfectly valid concerns about how the questions were drafted. I can only say that I share those concerns and give my assurance that questions of this type will not used in the future.

Does that really need pulling to pieces? A political debate. Is that debate in the sense of "to engage in argument by discussing opposing points" or "to engage in a formal discussion or argument" with the email's recipients? I notice he doesn't say he's going to share the survey's findings in the spirit of this debate.

I can only say that I share those concerns. Then why did he put his name to it? Or not at least glance at what had been written and was being emailed out in his name.

So far, so "we've been caught treating the public like dickheads again. Next time, we'll be much, much subtler". Ninety days' detention is still apparently non-negotiable (unless they have to haggle down to Janet Anderson's 60 day fallback position). Some of the "concessions" Clarkie proposes are also worth a closer look.

a) Further safeguards for the process itself, including that a full High Court judge has to agree an extension of detention every seven days and will have greater flexibility, and that a code of practice, similar to the codes under PACE, will govern the treatment of those held under this Act.

Are these High Court judges, providing the judicial oversight, going to be of the calibre of Lord Hutton - who also happened to be a Diplock Judge? How is the code of practice to be enforced and where is the redress for a detainee who feels he has been mistreated? Will there be an independent ombudsman?

b) Around the application and definition of the offence, including clearer definitions of incitement, narrow application of the law extra-territoriality and a review into the definition of terrorism, to be conducted within a year by Lord Carlile.

In fairness, that sounds pretty reasonable although what if Carlile comes back in a year with a tightened definition of terrorism and some of the guys who've been banged up don't fit the criteria?

c) A sunset clause with the 90-day power which provides that these powers will lapse after one year unless renewed by both Houses of Parliament.

Like the screws aren't going to be turned again to renew the bill when the mooted sunset clause lapses. Or is Charlie proposing to eradicate terror in 12 months just as he's promised to have "eliminated anti-social behaviour" by the next election.

The idea of judicial oversight has been kicked around for a while now. The mess surrounding the inquiry into the de Menezes shooting doesn't exactly inspire confidence in police accountability, particularly as one of those shouting loudest for these new powers also tried to stymie the investigation. Will national security considerations get in the way again if some of Sir Ian Blair's lads decide to give a detainee a dose of the Gerry Conlons?

The sunset clause is new, but as I said, how much of a carrot is that to sceptics who'll have to face down the whips again this time next year? In all, a half-hearted attempt to win over doubters. I suspect the Government think they're going to get beaten on the 90 days. I doubt this effort kept Charlie away from his dinner for long, if at all.

UPDATE: Ha ha! The offending questionnaire has been airbrushed from the New Labour website which is now as clean as Stalin's holiday snaps. Fortunately, Google's cache hasn't caught up yet for those who haven't seen Charlie's finest hour.
...and I've been threatened by a dog
Tuesday, November 08, 2005


Inspired. Courtesy of Tim Ireland.

As he says on the B3TA board today: "Your average bruise takes 2 or 3 weeks to heal". Hell, it only takes six weeks (42 days) for a broken bone to heal. You know, if you were careless enough to trip down a police station's steps. Or summat.
The threat of a good example
Tuesday, November 08, 2005

The same tired, old, and thoroughly debunked turds still trip from the Prime Minister's trap. And to think he kisses his wife and children with that mouth. Here he is at his monthly press conference yesterday:

Question: Putting aside your answer to Colin Brown about Christopher Meyer, can I ask you, just not specifically in relation to the book, but the charge is, and it has been put by others, that you didn't use your influence on the timing of the war and over post-war planning, and in particular that if you had asked for a delay in the war for about six months, this would have given you more time to find out whether there were weapons of mass destruction. It is a serious charge put by a number of people, not just by Sir Christopher Meyer.

Tony Blair: If you go back and look at what happened in March 2003 I think you will see that I made the most strenuous efforts to get a second UN resolution, and to end up with a second resolution that would have given us more time. The fact is we couldn't get one, and we couldn't get one for a very simple reason, the French made it clear they would veto any such resolution. That is the reason why in the end you had to make a choice, and there was no other way.

Question: He specifically said that the French subsequently said that you and the Americans have exaggerated the degree to which they were saying no.

Tony Blair: Go back and have a look at what was said at the time - whatever are the circumstances. I don't know what those words imply to you, but they rather imply to me whatever are the circumstances.

