Two years ago the freshly elected David Cameron spoke of how Britain owes so much to the USA for its military support during the Battle of Britain.
the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the US, but we are the junior partner. We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis.
Robert Fisk writes of how, as the Iraq War began in 2003,
both Bush and Blair reminded journalists that the US had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Britain in her hour of need in 1940.
In fact the Americans only joined the war in December 1941. In 1940, Britain stood alone against the Nazis. Facing vastly superior weaponry the Americans expected that, like much of Europe, we would readily fall to Nazi occupation.
Knowing that the immediate future would be one of either occupation or the protracted privation of war, the British swiftly interned all German and Italian men, even those who were here as refugees from fascism, then set about deporting them.
And so it was that around 1,400 of them were crammed into a ship called the Arandora Star. On 1st July 1940 she sailed out of Liverpool and, in the early morning light 72 years ago today, appeared to the commander of a German submarine like a slow moving prize of a troop ship. After the torpedo hit there was barely half an hour before she sank, taking around 800 men to their deaths.
Towards the end of July, as bodies washed up along the Scottish and Irish coasts, only the few whose personal papers had survived weeks in the sea could be identified. Many were buried in services paid for by the communities who found them.
If you want to know more, I wrote a piece about it for the radical history calendar site On This Deity. There's also a really well-written home made documentary on Youtube in four parts starting here.
Last month I visited Islay, one of the westernmost isles off the coast of Scotland, facing out into the Atlantic.
On Islay, as all across Britain, cemeteries usually have a few military graves tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I was surprised and moved to find that Arandora Star passengers - civilian non-combatants and enemy nationals - are also buried in these areas. As such, their graves and headstones are tended in perpetuity out of public funds.
Both of Islay's Arandora Star passengers are Italian. The Italians had been on the lowest decks, under the most barbed wire, and a disproportionate number of them died.
Here is the grave of Andrea Gazzi, a 41 year old from Bardi in northern Italy, buried in Bowmore churchyard. He was found after more than two months in the sea on 6 September 1940. Some 48 men from his small village died on the Arandora Star, and there is now a commemorative chapel in Bardi's cemetery.
Down at Port Ellen cemetery there is an unknown Italian civilian. The inscription says 'Deceduto il 19 Agosto 1940' - died 19 August 1940, which is erroneous. They will have died on the 2nd July when the ship sank and, like Andrea Gazzi, the inscription should say 'rinvenuto', 'found'.
They are both buried with the phrase 'morto per la patria' - 'died for their country'. This appears to be a standard motto on all Italian graves in the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
In the case of prisoners of war it is perhaps accurate, but here it has a sharp, almost cynical sting. They did not die fighting for anything. The Arandora Star internees - many of the Italians resident in Britain for 30 or 40 years - died for their nationality, rather than their country.
I know I'm a little late out of the starting blocks to talk about the killing of Osama bin Laden, but still.
If the American government could find him unarmed, subdue his associates, shoot him in the face then take his body away, they could have taken him alive. He could have been brought back and the Americans could have given their reasons for taking him. More importantly, he could have given his reasons for doing what he did.
Had he been made to stand and speak, allowed to define his position, it would have made the majority of muslims actively go 'hell no, he's not speaking in my name'. By being subjected to summary execution he becomes a pliable cipher to be claimed by all manner of causes, the silence he leaves can be filled by a myriad of future propagandists to further division and violence.
The White House says releasing pictures of Bin Laden's body would give the Islamists a 'propaganda coup' and may make things worse. Yet killing him in cold blood clearly does exactly that.
After the Second World War, the Allies faced the problem of what to do with Nazi war criminals. Winston Churchill opposed the idea of any trials, saying with good reason that there can be no doubt about Nazi guilt, and giving them a platform to mitigate or prosetylise would only help them.
Justice Robert H Jackson answered for the Americans, saying
Undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would violate pledges repeatedly given, and would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride. The only other course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times and horrors we deal with will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and our motives clear.
The Soviets agreed, and we had the Nuremburg trials. This was a major step forward from previous victories where the spoils were carved up by the victors who made a point of humiliating the vanquished. It set a tone for post-conflict activity from which we can trace a line forwards to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Irish Good Friday Agreement.
If we are so right, it should be easy to demonstrate it. If our enemies are so wrong, let them spell it out for posterity. Let there be due consideration and evidence declared for all the world to see, now and in future. This is humane, this paves the way for peace, it speaks of a concern for justice that sets some folks apart from others.
The phrase 'brought to justice' is commonly used as a synonym for a tribunal or trial. So Barack Obama - his Nobel Peace Prize gathering dust at home - does a disservice to those progressive peace-seeking deeds set in train by his predecessor Harry Truman in 1945 by saying that the summary execution of Osama Bin Laden was 'bringing him to justice'. Justice is the process that ends with sentence. The killing of Bin Laden had no such process, it leapfrogged straight to punishment.
