Tuesday, March 31, 2009 

Pakistan, Afghanistan and the new American strategy.

In one sense, the claim of responsibility from the Pakistani Taliban for yesterday's attack on the police school, more accurately known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban, headed by Baitullah Mehsud, is something of a relief; it means, that as yet, Lashkar-e-Taiba, another group founded by Pakistan's intelligence agencies, has not declared war on the Pakistani state itself, even if they remain the most likely suspects for the previous attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team. It does however show how quickly attacks like those in Mumbai can be copied and carried out, the TTP having previously relied almost exclusively on suicide bombings.

The other sort of good news from yesterday's attack was that a complete bloodbath was avoided thanks to the relatively swift intervention of the Pakistani security forces, those who had been criticised, probably unfairly, after the first Lahore attack. "Only" 11 dead, when there were up to 800 police recruits in the attacked compound, can be seen as something of a success. It might also cause a rethink in the terrorists' tactics: a suicide bombing, especially a truck one, would have almost certainly resulted in far higher casualties and at less expense to the attackers, hence why suicide bombing is such an attractive strategy, however much horror it inspires in those who are under attack.

Apart from those very small consolations, there is much to fear from the continuing spiral into proactive insurgency in Pakistan. The sharia "deal" in Swat was meant to bring a halt to some of the attacks: if anything, they have increased elsewhere, as could have been predicted. The justification given by Mehsud for yesterday's attack was the drone strikes which are also continuing in the semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghanistan border. While these attacks have been effective in taking out some al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, they are also the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, resulting in civilian casualties which only further enrage public opinion against the Americans, and in turn towards the Pakistani state which they see as colluding with the Hellfire missile assaults, however much they condemn the Americans in public. That the latest attack was again in Lahore, long regarded as being far removed from the tension of Islamabad or the radicalism of the towns and cities further west, also shows just how far the reach of the TTP has spread and also how quickly. The insurgency ostensibly began after the assault on the Red Mosque in 2007, but has since become almost inseparable from the simultaneous jihad in Afghanistan against the foreign forces, as the merging of three separate organisations under the banner of the Council of United Mujahideen last month showed. The new grouping, which also pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, was meant to focus its attacks on the coalition in Afghanistan and turn away from targeting the Pakistani military and police, yet there is no sign of that happening yet. Indeed, if anything, the attacks in Pakistan itself seem to have stepped up further over the past few weeks.

All of this is a direct challenge to the "new" US strategy on both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is fundamentally based around denying terrorists the use of safe havens to attack foreign countries from. In some ways it amounts to a refutation of the previous administration's strategy of tackling rogue states, where the attack on Afghanistan amounted to revenge with the war on Iraq, which had no connection to al-Qaida, the main event, but in other ways it is nothing more or less than simply a justification from Obama to continue the war, regardless of the consequences. The strategy fundamentally ignores what the jihadi motivation is: they themselves are only too aware of their actual weak status, knowing full well that they cannot carry out spectaculars like 9/11 on anything like a regular basis. What they can do however is draw in their enemies and then subject them to asymmetrical insurgency, knowing that unless their tactics become too brutal, as they did in Iraq, resulting in a backlash from those who had fought alongside them, that they have the potential to bog down the invaders or occupiers for years, if not decades, while increasingly gaining recruits to their cause as a result. Afghanistan has not really been free from war since before 1980, and some of those fighting have also been involved since then, showing no signs of getting tired of it.

The biggest problem with it though is that it imagines that it can create safe havens, or even that such a policy is the way forward. Even if you managed to kill bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar tomorrow and most if not all of those currently actively involved in the insurgencies, while it would be a tremendous blow, it would not even begin to challenge the ideology behind the men. Havens also are transient: at the moment it's the FATA area of Pakistan, but bin Laden if we are to use him did plenty of travelling around after the end of the jihad against the Soviets, moving from Saudi Arabia to Sudan and then back to Afghanistan. As Andrew Exum points out, where does it all end? Do we also go after and into Somalia, Yemen, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and anywhere else where jihadist movements are also beginning to spawn and which might at some point threaten the West? Then there's the "virtual" safe havens, the online jihadist networks which currently only involve discussion and distribution of propaganda rather than actual plotting, which instead takes place off the actual forums, but which could at some point potentially fill the void. Thomas Hegghammer points out four very simple things that have to be done but which don't involve violence of any variety which would help immensely:

It is very simple: 1) Say and do things on Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir that make Muslims feel less geopolitically deprived and humiliated. 2) Be nice to the locals in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and broadcast your good deeds, 3) Point out where the jihadis are wrong on substance, and 4) Let mainstream Muslim clerics take care of the theology.

The above is not suddenly going to stop the TTP from launching more attacks, but it will help to staunch the flow of recruits. Pakistan is worrying, but it is not suddenly about to fall into the hands of jihadists who will instantly have their finger on the nuclear trigger. Lastly, we also have to start thinking seriously about an exit strategy from Afghanistan: a country which could never be conquered in the past is not going to be conquered now. Deals, however unsavoury, will have to be made. It probably won't however look as bad as it currently does when the government we helped install wants to introduce such draconian laws on the role of women in Afghan society as those detailed in today's Grauniad.

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3/31/2009 10:19:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 30, 2009 

Richard Timney and the story of his descent into perversion.

The Sunday Express is not often noted for its political scoops, and coming shortly after its Scottish sister thought it was a spiffing idea to lead with the shame of the Dunblane survivors who were daring to act like teenagers generally do, their story on Jacqui Smith's husband claiming expenses for watching two "pornographic" features must be a cause for double satisfaction. For not only did they beat their rivals, but it also seems likely that Richard Timney was also contributing to Richard Desmond's coffers, having probably ordered the features from his Television X venture. A Telegraph blogger claims that the films in question were Raw Meat 3, which it turns out, is of the gay genre, and By Special Request, which is undetermined in nature at present.

If almost any other politician, or rather their spouse had been caught in a similar situation, with the possible exception of Harriet Harman, who the tabloids loves to portray as a feminazi, it wouldn't have probably been so embarrassing or have led to calls for their resignation. This though was unfortunate enough to befall Jacqui Smith, who seems to be have become the latest New Labour Home Secretary to gain the description "accident prone". No one could begrudge a spouse feeling lonely of an evening with their partner away the comfort of a surrogate, and as we know, Smith seems to spend an awful lot of time with her sister, and if they wish to sample adult entertainment to fill the void, as it were, even of the soft pornographic variety available on demand, that is no business of anyone else's. It would be best however if they didn't then claim it on their expenses. Yet to misquote Lady Bracknell, to be caught out once even if no explicit rule has been breached by claiming that your main residence also happens to be your sister's, to be caught out again in such a further shamefacedly way looks like carelessness.

In fact, the claiming of £10 for two half-hearted skin flicks looks remarkably less objectionable when you examine the list for what Smith was claiming in full, which includes, incredibly, a whole 88 pence for a bath plug, not to mention £550 for a Habitat stone model sink. Those who currently find themselves out of work and on jobseeker's allowance would have to save up for two months' and a week (the current rate is £60.50 a week if you're over 25, if you're under it's less) to be able to fit out their bathroom in the same manner. You can't help but think it would have been preferable for Timney to have emerged, crimson and contrite, to say sorry for the fitting out of their home at taxpayer's expense, especially when both are already in the pay of the state and hardly shabbily remunerated, than for him to have face the feral beast in full cry about his masturbatory habits.

Even with all of this in mind, probably the most outrageous statement made since yesterday's revelations has been the repeated claim, by both David Miliband and the prime minister, that Jacqui Smith is doing a "great job". She may be, as Hopi Sen half-heartedly says, decent and hard-working, and might also be a lovely person in general, it's just a crying shame about her politics and more than apparent difficulty to take criticism. It has to be remembered that this was the person who was determined, along with the prime minister, to ram through 42 days detention without charge for terrorist suspects, who recently oversaw the passing of the "dangerous pictures" law, and who now also wants to put through a successor "dangerous cartoons" act. Her contempt for individual liberty could not be more clear than when she when sneers at those that are "reasonably comfortable" but who complain about the erosion of civil liberties when far more important is the "fundamental right" for us "to be safe", and I say all this as someone reasonably sympathetic towards the way the media has portrayed her, from Quentin Letts leering at her bosom (not "pneumatic", friends of Ms Harman have accused me of misogyny) when she made the heinous mistake of inadvertently showing off some cleavage, to the oh so clever cartoonist in Private Eye who draws her with breasts the size of watermelons.

In fairness to Smith, while her claiming that her main residence is her sister's home is especially cunning, most MPs are doing things remarkably similar, regardless of their politics. The Sunday Mirror for instance claimed that William Hague, who is not exactly strapped for cash, was claiming for his second home despite earning in the region of £800,000 a year, and who wouldn't give up his outside interests despite being asked by Cameron. It's been apparent now for quite some time that to all intents and purposes, for those who want to abuse the system, even if they are not breaking the letter of the law, they can claim pretty much anything they want and not have to break into their own salary. At long last, possibly thanks to how bad this looks while everyone else is tightening their belts, Gordon Brown did today finally suggest that the second home allowance should be scrapped, despite only recently fending off attempts by others to reform the system, even if it will be replaced by a flat-rate system.

The rage that this is inducing in the public was palpably summarised on last week's Question Time, when Eric Pickles, who didn't help matters by putting off a poor defence of his allowance, was pulverised by the audience. This can be unfair on politicians who do often, it must be said, make the best of a bad lot. We ought to be grateful that for the most part ours are remarkably straight; far more worthy of criticism is the parliamentary system itself, where party comes above the personal all too often, as indeed is the first past the post system by which they are appointed in the first place. If you had to ask which was preferable, the fiddling of expenses so they can refit their bathrooms and get DVD players and widescreen TVs for their second homes for zilch, or the active buying or bribing of politicians by outside influences, you would go for the former every time. The sad fact is that most of them don't have to be paid to make bad decisions, whether on war, airport expansion or the bailing out of bankers: they do that more than acceptably all on their own.

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3/30/2009 10:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, March 28, 2009 

Weekend links.

Story of the weekend is undoubtedly the large protests in London ahead of the G20 meeting next week. After doing their best to raise tensions ahead of next week's probably more radical protests, the police seem to have made more than the usual effort to count the crowd, saying 35,000 turned up, which means you can probably at least double that, resulting in a more than fine turn out. Lenin, the Daily Maybe and Laurie Penny all have reports.

Elsewhere, Craig Murray examines in detail the latest Foreign Office Human Rights Report, which seems to be saying clearer than ever that it uses "intelligence" which is sourced through torture while at the same time "unreservedly condemning" the practice, Paul Linford says that Stephen Byers' criticism of Brown's economic policy is spot on, Justin puts into detail why Iain Dale should not win the Orwell prize for blogging (I'm rooting for Alix Mortimer), Nosemonkey sets out why he doesn't think the EU is about to become a "superstate" any time soon, David Semple is still (rightly) pissed off about the Jade Goody hysteria, while finally over on Heresy Corner Frank Fisher (aka MrPikeBishop from CiF) guests with a tongue-in-cheek post regarding the "dangerous drawings" legislation and the 18-year-old who painted a massive cock on the roof of where he lived.

In the papers, Ian Jack remarks on how suffering in public became an act, both Peter Oborne and Matthew Parris are rather scathing about Brown's rather unpleasant last week, Deborah Orr covers ground similar on the two contrasting rape cases to that which I did yesterday, and lastly Howard Jacobson rather weakly suggests that we shouldn't disbelieve those who tell us we're all about to die.

As for worst tabloid article of the weekend, normally the Sun would deserve some sort of prize for its curious belief that the mother of a footballer being caught shoplifting is a front page news story for two days running, but when such incredible chutzpah is on the front page of the Daily Mail it rather glosses over it. This country of anger and fear, a damning verdict, says the newspaper which does more than any other publication with the possible exception of the Sun to incite both that anger and fear. We also sadly can't go one week without mentioning the lovely Amanda Platell, who has this stereotypically Mail response to the Peter Bacon rape case:

Answer: because the strident feminist lobby has demanded that every woman's accusation of rape must be treated equally, however weak the evidence.

That does a great injustice to men like Mr Bacon, who - even when proven innocent - will for ever bear the shame and stigma of the trial.

But just as importantly it does a huge disservice to the genuine victims of aggressive rape, who will find their claims lumped together with those of promiscuous, binge- drinking, irresponsible fools who are the victims only of their own stupidity.

That's a rather harsh verdict on Mr Bacon; after all, he was only out for a totally legitimate one-night stand. Oh, she's talking about the woman...

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3/28/2009 09:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 27, 2009 

An interesting set of priorities.

It's interesting and perhaps informative to note that on the day that there was another case which showed the deficiencies and incompetence which often dogs police investigations into accusations of rape, both the Daily Mail and Express decided that a man cleared of rape after 45 minutes of deliberations was far more worthy of going on the front page than the conviction of Kirk Reid, who raped or indecently assaulted as many as 71 women before finally being caught.

The acquittal of Peter Bacon predictably touches all the issues which the Mail and Express love to highlight. His accuser admitted that she was drunk and couldn't remember what happened. She claimed that because she couldn't remember what happened, the sexual intercourse the pair apparently had must have been non-consensual, in line with an appeal court judgement from 2007 which adjudged that a woman who is drunk may well be unable to give her consent, but the decision is still ultimately left up to the jury to decide whether the man had a "reasonable belief" that consent had been given. For a paper that continues to take a highly moralistic line when it comes to sex, Bacon gets off remarkably scot free from criticism, especially considering his comment that he was aiming to try to get a one-night stand legitimately", with predictably the woman copping it instead. She was a self-confessed "recreational binge drinker", had not a boyfriend for a number of years, "was close to her mother", had been suffering from depression, "was known for flamboyant outfits in court" during her work as a lawyer, and had had another one night stand with a different man when Bacon and the woman had previously crossed paths. Bacon, instead, is "a very kind and caring individual, and would never speak badly of anyone", was holding down two part-time jobs, and also studying sociology at Canterbury university.

All of this is with a contrast with the Kirk Reid case, which you might have thought was more newsworthy. The second case within a month concerning police incompetence and repeated attacks on women over a number of years, the conviction of John Worboys being the other example. Reid had first entered the police's inquiries in 2004, and came into contact with the police 12 times before a detective inspector who had just been handed the case joined the dots in a matter of days. Both Worboys and Reid targeted women returning from nights out, often the worse the wear from drink, which Worboys then compounded by offering the women who entered his cab a drink, claiming that he had a major betting or casino win. The drinks were spiked; the women often woke up unable to remember what happened, but knowing that they had been sexually assaulted.

The obvious point to make is that despite improvements over the years, women are still all too often completely disbelieved or not taken seriously when making rape allegations, especially when drink has been involved. This is further not helped by surveys which routinely return results that up to a third believe women are partially responsible if they flirt with someone who subsequently rapes them, with around the same number also thinking the victim should accept some of the blame if she was drunk. As potentially irresponsible as getting drunk on your own is, with no one to take care of you while you get home, all the blame has to lie with the person who takes advantage of it - not the victim.

As much as Peter Bacon has undoubtedly suffered since he was accused, the end result shows that the system has worked. There is an argument to be made for the accused in rape trials to be given the same protection as the victim until conviction, but that then raises implications for those accused of other crimes. Why should those charged with murder or child molestation/possession of child pornography for example not also claim they should be protected until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt? Bacon couldn't really have asked for a better confirmation of his innocence than for him to be splashed across the front page of the second biggest selling newspaper in the country, which will hopefully be some kind of recompense, however slight. A far bigger travesty would be if the wide publication of his case was to further damage the belief in those who have been assaulted and who have never faced a greater challenge in bringing their attackers to justice.

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3/27/2009 09:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 26, 2009 

A police investigation, but how far will it go?

