Stop Blair!

Stop Blair! Stoppt Blair! Stoppons Blair! Paremos a Blair! Powstrzymaj Blaira! Σταματήστε τον Μπλαιρ! Állítsuk meg Blairt! Há que parar Blair! Stoppa Blair! Stopnite Blaira! Stabdom Blair'ą! Cuir stad air Blair!

We, European citizens of all origins and of all political persuasions, wish to express our total opposition to the nomination of Tony Blair to the Presidency of the European Council..."

Full petition wording (via European Tribune)

Direct to sign the petition

Send back your 'guardian'

Compare and contrast:

1) Mahmood Ahmadinejad's new 'blog'

2) Stop censoring us

Comment by 'the blogfather of the Iranian blogs' Hossein Derakhshan.

As seen in today's Guardian.

Silenced in America

Silenced, acrylic on canvas by Yehan Wang (yehanart.com)

Henry Porter writes for The Observer today about challenges to free speech regarding Israel and Palestine in the US.

Though Porter paints the situation with not too fine a brush, the firing of professor Douglas Giles from Roosevelt University, Chicago for allowing discussion of Zionism in a world religions class appears to be quite outrageous - particularly when you read Giles' own version of events. According to this, his department chair (Susan Weininger) had expressed concern that he had allowed a Muslim student to speak in a class on Judaism, and had called Palestinians 'animals' and 'not civilised'.

Porter also refers to the essay The Israel Lobby, which I posted on in April.

What was different this time?

From the San Francisco Chronicle on 21 July:

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis."

According to George Monbiot's Comment is free in today's Guardian:

Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the 'blue line' between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line 'on an almost daily basis' between 2001 and 2003, and 'persistently' until 2006. These incursions 'caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas'. On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, 'none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation'.

On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region 'remained tense and volatile', Unifil says it was 'generally quiet' until July 12."

"It's the victim wot did it"

Fu Xiancai in the People's Hospital in Yichang, Hubei on 16 June (BBC News)

Police in Zigui county, in China's Hubei province, have concluded their investigation into the beating of Three Gorges activist Fu Xiancai on 8 June that left him paralysed.

This attack had followed a string of other incidents of harassment and assault, in which the same county police appear to have been complicit.

Perhaps it is this last fact that makes the result of their investigation less stupefying.

Human Rights in China reported yesterday that the Zigui county police have found that Fu Xiancai beat himself up.

Oh China.

As read on BBC News today.

Inauspicious signs for ID cards

It seems that at least some of those charged with establishing the government's ID register are as aware of its flaws as the rest of us.

Yesterday, the Sunday Times published leaked emails between Office of Government Commerce mission critical director (identity and defence) David Foord and Identity and Passport Service acting commercial director Peter Smith that revealed plans to implement a scaled-down scheme in order to meet target dates. According to Foord:

This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality... I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail."

This month, the LSE Identity Project also released Reflections on the academic policy analysis process and the UK Identity Cards Scheme (pdf), which includes discussion on how academics were accused by then home secretary Charles Clarke of 'spinning' earlier this year when they challenged the facts behind the government's justifications for the scheme.

Keeping up with the council

Ever feel left behind by the back, forth and grind of the UN Security Council's work? Out of touch with the progress or otherwise of ongoing international interventions in the world's most troubling trouble spots?

You need the new, improved Security Council Report to keep you and your loved ones up to date with tensions over Iran's nuclear programme, disagreement over Darfur and expiring UN mandates!

But seriously, it does provide a useful summary of upcoming meetings and issues each month, on top of updates as events unfold and balanced background information.

According to the editors:

Our focus is to provide practical and helpful information and analysis for practitioners— such as delegates at Missions in New York, officials in capitals considering policy issues and instructions and UN Secretariat staff at headquarters, agencies or in the field. But our publications will also be prepared with the NGO community in mind, as well as the media, the academic community and the general public."

The UN also publishes its own webcasts for those interested.

A stub with a story

An article in today's Guardian recounts how reams of private information about one person who discarded their boarding card stub in a bin on the Heathrow Express was easily uncovered (admittedly by an expert, but apparently without any difficulty).

It exposes the ability of companies and governments to claim that they need to collect more private data about us in the name of security, and the disregard they can show for how easily that information can be accessed by criminals.

This all bodes even less well for the UK government's invasive and bumbling ID card plans...

Image by Alex Koulintchenko via stock.xchng.

