Rolled-up Trousers

It was never about WMD

Anyone expecting a Frost-Nixon moment when Tony Blair appeared in front of the Iraq Inquiry was sorely disappointed, and an unfeasible optimist. 

It seems Nixon had a heart that at least eventually confessed, in a way that Blair's is entirely black.

If Iraq was about WMD, there is precedent for this kind of action. During Blair's own reign, he was involved in a previous bombing of Iraq, Operation Desert Fox, which was ostensibly about weakening Saddam's WMD capability. Bill Clinton when attacking Sudan also that year said he was targeting weapons, though that turned out to be a pharmaceutical factory.

So what this establishes is that WMD were a concern previously and action was taken on it. What changed after 2000 was the neoconservative ideology of occupation.The problem of course is that there were no WMD. If the evidence was actually "extensive, detailed and authoritative" those sites could easily have been hit directly.

I don't think despite Blair and Campbell's strenuous protestations that anyone seriously thinks this was the reason for war anyway. Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell told the Iraq Inquiry that more time for weapons inspectors wouldn't have made any difference as there were no WMD. What makes Blair's situation even more egregious, is not just the way Iraq has appeared like a classic war of exploitation for big business, but that Blair himself has become so personally enriched on the back of it.

His bank directorships and six-figure lecture deals in America are payback for his shoulder-to-shoulder wars with the draft dodger Bush. He'd not be raking in anywhere near the sums over there had it not been for the spotlight he generated for himself over there through Iraq. So no, he's not going to be sorry.

Ending the Scotland Office

The First Minister recently refreshed calls for the Scotland Office to be abolished.

Certainly it is struggling to explain its relevance. As the FM said:

"I think that it is better if departmental contact that the Scottish Government and its officials contact directly the relevant department. I don't think that an intermediary is particularly helpful on many occasions, and I think that would be more effective."

The Scotland Office's budget is said to be £7m. It increases bureaucracy. Labour might want Jim Murphy to continue using it as a platform to get on the media and attack the SNP, but that's not his job. 

The Scottish Secretary's position is akin to being the UK's ambassador in Scotland, but without the independence bit. Given Mr Murphy may well lose his seat at the election this year, perhaps he would be a candidate for such a role post-independence. Would just need to sharpen his diplomatic skills a bit.

The banks say they are "too big to fail." So let's make them smaller.

Jim Wallis:

When I recently told a few friends that my wife, Joy, and I had decided to close our little account at Bank of America and move our money to a local bank that has behaved more responsibly, I was amazed at the response. Religious leaders and pastors from around the country called to say that they, too, were ready to take their money out of the big banks that have shown such shameful morality and instead invest according to their values, by putting money into more local and community-based institutions.

So we've decided not just to remove our own money, but to invite other Christians, Jews and Muslims to do the same. Already we are hearing reports of whole congregations, groups of churches and faith-based organizations, from California to New York City, deciding to transfer their funds to local banks and credit unions.

The banks say they are "too big to fail." So let's make them smaller.

Using Miliband to sell Labour to Muslims

Mohammad Sarwar’s Muslim Friends of Labour initiative seemed to have slipped off the radar for a while.

There have been no reported donations for a few years now, but they are still attracting top level cabinet ministers to their events, with David Miliband the star attraction last week in Kensington.

It is an odd choice of person to try and sell Labour to a Muslim audience, much less elicit money from them. Mr Miliband is at the moment trying to find a way to stop Israelis being tried for war crimes in the UK, was supportive of the Gaza bombings himself, and typically dismissive of the Goldstone report. He dismissed the latter as “flawed”, albeit this is coming from the government that thinks Chilcot is a robust inquiry.

A couple of years ago, Miliband was forced to deny reports that he had visited relatives of his who were Israelis that lived in an illegal West Bank settlement, one of the biggest obstacles to peace. That report in the Jewish Chronicle has mysteriously vanished. The question of who these relatives are has never been answered.

Maybe they live in East Jerusalem. Miliband appears to be the architect of the UK Government’s current position where it is advocating a “shared Jerusalem”. With weasel words though, he told the MFL audience he backed a Palestinian state on 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that he actually wants to change internationally accepted borders.

