Sober analysis

Amy Chua writes on democracy and capitalism run rampant. If the West doesn't offer completely free markets, why does it impose them on the rest of the world? And how should a democratic process start to succeed?

Not from here, is the answer from Clare Short. Her attack concentrates on the pisspoor and clearly incorrect legal figleaf offered from the Attorney General's office. The former Cabinet minister concludes:

As I go over and over events leading up to the rush to war, I cannot help but conclude that the way in which the Attorney General's opinion was produced and handled was very strange. It is hard not to suspect that he had doubts and was leant upon.

And, for the record, I am not at all bitter. I am not even angry. I am still astonished and sad and disappointed. I believe that our country and my party have been deeply dishonoured, large numbers of people have lost their lives and the world made more bitterly divided and dangerous. I committed myself to the Labour Party very many years ago because I believed it to be an instrument of moral advance and justice at home and abroad.

I believe the best way to correct the mistakes is to persuade Tony Blair to stand down. I have made no secret of this view. I have not enjoyed reaching these conclusions but they are my serious opinions. I do not support my party right or wrong. I want to preserve my party as an instrument of justice. I also think we should stop invading the privacy of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Speak!

1994: Chris Morris news satire The Day Today features a vox pop segment where the public rattle on about anything. A typical Speak Your Brains segment goes like this:

Chris Morris: Should we bring back the death penalty?
Random Member of the Public: Er, um, yes.
CM: And what should it be?
RMP: Er...
CM: How should we deal with them, under this death penalty?
RMP: Hang 'em.
CM: So you think..?
RMP: Yes, hang 'em.
CM: The penalty for death...
RMP: Hanging.
CM: Should be hanging. You wait until someone dies, then string up the corpse. That right?
RMP: Er... yes.

2004: The station occupying the frequencies of BBC Radio 5 launches a new marketing campaign, Speak Your Mind. According to the BBC's PR Puffery department:

"The trails highlight the range of debate on the station by illustrating such hard-hitting topics as overpaid footballers or arming the police via thoughts coming from the minds of listeners echoing the theme of the campaign that the station ‘Speaks Your Mind’."

Spook!

If Alistair Campbell was unhappy when the infamous and accurate 45 minute claim appeared nine months ago, we can only assume that he choked on his organic museli this morning. Former Cabinet minister Claire Short claims on the Today programme that the UK spied on Kofi Annan and the UN before last year's invasion. Such spying, which Ms Short vouched for with the claim that she'd read transcripts of UN phone calls, would be completely illegal.

At the monthly lie and falsehood fest that passes for a press conference, soon to be former prime minister Mister Tony Blair refused to explicitly confirm or deny the claim, but insisted that intelligence officers always acted within the bounds of national and international law. So that'll be a "no", then. The lying shit also said that he would "have to reflect" on the former international development secretary's future as a Labour MP.

Peter Kilfoyle, one of the leading anti-war MPs on the Labour backbenches, was not surprised by Ms Short's revelation. "It just compounds the felony, in that the government were misleading the British people on this issue. They were also seeking to mislead United Nations by illegal means." Richard Tomlinson, a former intelligence agent who was prosecuted for breaking the Official Secrets Act, told Today that illegal operations were not uncommon. "There has been a lot of illegal work in the intelligence services in the past, and I'm sure there was an awful lot in the run-up to the war."

This spying stuff, attractive as it is, distracts from Ms Short's comments on the recently-concluded Katharine Gun case.

[The opinion to war] centres on the Attorney General's advice that war was legal under resolution 1441, which was published, but was very very odd. The more I think about it, the more fishy I think it was. It came very, very late. He came to the Cabinet the day Robin Cook resigned, sat in Robin's seat, two sides of A4, no discussion permitted.

We know already that the Foreign Office legal advisers had disagreed and one of them had said there was no authority for war...

My own suspicion is that the Attorney General has stopped this prosecution because part of [Mrs Gun's] defence was to question the legality and that would have brought his advice into the public domain again and there was something fishy about the way in which he said war was legal.

The major issue here is the legal authority and whether the Attorney General had to be persuaded at the last minute, against the advice of one of the Foreign Office legal advisers who then resigned, that he could give legal authority for war and whether there had to be an exaggeration of the threat of the use of chemical and biological weapons to persuade him that there was legal authority.

I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinising and pressing to get the truth out.

Tony, some answers, please. Oh, and be quick about it, there's a good servant of the people.

