Armed Forces Day.

Today the people of Britain are collectively not bothering to celebrate the first annual Armed Forces Day marking the contribution of Britain's armed forces. Personally I always thought that Britain's armed forces were already honoured by the sombre reverence of Remembrance Sunday but recently it was decided that a second event was needed. Armed Forces Day was set up specifically to celebrate those members of the armed forces serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.

Although Britain's involvement in Iraq has already come to an end Armed Forces Day couldn't have come at a better time for British forces serving in Afghanistan. On June 22nd the British Army began Operation Panther's Claw, one of the largest airborne operations in recent history designed to capture and hold territory in Helmand province. Coupled with events in Iran, developments in my situation and the re-emergence of Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland this co-incidence gives an interesting insight into the attitude of the British Establishment.

It seems they planned a series of events starting with attempting to instigate a revolution in Iran then moving on to re-balance Northern Ireland in the Loyalists favour while encompassing the counter attack against me and a military success in Afghanistan before climaxing in a orgasm of national pride on Armed Forces Day. This tour de force would then be used to repair Britain's ruined international reputation ahead of next week's G8 summit before heading back to celebrate the end of the British social season with a British triumph at the Wimbledon tennis tournament

Well that was the plan anyway.

So My Brother's Back In Town.

He got back on Saturday 20th. Also my sister has begun her treatment at a local hospital, my father's got one of those help the aged cleaners in his house and we're having the drive tarmac ed so I guess the Brits trap has been firmly sprung. I was hoping to post on this earlier in more detail but there's not really that much to say. That's the really embarrassing thing about Britain's long planned counter offensive, it's so shit the only really worry I have is that the complete lack of jeopardy might cause a lot of people, my self included, to lose interest.

British News for British Readers

While Britain's been busy gallivanting across the Middle East there have been some quite important political upheavals going on within the countries own borders;

Lindsey Oil Refinery Strikes. Strike action at the Total refinery began in January 2009 when construction workers walked out in protest against the French oil companies practice of busing in cheap Italian labour without offering the jobs to local workers. As the snow fell across the UK and the country came within 48 hours of running out of natural gas Total rushed to settle the dispute and through the mysteries of trade union negotiation 102 new posts were created from British workers.
In June with the weather improving and memories of the original dispute beginning to fade Total, who invest heavily in Burma, decided to take their retaliation for the strike and made 56 workers redundant. The other workers responded to this by staging another wildcat (illegal) strike. This prompted Total to sack all the strikers in a move that backfired badly when oil refinery workers across the country walked out in support of their colleagues.
Total have now realised that unless they resolve the dispute soon they will go out of business and another company will take over the Lindsey oil refinery. As a result they are now negotiating with the unions while one union, the GMB, are considering balloting their members about possible strike action against the oppressive anti-strike legislation that made the inital strike illegal.

Romanians Forced Out of Northern Ireland. Last week 100 Romanian families were forced to leave their homes and take up shelter in a local church after enduring a week of sustained, racist attacks. Although the local police put on a bit of a show by arresting a couple of local teenagers the attacks against the Romanians and the church that was sheltering them. Now all but 14 of the families have announced they are to flee Britain for good.
The forcible expulsion of lawful immigrants has long been a cornerstone of the British National Parties policies. The BNP have not been elected nor has there been any parliamentary vote on the matter yet their policies have somehow become official British policy. It's so nice to live in a democracy(!)

BNP Injunction Threat. The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) have threatened the BNP with and injunction unless the revoke a membership clause that prevents non-whites becoming party members. At first this appears as if an apparatus of the state, the CRE, is finally getting tough on the BNP. In reality they're actually doing the BNP a massive favour. You see one of the biggest problems the BNP have in getting elected is that they are such an openly racist party. Every time the BNP try and deny this critics simply point out that they don't allow non-whites to join the party so by dropping the whites only clause, on paper at least, the BNP will be able to portray themselves as a more mainstream party.

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Visits London. Zimbabwean Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvanagari, visited London over the weekend and was forced to endure a rather public and rather staged booing at Southwark Cathedral. The purpose of his visit was to secure international support to held rebuild his damaged country. Britain pledged to provide £5million for school books that will be provided by British aid agencies but refused direct government to government aid or development loans that can be a nice little earner for the donor country. Britain also refused to lift the economic sanctions that are preventing the Zimbabweans from improving the country themselves. From that it seems clear that Britain couldn't care less what happens to the Zimbabwean people just as long as they're prepared to blame all their problems on Robert Mugabe.

I know that most people won't think that last story is much of a concern for British people but who do you think is paying to enforce those sanctions?

Iranian Protests. Interesting developments.

