Humanitarian Aid for Burma

As a consequence of my failure to blog for a week, I haven't been posting on the situation in Burma. If you want to make a difference in this oppressed country, visit Ten Percent and see what you can do.

Stop Blair Becoming EU President

Tipped off by the one and only RickB at Ten Percent:


Petition against the nomination of Tony Blair as "President of the European Union"

Stop the murdering bastard before it's too late.

Melanie Phillips - Sense At Last?

Interesting words from Melanie Phillips on her rage filled blog:

Unfortunately, the moral confusion of our age means that absolute moral values have widely given way to utilitarian and consequentialist thinking, which means in essence that bad means are justified by good ends. That is ultimately the way to tyranny and mass murder.

Quite an astonishing revelation coming from Ms Phillips. In her mind, the invasion of Iraq was an example of bad means justified by a 'good end'. Furthermore, an proposed assault on Iran by Israel would similarly be characterised in this way by Ms Phillips. Is she therefore suggesting that the assault on Iraq, and the proposed assault on Iran, is pointing the way to 'tyranny and mass murder'? Maybe she's not a bad old stick after all.

"The Evil Has Landed" - Or Was He Already Here?

The visit to the United States by Ahlmadinejad prompted the predictable outrage by the American public. Headlines in national papers had a field day with their attacks on the America's latest bogeyman. The New York Daily News, for example, chose the fear-inducing:

"The Evil Has Landed"

Patriotic, yet fear-mongering, the perfect news headline. However, when taking an objective view of recent events across the globe, it is hard to sympathise with the current US position in the Middle East, and particularly in relation to Iran.

The current obsession of the US administration has clearly been the so-called nuclear threat that Iran may provide in the near future. They base this assessment, they claim, on Iran's aggressive policies in the region. If we look beyond the knee-jerk reaction to guffaw loudly at this belief, it is not hard to expose this standpoint for the ludicrous claim that it so clearly is. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iranian government has only been involved in one armed conflict, the Iran-Iraq war. It is worth pointing out at this point that Iraq were the aggressors on that occasion, supported by many Western powers as well as various Communist nations and Arab allies. The war itself was particularly costly for Iran. There were an estimated 1 million casualties on the Iranian side, a huge of chunk of which were killed due to the use of those infamous 'weapons of mass destruction'. The use of chemical weapons, with the tacit support of the West (including the US) led to the deaths of over 100,000 Iranians. As usual, the US tried their best to render the United Nations utterly useless. On 21 March 1986, the United Nations Security Council made a declaration stating that:

"members are profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops and the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons."

The United States was the only member who voted against the issuance of this statement. The US refused to condemn the use of weapons of mass destruction on the Iranian civilian population, a refusal that caused much anger across Iran. Iran thus became one of the biggest victims to the use of these forms of weaponry in history.

This really highlights the hypocrisy of the current US position. Iran is apparently a threat and a danger to the world. However, they have only been the victims in any conflict, not the aggressors (they have never invaded a neighbour, despite the fact that many Arab nations backed Iraq in the long running war). Not only have they never been aggressors, they have also been the victim to one of the most horrendous examples of mass civilian casualties in history. Now, backers of Bush will claim that although Iran hasn't invaded her neighbours, she has been involved in covert action across the Middle East. This may well be the case, but hasn't the US been guilty of the same. Didn't the US government attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government in Venezuela in 2002? Hasn't American history throughout the post-war period been characterised by interference in other countries' affairs? Of course. Yet when it is the US they are benevolent, and when it is a foreign nation with a competing ideology they are malevolent and evil. Again, taking an objective view, wouldn't it be fair to say that when using Iran as a yardstick, the US government also appears to be a malevolent entity in global affairs? Bush alone has overseen two bloody wars of aggression (not to mention the failed coup attempts). What wars have the Iranians instigated in the past seven years?