Obama has been keen to talk of "what makes us different" from Bin Laden with respect to the treatment of dead bodies. However, in the treatment of people who are alive, the Bin Laden operation is not easily distinguishable from the actions it punished.
There can be no claim that Bin Laden's deeds were worse than the Nazis. If people long before us, brought up in a world of empires, eugenics and all manner of supremacist thinking, could find a way to step forward, then we have no excuse for not doing the same.
The people whose policy of perpetrating crimes against humanity on those they intern in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are not concerned with creating justice, let alone peace. Indeed, killing an unarmed captive who poses no immediate threat is in itself a war crime.
History shows that a preparedness to use force is not contradictory to the creation of peace, it just needs to be applied with intelligence, with forethought about the view from other parts of the world and from times yet to come, and with an abandonment of short-term Vin Diesel movie urges for retribution. When we yield to those impulses we pollute the moral high ground with the seed of future conflict.
Peace is the most precious of our intangible resources. It does not mean we cannot sacrifice some of it, but it must always be done reluctantly and with awareness of the consequences, actively concerned with minimising how much peace we lose.
NHS Direct is the latest victim of the Tory cuts. The phone line was, itself, set up as a money-saver. People can ring up with minor ailments and speak to qualified nursing professionals so they don't use the more expensive 999 calls or A&E admissions. The plan is to replace it with a line staffed by people who've had 60 hours training. The opportunities for misdiagnosis - costing more money as well as misery - are vastly multiplied.
This is not like John Major's Cones Hotline that was trumpeted by government yet only handled a dozen calls a day (including pranks). NHS Direct receives nearly a million calls a month. Its abolition is just a further gratuitous dismantling of the NHS. The replacement system is still being piloted, yet they've decided to decided to roll it out nationally and permanently. Andrew Lansley has a novel definition of 'piloting'.
The new government's continual excuse for the cuts as essential cost-cuting is an outrageous decoy. Just as they're axing the Sustainable Development Commission even though it saves tens of times its cost, so they're claiming their NHS cuts all save money and improve efficiency.
They tell us they're cutting layers of NHS bureaucracy, such as abolishing Primary Care Trusts. Leaving aside the fact that the Tories invented the internal market of the NHS and fertilised the culture of outsourcing, the new government is actually bringing in a new layer of NHS bureaucracy in GP's fundholding. Indeed, it seems likely that the bureaucrats we sack from PCTs will be rehired by GPs (doctors are hardly going to do all their own accounting), but with all the added waste of bringing in a new system.
Beyond all these giant cogs and gears of Tory spending cuts, there is a simple test to apply to claims of necessary cuts. They cannot credibly talk of saving money by cutting waste and things that don't get used whilst they're planning to replace Trident.
These WMDs are so terrible that they cannot be used. Their effects would decimate populations and poison land far beyond the target, quite possibly affecting the UK.
Here's the deal; if your enemy knows you won't use a weapon, it is not any kind of a deterrent. Every penny of the tens of billions of pounds spent on them is a pointless waste. The cost of Trident replacement is commonly cited as £20bn - coincidentally the same amount the NHS has been ordered to cut between now and 2014 - though a Greenpeace report estimates £97bn over its 30 year lifespan.
You expect Tory papers like the Mail and Telegraph to toe the government line, but the supposedly impartial BBC and the lefty Guardian use the phrase 'nuclear deterrent' too. That is not neutral descriptive language, it is the militaristic opinion that nucelar weapons deter. Trident is not a nuclear deterrent, it is a nuclear weapons system.
Frankly, I can't see any defensive element to the British military. If we abolished our armed forces, who exactly would invade us? But certainly, long before we reach such issues, there is no credible argument for nuclear weapons. Those who say we should keep them talk of being 'left defenceless'. Take a look at what we've done in Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan lately, all without nukes. See how many mighty non-nuclear states around the world go about their business unattacked.
Farting around making what are, financially speaking, comparatively tiny cuts to services people actually use and rely on in order to have the cash to spend on something that will never be used would be laughable if it were just an idea. It means we take away quality of life for our citizens in order to pretend to threaten ugly death to citizens of other places.
The fact that such ideas are at the forefront of the minds of the people running the country is frankly terrifying, and makes you wonder with dread what they'll do next.
Two members of the Free Gaza flotilla speaking in London, Saturday 5th June 2010.
Respect for human rights and international law is not a policy decision, it's not a choice to be made in number 10. It's an obligation. - Ewa Jasiewicz
What we went through on those boats and in prison was not one percent of the Palestinian experience, not one percent. The difference is we have governments that can represent us, we need to force the governments to act. - Alex Harrison
A year ago, as Israeli forces rained military death upon Gaza, we blogged, we wrote emails, some of us even took to the streets. And all of it felt futile.
Others, however, were out there. The Free Gaza boat activists had sailed laden with supplies for the besieged Gazans, and many were still there when Operation Cast Lead began.