Angel-martyrs or useless ingrates?

Well okay, more probably somewhere between the two than either (aren't we all?) but an article in this week's Observer questions the received wisdom that nurses are always right no matter what their complaint or demand is.

In a follow up on the severe dressing down health minister Patricia Hewitt met with at the Royal College of Nursing conference last week, as reported in British Nursing News, it tries to compare the angry hecklers' claims with what goes on in their workplaces.

The resulting picture is one reminiscent of the episode of Yes Minister in which Jim Hacker tours a hospital held up as an example of efficiency and cleanliness, largely due to the fact that it has absolutely no patients to 'spoil' things.

Nursing is increasingly about an insistence on professional rights, rather than an insistence on a duty of care. Older nurses I speak to regularly tell me they are worried by the attitudes of younger nurses coming in who cannot do some of the basic tasks they were trained to do, but don't particularly want to learn.

One nurse in her fifties told me: 'Some of them don't even know how to spot a pressure sore. It's such a basic task, but they haven't been taught it. What I find hard to stomach is that quite a few have inflated opinions of themselves and see it as their job to challenge the doctors in everything they do.'"

Highly unlikely to be anything like the whole truth with regard to what may or may not be wrong with the UK's health care system, but a potentially useful source of perspective nonetheless...

A nurse's ideal place of work?

Image by Russell Weller via stock.xchng.

Renew for freedom

NO2ID are calling for everyone with a UK passport to renew it during the month of May to send a message in protest against compulsory inclusion of our personal data on the National Identity Register - expected to become a condition of getting a new passport in a year or two's time.

For more information click on the button below.

As seen on Doogiespace.

A tyrant's rationale

Tony Blair is endeavouring to engage in debate with critics of his invasion of our liberties in The Observer today, exposing himself even further as an intellectually and morally defunct despot.

Among readers' responses to the interchange, Gavin Bullock says:

There are two things which concern me about Tony Blair's views on civil liberties. First, his thinking seems to be getting increasingly extreme - even hysterical. His reaction to opposition is not to reconsider his position and ask if the other voices could be right. It seems to reinforce the certainty in his own infallability to the point of abnormality. This worries me a lot.

"Secondly, he lacks rigour in his thinking. He is the past-master of the false dichotomy. It is crack down on crime and protect the victims. Who would disagree with that? But that position appears to lead to a view that suspected criminals should lose their protections (right to silence, juries, revelation of past criminal convictions at trials, abolition of double jeopardy). Now wrongly convicted and imprisoned people are to have their compensation capped. He seems to think people are guilty until proved innocent. If proved innocent after a bit of porridge, tough. So he will do all for victims but disadvantage anyone who has been collared by the police even if their arrest was erroneous.

"My own view is that the intelligent thing to do is to protect society from crime and also make absolutely sure the justice system is fair. British justice (the best in the world, my dad would tell me) has a pretty bad record in locking up innocents and then deducts board and lodgings from the compensation.

"The governments view on civil liberties is shown clearly in the new bill that was drafted to 'tidy up' unnecessary business regulation but could be used to pass virtually any law by decree of the executive. The minister responsible could not even understand what the fuss is all about, yet, as it stood (it has been amended) is virtually did away with the need for parliament. This reveals a deeply malign government. Just ask yourself why they did it.

"Blair seems disinclined, or is perhaps unable, to debate in a rational way. He 'argues' solely by assertion. He never demolishes arguments point by point. It is just, 'I passionately believe what I say. Let history be my judge.' His intellectual bankcrupcy is strange in a former barrister but it is, combined with his messianic certainty, one of the greatest threats to our democracy since the WW2."

The sooner Blair is a part of our history, the better.

Reform at least

Yesterday, BBC News said the Dutch government has received a report from the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) contradicting the perception that Islam necessarily conflicts with human rights or 'Western values,' an idea that has gained increasing currency there since the brutal murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004.

Though an English translation of Dynamism In Islamic Activism is not yet available, an executive summary is. From that:

In the past, the EU, in its advocacy of democratization and the improvement of human rights in neighboring Muslim countries, primarily put its hopes on non-religious movements and parties, even if these groups had little political support within the local population. It becomes increasingly apparent, however, that ignoring the political and juridical agendas of religious activism offers no solution and may even be counterproductive. Not only does such a stance discourage Islamic groups with substantial followings who are prepared to pursue gradual political liberalization from within the existing system, but it also fuels the widely-held view amongst ordinary citizens in the Muslim world that secularism and (Western) democracy, by definition, serve anti-religious interests. This will only fan the demand for Islamization, either because radicals will receive more support from the population for their religious views, or because political rulers themselves will play the conservative ‘Islamization card’ in order to maintain political legitimacy."

