Rolled-up Trousers

Blair's human rights

Blair may be leaving office, but I have the sinking feeling he's not going anywhere. He's going to be part of the national body politic for some time to come. Not the move into the serious old age of Thatcher, or to the cricket of Major for him. This is bad news for us all, but none will take it as badly as Gordon Brown I think.

Anyway, Blair's aiming to go out with a bang for now. In an article in the Sunday Times this week he defended control orders:

We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong.

Blair better hope that whenever he comes up against a war crimes tribunal that it doesn't operate on his standard of human rights. For, it could easily be argued at the time that given the nature of the star witnesses, particularly in the security services, that it would be better not to have a trial at all and move straight to sentencing.  But because that wouldn't be entirely fair, we'd just lock him up in his front room with no access to the outside world.

UN rejects JNF's application for consultative status

On 18 May 2007, the United Nations’ Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) rejected the application of the Jewish National Fund (JNF)-USA for consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) by a vote of 8 to 7 with three abstentions.

Consultative status enables NGOs to circulate statements and participate in relevant international conferences convened by the UN and in the meetings of their preparatory bodies. The Committee on NGOs, which is comprised of 19 Member States, decides upon whether or not to afford NGO-applicants consultative status. Over 2,700 NGOs from all over the world have been afforded consultative status.

The eight countries voting against the granting of status to the JNF-USA were Burundi, China, Cuba, Egypt, Guinea, Russian Federation, Qatar, and Sudan; the seven countries voting in favour were Colombia, Israel, Peru, Romania, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States; and the three countries abstaining were Angola, India, and Pakistan.

The JNF-USA lobbied hard to gain ECOSOC status and provided letters of support for its application from powerful members of the US Congress, such as Senator Hillary Clinton. However, country representatives and the Palestine Observer Mission to the UN expressed concern about the affiliation between the JNF-USA and the JNF-KKL (Keren Kayameth LeIsrael), which carries out land development and settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). While the JNF-USA told the Committee that it was independent and involved in water, environmental and development projects in the Middle East, country representatives stated that they were unable to distinguish between the activities of the JNF-USA and JNF-KKL. Another main reason cited for why the application should be rejected was that the JNF’s work violated the principles of the UN Charter, which emphasizes respect for human rights and equality.

Success

Well done to all who wrote in asking the Glasgow Film Theatre to show Taking Liberties. Here's the response from them:

Thanks to all of you who contacted us about Taking Liberties. GFT is screening the film on 6,7 and 8 July. Times are to be confirmed so please check our website www.gft.org.uk nearer the time. Brochures for July will be available from GFT from 21 June.

So three dates - two more than Edinburgh now!

Israel to pay £1bn to Palestinians for gas... oh wait

British Gas appears to have struck a deal whereby gas from Gaza can be piped to Israel. The Times reports that the Palestinians would receive $1bn from the agreement, with BG walking away with $4bn.

The only snag is that the Israelis haven't agreed how the Palestinians will be paid. They don't want to give them any money.

UJS recruits to the Israeli army

The Bonsoir blog, reports that the Union of Jewish Students are publishing advertisements recruiting to the Israeli army (well more accurately you need to pay £99 for the privilege of cleaning tanks). Akram Awad at Bonsoir makes the following noteworthy observations:

Although it is not a crime for a British citizen to serve in a foreign army,  The Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 makes it a crime for a British subject to enlist in the army of a foreign nation that is at war with any country that the UK is at peace with. On the other hand Israel -since its foundation in 1948- has been in a continuous state of war with the Palestinians (or more accurately against them), the Lebanese and Syrians (whom Israel is occupying part of their lands since 1967) and with most Arab countries.

...

Taking Liberties

The Taking Liberties film that is coming out next month looks like compulsory viewing. You can see the trailer and there are cinemas across the UK showing it.

However, there are no venues in Glasgow! I've emailed the GFT who, being the city's foremost independent movie house, should consider booking it. You can email them too via this address

More boycotting due to boycotting

Steven Weinberg, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has cancelled a visit to Imperial College in London. Reason? The NUJ boycott of Israel. He's boycotting all of Britain because of the union's boycott you see.

Presumably then, he believes the NUJ's action is worse than Israel's 40-year-long occupation of Palestine.

Weinberg also believes that the boycott can only be attributed to anti-Semtiism. This in the same letter where he said the only other reason he could imagine for the boycott was the NUJ's "desire to pander to the growing Muslim minority in Britain". Hmmm.