It's difficult to know whether to be surprised at the decision of the Attorney General to refer to the Metropolitan police her concerns that MI5 may have broken the law through its alleged complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, or surprised but at the same time cynical. The manoeuvres last week by the government, announcing that they would publish the guidelines MI5 and 6 would follow when interviewing suspects abroad, that the Intelligence and Security Committee would reinvestigate Mohamed's treatment, and that there would be a new agreement with the Pakistani authorities concerning their treatment of British detainees seemed to be an attempt to bring the embarrassment involving Mohamed's allegations to an abrupt end. Hopes were not raised by the length of time that Baroness Scotland was taking to look into the claims, which themselves arose after the evidence heard in a secret session of the court case involving Mohamed's lawyers' attempts to gain access to documents detailing his detention was felt to be so serious that the "possible criminal wrongdoing" demanded further investigation. Undoubtedly both the government and MI5 would have hoped to have avoided an investigation of any sort; that Scotland has decided that there is a possible case to answer is deserving of praise, especially considering her predecessor's considerable lack of independence from the government.

It will however be prudent to be concerned about just how wide the investigation will be and whether it will get anywhere. At the moment it looks like it may just be investigating the behaviour of "Witness B", the MI5 officer who drew the short straw and was the person who interviewed Mohamed while he was being held in Pakistan, where he was already suffering ill-treatment but was yet to be subjected to the "medieval" torture that he almost certainly suffered in Morocco. It's apparent from other cases that "Witness B" was not the only person to show a worrying lack of concern for detainees' well-being while in Pakistani custody, and the spectre of him being made a scapegoat and left hung out to dry is potentially worse than there being no investigation at all. As the Guardian has established, Mohamed's interrogation by "Witness B" was almost certainly the result of an official policy which had been drawn up by government ministers in conjunction with the security services. This agreement essentially took the "three monkeys" approach: they did nothing that would directly associate them with the ill-treatment that is endemic in Pakistani custody, while also doing nothing to stop it from happening. This was further compounded by how despite claiming to not know where Mohamed had been taken, they supplied information to the Americans which was subsequently used during the "interrogation" sessions in Morocco.

In other words, this potentially goes all the way to the very top. As has been pointed out, the current head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, was in charge of international counter-terrorism at the time. It hardly seems realistic that Knacker of the Yard is going to burst into Thames House and ask Evans to come along quietly, just as it seems doubtful that the spooks will be letting anything incriminating slip into their statements to the police. They can, after all, just like normal suspects, completely refuse to co-operate with the police's inquiries. This is one of the major reasons why there should be an independent judicial review, where evidence, not necessarily in public, would have to be given under oath. Doubtless also the likes of the Sun, which has been shameless in their disbelief concerning Mohamed's treatment, will be squealing tomorrow about how it will be distracting MI5 from their vital work of keeping us safe from those whom would, uh, not think twice about instigating similar methods.

This though is not just about Mohamed, but about how we suddenly decided that complicity with torture, not just of others but our own citizens and residents was acceptable despite knowing full well that torture makes for hopeless "intelligence". Those responsible should be at the least brought to account and made to explain themselves; criminal charges may well be sought, but again they seem unlikely to stick, just as very little concerning the war on terror has stuck to this government. The hope has to be again that today's announced investigation will shed even more light on one of the most shaming events in our recent history.

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3/26/2009 11:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: Disgraceful journalism shocker.

There was a major story today which highlighted some truly reprehensible journalism by the Sun which I was intending to post on, but which has since been removed from the newspaper site on which it was posted, not I presume because it was inaccurate but because of a court order which had previously been granted that had brought the initial coverage to an end. I'm not going to repeat it because I think the story, broken in the Sun, should never have been published in the first place, but if you're so inclined you'll undoubtedly be able to find it. I do however hope that the Press Complaints Commission, which was already investigating the initial story, now throws the book at the Sun.

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3/26/2009 11:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 

Scum-watch: Demanding the immediate arrest of Anjem Choudary.

One of the great things about the Sun is that every so often it gets enough of a bee in its bonnet, or rather sees a passing bandwagon, and it can't help but leap upon it. On occasion it starts the ball rolling; at other times it just enjoys the ride. These campaigns, if they can even be termed such, rarely last long; long-term attention span, except when it comes to something like the Human Rights Act, is not the Sun's strong point. Sometimes these campaigns will have a lasting and damaging effect, such as late last year's witch-hunt over the death of Baby P, and at other times they will have absolutely no impact at all, and end up being quietly dropped and forgotten. Their campaign against knife crime is one such example, although ostensibly it is still on-going. "Broken Britain", last year's big motif, has also not been so big this year, what with Jade Goody dying to instead concentrate on.

One of the previous campaigns which the Sun has not since stopped crowing about involved Abu Hamza. The Sun has since claimed that it was more or less thanks to them that he ended up behind bars, which was utter nonsense, as have other "internet investigators" that have since become rather discredited (see Bloggerheads RE: Glen Jenvey). Nonetheless, the Sun's continual emphasis on Hamza ended up turning him into a major villain and the archetypal spouting Islamic madman. How much influence he genuinely had on those who went on to take part in terrorist attacks is disputed; he certainly was involved in radicalisation, but the more lurid claims against him don't necessarily stand up to scrutiny. He was definitely on the periphery, and some who have gone on to become noted extremists certainly did go to the Finsbury Park mosque if not regularly then on more than one or two occasions to hear him speak, but also thanks to the portrayal of Hamza many now imagine that it's radical imams in mosques that do the radicalising when this is overwhelmingly, especially now, not the case. Hamza has if anything now become a cartoon, a puppet who can be brought out and used for almost any purpose.

Since Hamza's sad sojourn to Belmarsh, the Sun has been looking for someone to replace him. First they alighted upon Omar Bakri Muhammad, the then leader of al-Muhajiroun, since banned and now exiled in Lebanon, having been denied re-entry to the country. He even more than Hamza was a media whore, who loved the attention and had even less discernible links to those who have subsequently took part in if we must call it that, the global jihad. He still regularly pops up, when the Sun can be bothered to phone him up and incur the international charges. Replacing him though has been the second in command of al-Muhajiroun, now supposedly the leader of one of its numerous successor organisations, Anjem Choudary. Choudary is interesting for two reasons: firstly because unlike either Hamza or Bakri he has no religious training whatsoever, and has not studied to be an imam, and is instead a lawyer by profession, albeit one that doesn't seem to practice; and secondly because Choudary used to be a "normal" person, i.e. got drunk, slept around and generally had something approaching fun. Hamza also didn't embrace radical Islam until he was in his late 20s, during the mid-80s, but was not as well-known for similar behaviour as Choudary was.

Choudary however is even more shameless when it comes to media attention than Bakri and Hamza combined. He appears to adore it, perhaps even crave it. He never seems happier than when appearing on Newsnight or some other news programme, moderating his rhetoric somewhat to not appear completely out there, addressing the anchor by name (he almost seemed to be flirting with Kirsty Wark on a recent NN appearance) and generally enjoying the attention. This is not to deny that Choudary holds undoubted extremist views which go against not just the vast vast majority of people in this country but also the vast vast majority of Muslims as well, but he is, not to put too fine a point on it, an idiot, a shill, a complete incompetent who almost seems like a plant by the security services to discredit radical Islam even further. He is leader of a tiny sect that has only gained attention because both of his own inflammatory views, their skills at exploiting the outrage of the gullible, and because the media itself adores him, because he makes either their programme or their newspaper seem exciting, even vaguely dangerous. It's quite accurate to lump Choudary in with the British National Party, except that it's acceptable to use Choudary where it isn't to use the BNP. If anything, the roles should be reversed: the BNP is far more influential than Choudary and deserves challenging in the media spotlight, unlike the clownish Choudary.

Choudary is a distraction. His group may well contain some individuals who might go on to put their words into action, although not necessarily in this country, hence why it should be carefully monitored. Choudary though is just a windbag, someone who can be relied upon for a quote but who can equally be turned on when the press feels like it. Which is what the Sun has done today.

Coinciding with the release of the CONTEST anti-terrorism strategy, the Sun has unilaterally decided that Choudary is such a danger and has got away with his "incitement" for so long that he must be immediately arrested, charged, and locked away. Quite why it's decided now is anyone's guess, although it might be connected with the fact that the terrorist threat from jihadists in general seems to be receding somewhat, as the strategy set out, meaning the Sun might not be able to scaremonger relentlessly for much longer, as it also does today, as we shall come to. Other papers would suggest that the police might well want to look at the "evidence" they've gathered and go from there; not the Sun. No, the paper "DEMANDS" on the front page that the police take action. And inside it does much the same:

So today The Sun calls on police chiefs to stop dithering and charge former lawyer Choudary, 41, before he poisons more young minds.

There isn't of course the slightest evidence that Choudary has "poisoned" any young minds; those he appeals to have probably already gone through their "radicalisation" process.

Needless to say, the Sun's evidence is predictably weak and contentious, with context being everything. In his latest rant, the paper breathlessly informs us:

In his new outburst — a recording posted on a password-protected Al-Qaeda website — he said: “You do not neglect any of our duties...

“If many of our Muslim lands are under occupation then of course jihad — you are going to be talking about jihad. You are going to be recruiting for the Mujahideen.

“You’re going to be working to overthrow, sorry, liberate, Muslim lands. Because you’re living in a situation where there’s lots of Muslim lands under occupation.”

Quoting from Islamic text, Choudary added: “ ‘You cannot accomplish this until you train... train for jihad.’ What kind of training is he talking about? He’s talking about military training.”


Choudary is quite clearly not directly inciting those listening to go abroad and start overthrowing "Muslim lands". He's talking rhetorically, for a start. Britain has also never been considered a "Muslim land"; the caliphate which many radical Muslims wish to re-establish only ever reached as far as Spain. Choudary's group and Choudary himself talk rather hilariously about instituting Sharia law here and flying the "flag of Islam" from Downing Street, but it's for the birds. Not even they really believe it. The Sun doesn't try and suggest he's broken any laws here, but it's painstakingly analysed his other utterances for the slightest suggestion that he may have done:

Last September Choudary claimed the publisher of a novel about the prophet Mohammed should face the death penalty.

Martin Rynja — who put out fictional tale The Jewel Of Medina about the Prophet’s child bride — was placed under armed guard after petrol was poured through his letter box.

At the time Choudary appeared to be condoning the attacks, saying: “It is clearly stipulated in Muslim law that any kind of attack on his honour carries the death penalty.

“People should be aware of the consequences they might face when producing material like this.”

Our legal experts say this breaks section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which states racially or religiously aggravated disorderly behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress, is a crime punishable by up to two years in jail.

If it could be proved Choudary’s comments were directly linked to an attack on the publisher’s life, he could be prosecuted for conspiracy to murder — which carries a LIFE term.


Again here, it's quite apparent that Choudary is not directly inciting violence against the book's publisher. Choudary had made similar remarks to prior to this, including at a demonstration against the speech by the Pope which referred to Muhammad's work as "evil", where he said that under Islamic law the Pope could be executed for his slur on the prophet. He was careful during the actual protest to make clear the inference that it had to be under an Islamic system; with reporters he was not so careful, apparently telling one:

"Whoever insults the message of Muhammad is going to be subject to capital punishment. I am here have a peaceful demonstration. But there may be people in Italy or other parts of the world who would carry that out. I think that warning needs to be understood by all people who want to insult Islam and want to insult the prophet of Islam."

Now that is potentially incitement, but the Met had already investigated and decided not to press charges, as the remarks were apparently made in private. It's unlikely that they'd be able to prosecute or make the case stand up were they to attempt to do so over what the Sun highlights.

The paper isn't beat yet though:

Recently Choudary threatened that Lord Mandelson would be stoned to death under Sharia law and declared: “He would not be able to speak openly about homosexuality.”

Our experts said his comments broke the Public Order Act 1986, section 4A. It outlaws behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Breaking this law carries a heavy fine and/or six months in jail.

They might have a case here, but it would be a piss weak one and not get rid of Choudary for long. And err, that's it. That's all the Sun's evidence. To call this an investigation is itself rather pretentious, considering the amount of work that must have gone into it.

It's the Sun's leader though that is bordering on hysterical (url will change):

GORDON Brown warns of unprecedented terror threats as he prepares to host next week’s G20 summit.

Err, no he hasn't. He hasn't used any such terminology, either in his pronouncements on the anti-terrorist document, or in his Observer article at the weekend, "unprecedented" being entirely absent.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith raises fears further, predicting extremists will stop at nothing, including a nuclear “dirty bomb”, to inflict mass murder.

Again, no she hasn't. The most the document goes is to suggest that the "aspirations" of terrorists to use such materials has risen. My aspiration has risen to not get so worked up about a tabloid newspaper, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen.

So why hasn’t she rounded up dangerous loudmouth Anjem Choudary whose rants are most likely to provoke such an atrocity?

Probably because he is just what the Sun calls him, a loudmouth, just not dangerous. His rants are irrelevant except to his tiny band of followers and to the tabloid newspapers that love reporting them.

Ministers would ban harmless jokes about gays — even by gay comics — yet they allow Choudary to demand homosexuals’ execution.

Only neither is happening, or happened. Choudary was again talking about under Sharia law, while the government is not banning jokes about gays, despite the more ridiculous interpretation of potential laws again by the likes of the Sun.

This rabble-rouser pays lip service to peaceful action, yet is free to stir the hatred of gullible Muslims who might blow themselves and us to smithereens.

The key word here is "might". No Muslim listening to Choudary is suddenly going to decide to blow themselves and us to smithereens; to pretend radicalisation is that simple is more than daft, it's ignorant.

Despite his past as a cider-swigging, dope-smoking womaniser, Choudary demands death for anyone who drinks, takes drugs or fornicates.

He was behind the vile Luton demos against our brave soldiers. And he wants to sack our elected Parliament and raise the flag of revolutionary Islam over the House of Commons.


So? Is the Sun really so frightened of a thing called freedom of speech? He can call for whatever he likes or fantasise about whatever he likes as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and so far there is nothing to suggest that it has.

This is worryingly like a re-run of the Abu Hamza saga.

“Hooky” spent years fomenting terror right under the noses of our security services before he was finally put away. And that was only to stop America getting their hands on him.


This is simply bollocks. The security services were well aware of Hamza, it's true, probably because like with the other radicals they believed that had a "covenant of security", where they were more or less free to do what they wanted as long as they didn't target this country itself, as well as quite possibly informing the security services of those who wanted to. There are still accusations that Abu Qatada, for example, is a double agent. The others also had regular contact with MI5. How deep the links go we simply don't know. The American part is double bollocks: the Americans still want to extradite him.

If the PM is right, another 7/7-style massacre is looming.

Again, Brown has said absolutely nothing like this. The head of MI5 back in January said the threat level was if anything decreasing, and that al-Qaida had no semi-autonomous structure in this country at present. He could of course be completely wrong, as you can't really trust a single thing a spook says, but considering how they've scaremongered in the past it seems doubtful whether they would suddenly decide the threat level was decreasing unless it actually was.

One day our hand-wringing police will have to take action against Choudary. What are they waiting for?

They should slam this nasty piece of work behind bars NOW — before our emergency services have to count the corpses.


Again, like with yesterday the paper almost seems to be willing such an attack to happen, almost say it can say it told you so. If the paper really cared about the terrorist threat to this country it would completely ignore Choudary and go after the really dangerous people - the ones who don't become media whores who can be contacted by phone for an instant quote, the Mohammad Siddique Khans that stay under the radar until it's too late. That though is far too difficult and costs too much. Far simpler to demand that Choudary be thrown behind bars, no matter how weak or dismal the actual evidence to do so is.

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3/25/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 

An improvement, but more still to be done.

