Anonymous have apparently released 90,000 military email addresses, according to news sources everywhere. I am afraid I need help to understand this. Where are these addresses, and is each listed with its password so we can read actual emails? If not, what use is this? I am not technology savvy, so I may be missing something here.

No man is an island, and each man’s death diminishes me.  But some more than others and the loss of Ahmed Wali Karzai, Governor of Kandahar, monster of corruption, second largest heroin dealer in the world, is not particularly saddening.  It is, however, a tremedous reminder of the absolute futility of the war in Afghanistan.

NATO have killed uncounted thousands, many of them civilians, precisely to put Ahmed Wali Karzai and his like into power.  Ahmed Wali and his counterparts have stolen many billions of  Western taxpayers’ money, intended for aid and reconstruction.  They have flooded the world with more and cheaper heroin than ever seen before.  Somehow this has all been a great victory for the West.  

The difference between Karzai and his brother is one of style, not substance.  The idea that Ahmed Wali was up to his ears in drugs and corruption, but elder brother Ahmed is clean, is absolute nonsense.  It is however part of the myth we are supposed to absorb to justify this war, which has been extremely profitable for weapons manufacturers and other military suppliers, and boosted the funding and standing of the military themselves, mercenaries and the whole shady “security industry”.  What it has not done is improve the lives of the people of Afghanistan. 

 Ahmed Wali Karzai, by getting killed by his bodyguard, has done us a favour.  Otherwise the media could have ignored him and all he stands for about the Afghanistan which NATO has created, and just continued to sell us the lies about improved security, wise governance and girls going to school – none of which are true.

What do Rebekah Brooks, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price have in common?

The answer is obvious – they were all born on May 27th.

John Whittingdale MP is Chairman of the parliamentary select committee on media, culture and sport. He was interviewed on Sky News today, where he suggested that his committee should do nothing at all about the fact that Rebekah Wade Brooks misled parliament and lied to the committee, at least until police investigations and the judge-led inquiry are over. Murdoch’s main priority on this visit will doubtless be to work with Cameron to get the right safe judge appointed, while Clegg poses for the tabloids with the family of poor Millie Dowler.

Whittingdale, incidentally, is the man who allegedly warned MPs on the select committee that if they interrogated Rebekah, then their personal lives would be shredded. He hardly gave her a hard time in the committee, and for a committee chairman to whom she brazenly lied, he has been notably pusillanimous since; nor did he make any real effort to do anything about her astonishingly candid admission to his committee that the News of the World paid bribes to policemen.

Is it not therefore interesting that, at least as late as the end of last week (when Rebekah hid her facebook page), Whittingdale and Rebekah were friends on facebook, along with several Murdochs?

I am awake at this unholy hour because I am about to start the tortuous Sunday rail journey between Ramsgate and Diss, in order to attend Julian Assange’s fortieth birthday party at Ellingham Hall.

I am not sure who else is going, but the initial invitation did not give train information, but did tell you where to land your private plane or helicopter. I am going because I think Wikileaks do essential work and because I think Julian is an extraordinary mand and is being stitched up – his appeal against extradition is on Tuesday and this week he could be in a cell in Sweden on those entirely ludicrous sexual assault charges. I am also gong because I hope that some of the whistleblowing community might be there. And I am going because it says “party”!

Nonetheless, I worry that the amusing fact that the invitation tells you where to land your private jet or helicopter, actually is an indication of where Wikilleaks is going wrong.

That is perhaps strange for me to say of a thriving organisation with funds and staff, who have exposed much more of government wrongdoing than I ever managed. But I could not understand why Julian was using the celebrity media lawyer Stephens rather than one of our great, solid human rights lawyers. I emailed wikileaks several times before the trial to say they had absolutely the wrong kind of lawyer, and that there were several much more appropriate human rights lawyers used to dealing with politically motivated criminal charges, with a terrific record and respect in the courts, and who may well take it on pro bono. I got no reply. I presumed that this was because Wikileaks were being loyal to lawyers who believed in them, had been their lawyers before criminal charges arose, and who worked for them for nothing. But I now read that Assange has unpaid legal bills of £200,000. I think that Don King haired lawyer bloke who yelled a lot was a major mistake.

