Latest news on the Al-Jazeera memo: according to Blair Watch, there are two memos, i.e. the one in the Times from last year & the one in the Mirror from last week are different & that the two people on trial are charged over only one of ‘em.
As Blair Watch say:
If what was reported by the BBC on 17th November, prior to the Mirror story is correct; that Keogh and O'Connor are being prosecuted over the leak of the document 'Iraq in The Medium Term' as published in the Times [May 2004], and not for leaking the source of the Mirror article then the Bliar and his official spokesman would be leaving themselves wide open by describing the Mirror story as 'sub-judice'.
If the Mirror is correct in it's assertion that Keogh and O'Connor are being charged over the source of their story [the transcript], then the story reported by the BBC about them being charged over the leaking of the 'Iraq in the Medium Term' memo was a construct, a 'beard' to cover up the existence of the document referred by the Mirror.
This means our government must have pre planned and disseminated the lie [or spin if you prefer]; that Keogh and O’Connor were being prosecuted over the leaking of the 'Iraq in the medium term' memo.
To cover up the existance of the 'Lets bomb Al-Jazeera' transcript?A plan derailed by the Mirror obtaining a copy and publishing it's story.
The BBC ran the story about Keogh and O'Connor's prosecution on the 17th of November.The Mirror state they approached the Government with their story about Bush wanting to Bomb al-Jazeera 24 hours before publication, on the 22nd of November.
This was four days after we 'learned' via the BBC that Keogh and O'Connor were to be charged with the leak of the 'Iraq in the Medium Term' memo.
If this is the case, the Mirror story did not precipitate the lie [spin] that was reported either wittingly or unwittingly by the BBC on the 17th November, it exposed it.
If we accept Peter Killfoyle's word (and I do) that the Times article and the Mirror article are from different sources, then Keogh and O'Connor cannot be facing charges over both leaks.Either way we are being told lies by our government, and either wittingly or unwittingly by the mainstream media.
29 November, 2005
28 November, 2005
Memo FoIA request
The FoIA blog has put in a FoIA request for the Al-Jazeera memo & has got a reply back within a day… maybe they’re responding to public pressure…
There’s also an opinion piece in the Guardian over the situation.
There’s also an opinion piece in the Guardian over the situation.
27 November, 2005
More Parliament protests
Some more people have been arrested for an unauthorised protest within 1 km of Parliament.
Two women were arrested on Friday 25th November while holding a bell-ringing ceremony outside Parliament to remember the estimated 100,000 people who had died since the beginning of the war in Iraq.
However, according to Indymedia UK (at least some of) the police don't seem to support the law:
One policeman was heard saying 'I wish I could join you. I wish I could do what you're doing. This is filthy. This is very hard for all of us'.
The women were taken to Charing Cross Police Station but later released without charges. As well as being reluctant to arrest, the Police also seemed concerned at the possibility of two more people challenging the new laws.
This may explain the lack of action when I put a new sign up in the "Designated Area"... I wonder if they've mentioned their concerns to the head of the Met Police Sir Ian "Give us more powers for your own good" Blair?
Civil disobedience can make any law unworkable, as seems to be happening!
Two women were arrested on Friday 25th November while holding a bell-ringing ceremony outside Parliament to remember the estimated 100,000 people who had died since the beginning of the war in Iraq.
However, according to Indymedia UK (at least some of) the police don't seem to support the law:
One policeman was heard saying 'I wish I could join you. I wish I could do what you're doing. This is filthy. This is very hard for all of us'.
The women were taken to Charing Cross Police Station but later released without charges. As well as being reluctant to arrest, the Police also seemed concerned at the possibility of two more people challenging the new laws.
This may explain the lack of action when I put a new sign up in the "Designated Area"... I wonder if they've mentioned their concerns to the head of the Met Police Sir Ian "Give us more powers for your own good" Blair?
Civil disobedience can make any law unworkable, as seems to be happening!
Time to move on...
I've previously mentioned that the Serious Organised Crime Act was created to victimise an anti-war protestor who's camped outside Parliament.
Well from Bloggerheads, comes this:
Britain's most persistent anti-war demonstrator was today ordered to quit his protest. Parliament Square protester Brian Haw has been served with a legal notice to dismantle his makeshift peace camp opposite the House of Commons. Ministers expect him to be gone by August.... Mr Haw's removal would end demonstrations outside the Houses of Parliament for the first time in 350 years. [i.e. since before the Civil War when we had a war-mongering leader who thought he had a divine right to rule the country & no-one could tell him otherwise... Wait a minute... that seems strangely familiar. Why?] The Home Office brought in special laws last month overturning the centuries-old right of people to challenge their elected representatives outside Westminster. They claimed the measures were needed for security reasons.
"Security reasons", yeah right! It's to embarrassing seeing him every day reminding everyone what you've done & you can't handle it.
So much for having a democratic right to speak out & protest about the actions of your government... Guess it only applies if you're supporting the government.
Well from Bloggerheads, comes this:
Britain's most persistent anti-war demonstrator was today ordered to quit his protest. Parliament Square protester Brian Haw has been served with a legal notice to dismantle his makeshift peace camp opposite the House of Commons. Ministers expect him to be gone by August.... Mr Haw's removal would end demonstrations outside the Houses of Parliament for the first time in 350 years. [i.e. since before the Civil War when we had a war-mongering leader who thought he had a divine right to rule the country & no-one could tell him otherwise... Wait a minute... that seems strangely familiar. Why?] The Home Office brought in special laws last month overturning the centuries-old right of people to challenge their elected representatives outside Westminster. They claimed the measures were needed for security reasons.
"Security reasons", yeah right! It's to embarrassing seeing him every day reminding everyone what you've done & you can't handle it.
So much for having a democratic right to speak out & protest about the actions of your government... Guess it only applies if you're supporting the government.
Religion vs Freedom of Speech
The govt have published their "Racial and Religious Hatred Bill".
I'm opposed to it for the following reasons:
Yeah, right! All Labour know is to stifle criticism & dissent at all costs - see the Serious Organised Crime & Police Act 2005 which bans "Any person [from demonstrating] in a public place in the designated area" (section 129), which means Parliament. There is an anti-war demonstrator (Brian Haw, who stood in the election as an Independent) who's been there for 4 years, so it appears that this section has been designed specifically with him in mind.
I'm opposed to it for the following reasons:
- It's my right to slag-off Christianity
- Religion is different to sex/race/sex orientation in that you can change your religion, but it's kinda hard to change your race
- The govt unfortunately appears to be pandering to religious-freaks who want to stop any criticism of them (see the hassle Christian groups caused with the BBC's showing of Jerry Springer: The Opera & the subsequent dismissal of their complaints).
- Religion is just an idea - ideas are there to be challenged, if you can't take my criticism, then that means those beliefs are very poorly thought out. There's no reason for people to end up in prison because you're easily offended (are make out that you are offended…). Let's hope someone challenges it under the Human Rights Act 1998 as being disproportionate & a breach of Article 10 (Freedom of Expression), which would force to govt to change it.
Yeah, right! All Labour know is to stifle criticism & dissent at all costs - see the Serious Organised Crime & Police Act 2005 which bans "Any person [from demonstrating] in a public place in the designated area" (section 129), which means Parliament. There is an anti-war demonstrator (Brian Haw, who stood in the election as an Independent) who's been there for 4 years, so it appears that this section has been designed specifically with him in mind.
More on the memo
More on the Al-Jazeera bombing memo from the Independent on Sunday
"Some people will think this is heavy-handed," said a senior Whitehall source. "What people are bound to say is that we are being inconsistent in dealing with this case. They are bound to ask why we are pursuing this case, and not others."
The innocent (government) has nothing to fear…
Some have argued that if the text of the memo at the heart of the present row were published, it would show that Mr Blair, contrary to the claims of Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to Washington, had used his influence to restrain American behaviour in Iraq. But events in Fallujah and beyond do not give much sign that the US ever heeded any British expression of concern about its methods of dealing with the insurgency.
Not only is the Prime Minister's authority in Washington in question, but Iraq has also eroded his ability to push through his policies at home. It is in this context that the Government's crackdown on leaks is being viewed. With open disagreements growing inside the Government on a host of issues - just in the past week, these have included pensions, nuclear power, education policy and flu jabs - a firmer approach is needed to stop the flow of confidential documents, some believe.