Sharyn Lock was one of them and, as I nudged folk towards at the time, was blogging from the thick of it. Her writing was clear, intelligent, compassionate and fearless. She wrote calmly, straightforwardly and thoughtfully, yet didn't flinch from her freaked out Western reactions, nor from the duty to stay where she was most needed and report what she saw.
The subject matter was so vivid, the number of voices coming out so few, and her talent so great, that she was commissioned to make a book of her writings which has just been published as Gaza: Beneath the Bombs.
In order to assemble it into a coherent narrative she worked with Sarah Irving. Irving's not only an incisive non-mainstream journalist but is also an experienced volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement.
She first went to Palestine in March 2002 as part of a group of international citizens whose presence in Israeli-occupied territories would, they hoped, curb the excesses of the Israeli military. Soon after they arrived, the Israelis launched fierce attacks, massacring Palestinians and shooting unarmed peace demonstrators.
This being before blogging had taken off, Sarah maintained frequent email contact with the outside world. Her reports from Bethlehem - contrasting sharply with the biases of the corporate media - were startling, harrowing and compelling. So much so that I couldn't let them disappear and archived them over at U-Know.
Her writing, like Lock's, is trustworthy precisely because it doesn't have any pretence of objectivity. They lay their feelings wide open; we see any bias plainly, we see why it exists, as they refuse to shy away from emotional responses. How could anyone really be there and really be part of it but remain aloof?
If a writer on a political subject manages to preserve a detached attitude, it is nearly always because he doesn't know what he is talking about. To understand a political movement, one has to get involved in it. And as soon as one is involved in it one becomes a propagandist.
- George Orwell (New English Weekly, 22 Sept 1938)
Yet this is not blindly partisan. The book has an unswerving compassion for all the people recorded in it, Palestinian, Israeli or international. As Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine, says in the book's afterword, it manages to humanise the inhuman.
It is powerful, moving and strikingly modern writing; accessible, warm and humane. It is as much about psychology as physical fact, as much a story of resilience as brutality. Anyone wanting to understand the reality of life in Gaza should get a copy.
The authors are doing readings at bookshops and event around Britain, check here for details. You can also buy it online. If you're going to do that, go to the publisher Pluto Press and enter the code FREEGAZA or ISM GAZA during the payment process, and the relevant organisation gets a cut.
The sense of betrayal about Barack Obama's presidency mystifies me. The talk is as if he's somehow not fulfilled the promise, when in fact that's precisely what he's done.
His election campaign included explicit commitments to escalate the war in Afghanistan. And there he stood today, in the week he committed a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan on top of the 20,000 extra he sent earlier in the year, using his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to justify war.
America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide
...said the leader of a country that refuses to be a member of the International Criminal Court that prosecutes individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes
The ideals of liberty and self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced
The Pakistani parliament passed a motion condemning the USA's use of drone attacks in their country - extrajudicial killings that may well constitute a war crime - and the Americans have ignored it and carried on with the attacks.
On Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Pakistan parliamentarians brought it up again, pointing out that it is hard to tell people that America isn't acting as an anti-democratic unilateral bully.
Faisal Saleh Hayat and others were of the opinion US on one side lends support to sustaining democratic order and on the other side it does not respect the resolution adopted by symbol of democracy, Pakistani parliament against drone attacks. That is why concerns prevailing among the people against US were proving correct, they added.
Can you imagine American public feeling if there were Pakistani drone attacks on US soil? But it's different in Pakistan, it's just what Obama calls
a reflexive suspicion of America
How could anyone doubt America's nobility, he wondered.
The United States of America has helped underwrite global security
...said the leader of the world's largest arms exporter.
His wars are different, he explained. They are waging 'just war'. Such a war is marked by a number of distinguishing characteristics. For instance,
whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.
Cluster bombs are small 'bomblets' scattered from a single bomb. They have a high non-detonation rate, and can lie around for years until disturbed, frequently by children picking up such a peculiar object. The USA, though, refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
He singled out the need for those with high moral fibre and a commitment to equality to stand up for right in a world where there are
failed states like Somalia
Somalia is the one of the two countries on earth that have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other is the United States of America.
Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight.
...said the leader of a country that - in the minority again - hasn't signed the treaty banning another great killer of post-conflict civilians, anti-personnel landmines.
At the other end of the weapons scale, he spoke of the most terrifying military hardware yet invented.
In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work towards disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I'm working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia's nuclear stockpiles.
But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.
One country in the Middle East has already got nuclear weapons: Israel. What sanctions does the Obama administration impose? None, it stands idly by, and indeed rewards them with billions of dollars a year in military aid.
His deafening silence echoes through his response to the UK breaking the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by promising to replace Trident.
Deciding to give him a prize for achievement less than a fortnight into his presidency was a little ahead of itself, but it was simply stupid to dish out a prize for peace to someone who, even then at the outset, was pledged to expand and intensify war, whose office inevitably involves waging war and who, were the standards of the Nuremburg Trials applied, would be hanged.