Another recent WRR publication, produced within the framework of the same research, is also worth a read: Reformation of Islamic Thought (pdf 1.1Mb). It gives a useful historical perspective absent from many discussions of Islam, and begins:

The rise of Islamic activism since the 1970s and, more recently, Muslim terrorist attacks in the West, have pushed Islamic exclusivism and (violent) fundamentalism once again squarely into the public limelight. As a result, for many non-Muslims across the world, Islamic culture and religion are now closely associated with authoritarian rule, cruel traditions and human suffering. Sadly, these non-Muslims actually share Muslim fundamentalists’ convictions that the ‘real Islam’ is simply incompatible with modernity, democracy and respect for human rights."

I suppose that, if religionists of whatever flavour find themselves unable to get over their delusions, it would be nice if they could at least reform themselves into less anti-humanistic forms.

Jack Straw "approved torture"

On EU Observer yesterday:

A British former envoy to Uzbekistan has revealed that western secret services obtained intelligence secured under torture from foreign detainees...

"'There is a plenty of evidence about torture carried out in Uzbekistan and I know that foreign minister Jack Straw officially approved using the information obtained through torture,' Mr Murray said, citing a secret report from a meeting held on 3 March 2003.

"The German secret service was also cooperating very closely with its Uzbek counterpart, he added, while Britain and the US had taken a policy decision to obtain intelligence under torture in other countries as well."

Medical research using animals

If you agree with the following three statements, you may consider signing an online petition:

• Medical research is essential for developing safe and effective medical and veterinary treatments, requiring some studies using animals;
• Where there is no alternative available, medical research using animals should continue in the UK; and
• People involved in medical research using animals have a right to work and live without fear of intimidation or attack.

From the site:

The People's Petition gives a voice to the silent majority of people in Britain who want to show their support for medical research using animals in the UK.

"It's a campaign for people who believe that this research, carried out under stringent animal welfare standards, is essential to the health and quality of life of humans and animals."

It was set up by the Coalition for Medical Progress, an alliance of research charities, drug companies and medical, veterinary and scientific organisations.

As reported today by BBC News, and in this Guardian article.

Lobby ≠ cabal

An article by Juan Cole on Salon.com today, accessed via GlobalEcho.org, discusses the reaction to a paper by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in the last but one issue of the London Review of Books describing what it calls The Israel Lobby in the US.

From the Salon.com posting:

In "The Israel Lobby," Mearsheimer and Walt argue that U.S. policy toward the Middle East has been dangerously skewed by a powerful pro-Israel lobby, which inhibits free discussion of the issues and has made the pro-Israeli position a political sacred cow. Congress, they point out, virtually never criticizes Israel: It is an untouchable subject. And this taboo has had enormous consequences, which are themselves off limits for discussion. Because America's blank-check support for Israel arouses enormous Arab and Muslim rage, Israel is a strategic liability, not an asset."

The conclusion of the original paper at least contains some optimism:

There is a ray of hope, however. Although the Lobby remains a powerful force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but reality cannot be ignored for ever. What is needed is a candid discussion of the Lobby’s influence and a more open debate about US interests in this vital region. Israel’s well-being is one of those interests, but its continued occupation of the West Bank and its broader regional agenda are not. Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for one-sided US support and could move the US to a position more consistent with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel’s long-term interests as well."

There does seem to be a repeated, and surely often deliberate, confusion between taking a stance against the government of Israel and the continued fallout from Zionist movements, and actually being anti-Semitic.

An article by John Bunzl in the current Palestine-Israel Journal examines the nature and sources of this obfuscation.

The journal describes itself as "the only independent, non-profit quarterly publication co-published and produced by Israelis and Palestinians, as an explicitly joint venture promoting dialogue, in the search for peaceful relations."

Brokeback Bollywood

An amusing Brokeback Mountain takeoff with a serious message can be downloaded here (~22Mb mpeg).

Japanese imperialist atrocities, Chinese Communist lies

This morning, AP reports that a district court in Japan has rejected compensation claims by 45 Chinese men who were used as wartime slaves.