Following Friday's speech in which Iran's Supreme Leader promised that the police would act to prevent any further illegal protests Saturday's demonstrations were hyped up to be a massacre of a large number of protesters. In the end it turned out to be a bit of a let down. Only around 30,000 people turned up and the police were out early and in force to prevent people assembling in Tehran's Enghelab square. This sort of reverse kettle worked and small groups of protesters fought running battles with police armed with batons, shields, tear gas and water cannon The BBC and protesters have been circulating these two videos in order to demonstrate the ferocity of the police's crackdown;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToOVCcG6tYA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq9OGScMMxA

I'll agree that to the untrained eye the police's response seems shocking but I can't help but compare it to this video of the 2001 G8 Protests in Italy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_YhmB0OJZM&feature=related and this video of a steelworkers strike in Spain last month http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAIYHkbnpaQ As the person who has frequently been on the recieving end of the police batons I obviously think that this level of police violence is unacceptable and bust stop. HoweverI can't see much difference between the conduct of the Iranian police and what is considered an acceptable way to deal with protest in western democracies.

On a sadder note the Iranian media are reporting that 13 people were killed in Saturday's protests. Although no further details have been released it is believed the deaths occurred during two incidents in which protesters set fire to petrol stations and a third incident in which they tried to set fire to a military barracks. The BBC are covering this story by reporting that Iranian media is reporting that 10 people have been killed. This is a blatant lie because I got the figure of 13 dead from an Iranian news agency but it is interesting because if any Iranian's were only relying on the BBC's Persian and Twitter rumours for their news they would get the false impression that the Iranian media is trying to cover up the truth.

The other interesting thing to come out of yesterday's protest was the Commonwealth embassies in Tehran starting with the British and swiftly followed by the Australian and Canadian threw open their doors to the protesters. The embassies then used their diplomatic status to protect the demonstrators as the recovered between clashes with the police. That looks very much like the British Crown providing direct, material support to the rioters.

On a related note the Zimbabwean Prime Minister will visit the UK in an attempt to secure financial aid for his country. It will be interesting to see if Britain's support for the Zimbabwean people only extends as far as deposing Robert Mugabe from power.

Great Britain Versus Iran: A Brief History.

Almost everybody with experience of protest, insurrection and international politics accept that Iran's current protests have little to do with democracy or freedom and are now simply the product of interference by foreign governments with old scores to settle. The only question left is which governments are involved and why? Due to US President Bush's 7 year Global War on Terror that considered Iran to be part of an axis of evil and hoped to build an arc of freedom across the middle east made up of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iran a lot of people are laying the blame firmly at the feet of the CIA. To their credit I don't think this is the case because America is a true democracy so when it's President changes it's policies change almost overnight. Instead I think that Bush's partner in crime, the UK, is the driving force behind Iran's sudden "Green Revolution."


The history of animosity between Great Britain and Iran is so long it would be impossible to detail it all here. The current round of problems began in 1941 with the Anglo-Russian invasion of Iran. Here the British, for reasons known only to them, decided that all of Iran's oil belonged to Britain. During the course of this invasion and ensuing occupation Iran's Reza Shah was deposed and during a period of British rule was replaced by his son Mohammed Reza Shah. In 1951 the Shah was replaced by the popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq who brought the Iranian oil industry back under Iranian control cutting off Britain's oil supply. At first Britain responded to this by enforcing an economic blockade or sanctions against Iran. After two years this had failed to undermine Iran's democratic government so Britain's MI6 took a more direct approach by instigating an uprising that saw Prime Minister Mosaddeq deposed and the power of the Shah reinstated. This 1953 operation is known as Operation Ajax and was spearheaded by the BBC.

With the Shah back in power and Britain's supply of cheap oil secured the sanctions against Iran ended and tensions between the two countries cooled throughout the 1950's and 1960's. Then in the 1970's economic problems led to 1979's Islamic Revolution in which Mohammed Reza Shah was again deposed. Aside from disrupting Britain's cheap oil supply the Islamic Revolution caused Great Britain something of a constitutional problem. Iran had became a theocracy with a Supreme Leader anointed by God to rule over the population. Great Britain is also something of a theocracy with a Monarch anointed by God to rule over the rest of humanity. Obviously you can't have two different people claiming to have been anointed by two different Gods to rule otherwise it makes the whole system of governance look a bit silly. Besides no Monarch is ever going to be friends with people who depose Monarchs.


Again Great Britain reacted swiftly against Iran introducing sanctions against the new government. When this again failed Britain began funding and arming a regional ally called Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq. By 1980 they had convinced Hussein to invade his neighbour Iran leading to an eight year war that kept the Iranian government on the defensive and did great damage to Iran's economy. By the time this war ended in 1988 Britain's North Sea oil supply was up and running, the Cold War had ended in the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and Britain was too busy carving up Eastern Europe into bite sized to chunks to cause further trouble with Iran.


This tense peace ended on September 11th 2001 when Al Queada attacked the USA as a response to America's unwavering support for the Israeli's war against the Arab world. As the US President at the time was a fool he responded to the attack by intensifying his support for Israel, invading Iraq and Afghanistan on their behalf. Great Britain leapt to the support of this little adventure because the religious text that allows the Queen of England to sit on the throne is the same religious text allows Jewish people to lay claim to Israel as their homeland. Plus it gave the British to opportunity to secure some cheap oil and settle old scores with the Iraqis and Iranians. This Global War on Terror put Britain and Iran in direct confrontation again and led to a series of events in which the Iranian government was able to humiliate the British on numerous occasions;

• Either real or imagined the UK firmly believes that Iran has been killing British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such they consider the entire population of Iran to be part of the Taliban and think the two countries are already at war.
  

