The Osterley Times

Monday, June 25, 2007

We must have a soul, new leader tells party

The fact that Gordon Brown was elected to be the new Prime Minister without having to fight anyone else for the crown has meant that for the past six weeks - whilst Blair was holding on to power doing his farewell tour - that attention has moved on to the Deputy Leadership election and away from the man who is now set to lead the UK.

Yesterday for the first time in six weeks, all that changed. Harriet Harman was named as Brown's deputy and the attention moved firmly back towards Brown.

In Manchester, he made a speech that introduced him to the British people and attempted to set out his values.

He set out the party's commitment to the NHS:

"I grew up in Kirkcaldy, the community I now represent in parliament ... I went to my local school and was one of the people in my class to get to university. When at 16 I suffered an injury and lost the sight in one eye, I was fortunate to have the NHS which saved the sight in my other. It is for me a matter of fundamental principle that the best education and health care I received should be there ... for all families in all parts of Britain.

And then he set out to show why this personal experience was the rock on which all of his values were built:

"All I believe and all I try to do comes from the values I grew up with: duty, honesty, hard work, family and respect for others. I am a conviction politician ... My conviction is that everyone deserves a fair chance in life ... that each of us has a responsibility to each other ... that when the strong help the weak it makes us all stronger. Call it the driving power of social conscience, call it the better angels of our nature, call it our moral sense, call it a belief in civic duty. I joined this party as a teenager because I believed in these values. They guide my work, they are my moral compass. This is who I am.

"And because these are the values of our party, too, the party I lead must have more than a set of policies - we must have a soul."

He then promised that housing would have a new urgency under his administration:

"Housing will be a priority. The housing minister will attend cabinet. This time the promise of a property-owning democracy must be open to all those wanting to get on the housing ladder. We need to build homes not just to own but to rent ... We can make affordable housing for all one of the great causes of our time."

He spoke of the scandal of child poverty saying that such a thing was unacceptable within the fourth largest economy in the world.

He hinted that he would not be withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, although he did emphasise where he thought the most important area was for tackling international terrorism:

"In Iraq, which all of us accept has been a divisive issue for our party and our country, in Afghanistan and the Middle East, we will meet our obligations, we will learn lessons that need to be learned, and at all times be unyielding in support for our dedicated armed forces.
"To isolate and defeat terrorist extremism now involves more than military force - it is also a struggle of ideas and ideals ... An essential contribution to this will be what becomes daily more urgent - a Middle East settlement upholding a two state solution."

I happen to agree that a Middle East solution between Israel and Palestine would do more to tackle international terrorism than any other action that we could take. But then, to be fair, even Tony Blair recognised the truth of that but had scant chance of making it reality based on the intransigence of the Bush administration on the subject.

Brown has had a passenger seat view for the past ten years of where Blair has succeeded and where Blair has had less success. Blair's greatest mistake was to tie himself to the tail of the tiger, making Bush's foreign policy his own and reducing his ability to influence the American's in any significant way.

Brown now gets a chance to begin that relationship anew, tying the British presence in Iraq and Afghanistan to movement on the Middle East peace plan. Threatening to leave the US isolated should Bush not make some real and substantive attempt to bring about peace between Israel and Palestine.

I have no idea whether or not Brown will have the courage to attempt to do this, but the goalpost is in front of him.

What I do suspect is that Britain's relationship with the United States is about to subtly change. Brown is well aware of the price that Blair paid for his close relationship to Bush's White House and to how badly that White House repaid Blair for all his loyalty.

He is unlikely to repeat those same mistakes.

A new era begins.

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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Viewers get whitewashed version of history

Antonia Zerbisias has an article in The Star about a new documentary shown on PBS, covering the events of The Six Day War to commemorate the 40 year anniversary, and tells how two very different versions of it were created. A French version seen in Europe, and an American version, which was only seen in North America including Canada.

It's no wonder Americans have a view of the Middle East that differs so starkly from Europe if they are being fed such edited tosh. She writes:

The perfect illustration is a stunning $1.2 million Canada-Israel-France co-production, Six Days in June. Fast-paced and rich with archival footage, its stories are told not by "experts," nor pundits, nor academics. The people who we see are witnesses – as fighters, journalists, politicians, diplomats, refugees or survivors.
Two not-so-subtly different versions have already aired this week. Both about two hours in length, one ran in French, on CBC's sister networks Radio-Canada and the all-news RDI, the other in English on PBS. (A three-hour edition also aired to rave reviews in Israel.)
The PBS version repeats Sunday at 3 a.m.on WNED.
The French edition is what Montreal-based producer Ina Fichman calls the "international version," which was sold to Italy's RAI, Australia's SBS and elsewhere.
It depicts, among other historical facts, the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians by the Israeli army, a move the narrator delicately describes as "the first change to the demographics of the West Bank." It shows, through the eyes of a former Arab resident and an Israeli who photographed the event, that, where large villages stood, now are forests (many planted with Canadian charitable donations).
There is also a sequence, as related by the American-born Abdullah Schleifer, editor of Palestine News, as well as an Arab whose home was destroyed, about the overnight razing of a 700-year-old Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem by the triumphant Israeli defence minister, General Moshe Dayan.
"When I saw this destruction, there was a part of me that felt tremendous dread, that a whole new problem was going to be created,'' says Schleifer. He says this in the PBS version as well, but the horrifying context is stripped away for American sensibilities.
"PBS is really not a liberal left-wing broadcaster," says Fichman. "It's subscription and sponsor-based, with members of the Jewish community among its supporters."
Fichman said that PBS demanded entire scenes and sequences come out, and others be softened.
The sad part is that, unless the feature-length "director's cut" by Israeli-born filmmaker Ilan Ziv gets distribution, Canadians will not get to view what the rest of the world, including Israel, has.
CBC-TV, for example, did not buy it because PBS already had North American rights. The film also did not fit with its focus on "contemporary political and social issues."
And so, we get the whitewashed version of history. Not surprising.
As the narrator says, "The Six-Day War will prove to be an unfinished war, just one battle in a conflict that has never ended.

