Big Sticks and Small Carrots

I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve just seen on Newsnight at the moment. I just want to record it really. We know that Sir Iain wrote a letter concerning the delay of the IPCC investigation into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Here’s what he said about that letter last month.

What I actually said was, we have a unique situation here which, at that stage, I and my officers thought the dead man was a suicide bomber… and we are in the middle of one of the biggest counter terrorist operations; is it wise to bring in another set of investigators into the middle of that with the forensics, ballistics and explosives and so on?

And secondly the IPCC has a duty, which I respect, to inform the family of everything that they find - and this is an investigation which involves secret intelligence, and where do those two things fit together? Permanent secretary would you please advise what we should do now. [my emphasis]

Here’s what the letter actually said.

In a fast-moving, multi-site terrorist situation, in which suicide bombers are clearly a very strong possibility, a chief officer of police should be able to suspend… [the part of the] Police Reform Act 2002 which requires us to supply all information that the Independent Police Complaints Commission may require [my emphasis]

Note that “should be able to”. Sir Iain does not currently have the power to act in this way and this letter confirms that he is aware of that fact. He goes on.

I have therefore given instructions that the shooting that has just occurred at Stockwell is not to be referred to the IPCC and that they will be given no access to the scene at the present time. The investigation will be carried out by the Met’s own Directorate of Professional Standards. [my emphasis]

This is an instruction he demonstrably knows he does not have the authority to issue. Furthermore the final paragraph catagorically confirms that the policy adopted is outwith the scope of existing legislation (ie, it’s illegal).

For the time being I seek your support for this measure, which may form the basis for amending legislation in the future.

It’s all just so very disturbingly wrong. Does the Commissioner have a major involvement in policy making decisions?

And he has seriously misrepresented the entire contents of the letter. It is clearly not a request for guidance but a notification of a decision already taken, and a request for support for that decision.

Sir Ian Blair: Judge, Jury, Executioner.

Btw, today’s bitter irony is to be found in the fact that Sir Iain uses the phrase “shoot to kill” in his letter. Not “shoot to protect” then?

I would definitely recommend taking the time to read this if you haven’t already done so. There’s a whole lot of pressure building up and it’s going to have to be released one way or another. Unless the Labour Party starts to address this in a reasonable way I’m afraid it’s going to become collateral damage in the resulting explosion.* The portents are already with us; party membership has halved since 1997. I fear that much worse is to follow.

I’ve been trying to see if I could understand why New Labour don’t seem to be able to see this problem. Patricia Hewitt was on Question Time last night. When she was confronted with accusations that New Labour continually stifle dissent, replete with a number of specific examples, she appeared to be completely taken aback. The reaction of the audience said it all. They jeered. (It’s the first question if you want to watch it, jeering starts 6 minutes in.) After I’d calmed down a bit, I started thinking about what lay behind Ms Hewitt’s display of surprise. Here are the possibilities I considered.

1. She is genuinely surprised to learn that dissent is routinely stifled.
2. She is surprised to learn that people are aware that it happens so regularly.
3. She is surprised that anyone would have the audacity to raise the issue.
4. She is merely pretending to be surprised, is fully aware that it happens, and is adopting the official position of outright denial. In short, she is a liar.

I can’t say with any certainty which of these is accurate. There might even be another possibility I’ve overlooked altogether.

As an aside, Ken Clarke’s answer to the question made a great deal of sense to me. I see why Labour are so keen to tell everyone he’d be a useless Tory leader. He’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but I’m starting to think he might actually be less bad the the authoritarian maniacs we’ve got at the moment. As a potentially electable Conservative, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll become leader though.

But back to New Labour. In the Bloggerheads post linked above, Tim says:

Blair’s camp - knowing but not really caring that the man had been refused re-entry under Section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act - were more concerned about how the initial ejection looked on film. They made no comment on the matter until they saw the footage so they could determine whether damage control was necessary.

I’d like to have been a fly on the wall of that little episode. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible. As we are all to aware, there are very many closed doors in this open government of ours. I can only speculate as to the conversation which took place. So I will.

So, they’ve just watched the TV footage of Mr Wolfgang being forcibly ejected from the conference. It’s clear that it’s a PR disaster. TB says “what are we going to do Alistair? The media are going to, you know, to use this as evidence of the authoritarian control freakery they keep accusing me of. There’s a, you know, a chance that the public will start to believe them.” Alistair tells him not to worry, they’ll be able to blame the stewards. “Relax teflon, they can’t stick this on you. We’ll pass it off on the volunteers, that’s what they’re there for.”