The government needs to promote its heavy-handedness in order to pre-empt further leaks…
It remains to be seen whether the Government seeks to prevent the five-page document becoming public during the OSA trial, but it could not have focused more interest on the case unless it published the whole transcript, as Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, and others are demanding in a parliamentary motion.
But they’ve ballsed-up: by threatening to jail anyone who publishes it, they’ve drawn more attention to it, than it (possibly/probably?) deserves.
The Sunday Times also has ideas about why the government has chosen to act how it has:
Bush had endorsed Ariel Sharon’s plan for the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. But the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees to land seized by Israel since 1948 was blocked. The plan was met with fury in the Arab world. It also angered Blair as it ended two years of diplomatic efforts by the British on the “road map” to Middle East peace.
According to Anthony Seldon, Blair’s biographer, who has interviewed those briefed on the meeting, this marked a “significant” setback for Blair. The prime minister was also said to be angered by the US failure to consult him on their private negotiations with Sharon. However, in public Blair remained supportive of Bush.
There were disagreements, but not over bombing a TV station, but over how to resolve the Israel-Palestine problem. They also think it contains other juicy details:
The White House meeting is thought to have covered how the British were secretly liaising with Iranian “diplomats” in Baghdad in the hope that they would mediate with the Shi’ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
Iran is now suspected of funding and training insurgents in southern Iraq, so the disclosure of any evidence that Blair was prepared to negotiate with them in 2004 would be embarrassing.
This part of the discussion also revealed information about British and American intelligence sources in Iraq and military strategies. It is this material that the government is most concerned to prevent leaking into the public domain.
"Some people will think this is heavy-handed," said a senior Whitehall source. "What people are bound to say is that we are being inconsistent in dealing with this case. They are bound to ask why we are pursuing this case, and not others."
The innocent (government) has nothing to fear…
Some have argued that if the text of the memo at the heart of the present row were published, it would show that Mr Blair, contrary to the claims of Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to Washington, had used his influence to restrain American behaviour in Iraq. But events in Fallujah and beyond do not give much sign that the US ever heeded any British expression of concern about its methods of dealing with the insurgency.
Not only is the Prime Minister's authority in Washington in question, but Iraq has also eroded his ability to push through his policies at home. It is in this context that the Government's crackdown on leaks is being viewed. With open disagreements growing inside the Government on a host of issues - just in the past week, these have included pensions, nuclear power, education policy and flu jabs - a firmer approach is needed to stop the flow of confidential documents, some believe.
The government needs to promote its heavy-handedness in order to pre-empt further leaks…
It remains to be seen whether the Government seeks to prevent the five-page document becoming public during the OSA trial, but it could not have focused more interest on the case unless it published the whole transcript, as Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, and others are demanding in a parliamentary motion.
But they’ve ballsed-up: by threatening to jail anyone who publishes it, they’ve drawn more attention to it, than it (possibly/probably?) deserves.
The Sunday Times also has ideas about why the government has chosen to act how it has:
Bush had endorsed Ariel Sharon’s plan for the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. But the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees to land seized by Israel since 1948 was blocked. The plan was met with fury in the Arab world. It also angered Blair as it ended two years of diplomatic efforts by the British on the “road map” to Middle East peace.
According to Anthony Seldon, Blair’s biographer, who has interviewed those briefed on the meeting, this marked a “significant” setback for Blair. The prime minister was also said to be angered by the US failure to consult him on their private negotiations with Sharon. However, in public Blair remained supportive of Bush.
There were disagreements, but not over bombing a TV station, but over how to resolve the Israel-Palestine problem. They also think it contains other juicy details:
The White House meeting is thought to have covered how the British were secretly liaising with Iranian “diplomats” in Baghdad in the hope that they would mediate with the Shi’ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
Iran is now suspected of funding and training insurgents in southern Iraq, so the disclosure of any evidence that Blair was prepared to negotiate with them in 2004 would be embarrassing.
This part of the discussion also revealed information about British and American intelligence sources in Iraq and military strategies. It is this material that the government is most concerned to prevent leaking into the public domain.
24 November, 2005
Iraq Motion/email to MP
I sent this email to my MP, Kitty Ussher:
Dear Ms. Ussher,
I was wondering if you would be kind enough to support this Early Day Motion (http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29437&SESSION=875) as I feel that it would be good for the whole of the UK if we are able to find out how we were led to war with Iraq, as we would be able to put it behind us once and for all.
Yours sincerely,
I wonder what reply I’ll get off her “people” this time? (I still haven’t had a reply to my 2nd email, yet…)
Dear Ms. Ussher,
I was wondering if you would be kind enough to support this Early Day Motion (http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29437&SESSION=875) as I feel that it would be good for the whole of the UK if we are able to find out how we were led to war with Iraq, as we would be able to put it behind us once and for all.
Yours sincerely,
I wonder what reply I’ll get off her “people” this time? (I still haven’t had a reply to my 2nd email, yet…)
23 November, 2005
The history of ID cards
Jon Agar, lecturer at Cambridge University’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science, has done a brief history of ID cards in the UK.
This is the Executive Summary:
This is the Executive Summary:
- The first national register (1915-1919), and accompanying identity card, was a failure, and the second (1939-1952) a partial success. The success of the second system was secured by analysing the causes of the failure of the first.
- Universal registration systems have repeatedly been proposed as solutions to short-lived moral panics [e.g. terrorism]. But there is little evidence that national registers effectively resolve such panics.
- Public indifference or hostility to identity cards was managed by building 'parasitic vitality' into the second experience. In particular, the system of national registration was intimately connected to the system of food rationing. Without similar 'parasitic vitality', contemporary proposals can be expected to struggle to win acceptance [i.e. you have to have one or else].
- However, such interconnection encourages the phenomenon of 'function creep': eventually the pattern of disclosure and use of personal information is markedly different from that originally declared.
- The last National Register, while relatively simple to operate and dependent on manual technology, was only marginally judged value for money when subjected to sympathetic but critical analysis.
- Meanwhile, a large part of the effectiveness of the simple cards lay in their very simplicity: the lack of information contained permitted a cheap and effective check system.
- Even so, the historical record also reveals the diverse unofficial, including criminal, uses of identity cards.
- The latest proposals seem to resemble the first national register more than the second. Policymakers would do well to follow their predecessors and learn from the past [or, rather, lets hope they don’t].
Memo
This is the article that was in the Mirror on Monday, which the government are trying to ban:
PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.
But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.
A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.
The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.
A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.
"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.
"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."
A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".
But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."
Yesterday former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the five-page transcript of the two leaders' conversation. He said: "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions.
"I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war."
Bush disclosed his plan to target al-Jazeera, a civilian station with a huge Mid-East following, at a White House face-to-face with Mr Blair on April 16 last year.
At the time, the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.
Al-Jazeera infuriated Washington and London by reporting from behind rebel lines and broadcasting pictures of dead soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi victims.
The station, watched by millions, has also been used by bin Laden and al-Qaeda to broadcast atrocities and to threaten the West.
Al-Jazeera's HQ is in the business district of Qatar's capital, Doha.
Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".
Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.
To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.
The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.
In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre.
The memo, which also included details of troop deployments, turned up in May last year at the Northampton constituency office of then Labour MP Tony Clarke.
Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh, 49, is accused under the Official Secrets Act of passing it to Leo O'Connor, 42, who used to work for Mr Clarke. Both are bailed to appear at Bow Street court next week.
Mr Clarke, who lost at the election, returned the memo to No 10.
He said Mr O'Connor had behaved "perfectly correctly".
Neither Mr O'Connor or Mr Keogh were available. No 10 did not comment.
The Wayne Masden Report has this to say:
WMR will be more than happy to publish the Al Jazeera bombing memo or any other classified British government memo in whole or in part. E-mail to waynemadsendc@hotmail.com. The web makes the Official Secrets Act a true "paper tiger."]