There's really nothing to add to that. The facts speak for themselves.

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Britain hails EU deal

Well, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about this. Britain is hailing a new deal achieved at the EU after Blair won a legal exemption from a new rights charter for the UK.

Tony Blair achieved his aim of an explicit declaration in the proposed treaty that the European Court of Justice will not be able to use the Charter of Fundamental Rights to change British law. The declaration stated: “For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in the charter creates justifiable rights applicable to the UK except in so far as the UK has provided for such rights in its national law.”

And that's good, right? Europeans will enjoy rights that the UK government can deny their citizens if they choose.

As a parting gift from this particular Prime Minister there's something oddly appropriate about this. I think I'm getting all misty eyed here. It's like being body searched by Tony for the last ever time.

Thankfully, Brown immediately intervened and demanded that some things be reversed. He'd noticed that the changes to the preamble of the treaty now commits the EU to “an internal market” but omits the condition “where competition is free and undistorted” and demanded that this be rectified.

On British citizens being potentially denied the same rights as other EU member's citizens... Gordon was strangely quiet.

The more things change....

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Blair tells Pope: Now I'm ready to become a Catholic

The fact that Tony Blair is set to convert to Catholicism once he leaves Number Ten has to be one of the worst kept secrets in politics. It was already known that he attended Catholic mass every Sunday; indeed, he had to be asked to stop receiving Holy Communion on the grounds that he wasn't actually a Catholic.

Now, as he completes the longest goodbye tour in the history of British politics he's popped into the Vatican to give the Pope the good news. However, Benedict doesn't appear exactly chuffed to hear that Blair is joining the ranks and the meeting is reported to have been "frank" which is highly unusual language to describe a meeting with the pontiff, whose meetings are usually described as "cordial".

But, in talks lasting more than half an hour, the outgoing Prime Minister was left in no doubt that the Pope took a dim view of his record in office. A statement issued afterwards by the Vatican said there had been a 'frank exchange of views'.

Vatican sources said the Pope remained unmoved in his view that Blair had been wrong over Iraq. To an even greater extent than his predecessor, Benedict feels that Catholic politicians cannot separate their public lives from their private.

This can hardly have been the reaction that Blair was hoping for. These religious people really don't seem to get it, objecting to a few hundred thousand deaths as if it's a big deal. I mean, I know the commandments include, "Thou shalt not kill" but do we have to be so literal about it?

I mean, if Benedict is going to insist on such things the Catholic Church might lose this valuable asset. Not since the Crusades has there been a Christian this keen to resume the battle.

And, after all, he's leaving the PM job soon so can't they just agree that if he kills anymore then those sins will count and wipe the slate clean of everything else?

Alastair Campbell once famously told Blair that the British people "don't do God". If the Pope remains such a stickler for the rules, then Blair may very well decide that neither does he.

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Harold Ford, Jr. Allows Hannity To Smear Democrats

Harold Ford, Jr., was silent as Sean Hannity accused Democrats of emboldening the enemy and betraying our troops. No wonder FOX News found him more appealling than Gen. Wesley Clark, who was supposedly replaced by Ford.

The Middle East doesn't need Blair

Ian Williams covers the same issue as Fisk covered yesterday, The nightmare thought of Blair as the international community's envoy to the Middle East.

In response to a news story, Tony Snow, Bush's spokesman, denied that Tony Blair was being considered for a position of special representative for the Middle East quartet. So, based on Snow's record for obscuring issues, it must be true.

It would be the final epitaph for a quartet that has already proven to be a quadruple diplomatic paraplegic.

To be fair, Blair does realize the primacy of the Israel-Palestinian issue for peace in the region. It is indeed the blockage in the regional U-bend that needs clearing before any other issues there can be seriously addressed.

But knowing what the problem is, does not translate into knowing the solution, let alone being the solution. He has tried to tell George W. Bush this repeatedly - but with clearly limited success.

Blair has consistently done whatever Bush wanted him to do. When he took British forces into Iraq, it was with clear knowledge of the ineptitude of the White House but he nursed the fond illusion that his support would give him a hand on the steering wheel - and then he found that runaway trains do not have steering capacity, and no working brakes either.

His behaviour since he forced Robin Cook out of the foreign office follows a similar track, of coupling his wagon to the runaway Bush train. Once upon a time, even during the Reagan era, Margaret Thatcher had no compunction in having Britain vote with the rest of the world against the US on Middle East issues. Since Blair chopped Cook, on any occasion when the US has vetoed a resolution in the UN security council, British diplomats have abstained.

In the EU, that has translated into tacit support for the American-Israeli positions. Diplomats from countries like Germany complain that even when Israeli depredations horrify them, they cannot be more critical of Israel than the British. That has shifted the formerly even-handed EU consensus into the American camp.