Speculation, as I said. Call me a cynic but I suspect it’s fairly close to the mark. The point is that there is one vital conversation which I just cannot imagine cropped up. Did anyone involved in the discussion mention the fact that these accusations are basically very well founded and that the best solution would be to actually stop with all the control freakery? I doubt it very much. I’m not even sure if it would occur to any of the participants to think it. It is, I think, a classic example of the seige mentality. They’ve got no-one outside the ramparts looking in. As a result we’ve got a government who are constantly busy defending what is nothing more than an indefensible pile of worthless crap. They are just to concerned with plotting their defensive strategies to have noticed.

So, I suspect they genuinely don’t understand why most of the population jeers at their feeble excuses. The defence of the Westminster bubble has subsumed all other activities in government. I think that’s why government ministers are so surprised when they meet members of the public who treat their pronouncements with derision. Well, it’s time to wake up and smell the discontent. History shows that an ivory tower can’t be defended forever. Will the government realise that it’d be better to come out willingly now than be dragged out kicking and screaming later?

*In a sign of these troubled times, I feel the need to emphasise that I do not mean an actual physical explosion. I’m sure it’s obvious but I’m also sure I wouldn’t trust Charles Clarke not to *ahem* misinterpret such a statement.

Yes, I know it’s in very bad taste. Just be thankful I didn’t go with something worse.

How many people have been killed so far today in Iraq? I think it’s clear to most people that Iraq has become the stain on the conscience of the Blair (that’s assuming he has one at all). His pitiful bleatings about UN mandates, moral authority and showing resolve are an embarrasment to this country. It’s clear that Blair believes that to be a valuable ally is to show blind devotional loyalty and obedience at all times. As any normal person will tell you, that is not the behaviour of a friend and ally but that of a syphophantic yes man. Such behaviour is about as useful as an individual opinion at a Labour Party conference. If one of my friends is acting stupidly, I don’t say “well done mate, good stuff, keep it up”. No, what I say is “stop acting like a muppet and sort yourself out”. And I’d hope my friends would do the same for me. I suspect Blair doesn’t understand this because he doesn’t actually have any frends.

So, what would an actually useful ally be telling the US government about the situation in Iraq? Well, first here’s what I think is going to happen if things stay as they are. The insurgency/terrorism is going to continue unabated. It may worsten. The US military will start a staged withdrawal starting in the spring or summer of next year. This will be in response to the Iraqi government stating that their security services are now better equipped to fight the insurgency. This is unlikely to be influenced much by the actual state of the Iraqi security services or the insurgency. It will be influenced by the need to have good news to sell in the campaign for the US elections in November. The UK government will adopt the same strategy arguing that it is a purely strategic decision based on events on the ground. This will be a lie. The insurgency will morph into full scale civil war after the pullout. Iraq will disintegrate and this will cause increased instability in the surrounding countries. Iraq will become a haven for terrorist groups. And then what are we going to do, invade again? No, I’d say airstrikes are most likely and lots of them. It’ll be just like 2002 all over again, except that a lot of people have been killed and the situation is much worse.

It’s not a pretty picture but it’s looking more and more likely as each day passes. So what could the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom be doing if he wasn’t such a useless tool? Here are some suggestions for policies I think the “coalition” should adopt.

It is hugely important that we do not allow the referendum on the constitution to be fudged. If there is a legitimate no vote from the referendum this must be accepted, no matter if it’s politically embarrasing for our governments. If the constitution proceeds on a fraudulent yes vote this will only spread the belief that the coalition are lying hypocrites. The insurgency is likely to get stronger as a result, not weaker. So, if there’s no vote, start at the beginning and try again.

I also think we need to unleash Super Marshall Plan Extra Gold Plus on the Iraqi economy. Start with the hospitals. When an Iraqi doctor says “I could really use one of those machines which goes ping beeeep”, Donald Rumsfeld should be wheeling one in before the doctor has finished his sentence. Every available doctor at the disposal of the “coalition” should be working to help make Iraqi hospitals some of the best in the world. A huge effort to get electricity and water supplies restored should be undertaken. Employ people from the areas affected by the shortages for every possible position from technical personel to labourers to security guards. Do it visibly and with enthusiasm and determination. I want to see huge pots of money being visibly directed towards making life better for ordinary Iraqis.

And then there are the US and UK troops in Iraq. I don’t believe that an immediate pullout is a good idea. I’d be concerned that it would just speed up the disintegration described above. I do believe that the coalition troops are fuelling the insurgency but I also believe their presence limits the likelyhood of open warfare and all out civil war. So, I’d recommend that we withdraw these forces from all population centres and have them consigned to barracks. The only other place they should be is guarding electricity plants and the like. There they should stay unless open warfare does break out between factions. The bases will probably come under attack and they should defend these bases vigourously. They should not seek to engage anyone however. In the short run this may not reduce the number of insurgent attacks in civilian areas but I believe it will do over time. We should also be actively trying to persuade governments from other nations to send peacekeeping troops to replace coalition forces.