He either really believes it which makes him deranged or he's continuing to foster the misrepresentation which makes him liar. If he was in an Uzbeki jail they'd already be boiling the water to ascertain which it is. He's lucky he's not one of these johnnies he wants to deport back to Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere - being so very fuzzy on the facts over there can get you killed.

A second resolution was sought to authorise force against Iraq not give "us more time". And this misrepresentation of the French position has been repeated so much by Blair in his attempt to smear them and ride the wave of latent anti-French sentiment lying just below the surface of the British psyche that's it's beginning to play like his personal equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

For the bajillionth time, Chirac did not threaten to use his veto "whatever are the circumstances". This from Panorama's Iraq, Tony and the Truth:

CHIRAC: My position is that, regardless of the circumstances, France will vote no because she considers this evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to achieve the goal we have set ourselves to disarm Iraq.

WARE (presenter): In his interview the French President mentioned "this evening" no fewer than four times to stress he didn't think war was justified as of that moment. But Mr Blair seized on only the first half of President Chirac's statement.

It's a delightful ruse for those of us protected by whatever the convention that keeps Prime Ministers out of jail. If only it would serve the rest of us so well:

Me: Hello Mr Securicor Man, delivering cash to the bank. I'd quite like to take one of your bags of lovely money.

Mr Securicor Man: Well, you can take one if you like but you'll end up being arrested if you do.

Me: I'll have one then.

Mr Policeman: Hello, hello, hello. You're nicked, you tea leaf.

Me: Hang about officer, Mr Securicor Man said "you can take one if you like".

(Sound of cell door clanging shut and large cellmate unzipping his fly.)

Me: Curse me and my failure to grasp the concept of moral relativism.
You'll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator
Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Evening Standard: Voters back 90-day detention plan
The YouGov poll for Sky News found almost three-in-four (72%) believed the maximum time police can detain suspects should be extended to 90 days.

The return of capital punishment and castration for nonces are only a YouGov poll away.


Free polls from Pollhost.com
Do you think that our laws should be updated to cope with the current absence of Spangles from our sweet shops?

Yes No Not sure

  
George Monbiot: The media are minimising US and British war crimes in Iraq

We were told that the Iraqis don't count. Before the invasion began, the head of US central command, General Thomas Franks, boasted that "we don't do body counts". His claim was repeated by Donald Rumsfeld in November 2003 ("We don't do body counts on other people") and the Pentagon last January ("The only thing we keep track of is casualties for US troops and civilians").

But it's not true.
I love the BBC
Monday, November 07, 2005

The whole of series two of The Thick of It is available on the BBC website, free, gratis and for nothing.
The Times: Order to kill was ‘never given’
THE police chief who headed the bungled operation that led to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes says that she never issued the special code word to kill him.
AKI: IRAQ: ITALIAN TV ALLEGES U.S. USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN FALLUJAH
A documentary to be aired on Tuesday by Italian state satellite TV channel RAI News 24 alleges that US troops used chemical weapons during their assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in November last year. The documentary - 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' - uses witness accounts from former US soldiers, Fallujah residents, video footage and photographs, to support its claim that contrary to US State Department denials, white phosphorous was used indiscriminately on the city, causing terrible injuries to civilians, including women and children.

(View the documentary here (27 mins). Please be warned that some of the images are very, very disturbing.)

UPDATE: Time to start counting occurences of this story in the British media - I'm not expecting to have to get my abacus out. Still, here's number one.
The Ultimate Answer
Sunday, November 06, 2005

From this evening's Channel 4 News Snowmail:

Channel 4 News has learned that rebel backbenchers have been offered a compromise of 42, rather than 90 days on holding suspects without charge. So is it going to be a Dutch auction on this most sensitive issue? I challenged the Home Office minister Hazel Blears to deny it. And she didn't.

Is it me or are these numbers being pulled out of thin air? If the police want 90 days, why would 42 be any good?

UPDATE: This from the Independent:

Mr Clarke will meet Labour rebels, David Davis, his Tory shadow, and Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, to discuss a compromise, possibly cutting the detention period to 28 days, which he has to table by "close of play" tonight.

At best terribly lazy language, at worst a softening up. We're talking about increasing the detention period to 28 days not cutting it to 28 days. It's looking like the magic number. I suppose if you're lucky to have accumulated enough holiday entitlement you might save your job. This after all, is the equivalent of a two month prison sentence - what beating an Afghan man to death will get you if you're an American soldier.