Now, I am no defender of Iran (I am an atheist and therefore cannot support any state built on religious grounds) and I find some of Ahlmadinejad's statements a little unsavoury to say the least (note his comments about homosexuality in Iran at the recent college debate). However, I see no evidence that he is any more 'evil' than George W Bush (who hasn't exactly been noted for his liberal social views either). Perhaps before lobbing venom at the President of Iran, American people should look a little closer to home to see an establishment that is all to eager to utilise weapons of mass destruction, or encourage its use by proxies. After all, sixty-two years after the end of the war, only one nation has taken full advantage of its abilities to launch weapons of mass destruction and it's not Iran.

The Blairite Legacy

As their seems to be a national obsession with defining what the Blair Legacy™ is, it seems only fair that I should also have a crack at what people will remember about Blair. Of course, it would be easy for me to just copy and paste what a thousand other commentators have written, but that would be just plain lazy. It would also be very easy to spend the entire post using the situation in Iraq with which to beat Teflon Tony. However, no matter how angry this decision made me, there are countless other examples of why this man has been such a disaster for this country and, in particular, for left-wing progressive politics in general.

Firstly, I want to take you back to 1997 and the general election. Now, I have to confess something to you. Something that seems to annoy many left-wing people I have encountered via this medium. However, it is something that I am proud of. I never voted for Tony Blair. There I said it, this is where you start hurling abuse at your monitor for my failure to vote for the only electable, left-wing candidate. As I said, however, this is something of which I am proud to say. I know this will sound a little 'I told you so', but I had bad feelings about Blair right from the very start. I was coming up to the end of my final year when the election campaign was underway, and I was looking forward to playing a part in my first general election (it's rather like the first time you go out on a date - only the end result is even more crushingly depressing than you might have feared). A friend and I watched some of the pre-election bullshit (sorry, I mean campaign) and we were both agreed - we couldn't trust Blair. At that stage it was for very superficial reasons. Remember the devil eyes poster by the Tories? Well, that was exactly what we thought of Blair - the only disappointment being that it was the dreaded Tories that had come up with such an appropriate image for our future Prime Minister. We were also very suspicious of the actual content of what he said, but it was the smile and the eyes that made me think that he had sold his soul to the devil (as it now seems). So, regardless of the consequences of not voting for the only credible opposition to the Tories, I voted Lib Dem. Not much better but at least it wasn't Blair.

Not long after the election, I began to realise that Blair was preparing to be the very thing I feared he might become - the spawn of Thatcher. And here is where his legacy begins. Barely two months after the election, on a wave of 'goodwill', Blair did the unthinkable. He introduced top-up fees. Essentially, he opened higher eduction up to market forces. Now, I know it is a controlled market at the moment, with no flexibility to set varying fees and thus create 'competition' and 'choice', but the foundations are certainly there. Besides, education is a right, not a privilege. Any attempt to put a price on education, makes it exclusive to those that can afford it. Surely this was the antithesis of a socialist government? Was this the Tory party in disguise? Of course it was. And as they have proved ever since, the re-branding of Labour as 'New' Labour might as well have been labelled Tory 'Lite'. Furthermore, under Blair's Labour party, the divide between the rich and the poor has become even wider. Who would have thought that this would be possible with a Labour government? It is very clear who truly inspired Blair.

Not long after the introduction of tuition fees, Blair then showed how close he was to big business. In October 1997, Blair decided to exempt Formula One from the ban on tobacco sponsorship. It then emerged that the decision was not as simple as was first thought. It transpired that Blair had accepted a £1 million donation from Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone before the general election. As part of his defence, Blair claimed that:

"I don't believe I have been tarnished - no ... I am a pretty straight sort of guy."

Aaah, hindsight eh? Again, the suspicions about his support of the business community (not to mention the accusations of being bought by business leaders), raised serious questions about where this country was heading under Blair. First, restricting universal, free education, then seemingly bowing to the will of big business. Were we in fact seeing a Tory 'Lite'? A government with roots in Thatcherite economics? A centre-right Labour party?

There then followed a series of scandals as Blair became embroiled in a culture of sleaze. This was turning into the Major years all over again. Blair resorted to spinning himself out of every mess he found himself in. However, many people were starting to see through the culture of spin that Blair had created around him. As one commenter put it on the BBC website in 1999:

Tony Blair and the New Labour Party now represent nothing more than the sneering face of New Thatcherism. How else can one describe a party which embraces privatisation of core public services (through the PFI), cynical pre-election tax cuts ahead of real investment in schools and hospitals (and New Labour is proud of the fact that it spends less on public services than any British government in 40 years), an "ethical" foreign policy which sees British weapons sold to some of the most opressive regimes in the world?