Whenever the government hypes something up, you can almost guarantee that the end result will be less than the sum of its parts. So it is with the latest attempt by the Home Office to get to grips with something approaching an anti-terrorism strategy, which they have christened alliteratively pursue, prevent, protect and prepare, promoted heavily at the weekend by both Brown himself and Jacqui Smith. Using the protect word might well have taken something approaching balls: many minds still associate that with the ominous protect and survive booklets issued in the 80s, which matter of factly went through building a fallout shelter in the basement and wrapping up dead loved ones in black plastic bags, the eeriness and doom of the cartoons which accompanied the booklets still highly memorable now.

While in the past such doommongering, both from politicians and police was regular, this latest document mainly eschews scaremongering, as have the politicians promoting it. With the exception of the potentially worse than useless training of up to 60,000 people in how to act should they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a terrorist attack, which in reality amounts to an around 3 hour seminar session for business people, which only seems likely to be quickly forgotten or alternatively make all those involved even more paranoid than they may have been, and the emphasis that has been put on the threat of some variety of "dirty" attack being launched increasing, it mostly keeps things in something approaching prospective. One of the first facts it points out is that over 3,500 people died between 1969 and 1998 as a result of "Irish-related terrorism", which is something well worth pointing out the next time someone tries telling you that the threat level posed by Islamic terrorists is far beyond that the IRA did; al-Qaida has after all as yet made no attempts whatsoever to murder political figures in the West, attempts on the life of former Pakistan president Musharraf not withstanding, while the IRA came incredibly close to killing much of the Thatcher government in Brighton in 1984.

In fact, the thing that perhaps undermines the entire document the most is that the government is essentially being forced to admit that the threat level is actually diminishing. After years of telling us that things were getting worse, that the "sky was dark" and that an attack could happen at any time, back in January we had the head of MI5 admitting that al-Qaida had no semi-autonomous structure in the country at this time, and that rather than attacks being actively planned, they only had the "intention to launch an attack here". Partly this may well be down to al-Qaida having to re-examine exactly where it's going at this moment in time: with the "Islamic State of Iraq" all but defeated in that country, it being essentially flushed out of Saudi Arabia and with the only real encouraging signs for the organisation being the increased activity in places like Yemen, Algeria and Somalia, with there being a contradictory situation in Pakistan of the Pakistani Taliban increasingly in strength while the drone attacks have succeeded in killing many senior figures in the hierarchy, its supporters in Europe might well be their last concerns at the moment. The document makes clear that should things continue the way they are, it may well be possible by next year to reduce the threat level, which has stayed at severe since 7/7 and gone up to critical on two separate occasions, to substantial.

While the document then continues to claim that the main threat remains "al-Qaida central", i.e. the remnants of the original organisation now in hiding most likely in Pakistan, of increasing importance is the threat from al-Qaida's "franchises", such as the former Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, now known after pledging allegiance to bin Laden as al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb. Almost mentioned is al-Qaida in the Arabian penisula, despite its effective defeat, the aforementioned ISI and al-Qaida in Yemen. Perhaps most notable though is the new importance given to "self-starting" networks, or even lone individuals, motivated by the extreme salafist takfirist jihadist ideology, but whom have no connection whatsoever to al-Qaida central, such as Nicky Reilly. Mentioned last is groups that have a similar ideology to al-Qaida, but whom have their own identity and regional agenda, perhaps thinking of the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The first part of the document is entirely given over to a narrative detailing the effective rise of international terrorism, from the initial actions of Palestinian groups and their attacks during the 70s, up to the founding of Hizbullah and finally the genesis of al-Qaida itself. Interestingly, it directly links the bombings in Istanbul in 2003 against the British consulate and a British bank to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organisation in Iraq, before his group had become part of al-Qaida, which is either new or something I had otherwise missed. This section doesn't tell you anything you probably don't already know, but for the government to be setting it out in such a way, and doing so matter of factly, without anything approaching spin, is itself a sign of progress, even if it is very much the establishment version of events. The part on radicalisation which follows on draws heavily on the leaked MI5 document on understanding extremism in this country. This made clear that there was no single underlying cause, while at the same time dismantling the myths that had built up that it was all the work of extremist preachers. The main threat remains the small groupings which build up, often around a charismatic local leader voiced in radical Islam, whose influence on those around him is worth about 10 of any radical on the internet.

The only main parts where the document noticeably falls down is in the "principles" section and on the reasoning behind the idea that "dirty" attacks are becoming more likely. It's impossible not to snigger at the very first principle in countering international terrorism:

Our approach to national security in general and to counter-terrorism in particular is grounded in a set of core values. They include human rights, the rule of law, legitimate and accountable government, justice, freedom, tolerance and opportunity for all.

This would be the same government currently up to its eyeballs in claims regarding security service collusion in torture of "terrorist suspects" abroad; which completely ignored the rule of law in detaining foreign suspects indefinitely without charged; which continues to defend the permanent deprivation of liberty associated with control orders as well as ensuring that those under them cannot properly find out what they are accused of or challenge that evidence; and which only gave in over extending the detention limit to 42 days after it became clear that it had no chance of pushing it through the House of Lords. If the government has any shame over any of this, it doesn't show it.

Like the initial section of the report, the part on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons is a narrative stating the background. This mentions the Japanese underground Sarin attack, then goes on with claims on how al-Qaida has experimented with CBRN weapons, almost all rudimentary poisons. It details the alleged 2003 plot to release hydrogen cyanide on the New York underground, strangely called off by Zawahiri, and then less realistically lists good old Dhiren Barot's coke-can and smoke alarm bomb plans, which even if he could have got hold of the material involved would likely have been as effective as gas canisters to bring down buildings plan turned out in practice. For good measure it also lists the Islamic State of Iraq's experiments with including chlorine gas canisters with its suicide car/truck bombs, which is again about as rudimentary as you can get, and which they stopped doing some time ago. The three factors listed for the increased threat are "a significant increase" in the trafficking of such materials, that the internet has made information on them much more widely available, and that CBRN materials can be used for legitimate purposes, in case you didn't know. All round, this is pretty woeful stuff. As terrorist groups are incredibly unlikely to get access to enriched uranium any time soon, the main threat posed is from them combining machines from hospitals containing such materials with bombs, and letting the air do the rest of the work. The main threat from this would not be the material itself, but from the panic that would ensue and the subsequent decontamination. Even this has most likely been vastly exaggerated: even the polonium of the type which killed Alexander Litvinenko would be unlikely to kill many, if any, if used in a bomb. The document then mentions IEDs of the type constructed in Iraq and increasingly being used in Afghanistan, concerning the intent to "experiment with novel explosives". Discounting the combination of suicide bombs with chlorine, most of the explosives used in Iraq were actually old regime stockpiles which came in extremely handy, and which only in the last couple of years were exhausted, which itself has probably contributed to the drops in such attacks. The innovations have occurred in the ways in which to trigger them and to get around equipment which is meant to disarm them. Quite why it's even bringing this up is unclear: there have been no signs whatsoever that groups in this country intend to start making roadside bombs, and as the past few attacks have shown, explosives themselves are incredibly difficult to obtain, let alone to then use correctly. You have to wonder if the claims surrounding dirty bombs are ones which they know the media won't bother to investigate, and which instead turn on the horror reflex, hence the Sun's illustration to their report. With the threat diminishing, the unusual threats column is the only one remaining which they can highlight.

While the government then deserves some acclaim for setting out clearly the origins of the threat, not dismissing out of hand the fact that foreign policy clearly has a distinct influence on it, and for also admitting that if anything it's diminishing, all signs that the spin and playing politics with terrorism which flourished under Blair and which continued for a time under Brown might now have finally been decided to have been counter-productive, more work is still needed on really getting to grips with the origins of extremism, while also not denouncing but challenging those that hold views which can be seen as stepping stones towards full-blown Islamic fundamentalism. Not overreacting stupidly to a dozen protesters at a homecoming parade would be a start, but to do that they would also have to challenge the media's completely unhelpful obsession with extremists under the bed, something they have shown no intention of doing.

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3/24/2009 11:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 23, 2009 

Rights and responsibilities in a policy vacuum.

2009 is turning out to be an incredibly strange year as far as politics is concerned. By any measure, Labour ought to be doing far far worse in the polls than it currently is - most showing a Conservative lead of around 12 points, which if repeated at the ballot box would give Cameron's Tories either a very slim majority or result in a hung parliament. Labour would suffer major casualties, but still not have been wiped out to anything like the extent to which the Tories were in 1997. It's uncertain why despite the recession that Labour's support is holding up, even if reports claiming that if the recession bottoms out before polling day that Labour could still pull it back seem optimistic at best. Brown's constant repetition of two points, firstly that the economic crisis is global, which is true, but doesn't acquit him especially as far as banking regulation goes, and secondly that the Conservatives are the "do nothing" party, which is far less accurate, might be having some effect, but it also seems to be as others constantly witter, that voters like Cameron but don't like his party or trust them.

At the same time, there seems to be an almost complete deficit of policy discussion coming from all the main parties. This is to be expected when all thoughts turn towards the economy, and should it ought to be remembered what so many of us bemoaned for long periods - that when the differences over how to run economy went the major differences between the political parties also went. This doesn't excuse however the almost complete lack of discussion about anything other than taxes, havens and bail-outs, which has become increasingly glaring, entertaining as the Tories bickering internally over tax is. After years of discussing Iraq, we seem to want to blot all talk of Afghanistan out, a war which has never been explained in anywhere near the detail that Iraq was and continues to be. Everyone knows the supposed reasons why we went into Iraq, yet if you asked the same question about what we're doing in Afghanistan shoulders would be shrugged uniformly. We've gone from politicians wanting the troops to leave without firing a single shot to an average of around one body a week returning home, all without anything approaching a reason from a minister as to why such blood and treasure is being spent on such an apparently endless conflict.

As well as the recession, this is also partially down to the election being probably only just over a year away, and we're either at the beginning of the phony war or fast approaching it. Labour's legislating instinct has also somewhat fallen away under Brown, with the resulting dullness of Westminster except over the continuing fallout over expenses not helping. Into all this greyness, Jack Straw seems to want to inject a bit of colour, by finally getting round to publishing the green paper on "rights and responsibilities", much delayed having being trumpeted since Brown's ascension to the throne, as it were, as part of his agenda for constitutional reform. It soon becomes clear why it has been repeatedly kicked into the long grass - even by New Labour's standards, this is a document of such woe and potential pitfalls that it's quite something that it has finally come to light at all.

Fundamentally, you have to approach this knowing two things: firstly, that Labour quite rightly finally got round to introducing the European Convention on Human Rights, largely drafted by us, into our own common law, negating the need for claimants to have to go to Europe to gain recompense. Secondly, that despite its British origins, the tabloids and others have long regarded the ECHR and the HRA as foreign entities, enshrining rights that are beyond the pale, such as the right to life, right to a private family life, right against inhuman and degrading treatment etc, making the HRA appear to be a charter only for terrorists and criminals, and also one which very sadly might well threaten the tabloids' business model, bringing hated ideas of European privacy to our media and stopping the scandal sheets from splashing on the latest strumpet to shag a star. Since then Labour has always deeply regretted introducing it, and has at best put up a shallow defence of it, although Jack Straw, having introduced it, has put in a better one than others. Also to be noted is that the HRA has done very little to prevent the same government from drastically reducing actual civil liberties, given the lengths of time it takes for appellants to go all the way to Strasbourg and challenge things such as the DNA database, our own courts having not seen things the same way as the European one eventually does.

Straw's cherished bill of rights and responsibilities is then at best an attempt to make up for the unpleasantness surrounding the HRA. Straw has tried to cover this up by noting the "interesting times" in which we are living, suggesting that turmoil has often led to constitutional reform, and at the same time somewhat insultingly given the proposals bracketing the "R 'n' R" he has developed with the likes of the American declaration of independence, the subsequent constitution and the French 1789 declaration of the rights of man and the citizen. This might have worked if Straw's bill was a relatively recent idea, but it dates back to before the start of the credit crunch, if we have to call it that. It hence takes on a very different tone, one far more associated with that of New Labour - one of control.

The obvious point to make is that rights protect us, whether from the state or from other individuals or corporations. Responsibilities, on the other hand are the unwritten rules, or indeed, actual written laws which we already know we have to abide by, and which we don't need informing about. Straw actually seems to want to take it even further than this though: he seems to want to extend responsibilities into the territory of norms and values, into outright conformity with the state. The argument that the green paper makes is that some of these existing responsibilities are "arguably so central to our functioning as a society that they deserve an elevated constitutional status...". This argument might be more convincing if the responsibilities which Straw is thinking of were either breaking down and being ignored or if they weren't already being treated with respect. Yet it's a list of essential banalities which Straw wants to enshrine: treating NHS staff with respect, caring properly for children, "participating in civic society through voting and jury service", assisting the police, paying taxes, obeying the law. Yes, seriously, Straw wants potentially to enshrine obeying the law as a responsibility. While these are banalities, there's also something far more sinister lurking underneath them, especially when it comes to voting and assisting the police: neither are legally required, although you can be charged with perverting the course of justice for deliberately obstructing the police in the course of their investigations. This seems to be New Labour setting down on an elevated constitutional status at least two things which should always be personal decisions: the right not to vote especially should be as important as the right to vote.

Before we get too carried away, we ought to note that the chances of this becoming law still seem pretty slim, and the green paper itself acknowledges that the rights in the ECHR and HRA "cannot be legally contingent on the exercise of responsibilities". In others words, even if we do this, we know full well that we cannot in any way enforce them. All they're destined to be is pretty words, a sop to authoritarian opinion whilst also underlining our own far from libertarian attitudes. Even with this in mind, it bears comparison to the great aforementioned documents - nowhere in the American constitution does it outline how those in society are expected to behave whilst wielding their right to bear arms and arm bears and everything in-between, elevating them above normal status because of their utmost importance in ordering society. It smacks of a government that has become so mad with power that it no longer knows how or where to wield it; it just has to do it, and even something as important to the state as the constitution is not out of bounds to the wackiest thinking when it comes to trying to win favour with some of the nation's media. If this is the stuff to fill the policy vacuum, perhaps we want things to remain lifeless for as long as possible.

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3/23/2009 11:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

The world mourns.

MOST WORTHLESS WOMAN TO HAVE EVER LIVED DIES
THE WORLD PAYS TRIBUTE - OBAMA BROADCASTS TO AMERICA
GORDON BROWN DECLARES WEEK OF MOURNING - MOST WORTHLESS WOMAN TO LIE IN STATE
ALL THE NEWS, PICS AND HYSTERICAL HYPOCRISY PAGES 1-93 PLUS 94 PAGE MEMORIAL PULLOUT WITH FREE MOST WORTHLESS WOMAN CERAMIC FIGURE (JUST PAY £199 POSTAGE AND PACKING)

PAGE 94 - OTHER NEWS
SLOW START TO WORLD WAR 3
MILLIONS DEAD IN MIDDLE EAST
OVER BY CHRISTMAS SAYS JOHN HUTTON - NO NEED TO PANIC

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3/23/2009 10:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, March 21, 2009 

Weekend links.

Another week down, and Manchester United lose for the second weekend in a row. Things don't get much sweeter.

Anywho, onto matters at hand. On the blogs both Craig Murray and BenSix comment on Canada barring George Galloway, Murray especially wondering whether our politicians might make a similar stance to the Dutch ones that supported Geert Wilders. Fat chance; ours don't care about freedom of speech. Paul Linford provides his weekly column, on the policy vacuum at the heart of the Conservatives, Justin answers Tom Harris's feigned outrage that bloggers didn't note the dropping of the much criticised bailiffs policy, where it's tempting to ask whether Harris would like some cheese with his whine, Anton Vowl sees the Mail engaging in up-skirt journalism, but only because Gemma Arteton was wearing (big) pants rather than none, Alix Mortimer says that the upcoming Labour intake shows that the party's doomed, John B notes some statistics which show that the murder rate in London remains stable, rather undermining the "knife crime" epidemic motif, while if you only read one thing, I can't recommend enough Laurie Penny's Tales from the Turnpike, where she collars a banker, relieves him of one note of his fat wad, and hands it to a distressed homeless teenager. Almost restores your faith in humanity.