The invertebracy of the EU has, as UN Envoy Alvaro de Soto demonstrated, helped the UN fall into the American-Israeli line. That accounts for three legs of the quartet and has left the Russians, who no longer really have a dog in the fight, as the half-hearted hold-outs, making the quartet a fig leaf for American positions.

But consider also Blair's personal position. One of the reasons he is leaving office is that he accepted the fund raising talents of Lord Levy, whose imaginative dangling of peerages for pounds attracted the attention of Scotland Yard. One should remember that his lordship was originally enticed to finance Blair's leadership campaign with the promise that it would be good for Israel for him to do so. And in return Blair made him Britain's special envoy for the Middle East.

When it came to the Lebanon war last year, Blair stood alongside with the US and Israel in resisting a ceasefire for a month during which millions of cluster bombs rained down on Southern Lebanon.He not only backed the wrong side in moral terms, he backed the losing side. This does not augur well for his announced career path.

It has been reported that Abbas has accepted Blair's nomination. That would be the beleaguered president of Palestine whose party lost the legislative elections and has accepted Israeli and American aid to oust the victors.

Blair has shown consistently that he has no influence with the White House on any important issue and will not even try to influence the Israelis. In the unlikely event that he has a blank cheque from the White House, he could do something useful. But it looks much more like the White House tossing him a diplomatic dime because there are vestigial memories of him doing them an occasional good service.

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Cheney thinks he is above the law

The vice president's office claims it doesn't have to comply with the National Archives because Dick Cheney is his own branch of government. Dana Milbank weighs in.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Robert Fisk: How can Blair possibly be given this job?

I am pleased that Fisk has written about this. I was going to write about it but simply find the whole proposal depressing beyond words.

It has already been established that Blair came into office knowing very about the Middle East and that he was schooled on the subject by Lord Levy. Nice to know he studied at the feet of such an unbiased source, a source who he then went on to make our envoy to the Middle East.

He then decided that the Labour Party should become pro-Israel, so we can already see why Olmert and Bush are keen to have him as the international community's Middle East envoy. That's really what we need at the moment, another pro-Isreali representing all of us in future Middle East negotiations to create the new state of Palestine, eh? Blair has already denounced Arafat for turning down the Great Offer That Never Was saying, "It's the best offer he'll ever get", so we can imagine what side of the fence - or should that be Wall? - he's going to come down on.

Normally, I disagree with Fisk on at least one point during his articles, but in this case I agree with every word.

I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create "Palestine". I checked the date - no, it was not 1 April - but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being "our" Middle East envoy.

Can this really be true? I had always assumed that Balfour, Sykes and Picot were the epitome of Middle Eastern hubris. But Blair? That this ex-prime minister, this man who took his country into the sands of Iraq, should actually believe that he has a role in the region - he whose own preposterous envoy, Lord Levy, made so many secret trips there to absolutely no avail - is now going to sully his hands (and, I fear, our lives) in the world's last colonial war is simply overwhelming.

Of course, he'll be in touch with Mahmoud Abbas, will try to marginalise Hamas, will talk endlessly about "moderates"; and we'll have to listen to him pontificating about morality, how he's absolutely and completely confident that he's doing the right thing (and this, remember, is the same man who postponed a ceasefire in Lebanon last year in order to share George Bush's ridiculous hope of an Israeli victory over Hizbollah) in bringing peace to the Middle East...

Not once - ever - has he apologised. Not once has he said he was sorry for what he did in our name. Yet Lord Blair actually believes - in what must be a record act of self-indulgence for a man who cooked up the fake evidence of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" - that he can do good in the Middle East.

For here is a man who is totally discredited in the region - a politician who has signally failed in everything he ever tried to do in the Middle East - now believing that he is the right man to lead the Quartet to patch up "Palestine".

In the hunt for quislings to do our bidding - ie accept even less of Mandate Palestine than Arafat would stomach - I suppose Blair has his uses. His unique blend of ruthlessness and dishonesty will no doubt go down quite well with our local Arab dictators.

And I have a suspicion - always assuming this extraordinary story is not untrue - that Blair will be able to tour around Damascus, even Tehran, in his hunt for "peace", thus paving the way for an American exit strategy in Iraq. But "Palestine"?

The Palestinians held elections - real, copper-bottomed ones, the democratic variety - and Hamas won. But Blair will presumably not be able to talk to Hamas. He'll need to talk only to Abbas's flunkies, to negotiate with an administration described so accurately this week by my old colleague Rami Khoury as a "government of the imagination".

The Americans are talking - and here I am quoting the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack - about an envoy who can work "with the Palestinians in the Palestinian system" to develop institutions for a "well-governed state". Oh yes, I can see how that would appeal to Lord Blair. He likes well-governed states, lots of "terror laws", plenty of security - though I'm still a bit puzzled about what the "Palestinian system" is meant to be.

It was James Wolfensohn who was originally "our" Middle East envoy, a former World Bank president who left in frustration because he could neither reconstruct Gaza nor work with a "peace process" that was being eroded with every new Jewish settlement and every Qassam rocket fired into Israel. Does Blair think he can do better? What honeyed words will we hear?

I bet he doesn't mention the Israeli wall which is taking so much extra land from the Palestinians. It will be a "security barrier" or a "fence" (like the famous Berlin "fence" which was actually called a "security barrier" by those generous East German Vopo cops of the time).

There will be appeals for restraint "on all sides", endless calls for "moderation", none at all for justice (which is all the people of the Middle East have been pleading for over the past 100 years).