I also worry that they managed to fall out with David Leigh of the Guardian, for whom I have huge respect (which he has made plain to me is not mutual, but that is another story). I was myself very offended indeed when I was kicked off the panel of Assange’s New Statesman debate on whistleblowing. I suspect it was a combination of establishment objections, and a desire to curry favour with the New Statesman and Al Jazeera, for both of whom I made room. But the whole Stephens/Al Jazeera/stately home/celebrities in private jets thing indicates to me a fascination with the bubble celebrity which will leave you crying when it bursts.

I am one of Assange’s admirers, not one of his detractors. I am going along to show my genuine support. There may in fact be a good turnout, because this is probably the best chance this weekend for the radical chic wealthy to get together and thrill over the wounds of Murdoch. There is an auction of donations to raise funds for his legal expenses, which I hope goes well – personal bids will establish a reserve price, and then the items will go on to ebay. I do hope that goes well too. And I hope when Assange’s celebrity dies down, those helicopter riders will still support him.

I just doubt it.

Hat-tip to Mary for pointing me in the right direction.

For those of us who experienced a surge of naive hope that News International have been referred to Ofcom for a ruling on the “Fit and Proper Persons” test, here is a bucket of cold water. Rather than being disinterested public servants, the Board of Ofcom represent the political and financial establishments which are so irreversibly penetrated by the spores of News International. Many of them hold directorships of companies – like banks and insurance companies – which have a direct interest in seeing no further plunge in News Corp/News International share price. They are also beneficiaries of the policies Murdoch has championed – private equity firms and privatised utilities, for example.

Bluntly, there is no chance that a body of which the Chairman, Colette Bowe, is a Director of Morgan Stanley and of Electra Private Equity is going to pull the rug on News Corp.

Here is but a selection of some of the Directorships held by Ofcom board members:

Morgan Stanley
Electra Private Equity
Thames Water
Axa
Betfair Group
JJB Sports
Pace Plc – supplier of set top boxes to Murdoch’s Sky
Nujira Ltd – defence contractors to US military
Standard Life

That is just a selection. In addition, the Chairman is a director of the Wincott Foundation, a “charity” whose purpose is to spread the far right economic doctrines of Milton Friedman in Eastern Europe – to the benefit, ultimate if incidental, of Morgan Stanley and Electra Private Equity, in which she also holds directorships.

She is most unlikely to find the Murdoch influence pernicious, wouldn’t you say?

How on earth did we come to have a regulatory body for the communications industry composed of these kind of parasites? Why is it so overpacked with businessmen and so devoid of intellectuals? Again, to put that simply, why the Chairman of JJB Sports and no Eric Hobsbawm?

Our entire fabric of government is a sick fucking joke.

Rebekah Brooks has now laid down several hundred jobs to save her own. She has also made way for the brand new super soaraway Sunday Sun. News International have evidently decided to gamble on the idea that there is no end to the gullibility of the British mass public.

But let us stop and consider. A great part of British newspaper history, a paper that supported imprisoned Chartists , has just been lost. With it have gone hundreds of jobs. It has been lost because the management of News International at the News of the World was either criminally involved or culpably negligent – there are no other choices. By their destruction of the News of the World, News Corp have proven beyond any doubt that they are not fit and proper persons to run media in this country. Ofcom must now act on this to use its powers to disbar unfit persons, and force News Corp to sell all its media interests in the UK.

The result of the News International scandal should be that senior News International figures and senior policemen go to jail. It won’t be – the result will be a public inquiry, pushed back till long, long after media interest has abated, and concluding regrettable mistakes were made, by comparatively junior people.

Hardly any of the media noticed the announcement yesterday that the Gibson inquiry into UK government complicity in torture will finally start to get under way. This should be a dreadful warning – particularly not to be misled by the Nick Clegg device of valuing a “judge-led” inquiry as the indicator of worth. Gibson is a judge – and was also the Commissioner for the Security Services, asked now to “independently” investigate whether he was himself complicit or ineffective. Similarly Hutton was a judge – a Northern Irish one, so close to the security services as to be a thoroughly reliable tool for government.

Anybody who thinks that the Tory Party and Murdoch don’t already have a tame judge firmly in mind, is a complete fool.

Gibson’s protocols and terms of reference are a complete farce. As I told you months ago, after I was tipped off by senior British diplomats, they will only accept evidence related firmly to individual named detainees, rather than consider the general policy of cooperation with extraordinary rendition and receipt of intelligence from torture chambers abroad. The US Government will have a veto over what can be revealed by UK officials and documents about CIA involvement – and, as the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement and the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme is the entire context of the torture policy, that already renders the inquiry useless. The Cabinet Secretary – ie the government – and not the judge, will decide which documents can be made public.