Michael White writes regarding Margaret Hodge's call for housing to be allocated to migrants after indigenous people, rather than on the current basis of need:

Last year the number of council and housing association units built in the borough fell from a very modest 572 to 230. What is true, as Jon Cruddas, Dagenham's Labour MP now running to be deputy leader, keeps saying is that social services in poor boroughs do feel the pressure of globalisation. So do falling local wage rates. "Racialising" problems will not help, better statistics leading to more Whitehall cash will, argues Cruddas whose local activists beat back the BNP. Labour in Barking did not, add Mrs Hodge's critics.

There's no point in beating the BNP by becoming the BNP. There can be no triangulation with them. But as White says, this strategy doesn't work anyway. If you make the far-right's rhetoric acceptable by aping it, why would you get the votes on that platform rather than the real deal?

Blair: Algeria has a different political system

Robert Fisk after Tony Blair's farewell speech in Sedgefield:

I was struck by all this last month when I came across one of Blair's lies in my local Beirut paper. Sandwiched beneath a headline which read "Saudi reforms lose momentum" - surely one of the more extraordinarily unnecessary stories in the Arab press - it quoted our dear Prime Minister as saying that he was very angry that a review committee had prevented him from deporting two Algerians home because their government represented a "different political system". The "foregrounded" element, of course, is the word "different". This is the word that contains the lie. For the reason why the committee declined to return these men to their country was not - as Blair well knew - because Algeria possesses a "different" political system but because the Algerian "system" allows it to torture to death its prisoners.

I have myself interviewed Algerian policemen and women who have become perverted by their witness of torture: one policewoman told me how she now loves horror films because they remind her of the repulsive torture she had to watch at the Chateauneuf police station in Algiers - where prisoners had water pumped into their anuses until they died. I still remember the spiteful and abusive letter that the Algerian ambassador to London wrote to The Independent, sneering at Saida Kheroui whose foot was broken under torture. She was a "terrorist", this man announced. This is the "different" political system that Blair was referring to. Ms Kheroui, by the way, never emerged from prison. She was murdered by her torturers.

Blair knows that the Algerian security forces rape women to death. He knows this. So how does he dare lie about the "different" political system which allows police officers to rape women? We Europeans now make a habit of lying about this...

Tony thinking he's doing the right thing

[Blair] did what he thought was right for his country, bless him. Big deal. So did Joe Stalin. So did Neville Chamberlain. So did John Wilkes Booth. Sincerity is no excuse. The world is full of people doing what they feel is right, which is why we judge on consequence not intent. Guess what? Every bankrupt business really believed in the product. Every referee that pointed to the penalty spot was absolutely convinced there had been a foul. And every leader that committed his country to a bloody and disastrous war was convinced of the opposite outcome.

From Martin Samuel in the Times, well worth also reading for his comparison of Blair with a sheepshagger

To understand political violence, we must first recognise its potency

This is precisely what has happened since 9/11. Those attacks, followed by the July 7 bombings in London, have set back the cause of Palestine, Muslim minorities and civil liberties all over the world. (Spain, where the conservative government was caught red-handed in a huge lie on the eve of an election, is an exception.) And then, of course, there has been Iraq. This does not absolve the British and Americans one iota of their responsibility for the wars they have started, the lies they have told and the lives they have cost. But those who are interested in context and causes cannot pick and choose: 9/11 set the scene for Iraq just as Iraq has set the scene for subsequent terror attacks.

From an excellent article by Gary Younge in the Guardian

See the Sunday Times front page

Mustafa Arif has shown himself very confident in his lawyers and the steadfastness of his internet hosts by publishing the front page of the Sunday Times that News International demanded I remove from my site. He says:

Why have News International decided to pick on Osama? One can only assume they didn’t appreciate the criticism. Surely, a large multi-national media company ought to be thicker skinned than cry foul over the musings of a minor blog?

I like to think of this as more than just a "minor blog" but thanks anyway Mustafa!

Asian moves into Holyrood

Scotland's first ethnic minority MSP, Bashir Ahmad was sworn in yesterday. I have wondered about this though. With Linda Fabiani recently receiving an Italian knighthood, isn't she actually first? I don't know how these things are termed, but certainly Bashir Ahmad is the first non-white in the Parliament (though maybe Tommy Sheridan would lay claim to that), and first Asian - finally after eight years.

At the start of the second all-white Parliament in 2003, I remember politicians from all parties queuing up to promise they would fix this come 2007. Only the SNP have, and none of the others even came close. In my observation they did not even try.

They need to look hard at their processes and internal structures. The SNP did not achieve this by accident. The Scots Asians for Independence was set up around 10 years ago and gave a platform for Asians to get involved in the party, where it was otherwise difficult. The core ingredient though was Ahmad's own hard work, and senior party officials supported him wherever they could.

