Africans have yet to see much economic benefit from the policies espoused by the apostles of globalisation. Not exactly many black faces among the delegates either. Scroll through all the Guardian’s pictures here.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/jun/09/bilderberg-spain
This is a very important documentary from the ever excellent Michael Andersen. It requires some patience and concentration, but it is essential to get away from the banalities of the mainstream media and understand the sheer scale of the disaster to which a purblind concentration on the disastrous Afghan war is leading.
Please watch.
I know Diane Abbott slightly. I once had the pleasure of accompanying her across the Canopy Walkway at Kakum in Ghana. The photo of the walkway may come in handy as a metaphor. Last time I met her we chatted in Westminster tube station about Tony Blair – our views on him are similar.
A question for my Labour supporting commenters. I do not know if, now John has stepped down, if Diane will now get enough MP nominations to stand. But why is hr candidature treated as a joke, or at best a half-hearted bit of tokenism? Look at her voting record:
Voted moderately against a stricter asylum system.
Voted very strongly against the Iraq war.
Voted moderately against an investigation into the Iraq war.
Voted moderately against Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
Voted a mixture of for and against allowing ministers to intervene in inquests.
Voted moderately against greater autonomy for schools.
Voted a mixture of for and against introducing ID cards.
Voted a mixture of for and against laws to stop climate change.
Voted moderately for removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
Voted very strongly for a wholly elected House of Lords.
Voted strongly for more EU integration.
Voted moderately for equal gay rights.
Voted very strongly against replacing Trident.
Voted moderately against introducing student top-up fees.
Voted a mixture of for and against a transparent Parliament.
Voted strongly against introducing foundation hospitals.
Voted moderately for the hunting ban.
Diane Abbott is the only possible candidate left who was against the Iraq War, against Trident and for civil liberties. All the other candidates are deeply steeped in Iraqi blood and strongly associated with New Labour’s viciously authoritarian agenda. The frontrunner, David Miliband, spent most of his tenure as Foreign Secretary engaged in numerous legal attempts both to keep secret and to justify Britain’s complicity in torture under New Labour.
But she is the joke candidate because she is the only one who is not an Oxford educated cabinet minister.
Which opens the question, what is New Labour for? To me, it has found its niche as a neo-conservative opposition to a more traditional Conservative party given a still more comparatively Liberal tinge by coalition.
This goes back a few days, but makes some important points on schools, where Tory policies are potentially disastrous:
http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-the-coalitions-education-policies-are-seriously-flawed-19852.html
Child smuggling food into the Warsaw Ghetto
Child smuggling food into Gaza
We hoped the world would never forget. How tragic that it is Israel that has forgotten most completely.
Someone has written me a letter about Bilderberg
http://thetruthserumblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/open-letter-to-craig-murray-and-michael.html
My own view is that those who get overly worried about rich and powerful people meeting to forward their common interest, need to chill out. Of course they do that. It’s just like Davos with added cachet from the thrill of being “secret”. If it were public, I don’t doubt you would find it’s just as banal.
Everything is not directed by Bilderberg, Freemasons, Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, the Rothschilds, the Prieure of Sion or any other grouping. Do the rich and powerful heavily influence western governments? Of course. Do they cabal in various ways? Of course. Is there a hidden force behind everything, a secret world government? No.
This extraordinary passage is from the State Department’s Daily Brieifng yesterday:
QUESTION: Mr. Crowley, it is the Israeli’s actions that need to be investigated. So how can Israel, too ?” best investigation ?” why is the United States opposed to UN investigation?
MR. CROWLEY: As we’ve said, we are completely supportive of an impartial investigation that helps us understand what happens ?” what happened on these ships, and more importantly, working collectively, how we can meet our common objectives of increasing the international support for the people of Gaza, and at the same time, supporting Israel with its legitimate security concerns.
We believe that Israel is in the best position to lead this investigation. But as the Secretary said yesterday, this has to be credible. The international community will be watching this very closely as it unfolds. We want to see this done in a way that meets international standards. We’ll be talking to Israel about how best to accomplish this. We’ll be talking to other countries that may want to play a role in this. And as we ?” as the Secretary said, we are open to ways of making this as credible as possible, including international participation. And that is our view.
QUESTION: Why ?” I think his question, though, was essentially why? And can you explain why Israel is in the best position to lead the investigation (inaudible)?
MR. CROWLEY: Israel is a vibrant democracy. It has effective, competent institutions of government, and Israel is fully capable of investigating a matter that involved its forces. And so can Israel conduct a fair, transparent, credible investigation? The answer is yes.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/06/142591.htm
At the UN Human Rights Council, the USA was joined by only Italy and the Netherlands in voting against a motion condemning the murderous Israeli attack in international waters. (The UK abstained on the pathetic grounds that we should await the outcome of the independent investigation, in the full knowledge that there will be no independent investigation).
