democracy-watch

Of course, everyone can read Simon Jenkins' article, "Panic in the face of fanatics is making Britain dangerous", for themselves.

All I want to do here is emphasise certain parts of it that seem to be so very important to those of us left aghast by the way the press has either allowed past events to be the gospel according to the Home Office - or else remained pretty silent. (The SUN is far from silent: "We've Got the Bastards!" it bawled on the news of arrests - encouraging by example those instincts that lurk nastily in most of us and that need to be kept reined in by (genuine) education and by civilised behaviour.)

The main points I pick up from Sir Simon Jenkins' article:

"a howling mob has clambered aboard the terrorists’ bandwagon ...roar abuse at all and sundry and cloak prejudice in the dogma of necessity."

"what purpose was served last week by police crying, "They’re still out there and trying to get you"?....Half the British Establishment seems to have signed up to the League of Friends of Terrorism."

"That some London passengers were sadly killed earlier this month does not put the security of the British state at risk..... Britain is not at war just because some Arab says so. No amount of tabloid hysteria — or tabloid government — should make it otherwise"

" Given the resources poured into Britain’s police and security services — more than any other country in Europe — Britons are entitled to ask how this month’s disaster occurred."

" If terrorists want evidence of how easy it is to reduce Britain to a crude police state, they need only study the Stockwell shooting."

"Terrorism’s “useful idiots” have had a field day this past fortnight. They have jumped from “nothing can justify the bombing” (true) to “nothing can explain the bombing” (absurd). They have jumped from “Britain’s war in Iraq is no excuse for killing innocent Londoners” (true) to “Britain’s war in Iraq has nothing to do with the bombing” (palpably absurd). They jump from “we must not be driven to alter our way of life” (true) to demanding that we do just that."

"In 1998 the Blair government signed up to the European convention on human rights. .... I never thought that its most determined foe would be Blair himself. In 2001 he suspended habeas corpus and introduced unlimited detention without trial."

"For Blair to suggest that the London bombs threaten the nation’s life (as opposed to British lives) is plausible only if he accepts the fantasies of the bombers themselves."

"On Tuesday Blair abused the judiciary in terms that would do credit to his friend Vladimir Putin. He implied that he would continue to defy the law lords and the human rights convention on the grounds of national emergency, which he claims the exclusive right to define."

"The government has not even begun to prove that the London bombs resulted from legislative impotence rather than from its own incompetence or some unavoidable evil ....judges....must not let government “cheapen our right to call ourselves a civilised nation."

John Gardner is the Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford,
and occasional Visiting Professor at Yale Law School. He has very impressive biographical notes indeed. His article about the Police State concerns the killing of Mr Jean Charles de Menezes, responsibility for that act and the response of the government to "terrorism". The article should be read in full.

Among the legal and ethical points he makes are:

(1) There is no general legal duty to assist the police or to obey police
instructions. Rice v Connolly [1966] 2 QB 414.

(2) There are special police powers to arrest and search. But there is no
special police licence to injure or kill. If they injure or kill, the police
need to rely on the same law as the rest of us.

(3) The law allows those who use force in prevention of crime to use only
necessary and proportionate force. Jack Straw and Sir Ian Blair say that
officers are under great pressure. But this is no excuse. In law, as in
morality, being under extra pressure gives us no extra latitude for error in
judging how much force is proportionate or necessary. R v Clegg [1995] 1 A.C. 482.

He writes that the fact that those involved were police officers is irrelevant to the question of whether to prosecute them. It is a basic requirement of the Rule of Law that, when suspected of crimes, officials are subject to the same
policies and procedures as the rest of us.

It is a relief to read an experienced legal and academic voice, pointing out

"people say: Blame the terrorists, not the police. But blame is not a
zero-sum game. The fact that one is responding to faulty actions doesn't mean one is incapable of being at fault oneself.
We may blame Tony Blair for helping to create the conditions in which bombing appeals to people, without subtracting any blame from the bombers.
We may also blame the bombers for creating the conditions in which the police act under pressure, without subtracting blame from the police if they overreact. Everyone is responsible for their own faulty actions, never mind the contribution of others.
This is the moral position as well as the position in criminal law."

On the proposed new anti-terrorist offences, Professor Gardner writes:

"The one that has been variously labelled as 'condoning' or 'glorifying' or 'indirectly inciting' terrorism gives cause for concern.

It is already an offence to incite another person to commit an act of terrorism (Terrorism Act 2000 s59).

In which respects, we may wonder, is the scope of this offence to be extended? The word 'indirect' suggests that they mean to catch those who incite the s59 inciter. But under general doctrines of English criminal law it is already an offence to incite the s59 inciter. So one suspects some other extension of the existing offence is being cooked up.

Is the plan to criminalise the mere defence or endorsement of a terrorist act? If so we are in for trouble.

Terrorism in English law is defined to cover all modes of political violence, however trifling."

Professor Gardner asks, "Are academics and commentators no longer to be permitted to defend any political violence? Is Ted Honderich's Violence for Equality, or Peter Singer's Democracy and Disobedience, to be put on the banned books list? The only thing protecting these books at the moment is that, in the eyes of the law, an argued endorsement is not an incitement.

The thought that the government may be thinking of changing this should send a shiver down the spine of anyone who still has a spine (damn few).

Professor Gardner concludes with a quotation from Lord Hoffman

Lord Hoffman in .A v Home Secretary [2005] 2 WLR 87: 'The real threat to the life of the nation ... comes not from terrorism but from laws like these.'

"Quite right," comments Professor Gardner, who himself works in London. "Some extra risk of being blown up by fanatics on the way to work is one of the prices we pay for living in a free society. Let's make sure we keep it that way."

I live in rural South West France. Visitors here relax within hours of arriving, their shoulders sink, they breathe the warm air, they revel in the colours of the vineyards, and at neatly cultivated fields, estuary flatlands, hilly woodlands and the great empty sky above my house. They wonder at the open faces of people, particularly of the young, who look you in the eye and smile - something that would cause you to do a double-take in most parts of poor, suspicious UK. "This is what we have lost in England," they say. "It's like the 50s! No wonder so many English want to share it."

We do want to - but what we so love is going - and our very presence is a symptom of its passing.

A film was shown, last night, in the next village. It was made by the film-making daughter of a resident, and projected onto a huge screen in the village church. Elsa is an extraordinary girl whom I have known for some time. She decided early last year to organise a cultural festival in the district - and with charm, determination and unlimited chutzpa - beguiled the sceptical local mayors to support it. Her friends brought their paintings, their photographs, their music and their acting.

Her own film was the highlight of the few days for me. She depicted the village of St Ramée over the course of the year; empty roads, beautiful old doorways, winding roads, dusty sunshine and huge sky - but the raison d'etre was to allow the villagers to speak for themselves. The film was entitled "Traces".

The oldest inhabitant; frail and bald and smiling toothlessly under his beret and with the wrinkled papery arms of a very old man, began and ended the film. His eyes gleamed into the camera with humour,with regret and with no trace of self. He spoke of the soil - and what he meant was the warm earth in his fingers and under his care for the past 75 years. "Anyone without land may as well not bother to live..."

He has cultivated the land all his life and it shows in his whole face and body. He has a reality that makes most of us look two-dimensional. He was sitting in the front row of the church to watch the film, beaming.

The one schoolmistress, still with her single plait and greying hair, shows photographs of the last class of children in 1986 before the school closed down. The fastening of the huge shutters on the still recognisable classroom as she leaves after talking to Elsa about how it all used to be, returns the room to shadows.

The young man who cuts the verges with a whining Flymo, smiling shyly in the sunshine of the square and unable to express his feelings about the lost opportunities for the young and how they all leave the village now.

A middle-aged agriculture worker talking proudly of his little grandson and his hopes that he too will be a paysan and go on working the land - "Yes, he has the choice - but I hope he will." The eyes hold anxiety as well as warmth.

Many, many others tell Elsa about the days before television, before supermarkets, before all had to be concentrated into big enterprises, before modernity emptied the streets and everyone had had a cow and a bit of land. The blacksmith in his blue overalls, capable and aware of his skill in mending the tractor's ploughshares, was fourth generation - but the forge is closing.

The grapes that grow outside the village are collected by a deafening, belching and snorting machine. It gobbles leaves, mud, insects and anything else that happens to be around the bunches of grapes. The old man said that he cannot even begin to talk to the others about how they used to work - "with such cleanliness" - at the time of the vindange, "They would not believe me..."

No one pretended that this is progress. The land and the houses and the sunshine and the fields are still there but a centuries-old way of life has changed within the memory of most of the people in the village. If the traces still visible seem to us like the 1950s this is an illusion. The vague foreboding, the sense of an invisible but unstoppable juggernaut crushing them, is just under the gentle expressions of the faces of the people who sit in the church watching -with new eyes, one felt - the huge screen, their landscape, their old houses, their streets and fields, themselves. At the end there was silence and then huge applause. Many grasped the hand of the film maker, Elsa, as they left. Many could not speak. I couldn't.