In the papers, it's a rather a barren week. Marina Hyde in her usual waspish fashion tackles OK!'s premature killing off of Jade Goody, Matthew Parris is readable as ever on lawyers, the law and the connection with politics, and Howard Jacobson somehow files the Myerson saga down to just Jake's habit for making cheese on toast at 2 in the morning and leaving the gas on.

As for worst tabloid article, we are once again spoiled for choice. If we wanted to create a new category of most mystifying tabloid piece, it would have to go to the Sun so much as bothering to cover the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. There isn't of course so much as a word dedicated to the paper's own involvement, and surprisingly in the comments there isn't any mention of it either, where you would expect there might have been. One has to wonder how heavily moderated it's been, although they could have just turned comments off. Also in the Scum is the continued haranguing of Harriet Harman, hilariously called "Harperson", for daring to have a bit of fun with actor Michael Sheen. The prize though must go yet again to Amanda Platell, this time commenting on the post office worker who refuses to serve people who can't speak English. There are choice points throughout, but it's Platell's conclusion that corks it:

It isn’t racist to say that while immigration has benefited Britain in many ways, there are now simply too many people settling here who don’t share our values - and, at worst, actively despise them.

No, it isn't racist - it's just completely and utterly ignorant. Much like the postie himself.

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3/21/2009 09:50:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 20, 2009 

It's not enough.

As it has done repeatedly in the past, the government has done the absolute minimum possible in an attempt to put to an end the increasing embarrassment caused by the continuing allegations of our active collusion in torture. We perhaps ought to be glad that the puny sops of publishing the guidance which the intelligence services have when it comes interrogating suspects, the reinvestigation of the treatment suffered by Binyam Mohamed by the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the promise of a new agreement with Pakistan concerning the arrest of British citizens have been offered at all; Diane Abbott seemed to sum up this government's attitude towards torture when she described ministers rolling their eyes and whispering about it "all being a Daily Mail campaign" when David Cameron unexpectedly brought the subject up at last week's prime minister's questions. These are former members of the likes of Liberty, some of them apparently still members of Amnesty International, dismissing the most brutal torture of innocent individuals as a tabloid campaign which they can just ignore, sigh and complain in private about. It might not win them many votes at the next election, pretending to care about "terrorist suspects" having their fingernails extracted with pliers or their penises repeatedly slashed with razors, but the general attitude towards such allegations still comes across as shockingly apathetic, even callous.

It's very good news therefore that Craig Murray will be called before the joint committee on human rights' parallel investigation into rendition and torture, his first opportunity to put his personal experience of information obtained via torture being used by the UK authorities before parliament. While the JCHR has been ignored repeatedly in the past, whether by MI5 chiefs or more recently by David Miliband and Jacqui Smith, it will at the least put into the open far more forcefully what has already been known but rarely highlighted for years. The same cannot be said for the Intelligence and Security Committee, a more discredited body it's difficult to think of. Its reports are unintentionally hilarious, when they are not absolutely scandalous, thanks to the ridiculous censorship imposed upon them, such as in these recent examples:

Whilst the primary focus is necessarily on international counter-terrorism (ICT) work, the UK's intelligence and security agencies also dedicate resources towards countering the challenges posed by ***, ***, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional instability in *** and the ***, and other challenges."

• "Top priority" in the UK's requirements for secret intelligence last year was given to seven areas:

• ***;
• ***;
• ***;
• ***;
• ***;
• ***; and
• ***."


And I hate to keep banging on about it, but it was also the ISC in its investigation into extraordinary rendition which decided that their definition of ER was different to everyone else's, thereby helpfully managing to clear the security services of collusion with ER in the case of Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi.

As Ian Cobain points out, it used to be claimed that MI5's 11th commandment was "thou shalt not get caught". Now that they almost certainly have been caught, the only way to fully understand what went wrong, how far the policy went and why we actively connived with the torture of our citizens and residents is for there to be a full judicial inquiry. There have been far too many lies told for anything less to be acceptable, and hopefully the admittance at last that there may have been a problem will inexorably lead towards one being granted.

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3/20/2009 11:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 19, 2009 

A depressing pyrrhic victory.

The only possible way you can describe Barclays' depressing legal victory over the Guardian, Mr Justice Blake ruling that the paper cannot republish the memos detailing the workings of Barclays' Structured Capital Markets team is as a pyrrhic one. The Guardian, in its own editorial, more than sums it up when it states that all that Barclays has achieved is to shut the stable door after the horse has not just bolted, but completely disappeared from view. This is thanks to the documents being immediately mirrored by Wikileaks, where they still reside and where they can be downloaded from a server in this country, in defiance of the injunction. The terms of the injunction mean that the Guardian cannot even point people in the direction of where they can find them or "incite" others to publish; all they will have to do instead is Google for them, where they'll quickly find them.

Part of Justice Blake's justification for ruling against the Guardian was that he didn't believe that the documents had spread far enough for their confidentiality to have completely broken down. This is clearly nonsense: all those that Barclays wanted to hide these documents from have not only got them, they've been poring over them now since Tuesday, whether they be HMRC, Barclays' rivals, or anyone else with the slightest grudge against the bank. The Grauniad refers to the House of Lords ruling on Spycatcher, that you cannot put the melting ice cube back into the freezer. That is more than apt: through the ban the only people who are being denied from being allowed to see what everyone else has is those who are either without the internet or those that have never heard of Wikileaks and can't properly use a search engine.

Equally weak was Blake's second argument. He agreed that the Guardian can report on the contents of the documents, as that is in the public interest; not in the public interest is the unexpurgated publication of the documents in full, containing legally sensitive matters and other confidential information. There are some obvious flaws in this: how is the paper meant to know firstly what is considered legally sensitive and confidential and what isn't? Their lawyers' might come to predictability different conclusions from those of Barclays'. This appears to have the potential to be a slippery slope; how else can a paper know what is sensitive unless they first consult the people they are preparing to expose and give them the opportunity to halt publication in its entirety? Ideally, journalists should do this anyway, but there are certain situations where if they did on an incredibly important story, undoubtedly in the public interest, they could end up not being able to publish anyway. In cases such of that as Max Mosley, there ought to be no question of the person being informed beforehand; when it involves politicians being accused of corruption or corporations being accused of blatant and artifical tax avoidance, there is a good argument for not doing so. Furthermore, why shouldn't the general public be able to view the source material for such exposes and be able to make their own minds up where it is possible for the hacks to provide such a service? Journalists cannot always be relied upon to report accurately what is in things which they either come across, investigate or are handed to them, especially when it comes to such incredibly complex and difficult to understand matters as tax avoidance. The Guardian itself is has an example of this, having misinterpreted how Tesco was operating a tax avoidance scheme and wrongly claiming that they were avoiding corporation tax to the tune of £1bn when they were in fact avoiding stamp duty land tax on a much lesser scale.

Blake also suggested that "if the debate can flourish without the publication of the full documents, that is a highly material factor". But none of the articles in either the Graun or the Sunday Times begins to cover in anything approaching forensic detail just what is discussed and proposed in these documents; they just give a broad summary. Debate can flourish without them being freely available, but that is not truly informed debate. The best summation of what they contain was made by Alan Rusbridger in his statement to the court:

"I considered these documents to be of the highest significance in the debate about tax avoidance.

"They revealed at first hand the processes involved in structuring extremely complex and artificial tax avoidance vehicles; how lawyers and accountants worked together to exploit loopholes in government legislation; and the degree to which they are sanctioned at the highest levels within Barclays."


Only by examining the documents first hand do you fully understand just how Barclays' SCM team operated and operates. Blake's decision has slammed the door on one source of light, but the others remain wide open.

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3/19/2009 11:18:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 

How many more might there be?

The details in the case of Sean Hodgson are so familiar that they could almost be the boilerplate of any mediocre ITV drama: the local "oddball", often with mental health problems, who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, ends up convicted of murder and left to rot in prison, always denying his guilt, only for his innocence to be eventually established. It's also familiar because it has happened so often, with the names of those involved in similar miscarriages of justice becoming seared on the memory: Barry George, Colin Stagg, Stephen Downing, and probably most notoriously, Stefan Kiszko.

Kiszko's case, where he was eventually cleared of the murder of Lesley Molseed after he was found to be infertile, the real killer having ejaculated onto Molseed's underwear and skirt, was memorably described by one Conservative MP as the "worst miscarriage of justice of all time". That might be disputed by the friends and family of Derek Bentley and Timothy Evans to name but two, both executed for crimes they were subsequently cleared of, but it's one that's stuck. Hodgson's however must challenge it, as did Downing's, who also served 27 years before finally being freed.

For those of us who can barely imagine, or wish to imagine serving any length of time in prison, 27 years seems even more unfathomably abstract. To spend those years also knowing that you are innocent takes the equation even further into territory you have no desire to visit. Simply to survive that time and not come out at the end of it a broken person is almost always an impossible task, and sadly Hodgson, who was already a troubled man who lied pathologically, looks substantially older and frailer than his years. He will presumably receive substantial compensation, like the other recent victims of miscarriages of justice, but it will never even begin to atone for how he has undoubtedly suffered.

The forensic evidence which proved Hodgson's innocence is not always so conclusive however, and can rely just as much on the person running the tests and subsequently testifying as the evidence itself. In Barry George's case the speck of "firearms residue" which sealed his fate was found to have been as likely to come from any other source as it was from the gun which killed Jill Dando. Barri White was convicted of the murder of his girlfriend partially on the basis of particulates found on Rachel Manning's skirt, which the prosecution case said had come from his friend Keith Hyatt's van, supposedly used to dump Manning's body. This evidence was subsequently shown to be completely inaccurate; the particulates were not from the van's seat and in any case the scientist had not done the necessary work to even establish conclusively that they had. After a retrial White was cleared of any involvement in her death. Meanwhile Thames Valley police, having brought what was described as one of the most flimsy prosecutions for murder in years, has been forced to start from the beginning again.

One can only hope that the overturning of Hodgson's conviction leads to all similar cases being re-examined in line with the latest advances. Some others though still languish in prison on even less evidence, the most notorious example being Michael Stone, convicted of the equally infamous murders of Lin and Megan Russell on the basis of a supposed cell confession by an admitted liar. Some, perhaps rather optimistically, have since linked the Russell murders to Levi Bellfield, convicted last year of a series of attacks on young blonde women in London, who has also been linked to the unsolved murder of Amanda "Milly" Dowler. Stone has already had one retrial, and had a further subsequent appeal rejected, yet it seems doubtful that with the remarkable lack of actual evidence linking him to the murders, a "bootlace" found at the scene notwithstanding, that Stone's could yet turn out be a miscarriage of justice to rival all of the above.

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3/18/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Jenvey saga widens even further.

The Glen Jenvey saga continues to simmer nicely. It now appears that Jenvey does not just fabricate messages on Islamic forums with a view to selling the "extremist" results to the media, but also when cornered turns to smearing his foes with predictable allegations of paedophilia, his IP matching the one making comments on Thai websites with the one behind malicious edits to Wikipedia, attributed to Jenvey.

Difficult though it is get your head round, this all began with a Sun front page story which claimed Islamic extremists, in reality a couple of posters on Ummah.com suggesting sending polite letters to Jews in the wake of the Israeli assault on Gaza, were targeting the likes of Alan Sugar. Since then the PCC has begun investigating, Alan Sugar has launched legal action, the ambassador to Afghanistan has been drawn in, a Conservative MP who has worked with Jenvey has become embroiled, and now it seems likely that the police, already contacted by Jenvey himself, will now also become further involved. Almost all the credit goes to Tim Ireland for an exceptional investigation, and one which seems likely to run and run.

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3/18/2009 11:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

The Apprentice.

Is just Big Brother for the bourgeois.

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3/18/2009 11:19:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 

The smartest guys in the room get hot under the collar.

It would be nice to think that with various tax havens having to promise to be rather more transparent in their operations than they have been previously, threatened with being "named and shamed" by the OECD, that the actual businesses which exploit such havens would be following a similar trajectory. The sad reality is that both will continue to get away with it just as they have in the past: they'll wait for the current mood to slowly wither away, as it will when the economy eventually recovers, and then the same old lawyers and same bean-counters will be back to doing what they do best, letting the rich and powerful get away it while castigating the scum at the bottom who dare to fiddle their benefits.

Barclays however hasn't even bothered with letting it all blow other. Despite being in negotiations with the Treasury, threatened by its toxic assets, which it wants the government to insure, it still succeeded in gaining an injunction against the Guardian, stopping it from hosting documents detailing "Project Knight", a tax avoidance scheme devised in Feburary 2007 which could have seen the bank save between £40m to £60m in a single year. This is despite the fact the scheme is not illegal, and that Barclays even says that it fully informed Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs of what it was doing. Why then is it so desperate for the documents not to enter the public domain? Is it ashamed of what it was doing, legal though it was? Barclays' lawyers Freshfields argued that the documents were property of the bank, and that could only have been acquired by someone who had breached confidentiality agreements.

Sadly for Barclays, either the documents were up long enough for someone to mirror them, or they were also distributed to Wikileaks, increasingly becoming vital against legal threats of all varieties, where they are still fully available. Not just is the proposal for Project Knight included, but also documents detailing the setting up of a "Brazilian Investment Strategy", "Project Brontos", "Project Berry II - Investment in Index Linked Gilts", "Project Faber", "Project Valiha" and a memo detailing the minutes of a meeting of Barclays' Structured Capital Markets team concerning the setting up of an office for SCM in Luxembourg. Most interesting to do with the injunction issued against the Guardian is the involvement of Freshfields with Project Faber. Normally you would imagine that Barclays would have employed a separate legal firm to deal with the media, as Freshfields is ostensibly only involved with business law advice, but in this instance they seem to have decided not to do so. This raises a potential conflict of interest because the document on Project Faber details Freshfields' legal advice on the tax risk which the project would incur, and unlike the other documents where the risks are summarised fairly succinctly, Freshfields goes into quite some detail on five specific UK risks which Faber raises. Again, there's no suggestion here that either Barclays or Freshfields has done anything specifically illegal, but it also certainly seems to be in Freshfields' interest, as well as Barclays', to stop the documents from entering the public domain.

I won't pretend that I understand much of these documents, nor probably would 99% of the other people in the country, unless we had the likes of "Slicker" from Private Eye personally explaining them to us, but Richard Murphy is another man who does and who was asked by the Sunday Times to look at them after they were first passed them but didn't publish them in full. He described Project Valiha thusly:

It is designed so the money goes round in a big circle and comes back to Barclays so that they make £99m in tax savings without taking any risk at all. The whole thing takes three days.


As for the others:

“They work on the basis of exploiting tax regulations and the laws of different countries. They don’t generate any real profit for anyone, but they do save vast amounts of tax that they would otherwise pay.”

The Sunday Times claimed that Barclays might have been saving up to £1bn in tax through the various schemes, something the bank has vigorously denied. Murphy has though commented rather further on the schemes, of which it seems there might be even more which haven't turned up on Wikileaks:

I’ll tell you what I think is going on with Barclays. In my opinion it has constructed a series of wholly almost entirely artificial transactions undertaken through a significant number of separate legal entities, most under the control of Barclays itself, but some, inevitably, owned, or controlled (and in these deals it is always difficult to define what that might mean, deliberately) by the counterparty to the transaction - in most cases banks such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Fortis and so on.

Those entities have been in a number of jurisdictions, the UK and the Cayman Islands being the most common, but Luxembourg also being a participant. Some have been limited companies, some limited liability partnerships.

