The Observer: Rice rejects EU protests over secret terror prisons
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inflame the transatlantic row over America’s alleged torture of terror suspects in secret jails by telling Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other European officials to ‘back off’.

Condi knows best and uppity Old Worlders should know their place. America doesn’t “do torture” and “does not allow rights abuses”. All this cloak and dagger stuff is no doubt just to give what is otherwise a routine and mundane job a little frisson. It probably makes the workers’ lives a bit more exciting, like being able to wear jeans on a Friday.

In other news…

Washington Post - Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake

In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country’s interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA’s Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.

Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.

Dear Ruth

I hope to be seeing you soon in one of your meetings arranged by the Whips to convince doubters like me of the benefits to my constituents of your Education White Paper. Since I am an acute case I’d like to set out my problems about your curate’s egg…

read the rest….

…35040 little hours.

Then:

BBC News, 10 October 2001: Tricksters target government scheme

The police are now investigating the abuse of Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs), which offer discounts of up to £200 for adult learners.

…

The Trading Standards Institute, which highlighted the problem, said that it was a “massive scam”, but impossible to know how much money had been taken.

Now:

BBC News, 2 December 2005 : Online tax credit system closed

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) shut down its online portal for the tax credit system late on 1 December after finding a number of fraudulent claims.

…

The problems with fraud in the tax credit system are thought to result from the system’s design, described by some fraud experts as “low-hanging fruit” for scammers.

You know, I sometimes think we should embrace ID cards just to see these clots humiliated all over again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a again: if these berks were running a bun shop, they’d be bust inside of a week.

If a Norman Johnson column falls down in the woods - and no blogger is there to hear it - does anybody still get it? God knows, it sails gratifyingly over my head the weeks I’m bored enough to read it.

Participation. Engagement. Dialogue. Only connect… and all that. It’s nice to advocate something practical now and again. Makes one feel that it’s not all whistling in the dark.

Tom Steinberg of mySociety (the people behind the mighty WriteToThem.com and PledgeBank) left a comment on my piece about the New Labour Education White Paper propaganda drive:

This is one of the reasons why we… have built our newest site, www.hearfromyourmp.com. Because constituents get a right to reply, there is a slight pressure on MPs to be original - you don’t want to be caught out by something like this in a place where people can point out that you appear to be astroturfing.

I signed up for this a while back but forgot to plug it. It’s all explained here.

Some MPs are already engaging in the process. Some are not. My local MP, for example, has been emailed twice letting her know that some of her constituents wish to discuss what she is doing in their name. As yet, she hasn’t replied.

Still. Go to it. The more people sign up, the more likely it is to happen. Let your MP know that you pay their wages and you’d like to know what you’re getting for your money.

BBC News: Kurd oil deal alarms Iraqi Sunnis
News that a foreign firm has begun drilling for oil in Iraq’s Kurdish north has sparked new fears of secession among Sunni leaders.

Here’s the punchline:

At a ceremony to launch the drilling, Nachirvan Barzani, one of the Kurds’ two regional prime ministers, stressed the benefits to his community.

“The time has come that instead of suffering the people of Kurdistan will benefit from the fortunes and resources of their country,” he said.

“There is no way Kurdistan would accept that the central government will control our resources.”

My emphasis. I’m sure this will all work out ok, the shiny new constitution will tell them what to do…

“We need to figure out if this is allowed in the constitution,” said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, an advisor to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. “Nobody has mentioned it. It has not come up among the government ministers’ council. It has not been on their agenda.”

…

However, Helge Eide, managing director of Oslo-based DNO, said he believed Iraq’s new constitution gave the Kurdish north jurisdiction over certain drilling and oil exploration activities.

“That was clearly pointed out by Mr. [Nechirvan] Barzani,” said Eide, who attended the Zakho ceremony.

Glad we got that cleared up. You know, people can’t say they weren’t warned about this. The negotiation process for the constitution was driven to an arbitrary American timetable. When that deadline was breached the further negotiations and changes that were made were technically illegal and may even be challengeable in the courts. Not only that, according to an International Crisis Group report:

Key passages [of the constitution], such as those dealing with decentralisation and with the responsibility for the power of taxation, are both vague and ambiguous and so carry the seeds of future discord.