Berlsconi’s support for the US and Israel is no surprise, but the Netherlands deserves remark. It has gone on a remarkable journey in the last decade, from a liberal society to one as poisoned with fascism as their Flemish neighbours.
Iain Dale deserves applause and support for taking on the appalling rich man’s thugs, Schillings, and publishing John Sweeney’s Rooney’s Gold.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/06/rooneys-gold-publishing-tale.html
You will recall it was Schillings who had this blog – and several others – taken down temporarily (permanently if they had their way) at the behest of convicted gangster and racketeer Alisher Usmanov.
Just as Schillings had Rooney’s Gold cancelled by Random House on behalf of Wayne Rooney, so they had The Catholic Orangemen of Togo cancelled by Mainstream (50% owned by Random House) on behalf of mercenary killer Tim Spicer. Yet not a word of libel appears in either book.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/01/buy_the_catholi.html
Rooney’s Gold is written by my mate John Sweeney. It should be a good read – the extraordinary things he was telling me about the relationship between football agents and organised crime were a real revelation.
I am going to contact other bloggers to see if we can’t organise a day of campaigning by all major British bloggers against the UK’s notoriously oppressive libel laws, which put nil value on freedom of speech – literally – and are designed for the express purpose of protecting the rich from the revelation of truth.
I remain grateful to emptywheel for the perception that the US defence of the Israeli killings is of a piece with its own claim to the right to murder anybody, anytime, anywhere.
This is starkly illustrated by the news that the US killed 35 women and children in a cluster bomb attack on the Yemen.
This policy is the apogee of what I named in “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo” the “Good Guy, Bad Guy” school of foreign policy analysis. In this view, conflicts are not born out of competition for resources or present or historical injustices, but simply by evil “bad guys”. Eliminate them, and the conflict goes away.
The tragedy is, of course, that the continued US massacre of civilians by these “targeted” attacks in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere will only make conflict more bitter, intense and of course longer. But then, that is good news if you are an arms manufacturer, mercenary, part of the security apparatus or a right wing politician. All of those people’s access to funds, resources and power is increased by continuing conflict.
Today I link to something that I did not enjoy reading, just to illustrate a point. It is a truly poor article by one Niles Gardiner in the Telegraph.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100041748/the-world-demonises-israel-once-again/
I point out merely in passing that the first few hundred overwhelmingly negative comments were deleted by the Telegraph. But the real reason I link is the significance of the strapline:
He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.
I bet he does. He has no international diplomatic experience, no knowledge of international law and very little experience of the hotspots of the world. But he is fully armed with the set of opinions those news outlets want their readers to hear.
Absolutely anybody can write this rubbish. Just string these elements together:
Poor little Israel. Threatened from all sides. Nazi Germany. Islamic terrorism. Hamas. Anti-semitism. Brutal Jihadists. Self defence. The right to return. Only democracy in the Middle East. Self defence. Iranian President threat to wipe off map. 8,000 Hamas rockets. Alliance of liberals, commies and islamists. 9/11. Chopping off hands. Subjugation of women. Taliban. Clash of civilisations. Existential threat. Self defence.
I could churn this stuff out easily and be on Fox, Sky and BBC as often as I like. I could pick up a fat salary like Nick Cohen for a weekly column of this stuff, and pocket the Rupert Murdoch TV fees as an extra. I could sit in a think tank. I would certainly be a great deal more qualified, and a great deal more convincing, than Niles pisspoor Gardiner. I write a lot better too.
But then I am handicapped by morality.
Which reminds me. Having followed the media coverage of the Israeli action very carefully, have you noticed what seems a complete absence on TV of bona fide experts in maritime law?
Normally live news brings in “experts” at the drop of a hat to fill in the 24/7 broadcasting, but despite the fact that professors of international law specialising in the law of the sea are not exactly hard to find, no TV station has asked one about the legality of the Israeli action.
That is because the martime law community is unanimous that the Israeli action is illegal.
For anybody inclined to be sympathetic to BP over the Gulf oil link, note that its latest capping effort is capturing about 10,000 barrels of oil a day, estimated to be about half of what is leaking.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/06/bp-oil-spill-chief-executive
But note that for months, BP claimed the total leak was only 5,000 barrels a day and roundly abused the very many experts who suggested otherwise – while rebutting any independent monitoring.
So what we now know is that total leakage is about four times what BP were claiming for 90% of the period covered by the disaster so far. Now, either BP don’t know much about oil wells, or they were deliberately lying about the extent of the disaster.