Boris Trajkovski

Macedonia's president was today killed when his plane crashed in thick fog in a mountainous part of southern Bosnia. Boris had been flying to an international investment conference in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, when the plane came down. There had previously been concerns that the presidential jet needed repair work, but that never happened.

Mr Trajkovski's main achievement was a NATO-brokered peace deal to prevent a full-scale civil war in Kosov@ three years ago. He deliberately avoided the populist nationalism all too prevalent in the region, and worked with the Albanian community in Macedonia to show that compromise politics were possible. Instinctively European, he put in place key figures to promote Macedonia's aspirations to join the EU - indeed, Macedonian PM Branko Crvenkovski was in Dublin today to submit his country's formal application for membership.

You hear it here first

It's five and a half weeks since we told you about Katharine Gun, the former spy who was fired and prosecuted for revealing the US's spying operations on UN Security Council members in the run-up to last year's invasion of Iraq. The case came to a preliminary hearing today. The prosecution offered no evidence, and Ms Gun walked free. Reports the Indy:

The Crown Prosecution Service refused to go into the reasons why, after nearly a year, it had decided to offer no evidence against Katharine Gun. She had been accused of disclosing a request allegedly from a US National Security Agency official requesting help from British intelligence to tap the telephones of UN Security Council delegates in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

She left court today saying "I have no regrets and I would do it again." She had no idea why the charge had been dropped. "But I would like to know why," she added.

The Crown refused to give a fuller explanation of why it had changed its mind - in spite of being continually pressed to do so in court by Ms Gun's barrister.

"Yesterday, on February 24, the defence served on the prosecution a document setting out her defence and making requests for disclosure certain diplomatic communications and certain items of Government legal advice. A call was received yesterday afternoon from the CPS indicating a decision had been taken to drop the case."

Mr Ellison, for the prosecution, refused to be drawn, apart from saying: "You will understand that consideration had been given to what is appropriate for the Crown to say. It is not appropriate to give further reasons. I am reluctant to go further than that unless the court requires I do."

The Recorder of London, Judge Michael Hyam, asked whether there was "any form of inquiry which I would be entitled to make?" He was told by Mr Ellison that apart from making an order for the defence costs, there was not - as the Crown had offered no evidence.

What are they covering up? Why has the trial fallen apart as soon as the defence outlined its strategy? Surely soon to be former Prime Minister Mister Tony Blair isn't quaking in his boots at the prospect of having to reveal the legal advice that led him to conclude - inaccurately, of course - that there was justification for toppling a soverign regime?

We'll have some answers, Tony, and we'll have them now.

As one would expect from a thinking man...

Easterblogg is not impressed by Mel Gibson. Not only is he quietly pissed off about the spam promoting the motion picture, but Gregg cites it as Yet Another Example Of Hollywood Being Gratuitously Violent At The Expense Of The Plot. And, just to add to the maker's woes, it's not even a faithful report of the plot. It's Mel's Guess.

Thinking Allowed

1) Why the Republican push for a US constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages could be the death of marriage as we know it. Or, don't tinker with Province's rights, George.

2) A map of the London Underground with stations closer than 500m marked. Someday, someone's going to something similar for the Full London Connections map: in the meantime, maybe this will stop those stupid Yanks who think the fastest route from Leicester Square to Covent Garden is via the tube, not via Sainsbury's Local...

When feeling lazy, repost huge chunks of the C4 News mail

Dear old Britain has awoken at the 25th hour to the reality that Europe is about to expand by ten destitute new members. Well, not quite ten destitute, because Cyprus is economically hunky dory, even if ethnically, er, confused. But the rest, well all right, leaving aside Slovenia (sorry, where?). Slovenia, yes happy product of the Austro Hungarian Empire, the rest..er, well lots of poor, lots of unemployed, lots of folks ready to spring onto buses, hide under trucks, and flood, yes flood, into Britian..to...er work! Work? Yes! Work! Heavens, what a shock for the old Brits! I mean, whoever wants to go to some windswept, rain sodden, distant isle with a pound sterling, to work? So Mr Home Secretary Blunkshett has sprung to his feet to rush a change in the law to stop people coming here NOT to work. But anyone mad enough to want to come here to WORK,well they can specifically, plumbers and doctors can. Sounds fun? Sounds er, odd? Sounds panicky? Populist?