Keogh passed the memo to Leo O'Connor, an assistant to former British Labor MP Tony Clarke. Both Keogh and O'Connor face charges of violating Britain's quaint and arcane Official Secrets Act. However, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) translator and analyst Katharine Gun had similar charges against her dropped when it became apparent that her trial on the leak of a Top Secret National Security Agency (NSA) directive to GCHQ to begin surge surveillance of UN Security Council members prior to a 2003 vote on an Iraq war resolution would embarrass the Blair government. Neither were their criminal sanctions as a result of the leak of the "Downing Street Memo," marked Secret and Strictly Personal - UK Eyes Only, that pointed to premeditation between Bush and Blair to justify the war against Iraq.
These newest revelations point to several issues. Current and former members of the British government are as rebellious over the neo-con takeover of their government as are their American counterparts with regard to their own government. The fact that Bush would entertain bombing an ally and an independent news media operation points to his current mindset. Bush made his statement to Blair at the same time others in his White House were contemplating a pre-election attack on Iran's nuclear sites. Bush and his coterie of advisers are the most dangerous regime in the world today, a group of people who have their hands on triggers of weapons of total destruction (WTDs).
UPDATE: Bliarwatch have a list of everyone who's signed up to publish it.
Found this on DU:
... on Wednesday's Channel 4 News, Jon Snow said the Sunday Times published large parts of the Bush-Blair "bomb Al Jazeera' memo on that day. I can't find anything on the website, but then they might well have removed it after the threat of the Official Secrets Act.
There's a link to the C4 piece in General Discussion here. The mention of the Sunday Times is about 9 minutes into it.
Anyone have a copy of the Sunday Times from 20/11/05?
PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.
But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.
A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.
The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.
A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.
"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.
"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."
A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".
But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."
Yesterday former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the five-page transcript of the two leaders' conversation. He said: "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions.
"I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war."
Bush disclosed his plan to target al-Jazeera, a civilian station with a huge Mid-East following, at a White House face-to-face with Mr Blair on April 16 last year.
At the time, the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.
Al-Jazeera infuriated Washington and London by reporting from behind rebel lines and broadcasting pictures of dead soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi victims.
The station, watched by millions, has also been used by bin Laden and al-Qaeda to broadcast atrocities and to threaten the West.
Al-Jazeera's HQ is in the business district of Qatar's capital, Doha.
Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".
Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.
To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.
The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.
In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre.
The memo, which also included details of troop deployments, turned up in May last year at the Northampton constituency office of then Labour MP Tony Clarke.
Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh, 49, is accused under the Official Secrets Act of passing it to Leo O'Connor, 42, who used to work for Mr Clarke. Both are bailed to appear at Bow Street court next week.
Mr Clarke, who lost at the election, returned the memo to No 10.
He said Mr O'Connor had behaved "perfectly correctly".
Neither Mr O'Connor or Mr Keogh were available. No 10 did not comment.
The Wayne Masden Report has this to say:
WMR will be more than happy to publish the Al Jazeera bombing memo or any other classified British government memo in whole or in part. E-mail to waynemadsendc@hotmail.com. The web makes the Official Secrets Act a true "paper tiger."]
Keogh passed the memo to Leo O'Connor, an assistant to former British Labor MP Tony Clarke. Both Keogh and O'Connor face charges of violating Britain's quaint and arcane Official Secrets Act. However, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) translator and analyst Katharine Gun had similar charges against her dropped when it became apparent that her trial on the leak of a Top Secret National Security Agency (NSA) directive to GCHQ to begin surge surveillance of UN Security Council members prior to a 2003 vote on an Iraq war resolution would embarrass the Blair government. Neither were their criminal sanctions as a result of the leak of the "Downing Street Memo," marked Secret and Strictly Personal - UK Eyes Only, that pointed to premeditation between Bush and Blair to justify the war against Iraq.
These newest revelations point to several issues. Current and former members of the British government are as rebellious over the neo-con takeover of their government as are their American counterparts with regard to their own government. The fact that Bush would entertain bombing an ally and an independent news media operation points to his current mindset. Bush made his statement to Blair at the same time others in his White House were contemplating a pre-election attack on Iran's nuclear sites. Bush and his coterie of advisers are the most dangerous regime in the world today, a group of people who have their hands on triggers of weapons of total destruction (WTDs).
UPDATE: Bliarwatch have a list of everyone who's signed up to publish it.
Found this on DU:
... on Wednesday's Channel 4 News, Jon Snow said the Sunday Times published large parts of the Bush-Blair "bomb Al Jazeera' memo on that day. I can't find anything on the website, but then they might well have removed it after the threat of the Official Secrets Act.
There's a link to the C4 piece in General Discussion here. The mention of the Sunday Times is about 9 minutes into it.
Anyone have a copy of the Sunday Times from 20/11/05?
20 November, 2005
Ricin Ring update
Earlier this year I said that the Guardian had removed an article from its website over the failed ricin-ring plot.
Spy Blog have an update which links to official Guardian version over what happened – the DID have a D-Notice; however, as Spy Blog point out they are only advisory, not mandatory. Also, the Guardian admit that no Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate was handed out by the court, which is the normal way to restrict reporting, which, in this case, was due to naming witnesses:
Despite several requests, the MoD and the Crown Prosecution Service failed to provide the Guardian with a copy of the order. However, its lawyers spoke to the prosecution and defence lawyers in the case, who confirmed that the judge had granted an unopposed application to protect the identity of Porton Down witnesses. Apparently, they were not named in open court and they were screened from the jury when they gave evidence. No order was posted in the court press room - the usual practice with reporting restrictions - and Mr Campbell was not at court.
As Spy Blog mention it’s interesting that this happened in the run up to the election & it worth pointing out that the Guardian didn’t mention the PII certificate.
Spy Blog have an update which links to official Guardian version over what happened – the DID have a D-Notice; however, as Spy Blog point out they are only advisory, not mandatory. Also, the Guardian admit that no Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate was handed out by the court, which is the normal way to restrict reporting, which, in this case, was due to naming witnesses:
Despite several requests, the MoD and the Crown Prosecution Service failed to provide the Guardian with a copy of the order. However, its lawyers spoke to the prosecution and defence lawyers in the case, who confirmed that the judge had granted an unopposed application to protect the identity of Porton Down witnesses. Apparently, they were not named in open court and they were screened from the jury when they gave evidence. No order was posted in the court press room - the usual practice with reporting restrictions - and Mr Campbell was not at court.
As Spy Blog mention it’s interesting that this happened in the run up to the election & it worth pointing out that the Guardian didn’t mention the PII certificate.
Basra
1. Yesterday, British troops, amongst other things, stormed a prison in Iraq which was holding 2 soldiers who'd been arrested for shooting Iraqi police.
These are the two guys arrested:
Thing is, when I looked in the paper this morning, their faces were blurred... probably due to this (from Rigourous Intuition, the comments of which are very interesting):
Reuters appended a note to each photo over the wire: "ATTENTION EDITORS - THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT REQUESTS THAT THE IDENTIFICATION OF THIS MAN IS NOT REVEALED, EITHER VIA PIXELLATION OF THEIR FACES OR BY NOT PUBLISHING THE PHOTOS."
2. According to Daily Kos, BBC World Service originally said the men (SAS guys) were driving a car full of "full of explosives and bomb making equipment." Which would explain the blurring... Antiwar say a similar thing, with a quote from Xinhua:"
'Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers,' an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said."
Antiwar continue:
By "Arab uniforms" they no doubt mean traditional Arab dress, long flow-y Lawrence of Arabia drag, but as for the explosives .... I'm not sure how much truth there is in this report, but the source doesn't necessarily rule it out. After all, what were those two Brit Special Forces types doing out of uniform -- and seemingly gone native? They were apparently riding around Basra, with whatever it was they had in their car: explosives, surveillance devices, or maybe just candy to hand out to children....
3. A commentary on WIIIAI includes mentioning this act violates international law by the soldiers being undercover; while another one here asks why were the soldiers dressed in Arabic clothes? So much for Iraq being a "sovereign nation".
4. Now the Iraqis are calling for us to leave! Some people are just so ungrateful...
5. More comments on Rense, including This report give crediblity to the 'conspiracy theorists' who have long claimed many terrorist acts in Iraq are... initiated and carried out by US, British and Israeli forces.