Some of those entities, even when incorporated elsewhere are tax resident in the UK, and some are not.

Some account under International Financial Reporting Standards. Some account under UK accounting standards.

It would seem that Barclays are trying to realise profits that they have ‘manufactured’ in most cases through these immensely complex structures by arbitraging (trading off) international taxation law, company law in various jurisdictions and even accounting standards, to achieve taxation results that mean that profits are realised or sold without taxation liabilities arising for Barclays.

The result has been a deliberate attempt to defraud – by which term I mean seeking to secure a financial advantage by deception, although not (I stress) illegally.

The deception has been on three parties. The first has been tax authorities who despite their brave statements to the contrary did not, I suspect, know the full details of some of these arrangements. It would seem that some may not have been disclosed to them.

Secondly, Barclays have sought to defraud (using the above definition) the taxpayers of the UK and maybe elsewhere who have not received the funds rightfully due to them on profits declared.

Thirdly, I think they have defrauded (using the above definition) their shareholders by declaring profits which were not, in my opinion, sustainable and which were manufactured through preconceived and structured financing deals in which the counterparties played a remarkably small part in exchange for what was, in effect, a fee to allow Barclays to record realised profits by turning the manufactured profits into third-party transactions.


This seems to be the real reason why Barclays is so desperate to keep the documents out of ordinary people's hands. They realise that they are some of the first real hard evidence to emerge of just how specialist teams within the banks sought to avoid tax, and who were subsequently incredibly richly rewarded for their work, with Murphy claiming that the head of Barclays' SCM division may well have been earning an astonishing £40m a year (other sources claim it could be £75m, for which see this revoltingly sycophantic article), about the same amount as that which one of the schemes would have saved the bank. In order to offset such huge remuneration, the profits from the avoidance would have had to have been far higher, and the £1bn a year figure no longer looks as nonsensical as Barclays claim. It somewhat puts Fred Goodwin's pension, even the £3 million lump-sum we now know he received into perspective, hence why Murphy has put up a further four posts on what should be done. At the very least we need to stop apologising for and excusing tax avoidance and demand that companies, in the words of Alistair Darling, don't just adhere to the letter of the law but also the spirit of it. Great public anger over the bailing out of the banks has not yet reached boiling point, but the Barclays revelations may just push the mercury further towards the top.

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3/17/2009 11:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

I stared into the cold, dead eyes of unpopular journalism...

As well as being exploitative and revolting, the coverage of the Fritzl trial has also delivered some simply shockingly bad journalism. The Guardian, despite its crowing about the only British broadsheet in the courtroom, has at least tried to remove all sensationalism and cod personal insights from its reports, even if the sub-editor behind the headline was not as subtle. The same, unsurprisingly, cannot be said for the Sun, or the other papers that led with the impossibly precise figure of 4,000 rapes, but Brian Flynn's piece in places has to be read to be believed:

I STARED into the cold, blue eyes of incest fiend Josef Fritzl yesterday — and saw not a flicker of remorse or shame.

Fritzl had lowered the blue file binder he used to hide his face from photographers when he entered court.

The power-crazed monster, who regards females as objects to dominate and abuse, was finally confronted by two women who will decide his fate

Yet, with a sick discipline learned from the Nazi heroes of his youth, he simply gazed ahead, expressionless, for more than two hours.

...

As the public section of the trial ended yesterday, Fritzl reached for his blue folder and held it against his face once more.

It was as if he believed that no one was going to see into his soul.

But he was too late for those of us in court who had already fixed upon his eyes.

I was in no doubt I had seen the most evil man on earth.


Even Craig Brown might have baulked at satirising a humourless, puffed-up journo in such a fashion, thinking that no one would believe one could write such utter meaningless twaddle dressed up as an actual news report. Fritzl will remain the most evil man on earth until the Sun finds the next one, who should be along a couple of days from now.

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3/17/2009 11:00:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 16, 2009 

Fritzl and media saturation.

There really is nothing quite like some good old fashioned humbug. The same media which rejoiced in the Josef Fritzl story, covering every sordid detail of the 24-year long abuse of his daughter even as it proclaimed itself shocked and horrified at what he had done, while chomping at the bit to ascribe to Austria as a whole the blame for the man, is now covering his trial in the same fashion. This should be one of those occasions where the media just leaves well alone, lets justice take its course and leaves the shattered family in peace, but of course someone somewhere would cover it, so therefore all of them have to. The Guardian is even crowing about being the only "broadsheet to have a correspondent in court throughout the trial", as if that's something to proud about. The person who abused therefore has his audience, through which the abuse can be continued and extended, even if for the last time.

This is nothing more than voyeurism of the worst kind, purveying the peversions to a salivating audience whilst pretending to simply be providing a public service. Then again, when you have the likes of Peter Hitchens saying with a straight face that women who are raped when drunk have to bear some of the responsibility, it's not entirely surprising that the Fritzl story has been proved to be so amazingly popular.

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3/16/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Tory logo.

The site where you can create your own Conservative party logo slogan sadly seems to have collapsed under the weight of use, but not before I managed to create my own, not really humorous, more poignantly cynically honest version:

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3/16/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: Kavanagh demands Muslims personally apologise to him, and crime confusion.

Almost a week on from the protests in Luton by around 15 Islamists, those out to milk it for all its worth still haven't let go. Today Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun, having previously treated us to Islamophobia in response to accusations of Islamophobia instead introduces us to his amazing knowledge of both the terrorist threat and the Muslim community:

IF you thought public fury over the latest ‘IRA’ atrocities was impressive, wait for the uproar over the next 7/7.

For the jihadists haven’t gone away, either.

They are just furious that a few flint-eyed extremists from the Real IRA and Continuity IRA have beaten them to it.

How does Kavanagh know this? Simple: he doesn't. The jihadists haven't gone away, it's true, and undoubtedly the threat from them is worse than it is from Republican dissidents, but it's also worth bearing in mind that there now hasn't been a major attack foiled since the liquid bomb raids, over two and a half years ago, not counting the dismal failure of the Tiger Tiger and Glasgow airport patio gas canister attacks.

Last week’s Belfast demos involved peace-loving citizens from both sides of the community.

The question is, will we see peace-loving Muslims, preferably some in hijabs, filling the streets of Bradford after the next Islamist outrage?

Most British Muslims are as appalled by violence as the people of Northern Ireland.

Some bravely condemned the Luton fanatics who spat bile at our soldiers as they marched home last week.

But would they turn out in their thousands to denounce another massacre like the London Tube murders?

Unlikely. Yet, if they fail to join other British citizens in publicly expressing disgust, they risk being seen as silent sympathisers.

Kavanagh here doesn't see the flaw in his own argument. He is suggesting that Muslims would be the only ones that wouldn't turn up to denounce a second 7/7 attack, yet there was no response after 7/7 akin to that which we saw last week in Northern Ireland, also unlike the response in Spain to the Madrid attacks there. And why preferably some in hijabs? Because Kavanagh assumes that women wearing them must be more extreme, or more devout? This mirrors Kavanagh's previous comments regarding hijabs, which he described as "provocative", when they are nothing of the sort. Niqabs maybe, hijabs from this secularist's view unpleasant and unnecessary but not "provocative". Kavanagh's remarks that if they fail to live up to what he demands of them they "risk" being seen as "silent sympathisers" could not be more clear: he views them as outsiders unless they distinguish themselves by denouncing something that was not done in their name but by those who claim to share their religion. He wouldn't subject any other group in this country to this sort of treatment; what makes it's acceptable to do it to Muslims?

Not satisfied with this, he then, like the Sun has repeatedly, questions the allegations made by Binyam Mohamed regarding his rendition and torture:

But lying is the default position for Islamists. Which is why we should question Guantanamo inmate Binyam Mohamed’s claim he was tortured by America and hung out to dry by the British.

On balance, I prefer the word of our security services.

The Ethiopian asylum seeker is another ex-druggie convert, deluded by fantasies of Islamic purity in hellholes such as Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Yet we are giving him sanctuary, at huge cost and potential risk.

He is not British. He should be sent home, along with ALL foreign terror advocates who trade off the freedoms they are so determined to destroy.


Except he doesn't claim that it was only Americans that tortured him. His main mistreatment occurred in Morocco, where he was rendered by the Americans (undisputed, as we have the flight logs which showed a trip on the correct date on a plane associated with the rendition programme) and where, as the Intelligence and Security Committee has already said, MI5/6 provided his interrogators with questions which were used while he was tortured. How much evidence does Kavanagh actually want? Does he want to see Mohamed's penis, which was sliced with a razor and still bears the scars? That he has lived here since he was a teenager has no real links to any country other than here is irrelevant to Kavanagh; he should just be thrown out because of his own ideological bias.

Much of the rest is the same old spouting that the Sun has cranked out for years, all without anything approaching proof or anything approaching insight, bringing up the old already disproved idea that it's foreign imams that are brainwashing the youth when in fact the radicalisation process is far more complicated and more to do with groups of like-minded individuals and the internet than simply listening to the sermons of the Qatadas and Hamzas. The new tactic is to quote at length those who have turned their back on radical Islam, even when they themselves are discredited. Shiraz Maher, who produced a report which had the most ridiculous and rigid recommendations for the government when tackling extremism for the think-tank Policy Exchange, discredited over Islam after Newsnight exposed that it had fabricated parts of a previous report is given space, while Ed Husain, more reliable but also unwieldy in what he thinks should be done, unlike his more amenable colleague Majjid Nawaz, also of the Quilliam Foundation, is also given room to voice concern over how Luton didn't turn out to denounce 15 people who weren't even all from the town, despite pictures from mosques on Friday which featured many worshippers condemning the protests.

All of this covers up the fact that the very thing Kavanagh seems to want is in fact just as likely to alienate as it is to unite. Demanding that Muslims as a block denounce something that doesn't in any way represent them is the exact sort of thing that is guaranteed to cause resentment towards a society which is already fearful and sceptical, and in some cases even prejudiced against them. The Sun's entire coverage of terrorism and the war on terror has been conducted in an "us and them" style, completely wedded to the Bush administration's policies on it, and scornful of the alternatives. That this has been counter-productive could not be more plain, yet the paper continues to defend it, ridiculing those tortured and demanding that terror laws be ever further tightened.

Elsewhere, the Sun's leader is typically confused (url will change as usual):

CRIME statistics alone cannot reveal the truth about Broken Britain.

They can be twisted any way the Government likes.

The Tories point to Justice Ministry figures showing convictions for teenage violence and theft doubling since Labour took office.

True, says the Government — but only because we’re bringing more yobs to book.

In fact crime is DOWN by a massive 39 per cent.

Does someone really need to explain to the Sun that just because crime is down that doesn't mean that convictions must also be down? It seems like it. As with Kavanagh, the Sun has already decided what's actually happened: Britain is broken and the government twists the statistics. True, it doesn't help when the government is caught doing just that, such as over the knife crime statistics released late last year, but the Sun itself fell for that and then claimed that no one had believed them anyway. The Sun then launches its own survey:

Crazy, isn’t it? So we must all decide for ourselves.

Today, we report four teenage murders in three days.

Do you think crime levels are lower than in 1997?

Do you feel there are enough police to keep order? That sentences are sufficient deterrent?

Do you think Labour really has been “tough on crime”? Do you feel safer than when they came to power?

We’ll bet the answer, every time, is No.

And the Sun is determined that the answer remains no, as its hysteria over "Broken Britain" and demands for ever more police and prison places continue unabated.

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3/16/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Sunday, March 15, 2009 

Weekend links.

No overall theme again this weekend, so let's just get straight into it. On the blogs, there's my gun control/school shootings post mirrored on Lib Con, where there's an informative and interesting debate in the comments, Blairwatch notes that Iraq is set to execute 128 prisoners, as well as sentencing show throwers to three years in prison, 5cc on Mail Watch highlights the Mail's continuing emphasis on immigration, Craig Murray lets us know how the JCHR treated the email campaign that he launched, Shiraz Socialist looks at the link between the Revolutionary Communist Party, that band of libertarians and their influence on current Tory thinking re: multiculturalism, rhetorically speaking, Anton Vowl and Daily Quail tackle the continuing fallout from the Luton demonstrations, Laurie Penny mirrors her Red Pepper article on Britney Spears and Alix Mortimer looks at the cynicism behind David Cameron's apology over his party's economic policy.

In the papers, Matthew Parris tries to find out what the Conservatives' foreign policy is and fails, Janice Turner, riffing on the blackmailed BMW heir, suggests that empowered women have few qualms about paying for sex, Deborah Orr says that apologies change nothing, Howard Jacobson amusingly as always talks of the boredom of existence, Christina Patterson, noting the bizarre current fascination with Ayn Rand says she's the last role model we need right now, Tristam Hunt attacks the Mail over their own assaults on Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, and Jeremy Clarkson (yep, Jeremy Clarkson) pisses all over his fellow Sun columnist's efforts with an actually rather good piece on "common sense".

As for worst tabloid article of the weekend, you can make your own decision. You can either go with the Sun's attack on the BBC for daring to broadcast an interview with Binyam Mohamed, when they certainly didn't go after the Mail on Sunday in a similar way who got there first, or with the horror of yet another fucking article in the Times by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal about his split from the equally loathsome Liz Jones, via the fact that Jake Myerson obviously wasn't treated as badly as he was.

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3/15/2009 12:04:00 AM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 13, 2009 

Laming to the slaughter.

Slowly, the memory of Baby P will fade. Last November and December's moral panic, wrapped up with one of the most unpleasant and counter-productive witch-hunts of recent times and also containing more than a dose of the emotional incontinence which has afflicted some since the death of Diana is still pulsing, but barely. Even as our natural empathy for each other and for those who are actually still alive seems to inexorably ebb, we seem to find it far easier to care about those who we can't bring back. At least those cut up about the upcoming death of Jade Goody (if indeed anyone genuinely is) are directing their attention at someone still breathing.

For social workers themselves though, Baby P will continue to haunt them. Not just because they too will be fearful of receiving the same treatment that Sharon Shoesmith, Maria Ward and others were subjected to should they be unfortunate enough to also fail to prevent a child in their care from being killed, but also because of how the rattled Ed Balls turned once again to Lord Laming to produce a report on what went wrong. As Martin Kettle points out, Laming's first review after the death of Victoria Climbie made 108 recommendations. Social workers complain bitterly that Laming's report instituted the kind of bureaucracy and paperwork more associated with the police; Shoesmith in her interview with the Guardian noted that those working under her were spending up to 70% of their time in front of computers instead of working with families and children. The word "bureaucracy" doesn't feature once in Laming's report (PDF). The word "paperwork" appears once, with Laming emphasising that paperwork not being up to date shouldn't stop an application for a care or supervision order being made.

To add to those first 108 recommendations, there are another 58 in yesterday's to add to them. Balls, unsurprisingly, announced that the government would endeavour to introduce every single one. Not that the language used in Laming's report really gave them much option: flicking through the various proposals, must is used only slightly less sparingly than should. In any event, Laming's report was always a ploy to buy the government time, meant to show that something was being done. Reports and inquiries set up and turned around in such a relative short space of time are always stop-gaps, hardly likely to really help, and in some instances make things worst. They are however a vital part of modern politics: when there really should be inquiries and reports, such as into the 7/7 bombings, our involvement in extraordinary rendition and the Iraq war, they're denied. We might learn something from those; you're unlikely to learn much from Laming's report.

This top-down approach, which seems to be designed to further demoralise workers with edicts from above when they are already under such strain is destined to fail, yet the centralisation instinct continues to reign supreme despite all the negatives which have become attached to it over time. Part of the problem is undoubtedly fear on the part of politicians of losing both influence and power, but it's also because we increasingly demand ourselves that something must be done instantaneously, and that the best way to do it is to rip it up and start again. It's also the easiest thing to do, because it gives us someone to blame and ridicule, whether it be Shoesmith or Sir Fred Goodwin, enabling us to have our own watered down version of the two minutes' hate.