The Guardian deserve congratulations for doing an excellent job in reporting this.

So restrictive are the terms under which the inquiry will be conducted, however, that Justice, the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists, warned that it was likely to fail to comply with UK and international laws governing investigations into torture. Eric Metcalfe, the organisation’s director of human rights policy said: “Today’s rules mean that the inquiry is unlikely to get to the truth behind the allegations and, even if it does, we may never know for sure. However diligent and committed Sir Peter and his team may be, the government has given itself the final word on what can be made public.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “When is an inquiry not an inquiry? When it’s a secret internal review. The use of torture by great democracies was the most shaming scandal of the war on terror. Today’s disappointing announcement suggests ministers, not independent judges will decide what the public is entitled to know. It is very hard to see the point of wasting public money on such a sham.”

Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, said the inquiry was heading for a whitewash, with the US authorities in effect deciding what the public should learn. “Virtually nothing will be made public that is not already in the public domain,” he said. “This is meant to be an inquiry into British complicity into torture and rendition, almost all of which was complicity with the Americans. Yet these terms give America a veto on much of what should be public.”

Solicitor Gareth Peirce, who also represents several victims, described the inquiry as “a wholly inadequate response to the gravest of state crimes – torture”. She added that while the Ministry of Defence exposed the torture of Baha Mousa to public scrutiny “the intelligence services, in contrast, are being allowed to hide”.

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP for Chichester, who chairs the all- party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, said: “Sir Peter Gibson has stated that he will not be asking the US or other foreign organisations for information on rendition. Without this information, his examination of other aspects of rendition is likely to be incomplete. The plain and highly regrettable fact is that the UK government is not in possession of all the facts on its own involvement in rendition. This is what government departments have confirmed to me.”

Keith Best, chief executive of the charity Freedom from Torture, said: “Effective survivor participation demands an open process. Every decision along the way that privileges secrecy will erode the inquiry’s capacity to deliver justice to victims of torture that Britain knew about or was otherwise complicit in.”

Amnesty International said the government appeared to have “squandered the opportunity to address a mounting pile of allegations of involvement of its agents and policymakers in the torture and ill-treatment of detainees” in a way that ensures public confidence.

There was no immediate response from the inquiry team to the criticisms it is facing.

It gets worse. The inquiry’s offices, at 35 Great Smith St, are in a Cabinet Office building. It is staffed not by people from the judicial service but by central government civil servants. All the inquiry’s computers are Cabinet Office computers which are an integral part of the Whitehall central government computer network, and the inquiry’s papers can be accessed by MI5, MI6, the Cabinet Office and Foreign Office without leaving their desks. I contacted the Inquiry last night offering to give evidence – and some staff in the FCO had copies of my email this morning. That is how “independent” the Gibson Inquiry is.

Consider this – the Secretary of the Inquiry is Alun Evans, former Director of Strategic Communications in No. 10 and before that John Precott’s spin doctor. The secretariat staff:

Four are from the Cabinet Office, two from the Ministry of Defence and one from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. .

An independent inquiry?

This is such a sick joke it is beyond belief.

My present thought is, that while I very much respect those who are boycotting this inquiry, yet given that I have an eyewitness account that the Foreign Office specifically sought to twist the terms of reference to exclude my evidence, it would be crazy to make them happy by boycotting. But nor do I wish to submit unsolicited written evidence that the Inquiry can simply bury in Volume III Appendix B p. 4278-4291. Their website says specifically that Crown Servants and Former Crown Servants will normally be approached by the Inquiry – they are anxious not to encourage whistleblowers to come forward. So I have written to them, offering to give evidence but putting the onus on them to call me. This is what I sent:

I was, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the only senior British civil servant who entered a formal written objection to my Secretary of State on the subject of our complicity in torture, and in doing so I specifically referred to our being in breach of the UN Convention on Torture.

I submitted evidence and gave oral testimony on the UK’s policy of complicity in torture to the European Parliament’s Committee of Inquiry into Extraordinary Rendition in Brussels, and the Council of Europe Inquiry into Extraordinary Rendition in Strasbourg, as well as the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. I note that your guidance says that normally your Inquiry will take the initiative to call former crown servants. I am therefore making contact with you, so the Inquiry has my contact details, and I expect to be called.

Please acknowledge receipt.