6. See also this.
I've always said the term "conspiracy theorist" is just a way of attacking someone's credibilty, when their statements cannot be proven wrong. A "conspiracy theory" is just what you get when you combine facts, logic & rational thinking, which makes holes in the official version.
These are the two guys arrested:
Thing is, when I looked in the paper this morning, their faces were blurred... probably due to this (from Rigourous Intuition, the comments of which are very interesting):
Reuters appended a note to each photo over the wire: "ATTENTION EDITORS - THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT REQUESTS THAT THE IDENTIFICATION OF THIS MAN IS NOT REVEALED, EITHER VIA PIXELLATION OF THEIR FACES OR BY NOT PUBLISHING THE PHOTOS."
2. According to Daily Kos, BBC World Service originally said the men (SAS guys) were driving a car full of "full of explosives and bomb making equipment." Which would explain the blurring... Antiwar say a similar thing, with a quote from Xinhua:"
'Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers,' an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said."
Antiwar continue:
By "Arab uniforms" they no doubt mean traditional Arab dress, long flow-y Lawrence of Arabia drag, but as for the explosives .... I'm not sure how much truth there is in this report, but the source doesn't necessarily rule it out. After all, what were those two Brit Special Forces types doing out of uniform -- and seemingly gone native? They were apparently riding around Basra, with whatever it was they had in their car: explosives, surveillance devices, or maybe just candy to hand out to children....
3. A commentary on WIIIAI includes mentioning this act violates international law by the soldiers being undercover; while another one here asks why were the soldiers dressed in Arabic clothes? So much for Iraq being a "sovereign nation".
4. Now the Iraqis are calling for us to leave! Some people are just so ungrateful...
5. More comments on Rense, including This report give crediblity to the 'conspiracy theorists' who have long claimed many terrorist acts in Iraq are... initiated and carried out by US, British and Israeli forces.
6. See also this.
I've always said the term "conspiracy theorist" is just a way of attacking someone's credibilty, when their statements cannot be proven wrong. A "conspiracy theory" is just what you get when you combine facts, logic & rational thinking, which makes holes in the official version.
Operation Mirrorball
From the Yorkshire Ranter (TYR), the London Evening Standard had an article which has gone down the Memory Hole (probably via a D-Notice as it makes the government look bad). Here it is in full:
HOW CAN BRITAIN STILL USE THE MERCHANT OF DEATH?
Today the UK will promise to curb arms traffickers. But the MoD is hiring planes from a dealer linked to Bin Laden.
By Andrew Gilligan. Evening Standard, Monday, 9th May 2005.
Victor Bout [sic] is the most notorious arms trafficker in the world. Linked to Osama bin Laden by the British government, linked to the Taliban by the US government, he was described by a New Labour minister as a "merchant of death" who must be shut down.
Yet an Evening Standard investigation has found that, just two months ago, a Victor Bout company was hired by that very same British government to operate military flights from a key RAF base.
Bout, a 38-year old Russian, owns or controls a constellation of airlines that have smuggled illegal weapons to conflict zones for the past 15 years. He has been named in countless official investigations and reports - the most recent only last month. The authorities in Belgium, where he used to work, have issued a warrant for his arrest. In 2004, the US froze his assets and put him on a terrorist watch list [not that they stopped him flying to and from Baghdad, TYR].
But between 6 and 9 March this year, according to official Civil Aviation Authority records, two Victor Bout charter flights took off from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. The cargo was armoured vehicles and a few British troops. The client was the Ministry of Defence.
The charters were operated by an airline called Trans Avia. It was named as one of Mr. Bout's front companies by the Government itself - in a Commons written answer on 2 May 2002. The Government cannot claim ignorance of Bout's dubious links. The Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane reassured MPs: "The UK has played a leading role in drawing international attention to Bout's activities, initially in Angola and Liberia and more recently relating to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda".
A specialist aviation journal reported that the "al Qaeda link" was Bout's role in supplying bin Laden with a personal aeroplane - in the days before September 11, when he had a little more freedom of movement. Could Trans Avia have gone legit since then? Not according to the United States Treasury Department. Only two weeks ago, on 26 April, the Treasury "designated" Trans Avia as one of 30 companies linked to Bout, "an international arms dealer and war profiteer". Bout "controls what is reputed to be the largest private fleet of Soviet-era cargo aircraft in the world", says the Treasury press release. "The arms he has sold or brokered have helped fuel conflicts and support UN-sanctioned regimes in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan. Notably, information available to the US government shows that Bout profited by $50 million by supplying the Taliban with military equipment when they ruled Afghanistan."
The story doesn't end there. Another two flights were made in the same three days of March by an airline called Jet Line International, also from RAF Brize Norton. A further three flights were made at the same time from another base, RAF Lyneham. The destination was Kosovo. The client, once again, was the Ministry of Defence.
Yet Jet Line, too, is a company that has been accused of close connections to Bout. According to the authoritative US newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, it appeared on a list of Bout companies circulated by the State Department to US diplomatic posts around the world.
"There is no doubt at all about the links between Jet Line and Bout," says Johan Peleman, the researcher who wrote the UN report. "It's one of his most important assets." Intelligence agencies say the same thing. Jet Line's office address in its base at Chisinau, Moldova, is the same as that of Aerocom, a company exposed by the United Nations as involved in sanctions-busting and arms-smuggling to the brutal rebels of Liberia. According to the UN, Aerocom was involved in the illegal smuggling or attempted smuggling of more than 6,000 automatic rifles and machine guns, 4,500 grenades, 350 missile launchers, 7,500 landmines, and millions of rounds of ammunition in breach of a UN arms embargo.
Tracking down the registration numbers of the sanctions-busting aircraft, it turns out that the Jet Line aircraft that flew the MoD flights in March were previously registered to Aerocom. They are in fact the same planes.
Bout's activities have helped cause quite literally thousands of deaths in many of the worst places in the world. Born in 1967, he served in the Soviet air force and then military intelligence, where he developed a gift for languages. When the USSR broke up, he "acquired" a large fleet of surplus or obsolete aircraft, which he used to deliver arms and ammunition also "acquired" from old Soviet stockpiles. That weaponry fuelled some of the most savage wars in Africa. Charles Taylor's insurgent guerrillas used Bout weapons to destroy Liberia. In Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) used Bout weapons to terrorise the country, seize the diamond mines, and chop off their opponents' hands.
None of our business? Well, the RUF's Bout-supplied weapons were almost certainly used to attack British troops engaged on the Sierra Leone peacekeeping mission in 2000.
Bout's planes would arrive at obscure African airstrips, loaded with weapons, then leave heaped with diamonds, coltan - vital for making mobile phones - and other precious minerals in return. "He was apolitical," said one UN official. "He would fly for anyone that paid." Bout's willingness to go places that no-one else would go made him the market leader in the arms-trafficking business. Little wonder, therefore, that the then Foreign Office minister Peter Hain said "The murder and mayhem of Unita in Angola, the RUF in Sierra Leone, and groups in Congo would not have been as terrible without Bout's operations." He was truly "a merchant of death", Hain said [and for a long time I respected Hain for it, too - TYR].
Bout used to operate from Ostend, in Belgium, where a shabby hotel in the city centre acted as his informal marketplace. There was a flight departures screen in the hotel bar, so he could keep track of his planes' movements. Then he was forced to retreat to Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates - and after September 11, to Moscow, where he controls his empire through front companies such as Trans Avia. "You are not putting facts. You are putting allegations," he tells journalists on the rare occasions they manage to get through on his Russian phone number. [Actually, the quote comes from his surprise appearance on Ekho Moskhy radio in 2002 - TYR].
Britain has been embarrassed by dodgy airlines before. Last year, the Department for International Development promised a full investigation after the Standard exposed its use of Aerocom on an aid flight to Africa. The problem is that few reputable carriers want to fly to Kosovo, Iraq, Darfur or some of the places where the government needs transport. And the airline brokers used by Whitehall seem to have learned surprisingly few lessons from past embarrassments.
In a statement, the Ministry of Defence said the fact that its broker "seems to have used an aircraft in Jet Line International livery" was not the same as saying that the MoD itself had contracted Jet Line. But, whatever hairs the MoD may choose to split, the payout - for Mr. Bout - is the same.