The full report is long but worth the read if you’re interested in such things. Seeds of civil war are planted in the constitution itself. If rampant sectarian death squads don’t light the blue touch paper, the constitution - hailed as the country’s saviour - may very well do it for them.

By the way, we’re not to call these people “insurgents” any more, Donald said so. They don’t have a “legitimate gripe” and Rumsfeld really doesn’t have anything better to do. He had “an epiphany” and decided their current epithet gives them “greater legitimacy than they seem to merit”. I like the seem. Donald Rumsfeld: bringing the anarchy to an end one semantic adjustment at a time.

You’ll have noticed that I’ve sourced a lot of links from Reuters AlertNet. If you want to get a flavour of the mayhem ensuing in Iraq right now, sign up for for 24 hours to the email service alerting of events in Iraq. You’ll be inundated with more emails than you can probably read.

In other news:

Dahr Jamail and Harb Al-Mukhtar: Where People Cannot Afford Their Country
Despite the allocation of billions of dollars of U.S. government money for “reconstruction”, Iraqis are struggling to exist amidst soaring prices, unemployment, a devastated infrastructure, and cuts in services.

With 46% of the vote, Peter Wright, as Editor, takes the rap for the most outrageous and blatant piece of plagarism of the year. Across two pages he cut ‘n pasted the writings of “PC Copperfield” of the Policeman’s blog. In the blogging Copper’s own words, “The Mail on Sunday never even asked… bastards”…

read the rest…

Blunkett
1. v. To have sexual intercourse. e.g. I gave the missus a right good blunketting last night
Etymology: earliest cited use ca. 2010 This ID card system is blunketted.
(The Sharpener’s Future Dictionary of Great Britain)

Aha. The Sunt have neglected to put online David Blunkett’s inaugaral column for them. You’ll have to buy the paper to appreciate the true poetic beauty of the piece.

Ostensibly, his main piece (followed by two shorts) is about the public (over)reaction to the death of George Best, the Diana effect of mass public grief and just why this is the case (”breakdown of family life… blah… loss of religious experience… community… blah… churches”). A fair enough subject to pick, if a little overdone.

He talks about the “beast” in Best and castigates the man at length for his drinking. Blunkett does, however, studiously avoid the darker side of Best’s character: his propensity for hitting women. As Gordon Burn put it in the Guardian:

Between the accounts of how she had been given black eyes and broken arms and had her hair hacked off in the night by her drunken husband, Alex Best’s book, Always Alex, is a litany of tabloid-funded trips to faraway places with George. A beating and a payday. Another love rat scandal, another BestEnders episode sold to the pops.

Blunkett on the other hand pulls, if you’ll forgive me, his punches on the subject of spousal abuse. Which, I imagine, is only understandable if your editor was recently arrested for doing something similar to her own partner.

Thinking about it, there are probably dozens of subjects Blunkett won’t be able to go near in future columns. Lies and deceit. Extra-marital affairs. Paying tax. The accountability of government ministers…

But it’s the mewling self pity that is most striking in the column…

But as I know to my cost, those who build up celebrities soon get bored with them - and are the first to knock them flying from their pedestals.

…and, invoking Sting…

I know from experience what it is like to have your life turned upside down as every move you make, every hand you shake, becomes potential danger.

In a short piece about Michael Howard:

As he prepares to leave the Tory leadership, I prepare to leave the home I’ve occupied for the last six years.

And on the pensions review: “I am still too close to make pronouncements…” Towards the end of his piece about Best he says:

The real heroes are those who fight back up from the bottom, who have the strength of character to rebuild their shattered lives.

I wonder who he’s talking about? And this is in Britain’s most popular newspaper. If he stood up and said this at a party you were at, you wouldn’t know where to look.

It makes you want to grab him by the lapels and shout, “You talk about mawkishness from the public? You are Britain’s most emotionally incontinent man and you are embarrassing everybody.” As if it wasn’t bad enough with his sentimental resignation interviews that made you suck your teeth and the moist laments about “that little lad”.

It has become become a national affliction to look for an outburst of joy, hate, fear… or grief

Physician, heal thyself.