Rory Bremner today (Independent) is ferociously and wonderfully outspoken about the Prime Minister. The news that Mr Bremner is to write a weekly column in the New Statesman will increase that magazine's circulation by at least one reader.

Bremner marvels at Blair's ability to "get away with it".
"It's rather like an illusionist, a David Blaine. You know it's a trick, but you want to believe it. He's so self-righteous, so priggish, that I don't find him a particularly attractive character to do. Whereas I enjoy someone like Tony Benn or George Galloway."

They are proper "characters", he says, with real passions.

Real passions.. with the emphasis on real. Blair's blaring sincerity is all marketing. A trick.

....."He has such vast reservoirs of confidence," says Bremner. "I don't know if he stands in front of a mirror saying: 'You are great, you are great, you are great.' But he is a consummate actor and communicator. It's when you look behind the reality that it begins to fall apart."

Yeats' prophetic poem.....
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
....goes on to speak of a terrifiying Second Coming; "... twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle..."

Accelerating centralisation, pushing people into rigid lines not of their own making, is causing much that we hold dear to fall apart. The police have received training in Israel to stop suicide bombers. The technique is shooting the suspect in the head. When Ken Livingstone points out that Britain has practised 'double standards' in its foreign policy by

'80 years of western intervention in predominantly Arab lands'

he is vilified.

In Europe the Rough Beast of an unaccountable, unstoppable European Commission has snatched away local responsibility. The French and Dutch vetoes on the Constitution notwithstanding, the Commission now exercises almost total supranational authority over civil and criminal law, over taxes, over defence policy, fiscal policy, agriculture, fishing, the environment, weights and measures and much else.

Rory Bremner says "For Blair, it's not about politics, it's about marketing" The politicians who strut and fret their hour upon the world stage look ever more strained. They are indeed obsessed by marketing, about covering up, about justification. No wonder Mr Blair spends so much on face powder and make-up. ( It's Enough to Make a PM Blush writes David Cracknell, Political Editor of the Sunday Times). It is all that's left when genuine substance has gone. They may try to justify globalisation by talk of "free trade" - but genuine free trade is surely a removal of regulations preventing commerce between willing buyers and sellers. The centralising regulatory monstrosities of a different world order, overriding national and local common sense and bringing poverty and despair to the developing nations, have nothing to do with free trade or free anything. A cradle of poverty, of impotence, of frustration, of terrorism.

"The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity..." Who is there left to argue that the Centre of global control cannot hold? No Opposition - except for a few brave voices. My solemnity and sense of unease is not helping either, I know, - so thank all the gods for Bremner, Bird and Fortune, their conviction and the weapon of laughter. Falling about may help us in the fight against falling apart.

(Roger emailed later in the day to say that you can read the New Statesman article, "Rory's week - Rory Bremner admires a salesman at work" here )

The BBC today, Sunday, reports that the young man was a Brazilian electrician unconnected to the incidents.

Scotland Yard said Mr Menezes, who lived in Brixton, south London, was completely unconnected to the bomb attacks and added: "For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets."

The Brazilian government has expressed its shock at the killing and Brazil's foreign minister Celso Amorim will seek an explanation from foreign secretary Jack Straw in London.

Police have apparently refused to release details about what happened - so once again we are dependent on sometimes contradictory statements in the press.

Sir Ian Blair, Scotland Yard's commissioner, told a news conference on Friday that the man had been directly linked to the attacks the day before. Why did he say so? What else has he said that is unsubstantiated assumption?

The latest, very brief, Scotland Yard statement doesn't say whether the 27-year-old victim, Jean Charles de Menezes, spoke English.

We don't know whether the plainclothes policemen identified themselves as such.

We don't know why the (presumably well-trained) policeman who threw himself down on the victim in the train carriage didn't simply grab his arms instead of shooting five bullets into his head. The ( Sunday Telegraph) suggests that a shoot to kill policy is now in operation. The policeman was only "obeying orders" it seems.


We don't know whether any of the four bombing suspects, whose photographs were released on Friday, have been arrested.

We don't really know much at all. And, as always, when facts are missing, people will make assumptions. Assumptions can be dangerous.

A good friend of mine evidently feels sympathy for the police and thinks that it was one of those situations where not to have acted could have brought about many more deaths; "When you're all hyped up and frightened, of course you will want to shoot - to stop him from detonating his bomb..."

It is a point of view. I feel compassion for the policeman involved - but why was he so hyped up? What evidence had convinced him that the man struggling underneath him really was a mass killer? Evidence- if there was any rather than mere suspicion - was wrong. This was pre-emptive killing - a concept that is gaining more and more acceptability.

I can't get out of my mind the last confused and terrified moments in the life of an innocent Brazilian visitor to London, fleeing for his life from men in plain clothes. His conscience was probably as clear as the average person's - but he ran. In the same situation, what would any of us have done?

There doesn't seem to be much more to say. But there is much to think and feel.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, plans to go abroad on a family holiday this week.

Yesterday morning in London, a plains clothes policemen emptied, at point blank range, the contents of his gun into the body of a young Asian suspect who had not stopped when being chased.

An unfortunate witness on the underground train in Stockwell where it happened ,Mark Whitby, told the BBC: "I looked at his face. He looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified, and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him...he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor, and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand. He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him."

Even as we feel Mr Whitby's anguish about this, we notice his correction from "rabbit" to "fox" and we notice five shots. Five.

The young man was a suspect. It seems that suspects in Britain who do not stop when challenged can now be shot five times at point blank range. Many may rejoice at this. Perhaps it will make them feel safer to know that with suspects collared on a train by a large number of policemen, five consecutive shots into the body are better than handcuffs.

Alan Cowell of the New York Times, however, wrote this today,

"The moment defined the price London might have to pay to fight back -- even though it remained unclear late Friday who the man was or even whether he had anything to do with the London bombings."

All this raises the same question as that asked by Macduff in Macbeth (2.3.106-107). Is anyone else asking it - or has the asking of such questions become not only irritating but treasonable?

" extraordinary propensity to give his own version of events inconsistent with that of his own advisers and officials when it suited his case".

Summing up in the Railtrack liability trial at the High Court, Keith Rowley QC also told Mr Justice Lindsay that Mr Byers "was not a witness of truth..."

Mr Byers is just one of the latest so-called public servant to be exposed as a liar - or rather not exposed since the media become very shy at such times.
However, Simon Jenkins is not "the media". He fearlessly wrote last week:

"... No reasonable person following the trial could doubt the Treasury wanted Railtrack back in its clutches and schemed with Byers to cheat ...."

Mr Byers can now relax for a bit, if he feels like it. The Railtrack liability trial is over and the judge, Mr Justice Lindsay, has reserved judgement. It is expected that the Court will reconvene in October for judgement to be delivered.

The Downing Street memos show the way that Governments will "fix things around the policy". The list of those in public life from whom one wouldn't buy a postcard let alone a second-hand car grows ever longer. The time we can expect to live in peace without harassment or worse grows ever shorter.


In the 2001 FMD crisis, the "best scientific advice" was also being fixed around the policy.

At first, I simply couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing from the real people involved. Misinformation in 2001 about the nature of the disease, about compensation, about vaccination and about rapid, effective hi-tech diagnosis led to horror. While I was in a state of constant grief and anger, the media, our only hope of redress, kept its mouth shut. Phoenix the calf, about which the media did gush forth, did much to quieten anxiety among the credulous public, for wasn't one little calf safe and well?

Government arrogance, its inability to empathise, Downing Street's wish for a quick fix, its insistence that its policies had scientific justification - all this was creating daily scenes from hell. Literally millions of healthy animals and their young were being stressed and terrified before being slaughtered. Anyone who thinks this doesn't matter had better never come near me. People were made prisoners in their own farms, anyone who stood up for sanity was ridiculed or - far nastier - was curtly told they were jeopardising their neighbours' safety. As Abigail Woods said from the very beginning, it was a "Manufactured Plague". The experts who understood that this was madness were sidelined and the decent vets despaired.

Except for splendid Devon who carried out the first Inquiry, (and who waited in vain for input from DEFRA and whose conclusions were unequivocal), other so-called official FMD inquiries had their teeth quietly extracted; the public slumbered on. They believed that farmers had been greedy or worse.

Those in positions of power who had contributed to the nightmare were promoted, honoured or else gently moved on.

The EU team who came to investigate the UK outbreak would similarly have uncovered nothing of note had it not been for a few "ordinary" individuals. Luckily, there were those who were past caring what officialdom could do further to blight their lives and their careers. They simply spoke from the heart. Even the redoubtable Signora Redondo and many other hard bitten career MEPs were reduced to tears by what they heard at Knowstone, in Wales and in the Forest of Dean. The EU committee left under no illusions about the effect of the UK policies. Several "on-message" New Labour MEPs, trying to undo the damage, found that spluttering self-righteousness had no effect.