Today and tomorrow, at the MoD's vast procurement headquarters in Bristol, defence officials are holding a special conference with human rights groups and arms trade campaigners. The purpose is to persuade them that the government is serious about cracking down on the scourge of arms trafficking.
One good way to start might, perhaps, be to stop putting British taxpayers' money into the pockets of the worst arms trafficker in the world."
HOW CAN BRITAIN STILL USE THE MERCHANT OF DEATH?
Today the UK will promise to curb arms traffickers. But the MoD is hiring planes from a dealer linked to Bin Laden.
By Andrew Gilligan. Evening Standard, Monday, 9th May 2005.
Victor Bout [sic] is the most notorious arms trafficker in the world. Linked to Osama bin Laden by the British government, linked to the Taliban by the US government, he was described by a New Labour minister as a "merchant of death" who must be shut down.
Yet an Evening Standard investigation has found that, just two months ago, a Victor Bout company was hired by that very same British government to operate military flights from a key RAF base.
Bout, a 38-year old Russian, owns or controls a constellation of airlines that have smuggled illegal weapons to conflict zones for the past 15 years. He has been named in countless official investigations and reports - the most recent only last month. The authorities in Belgium, where he used to work, have issued a warrant for his arrest. In 2004, the US froze his assets and put him on a terrorist watch list [not that they stopped him flying to and from Baghdad, TYR].
But between 6 and 9 March this year, according to official Civil Aviation Authority records, two Victor Bout charter flights took off from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. The cargo was armoured vehicles and a few British troops. The client was the Ministry of Defence.
The charters were operated by an airline called Trans Avia. It was named as one of Mr. Bout's front companies by the Government itself - in a Commons written answer on 2 May 2002. The Government cannot claim ignorance of Bout's dubious links. The Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane reassured MPs: "The UK has played a leading role in drawing international attention to Bout's activities, initially in Angola and Liberia and more recently relating to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda".
A specialist aviation journal reported that the "al Qaeda link" was Bout's role in supplying bin Laden with a personal aeroplane - in the days before September 11, when he had a little more freedom of movement. Could Trans Avia have gone legit since then? Not according to the United States Treasury Department. Only two weeks ago, on 26 April, the Treasury "designated" Trans Avia as one of 30 companies linked to Bout, "an international arms dealer and war profiteer". Bout "controls what is reputed to be the largest private fleet of Soviet-era cargo aircraft in the world", says the Treasury press release. "The arms he has sold or brokered have helped fuel conflicts and support UN-sanctioned regimes in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan. Notably, information available to the US government shows that Bout profited by $50 million by supplying the Taliban with military equipment when they ruled Afghanistan."
The story doesn't end there. Another two flights were made in the same three days of March by an airline called Jet Line International, also from RAF Brize Norton. A further three flights were made at the same time from another base, RAF Lyneham. The destination was Kosovo. The client, once again, was the Ministry of Defence.
Yet Jet Line, too, is a company that has been accused of close connections to Bout. According to the authoritative US newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, it appeared on a list of Bout companies circulated by the State Department to US diplomatic posts around the world.
"There is no doubt at all about the links between Jet Line and Bout," says Johan Peleman, the researcher who wrote the UN report. "It's one of his most important assets." Intelligence agencies say the same thing. Jet Line's office address in its base at Chisinau, Moldova, is the same as that of Aerocom, a company exposed by the United Nations as involved in sanctions-busting and arms-smuggling to the brutal rebels of Liberia. According to the UN, Aerocom was involved in the illegal smuggling or attempted smuggling of more than 6,000 automatic rifles and machine guns, 4,500 grenades, 350 missile launchers, 7,500 landmines, and millions of rounds of ammunition in breach of a UN arms embargo.
Tracking down the registration numbers of the sanctions-busting aircraft, it turns out that the Jet Line aircraft that flew the MoD flights in March were previously registered to Aerocom. They are in fact the same planes.
Bout's activities have helped cause quite literally thousands of deaths in many of the worst places in the world. Born in 1967, he served in the Soviet air force and then military intelligence, where he developed a gift for languages. When the USSR broke up, he "acquired" a large fleet of surplus or obsolete aircraft, which he used to deliver arms and ammunition also "acquired" from old Soviet stockpiles. That weaponry fuelled some of the most savage wars in Africa. Charles Taylor's insurgent guerrillas used Bout weapons to destroy Liberia. In Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) used Bout weapons to terrorise the country, seize the diamond mines, and chop off their opponents' hands.
None of our business? Well, the RUF's Bout-supplied weapons were almost certainly used to attack British troops engaged on the Sierra Leone peacekeeping mission in 2000.
Bout's planes would arrive at obscure African airstrips, loaded with weapons, then leave heaped with diamonds, coltan - vital for making mobile phones - and other precious minerals in return. "He was apolitical," said one UN official. "He would fly for anyone that paid." Bout's willingness to go places that no-one else would go made him the market leader in the arms-trafficking business. Little wonder, therefore, that the then Foreign Office minister Peter Hain said "The murder and mayhem of Unita in Angola, the RUF in Sierra Leone, and groups in Congo would not have been as terrible without Bout's operations." He was truly "a merchant of death", Hain said [and for a long time I respected Hain for it, too - TYR].
Bout used to operate from Ostend, in Belgium, where a shabby hotel in the city centre acted as his informal marketplace. There was a flight departures screen in the hotel bar, so he could keep track of his planes' movements. Then he was forced to retreat to Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates - and after September 11, to Moscow, where he controls his empire through front companies such as Trans Avia. "You are not putting facts. You are putting allegations," he tells journalists on the rare occasions they manage to get through on his Russian phone number. [Actually, the quote comes from his surprise appearance on Ekho Moskhy radio in 2002 - TYR].
Britain has been embarrassed by dodgy airlines before. Last year, the Department for International Development promised a full investigation after the Standard exposed its use of Aerocom on an aid flight to Africa. The problem is that few reputable carriers want to fly to Kosovo, Iraq, Darfur or some of the places where the government needs transport. And the airline brokers used by Whitehall seem to have learned surprisingly few lessons from past embarrassments.
In a statement, the Ministry of Defence said the fact that its broker "seems to have used an aircraft in Jet Line International livery" was not the same as saying that the MoD itself had contracted Jet Line. But, whatever hairs the MoD may choose to split, the payout - for Mr. Bout - is the same.
Today and tomorrow, at the MoD's vast procurement headquarters in Bristol, defence officials are holding a special conference with human rights groups and arms trade campaigners. The purpose is to persuade them that the government is serious about cracking down on the scourge of arms trafficking.
One good way to start might, perhaps, be to stop putting British taxpayers' money into the pockets of the worst arms trafficker in the world."
BBC
From Popbitch:
Bafta balls-up: Nightmares for the BBC
The Power of Nightmares, the programme about how news media distorted coverage of the war on terror which Popbitch promoted last Autum, won a Bafta last week. When its helmer Adam Curtis made his acceptance speech about the ludicrous coverage of the recent Ricin trial and, with fabulous irony given the subject matter of the show, the speech was cut out completely from the TV coverage.
Newspaper coverage of the Ricin trial alleged that it meant "consequences beyond 9/11." The reality? Eight men acquitted and no evidence of ricin found. Just one man, Kamal Bourgass was found to have been trying to make nicotine poison. But at Porton Down, the Government’s biological experimentation centre, when they tried to use this poison on mice, they couldn't even kill them with it. The mice just got a bit queasy and had to be put down.
Still, the programme’s plaudits continue. This week it's being feted at the Tribeca Film Festival, and next week it's the only British film to be shown at Cannes.
A speech about media distortion is distorted... No wonder the BBC has a reputation be being the Ministry of Truth. Guess they've learned to stay on Bliar's side since the Hutton Report.
Bafta balls-up: Nightmares for the BBC
The Power of Nightmares, the programme about how news media distorted coverage of the war on terror which Popbitch promoted last Autum, won a Bafta last week. When its helmer Adam Curtis made his acceptance speech about the ludicrous coverage of the recent Ricin trial and, with fabulous irony given the subject matter of the show, the speech was cut out completely from the TV coverage.