And Israel likes Lord Blair. Indeed, Blair's slippery use of language is likely to appeal to Ehud Olmert, whose government continues to take Arab land for Jews and Jews only as he waits to discover a Palestinian with whom he can "negotiate", Mahmoud Abbas now having the prestige of a rabbit after his forces were crushed in Gaza.

Which of "Palestine"'s two prime ministers will Blair talk to? Why, the one with a collar and tie, of course, who works for Mr Abbas, who will demand more "security", tougher laws, less democracy.

I have never been able to figure out why the Middle East draws the Balfours and the Sykeses and the Blairs into its maw. Once, our favourite trouble-shooter was James Baker - who worked for George W's father until the Israelis got tired of him - and before that we had a whole list of UN Secretary Generals who visited the region, frowned and warned of serious consequences if peace did not soon come.

I recall another man with Blair's pomposity, a certain Kurt Waldheim, who - no longer the UN's boss - actually believed he could be an "envoy" for peace in the Middle East, despite his little wartime career as an intelligence officer for the Wehrmacht's Army Group "E".

His visits - especially to the late King Hussein - came to nothing, of course. But Waldheim's ability to draw a curtain over his wartime past does have one thing in common with Blair. For Waldheim steadfastly, pointedly, repeatedly, refused to acknowledge - ever - that he had ever done anything wrong. Now who does that remind you of?

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No End in Sight.

NOW's Coverage of the Documentary "No End in Sight" Part 1

NOW's Coverage of the Documentary "No End in Sight" Part 2

NOW's Coverage of the Documentary "No End in Sight" Part 3

Guantanamo Splits Administration

Whenever the Bush administration find themselves facing some intractable problem that harms their image abroad, the hand of the worst and most powerful Vice President in American history is never found too far from the wheel.

There are reports in both The Independent and The Washington Post that Bush is keen to shut down the facility at Guantanamo Bay before he leaves office. Which is the least he could do for any successor, after all he is already leaving them an intractable war in Iraq.

The facility at Guantanamo has already proved an embarrassment to many leading Republicans.

President Bush has said he would like the prison to close its doors as soon as is feasible, and Robert Gates and Condoleezza Rice, the secretaries of Defence and State, have indicated their opposition to it.

General Colin Powell, who was the secretary of state when the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, said on Sunday that he thought the facility should be closed and the prisoners moved to jails on the US mainland.

The Democratic opposition to this facility has, naturally, been even harsher:

Guantanamo was not merely a problem but "an international disgrace that every day continues to sully this great nation's reputation", Steny Hoyer, the majority leader and the second ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, said this week.

The Washington Post pointed out that the problems to shutting it down were what to do with the remaining people held there.

Key discussions have centered on how to repatriate roughly 75 remaining detainees who have been cleared for release or transfer, how to put roughly 80 detainees on trial following major failures in the Military Commissions Act, and where to indefinitely hold an additional 220 detainees the government deems too dangerous to release.

Now, obviously I disagree with any attempt of the US to hold 220 people "indefinitely". The American system was designed precisely to avoid ever giving an American president the powers of a British King, which is exactly the power that Bush is claiming he has when he states that he can pronounce a person "an enemy combatant" and hold them "indefinitely".

Leaving that aside, who is the person who appears to be opposing the move to shut Guantanamo and bring the remaining prisoners to the American mainland? Well, wouldn't you just know it?

While there have been preliminary talks of bringing them to military detention centers in the United States, there has been significant opposition from Vice President Cheney.

The man who voted to keep Nelson Mandela in jail never fails to be on the wrong side of any issue, arguing "against moving Guantanamo detainees to the United States because it would immediately grant the alleged terrorists habeas corpus rights, which would launch another round of legal battles in U.S. federal courts."

If Cheney feels that he is so right concerning how these men should be treated, why is he so afraid of ever having this matter tested before US federal courts?

I suspect it's because he knows that the powers that he claims the President possesses "at a time of war" would not stand up to court scrutiny. After all, the war time powers that certain right wingers are claiming belong to the President were never designed for a war of this kind; a sort of amorphous war with without end; indeed, a conflict which some on the right appear to regard as a "perpetual war".

So, for this reason Cheney and some on the right would rather keep Guantanamo open, despite the fact that it's continued existence greatly harms the US's ability to argue for the expansion of human rights across the globe.

As the outrage has grown, US officials increasingly find that when they press for greater human rights around the world, their arguments are undercut by critics who point to how detainees have been held at the prison for five years or more without charge, in effect incommunicado and without the right of habeas corpus.

Colin Powell took apart Cheney's argument most succinctly last Sunday when he pointed out that every person in every jail in America has had access to lawyers and that, if the US have evidence against the men that it wishes to hold indefinitely, then it need have no fear of putting them in front of a court of law. He also pointed out that Guanatanamo was damaging the US much more than it was aiding it.

Cheney would have the US accept the damage that Guantanamo Bay is doing to it's reputation in order to continue to argue that George Bush has, in effect, the powers of a British King. That's about as un-American as you can get. Especially as one of the reasons that the US has been so admired around the world was because they fought their war of independence against the Brits and wrote their constitution precisely to say that their President didn't have those powers.

So the argument will rumble on and, as always, Cheney will be on the wrong side of it.

Goldsmith steps down days before Brown becomes PM

Dear God, it's like the equivalent of a clear out sale at Number Ten.

We all knew Blair was going and that Prescott would, likewise, have to walk the plank; but then John Reid announced that he too was leaving, I presume because having been such a Blair loyalist that he would find it impossible to work under Gordon Brown.