• Iran's nuclear program along with it's support for Hezbollah and Hamas make Israel believe that Iran is at war with the country. For the reasons explained above Britain consider any opposition to Israel to be a direct attack on the British Monarchy.

• In 2006 a group of British Sailors and Marines strayed into Iranian waters and were taken prisoner by the Iranians. Aside from the humiliating fact that the once great Royal Navy were longer able to navigate the waves let alone rule them Britain's embarrassment was compounded by the fact it needed the Iranian's to walk British intelligence through the negotiations that brought the situation to a peaceful resolution.

• Between 2006 and 2007 British bank, Lloyds TSB, helped the Iranians break international sanctions by laundering cash. Far from being an act of friendship this was a MI6 intelligence gathering operation to find out not only where Iranian assets were being hidden but who was hiding them and how the entire laundering operation worked. Being a British operation this started going so badly wrong that the CIA were forced to shut it down with a court case that cost Lloyds TSB a lot of money and further bruised MI6's already fragile ego.

• Since 2006 Lebanon war Britain's elected Labour party expended a lot of effort trying to get the political ally Tzipi Livni elected as Israeli Prime Minister. When this failed in 2009 the apparent attempt to influence the Israeli election severely strained relations between Israel and Great Britain. Creating problems for Iran, Israel's favourite enemy, and being seen to do so is a very good way for Britain to repair that fractured diplomatic relationship.

At this point I would normally round off this post with some neat explanation of why Britain is trying to stir up unrest in Iran but unfortunately they just seem to be doing out of some strange mix of religious fervour and historical egotism. The combination of historical animosity between the two countries though and the extreme methods that the BBC/Foreign Office's Persian Service are using to make sure that the British perspective of the protests is foisted onto the Iranian population leave me in no doubt that Britain is keen for the unrest to go on as long a possible.

Faced with this sort of espionage attack on their country the Iranian authorities are running out of options and I'm worried that the Iranian protesters will soon become martyrs to nothing but their own stupidity.

UK Shows it's "Support" For the People of Iran.

In a written statement to the House of Commons made yesterday, June 18th, Her Majesties Treasury confirmed that it had seized a total of US$1.6bn of Iranian assets. Although un-redacted the statement which can be read here http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2009-06-18a.22WS.0 is as vague as it is short so it is impossible to tell exactly which round of sanctions against Iran the assets were seized under. Either way I don't see the economic situation in Iran improving anytime soon.

As for the Iranian election itself the Guardian Council revealed that it has received 646 separate allegations of voting irregularities. While the announcement didn't go detail the exact nature of the allegations it did break them down into five separate categories ranging from the minor such as party officials being refused entry to polling stations (a standard practice in UK elections) to more serious allegations of buying votes by directly bribing voters. Of course these will all have to be investigated thoroughly and be seen to be investigated but to put that figure in perspective there were around 1000 alleged irregularities in Florida alone during the 2000 US election and there were 252 allegations of fraud in the UK's 2005 General Election. If I was feeling especially pedantic I could report 4 separate voting irregularities I witnessed at a single polling station in June's European election.

In a statement in Knesset Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency announced that he expects the Iranian protests to burn themselves out over the next couple of days and declared that Israel would prefer it if Ahmadinejad continued as Iran's president. As you would expect from a statement from the head of an intelligence agency this can be interpreted in a number of ways. At first it could be seen as an attempt by Israel to distance itself from the protests by diffusing the situation. It could also be seen as an attempt to further inflame the situation by challenging the protesters to keep the protests going for as long as possible while boosting Mousavi's popularity by portraying him as more anti-Israeli then Ahmadinejad. Read alongside Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman's statement that Israel will have a problem with Iran regardless of who is president I take the statement to mean that Israel wants the Iranian protests to go on for as long as possible.

In his first public appearance since the election Iran's Supreme Leader endorsed Ahmadinejad as the properly elected president and called for the protest to end decrying them as the work of foreign provocateurs, specifically the British. A fairly accurate statement it has to be said. The British media are interpreting this as an indication that Iran is about to violently put down the protests. Although such a violent solution may become necessary I think it's mainly wishful thinking on Britain's part because if the primary objective of bringing down Iran's Supreme Leader fails MI6's secondary objective is to provoke a violent response from the Iranian authorities in order to increase sectarian divisions and bring about long term unrest in the country.

And on a much more important issue do you think F1 supremo Max Mosley has realised yet that continous and ridiculous rule changes are ruining the sport?

Iran Protests. So Much Bullshit.