This isn't to dismiss all of Laming's recommendations out of hand. One of the key failings has been a lack of proper training, but this itself has not been helped by the abject failure of politicians to stand up for, support and defend social workers when they are often unfairly criticised by the press. They're either breaking up families too easily or letting parents or carers kill when it should have been obvious that something was wrong. The lack of support in the aftermath of the Baby P case was palpable, further demoralising a profession which already finds it incredibly difficult to retain staff that are overworked and dealing with some of the most intractable problems in society as a whole. The response was institutional risk aversion, taking unprecedented numbers of children in temporary state care. Laming's report will do little more than make social workers and those in charge of them jump through ever tighter hoops, while the opprobrium has not been staunched.

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3/13/2009 09:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 12, 2009 

How not to react to idiotic protests.

Over 5,000 people protested yesterday across Northern Ireland for peace. That was on the inside pages. On Tuesday between 12 and 20 Islamists, almost certainly connected with the successor groups to al-Muhajiroun, exercising their clear democratic right, protested at a parade of troops returning from Iraq. Their slogans and placards were admittedly inflammatory, but probably just on the side of not causing a public order offence or inciting hatred, and in any event they should have been given the benefit of the doubt in order to exercise their legitimate right to demonstrate. Their protest, clearly designed to attract widespread attention, makes the front pages of the tabloids for two days running. Forgive me for wondering about the sense of priorities.

Not that any of this was in the slightest bit surprising. It ticked all the buttons for the tabloids: our brave heroic boys being unfairly abused when they are just doing their jobs, mad Muslims doubtless sponging off the state daring to appear in public with a different view from that of the Fleet Street consensus, and then they of course got to make phone calls to their favourite people, the spouting likes of Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri Muhammad, always waiting on the end of the phone line to deliver a diatribe against some part of life or society. All so predictable.

Less predictable was the tenor of the condemnation from politicians, who rather than suggesting that perhaps the best way to respond to the protest was to not give those who desperately wanted publicity the exact thing that they craved instead competed to spout the most meaningless platitude. Hence we had Harriet Harman hilariously suggesting that the soldiers were fighting for "democracy and for freedom of speech as well as peace and security in the region and the world." These were the troops which have just spent their last six months rarely leaving their base outside Basra, and according to most accounts doing a rather poor job of training the Iraqi police. Their presence, according to no less an authority than the head of the army himself, was in fact "exacerbating" the security situation. She was however outdone by the egregious Liam Fox, who said "[I]t is only because of the sacrifices made by our armed forces that these people live in a free society where they are able to make their sordid protests." He is of course right, up to a point, but the idea that our current armed forces and their deployments are in any way protecting us currently, and that this somehow means that they are beyond criticism, is an attempt to close down such debate, without getting into other arguments such as that made by Matthew Norman. We could however depend on other shrill Tory politicians, such as Sayeedi Warsi, who described the protesters as "criminals", and this blog's much loved Nadine Dorries, who described their intervention as "atrocities" (according to the Sun, although I can't seem to find her describing them thusly elsewhere, although she makes points similar to Harman and Fox on her blog) to even further ramp up the synthetic outrage.

Quite how far what should have been an insignificant protest launched by marginalised individuals with absolutely no wide support was blown out of proportion was symbolised by what we have since learned about the attempts to organise their presence. Mass leafleting went on in Luton, which has an estimated population of around 20,000 Muslims, to encourage protests at the homecoming: that just 20 turned up, and that indeed there are claims that some of those there were not even from Luton or the surrounding area shows how ignored their message was in the town itself. Indeed, the TV pictures clearly showed that there were plenty of other Muslims who had turned up to applaud the troops, who have been completely ignored in all of this. That though was never going to fit into the message which was meant to be conveyed here: that the protest itself was bordering on the almost treasonable, and that anyone who treats the armed forces in such a disrespectful matter ought to be put on the first plane out of the country.

The reaction which those who organised the protest have received will if anything embolden them to repeat their actions. That one of them has lost his job working at Luton airport due to his attendance will be a further greviance they will build on. The real victims in all of this will of course will be the ordinary Muslims whom have been tarnished, both by the protesters themselves and by the media who at the first opportunity get in contact with individuals who build themselves up as representative of the wider community when they are representative only of themselves. Choudary and al-Bakri stigmatise Muslims as a whole, and then individuals demand that good, decent Muslims raise their voices against them; why should they when it should already be apparent that they loathe those who are only interested in their own self-aggrandisement? The other beneficiaries, as always, are the BNP, with Nick Griffin sending out an email to supporters which was actually milder in the language used than most other politicians were.

One final, controversial point to make is to challenge the idea that the troops themselves are completely above reproach. While we thankfully don't have the same jingoistic view of our soldiers as they do in the US, the tabloid press especially insists on regarding every single member of the armed forces automatically as a "hero"; this, it should go without saying, is an incredibly simplistic and unhelpful view to take. The soldiers themselves for the most part resent the way the media portrays them, regarding it both as cynical and false, not to mention embarrassing when they themselves are for the most part incredibly humble about what they do. It also undermines the very real fact that they are working for what many of us would regard as poverty pay, in often horrendous conditions, with old equipment and in unsanitary housing. They deserve respect and support, not fawning and brown-nosing. Targeting them in such insulting terms is wrong, but is not to say that all protests against soldiers are automatically unacceptable. If only we could get past all such orthodoxies, we might eventually get somewhere in challenging all those involved, but it seems destined not to be.

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3/12/2009 10:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 

Gun control and school shootings.

While I tend to be for the most part as socially libertarian as you can get, one of the things I tend to disagree with the actual libertarians on is gun control. One of the undoubted major reasons why gun crime in this country is for the most part incredibly rare, especially when compared to other countries is thanks to the draconian nature of our laws; you could argue that we've never been major gun lovers over the last century in any case, and that we've never had the sort of constitutional protection like in the United States which has encouraged mass gun ownership, but it's almost certainly a factor as to why we thankfully haven't experienced the school shooting massacres that the US has become notorious for and which Germany experienced its second of today. True, the Dunblane massacre, alongside the Virginia Tech and Columbine shootings is one of the most well-known, but that doesn't really count as it wasn't committed by either a student or former pupil who had only recently left.

Sadly, I do however think that it's only a matter of time until we do experience our own version, which is why triumphalism or sneering at other countries' problems and policies, and especially putting it down to some sort of moral decay, societal problems or a nation's history is incredibly unhelpful. The key thing that has to be stated is that all of these massacres are essentially copycat crimes: media coverage and especially sensationalism does nothing whatsoever to help them from being repeated. Some of those who launch such shootings will do it on the spur of the moment; the majority however will have almost certainly been planning their attacks for some time, and the warning signs may well have been there. What I wrote after the Virginia Tech massacre seems worth repeating:

There have always been serial killers, murderers and terrorists, but never before have young men and teenagers in such a short space of time carried out such wanton acts of carnage against their own peers in the corridors of their schools. The easy availability of such lethal weaponry plays its part, but it doesn't explain why this epidemic has erupted in such a way, especially in the last decade. Teenage angst, alienation, mental illness and a thirst for revenge against both perceived and actual slights help us to understand why, but they don't tell the full story. These may be extroverted suicides, as [Lionel, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin] Shriver also argues, and Oliver James seems to concur, but there are thousands who kill themselves and who want to end it all without taking dozens of others with them. We have to examine whether the pressures being put on children everywhere to succeed whatever the costs, especially in a dog eat dog world which seems to grow crueller and nastier by the year, and where failing and even being "different" is worthy of ridicule is helping to contribute to the malaise which is afflicting youngsters, even if very few of them are going to slaughter their classmates as a result.

...

I don't have the solution or the answer, but if there is one thing that perhaps would help, it would be for more understanding both for those who suffer from mental ill-health and more attention to be given to those who do suffer from their own private demons while young. It just might prevent more re-runs of the current grieving than is necessary.

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3/11/2009 11:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: Hypocrisy amongst a defense of Maddie-balls.

You'd really think that the Sun would have just said nothing about Gerry McCann's evidence to the culture, media and sport select committee's investigation into press standards and left it at that. Every line and word would have the potential to be gloriously hypocritical and also highlight their own role in the smearing, not perhaps of the McCanns themselves, where they acted for the most part with relative restraint compared to their rivals, but certainly in their far less balanced coverage dedicated to Robert Murat, who the Sun along with the rest of the tabloid media paid damages to.

Instead, it's dedicated a leader to somewhat defending itself, although the real point behind it becomes evident with its conclusion. Still, let's delve in (url subject to change):

KATE and Gerry McCann suffered the double agony of losing a precious daughter — and media lies about their role in her disappearance.

Dignified Gerry says Madeleine’s nightmare abduction plunged them into an agonising “media storm”.

Distraught with shock and guilt, they faced vile claims they murdered their own child and dumped the body.

Trashy “exclusives” added to the grief of this tragically unlucky couple.


Trashy "exclusives" like splashing on the front page with a picture of a random little blonde girl who looked slightly like Madeleine, for example? Or running a completely bogus story about Murat that couldn't possibly have been true because the McCanns themselves told the paper that their daughter hadn't gone missing at the time the witness claimed to have driven them in his cab? Or a 12-page super special on the anniversary of Madeleine going missing that plumbed new depths of even tabloid journalism?

Much blame lies with Portuguese police who made up for their incompetence by smearing the McCanns as suspects, leaving them defenceless against poisonous rumour.

Ah yes, the blame the ignorant, incompetent foreigners defence. I'm pretty sure they didn't force the Sun to print what it did.

Some newspapers greedily pounced on any dodgy rubbish to increase sales.

The Sun’s own coverage was sometimes less than perfect.

But we are proud to have been praised by the McCanns for our steadfast support.

And the tabloids were not alone in this media frenzy.

The BBC’s Huw Edwards fronted the news standing outside alleged suspect Robert Murat’s front door.


Quite true, the BBC hardly helped matters by flying anchors over to Portugal, which was completely over the top. I seem to remember Sky News (majority shareholder R. Murdoch) however had an entire dedicated section to Madeleine, and when the McCanns returned from Portugal followed them for their entire journey from the airport to where they were staying by helicopter, in the world's slowest and most boring car chase. The BBC merely joined in the race to the bottom, and would use the exact same defence as the tabloids would: that they were giving the public what they wanted.

And, it has to be said, the McCanns themselves fed the headlines.

They hired spokesmen, courted the cameras and at one stage flew to Rome to meet the Pope.

Who can blame them? They were desperate to keep the world focused on the search for their little girl.


Again, quite true: from the moment the McCanns went all out with the media hunt the chances of finding their daughter seemed to decline immeasurably. Making your missing child the most famous face in Europe, if not the best part of the world, is not necessarily the best way to find her. They however did this for the best possible reasons: the media regardless chewed them up and spat them out.

Despite all this, Gerry McCann still believes in freedom of speech.

Which is more than can be said for Max Mosley who wants EU-style privacy laws.

Britain already has draconian libel laws and self-regulation. It also has the Press Complaints Commission where issues are resolved swiftly and cheaply, without £500-an-hour lawyers.

The last thing we need is unelected judges censoring the truth about scandalous conduct among the Great and the Good.

And so we get to the real reason for this tortuous leader. McCann incidentally said much the same as Mosley, with he too wanting far tighter regulation. Mosley's demands also fall short of a fully-fledged privacy law: fundamentally he wants those who are going to be featured in exposes like the one he found himself at the centre of to be informed before they go to publication, which is simply common courtesy, so they can then challenge that publication in the courts. In Mosley's case this would have meant that the NotW would not have been published the story in the form it was; it still probably could have splashed on his antics, just not with the fabricated Nazi angle, although again he still could have challenged it on invasion of privacy grounds. It's also true we have draconian libel laws, but as has been argued repeatedly by myself, the PCC is for the most part toothless. To pretend that it's a completely competent and strong regulator is a nonsense, as the McCann case comprehensively proved. Those who respected and feared it would never have published the articles they did in the first place, and the fact that all those who subsequently sued firmly rejected going to it with their complaints, and that the McCanns themselves were apparently advised by Christopher Meyer to launch legal action is hardly a vote of confidence in its abilities. Fundamentally, the Sun realises that Mosley threatens their business model: they rely on the scandals and the sex concerning the dregs of the celebrity world which has no real public interest. Exposing the real great and good often is in the public interest.

The chances in any event of any change to the law, which is what it will require rather than rulings by judges, are incredibly slim. That the Sun felt the need to defend itself in print, something it very rarely does, suggests that perhaps it isn't that unthinkable after all.

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3/11/2009 10:12:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 

The peace process strikes back.

The sudden revival of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland is neither as sudden nor as surprising as has been made out in some quarters. Warnings had been made over the last couple of years that dissident Republicans were growing in strength, or at the least growing in their brazenness; the terrorist groups on both sides have long kept their capability to commit outrages on ice, mainly to enforce their criminal rather than political activities. Quite why they chose precisely now to launch the first murders of soldiers and policemen in over 10 years is unclear, but it might not be entirely unrelated to the decision last week by Sir Hugh Orde to reintroduce special forces troops into the province, ostensibly on the grounds of preventing that which has now happened, but a move that has always been a red line with nationalists.

Immensely important here is gaining a sense of perspective. At most, active members of both the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA number in the low hundreds, if that; their supporters are probably only a few hundred higher, and going by the graffiti which has quickly been sprayed up on walls some of those involved may well not be able to even remember the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. The next generation, sometimes just until they grow out of their youthful radicalism, often want to rerun the battles of their fathers. Furthermore, if we deal with the murders of the two soldiers and the policeman as we should have responded to the far larger threat posed by Islamic extremists, who themselves probably number not much more than the groups in Northern Ireland but who often have far wider aspirations, as criminal acts and not as an existential challenge, the number of murders involving shootings in London alone in a month is probably more than the three in the last few days.

Always key to isolating support for the extremists was the response of Sinn Fein. More even than a challenge to the peace process itself, the attacks were a challenge to them, intended to push the party and the IRA's former members and leaders now turned politicians into what they regard as full collaboration with the British state itself. This was why the criticism, almost all from the right-wing press, directed at Sinn Fein for not condemning the attacks harshly enough was potentially incredibly counter-productive; both Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams have had to provide a balance between denouncing their former comrades while not alienating their supporters by giving too much away. They were certainly right to suggest that these attacks were also aimed at cultivating a harsh overreaction from the state: they know more than anyone that it was the doors being kicked in, the impunity of the RUC and the treatment of the nationalist community that brought more recruits than anything else into the IRA. It certainly wasn't their rhetoric or other political aims, that's for certain.

John Ware noted in his Guardian article that the "m" word had not been used by Sinn Fein. This might well have been because they were building up to using a far more punishing and ostracising one: standing alongside Orde and the first minister Peter Robinson, McGuinness denounced those responsible for the murders as traitors. For a member of Sinn Fein to be standing alongside either man at a press conference would not so long ago have been unthinkable; for him to also launch such a vicious, angry assault on the RIRA and CIRA could well be as historic a moment as some of the previous signings of agreements have been, as was the formal declaration from the IRA that war was over and that their weapons had been put beyond use. After his statement, the criticism about Adams' supposed "mealy-mouthed" criticisms or him fanning the flames by comparing the deaths of soldiers to the death of former provisionals seems utterly misplaced.

Just as it was to be hoped that the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan last week may have brought the disparate factions there together in condemnation of those who wished to undermine their nation state, it seems more likely that something along those lines may happen now in Northern Ireland. Of course, the huge differences between the nationalists and the unionists are never going to be fully breached, but the overwhelming response so far has been that the people there never want a return to the days where the gun and the bomb, but most of all fear itself, ruled the day. Sinn Fein has done all that could be reasonably asked of them: now it is up to the police force they have come to support to bring those responsible to justice.

