No Right Turn on Labour’s electoral reform announcement:
After a decade of broken promises, the UK’s Labour government is finally moving on electoral reform, announcing that they will pass a law before the election requiring a vote on the electoral system within two years. Of course, New Labour being New Labour it is being done for all the wrong reasons…
There have been a number of inquiries into the 2003 invasion of Iraq but as someone commenting on the European Tribune website put it, they
… are not intended to reach a finding that the public find credible, they exist to provide a smokescreen for a few years to cover the establishment for a few years in the hope everyone forgets about it.
Jacqui Janes believes her son is dead because the war in Afghanistan is under-resourced.
He’s not. He’s dead because he was fighting an unjust war.
The stated aim of the invasion of Afghanistan was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda members. On 14 October, 2001, the Taliban publicly offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country, provided the U.S. halted the illegal bombing of Afghanistan and produced the necessary evidence about involvement of bin Laden or any of his associates in the 11 September attacks.
George Bush junior dismissed this offer and continued with the offensive, putting an end to any possibility of a potentially peaceful, legal resolution to the events of 11 September 2001.
The United Nations Security Council never authorised the invasion of Afghanistan and it certainly wasn’t an act of self-defence. It was an act of aggression, the supreme international crime.
Neither George Bush nor Gordon Brown had to go off to war, but Jacqui Janes’ son did, and now he’s dead.
Labour (UK) have had twelve years to do this:
A fierce debate within the government on how to tackle entrenched wealth inequality … is to be ignited by a report ordered by Harriet Harman, the Labour deputy leader and the minister responsible for equalities.
As part of negotiations with Iran over nuclear fuel Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently proposed that Iran transfer about 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment by the end of this year, then to France for conversion into fuel plates for medical use, effectively negating its use in alleged potential nuclear weapons.
Iran has apparently made the perfectly justifiable suggestion that rather than send their fuel off, and cross their fingers that it comes back, they instead do a direct swap of their low-enriched uranium for fuel plates. This makes even more sense when you realise that the U.S. and France have reneged on commercial deals in the past to supply Iran with nuclear fuel.
According to this Reuters report (typically vague on sources) this suggestion is “unacceptable” to “Western diplomats.”
If you wanted evidence that these negotiations are not being carried out in good faith then here you have it. What does it matter to the West if a direct swap is made? The only reason it could matter is that peace is not the West’s aim.
Channel 4’s Dispatches last night: Do You Know What’s in Your Breakfast? A reminder that, in capitalism, it’s not the job of the food industry to provide good healthy food. Their job is to make as much money by whatever means necessary, even if that means sneaking copious amounts of saturated fat, sugar and salt into your child’s diet.
Guardian gagged from reporting UK parliament:
The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
Update: Trafigura drops bid to gag Guardian over MP’s question.
‘No credible evidence’ of Iranian nuclear weapons, says UN inspector:
The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen “no credible evidence” that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, rejecting British intelligence allegations that a weapons programme has been going on for at least four years.
Anyone surprised by this is just a fucking plonker.
Open letter from the Camp for Climate Action to Ian Thomas, the Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police Service. Worth reading in it’s entirety.
Could be interesting. Jon Henley for The Guardian:
The Metropolitan police have announced a new strategy for next week’s Climate Camp – putting women officers in charge of the operation. Will this avoid the violence seen at the G20 protests?
Perhaps the most noted American researcher into gender differences in policing, Joseph Balkin, observed that “policemen tend to see police work as involving control through authority, while policewomen see it as public service”. In some respects at least, he concluded, “women are better suited for police work than men.”
Maybe this strategy should be transposed to international politics?