UPDATE: ePolitix:

Meanwhile, the government has been boosted by a YouGov poll for Sky News which found that 72 per cent of voters back the extension to 90 days.

I'd be very interested to see how the poll breaks down along racial and religious lines. I imagine white Christians with "nothing to hide" were fairly sanguine about the reintroduction of internment.

UPDATE: Ace stuff from Unity.
Britblog Roundup # 38
Sunday, November 06, 2005

Tim Worstall's weekly Britblog Roundup is out.
The honourable gentleman
Sunday, November 06, 2005

A gentleman's agreement. A meeting of civilised minds:

Foreign Office: UK SIGNS MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING WITH LIBYA
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced that the UK Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Government of Libya, on 18 October, to facilitate deportation of persons suspected of activities associated with terrorism.


That's Libya ticked and we "signed a similar MOU with the Kingdom of Jordan on 10 August". Gives you a rosey glow doesn't it? Hang on though, don't break the bunting out just yet.

Only six months ago, we documented unfair trials, physical abuse in detention and restrictions on free expression and association.

That's Human Rights Watch quibbling - as always - over Libya's internal repression.

Just what is it with this government and torture?

ePolitix: UK wins European backing to challenge torture ruling
The British government has persuaded four other European countries to help challenge a ruling from the European court of human rights that prevents sending foreign terrorist suspects back to countries where they could face torture.

What does it say about the personalities of the people willing to entertain this? Somebody, somewhere is literally sitting at a desk and thinking:

"Well this guy could go back to his home country and be beaten, raped, electrocuted or tortured in a hundred different ways that my threadbare managerial imagination cannot grasp. And I do not care."

or

"Well this information came from a man who has been be beaten, raped, electrocuted or tortured in a hundred different ways that my threadbare managerial imagination cannot grasp. And I do not care."

They do not care because if they did they would say "no", or resign or try to change the system. In a recent article for the Independent, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray details what went on in the jails of our Uzbek allies in The War Against Terror:

I will tell you what torture means.

It means the woman who was raped with a broken bottle in both vagina and anus, and who died after ten days of agony. It means the old man suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling while his children were beaten to a pulp before his eyes. It means the man whose fingernails were pulled before his face was beaten and he was immersed to his armpits in boiling liquid.

If you think there are circumstances where torture is warranted then this argument is probably not for you and now is the time to head for websites that cater for your predilection before the Government bans them.

A commenter in reply to this ill-placed polemic I wrote for The Sharpener said:

How can you expect to have a reasonable and worthwhile take on anything the government does when you have developed such an unreasoning hatred for its leader?

Unreasoning? I got my reasons.

I was struck by this short piece (via Tim Worstall) by Paul Krugman in which he says:

What we really need is political journalism based less on perceptions of personalities and more on actual facts.

It seemed an odd thing to say, particularly when there are many facts in the public domain that I would say allow us to draw indisputable conclusions (not perceptions) about the personalities of some public figures. By drawing on these facts, the unreasoning hatred becomes a reasoning one. We need not rely on Krugman's "perceptions of personalities" but can say this is true about this person's personality. It's what each of us then does with those facts which leads to the conflict, friction, disagreement, name calling or whatever.

Take Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State during the Clinton Administation. In 1996, before accepting the role, when asked if she thought the deaths of half a million Iraqi children under the sanction regime imposed to "contain" Saddam Hussein was a price worth paying, she replied:

"I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."

There's your fact in black and white. Albright has a personality that allows her to countenance those deaths as acceptable. It's not a perception - it came out of her own mouth. It is then down to each of us to decide how we process and deal with that fact. Imagine the (perfectly rational and to be expected) outcry if Saddam Hussein were to stand in the witness box and say, "300,000? The price was worth it."

On the subject of Saddam and for the sake of balance, let's look at again at George Galloway's notorious salute to Saddam Hussein:

Your excellency, Mr President, I greet you in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means, which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq ... I greet you too in the name of the Palestinian people ... I thought the president would appreciate to know that even today, three years after the war, I still meet families who are calling their newborn sons Saddam. Sir, I salute your courage, your strength your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem.