UPDATE 4/12: Ha. It seems Nosemonkey in the comments was right:

The Independent - Blunkett: Oops, he did it again
David Blunkett has started his new job as a newspaper columnist without waiting for clearance from the anti-sleaze watchdog, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.

A couple of new ideas seem to be forming inside the debate on the Iraq debacle.

The shift in public perspective on troop withdrawal from an abstract concept to its practical considerations is just beginning, it would seem. Jamie Kenny is following this one via this article from the American Jewish weekly, Forward (which was also discussed in the Guardian yesterday.)

When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.

Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all.

I wonder if many people have thought about just how you remove 150,000 troops (in a phased withdrawal, one would imagine) from a country. The “Troops Out” lobby seem to have offered little solution, which is typical of the anti-war crew (of which I’m a member), I suppose. It’s all “do this” and “don’t do that” but no “do it like this” and “don’t do that, do this”.

You’d think the troops were going to be beamed out of Iraq, Star Trek fashion. But with practical considerations now entering the calculation, and with only one apparent escape route, any withdrawal has a good chance of becoming a bloodbath. Every yahoo able to hold a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or fashion an Improvised Explosive Device will be lining the road between Baghdad and the Kuwaiti border.

The second idea is that any US troop withdrawals will be replaced by a ramping up of the air war in support of Iraqi troops on the ground. Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker, reports that:

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

Students of recent “humanitarian interventions” can tell you of countless cases where “smart” weaponry has been anything but. If Hersh is right then the current US military tacticians haven’t learned much from the improvisatory and adaptable qualities of the Iraqi insurgency. Are roadside bombers attackable from the air? Are they going to obediently stand in an open space so you can strafe them? Not to mention that civilian hearts and minds are also harder to win from 35,000 feet.

There’s also a chilling political aspect that needs to be considered now that it’s been established that many within the fledgling Iraqi military establishment have divided loyalties. As Hersh says:

For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. “Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?” another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. “Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?”

It’s a neat and darkly humorous reversal of who exactly the chumps usually are in proxy wars but probably won’t do much for stability on the ground. The US air force could in effect end up as the hired muscle settling turf wars.

Where all this leaves the doctrine of humanitarian intervention is just about anybody’s guess. Writing in the New Statesman a week or two back (reproduced on the Channel 4 news website), Lindsey Hilsum said this:

Many on the left would say realpolitik isn’t dead, that all this talk of spreading democracy across the Middle East is a smokescreen for the real aim of securing Iraq’s oilfields, testing American weapons and asserting imperial power.

I disagree. I think they really do believe their own ideology and are determined that everyone else should, too. A recent visitor to Washington told me how a CIA operative he met said the agency had been given three “strategic tasks” - counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and “bolstering the growth of democracy and forging relations with incipient democracies”.

…

[I]n these dangerous times I find that realpolitik has a certain appeal. Realpolitik would have meant leaving Saddam in power. My Iraqi friends, all of whom welcomed the war, now wonder if that might have been better - those that haven’t been kidnapped or murdered in the current chaos, that is.

As someone who gained much of his political outlook from reading about what the CIA got up to in Central America in the 80’s, for me, realpolitik has always been one of the four horseman of the political apocalypse, more often than not accompanied by his comrades in arms, Acceptable Losses, Illegal Bombing and Death Squad. If, as Hilsum (and the “pro-liberation” camp) suggests, Iraq wasn’t invaded for reasons of realpolitik (securing oil supplies) but according to a neoconservative/Humanitarian Intervention agenda (initiating a democratic domino effect in the Middle East), then we’re up shit creek. It seems that Realpolitik’s three mates have a conflict of interest and are now moonlighting for Humanitarian Intervention and, unless major lessons are learned from what’s happened in the last two years, it may be necessary to reject both positions and search for something else.

As Jamie Kenny says:

I think this war, and the conflicts it will trigger will shape politics going forward in a fairly profound way, rather than just add information proving or disproving existing political beliefs.

Yes, but what terrible bastard political creation might crawl from the wreckage?

There’s also more of this over at Jarndyce’s place. It’s treated with much more intellectual rigour than you’ll ever find here and the comments are a must as well. I find a lot to agree with in the piece which is surprising as Jarndyce supported the war, but as he says: “[S]imilar principles can take you either way on this depending on how you make a couple of close calls.”