Simon Mann - a person who'd fit any decent working definition of 'international terrorist' - has been pardoned and released from jail in Equatorial Guinea, 16 months into a 34 year sentence for his attempted coup in the oil-rich nation.
Neo-colonialist mercenary leader Mann was caught with a planeload of weapons and ex-apartheid South African special forces on their way to stage a coup in Equatorial Guinea...
Mann certainly wasn't going there on any humanitarian mission. As with his previous campaigns, it was about clearing out one group so a grateful government - irrespective of its attitude to human rights - would bestow lucrative mineral rights upon him.
For a more detailed account of the activities of Mann and his friends around the world, check out my article Simon Mann: A Very English Killer.
During his trial in Equatorial Guinea, Mann sang like the proverbial canary and implicated 'Sir' Mark Thatcher (who pleaded guilty to involvement in a South African court) and plot-chief Ely Calil.
I am very anxious that Calil, Thatcher and one or two of the others, should face justice.
I'm relishing the thought of it happening - oh please let plot-funder Jeffrey Archer have another spell in jail - but I cannot muster any faith that it'll come to pass. The establishment insulates its members well.
Indeed, this was shown in Mann's favour by Guernsey courts' refusal to allow the Equatorial Guinea government access to Mann's account records and safe deposit boxes, despite strong evidence that these contain hard and damning evidence of the plot.
Meanwhile, a vicious mercenary is now free to enjoy his millionaire's lifestyle and work on his book deal and film options.
= = = = = = = = =
UPDATE 11 NOV 09: Over at The Quiet Road, Jim's post on Simon Mann (and the comments) include specific discussion of my post here.
Having recently set out what I think poetry shouldn't do, here's an instance of what it can be well used for.
Poetry should come from the heart and speak the truth. Or, as a real poet said,
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. - Leonard Cohen
The Speaker's Forum is a phenomenally interesting space at Glastonbury Festival. You get a broad range of political and countercultural figures there, not just declaiming to the adoring masses but having involved Q&A sessions. You can find someone good and get them to expand on an idea that a mass-media interview would never allow, or you can cross-examine on an issue that they're dubious on. This year saw Ben Goldacre, Tony Benn and Glasto godfather Michael Eavis.
I was in a team who did performance poetry there, and we were interestingly scheduled. On the Saturday we were before Mark Thomas, which was cool, and appropriate in a flattering way. But on the Sunday we were on between Daily Mail astrologer Jonathan Cainer and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.
It was obvious that Clegg would be doing a touchy-feely greenwash performance, and so I hastily composed a poem to do at the end of our set to undermine his bullshit.
There's already been a back-and-forth in the comments of an earlier post about the confrontational attitude of the poem. It comes across as angry, and that's for a very simple reason. I am angry. The LibDems are neo-colonialists who masquerade as responsible green sustainability folk.
Wakey wakey time. Rampant freemarket capitalism is not neatly compatible with tackling social injustice and the environmental crises caused by overconsumption. It creates and exacerbates them.
Those, like the LibDems, who pretend we can have perpetual economic growth whilst dealing with those fundamental problems are - in the phrase used in the performance's preamble - the agents and engines of destruction.
And whilst the poem is certainly angry and aggressive, it's not puerile. I think I did quite well in avoiding rhyming Liberal Democrats with twats.
There were a couple of people filming it (both of whom had batteries fail) but the various clips have been spliced together to get a complete version.
For completeness' (and googlability's) sake, here's the text of it too. Performance poetry rarely reads well on the page, the rhymes aren't at regular intervals nor does it stick to a single meter de-de de-de de-dumming along.
The wording's been tweaked a little (the original was done written in hurry with all the distraction and brain-inhibiting factors associated with proper festival enjoyment).
FUCK YOU LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
Everything in this is absolutely true.
I learned about environmental action fast I was given a masterclass Up the trees that were in the path Of the infamous Newbury bypass It was an issue so clear-cut A plan that was so far gone That before it was built the Tories who ordered it Admitted that they were wrong. But there were two voices in favour then Unrepentant to this day, in fact; Newbury's council and MP David Rendel Both of them: Liberal Democrats.
LibDem councils were at it again in Kingston on Thames Taking on tree protesters there to defend Mature poplar trees the LibDems said that Spoiled the view for new luxury flats. No prizes for guessing who won, protesters or interests vested. The copse was cut down, the monies moved in and the protesters all got arrested.
When it came to GM then the LibDems Volunteered themselves as biotech's friend. The people wanted modified crops To be banned, and the trials to stop. In Westminster, where they had no power The LibDems said we should go no further But at the the same time in Scotland, in government, They voted unanimously in favour.
With Manchester airport's second runway In Stockport, where they held no sway, The LibDems said such a monstrous plan should be fought But in Manchester council, who own the airport, The LibDems gave it wholehearted support.