Oil is of course a perfectly natural substance which on occasion gets into the sea through seismic events, erosion or other natural cause. Chemical dispersants – most of which are varieties of detergent – are not natural substances at all. I am sceptical whether spraying the seas with chemical dispersants does not make the situation worse.
Of all the defences of Israel killing unarmed Turkish protestors – the majority of them shot in the back, four in the back of the head execution style – Nick Cohen’s ramble must be the least coherent by a very highly paid hack.
As far as I can make any sense at all of his nine pint muddle, it relies chiefly on his usual contention that anti-semitism and anti-zionism are the same thing, plus the idea that anybody who opposes Israeli brutality, supports Islamic extremism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/06/israel-gaza-blockade
He manages to get in a side swipe at those of us wise enough to oppose the war in Iraq.
Why is he paid for this nonsense?
Swedish dockworkers to boycott Israeli ships and goods
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704183204575288222251185504.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The Rachel Corrie has now been illegally boarded by the Israeli military in international waters.
As usual the BBC’s immediate reaction is simply to retail Israeli propaganda. The Rachel Corrie has been boarded “with the full compliance of the crew”, BBC News tells us. That is almost certainly not true, unless you count without violent resistance as “full compliance”.
If that were true, you might wonder why Israel had jammed – again contrary to maritime law – all the Rachel Corrie’s communications with the outside world, and why they are still jammed. The BBC did not mention that.
The organisers have just posted this:
“For the second time in less then a week, Israeli naval commandos stormed an unarmed aid ship, brutally taking its passengers hostage and towing the ship toward Ashdod port in Southern Israel.”
But the BBC is much more concerned to help ensure that the Israeli version has unquestioned domination of the initial news.
Sometimes I come across bloggers who are much better than me. This is one of those times.
This is an absolutely brilliant post from emptywheel. The argument is this. Israel claims its standoff with Hamas is the equivalent to an armed conflict in international law, entitling it to take naval action on the high seas. Equally, the US claims its “War on Terror” is equivalent to a formal armed conflict, justifying its extra judicial killings particularly by aerial drone.
This US argument has just been comprehensively rejected by the United Nations in a comprehensive legal report issued this week.
Read the emptywheel piece, and then consider this from the Washington Post:
Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.
The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.
One advantage of using “secret” forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.
Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965.html
Statcounter has been throwing up some very curious statistics in the last few days. A large number of individuals are coming to the site and staying on it for perhaps four or five hours, hopping exclusively between recent articles about the Gaza convoy. Strangely, all the users with that profile use Firefox not IE, and if they come via a search engine usually arrive on the site via a Yahoo search not a google search.
Now this is from a significant sample – 500 – and the sample changes in real time, but Firefox has been ahead all the time for the last three days. I have never before seen Firefox even come close to overtake IE among readers of this blog in the five years it has been running – which makes sense if you consider IE has a three times larger market share.
I don’t think I have seen yahoo overtake google before in terms of search engine used to find us either.
All of which leads me to think that for two days we have been targeted by a substantial group of people using standard issue software. We have also been under continual spam attack – there were over 10,000 items of apparently random spam removed yesterday.
“The Zionist Federation together with the English Defence League demonstrated opposite the Israeli embassy in support of the Israeli Defence Force action against the Gaza aid flotilla”
http://www.demotix.com/news/346651/zionists-support-flotilla-attack
Whatever its initial aspirations, the State of Israel has become a vicious racist entity. As you can see by its friends.
Commenters may wish to dig around on this one. Just how precise a correlation is there between media supporters of the illegal invasion of Iraq, and media supporters of the illegal attack on the Gaza convoy?
Take both old and new media into account. I think you will find the correlation is approaching 100% – and is a much higher correlation in the media than among politicians.
Now how do you explain this?
Discuss
The Free Gaza movement has just announced that they are sending their ship, the Rachel Corrie, to a port to have a check up in view of apparent Israeli sabotage of some other freedom flotilla ships even ahead of the murderous attacks.
So we are going to make sure the Rachel Corrie is well protected and that Israel is put on notice that anything that happens to her, the passengers and the crew will rest with Israel. As a result of these threats, we’re going to pull Rachel Corrie into a port, add more high-profile people on board, and insist that journalists from around the world also come with us.
I do hope that by well protected they mean physically. Boarding a moving ship from boat or helicopter is not easy, and can be made almost impossible with imaginative deployment of purely defensive measures like razor wire around the rails and razor wire interspersed with sharp metal spikes on open decks.
Interestingly the Free Gaza website is still referring to the Mavi Marmar as Turkish fflagged.
