Suspension of disbelief

Joe Klein of Time, normally a very clever and insightful guy -- with a strong grasp of international politics -- seems to have momentarily misplaced his skepticism and powers of critical thinking. He premises this Swampland post on

the appalling news that Iran seems to have brought espionage charges against three American hikers who wandered across the Kurdish border

It would be one thing if Joe were to back that assertion with some evidence, but as it stands it looks like Mr. Klein swallowed a whopper (intentionally or not) and is trying to feed it to us, too.

I mean sure *nudge nudge, wink wink* it's possible these 3 young Americans were just enjoying a lovely hiking holiday in Iraq of all places, and just happened to innocently mosey into Iran. But upon reflection, how likely does that seem?

Roughly as likely as, a few months prior, 2 American journalists just naively crossing a desolate frozen river into North Korea, again totally by accident. We know by their own admission that America deploys spies into these countries, so how do we suppose they get there, exactly? Of course these spies have a cover story, but that doesn't make it true.

Really, when was the last time you heard about a young American being arrested for accidentally wandering into, say, Canada? Mexico? Turkey? When Americans get caught sneaking across remote borders on foot, crossing from a war zone into a bleeding "Axis of Evil" country, they work for the CIA until proven otherwise, yeah?

He's betting we forget

Can you spot what's missing in the following quote from Dick Cheney, defending his torture regime?:

Now, if you'd look at it from the perspective of a senior government official, somebody like myself, who stood up and took the oath of office on January 20th of ‘01 and raised their right hand and said we're going to protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, this was exactly, exactly what was needed to do it.

Gosh, either Mr. Cheney forgets what he actually swore to defend (unlikely) or he's betting that you forget. He swore to protect and defend the US constitution -- not the US itself. And it was, ironically, the constitution Dick Cheney and George W Bush kicked to the curb along with the Geneva Conventions these last 8 years. Apparently the best he can do to defend himself now is to retroactively redefine his oath of office.

Erotic interrogation

It would be interesting to ask torture advocates if they also think it should be OK to rape terror suspects, as long as it is done under strict legal guidelines, no more than X number of times per day, gently, with plenty of lubricant, etc.

If you think about it, it's no worse morally than other forms of torture, should not leave any physical scars, and has an obvious advantage over waterboarding: the prisoner's mouth is left unobstructed should they choose to 'break' and start talking.

After all, it happens to regular prison inmates all the time. Heck, some guys even do it to each other for fun, right? Where's the harm in it if it saves lives? We can even give it a nice name; since "enhanced interrogation" is already taken, how about "erotic interrogation"?

Calm down dear, it's only an election

After the election of Barack Obama in America, I confess to feeling a certain amount of schadenfreude, watching the fear and loathing of the hardcore right-wingers (or in Rumsfeldian parlance, the Bush/Cheney dead-enders) gnashing their teeth and forming proverbial "circular firing squads". [For my Republican readers, schadenfreude is a German word meaning "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others"].

For a while it was interesting and entertaining, but latterly the debate seems to have been taken over by the certified, Kool-Aid-drinking moonbats. I find myself clicking on links to right-wing articles and blogs, or beginning to watch YouTube video clips of Fox News commentators, only to click the 'back' button moments later. What was once (gratifyingly!) bitter disappointment at their 'side' being out of power, has descended into pure unadulterated rancor and malice. It's not clever any more. I can feel the hatred coming through my laptop screen like radiation.

All of which is slightly difficult to understand, since president Obama has been in office fewer than three months, and hasn't really had much time to do anything truly controversial. Sure, there are legitimate debates to be had about the economics of bailouts and stimulus packages. Frankly, there is probably no single correct answer. Obama inherited a financial crisis, and he's doing his best to fix it, but any reasonable person should be able to debate these things without getting too emotional.

That's why I find all the "tea party" stuff so disturbing (except for the unintentionally funny stuff about "tea-bagging"). There's no theme there. "Burn the books"? What do they actually want, specifically? No one seems to know; It's just an increasingly angry mob making decreasingly veiled references to violent revolution. They're supposedly angry about the budget deficit? Why were these same people so silent while Republicans were spending like drunken sailors these past 8 years?

The hatred and vitriol coming from the rump of the Republican party has long ceased being logically coherent. They're throwing every epithet in the book at their president -- terrorist, wimp, socialist, communist, fascist dictator -- except for the one I suspect many of them wish they could say in public (perhaps prefaced with "uppity").

It seems as if a lot of right-wing true believers in America right now, for example the followers of Rush Limbaugh, would rather see their country fail than see a fellow the likes of Barack Obama succeed. Something has snapped inside of these people. The political wilderness will be a good place for them to spend the next few years having a 'time out'.

Plumbing the depths of despair

Shimon Perez, Israel's president, states, "Israel's aim was to provide a strong blow to the people of Gaza so that they would lose their appetite for shooting at Israel."

The "people of Gaza"? Mr. Perez, did you mean to include those hundreds of dead children in your 'lesson'? I think the answer can only be yes, when you bombard neighbourhoods and schools. In other words: collective punishment, just like Lebanon in 2006. Last I checked, that is still a war crime.

I think Israel is a wonderful place, and I hope they do achieve peace with all their neighbours -- including a revived, independent, and sovereign Palestine. But I also think Israel's military and political leadership have demonstrated the worst kind of brutality in recent years.

I don't assume it's because they're bad people, though some of them may well be. I suspect it comes much more from genuine emotion, and well-considered strategy, but also from the fundamental laziness made possible by having such an overwhelming military advantage over your enemies.

Faced with terrorism and insurgency, and difficult choices and compromises, it probably seems very tempting, when diplomacy fails, to simply bomb the hell out of your adversaries. But we all know violence is a downward spiral. More succinctly: Israel have just created the next generation of Hamas militants in Gaza -- i.e. all the young survivors who just lost their homes, schools, siblings, parents, or friends. I imagine Israel will be hearing from many of those young victims in a few years' time.

This is probably a vain hope, but perhaps with an adult in the white house, Israel won't be given a blank cheque when it comes to violence. Perhaps Israel's leaders will be obliged to take a more progressive and humane path for the next few years. I'm sure it's no coincidence that they are winding down their Gaza operation on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration. As one frequently sees spray-painted on utility boxes and walls in Tel Aviv: "know hope"

Come and see the violence inherent in the system

In what has to be some kind of record, American Republican congressman Paul Broun is warning of an incipient Obama dictatorship just 1 week after his election -- 71 days before Obama is to take office:

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Evidently, Broun thinks Marxism, Soviet communism, socialism, fascism, and National Socialism are all equivalent (well, they're all bad, right?) Evidently he thinks Barack Obama's liberal jackboot squads are already being covertly assembled in secret Massachusetts training camps. Evidently, being an ignorant hysterical boob is still a virtue -- for the remaining Republicans in the US congress anyway.

You know, I had a funny feeling 'conservatives' would suddenly remember their distaste for executive power, as soon as it was time for a liberal to be the executive. I do believe this was the first ironic squawk.

Preview of next week's issues: Oh, you mean you don't want the liberal government listening to your phone calls? What's that? You don't believe in torture, and secret prisons, and imprisonment without trial, and foreign military adventures? Gosh, we must have misunderstood you, all along.

Whadda ya know, Eskimo?

From Juliet Lapidos, of Slate's XX Factor, rubbishing reports that Sarah Palin thought that Africa is a country:

I don't believe for a second that Sarah Palin wasn't aware of the fact that Africa is a continent ... I'd also like to point out that none other than George W. Bush once referred to Africa as a "nation."

So, class, to recap: No way it's true, no one could be that dumb. And even if it is true, it's a mistake anyone could make -- even someone as scholarly and worldly as George W. Bush.

BWAHAHA! *Wipes eyes*. Juliet, you slay me babe.

I'm okay, you're not okay

Israel warns on Iran nuclear aims

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz has warned that Iran is near a breakthrough in its nuclear programme.

Perhaps Israel would have more credibility on this subject if it were to come clean about its own nuclear arsenal?

Speaking on a visit to Washington, Mr Mofaz said it was "unacceptable" for Iran to become a nuclear power.

But it's okay for Israel to be one, because...?

It seems funny to me that the most vociferous opponents of nuclear proliferation turn a blind eye to (or even help) their allies' activities, and actively maintain their own arsenals. Do as I say, not as I do.

Who can blame Iran for ignoring the criticism of such hypocrites?

All your privacy are belong to US

New anti-terrorism rules 'allow US to spy on British motorists'

Routine journeys carried out by millions of British motorists can be monitored by authorities in the United States and other enforcement agencies across the world under anti-terrorism rules introduced discreetly by Jacqui Smith.

The discovery that images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, can be sent overseas, has angered MPs and civil liberties groups concerned by the increasing use of "Big Brother" surveillance tactics.

This is depressingly familiar, and I'm sorry to say, totally expected. That the British government allows its citizens to be arbitrarily spied upon by foreign authorities on the streets of London is nothing new. The American eavesdropping agency, the NSA, has at least one listening post on British soil, at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire. It is claimed that their ECHELON system intercepts nearly every electronic communication in the world. It's more than a little disturbing that they can use our baby monitors, or our mobile phones (even when they're 'off' see also: this) to record the daily, offline conversations of any person. It's a pet peeve of mine that, not only does the US monitor my communications, the British government helps them do it. I'm a British citizen. Is it quaint that I expect my government to be on my side?

Last year I wrote about the police being given blanket, real-time surveillance power over every vehicle in London, and their assurances about its limited scope:

But they will only be able to use the data for national security purposes and not to fight ordinary crime, the Home Office stressed.

I replied:

Yes, I trust them on that score, because it's so believable. Obvious prediction: In a year or two, the system will be hailed as a great success in stopping terrorism, and the government will be pushing a 'scheme' to have the cameras used fight "ordinary crime".

Well, it's been less than a year since then. They haven't admitted to using the cameras to investigate petty crime yet, but in some ways, this is even worse. At the time of writing, last year, the government had already, secretly, given authorization for foreign governments to use the system. They used their usual tactic of 'selling' it to us one way, whilst planning to use it in another.

Whenever the government tells us that some new invasion of privacy is strictly for one thing (usually, protecting us from terrorist bogeymen), remember that they have their fingers crossed behind their backs, OK?

If a capability exists, it will be abused. You can take that to the bank. Just don't deviate from your usual route -- it might look suspicious.

[ Edit: the post title may require some explanation for those who aren't familiar with the "all your base are belong to us" joke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base ]

In CCTV we trust

Poole council spies on family over school claim

A council has used powers intended for anti-terrorism surveillance to spy on a family who were wrongly accused of lying on a school application form.

Poole borough council disclosed that it had legitimately used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on the family.

The Act was pushed through by the Government in 2000 to allow police and other security agencies to carry out surveillance on serious organised crime and terrorists. It has since been taken up by councils to catch those carrying out any "criminal activity".

I bleat on and on about the emerging British 'surveillance society', so this kind of story brings a mixture of feelings -- both outrage, and also vindication: Who is surprised by this? Not me. Talk about a good example of sliding down the proverbial slippery slope. When I discuss this subject with Brits, they tend to dismiss the potential pitfalls, because they trust their government not to abuse the new powers it regularly gives itself. Will this story give them pause to reconsider? Probably not, even though a followup story reveals that the abuse is already rampant:

More than 1,000 covert surveillance operations are being launched every month to investigate petty offences such as dog fouling, under-age smoking and breaches of planning regulations.

Councils and other public bodies are using legislation designed to combat terrorism in order to spy on people, obtain their telephone records and find out who they are emailing.

Councils are increasingly using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) to investigate anything that can be classed as a criminal offence. The Home Office website describes the legislation as a tool for "preventing crime, including terrorism".

But it is used to spy on otherwise law-abiding people committing minor offences such as fly-tipping and failing to pick up dog mess and to gather evidence that can be used to instigate fines.

"including terrorism", eh? In a post-9/11 world, every single invasion of privacy and abuse of government power will be hidden behind a smokescreen of fighting terrorism. Police here rarely bother to investigate nonviolent crimes. But what the government really want to do, and what they're really good at, is coming down hard on ordinary citizens for speeding. Or not paying the TV tax. Or [not] fibbing on a school application. Or protesting climate change at Heathrow.

They film our activities hundreds of times per day using CCTV. They log all of our phone calls and text messages. They want to collect DNA samples from every Briton. They record every car journey. They record most public transportation journeys. They track our personal whereabouts using our mobile phones. They can stop us and search our pockets without cause. They want the right to interrogate us on the street. They want the right to fingerprint us on the street. They want to lock up terrorism suspects indefinitely, without charges.

They keep all of this detailed information on ordinary citizens, whilst government ministers make ludicrous claims about their databases being "unhackable", meanwhile losing the bank account details of every parent in Britain. In recent decades, British governments and institutions have not excelled in displays of basic competence. At least when someone screws up, bank account numbers can be changed. DNA and fingerprints are for life.

Still, at least we can trust them not to abuse all this information and power. Can't we?:

Professor Jeffrey Rosen wrote an article in The New York Times in 2001 showing that surveillance cameras in London, which were put up to combat the threat of terrorism from the Irish Republican Army, are actually used to intimidate vagrants and punks -- and, predictably, to ogle women.

-- and, predictably, increasingly, to track and monitor everyone all the time, for any reason at all. Just in case they're terrorists, or in case they 'forget' to pick up their dogs' poops. Ah well, take heart, for as long as you have nothing to hide...

Shameful

...And no, I'm not referring to putting Madonna on the cover.

If you missed this Vanity Fair article earlier in the month, and you care at all about the issue of torturing prisoners, be sure to give it a read. It is a detailed storyline of how the Bush administration's torture regime came to its shameful fruition:

The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse.

Nazi lawyers were executed as war criminals following WWII, for exactly the same sort of behaviour. Was it victor's justice? Or do the same standards apply to Americans? War crimes trials are the only just resolution in this case. But as I predicted here, I'll say it again: it'll never happen. Welcome to the new world order.

Iraq the place: everyone's loss

Just wanted to link to this excellent piece by George Packer, author of "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq" which I also highly recommend. Key quotes:

The American invasion of Iraq was, above all else, a revolution in the lives of Iraqis. Their institutions, their everyday routines, their futures, their sense of order were all turned upside down. This revolution, which is still ongoing and will play out for years to come, was the opening of a prison. When they staggered out into the light, most Iraqis didn’t know where they were, what they wanted, even who they were, and the Americans who had so quickly and casually broken down the gate were standing around as if they had never even considered what to do next.

And:

“I can never blame the Americans alone,” an Iraqi refugee named Firas told me in early 2007. “It’s the Iraqis who destroyed their country, with the help of the Americans, under the American eye.” To gain this wisdom, Firas had to lose almost everything. What would it take for Americans to understand what Firas already does? A recognition that Iraq was everyone’s loss, whichever side you were on.