I'm from central Leeds and the other year The LibDem council of our city Came up with a plan to spend 170 grand To make my local park look pretty; Turn it into car parking spaces. Well, you should've seen our faces. Not even their rigged 'consultation' Was enough to allay our consternation. The LibDems bullshat and backpedalled And tried to win a spin gold medal Saying it could have shrubs and nice coloured tarmac But that risible attempt to fudge it Isn't the punchline - no, that's the fact that The 170K was the 'Parks Renaissance' budget.
The Green Party quit the city government Not for the park but an environmental crime even greater The LibDems plan to choke their voters With a PFI waste incinerator.
They say now they were always against the war But those who remember 2003 know the score They were proudly "not the all-out anti-war party" then They just wanted approval for war from the UN. Not against the war, just after one more vote, And the reasons for the war? Well they said - and I quote - It was "ridiculous" to say it was all about oil No, Saddam's a bad man with WMDs on his soil.
When the troops went in the LibDems said We shouldn't object to this war crime's colossal violence Their leader said, I quote again, "Now is the time for silence". Well if you feel shamed and stained By the threat of mass murder in your name You've got to shout louder when troops go over the border So fuck you, Liberal Democrats, and your collaborators gagging order.
They're the same when it comes to climate change Whatever they try to spin I though Chris Huhne was just a buffoon Their environmental spokesman But then I saw him dodge and weave and lie And I knew he was really a man on a mission To hand governance to corporations Like every other mainstream politician.
He said he's against carbon rationing Cos it'd take too long to implement As if it's quicker to wait for elections That'll bring us LibDem government.
The LibDems, Huhne said, won't stop airport expansion No matter what devastation it may bring "There's a contradiction in you wanting to relocalise life Yet have a central ban on things". So you see, it's not stupidity But something much more sinister "I don't want to see things run from some office in Whitehall," says the man who wants to be a Minister.
The LibDems policy paper called "Setting Business Free" Says they "start with a bias in favour of market solutions". Why's that? Me, I start with a bias for effective solutions And ones that are sustainable and fair, And if the markets have taught us anything It's that we won't find those values there.
If there's ever any conflict Between anything and profit Then the holy market doctrine doth decree Profit wins every time And the losers are Social justice and sustainability. When they say they want to "cut red tape" they mean the regulation That stands between corporations and employee exploitation, The accountability of directors, and environmental devastation.
So if profit isn't primary to you join me In saying this one thing, that's 'Shove your "Manifesto For Business" up your arse, Liberal Democrats'.
Opposition politicians Always promise everything to everyone We saw it from Labour before 97 Now we see it from Cameron. Being in opposition most places most times Makes it easy for LibDems to claim compassionate intent But look at where they've been in power And you'll see that they're no different.
So you freemarket fucks, you'll be judged Not by your spin but by your acts, We know who you are, we've seen what you do, And we know that yellow isn't green, it's blue Fuck you from here to Timbuktu, Liberal Democrats.
In addition to Tales To Tell, the blog from Gaza mentioned in my previous post, there's another blog done by an International Solidarity Movement volunteer called In Gaza.
Firstly, the defence used by Hamas and their supporters that the rockets fired into Israel haven't killed many people misses the point.
It's not that there have been 15 or 20 Israelis killed. It's that 3,000 rockets have been fired. They may not be weapons of mass death but they are certainly weapons of mass terror. Can you imagine what it must be like knowing you're within range of those rockets?
This, though, does not in any way justify the Israeli action. When the death toll is 100 Palestinians for every Israeli, this is disproportionate retaliation; it is a war crime.
When at least a third of the casualties are unarguably civilians, this is collective punishment; it is a war crime.
Why are Hamas missiles terrorist action deserving of war crimes yet Israel's extra-judicial killings of Hamas politicians isn't even worth mentioning?
The idea that Hamas weapons are cruelly placed close to civilians is horseshit of the highest order; when one and a half million people live in an area the size of the Isle of Wight, where the hell is the area away from civilians?
And can people stop saying Obama is any kind of hope? In July he was asked if he thought Israel should negotiate with Hamas.
I don't think any country would find it acceptable to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens.
The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if - I don't even care if I was a politician. If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.
He didn't say if the same thing applied to Palestinians suffering Israeli missiles.
He defended Israel's attack on Syria and avoided answering whether he'd support similar Israeli action against Iran. He did, though, warn of the dangers of Iran getting nuclear weapons.
Whatever remains of our nuclear non-proliferation framework, I think would begin to disintegrate. You would have countries in the Middle East who would see the potential need to also obtain nuclear weapons.
That started happening when the first middle eastern country got nuclear weapons. But shhh, let's not mention them. When the US government commissions reports into the weapons of mass destruction of other countries, there's always one omission.
The agencies provide their assessment of programs in Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but Israel (and Egypt) are omitted. This pattern is repeated across the board.