We should also be inviting other nations to contribute to the management of Iraq. Decisions which are currently taken in Washington should be internationalised. I don’t wish to disparage the current Iraqi government but I know, and you know, and the insurgent know that most of the important decisions are still made by the Whitehouse. Those decisions should be the responsibility of the Iraqi government in collaboration with a group of advisors from the international community.

These are suggestions which I think might have some useful effect. I don’t honestly know if the adpotion of these suggestions would prevent the scenario described above. It might already be too late to do anything to prevent it. I believe that it must be better to try than to continue to follow a policy which is so clearly failing.

As I was writing this post a desktop alert highlighted this story. How many more?

But they’ll never take our… oh, they have. We really should have been paying a bit more attention.

Warning: Rantage

Yes, it appears that Jack chicken shit Straw’s arguments are so robust that they can only be defended through the physical intimidation of the elderly by some New Labour goonmonkeys. Our Foreign Secretary is a truly inspirational and courageous man. Just the sort of fellow this country needs at a time like this.

This government makes me fucking puke. They must surely be the most disgusting, hypocritical, self-serving, shallow, power mad, media obsessed shower of useless fucks in the entire history of showers of useless fucks. I wouldn’t trust them to piss on a parade, never mind run a country.

And it’s already clear what strategy they are going to employ to minimise the impact of this situation. This is the sort of shit I expect we’ll be hearing from the lickspittles over the next few days:

This sort of behaviour is not authorised by the executive. This unfortunate incident was caused by poorly trained goons acting outside of their orders. The objectionable behaviour of a few rotten apples should not be allowed to diminish the importance of continuing the project. We will conduct an inquiry to make sure that the media don’t report any similar incidents in future it doesn’t happen again.

Sound familiar? Where’s my puke bucket?

But not in a good way.

It is my belief that the current “war” on terror is a spectacular misjudgement. It’s not just that this “war” is ineffective in combatting terrorism although this is bad enough. I believe it’s far worse than that. I am convinced that many of the policies and actions which come out of this “war” are dangerously counter-productive. Today’s news provides a perfect bloody example to illustrate my point.

Last week, I wrote about a US-Iraqi assault on Talafar. The intention of the assault was to kill or capture the insurgents who had been based in the city. On Thursday 22nd September, the Iraqi general nominally in charge of the operation declared that the it had been successully concluded and that security forces were in full control of the city. There was very little media coverage of the assault so the information available was almost exclusively from military sources. As such, I concluded that it was impossible to confirm or deny the success of the operation, or even comment on the way it had been conducted, in any meaningful way.

My fear is that the US miltary, along with the Iraqi security forces under its command, continues to adopt the heavy handed military tactics of attrition which were so prevalent and so futile during the Indochinese conflict. The search and destroy tactics, the “clearing” of population centres, and the scorched earth policy were all hugely counter-productive strategies. To fight an insurgency, the one battle which is far more important than all other considerations is the battle for hearts and minds. The Vietnam War was lost in large part due to the US government’s failure to understand this. Unfortunately I’m not convinced that the current US administration has understood Vietnam’s painful lessons.

Today in Talafar, a female suicide bomber has killed at least seven people. She targeted a group of people who were queuing outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre. Is there any way in which the assault on Talafar can still be considered a success? It’s hard to see how.

We’ll probably never know why this woman chose to commit this brutal act. There will be no investigation into what motivated her to target new recruits to the Iraqi army, no analysis of the events which led to the deaths of at least seven defenseless Iraqis. Was she a terrorist before the assault on Talafar or did a heavy handed military assault on her city drive her to commit this extremist act? If I was being facetious I’d say it must be the latter, the military operation cleared all existing insurgents from the city after all. In truth, it’s impossible to be certain. It could be that during the operation a family member, a younger sister perhaps, became another uncounted statistic in the unfortunate collateral damage of modern war. Perhaps her home was destroyed during the operation. Perhaps she witnessed something so horrific during the attack that suicide bombing looked like the only option which could provide revenge justice and peace. On the other hand, it might be this woman was a terrorist before the assault, that the thought of people voting was an anathema to her. As I said, we’ll never know for certain. I do know which explanation I find more plausible and I suspect most reasonable people would agree.

I am certain of one thing though: we are not winning the war in Iraq. The evidence is there for all to see. We need a leader who can first admit that fact, and then start to do something about it.

Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit.
(via)

In other news, the government has announced a new initiative to combat the increasing lack of respect in British society.

One of the good things about blogging is that there is something of a sense of community among bloggers. I’ll try to demonstrate what I mean. Twice.

As well as keeping an eye on the bizarre world of Stephen Green’s Christian Voice, MediaWatchWatch also monitors the activities of other self-important clowns. A job well done, in my humble opinion.

Meanwhile, over at Bloggerheads, Tim highlights another media appearance by everyone’s favourite philanderer. In honour of this latest remarkable achievement, he shall henceforth be known as the Shagmaster General.

Most satisfactory.

Today, Tony Blair says “we are the change makers“.

Tim at Bloggersheads got it exactly right yesterday.

Tony Blair can’t be waited out, or smoked out… he needs to be thrown out.

Blair’s speech today proves the point just in case anyone was in any doubt. The time for the Labour Party to grow a conscience is long overdue. If this doesn’t get sorted out soon the “Thatcher Effect” is going to land the Labour Party back in opposition for a very long time indeed.

I was going to take some notes on Blair’s speech but I found it far to irritating to be able to manage that to any useful degree. I did write down one sentence which stuck out for me

Politics is the answer, not terrorism.

Terrorism is cleary not the answer to anything and in that respect I agree. There is absolutely no justification for terrorism.

But, at the risk of sounding like a heretic, I think it’s becoming increasing clear that British politics in its current form can’t provide the answers to our problems either. I’ll try to explain what I mean. I don’t think that my political views are particularly extreme. On the traditional political scale I’d probably be classed as slightly left of centre. I’m certainly not a hard line leftie and I never have been. So, I’m progressive, a bit liberal, and a bit left of centre. In the UK general election in May I did not have the option to vote for these values in any meaningful way. There were two realistic choices as to who would be the next government, and both support policies to the right of my own position.* There was no vote I could cast which could influence the political landscape in the UK in the way I believe is necessary.

What we currently have in this country is a choice between the right of centre Tories and the right of centre Blairites. Let’s not kid ourselves, there are differences between the two parties. Blairism is slighly less awful than Thatcherism but I’d argue there’s not that much in it. The gap between the richest and poorest continues to widen at an alarming rate. Can I vote for a party who wishes to address this problem? Well, yes, I could, but it wouldn’t achieve anything.

It’s an oft quoted statistic that Blair won the last election on a 22% share of those eligible to vote. He says this gives him a mandate because this is more than any of the other parties managed. In a way that makes sense, he should lead the most powerful party. But, a system which gives absolute power to a PM based on the support of less than a quarter of the population is a system which is broken. The opinions of the 78% who did not vote for Blair count for nothing in our system. And of the 22%, how many voted Labour because they worried that Peter Hain’s back door might be penetrated by the Tories? How many took advantage of one of Polly’s nose pegs? What percentage actively supported Blair at the last election? 20%? 15%? 10%? What kind of mandate is that for authoritarian government?

For me, British democracy has failed. My voice, as well as those of huge numbers of others with similar, and indeed very different, opinions, has become irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what I want or what you want either most likely. Unless you’re one of the lucky few swing voters who’ve been targeted as belonging to a key demographic, you can take your opinions and stuff them up your ballot box for all the good they’ll do. Our politicians don’t care what you think because they don’t need to. As long as they can maintain their well oiled sleazy relationship with their swingers, they can stay in power. The rest of us just have to make do as best we can. A few scraps might get thrown our way if we’re lucky but nothing more.

And this makes me very angry. It’s not like I want to introduce Stalinist five year plans or something, I just want my vote to count. But it doesn’t. Do I feel marginalised, frustrated, ignored? Yes, of course I do. Does this situation give me faith in the democratic process of the country I live in? No, it does not. Am I becoming an “extremist”? In a sense, you could say that I am. Will I decide to take up arms against the political system? No, but I do have a hint of an idea as to how someone would arrived at such a decision.**

So, Blair can harp on about how politics is the answer all he wants. The fact is that under Blair, there is less democracy in this country than there has been for a very long time. If he doesn’t see that, and more importantly, if he doesn’t understand how big a problem it is, then he’s even more of an idiot than I had previously thought. And I haven’t even mentioned Blair’s continuing efforts to stifle dissent and restrict the right to protest. He needs to be got rid of. We need a leader who can face the fact that democracy in this country is in desperate need of reform. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the heir apparent is going to be that leader. Yay for politics.

*In fact even that is misleading. Given the Labour majority going into the election, and the current voting system, there was only ever a choice about the size of the Labour majority. In a very real sense there was only one choice.

** Justifying terrorism, eh? Belmarsh, here I come