Remember the hanging chads? The President not elected by a minority of the votes cast? Well, goodbye chads, goodbye paper votes of any kind and hello to a new super dooooper electronic voting system. Trouble is that a nice middle aged, middle class voter fell into its controlling codes one day by trawling around on Google. In fact, the system is thoroughly hackable and it's possible to shift Republican numbers into Democrat columns etc..and, oh, just by the way, the company that got the contract to pioneer and run this sumptuous system gave Candidate X's campaign $100,000. This is revealing stuff about the world's leading democracy at a moment when that self-same democracy is bound upon exporting democracy elsewhere. Is the system safe? Is it foolproof? The answer is a very worrying one. This is exclusive, remarkable and unmissble. Be there or be square like some perforated hanging chad, ignored in the next count!

Oh, go away

Speaking to that official state organ the News Of The Screws (prop: R Murdoch), soon to be former Prime Minister Mister Tony Blair said that he would lead his party into the next general election. "We'll have to see about that," thinks lots of Labour backbenchers, who are rather worried about their future under a loser and war criminal. The out-of-touch leader had the gall to tell Labour MPs to "reconnect with what is actually happening in their constituencies." Yes, we're saying "Mister Tony Blair is a liar and a war criminal, and he's the biggest electoral liability your party has."

In an attempt to appear tough and nasty and still able to grab headlines, Mister Blair also announced plans to allow schoolchildren to be forcibly tested for drugs. Not only does this perpetuate the myth that addressing the symptoms will cure the problem, but it also treats children as non-citizens. Adults have to give their consent to such tests. Forcing them on students will merely train a bunch of complacent sheep, or store up trouble for future years.

Throwing underwear at the stars

No change at the top of the albums chart, it's now six weeks for Katie Melua, with Franz Ferdinand holding at 2 for the second week. The BPI awards ceremony has its usual effect on the charts, with good climbs for featured Jamie Cullum (15-7), 28 New Pence (32-17), Lemar (17-11), Outkast (8-6), and the Black Eyed Peas (6-3). Not related to the baubles: climbs for Birtney's Pears (10-8 - the first time she's been in the top ten since release in November), Busted (25-13, more thanks to discounting in one large chain), the White Stripes (24-21) and Alicia Keys (29-22).
Highest new entry honours goes to Probot's eponymous album at 20, ahead of Duel's at 25, Kayne West The College Dropout at 27, while Blink 182 re-enters at 28, three places ahead of Busted's old album. Slumps for Kelis (19-24), Coldplay (20-30), Jamieson (21-34), and the Von Bondies (18-36). Sparky makes a non-mover at 37, suggesting an aggregate sale around half a million

[Above edited 28.02, on news that Norah Jones, Air, and Jamie Cullum's albums are Corrupt Disks and hence not eligible for the chart.]

On the singles front, Busted secures the third chart-toppper of their six single, 18 month career with Who's David?. It bears no resemblence to Debarge's 1986 flop "Who's Jonny?" nor Smokie's "Who The Flip Is Alice?", and suffers from both. The PI2 Sad Losers slip to 2. Keane debuts at 3 with the absolutely wonderful Somewhere Only We Know, a song that will appeal to anyone who has their own Glendalough or Woodchester Mansion or Beacon Hill. In its fifteenth (count 'em!) week Outkast holds at 6 with the phenomenally successful Hey Ya. Deepest Blue's "Give It Away" is new at 9, Raghav "Can't Get Enough" at 10, and they really ought to yield their top 10 positions to Alex Parks and Belle and Sebastian. Cry and I'm A Cuckoo debut at 13 and 14 respectively; it's the biggest hit for B&S, but a disappointing placing for Sparky. Katie Melua's amazing rule of only falling one place at a time this year continues, she's 16 this week.
Lower: NARAS winner Luther Vandross puts Dance With My Father in at 21, Clea are Stuck In The Middle two places lower, Hundred Reasons' What You Get is 30, Summer Matthews hoped for more than 32 with Little Miss Perfect, Auf Der Maur chart at 35 with Follow The Waves, and the Stills' Lola Stars And Stripes is 39. Ikara Colt, Delerium, Kings of Leon, Alfie, Syntax, Jeevas, and John Mayer (Bigger Than My Body, folks) enter between 41 and 75. Bizarre record of the week has to be a fan tribute to third division Yeovil Town, Yeovil True is a 36 hit. Only in Blighty...

older writing...