Obama's drones kill 700 Pakistanis

On the anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration, I thought I'd post up the fact that US drone attacks killed 700 Pakistani civilians during 2009.

Of the 44 attacks, only 5 hit their intended targets.

The total already surpasses George W Bush's kill count in Pakistan.

Hat tip Pulse Media. Good read on drone attacks here.

Thieves in the night

This week my house was broken into. We were woken when they were at our front door at 5am. After hearing us get up they scarpered, but not before driving off with our car which they'd managed to get the keys for from the house.

Over the last few days I've been astonished at the number of people I know whose homes have been broken into at some stage or another. The numbers are inevitably going to be going up too with rising unemployment.

As people who have been through this know, it's a time of vulnerability. Your home isn't quite the same afterward. Possessions come and go, but the main thing is the family are fine and no one was hurt.

When I'm being philosophical about it, I did manage to get a look at the two boys who did it. And I do mean boys. They were very professional in how they drove off with the car, but they barely looked old enough to drive. What kind of circumstances must they have been brought up in, and live in currently, to be patrolling the streets when people are sleeping to do this kind of thing?

As my son asked innocently afterwards "Won't their mums ask where they got that car from?". If only life were that simple.

I'd like to thank family and friends who have been absolutely awesome in helping out these last few days.

Ferrets in a sack

The Labour Party tried yet again to hand Gordon Brown the sack last week, only to find themselves too busy fighting in the said receptacle to do anything with it.

It is the third time they have made a timid attempt to remove Mr Brown, only to find themselves paying unwitting homage to their leader in aping his decade of marches half way to the top of the hill against Tony Blair.

The obvious point is that the Labour Party, including the cabinet, have no confidence in the prime minister. It's just they don't have anything better. David Miliband didn't have the bottle when the need came to push and shove. However, the astonishing thing for me about last week was not just the so-lukewarm-it-was-actually-as-cold-as-the-weather endorsements of Gordon Brown by the obvious people, loyalists like Jim Murphy and proteges like Douglas Alexander were at it too.

Voters cannot then by into this Gordon Brown vs David Cameron dichotomy that Labour try to create, and not just because there is no difference between Labour and Tories apart from presentation.

In Glasgow Central, the electorate has a choice between a Labour MP and an SNP MP. If the former is elected, and Labour win power for five more years, he is going to spend his time on benches fighting amongst colleagues on how and when Gordon Brown is to be replaced. If Labour are in opposition, he is going to be spending his time in recriminations, finger pointing and yes, fighting with colleagues.

Only a solid block of SNP MPs, including one from Glasgow Central, will offer the coherence and cohesion that is needed during these times of national and international crisis to stand up for Glasgow and Scotland.

Sunday Post interview

There's a full page profile piece with me in today's Sunday Post. Unfortunately it is not online so you have to do the old fashioned thing of buying at a local newsagent to read it. Shock horror!

Scottish trade mission to Israel

I've been getting many calls and emails from people outraged by this week's scheduled trade mission that Scottish Development International are organising to Israel.

I share the strength of feeling that exists, the timing coincides one year on from when Israeli bombs were raining down on Gaza. Of all the things that the mission could focus on too, it is ironically life sciences. I understand this trip was meant to go last year a month or two after the carnage, but was cancelled due to the situation. I don't see how anything in Gaza has moved on since then. There may be more safety and security in Israel, but that state is denying the same to another people.

Douglas Alexander should be with the protesters at Egypt’s border

At this moment there are over 1,400 people trying to get the Egyptian authorities to let them over the border with Gaza at Rafah in an act of solidarity and with essential supplies for the impoverished territory.

We are a year on from Israel’s brutal bombing of the strip, which killed the same number of people as those who have been trying to get into Gaza from 43 countries. There has also been a longstanding siege enforced by Israel and Egypt which has led to a humanitarian catastrophe. From DFID’s website, we know that:

• 61% of households are food insecure (this means hungry or in fear of starvation)
• 13% suffer sleep problems due to the “war”
• 60% do not have access to daily water

After the bombing of Gaza last year, the UK government pledged £47million towards the reconstruction effort. In the year since, only £20m has actually been spent though.