It looks very much as if Galloway will defend that quote with his dying breath as a salute to the people of Iraq. Again though, the facts are not in dispute - Galloway is a man who bends his knee before tyrants - but it's up to you how you process the information to form your opinion. Some people are willing to let it pass and the rest of us aren't. (If only George had swallowed his pride and said to his critics: "Look, I was standing in front of one of the world's most bloodthirsty tyrants, surrounded by bodyguards armed to the teeth. I was shitting bricks. What would you have said?" It might have been disingenuous but it would have garnered considerably more public sympathy.)

Just why Albright receives deference and Galloway sneers is for the likes of Jeremy Paxman to explain. No TV or radio presenter asked to interview Albright today is likely to object and risk their job. Journalists allow their careerism to win out every time.

This was particularly true during the time Alastair Campbell ruled the parliamentary lobby with both an iron fist and a velvet glove. Those journalists who did and wrote as they were told got the better access to The Greater Good. Those who didn't, didn't.

And it still holds true today. Take this from Andrew Marr about the recent guff surrounding David Cameron and the did-he-or-didn't-he-snort guff:

The devil's dandruff is on every second lapel in Soho; it's sprinkled on washstands in Blackpool; it is piled high in theatre dressing rooms.

That was on October 12. Ten days before, the Evening Standard had revealed how its reporters had found traces of cocaine at six parties held during the Labour Party conference in Brighton. The story completely failed to catch fire across the rest of the media who were too busy giving Kate Moss a kicking. I wonder, however, if Marr's fingers paused over his keyboard before typing "Blackpool". As far as I'm able to ascertain, there were no stories of cocaine being used at the Conservative conference in Blackpool (Marr filed his piece in the week after the Tory Party Conference)- the cocaine was sprinkled on conference washstands in Brighton, not Blackpool.

As it turned out, Marr's article passed without comment from the Tories although you would think they had grounds for complaint. The fallout, however, might have been heavier had Marr transposed the Northern seaside town for the Southern one in his article, particularly with him being a prominent media personality having to float a newly launched television show and the BBC still supine post-Hutton and wary of causing further offence to New Labour.

Which brings me back to Tony Blair and my "unreasoning" hatred for him. The flaws in the Prime Minister's personality are there for all to see, as matters of public record, as cold fact. It's just that some are able to ignore them more easily than others.

There's his stories about watching Jackie Milburn play football at Newcastle and, when a teenager, stowing away on a plane to the Bahamas. What about his favourite food? Is it fish and chips as he told the Labour Party magazine or is it "fresh fettuccine garnished with an exotic sauce of olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes and capers" as he told the Islington Cookbook? Trivial issues, to be sure, but demonstrative of a dysfunctional relationship with the truth.

The list is, for all intent and purposes, endless. Why could Blair find the time to write to Ozzy Osbourne when the latter came a cropper on his quad bike or visit Rob Lowe when the actor was performing in London but can't find an hour to pay a hospital visit to servicemen wounded in Iraq?

Next question. For ten marks, reconcile this:

If military action proves necessary, it will be to uphold the authority of the UN and to ensure Saddam is disarmed of his weapons of mass destruction, not to overthrow him. It is why, detestable as I find his regime, he could stay in power if he disarms peacefully.


With this:

A majority of decent and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler and that those who did were war-mongers. When people decided not to confront fascism, they were doing the popular thing, they were doing it for good reasons, and they were good people ... but they made the wrong decision.

An appeaser teasing the appeasers.

Flying from Shanghai to Hong Kong on the day David Kelly's body was discovered, when asked if he'd had anything to do with Kelly's name entering the public domain Blair said: "Emphatically not. I did not authorize the leaking of the name of David Kelly." However, under questioning during the Hutton Inquiry, Sir Kevin Tebbit, Permanent Undersecretary at the Ministry of Defence, had this to say about the strategy to get Kelly's name into the open:

Tebbit: [A] policy decision on the handling of this matter had not been taken until the Prime Minister's meeting on the Tuesday. And it was only after that that any of the press people had an authoritative basis on which to proceed.

Jeremy Gompertz QC, counsel for the Kelly family: So are you saying this: that the decisions which led, in fact, to the naming of Dr Kelly were taken at No. 10 Downing Street and not by the Ministry of Defence?

Tebbit: I was not trying to make that point. I was trying to contrast to you the difference between a formal decision on bringing forward the information into the public arena and the stage before any such decision had been taken.

Gompertz: Whether you were making that point or not, what is the position? That the decision was taken at No. 10 and not by the Ministry of Defence, or by the Ministry of Defence?