Craig Murray
HM Ambassador to Uzbekistan 2002-4

I am going to approach the FCO for assistance over this provision:

Current and former civil and crown servants called as witnesses can expect to receive legal and financial support from their current or former Department or agency.

I have a feeling we will find that whistleblowers are excluded from this provision!

Actually, you could not invent a more farcical “independent” inquiry if you tried to write the blackest of satires. Yet, if there was one area where I honestly did believe that the Lib Dems and even the Tories would be better than New Labour, it was over civil liberties. Plainly we just don’t have career politicians who care about freedom at all, or any principle other than their personal power and self-enrichment.

The total corruption of this country’s political community is the lesson from both the immunity of the Murdoch empire, and the Gibson non-inquiry into state complicity in torture.

A couple of points are worrying me. Why have the police not been into all of News International’s offices, particularly its HQ, and removed all the hard drives, rather than waiting for News International voluntarily to sort through their own emails and hand over what they choose? This seems to me absolutely remarkable. The Met even raided Damian Green’s House of Commons office, but they treat News International precisely as though it were a foreign embassy with diplomatic immunity.

The second point is, how can Lord Macdonald – whom I have respected in the past – be acting as their lawyer now, when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions responsible for inaction on this some years past?

This scandal is fascinating because it has the potential to expose so many layers of the cosy corruption of the British establishment.

If anybody feels that News International’s chief executive Rebekah Brooks and those close to her should have their champagne lives a little bit interrupted and annoyed, facebook members can always go to her facebook page. You can scroll down her friends on the left hand side, and send them messages telling them exactly what you think of the company they keep. They include several Murdochs, and the odd MP, so you can get quite abusive. Don’t do threatening, please.

I do think an hour’s harmful diversion breaks up the working day to useful effect. Nobody will be nearly as upset as were the families of muder victims by what Ms Brooks’ organisation did in phone hacking their lost relatives.

The most astonishing fact to emerge so far is that it is now six months since News International emails were given over listing tens of thousands of pounds of corrupt payments they made to police. Yet nobody – bent policeman or Murdoch slime – is in handcuffs for this yet. Is there any possible innocent explanation for this?

Nadira continues her rehearsals for her big role at Edinburgh

Last week the Murdoch phone hacking empire hired the palatial rooms of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for their summer party. There Rebekah Brooks and Murdoch junior sumptuously entertained their bought politicians from all the major parties, who turned up in droves, tongues dragging on the bespoke axminster, from Cameron down.

There is something horrible about News International taking over the Foreign Office. Its state rooms are available for hire – but not for public hire. A couple of years ago when Charles Crawford and I were considering holding a public debate on foreign policy and the practice of diplomacy, I asked whether it would be possible to rent a state room in the FCO. I was told I was not an appropriate person to rent a room there. While evidently the lying criminal scumbag Rebekah Brooks is an appropriate person. Fascinating set of values our government has.

I think we are all truly shocked by the revelations about the Murdoch press hacking Milly Dowler’s telephone. Probably I was like most people, in that the hacking of celeb phones looking for scandal seemed to me criminal, but less of a worry than other aspects of the Murdoch press. The most interesting aspect of the story until now had been the collusion within Scotland Yard in covering up the criminal activities of the Murdoch empire. The part played by Andy Hayman looks particularly interesting in this respect, particularly given his role as chief retailer of lies to the Murdoch media about the War of Terror, notably but by no means only over the murder of Jean Charles De Menezes.

But both in terms of sheer sickening behaviour, and in terms of endangering an urgent search, the Milly Dowler business is worse. Ed Miliband is quoted by the Guardian as saying that Rebekah Brooks “should consider her conscience and consider her position”.

No. Anyone working for Murdoch sold their conscience long ago, and she should have no choice about her position, which should be behind bars, alongside Coulson and sundry Murdochs. News International must be stripped of all its media outlets, as being demonstrably unfit to own any media in this country.

I seem to be completely out of sympathy with every commentator in the debate on care for the elderly, which is today’s mainstream news agenda. The Dilmot report recommends that the asset level you can have before you start getting charged for residential care, is raised substantially to £100,000. I don’t have a major problem with that.

But it also suggests that the total amount you have to pay for residential care is capped, at £35,000. That means that someone with assets of £90,000 would pay nothing, someone with assets with £110,000 would pay £10,000, someone with assets of £135,000 would pay £35,000 and someone with assets of £10,000,000,000 would pay £35,000. What a stupid proposal.