I didn't post on Iran's protests yesterday because Britain had some shocking news of it's own. In Northern Ireland 20 Romanian families were forced from their homes by a Protestant hate mob. The families had sustained a week of sustained racist attacks while the police stood back and watched. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8106482.stm This is eerily reminiscent of the start of the Northern Irish Troubles in the 1960's when Catholic families were driven from their homes by Protestant gangs or Hitler Germany when Jews and Roma were forced into ghettos. Obviously this stunned every right thinking person in the UK and forced Iran off the news agenda.

Of course the BBC, who recently spent £250million setting up a dedicated Persian service, have taken it on themselves to promote the Iranian unrest as far and wide as possible are still reporting on events but their coverage has become something of a fact free zone. This is partly because the Iranian authorities have rather sensibly stopped BBC journalists mixing with the protesters making it difficult for them to collect and disseminate information. Mainly though this sharp drop in normal editorial standards seems to be because the facts don't support Britain's official line that the protests are growing by the day and the Iranian establishment could be undermined at any moment.

This lack of credible reporting has forced be to trawl through Iranian blogs and Twitter pages to find out what is really going on. The first thing that struck while doing this was this message;

" If you have a Twitter account, log in now and change your location and time zone to Tehran. Apparently, the Iranian gov't is sweeping Twitter looking for dissidents and this will help obfuscate"

I'm not sure how credible the claim is but the use of inflammatory language is certainly having an effect. These two Twitter pages; http://twitter/StopAhmadi http://twitter/Change_for_Iran both claim to be located in Iran when in fact they're being updated from IP addresses in Israel. The users are believed to be members of the Israeli Defence Force's Corp of Bloggers http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1056648.html That of course would be the same Israeli Defence Force who have spent the last five years planning to launch airstrikes against Iran.

Of the more genuine Iranian postings on the web there seems to be one topic that has been totally omitted from the discussion - The election itself and why exactly people think it was rigged. Instead the posting seem to be all about exchanging increasingly wild claims about the protests themselves. These include rumours that the real death toll is in the hundreds, mythical walkouts by medical staff and civil servants and best of all that the security personnel being used are members of Hezbollah bussed in from Lebanon. That last one fits in exactly with the Israeli claim that Iran is responsible for all the terrorism in the world from Afghanistan to Somalia.

This moving away from discussion about the election the protests are supposed to a be a response too into a self-feeding frenzy about the protests themselves is something I've seen from Western Anarchists time and time again. The idea is to whip the protesters into such a state of hysteria that the protests continue long after the original cause has been proved to be false or simply forgotten. Mousavi, the protests leader, seems to be following this tactic himself. Today he has called for another large demonstration but this time it won't be about the election. Instead the protest will be to mourn those who were killed in earlier demonstrations. This seems to be an admission by Mousavi that the election was not rigged so he needs to find a new cause to sustain his popularity.

An international day of action has been called in support of the Iranian protests for June 20th. I don't expect there to be too much of a turnout from the British protest scene. They're all too busy debating whether or not by allowing themselves to get whipped up into a hysterical frenzy over the G20 protests they ended up helping the BNP getting elected, increased racial tensions in Northern Ireland and help Britain to take a firm leap towards fascism.

Incidentally if you type the words Iran, unrest and chaos into google one of the first articles you come up with is this one http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543798/US-funds-terror-groups-to-sow-chaos-in-Iran.html which detail how under the Bush presidency the CIA spent millions of dollars funding Iranian militant groups in order to undermine the Iranian state. It's interesting because it specifically mentions the Azeri groups that a driving Iran's current protests.

Iran: The Madnes Continues.

Today another mass demonstration has assembled in Tehran calling for an annulment of Friday's election amid opposition claims that it was rigged. Overnight it was confirmed that the death toll from yesterday's demonstration has risen from 1 to 7. It has also emerged that at the time the militia opened fire on the protest the protesters were trying to set fire to the building housing the militamen. As such it would appear that rather then being an attempt to violently put down an anti-government protest the militiamen on the ground opened fire in self defence because they were in fear for their lives.

Although Iran's opposition parties have yet to detail how and why they think the election was rigged one of the rumours doing the rounds is that the election must have been fixed because Ahmadinejad won a large percentage of the vote in districts which are perceived to be Mousavi strongholds. Central to this theory is Iran's sectarian or tribal make up. The two main tribes are the Persians and the Azeris. Ahmadinejad is loosely speaking a Persian and Mousavi is an Azeri so the conspiracy theory hinges on the belief that the election must be rigged because there is no way Azeri's would vote for a Persian candidate. The problem with this theory is that Iran is not Iraq and it is not Afghanistan. While many Iranians are proud of the cultural and ethnic heritage there is no great sectarian divide and it's not a major political issue. Saying the Iranian election must have been fixed because the result doesn't reflect tribal lines is like saying that British elections must be fixed because Welsh Celts voted for Anglo-Saxon candidates.