Amen.

Failing the test of democracy

S Africa joins Zimbabwe vote call:

South Africa has joined international calls for Zimbabwe's electoral commission to release the results of last month's presidential election.

The call came a day after the head of the UN warned that the credibility of democracy in Africa could be at stake.

Correction: The credibility of Zimbabwe's democracy is at stake. It's becoming pretty clear that Mugabe has no intention of allowing himself to be declared the loser -- the election results were due, by law, within one week of the poll -- at least not in any meaningful way. Since the only real test of a democracy is whether a government will allow itself to be voted out of office, I guess we have to conclude that Zimbabwe is not a democracy, Mugabe is a dictator, and that elections in that country are purely for show -- a la Saddam.

I suppose I'm stating the obvious here, but I think more people need to start saying it out loud, and stop taking this 'election' seriously. The end result looks as though it has been a foregone conclusion all along.

Mi casa no es su casa

Just catching up here on a couple of things I'd wanted to blog about. This is several days old:

Kenya warned by U.S. over Cabinet row

(CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged Kenya's government and opposition party to agree on the composition of their coalition Cabinet after the two sides suspended talks on power-sharing.

"Should the accord not be implemented, however, the United States will form its own judgments regarding responsibility for lack of implementation of the accord, and act accordingly."

Am I reading this correctly? Is the US threatening another sovereign country over an internal political matter? Can you imagine if China or Russia had made such ominous statements during America's last electoral crisis in 2000? What howls of outrage there would have been, and rightly so. America's moments of internal political turmoil are America's business, and no one else's. So should the same standard not apply to other nations? If Kenyan politicians want to haggle over the composition of the cabinet, is that not their own concern?

I know that I'm being slightly obtuse here, in that the US seems to merely be seeking to help stabilize Kenya in the wake of the post-election violence. That's a fine, laudable, and even noble thing. In what remains a mostly uni-polar world, perhaps the lone superpower needs to be able to push other nations in the right direction, on occasion. What bothers me is the (what spin-meisters refer to as) 'optics' of the situation. This is rather indelicate diplomacy -- unfortunately a hallmark of the Bush II administration.

If the US is, at times, resented by people in other countries, look no further than this sort of exceptionalism for an explanation. America would never stand for overt foreign meddling in its political affairs, or intrusions on its borders. For that matter, the US would not look kindly on, say, overt Russian meddling in the Ukraine's internal politics. However, the American government doesn't seem to apply the same standard to itself when it unilaterally sends drones flying into Pakistan or Yemen to fire missiles at its enemies, or threaten Kenyans to form a cabinet. America's sovereignty is sacrosanct. Others' -- not so much.

Can you imagine what would happen if China sent a drone to the coast of California to shoot a missile at Richard Gere?

Free what?

Just in case anyone was under the impression that we have free speech and the right of peaceful protest in Britain, read this about the Beijing olympics torch relay in London today:

Before the torch arrived police circulated among Tibetan demonstrators ordering them to remove T-shirts and confiscating Tibetan flags in an apparent breach of a promise from Met commanders that police would not intervene to prevent embarrassment to Beijing.

Yonten Ngama, a Tibetan who has been resident in the UK for four years, was ordered to remove a T-shirt scrawled with three slogans, 'China Stop the Killing', 'No Torch in Tibet' and 'Talk to the Dalai Lama'. "They didn't tell me why, they just said I couldn't wear it," he said. Police on the ground declined to comment on the reasons for confiscating the T-shirt.

Oh, well that's okay then: we wouldn't want to embarass the Chinese by allowing democratic-style demonstrations during their big day. Not only can the police in London order you not wear a T-shirt with the wrong slogan on it, or wave the wrong flag, they won't even bother to tell you why. We did the Chinese proud today.

In the photo above, 10 British police and "Chinese security guards" tackle a woman with a placard.

What we need is a little justice

CIA destroyed interrogation tapes:

The New York Times, which broke the story, quotes current and former government officials as saying the CIA destroyed the tapes in 2005 as it faced Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program.

Officials feared the tapes could have raised doubts about the legality of the CIA's techniques, the newspaper says.

Well of course they did. And we are expected to believe that the government "lost" the interrogation video of Jose Padilla, too. No one likes a war crimes trial.

America's honour will be restored when they a) stop torturing; and b) put those responsible on trial -- and I don't mean the individuals who carried it out, a la Abu Ghraib. The men responsible for the policies need to explain themselves to a jury.

Nothing less will make it right. I'm not holding my breath.

I'll show you a big head, Todd

News from the Clinton campaign:

in recent days the Clinton presidential campaign's "official" song -- You And I sung by the Canadian diva [Celine] Dion -- has been replaced at campaign events by Blue Sky, from the Colorado-based band Big Head Todd and the Monsters.

Well, at least they stuck with a big head theme.

When your American friends are bullies

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

Presumably the US won't make much of a fuss then, if a foreign country abducts Americans from the States. For example, Americans who name their teddy bears Mohammad, could be kidnapped and taken back to Iran or Saudi Arabia for trial, yes?

No? This wouldn't be the umpteenth example of American exceptionalism, would it?

When people like Karen Hughes try to tackle the problem of America's negative image abroad, it's an uphill struggle. No wonder she's giving up. Because, spin it all you want -- it's the substance of America's behaviour in the world that stinks. A good starting point might be showing respect for other countries' sovereignty, just as America expects for its own.

Oh, is that so?

Bush to the president of Pakistan:

"You can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time," Bush said, describing a telephone call with Musharraf. "I had a very frank discussion with him."

Good point, Mr. commander-in-chief.

Good for the goose

Well, I guess everyone gets to waterboard everyone now. The US seems to have deemed it an acceptable practice, even when the victims are American:

The top legal adviser within the US state department, who counsels the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, on international law, has declined to rule out the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding even if it were applied by foreign intelligence services on US citizens. John Bellinger refused to denounce the technique, which has been condemned by human rights groups as a form of torture, during a debate on the Bush administration's stance on international law held by Guardian America

Strange, given that the US operated and participated in the trials and executions of Nazis for using such techniques. How about we make this simple, and all just go back to not torturing, hmm?

British liberty ctd.

I'm a little late on this one because I've been travelling this week:

Information about all landline and mobile phone calls made in the UK must be logged and stored for a year under new laws. Data about calls made and received will also be available to 652 public bodies, including the police and councils. The Home Office said the content of calls and texts would not be read and insisted the move was vital to tackle serious crime and terrorism.

Note the fairly waffly statement that "calls and texts would not be read". It doesn't say "can not be read" because we know from common sense that they will be, when the government or police decide that this too has become 'vital'.

Note also the huge number of organizations who'll have access to the information; it will practically be public information. (i.e. what private investigator or hacker won't be able to access it for the right price?).

Note further, if you read the article, that our physical locations will now be officially tracked and recorded when we make calls or send texts.

On the basis of several technologies, including CCTV, automatic number plate recognition (recording all car journeys), Oyster cards (recording all public transit journeys), and this new phone logging, the government will now have a record of where we are and where we go at all times. Clever terrorists and criminals, of course, will evade these methods by doing things like, for example, using anonymous pay-as-you-go SIM cards in their mobile phones (available for a few pounds in the dodgier news agents) and changing them frequently. It will be the rest of us who are effectively tracked by these methods. Feel safer now?

What part of "police state" don't we understand?

Sweet neo-con, light of humanity

Well I just love this, posted by Jamie Kirchick on Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Today, it seems that a "neo-con" (at least in the fevered imaginations of the net-left) is someone who frequently calls attention to the unprovoked aggression of despotic regimes (e.g. Iran and Syria), the violation of human rights in other countries, and advocates the moral superiority of democratic countries in international affairs. A "neo-con" is now anyone who dares make an issue out of the aggressions and inhumanity of despotisms without explaining them away, and for advocating America do something about these aggressions and inhumanities.

That's it! The 'fevered' people who label the neo-conservatives (as juxtaposed with the sensible, pragmatic, and serene neo-cons themselves) are using the term as a way to denigrate those who see injustice in the world and have the nobility and good-heartedness to want to "do something" about it. The neo-conservatives are the champions of international human rights; With pure hearts, they advocate for the moral superiority of the correct political system, American-style democracy, and stand up for non-aggression and humanity. And yet all they ask is that we "do something" instead of explaining away.

Clearly, people who disparage these latter-day saints as neo-conservatives, in their fevered and addled liberal way, oppose human rights, democracy, peace and humanity. The neo-cons are like Clark Kent in a phone booth. The collective "net-left" are like the Axis of Dr. Evil.

Poor Jamie.

The disingenuousness of this should be self-evident, but I feel like responding so here goes: The neo-conservatives, people who founded organizations like the Project for the New American Century, are self labelled. That's what they call themselves. So, you'll have to excuse everyone else who uses the term. They advocate for the use and projection of American military power to remake the world in America's image. The purpose being to benefit America and American commerce, and to perpetrate a "new American century". All this guff about human rights and peace is packaged on the premise that it will come to pass if necessary through force, intimidation, and (if necessary) torture -- a form of "soft empire".

They are mainly ex-liberals. They support liberal-style interventionism. They called themselves neo-conservatives. They were the 'intellectual' force behind the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and are still pushing for a ludicrous military confrontation with Iran. And they are largely discredited. Think Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Think Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. For the fact that some people use that label as an insult, they have only themselves to blame.

Those little perks of democracy

Anyone who visits here once in a while will know that I write a lot of posts about British liberty and our surveillance society. I write about the many different ways our government tracks and spies on us. I also complain a lot about the nearly limitless powers that the British police ask for, and most often get. The nastiest tools at their disposal come from the various incarnations of the Terrorism Act (2000, 2001, 2005, 2006). Under these acts, for example, they've done away with the idea of "unreasonable search". Here's a little lesson on why that's a bad idea:

Armed police will use anti-terrorism powers to "deal robustly" with climate change protesters at Heathrow next week, as confrontations threaten to bring major delays to the already overstretched airport. The police have been told to use stop and search powers against the protesters...

So here is an example of the police having a hammer called the Terrorism Act, but since a protest at Heathrow is inconvenient during "its busiest week of the year", the protesters look like a nail. The police are threatening, in advance, to use the Terrorism Act to intimidate lawful protesters. These laws give the police the right to stop-and-search people without justification (i.e. reasonable suspicion that the person is a terrorist), among other powers.

The police aren't making any serious effort to argue that the protesters are terrorists -- just that they're an annoyance, and so the police are going to use the tools at their disposal.

The Guardian has established that at least two climate change campaigners have been arrested recently at Heathrow by officers using terrorism powers. Cristina Fraser, a student, was stopped when cycling near the airport with a friend and then charged under section 58 of the Terrorism Act. This makes it an offence to make a record of something that could be used in an act of terrorism.

"I was arrested and held in a police cell for 30 hours. I was terrified. No one knew where I was. They knew I was not a terrorist," she said.

Ms Fraser, a first-year London university anthropology student, has been on aviation demonstrations with the Plane Stupid campaign group, but claims she was carrying nothing at all. The police later recharged her with conspiring to cause a public nuisance.

Ah, "public nuisance", the catch-all charge for any person who irritates a policeman. Does "conspiring to cause a public nuisance" mean it's also illegal to seem like you're thinking of being irritating?

Weren't we told that these powers were meant for stopping terrorists? As opposed to climate protesters? We bought it. In retrospect it seems like a bad idea to have given the police unlimited power to arbitrarily stop-and-search people on the streets, but there's nothing we can do about it now.

But for the police it's never enough. They want equivalent stop-and-fingerprint, and stop-and-DNA-test, and the power to hold 'terrorism' suspects indefinitely without charge. We're assured they would never think of abusing these powers. So are we going to grant them? Are we going to buy it yet again, in the face of evidence to the contrary?

I bet we will. Furthermore I bet it won't be long before they're using these new powers to deal with minor nuisances (that means you and me). Put down that placard and behave yourself, if you know what's good for you.

Sir Ben Dover ctd.

Some commentary from the Telegraph about this issue:

The British police, I was bleakly surprised to read in The Daily Telegraph this week, have the biggest single DNA database in the world, with more than five per cent of the population logged, including nearly a million children under 17.

Is that big enough? The police, their response to a Home Office consultation about their powers now tells us, don't think so. If they get their way, next time you're arrested on suspicion of failing to scoop your dog's poop, they will be entitled to keep a permanent record of your DNA. Does that strike you as a bad thing? It does me.

I should make clear here what I think the police request is about. I do not imagine a cabal of senior police consciously fantasising about a surveillance state in which Plod Is The Master Now. Nor do I imagine that a similarly totalitarian instinct exists among those in government.

Agreed. I don't think it's a conspiracy. The police just want to do their job better. And it's our job (and thus, the job of government) to decide where the line is. When the police reach too far, it's our job to say no. The problem is that in Britain, we don't say no very often.

Sir Ben Dover

But of course, officer! The latest:

"Police are seeking powers to take DNA samples from suspects on the streets and for non-imprisonable offences such as speeding and dropping litter."

Well of course they are. Tony Blair had previously stated his belief that every person in the UK should be in the DNA database (and I've no reason to think that Gordon Brown feels any differently). Since there might be too many legitimate and vociferous arguments against making it mandatory, the 'stealth' way to accomplish the same goal would be exactly, well, this. (They've already been slapped for gathering samples from innocent schoolchildren). How many adults have never been stopped whilst driving, or for jaywalking, or littering, or some other minor, 'ticketable' offence? Raise your hands... Anyone? I thought not.

But notice the phrasing "...suspects on the streets and for non-imprisonable offences..." [emphasis added]. In other words, all you'd really have to do is look suspicious. Just like stop-and-search.

Ultimately the job of the police can be done most easily and efficiently when they have the means of knowing a) each person's identity; and b) where they've been at all times. In the past few years I've been in Britain, they've made great strides toward these goals. They track us when we drive (ANPR), when we ride on public transport (Oyster), and potentially everywhere we go with our mobile phones. Our passports have chips for our biometric data (pictures and fingerprints). They want us to carry mandatory ID cards, also with biometric data. They film us with CCTV from every street corner. Under the "terrorism act" they can stop us and search us on the street, and will soon be given 'wartime' powers to interrogate us on the street as well. If they don't like the answers, they can imprison us for 28 (maybe 50, maybe 90) days without charge. The goal is to be able to know who we are, and where we've been, at any given time. So why not cut to the chase, as they say?