Tebbit: The decision was taken at a meeting in No. 10 with which the Ministry of Defence concurred.

How to reconcile "Emphatically not. I did not authorize the leaking of the name of David Kelly" with "[A] policy decision on the handling of this matter had not been taken until the Prime Minister's meeting on the Tuesday"? This was Blair's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" moment but with weasel words worthy of Clinton's "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is", he scrambled free: "I stand by the totality of what I said at that time". Whatever the totality means.

This isn't all about a mate who never gets his round in or cheats on his wife. It's about the man responsible for the welfare of every man, woman and child in Britain. A man who has taken Britain to war more times in the shortest space of time than any other Prime Minister and may yet find the time to squeeze in another ruck or two before retiring. A man, wanting for nothing behind bomb-proof and bullet-proof glass, complacent about death and torture and truth.

A fish rots from the head down is an overused, cliched metaphor these days but I really can't think of a better one. Here's Matthew Norman in the Independent (behind the subscription wall) on the downfall of David Blunkett:

The only pag of pity I can find for this odious fluffball of self-righteous arrogance, as Nemesis pays her final house call, is in so far as he's a weak-willed, semi-bonkers victim of a culture created and fostered by his dear friends the Blairs. Maybe he came to assume, without being aware of it, that if they could get away with all the nonsense (freebie hols, fraudsters brokering property deals, reversing state policy for £1m donations, doling out peerages and ministerial posts for cash, and the rest of that tired old litany), then it couldn't be corruption at all. If all the greed and the grandeur, the lying and dissembling, are just part of the game, why shouldn't he have a bit for himself?

If he concluded that the standards expected of political leaders have sunkso far as to be invisible, who can blame him? In an age when a Prime Minister's wife merrily smuggles Chinese pearls into Britain without paying the VAT, is it any wonder to hear that same Prime Minister state, with every appearance of sincerity, that Mr Blunkett leaves without a stain on his character?

Like I said, it's how you process these facts. To me and many others, they mark Blair as unfit to lead if not worthy of a cell in the Hague. To others, these character traits can be safely ignored or, if they're frightened to rock the boat, pushed away out of sight for the time being. Could you really imagine a Paxman or a Marr asking:

Prime Minister, are you seriously suggesting that your wife took half a million pounds out of your blind trust to buy two flats in Bristol and you knew nothing about it?

Or

Why do you continue to lobby for the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, a country your own Foreign Office says it has "a number of concerns about human rights" about, including "the implementation of basic international human rights norms; aspects of the judicial system; corporal and capital punishment; torture; discrimination against women and non-Muslims; and restrictions on freedom of movement, expression, assembly and worship"?

Or

Prime Minister, you could put thousands of still anxious parents' minds at ease by answering one simple question: Did your youngest son have the triple MMR vaccine?

Or

Prime Minister, why did you not sign the early day motions in 1988 condemning Saddam's gassing of the Kurds at Halabja?


Or
Prime Minister, would you say these lies, evasions, sales of weapons, and all the rest, are the acts of a self-proclaimed Christian?

You could, of course, substitute Prime Minister for Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary, Home Secretary...

When our Christian leader was told that to deport asylum seekers back to Egypt was to risk them being subjected to "serious human rights abuses" and that there was "little scope for pushing deportations any further", his response was: "This is crazy. Why can't we press on?" How to file away that fact?

To me it paints a picture of a man aloof and reckless with other people's lives. That he doesn't care that these people may be tortured. That he doesn't care whether these people are innocent or guilty. If he did he'd order their trial. If he can order these people deported to countries where they may be tortured or held indefinitely without trial then he has no belief in the rule of law and has no claim to the values of humanitarianism, democracy or even common decency.

He is head of a government which is prepared to accept intelligence obtained under torture from some of the worst regimes on the planet. It colludes in the extraordinary rendition of suspects to countries where information can be extracted using methods it itself is too squeamish to use. It shakes the hands of savages. The next time Blair gives a speech in which he mentions human rights, remember he might as well be talking about particle physics: he knows little about the subject and cares even less.

Any and all of this extends from Labour's years in the wilderness and Blair's willingness to exploit them: the desperate lust for power followed by the inability to find any meaningful use for that power once it was gained. In the face of savagery, the only response that Blair and New Labour could find was to respond with savagery of their own. Finally came the twin realisations that power is the only reason left for staying in power and that life is cheap. Trivial matters like the truth and the needless death and pain of faceless human beings need not get in the way of that. Realpolitik or whatever other lofty euphemisms used to give a sham nobility to shameful actions are the magnets dragging the moral compass from its true direction.