As if to emphasise the flaw in this theory a widely respected and independent American think tank called Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT) carried out a comprehensive opinion poll ahead of the Iranian election. Using standardised polling methods TFT produced an extensive report detailing their findings that can be read here; http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20Iran%20Survey%20Report%200609.pdf
One very interesting thing the poll found was that 31% or Azeris intended to vote for Ahmadinejad while only 16% of Azeris intended to vote for Mousavi. They also found that across all ethnic lines Ahmadinejad was expected to win the election by a ratio of two votes to one. I should also point out that one of the directors of Terror Free Tomorrow is Republican Senator John McCain. You may remember that during the US Presidential election Senator McCain stood up and sang "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!" so if his organisation is biased in any way it's certainly not biased in favour of Ahmadinejad.

In light of this independent evidence I find it very hard to believe claims that Mr Mousavi had any safe districts let alone that there was any need to steal votes in those districts by wrongly attributing them to Ahmadinejad. Further more I can't help but be suspicious of people who are circulating this slightly racist rumour because it seems to be an attempt to stoke up ethnic tensions and divide Iran up along sectarian lines. If that happens it would put Iran in a group of countries that include Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.

Iran Rally Ends in Violence.

In contrast to the last two days of spontaneous protest against the Iranian election result today saw hundreds of thousands of Iranian gather in Tehran for a protest organised by the political apparatus of defeated candidates Mohsen Rezai and Mir Hossein Mousavi. After assembling in Tehran's Enghelab square to protest marched to Azadi square for a rally. At around 20:30 local time shots were fired into the crowd killing one and leaving a dozen injured. Although the violence seems to be the work of a single undisciplined militia unit rather then an organised attempt to put down the protests this is exactly what I fear from the continued demonstrations in Iran.

Whether or not they realise it the demonstrators are beginning to be used as agents of a foreign power, specifically Britain who are still bitter over the sailor incident and the ensuing failure of the Lloyds TSB sanction busting operation, in order to destabilise the Iranian state. If this continues the Iranian state will have little choice then to treat the protests as a threat to national security and put them down using force if necessary.

While it is unfortunate that Iran's Supreme Leader is currently not encouraging an open discussion about the way Friday's election was run these protests need to stop. I understand that many of the demonstrators think they a participating in some sort of historical event that will bring about a new era of freedom to Iran but sadly they're not. By continuing the protests they are at best going to push the state too far, bring violence down on their heads and wipe out any progress they have made. At worse they will begin a process which is going to destabilise Iran for a number of years and make life worse for a generation of Iranians. Protests against supposedly stolen elections followed by violence and a fracturing of society is almost exactly how Zimbabwe began it's current problems.

There Goes the Quiet Sunday.

Amid a plane crash, a saga over IVF treatment and the UK's first swine flu death there was one news event that stood out. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech outlining his vision for the middle eastern peace process. I have to confess that I only got to see part of the speech because the BBC didn't cover it in it's entirety but I don't think I missed much. This is because Israeli peace talks tend to run in seven year cycles and we are only in the first year of the current cycle. Plus Netanyahu is in the precarious position of having to balance the interests of an incredibly pro-Zionist coalition government against an American President who seems set to take up the Palestinian cause like no other so Netanyahu is unlikely to rock the boat in either direction.

The most important part of the speech was the recognition that the Palestinians will need a state of their own alongside the state of Israel, the so called two state solution. At first this seems like and important step forward because Netanyahu and his coalition partners have previously seemed dead set against the idea of Palestinians let alone a Palestinian state. However his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, had long accepted the idea of a two state solution so yesterday's speech only really represents Netanyahu beginning to accept a position that Olmert was already firmly committed to furthering. So while it is a step forward it still leaves everybody a few steps behind where they were twelve months ago.

The other interesting part of the speech was Netanyahu's insistence that the Palesitinians must occupy a demilitarized state. Although no specific details have been outlined this is bound to be contentious because every state has to have some capacity for violence even if that violence is only used against it's own people. Therefore the idea of a demilitarised state is almost unheard of. In fact the only examples I can think of are Nazi Germany before the second world war and liberated Germany after the second world war. On both occasions the state relied upon a large and para-military police force to compensate for the lack of an army. I suspect that discussing the details of either of these case studies with a group of Holocaust survivors will be no easy task. This is pretty much a standard Israeli negotiating position where they agree to an idea in principle yet attach some many complicated caveats to the idea it becomes impossible to put it into practice.

Meanwhile the protests over Iran's election results have continued but seem to be fading away. Right on cue the calls have begun for the British left to support what is being called the Iranian uprising. Apparently it is an anti-religious issue, a gay rights issue, a feminist issue and a class issue all rolled up into one neat little package. Considering that Ahmadinejad is the working class candidate and Mousavi is mainly supported by middle-class voters I'm not sure how that last point is expected to play out exactly.

Iran's supreme leader has opened an enquiry into claims that the election was rigged so hopefully any evidence to support the claim will emerge or at least Mousavi's supporters will be forced to detail why they think the election was rigged because just repeating the claim parrot fashion does little to convince me that they have a case.