I have no doubt that all the parties would love to have Asians elevate within their ranks. Looking at them, they are screaming out for it. Those Asians that are involved, particularly within Labour, have illusions of grandeur and all too high opinion of their own abilities which are not shared by fellow party members. These emperors not only don't have any clothes on, they were naked to begin with.

Hateful election campaigns

A word or two also about the minority parties after the elections, though in the case of the BNP, clearly not the party of the minorities. Their performance deserves to be mocked after yet another election where they promised to make a breakthrough, but didn't come close. Proportional representation is meant to be their harbinger, but they polled a paltry 1%. Even in the council vote (also PR) they got not a single councillor across Scotland. Things are so bad for them here that they had to put English based candidates on their lists in order to qualify for an election broadcast. The irony of the BNP using flexible immigration rules to their benefit should not be lost.

The Christian parties also did not make any headway. The Christian Peoples Alliance made great play of their Muslim candidate in Glasgow. They decided not to draw attention to their hateful campaign against the proposed mosque in London's Newham area though.

So bye, bye, Tony goodbye

Sunday Times

News International have been in touch to complain about me using copyright material in this post.

The material in question was an image of their front page that day, which accompanied the expose of how poor their lead story was.

I'm not an intellectual property lawyer, and don't want to go to the expense of pushing this, so all other News International front pages have been removed from this website.

I will add though that we live in a sad state of affairs where they can be up in arms about further publicity of a front page which has already been seen up and down the country, while there is no recourse on their rank rotten journalism.

UPDATE: Shouldn't grumble too much, we also live in a country where people are prosecuted for telling the public that the government wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera, with no action against those that actually wanted to do the crime.

Facebook

I've signed up at Facebook, and this blog is now being fed through there too. If you're a member, do look me up. Good to put a face to the readership.

More Unionist than the arch-Unionists

A few points and lessons come out of yesterday's historic events in Northern Ireland.

Firstly, and sadly, this shows that terrorism works. Now that the Troubles are over, Catholics are in a completely unimaginable position in sharing leadership compared to where they were before. Violence, despite the elevation of the peaceful figures who took the plaudits in the end, was pivotal in South Africa and India before for example. People like Mandela (who previously himself engaged in violence) and Gandhi would have been nothing if there was not the violence to compare the peaceful process with. This is not the lesson though. If anything has to be learned, is that we need to get rid of injustice before it gets to the level where violence begins.

Secondly, to achieve peace, you need to sit down with people who you don't agree with. Astonishingly, people are reporting that there is "chemistry" between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness. These men loathed each other, and "moderates" in the centre loathed both. But without them on board, there would be no peace.

Thirdly, peace can be achieved despite parties not agreeing on everything. Sinn Fein have not dropped their dream of a united Ireland. But peace there is, and all sides expect it to stay. Comparing this to the situation between Israel and Palestine, preconditions on longterm visions have to be dropped. The proposal of withdrawing to 1967 borders for a longstanding peace is a sensible one. If either side still hanker over one-state, then they should be allowed to do so as long as it is only done by the force of argument, and not trampling on the rights of others.

Freshly powdered Al-Qaeda

The Sunday Mail report that the bomb squad was called in over some talcum powder discovered in a Paisley Road West flat owned by Muslims. Some young boys were hauled off for questioning about their alleged membership of Al-Qaeda. They were released a few days later.

Veils on the buses

Lothian buses made an unprompted announcement last week that drivers would have to check the identity of anyone with a bus pass wearing a veil.

A more pointless directive there can scarcely be. There are hardly swathes of ladies wearing the veil in Edinburgh, much less using the buses. I can't imagine in the current climate of hostility that there are many people donning a niqab simply to dodge a bus fare.

Boycotting the boycotters

A US university has protested a UAE university's boycott of Israel by boycotting them!

Last month, the NUJ voted to boycott Israel, and since then all sorts of predictable opprobrium has been heaped on them. All I reflect on is that in the moral indignation of whether or not a boycott is an acceptable political tool, there has not been a peep about the international sanctions that have been placed on the Palestinians, leading to a humanitarian disaster.

This was imposed last year for the people's decision to elect a Hamas government. Hamas are boycotted because of their past killings of Israelis. Meanwhile Israel carries on killing, occupying and building settlements but a boycott of the country isn't on the same moral plane for some reason.

Everyone's going to realise they have to talk to Hamas eventually, as Mary Ann Sieghart writes in the Times today:

Mr Blair could have applied the lessons he learnt in Northern Ireland – in particular, that he could not make peace by involving only moderates from the UUP and SDLP. It was the arrival of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams at the negotiating table that made an agreement possible. The same boldness is needed now in the Middle East. Any negotiation will have to include Hamas as well as Fatah, the ultra-orthodox Shas party as well as Labour.