Privatisation became a massive priority for Blair over this period. The NHS and the education system both became prime targets for Blair's infatuation with PFI. Blair's determination to get the private sector involved in public services was the clearest indication yet of his passion for Thatcherite economics. Despite the protestations of unions and some backbenchers, Blair continued down the course of privatisation. In fact, one might say that privatisation was re-invigorated by Blair throughout his premiership.

Then there was his disastrous foreign policy. Not only has the war in Iraq itself proven to be such an unmitigated disaster, the conduct of Blair and his government in the run-up to the invasion led to numerous high profile scandals. First, and most importantly, was the death of Dr David Kelly. Dr Kelly was Andrew Gilligan's main source for the claim that the 45 minute claim was exaggerated by Alastair Campbell. After his subsequent hounding by the government, Dr Kelly was found dead on Harrowdown Hill, having apparently committed suicide (although this has been disputed by some doctors). Perhaps one of the most shocking events of Blair's tenure, the sense of distrust of Blair over this was exacerbated by the revelation that Alastair Campbell and Cherie Blair had signed a copy of the Hutton report (which investigated Kelly's death) that was subsequently put up for auction. When questioned on the auction, Blair merely answered:

"I do not believe that any offence to anyone was intended".

Progressive? I guess not. Up until this point I had deep reservations about Blair's government. The events surrounding the death of Dr Kelly simply re-affirmed what kind of government we were dealing with here. A ruthless, hard government, that would steam-roller opponents in the most callous way possible. Perhaps it is no surprise that a man like Alastair Campbell would be central to just such a regime.

After the events of September 11th, Blair announced that the UK would stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with the US. It didn't take long to find out what this meant. Blair refused to speak out about many issues that concerned progressives around the globe. Guantanamo was ignored, renditions were permitted, Iraq was invaded, Israel's actions in Lebanon were effectively endorsed and a strategy of pre-emptive strikes was put forward. Blair was leading the country into a new and dangerous direction. No longer would the British government concern themselves with international law, now it would be a case of following the lead of Bush and the White House. Human rights were wilfully discarded as part of the fight against terrorism that Blair and Bush put at the centre of their ideologies. Out went any remaining semblance of socialism, and in came neo-conservatism. Blair had clearly lined himself up with the far-right, who were willing to accept Blair as an ideological partner. Was anymore proof needed that Blair had abandoned the progressive left and was making a play for the conservative right? Was it really a surprise given Blair's underlying conservative (and indeed, Thatcherite) tendencies at the very beginning of 'the project'?

So where does that leave us? Well, it seems clear to me that Blair's overriding legacy is consolidation. Consolidation of the very things that the Conservatives put in place over 18 years. In fact, in some areas, one could argue that the Blair has gone further than even the Conservatives would dare (particularly in regard to creeping privatisation in the NHS etc). He has proven to be an ally and a close friend to the business community. He has developed conservative allies across the globe. Bush, Aznar, Merkel, Berlusconi and now, Sarkozy have all been friends to Blair. It would be fair to say, that he has tried to distance himself from progressive left-wing leaders across the globe. In terms of foreign policy, he has put this country at risk like never before. His foolishness has cost the UK dear in terms of respect. Iraq and Lebanon have seriously damaged our abilities to conduct diplomacy throughout the Middle East, if not the world. By aligning himself with the neo-conservatives, Blair has shown how he views the world. Democracy is something that must be imposed. It does not grow organically from grassroots movements. It is brought to the people by blood and guns. Blair's legacy has been the shift in UK politics to the centre-right. When politicians talk of the 'centre-ground', they mean centre-right. It is this policy that pushed the Conservatives further to the right, and that dis-enfranchised millions of people who were left without a credible alternative to the voices of the establishment. This will be Blair's legacy. The consolidation of Thatcherite economics and the almost fatal blow to socialism. Thanks to Blair, the true legacy that will linger, will be the legacy of Margaret Thatcher - seventeen years after we thought we had seen the back of her.