There is, four years later, cause for the deepest concern. UK disease Contingency plans still fail to acknowledge the lessons that should have been learned and have not been. Warmwell's comments about the latest Contingency Plan can be read half way down on this page of the website of the FMD & CSF Coordination Action (EU funded project).

There is still no acknowledgement of rapid on-site PCR diagnosis nor, apparently, much understanding of the derogations to help farmers in the EU Directive. There is no independent expert group in the UK. Of what use is an "Expert Group" largely answerable to DEFRA?

Farmers are deeply suspicious of DEFRA and government. They have lost faith in a Ministry that has made their lives drearily complicated and their livelihoods precarious. Like the rest of us, they are tired of the spin, the arrogance and the truly appalling level of ignorance.

But in the matter of zoonoses, farmers are our first line of defence. There really is a risk of serious animal disease going unreported. Farmers have their backs to the wall. No successful efforts are being made to regain their trust and their willing cooperation. Neither draconian penalties nor unreadable Contingency Plans are going to solve this dangerous problem.

Like the Ministers themselves, few farmers would admit to something nasty in the woodshed if there were a chance of quietly burying it.

I'd like to say that I have confidence in the Prime Minister, his Cabinet, MI5, the Metropolitan police and all the rest who are telling us about evil ideologies and saying that now is not the time for an inquiry but rather for a decision on what legal steps are needed against terror.

I'd like to.

It would indeed be a triumph of officialdom if it could legislate against fear.

Why is it that I feel such unease about the official line taken on the London Bombs? Why is that when Mr Blair and Mr Straw talk about "evil ideologies" I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck and know that nothing to do with Islam is the cause but rather an instinct, a nose for a bad smell? Am I just a born-again dissenter - or is there really something rather strange going on here when the official line is contradictory and unclear?

Some points raised that question the official line on the London Bombings include:

The men who were described as 'suicide' bombers left valid parking tickets on the windows of a Nissan Micra and a Fiat Bravo in the station car park. They boarded the 7.48am to London carrying return tickets A Scotland Yard spokesman has said,"We do not have hard evidence that the men were suicide bombers. It is possible that they did not intend to die." news reports One of the young men was expecting to become a father within days.

There is no actual evidence to suggest there was an Al Qaeda mastermind. The young men had been to Pakistan in 2004 but that in itself provides no proof that they were Al Qaeda terrorists.

Have I missed some important evidence being reported? What was the proof that led the police so quickly to descend on Leeds ( beyond the acetone peroxide found in the houses)? If they were already under surveillance, how was it that they could get so far?
Early reports said the explosives had been of military origin and that the bombers must have had "someone on the inside who enabled them to get out of the military establishment." Independent Why were the early reports wrong - if they were?

The Egyptian, Magdy el Nashar, challenged officials to find any credible evidence to implicate him. They have failed and his innocence is loudly supported by Egyptian authorities. Zaman.com The Egyptian Interior Minister Habib al-Adli told the newspaper al-Cumhuriyya that all claims linking al-Nashar with al-Qaeda were baseless. "Adli has also denied claims that British security units were present during al-Nashar's interrogation in Cairo."
But where is the truth? Were they there or were they not?

A "drill" was taking place on the same morning.
On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants said: "At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now." audio The same stations?

Israeli authorities have confirmed that they did receive prior warning of the attacks and warned Benjamin Netanyahu to stay inside his London Hotel. USA today on 7 July

There will be 'No internal inquiry' into the blasts

Charles Shoebridge, a security analyst and former counterterrorism intelligence officer, says that it " would indeed be evidence of an enormous failure," if MI5 agents had dropped a crucial lead about Mohammad Sidique Khan , suspected of links to al-Qaeda. Lord Falconer said no internal inquiry had been launched into why the London bombers were not picked up by the security services. He said "now is not the time" for an inquiry, but for a decision on what legal steps were needed against terror.

Charles Clarke vehemently denied that anyone connected to the bombing was investigated last year by MI5 when M. Sarkozy said last Wednesday in Brussels that this was so. Indeed, Mr Clarke sounded incandescent. But the BBC said otherwise. The Independent today (Wednesday) reports that the Intelligence and Security Committee will question Sir John Scarlett and other intelligence chiefs about ".. the lessons to be learnt." (A phrase we have heard before and one that hardly fills one with confidence.)

The official line has been questioned by the London Mirror and the Independent among others - reports can be seen here.
I'll add to them - or refute them - when I can.
I would much rather not be looking at these questions. But can one really trust the official line? The Jonathan Freedland Guardian article Yes, they did lie to us continues to haunt me.

Dammit. How much more comfortable to pull the covers over one's head.

# posted by Mary @ 9:38 AM   

cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail ...

With regard to the Karl Rove leak scandal, President Bush promised to fire anyone with responsibility for the leak of the CIA agent, Valerie Plame's name.

He now says that he would only fire the person if they were shown to be guilty of a crime.

Boston.com

"....Bush, asked directly in June 2004 if he would dismiss someone who leaked the agent's name, responded: ''Yes." But yesterday, as the drama over Rove's possible involvement escalated, he seemed to subtly alter the standard for ousting the friend and longtime adviser who masterminded his two winning presidential campaigns."

Professor Juan Cole comments satirically:

"You can only imagine the 2006 newspaper headline: "Bush Pledges to Fire anyone Proven Guilty of Genocide."

---

Meanwhile, following the takeover and destruction that was justified in part by the nonsense Valerie Plame's husband had the temerity to reveal, Iraq looks closer than ever to the bloodiest of civil wars. The innocent - men, women, children, babies - are caught up in horrors that I can't really begin to imagine. It is there at the back of my mind all the time, however. I can't turn away from it entirely. That is why I go on writing - and reading. Hour after hour. If only it did some good...

I read this morning that "Just as Iraqi women were anticipating a new era of democracy and freedom, a wave of intimidation by extremist groups has arisen to crush their hopes."
Women in Iraq are suffering in ways that they were spared even in the days of Saddam Hussein. As this report from
opendemocracy.net shows, "there is silence from world leaders, religious leaders, politicians and the media."

"....Violent oppression of women is spreading across Iraq, a weapon of mass mental and physical destruction. And yet there is silence from world leaders, religious leaders, politicians and the media.

Insurgents and religious extremists use rape, acid and assassination to force Iraqi women to wear the veil – the symbol of submission, first signal of further repression to come. Many Iraqi women have never worn the scarf. Now, dead bodies of girls and women are found in rivers and on waste ground with a veil tied around the head, as a message...


.... In 1948, Iraq had been one of the first countries in the middle east to have a woman judge; in 1959, Nazila al-Dulaima (of the Iraqi Communist party) became one of the first female government ministers in the Arabian peninsula. Even under Saddam’s regime, women were free to choose whether to wear western-style dress and make-up or the black abaya. Many wore western dress in their jobs for government departments and in schools and universities. Indeed, when the Ba’ath Party took control in 1968, one of its proclaimed goals was equality of men and women."

Much attention has been given to the Chatham House report: "Riding Pillion for Tackling Terrorism is a High-risk Policy" by Frank Gregory, University of Southampton and Paul Wilkinson, University of St Andrews reported in, for example, the Times and the Australian "The Age" today.

I find much more interesting the paper by Bill Durodié of Cranfield University Terrorism and Community Resilience – A UK Perspective, which is the next paper in the same Chatham House report (pdf)

Bill Durodié notices a strange thing about all the counter-terrorist measures put in place in the UK since 2001.

He says that they are merely "technical".

".... These include more surveillance, better intelligence, new
protective clothing for so-called ‘first responders’,
along with gadgets to detect chemical, biological or
radiological agents, concrete blocks and fences around
public buildings, endless checks at airports and
stockpiles of vaccines..."

He rightly points out that in seeking to secure society from the outside, we fail
to engage society from the inside. I have thought for some time that it's all very well to erect great blocks of concrete around the Mother of Parliaments - yet such an act of isolation, together with the endless checks from blank faced officials at the doors (someone next to me once had postcards taken away...), makes many of us feel more cut off than ever from the democracy that nurtured us.

Dr Durodié suggests that we are forgetting to ask questions about what we as a society actually stand for.

My nephew Peter reports that people in the Tube are very much friendlier towards each other at the moment. Having to go on earning a living means they have to make the best of it - and the sense of heightened risk makes people feel closer to each other. This is surely one of the good things to come out of the horror.

Bill Durodié notes:

".... pushing people out at such times may appear logical and professional but in actuality is counter-productive and fails to capitalize upon the spontaneous social bonds
and behaviour that emerge in such situations.

My own view is that while Parliament is busily rushing through yet more counter terrorism legislation "to be in place by December", very few now dare to question the effect of what appears to be such widespread nailing up of stable doors. The official UK response to the death of 57 innocent people caught up in the events of last Thursday seems to be taking on a sort of ghastly political correctness. "Don't mention Iraq...."

