Ya Bass

Anti-choice, anti-research, anti-gay fundamentalist wins Glasgow East

2008-07-25T10:04:00.003+01:00

So it seems John Mason of the SNP has one the Glasgow East by election.

A victory for an anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay religious fundamentalist is a bad day for Scottish politics, whether that candidate is pro union or pro independence. SNP supporters don't however care too much about this - they do not do "values" beyond that of independence.

Considering that their largest financial donor, Brian Souter, the man who bankrolled their 2007 election operation with a £500'000 donation ,is an anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay religious fundamentalist perhaps it goes beyond not having any values beyond that of independence.

Back to blogging

2008-07-25T10:01:00.002+01:00

It's been a while...

What if 9/11 never happened? A counter history

2006-08-16T11:55:00.000+01:00

Interesting article at the New York magazine pondering What if 9/11 Never Happened with contributions from Thomas L. Friedman, Bernard-Henri Levy, Fareed Zakaria, Al Sharpton, Andrew Sullivan and others from across the political spectrum. My sentiments would echo those of Zakaria on the subject:

But, to prick this fantasy, Afghanistan would still be run by the Taliban, and Al Qaeda would be happily ensconced there. Wahhabi clerics would still be fomenting hatred of the West. Saudi millionaires would still be funding madrassas and militants. And there would still be jihadis plotting a terrorist attack on the United States. History would have been delayed, not denied.

By any means necessary: the symptoms of an advanced degenerative disease

2006-06-13T13:49:00.000+01:00

There was a quite astonishing piece of Islamist terror-apologia by Ian Bell in The Herald newspaper today

He starts his article reasonably enough, although I would disagree with what he is saying - it's only on those on the extremes of the debate that would consider opposition to Bush to be comparable to actions of a suicide bomber - to say otherwise is just using a rhethorical trick similiar to what he is criticising of painting those holding opposing views as deranged loons without perspective:

Dissent from the occupation of Iraq and you are styled anti-American, a de facto enemy of democracy. Specify the Bush administration, exempt the tens of millions who personify decency, laud a culture so vital it could make your head swim: none of that will help much. Oppose a planetary hegemony and you are no better, it seems, than the most demented suicide bomber. The trick is rhetorical, but almost always effective. If you oppose the things being done in America's name you are, clearly, a fellow traveller of every insane jihadi. You wanted 9/11 to happen, you are soft on terror, weak on values, a descendent, somehow, of every Quisling. Our own prime minister has been exploiting the gimmick ever since Saddam's weaponry failed to materialise: with us or against us, no ifs, buts, maybes, or alternatives. Your choice.

It starts to go downhill quickly from this disagreement with what he is saying, to astonishment at how low he is stooping:

I am anti-American. I oppose this empire. I want it stopped, as brother Malcolm once used to say, by any means necessary.[emphasis added]

By any means necessary? Flying passenger aircraft into buildings full of civilians, bombing nightclubs full of clubbers, bombing subway trains packed full of commuters, bombing UN compounds, bombing embassies, hacking off the heads of aid workers and journalists. By any means necessary is acceptable apparently.

Oh and it's a small but important point; middle aged white men - especially those who bear a passing resemblence to George Galloway as Bell does - look and sound even more ridiculous when they refer to Malcolm X as "brother Malcolm"

Guantanamo exists, remember, simply because the government of the United States cannot bear to trust America's invaluable laws and America's shining constitution. Stalin had the same problems, as it happens, with the impeccable Soviet legal code, and he adopted much the same solution.

Guantanamo is a problem that has to be fixed. It's wrong legally, it's wrong morally and in terms of the War on Terror it is an enormous own goal by the US in the battle for hearts and minds. But some perspective would be nice. Guatanamo has a few hundred prisoners, the Soviet Gulags held over 2 million political prisoners following the purges in 1937 alone. Some of the Soviet camps has a death rate as high as 80% of prisoners in the first months of incarceration. Where does that leave the comparisions between Bush and Stalin?

Yet by pointing this out I am, clearly, the sort of extremist whose visa problems are about to get worse, and then some.

"By any means necessary" - does he not get it? He may not be a militant Islamist strapping on a bomb vest - but he is an extremist who is advocating the support of terrorism and the murder of innocent civilians.

The greatest irony of life under totalitarianism, meanwhile, is that no-one notices. The world goes on. An occasional weirdo will point out that the emperor is wearing full battledress. The rest go shopping at the mall, or celebrate their own courage in the face of unspeakable terror, and forget to realise that they no longer have a sense of scale.

So the US is totalitarian now? Interesting that he goes onto the subject of a sense of scale, this is a journalist who has just compared the flaws of a democracy (and there are many justifiable criticisms to make of the US and particularly some of it's policies in the War on Terror) with Stalins Russia. The suicide of three prisoners with the Gulag. To add a bit of perspective to there is a female prison called Cornton Vale about thirty miles away from where Ian Bell's newspaper The Herald is published and between 1995 and 1998, eight women killed themselves. Since then the suicide rate has declined somewhat and averages about one a year. That is one prison, of approx. 200 inmates.

Even I find these words sticking in my throat. I have no interest in defending, aiding or abetting fundamentalist maniacs. But I return, increasingly, to what once seemed a bizarre mental experiment: how would the world look if America were recognised as an enemy of freedom?

What and have China become the worlds pre-eminent power? That well known bastion of human rights, democracy and freedom. Everything will be alright then, the world will be henceforth be known as Happy Land, and everyone can live in a gumdrop house on lollipop lake!

On the afternoon of 9/11 I wept like a child, like a human being. Never again.

This man has some nerve to call himself a liberal. What sort of mind considers mass murder by theocratic fascists, acceptable - by any means necessary - and yet still go an and characterise the American body politic as being the ones in the throes of an advanced degenerative disease?

No to Sexual Exploitation at the World Cup, Germany 2006

2006-05-29T15:20:00.000+01:00

From June 9 - July 9, 2006, 12 German cities will host the football world cup. Approximately 3 million football fans will attend. In 2002 Germany legalised pimping and the sex industry however it is predicted that the legal red light districts will be too small for the thousands of sport/sex tourists in attendance. It is estimated that up to 40000 women will be "imported" from Central and Eastern Europe into Germany to "sexually service" the men. But buying sex is not a sport and it simply should not be considered an acceptable practice It is sexual exploitation in which women are physically and psychologically harmed, and women's bodies are treated as commodities to be bought and sold.

There is a petition to protest this sexual slavery. If you wish to sign this the petition is available here. More details on on the campaign are available here

But now for the "However".

I cannot underline enough that I support the goals of the campaign - ending sexual slavery and the exploitation of women at the world cup. However while I am happy to draw attention to the petition I will not sign it myself. First of all I have a bit of a problem with online petitions, in the same way as I have a problem with the Make Poverty History wristbands. I think it encourages the notion that by signing my name to something, or by wearing a white wristband, that means my responsibility is up. I think the implication must always be that this should only be the start of one's involvement in an issue, not the end as it is for so many people. However the awareness raising aspect can only be seen in a positive light hence why I bring the campaign to your attention.

The other issue that prevents me from signing this particular petition is that it is organised by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. C-FAM are anti-choice and anti stem-cell use and while I am supportive of their ending prostitution campaign the reasons they are anti World Cup prostitution are light years away from the reasons I have. It is a worthy cause but I am simply uneasy putting my name towards something organised by a group like C-FAM.

While on the subject of prostitution there is a good piece at Gendergeeks that is worth a read.

Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman

2006-05-24T17:39:00.000+01:00

A few months ago I read this article by Martin Kettle in the Guardian about Russian author Vassily Grossman and his novel Life and Fate. According to Kettle;

Little by little, Vasily Grossman seems to be working his way into the consciousness of the modern world. If his name already means something to you, and especially if you have read his novel Life and Fate, you may share my view that it is only a matter of time before Grossman is acknowledged as one of the great writers of the 20th century. If today is the first time you have encountered his name, take note of it, for your life may be about to change.

So I followed his advice and took note of Grossmans name and got a copy of the book. Anyway a couple of months after reading it for the first time and a day after reading it for the second time i've come to the conclusion that Kettle is correct when he says it is one of the great works from the 20th century. It can and should be mentioned amongst the all time classics like War and Peace or Don Quixote.

We are, however, lucky that we get the chance to read it at all because after Grossman submitted Life and Fate for publication the KGB raided his apartment. The manuscripts, carbon copies, notebooks, as well as the typists' copies and even the typewriter ribbons were seized. He wasn't arrested, but his book was! With the post-Stalinist thaw underway by this time, Grossman wrote to Khrushchev in protest;

What is the point of me being physically free when the book I dedicated my life to is arrested… I am not renouncing it… I am requesting freedom for my book.

It was punished with what amounted to a 200 year jail sentence. Fortunately at some point in the 1980s, sadly long after Grossmans death, someone smuggled out the last remaining manuscript of the book (all the others had been destroyed) and it was published in Switzerland. Whoever it was that saved that last copy and smuggled it out deserves the praise of a generations to come.

Time is a transparent medium. People and cities arise out of it, move through it and disappear back into it. It is time that brings them and time that takes them away. But the understanding that had just come to Krymov was avery different one: the understanding that says, "This is my time," or, "No, this is no longer our time." Time flows into a man or State, makes its home there and then flows away; the man and the State remain, but their time has passed. Where has their time gone? The man still thinks, breathes and cries, but his time, the time that belonged to him and to him alone, has disappeared.
There is nothing more difficult than to be a stepson of the time; there is no heavier fate than to live in an age that is not your own. Stepsons of the time are easily recognized: in personnel departments, Party district committees, army political sections, editorial offices, on the street ... Time loves only those it has given birth to itself: its own children, its own heroes, its own labourers. Never can it come to love the children of a past age, any more than a woman can love the heroes of a past age, or a stepmother love the children of another woman.
Such is time: everything passes, it alone remains; everything remains, it alone passes. And how swiftly and noiselessly it passes. Only yesterday you were sure of yourself, strong and cheerful, a son of the time. But now another time has come - and you don't even know it.

As it's main subject area is the Eastern Front during World War Two, Stalingrad, the German concentration camps, the Soviet gulags, the Lubyanka and so all this makes it sound like it is going to be a thorougly depressing book - but despite what the subject matter is it's not really. The basic premise is summed up by Grossman himself in the question;

Does man lose his innate yearning for freedom? The fate of both man and the totalitarian State depends on the answer to this question. If human nature does change, then the eternal and world wide triumph of the dictatorial state is assured; if his yearning for freedom remains constant, then the totalitarian state is doomed.