(And I haven't even mentioned cash for peerages..., BAE or the recent Official Secrets prosecution.)

Keogh and O'Connor in Jail

Ok, I admit it, I have been amazingly slack on this story:

Two political staff have been jailed for leaking a secret memo about talks between George Bush and Tony Blair.

Civil servant David Keogh, 50, from Northampton, was found guilty of two offences under the Official Secrets Act and jailed for six months.

The memo recorded Oval Office talks between Mr Bush and Mr Blair about Iraq in 2004, the court was told.

Luckily, RickB has been much more on the ball than I have. Another nail in the coffin of Blair's legacy.

David Keogh & Leo O’Connor Are Heroes

In domestic reporting of this case it seems our MSM is going to pussy foot around the case, David Keogh and Leo O'Connor leaked a memo that showed Bush wanting to bomb the Al Jazeera TV stations HQ (in Qatar, not in Iraq, ie. he wanted to attack a civilian target in a whole other country) and discussion of the blitz on Fallujah. In other words they leaked evidence of the planning of war crimes:-

"My concern is that the only conspiracy surrounding this was a conspiracy to level Fallujah," said Mr Kilfoyle. "He [Mr Blair] would say 'conspiracy theory'. That's been the American line and now he's adopting it. But if it is so fantastical, why are they prosecuting these two people this week?

"I am in no doubt that there was a mention of Fallujah. I was made aware of the contents by Mr Clarke. He and I sat down and talked about the contents of it because he was seeking my advice on what to do with it-

Blair is now doing his masters bidding like a good 51st client state bitch and trying to fuck these public spirited men over in closed court. If you want to follow this case you will need to use overseas media and some trusty blogs:-

LONDON: An ex-government official and a political researcher went on trial Wednesday for allegedly leaking a classified memo in which U.S. President George W. Bush reportedly referred to bombing Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera.

David Keogh, 50, a former government encryption specialist, and ex-parliamentary researcher Leo O'Connor, 44, are accused of violating Britain's Official Secrets Act.

Keogh is alleged to have passed the memo to O'Connor, who in turn placed it in a file he handed to his boss Tony Clarke, then a legislator who had voted against Britain's decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The document, marked "Secret-Personal" was intended to be restricted to senior officials and written by an adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff.

Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper previously has reported that the memo revealed details of a conversation between Bush and Blair at the White House on April 16, 2004.

According to the newspaper, Blair argued against Bush's suggestion of bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Mirror said its sources disagreed on whether Bush's suggestion was serious.

Blair has said he had no information about any proposed U.S. action against Al-Jazeera, and the White House called the claims "outlandish and inconceivable."

Prosecutor David Perry said the record of the leaders' meeting was sensitive and was concerned with policy toward Iraq.

He said contents of the memo would not be read in open court. Because of the sensitive nature of the details, the document would be seen by jurors and discussed in a private session, closed to the press and public, Perry said.

Perry told the court that the meeting between Bush and Blair took place while the Coalition Provisional Authority still was acting as administrator in postwar Iraq — "against the background of the insurgency in Iraq at a time when British citizens, both military personnel and civilians were in that country."

Discussions ranged over a number sensitive issues, he said, and included "information about this nation's defense interests and this nation's international relations."

Blair's foreign policy secretary drafted a memo about the meeting that later was circulated to officials in London, Washington, the U.N. and Iraq — including Britain's MI6 spy agency.

Keogh worked at a government communications unit that handled sensitive documents and intelligence, passing them on to British diplomats based overseas via secure methods.

Perry said Keogh received a faxed copy of the memo on April 16 and made his own copy of the document, later passing it to O'Connor. Clarke, no longer a lawmaker, alerted authorities when he discovered the memo among paperwork from O'Connor.

Prosecutors have not yet outlined how O'Connor allegedly passed the memo to Clarke. He has denied handing it over, telling police it may have been given to the lawmaker because of his critical views of the Iraq invasion.

Officials later were able to use scientific tests — examining folds and markings from fax machines — to establish that the leaked memo had been a copy handled by Keogh, Perry said.

