Turkeys for Thanksgiving
June 10, 2008
Lo and behold! Gordon Brown, the man who has been forlornly playing the pipe still wet with Tony Blair’s spit, has failed to lure many vermin with his call for for more draconian legislation. So when finally a rat does come out, it bears a Muslim name. According to the Daily Telegraph, Brown’s call for 42-day detention — a political move according to Jacqui Smith to present the Tories as soft on terrorism — has received the endorsement of one Khurshid Ahmed, Chairman of something called the ‘British Muslim Forum’. ( It is worth reading the current article in conjunction with this article by Gareth Peirce; it provides necessary context about the draconian “anti-terror” legislation in Britain). My friend Paul de Rooij comments:
The British government is seeking to pass a law allowing 42-day-detention without trial for “terror suspects”. Note, that Britain already has draconian “anti-terror” legislation in place from the days it fought Irish nationalists. All the recent measures added to this legislation are specifically targeting Muslim “terror suspects”, and thus it is truly bizarre to find a Muslim organization favoring the government’s proposed measures. It is a bit like an organization of turkeys popping up stating that they are in favor of Thanksgiving.
The history of terrorist arrests in the UK is appalling. Many wrongful convictions, brutality in prison and under questioning, horrendous conditions in jail causing prisoners to lose their minds… and the cases that led to many arrests and were trumpeted in the media resulted afterwards in the release of suspects without charges and without any apology. And there are other frivolous cases: imprisoning a woman who wrote a poem lauding the resistance fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan…
New Labour’s Tax Cut Mania
June 5, 2008
‘A mania for tax cuts at any cost defies public opinion’, writes Seumas Milne. ‘The political class wants a smaller state and clings to a free-market model that is falling apart. Who is listening to the voters?’
As Gordon Brown lurches from self-inflicted crisis to crisis, the consequences of his failure to carve out an agenda of his own are becoming painfully clear. Not only is he tying himself in knots over discredited and unpopular New Labour policies – from the extension to pre-charge detention to his business secretary John Hutton’s edict against any more legal protection for workers, to yesterday’s plans to hand over entire NHS hospitals to private companies – even more alarmingly, the political vacuum he has created is being eagerly filled by others who want to push the government yet further to the right.
The past week has seen a veritable Blairite insurgency in response to Labour’s month of electoral misery. One former acolyte of the lost leader after another has lined up to kick down the last pillar of the social democratic-Tory political divide, demanding tax and spending cuts and a smaller state.
Labour’s Time is Up
May 27, 2008
‘From the start New Labour was pledged to consolidate the Thatcherite paradigm rather than offer anything different,’ writes Tariq Ali.
Power can shape “truth”, but not for ever. That is one lesson that could be learned from the series of electoral defeats that mark the end of New Labour’s weightless hegemony. There is something grotesque about the daily denunciations of Brown by hardcore Blairites in parliament and their media acolytes, who barely uttered a word of criticism as the country was dragged into two wars and New Labour prettified the Thatcherite social and economic agenda, now calling for the removal of Brown. As if his removal and replacement by a robotic Blairite (Miliband senior, Purnell and, amusingly enough, even Milburn is mentioned in this regard) would do the trick.
The litany of own goals scored by Gordon Brown is endless and has been well-documented. That one of these could lead, sooner rather than later, to the independence of Scotland, is ironic, but all this is beside the point. Brown was fully implicated in the New Labour project and funded its hyper-militarism. He is too weak to even mimic Zapatero in Spain and Rudd in Australia by withdrawing British troops from Iraq. Instead, one of his zombies devised the pathetic idea of Armed Forces Day to celebrate militarism and encourage school-leavers to take up killing foreigners as their main subject and graduate or die in the university of the world.
The Assault on Academic Freedom
May 27, 2008
Further reporting from Polly Curtis and Martin Hodgson on the student held for six days for researching al-Qaida tactics. (thanks Shahbaaz)
A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the “psychological torture” he endured in custody. Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics.
The case highlights what lecturers are claiming is a direct assault on academic freedom led by the government which, in its attempt to establish a “prevent agenda” against terrorist activity, is putting pressure on academics to become police informers.
Freedom under threat
May 26, 2008
‘The arrest of a Nottingham University student for downloading an al-Qaida manual is an outrage and undermines the university’s academic integrity,’ writes Ayesha Christie.
On May 14, Rizwaan Sabir, a student of politics and Hicham Yezza, a former student currently employed at the University of Nottingham, were arrested under the Terrorism Act. Their crime? Sabir, a graduate research student, who is writing his MA dissertation on Islamist extremism and international terrorist networks, had downloaded an edited version of the al-Qaida training manual from a publicly accessible US government website. He had sent it to Yezza to print, and the material was noticed by staff who passed it on to university authorities. The university reported it to the police, and the two men were arrested. Kept in detention for six days, they were released without charge on May 20.