Anyway. Am I presenting a false choice between realpolitik and humanitarian/neoconservative agendas when it comes to foreign policy? Is the conflation of so-called humanitarian intervention and neoconservatism valid? I’d argue it is in the case of Iraq but would it be the rule going forward? It’s been said on many occasions that the anti-war faction left themselves wide open to accusations of abandoning ordinary Iraqis and being comfortable in their purely oppositional stance, providing no alternatives to war and the doctrines on offer. It’s a trap to be avoided next time and ditching the ex-Stalinists and fundamentalists we allowed to lead us last time would be a start.

So what is the, ahem, Third Way, and would anybody with real power be interested in implementing it? Those with knowledge of Henry Kissinger’s time at the helm of world politics (as Hilsum points out) will know that that’s when Realpolitik got it’s filthy reputation. Vietnam, Central and South America. Death squads and Pinochet.

But I pretty much defy anyone to deny that the doctrine put into play in “liberating” Iraq has led to anywhere else but the same foetid, stinking destination we would have arrived at if we’d let Kissinger do the job. Torture, death squads, acceptable losses (”So sorry, but…”). It’s humanitarian intervention without the humanity.

In his fine piece on blogging at The Sharpener, Nosemonkey had this to say:

The better - or simply more popular - bloggers end up reading each other and linking to each other and, increasingly, finding themselves less able or inclined, due either to time constraints or the knowledge that their current blogrolls contain enough good people to find most things so they shouldn’t be missing much, to pick up on newer blogs. Equally, the more people that link to you, the harder it is to notice new ones, or new good ones - especially as the likes of Technorati and the other blog search engines are currently having so much difficulty in keeping up to date and accurate.

I’ve only come across two new blogs in the last few months that I read regularly: the mighty Rachel from North London and the excellent Kitty Killer who hasn’t posted since late September (if you’re out there mate, give us a shout). So, to find out what other new blogs are out there, I’m inaugurating a one-off New Blood Blog Roundup.

If you run a political blog of whatever flavour that was created after August 1 this year or would like to recommend one, please email chickyog@gmail.com before midday on Friday December 9. I’ll then present the list both here and at The Sharpener. As a further incentive to potential third party recommenders, other than the rosey glow of a good deed well done, I’ll also give a hat tip link to your blog.

This isn’t designed as a patronising, patriarchal pat on the head or beauty contest for the “little folk” from some kind of self-styled “big boy of blogging”. It’s a genuine attempt to broaden the circle of blogs that many of us are reading right now. There will be no judgements made and all recommendations will make the list. It’ll then be up to everybody using the list to decide who’s cool and who’s fool.

(Also posted at The Sharpener)

Feeling a little uninspired, as a blogger? Is the moribund state of British politics sapping you of your pith and vinegar? Has your fire, as Paul Weller once asked of himself, really gone out?

Well, help is at hand. Rejoice, for the Baby Jesus has smiled on us once more:

Brand Republic: Blunkett boosts media profile by joining Sun as columnist

The Sun has snapped up disgraced former minister David Blunkett as a columnist, just weeks after his resignation as Work and Pensions Secretary.

The Sun has announced that Blunkett’s “forthright and outspoken views on life and politics” will be aired in a weekly column starting tomorrow and then every Thursday.

Every Thursday morning bloggers Left, Right and Centre can (finally) buy The Sunt with a clear conscience, make a nice cup of coffee, turn to their keyboards with a song in their heart and begin…

As Kelvin MacKenzie famously said to John Major: “I’ve got this big bucket of shit and I’m going to tip it all over your head.” I do hope you’ll join me.

(Hat tip: Tim Ireland)

We all started blogging as individuals, as independent as you can get. Now that inter-blog, cross-party networks are beginning to grow in the UK political blogosphere, we may be able to make our voices heard more by acting as a group - but are our individual voices and opinions being drowned out in the process?

read the rest…

I wonder if this question couldn’t have been phrased a little better:

Adam Price (Carmarthen East & Dinefwr, PC): To ask the Prime Minister what information he received on action that the United States Administration proposed to take against the Al-Jazeera television channel.