Newspaper coverage of the Ricin trial alleged that it meant "consequences beyond 9/11." The reality? Eight men acquitted and no evidence of ricin found. Just one man, Kamal Bourgass was found to have been trying to make nicotine poison. But at Porton Down, the Government’s biological experimentation centre, when they tried to use this poison on mice, they couldn't even kill them with it. The mice just got a bit queasy and had to be put down.
Still, the programme’s plaudits continue. This week it's being feted at the Tribeca Film Festival, and next week it's the only British film to be shown at Cannes.
A speech about media distortion is distorted... No wonder the BBC has a reputation be being the Ministry of Truth. Guess they've learned to stay on Bliar's side since the Hutton Report.
Ricin Ring
From Chicken Yoghurt:
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the Ricin terrorist plot in Britain that turned out to be cobblers. In the piece I linked to an article in the Guardian by Duncan Campbell that took the case to pieces and showed it for the horseshit it was. That piece has now been pulled from the Guardian website for "legal reasons".
"Legal reasons" as in a D-Notice (or an equivalent) has been served.
More from The Register:
A Guardian story on "The ricin ring that never was" has been pulled from the newspaper's website, for what are said to be 'legal reasons'. The story, by Duncan Campbell (the investigative writer, not the Guardian journalist of the same name), analysed the collapse of the UK's 'ricin conspiracy' trial, and reported Porton Down evidence that had made it clear that claims of mass poisoning attacks had no basis.
Campbell's piece had named a Porton scientist who had given evidence, but the names of Porton Down scientists are not a state secret. Or they weren't, anyway. A Public Interest Immunity Certificate is a relatively seldom-used legal mechanism for placing restrictions on evidence. According to the Crown Prosecution Service "the government now considers that where government documents or information are material to legal proceedings, PII will only arise if disclosure could cause real damage to a genuine public interest.
If a PII did constitute the "legal reasons" it's difficult to see where the public interest in the action lies. The removal of the article does however mean that one of the very few correctives to widespread 'UK 911 poison terror scare' hysteria no longer exists in the mainstream press. Au contraire; the weekend after the end of the trial and the publication of the evidence, the Sunday Telegraph reported that we were/are faced with "chaos and panic in London's public transport system", and our security forces narrowly averted "our September 11, our Madrid. There is no doubt about it, if this had come off this would have been one of al-Qa'eda's biggest strikes", a "senior officer at Scotland Yard" told the paper.
A copy of the original article can be found here or here (for how long before it goes down the memory hole who knows?). Anyway, it's another reason in favour of a US-style 1st Amendment.
In case it dissappears, here's the article in full:
Fake Terror - Ricin Ring That Never Was Yesterday's trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a 'poison attack' on London By Duncan Campbell The Guardian - UK 4-15-5
Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the UN. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring.
Yesterday's verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday's acquitted defendants. It wasn't.
The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the "UK poison cell" and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?
The information - five pages in Arabic, containing amateur instructions for making ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and a list of chemicals used in explosives - was at the heart of the case. The notes had been made by Kamel Bourgass, the sole convicted defendant. His co-defendants believed that he had copied the information from the internet. The prosecution claimed it had come from Afghanistan.
I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.
The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London. These were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings and attempted killings.
If this was the measure of the destructive wrath that Bin Laden's followers were about to wreak on London, it was impotent. Yet it was the discovery of a copy of Bourgass's notes in Thetford in 2002 that inspired the wave of horror stories and government announcements and preparations for poison gas attacks.
It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal. A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin. But when this result was passed to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.
The planned government case on links to Afghanistan was based only on papers that a freelance journalist working for the Times had scooped up after the US invasion of Kabul. Some were in Arabic, some in Russian. They were far more detailed than Bourgass's notes. Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley, they showed a "common origin and progression" in the methods, thus linking the London group of north Africans to Afghanistan and Bin Laden.
The weakness of Timperley's case was that neither he nor the intelligence services had examined any other documents that could have been the source. We were told Porton Down and its intelligence advisers had never previously heard of the "Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, containing recipes for ricin and much more". The document, written by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, has been on the net since 1998.
All the information roads led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. He advertises videos and books on the internet. Before the ricin ring trial started, I phoned him in Arizona. For $110, he sent me a fistful of CDs and videos on how to make bombs, missiles, booby traps - and ricin. We handed a copy of the ricin video to the police.
When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. "Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives," he said on November 14.
The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al-Qaida manual" into the case. The manual - called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad - had been found on a raid in Manchester in 2000. It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial for the first attack on the World Trade Centre. But it wasn't an al-Qaida manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001, and the contents were rushed on to the net to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act.
To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s and the period of the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner's Handbook, by Maxwell Hutchkinson.
We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.
Duncan Campbell is an investigative writer and a scientific expert witness on computers and telecommunications. He is author of War Plan UK and is not the Guardian journalist of the same name.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the Ricin terrorist plot in Britain that turned out to be cobblers. In the piece I linked to an article in the Guardian by Duncan Campbell that took the case to pieces and showed it for the horseshit it was. That piece has now been pulled from the Guardian website for "legal reasons".
"Legal reasons" as in a D-Notice (or an equivalent) has been served.
More from The Register:
A Guardian story on "The ricin ring that never was" has been pulled from the newspaper's website, for what are said to be 'legal reasons'. The story, by Duncan Campbell (the investigative writer, not the Guardian journalist of the same name), analysed the collapse of the UK's 'ricin conspiracy' trial, and reported Porton Down evidence that had made it clear that claims of mass poisoning attacks had no basis.
Campbell's piece had named a Porton scientist who had given evidence, but the names of Porton Down scientists are not a state secret. Or they weren't, anyway. A Public Interest Immunity Certificate is a relatively seldom-used legal mechanism for placing restrictions on evidence. According to the Crown Prosecution Service "the government now considers that where government documents or information are material to legal proceedings, PII will only arise if disclosure could cause real damage to a genuine public interest.
If a PII did constitute the "legal reasons" it's difficult to see where the public interest in the action lies. The removal of the article does however mean that one of the very few correctives to widespread 'UK 911 poison terror scare' hysteria no longer exists in the mainstream press. Au contraire; the weekend after the end of the trial and the publication of the evidence, the Sunday Telegraph reported that we were/are faced with "chaos and panic in London's public transport system", and our security forces narrowly averted "our September 11, our Madrid. There is no doubt about it, if this had come off this would have been one of al-Qa'eda's biggest strikes", a "senior officer at Scotland Yard" told the paper.
A copy of the original article can be found here or here (for how long before it goes down the memory hole who knows?). Anyway, it's another reason in favour of a US-style 1st Amendment.
In case it dissappears, here's the article in full:
Fake Terror - Ricin Ring That Never Was Yesterday's trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a 'poison attack' on London By Duncan Campbell The Guardian - UK 4-15-5
Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the UN. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring.
Yesterday's verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday's acquitted defendants. It wasn't.
The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the "UK poison cell" and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?
The information - five pages in Arabic, containing amateur instructions for making ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and a list of chemicals used in explosives - was at the heart of the case. The notes had been made by Kamel Bourgass, the sole convicted defendant. His co-defendants believed that he had copied the information from the internet. The prosecution claimed it had come from Afghanistan.
I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.
The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London. These were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings and attempted killings.
If this was the measure of the destructive wrath that Bin Laden's followers were about to wreak on London, it was impotent. Yet it was the discovery of a copy of Bourgass's notes in Thetford in 2002 that inspired the wave of horror stories and government announcements and preparations for poison gas attacks.
It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal. A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin. But when this result was passed to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.
The planned government case on links to Afghanistan was based only on papers that a freelance journalist working for the Times had scooped up after the US invasion of Kabul. Some were in Arabic, some in Russian. They were far more detailed than Bourgass's notes. Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley, they showed a "common origin and progression" in the methods, thus linking the London group of north Africans to Afghanistan and Bin Laden.
The weakness of Timperley's case was that neither he nor the intelligence services had examined any other documents that could have been the source. We were told Porton Down and its intelligence advisers had never previously heard of the "Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, containing recipes for ricin and much more". The document, written by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, has been on the net since 1998.
All the information roads led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. He advertises videos and books on the internet. Before the ricin ring trial started, I phoned him in Arizona. For $110, he sent me a fistful of CDs and videos on how to make bombs, missiles, booby traps - and ricin. We handed a copy of the ricin video to the police.