The Chatham House paper that is getting coverage does "mention Iraq" and has, of course, already been dismissed by John Reid. I hope the legislators read the paper that follows with humility

Bill Durodié concludes:

" the purported solutions – for we have yet to
see whether many of these truly work – can end up
encouraging a sense of social suspicion and mistrust.
We are asked to be ‘alert’ as to the activity of our
neighbours, or those seated opposite us on public
transport. Rather than bringing people together as the
times demand, this serves to push people further apart.
In that sense at least, we truly are ‘doing the terrorists’
job for them’."

July 18 2005 ~

Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said the concern over China's economic growth as a possible national security threat is a byproduct of the huge budget deficits and trade deficits that are putting the United States at a competitive disadvantage.

"We're at odds with ourselves," said Prestowitz, whose new book, "Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East" details China's surge to power. "We're like a spoiled rich kid who realizes he's drowning in debt and doesn't like it." http://www.menafn.com

July 18 2005 ~
"There was no Iraqi nuclear program, and Rove knew this in summer of 2003 when he outed Valerie Plame." Professor Cole's comment on the Karl Rove/ Valerie Plame case is worth reading in full. This particular jury member is fully convinced that Rove's outing of Joseph Wilson's wife was a deliberate ploy of a worried administration to discredit Ambassador Wilson and shut up the journalists about the false Niger claim.

Last Wednesday, Mr Clarke, Mr Sarkozy and other EU justice and home affairs ministers met at an emergency meeting in Brussels to discuss the London bombing. M. Sarkozy said some of the bombers had been "subject to partial arrest" last year.

"I am absolutely staggered he should make that assertion," Mr Clarke was heard to splutter. The BBC microphones recorded his angry retort and a BBC report on Thursday, 14 July, 2005 repeated this:

The Home Secretary, ".. vehemently denied claims by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy that some of the suspects had been arrested in 2004 but were freed in a bid to catch a wider network.."

However, it seems clear now that M.Sarkozy was right and that he had indeed been correctly informed.

By whom is not clear.

Is it conceivable that Mr Clarke was not privy to the same information as the French interior minister? According to the BBC news today, Sunday 17 July,
Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, was "subject to a routine assessment by the security service because of an indirect connection to an alleged terror plot.

He was one of hundreds investigated but not considered a risk." See BBC

Did Mr Clarke not know that this was so? Or did he indeed know and preferred not to say because the admission seemed so embarrassing? Or was M. Sarkozy informed by a secret service that chose not to let on to Mr Clarke?

How can it be that the french interior minister knew last Wednesday what our own Home Secretary professed not to know?

I think we should be told.

Thank all the gods for Sir Simon Jenkins


Here he is today in the Sunday Times on the subject of Stephen Byers. "This is a good week to bury the ministers with a licence to steal"

"..... The High Court has been witness to the biggest and most sensational class action in British history, a suit for "misfeasance" (dishonest abuse of power) brought by 50,000 Railtrack shareholders against Her Majesty's government.



The case is of massive significance to the integrity of British politics. It is the common man against Leviathan, the evidence portraying squirming ministers, bullying officials, money beyond dreams of avarice, chicanery and lies. Laid bare have been the inner workings of Tony Blair's courtier style of government. The Scott inquiry into arms-for-Iraq was small beer in comparison. The case tells us more about Whitehall's view of the world than ever did Hutton. It deserves a Spielberg movie to itself. On Thursday the fall guy in the case, Stephen Byers, finally admitted that he had lied on the central issue: whether or not there was a Treasury conspiracy, Project Ariel, to renationalise the old British Rail infrastructure company, Railtrack. The conspiracy involved denying 250,000 shareholders, despised as "grannies", compensation of some £4 billion. .." Read in full

As one of the very minor shareholders who supported the Class Action, (shareholders were described by Mr Byers as "grannies" not having the nerve to risk their "blouses",) it is with a certain grim satisfaction that I see him finally have to admit that he lied. My father gave me the few shares he had, saying kindly "Don't lose these! There is no way that these will fail you."

Lying is something more than a minor peccadillo. If, to feather my own nest, I say that something is true - knowing that it is untrue - I am denying my own integrity. I'd be showing myself to be as unworthy of respect and trust as a madman who really cannot tell the difference between right and wrong.

Our parents and elders rightly warned us that it was foolish as well as wicked.

When politicians do it - as they do in the way of an arrogant colossus assuming that stamping on the little ants of democracy hardly matters a jot - they are demeaning politics and making everything around them shabby and low. Time and time again we have seen that they think they can get away with it. "Accountability is nowhere. Parliament is nowhere. Were it not for bold shareholders we would know nothing of it..." But the truth will out - even if the tabloids, as Byers' aide, Shriti Vadera hoped, have lost sight of the story.


It is also worrying that the London bombs have so usefully taken the public's attention away from this case. Sir Simon's article must be read in full. He concludes

"This past week has been a good one to bury an astonishing tale of Whitehall skulduggery told to the High Court. It must not be ignored. The case, which has a while to run, is a classic test of judicial authority over a corrupted executive....."

Strong words. Justified I think.

Juan Cole yesterday (July 15 05)

"John Aravosis at AmericaBlog brings up the awful possibility, based on an ABC report, that the Public Relations-hungry Bush administration may have interfered with a British and Pakistani investigation of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb London that ties into July 7"
The article her refers to has as its headline:Bush admin may be responsible for botching effort to thwart London bombing

At the time of the arrest of Khan in Pakistan, warmwell wrote: (Extract from
warmwell archive )

"... the Pakistanis could easily have held a press conference to trumpet their new captive. This decision to keep the arrest quiet appears to have been made because Khan had been "flipped," i.e., had become a double agent and continued to have email contact with al-Qaeda members in London."

Oh fatuous day....We see that Mr Blair has been trotting out the "What was September 11 2001 the reprisal for?" argument
again - as if this were an unanswerable rhetorical question and that the planes crashed into the World Trade Center in a gratuitous act of murderous but unfocussed hatred.

Bombs not revenge for Iraq - Blair WMN "...Tony Blair has insisted the London bombings were not motivated by revenge for the invasion of Iraq."

It leaves one reeling.
Professor Cole again

(Jack Straw) "...seems unaware that according to the September 11 Commission report, al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon's threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad argued in each case that the operation just was not ready. As for Straw's contention that September 11 caused the Iraq war, he should be reminded that Paul O'Neil reported that the very first Bush cabinet meeting he attended, in late January 2001, was "all about Iraq" and that the 9/11 Commission found no evidence for operational cooperation between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda..."

And Seumas Milne's It Is an Insult to the Dead to Deny the Link with Iraq is clear:

"...The central goal of the al-Qaida-inspired campaign, as its statements have regularly spelled out, is the withdrawal of US and other western forces from the Arab and Muslim world, an end to support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and a halt to support for oil-lubricated despots throughout the region. Those are also goals that unite an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere and give al-Qaida and its allies the chance to recruit and operate - in a way that their extreme religious conservatism or dreams of restoring the medieval caliphate never would. As even Osama bin Laden asked in his US election-timed video: if it was western freedom al-Qaida hated, "Why do we not strike Sweden?" ..."

On the subject of the young cannon fodder who seem to have set the bombs, an emailer who was herself approached in her South African youth to take part in clandestine activity, writes,

".... Is it really so strange that, in the current political climate, and in a country where many conventional people feel disaffected and impotent to have their voices listened to - that some vulnerable people can be recruited by the wicked who think that bombs and fear are the only way to effect change?"

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell

When, several years ago, I was teaching classes to English schoolchildren on George Orwell and referring back to the frightening events in his own lifetime, I naively congratulated myself on living in an enlightened and truly democratic age.

Now I feel the deepest unease. Opposition is going out of fashion," wrote Jacky Ashley in Thursday's Guardian - and the lack of it is truly frightening, especially after what is - inevitably and sickeningly - being referred to as "7/7".

I hadn't - all those years ago - realised how forward looking were George Orwell's insights about the nature of power and the need of people to believe and trust their rulers even when the evidence of lying and corruption piles up in front of their eyes.

Here is an extract from the blogger Riverbend here about listening to George W Bush's speech on July 1. (River's latest entry tells us that blogger Khalid has been imprisoned. I have written to the Iraqi Embassy and I hope many, many others will too. consul@iraqiembassy.org)

"Why aren’t the Americans setting a timetable for withdrawal? Iraqis are constantly wondering why nothing is being done to accelerate the end of the occupation.

Do the Americans continue to believe such speeches? I couldn’t help but wonder.

“They’ll believe anything.” E. sighed. “No matter what sort of absurdity they are fed, they’ll believe it. Think up the most outrageous lie… They have people who’ll believe it.”

The cousin sat up at this, his interest piqued. “The most outrageous lie? How about that Iraq was amassing aliens from Mareekh [Mars] and training them in the battle art of kung-fu to attack America in 2010!”