Tony Blair (Prime Minister, HM Treasury): None.

Scaryduck went to the Kevin Maguire/Wadah Khanfar pow wow last night at which Maguire was pretty unequivocal:

* A source (which Maguire will not name) approached the Mirror with details of a top secret memo, which had “accidentally” found its way into the papers of a certain MP. Noting that the memo contained, amongst other things, details of UK and US troop movements in Iraq, said MP turned it back to Downing Street.

* The memo also contains details of a conversation between George W Bush, and his London spokesman Tony Blair, in which the Leader of the Free World reveals plans to attack Al Jazeera TV, a civilian broadcaster financed by the government of Qatar. Mr Blair, for all his faults, tells him that this may not be a particularly good idea, and other, unnamed officials tend to concur with Tony’s line of thinking.

* The Mirror, out of courtesy, informs Downing Street that they will be publishing details of this memo. Downing Street has a hissy fit, and the White House, according to Maguire “went beserk”, leading to threats of the Official Secrets Act against anybody who is even considering publishing the document.

* Of course,” said Maguire, “the government wouldn’t be using the Official Secrets Act if the reports weren’t true. This government will go to great lengths to keep this memo secret.”

So how to parse Price’s question so that it leaves a get out for Blair, assuming what Maguire says is true? I can’t spot one - the two positions won’t square for me - but then my mind doesn’t work like a Number 10 press officer’s.

This looks like it could be good. Shame I can’t make it:

THE FRONTLINE CLUB INVITES YOU TO A BREAKING NEWS DISCUSSION

MONDAY, 28th November – 7.00pm
(Cheers to Scaryduck for the heads up.)

Here’s fun:

The Guardian - Murdoch: I’m proud of my legacy, but BBC resents me

His influence extends across the globe: from Fox in the US to Star TV in Asia, and the Sun and Sky in the UK. He is courted by presidents and prime ministers, and his personal fortune is estimated at $7.8bn, or £4.53bn. But Mr Murdoch still does not feel he gets the respect his achievements deserve, using his first British interview in five years to complain about the “resentment” he inspired at the BBC and the “establishment forces” ranged against him.

Fantastic. More money than he can spend in the little time left to him before he’s dragged, screaming, to Hades. Princes, presidents and prime ministers bend the knee before him. He has a global influence unlike anybody since Alexander the Great. And he still has room for a cute little martyr complex. Aw.

Sky is doing very well. It will do a lot better. And as it does, the resentment from the establishment forces will only grow stronger.

Look at that. He’s still the plucky little Aussie battler - slogging away for little reward other than the scorn of his peers - he was all those years ago when he couldn’t sacrifice his Australian citizenship quick enough on the altar of his ambition. Some things you never lose.

This kind of thing is usually meat and potatoes at Chicken Yoghurt:

Austin Mitchell MP: Selling Educashun

The “Tool Kit” for Labour MPs shows what I should have done to sell the Educashun White Paper.

…

The follow-up Press Release: “Parents give schools plan the thumbs up”. MP rushes back to Westminster to give Ruth Kelly the good news. “I have no doubt that they will get their message will be heard (sic) in Westminster loud and clear”. There’s even a quote provided to prove it: “<<INSERT PARENT NAME>> a parent at the event said “The government’s plans are really ambitious. I’m pleased they want to give parents control … but I was even more pleased the <<NAME>> MP and the head bothered to take time out to listen to my views”. Democracy Works!

Clive, Jamie and Dave all have more.

This is classic New Labour astroturfing, as revealed by Channel 4’s Dispatches in May this year, on which I said:

Propaganda techniques used by US pharmaceutical companies and political parties were imported. Letters were written by the press office bigging up New Labour or attacking the opposition parties and then sent to local activists who were asked to get them into the local press. Several identical letters appeared in local newspapers across the country. One letter appeared in one newspaper twice. In Leeds letters were printed in a newspaper from a woman who doesn’t exist. All because New Labour deemed that readers “trusted” the letters page - the views of “real people” - in a newspaper more than any other part. Trust was just another commodity to be exploited and abused.