And then suddenly last night the announcement that the Attorney General is also handing in his post. If I was Brown I'd want a surveyor to check the building for subsidence, as that's an awful lot of people suddenly saying, "I'm off!"

However, as Goldsmith heads back to the lucrative bar he gave up in order to serve under Blair, he does so as the most controversial Attorney General that has served in my lifetime.

His surprise announcement, released just before 9.30 last night, ends a six-year career dogged by controversy.

In 2003 he drew fierce criticism for his apparent change of mind over the legality of the war on Iraq, giving the impression that he had been leaned on by the US and Number 10. He issued a terse statement saying the war would be lawful without a further UN resolution, only to have his longer, much more equivocal opinion given only 10 days earlier eventually leaked.
His Iraq troubles were followed by a furore over his insistence on retaining the final say in whether prosecutions of senior Labour figures should go ahead in the loans-for-peerages case.
His reputation was further battered by revelations over his part in halting a Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged corruption by BAE Systems in the Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

The story of Goldsmith's time served as Attorney General will no doubt be the subject of many books in future years, when we all hope to find out the truth about just what happened before the Iraq war. Why did the Attorney General change his mind regarding the legality of the conflict without a second resolution? Who leant on him? The US? Tony himself?

In an exchange of letters with Mr Blair, he said: "I wanted to put on record how honoured and proud I have been to have served in this role. At just over six years, my term of office has been the longest of any Labour attorney general. It hardly needs saying that during that period we have faced a host of challenges, many of them raising important legal questions ... conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight against terrorism, the balancing of individual rights and collective security, continuing constitutional reform, and the great progress towards peace and stability in Northern Ireland."
Mr Blair replied that he discharged his role "at all times with integrity and professionalism ... You have shown an unwavering commitment to the importance of the rule of law and human rights. You have also made a huge contribution to the government's success in improving the criminal justice system."

The scandal of Blair's legacy in the criminal justice system is something that I will reserve for another post, but suffice to say that - under this Attorney General - a shift of gravity took place, replacing the central concern of presumption of innocence with the Blair theme of "protecting the victim", a nuanced shift that, made the presumption of innocence less important than it has ever been before in the British criminal justice system.

There are many things that Blair has done which I regard as positive. But his failings have been the Iraq war and the effect that he has had on the criminal justice system.

Both of those immense failings have, to a large degree, been carried out with the assistance of the Attorney General.

So Brown can be grateful that he gets to start his term in office with the current Attorney General falling on his sword.

Goldsmith was an appalling Attorney General, a friend of Blair's who seemed not to understand that his role was to advise the government of legal matters whilst remaining almost above the government. Goldsmith went the way of Gonzales in the United States and started acting as if he was Tony Blair's personal lawyer, which was a complete abdication of his responsibilities.

When a letter was leaked from the Solicitor-General's office during the Westland helicopter crisis, the then Attorney General, Sir Michael Havers, was so enraged that he threatened to send the police into Number Ten unless Thatcher immediately launched an enquiry, which she promptly did. This was a moment which illustrates the independence of that great office.

When Goldsmith was faced with a war which was illegal without a second UN resolution, he took advice from the only international lawyer in Britain who would tell him what he wanted to hear and then presented this as a case for the legality of the war, a case that even Goldsmith conceded might not hold up in court. However, by appearing to argue that there was a case for saying that the war was legal, he gave Blair the wriggle room he needed to loudly proclaim that the Attorney General had pronounced the war "legal".

Both Blair and Goldsmith then hid behind the traditional secrecy given to the Attorney General's advice and refused to discuss the matter further.

As I say, historians will pick over what Goldsmith did for decades to come. But, for the moment, I will simply say good riddance to bad rubbish.

An appalling Attorney General has stood down. Let the celebrations begin.

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Friday, June 22, 2007

OVP: Our Fourth Branch of Government?

Has there ever been a more preposterous Vice President than this one?

Thanks to Crooks and Liars.

Abbas demands final status talks or nothing as he heads to Egypt summit

Well, well, well.

It seems Abbas has not learned the rules. Bush and Rice have lauded him as "the President of all the Palestinians" and Olmert has let it be known that he is anxious to have talks with him. Of course, this is a dreadful nonsense, Olmert has no intention of holding talks about anything more meaningful than "Palestinian terrorism", he certainly doesn't have any plans to talk about borders or of Israel handing back land.

Indeed, he stated recently that he wanted to see Abbas form a "credible and serious administration", which I certainly took to be an administration that knew it's place. And now Abbas makes his first demand:

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, is demanding that next Monday's scheduled summit with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, contains a discussion over "final status" talks on a future Palestinian state, Palestinian officials said yesterday.

The two leaders are scheduled to meet in Sharm el Sheikh on Monday at an Arab-Israel summit designed to boost the Western-backed strategy of shoring-up Mr Abbas in the West Bank while isolating Hamas in Gaza.

Mr Abbas is reportedly insisting that the summit, hosted by Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, will be fruitless if it does not set in train a process aimed at a final resolution of the key issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said: "We need to deliver the end of occupation, a Palestinian state. If we don't have hope, Hamas will export despair to the people."

It's like no-one has told Abbas that he has just performed a US/Israeli backed coup against the democratically elected government chosen by the people of Palestine. I doubt his new masters will appreciate this biting of the hand that feeds him, especially as they are backing him at a time when the UN refuses to accept this US/Israeli version of events thanks to the objections of Russia, South Africa, Indonesia and Qatar.