For Grossman the yearning for freedom is constant, there is after all;

no higher happiness than to be able to crawl on one's stomach, out of the camp, blind, one's legs amputated, and to die in freedom, even if only ten yards from the cursed barbed wire.

this is a partial repost from an entry i have made on my personal blog

Hitch v Cole "it's a blogwar"

2006-05-04T15:30:00.000+01:00

It started wih this article by Hitch, The Cole Report: When it comes to Iran, he distorts, you decide. Juan Cole retaliated with Hitchens the hacker and Hitchens the Orientalist.

Hitchens responds to this in a radio/podcast interview transcribed and available to listen (in mp3 format) at Juan Cole is 10th rate...he is the embodiment of the mediocre...his sentences are syntactical train wrecks...it's illiteracy, simply. The interview contains some vintage Hitch-slapping that people by now have either grown to love or hate (i love it, naturally):

...it also suggests very strongly, which is the fun bit, that Professor Juan Cole does not know what he is talking about, in any language. His English is, by the way, very poor. I can't believe his Persian is excellent, because his English is lousy. He knows no history, he has no policies. He is a complete dim bulb, and well, I must say, I took pleasure in pointing this out.

I get the feeling this ones going to run and run...

Dispatches from Khartoum

2006-05-02T22:15:00.000+01:00

With the long running crisis in Sudan once again back in the news I thought i would link to Strange Glitter which is an online diary of a young English teacher living in Khartoum. While it doesn't go into depth on the current crisis (it's a non-political blog) instead focusing on her day-to-day life in Sudan it's still an enlightening read nonetheless. There are interesting contrasts between her obvious love of the place and many the people she lives and works with on a daily basis and the difficulties experienced living there on other - whether it be the low level corruption of officials and the police to what it is like living as a western woman under Sharia Law.

The Euston Manifesto: a new democratic progressive alliance

2006-04-18T17:09:00.000+01:00

The Euston Manifesto: I am reminded of the words of a great man (namely Homer J. Simpson) hmm your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

We are democrats and progressives. We propose here a fresh political alignment. Many of us belong to the Left, but the principles that we set out are not exclusive. We reach out, rather, beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment. Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values. It involves making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or not.

Here's a bit of background to it from Norman Geras and Nick Cohen writing inThe New Statesman

It started with some like-minded progressives meeting in a London pub. Disenchanted with what they saw as the wrong-headed thinking of the anti-war movement, they began to talk of a new left movement.

On a Saturday last May, right after the general election, 20 or so similarly minded people met in a pub in London. We had no specific agenda, merely a desire to talk about where things were politically. Those present were all of the left: some bloggers or running other websites, their readers, a few with labour movement connections, one or two students. Many of us were supporters of the military intervention in Iraq, and those who weren't - who had indeed opposed it - none the less found themselves increasingly out of tune with the dominant anti-war discourse. They were at odds, too, with how it related to other prominent issues - terrorism and the fight against it, US foreign policy, the record of the Blair government, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, more generally, attitudes to democratic values.

At that first meeting our discussion focused on our common sense of discord with much current left-liberal thinking. We talked of how the prevailing consensus had ample representation in the liberal press, on the BBC and Channel 4, whereas the viewpoint of our own segment of the left was significantly under- represented in the mainstream media. We had, however, found a place on the internet and in the blogosphere, which had helped to connect people who might otherwise have felt isolated and had given expression to the voices and debates of a left other than the one heard loudly everywhere: from TV screens and newspapers, in universities and other workplaces, in theatres, at dinner tables and at every kind of social gathering. Its ideas were so much perceived as conventional wisdom that many found it difficult to allow that there could be an alternative left-liberal view.

The group that took informal shape that Saturday decided to continue meeting, with the aim of getting its political arguments out beyond the internet, of winning for those arguments a greater space within more traditional forums of public discussion. We have met twice more (at a pub near Euston Station, as it happens); others who were not at the initial meeting have become involved.

We have now produced a manifesto, in advance of a public launch some time in May. In it we set out our basic commitments. In the nature of what it is, a document of orientation, the manifesto may, in some of its points, appear to state the obvious. We make no apology for this. Part of the problem with much contemporary left-liberal opinion is that too many things that should be obvious in the light of the history of the past hundred years seem not to be so.

We hope that this manifesto will serve as an encouragement to others who, like ourselves, bel ieve that some of the most important values of a progressive politics have lately been lost sight of, subordinated to wrong-headed political priorities and insubstantial tactical consideration.

German neo-Nazis to support Iran at the World Cup

2006-04-13T23:03:00.000+01:00

Why does this not surprise me in the slightest?

A neo-Nazi group in Germany has announced plans to attach themselves to Iran during the World Cup to further its dissemination of anti-semitic propaganda. The NPD party, a right-wing extremist group, intends to march around the east German city of Leipzig on June 21, when Iran take on Angola in group D.
...
The NPD admires the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has referred to the Holocaust as "a myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped of the map".

Channel Four balance on Iraq and their creepy circus sideshow

2006-01-13T01:45:00.000Z

So that is another season of anti-war documentaries and programming on Channel 4 and it's sister Channel More4 with Iraq the bloody circus almost finished now. It's about time Channel 4 commissioned some programming acknowledged the other side of the debate as it's been completed airbrushed from their narrative of Iraq and the "war on terror". I remember the height of the anti-globalisation protests a few years back there were a few documentaries supportive of the protestors case (which were always amusingly juxtaposed with the commercial breaks for Mercedes, Pizza Hut, KFC and the rest - Much like how the Independent will run an article on climate change and the damage SUV's are doing to the environment, then over the page with be an advert for a BMW X5 or the Jeep Cherokee). The important thing though was that one the hand Channel 4 were broadcasting work by the likes of Noreena Hertz or the Alt-TV series - but at the same time as this were also showing pieces like the Johan Norberg documentary Globalisation is Good. In other words there was balance. Now I don't expect there to be a 50/50 split in their coverage on the Iraq war and the "war on terror" more generally, but it would be nice for a change for some dissenting viewpoints being aired. Right now, there is nothing being broadcast that offers an alternate viewpoint. The alternative viewpoint may well be inaccurate but the viewer should be allowed tomake these sorts of judgments for themselves, not have it airbrushed it from the media schedules as Channel 4 is doing now.

While on the subject of Channel 4, earlier tonight they ran a trailer for Celebrity Big Brother with the creepiest thing I've seen in years. The clip consisted of George Galloway acting as if he was a cat and then "lapping" milk from some woman's cupped hands (Who I imagine is a celebrity of some sort but I didn't recognise her). Previously I thought Dennis Hoppers role as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet was the creepiest thing I'd ever see on TV but this beat it. There can only be one word for it: EEeeeewwww.

See the video nasty by clicking here. (It's on google video courtesy of dj bleu. Nice soundtrack!)

The Hitch had a brief piece in the Mirror today on the whole sorry spectacle,at home with the tenth rate.

I notice that Galloway has said he'll donate his fee to a charity that helps hard-pressed Palestinians. Has anyone asked lately what happened to poor Mariam, the gravely sick Iraqi girl? The last I read, she was sicker than ever and her family in Baghdad asking to know what had happened to her once-generous "Big Brother".

Get back to work Galloway

2006-01-06T14:01:00.000Z

Contentant George Galloway MP: Why Isn't He At Work?

The slow road to Justice finally produces some results

2005-12-23T19:21:00.000Z

Justice is beginning to be dealt as a court in the Netherlands sentences Dutch arms trader Frans van Anraat to 15 years in prison for his role in the supply of ingredients used to make chemical weapons which were to be used by Saddam Hussein's regime against Kurdish civilians in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Before van Anraat could be convicted, the judges had to decide whether the 1988 attack on Iraqi Kurds in Halabja amounted to genocide, it's findings stated

The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq.

The role of van Anraat in the genocide may have been a small one but nonetheless the decision is important because it recognises acts of genocide against the Kurds in Iraq and as such another small step towards justice for those innocent victims.

Some background to the trial can be read on the blog From Holland to Kurdistan, here and here.

Palestinian FA plan to punish Peace Team players

2005-12-07T15:11:00.000Z

From football being used as a symbol of hope and of peace last week when a joint Israeli/Palestinian team played together against the mighty Barcelona to football administrators in Palestine displaying remarkable small mindedness just a few days later. From Reuters

The Palestinian FA plans to punish players under its jurisdiction for participating alongside Israelis in a "Peace Match" in Barcelona, an official said on Wednesday.

A 'Peace Team' of Israeli and Palestinian players lost 2-1 to Barcelona at the Nou Camp last week in front of 31,820 spectators, including many dignitaries.

"The Palestinian FA will form a committee to investigate the players who participated in the match ... everyone involved will be punished," senior FA official Jamal Zaqout told Reuters.

"We act in accordance with the attitude of our people who are against normalisation (of relations with Israel) before the end of the occupation," Zaqout said, referring to Israel's hold over lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Fifteen Israelis, including many internationals and 12 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank joined up for the match sponsored by Israeli statesman Shimon Peres's Centre for Peace foundation.

Zaqout, who is based in the Gaza Strip, said the five West Bank players who competed, including national team member Khaldon Fahd would be subject to the investigation.

The official Palestinian national team and their Israeli Arab coach Azmi Nassar were participating in a tournament in Qatar at the time, losing to Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

A Peres Centre spokeswoman said the Palestinian FA's reaction was "irresponsible and annoying".

"The Peres Centre together with its Palestinian partner, the Abu Sukar Centre, received the blessing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and (his senior security adviser) Jibril Rajoub for the match," spokeswoman Michal Eldar said.

"The match in Barcelona was an unprecedented event in which we managed to convey to the world the message of peace and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians," she said.

A spokesman for the Israel FA (IFA) said it had approved the participation of its players.

Israel's FA has been generally supportive of its Palestinian counterpart, which became a full FIFA member in 1998.

The IFA helped Palestinian players receive permits to leave Gaza for overseas matches when Israel controlled the coastal territory before pulling out last September.

Only one word can describe the Palestinian FA's response adequately - Pathetic.

Tories choose Cameron as new leader

2005-12-06T16:26:00.000Z

As expected, David Cameron is elected leader of the Conservatives. May I be the first to express a great sense of dismay at this turn of events - the country is obviously in a very disturbing state of moral decay when degenerate hard drug users can be elected to lead one of the main political parties!