I am totally out of sympathy with the whole concept. Am I entirely callous? It seems to me perfectly natural, that in your childhood years you are a net cost. Then you have economically active years where you accumulate a certain amount of wealth. Eventually you have economically inactive years when you are a net cost again, and your accumulated wealth dissipates. Then you die.

Why on earth try to adapt the system so you die with money? What are you going to do with it when you are dead? It is crazy. Why should taxpayers fund a system of state paid care, so that people can pass on unearned (by the recipient) wealth to their children?

I favour without any quibble or reservation, care provided fot the elderly so that everybody – no matter how poor – has dignity in life right until the end. But I also believe that those who can pay for it, should. That “callous” system also contains an economic incentive to those wanting to get their hands on inherited wealth, to look after their parents themselves rather than pack them into a battery farm.

As far as I can see, this proposal that taxpayers shell out untold billions to protect inherited wealth, is a scam to protect our ludicrously overpriced housing market.

Here is a video of Greek commandos pointing automatic weapons at the US vessel of the Gaza peace flotilla. The contriving of all authorities to attempt to prevent the flotilla from leaving is quite remarkable – including US and Greek governments. It is to me quite astonishing that we live in a world where it is now perfectly accepted by all officialdom and mainstream media that humanitarian protest should simply be stopped.

Haaretz is trumpeting that Netanyahu was able to use his support for the Greek bailout to block the Gaza flotilla. I don’t buy that Netanyahu had that much influence on the bailout, or could persuade Papandreou that he had. But the actions of the Greek government are disgraceful, and unlawful in preventing ships from sailing on politically motivated false pretences. Every Greek should be deeply ashamed of their government. Of course, they already are, for different reasons.

Some of my FCO sources tell me that the Israeli government has now been supplying the Greek government with emergency supplies of tear gas and other unspecified “anti-riot equipment”, as the Greek government ran out. Isn’t the Greek government lucky to have a friend like Natanyahu?

I think I am entitled to claim some wisdom in what I wrote about the DSK rape allegation, which was this:

The allegations against Dominique Strauss Kahn are of a different order as they do seem to involve violent assault and non-consensual sex acts. Plainly there is a very serious case to answer, especially given his known highly charged sexual history.

But I have been given pause today by learning that the police have amended their accusation to say that they were one and a half hours mistaken in the time that the rape took place. Given that it was reported pretty well immediately, how can there have been this confusion about when it happened? A ten minute mistake would be natural, but one and a half hours wrong in a period of three hours?

The difference is very significant, because the police were alleging that he raped her, then rushed from the hotel to the airport to flee. They now acknowledge as true the defence statement that he actually went to a lunch engagement quite close to the hotel before going to the airport. Given that his alleged hurried running away was a major factor in not granting him bail, this seems to me inportant. I repeat – how on earth could an investigation make such a very fundamental mistake?

My feelings of unease were then increased by US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner coming out to lead international demands for DSK’s replacement – as the prosecuting authority, surely it would behove the US government to shut up until he has been found innocent or guilty? Since then I have been listening to Ghanaian radio (I am in Accra) where callers are more or less unanimous that as the woman is from Guinea, in Francophone Africa, the Sarkozy connection is to blame. That fact is certainly a boon for conspiracy theorists.

DSK deserves the benefit of the presumption of innocence for now. We just don’t know what happened yet. The failure to grant him bail appears to me completely unjustifiable – where on earth do they think he will vanish, and how? There seems something peculiarly vindictive in the handling of this – of which his bail appearance without being allowed clean clothes or a shave was a stark symbol.

I have added the emphasis because I had got hold of absolutely the key point. It turns out the woman lied to the police, and in fact had gone back to cleaning rooms after the alleged assault, before reporting it – but then not told the truth about that. it also turns out that the woman – who you may recall we were told at the time was a very quiet religious Muslim – has a long term relationship with an imprisoned drug dealer and had received US $100,000 in recent months, largely from him. It is also the case that she had admitted to a flase claim of gang rape in her political asylum claim, and she has been taped discussing how much money she might make from the case.

Here is part of the prosecutor’s letter to the court:
“Additionally, in two separate interviews with assistant district attorneys assigned to the case, the complainant stated that she had been the victim of a gang rape in the past in her native country and provided details of the attack. During both of these interviews, the victim cried and appeared to be markedly distraught when recounting the incident. In subsequent interviews, she admitted that the gang rape had never occurred.”