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3/10/2009 10:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Dehumanised to a commodity.

Never has a truer word been spoken than the description by Gerry McCann of how his daughter became a commodity, with profits to be made out of her disappearance. He sugared the pill slightly in his evidence to the culture, media and sport select committee slightly by acknowledging that to begin with there was a "desire to try to help get facts that would lead to Madeleine's whereabouts", but even this was coloured, as it always is, by the media at the same time trying to promote themselves. There was no need to for the likes of the Sun and the News of the World to splash their logos all over the t-shirts they produced, or the posters which went up across Portugal, where they were almost as big if not bigger than the words "FIND MADDIE". Newspapers know full well that launching such campaigns benefits them, the chances of having to pay out being extremely slight, even though offering such huge rewards tends to attract cranks, and in extreme circumstances, such as in the Shannon Matthews case, even encourage the desperate to stage disappearances.

It's equally difficult to disagree with Mr McCann's other claim:

...our family have been the focus of some of the most sensationalist, untruthful, irresponsible and damaging reporting in the history of the press.

When you know the sorry history of the tabloid press in this country, and some of the recent low points, that's quite the statement. It's all the more depressing that it's almost certainly true.

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3/10/2009 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 09, 2009 

First and last words on the Jade Goody phenomenon.

Part of the reason I've abstained for the most part from commenting on the media/Jade Goody complex is that I've covered very similar examples here in the past ad nauseum. Goody is the latest continuation of what has been building in our media since the death of Diana: the perfect opportunity for the tabloid press to show they care while at the same exploiting the person for all they're worth, even if at the same time the person they're pretending to care about is also exploiting them. The line can be drawn fairly straight from Diana, through to Jill Dando, Sarah Payne, perhaps even Holly and Jessica, Madeleine McCann, Baby P at a stretch and now to Goody. The difference this time round is that Goody is still alive, for now; Madeleine technically is but was being treated as dead from almost as soon as she went missing. The fact that she was missing meant that she and her parents were fair game; to begin with they cooperated, then they were turned on, then they were rehabilitated. Remarkably like Goody, except she went through an initial process of vilification before being rehabilitated before once again being vilified.

The line of defence is that the media is expressing the public will, or the public mood: we too were grieving for Diana, we wanted the murderer of Jill Dando caught, we wanted to string paedophiles up by their testicles, we wanted to find Madeleine, and now we all feel the pain of Goody, of a life unjustly cut short by a disease that strikes us down at random. These moods can sometimes be fleeting, they can sometimes be lengthy, but the media will always be there to milk them to their full potential. Madeleine was only the most extreme example: a press which had lost all sense of its normal journalistic values, reduced to translating gossip in the local Portuguese rags, regardless of how heartless or defamatory, all because they believed that it was what their readers wanted, and that even if it wasn't, it was what they were going to get. Another justification increasingly cited is that the internet now allows constant, almost always unmoderated speculation and rumour, far beyond what even the Express published; the newspapers are only competing in a race to the bottom. It's wholly unconvincing, but expect it to be increasingly depended on as the recession deepens, advertising revenues fall further and circulations drop.

The case of Jade is however slightly different because it's the first real alignment between public relations and media which has dominated the tabloids for such a lengthy period of time. Most of the previous outbreaks of group-think were when those involved were either dead or missing, and when the only people who profited from it, apart from the media, if at all and hardly by much were the relatives. Jade is more comparable with those other individuals famous for no real reason, Jordan and Kerry Katona, the latter also previously handled by Max Clifford. Clifford is both a genius and probably the most shameless individual in the country, other than the tabloid editors themselves: his control and power are probably only comparable in the media world to, believe it or not, Sir Alex Ferguson, another person who can banish media organisations from his presence on the slightest of whims and with the same amount of accountability, namely next to none.

Clifford in fact didn't really devise the model of turning an individual into a brand; Jordan's people are probably those chiefly responsible. Jordan, or Katie Price is not just a perpetually surgically enhanced model, she's an underwear designer, a novelist, the modern equivalent of a diarist, a children's author, a singer, a horse rider, a perfume brand, even a porn star, if you're willing to count her amateur antics with Dwight Yorke which were released onto the net, while at one point she was even set to give birth live online. This edifice is of course a complete and utter sham: she no more writes a single word of her books than she does actively design the underwear sold under her name. Who knows, perhaps it isn't even really her riding a horse or on that TV show with her husband; everything else about her life is fake, why couldn't she herself be? The remarkable thing about all this is that in a world where the tabloids are prepared to scream at the slightest example of phoniness on BBC programmes, they completely indulge Jordan, Katona and Jade. Sure, they might occasionally run the odd article pointing out that Jordan doesn't actually write her books, but the Faustian pact between them is strong enough to ensure that it doesn't affect the next exclusives they've got lined up to keep the punters happy. The other thing is we honestly don't know whether those who buy the books or the garments actually care whether or not they're not getting the real deal: they probably don't. At any rate, the whole thing would be unlikely to come completely crumbling down even if the whole thing eventually turns out to be one long hoax to see just how low someone can go and get some of the general public to follow them.

It's only when someone makes a truly glorious mistake, such as that made by Goody when she bullied Shilpa Shetty that for a time they're sent to the dog house, awaiting their rehabilitation. In the most extreme examples this never happens: Michael Barrymore is one such case, and some of the other famous men accused of various crimes, both proved and disproved also come to mind. Some directly link Goody's subsequent living secular saint status to the fact she was diagnosed with cancer live on Indian Big Brother, but she had in fact been back in the tabloids and not been pilloried for some time before that. The cancer diagnosis though changed everything: sympathy will always win through, unless someone is either a paedophile or a murderer, as it ought to. This though has instead been taken to ludicrous extremes over the last few weeks, resembling a unending wake before she's even close to death's door, all the past insults forgotten, just as they were after Diana died, the harlot that betrayed the royal family turned into one of the greatest Britons to have ever lived, as Rosie Boycott so risibly argued (Interestingly, when Channel 4 did its equally unscientific 100 Worst Britons poll, Jordan came 2nd and Goody came 4th<, which was certainly unfair on Goody at the time). It has gone far, far beyond emotional pornography, instead evolving into the journalistic equivalent of an onanism obsessed teenager filling a whole drawer with spunk-laden tissues, not knowing what to do with them. The whole shallow, facile, revolting spectacle has been variously defended on the grounds that it's encouraging young women to get cervical check-ups, which is far from a compelling reason but a slight positive side-effect, to the completely baseless one that Goody is doing it so that her sons can have the life that she didn't. This is nonsense, not only because Goody was already more than well-off before she was diagnosed, but also because it seems to assume that you can't do well unless you're financially stable and go to a decent, presumably private school.

The real reason I was driven to write this drivel was Madeleine Bunting's even worse article in today's Grauniad, a similar act of masturbation, albeit a pretentious one, trying to explain the Goody phenomenon in terms of the economic calamity. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "needing to restore our faith in human nature", "grieving for the death of a fantasy world we have all been living in" or wondering what "sacrifices will we have to make as a nation to pull ourselves out of this economic mess", even if not all of those are directly thinking about Goody's death in these terms but instead through "tap[ping] into vague inchoate emotional anxieties", but is instead all to do with how Jade has been marketed and branded: she is an everywoman, and to those that have followed her, her death is similar to someone they know dying. With Diana certain people felt they knew her, through constantly seeing her life played out in the newspapers; with Goody this has been increased ten-fold, to the point where some probably are on the point of grieving because of her death, or even harming her, as the woman found with the hammer in her room may have done if not disturbed. Goody and the media have signed up because it benefits them both, and to hell with the actual effect that this real-life soap opera has on some people.

This obscene voyeurism is the ultimate tabloidisation of our culture, the latest pinnacle of the celebration of the completely unremarkable individual, the obeisance to the know-nothing. The worst thing of all is that the majority are almost certainly completely unmoved by Goody's demise, sad and sympathetic certainly, but not to the point where they want her to stare out from every tabloid front page for getting on for a month. It is instead being imposed on them by those in on the joke, those personally profiting from it. It just isn't funny. The real tragedy is that the woman with the hammer didn't cave it into Goody's skull and put all of us out of our misery.

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3/09/2009 11:38:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Paula Murray is a disgraceful hack.

I have very little to add to the astounding new barrel scraping low from the Sunday Express of stalking the survivors of the Dunblane massacre and analysing their moral purity, except to make a point the others missed: Paula Murray is employed by the man who produces and profits from such essential cultural films as Anal Boutique, Heavy Petting, Favourite Fucks 3, Katie K's Teen Rampage, Omar's Big Tit Virgins 4 and Old Guys Young Thighs 4 (link very nsfw). Quite how Richard Desmond has the nerve to print such outraged invasive cant is amazing in itself.

Update: The Press Complaints Commission already seem to be investigating, and the article has vanished. Lasted slightly more than 48 hours; a new record?

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3/09/2009 10:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, March 07, 2009 

Weekend links.

Another weekend, another bailout. We now own 65% of Lloyds-HBOS, thanks to the merger which was stitched up by Brown and Victor Blank. There's no wriggling out of this one: instead of just one other failing bank, we've now helped bring down one which would otherwise have managed better on its own, thanks purely to the hubris of both men and their back of a fag packet plan. The man who saved the world is increasingly left looking as if he's forgotten to put his pants on, let alone wearing them over the top of his trousers.

Elsewhere we have the usual mixed bag. Lenin has news that Hicham Yezza, caught up in the arrest of the Nottingham university student for having an al-Qaida training manual which he had downloaded from a US government website for his MA dissertation has been sent down for nine months, typical of the vindictive nature of the police and the CPS in getting someone over their embarrassment. Paul Linford asks whether Gordon should say sorry, Sid at PP compares a Hizbullah activist who's coming here with the banned Geert Wilders (both should be allowed to come, if that's not clear) and MediaWatchWatch notes John Beyer getting put in his place on the Grauniad's website. Causing the main ructions in the left/liberal "blogosphere" though is Amnesty International's claims that 1 in 10 women in Britain suffer rape or other violence every year. This lead to John Band claiming otherwise, although rather intemperately, which in turn led to this from Aaron. Since then both Sunny and Laurie Penny have entered the fray, while John has followed up his initial post.

In the papers, Arthur Scargill breaks his silence in the Graun with his personal view on the miners strike, which unsurprisingly are rather different to Norman Tebbit's. Ian Jack adds to the row over Julie Myerson treating her own son as book material (can't say I'm her biggest fan - I tend to disagree with more or less everything she says when on Newsnight Review), Ariane Sherine examines retorts and insults, Greg Dyke spares no punches regarding Michael Grade's running of ITV (especially interesting considering it's in the Times, what with BSkyB having around a 20% stake in ITV) Matthew Parris somehow imagines that the Conservatives will bring the end of managerialism (yeah, right) while in the Indie Deborah Orr says Brown should call an election and Johann Hari imagines that we've forgotten how to face death. Finally Peter Oborne asks whether Cameron's tragedy will toughen his stance and tell voters some home truths.

As for the worst tabloid article/comment of the weekend, we can't not comment on the Scum and Ashley Cole. It turns out it was the Scum's harrassment of Cole while he was out on Wednesday night which resulted in his arrest, having apparently taken photographs of him in a nightclub daring to talk to a woman. For now Cole has succeeded in stopping the paper from printing them, and however much Cole is loathed (and a lot of it is deserved, coming as this does from an Arsenal fan) it's not surprising how he feels about the paper considering that it first had to settle out of court with him after claiming he was gay, and then more successfully exposed him cheating on his wife with another blonde. Lorraine Kelly takes up this putrid theme in her column, saying that he doesn't deserve gorgeous pouting hideously tattooed Cheryl, regardless of any evidence that anything other than a conversation was going on in the club. The Sun's pursuit of Cole though is in stark contrast to the rest of the media's reticence when it comes to Rebekah Wade's marital status - she has just had her divorce from Ross Kemp finalised on the grounds of infidelity (his), and like when Les Hinton phoned round the other papers begging them not to print anything about it, only PA and the Press Gazette seem to have mentioned it this time round.

Actual worst article of the weekend though must go to Sue Reid, who you might recall a couple of years back was encouraging Polish people to come here and break the law so that she could write about it for the Mail. Now she's back highlighting Indians daring to work here on the Olympic site, despite Brown's call for British jobs for British workers. Call me cynical, but I don't think we can entirely trust her reliability.

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3/07/2009 09:21:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 06, 2009 

Ian Kerr and Stephen Whittamore.

It's interesting to note that the media is taking a far greater interest in the exploits of Ian Kerr, a private investigator who sold information on individuals and their political views to construction companies as part of what was almost certainly a blacklist, than they did in the somewhat similar case of Stephen Whittamore. Both were selling information on, the difference was that Kerr dealt in workers while Whittamore dealt with whoever newspaper journalists wanted him to, and that also meant gaining access to state databases, which it appears that Kerr did not.

Also worth noting has been the rather tepid response of the government itself. This couldn't possibly be because of the 40 or more companies, a good percentage of them conduct much of their business with the government via the private finance initiative, could it? Technically, this means that the state itself has been excluding workers on no more information that hearsay, something which it only otherwise practices when it comes the British National Party, and even then only in the police and the prison service, which is at least somewhat defensible if still troubling. In any event, Henry Porter as usual nails it.

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3/06/2009 11:13:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

It's not easy being green.

When it comes to protests like Leila Deen's this morning, it's difficult to know where exactly to draw the line. Undoubtedly, having any liquid substance thrown over you is unpleasant, yet unless it's something spectacularly nasty, such as the far more available urine rather than the "acid" mentioned by the likes of John Prescott, there really shouldn't be any repercussions for such rare political statements, and Peter Mandelson doesn't seem to want to take it any further. Speaking of Prescott, throwing eggs is something else, for the simple fact that a thrown egg has the potential to hurt, but again it shouldn't really result in criminal proceedings unless someone is repeatedly doing it.

In fact, if anything I'd further support the sliming of politicians, or the throwing of custard pies in some circumstances: a politician that can't take the odd act of direct action is one that really ought to get over themselves. The power they wield, especially someone unelected like Mandelson, is out of all proportion to that of the humble protester; sometimes you have to take your cause to the next level. Deen might have came out of this looking slightly infantile, and her arguments are not as convincing as she might believe, but she succeeded in getting her own personal message across.

It would also be nice if some people could digest such events without restorting to straw men, as the noble Martin Kettle just had to. The greening of Mandelson proves that we don't live in a police state, even though only those addicted to hyperbole have said we do. Sleepwalking towards one potentially, already in one no. Still, it seems to have been good timing for Kettle to say just that, as the Guardian tomorrow has an exclusive on... the police building databases on peaceful protesters.

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3/06/2009 10:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Republicans go urban.



I laughed.

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3/06/2009 10:35:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 05, 2009 

Remembering the case of James Ashley.

Everyone, sadly, knows the name Jean Charles de Menezes. Probably not enough know the name Harry Stanley. Even less probably know about, or considering the length of time since his shooting, remember the name of James Ashley, his family formally apologised to today. His case however shows just how little the police learnt from the tragedy which befell him.

Ashley, it must be said, had at best both an unpleasant past and some unsavoury friends. He had served 2 years for manslaughter and had been involved in a stabbing in the pub, although it subsequently turned out that he had pulled the perpetrator off the victim.

Police intelligence was that there was a large amount of drugs in the house, and that it was highly likely that Ashley would be armed and dangerous. On the 22nd of July 2005, the armed officers that were to shoot de Menezes were told in their briefing that they were likely to encounter individuals that were "deadly and determined" and "up for it", despite the fact that all the failed bombers were on the run and had no further explosives to fall back on. Similarly, the intelligence turned out to be completely wrong in the case of the Kamal family, and while we have never subsequently learned definitively exactly what it was they expected to find in their house in Forest Gate (suggestions included that it was some sort of "dirty" device, or an explosive with some sort of chemical substance), allegations have also been made that the intelligence came from a highly dubious source.