“They’d believe it.” E. nodded in the affirmative. “Or that Iraq was developing a mutant breed of rabid, man-eating bunnies to unleash upon the Western world. They’d believe that too.”

A radio exchange between the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, and its security correspondent, Frank Gardner, who was left disabled by an al-Qaida attack in Saudi Arabia last year, and which I listened to in grim amazement, was quoted in the Guardian

Was it the "very diversity, that melting pot aspect of London" that Islamist extremists found so offensive that they wanted to kill innocent civilians in Britain's capital, Marr wondered. "No, it's not that," replied Gardner briskly, who is better acquainted with al-Qaida thinking than most. "What they find offensive are the policies of western governments and specifically the presence of western troops in Muslim lands, notably Iraq and Afghanistan."

See Seumas Milne's It Is an Insult to the Dead to Deny the Link with Iraq




Iraqi Blogger Jailed

July 16 2005 ~ Iraqi blogger Khalid has been, as Juan Cole puts it, "tossed into jail, apparently for being critical of the Iraqi government on the Web". The arrest was first reported by Riverbend.


Please consider writing in protest. The email address is consul@iraqiembassy.org" .

July 16 2005 ~ "The uneasy truce inside the Labour Party over the London bombings ended last night as an ex-cabinet minister and left-wing Labour MPs linked the attacks with the war in Iraq.

Left-wing Labour MPs said they would use a conference in London today to pile the pressure on Tony Blair to hasten the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. And Clare Short, the former cabinet minister, said in a television interview to be broadcast tomorrow that she "had no doubt" that the bombings were connected to the Iraqi conflict..

"Some of the voices that have been coming from the Government that talk as though this is all evil, and that everything we do is fine, when in fact we are implicated in the slaughter of large numbers of civilians in Iraq and supporting a Middle East policy that for the Palestinians creates this sense of double standards - that feeds anger," (Clare Short)

." Independent

July 16 2005 ~ The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that three British soldiers have been killed by a suspected roadside bomb while serving in Iraq BBC

July 16 2005 ~ US soldiers are charged with assaulting suspected Iraqi insurgents in custody, US officials say. BBC

July 14-15 2005 ~ Valerie Plame: The Washington Post editorial casts doubt on the honesty of both sides - not to mention the real facts behind the Niger claim. "......Whether Mr. Rove or others behaved in a way that amounted to criminal, malicious or even merely sleazy behavior will turn on what they knew about Ms. Plame's employment. Were they aware she was a covert agent? Did they recklessly fail to consider that before revealing her involvement? How they learned about Ms. Plame also will matter: Did the information come from government sources or outside parties?


It may be that Mr. Rove, or someone else, will turn out to be guilty of deliberately leaking Ms. Plame's identity, knowing that it would blow her cover. Or officials may have conspired to cover up a leak or lied about it under oath. For now, however, it remains to be established that such misconduct occurred...."

July 14-15 2005 ~Valerie Plame/Karl Rove case - "A few paces off the Senate floor, Plame's husband, a former diplomat, criticized Bush's deputy chief of staff and chief political strategist in personal terms. ``I made my bones confronting Saddam Hussein. ... Karl Rove made his bones by dirty political tricks,'' said Joseph Wilson, who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the first Persian Gulf War. At the news conference hosted by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Wilson said he has been targeted by a ``smear campaign launched from the West Wing of the White House.'' Guardian

July 14-15 2005 ~ A Pentagon investigation has provided the clearest proof yet that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib which shocked the world was in largely "road-tested" at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Independent


Leading article: Abu Ghraib was not the exception; it was the rule


"There are some documents whose content is so consistently shocking that the individual details it catalogues start to seem banal. The report by the US military on treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay appears to be a prime example of the genre.

This report, submitted to the US Senate Armed Services Committee, assesses the treatment meted out to detainees at the "facility" that subsequently became known as Camp Delta. It identifies only three instances where US Army policy was breached. And none was considered serious enough for the Army to reprimand the then commandant of the camp, Maj-Gen Geoffrey Miller...."

July 14-15 2005 ~ London Bombing: "I've been told by people close to the investigation that this quantity of explosive that has been recovered at the house in Leeds - some of it is still in there - is in fact acetone peroxide," BBC Newsnight reporter Mark Urban said.

"This is a shocking development in the sense that earlier ideas about commercial or military grade explosive being used in the bombs themselves would therefore seem to be wrong."

July 14-15 2005 ~ Legality of the war
Telegraph "....a debate in the Lords on Thursday to condemn the investigations, which they say are severely undermining morale. They believe that troops are being "hung out to dry" while the Prime Minister has yet to clarify the legality of the war. .." See also Online Journal

July 12-13 2005 ~ "Opposition is going out of fashion," writes Jacky Ashley in Thursday's Guardian ".....Making any connection between the government's policy on Iraq and terror attacks in Britain, at all, is apparently beyond the pale, in some strange way it is seen as disrespectful to those who died.
......we should be alarmed at the worried, finicky nature of political debate about these matters, the lack of democratic robustness.... If the polite, uncontroversial exchanges after the bombings were a respectful lull then, yes, we should welcome that. If they are the beginning of a new mealy-mouthed, mumbling kind of politics, then we should protest. ..." Read in full

July 12-13 2005 ~ "The details of his life certainly do not point to militancy." Independent on Shahzad Tanweer: 'I cannot begin to explain this. He was proud to be British' ... His mother, Parveen, was in a safe house last night, along with the rest of the family, where she has been "crying uncontrollably"..."

July 12-13 2005 ~ "....If the world shifted on its axis after the tragedy of 9/11, it is because we allowed it to be so. We allowed our governments to make it so. If Britain is changed by what occurred on Thursday, and propelled yet further down that destructive course, it will be similarly so.

Remember, as we pore over those newspaper images of the people who died, and read the anguished detail of how all they have been and all they could have been was extinguished in minutes, in seconds, that they are victims to add to the many more."
from a moving article in WMN that should be read in full.

July 12-13 2005 ~ UK EU presidency aims for Europe-wide biometric ID card
- an article by John Lettice at The Register "...The IDC card has to be read against central and national databases set up to facilitate "exchange of information on issues of common interest". Which could, you might speculate, include many things, and no doubt will."

July 12-13 2005 ~ Independent (sic) ".....Is it time to think the previously unthinkable? One top drawer bank that thinks it might be is HSBC, which breaks ranks in taking the view that the stresses and strains all too apparent within the eurozone may bring about its eventual collapse..."

July 12-13 2005 ~ Informed Comment reports: "Police have videotape of the four young men arriving at King's Cross rail station, wearing huge camper backpacks and seeming relaxed and full of camaraderie. At least three of them died in the explosions. The 19-year-old had gone missing the previous day, and his worried family in Leeds had filed a missing persons report with the police. He appears to have become disoriented and to have missed his chance to enter the subway system, which was closed down when the other three bombs went off. That may be why he took the double decker bus, which is where his bomb went off. Earlier reports mention passengers seeing him fiddle with something in his backpacke. Perhaps his timer had malfunctioned."

July 12-13 2005 ~ Independent : "The former Cabinet minister was the star turn that everyone had been waiting for. Byers, Byers, pants on fire; the man who pulled the rug from under Railtrack. ..."

July 11-13 2005 ~ Railtrack "an unprecedented case, and one which includes evidence from the secret heart of Whitehall". Mr Byers took the stand in the High Court today. BBC

July 11-13 2005 ~ Valerie Plame case : "Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired...White House refused on Monday to answer any questions.... recent disclosure of evidence... Mr. Rove had, without naming Ms. Plame, told a Time reporter about the same time that Mr. Wilson's wife "works at the agency," ......"New York Times

July 11-13 2005 ~ The Downing Street memos updated page contains more articles and transcripts, including the Jonathan Freedland Guardian article Yes, they did lie to us

".....the decision for war came first and the evidence was "fixed" to fit - the leaks have kept coming. In the past fortnight, six more documents have surfaced, their authenticity not challenged. One shows that Britain and the US heavily increased bombing raids on Iraq in the summer of 2002 - when London and Washington were still insisting that war was a last resort - even though the Foreign Office's own lawyers had advised that such action was illegal..."

July 11-13 2005 ~ Five West Yorkshire addresses are being searched by police investigating the London bombings. BBC

July 11-13 2005 ~ London bombs: The head of the French Anti-Terrorism Co-ordination Unit, has told Le Monde newspaper that the explosives used in the bombings were of " military origin", which he described as "very worrying". See Independent

July 11-13 2005 ~ Iraq: A majority of Americans, 54%, now says that the Iraq War has made the United States less safe.
It has made Iraq somewhat less safe too.
42 people were killed in clashes or guerrilla attacks on Monday. In a hellish incident, nine building workers died after being arrested and then left in a closed metal container for 14 hours in the burning summer heat. ( SeeBBC)

"They had apparently been caught up in a firefight between US troops and Iraqi gunmen, and were detained after taking an injured colleague to hospital."