Iranian Elections.

On Friday June 12th Iran held it's general election. I have to confess that I've not really been following the campaign. This is partly because British politics have been so much fun recently but mainly because as of six weeks ago Iran's election was predicted to be a one horse race with incumbent President Ahmadinejad expected to win around 80-90% of the vote.

Then, possibly because of Obama's tour of Arab countries, the opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi experienced a massive surge in support amongst young, urbanised Iranians. When the result of the poll was released today it showed that Ahmadinejad had won with 63% of the vote. This prompted Mousavi to claim the election was rigged and dismiss the whole thing as a charade while his supporters took to the streets in some of the worst unrest Iran has seen in ten years.

I've yet to hear any evidence to support the idea that the election was rigged but it will be interesting to see how this plays out because I don't think I'm giving away any state secrets when I say that there are plenty of people outside of Iran who would like to see regime change in Tehran.

(14/6) Edited to make clear. I don't think there is anything suspicious about yesterday's protests in Iran. It looks to me as if the Mousavi supporters got whipped up into such a frenzy ahead of the election that when their man didn't win all that energy had to go somewhere. You see a similar thing a lot in football when a team expects to win a cup final and then doesn't conspiracy theories abound and the teams supporters go on a bit of a rampage. The worry is that if the protests carry on then every trouble maker in the world will then descend on Iran and attempt to use the protests as a way to destabilise the country.

London Underground Strike.

On Wednesday June 10th and Thursday June 11th the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) staged a 48 hour walk out on London's Underground rail network, the Tube. It was probably a bad time to stage a strike because Wednesday saw and England World Cup qualifying game being played at Wembley stadium. This meant the only thing most people in the country and possibly the world got to hear about the RMT and the strike was that it was making life very difficult for a large number of people. Plus after the events of the last couple of weeks even the politic ans were getting a bit bored of politics. In spite of this one thing that really bothered me about the strike was that a lot of the commuters interviewed about it on TV had little sympathy for the RMT because they thought they were on strike to secure even better pay and conditions. This simply isn't the case.

Back in 2002 a fresh faced, young chancellor called Gordon Brown had the bright idea of part privatising the Underground network using something called a Public Private Partnership (PPP). This involved setting up a private company called Metronet to carry out maintenance work on the network. At the time everybody said that this was a very bad idea that was going to go horribly, horribly wrong and lots of protest sprang up to stop it from happening. Leading the opposition to the plan was the RMT. Eventually when it became clear that Brown was incapable of listening to reason the RMT turned round and said; "We know Metronet is going to fail so when it collapses and the work needs to be taken back into public ownership can we have a clause in the contract that protects our members jobs?" In their arrogance that the plan was going to succeed the Government agreed and signed up to a no compulsory redundancy clause.

In July 2007 Metronet went bankrupt and the whole thing had to be brought back into public ownership at a cost of around £500m to the taxpayer. As part of this bailout the government turned round to the RMT and informed them that they were going to tear up the no compulsory redundancy clause and make a lot of Tube maintenance workers redundant. The RMT obviously turned round and decided they were going to fight them so the strike wasn't about improving pay and conditions it was about making sure that a lot of workers didn't have to lose their jobs in order to allow the government to get away with yet another massive cock up. To me that is exactly what a trade union is meant to be doing.

Corrections & Clarifications.

Before the European elections there were a few mistakes, errors and inconsistencies in some of my post that I wanted to correct. Here they are;

• I said my brother would be returning for his job in Europe to a long period of unemployment. This is not strictly true. Possibly because I've been talking about it he will now return to a three month placement with the Institute of Ideas. This is unemployment but I think you'll agree it's hardly a firm career move especially for someone with a masters degree.

• The Englishman wanted in connection with the death of a Polish millionairess in Paris is of course Ian Griffin not Ian Griffen. This was simply a mistake on my part but not as much of a mistake as the people who on June 2nd were reporting that the search for him was still ongoing. It has just been revealed that Mr Griffin was arrested by the British police on June 1st.

• 228 people were aboard Air France flight 447 not 240. In my defence the early reports said there were 228 passengers + 12 crew aboard. I'm not sure how you feel about French aircrew but top my mind that makes a total of 240 people.

• Air France flight 447 was of course an Airbus A330 not a Boeing 737. This was entirely a mistake on my part that was made even more incredible by the fact the rolling news coverage of the crash featured a looped promotional video of the type of aircraft with a plane that had A330 written on the fuselage in massive letters.

Brazilian search teams this week located the the crash site and have begun to recover wreckage and bodies. A French submarine has also joined in the search so with a bit of luck they'll soon recover the planes black boxes and we can finally find out what caused the crash. Until then the French government seem very keen to play up terrorism as a possible cause. This is an obvious attempt to keep the crash and by extension the French government in the diplomatic spotlight. That further reinforces my theory that the main reason why the Queen of England missed the D-Day commemorations was because she wanted to stay in the UK and watch the Epsom Derby. No doubt the British Royal Protocol officer failed to tell the French that they needed to make the first move and invite the Queen. With that mistake made the way was clear to lay the blame domestically on incredibly unpopular Prime Minister Gordon Brown and internationally on the French who have long history of competitiveness with the French. The French were understandably unhappy about the insult and wanted to hold the worlds ear long enough so they could set the record straight.