For example, the 2003 report on the ballistic and cruise missile threat from the National Air and Space Intelligence Center lists 18 nations with missiles, including U.S. allies Bulgaria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Yemen, and Egypt — but not Israel.
Yet, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and an array of medium-range missiles that could deliver them.
The US government gives billions of dollars a year in military aid to Israel. Obama will continue that. Having the US as arbiter is like watching Northwich Victoria play Manchester United and saying it'll be fair if Alex Ferguson is the referee.
While those of us over here vent spleen on blogs and have our marches - including the inspired shoe-throwing at Downing Street - we know that the Israeli government is unaffected. So does it make any difference? Largely not. But yes it does, if it emboldens some to take practical action.
In August a group of international activists including Holocaust survivors loaded a boat with the kind of essential supplies the Israelis were blocking and sailed it to Gaza. After a hair-raising game of bluff with the Israeli navy, they broke the illegal Israeli sea blockade and delivered their cargo.
Once there, they sailed out with Palestinian fishing boats (the Israeli military had been illegally attacking them in Palestinian waters).
One of their number is there again now as part of the International Solidarity Movement, going to where it's most useful as a human shield (the idea being that the Israelis are less likely to commit atrocities with internationals there). There is - and be warned, it is harrowing stuff - Tales To Tell, a blog from the thick of it.
How depressing it must be for Americans to have that two months between a presidential election and them actually taking office. Two months in which Obama is obliterating all those high hopes of change by appointing Bush and Clinton's war criminals and backtracking on major policies like withdrawal from Iraq.
At least in 1997 we had a couple of months of seeing the Conservatives actually out of office and thinking change was really beginning to happen. Lest we forget, at the end of May 1997 Tony Blair had an approval rating of 93%, the highest for any leader anywhere ever.
Only 7% didn't believe he was doing a bang-up job! I bet more people believe in leprechauns!
But once in office you have to serve the powers that got you there. As the Daily Mash reported Obama saying
"I promised you change you can believe in, I did not promise you change you can actually see."
He added: "You believe in Jesus don't you? Right, but have you ever seen Jesus? Exactly."
Having started out by appointing a Zionist freemarket fundamentalist as his Chief of Staff, Barack Obama goes on to get in more rabid old-guard fuckheads on his team.
Obama's claims to be solidly against the Iraq war and planning a withdrawal are already unravelling.
The uncertainties facing the incoming administration may have prompted Obama, in introducing his national security team Monday, to signal greater flexibility in his plans to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.
'Flexibility'.
Exactly what 'uncertainties' are there in Iraq that weren't there when withdrawal was being talked about a month ago?
Obama reaffirmed that goal, but also emphasized his willingness to consider options put forth by the military.
"I will listen to the recommendations of my commanders," he said
His commanders like, say, his choice of Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. You might already know him because he's Bush's Defense Secretary. The man who's been overseeing the surge of troops and running the fucking war for the last two years.
This is not responding to any new 'uncertainties'. During the election campaign Obama left himself a loophole, talking about how
"We'll keep a residual force" for "targeting any remnants of al-Qaeda; protecting remaining U.S. troops and officials; and training Iraq's security forces" provided they "make political progress."
How big would this more or less permanent "residual" force be? Obama did not say, but advisers leaked that it could reach 50,000.
That's about a third of what's there today. That's not a withdrawal.
It doesn't matter what was promised or implied, what you think you voted for;
"We are not going to be hampered by ideology in trying to get this country back on track"
His Secretary of State is Hillary Clinton. When she was last an adjunct of presidential power it was her husband Bill who was, like all American presidents in living memory, a war criminal on several continents. Whether littering residential areas of Belgrade with cluster bombs or firing cruise missiles at Baghdad, Hillary was by his side.
These, though did little damage compared to the sanctions the US imposed against Iraq that denied supplies of basic medicines, a tactic that disproportionately punished the sick, the very old and the very young.
When Madeleine Albright, Bill's Secretary of State, was asked about the half a million Iraqi children who died as a result of this, she said 'we think it's a price worth paying'.
There can be little doubt that the 'we' included the person new appointee to Albright's job, Hillary Clinton.
I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'
Go back to bed, America! Your government is in control! - Bill Hicks
I've written to many prisoners in my time, but today is the first time I've had the urge to send one page after page saying 'HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!'. Simon Mann just got 34 years.
Neo-colonialist mercenary leader Mann was caught with a planeload of weapons and ex-apartheid South African special forces on their way to stage a coup in Equatorial Guinea.
Having been banged up in Zimbabwe he was then taken to Equatorial Guinea. Much is, accurately, made of the regime's repressive nature. Still, you've got to wonder if there's any country on earth that would give a lesser sentence to someone who was about to kill the head of state and overthrow the government.
Mann certainly wasn't going there on any humanitarian mission. As with his previous campaigns, it was about clearing out one group so a grateful government - irrespective of its attitude to human rights - would bestow lucrative mineral rights upon him.