Why not fit each person with an ankle bracelet that continuously broadcasts their identity and location to a police computer? Perhaps you think that's too easily tampered with or spoofed? Take the technology a little farther then, and implant us with RFID chips. That would basically solve the crime problem, no? You'd be right in thinking that the real criminals and terrorists would find ways to beat the system -- but then, they'll always do that. This is about the rest of us. Will you speed if you *know* that a police computer is definitely going to detect it, and send you a ticket?

So why don't we just do that, then? I think the answer lies in what people sometimes call the "yuck factor". Why aren't the police asking for stop-and-cavity-search powers? Yuck factor. Monitoring each one of us all day, every day? It just seems wrong somehow, doesn't it? These are our remaining instincts of privacy and free will, trying to be heard over the increasing din of our fears. Fears of muggers and terrorists who lurk, we are assured by policemen and politicians, around every corner. But tracking all of us, all the time, without fail? That still seems like overkill.

However, we will get used to the idea, over time, that we have no longer have privacy anyway. Some future government study will say, in essence: Look, we're already tracking and monitoring everybody anyway, through all these various means; Let's save the taxpayers a lot of money by just implanting this little chip, which can be used as a debit card, and an ID, and a passport, and which will also be able to do useful things like storing your grocery store loyalty card info, etc. etc.

And someday we'll just finally give in, lured by the promises of a more convenient life and resigned to the fact that the government is going to pass the law anyway. Or perhaps they'll start with an optional version, and gradually subtract from the list of things you can do without having one. Of course, they'll probably charge us a fee to get the chip (they're just that cheeky), but we'll pay without grumbling too much.

Am I being paranoid again? Many of the things I mentioned earlier -- things that have been pushed upon, and accepted by, the people of Britain -- would have seemed pretty far-fetched 15 or 20 years ago. "We'd never stand for that!" And yet, we've come to accept them nonetheless. Have these measures made us any safer? The statistics (not to mention all the warnings from politicians and policemen about criminals and terrorists) would indicate not. But the schemes keep coming. The slippery slope is getting steeper and slipperier every day, but like the frog in slowly-heated water, the British public don't seem to notice what's been happening to them. Or that it's starting to happen faster and faster.

A pledge: I will not voluntarily give a DNA sample to any policeman. They will have to hold me down. I'll go to jail if I have to, but in the grand scheme of things, it would probably be smarter to save myself the trouble by moving away preemptively, to a still-free country. Preferably one with a bill of rights, and maybe a constitution.

When we get carried away

Schoolboy guilty of terrorism offences:

A schoolboy who ran away from home to become a Muslim martyr and three students who recruited him are facing jail after a jury found them guilty of terrorism offences.

Mohammed Irfan Raja was supposed to be on his way to school in Essex when he ran away to join a group of radicalised students in Bradford.

During raids on their homes officers found material on their computers which included al-Qa'eda manuals, speeches by Osama bin Laden and justifications for suicide bombings.

The defendants, who had spent much of the trial laughing and giggling together, looked shocked as the verdicts were announced.

So now we're going to start putting away rebellious kids, under the terrorism act. A 17 year old is going to go to jail for adopting 'jihadi' rhetoric and running away from home. And for downloading stuff from the Internet, and "glorifying terrorism". Look at this goofy teenager. He looks about as sharp as a box of rocks. That could easily have been me at 17. Luckily for me, I didn't choose to rebel in the same way as him. I stuck to music my parents didn't like, and staying out past curfew. I exploded all my little 'bombs' harmlessly, in empty fields.

We're scared as hell and we're not going to take it anymore, I guess. We should probably start jailing little hoodlums for repeating gangsta rap stanzas about guns and 'hos', too. And now that I think about it, those kids in hoodies -- stick them in jail too. They look very suspicious if you ask me.

I can't even get excited

Maybe it's because I'm tired tonight. Maybe it's because I'm surprised they weren't doing it already. Here it is:

Police are to be given live access to London's congestion charge cameras - allowing them to track all vehicles entering and leaving the zone. Anti-terror officers will be exempted from parts of the Data Protection Act to allow them to see the date, time and location of vehicles in real time. They previously had to apply for access on a case-by-case basis.

Or maybe it's because, finally, I've given up on the concept of privacy in Britain. I'm sure I'll continue to highlight it here, but I may have reached the point of resignation. That's a tough pill to swallow for a North American, with our disinclination to automatically trust "authorities". I drive through the congestion zone every day. This affects me. Being tracked in real time by the police -- when I'm not a suspect in any crime -- strikes me as so fundamentally wrong as to be on the level of a human rights violation. But that's Britain today. I guess you like it or you leave.

But they will only be able to use the data for national security purposes and not to fight ordinary crime, the Home Office stressed.

Yes, I trust them on that score, because it's so believable. Obvious prediction: In a year or two, the system will be hailed as a great success in stopping terrorism, and the government will be pushing a 'scheme' to have the cameras used fight "ordinary crime". Probably, some heinous crime will be paraded about as an example of something that wouldn't have happened if the police had had more access. Then the public will nod, and it will be done.

Meanwhile, the sensible people of New York City are in the process of rejecting congestion charge cameras.

Countdown to disaster

According to this piece in the Guardian, the Cheney/Bush white house is planning to attack Iran militarily, with Cheney (as always) playing the role of warmonger in chief:

"The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week.

"Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively.

Well, isn't that good news for civilization? Dick Cheney still has the clout to start another war, and apparently has the good judgement to decide what kind of situation the next president should face.

Since common sense dictates that America cannot accomplish some kind of ground invasion/occupation of Iran (a la Iraq), then the options would appear to be a) aerial bombardment with conventional weapons; and b) nuclear attack. Previously I've asked the rhetorical question:

What makes Mr. Lieberman think that Iran -- militant, confrontational Iran -- will respond to a military attack by cowering? By surrendering and backing down?

What makes Dick Cheney think he has the option of "deal[ing] with Iran decisively", short of the nuclear option 'b'? That question scares me, because I don't imagine for one minute that some kind of conventional bombing campaign will defeat Iran, case closed.

Here's a nice nightmare scenario: What if, in response, Iran were to invade Iraq? They've got ~160,000 American soldiers hostage in Iraq, who already have their hands full just dealing with the locals. How big a disaster would it be? How would America hope to repel Iran's half-million-strong army under the circumstances? What would Cheney and Bush do then? Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I can think of only one answer: Option 'b'. In that case, ladies and gents, we're all screwed.

And throw away the key

I was going to write an entry about this:

One of Britain's most senior police officers has demanded a return to a form of internment, with the power to lock up terror suspects indefinitely without charge.

But my friend over at Jen's Den of Iniquity has done an admirable job of beating me to it.

Ho hum, another day, another odious assault on democracy and freedom. This is becoming a way of life in Britain. I don't have too much more to add, except to point out that under the UK's Terrorism Act 2006, even "condoning or glorifying terrorism" is an offence. For that, they'd like to be able to lock people up indefinitely without charge.

Not only is there no guarantee of free speech in this country (indeed, various types of speech are illegal), but apparently there won't be the guarantee of a trial either.

Paranoia, paranoia, la la la.

And there you have it

Ask a stupid question...

The politicians now have to DO SOMETHING! What clever thing will they (our intrepid leaders, not the terrorists) think of next? A crackdown on nails and gas canisters? On parking? On Mercedes sedans? (along with a new tax security charge, undoubtedly?)

...and here's the stupid answer:

Background security checks on foreign doctors and other health workers migrating to Britain are to be stepped up after the weekend bomb scares in London and Glasgow.

(throws hands in air, slumps in chair).

Take that Osama

Following on from my last post, in which I described how Canada is being seriously underserved by the international terrorist community:

I've come to the hypothesis that Osama has unfairly bought into the "mostly harmless" stereotype of Canadians. And goodness knows, even in Afghanistan, he still hasn't seen a Canadian with a gun [Canadians with guns are still not as mean as Canadians with Hockey sticks though].

We need to send him a message. Change our image. Here are some ideas:

• Put some big, visible guns on the CN Tower.
• Stop killing seals with clubs, and start using machine guns or bombs instead. Or behead them (It's probably quicker and more humane anyway). Actually, I don't think the Qur'an has any bad things to say about seals, so Osama probably already thinks we're just being cruel.
• Do a better job of publicising just how tough beavers actually are. I've heard about one trying to pick a fight with a bulldozer. No kidding.
  
• Put some knuckles on either side of the CN Tower, so that it becomes the world's largest free-standing middle finger.

I know I keep coming back to the CN Tower but it seems like the best tool in our arsenal.

Wallowing in the fear

Of the many overhyped, fear-mongering terrorism headlines I've seen in the past few days -- though not strictly related to the London "car bombs" -- this one takes the cake. Ready?!:

Dirty bombs missing in Canada
Numerous have been lost or stolen since 9-11

That's right folks, Canada is positively awash in missing dirty bombs!:

At least 76 radioactive devices - several of which could be used in a terrorist attack - have gone missing in Canada over the last five years, newly compiled figures show.

Now wait just a cotton-pickin'. "Radioactive devices" doesn't sound quite like a dirty bomb. They couldn't be trying to stir us up with that breathless headline, could they? What are these dirty bombs?

Turns out, they're pretty much anything that's radioactive. You have to keep reading for quite a while before you get good idea of the actual, less-than-sensational devices in question: "nuclear gauges", "radioactive tools" (used in oil and gas discovery), "nuclear medicine markers", and a "vial of sodium iodide":

the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said it's "quite surprising" terrorists have not already set off a crude radioactive bomb.

"We are positively overdue" for such an attack, CSIS said.

Nothing much exciting happens in Canada. Sometimes I think we Canadians feel a little left out of this whole war on terror thing. Subconsciously, it seems we're gagging for some big news to call our own -- after 9/11 I had friends who were convinced Calgary or Edmonton was the next big terrorist target, you know, 'cause there's oil there. Why don't the terrorists pay us any attention?! We're totally a real country!! Look, we have the CN Tower ("Canada's wonder of the world!" -- see photo); it would make a great target! Of course, we did have those teenage terror masterminds with the frighteningly plausible plan to cut off the Prime Minister's head and blow up the CN Tower, but those hosers didn't even get a chance to try anything, eh? To be fair, though, Australia has totally done more to deserve their own terror attack, but they're still waiting.

JIM BRONSKILL AND SUE BAILEY, stand up and collect your razzie for irresponsible journalism.

Al Qaeda sure makes crappy bombs

Apparently my skepticism of last week's attempted car bombings has some justification. The Reg has a pair of smackdowns (they're good for that sort of thing):

Beavis and Butthead in London jihad. Good quote:

Today we have news from London, where a "big [explosive] device" was discovered inside a parked car near Piccadilly Circus. The device consisted of petrol, propane gas cylinders, and nails. The car containing it had been abandoned after its driver was observed piloting it erratically, crashing it, then running off, like a true professional.

And another:

"It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been serious injury or loss of life", Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke intoned gravely.

Ah, if it had detonated. Yes, it could have been a real horror. Only, the device could not have detonated. Not under any circumstances. You see, the terrorist wannabe clown who built it left out a crucial element: an oxidiser. The device was pure pre-teen boy fantasy.

"We'll heat up these propane cylinders with burning petrol, and they'll go off like bombs", boys the world over have remarked with glee. They don't realise that air is a poor oxidiser, and the only "explosion" they will get is when gas pressure inside the cylinders is great enough to burst them. Then the propane will ignite, and a nice fireball will blossom. A fireball, not an explosion.

Here's the other razzie (from a former bomb squaddie no less): 'al-Qaeda' puts on big shoes, red nose, takes custard pie. Good quote:

If these guys at the weekend really were anything to do with al-Qaeda, all one can really say is that it looks as though the War on Terror is won. This whole hoo-ha kicked off, remember, with 9/11: an extremely effective attack. Then we had the Bali and Madrid bombings, not by any measure as shocking and bloody but still nasty stuff. Then we had London 7/7, a further significant drop in bodycount but still competently planned and executed (Not too many groups would have been able to mix up that much peroxide-based explosive first try without an own goal).

Now we have this; one terror-clown badly burnt and nobody else hurt at all.

So if these guys are obviously amateur 'terror-clowns', why are the police and politicians trying to spook us again with talk of Al Qaeda and international terrorism?

Another bogus terror plot? This is getting ridiculous -- add it to the long, long list. Ask yourself: Do the British police and government have any credibility left, at all?

Close the barn door (them horses done ran away)

Seems we in Britain are on high terror alert after this week's failed car-bombing attempts.

Can I just say, how much more impressed I'd be if they'd alerted us before the events?

Are we on alert because the government knows there are more attacks coming? Can I be excused for being skeptical about that? With all their eavesdropping and surveillance, why didn't they warn us in advance? These attempted bombers were clearly amateurs. Of course we're being told it's the work of the usual bogeymen (Al Qaida) but colour me unconvinced; Al Qaida's bombs don't usually fail to explode, do they? And another thing: terrorists don't usually attack us when we're expecting it -- for example on obvious symbolic anniversaries, or holidays, or when we're on high terror alert. They usually wait until we're not expecting it. When we're nice and relaxed. They're clever that way. So what's the point, really?

Now, this isn't just macho talk. I am afraid of terror attacks. But not for the obvious reason. They worry me because of high terror alerts, hair-trigger police, and itchy politicians. The most dangerous thing to be in Britain right now is the proverbial innocent bystander. Terror attacks worry me because I wonder about how the government is going to punish the rest of us.

The politicians now have to DO SOMETHING! What clever thing will they (our intrepid leaders, not the terrorists) think of next? A crackdown on nails and gas canisters? On parking? On Mercedes sedans? (along with a new tax security charge, undoubtedly?)

I'm not being totally facetious. We're still carrying our lipstick and toothpaste in clear plastic bags when we board airplanes, aren't we? Because of a bogus plot.

You can't beat terrorism with oppressive laws and security restrictions (not to mention with fighter jets, M16s, or daisy-cutter bombs). Terrorism isn't a group of people, or a religion, or even an ideology; it's a tactic. The object is to make us afraid, and to make us change our behaviour. So is it working? Every time we react badly, we show our enemies that it is.

Pesky terrorists Pt. 5

So most people are probably aware that 2 supposed car bombs were found and disabled today here in London. Good for the police. Something keeps bothering me about this though; the reports persist in referring to the bombs as "potentially viable". That suggests to me that the bombs were not viable. As in, a stunt, or carried off by amateurs. Given the UK's history of hyped-up, bogus terrorism busts (think: big airline terror story from last summer), surely we've learned our lesson by now. This couldn't be yet another example, could it? I don't have any inside information. I'm just saying.

Meanwhile, I went out to lunch today with about a dozen workmates. I don't recall last night's attempted bombing coming up in conversation.

It would seem that we "ain't bothered".

How long till the election?