News of the World win it for the SNP?

In 2003, the SNP went down to 27 seats, with the analysis being that minority parties like the SSP and Greens benefited at their expense. Fast forward four years, the minority parties collapse, and the SNP emerge as the biggest party.

I managed to wangle my way into the count on Thursday night at the SECC. Labour's Govan activists were attributing Nicola Sturgeon's win to the fact the there was no SSP candidate there this time. To which I responded that their almost in-house rag the News of the World shouldn't have engineered the Tommy Sheridan split then!

There's a backs to the wall mentality in the SNP that is not misplaced. When you have the other major parties uniting in their dislike for you, backed up by the mainstream media, you deserve every happiness when you beat the system. Getting the Edinburgh-Glasgow train on Friday (an essential journey for all interested in politics) I was sitting near to the Scottish TV team who seemed a tad bitter about the result. Jack McConnell was simply "Jack" while Alex Salmond was referred to as "Salmond" (I wasn't eavesdropping, my friend was!). A small example, but it points to something regarding the media relationship with Labour.

I think the mood in the SNP could be summed up by employing the famous Norwegian commentary from 1981 when the country beat England at football. Except it would sound like this:

"Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jack McConnell, Menzies Campbell, The Daily Record, The Scottish Sun, Sir Alex Ferguson, Tesco, we have beaten them all, we have beaten them all. Maggie Thatcher can you hear me? Maggie Thatcher [...] your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!"

Counting and waiting

Very frustrating. At time of writing this morning we're still waiting for a good number of the election results to come through, and don't have a clear picture of which party is coming out largest.

One would have thought with the electronic counting this would be easier and faster. 100,000 ballot papers are said to have been spoiled yesterday, most likely because of the complexity of the system. I have to say that even I, with degree in politics, had to be reminded that the council vote needed a numerical response rather than an X. Three votes, three separate systems governing them. Someone somewhere needs a kicking, as there were plenty warnings about this.

PR government is infinitely better than FPTP, but even when votes are counted properly, it takes days or even weeks for the picture of government to emerge. As it looks just now, we're headed for Labour and the SNP each getting somewhere in the the 40s in terms of seats, with the Lib Dems and Tories in the teens. With 65 being the magic number for a majority, the Lib Dems may not be able to form a majority with either party. Would be fascinating to see how such a scenario plays out.

UPDATE: My good friend Alasdair Allan has won the Western Isles. The man is salt of the earth, and the people there are very lucky to have him. Also big shoutout to Jamie Hepburn and Aileen Campbell who are both new MSPs from their respective lists. Bob Doris, who used to be my school teacher (though he doesn't appreciate me broadcasting that!) got in on the Glasgow list, with of course, Scotland's first ever ethnic minority MSP Bashir Ahmad. Lastly for just now, congratulations to Hugh O'Donnell who I know well on the Central Scotland list.

Polling day

Speaking to friends south of Hadrian's Wall, one great feature of the Scottish elections is the choice available to the electorate, meaning that you don't need to hold a peg over your nose while casting your vote.

I'm one of Thatcher’s children (not literally - stop sniggering), and it was quite something when New Labour shot to power in 1997, giving my generation a government other than a Tory one for the first time in our lives. As a Scot, we’ve actually been in a one-party state for longer. Scottish Labour have exercised power not just in the post-devolution phase, but for decades have been the major political force nationally and in local authorities. And now for the first time in my lifetime, the polls appear to be showing that they will no longer be the largest party, and it is the SNP that will come up trumps.

What difference will this make politically? The major disappointment in 1997 was that Blair turned out to be little different in reality to the Tories that went before. The SNP have similarly gone through modernisation in recent years, albeit without loud Clause 4 moments. Economic policies have moved from raising taxes, to arguing that cutting them will stimulate the economy in a way that other nearby small countries have done to great success. We have to have a competitive edge vis-à-vis the south-east of England to be more successful.

Comment at Comment is Free

Spittingmadwoman
Comment No. 556901
April 30 21:57
GBR

If Inayat Bunglawala wrote an article explaining that 2+2=4, that the Earth went round the sun and that bears shit in the woods, some of the commentators here would say:

"Well 2+2 might equal 4 today Inayat, but if you had your way it would be 2+2 = global caliphate and beheading of all kaffirs."

"The Earth going round the Sun? What shameless propaganda. We all know the Sun is going to EXPLODE in a few billion years and it will all be the fault of Muslim terrorists like you."

"How bloody typical, your bears coming to our woods to leave their droppings. If they like shitting so much why didn't they stay in their own woods and shit there? If we allow this to continue in a few years the entire country will be swamped with bearshit and then you'll all be sorry."