Nearly four years ago I wrote an article about Mann and his friends who fight wars in order to claim natural reources.
Six months later I did a post about how the government of Guernsey was blocking investigations into Mann (yes, he's an international terrorist - but where would tax havens be without the money-laundering facilities they offer to international terrorists? Imagine if they let Mann be investigated, what would that do to business? What kind of communist are you to stand there and suggest we help stop terrorists?).
There was also the one that mentioned a fact I've not seen in the recent coverage, something gone into more detail here, that uber-twit Jeffrey Archer chucking a few grand into the coup plan.
This isn't just glee at an arrogant murderous colonialist toff getting jailed (though that in itself is all well and good); this has got to have put the wind up all Mann's ex-colleagues and other would-bes, and somewhere out there is some land and some people that will stay unattacked, the next Bougainville lives on, unplundered.
The war in Iraq is, as we all know, about liberating the country and making it safe for its people.
We're doing such a good job of it that the Home Office has decided that the country is now safe, and Iraqi refugees must return. If the refugees disagree, well, we take them by force from the prison 'detention centre' they've been held in and put them on a military flight.
Despite - once again - deciding that we can't withdraw troops after all because the country is so volatile, despite that perpetual background hum of stories halfway down the news that you don't pay attention to any more telling you that there's a 7/7 going off every day in Iraq, we are convinced it's safe to send them back.
Telling Iraqi refugees their country is safe has all the integrity, truth and commitment to the welfare of those being addressed as Bush's announcement to American troops - nearly five years ago - that 'major combat operations in Iraq have ended'.
The Home Office say it's safe now, but the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's say
We advise against all travel to Baghdad and its surrounding area, the provinces of Basra, Maysan, Al Anbar, Salah Ad Din, Diyala, Wasit, Babil, Ninawa and At-Tamim (At-Tamim is often referred to as "Kirkuk Province"). We also advise against all but essential travel to the provinces of Al Qadisiyah, Muthanna, Najaf, Karbala, and Dhi Qar.
The security situation in Iraq remains highly dangerous with a continuing high threat of terrorism throughout Iraq, violence and kidnapping targeting foreign nationals, including individuals of non-western appearance.
I tend to believe the Foreign Office's opinion on this.
So does Solyman Rashid, an Iraqi asylum seeker we returned last year. Or at least I think he would do, had he not been killed by a car bomb in Kirkuk.
In February 2003 there were two parliamentary votes to hold back on going to war in Iraq. Labour's Ruth Kelly voted against them, and for pushing ahead to war.
In March 2003 there was a move to amend the Declaration of War to say the case for war had not yet been established. Ruth Kelly voted against it. Less than an hour later there was a vote on going to war, and she voted in favour.
That declaration, let us remind ourselves, was due to the threat from 'Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and long range missiles'.
As the weapons didn't exist, surely we should be asking why politicians thought they did. Anyone of integrity who'd been duped into voting for war under false pretences should be outraged. They sanctioned mass killing for no reason.
Yet in the eight times that Kelly's been in Parliament to vote on any inquiry into the war, she's voted against it every time.
Add this to her solid voting for war in the first place, and you understand why I was shouting at the TV tonight. The BBC's Question Time had Ruth Kelly on the panel, and the subject of the death penalty came up.
Personally, if asked the question 'could I ever inject someone or, you know, trigger the death of someone?' - absolutely not.
They were so setting us up for an invasion of Iran because, like Iraq, it has a lot of oil and a government unfriendly to the West.
As early as last year, the Daily Telegraph was running maps showing the range of missiles from Iran and how they could hit the UK. Saddam's 45 minutes, anyone?
The only thing that could stop the looming invasion would be a sudden disappearance of our thirst for oil. Or else somebody with a power greater than the USA, who, we should remember, possess the largest arsenal of weaponry ever assembled. Neither sounds likely, does it?
Over and over the Americans talked of Iran's secret plans to make nuclear weapons and how stopping them was a matter of urgency. As recently as October, Vice President Dick Cheney was on his hind legs angling for invasion to avert Iran's feverish efforts to build nuclear weapons.
"Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney said in a speech Sunday to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies.
He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow it to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that "the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time."
Then this month, the greater power stepped in.
A National Intelligence Estimate report - a pooling of the knowledge and opinions of all America's security services - said that Iran stopped its weapons programme in 2003, and would be unable to make nuclear weapons until 2010-2015, quite possible not until after then. Even if they wanted to, which it may not as Iran 'is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging'.
It's a total U-turn for the USA, completely at odds with the extension of the oil empire. Overnight, it has squashed the drive to invade.
What was behind this? Who could be the puppeteer pulling such massive strings? Who could overrule Iran and the Americans at a stroke? Who is it who needs to heal international rifts so he can pave the way for a single world government of evil totalitarian shapeshifting lizards? Who - already noted as 'the only international artist to at the celebrations when East and West Germany were re-unified' - is now off to Tehran, the first Western musician to do so since the Islamic revolution of 1979 that banned all Western pop music?