While I say that tongue in cheek (being quite a fan of many things considered morally degenerate by those who make such judgements on others activities) when it comes to drug use I can become quite puritan. I don't agree with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair on many things but on Cocaine use he was spot on in early 2005 when he stated:

People seem to think the price of a wrap of cocaine is 50 quid, but the cost is misery on estates here and a trail of blood back to Colombia. Someone has died to bring it [cocaine] to a dinner party. People who wouldn't dream of having a non-organic vegetable don't seem to notice the blood on their fingers.

On a related point there was an interesting juxtaposition of articles on the BBC News front page. Sadly it only lasted a few minutes (I wonder if they got a call from Tory central office?) but thanks to the print screen function here it is.

firefox, internet explorer and a slight redesign

2005-11-28T22:25:00.000Z

I've just recently discovered that this blog looked a bit messed up in Internet Explorer so i've changed the template and also moved a couple of other things which should hopefully improve things. According to sitemeter the vast majority of visitors still use Internet Explorer, which I also used up until about 6 months ago. It did everything I needed and whenever someone would recommend Firefox as an alternative to me I would never pay much attention thinking it was just a programme that would require more computer knowledge than I had and that I was better off sticking to something I already knew how to use. Eventually the faults of Internet Explorer got to be too much (mainly as a result of it being unable to render images correctly on a new widescreen laptop I got - a pretty basic fault considering the shift towards widescreen particularly for those with home media centers).

So this forced a shift to Firefox, which could render the images correctly, and I haven't looked back since. If anything it is even simpler to use than Internet Explorer, but it's also faster and (apparently) safer too. Best of all though, thanks to a couple of extensions i've added, it gives me a version of the web that is virtually advert and commercial free. I never thought i'd be one of these guys but I cannot recommend it highly enough:

Monitoring Bush: Uzbekistan and Karimov, US Air Force pulls out

2005-11-23T12:07:00.000Z

As mentioned previously in this piece Live Up To Your Words

The old "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch" shouldn't protect him [President Karimov of Uzbekistan] any more - not only is the promotion of freedom the right thing to do it also make sense in a strategic sense because such short sighted policies nearly always end up creating more problems in the long term. Karimov may well be able to hold onto power this time but he will eventually fall in the medium to long term and it's in US interests in the region as well as those of the Uzbek people that the United States' does not disqualify itself from participating in the process of democratisation which Uzbekistan desperately needs.

It's still not enough yet (I would prefer to hear more outspoken criticism and more financial pressure) but at least this news is a step in the right direction - one that many cynics believed would not happen.Last US plane leaves Uzbek base

The US has flown its last plane out of an air base in Uzbekistan that has been an important staging point for US military operations in Afghanistan.

Uzbekistan in July gave the US six months to leave the base, after it joined international condemnation of the suppression of a May uprising.

In a ceremony, troops lowered the US flag and handed to Uzbek officials the keys to the Karshi-Khanabad base.

Sadly for some this news will inevitably just lead to a shift of their views on President Karimov and his regime - from that of a despicable tyrant who boils his opponents to that of the plucky underdog standing up to George W. Bush and US Imperialism.

Tony Blair warns Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

2005-10-27T22:09:00.000+01:00

Despite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent comments on Israel:

There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world. As the Imam (Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map.

There are still many who think Iran should have an inalienable right to develop nuclear weapons, because it would be hypocritical for them to be told otherwise what to do by a Security Council made up of nuclear powers like the US/UK/France/etc. What they seem to forget is that the world can live and function with this hypocrisy, but living with nuclear armed theocratic states intent on wiping out a people is another matter entirely.

At least Tony Blair understands what is at stake;

These sentiments are completely and totally unacceptable, I have never come across a situation of the president of a country saying they want to wipe out - not that they have got a problem with or an issue with - but want to wipe out another country.

This is unacceptable and their attitude towards Israel, their attitude towards terrorism, their attitude on the nuclear weapons issue isn't acceptable.

If they continue down this path then people are going to believe they are a real threat to our world security and stability.

There are more and more issues I diverge from Blair on domestic policy (his support of faith schools for example) but on the most important and fundamental issue of foreign policy, through which nearly every other issue is mere footnotes, then Blair gets it spot on.

Bird flu hits Paris

2005-10-27T22:07:00.000+01:00

Perhaps in poor taste, but still funny nonetheless.

The Daily Mail headline generator

2005-10-21T23:44:00.000+01:00

May I draw your attention to the Daily Mail-o-matic from qwghlm.co.uk:

COULD SINGLE MOTHERS RIP OFF THE COUNTRYSIDE?

WILL NEW LABOUR INFECT CAR DRIVERS WITH AIDS?

COULD KEN LIVINGSTON DEFRAUD YOUR DAUGHTER OF ALL DIGNITY?

WILL THE GERMANS DEFRAUD THE CONSERVATIVES?

WILL TEENAGE SEX STRIP THE QUEEN OF ALL DIGNITY?

George Galloway and a strange tale of adultry and arson

2005-10-20T12:01:00.000+01:00

This is perhaps old news and as a result unsuited to the fast moving blogosphere but only yesterday I was shown a copy George Galloway's column from the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail (4.09.2005) in which he commented on the fire-raising peer Mike Watson who was sent to prison.

That a large part of the Galloway column is shameless should come as no surprise. Galloway describes Watson as:

The inadequate husband who strutted ever more unconvincingly with ever younger women, giving rise to the best political joke of the decade. Mike Watson sends his apologies for being unable to be here, he is attending the birth of his next wife.

Yes that's right, the Carnally Known One, Mr No Respect himself, criticising someone else for being an "inadequate husband". Beyond parody. For those who don't know the background on this Galloway was divorced from his first wife after he admitted on a press conference that he'd had extra marital affairs while in Greece for a conference with War on Want. Then during the last general election, his current Palestinian wife questioned him naming his new political party, 'Respect'. Her reasoning was that he had no respect for her, or their marriage. George is of course a serial adulterer.

He goes on to describe Watson as:

The anti-racist who, when his position was challenged by Scotland's only ethnic minority MP, Mohammed Sarwar, dredged every barrel, spun every stereotype and relied on a set of dirty tricks that would have shamed a segregationist senator in Mississippi

Galloway obviously learned a few tips from Watson on how to engage in a dirty campaign highlighting ethnic and religious differences.

While on the subject of politicians and arson, I'm reminded of the fires in a couple of Whitefield Social Clubs after a young politician within Dundee council was queeried over missing funds from the bar and the pool table in these establishments. Both clubs burned to the ground and the account ledgers destroyed in the fires which unfortunately burnt just a few short hours before the books were to be seized for investigation.

Unicef bomb the Smurfs

2005-10-09T19:51:00.000+01:00

From the Telegraph, via Spiritof1976 comes the news of Unicef bombing the Smurfs:

The short film pulls no punches. It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom- shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky.Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs.

The final frame bears the message: "Don't let war affect the lives of children."

It is intended as the keystone of a fund-raising drive by Unicef's Belgian arm, to raise £70,000 for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Burundi.

Philippe Henon, a spokesman for Unicef Belgium, said his agency had set out to shock, after concluding that traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers. "It's controversial," he said. "We have never done something like this before but we've learned over the years that the reaction to the more normal type of campaign is very limited."

The advertising agency behind the campaign, Publicis, decided the best way to convey the impact of war on children was to tap into the earliest, happiest memories of Belgian television viewers. They chose the Smurfs, who first appeared in a Belgian comic in 1958.

It's a pretty sad reflection of the lack of empathy and humanity in parts of society that people no longer connect with the suffering of actual children and that adverts - for a very worthy cause - have to tap into their own childhood memories in order to move them. In this respect it's not about child soldiers in Burundi it all about me me me.

Alternatively, upon watching this film i'm sure there will be many who will just see the images of Smurfs being bombed and think "take that you little blue bastards!"

UPDATE 14/10: Thanks to Wirthy in the comments box who found this footage of the advert from Belgian TV.

Anti-War, My Foot

2005-09-27T12:08:00.000+01:00

Another good piece by Hitchens in the Slate today

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh.

Gene at Harry's Place posts an interesting piece by Bernard-Henri Lévy about his journey through the United States in 2004 when he accompanied Hitchens in his pursuit of Kissenger:

It always takes a kind of courage to run the risk of disappointing or alienating your own followers; and in this case it takes courage to stand firm on both fronts—to stand in front of these 150 leftists for whom Hitchens used to be a hero, and who ask nothing more than to go on celebrating him as one, and tell them, "I am and I am not one of you. There is Hitchens No. 1, who is responsible for this film, and who, ten years later, wouldn't take one word or shot away from it. But there is Hitchens No. 2, who continues the fight without you, by supporting the war in Iraq

Hitchens v Galloway on HBO

2005-09-23T01:07:00.000+01:00

Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway meet again on Bill Maher's "Real Time", Friday 23rd September, 11pm ET.

Will be interesting to watch if only to see if Galloway has signed the affidavit he promised to during the first debate.

From the Daily Telegraph earlier in the week:Galloway is a hot, blustering bully - but I'm staying on his case until the very end'

new design, new voice of sanity...as if

2005-09-17T22:43:00.000+01:00

It says something quite damning about the Guardian if a spoof article contains one of the more sensible comments to have made it's pages in recent months.

And if you were a senior voice on the left, you were in favour of defeating a fascistic dictatorship, not on the side of the murderous, leering tyrant and his slobbering death squads. If there's one thing I've learned in the past three years, it's this: the left hasn't just lost its way in this country, it's now so bereft of any sense of direction that it's gone blundering off after George Galloway, down the corpse-stinking ditch that ends in tyranny.

Speaking of Galloway, Republican Agent Provocateur.

The Honorable Member of Britain's House of Commons has become the new love-child of American progressives for his in-your-face accusations about our own government's mendacity in sending our troops to war in Iraq....But the man who saluted the "courage" of Saddam Hussein in 1994, who today can't and won't account for nearly a million dollars in income and expenditures for a charity he founded to buy medicine for Iraqi children is not, friends, the best choice as our anti-war spokesman.
- - -
Where did this guy come from? Who invited him here? The answer: US Senate REPUBLICANS. As Cindy Sheehan was gathering public sympathy as the Gold Star mom against the killing in Iraq, the Republican party decided to import an easier target to pummel. So they brought over the "I-salute-your-courage, Saddam" religious fundamentalist crack-pot who can't tell us where the money went.

first reflections on Hitch v Galloway

2005-09-15T02:57:00.000+01:00

It's late and perhaps tomorrow morning i'm going to regret staying up to watch the Christopher Hitchens v George Galloway debate, but here are a few brief thoughts.