BNP Election Result Part 3.

Ahead of the European election much was made of the British National Parties election leaflet. In part this was because a large number of British postal workers refused to deliver it in effect saying that they would rather face the sack then help the BNP get elected. A brave thing to do in a recession. The main controversy though was about the leaflet itself;



As you can see the leaflet features testimonials from BNP voters to prove that the people who vote for the BNP are ordinary folk just like you and me. The main message is that the BNP are the only political party that will fight for British jobs for British workers. To emphasise the point the front of the leaflet features a photograph of a RAF Spitfire flying in the Battle of Britain. As soon as the leaflet was made public this website popped up and pointed out one or two minor problems; http://www.newspeak.org.uk/2009/05/13/british-national-party-voters-dont-exist/

• The builders who supported the BNP because the were sick of foreign workers coming over and taking all the jobs weren't British at all. In fact they were Americans who had never heard of the BNP. The photograph was taken as a way to promote Portland Oregan and the original image feature a fourth, black, construction worker.

• The doctor who supported the BNP because he'd seen what immigration had done to the NHS and wanted to bring and end to health tourism not only wasn't British he wasn't even a doctor. Instead he is an American model/actor who dressed up in a white coat for a stock image in photo-library. Again he's never heard of the BNP and when he was contacted about the leaflet was keen to distance himself from the party.

• The grandparents who supported the BNP because they'll put pensioners ahead of asylum seekers are Italians posing as a favour to their son, an Italian photographer. When contacted the photographer was especially unhappy that the BNP were using one of his photographs because he was aware of how the BNP attempted to victimise Italian workers at the Linsey oil refinery protests.

• Ignoring the fact that the Spitfire in the Battle of Britain was fighting against fascists like the BNP the BNP still managed to mess up the use of the image even further. The Spitfire pictured flew in world war two as part of one of the RAF's Free Polish squadrons. This means that the pilot of the plane was a Polish immigrant who'd come over the Britain to do a job that a British worker wasn't skilled enough to do.

These appalling cock-ups were picked up by the moderately right-wing Daily Mail newspaper who ran the story as a full page spread for their readers some of whom are potential BNP voters. Viewed in isolation the incident appears to be just another example of a none too bright political party making stupid mistakes on their election campaign and being picked up on it by rival bloggers and newspapers. However when you look at it alongside the Ian Griffin manhunt and a recent episode of British TV show Ashes to Ashes it takes on much more significance.

Ashes to Ashes is a cop show set in 1980's London and is the follow up to another show called Life on Mars. Both shows are made by the production company who are famous for making the show Spooks. Spooks is a high quality TV drama set in the world of espionage that is made with the assistance of Britain's own MI5. For the first four or five series this made the show a really great watch with the TV people and the spies dancing round each other and slowly revealing each others secrets. Then the balance of power shifted and the spies started eating the production team alive. In the episode of Ashes to Ashes that was first broadcast days after the Daily Mail's expose on the BNP the TV detectives were investigating the murder of a Polish migrant on a building site. At one point one of the the cops turned to another and pointing to an, off screen, Polish builder said; "Did you know he used to fly Spitfires in the Battle of Britain?"

That simple line of dialogue could well have given some conspiratorially minded viewers the impression that MI5 had somehow infiltrated the BNP and deliberately sabotaged their election leaflet in order to ruin their chances at the European elections. Personally I think the BNP have a seemingly endless ability to screw up their own propaganda and the TV show has a very short lead time between finally editing and broadcast. Therefore MI5 would have had time to see the leaflet before it was released from the printers and pressurised the TV people to include the dialogue in the show to give the public a false impression about MI5's role in the BNP's election campaign. This has the added advantage of making the BNP look like an oppressed minority and helps them secure the outlaw vote.

BNP Election Result Part 2.

Assuming you haven't already completely disregarded yesterday's post as a lunatic conspiracy theory you're probably wondering why the British State would conspire to have a bunch of lunatics like the BNP elected.

Part of the answer is sadly the British Monarchy. This is a system of governance that honestly believes that a family bloodline has been nominated by God to rule over the rest of humanity. If you are not part of that bloodline they you are considered to be a lower form of human life. If you also happen to be non-white and non-CoE Protestant then I'm very sorry but then you're just not considered to be a form of human life. By comparison mere fascism looks positively warm and cuddly.

The much more significant part of the answer though deals with the much less ethereal process by which people are recruited to the UK security services. For the purposes of this discussion I am defining the Security Services as the secret intelligence service (MI5/MI6), the policing buffer (Special Branch/Anti-terrorism Command/Diplomatic Protection Squad) and the Crown Prosecution Service. Like any other government department or old style corporation the security service has a staff turnover with employees climbing an internal power structure over a career which normally last 30-40 years. Although government departments are meant to be free of political interference and only employee people who fully support the idea of Monarchy they can't help but reflect cultural and social trends in the society in which they exist including shifts in elected government. This means that when Margret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 the security services made a huge leap towards the political right.