UN sources in New York said that these countries' governments object to the anti-Hamas policy and to American and European efforts to isolate the group as a terror organization. They said that Russia and South Africa have questioned the legitimacy of the Palestinian emergency government and argued that a Palestinian unity government is not only still possible, but would be preferable to the emergency government headed by Fayad, which has authority in the West Bank only.

The South African ambassador argued that the international community, especially the U.S., Israel and the Quartet, are to blame for the situation in the Gaza Strip.

So the USraelis are backing Abbas against international opposition... and he chooses this as the moment to make his demands?

Frankly, despite my misgivings towards his administration's legitimacy, I happen to think Abbas has a point. Why, with events in Palestine in such flux, would there be any point in holding yet another useless meeting where nothing of any import is decided? But I hardly think that this point is going to go down well in either Washington or Tel Aviv.

The Israelis are prepared to release the tax funds that they have been illegally withholding from the PA in "a gesture of goodwill" towards him, but I rather suspect that's as far as they are prepared to go. They certainly have no intentions of holding final status negotiations with him. Israel and the US would much rather hold talks about whether to hold talks. They certainly don't want to decide anything or do something as rash as establishing peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Where the Hell did Abbas get that idea?

No, no, no. Israel would much rather ask Abbas to carry out a number of unachievable tasks before any such talks can usefully take place.

The implication is that Israel might be prepared to curb raids aimed at hunting militants in the West Bank and pull back its troops if Mr Abbas and his Fatah-dominated forces - perhaps augmented by Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militants - are prepared to maintain what Israel would consider a sufficiently high level of security.

Now this might sound like a difficult task, but one only has to look towards Iraq to see how easily the US have managed to curb militants in that country to witness the example which Abbas should follow. And if he doesn't manage to cut down the militant attacks with the same level of precision as the Americans have achieved in Iraq he should be deemed to be a failure.

Of course, Olmert's option is unachievable, which is the very reason that he is proffering it. It is yet another hoop that Olmert wants Abbas to jump through before talks can begin. It's a giant fucking red herring, laid out to prevent final status talks from ever happening.

But Abbas is cutting to the chase. He has to, for he must surely know that his administration lacks legitimacy and that it's only a matter of time before Hamas and the international community insist on further elections. Elections that Abbas knows he might, yet again, lose.

So the USraelis have a problem. Their puppet administrator is already getting ideas above his station, demanding things that they have no intention of giving him. I mean, to listen to Abbas talking, you would swear that George Bush had called for a state of Palestine within five years or something.

How will Washington and Tel Aviv get him to toe the line? "Oh wait! He says if we don't give him what he wants then he'll refuse to attend any meetings. We don't want any meetings anyway. Result! Let him walk away and we can condemn him as making demands that were neither serious nor credible. And then Israel's long, lonely search for a partner in peace can begin anew."

Phew! For a moment that was worrying.

Click title for full article.

US predicts regime change in Zimbabwe as hyperinflation destroys the economy

Zimbabwe's inflation is set to hit 1.5m% by the end of the year, making money within that country a useless currency, forcing people to resort to bartering and, in all likelihood, driving Mugabe from office. At least those are the predictions of the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe.

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Christopher Dell said prices were going up twice a day, sapping popular confidence in a government which is now "committing regime change on itself".
"I believe inflation will hit 1.5m% by the end of 2007, if not before," Mr Dell said. "I know that sounds stratospheric but, looking at the way things are going, I believe it is a modest forecast."

Officials in Zimbabwe say the inflation rate is 4,500% but experts say they are massaging the figures and that the real rate currently stands at around 11,000% .

"Prices are going up twice a day, in some cases doubling several times a week," said Mr Dell, who is approaching the end of his posting to Zimbabwe. "It destabilises everything. People have completely lost faith in the currency and that means they have lost faith in the government that issues it.
"By carrying out disastrous economic policies, the Mugabe government is committing regime change upon itself," he said. "Things have reached a critical point. I believe the excitement will come in a matter of months, if not weeks. The Mugabe government is reaching end game, it is running out of options."

Mugabe may very well bring himself down, but one is still left wondering why Mbeki of South Africa has stood silently on the sidelines whilst this dictator took his country to the dogs. Mbeki is the only man who could have brought Mugabe to his knees. All he had to do was publicly oppose him, to speak out against the myriad of atrocities that this vile man has carried out, but Mbeki has chosen silence and cowardice at every turn. It really is a shameful stain on the African continent.

I have been left stunned at how much Mugabe has got away with.

Edward Chikombo, the cameraman who took the pictures of badly injured opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, was found murdered and Mbeki said nothing.

Zimbabwe's unions called a two day strike, literally risking their lives in the hope of intervention from somewhere, and Mbeki said nothing.

Zimbabwe's Catholic Bishops broke with their traditional silence to call Mugabe's regime, "racist, corrupt and lawless" and compared the struggle to remove him from power with the struggle to free the country from white rule. And still Mbeki stayed silent.

He has used hit squads to beat up opposition leaders, he has confiscated their passports in an attempt to stop them from telling the outside world of the atrocities that he is engaging in and, still, Mbeki has remained silent.

He has even threatened US and UK diplomats with expulsion for daring to criticise his actions and still Mbeki has said nothing.

We have watched a lunatic take his country to the brink of despair and beyond and now we will thank ourselves that the madman appears to be bringing about his own demise.

The only hope now is that, as hyperinflation takes hold, his own army might be forced to betray him. After all, they will be feeling the effects of this the same as everyone else.