First of all i'll be open about my bias from the outset: As corrupt, sexist anti-semites who lick the boots of fascists go I tend to dislike Galloway more than most (I guess it's because he was my constituency MP for a time and i've got first hand experience of the man and his ways.) As for the debate - I don't think Galloway addressed a single point that Hitchens made all night instead prefering to wildly distort what Hitchens had said previously. For example: according to Galloway because Hitch supports the cause of Saad Eddin Ibrahim (a JAILED democratic activist in Egypt imprisoned for the crime of monitoring elections) that means he supports the regime that stuck the poor guy in jail! Then there was the apologia for fascist terror in Iraq and elsewhere - there can now be NO doubt (as if they ever was) what side of the fence Galloway sits on this subject - it was nauseating. There were of course some members of the audience who bayed and whooped like a bunch of drunken frat boys at a pantomine whenever Galloway made any points and who in turn kept trying to interupt Hitchens while he was speaking, but thankfully that didn't spoil the dismantling of the corrupt Dundonian Ba'athist. In the words of a semi unreconstructed Glaswegian (and proud of it): Hitch tore Gorgeous George a new arsehole tonight - so much so the shitebag wanted the debate to end earlier than planned because it was "running out of steam".
.

Some background reading to debate:
George Galloway is Gruesome, not Gorgeous

Whats Left?

Losing the victory in Europe

2005-09-02T00:03:00.000+01:00

From an article by John Dos Passos in Life magazine 7th January 1946.

Sample quotes:Europeans. Friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. They cite the evolution of the word "liberation." Before the Normandy landings it meant to be freed from the tyranny of the Nazis. Now it stands in the minds of the civilians for one thing, looting.
. . .Never has American prestige in Europe been lower. People never tire of telling you of the ignorance and rowdy-ism of American troops, of out misunderstanding of European conditions.
. . .We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease.

I'm sure I read this on another blog a couple of days ago and I was intending to just post the link to it - however on quickly looking through my .rss reader I cannot find the relevant page. So apologies for pinching your find, i'll edit this message to include a link if needs be.

No case for legalising drugs - heroin is so passe.

2005-08-24T10:12:00.000+01:00

From yesterday's Guardian Why can't you buy heroin at Boots?" which contained such gems as:

Most of us aren't heroin addicts because we don't want to be heroin addicts. Or coke heads or meth freaks. The people who do want to be junkies are junkies. Were hard drugs decriminalised, it's dubious that consumption would appreciably rise.

First of all the massive increase in heroin users that would result from legalisation (and there would be a massive increase) would multiply the problems of drug abuse far more. Plus legalisation wouldn't take away the illegal market anyway (remember that the black market on cigarettes and alcohol, which are both legal of course, is worth billions of £ a year)

So even with legalisation the illegal market would still exist and would still be very large. Second, proponents of legalisation argue that "pure" heroin is OK health wise as the impurities and contaminants wouldn't exist. Well thats simply nonsense. Heroin is not a drug like alcohol or tobacco where users can function and live a life without it, heroin for the vast majority of users is all encompassing and nothing matters to the user apart from the drug. Pure, easily available and legal heroin would just multiply the problems of drug use.

In this respect having "freedoms" like easy access to legal hard drugs would not lead to people living liberated and free lives but to their enslavement, not only to the drug but to the controllers of the supply of the drug whether they be dealers or the government (like what happened with opium in China in the 1800s).

Heroin in fact used to be available on prescription in the UK. I'm not talking about pre 1950s when doctors could prescribe heroin much like any other opiate (such as morphine) but heroin on prescription as a way to deal with the problems of addiction. It was during the 60s that "recreational" drug use became a major problem and one policy used to try and tackle the rising rates of heroin addiction was through the clinical supply of heroin through medical clinics where addicts would come for treatment and get their heroin. However this programme was a total failure for a variety of reasons

. the number of addicts increased by over 100% in the 1970s when the clinics were running
. crime rates of addicts in the program were much the same as those of addicts outwith
. for addicts in the programme their death rate was about 30 times that of the general population
. most of the registered addicts in the programme continued to turn to illicit sources for more drugs
. most did not decrease their heroin dosage over time
. the black market for illegal heroin continued to thrive drawing in a disproportionate number of these new addicts who were younger than what had been using heroin before

So no legalised heroin or prescription heroin doesn't work.

What really annoys me however is that it is usually always people like Lionel Shriver or the Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies who are the ones advocating legalisation of hard drugs. Put simply these are not the sort of people who will have to put up with the consequences of such a decision and who will be forced to live in the communities which are already ravaged by drug abuse. It's not just the problems of crime that is there to feed the habit, it's the use of the drugs itself. It's not pleasant at all - the broken syringes laying on the ground, the users slumped in doorways and alleyways. It's the walking by the chemists or health centre in the morning with the lines of users outside waiting for their methadone. It can be extremely intimidating for staff working in these places or patients (often the most vulnerable is society like pensioners) picking up their prescriptions to have someone coming in looking for their methadone and then getting their hit - so what is it going to be like if it was the same for heroin but on a much greater scale? At least methadone is taken orally. And contrary to what Shriver may write most of these people do not want to be heroin or methadone addicts. They do not want to be junkies, they continue using however because that is the nature of addiction.

playing politics with the dead

2005-08-20T02:05:00.000+01:00

Menezes' family calls for justice. I can understand the anger of Jean Charles de Menezes' cousin Alessandro Pereira - indeed I agree with much of what he has said over the last few days. However there is something deeply unedifying about those who have been busy jostling to position themselves as guardians of the Menezes family interests.

On one side of Mr Periera, sat Asad Rehman (George Galloway's political assistant -which for this individual is enough said about unedifying spectacles) and on his other side sat Yasmin Khan, member of an activist group called Corporate Pirates. A group that admittedly i'd never heard of before tonight, but judging by these pictures they look like every other bunch of self satisfied and self righteous bourgeous students that make up these "zany" and "wacky" protest groups and who manage to trivilise important issues and look like twats all at once.

Furthermore, the website of The Jean Charles de Menezes Family Campaign is registered to an Alistair Alexander. I don't know if it is still the case but this Guardian article from 2003 identifies him as a member of Stop the War Coalition and he was listed on the STWC website as available for comment on the Blix report published earlier that year and appears to be involved with press relations for the STWC. Perhaps someone more knowledgable on the matter can shed some light on this.

Yes to justice for Jean Charles de Menezes. But for those who have attached themselves to the issue and who seek to drag an innocent mans body from the grave in an attempt to exploit it's political capital? Shame on you.

Robin Cook

2005-08-06T19:42:00.000+01:00

Former Cabinet minister Robin Cook, 59, has died after collapsing while hill walking in north-west Scotland.

I didn't always agree with him, increasingly so in the last two or three years but I still had alot of respect for him. Not only as a very capable politician (his resignation speech was described by Andrew Marr as "without doubt one of the most effective, brilliant, resignation speeches in modern British politics" and I think that is a fair point. but also as one of the architects behind "Blairite" foreign policy and in particular the interventions in Kosovo/a and Sierra Leone.

RIP

Akbar Ganji

2005-08-05T10:38:00.000+01:00

Eight Nobel laureates call for Akbar Ganji's release
Reporters Without Borders today hailed a petition calling for the immediate and unconditional release of imprisoned Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji which was launched by Iran's 2003 Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and which has already been signed by seven other Nobel laureates.

"Iran's most senior officials must heed this very clear message from eight world figures who have made outstanding contributions to peace and science," the organisation said, going on to appeal to foreign diplomats based in Tehran to visit Ganji at Milad hospital, where he was taken on 17 July.

Until now, Iran's government and judicial authorities have refused to heed the calls for the release of Ganji, who has been imprisoned for five years and who is continuing the hunger strike he began 54 days ago.

If the international community does not react, Ganji is going to die.

The eight Nobel laureates who have already signed the petition are :

Shirin Ebadi - 2003 Nobel peace prize
John Hume - 1998 Nobel peace prize
Jody Williams - 1997 Nobel peace prize
Archbishop Desmond Tutu - 1984 Nobel peace prize
Mairead Corrigan Maguire - 1976 Nobel peace prize
Betty Williams - 1976 Nobel peace prize
Maurice Allais - 1988 Nobel prize for economics
Georges Charpak - 1992 Nobel prize for physics

The petition can be found here: Free Akbar Ganji: an appeal to Iran.

For a brief background on Ganji and his imprisonment:click here.

Ganji's Letter to Free People of the World (part 1)

As I have said many times before, if I die in prison, it is on the orders of Mr. Khamenei. Mortazavi [a hardline Iranian judge and General Prosecutor of Tehran who ordered the closure of over 80 pro-reform newspapers that supported Mohammad Khatami in 1999 and who is now likely to become Justice Minister in the cabinet of the President-elect Ahmadinejad] gets his orders via Mr. Hejazi directly from Mr. Khamenei. I have opposed the unelected and indefinite rule of Mr. Khamenei. I have said that life-time unaccountable absolute power is at odds with democracy. I said expressing this opinion will be faced with Mr. Khamenei's quick and harsh reaction. What took place proved me right. He does not tolerate any personal criticism. Karroubi, Moeen and Hashemi Rafsanjani all tasted Mr. Khamenei's "religious democracy" in this election. The widespread and organized interference of the Guards Corps and Basij caused the outcry of even Larijani's campaign staff and the person of Mohsen Rezaei. A sultanist system is at odds with democracy. In such a system the sultan rules supreme and everyone else is at his service. Mortazavi has told my wife: "What will happen if Ganji dies? Dozens die everyday in prisons; Ganji will be just one of them." These are Mr. Khamenei's words that are uttered through Mortazavi's lips. Ganji dies, but the demand for freedom, democracy, political justice, hope, aspirations and ideals won't. Love for others and self-sacrifice for people will always continue to live.