Patrick Cockburn, writing from Baghdad, in the Independent reports Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, saying that ." Iraq would descend into "hell" if Britain and the US started to withdraw troops before the end of the year. .... A problem for the present government is that, aside from the foreign ministry, much of its administration does not function. The Americans have an ambivalent attitude towards the Iraqi police and army, emphasising that they must be built up speedily but refusing to give them modern weapons." Professor Juan Cole reports that Muqtada al-Sadr's Shiite nationalist group has begun a drive to collect a million signatures on a petition that US troops should withdraw from Iraq.

July 11-13 2005 ~ Bearing down? The FT reports that: "Britain could speed up the introduction of new laws to apprehend and prosecute people preparing to commit terrorist acts in the wake of last week's London bombings, Tony Blair said on Monday..."

July 11-13 2005 ~ Land theft on a massive scale - it is wrong in the first place, wrong morally, and wrong in international law and an insult to the United States in completely departing from the roadmap.. Professor Cole "The Ariel Sharon government in Israel has announced that it will build a huge wall on someone else's land through Jerusalem, cutting off 55,000 Arabs from the city....Worse, it is theft on a stage of sacred space that affects the sentiments of over a billion people. Whether Westerners like it or not, Jerusalem is considered by Muslims their third holiest city, and Israeli theft of the whole thing drives a lot of them up the wall...That is why our press and politicians do us an enormous disservice by not putting the Israeli announcement about the Jerusalem Barrier on the front page." more - and see also BBC".... Palestinians and the United Nations say the barrier causes great hardship to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank, cutting them off from hospitals, schools and jobs. "

July 11-13 2005 ~ The Washington Post reports on the tensions between the virtual army of private security guards in Iraq and the US military.
Professor Cole comments: " Imagine the tensions with the Iraqis!"
Guerrillas launched a new wave of bomb attacks in Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 48 persons and wounding dozens more. AP reports:

July 11-13 2005 ~ ".....The other important difference between the London bombings and 9/11 has been the response of the world of Islam. For months after 9/11, I kept writing that it was sad and disturbing that Muslims were reluctant to condemn the attacks. This time is different. Major Muslim groups in Britain have unambiguously denounced the bombings. Even the so-called fundamentalist organisations have condemned it. The Muslim Association of Britain, a hard-line group with alleged ties to militants in the Middle East, called the bombings "heinous and repulsive" and urged Muslims to help the emergency services and police. "We have faith in Britain and British people that we as a country will not be defeated by this," said its spokesman, Anas Altikriti..." Khaleej Times Online

July 11-13 2005 ~ WMN ".... the cuts will be seen as further evidence of the Navy's decline. Last month the National Audit Office warned that barely half the fleet was ready to go to war because of crippling cuts in the maintenance budget."

July 11-13 2005 ~ "......Neither foreign aid nor foreign investment can right the heavy wrongs of any society. We have to right ourselves and we will never do it if we bow or kow tow or sneakingly admire the swagger and show off of the Big Men." an interesting article for Trinidad and Tobago Righting ourselves by

Martin Daly in the Trinidad Express. See also Matthew Parris on ".... A ruling class of greedy men, sheltered by a popular culture of gawping passivity in the face of political swagger, is suffocating the people of Africa and neither tears nor money nor rock music should be our first response. Rage, not rock, is called for. .."

July 11-13 2005 ~ Police are investigating several incidents, including four arson attacks on mosques, that may have been motivated by revenge. Independent

July 10-13 2005 ~

On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants said: "At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now."
In America on Sept 11 2001 "... the government carried out exercises that were supposedly intended to enable it to counter attempts to carry out such attacks, and was carrying out such an exercise on the very morning of September 11, 2001."

July 10-13 2005 ~ Qinetiq.
"QinetiQ (pronounced ki’ ne tik as in ‘kinetic energy’) is Europe’s largest science and technology solutions company with unrivalled expertise in the defence and security sectors. Founded In July 2001 from the majority of DERA (Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) the laboratories of the UK MOD, QinetiQ employs nearly 10,000 people, including many of the UK's leading scientists and internationally acclaimed experts. Today QinetiQ operates in markets as diverse as health, defence, security, automotive, information technology, aerospace, rail, telecommunications, electronics, space, marine, energy and oil & gas."

July 10-13 2005 ~ The London Central Mosque Trust and the Islamic Cultural Centre stands in solidarity with the nation.
email

July 10-13 2005 ~ A violent day in Iraq has killed at least 35 people, with sucide bombs in Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk and Fallujah - while in Baghdad a family of nine were murdered by gunmen in their sleep. Channel 4 news

July 10-13 2005 ~ Voters in Luxembourg have approved the European constitution with a majority of 56.52%. BBC

July 10-13 2005 ~ The Sunday Times ".....Blair is right to insist that bombing London serves no purpose beyond inciting anti-Muslim sentiment. Why does he not apply that logic conversely to bombing Iraq? We must hope and pray that Blair, with George Bush in attendance, does not use Thursday as an excuse to kick hell out of another poor country in their “war on terror”.

On the radio yesterday Blair struggled both to assert that the London bombs validated his “war” analysis and yet were not the outcome of his conduct of that war." Simon Jenkins' article must be read in full.

July 10-13 2005 ~ A partial UK troop withdrawal from Iraq. A document, called "Options for Future UK Force Posture in Iraq" and marked Secret: UK Eyes Only has been leaked to the Mail on Sunday. In it, John Reid suggests the UK's 8,500 troops in Iraq could be cut to 3,000, saving around £500m a year.
It also mentions a "strong US military desire" for "significant" troop reduction but said the Pentagon and US commanders in Iraq were divided over the plans. In its report, the BBC says, "BBC political correspondent James Hardy did not believe this document represented a change in policy over Iraq.

"Tony Blair has repeatedly insisted that British forces will stay in Iraq for as long as they're needed.

That policy hasn't changed, but it's clear detailed planning is under way for at least a partial withdrawal."

July 10-13 2005 ~ Police are preparing to reopen parts of Birmingham city centre following the evacuation of to 20,000 people in a security scare. The device that was discovered, a box with wires hanging out and a switch on top, was later found to be harmless. An intelligence warning of a "substantial threat" led to the closure of the Broad Street entertainment district and the Chinese quarter. Details in the Mail on Sunday

July 10-13 2005 ~ "...If the £20 billion we are shelling out for the useless Eurofighter, thanks to Michael Heseltine back in 1986, seems a high price to pay for EU defence integration, we can now see this was only the start of it. What is even more startling is the lengths to which our Government will go to hide it from view. .." As usual, Booker's Notebook tells us what would otherwise remain "hidden from view".

July 9 - 10 2005 ~ "....With Congressman John Conyers holding hearings, the media are finally starting to cover the Downing Street memo..." Read in full

July 9 - 10 2005 ~ ".... China sees its future energy supply in terms of its own national strategic interests. China has U.S. dollars in the bank available to spend, courtesy of its massive trade surplus with the States. And the Chinese can read the charts. They can spend those dollars now while they are worth something (say, $60 for a barrel of oil), versus waiting for inflation to depreciate the value..." Peak Oil news pages quote HoweSt.com

July 9 - 10 2005 ~ "Margaret Beckett, said it was "absolute rubbish" to claim the G8 summit had not signed up to anything new. .." Guardian.

July 9 - 10 2005 ~ John Pilger on the London bombs and on the G8 "....the antithesis of February 15, 2003, when 2 million people brought both
their hearts and brains and anger to the streets of London."
"..... the only reliable warning from British intelligence in
the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase
in terrorism “with Britain and Britons a target ".... in 2003, the CIA reported that Iraq “exported
no terrorist threat to his neighbors.
” and that Saddam Hussein was
“implacably hostile to Al-Qaeda.”

July 8 - 10 2005 ~ Channel 4 news update "...49 people ...now confirmed dead. Relatives of the missing are now at London hospitals in search of their loved ones.
....The Commissioner of the Met Police has told me they there's nothing to suggest any of the explosions were the work of suicide bombers, although 'nothing can be ruled out'.

He also said that the timings of the events ruled out the possibility that it could all have been the work of one person."

July 8 - 10 2005 ~ "UK biometric ID card morphs into £30 'passport lite'"
The Register "... Nor does it seem absolutely certain that the UK ID Cards Bill will even make it onto the statute book, never mind actually work/ship. Nevertheless, the total demise of the UK scheme would not of itself turn the clock back. Take the ID scheme out of the equation and we still have the US, the EU and the G8 committed to widespread use of biometric ID..." Read in full

July 7- 10 2005 ~ G8 "...pledges of aid to Africa are regularly made but not honoured, and the continent’s total debt stands at $300 billion.
........Bush... also boasted that he had increased US aid to Africa.

But he did not mention that to qualify, recipients had to adopt democratic reform and a free market economy, protect US investment, lift barriers to US goods, and provide a friendly environment for US policies..." Michael Jansen writes in the Deccan Herald

If the G-8 had tackled Palestine and Iraq there would be no need to spin tales about global warming & Africa.