They were demanding US$9 million (US$8.5 million according to the BBC) from the government and two companies - Mitsubishi and Matsui Mining Co. - involved in taking them from their homes in China and into forced labour in Fukuoka between 1943 and the end of WWII.

One of the plaintiffs' lawyers says the case was ruled against despite recognising the wrongdoing due to a 20-year deadline for filing suits and because the current government shouldn't be held responsible for wartime leaders' actions.

A March 20 article by a Fukuoka Jo Gakuin University faculty member says Mitsubishi's defence had denied facts of forced labour accepted by courts hearing earlier cases, going so far as to question whether Japan had "invaded" China at all.

There have been many claims for compensation relating to Japan's war crimes against Chinese people (including forced labour, sex slavery, use of biological and chemical weapons and the Nanjing Massacre) progressing through its courts in recent years.

The great majority have been rejected for similar reasons, most notably that the government of China renounced all potential claims in exchange for aid in 1972's joint statement reestablishing relations between the two countries, though campaigners say this does not cover claims made by private citizens.

Shocking though the wartime atrocities committed by Japan are, I found the way they are perceived in China to be extremely warped by the lens of Communist misinformation, particularly among younger people.

Taught history has to conform to the Communist Party's narrative, portraying it as the saviour of the Chinese people and legitimating its authority over them.

As far as I could tell this results in a focus on the overlapping civil war and Japanese invasion, in which the Party's role in securing their own victory is exagerrated, and a brushing over of the millions who were killed and many more who suffered from Communist policies during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.

Whilst many of my older Chinese colleagues could contextualise Japan's crimes within history, those in their 20s, though educated, were either largely unaware of or disinterested in significant events between 1945 and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms.

It is no coincidence that this is a generation so easily provoked into anti-Japanese demonstrations and violence over a textbook used in a small minority of Japanese schools with no reference to the books used universally in Chinese schools that whitewash Communist mass murder and lethal negligence under Mao Zedong.

Beijing Loafer talks about the reluctance of Chinese people to criticise a government that casts itself in a parental role, pandering to the misguided Confucian obsession with filial piety - contrasting sharply with the Communists' hackneyed demands for the Japanese government to "take history as a mirror and look forward to the future."

There does appear to be a huge amount of denial in Japan about its wartime actions, but repeatedly coming face to face with this hypocrisy in Beijing left me with little sympathy for those seeking compensation.

Instead, I (unfairly) began to see them simply as pawns used by the Party to help score points in wider strategies against its neighbour, keeping a check on its role in the UN and competing for natural resources.

Once again, the Chinese people are victims of their biggest real enemy: the Chinese government.

Trouble getting wood

The press release of a report published yesterday on illegal and unsustainable logging is headed US, EU Consumption Driving Chinese Imports of Illegal Wood from Around the World with the subtitle "Chinese Government Faces Opportunities to Boost Timber Production And Reduce Poverty and Conflict in Rural Areas."

BBC News' China furniture destroys forests seems to shift focus from demand in developed economies toward China's imports from dubious sources. Though it does refer to Western consumers playing a "major role," is this basically yet another story written on the 'hungry waking dragon spoiling it for everyone else' template?

Of course, it's hardly the job of journalists to unquestioningly accept the pitch of a press release and the full report itself, China and the Global Market for Forest Products (pdf), does appear to give more emphasis to the country's role in driving overexploitation of forests in nations such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

English news of the report was released by Forest Trends and the Center for International Forestry Research but it was produced jointly with the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, run under the aegis of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Given a tendency in China to intentionally politicise everything, it is tempting to speculate that such an agency may have pressured a spin of the press release away from the country's regulatory and enforcement deficiencies.

But the overall tone of the report (facing "opportunities" rather than problems) also chimes with Forest Trends' description of themselves as "market promoters," and it could be argued that a report produced with the involvement of a Western government agency might be just as likely to have news of its release skewed from anything too awkward.

And awkward the issue of wood supplies certainly is in China; even official news agencies have reported sporadically on likely local government corruption connected to logging by the notorious APP in the provinces of Yunnan and Hainan.

Embarrassments like these have helped prompt crackdowns on logging within China, resulting in increased supplies from elsewhere.

Perhaps, regardless of who produced the report, a genuine desire to positively influence Chinese policy rather than berating it lies behind its diplomatic phrasing.

Governments that cannot take criticism might respond laboriously slowly to carefully-worded recommendations, but not at all to bare exposure of their flaws. And boy, if there was ever a government with flaws...