Ganji's Second Letter to the Free People of the World

Instead of giving up the resistance against tyrants and those who violate human rights, we should refute the pre-modern illusions of the people. We should point out that there are no saviors. All men are regular people and prone to error. Earthly human is sinful and erring.
- - - We should relentlessly criticize everyone's opinions and beliefs, including those of the dissidents....It is not at all important that a person is not tolerant of criticism, neither is it important that the disciples of a political thinker or activist consider him immune to error, what is important is that criticism should be possible, so that everyone would get criticized in the public arena, and no one could deceive the people with totalitarian ideologies. Brave intellectuals and thinkers are the ones who should be building the public arena, instead of waiting for the ruling regime to build it for them.

I was reminded of Milan Kundera. In his novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", recounting the situation after the "Spring of Prague", Kundera writes: "Is it better to shout out and hasten our death or to keep our silence and lengthen our slow and gradual dying"
- - -
This candle is about to die out. But this voice will not be silenced. This is the voice of peaceful life, tolerating the other, love for humanity, self-sacrifice for people, seeking truth, seeking freedom, demand for democracy, respecting the opponents, welcoming different lifestyles, separation of the state and the civil society, separation of the private sphere and the public sphere, separation of religion and state, equality of all humans, rationality, federalism within a democratic Iran, rejecting violence.

This candle is about to die out, but this voice will raise louder voices in its wake.

Sponging

2005-07-27T13:51:00.000+01:00

Some political opportunism of the worst sort on the front page of the Daily Express today.

For the Express it's always either Tony Blair's fault or the European Unions fault or asylum seekers fault. Or more often than not a combination of all three.

Personally I blame it all on the decline of standards amongst tabloid editors - It should be sponging not spongeing. Best to at least run words through a spellchecker before sticking them onto the front page in a large font.

Are you awake?

2005-07-26T21:55:00.000+01:00

Some vintage Blair at the final PM press conference before the summer recess - Not One Inch.

Look, of course people are going to use Iraq and Afghanista...They will use Iraq to try and recruit and motivate people. They will use Afghanistan. Before Iraq and Afghanistan, and 11 September, which happened before those two things, they used other things. But I think most people understand that the roots of this go far deeper. And in any event where does this argument take us in the end. And I want to make one thing very clear to you. Whatever excuse or justification these people use I do not believe we should give one inch to them, not in this country and the way we live our lives here, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in our support for two States, Israel and Palestine, not in our support for the alliances we choose, including with America, not one inch should we give to these people. And I want to say this to you, and I may offend people when I say this, but I am going to say it nonetheless. 11 September for me was a wake-up call. Do you know what I think the problem is? That a lot of the world woke up for a short time and then turned over and went back to sleep again. And we are not going to deal with this problem, with the roots as deep as they are, until we confront these people at every single level. And not just their methods, but their ideas.

Let us just take this issue of Iraq and expose it for a moment. Frankly the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism. If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing them.

The discomfort of strangers

2005-07-26T14:42:00.000+01:00

An interesting article on the bbc site about travelling by tube and the discomfort of strangers. It's a bit depressing to read the comments section and other people's experience - for example how one British Asian has taken to carrying a bottle of wine with him as a clear visual symbol that says I'm not a fanatic Islamic bomber or from the other end of the spectrum how people are viewing others with suspicion. As one commentator notes on all this:

That is why it is called terrorism the threat or use of violence, often against the civilian population, to achieve political or social ends with the aim of sowing fear and confusion.

While generally agreeing with that statement, I wonder how much of this is really a new shift in attitudes post-bombing and not down to people becoming more aware of certain subconcious attitudes they already possessed towards other tube passengers. I've always found the underground to be about the "discomfort of strangers". At rush hour, especially on a hot day, it's never been a particularly nice place to be. The trains are packed full of people looking at each other suspiciously, avoiding eye contact and being apprehensive over others invading their personal space. On a personal level my only real worry on the subway is not one of bombers and exploding rucksacks but whether i should offer to give up my seat for someone when it's crowded. Basically will they think i'm being a selfish dick for not giving my seat up or a patronising dick for giving it up. Add in a large dose of patriarchal guilt and a concern for not looking at the boobs of the woman sitting opposite me or the arse of the woman standing beside me then the average subway journey quickly becomes a ride that is not particularly enjoyed; it's full of the discomfort of strangers.

It's not that I underestimate the Jihadist threat either, I know full well what these people are capable of. But all the same, life goes on and in an incredibly shallow and self obsessed way I worry more about looking like a selfish/patronising dick or a perv (or indeed both) than I do about being blown up. I think this is in effect part of a similiar rationale which helps explain why so many liberals and those of the left are so blind to the dangers of militant Islam and it's theocratic fascism - the fear of being thought of by others as racist or Islamophobic clouds the vision.

Pinter has some competition

2005-07-25T00:30:00.000+01:00

Worst Poem. Ever?If you go into other people’s countries
and bomb them
they will bomb you.
You can call them what you like
You can tell us that our cause is noble
You can tell us that they’re evil and we are good
But the rule remains:
If you go into other people’s countries
and bomb them
they will bomb you.
I didn't think it possible but the three poems Michael Rosen has written for the Socialist Worker are at least on a par with Harold Pinters efforts from a couple of years ago. Remember this?

Democracy

There's no escape.
The big pricks are out.
They'll fuck everything in sight.
Watch your back.

On another point - perhaps someone should inform Michael Rosen that the Jihadist murderers who carried out the London massacres on 7/7/2005 did not come from Iraq or Afghanistan, but from Yorkshire.

the New Statesman

2005-07-22T21:06:00.000+01:00

In recent weeks I've left Amnesty International over their shift of focus over the last couple of years best illustrated with "Gulag-gate"then stopped buying the Guardian because they were employing a fascist and giving him space to spread his hate (although they are to be commended for finally seeing sense on the issue so I'll probably be purchasing it again tomorrow). Now it seems I'll be cancelling my subscription to the New Statesman.

Via Oliver Kamm: Have you Left No Sense of Decency.

A few days after the destruction of the Twin Towers, the New Statesman ran a notorious editorial in which it asked whether the bond traders murdered at the World Trade Center had been "as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants". Its answer: "Well, yes and no."

There are many things that could be said of this. Jonathan Freedland wrote some of them in his Guardian column. The timing stank; the tone was gross; the hypothesis the editorialist assumed was itself, in Freedland's delicate understatement, "shaky at best". I would put it slightly differently. A man who can write such a sentiment, and at such a time, merits the question directed to Senator Joseph McCarthy by his nemesis Joseph Welch: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

That editor (Peter Wilby) has gone. His replacement, John Kampfner, has distinguished himself by giving the cover story of this week's edition to John Pilger, illustrated with a picture of a rucksack and the title "Blair's bombs". Not al-Qaeda's bombs, mind: Blair's bombs.

I don't mind reading things I disagree with - after all I still read the Guardian after some awful crap since 2001 from Seamus Milne and Tariq Ali and George Galloway and John Laughland and AL Kennedy and the whole sorry bunch. But there are lines to be crossed and leading articles and tasteless rucksack graphics blaming a democratically elected leader for the murder of innocent people by the Jihadist enemies of democracy - then that is one such line.

The Terror Threat

2005-07-18T22:16:00.000+01:00

Chatham House has published a report saying that the Iraq War and British support for the War on Terror has increased the danger of terrorist attacks within Britain. The timing of the report perhaps seems a bit insensitive and no doubt there will be those who think that it will have been held back until a time like now to gain maximum publicity - but I don't think that would be a fair criticism. As for the report itself: To suggest a view other than that the war in Iraq and support of the War on Terror has played a part in increasing a potential risk would be a bit ridiculous. Similiar to if there was a report in 1940s claiming that declaration of war on Germany greatly increased the chance of Luftwaffe bombing raids on British cities!

The risk was of course already there long before policy choices taken in the post September 11th 2001 world. Following Bin Laden's Fatwa of 1998 "ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military –is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it" to attacks of September 11th 2001 there were Jihadist terror atrocities in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Yemen, Russia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Israel, the US and India with major plots foiled in Jordan, France and the US. All pre-Iraq War and pre-War on Terror.

The usual suspects will no doubt be seizing upon the report for political advantage and this raises the question of whether there is point where one considers standing up to fascism and terror (whether of the 1930s/1940s variety or the modern day Jihadist variety) and the associated increased risk of such a policy to be not worth the extra risk involved? That it's easier to keep one's head down and let them get on with it in the hope that you will not have anymore problems. Perhaps it's easy to type from behind the safety of my keyboard but I really don't believe that such a point exists. If accomodation is made with such people then exactly what principles are there left to fight for and stand up for?

We Are All Londoners Now

2005-07-07T12:18:00.000+01:00

I intended to write about the G8 summit, my experience of the protests and in particular a "discussion" I had with George Galloway yesterday in Auchterarder.

But that particular anecdote (although not the cause of poverty in Africa) which I thought would make for a nice entry has sadly been overshadowed by the news of another murderous terrorist attack against innocent civilians. The Islamofascists have taken their war to the streets of New York, Bali, Moscow, Madrid, Israel, Kenya - and lets not forget on an almost daily basis against fellow Muslims in the middle east itself - and now it appears, they've hit London.

We Are All Londoners Now.

Ice-picks and history

2005-06-17T01:09:00.000+01:00

'Ice-pick that killed Trotsky' found in Mexico. Naturally the person who has the ice-pick wants some cash:

"I am looking for some financial benefit. I think something as historically important at this should be worth something, no?"

I think I must have been about 13 when I first read about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in one of my history books. Back then the whole ice-pick in the head of his enemy scenario not only helped sum up what a mad bastard Stalin could be but also helped turn my gaze towards some of the intrique inherent within "history". Before that I had considered it more in terms of trying to memorise the names of some old dead guys and a few dates - an inconvenience which got in the way of more important things like playing football or Sonic the Hedgehog.

normality, hope and football

2005-06-14T21:17:00.000+01:00

Some good news for Iraqi football fans via Iraq the Model.
Football returns to Baghdad as the the Iraqi Premiere League begins.

Anne Applebaum on the Gulag and Guantanamo

2005-06-09T11:37:00.000+01:00

Anne Applebaum on Amnesty's Amnesia in The Washington Post.