July 8 - 10 2005 ~ For George Galloway's comments on the bombing - and the extraordinary language with which Adam Ingram and Jack Straw responded, see BBC
As Professor Juan Cole remarks drily,

"Straw seems unaware that according to the September 11 Commission report, al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians..... As for Straw's contention that September 11 caused the Iraq war, he should be reminded that Paul O'Neil reported that the very first Bush cabinet meeting he attended, in late January 2001, was "all about Iraq" and that the 9/11 Commission found no evidence for operational cooperation between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda....The bombings in London on Thursday underlined what absolute hell Iraqis are living through, who suffer the equivalent every other day."

July 8 - 10 2005 ~ Virtually the entire British media has ignored the deliberations of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul, but, quietly and without any strident voices, it has delivered its verdict. It has indicted the US and UK

"We are here to make concrete records, documents and analysis," says organiser Ayca Cubukcu. "The findings of the WTI are then being taken to the International Criminal Court."


This is being done by a collection of international bar associations, with the Istanbul Bar Association a leading light in the prosecution of the UK government for its part in what the Istanbul lawyers claim is an illegal war.


"We only have the documentation and facility to indict British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the UK foreign secretary," said Kazim Kolcuoglu, president of the Turkish Bar Association. "We'd like to have Bush and Powell in there too, but we can only cite them as witnesses."

Read in full

July 7- 10 2005 ~ Sympathy and concern for those killed and hurt and their families pour in today. Political and media exploitation of the dramatic events is depressing - but the reality of the Dunkirk spirit of the people caught up in what happened yesterday and the brilliantly professional response of the emergency services make one proud of London and its cosmopolitan, resilient people.

July 7- 10 2005 ~ The London Central Mosque Trust & the Islamic Cultural Centre condemns the bombings and sends us this press release.

"...Our thoughts, our prayers and condolences go out to all the victims of this terrible terrorist attack. As citizens and co-workers of this great city, we share the concerns and fears of fellow Londoners. We use the same transport and live and work in the same buildings and any attack is an attack on us all."
More

July 7- 10 2005 ~ Helen, at EU Referendum blog, puts into words what many of us will be thinking: ".....Ever since 2001 we have been warned in almost hysterical terms on a weekly basis that there will be an attack any minute but when it came, the tale of the boy who cried wolf sprang to mind.... "

July 7- 10 2005 ~ Mr Blair's apparent view that the bombs were "timed to coincide with the G8" and the inevitable "... it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country" shows how little he grasps what most of us in this country hold dear. Do I speak for other readers when I say that we hold dear such things as peace, tolerance, generosity of spirit, accountability for our actions and the sense of proportion that accompanies a genuine English appreciation of irony and of the ridiculous?
The group that has claimed responsibility for the explosions (see Bloomberg) says, it was "a response to the massacres carried out by Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan". Although perpetrated in our name, these horrors have as little to do with what many of us "hold dear" as the miserable attacks on London today have to do with the majority of British Muslims trying to live peacefully in Britain. We can only hope for calm and restraint in the aftermath.

July 7- 10 2005 ~ A round-up of the latest news on the London explosions. "....The U.S. officials who gave the death toll spoke on condition of anonymity because British officials have yet to make the toll public."

July 7- 10 2005 ~ ".....The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and
occupation, the kind governments dare not hold. "We are here," said the
author Arundhati Roy in Istanbul, "to examine a vast spectrum of evidence
[about the war] that has been deliberately marginalised and suppressed - its
legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in
the occupation; the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as
depleted-uranium munitions, napalm and cluster bombs, the use and
legitimation of torture . . . This tribunal is an attempt to correct the
record: to document the history of the war not from the point of view of the
victors but of the temporarily vanquished." New Statesman

July 7- 10 2005 ~ The latest on Reuters on the London explosions. (France is aghast and is running a special news report on the radio. All ill feeling about the Olympics seems forgotten in its sympathy for the victims of the attacks.) other reports

July 7- 10 2005 ~ Judith Miller (see below) , the New York Times reporter, has been jailed for refusing to reveal her confidential source. See Scotsman
See warmwell pages on the US Government's alleged implication in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent. The publisher of the New York Times has said Miller had acted for the "greater good of our democracy" by "honouring her promise of confidentiality to her sources".

July 7- 10 2005 ~ IndyMedia server seizure last week BBC
".....Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney at the digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the police actions were "troubling".

"By seizing the servers, the UK authorities pulled the plug on the entire Bristol website - our modern printing presses - and took down a host of political journalism.

"Every news publisher should be wondering, 'will I be silenced next?'" ..."

July 7 - 10 2005 ~ ID cards Independent "..... As MPs delivered a scathing verdict on other Whitehall computer bungles, the Home Office conceded that the ID card scheme might not happen until 2014 - the previous official target date was 2013.

There are also growing doubts within the IT industry whether the planned date of 2007 for launching the ID database is realistic..."

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ ".. Doing things sober is no way to get things done" ....Louise Casey certainly wants to get things done. She has energy and a sense of humour, but the Civil Service, it seems, are not amused. The secretly made recording says much about this extraordinary 38 year old who reports directly to Mr Blair.

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ An article by George Monbiot: "Africa's New Best Friends" comments drily that
"The US and Britain are putting the multinational corporations
that created poverty in charge of its relief....I began to realize how much trouble we were in when Hilary Benn, the secretary of state for international development, announced that he would be joining the Make Poverty History march on Saturday. What would he be chanting, I wondered? "Down with me and all I stand for"?


........At the Make Poverty History march, the speakers insisted that we are dragging the G8 leaders kicking and screaming towards our demands. It seems to me that the G8 leaders are dragging us dancing and cheering towards theirs."

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ Oil paintng by numbers "....massive realignment of Eurasian powers with China and Russia over the weekend, marching to a new NWO manifesto excluding the US .."

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ ..... Guardian Economic dispatch today: -"...... fiercely competitive forces of what is known as globalisation.
..... The BIS (the Bank for International Settlements in Basel) worries about a "shortsightedness in policy advice" .

...When asked about not signing up to Kyoto, US President George Bush said, "I don't think you can expect any American leader to wreck the economy". Yet in accumulating deficits as if there were no tomorrow, Mr Bush may merely be postponing the day of reckoning - and wreckage."

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ "The vision of a US-controlled internet infrastructure will be anathema to large parts of the world .... a demonstration of the US administration's failure to think globally that it doesn't recognise that there is surprisingly little preventing other parts of the world from creating a second Internet outside of US control..." The Register

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ Radio Netherlands on the G8 "... the price of crude oil...is now expected to join Africa and climate change as one of the main issues under the spotlight.....Prime Minister Blair paid a surprise visit to Saudi Arabia at the weekend, not - as the official explanation would have it - to seek Saudi support for a new G8 initiative for the Gaza Strip, but to ask the world's largest oil producer to keep the price under control, and preferably down.. it's an issue which the G8 cannot avoid: a major oil crisis would bring a halt to economic growth, and the negative impact of such a development would be felt all over the world, including the developing nations of Africa and elsewhere." full

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ Scotsman "Margaret Beckett, Environment Secretary... said nobody was more pro-farming and more aware of the CAP reform package than Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and his Chancellor."
The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh would also have proclaimed himself pro-farming. Human News says, ". .... with advice from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), McKinsey & Company, the World Bank and other consultants, the then Chief Minister dismantled many of the support mechanisms enjoyed by the farmers at the grassroots level....Indebtedness, insecurity due to crop failures, and increases in the cost of seeds and fertilizers aggravated the situation. In the United States, cotton was subsidized at $12.9 billion during 1999-2000. Farmers in India were pitted against these highly subsidized imports. Indian products were very costly compared to the US products, and they suffered heavy losses in market share.

The high tech government collapsed ....
." Read in full Such economic straits contributed to the nearly 10,000 (sic) Indian farmers suicides in 2004.

July3-6 2005 ~ Znet comment "....The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the WTO (since 1995) comprise the Holy Trinity managing the global economy...As Arundhati Roy, an Indian development expert argues, “Democracy has become the Empire’s euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism.” It’s the new face of neo-colonization for the Third World..." read in full this clear and important article by Gary Olson, Ph.D., chair of the Political Science Department at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. ( Russian joke: What did neoliberalism accomplish in seven years that communism couldn’t do in 70 years? Make communism look good.)

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ "... Chinese analysts are arguing that the US should approve the Unocal deal so that China becomes America's partner in the management of global energy resources. Some analysts have warned that if this approval doesn't come through, China will be forced to expand its business with 'rogue states' such as Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar..." (see Peak Oil news page)

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ "The Chinese ... For them, oil is main issue. .... Russian oil makes Beijing less dependent on America. Judging all the indicators, China is becoming a superpower ..." article in "Russia's first independent newspaper" http://www.kommersant.com (see Peak Oil news page)

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ "Grotesque" extradition law - the Babar Ahmad case. "..... Mr Johnson said it was contrary to UK law that British citizens should be extradited for crimes allegedly committed in the UK.
"To call it poodling is an insult to poodles."