Hyperinflation is spreading poverty, as even basic goods become unaffordable. Supermarket trollies lie idle as few can afford to buy more than a handful of goods. Government regulations only permit the withdrawals from banks of Z$1.5m a day, which is not enough to buy a week's worth of groceries.
Golfers pay for drinks before they set off on their round, because the price will have gone up by the time they have finished the 18th hole. One Zimbabwean was recently told by a pension company that it would no longer send him statements as his fund was worth less than the price of a stamp.

And it is this hyperinflation which has led to cracks, at last, appearing in the ranks:

Mr Dell, 51, who has had a tumultuous three years as ambassador to Zimbabwe, said that Mr Mugabe faced further trouble from his army, which used to be considered solidly loyal to the president. Last week six men, including an army private and a retired senior officer, were charged in court with plotting against the president. He said the allegations of the coup plot show divisions within Mr Mugabe's ruling party, Zanu-PF.
"I don't believe it was a real coup plot. I think it shows one side of Zanu-PF plotting against the other. The bitter factional infighting is now dragging in the military. That cannot be good news for Mugabe," said Mr Dell.

Dell continues to hope that Mbeki's scheme for compromise between Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change might lead to a peaceful resolution of this problem, but I find that hopelessly optimistic.

Having gone to the wire I suspect the end of this will be bloody. Mugabe will not negotiate and will face upheaval from within his own armed forces. For a while he will attack some of them as terrorists and traitors and, for a while, he will get away with it; but eventually the whole bloody edifice will fall.

At that point I suspect that we will hear praise for Mbeki's vision, for his far sighted plan. But it will all be a lie. The truth will be that Mugabe brought himself down whilst Africa's other leaders sat around watching him, terrified to challenge.

It's no wonder that he holds them in such contempt.

Click title for full article.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Iraqi Labor Leaders Blame US for the Bloodshed in Iraq and say Get Out!

Two Iraqi Labour leaders, who are in Philadelphia as part of a U.S. tour sponsored by a coalition of American labor unions called U.S. Labor Against the War, have said that the US is the cause of most of the violence in Iraq and are demanding that they leave.

Some of the points they raise are very hard to argue with.

“Did the occupier find us fighting each other when they came to Iraq?” asks Hashmeya, who is president of the Electric Utility Workers Union of Iraq. “No. The fighting among Iraqis started two and a half years after the Americans came.”

Faleh, general secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union based in Basra, agrees, saying that while the U.S. claims to be trying to quell the violence, “actually, since the U.S. has come into Iraq, they have done everything they could to encourage sectarian strife.” He asks, if Iraqis are just a bunch of sectarian fanatics, “How did we manage to get along in the past?”

They also claim that the violence in Iraq is being misrepresented by US television networks who, they claim, give the impression that the violence is mostly Iraqi fighting Iraqi.

Of an average 1000 attacks in Iraq each week, only about 30 are by Iraqis against other Iraqis. The rest are attacks on American and British forces.

Astonishingly, Union membership in Iraq has grown since the invasion despite a ban on Union membership started under Saddam and continued by Paul Bremner. And one of things causing membership to grow is opposition to the Bush plan to pass Iraq's new oil laws, which ordinary Iraqis realise is simply a way to pass their oil into a foreign company's hands.

But the workers are having some success, even when their own government threaten them.

Faleh says his union recently won a victory when its members struck in Basra in opposition to the oil privatization plan. “The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the workers surrounded, and ordered the army to attack and arrest the strikers,” he says, “but the commander of the Basra region refused and said he would “not arrest anyone who loves Iraq.” At the commander’s urging, the government agreed to put off action on an oil industry law until October, and to sit down and negotiate with the union. Faleh called the action a “big victory” for the union movement.

It seems even the commander of the Basra region realises that opposing Iraq's new oil law might actually be an act of the deepest patriotism.

Faleh also warned that an attack on Iran would increase the violence in Iraq even beyond it's present horror.

Not that any of us have any faith that Bush and Co will listen to such sensible advice. Especially if it's coming from union men, who they no doubt see as socialists wasters.

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Podhoretz "hopes and prays" that the US will bomb Iran.

This is simply reprehensible. Listen to the casual way that Podhoretz "hopes and prays" that the US will bomb Iran. And, lest we forget, no-one has ever proven that Iran are even developing a nuclear weapon. But none of this bothers Podhoretz, who blithely calls for the deaths for thousands of people.

Also note that he thinks Britain should have threatened to "bomb the Iranians to smithereens" over the capture of British sailors. This is an incident which was resolved within weeks with no loss of life, but Podhoretz thinks that threatening to "bomb the Iranians to smithereens" was the more sensible option. Unbelievable...

He also, rather bizarrely, accuses the Iranians of using torture as a tactic. I presume his dislike of this is the fact that it is Iranians who are doing the torturing as he certainly doesn't seem to object to Americans who use such tactics. Indeed, he complains that attempts are being made to stop them from torturing:

Both domestic opposition and the international community, unhappily, are "defining torture down. The things they're calling 'torture' now have never been and have no business being considered torture." He keeps on: "It is an effort to disarm us that's succeeding to a frightening extent. No, it's worse than that. They're trying to make it impossible to fight terrorism. . . . Every weapon that's been developed to protect us from terrorism, and the Iraqis from internal terrorism, is under assault."

Oh, and you'll note he also gets in the tired Hitler analogy. The sooner these neo-cons nuts are kicked out of power the safer the whole world will be.