When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. "Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives," he said on November 14.
The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al-Qaida manual" into the case. The manual - called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad - had been found on a raid in Manchester in 2000. It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial for the first attack on the World Trade Centre. But it wasn't an al-Qaida manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001, and the contents were rushed on to the net to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act.
To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s and the period of the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner's Handbook, by Maxwell Hutchkinson.
We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.
Duncan Campbell is an investigative writer and a scientific expert witness on computers and telecommunications. He is author of War Plan UK and is not the Guardian journalist of the same name.
Statistics
From Private Eye (via Distillated):
Number Crunching:
Number Crunching:
- 24 hours: period terrorism suspects in Australia (al-Qaeda death toll: 88) can be detained before criminal charges must be levelled;
- 5 days: period terrorism suspects in can be detained before criminal charges must be levelled Spain (death toll: 191);
- 7 days: period terrorism suspects in can be detained before criminal charges must be levelled USA (death toll: 3,000);
- 90 days: period government proposes terrorist suspects in UK (Al-Qaeda death toll: 52) should be allowed to be detained before criminal charges must be levelled
TWAT fails - Official!
From the Sunday Times:
THE government’s counter-terrorism strategy is failing, according to a leaked paper by the prime minister’s delivery unit, which was set up to ensure policies work effectively.
In an indictment of Labour’s war on terror, the confidential document says that key policies designed to prevent Al-Qaeda attacks and stop terrorism taking root in Britain are “immature” and “disjointed”.
Not that this’ll stop ‘em trying to pass more pointless, ineffective, abusive “anti-terror” laws…
Others, it adds, are unrelated to the “real world” and show no sign of making progress. … other than clamping down on our freedom…
THE government’s counter-terrorism strategy is failing, according to a leaked paper by the prime minister’s delivery unit, which was set up to ensure policies work effectively.
In an indictment of Labour’s war on terror, the confidential document says that key policies designed to prevent Al-Qaeda attacks and stop terrorism taking root in Britain are “immature” and “disjointed”.
Not that this’ll stop ‘em trying to pass more pointless, ineffective, abusive “anti-terror” laws…
Others, it adds, are unrelated to the “real world” and show no sign of making progress. … other than clamping down on our freedom…
War on Drugs fails - Official!
Following on from Sunday's post, today the Guardian reported the parts of the report that were originally suppressed by the govt under the FoIA 2000, the actual report is here (PDF).
It says that the traffickers enjoy such high profits that seizure rates of 60-80% are needed to have any serious impact on the flow of drugs into Britain but nothing greater than 20% has been achieved.
The study concludes that the estimated UK annual supply of heroin and cocaine could be transported into the country in five standard-sized shipping containers but has a value which at a conservative estimate tops £4bn.
Among the data suppressed... is a table... showing average street prices for various drugs. It estimates the average cost for a heavy user at £89 a week for cannabis and £525 for crack cocaine - information that is presumably at the fingertips of every hardcore drug abuser and dealer in the country.
Emphasising the inadequacy of seizure rates, the study says the result over the past 10 to 15 years has been that, "despite interventions at every point in the supply chain, cocaine and heroin consumption has been rising, prices falling and drugs have continued to reach users". [i.e. we have an admission that prohibition doesn't work]
It concludes that even if the government succeeded in reducing the availability of drugs, that could backfire because the most addicted, "high harm" users might commit more crimes to fund the purchase of ever more expensive drugs.
Here's my favourite part:
An economic model made for Downing Street shows that the profits per kilo for a major Afghan trafficker into Britain carry a profit margin as high as 58% - higher than Louis Vuitton's margin of 48% or Gucci's 30%.The actual report gives a list of how damaging to society & health various drugs are (p. 19):
Price of coke (£/g) (taking into account increases in purity):
Overall this report is saying that the current prohibition-based drug laws are a complete failure. Hopefully, this will lead to a change in policy; however, the fact that this report was suppressed for 2 yrs (it was originally published in 2003) & the fact that only half of it was originally released via a Freedom of Information Act 2000 release (the rest being held back for reasons of "national security", & was only made available to the public via a leak to the Guardian) would suggest otherwise. This is also suggested by the passing of the Drugs Act 2005, which outlaws the sale of magic mushrooms (which are available in Manchester - I might go & buy some when I go there tomorrow; are they worth £15/30g bag? I dunno...) as of Monday 18th July 2005.
The report also says that there's too big a marketplace & too much of a supply for the drug laws to ever be effective. It's time for legalisation of all narcotics to happen, whether for sale in a specially-licenced shop (equivalent to an off-licence), a chemist, or for prescription from a doctor or heroin-clinic.
See also Transform for their comments.
It says that the traffickers enjoy such high profits that seizure rates of 60-80% are needed to have any serious impact on the flow of drugs into Britain but nothing greater than 20% has been achieved.
The study concludes that the estimated UK annual supply of heroin and cocaine could be transported into the country in five standard-sized shipping containers but has a value which at a conservative estimate tops £4bn.
Among the data suppressed... is a table... showing average street prices for various drugs. It estimates the average cost for a heavy user at £89 a week for cannabis and £525 for crack cocaine - information that is presumably at the fingertips of every hardcore drug abuser and dealer in the country.
Emphasising the inadequacy of seizure rates, the study says the result over the past 10 to 15 years has been that, "despite interventions at every point in the supply chain, cocaine and heroin consumption has been rising, prices falling and drugs have continued to reach users". [i.e. we have an admission that prohibition doesn't work]
It concludes that even if the government succeeded in reducing the availability of drugs, that could backfire because the most addicted, "high harm" users might commit more crimes to fund the purchase of ever more expensive drugs.
Here's my favourite part:
An economic model made for Downing Street shows that the profits per kilo for a major Afghan trafficker into Britain carry a profit margin as high as 58% - higher than Louis Vuitton's margin of 48% or Gucci's 30%.The actual report gives a list of how damaging to society & health various drugs are (p. 19):
- Most damaging - crack & smack
- Little damage - methadone, grass, coke, speed, E
- No damage - LSD
- LSD/grass/E are unlikely to cause significant health damage & use is unlikely to cause crime, but may affect the ability to care for others/work;
- Coke/speed may lead to cardiac problems (i.e. it's your risk when you take 'em), and may affect ability to work/care for others [it'd explain why it's popular with yuppies/rock-stars/other wankers!] Does this also explain our Dear Leader's "heart problems"?
- Class A (highest): crack & smack (both already Class A)
- Class C (lowest): methadone (available on prescription, but Class A); grass (already Class C)?; coke, speed & E (all Class A)?
- Legal/decriminalised: LSD, grass, E (?)
- Page 23: drug-related crime costs the country approx £19 billion/yr, compared to approx £12 billion for booze related crime.
- Page 29: £16 billion (87%) is due to crack/smack addiction.
- LSD - low risk to self & others
- E/grass - low risk to others, slightly higher risk to self than LSD
- Coke/speed - middle on both (speed slightly less risk to others)
- Methadone - Mid-high risk to self, same risk to others as speed
- Crack - High harm to others, mid-high risk to self
- Smack - High harm to self & others
Price of coke (£/g) (taking into account increases in purity):
- 1990: 280;
- 2002: 140,
- 1990: 310
- 2002: 160
Overall this report is saying that the current prohibition-based drug laws are a complete failure. Hopefully, this will lead to a change in policy; however, the fact that this report was suppressed for 2 yrs (it was originally published in 2003) & the fact that only half of it was originally released via a Freedom of Information Act 2000 release (the rest being held back for reasons of "national security", & was only made available to the public via a leak to the Guardian) would suggest otherwise. This is also suggested by the passing of the Drugs Act 2005, which outlaws the sale of magic mushrooms (which are available in Manchester - I might go & buy some when I go there tomorrow; are they worth £15/30g bag? I dunno...) as of Monday 18th July 2005.
The report also says that there's too big a marketplace & too much of a supply for the drug laws to ever be effective. It's time for legalisation of all narcotics to happen, whether for sale in a specially-licenced shop (equivalent to an off-licence), a chemist, or for prescription from a doctor or heroin-clinic.