This government has certainly reached its decadent phase much faster than the preceding Tory one. The word "sleaze" is now bandied about freely. It won't be long before the Tories begin to throw it about with impunity safe in the knowledge that their own brand, with its sad little men with their envelopes full of banknotes and their trousers around their ankles, was much less sinister and entrenched than the New Labour flavour. The helter skelter of new legislation makes me wonder if Blair realises this as well. When Harold Wilson left office the one and only thing he could point to as his legacy was the Open University. It remains doubtful whether a decade of Blairism will have anything even as paltry to show for its time. An embracing of torture and misery may yet be a defining characteristic.

And yet. A cowed, compliant corporate media with egos and mortgages to maintain won't ask too many searching questions on the issues that really matter. Nor will a few pathetic wogs who, innocent or guilty and sent back to abattoir states, will never be heard from again.
The Observer: Jowell faces conduct claims

Tessa Jowell, Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, is accused of breaking the rules that forced David Blunkett to resign last week as Work and Pensions Secretary.

...

It has now been confirmed that Jowell disclosed her husband's work for the Iranian company ILTC only on 2 May 2003. This was the same day that The Observer contacted her husband, corporate lawyer David Mills, to ask him about the business.
Eat my poll
Saturday, November 05, 2005

We all know that work is the hateful, soul-sucking dross that we do during the quality hours of our lives. Bosses and supervisors are - without exception - people you wouldn't save from drowning in any other context, let alone waste your breath on. Managers are the people you befriended in your first week at university and then spent the next three years hiding from.

So pity poor Charlie Clarke saddled with a boss intent on making Clarkie an even bigger figure of fun than he is now.

New Labour, in the Safety Elephant's name, have sent out, via email, just about the most idiotic questionnaire I've ever seen, seeking views on his proposed internment legislation.

Do you think that our laws should be updated to cope with the current security threat? Yes - No - Not sure

Do you think police should have the time and opportunity to complete their investigations into suspected terrorists? Yes - No - Not sure

Do you think the government should make sure there are new safeguards to protect innocent people? Yes - No - Not sure

Would you like to be kept up-to-date on the progress of this legislation and other issues? Yes - No - Not sure

They forgot one:

Nasty men want to make you go boom. Are you frightened? Yes - No - Not sure

The state of New Labour's coffers must be parlous indeed if they don't have the funds to put a proper YouGov or MORI poll in the field. Or maybe they were worried a scientific poll with intelligent questions and everything wouldn't give them the answer they wanted. That the debate over the terrorism legislation should boil down to these amateur hour gambits shows a sweaty desperation unexpected even from this shower. Being on New Labour's email list really is a gift that keeps on giving and I urge you to sign up.

I was gratified to learn that you don't have to fill in all the questions to submit them (they really do have the cream of web designers on board) and you can answer them as many times as you like. The email box doesn't validate the emails either.

I mean, a bunch of like-minded people with ten minutes to spare on a Saturday morning could really make this questionnaire look like a desperately transparent, quickly-cobbled-together-on-Friday-at-half-four, piece of cobblers. If it wasn't one already. I can't wait to hear Clarkie say, "well, our own survey says..."

The debate on terror is a serious one and it needs adult contributions and a commitment to fair play and respect from all involved. Stunts like this do nothing but anger those able to see the fix, deceive those who aren't, and seek to lend a credibility to Clarke and his legislation which they have neither earned nor deserve. Yet another sign of the contempt in which the public is held by New Labour.

For shame.

More here, here and here.
Da bomblet
Thursday, November 03, 2005

Reuters: Imagine the effects of a cluster bomb dropped on Covent Garden…


…If a cluster bomblet was dropped on Covent Garden… The red area shows an area of guaranteed fatalities The orange area shows an area of likely injuries.


Being a geek and a regular peruser of Hansard for some years now, this exchange fron June 2003 has stayed with me. I remember commenting on it back in my Bar Room Philosophy (my old blog) days:

Paul Flynn (Newport West, Lab): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many cluster bombs were used by British forces during the recent campaign in Iraq; and what assessment he has made of the number of unexploded cluster bombs in Iraq.