Fareed Zakaria

Carter Blasts US Policy on Palestinians as "criminal"

Former President Carter has called the behaviour of the US and Israel "criminal" in the way they have sought to undermine the democratically elected Hamas government.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, said the Bush administration's refusal to accept Hamas' 2006 election victory was "criminal."

Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas' moderate Fatah movement.

Hamas fighters routed Fatah in their violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last week. The split prompted Abbas to dissolve the power-sharing government with his rivals in Hamas and set up a Fatah-led administration to govern the West Bank.

Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas' new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an "effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples."

"All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there's no effort from the outside to bring the two together," he said.

The U.S. and European countries cut off the Hamas-led government last year because of the Islamic militant group's refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel. They have continued to send humanitarian aid to Gaza through the United Nations and other organizations.

In the latest crisis, the U.S., Israel and much of the West have been trying to shore up Abbas in hopes that the West Bank can be made into a democratic example that would bring along Gaza.

During his speech to Ireland's annual Forum on Human Rights, the 83-year-old former president said monitors from his Carter Center observed the 2006 election that Hamas won. He said the vote was "orderly and fair" and Hamas triumphed, in part, because it was "shrewd in selecting candidates," whereas a divided, corrupt Fatah ran multiple candidates for single seats.

Far from encouraging Hamas' move into parliamentary politics, Carter said the U.S. and Israel, with European Union acquiescence, sought to subvert the outcome by shunning Hamas and helping Abbas to keep the reins of political and military power.

"That action was criminal," he said in a news conference after his speech.

"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah," he said.

Carter said the U.S. and others supplied the Fatah-controlled security forces in Gaza with vastly superior weaponry in hopes they would "conquer Hamas in Gaza" - but Hamas routed Fatah in the fighting last week because of its "superior skills and discipline."

Thank God, there are people like Carter who get it. We cannot say we believe in democracy and then insist that elections only bring forward governments that we agree with. As Rumsfeld famously said, "Freedom is messy". It sometimes brings forward governments that we do not agree with.

I was vehemently opposed to the government of Margaret Thatcher but I could not deny she was the democratic choice of the British people, much as I disagreed with their choice.

What is currently taking place in Palestine is the subjugation of the democratic process to the preferences of outside forces. And Carter has found the precise word for Bush and Olmert's actions.

Criminal.

Click title for source.

The Truth About Abu Ghraib - Olbermann

Hamas 'project of darkness' angers Abbas

Abbas, no doubt taking strength from the support of Israel and the US, has resisted calls from Hamas to begin a reconciliation process and has stated that "there is no dialogue with these murderous terrorists".

I wonder, seriously, how long he will be able to keep that stance up? After all, Hamas are more popular in the Occupied Territories than Abbas is, and the more that Olmert and Bush sing his praises as "the leader of all Palestine" the more they tar and feather him as an US/Israeli puppet.

They are killing his chances of leading the Palestinians with every word of praise they heap upon him.

Some Hamas officials were seeking an answer to the profound schism between Gaza and the West Bank after the collapse of the coalition Palestinian Authority triggered by the Islamic faction's bloody victory in last week's infighting.

At the same time, they stepped up the pressure on the kidnappers of the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, seized 100 days ago yesterday, by expressing growing impatience at their failure to free him and warning that the faction would use "all the means" to release him if necessary.

Ghazi Hamad, a key aide to the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who has refused to accept his dismissal as Prime Minister by Mr Abbas, emphasised the importance of reunifying the two parts of any future Palestinian state and declared: "We are trying to find a solution. Hamas is not interested in controlling Gaza. We are not trying to build a state or empire in Gaza."

However, Abbas, with American and Israeli endorsement ringing in his ears - and how sweet that must sound after his resounding defeat at the hands of the Palestinian electorate - has decided to play the hard man role, stating that Hamas had embarked on a "project of darkness".

No doubt such language plays well in Israel and the US, but even George Bush would admit that he is attempting to make Abbas the leader of the Palestinians. I am not sure how such language will play in Palestine.

Hamas have set out the problems that both Hamas and Fatah face in the current stalemate:

"It is very difficult," he said. "There are two governments and two prime ministers. But sooner or later we have to sit together. President Abbas cannot control things without Hamas and Hamas cannot control the situation without Fatah."

In a notably downbeat appraisal, Mr Hamad claimed before last night's uncompromising speech by Mr Abbas - said to be meeting the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert soon - that the President "was in a trap" because he was unable to influence events in Gaza.

But he acknowledged that the situation posed serious problems for Hamas as well. "It is also not easy for Hamas to accept this situation because ... we want a unified authority," he said.

Abbas is, indeed, in a trap. The more he nuzzles up to Bush and Olmert in order to shore up his power, the less credibility he will have on the Palestinian street. A Palestinian street that has already explicitly rejected his government.

Indeed, he has just fired the government that the people of Palestine voted for. And he is now refusing to enter into any talks with that government.

Abbas should remember that leaders should represent the wishes of their people, not the wishes of foreign powers. Abbas has always been presented as one of Palestine's most credible leaders and negotiators, however, I wonder if there is any way that he can negotiate the torturous path before him whilst retaining that credibility and the support of his sponsors?

I suspect not. For Israeli and US support comes at a price. And the price is that Abbas assists them in overturning and continuing to ignore the democratic will of the Palestinians.

The very people that Bush insists that Abbas represents.

That's the rock on which he will surely perish.

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