I don't know when Amnesty ceased to be politically neutral or at what point its leaders' views morphed into ordinary anti-Americanism. But surely Amnesty's recent misuse of the word "gulag" marks some kind of turning point. In the past few days, not only has Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Khan, called the U.S. prison for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our times," but Amnesty's U.S. director, William Schulz, has agreed that U.S. prisons for enemy combatants are "similar at least in character, if not in size, to what happened in the gulag."
. . .Thus Guantanamo is the gulag, President Bush is Generalissimo Stalin, and the United States, in Khan's words, is a "hyper-power" that "thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights" just like the Soviet Union. In part, I find this comparison infuriating because in the Soviet Union it would have been impossible for the Supreme Court to order the administration to change its policies in Guantanamo Bay, as it has done, or for the media to investigate Abu Ghraib, as they has done, or for Irene Khan to publish an independent report about anything at all.

Importantly, Applebaum does not seek to be an apologist for the Bush administration. She makes reasoned (and justified) critique of the practices at Guantanamo and elsewhere:

Like Khan and Schulz, I am appalled by this administration's detention practices and interrogation policies, by the lack of a legal mechanism to judge the guilt of alleged terrorists, and by the absence of any outside investigation into reports of prison abuse. But I loathe these things precisely because the United States is not the Soviet Union, because our detention centers are not intrinsic to our political system, and because they are therefore not "similar in character" to the gulag at all.

mixed news

2005-06-06T22:00:00.000+01:00

Good piece in the Guardian today: Young democracy guerrillas join forces.

Meanwhile in Iran:
Iranian women kick out against football ban.

In Syria the Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam stood down from his position in the Syrian government and the Baath Party today. It probably doesn't signal much however - while he was a hardliner and one of the architects of Syrian policy towards Lebanon over the last two decades his political influence has been fairly small in the last few years.

Things are looking much less promising in Zimbabwe: From the Sunday Times.

[Police] swept through the centre of Harare, rounding up the many thousands of traders who survive by selling everything from chewing gum to second-hand clothes and even the colourful women flower sellers who have operated in Africa Unity Square for decades. Flowers and wooden curios were thrown onto bonfires as their owners watched in disbelief.

It was the start of what has since become a nationwide scorched earth campaign. In cities from Mutare in the east to Bulawayo in the south, police have torched homes, demolished market stalls, detaining more than 20,000 traders, and bulldozed shanty towns.

Naturally, Zimbabwe hold a seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

The Gulag of our Times?

2005-06-05T15:14:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I was astonished to read Amnesty International describe the prison at Guantanamo Bay as the "gulag of our time". Undoubtedly there are abuses of power occurring in there but a reasoned critique of this should be made, not hysterical statements comparing it to a Gulag. Guantanamo has a few hundred prisoners, the Soviet Gulags held over 2 million following the purges in 1937 alone and cumulatively over 10 million throughout their existence. This is a low end estimate, many respected historians such as Anne Applebaum have put the figure at closer to 25 million. Over a million prisoners are documented to have died between 1934 to 1953 and the actual figures are most probably higher than this (in some camps the death rate was as high as 80% of prisoners in the first months of incarceration).

Guantanamo the Gulag of our times? I don't think so.

Nick Cohen mentions in the Observer today that he has:

an uneasy feeling that it [Amnesty International]is losing universal principles and treating the abuse of rights by the United States as worse than similar or more grotesque abuses by others.

About a month ago I read an interview with the head of Amnesty Internationl Irene Khan (I thought this interview was in the Guardian but I can't find it in their online archive and google hasn't helped me find the original either, so the following should be treated with some scepticism until I can find it) where she stated that Amnesty was intending to focus their resources on abuse in certain key countries - a corollary of which would be Amnesty not having such an universalist focus (even acounting for it's current selection bias where a disproportionate number of AI reports focus on relatively more democratic and open countries).

Links for comment on the report:

Cronaco

Socialism in an Age of Waiting

Shuggy's blogspot

Eric the Unread

Normblog

Hitch at the Hay Festival

2005-05-30T16:50:00.000+01:00

Christopher Hitchens was involved in a couple of debates at the 2005 Hay Festival.

First up was the debate on religion, blasphemy and related topics with Stephen Fry and which can be listened to by clicking here. Hat tip to Normblog.

The following night was a debate involving John Micklethwait, Christopher Hitchens, Roy Hattersley, Mark Leonard and chaired by Jon Snow on History will be kinder to Bush and Blair than to Chirac and Schroeder. This can be listened to by clicking here. Highlight for me is Hitchens on Galloway

he’s a pimp for facist dictatorships overseas, and an exploiter of religious sectarianism at home, and a guttersnipe and a liar. And I can add I hope you go to labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk. They’ve issued a challenge to me and him to meet in a public debate. He can pick the venue, he can pick the chairman, it better be neutral, and then we’ll see won’t we?

I want ringside seats for that!

Black Triangle has a good commentary on the debate.

George Galloway and the Arabs

2005-05-28T22:23:00.000+01:00

Just over a decade ago during the run up to the Scottish Cup Final of 1994 the then MP for Glasgow Hillhead, George Galloway was all over the newspapers, the TV and radio in Scotland expressing his love for Dundee United football club and describing how he was a die-hard-life-long fan and numerous other platitudes. But it appears he has forsaken his team now and switched alliegance to Celtic.

A minor irrelevance perhaps but it reminded of the words of Uruguayan poet, Eduardo Galeano, "En su vida, un hombre puede cambiar de mujer, sus opiniones politicas o su religion pero no su equipo de futbol." In his life, a man can change wife, his political opinions or his religion but not his football team.

Football fans will understand that statement is no exaggeration. Being a lickspittle black shirted apologist for fascism is one thing - changing your football team is on a whole other level!

Either that or he lied about being a die hard fan of Dundee United. Which begs the question - what else has he lied about?

More Hitch

2005-05-21T18:38:00.000+01:00

Unmitigated Galloway.

Definitely worth a read, even if it is in the Weekly Standard. Hitchens not only nails Galloway but he also makes an excellent political case for his position (and that of the pro-liberation left) on the Iraq war.

While briefly on the subject of the Weekly Standard one of the amusing parts of Galloways act in the Senate was at his press conference afterwards when he refused to answer questions from a reporter with that newspaper. On this occasion I laughed along with Galloway rather than at him, but it is a bit strange that he refuses to answer questions from that publication yet quite happily gave an in depth interview to Germany's main Neo-Nazi publication National Zeitung a couple of years ago.

Hitchens on Galloway

2005-05-20T10:48:00.000+01:00

Christopher Hitchens on George Galloway in yesterdays Independent. The link requires a fee to read the article so i've copy and pasted it in full.

THE GEORGE GALLOWAY CASE: JUST WHAT WE NEED - A BAATHIST FUSED WITH A SECTARIAN MUSLIM

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

It's always impressive to see someone perform who is unembarrassable. George
Galloway's testimony was disgraceful, but " in a way that some disgraceful and shameless performers are " it was impressive. Like Oliver North, who put on his uniform and his medals and came to the Hill, he faced down the inquiry through sheer bluff and presence.

Galloway has the nerve to say that he's never publicly defended the Saddam Hussein regime " and the senators were either too sluggish or too polite to challenge him on it. But we've got the quotes, and he's been there on numerous occasions, shaking the hands of Tariq Aziz and Saddam.

His claims about the Charity Commission are false; it has issued a statement which only a millionth of the people who saw him will read. The question he was asked was: your name keeps appearing on this man, Fawaz Zureikat's, documents; do you know where he made his money? His answer was to deny buying or selling oil " but that wasn't what he was asked.

He has the advantage the media give to a lot of bare-faced charlatans with personality. They get away with it. That's how televangelists and mutual funds operators work.

I enjoyed our exchanges more than he did. I asked him if he had a copy of the letter or e-mail he claims to have sent to the committee, asking to appear before them. He hosed me with vulgar abuse, saying I was a terminal alcoholic, a 'Trotskyist popinjay'.

His claim to have sent a letter was obviously false but it bought him a little time. He can't show us the letter " so he must have been lying.

His appearance demonstrated the superiority of parliamentary training and the soapbox speaking style " rather than that of the overly polite, dull and deferential senate hearings. Americans enjoyed it because it broke the tedium.

But he looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class-wideboy-and-proud-of-it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels " all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse like a lot of them are, puffed up like a turkey. He has managed to fuse being a Baathist with being a Muslim sectarian and a carpet bagger in the East End " as well as a front for a creepy sub-Leninist sect, the Socialist Workers' Party. He's got the venomous riff-raff at one end and your one-God fanatics on the other. Wonderful. Just what we need.

This is pretty sordid. The media are there to ask the difficult questions, not to act as an echo chamber for frauds like Galloway.

tin foil hats at the ready

2005-05-19T23:34:00.000+01:00

Laughland re-appears in the Guardian with an article on the situation in Uzbeckistan. For a bit of background: John Laughland is a trustee of British Helsinki Human Rights Group - who have a rather different interpretation to the words "human rights" than most other groups. Despite the Helsinki in their name, it's not an official Helsinki Committee - which is a deliberate fudge on their part so they can be taken "seriously" - but this has has prompted the International Helsinki Federation to publicly disclaim any connection with the BHHRG. They supported Milosevic, argue that the government and electoral process in Belarus meets all democratic standards, campaign against immigration to the UK and Laughland has written articles over the last few years which are very supportive of the likes of Mugabe, Milosevic and Le Pen. More recently he's been writing in the Guardian comment page whenever democratic change has been an issue in Georgia, Ukraine and now Uzbeckistan. To sum up his views: Repressive regime good and getting a bad press from a biased media - the popular opposition is not popular opposition at all just fronts for American stooges seeking to help the US imperial project.

With the current situation in Uzbeckistan (which i've written on briefly here) he's had to amend the argument slightly as Karimov has had the support of the US over the last couple of years. But that's not a problem for Laughland, that support is only superficial and a construct so those with anti-war and anti-US sentiments can get behind the opposition to Karimovs authoritarian rule and support "regime change".

The twist this time is that President Karimov of Uzbekistan is presented as a pro-US tyrant rather than a Soviet-era throwback - so anti-war left and liberal commentators have been co-opted into baying for his blood.

This coming only a week after the tin foil hat nonsense by Al Kennedy and most importantly the departure of their best columnist David Aaronovitch there seems to be a worrying slip of standards at the Guardian.

spot on

2005-05-17T18:50:00.000+01:00

One of the best descriptions of Galloway i've ever read, courtesy of Eric in the comments box on Harry's Place.

He's like a minature version of a Middle East state. Does bog all for Muslims, but keeps spouting the bollocks about America to keep the wheels on the hate wagon.