There's a good piece by Boris Johnson here on the 'Torygraph' (my employer when I first arrived in London) with some sentiments that I want to echo.

First, with regard to the departure of Tony Blair:

Sky News may be treating it like the funeral of Queen Victoria, but I am really feeling quite chipper about the political extinction of Tony Blair. Yes, I was going to say, there are some of us who are bearing up pretty well, on the whole, and there are some of us who can't think of a better fate for Tony than to be carted off to the Middle East.

And on the arrival of Gordon Brown:

Suddenly my mood changed; suddenly I felt a sense of desolation and morosity that we had lost Tony Blair, and I can tell you the exact moment when I caught the bug and joined the national mourning. It was the moment Gordon Brown opened his mouth, and, with every word he uttered, the mercury of my mood started to sink and the clouds rolled in.

Yep. Pretty much the same for me. Perhaps the new Prime Minister will be excellent, but as of speech #1, I already can't stand watching him speak. Perhaps he was just really nervous and emotional. Or else, he's the most wooden, unlikeable politician I've ever seen, and as charming as a bag of poo.

I can already see that I'm going to miss that lovable rogue who walked out on us yesterday. Maybe we can all just forgive him for the Iraq thing, and he'll come back?

How to cook an occupation

How bad is it when they stop taking you seriously? In Bob Woodward's book "State Of Denial: Bush At War Part III" there is an anecdote relating America's attempt to set up a TV channel promoting America's perspective in Iraq "so that the coalition message could get on the air":

Eventually there was a U.S.-sponsored television network set up. To fill out its schedule, it broadcast Arabic-language reruns from elsewhere in the Middle East. As a result, some Iraqis took to calling it the "Lebanese Cooking Channel," especially after one day when most other major networks, like Qatar-based Al Jazeera, covered a significant news event live but the U.S.-sponsored network ran a foreign program on how to cook a rabbit.

Definitionally speaking

Referring to new revelations about Dick Cheney's role in promoting the use of torture, Andrew Sullivan writes today:

The only defense by Bush and Cheney against charges of war crimes is that a president definitionally cannot commit war crimes, if he's acting as he sees fit in the defense of the nation.

A president cannot commit war crimes by definition? I think I'm missing something here. So, for example, a president Hussein, or president Milosevic cannot be guilty of war crimes? Oh no, I know what he means. An American president cannot be guilty of war crimes.

Okay, to be fair, it would seem that Andrew is writing from a purely American context. He's talking about war crimes as defined under US law and in relation to the president's constitutional commander-in-chief role.

But come on. Enough with the exceptionalism already.

The new US "Detainee Treatment Act" and its amendments, which by consensus effectively allows the president -- but nobody else, honest -- to authorize "torture light", and which retroactively exempts government personnel (i.e. the CIA) from war crimes charges, should be regarded with contempt.

Let's imagine hypothetically that General E.L. Presidente, of the Great Bananian Republic, orders up a law that authorizes his intelligence service to torture prisoners of war. Does anyone suppose that this law would make the resulting atrocities legal, in the eyes of the world? Do war crimes stop being war crimes, just because the laws of the 'GBR', the offending nation, say they aren't? How about the laws of the USA? Is it different then?

Torture is evil. If the "good guys" use it, it doesn't make the torture good; it makes the "good guys" evil. And if Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld commanded or authorized torture or other war crimes, they should stand trial in the Hague just like anyone else.

I know, I'm dreaming. Not gonna happen.

Score +1 for Brown, already?

He hasn't yet officially become Prime Minister, but sounds like he's already planning to give us back a bit of the democracy we've recently lost:

Gordon Brown is to hold out an olive branch to opponents of the Iraq war by reinstating the right to demonstrate and march outside the Houses of Parliament, it has been claimed.

Restrictive legislation introduced by Tony Blair will allegedly be reversed by the Chancellor soon after he enters Number 10 next week.

Colour me impressed: The right to peaceful protest might be back! This is certainly a step in the right direction. Keep it up, you cranky, unlikeable fellow, and you just might win my admiration. And win back my vote.

Such a tool Pt. II

Lieberman doesn't seem to understand, by the way, that Iraqi Shiites would mind the US bombing their coreligionists and would probably massacre the entire British garrison in Basra as well as interdict US fuel convoys to the north from Kuwait and Basra. His irresponsible warmongering would get a lot of US troops killed for no good reason.

Lieberman comments from Juan Cole here and 'stilwell' here.

Such a tool

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN)– The United States should consider possible military action against Iran, Senator Joseph Lieberman said Sunday.

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq.”

So, Mr. Lieberman thinks that a "strike into — over the border into Iran" would frighten those Iranians silly, does he, so that they would cease and desist all naughty activity?

Foolish, foolish man.

If somebody pushes you, your natural instinct is to push them back, but harder. If they then slap you, your natural instinct is to punch them in return. Escalation like this is how simple disputes turn into serious violence. Or war.

What makes Mr. Lieberman think that Iran -- militant, confrontational Iran -- will respond to a military attack by cowering? By surrendering and backing down? A military strike to "stop them from killing Americans in Iraq" would result in the killing of more Americans in Iraq and elsewhere. Even a little nobody like me can predict that, without mental effort.

Foolish, foolish little man.

This is nearly enough to make me glad Cheney's running things. I mean, Cheney would like to start a war with Iran, but I think he at least knows that if you're going to start one, you start one. And that means taking it very seriously (I never doubt Cheney's seriousness, which makes him that much scarier to me). Mr. Lieberman seems to think that just tossing a couple of bombs at Iran will sort everything out.

Or else he knows better, and he's just pandering to the Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters and armchair generals in America. Which wouldn't surprise me at all, either.

British liberty Pt. V

We will no longer have the right to remain silent:

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair plans to push through a new anti-terrorism law before he steps down next month giving "wartime" powers to police to stop and question people, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

The "stop and question" power would enable police to interrogate people about who they are, where they have been and where they were going, The Sunday Times said. Police would not need to suspect a crime had taken place.

If suspects failed to stop or refused to answer questions, they could be charged with a crime and fined, The Sunday Times said. Police already have the power to stop and search people but have no right to ask them their identity and movements.

Wow. Wartime powers? Did I fail to notice we're at war? Or is it just the permanent, global-war-on-terror, Orwellian kind of war?

So now this, in a supposed liberal democracy. Has it ever been more obvious that a government needs a constitution to keep it in check? Isn't it bad enough that they can stop you on the street without cause and search your pockets? Isn't it bad enough that they'll soon have portable fingerprint scanners to identify us? And how about shouting (and otherwise) CCTV cameras to watch us and give us orders, and biometric ID cards, and a huge national DNA database, and computerized tracking of vehicles and public transport passengers?

And now a policeman will be able to spot-interrogate you, and if you don't give him the answers he (presumably) expects to hear, you can be prosecuted -- and don't forget you'll be giving a DNA sample down at the station, too.

Does anyone think that a terrorist, on his way to a terrorist meeting or whatever, is going to confess because he's afraid of a fine? Of course not. This law is aimed at the rest of us.

Okay, so maybe we can vote. Aside from that, has a human population the size of this country ever been so watched and controlled? I guess we just have to hope we never elect anyone with a hidden totalitarian streak.

And the cycle continues

There goes America again, arming people in the Middle East:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Military aid began arriving Friday after the United States said it will rush supplies to the Lebanese army fighting al Qaeda-inspired Islamic militants barricaded inside a Palestinian refugee camp in the country's north.

Hey, now they're arming the Lebanese government, after arming the Israelis so they could bomb the whole of Lebanon last Summer. Whatever the US is trying to accomplish here, it isn't peace.

"I certainly hope that the Lebanese government will be able to deal with these extremists," Rice said. "It's just another example of extremists in the Middle East who are trying to destabilize democratic governments."

Rigghht, and the US didn't destabilize the same government by letting Israel pound the crap out of the country (whose government is democratic and US-friendly) all within the last year? Of course they did, and moreover they knew they were doing so. Israel didn't just bomb Hezbollah guys in foxholes, they took out most of the major infrastructure -- and America supported that. Now this. What kind of careless games are they playing with peoples' lives?

And furthermore, the next time America is attacked (whether a military attack like the Cole or a terrorist attack like 9/11) maybe people in the US would be so good as to refrain from pleading "why do they hate us so much?". Given the years of "involvement" in the region's conflicts, perhaps Americans should consider that allowing their government to arm factions, take sides, and invade countries in the Arab/Muslim world is bound to result in a few enemies -- ones who don't hate you for your freedom fries, or because you're beautiful, but because you destroyed their lives. Just something to think about really.

[ I visited Lebanon in November, 2005 ]

Iron chancellor awaits coronation

Our chancellor, future prime minister of Britain (with a newly-discovered, wild-eyed smile now permanently plastered to his "dour Scots visage"), today says:

"Today there are new priorities and I offer a new leadership for this new time," he said. Mr Brown insisted he would welcome a challenge from "any other candidate who wants to stand", and said he would "fight hard" for every single nomination and expression of support.

Translation: Would somebody please run against me for the Labour party leadership (and, obviously, lose) so I can look as if I earned this? And no, he won't call an early election so we, the British people, can have our say. He's got a couple of years to enjoy the power he's longed for and expected, during his long nightmare of Blairite rule.

Based on nothing at all -- at least nothing substantial -- I'll just say I don't like or trust this guy. But, I guess time will tell. Perhaps he's brilliant.

I'm glad to see the back of Blair, with the stain of Bush and Iraq all over him. The shame of it, for me, is that I otherwise like Tony, but can't forgive him for Iraq. So now we'll get this guy Brown. Be careful what you wish for?

Actual pesky terrorists!

I've written lots of posts about all the bogus terrorism busts here in the UK, which usually result in nothing more than sensational headlines. It seems that after the headline hoopla and speeches, most times people forget to notice when no actual trials result.

More usually, the only result is some new law, loss of privacy, or regulation. Remember the big airline plot from last summer? No convictions, but you still have to board the airplane with your toothpaste in a clear plastic bag.

Anyway, today it seems they actually convicted some pesky terrorists. Strangely though, I don't even remember any sensational headlines about this one:

Five men have been jailed for life for a UK bomb plot linked to al-Qaeda that could have killed hundreds of people.

Well blow me down. We're really are overrun with terrorists, and the police finally caught some.

Watch what you say

From an editorial in the Calgary Herald:

No-fly list - Re: "Canada to launch no-fly list in spring," Jan. 14.

My name is on that international list, and I'm not a Muslim terrorist or an Irish Republican. Every time I attempt to check in for an international flight (which I do frequently), I'm challenged and made to feel like a criminal until I get clearance.

At the moment, my visa to enter Australia is held up while the consulate checks me out.

(The Calgary Herald is my hometown newspaper).

Overall, sounds like a pretty typical story: Innocent person's name ends up on some no-fly list or international "watch list" and gets hassled every time he tries to board a flight.

No doubt there is a scoundrel out there by the name of James McLaughlin, but if the data base were to include other details such as date of birth, passport number or other unique identifiers, surely they could identify me as the harmless wimp I've worked so hard to be.

James McLaughlin... Hey, that's my name! (James is my first name). The guy who wrote that editorial is my Dad, and since we have the same name, I'm on the list too. My Dad has joked before about my CIA file, since I started writing politically-oriented stuff on this blog. But seriously, I have this feeling that the "scoundrel out there" is probably me.

Isn't it coincidental that I/we have ended up on this list since I've started publishing stuff here? I was put through extra scrutiny the last time I went to the States, though the Virgin checkin clerk wouldn't say exactly why; Just that I'm "on a list". I can't do online checkin any more either. It couldn't be that having occasionally-contrarian political opinions gets you on a watch list, could it?

Sure it could:

Meet Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton University. He's a former Marine, with five years of active service and 19 years in the reserve, and a legal critic of Roe vs Wade and supporter of the Alito confirmation. He's also on the Terrorist No-Fly List:

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said."

I guess we all have to be careful what we say. Particularly if we're not American citizens.

I leave tomorrow morning to spend the week in California, for work. Those INS cats at SFO in San Francisco are a joy at the best of times. Wish me luck.

Dastardly Iranians

A quote:

“Don’t hold your breath waiting for liberals to condemn Iran for their treatment of the captured British marines.” Exhale, everybody! The marines are reporting that they were subjected to false execution, a well-known form of psychological torture and one which I condemn unreservedly. I have this rule of thumb, which I recommend to everyone: if Solzhenitsyn recounts some practice as one employed in coercive interrogations at Lubyanka, it’s torture. So, false execution: definitely torture. Also torture: long-time standing; exposure to extremes of heat and cold; forcing prisoners to kneel or stand in painful positions; putting prisoners in cells so small they cannot stand or lie down; keeping them awake for days at a time. These practices were the meat and drink of the NKVD, who preferred them to fingernail extraction for the same reason certain American torture advocates do: they can be made to seem as if they are not torture, even though they are, in fact, actually torture. FYI.

Cheney's flying circus

Remember how, back in 2000, Dick Cheney was supposed to be the pragmatic, experienced 'adult' in the Bush-Cheney partnership?

That's kind of laughable now, isn't it?

Today in the news we have Cheney reasserting the thoroughly-discredited theory that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in league with Al Qaida:

Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on Thursday as the Defense Department released a report citing more evidence that the prewar government did not cooperate with the terrorist group.

Why does Cheney continue to insist upon this? Well, keep in mind he's trying to defend the indefensible (the tattered case for the Iraq invasion). Logic theory tells us that when we start with a flawed assumption, we can come to any conclusion we like. That's why it's so important to get your facts straight before you begin using them to test your hypotheses. When you think about how many flawed assumptions underpinned the argument for war in Iraq (WMDs, Al Qaida links, being greeted as liberators, and a quick, cheap war with minimal troops) it's pretty easy to understand why the whole adventure has turned into such a disaster.

Cheney contended that al-Qaida was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida. Others in al-Qaida planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Al Qaida may well have been operating in Iraq, but then they were (are?) operating in the US and lots of other countries besides. That doesn't mean they had the government's blessing to be there. As a secular, socialist, cult-of-personality dictatorship, Saddam's government had no love for the Islamists who wanted to see him deposed. America was Al Qaida's "far enemy". Regimes like those of Mubarak and Saddam were the "near enemy".

“He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June,” Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. “As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.”

Cheney is deliberately fudging the timelines here: Anyone who has read The Looming Tower (a detailed history of Al Qaida before September 11) or indeed, anyone who simply has a good memory, knows that Zarqawi was not a member of the terrorist group before the US invasion of Iraq -- on the contrary, he was a rival.

The vice president is either mendacious to his core, or thoroughly delusional. Maybe it's both. Thankfully, even given the best medical care, we have to suffer at most 21 more months of Cheney's flying circus.