See also Transform for their comments.
The Sun vs Sanity
On Tuesday, before the 90-day detention vote, Pravda's front page was this:
(It's worth pointing out that the Sun didn't ask permission of the guy in question, as if it did, it would've known that he was opposed to Bliar's plans...)
On Wednesday, it has this:
On Thursday, in response to the anti-terror vote, the front page of Pravda was this:
Who's the bigger traitor? Someone who votes to keep the ideas we've cherished for 800 years & fought two world wars to save, or someone who is willing (in fact eager) to give them up at the first possible opportunity? Note the fact it proudly displays a poppy... Guess the irony of calling to give up the freedoms that the poppy represents is lost of 'em...
Is it any suprise I call the Sun Pravda?
In response, QWGHLM has come up with this, which I whole-heartedly support:
On Friday, the Guardian's cartoon was a bit of a piss-take of their reaction:
(It's worth pointing out that the Sun didn't ask permission of the guy in question, as if it did, it would've known that he was opposed to Bliar's plans...)
On Wednesday, it has this:
On Thursday, in response to the anti-terror vote, the front page of Pravda was this:
Who's the bigger traitor? Someone who votes to keep the ideas we've cherished for 800 years & fought two world wars to save, or someone who is willing (in fact eager) to give them up at the first possible opportunity? Note the fact it proudly displays a poppy... Guess the irony of calling to give up the freedoms that the poppy represents is lost of 'em...
Is it any suprise I call the Sun Pravda?
In response, QWGHLM has come up with this, which I whole-heartedly support:
On Friday, the Guardian's cartoon was a bit of a piss-take of their reaction:
Kitty Ussher's justification
In lieu of a lack of response from my MP to the reply to her position on 90-days detention (though to be honest, I only replied on Friday evening, so maybe “her people” haven’t got around to the concerns of her constituents), comes her justification of her position (with a good commentary from Europhobia):
"I very much hope that we will never have another terrorist atrocity in Britain. But if we do, and if it happens because the police have not had sufficient time to accumulate enough evidence to charge the perpetrators, then the Tories, the Lib Dems and our own rebels will have blood on their hands."
Which is pretty much what the reply to my first email was…
Like Tony Blair, Kitty believed that the police and security services asked for these powers and the responsible thing to do was listen to them. The clear fact is that this was not a policy of simply locking someone up for 90 days. There would have been a requirement that a judge reviewed the situation every week and decide whether it was appropriate for a suspect to remain in custody. I think the question on a terrorist act must now fall back onto those who voted against the legislation, what if a suspect commits and act of terror that could have been stopped had the police had 90 days to investigate?
"I very much hope that we will never have another terrorist atrocity in Britain. But if we do, and if it happens because the police have not had sufficient time to accumulate enough evidence to charge the perpetrators, then the Tories, the Lib Dems and our own rebels will have blood on their hands."
Which is pretty much what the reply to my first email was…
Like Tony Blair, Kitty believed that the police and security services asked for these powers and the responsible thing to do was listen to them. The clear fact is that this was not a policy of simply locking someone up for 90 days. There would have been a requirement that a judge reviewed the situation every week and decide whether it was appropriate for a suspect to remain in custody. I think the question on a terrorist act must now fall back onto those who voted against the legislation, what if a suspect commits and act of terror that could have been stopped had the police had 90 days to investigate?
Dear MP of Burnley
In response to last night’s anti-terror vote, I decided to write to my MP, via TheyWorkForYou.com.
I typed in my postcode & it came up with my MP’s details, Kitty Usher.
Looking at her details, I noticed that she voted in favour of having a 90-day detention period, so I wrote the following to her:
Dear Ms Ussher,
Thank you for voting in favour of increasing the maximum detention period of "terror suspects" to 90 days.
It is so re-assuring to know that I do not need to worry about Al-Qaeda wanting to take away my freedom when MPs such as yourself are more than willing to do it for them.
Yours sincerely,
Wonder if I’ll get a reply?
UPDATE: I got a reply on Friday via email (it wasn't addressed to me though... Is this a form reply?):
Like Tony Blair, Kitty believed that the police and security services asked for these powers and the responsible thing to do was listen to them. The clear fact is that this was not a policy of simply locking someone up for 90 days. There would have been a requirement that a judge reviewed the situation every week and decide whether it was appropriate for a suspect to remain in custody. I think the question on a terrorist act must now fall back onto those who voted against the legislation, what if a suspect commits and act of terror that could have been stopped had the police had 90 days to investigate?
Why stop at 90 days? How do you know whether that's a sufficient length of time? What if the incident happens after 91 days? Would we have to extend the period even longer?
Freedom is also relative. Given in France, Spain and Italy a suspect can be charged then basically imprisoned indefinitely so long as an investigating magistrate continues to work on the case, are they less free? I would argue not and this law would come no-where near that.
I have to point out that these countries are not using fear of terrorism to try and force through these sort of laws, only our government is...
I will finally say Kitty is your elected representative and will try to represent your views whenever she can. However given poll after poll after poll showed the public overwhelmingly supported the measure, which side of the argument would you have her take other than the one supported by the police, the public and the party under which she was elected? It is also a fact that today we have had at least 10 to 1 people ring or contact us irate that the measure did not pass.
I guess the astroturf are being activated.
Issues like this always divide people, but as Charles Clarke pointed out this is not a matter of a liberal view against a reactionary view it is a matter of security and if you actually look at what was finally put forward the 90 days was only a small but important part of a wider issue that continued the proper checks and balances. I sincerely hope you are right and 90 days was not needed, but only time will tell.
Kind regards,
Peter Marland
The Office of Kitty Ussher MP
"Working Hard for Burnley and Padiham"
The annotated bits are what I've sent in reply. Wonder what they'll say next time?
I typed in my postcode & it came up with my MP’s details, Kitty Usher.
Looking at her details, I noticed that she voted in favour of having a 90-day detention period, so I wrote the following to her:
Dear Ms Ussher,
Thank you for voting in favour of increasing the maximum detention period of "terror suspects" to 90 days.
It is so re-assuring to know that I do not need to worry about Al-Qaeda wanting to take away my freedom when MPs such as yourself are more than willing to do it for them.
Yours sincerely,
Wonder if I’ll get a reply?
UPDATE: I got a reply on Friday via email (it wasn't addressed to me though... Is this a form reply?):
Like Tony Blair, Kitty believed that the police and security services asked for these powers and the responsible thing to do was listen to them. The clear fact is that this was not a policy of simply locking someone up for 90 days. There would have been a requirement that a judge reviewed the situation every week and decide whether it was appropriate for a suspect to remain in custody. I think the question on a terrorist act must now fall back onto those who voted against the legislation, what if a suspect commits and act of terror that could have been stopped had the police had 90 days to investigate?
Why stop at 90 days? How do you know whether that's a sufficient length of time? What if the incident happens after 91 days? Would we have to extend the period even longer?
Freedom is also relative. Given in France, Spain and Italy a suspect can be charged then basically imprisoned indefinitely so long as an investigating magistrate continues to work on the case, are they less free? I would argue not and this law would come no-where near that.
I have to point out that these countries are not using fear of terrorism to try and force through these sort of laws, only our government is...
I will finally say Kitty is your elected representative and will try to represent your views whenever she can. However given poll after poll after poll showed the public overwhelmingly supported the measure, which side of the argument would you have her take other than the one supported by the police, the public and the party under which she was elected? It is also a fact that today we have had at least 10 to 1 people ring or contact us irate that the measure did not pass.
I guess the astroturf are being activated.
Issues like this always divide people, but as Charles Clarke pointed out this is not a matter of a liberal view against a reactionary view it is a matter of security and if you actually look at what was finally put forward the 90 days was only a small but important part of a wider issue that continued the proper checks and balances. I sincerely hope you are right and 90 days was not needed, but only time will tell.
Kind regards,
Peter Marland
The Office of Kitty Ussher MP
"Working Hard for Burnley and Padiham"
The annotated bits are what I've sent in reply. Wonder what they'll say next time?
18 November, 2005
Hello!
I've set up another blog, mainly for the stuff in the Special Reports section of the links. I'll put stuff in here whenever I can be arsed...
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