Actually, for me the scariest and most evil thing about this entire episode are the warped feminists at the Guardian who conflate the terms “men” and “rapists” as though they were the same thing. As in this:

How do we get men to stop raping lesbians or independent or highly sexual women as a “corrective act” rather than addressing the forces and powers they are truly angry at? How do we get men to understand the impact of rape: how the external bruises are internalised and remain for ever?

The hate speak involved in conflating “Men” and “rapists” in this way is a vital insight into the viciousness of the militant feminist movement.

None of that, of course, makes it impossible that DSK raped her. But I considered it unlikely before, and I consider it still more unlikely now. Fascinating that the Guardian chooses to lead the first of their articles I link to with the ludicrous bluster of her lawyer, rather than the damning facts about her which come right down later.

It is an unfortunate boon to the Daily Express tendency that it turns out this case plays right into so many of the stereotyped categories Black Americans still have to struggle against – lying asylum seekers, convicted drug dealers, out to make crooked money. But in a criminal trial, Strauss Kahn, wealthy white banker though he is, still has as much right to have his story heard as her. That is what the equality of human beings means. And bluntly, from what we know at this moment, his side of the story seems a great deal more believable than hers. That may change as more evidence emerges; but the public bluster of her attorneys to date outlines an extremely weak case.

Talking of which, yet further evidence of stunning illiberalism by the coalition was revealed in Teresa May’s unjustified – in the literal sense of the term – action against Sheikh Saleh. What precisely is Sheikh Saleh alleged to have done that made his visit to the UK so harmful? Is there any evidence of any Lib Dem influence in any direction that can be described as liberal, in any area of government policy? Answers on a postcard please.

It is worth noting that in the two occasions I have stood for parliament, just as independent me with no party behind me, no organisation except this little blog and definitely no Deputy Prime Minister to back me, I have always obtained more votes and a higher percentage vote than the Liberal Democrats did at Inverclyde in the early hours of this morning. Unless the Scottish Lib Dems abandon the hard line unionism they have adopted – which would not have been supported by either Jo Grimond or Russel Johnson, and certainly not Rosebery – they are going to be annihilated.

A reader has pointed out that Sherard Cowper Cole’s new book. Cables from Kabul, looks uncannily like Dirty Diplomacy, the US version of Murder in Samarkand, published four years previously. The books are indeed very similar. Except that Dirty Diplomacy has a sexy picture of a young lady on the spine – and the content is interesting.

Here is just one little story of the everyday humiliation, the destruction of Palestinian livelihood and culture, carried out by the ruthless, racist Israeli military machine.

I could post such stories every day, including many much worse, and could describe more of the political context which beggars belief – the Israeli Knesset, for example, has just passed through its committee stage a bill providing for Palestinians and other Arabs to pay the costs of the demolition of their own homes by Israel bulldozers. There is a horror to that which should not lead you to overlook a yet more horrible underlying fact contained in that sentence – exactly as in apartheid South Africa, thousands of Israeli laws are ethnically explicit.

I haven’t checked out this little olive tree story, I don’t have to. it is prototypical of thousands of such stories throughout my adult life. I have met victims and know such stories are true.

This is why I support all those working to give some justice and hope for Palestinains. And this is why I cannot understand how such controlling sections of the media and political establishments of the west have signed up so completely to defend the indefensible, to deny to themselves what kind of state Israel has in truth become.

I am sorry that writing a book (at least the way I do it) requires periods when all else is blotted out and you only come out of that immersion as though for a gasp of air. I am still mostly researching Alexander Burnes, though I have just started jotting down the odd phrase and papragraph that will probably feature in the final version. I can’t get the phraseology on this right:

The clash of Burnes and Vitkevich, pushing the respective British and Russian interests in Kabul, is the moment which, more than many other, encapsulates the entire romance and intrigue of the Great Game. Within four years, the events now unfolding would result in the violent deaths of both of them.

Should that last phrase rather be “in the violent death of each of them?”.

I am sorry this preoccupation has precluded me blogging about the appalling marketisation of univerisites, with students seen as consumers and education as a commodity, rather than a university being an academic community in pursuit of knowledge.

The physical sabotage of the propellor shaft of the Swedish Gaza peace flotilla ship is only the start. I would strongly advise all the convoy ships in harbour to run their props in very short bursts at random but not infrequent intervals. That might deter other Israeli Buster Crabbes.