Dundee Baathist on the hill

2005-05-17T17:40:00.000+01:00

I thought George Galloway came out of the Senate Hearing on the oil for food corruption relatively unharmed. He made his points and had time for plenty of soundbites too - mostly unrelated to what he was being asked - but that is often all that matters in today's tabloidised media age.

However he claimed under oath that the Charity Commission report on the Mariam appeal looked at "every penny in and every penny out" thus clearing him and the appeal.

Really? The Charity Commission report on the other hand stated:

"The Commission has been unable to obtain all the books and records of the Appeal. Mr Galloway, the first Chairman of the Appeal, has stated that this documentation was sent to Amman and Baghdad in 2001 when Fawaz Zuriekat became Chairman of the Appeal. Mr Galloway has informed the Commission that this documentation is no longer under the control of the original trustees of the Appeal and cannot be located by them. Mr Galloway confirmed that the Appeal did not produce annual profit and loss accounts or balance sheets."

Charity Commission Report.

live up to your words

2005-05-16T11:11:00.000+01:00

The situation in Uzbekistan seems to be going from bad to worse at the moment. President Karimov is in a stronger position than the leaders in Georgia, Ukraine or Kyrgyzstan when they faced similiar popular uprisings over the last couple of years. In such a closely controlled totalitarian regime with a huge repressive security apparatus ready and willing to do his dirty work then it's going to very difficult for peaceful protests or an unarmed popular uprising to succeed.

It seems to be quite a complex situation with different regions having different agendas and grievances with the government. Tashkent does pretty well apparently but the people in Samarkand and Bukhara are largely ethnic Tajik and face discrimination while the Ferghana Valley has a long history of being outwith government control. I think that's also the area where the Islamists are strongest, but what is happening just now seems more a matter of people protesting at the lack of freedom as well as the corruption and persecution in government. There is of c a danger that once things start gathering momentum beyond this initial focus that it will result in Jihadist forces being unleashed with a downward spiral of violence occuring with the end result being the replacement of a repressive dictatorship by a repressive theocracy..

So now is the time for the West to act. The European Union played an important role in forcing Yanukovych to let go of power in the Ukraine in the face of popular pressure, and the Kyrgyz president quit once he saw he couldn't get away with what he was doing anymore. The European Union however has no influence in Uzbekistan, and as the Russians are very supportive of Karimov he has intention of quitting, so i guess then it's down to the United States and that means Uzbekistan is a real test of Bush's commitment to the spread of democracy. As he outlined in his inaugural address in January 2004:

There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

Bush needs follow through on these words and the United States ought to do all it can to strengthen the forces of democratic opposition in Uzbekistan while pressuring Karimov to step down or at least open up much more to civil society. The old "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch" shouldn't protect him any more - not only is the promotion of freedom the right thing to do it also make sense in a strategic sense because such short sighted policies nearly always end up creating more problems in the long term. Karimov may well be able to hold onto power this time but he will eventually fall in the medium to long term and it's in US interests in the region as well as those of the Uzbek people that the United States' does not disqualify itself from participating in the process of democratisation which Uzbekistan desperately needs.

reflections four days on

2005-05-09T11:18:00.000+01:00

So Labour wins a historic third term with a working majority. A Majority of 66 is decent - it's not as great as the previous two elections but given how hostile the press has been to Blair in particular and Labour in general over the last few years, the divisiveness of the Iraq war and the timing of the leaking of the legal documents in the run up to the election (the question of who leaked remains unanswered for now) it's surprising in some ways that the vote held up so well.

Oliver Kamm makes a good point on the subject of the Iraq factor and the election.

Overall, I am afraid there is no escaping the conclusion that Tony Blair irrevocably damaged his political standing by committing troops to the Iraq war; had the war not taken place, we can reasonably assume that he would have enjoyed a substantial - and given its unprecedented character in Labour politics - triumphant third election victory. Many, probably almost all, Labour supporters would regard this as an indictment of the PM. I regard it as a measure of the man's political stature. Knowing that the character of the threats we face has changed since 9/11 - indeed since long before that - Blair chose to ally with a nominally conservative US administration in a war that needed to be fought, when the policy of containment of Saddam Hussein had manifestly failed, and the toleration of autocratic states in the region was an affront to our values and a gathering storm over our security.

The low point of the election night was undoubtedly seeing the Dundee Baathist, George Galloway, elected to represent Bethnal Green and Bow. In the 1930s that constituency showed a great deal of support for the British Union of Fascists under Oswald Mosley, but they never went so far as to actually elect a fascist to parliament. Sadly, that is no longer the case. David Aaronovitch in yesterday's Observer summed it up rather well.

I look on with despair at a public culture that vilifies him for his actions following 11 September, but that simultaneously rewards Saddam's principal apologist in Britain. It won't be easy to explain that in Basra or Kurdistan.

But I guess that's democracy - having to put up with people you don't like being elected, even those who seek to deprive others of the rights we take for granted.

Blairisme

2005-05-03T22:33:00.000+01:00

By Eric le Boucher in Le Monde, May 2 2005.

Few French people are following the election campaign in Britain - probably because the outcome seems to have been decided already... But if the French aren't watching events on the other side of the channel, it's also because Mr Blair upsets them. On the right, his success puts into focus the failures of the government of Jacques Chirac. On the left, [Britain's] economic growth, falling unemployment and rise in the minimum wage are deliberately hidden to obscure the fact that his 'third way' actually works.

One has to admit that, when it comes to globalisation, the Blairite strategy of 'adaptation' - fiercely fought in France in favour of the strategy of 'resistance' - is the better one.

The article is accompanied by a poll on Le Monde's website asking A votre avis, la France devrait-elle ou non s'inspirer de la politique économique et sociale menée en Grande-Bretagne par Tony Blair? Basically: Should France follow the economic policy and social policy taken in Great Britain by Tony Blair?

(The poll was running at 47.1% yes, 48.5$ no and the rest undecided when I checked 5 minutes prior to posting this entry)

Iraq and the missing social democratic narrative

2005-05-02T23:34:00.000+01:00

Alan Johnson, from Labour Friends of Iraq has a good guest piece over at Harry's Place on Iraq and the Missing Social Democratic Narrative.

It would have been better if Labour had been bolder and had told a more compelling political narrative about Iraq much earlier (as well as admitting mistakes earlier and explaining them). The failure to do so has been one reason for the current state of the ‘debate’ and has blocked the coming home of many Labour supporters and activists. Blunt fact: home has to feel like home before you come back to it. Supporters will come home when they are convinced that what is happening now in Iraq can be understood in the terms of their own social democratic values and hopes.

Labour could be bold in articulating a social democratic vision in which events in Iraq can be understood: the removal of Saddam, the end of the Ba'ath, the return of the refugees, the joy of the Kurds, the religious freedoms now enjoyed by the Shia, the creation of a UN-backed political process, the 8 million voters in the January elections, a fantastic display of ‘purple power’, a new democratic assembly, one in three members of which are women, the rebirth of trade unionism and the labour movement, the rise of new democratic political parties, a relatively free press, the reflooding of the Marshlands, the return of the Marsh Arabs, the opening up of the mass graves, the beginning of a truth and justice process. The yearning for freedom, democratiya and social justice is spreading through the region and it is the only antidote to fundamentalism. It is the only real road to an end to terrorism.

Worth a read.

Wigton Fahrenheit 451

2005-05-02T00:19:00.000+01:00

This makes me uncomfortable: Book-burning event ignites controversy at literary festival.

Perhaps it is "purely a pragmatic decision" to burn some excess stock rather than stick it in a landfill site. Admittedly I always find it a bit sad to see a skipfull of books outside a library or 2nd hand bookstore waiting for removal, but I understand dispossing of books must be unavoidable. But to burn them? The imagery and symbolism is just so wrong.

"Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings" - Heinrich Heine

5 days to go

2005-05-01T12:14:00.000+01:00

David Aaronovitch in the Observer today:

Elections are blunt affairs. For example, if I want to vote for Blair, I actually have to vote for someone - Glenda Jackson in my case - who has called for him to resign. To vote for freedom for Iraq, I have to vote for someone who seems to me to be indifferent to it. And that's what I'll do. Because if you try sending messages at elections, it's quite likely that a message will come back to you. And it's this: don't mess about at elections.

And from the election leader, also in the Observer:

A problem for New Labour is that some of its most creditable achievements do not directly affect the middle classes whom Tony Blair wooed so assiduously to get elected in 1997. Since then, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the bottom 10 per cent of society are 10.8 per cent better off while the top tenth is 4.4 per cent worse off. New Labour, despite left-wing insistence to the contrary, has been quietly redistributing income as might be expected of a progressive government. Eight years of Labour rule have reversed the effects of the Tory decade that came before.

In other words middle class liberals can quite happily have their protest vote and when they wake up to the Tories on May 6th it doesn't matter a jot. They can have the self satisfaction of remaining "pure" and happily pocket the tax cuts while not being adversly impacted by less spending on the NHS, education and programmes for greater social equality. Maybe Labour should start targetting these voters in a language they understand and warn them that Tory immigration controls will make it harder to get a nanny or a house cleaner that can be paid under the minimum wage. Oh but dahling, the minimum wage could be gone too.
Back to the Observer leader:

A general election is about more than protest. It presents a choice between competing propositions for government. It is not a referendum on a single issue, nor a choice between the incumbent administration and an ideal one.

A vote should not be cast in protest but to endorse a party, and the only party that offers progressive government committed explicitly to ending poverty and building social justice is Labour. The way to get a Labour government in most constituencies is to turn out and vote for one.

So Vote Labour on May 5th and Don't Wake Up To the Tories

The crux of the matter

2005-04-28T13:25:00.000+01:00

A comment by Taziq posted on The Guardian election weblog.

The British press make me laugh. The War in Iraq (my own country I shall add) is not a game, it is not a question of whether or not Mr Blair saw the linesman waving his flag or not! Whatever the rules may say - however he and President Bush interpreted them - they have gotten rid of a man who murdered my fellow countrymen (and countrywomen) on an almost daily basis.

Please, would some of you who think that the war was such a bad idea, and who now debate whether or not it was or was not legal, tell me, were it not legal, should we still then have to suffer Hussein?

The Uncredibiles

2005-04-28T12:42:00.000+01:00

This is great, The Uncredibles. Prudent Rays....Must resist!

hat tip: The Salmon of Doubt

Timing is everything

2005-04-28T11:38:00.000+01:00

So it seems the Attorney General's advice had finally been leaked to the media.