The university has argued that it was well within its grounds to contact the police. After all, what was Yezza, employed in a non-academic role, doing printing a terrorist manual? Arguably, the university was only acting in the interests of the safety of its students and staff. In the current climate of fear and surveillance constructed by the government and much of the media, we are all encouraged to be on “terror alert”.
The Influence of Israel in Westminster
May 25, 2008
The celebration at Windsor Castle of Israel’s 60th year
Janine Roberts on the UK Israel Lobby. (from my friend Ramzi’s indispensable Palestine Chronicle).
We British are not like Americans – we would not tolerate having Israeli lobbyists standing over our politicians like happens in Washington and thus gathering power. Why – they might bias our decisions over our foreign policy! The influence of Israel in Washington is well documented. It is exercised both through powerful overtly Jewish Washington organisations and, increasingly, through Christian Zionist organisations.
In Jerusalem two weeks ago 600 US Christians turned up to celebrate Israel’s birthday, in the name of a powerful US pro-Israeli lobbying group claiming to represent 40 million Christians and called Christians United for Israel, led by the millionaire Rev John Hagee – head of a Texas church and of a widely syndicated Christian TV station. Their organisation is modelled on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) whose conference in Washington last year drew 6,000 participants.
Why Darfur Intervention is a Mistake
May 24, 2008
Alex de Waal analyzes the politics and practicality of intervention on BBC’s Viewpoints.
Analysts say that Darfur is Rwanda in slow motion, that we should send troops to protect African civilians from their Arab killers and disarm the infamous Janjaweed.
Khartoum came under attack by rebels just two weeks ago
In the Rwandan genocide, a million people were slaughtered in a hundred days. It was Africa’s holocaust. Few would have opposed a short sharp episode of colonial-style armed intervention to stop it.
The British Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, certainly leans towards such a policy for Darfur.
“Too many times, in the aftermath of mass atrocities, we’ve promised ‘never again’,” he said.
“But in a world where so many states remain wedded to the principle of non-interference and the primacy of sovereignty, how do we make the responsibility to protect a reality, not a slogan?”
His are good intentions but they pave the way to a problem from hell.
What New Labour Wrought
May 20, 2008
‘This government has been the most rightwing since the second world war’, writes George Monbiot of the New Labour government. ‘The prospect of a Tory in No 10 does worry me – but no more so than another term for this cabinet of war criminals’.
You can hear the wringing of hands and tearing of cloth all the way down Farringdon Road. Dismayed by the local election results, convinced that Labour will be crushed in Thursday’s byelection, afraid that this will presage disaster in the next general election, my fellow columnists are predicting the end of the civilised world. But I can’t understand why we should care.
Yes, I worry about what the Tories might do if they get in. I also worry about what Labour might do if it wins another term. Why should anyone on the left seek the re-election of the most rightwing government Britain has had since the second world war?
New Labour’s apologists keep reminding us of the redistributive policies it has introduced: Sure Start children’s centres, reductions in child poverty, raising the school leaving age, the national minimum wage, flexible hours for parents and carers, better conditions for part-time workers, the decent homes programme, free museums, more foreign aid. All these are real achievements and deserve to be celebrated. But the catalogue of failures, backsliding and outright destruction is much longer and more consequential.
Balfour to Blair
May 18, 2008
Decent documentary with jarringly incongruous background music.
Al Jazeera International: Balfour to Blair is a special 30 minute film that investigates the role of British policy in the Middle East from the beginning of the 20th century to today.
Be All the Cannon Fodder You Can Be
May 11, 2008
First there was the RAND report on US soldiers nearly one-third of who return from Afghanistan and Iraq suffering brain injuries or stress disorders or both. Only 43 percent of them ever get to see a doctor. Now comes this exclusive in the Independent: ‘Soldiers need loans to eat, report reveals‘. Following is the Independent investigation followed by Alexander Cockburn’s analysis of the RAND report.
Senior figures react angrily to damning indictment of life inside the Army. Jonathan Owen and Brian Brady investigate
A highly sensitive internal report into the state of the British Army has revealed that many soldiers are living in poverty. Some are so poor that they are unable to eat and are forced to rely on emergency food voucher schemes set up by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Some of Britain’s most senior military figures reacted angrily yesterday to the revelations in the report, criticising the Government’s treatment of its fighting forces.
The disturbing findings outlined in the briefing team report written for Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, include an admission that many junior officers are being forced to leave the Army because they simply cannot afford to stay on.