Adam Ingram (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence): United Kingdom forces used some 66 RBL755 air-delivered cluster bombs, each containing 147 bomblets, for which recent statistics show an overall failure rate of 6 per cent. and some 2,098 artillery-delivered L20 extended range bomblet shells, each containing 49 bomblets, which have a proven maximum bomblet failure rate of 2 per cent. Further evaluation of the latter will be required to establish the exact rate on the ground. We do not have comparable assessments for the rates of unexploded cluster munitions not delivered by UK forces.

Some quick maths following those failure rates tells us that UK forces left 2250 unexploded bomblets littering Iraq.

Cleanup operations to disarm unexploded ordnance are apparently being conducted but as to how many civilians may have met their fate by disturbing the bomblets, well, you're probably way ahead of me:

Adam Ingram (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence): No research has been commissioned by the Ministry of Defence on casualties caused to civilians by cluster munitions.
BBC News: 'Bad news buried' claim Lib Dems

A report criticising the way police handle calls from the public had been scheduled for publication on Thursday.

But it was released by the Home Office a few hours after the work and pensions secretary stepped down on Wednesday.
The dog ate my terror suspect
Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Yahoo News - Pentagon: Top al-Qaida Operative Escaped
A man once considered a top al-Qaida operative escaped from a U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him, a defense lawyer involved in a prison abuse case said Tuesday.

However way you slice it, you have to admit this doesn't look good on about a bajillion levels.
Washington Post: CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
"He can't make that kind of decision, he's just a grunt!"
Wednesday, November 02, 2005

I don't know about you but when I want to influence a vote in the House of Commons, I don't bother with all the tedious wastes of time like lobbying my MP, writing letters to the minister concerned or, God forbid, standing for office. No, what I do is write an article for one of Britain's biggest selling newspapers. It's an opportunity open to all and I heartily suggest you avail yourself of it - who knows, you might even sway the opinions of some very important people.

So who can blame Sir Ian Blair, the apolitical Chief of the apolitical Metropolitan Police, for seeking to interfere in today's Parlimentary debate on the new terrorist legislation. Instead of making his recommendation to the Home Office and leaving it at that, Sir Ian has gone that extra mile and written a colourful piece for the Sun newspaper.

The sky is dark. Intelligence exists to suggest that other groups will attempt to attack Britain in the coming months.

...

It is the united view of police chiefs that an extension of detention to 90 days is necessary if we are to defeat those planning further terrorist carnage.

Sir Ian picked his platform wisely, the newspaper, should we forget, having a robust attitude towards the rule of law:

Britain is crawling with suspected terrorists and those who give them succour. The Government must act without delay, round up this enemy in our midst and lock them in internment camps.

I say wisely. Most of the people I've ever known who read The Sun generally start at the back and work forwards, after checking the breasts on the girl on Page 3. They often make it as far as the TV listings, tea and lunch breaks permitting. Just how many Sun readers will have read Sir Ian's words, let alone understood, them is moot. He certainly seems to be trying to confuse people with this:

We have no interest in detaining lots of people but we do have an interest, and a duty, to detain some people long enough for us to understand what they are planning in order to protect this country.

What if these some people are planning merely to get up, go to work, play with their kids and lead their lives? What about them? Blair seems to be suggesting that anybody held under the powers after which he is hankering must be "planning" something awful. As for those innocent people who'll end up being detained: details, dear boy, details. No need to worry about the innocent when there are MPs to be cowed.

Anyway. Don't worry that Blair, in the same piece, tell us that "[t]he Security Service and the Met have prevented other attacks in the last few weeks" with existing powers and resources. Forget that Sir Ian personally obstructed the inquiry into how an innocent man was shot in the head eight times because the officer who was supposed to be identifying him as a suspected terrorist or not was urinating in the street.

Some would argue that Sir Ian should get his affairs as they currently stand in order. That he should examine his own attitude - and that of some of his officers - towards accountability and procedure, before appealing for the extraordinary powers to intern suspects for three months or recruit a mercenary army. These issues, fortunately for Blair and his supporters, are unlikely to receive much scrutiny in the media today thanks to the Minister for Work and Pensions having kindly just resigned.

(No doubt there are those who would mark me and my ilk as anti-police or pro-terrorism. This is, of course, the same intellectual retardation that dictates that because we want to see Ariel Sharon in a jail cell we also want to see Israel wiped from the map and the Jewish race marched to the ovens.)