The New Labour website had a similar doohicky on its website. A visitor typed in their postcode and a page came up saying “Your local hospital has had £X pounds of investment” and “Your community has X extra policemen”, the X’s filled in by a clever little computer programme.

Which at least gave the impression of making a stab of informing voters. The astroturfing shown by Channel 4 and the latest wheeze outed by Austin Mitchell are deception pure and simple. Lies in other words.

Here’s what WriteToThem.com, the nifty website facilitating communication between MPs and their constituents, says about sending cut ‘n’ pasted emails to MPs:

We know your issue is important to you, but we’ve spoken to representatives — and if you are not a constituent, or you send a “copied and pasted” form letter, your message will go straight into the bin.

…

[P]lease don’t copy and paste the same message as everyone else. And don’t encourage others to do so. It’s worse than useless as we’ll automatically stop your messages before they get through. Ask people to write in their own words. If they care enough about your issue, they’ll do so.

My emphasis. Cut ‘n’ pasted letters and emails from constituents are ignored and binned by MPs, and fair enough. But cookie cutter quotes sent in the other direction, to gull voters into thinking a policy (whatever its merits) is popular, are fair game from our elected representatives. I suppose that’s what you call “building a consensus”.

I always like to trace these things back to their roots and examine them from first principles. In this case, somebody sat in an office and decided that in order to paint the Education White Paper in a good light, MPs should tell lies, make up stories, puff up potential legislation that they clearly didn’t feel capable or willing to defend and sell on its own merits. (Or weren’t trusted to defend and sell on its own merits.) New Labour employs people to orchestrate campaigns of lies and propaganda because it’s less effort than trying to get the real message through to voters who are obviously regarded as simpletons. Somebody said, “Alright lads, this is what we’ll do…” His colleagues agreed with him and the deceit was formalised and filtered through the system to the sharp end where MPs were told: “You will lie to the press and your constituents.”

The Education White Paper is supposedly about putting parents at the centre of the process. If that’s the case, that they’re to be trusted with influence on how our education system is run, why treat them with contempt when selling the policy? On one side you’re saying that people should be given more power while on the other treating them like children.

This cuts to the heart of the criticisms of the “People Power” aspect of this White Paper. Educated, informed, energetic and enthusiastic parents will immediately jump up and seize the best for their children. Under-educated, lazy, working all hours God sends to put food on the table, and introverted parents will not. They will also be uninformed and misinformed because the Government are not explaining the issue in terms the latter group will understand and be able to act upon. Once again it’s just a case of, “Trust us, it’s gonna be great.” Some bloke they made up said so, so it must be true.

It’s all so dispriting; so difficult to find the energy to summon the anger to give these abject, contemptuous, contemptible bunch of tartuffes another poke. Yet another fundamental aspect of people’s lives, their kids’ education, boiled down polystyrene soundbites and fact-free facts pulled out of thin air. And I keep saying and saying it until I sound like a greatest hits collection: we wouldn’t accept this behaviour from anybody else. If your partner or children lied on such a level and based all their decisions and behaviour on the say so of imaginary friends you’d be looking for a psychiatrist. But with the government, the people who control almost every aspect of our lives, we just shrug and say, “well that’s politicians, innit?”

I sometimes think we’ve (I’ve?) nowhere left to go in describing this government. Their imagination is endless whereas mine is failing. That they are liars and bullies with contempt for process and The People now seems a given and hardly worth mentioning, much like the fact the sun came up this morning. “Morally bankrupt”, while a useful phrase, is overdone and lacks the requisite sting, I feel.

Robust anglo-saxon is useful at times like this but I’m trying to cut down on the swearing.

Natalie over a Philobiblon guest-hosts this week’s roundup. Some cracking stuff this week.

Another day, another redesign. Version 6034.5 was looking too busy and the bells and whistles were distracting, I felt. Not to mention that all the third party javascript doohickys and assorted junk meant the site was taking an age to load.

The three columns was crowding the writing and building Jarndyce’s new look showed that simpler is best.

The Independent: Britain gives approval to torture, claims Amnesty
Blair… told MPs: “We do not agree with the use of torture.” Pressed over whether that was an absolute rule, Mr Blair added: “I mean absolute in this sense, that you say ‘Look, it is simply the civil liberties of the suspect, or simply the liberties of freedom from terrorism’. You have to balance those two things.”