Vicious Tory scumpig Ann Winterton was up on her hind legs in parliament this week, pushing for a bill to ensure that women who go for abortions have a seven day period between the request and the operation.
Whatever the theory, in practice most women wait an awful lot longer. I've known women wait two months, volatile, anxious and miserable as their bodies go hormone haywire.
But Winterton says that's not the case.
Whenever an attempt is made to change the law on abortion, MPs and the press are inundated with ludicrous claims from abortion groups. One such claim is that women are being kept waiting for abortions, and that any amendment, however minor, will cause that wait to be even longer. In fact, the latest figures show that 67 per cent of abortions are carried out before the 10th week of pregnancy, and 89 per cent are undertaken before 12 weeks.
Am I missing something? How does the fact that most women are waiting between two and three months mean they're not being kept waiting?
But, ever the good evangelist, Winterton doesn't let the facts get in the way of her anti-abortion stance.
Doctors 'refer girls for abortion'. Silly me, I thought it was women who got pregnant. But 'women' doesn't make people sound half as vulnerable or unable to take a serious adult decision, does it?
It's about giving 'help' (interesting term for an obligation) to those who want to 'want to keep their baby'.
A bit of elementary medical jargon for you here. 'Baby', as you might already know, is a technical term that means a human that's been born. 'Abortion' is terminating a pregnancy a long time before birth. Thus, nobody aborts a 'baby'.
But damn, 'foetus' just sounds too insubstantial. Later on, she calls them 'pre-born infants', which is rather like calling a hazelnut a pre-born tree and saying anyone who eats them is guilty of deforestation.
There needs to be action taken to undermine a the 'hardcore group of doctors' (what does that mean? I imagine white coats with studs and Hells Angels insignia).
Oh but she just loves the ickle children, right? No, she wants to see them physically assaulted by adults. In 1986 she was one of the few who voted to retain corporal punishment in schools. In her world, whoever has the power maintains it by use of violence.
From here in the middle of 2007, it seems now like we rushed into the Iraq war, with parliament practically tripping over itself to send troops in. Actually, the build up went on for months and months, with several parliamentary attempts to hold back.
On 25 November 2002 there was a vote to wait until there was a UN mandate. Ann Winterton, though, voted to press ahead.
On 26 February 2003, when people were very loudly going 'hang on a minute, this is a fucking war you're committing to on very dodgy grounds', there was a vote in parliament saying that 'the case is unproven'. Winterton voted against it and for a motion 'to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction'.
A month later there was another parliamentary vote for those who believed 'that the case for war against Iraq has not yet been established, especially given the absence of specific United Nations authorisation'. Winterton, again, voted against peace. On the same day, she voted yes to war. Or, as the vote put it, to 'use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction'.
Now we're sure Iraq has no WMDs, is she asking for the troops to come home? Yeah, right.
In March this year, she voted for replacing Trident. Seems it's OK for us to have illegal weapons of mass destruction to threaten the world with.
She has consistently voted against gay equality; against equal ages of consent, against civil partnerships and, most pertinently, against gay couples adopting.
There are thousands of unwanted children desperately needing love and guidance in a secure family. Winterton would rather they go further down the road to miserable isolated shitty lives if they can't be loved by a heterosexual family. Fuck you all, she cries. The sanctity of life begins at conception and ends at birth.
She holds the distinction and, presumably, some kind of record for being sacked not once but twice by the Tories for publicly telling racist jokes.
She apologised for the one about throwing Pakistanis out of trains that cost her a frontbench post, but refused to do the same for one about the deaths of Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay.
It's interesting to note both jokes involve killing people; further evidence of the way the sanctity of life ends at birth. The right to life doesn't seem to apply so much to those who are actually alive. To this day she is in favour of capital punishment.
When you see David Cameron's cuddly touchy-feely front, look over his shoulder and see who's in his gang.
Interesting to look at the BBC site telling us about how we're in Iraq to bring democracy. Buried in a story about Iraqi prisoners escaping from British jail near Basra is this line
A security source told the agency that the prisoners had been held without charge for the past two years.
The escape was the headline, whereas surely the fact that we're keeping people prisoner for years on end without charge is far more important. A British government that condemns Guantanamo Bay is doing precisely the same thing itself.
Iraqis are still showing resilience, with substantial support for democracy
What would you say was substantial support for democracy in the UK? Say, 95% and above? Would we feel that we 'substantially supported' democracy if most of us didn't want it?
In Iraq support is 43% (and falling). A majority of Iraqis don't want it even if we were delivering it. It's only marginally less in favour of a 'strong leader' appointed 'for life' (34%, and rising).
The same poll shows there is at least one thing a majority of Iraqis support.
The number of Iraqis who approve of attacks on coalition troops has risen from 17% in a similar survey three years ago to 51% now.