Tony Blair to resume acting career

Seems our Prime Minister has some plans for his retirement from politics. He's getting back to his acting career:

Tony Blair has agreed to resurrect his interest in acting when he leaves Number 10 after he was approached about a major stage role by his close friend, the artistic director of the Old Vic, Kevin Spacey, The Observer can reveal.

Good for Tony. I really enjoyed the Comic Relief sketch, he did really well. If only we could keep him harmlessly entertaining us, instead of starting wars. However perhaps he should wait until he's actually out of office:

One senior cabinet minister, who did not wish to be named, said: 'An ambassador arrived at Number 10 the other day to find Tony dressed like a Puritan, waving a crucifix in the air and shouting about chasing out the devil. Fortunately the ambassador had studied The Crucible at UCL.'

Good scoop by Pahli Tarikh and Primera Delmes.

Surveillance society

From the article:

We are already a "surveillance society". We are, for the time being, fortunate that the full potential for its abuse is constrained by the pluralist democracy in which we live. However, we do not have to look back very far in history to imagine the use to which such snooping could be put.

A unified Iraq 'surge' theory

I had a thought the other day, about a possible deal that might have been struck between Bush and Maliki and Sadr. It sort of makes sense, since it's a nominal win-win for all the major players. There have been bits and pieces of this floating around but I haven't seen anyone else put them together in a suitably cynical way:

Since Bush's 2 most attractive remaining options are: a) pacify Iraq enough to declare victory and get out; or b) stay the course long enough to hand the problem (and thus a share of the historical blame) to the next president -- with a) being obviously preferable --

And since the Shia government, who have previously been opposed to more troops (because they apparently want to get on with it and crush the Sunni insurgency militarily), are suddenly so agreeable on the subject --

And since things have suddenly gotten much quieter in Baghdad, despite only the first 'surge' troops being in place, with Sadr and his militia having been been remarkably well-behaved (some say melted away to Iran or Sadr City to "wait out" the surge) --

What if all of the above is part of a grand deal? What if the Mahdi army really have 'disappeared' to wait out the end of the surge, with the agreement of Bush and Maliki? Think about what would follow: Bush's "give the surge a chance" miraculously works (the surge being necessary to demonstrate an assertive action). The Americans stick around for a few months of peace and prosperity, declare victory, and finish the mission. After which, Sadr and Maliki get on with the business of ethnic cleansing. The Shia crush the Sunnis and take full control. From afar, Bush cheerleaders and neoconservatives back home in America get to work writing their "we gave them freedom and they chose civil war" history books as the US administration and the military, looking reasonably clever after finally pacifying Baghdad, decide to wash their hands of the whole affair. The official story: America won the Iraq war, but the Iraqis were intent on civil war and that was none of America's business.

A bit messy, but sort of a win-win, no?

The trouble with Rudy

Generally speaking, I like Rudy Giuliani. One of the reasons is that he seems competent. Another is that he's not a pure partisan, and I think American politics could use a good helping of people like Rudy and Obama, who at least seem to be able to talk civilly about their opponents. Unfortunately, I don't think he has a chance in a presidential race, even if he can get the Republican nomination. Andrew Sullivan has a Sunday Times column, "They wrote off resilient Rudy a little too soon", discussing the merits of his potential candidacy. It's a fairly positive assessment, but there's one small thing in the article that got me thinking:

He has also dressed in drag on several occasions. You can YouTube a clip of him in full drag being courted by Donald Trump in a department store. New Yorkers loved it. But it doesn’t go down too well in South Carolina.

I'd seen that clip before and not thought much about it, other than Rudy makes a pretty awful-looking woman. But now, upon reflection, I think the problem goes far beyond South Carolina. I don't personally have a problem with it at all; as a fellow straight man who has, for charity, appeared in -- if not drag, then something akin to it -- I too have been photographed in attire that one might call 'non-presidential'. I think it's silly in principle, but there is something to the idea of seeming presidential. Will Rudy's drag appearances hurt him in seeking the nomination? Probably, he will be mocked. We'll probably all get tired of seeing the replays. So can he possibly be taken seriously as a president? Think about all the times you've seen protesters, whether in America or elsewhere, demonstrating against Bush. Or Clinton. Think about all the caricatures and effigies you've seen. Now imagine they were wearing dresses and horrible makeup. I just think Rudy, and America, would never see the end of it.

Surveillance

When I go on and on (and on) about surveillance, tracking, and other forms of privacy invasion here in Britain, it seems as if -- to many people, especially the British -- I come across as paranoid. People point out all the benefits of the technology, and virtually suggest that I give up my tinfoil hat.

I guess sometimes I don't do a good job of explaining my philosophical problem with all this 'benign' surveillance. Maybe I don't do myself any favours when I phrase my argument too stridently, too emotionally, by calling it the "infrastructure of tyranny". (I do believe that's the case, but I should be a little bit more conscious of using the "soft sell" when I care passionately about a topic).

So, here's a short article about the creep of surveillance technology. One quote:

Professor Jeffrey Rosen wrote an article in The New York Times in 2001 showing that surveillance cameras in London, which were put up to combat the threat of terrorism from the Irish Republican Army, are actually used to intimidate vagrants and punks -- and, predictably, to ogle women.

It's not the ogling or harassment of today that worries me so much: It's the mission creep. It's what might come next. I worry about the future. Every time we voluntarily give up some little piece of our privacy or freedom to secure some benefit, we lose it forever. We lose it to leaders of the future whom we haven't yet met, who will use it to further agendas that we can't yet know. Should we be so trusting?

Saddam

Saddam Hussein was executed this past Saturday. I have thought about it a lot these last few days. I will respect the opinion of anyone who says he had it coming, since surely he -- if anyone can be said to deserve it -- deserved it. For me though, I am against capital punishment. I am against killing, period. I am against it when Saddam kills Shiites and Kurds and political opponents. I am against it when a criminal kills somebody. I am against it when George Bush sends American soldiers to kill Iraqis, Afghans, etc. And I am against it when a judge permits a state to kill a criminal. I'm not religious, but I seem to have absorbed a lesson that many religious people appear to have overlooked (since, after all, the religions of the World seem pretty unanimous in this): thou shalt not kill. [ Here's a memorable bit of humour on the subject, from the Onion after the September 11th attacks ].

Normally, I think Christopher Hitchens is a blustery, irritating (though intelligent) blowhard. He's only good at doing outrage. For the past few years, he's distinguished himself as the only pro-Iraq-war pundit I've followed who still manages to be outraged at all the people who disagree(d) with him about Iraq. Still, somehow, this week with his bluster he's managed to sum up my own feelings about the Saddam execution (and the accompanying mobile phone video) better than I could. Here's the article. Here's a quote:

At one point, one of the attending magistrates can be heard appealing for decency and calm, but otherwise the fact must be faced: In spite of his mad invective against "the Persians" and other traitors, the only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene is the father of all hangmen, Saddam Hussein himself.

Yes, well done Mr. Maliki: you've managed to make people feel pity for the "Butcher of Baghdad".

Pesky terrorist ringleader not a terrorist

As I mentioned in a previous post, the big sensational British Summer terrorism bust (the one about blowing up 10 airliners, and "mass murder on an unimaginable scale") is quietly disappearing. Suspects are being released, bailed, or charged with lesser offenses.

The latest news is that the supposed ringleader has just turned out not to be a terrorist after all:

The arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan triggered arrests in the UK of a number of suspects allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic flights.

The Pakistani authorities described him as a key figure.

But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation.

I have previously posted doubts about the whole thing here, here, here, and here.

I don't think the public will notice. Innocent people don't generally make for good headlines. The police and politicians certainly won't be anxious to remind us about the whole affair. All that will remain in the public memory will be some vague, false notion that Tony Blair saved us from terrorists this Summer. All of the UK's big terrorism busts have turned out to be bogus in the end, but the public don't seem to have noticed. We therefore remain as fearful, gullible, and manipulable as ever, and Tony Blair gets to look "tough on terrorists".

Do you spot a pattern? Will you believe them the next time?

I can't believe what you're saying

Excerpt from the article:

The UK's senior counter terrorism police officer has questioned the value of stop-and-search powers.

Andy Hayman, the Metropolitan Police's assistant commissioner responsible for anti-terror probes, said few arrests or charges arose from such searches.

"It is very unlikely that a terrorist is going to be carrying bomb-making equipment around... in the street," he told a London police authority hearing.

It was "a big price to pay" given some people feel unfairly targeted, he said.

It's a shame to be so shocked by this rare dose of common sense and respect for liberty and privacy. If only this was the beginning of a trend. If only something like this was likely to actually change the slippery slope we're currently descending. I have a feeling that in the UK, we (OK, they -- I have no intention of sticking around to find out) are going to be saying a lot of if onlys 10+ years from now.

Still, credit to the guy. And a policeman no less.

Feedback

My Dad writes:

An interesting read, although I haven't been through it all yet. I admire your intelligent analysis of the events that concern you and your single-mindedness in expressing your thoughts and opinions.

Hey, that's the beauty of a blog -- it's a one-sided conversation! Well, I guess people can leave comments if they want to argue a point. It's useful to have an outlet when I get a "bee in my bonnet" about something.

Just so long as you don't allow your natural (and no doubt healthy) skepticism to prejudice - in the actions of politicians, for example - consideration of the possibility both of good intent, and even sometimes justifiable cause.

Good point. I worry sometimes about coming across as a conspiracy nut when I write about some things (particularly the 'British liberty' stuff). I don't think it's all a conspiracy, and I don't think our politicians are specifically out to harm or oppress us. Politics here are very populist -- they pander transparently to the latest headlines in the Sun and the Mirror. Being tough on terrorism and crime (and playing on fears of same) is a big vote-getter, and of course the police really just want to be good at catching bad guys.

The problem is that in Britain, they just don't either understand or care about the "slippery slope" side of privacy, police powers, and the like. Authorities (even benign, well-meaning ones) have a natural tendency to want to increase their power and control over people. One of the beautiful things about the American constitution and mindset is that they recognize this and structure their branches of government accordingly, so that there are "checks and balances" in a somewhat adversarial system. Canadians have the same kind of mindset I think, but not the formal structure to address it. The British have neither and I think they'll come to regret it eventually.

I try to explain to people here that sure, it's not so terrible now because we have an essentially well-meaning government, and the "if you're not doing anything wrong..." argument holds some water at the present time. But we're building the infrastructure of tyranny in Britain. All that needs to happen is, we accidentally elect the tyrant who'll really harness all this power -- this detailed knowledge of our daily lives and movements -- we're going to hand him. I like to point out to people that since there's no formal constitution and no guarantee of free speech here, it is theoretically and practically possible for a majority government to pass laws governing political speech, and make it illegal to criticize the Prime Minister, for example. And with all the surveillance we've got, they'll be able to spot when you're being 'subversive', communicating or meeting with the wrong sorts of people, etc. I'm not saying it will ever happen, but it really could. Brits just aren't concerned by it, but I think they should be.

On the policing side, I think the police here are essentially lazy; they don't much like spending time doing old-fashioned police work -- they much prefer when computers can tell them who was where and who did what. Thus we're on this path of computerized data-gathering of everything we do.

PS: I wonder how thick your file is with the CIA.

I guess we'll find out when we land in New York in a couple of weeks! >8^}

Deferred success

Last year educators in the UK proposed the idea that no child should be allowed to think they'd failed something, but were instead experiencing "deferred success".

Luckily, common sense prevailed over the educators' amateur child psychology, and the "deferred success" initiative [ insert obvious joke here ] failed:

Ian Pringle, from Canvey Island, Essex, said: "We'll be ridiculed. Please do not vote for this motion."

So was Tony was having a little fun at George's expense here, by not stopping him from saying this about Iraq?:

With chief war ally Tony Blair of Britain by his side, Bush declared he's "disappointed by the pace of success"

The blame game

The time for feeling smug about my vociferous pre-war opposition to George Bush's Iraq adventure has long since passed, if there ever was such a time. It became apparent some time ago that not only is America going to 'lose' in Iraq (due to the persistent insurgency) but that barring unforseen miracles, Iraq is going to tear itself apart. A lot of people are going to die, and even after the dust has settled it will take a generation to fully recover. I saw that in Lebanon last November (before America decided to let Israel have another go at them, too). A lot of things in Lebanon still had bullet holes in them, 15 years after the fact.

This descent into civil war in Iraq is much more serious to me than America's (or my own) pride, and despite my antipathy toward the current American government, I truly, honestly never wanted to see this project fail so disasterously -- indeed, I wouldn't have thought it possible. The indifference to the magnitude of the task at hand, the ineptitude, and the incompetence, are staggering. I highly recommend the book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas E. Ricks. It will set your blood boiling, if it doesn't make you weep in despair. Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that warmongering cabal are callous, criminal, and inhuman. They have only slightly more concern for the thousands of dead and maimed American soldiers than they do for the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dead Iraqis. These men are little better than Saddam himself.

As it has become apparent that America wants to "get out" of Iraq -- besides a dozen or so permanent military bases, that is -- I've come to disagree with the Cindy Sheehans and John Murthas on the anti-war side in America. Morally, America cannot simply walk away just as the slaughter begins in earnest. America created this situation, and it falls to America to put it right, or at least mitigate the disaster. The only moral thing America can do in Iraq is persist. Personally, I don't care if it pains them to do so; Maybe they'll think twice before starting their next war.

So this morning comes an article on MSNBC about how the new game in town, in Washington, is the blame game. Everyone sees the Iraq project is a failure, and they know that history will record it as such. So now they're casting about for a way to make it someone else's fault. This is quite aside from the fact that the Bush crew are flailingly trying to discourage people from using the term "civil war" to describe what's happening. We know why this is so; it's all about the history books. The President most certainly does not want his legacy to be summed up with the sentence, "Following Bush's half-baked invasion, and ignominious withdrawal, Iraq descended into civil war". It will be difficult to leave and declare victory while everyone thinks there's a civil war going on.

Back to the blame game: Whose fault will it be? Why, the Iraqis' fault of course. They just weren't good enough to live up to America's lofty vision. From the article:

From troops on the ground to members of Congress, Americans increasingly blame the continuing violence and destruction in Iraq on the people most affected by it: the Iraqis.

And another quote:

"It is the first manifestation of a 'Who lost Iraq?' argument that will likely rage for years to come," said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University expert on terrorism who has worked as a U.S. government consultant in Iraq.

I don't think the history books will say that this was the Iraqis' fault. Just in case anyone needed reminding, the Iraqi people didn't ask to be invaded, have their government, army, police, ministries, and institutions dismantled. Let's say someone came along and effectively removed all functioning government in Detroit, increased unemployment to 50% (would that be an increase in Detroit?), cut the power supply to 4 hours per day, and made day-long queues for a tank of gasoline at several times the current price. I'm sure, in such a situation, Detroit would be the model of civility. And if things were to go pear-shaped after 4 years of this? Well, blame it on the citizens.