That’s a definition of absolute you’ll be unfamiliar with. When we say absolute, we mean “not limited by restrictions or exceptions“. What Blair means by it, well, you’d have to ask him. I think it means Tony condones torture, whatever the nauseating wordplay he uses for sake of appearances.

What a whacky topsy-turvy world the Blair household must be. “Fish for tea, Tony?” “Absolutely, in the sense that that you say ‘Look, it is simply fish for tea, or simply pork chops for tea’. You have to balance those two things.” “Oh darling, you are a card!”

How did it come to this? A bunch of arseholes blow themselves up on the tube and the next thing you’ve got the Prime Minister saying in public that we (well not we obviously, we let our tame thugs do the actual beating, mock drowning and sexual assualts) should take suspects, suspects mind you, and inflict pain on them to find out what they may or may not know. That’s what “you have to balance those two things” means. Try and explain it any other way, please do. Tony Blair buys your “freedoms” with the pain of others.

BBC News: MI5 ‘given secret prisons data’
Security service MI5 has received information given by terror suspects held in “secret prisons” outside the US, the BBC has learned.

It costs two pounds a month to join Amnesty International. I joined this morning because suddenly we need to protest to the British Government about its human rights record. Our own government. I’d urge you to do the same.

“Feeling trapped in the middle of a fight you didn’t pick? Mad as hell? Not going to take it any more? Well hip hip hooray - it’s venting time. At the allotted date/hour, stop what you’re doing, put down your tools, step into the street and join us, the sane remainders of the human race, as we howl inarticulately at the skies.”

read the rest…

Kids are fun, y’know. Only the other night I asked my five year-old what she’d like for her tea. “I’m not bothered,” she said, not looking up from her colouring. So off I toddled and whipped up a wonderfully piquant Spiderman pasta shapes on toast. “I don’t want that,” she said upon seeing my gastronomic tour de force, “I wanted a dippy egg and soldiers.”

(Progressive parents don’t slap their children. No, what you have to do these days is supress that anger and channel it towards your first duodenal ulcer.)

I was reminded of this after hearing that Gordon Brown isn’t happy with Lord Turner’s review of the state of Britain’s pension system and his recommendations into how to fix it. Lord Turner is said to be livid at Brown’s dismissal of his report. After all, he’s only spent three years of his life researching and writing the thing only for Brown to turn around and say, “I don’t want this, take it away,” like a petulant child told to eat up. If only Lord Turner had thought to consult the Chancellor, all this unpleasantness could have been avoided. Or did Gordon say, “do what you like,” only to regret this later?

This government has spent a fortune over the last eight years commissioning reviews into this and commissions on that only to bury them when the resulting reports didn’t tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. It makes you wonder why they bother in the first place. What they should do at the outset of all the commissions, reports, reviews, or whatever these done deals are called these days, is get the fix in right at the start. That way, the government get what they want, all the money which might as well have been given to the Blairs for all the good it’s done the public will be saved, nobody loses their temper, and we can all go back to hoping we get hit by a bus before we reach 65. Or 67.

Couldn’t somebody have had a word in Lord Turner’s ear right at the beginning and said: “Look Turner, don’t want to interfere or anything old boy, but Gordon will be in a frightful bait if you suggest anything that he thinks might jeopardise his ascension to the throne.”

Which is, one suspects, what this is all about. Gordon’s pulling the ladder up - if only for a little while - until he gets the big chair. Screw the coffin dodgers, with the economy heading South, he’s not going to have the cash to splash about to ensure that these economic drag factors don’t freeze or starve to death. To do so would threaten his reputation for “fiscal responsibility” or whatever phrase he uses to induce a glassy-eyed trance in the public. Brown might be convinced that dark Blairite forces leaked the letter detailing his shafting of Turner in order to shaft him in turn, but I think we can be pretty sure sinister Blairites didn’t put those thoughts in Gordon’s head in the first place.

You see, you’ll never become the head factotum by looking after the little guy, Gordon. There’s no hearty slaps on the back from Digby Jones in worrying about the pondlife too stupid or lazy to get MBAs, seats on the board, and nice juicy pensions. I bet a third of Digby’s or Rupert’s or Paul’s or David’s phone calls don’t go unanswered.