Boris Johnson said extradition rules introduced in 2003 were "grotesque".

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Goodhart QC said Mr Ahmad and other defendants should be put on trial in the UK. ..."

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ Four years ago, the FAO launched an initiative with a distinct focus on livestock: the Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Facility (PPLPF)


"...Technology oriented projects in the livestock sector and related sectors have failed to deliver significant improvements in the livelihoods of the poor.... Positive steps would include:

efficient, fair and equitable access to input and output markets,

improved access to livestock services,

development of grass-root organizations that increase the negotiating power of marginalized groups. "

July 5 - 7 2005 ~ "Len Cook, the Government's chief statistician, has been issued with a summons to produce key documents to the High Court case that is seeking compensation for shareholders in the defunct Railtrack." Independent
For a website concerned about lack of accountability and unethical corner-cutting by government, this story is likely to be important.

July3-6 2005 ~ Still getting away with it.

"For the preparation of the dossier we had a real concern not to exaggerate the intelligence that we had received. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to reflect the credibility of the information, and we rate the credibility of what we have very highly. I say no more than that." Tony Blair's statement to Parliament on the launch of the government's dossier 24 September 2002.

The Downing St memo shows that "intelligence and facts" were being fixed eight months before the March 2003 invasion - ie in the month preceding this speech.

July3-6 2005 ~ "Today was the day of the G8 counter summit, a day of reflection rather than action, organised by a coalition of unions and campaign groups and speakers ...
.. Robben Island inmate with Nelson Mandela, Dennis Brutus said: "..... The G8 is the source and engine of our suffering, our pain and our oppression. Instead of poverty, it is the G8 we should be making history of." Channel 4.

July3-6 2005 ~ "Some help with development will be useful but before rich countries send us money, they should take time to truly understand us. There is so much corruption here that funds from overseas often go straight into the pockets of politicians. We must find a way to give aid money directly to the small people. Will the people at this concert understand all that?" Independent.
People at the sharp end know that top-down initiatives - even the most well-meaning of them - inevitably fail.

July3-6 2005 ~ Telegraph "....their chief preoccupation is not global warming, but social control; hence the appalling proposal to tie personal carbon quotas to ID cards. This is not about the environment..."

July3-6 2005 ~The Independent's Campaign for Democracy calls on Mr Blair ".....in your final term as Prime Minister, to institute urgent reform of our voting system so that the British people are encouraged to believe that their votes count and that the result of a general election is more representative of their wishes. "

July 3 - 6 2005 ~ Reuters "Throwing money at African governments is not the answer," the brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki wrote.

"Give the money to the people for productive investment," Moeletsi Mbeki said in the Mail on Sunday. "Africans are perfectly capable of improving their own lot."

July 3 - 6 ~ Simon Jenkins ".....Live 8 claims political status, but the politics is totalitarian, using celebrity to mobilise a crowd. The crowd has a noble place in politics, but it is a transient one. Tomorrow it is gone and its punch leaves no bruise. Small wonder Tony Blair is playing Pope Innocent to Bob Geldof’s Francis of Assisi..."
See also Michael Portillo "....As the G8 summit approaches, the government is whipping up public demonstrations (a practice usually confined to authoritarian regimes)."

July 3 - 6 ~ "... You cannot play the terror card and simultaneously promise the scheme will be voluntary and take a decade to roll out. .... reassuring estimate of what the scheme will cost has been demolished by two independent reports .....the public would rather believe Pinocchio than any minister of the crown. ..... Ministers won the vote in the Commons but lost the argument. Their majority understates the degree of discontent on all sides. Labour backbenchers savaged the bill and its authors. The Lords will maul it further. ......

Crime is a scourge in a free society. But when privacy dies, the free society dies with it. .." Michael Portillo writes in the Sunday Times

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~ " The director of the London School of Economics has accused the Home Office of using “bullying and intimidation” in its attempt to suppress a study about identity cards.." Sunday Times

".....a series of aggressive telephone calls before the study was published on Monday. “They are stepping over a line that hasn’t been crossed before,” he said. “On the one hand they say it (the ID card) is not an attack on civil liberties, but then, if anyone questions any aspect of it, they abuse you and accuse you.
..... the idea that it is deliberately biased or fabricated seems to me to be fatuous. I am genuinely shocked, surprised and disappointed at the response.”

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~A recent ICM poll found that 43 per cent believe ID cards are a 'bad' or 'very bad' idea. The Home Office, however, maintains that around 17 per cent of adults - up to four million people - oppose the cards. The Observer reports that "....Opponents are preparing to launch a co-ordinated mass application to the Passport Office over the summer. The applicants would be issued with the current non-biometric passports that would, theoretically, be valid for 10 years. The surge in applications would cause a major headache for the office, which has suffered backlogs due to IT failures." See also the No2ID website (new window). It already has a Google rating of 7/10.

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~ It seems that Sarah Sands, the new editor of the Sunday Telegraph, has decided to drop Booker's Notebook column this week, in order to turn the newspaper into a large "souvenir edition" of the G8 Summit and the egregious Live 8 concert. (see comment below)


Letters to the editor about this can go to stletters@telegraph.co.uk.


or by post to "Letters to the Editor", Telegraph Group Limited, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DT. "Not for publication" complaints and comments should be emailed to:
readrel@telegraph.co.uk

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~ EU Presidency BBC ".....Shadow Europe minister Graham Brady said: "Their agenda is to increase Britain's contributions to the EU budget and the talk about radical reform to the Common Agricultural Policy really is just that. The document they published yesterday (Thursday) setting out the government's priorities does not mention that radical reform at all. It's all back of an envelope stuff."

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~ EU ref blog "....it is OLAF, whose doings were recorded by Hans-Martin Tillack, (warmwell page here) the German journalist, which set into motion the various arrests, confiscations of material and persecutions by the Belgian police, at the instigation of the anti-fraud office.

So far Mr Tillack’s attempts to get back his documents, to prevent OLAF and the Commission from finding out the names of his sources and to stop various past and present OLAF officials from slandering him have been unsuccessful.

One can’t help looking forward with some anticipation to the final report produced from bunch of … ahem … not entirely accountable officials on another similar bunch..." writes Helen.

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~ John Humphrys "I think it is not just desirable, but absolutely essential that you hold people in power to account for what they say and do. That's our job. It may mean you have to argue with them to develop that holding to account." Several Labour peers evidently dislike this approach. The House of Lords Select Committee on BBC charter renewal (sic) has been grilling Today's John Humphrys. See Telegraph

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~ Another nail in the coffin of a free press....The vengeful and outraged response by a government that did not want questions asked about Iraq was depressing enough in our Gilligan affair - but these two Time reporters actually face gaol sentences for their refusal to reveal sources.

July 1-3 2005 2005 ~ The Bush Administration appeared, in 2003, to have leaked Valerie Plame's identity as an agent to the conservative columnist Robert Novak in 2003 in revenge for her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson's revelations about Niger and WMD . See Denver Post editorial "Time Inc. abandoned its protection of a confidential source yesterday with its capitulation to an overbearing federal prosecutor.... ."
warmwell's pages on the Valerie Plame affair
Time's editor in Chief, Norman Pearlstine, has rejected a suggestion by the Wall Street Journal that the decision to hand over the reporter's notebooks was influenced by a clash between journalistic standards and the financial concerns of parent company Time Warner Inc. See also Reuters

28/30 June 2005 ~

http://wcco.com/topstories ".... Adam Price asked Blair in the Commons on Wednesday ...

“Is it safe to assume that Sir Richard’s (Dearlove) statement ... that the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy was an accurate assessment of the intentions and actions of the Bush administration?”


Blair said the contents of that memo (here) had already been covered by a high-level independent inquiry into the British government’s case for war in Iraq.

He emphasized that the 2002 meeting was before Britain and the United States sought and secured a resolution from the United Nations Security Council—a path that indicated they were not bent on military action. ..."

28/30 June 2005 ~ A top U.S. Army procurement official said on Monday Halliburton's deals in Iraq were the worst example of contract abuse she had seen Reuters

28/30 June 2005 ~ The EU referendum blog reveals that the MOD is paying Iveco Spa Defence Vehicles Division in Bolzano, Italy the sum of £166 million for 401 British military vehicles. Anne Winterton's parliamentary questions finally revealed, albeit in the usual smudged over language of parliamentary replies, that this was so. But the MOD's announcement back in July 2003 had given a very different impression: "... Any casual reader would gain the impression that this was a British-made vehicle, for the British Army, produced by BAE Systems Land Systems, a British company."
"...what is so remarkable," comments Richard, "is the lengths the MoD has gone to conceal the fact. This is Europeanisation by stealth."

28/30 June 2005 ~ The following blog is worth r