Never mind, install a few military bases behind high walls, strong-arm a few oil deals, declare victory, and hang Saddam on your way out of town, George Bush. Those things are all you ever really cared about anyway. Mission nearly accomplished. That other democracy stuff was just supposed to be frosting.

Following President George W. Bush's half-baked invasion, failure to find weapons of mass destruction, failure to install democracy, and ignominious withdrawal, Iraq descended into civil war. Iraqis just didn't do enough to help themselves.

What happened to these pesky terrorists?

Let's not forget about that big terrorist airline plot that British authorities busted up this summer, as it seems to have largely dropped out of the news (just as the bogus "ricin plot" did). I posted doubts about it here, here, here, and here. Considering that the plot promised "mass murder on an unimaginable scale", I find it odd that some of these guys have been quietly bailed or even released outright. I suspect that when politicians want to scare us with terrorist bogeymen who may or may not be legitimately dangerous, they rely on the fact that the public has a really short memory for news stories -- just in case they turn out to be "semi-harmless losers". If these airline plotters had been the proverbial real deal, I expect that Tony Blair and John Reid would still be crowing about it, and that we would now be seeing sensational terrorism trials.

In fact, I know someone who claims to have been acquainted with one of the arrestees; my friend told me that, far from being an Islamist fanatic, the alleged plotter was a petty drug dealer. I suspect (though I have no further inside information) that in the end, he'll be prosecuted for nothing more than whatever drugs charges they can make stick. [ See also the story of the completely innocent alleged terrorist who was shot in his home by 250 armed policemen, and not properly apologized to, but rather head-spinningly charged for the dodgy porn they subsequently found on his computer. ]

British liberty Pt. IV

The march of "big brother" continues relentlessly here in Britain. Seems like there's a new scheme every week. Last week there was talk of a mandatory nationwide DNA database. Here's the latest: police will be able to fingerprint people on the spot in order to determine identity. The Beeb article is here. First quote:

"Screening on the street means they [police] can check an identity and verify it." Currently an officer has to arrest a person and take them to a custody suite to fingerprint them.

Heaven forbid the police would actually have to show cause to arrest someone before the fingerprints and mugshots stage. But you see, in Britain, all of these schemes are presented as innocent tradeoffs: CCTV cameras are only there to protect you from crime, for example. And in every case I've seen, the British are willing to make the tradeoff. Yes, they're always willing to trade privacy and freedom for some short-term benefit, and they always trust the government and police not to abuse the new powers they award themselves month after month. In this case, the tradeoff is sold as "convenience" along with a veiled "so we don't have to make your life miserable" threat:

Inspector Steve Rawlings, based in Luton, said it takes two sets of fingerprints and the fingerprints are not retained. "The encounter can be 15 minutes on the roadside rather than three hours in the police station," he said.

I've been ticketed at the roadside and required to show proof of insurance, etc., at the police station. It took about 10 minutes, rather than 3 hours. Note that the police and politicians promise that the fingerprints won't be retained, but how will they build their database in the first place? In order to be useful, they need to have my fingerprints on file -- which they currently don't. I don't intend to provide them unless I'm forced to. This last quote contains the spot-on prediction that I'm sure describes the future of this scheme:

Mark Wallace, who represents the civil liberties group, the Freedom Association told BBC Radio Five Live that he had "concerns" about the scheme. "I don't think we should be reassured by the fact that at the moment it's voluntary and at the moment they won't be recorded," he said. "Both of those things are actually only happening in the trial because the laws haven't been passed to do this on a national basis compulsorily and with recording."

The trial is being conducted in Hertfordshire, where I work. In modern-day Britain's surveillance state, we can be fairly certain that before long it won't be voluntary (what real use would it be if it remained voluntary?), that the fingerprints will be retained, and that the whole thing will probably be justified as protecting us from terrorists.

Add it to the list: pervasive CCTV surveillance, automatic number-plate recognition used to track all car journeys, 'Oyster' cards tracking journeys on public transport, DNA databases, arbitary police stop-and-search powers, anti-social behaviour orders, mandatory ID cards, biometric RFID passports, legally-enforced political correctness, and on and on. What fun.

More on these subjects here, here, and here.

E-voting silliness

In America people are determined to fix the voting shenanigans that gave the world the term "hanging chads". Apparently they've been using these mechanical devices to punch holes in a card.

It seems the solution is really complex electronic machines (gee, I wonder if tech-industry lobbyists had anything to do with that decision?). The problem, of course, is that really complex electronic voting machines have lots of potential ways they can disenfranchise people and screw up election results. There have already been cases of suspect results in isolated pockets, suggesting tampering (in which a population that had historically voted for one party, suddenly defied all the latest polling data and voted overwhelmingly for the other party).

Wired News has an article about ways to secure the e-voting machines and make the results verifiable. They include securing the machine's memory card, auditable paper records, and recording hash keys of the software that runs on the machine (to ensure that it's exactly the same software that was approved for the election). Here's the bit that made me laugh:

Combine the best features of touch-screen and optical-scan machines in a single device. Touch-screens are easy to use and are flexible enough to accommodate disabled voters and multiple languages. Optical-scan devices provide reliable paper trails.

We recommend a third alternative that combines the best attributes of both -- a ballot marking machine, such as one made by Election Systems and Software.

These devices let voters make their choices on a touch-screen. But instead of directly recording the votes digitally onto a memory card, the machine prints the votes onto a full-size paper ballot. Voters or election officials then place the completed ballots onto an optical-scan reader (.pdf), where the votes are recorded digitally.

So. This complex, heavily vetted and secured e-voting machine will.... produce a marked ballot paper? Can I suggest another option?:


I have voted in both Canada and Britain, and used this simple voting device to mark a paper ballot. It's relatively tamper-resistant and produces an auditable paper record. When I'm finished, my ballot goes in a box. When the polls close, representatives of each party/candidate get together and count all the paper ballots, and phone in the results. Within hours (or, at most, a day or two) we know the results.

Maybe the US could consider using such a system? It probably worked for them many many years ago, but then they didn't have tech-industry lobbyists to contend with.

Thanks, Israel

From the BBC today:

The conflict in Lebanon has caused devastating damage to the local economy and environment of the ancient port of Byblos. Byblos was not bombed, but it has been deeply damaged by the Israel-Hezbollah war. The harbour and the rocks and the beaches of Byblos are disfigured with oil. It spread up the coast in a thick slick after the Israelis attacked storage tanks at the Jiyyeh power station south of Beirut.

I visited Byblos in November -- here are photos (1, 2) of its beautiful little ancient harbour -- and it was one of the highlights of my Lebanon-Syria trip. I'm sure it will be beautiful again someday. I wonder if Israel will be helping to clean this up?

Pesky terrorists Pt. 4

I've been writing and linking to things expressing my doubts (here, here, and here) about the big alleged air-terrorism plot that emerged this week in London. Today Andrew Sullivan links to an item by Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan (and helped expose some nasty goings-on there). A couple of little excerpts:

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

...In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Lebanon Pt. 3

From the BBC today:

With a truce between Israel and Hezbollah raising hopes of peace in Lebanon, much of the focus is moving towards the task at hand: how to rebuild the country and how to pay for it. ... Tunisia's president has called for an emergency summit of Arab leaders, urging collective support for the rebuilding of the war-torn country. And Sweden has taken a lead in the West by organising a donor conference on 31 August, which some 60 countries and aid agencies are expected to attend.

"The world community now has to give its support to Lebanon's recovery and to the Lebanese people who have been severely affected," says Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson.

Maybe Israel and America can help pay for it.

I mean, since they're the ones who blew everything up.

If they don't, and the country descends into chaos yet again, then all that rhetoric about supporting emerging democracies (such as Lebanon) will seem pretty empty.

Pesky terrorists Pt. 3

More doubt.

In contrast to previous reports, one senior British official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

I can tell you from recent experience, that if you're:

• British
• Planning on boarding a plane next week to blow it up; and
• You haven't got your passport yet

Then I'm afraid your friends are going to have to go to martyr's paradise without you. Maybe they'll save you some virgins, but tell them not to expect you for a month or so.

Sullivan makes an equivalence

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, who has chosen his side in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, tries to counter some of the scenes of horror from Lebanon with this.

This Was Once A Car ...and then a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket arrived.

Well Andrew, I do feel sorry for the owner of that car. Someone's insurance premiums are really going to skyrocket!

In the meantime, if you have a strong stomach and there are no children about, have a look at some of Israel's handiwork here.

Pesky terrorists Pt. 2

A couple of entries ago I decided to just "throw it out there" that I had unformed and unsubstantiated doubts about the big counter-terrorism bust yesterday here in London (the one that involved blowing up a bunch of planes). Today on The Register, they're suggesting that some other folks at the US Department of Homeland Security might possibly have some doubts, too. Here's a couple of choice paragraphs, with some very handy links to articles about the previous big British counter-terror operations of the last few years (all of which have turned out to be fairly or entirely bogus):

In favor of option one, we have a recent history of British eagerness to announce breakthroughs in the struggle against the forces of darkness, with nothing to show for it. We have Jean Charles de Menezes shot to bits at point-blank range for behaving oddly just after the 7/7 atrocity. We have the imaginary ricin plot. We have the imaginary chemical bomb plot. And we have the imaginary red-mercury suitcase nuke plot.

There's been a lot of crying wolf in London, so it should surprise no one to find that the Americans have heard enough of it. (Although, to be fair, Washington has trumpeted its share of counterterrorist breakthroughs involving semi-harmless losers, but that's no reason for them to buy into anyone else's.)

Sullivan makes it explicit

A couple of entries ago I hinted that conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, who likes to accuse opponents of Israeli militarism of anti-Semitism, might be a bit of an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot himseld. He says this today:

There is something terribly sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in history. It is Nietzsche's ressentiment, but with God re-attached. We should indeed fear these people for the hideous carnage they can wreak for the sake of their God. But we should never let our fear overwhelm our contempt for them - their sickness, their evil, their petty insecurities, their inability to live meaningful lives and their attempt to assuage this by murdering others in God's name. Yes, they evil. But they are also pathetic, miserable excuses for human beings.

I guess that makes it about as explicit as can be -- he's just denounced the entire religion. He doesn't say that a few fanatical jihadists are sick: To Andew, it's the "Muslim mind" that's sick. And he tosses around accusations of anti-Semitism?

I guess in the same way that a thief always thinks everyone's trying to steal from him, maybe a certain kind of bigot always thinks everyone else is a racist.

Pesky terrorists

...disrupting everyones' Summer holiday plans. Today British police arrested a load of people, claiming they've foiled a massive terrorist plot to explode airliners headed for the USA:

A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said. It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.

At the moment, details are sparse. So, we all have to take this news at face value, I guess.

However, given the record of the British police and the politicians that motivate them, let just say that I have a small doubt in my mind. Remember the big 'ricin' terrorist plot involving, as it turned out, the dangerous posession of apple cores? (yes, I mean the fruit).

I don't know why I doubt it, I have no specific hunches, and maybe they really did foil a big plot. But still...

Sullivan and Israel

To conservative (but sometimes sensible) blogger Andrew Sullivan, the destruction of Lebanon is justified as part of the existential struggle of the state of Israel. An email from me to Andrew:

So, just so I'm clear, you support this, right?:
http://visopsys.org/andy/cat/2006/08/Lebanon-pt-ii.html

Because Hezbollah attacked a military patrol on the wrong side of the border? That's the threat to Israel's existence?

(the whole "threat to Israel's existence" thing is laughable anyway. They could kill every Arab in the Middle East if they were allowed to)

Did you notice that Hezbollah only fires rockets at Israeli cities in *response*, and that the other day, they largely stopped when Israel paused its attacks?

You know as well as anybody that Olmert needed a provocation so that he could swing his dick around, proving his tough-guy bona-fides, because he didn't have the military resume of Sharon.

Ever been to Lebanon? I visited in November. It was becoming beautiful again. The Lebanese have worked so hard to put conflict behind them. They are a natural democracy. They are friends of America. They barely *have* a military, for crying out loud.

Israel are bullies.

No response to that. But then, maybe that's to be expected. To Andrew, people who oppose the actions of Israel are anti-Semites:

The current war is not only bringing out the Jew-haters in America, like Mel Gibson, but also in Europe. Yesterday, one of Norway's leading writers, Jostein Gaarder, author of best-seller "Sophie's World," with 26 million copies in print, wrote an astonishing op-ed in Aftenposten, Norway's leading paper. It's called "God's Chosen People."

Here's a translation of some of the Gaarder piece to which he's referring:

There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.

We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep at its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism...

We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

I don't like the tone of this either, in that it's a bit overwrought, but that's all. Is it not legitimate to be enraged by what Israel is doing in Lebanon? To Andrew Sullivan, this is anti-Semitism. Some people, like Andrew, willfully refuse to recognize the difference between disagreeing with Israel, and racism. It's not that he doesn't know the difference, of course, and I don't even think it's necessarily malicious -- it's just intellectual laziness. If you're engaged in debate, and the person on the other side of the issue resorts to crude (and inflammatory) name-calling, it usually means they've run out of worthwhile arguments -- they want to shut you up. One way to end a meaningful debate in a hurry is to start calling the other person a racist.

Mr. Sullivan does have ideas about the current Hezbollah-Israel conflict, and here they are: The survival of Lebanon is a worthwhile cost of Israel asserting itself, and deterring Hezbollah from cross-border skirmishing. People of Lebanon be damned. Dead civilians be damned.

That's a legitimate position to hold (though I happen to stongly disagree), but let me turn Andrew's name-calling around on him: Mr. Sullivan has nothing but contempt for Arabs and Muslims, and displays a typically American (sorry!) combination of derision, arrogance, and ignorance. Even while he mocks them, he can't be bothered to learn the difference between a burqa and a hijab.

He didn't change his mind about the Iraq war until lots of Americans started dying. Tens of thousands of dead Arabs didn't really rate a second thought. Why? Maybe for the same reason he doesn't care about the suffering in Lebanon. But I wouldn't want to start name-calling.

Police innovation

The latest suspicious behavior targeted by British police:

Iraqi man 'filmed terror targets'. An Iraqi man filmed video footage of potential targets for a terrorist attack on London, a court was told. Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye were among the sights on tapes made by Rauf Mohammed, Woolwich Crown Court heard on Tuesday. The recordings could be of use to someone "angered" by the West's action in his homeland, prosecutors said.

