democracy-watch

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