Keogh denies two charges of making a damaging disclosure of part of a government document. O'Connor denies a charge of making a damaging disclosure of a document passed to him illegally.-

This prosecution does not serve the people it serves the state, so come on jury members, tell 'em to get fucked, innocent verdicts all round. Then straight to the Media to tell them all about the case and the memo.

The Lies That Led To War

Hat-tip to Saboma for this one (warning it's a long one!!):

More Melanie Ravings.....

Well, I have been missing the loony rantings of the future mass murderer (as are all those that deny climate change, for they will be partly responsible for the consequences of the world's neglect) Melanie Phillips. However, today didn't disappoint me. Her main focus of attention on her most recent blog, is an article by Mike Hulme in today's Guardian. First, I will show you her extract of the article, and then the bits that she missed. On her blog, she quotes Hulme as writing the following:

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled ‘post-normal’ science…The danger of a ‘normal’ reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow.

Note the '...' (always a give away that something important has been edited out). Now the actual piece from The Guardian (I have highlighted the bits she missed through the use of '...'):

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken.

It has been labelled "post-normal" science. Climate change seems to fall in this category. Disputes in post-normal science focus as often on the process of science - who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy - as on the facts of science.

So this book from Singer and Avery can be understood in a different way: as a challenge to the process of climate change science, or to the values they believe to be implicit in the science, rather than as a direct challenge to scientific knowledge.

In this reading, Singer and Avery are using apparently scientific arguments - about 1,500 year cycles, about the loss of species, about sea-level rise - to further their deeper (yet unexpressed) values and beliefs. Too often with climate change, genuine and necessary debates about these wider social values - do we have confidence in technology; do we believe in collective action over private enterprise; do we believe we carry obligations to people invisible to us in geography and time? - masquerade as disputes about scientific truth and error.

We need this perspective of post-normal science if we are going to make sense of books such as Singer and Avery's. Or indeed, if we are to make sense of polar opposites such as James Lovelock's recent contribution The Revenge of Gaia, in which he extends climate science to reach the conclusion that the collapse of civilisation is no more than a couple of generations away.

The danger of a "normal" reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow.

Quite a big chunk eh? After her edited extract of the article, Phillips ranted:

Indeed! Facts first, conclusions afterwards is the very basis of scientific inquiry. But not any more, it seems, where the religion of global warming is concerned. Here the facts have to fit the theory.

What Hulme is trying to express, as I understand it, is that it is difficult to take a normal reading of science if one does not know the background to the research (ie the source of funding etc). It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine what 'truth' is under these circumstances. It is only through complete transparency that we can begin to determine what is 'truth'. Consequently, it is necessary to weigh up the stakes and the decisions necessary. In the case of climate change the stakes are so high, and the decisions so urgent, that even if there was a climate of uncertainty, action would still need to be taken.

In a further passage, Phillips quotes:

Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.

She comments:

What an admission! Let’s read that one again. Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking. Of course not. The facts don’t support it. It’s not true. So, says Hulme, let’s abolish the need to establish the facts and the truth and impose the theory on the basis of — what’s that again — ‘values and beliefs’. In other words, climate change science has got to be anti-science. It’s got to be anti-truth. It’s got to be nothing more than an ideology.

Hulme actually writes (again I have highlighted the bits she missed):

Two years ago, Tony Blair announced the large, government-backed international climate change conference in Exeter by asking for the conference scientists to "identify what level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is self-evidently too much".

This is the wrong question to ask of science. Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.

Chink of weakness

Lack of such reflective transparency is the problem with "unstoppable global warming", and with some other scientific commentators on climate change. Such a perspective also opens a chink of weakness in the authority of the latest IPCC science findings.

And surely that is the point, unless there is a degree of reflective transparency, there can be no 'truth'. One only has to look up the subjects of this article by Hulme. Try clicking on exxonsecrets.org (see sidebar) and tapping in the names S Fred Singer and Dennis T Avery, these are not reliable sources. Hulme is not talking about abolishing science, he is talking about the impossibility of finding 'truth' when so much is kept from the public. But then, Phillips and her murdering buddies have never been to keen on analysing facts, only their political viewpoint.