The leak, coming when it has just a week before the election and the day after the Tories shifted their campaign focus from the pretty vile anti-immigrant discourse to a Blair lied one, meant my first thought was about fifth columnist Tory bastards in the civil service allied with a hostile media are seeking to destroy a Labour government (it wouldn't be the first time). The rational me would say that's unfair, but then gut reactions are not exactly rational thoughts. They are not always wrong either.

However on the subject of the Iraq war i'm pretty sure most people's minds are already made up one way or another and both sides have dug in to their position. At least from a personal perspective the legality (or otherwise) of the war was pretty low down on my list of considerations when thinking whether going to war was justified or not. That was the case in 2003 and it is still the case in 2005.

It's important not to forget either that the leak of the Attorney General's advice is not a smoking gun either. Lawyers often interpret the law and write proposition papers exploring the arguments against a policy that was to be followed. It's just exploring what the different legal opinions may be, playing Devil's Advocate.

Nice piece by Eric the Unred: A fairy tale on trust

A general theory of voting labour....or how i learned to stop worrying and love blogs

2005-04-27T12:30:00.000+01:00

From the rather good a General Theory of Rubbish blog, which I have just discoveredMore reasons to vote Labour.

for the muddle-classes and assorted nitwit liberals and professional gobshites who like to play the sophisticate, voting doesn't really matter and who you vote for is all a game.

This is one of the reasons why I'm becoming such a fan of blogs. With my friends and with much of the media (with only a few exceptions) I often feel very isolated in my politics, that I'm the only one who holds particular viewpoints on certain issues or see things in a particular way. It's like my teenage years as a Manic Street Preachers fan all over again! Apart from a period in the mid to late 90's, I was the only fan I knew and felt like the only person listening to their music - then i'd go to one of their gigs and it would be full of thousands of people like me, knowing all the words of all the songs that I had spent so many hours of my life listening to and obsessing over.

Labour, like the Manics, may not be quite what they used to be, but the feeling they are capable of good things above what their contemporaries are capable of still exists strongly. I may well be misguided, but I still believe. I may have bought their records or voted for them in the past but I could never believe in a Coldplay or a Liberal Democrats.

Or as a General Theory of Rubbish, puts it much better.

Ill-considered 'radicalism' leads to a reactionary position. To defend or support the Labour Party against the attacks of its enemies does not mean to defend each and every action of its leadership or each and every action of the government which is the instrument of the leadership. A 'totalitarian' concept of a defence or support of the Party is absurd. The distinction to make is that between actions that promote the interests of the working-class and those that are harmful, while nothing should ever be surrendered until it is irrevocably lost.

The Labour Party (despite everything) retains its character as a labour organisation. The other parties do not. The pathetic Liberals are nothing but Tories without their kicking boots on and act as Tories whenever they gain any power. Their potential for any radicalism is non-existent.

Hitchens on Blair - Long Live Labour

2005-04-26T22:37:00.000+01:00

A topical piece today in the Slate magazine by Christopher Hitchens on the British General Election and Why He's For Tony Blair.

On May 5, 40 years after I first took out a membership card, it will be possible, for the first time since the 1945 Labor victory that threw out the Churchill Tories, to vote Labor on a point of principle. Sixty years is a long time to wait, but the struggle for Iraq has decided the matter.

He then recognises the work of those on the pro-liberation Left in the UK like John Lloyd, Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Ann Clwyd who have stayed true to their principles and supported regime change and democratisation.

Then he goes onto to make the valuable point that Tony Blair is an ally, and not the poodle of George W. Bush, like his sneering critics would have us believe.

The commonest liberal and Tory jeer against Tony Blair—that he is George Bush's "poodle"—is self-evidently false. Far from being a ditto to Washington, it was Blair who leaned on Clinton and Albright to intervene in the Balkans, putting an end to the long and disgusting Tory appeasement of Slobodan Milosevic. Without asking for any American approval, Blair also decided to stand by Britain's treaty with Sierra Leone and to send troops to put down the barbaric invasion of the hand-loppers and diamond-dealers, based in Charles Taylor's Liberia, who were among other things the regional allies of al-Qaida. In 1999, when Bush was still an isolationist governor of Texas, Blair made a speech in Chicago pointing out that Saddam Hussein's defiance of international law made a future confrontation with him inevitable. After Sept. 11, 2001, Blair told Bush that he would send ground troops to Afghanistan even if the United States would not.

Following Mosley's East End footsteps...

2005-04-25T15:26:00.000+01:00

Following on from the Johann Hari report from Bethnal Green (I asked Galloway how many Muslims had been murdered by his friend Tari Aziz. The correct answer: even more than have been slaughtered by Ariel Sharon, or by Israel in 38 years of occupying Gaza and the West Bank. Galloway said, "Why don't you go and take some more drugs, you druggie?" ) , Nick Cohen's excellent piece on Galloway and the Respect coalition in last weekens Observer, Following Mosley's East End footsteps and the disagreement between the Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax and George Galloway here is an open letter from Kurdo's World addressed to the sleazy fascist apologist from Dundee.

An Open Letter to George Galloway: Re Salam Pax

Dear Mr. Galloway,

I know that you are campaigning hard to win the hearts and minds of the British public, and I wish you good luck in failing. I and many other people from Iraq, just like the father of the Iraqi blogs, Salam Pax, will never forget the scenes in which you were sitting and joking with Saddam Hussein on the screens of the Iraqi television.
We were wondering what you were laughing about. Were the jokes of the dictator who filled the lands and the rivers with mass graves, who terminated birds and rivers, who did not differentiate between a killing baby and a soldier, were his jokes too funny? Or were you laughing at the Iraqi people for having a leader like Saddam Hussein?!

I know that your Christmas wish was the return of Father Saddam to power, so that you can visit Baghdad again and laugh at our expenses, but I got good news for you, Father Saddam will never see daylight again nor your dreams.

The people of Iraq regardless of our ethnic and sectarian differences are happy about the removal of Saddam Hussein and are working hard to bring back peace and stability to our new baby democracy.
I know that many people in the world can not understand this and your harsh comment to Salam Pax that your country's troops have nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's removal and should not have intervened, are only adding more salt to our deep wounds.
I know you now will regard me as a Kurdish collaborator and accuse me, just like you accuse any freedom-loving and Saddam-hating person of Iraq of "selling your country".
We are not related to anyone in power in Iraq. We are just ordinary people loving freedom and democracy and want to live free just like anyone else in the world. We do not appreciate you stealing our cause and using it to steal the hearts and minds of the British public for your own benefits.

You traded with our cause when your friend, Saddam the killer, who you described as "calm, very calm indeed" ,was in power and now when he's locked up in jail, you continue to trade with our blood for your own benefits.

We are thankful for the forces of United States and United Kingdom and the rest of the world for getting rid of a dictator like Saddam Hussein. Many of us died and didn't live to see their long dream of a world-without Saddam, but those who are living today in that dream-come-true world, are not appreciating your works.

Warmest Regards
p.s. Tell me your birthday date I will send you a series of terror-DVDs filmed by Saddam' s men of killing and torturing innocent civilians including the most popular one "The Lion" in which Uday, the dead son of your friend, is giving a man to a lion for loving a girl Uday liked.

The Panzer Pope - Ratzi the Nazi?

2005-04-21T18:20:00.000+01:00

I don't think anyone can say for certain that Joseph Ratzinge or Pope Benedict XVI was an enthusiastic Nazi or anything close. What he did was similiar to what millions of other Germans (and lets not forget other Europeans) were to do during the period.

However, as far as I know, he has not commented on his time in the Hitler Youth, his service at the anti-aircraft battery guarding a factory staffed by slave labour except to say he was forced and never fired a shot because his dog ate his Luger or that he had a sore finger (to give this some perspective - only about 20% of soldiers involved in frontline battles during world war 2 actually fired their guns so not firing a shot was not unusual). But did he actually do anything for his supposed opposition to the Nazis? Did he resist on behalf of the Jews and the Poles and the Russians getting worked to death inside the place he was guarding? No.

There are of course very valid reasons why he didn't do anything positive to resist -indeed as i mentioned early his situation was little different to what many other Germans faced - they were never enthusiastic Nazis, but were governed by fear and could have faced terrible consequences had they had resisted actively. So they didn't do anything and just kept their head down. Of course they could still have followed the example of others and resisted but they didn't, however on the other hand they were not supportive of the Nazis either. That's a huge grey area of people not directly guilty of the worst Nazi crimes - but then not quite innocent either.

You would think that Ratzinger given his life experience, being brought up in a fascist state, being "forced" to join the Hitler Youth, being "forced" to man an anti-aircraft gun (etc) would demonstrate to him the fact that in many cases morality is not an absolute and that people's moral actions are shaped by the options available to them and their social circumstances and the historical position they find themselves in.

But according to Ratzinger himself such relativism and it's shades of grey between two absolutes is one of the greatest evils on the planet. So going on that basis and the logic with which he judges others on: Ratzinger didn't resist, he didn't do anything to prevent slave labour being worked to death in the BMW factory he was stationed at, so then does that mean he is complicit in the worst crimes of the Nazis and any shade of grey or extenuating circumstances should be dismissed?
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Are you seeing what we are seeing?

2005-04-12T16:50:00.000+01:00

Conservative parliamentary candidate Ed Matts has been caught altering a photograph put on his election material to ensure he was fully in line with the party's hardline stance on immigration.

Reminscent of an early time:

This is not a mission statement

2005-04-12T16:49:00.000+01:00

I'm not new to this weblog thing. I had an account with blogger about 6 or 7 years ago and for the last 3 years i've had a livejournal. In that time i've rambled incoherently on film, literature, football, cycling and general day to day nonsense and used various forums as my "political space" on the internet to debate and argue various issues.

I intend this blog (Politics, ya bass* ) to be an extension of this political space. If anyone happens to read what I write, then that is a bonus - but it doesn't matter that much because my aim is mainly just to gather a few thoughts that I have.

For those outwith the West of Scotland 'ya bass' is generally an abusive term partially associated with gang culture in Glasgow - It's either short of "you bastard" or is a corruption of an ancient Gaelic expression for "battle and die". I prefer the 2nd explanation and because it also sounds similiar to Ya Basta (an Italian co-operative/leftist movement) I thought this name would be appropriate. More honestly that explanation gives meaning to a name that I never intended to use - I must have tried over 100 different options before I could get one that hadn't already been registered on blogspot!