The stupidity and laughability of this should be self-evident. I have nothing further to add, except to say that I too am angered by the West's actions in Iraq, and I too have photographed London tourist attractions. However, I am not an Arab.

If you have any questions, go to the back of the class.

Lebanon Pt. II

Some nice before and after shots of Israel's handiwork, courtesy of CNN. This is a suburb of Beirut by the way -- this is not a place from which Hezbollah has been launching rockets. This is not even in the "conflict zone". This is Israel destroying the lives of thousands and thousands of Lebanese civilians:

Criminals.

Lebanon and Israel and America Pt. 2

So today, the leader of Hezbollah threatened to attack Tel Aviv:

"If you hit Beirut, the Islamic resistance will hit Tel Aviv and is able to do that with God's help," Nasrallah said in a televised address.

He justified it this way:

"You attack our cities, our villages, our civilians, our capital, we will react," he said. "At any time you decide to stop your aggressions on our villages and towns and cities and our civilians, we will not hit any settlement or any Israeli city."

Trying not to sound too biased, I guess I'd have to say that sounds reasonable. Notice that when Israel temporarily suspended airstrikes, Hezbollah stopped firing rockets? And that when Israel resumed airstrikes, Hezbollah fired more rockets than ever before?

While it's true that Hezbollah provoked the whole mess, it was a minor provocation compared to what has followed; they attacked an Israeli military patrol, not civilians. Israel has responded by punishing the whole country of Lebanon and killing civilians (and don't say it isn't deliberate -- if you level apartment buildings, you at least don't care if you kill civilians). In return, of course, Hezbollah has done likewise, firing rockets at Israeli cities. This is the nature of warfare. Both sides try to inflict pain on the other.

Now, why has Israel responded so drastically to a minor provocation? After all, the two sides have been skirmishing at the border for a long time now. So, why? Because new Prime Minister Ehud Olmert needs to show he's a tough guy. He wasn't seen by the Israeli public as being a strong military leader, the way Sharon was. He views this as his opportunity to beat his chest and establish his bona fides.

By most accounts, Israel has been waiting for the right provocation to justify this operation. Notice everyone seems to have mostly forgotten about those 2 abducted soldiers. And besides, Israel now has 30 or 40 more dead soldiers, plus a couple of dozen dead civilians. Worth it? Not to save 2 soldiers it isn't, especially when Hezbollah offered a prisoner exchange. They've exchanged prisoners with Israel before.

Now, here's Condoleezza Rice's response to Hezbollah's latest threat:

"The international community needs to say to Hezbollah that these kinds of threats are also not helpful at a time when the international community, the Lebanese people, the Israeli people, all want an end to the hostility," she told "Larry King Live" in a taped interview to be broadcast Thursday night.

So, it's okay if Israel makes threats, and targets civilians and infrastructure. It's not okay when Hezbollah does it. Got it. And America is trying to pretend to be a moderating force here? They arm one side, and make excuses for one side. They are on Israel's side, and everyone in the World knows it, so let's not try to pretend otherwise. For Lebanese people, that must hurt; Lebanon has been the most pro-western and pro-American country in the Middle East, not to mention the only natural Arab democracy.

By the way, opinion polls do not support Rice's assertion that the Israeli people want an end to the hostility.

America allows Israel to continue its offensive, ostensibly to give it time to weaken Hezbollah, but can't abide Hezbollah fighting back? Got it. And who really suffers here anyway? Israeli civilians, and much more so, Lebanese civilians. Sounds like a plan.

Punishing all of Lebanon, of course, is the point. Israel wants to punish the Lebanese people until they decide that supporting Hezbollah isn't worth it. On the contrary, I think Hezbollah is going to come out of this with more popularity than ever.

I hope Israel and America end up with a big black eye over this. I don't approve of Hezbollah's continuing fight with Israel (after Israel's withdrawal from Southern Lebanon a few years ago), but at this stage, I hope they have the last laugh. And I bet they will.

Lebanon and Israel and America Pt. 1

This article describes a mass burial of Lebanese bombing victims in the city of Tyre:

A Shiite sheik arrives and begins talking to members of the media. I pull him aside and ask him one question: "What message would you send to the people of America?" "Israel?" he asks. "No," I reply. "America."

"I love the people of America. It's the government I hate. Tell the American people that we received their gift. The missile that they gave to Israel - we have received it, and this is the result," he says, motioning to the coffins.

Lebanon Pt. I

I think some people who know me are probably wondering why I haven't commented about the current situation in Lebanon, given the fantastic trip I had there a few months ago, and given my already negative feelings about Israel. I think really, I'm just so sad and pessimistic about the whole thing that I can't really come up with anything appropriate to say. I'm in a state of disbelief about the pointless destruction and the punishment of innocent people, both in Lebanon and Gaza, by a supposedly enlightened country, with the unflinching support by the US. The mind just boggles. What are they thinking? That this will contribute to peace in the middle east? That Hamas and Hezbollah will just give up and go home? That Lebanese and Palestinians and Syrians and Iranians will just eventually bow down and give in to Israeli/American will? Or, just maybe, will this radicalize more people and spawn a new generation of Jihadis? What seems like the most likely outcome to you?

Serious water crimes division

It's a good thing Britain doesn't have any actual problems. Now games with water guns are a real serious concern for the British police:

British police have condemned a role-playing game where contestants travel all over London armed with water pistols looking to "assassinate" other players, saying it could spark terrorism alerts.

Jeebus people, let's get some common sense and sense of proportion, already. At least the police will probably have more success catching and punishing these baddies (I mean, as opposed to actual terrorists) since they'll tend to be conspicuously carrying large, luminous, orange-and-yellow Super Soakers.

Sorry, I just came back from a relaxing holiday, and I'm finding this place a little hard to take today. Spend a few days away from Brits, and when you return the first things that hit you are the loudness, the coarseness, and the pointless undirected aggression. Then put yourself and the aforementioned unpleasant, grouchy gits in a small, overcrowded country, with miserable weather, and stir...

A blow against Guantanamo

A bit of good news in the "global war on terror"

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Bush administration does not have the authority to try terrorism suspects by military tribunal.

Good news, that is, for democracy, the rule of law, due process, human rights, and all those sorts of things we've come to expect from free societies. All of those things the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan believe they're fighting for.

If you have evidence against them, charge them in either a criminal court or a court martial, so that the defendants can know and challenge the evidence against them and defend themselves properly.

How can Bush and co. be afraid of that, if these really are "cold blooded killers"? Because the evidence against most of them is flimsy to non-existent, and much of what there is was "confessed" under duress -- we won't say the 't' word.

Maybe now they will close Guantanamo. It is a stain on the honour of America. It's a shameful thing that it took the US Supreme Court to force the issue, but at least it shows the system works, eventually.

Spinning the cock-ups better

One way to try and avoid recriminations when you screw something up is: Declare repeatedly that you did the right thing, and lecture everyone that you just need to help them understand you better. This is called spinning (see George Bush and Tony Blair on Iraq). Today, the politicians and police declare that they did everything correctly, and will continue to do things the same way, but that they need better P.R. in the future

The arrests in Forest Gate came after a tip from a credible source, the Metropolitan Police Authority was told.

Maybe not so credible? Since the source was apparently wrong and the police raided, shot, and inappropriately detained an innocent man?

Sir Ian defended the decision to raid the property but said police "did not find what we were looking for and it seems we were wrong". He added: "There will be other raids but the lesson of Forest Gate is that we have to find new methods of engaging with the Muslim community in particular to reassure them of the necessity and appropriateness of police actions."

So, even when the police are wrong and harm innocent people, then focus on damage control instead of justice, what's needed isn't more careful vetting of intelligence, more surveillance of suspects before raids, more evidence, more accountability, and better policing generally. What's needed is "engagement with the community". Better P.R.! Carry on boys, you're doing a heckuva job so far.

Cock-up: Blair's behind it 101%

Don't inhibit police, Blair says. Because obviously, they're good at this sort of thing.

Tony Blair has told anti-terror police not to be "inhibited" in the wake of controversy over the Forest Gate raid. Mr Blair told MPs he fully endorsed the apology given by Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman for the "hurt" caused in the raid. But he said Mr Hayman's team were doing a superb job and he stood "101%" behind them when they acted on intelligence.

By the way, the apology was phrased as follows:

Mr Hayman said: "I am aware that in mounting this operation we have caused disruption and inconvenience to many residents in Newham and more importantly those that reside at 46 and 48 Lansdowne Road. I apologise for the hurt that we may have caused."

"Hurt we may have caused"? "Disruption and inconvenience"? They shot an innocent man for crying out loud. I've heard that getting shot definitely hurts. Never mind the psychological trauma of having your house stormed by 250 armed, masked policemen in the middle of the night. I'm inconvenienced when my train is late; Do you think this goes a little bit beyond disruption and inconvenience?

Mr. Kahar, the innocent brother who was shot in the botched raid, responded:

Is he 101 per cent behind the bullet which went into my chest? I am the same age as his son. I am as innocent as his son.

Well said, Mr. Kahar. I've never been a victim of overzealous British policing the way you have, or the way David Mery has, but I'm with you 101%. I hope you get all the apology you wish for, and plenty of compensation besides. Sue them blind if you have to, we the taxpayers owe you a lot for the bungling of Blair's anti-terrorism police. Thank goodness they didn't shoot you seven times in the head like Jean-Charles.

By my count, in this armed anti-terrorism campaign, it's shot terrorists: 0, shot innocents: 2. Maybe they should start asking questions first and shooting later.

Cock-up: Resignation calls, politicians involved...

Newspapers are calling (again) for Ian Blair, the Met police chief, to resign:

Senior policing and political figures, including the prime minister, have defended police chief Sir Ian Blair amid growing calls for his resignation.

And politicians including Tony Blair and Red Ken are hopping to his defense:

Tony Blair's spokesman said: "The prime minister continues to give his full support to Ian Blair - full stop."

It's a little scary, even to me, how much of this I predicted (all of it, by my reckoning). However I have to confess that I'm not a clairvoyant; This is just how things happen in Britain. Needless to say I absolutely do not apologize for my cynicism:

• The police are incompetent nincompoops with too many powers.
• The police are a political tool.
• The politicians are incompetent, corrupt nincompoops with wayyy too much power.
• The politicians think we're all fools, but they keep getting away with this stuff so maybe they're right.

Act of war

Apparently, according to the US military, killing yourself can be an "act of war":

The suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amount to acts of war, the US military says. The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were "committed" and had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

A more ridiculous thing I have not heard all day (mind you, I've been out in the garden washing the motorcycle). According to this theory, the inmates did this to make the US look bad, and therefore it was an attack. I'm surprised he stopped short of calling it a terrorist attack.

I have another theory that might be worth exploring: perhaps they killed themselves out of despair at being imprisoned without due process for years on end, possibly tortured, and with no real prospect of a resolution in the near future?

Perhaps it's not these inmates who are making the US look bad? Perhaps Guantanamo Bay makes the US look bad? Perhaps the US has a knack for making itself look bad nowadays? What if maybe it's not merely a case of "looking bad"?

Cock-up: Recriminations begin

The fallout has begun as it becomes clear the Met police focused their big showy terrorism bust on two innocent men (and shooting one of them during the arrest).

"The men, who had been held under the Terrorism Act 2000 and questioned on suspicion of terrorism involvement, were released shortly before 2030 BST on Friday. Through the week outcry at the arrest of the men developed into a protest about the tactics and the way information was leaked out which may have been misleading. ...Of particular concern, he said was "how we find ourselves with one of the brothers shot and quite a lot of the slander, quite honestly, which has been out in the press""

And the police say that the investigation continues -- that they're still looking for the chemical weapon -- implying that the men aren't really innocent. That's unfair too. Just apologize.

Cock-up confirmed

See my previous predictions. Step 1 in cock-up recovery: release the innocent suspects late on a Friday to minimize news coverage.

"Two men arrested after a raid on a house in east London have been released without charge, Scotland Yard said."

If these innocent men spent more time in jail than necessary, to try to minimize embarrassment to politicians, the politicians should be the ones in jail. But of course that's never going to happen.

Anatomy of a cock-up

So this week 250 Met policemen stormed a house in north London in a massive counter-terrorism operation (you probably saw a headline about it somewhere). One of the two brothers arrested was shot, non-fatally, in the shoulder. Various other people in the adjoining house were also arrested and then released.

I, in my innate cynicism, am convinced we are in the midst of seeing a "cock-up recovery".

The first sign of trouble, for me, was the more-or-less immediate concession that they hadn't found the chemical weapon they were looking for (yet). Nor any weapons, they said.

The second sign of trouble was the wishy-washy suggestion I saw on the television news, from "police sources" that one of the brothers might have shot the other. I thought they hadn't found any weapons!? It occurred to me that the Met police were feeling a bit sheepish about having shot this fellow. (This proposition has quietly disappeared from the news). The unsavoury George Galloway, in reference to this incident, characterized it thusly: "People are shot down by the police and then they're slandered by the police afterwards in an attempt to confuse people about the blunders that have been made."

The third sign of trouble was the fact that the police kept searching and searching and (interrogating and interrogating), yet failed to announce a big terror-fighting breakthrough. At this point, I started to wonder whether there was something going on here.

The fourth sign was politicians (ahem, Tony Blair) and Scotland Yard spokesmen leaping to the -- preemptive -- defense of the police, saying that the raid was "absolutely necessary", and that "we had no choice" [based on the intelligence]. This should immediately cause any skeptic to question whether the raid was absolutely necessary, and whether they really had no choice. At this point, I became pretty sure there was something going on here.

"To do otherwise we would have been failing in our duty to make London safer and protect all Londoners."

Quite.

The fifth sign was the application to extend the detention of the suspects. Initially the police had been granted permission to hold the suspects until Wednesday for interrogation. The subsequent request to extend the detention was for another week, until next Wednesday, or failing that until this Friday. At this point I became convinced that there's something going on here.

(I've seen no word on the BBC today about the outcome of the request. Hmm.)

I anticipate and predict the following:

• That the men are innocent. That the arrest was a mistake.
• That the police know there's going to be fallout, and that they know they will be embarrassed.
• That the police only want to extend the detention time so that they can postpone the embarrassment (and distance it from the big arrest headlines, so that it's not so much in the public consciousness).
• That when the men are released, it will happen late on a Friday if possible (see legal application, above), because that's politically the best time to announce bad news (fewer people are paying attention).
• That Tony Blair has leapt to the defense of the Met police because there are going to be more calls for the resignation of police commissioner Ian Blair (no relation).

Ian Blair has been a dead man walking for a long time. He is a buffoon, and he's been screwing things up politically for a long time. For some reason Tony Blair doesn't want him to resign in disgrace.