What’s the public’s future and piece of mind compared to Gordon’s personal ambition? They say he’s going to save the Labour Party for an encore. The Narnia branch, presumably.

As Peter Mandelson once (in)famously said, New Labour are “are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” What the cosy middle classes seem to forget is that their government is also pretty sanguine about people being dirt poor as well. The minimum wage and tax credits might buy Guardian readers’ votes but they don’t buy much more. They certainly don’t buy even remotely comfortable retirements.

And then the dismal John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, a man with all pith and vinegar of a rice cake, turned up yesterday to give us his five tests in a speech of such inpenetrable dullness and meaningless, I bet you could have used George Orwell’s corpse to drill for oil. I mean, Christ, we’re only talking about how the whole population is going to spend the final years of their lives.

…”the impact of these challenges”, “challenges and opportunities”, “a consumer led world that rationalises consumption today above saving for the long term”, “maximising the contribution”, “no magic wand solution”. The dread “balancing rights with responsibilities” was in there as well, as if Hutton needed to reinforce his nutrition-free New Labour credentials.

Apparently Hutton was married for 15 years before separating from his wife in 1993. I’d have loved to have been there when he chatted her up for the first time:

Of course, my attraction to you presents challenges as well as opportunities. I, of course, want to maximise my contribution to the relationship and of course realise that with my rights within said relationship come responsibilities if I am to rationalise the initial romance with sustained companionship in the long term.

It’s a wonder he’s not the loneliest man on Earth, the soulless and uninspiring wafer of a man.

There was some guff about “consensus” in there as well. Ed Balls, Gordon Brown’s Metatron, also used the c-word, while trying to take a bullet for his boss, as well as my personal favourite, “national debate“. It’s a great one, that is. Conjures up comforting images of Gordon nodding sagely while listening sympathetically to the personal concerns of everybody when, in actual fact, it means: “You’ll die in penury set to a level of our choosing”.

Anyway. Oh yes, five tests. I take it Hutton’s speechwriters and political overlords who surely vetted the speech knew what “five tests” would make those paying attention (that is, those able to drag themselves away from “celebrities” shilling their “dignity” in some jungle) think of. Gordon Brown’s five tests that he drew up so that he gets to decide whether Britain enters the Euro or not.

Yep, it looks like the Turner Review is not only being kicked into the long grass, but somebody’s released a hungry tiger into there as well to make sure nobody goes and retrieves the offending dossier. The future wellbeing of every man woman and child in Britain at the mercy of a bunch of petulant, selfish, whining squits who, if they were yours, would be sitting on their beds right now thinking about what they had done.

I doubt it’ll come to it but I’ll play.

If a Deep Throat would like to send me a copy of the Bush/Blair transcript, I and my clandestine network of urban intellectuals will publish far and wide.

Courtesy of the EU, and we’re now well on the way to bypassing the British parliament just as Blair and co planned (even if they did originally want the data to be stored for three years):

“An European Union parliament committee voted on Thursday to keep details of all EU-wide telephone calls and Internet use for six months to a year to help combat terrorism and serious crime.”

read the rest…

Fair Vote Watch has been remonikered as The Jarndyce Blog. Donald’s stuff is always worth a butcher’s, so go and have a look…

Early Day Motion 1088:

CONDUCT OF GOVERNMENT POLICY IN RELATION TO THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ
That this House believes that there should be a select committee of seven honourable Members, being members of Her Majesty’s Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and in its aftermath.

You could use WriteToThem.com to ask your MP to sign the motion, if you were so inclined. Doesn’t take long, you can keep it short and sweet. Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Ms Barlow,

I was fortunate enough to meet you during the General Election campaign in April and noted your opposition to the war against Iraq. I would therefore like to ask you to sign Early Day Motion 1088 (Conduct of Government policy in relation to the war against Iraq).

If you do not feel you are able to sign the motion, would you please give your reasons for not doing so.

Many thanks and kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

Justin McKeating

If the motion gets 200 signatures it will be debated in Parliament, apparently. It’s a bit like PledgeBank, only for special people.