The raid itself occurred in the early hours of the morning, as it did in Forest Gate. This is standard police procedure, as between 4 and 6am is when those targeted are felt most likely to be at home. This approach has the downside that unless the police make clear who they are, and this itself has the downside that it makes those inside attempt to flee before the police have succeeded in breaking in, that the occupants often fall under the impression that they're being burgled. This was what James Ashley thought, as did the brothers in Forest Gate. The other obvious thing about conducting raids in the early morning is the problem of the light: this was crucial in both the raid in Forest Gate and in the one which led to Ashley's death. In Forest Gate, Abdulkahar came pounding down the stairs as the police were coming up them; the officer, with only the light from his weapon for guidance, thought that someone was pulling at his arm and probably due to the bulkiness of the chemical suit he was wearing, ended up discharging his weapon, something that ought to have been foreseen (PDF). In the tragic case of Ashley, the officers had been disoriented by the plan of the house, knocking into an ironing board and also coming across an unexpected communal door. Fatefully, when an officer entered James' bedroom, again in the dark, he thought that James, having been woken and in a daze staggering towards the door, was about to attack him and so fired his weapon, killing him.

James had been in bed and was naked when he was shot. He had no weapon to hand, and only an airgun was found in the subsequent search. Also found was a small quantity of cannabis. He was found not to have links to the drug ring he had been suspected of belonging to. It was, to quote what an officer said to the Guardian in regards to the shooting of de Menezes, "a complete and utter fuck-up."

If this was as far as the fuck-up went, it might not have been so bad. Yet just as in the examples of the Forest Gate raid and the Stockwell shooting, the police either gave information which turned out to be wrong to the media or at worst actively conducted smear operations against those shot. Paul Whitehouse, the then chief constable of Sussex police, conducted a press conference in which he claimed that Ashley was wanted for attempted murder, that the raid was professionally planned and that the use of firearms was proportionate. A subsequent report conducted by Sir John Hoddinott under the auspices of the Police Complaints Authority, the forerunner to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which has never been published, found that Whitehouse had "wilfully failed to tell the truth as he knew it; he did so without reasonable excuse or justification and what he published and said was misleading and therefore likely to injure the public interest." Whitehouse resigned after the then home secretary David Blunkett suggested that he ought to be sacked to restore public confidence in the force. Perhaps the best that can be said for Whitehouse is that at least he made an active decision to lie about what had happened, having been fully informed of the raid; Sir Ian Blair, on the other hand, did not know that an innocent man had been shot on the 22nd of July until the following morning, when apparently even his secretary knew that was likely to be the case. Menezes was besmirched in any case, alleged to be here illegally when he was not, acting strangely when he had not been, wearing a "bulky jacket" despite it being a warm day, when he had in fact been wearing a light denim jacket, and that he had jumped the barriers at the Stockwell station, when in actuality the police running to catch up with him, having arrived late, were the ones who leaped over them, being confused with de Menezes.

Much the same thing happened to the Forest Gate brothers, with the Murdoch press leading the way and eventually having to apologise for their coverage. The Times and the Sun said they had criminal convictions when they did not, the Sun claimed that the large amount of money found in the house had not been explained, when in fact the police had been told repeatedly that they were keeping it there as it's haram (forbidden) in Islam to use bank accounts which accrue interest, then alleged that the brothers had spat at and insulted soldiers outside the brothers, also completely untrue. Finally, the big gun was brought out: the police leaked to the News of the World that child pornography had been found on a computer and mobile phone seized in the raid on the house. It turned out that this material had been on both devices since before they had been bought, second-hand by the family.

If lessons were meant to have been learned from the shooting of Mr Ashley, then they quite obviously weren't; the opposite seems to be the case. You almost have to wonder if it was or still is common police procedure to cast aspersions on the character of those who are unfortunate to find themselves at the heart of police bungles, knowing full well that once you have planted a seed of doubt in the public's mind, many will still believe it even if it subsequently turns out to be untrue. Right up until the final inquiry into the shooting of de Menezes was released, commenters on newspaper articles were still bringing up his supposed jumping of the barrier and that he wasn't legally here. In almost all the cases the police themselves could have corrected the mistakes, if that's what they were, but chose not to. Whitehouse was eventually held accountable, but no charges were brought over the Forest Gate raid, and while Sir Ian Blair was eventually forced out by Boris Johnson, the prosecution of the Met on health and safety grounds only resulted in a fine that the taxpayer had to be pay, while the coroner at the inquest denied the jury the opportunity to decide whether de Menezes was unlawfully killed, although they did strongly criticise the officers who shot de Menezes over their conflicting stories with that of other witnesses. The hope has to be that the next time an innocent person is shot, as they inevitably will be, that the above does not happen again. That however is all that it is, a hope.

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3/05/2009 10:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 04, 2009 

Half-assed blogging.

Apologies again for the half-assed blogging so far this week. I'd like to say it's because I've got something major in the works, but I haven't, it's just me not managing my time properly. Here then are two outstanding posts which more than merit your attention:

Stumbling and Mumbling - Gordon Brown: a defence
Unity - Woolas: the Minister for Invertebrates

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3/04/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Time to support Craig Murray. Again.

It seems an almost yearly occurrence to be making an appeal for or calling for support for Craig Murray, but this one is even more than vital than usual. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, which is investigating our involvement in extraordinary rendition and apparent complicity in torture, has yet to reach a decision on whether Murray should be called to give evidence. To suggest that he is the exact person they ought to be taking such information from is an understatement: he lost his job as a direct result of opposing the Foreign Office policy on accepting intelligence which was the product of torture, as long as we ourselves were not personally involved in it. Both David Miliband and Jacqui Smith have already refused to appear before the committee, similarly to how "Dame" Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, also previously refused to give evidence to the committee. Craig says that the government is furiously lobbying against his giving evidence, presumably for the reason that he has compelling evidence that shows undeniably that we were ultimately complicit in the torture of those picked up by likes of the Uzbek intelligence services.

Craig suggests that you email jchr@parliament.uk and urge them to allow him to give evidence. Although doubtless the full truth will not even begin to come out until a judicial independent inquiry is set-up, as has even been called for by the government's terrorism legislation reviewer Lord Carlile, the investigations by the JCHR and the Foreign Affairs select committee, which is also looking into the allegations of complicity, especially in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, not to mention the recent revelations concerning the handing over of prisoners in Iraq to the Americans who subsequently rendered them to Afghanistan, or the alleged use of Diego Garcia as a "black site". Craig has tried to expose the reality of our involvement in inhuman and degrading treatment; he was treated to smears and vilification from this government's finest as a result. We can't let them do it again.

Quoting Craig:

I wish to offer myself as a witness before the Joint Commission on Human Rights on the subject of the UK government's policy on intelligence cooperation with torture abroad.

I appeared as a witness in person before both the European Parliament and European Council's enquiries into extraordinary rendition. My evidence was described by the European Council's Rapporteur, Senator Dick Marty, as "Compelling and valuable".

The key points I wish to make are these:

- I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004.
- I learned and confirmed that I was regularly seeing intelligence from detainees in the Uzbek torture chambers, sent me by the CIA via MI6.
- British Ministers and officials were seeing the same torture material.
- In October/November 2002 and January/Februray 2003 I sent two Top Secret telegrams to London specifically on the subject of our receipt of intelligence gained under torture. I argued this was illegal, immoral and impractical. The telegrams were speciifically marked for the Secretary of State.
- I was formally summoned back to the FCO for a meeting held on 7 or 8 March 2003 specifically and solely on the subject of intelligence gained under torture. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe, FCO, Sir Michael Wood, Chief Legal Adviser, FCO, and Matthew Kydd, Head of Permanent Under-Secretary's Department, FCO.
- This meeting was minuted. I have seen the record, which is classified Top Secret and was sent to Jack Straw. On the top copy are extensive hand-written marginalia giving Jack Straw's views.
- I was told at this meeting that it is not illegal for us to obtain intelligence gained by torture, provided that we did not do the torture ourselves. I was told that it had been decided that as a matter of War on Terror policy we should now obtain intelligence from torture, following discussion between Jack Straw and Richard Dearlove. I was told that we could not exclude receipt of specific material from the CIA without driving a coach and horses through the universality principle of the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement, which would be detrimental to UK interests.
- Sir Michael Wood's legal advice that it was not illegal to receive intelligence got by torture was sent on to me in Tashkent (copy attached).
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf- On 22 July 2004

I sent one further telegram on intelligence got by torture, with a lower classification, following FCO communications on the subject. Copy attached.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf
It was my final communication before being dismissed as Ambassador.

In conclusion, I can testify that beyond any doubt the British government has for at least six years a considered but secret policy of cooperation with torture abroad. This policy legally cleared by government legal advisers and approved by Jack Straw as Secretary of State.

Craig Murray
2 March 2009

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3/04/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Another diamond in the rough.

After the Sun Lies comes along the new revamped and improved Daily Mail Watch, again masterminded by Tim from Bloggerheads. Do at least go and read Jamie and 5cc's opening messages: both are great arguments for why challenging tabloid bullshit is worthwhile.

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3/04/2009 11:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 03, 2009 

The Lahore attack and the resulting fallout.

The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore is likely to become one of those outrages which does genuinely change things, if not forever, then certainly for the foreseeable future. While many called the commando-style attack on Mumbai India's 9/11 and suggested that the city would never be the same again, India's capital has more or less returned to normality, just as the 9/11 attacks, as well as our own 7/7 changed very little about our actual way of life, changes in security and foreign policy not withstanding.

Today's attack however was different. Whether it's completely accurate that athletes have not been specifically targeted by terrorists since the Munich Olympics, jihadists have certainly not shown any past inclination towards targeting sportsmen. Perhaps this is because unlike other so-called Western practices which Islamic extremists routinely denounce as decadent or immoral, few jihadis, even the most hard line, find anything much to complain about when it comes to either football or cricket; indeed, at least one of the 7/7 bombers spent some of his last night alive playing the latter with friends. al-Qaida has not shown any real interest in such attacks, perhaps realising that there is nothing more likely to cause even sympathetic opinion to turn against you than to target universally admired individuals completely uninvolved in politics. In any case, much softer targets are more than available, as they have shown time and again, including in the attack last year on the Marriott hotel, which was far more symbolic and powerful without directly affecting Pakistanis themselves too greatly.

Likewise, today's attack doesn't seem to have been by the Pakistani Taliban, whom only last week signed ceasefire agreements with the Pakistan government in exchange for the imposition of Sharia law in the Swat valley. To jeopardise the truce so soon would be doubtful, even if, as today's Guardian's front page reports, the three disparate groups appear to have joined forces to fight the Americans in Afghanistan now that the Pakistani front has been becalmed. Similarly, despite the fact that it was the Sri Lankan team targeted, it also doesn't seem to have been anything to do with the ongoing conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers, neither their work or that of a group acting in solidarity with them, the Tigers also having never previously targeted athletes.

This does however seem to be a day for setting precedents. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group thought to be behind the Mumbai attacks and on whom suspicion is immediately settling, has also never launched an attack in Pakistan itself. Primarily focused on the Kashmiri conflict, but with apparent increasing links with al-Qaida, if this is their work it still seems to be a baffling choice of target. The immediate effect will naturally be the complete suspension of all international cricket in Pakistan, possibly indefinitely. In a nation which can be without cliché be described as cricket mad, and where the game transcends almost everything else, this seems guaranteed to result in overwhelming anger landing on the radicals throughout the country, not just those deemed to be personally responsible. The attack seems to have been designed to make the country more insular, further severing its links with the outside world, just at the time when tourism as a result of the country's shift towards extremism is already diminishing, also not helped by the global downturn which has left the country impoverished, forced to turn to the IMF for help. That the attack was in Lahore, one of the more culturally liberal and safest cities in the country is also causing deep concern; if such an assault can be launched there, it seems that nowhere is now safe from the spreading tentacles of Islamic militancy.

Pakistan has since its creation been a nation divided, one riven by its differences rather than prepared to unite around its common values. It was hoped that last year's election and the end of Musharraf's dictatorship would be a time for healing the old wounds, yet a year later the country is even more fragmented and in discord than before. Few had high hopes in Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, long known as "Mr 10%" because of the accusations of corruption made against him, becoming an uniting figure, but hardly anyone foresaw just how disastrous he might be. The recent banning of Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Muslim League (N) from office illustrated vividly the fractious and bitter nature of Pakistani politics, with violent protests from Sharif's supporters in reaction. The army, which has intervened in the past repeatedly, still has the same links to jihadists as before, while the ISI has not even began to be reformed. It seems doubtful that the army will intervene just yet, its humiliation in being forced into making a deal in Swat too recent, but it certainly cannot be fully ruled out.

It has to hoped that today's attack marks a turning point, with the outrage at the attack and its implications uniting rather than dividing where previous events have not. The risk of Pakistan being overran by extremists and gaining power in a nuclear-armed state has long been exaggerated, but the accusations that Pakistan is rapidly turning into a failed state are not so wide of the mark. Only the Pakistani people themselves, as their politicians have long been so hopeless, can arrest the march towards chaos. It might well have taken an attack on sport, and so the people as a whole themselves, to bring to a head what has been developing for some time.

Related post:
Bleeding Heart Show - Which Taliban?

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3/03/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Meanwhile, over on the Sun Lies...

If things seem a little slow here, it might be because of two posts from yours truly over on the Sun Lies: one from yesterday concerning the possibility of terrorists blowing up our nukes thanks in part to Google Earth, and today the Sun's complete mendacity concerning a report on community service orders.

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3/03/2009 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 02, 2009 

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

How appropriate that on the day that Charlie Brooker nails our politicians, making an especially apposite analogy about CCTV, the Graun gets invited into the Westminster CCTV control centre, the apparent envy of every authoritarian state on the planet. The attitude of the council's director of "community protection" (is it just me or is absolutely everything turning Orwellian?) pretty much sums it up:

Defending the searching gaze of London's cameras, Ingledew said that people who do not look as though they are doing anything wrong will be left alone.

"If you come up to the West End and you go into a restaurant and a theatre, even if you trip out of All Bar One after one too many, we're not going to follow you down the street."

Behind his back, an operator watched two men in bomber jackets talking animatedly inside a telephone box. Another operator watched a young couple gazing up at Nelson's column.

Ingledew turned around. "If you monitor this camera system," he said, "you very quickly learn to pick out the sharks amongst the shoals of fish."


How very comforting.

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3/02/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

From Gaza to Fallujah.

Nice to see that when he isn't being paid incredible amounts for speeches and other assorted things Tony Blair does occasionally have time for his other line of work, as Middle East peace envoy for the Quartet. Yesterday he finally found the time to visit Gaza, as well as Sderot, as everyone now has to so as not to be accused of sickening bias. He said that anyone visiting would be appalled by the destruction, which is something of an understatement.

That said, only around 1,300 Palestinians died as a result of the Gaza war, compared to the over 150,000 estimated to have died as a result of Blair's final war of his own choosing, Iraq. Somehow I can't quite see Blair choosing to visit say Fallujah, of his own volition, any time soon.

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3/02/2009 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

An apology to Glen Jenvey.

As Tim has discovered, it now seems apparent that despite previous claims on this blog andelsewhere that Glen Jenvey himself was behind the posting of messages on the Ummah.com forum which were subsequently reported in the Sun newspaper under the headline "TERROR TARGET SUGAR", that the messages were in actual fact posted by fanatical Islamic fascists posing as Jenvey in order to discredit him. As a result I humbly apology to Jenvey and wish him well in his battle against the evildoers.

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3/02/2009 11:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

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