When, in the wake of this splashy (botched?) terror bust, Andy Hayman, Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner is saying, "We must all pull together. This is not the time for conflict and anger", that suggests we're about to hear a big mea culpa following "the most significant anti-terror operation this year".

If these suspects are innocent, and have their detentions extended -- particularly so that their release comes on a Friday afternoon -- then they have been deliberately deprived of their liberty by people who would knowingly stoop to such things to protect their careers (anyone say politicians?). I don't know if that's actually a crime in Britain -- probably not -- but it damn well should be.

All of this remains to be seen; this is just the way it looks right now. Maybe there'll be more to write tomorrow. Maybe the police will announce a big terror breakthrough. Maybe the suspects will be charged with "public nuisance" (a.k.a. annoying the police) or some other misdemeanor, just to imply that they're not really innocent victims. Maybe they'll be released tomorrow afternoon, shortly after we've all left work and headed for the pub to watch the World Cup and start our weekends. That last possibility sounds like a good bet.

I'll apologize for my cynicism if my predictions turn out to be wrong.

Will the meddling never end?

Here's the latest social engineering experiment in Britain, "rights for cohabitees". There is no concept here of "common law marriage" as there is in N.A. Generally speaking common law marriage means that if you live with your partner for some continuous period -- often 2 years -- you are considered "common law spouses" and are technically legally married, and as such can claim various rights.

Now, Britain also wants to make you legally obligated to your partner if you live with them.

"Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips told the BBC changing the law would undermine marriage.

She said: "This idea that society is changing and therefore the law has to change to keep up with it is wrong, in my view, historically the law has led the progressive dismemberment of marriage by stripping it progressively of meaning."

I think Melanie is wrong that this undermines marriage; One reason people might not get married is that they don't want the legal obligations that can go along with that. If simply living together creates those same obligations, then heck, might as well get married (because ultimately everyone in our culture really expects you to do so -- if you don't it's a bit odd, isn't it?). However, then she says:

"The law is based on justice; justice requires that you don't get something for nothing. You don't claim rights if you don't enter into obligations."

There I can agree. And by the way, could the UK government please stop meddling in our lives? People who want to get married get married. That's most people. Speaking for the rest of us, please let us have our personal lives, and make our choices, in peace.

British Liberty Pt. III

With the confluence of access to modern technology and suspicion of its citizens, Britain has recently commenced down the road of "total information awareness" with computerized tracking of most (virtually all) of its residents at all times. Here are four major ways they accomplish this:

1. Pervasive CCTV (closed-circuit television cameras, A.K.A. surveillance cameras). From Wikipedia:

"based on a small sample in Putney High Street, "guesstimated" the number of surveillance cameras in private premises in London as around 400,000 and the total number of cameras in the UK as around 4,000,000. The UK has 20% of the world's CCTV and one camera for every 14 people."

This article goes into a bit more detail:

"Londoners can each expect to be captured on CCTV cameras up to 300 times a day - the secret state can now follow you from your home, onto the bus, on the bus, getting off the bus and then follow you along the street, and in some areas of the city of London, constantly monitor your movements."

"Barry Hugill, a spokesman for the human rights and civil liberties organization Liberty, said: "This proliferation of cameras is simply astounding. The use of CCTV has just exploded in the last few years, and what is terrifying is that we are alone in the world for not even having a debate about what it means for our privacy."

Automatic computerized facial recognition for these cameras is still in its infancy, but is being tested in various venues including airports and sports stadiums, particularly in the US. Rest assured that Britain will lead the world in deploying this technology nationwide.

2. Automatic number plate recognition systems (license plates). Beginning in earnest this Spring, there are cameras being installed throughout Britain, linked to a central database, which track and record the movements of all vehicles for at least 2 years.

3. Transport For London's Oyster Card, used on buses and trains. It's just an easy payment method, honest. Except they record all your journeys, and keep the records for a couple of years. If you don't use one, you have to pay significantly higher fares. And they've deliberately removed some of the most common ticket options from the cash ticket machines in stations. Want a single journey in central London? Well, now you have to queue at the ticket window for that -- where a belligerently unmotivated person will eventually get around to selling you a ticket, but not before making you feel like you've really inconvenienced them. Now, how about getting one of these handy cards?! You can just swipe it and walk through!

4. Mobile phone tracking. Here, we have a serious problem. In Britain, this is a wholly unregulated activity. Check out the web page for this commercial company in the UK, who gleefully offer, "track your family!" and "track your employees!". Here another company emotes "You can't be with your loved ones every minute of every day, but with [...] you'll always know where they are!". Touching! If this sort of thing doesn't appeal to the worst instincts of every jealous spouse, every paedophile, and every smothering parent, I don't know what will. This is a commercial free-for-all, unrestrained by laws (only a "voluntary industry code of conduct" -- i.e. they want to avoid attracting legislative regulation). Intuitively, all it takes is for one unscrupulous operator to corner the market on "unauthorized" tracking, and become the instant favourite of identity thieves, predators, private investigators, and stalkers everywhere. It wouldn't even be illegal. Taxi companies here can locate you from your call. Of course, it goes without saying that the government and police have access to the same data.

In Britain, if your mobile phone is turned on, any halfway competent police detective or private investigator could tell you where you are, right this moment, without leaving his office. If you drove anywhere today, they could probably tell where you went. If you used public transit, they could probably tell you where you went. If you walked the streets, computers will soon be able to tell them where you went. And if you cowered at home in fear and despair from all this surveillance, well, they know where you live obviously.

But in Britain we have faith that anything the authorities do with this information will be legitimate, and they will protect us from criminals, terrorists, and jealous spouses too.

If I was a criminal trying to avoid being tracked, I'd wear a "hoodie", use pay phones, get a fake number plate (trivial to obtain), and pay a bit more for a cash ticket on the train. Any halfwit criminal has already figured this stuff out, and so has every terrorist -- but at least the authorities can keep a close eye on the rest of us.

British Liberty Pt. II

There is no concept of "unreasonable search" in Britain. For the most part, if a police officer doesn't like the look of you -- regardless of where you are or what you're doing -- that officer can demand to search you. The police don't even have to be looking for any particular thing; they can search you and then prosecute you for whatever they find.

Of course, they can (like police in any authoritarian country) make your life miserable even if you weren't doing or carrying anything illegal. Take a couple of minutes and read David Mery's personal account of his Terrorism Act arrest in a Tube station (he is not a terrorist). They arrested him because:

• they found my behaviour suspicious from direct observation and then from watching me on the CCTV system;
• I went into the station without looking at the police officers at the entrance or by the gates;
• two other men entered the station at about the same time as me;
• I am wearing a jacket "too warm for the season";
• I am carrying a bulky rucksack, and kept my rucksack with me at all times;
• I looked at people coming on the platform;
• I played with my phone and then took a paper from inside my jacket.

However, despite the fact that the police were able to search him and swiftly determine that he was not a suicide bomber, they persisted:

"Arrested for suspicious behaviour and public nuisance, I am driven to Walworth police station. I am given a form about my rights. ...I empty my pockets of the few things they had given me back at the tube station, and am searched again. My possessions are put in evidence bags. They take Polaroid photographs of me. A police officer fingerprints me and takes DNA swabs from each side of my mouth."

They then searched his home, taking lots of "evidence" with them. Note that in Britain, DNA samples taken from suspects who are mistakenly arrested, innocent, never charged, etc., are nonetheless retained in the national DNA database. If you are unlucky enough to fall under suspicion, or just meet a policeman who's a power-tripping bully (surely such a thing doesn't exist!) you have just permanently lost another piece of your privacy.

The bar for this kind of police behaviour is very low in Britain. We are living in a strange kind of hybrid here: a democratic surveillance/police state. The British people I've talked to about it don't see anything wrong with it; in fact it makes them feel safer. They inherently trust their government and police to always do the right thing, as if overreaching, coercion, corruption, bullying, and the potential for abuse didn't exist.

Naturally as a North American I culturally, fundamentally, don't share this instinct. The police and government in this country possess extensive knowledge of our lives, and the power to use it for whatever means they determine. Every day we read news stories in which they demonstrate their inclination to exercise this knowledge and power, right or wrong -- whether for the sake of catching evildoers (great and small), or just finding innovative new ways to tax and regulate us. And virtually no one protests.

I fear and predict that one day Britain wake up with a government they weren't expecting, and find out too late that resistance is futile. Remember, a nation of reasonable, rational people once democratically elected a man named Adolf.

Oh lovely, this is back?

Americans and Canadians are booing one onothers' anthems at sporting events again?:

"booing started from the opening notes of singer Annmarie Martin's rendition of O Canada. While other fans attempted to drown it out by singing along, the boos were audible until the final notes."

Classy. Well, everyone remember that American fans started it this time. And, BTW, Sharks fans, how many of your team's players are Canadian? By my count, nearly half: 12 of 25, including both big stars, Jonathan Cheechoo and Joe Thornton. Oh well, nobody ever said Sharks fans know anything about Hockey (I've been to games at the Tank).

Ashamed of Canada

Speaking of free speech, here's something that makes me ashamed of Canada: the saga of Ernst Zündel. Sure he's a rotten little racist. A holocaust-denier, neo-Nazi, you-name-it. Exactly the sort of person we should hold our noses and defend in the name of free speech. Because the principle of free speech is a mutual covenant between the people of a free society, promising that I'll defend your right to speak your mind, as long as you defend mine -- even if we don't agree.

Here's what my country did. Before any Canadian criticizes the U.S. for things like the Guantanamo bay detention facility, take a look in the mirror:

Here we have a man with some nasty little opinions, who was imprisoned in solitary confinement for two years without charges as a "national security risk" because of purported connections to American white supremacists. He had lived in Canada for some 45 years, and was apparently denied Canadian citizenship due to his undesirable beliefs. In 2005 Canada "deported" him back to Germany to face charges of holocaust denial, because, of course, holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. Is it illegal in Canada? No. But, you see, some of his writing was available on the Internet to German residents, thereby violating German law. He didn't do anything in Germany, he did it in Canada. Not against the law in Canada. Yet, this man is now facing trial in Germany.

Germany and Canada are complicit in this sordid little affair. All I can say is that I hope some international court is able to intervene.

If you think that what happened here is okay, consider your position if you write anything pro-democracy online; What you're doing might be illegal in China. Don't post anything critical of Islam or Mohammad, for that might get you the death penalty in Saudi Arabia or Iran.

That is, unless your country stands up for your free speech rights -- but I wouldn't bet your life on it if you're Canadian.

British Liberty Pt. I

I couldn't have said it better myself. Andrew Sullivan writes*:

"Tony Blair has never seen a free act he doesn't want to constrain, subsidize, tax, regulate or inspire."

*(I have been in violent disagreement with Andrew on many occasions, particularly because of his single-minded support of the Iraq war, but this apology really restored my respect for him.)

I would take this further, and say it applies to most of modern British life and politics.

From a North American's perspective, coming to grips with civil liberties in Britain can be a tough task. Most of us agree with free speech as an overriding principle, and with perhaps a few extreme exceptions, believe that free speech must be absolute: if you have too many "buts", it's a slippery slope, and then the question is -- as with any form of censorship -- "who gets to make the decision?". That's why the U.S. has a constitution that guarantees free speech by default. Canada at least tries to follow along the same lines, with varying degrees of success.

Contrast this with free speech in Britain. Free speech exists here only insofar as the current government hasn't deemed particular speech illegal. People here will tend to pooh-pooh this hypothetical, but in theory the current majority government could vote a law tomorrow making it illegal to criticize Tony Blair. And henceforth, until such law was repealed by some theoretical future government, criticizing Tony Blair would be illegal (I'm not sure why Labour hasn't tried this yet).

For example, in conversation you can ask a British person whether they believe in free speech, and of course they will answer in the affirmative. However if you then ask them, hypothetically, whether it should be okay for you to say publicly "I hate Japanese people" (I choose Japanese people randomly here, sorry) they will tend to be taken aback and answer something like "of course not", as if it's common sense. You see, racism and bigotry of various sorts are technically illegal in Britain. Saying things like that could get you in trouble. "Political correctness" has actually become law here. The problem is that what's politically correct changes all the time.

I contend that with free speech, as with several other areas of civil liberties, the British have progressed so far down the proverbial slippery slope that they don't recognize it any more.

If you believe in civil liberties and free speech, you have to defend the principle even when you don't agree with someone else's politics (even if they aren't nice). Unfortunately the British pay lip service to principles they don't faithfully believe in.

They're Building Empires

The U.S. military has "702 overseas bases in about 130 countries".

How many foreign military bases exist in the U.S.?

(This question is rhetorical. The answer is obviously zero.)

If there's a U.S. military base in your country (there is in mine), how do you feel about the sovereignty of your country? Do you think the relationship is reciprocal?

Exceptionalism Pt. I

This is a little out-of-date, but here goes:

For Americans, I ask you to consider a hypothetical scenario.

For many years, a number of Americans, particularly some Irish-Americans, sympathized with the IRA and its cause. This was in the years shortly before America discovered terrorism. But, make no mistake, the IRA were terrorists. And in this case at least, a not-insignificant number of Americans identified not with "civilization" (Rudy "You're either with civilization or with terrorists" Giuliani), but with the terrorists.

So, let's imagine a scenario: It's 199X. Boston, a stronghold of the Irish-American community is attacked in an unmanned airstrike by the British armed forces, attacking a "safe house" for IRA terrorists and/or sympathizers. 18 Americans are killed, including women and children. Some of them may or may not have been IRA terrorists or sympathizers.

What do you think the reaction would be? From the government? From the American public? It would be an act of war, obviously. The British would no longer be considered an ally, but an enemy (even if there were rumours that the American government had secretly sanctioned the act -- but of course denied it).

Now we've established the scenario, tell me why this was okay with most Americans?

I think I know why, actually: Because the 18 dead were a bunch of Pakistanis.

Hosepipe bans

So here's some stupid stuff:

In much of England, including London where I live, we are now under what is called here a "hosepipe ban".

For North Americans and others who haven't heard the term, this means you can't use your garden hose for making things wet. In particular, you can't do things like water gardens or wash your car with the hose (you can do these things with buckets of water if you want, just not with a hose).

So. This is the wettest country you've ever seen. The stuff is falling from the skies by the bucketload. It rains here more-or-less nine months out of the year. The idea that there's a shortage is so typically, amusingly British. They've got more rain than the rest of the world put together (well okay, but you get my point) and they can't seem to capture it for human consumption.

I've heard people say they put rain barrels in their gardens, for watering purposes, and they're perpetually full. You don't have to do anything special to collect a lot of water in Britain, just put out containers big enough to hold as much water as you want. Couldn't they dig some nice big reservoirs? People have been living here for several millennia -- you'd think they'd have mastered this by now.