Then as the Apartheid regime in South Africa collapsed in the very early 1990's the UK security services gave refuge to a large number of White South Africans who had played an active and often enthusiastic role in the Apartheid system. This was done in order to protect the South Africans from the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and because the British State respected their ability to run a country where the only purpose of 95% of the population was to serve the ruling 5%. This obviously dragged the security services even further to the right to the point that they probably think the BNP are far too liberal. Twenty years on some of the younger South Africans have lost their accents and have been promoted to some very powerful positions.

At roughly the time the New Labour government came to power in 1997 more liberal candidates began getting recruited and promoted within in the security services and for liberal you can read white and gay specifically lesbians. It would be nice to pretend that this was some sort of great victory for liberalism and gay rights but sadly it was just the simple fact that gay women were found to be easily assimilated into the existing structure and were particularly well suited to the type of soft and subtle coercion, manipulation and exploitation involved in intelligence work.

I think it's obvious why the extreme right-wing, fascist 98% of the security services would want to make an extreme right-wing, fascist party stronger. The question is why did the the supposedly progressive and liberal 2% go along with it and how do the sleep at night? The answer is quite simple:- They lie to themselves, constantly. While the exact nature of the individual lie depends on the individual they all feature two main themes;

• By giving the British National Party a wider political voice the British public will realise not only how repugnant their true views are but how utterly incompetent and inept they are. There is a small grain of truth in this because while the BNP's share of the vote grew nationally at the euro-elections it fell slightly in constituencies where the BNP already have Town councillors. Of course I will play my part in achieving this objective because it was a brilliant idea when I thought of it 5 years ago but I fear it will fail because since then the political and economic landscape has changed dramatically so the British public may well be responsive to some of the BNP's more extreme views. Besides the first thing the BNP are guaranteed to do with all that extra European money is invest in some serious media training so they at least appear less odd.

• Allowing the BNP into Europe will encourage the British public to engage more with the European Parliament furthering European integration. This is unlikely because European politics are deeply complicated and deathly dull. Besides the only bit of European politics the BNP are going to raise awareness. These are so lavish hearing the details of them is only likely to turn the British people further off Europe which is exactly what the British Establishment want because, well those dirty foreigners just aren't part of the Royal bloodline.

The next UK General Election isn't for a whole 11 months and the next European Election isn't for a full 5 years so I'm not sure what will become of the BNP. I will say though that there is a section of British society that is fast getting a reputation for having the piss taken out of them.

The Strawman Liveth!

Last night the results of the European election were announced and Britain's ruling Labour party experienced their worst election result in almost 100 year. This statistic is made even more dramatic when you realise that the Labour party has only existed for 106 years and women have only been allowed to vote in UK elections for around 80 years. However the Labour party should be more worried by the fact that the fascist British National Party (BNP) have succeeded in having their first two Members of the European Parliament (MEP) elected.

The BNP are a racist, paranoid and deluded party who fetishise the military and are motivated exclusively by hate. In short they are the political party that best represents the views and values of the British Establishment. So when the time came for the state to anoint the party that would replace Gordon Brown's failed government the BNP are the natural choice. The only problem is that as recently as a year ago the BNP were a small minority party with a tiny budget and only a handful of town councillors. Therefore it would be impossible for them to go from a party with no county councillors, no MEP's and no MP's to a party that could challenge for a Parliamentary majority in just 18 months. However this does not mean that a strong showing by the BNP at June's Local and European elections would be unhelpful for the state. In fact it has several advantages;

1. By increasing the number of BNP councillors MI5 would receive much less local opposition when trying to mount community based intimidation projects against Muslims and other groups the state deems to be undesirable.



2. By electing just one MEP the BNP would be able to claim incredibly generous expenses from the European Parliament. This would boost the BNP's budget and allow them to mount more effective election campaigns in the future.



3. By bringing the BNP's brand of extreme right-wing politics into the British mainstream is allows the right wing views of the Conservative party to look positively moderate or even a little left wing by comparison.

So giving the BNP a strong showing at Junes elections was exactly what MI5 set about doing. The main contribution they made to the BNP's campaign was by actively promoting the issues that the BNP are famous for;

• In March 2009 a group of Islamic extremists protested against a welcome home parade by the Royal Anglian regiment in Luton. This caused much public outrage against the mythical Islamofacists that both the BNP and MI5 are convinced are about to over-run the UK at any moment. While I can't remember the Arabic name of the Islamic group who took part in the demonstration I know they were banned as a proscribed terrorist organisation in 2001. Then in 2006 they were suddenly taken off the banned list and started taking part in stupid publicity stunts like that.



• On April 8th 2009 the police arrested 12 Muslim men for terrorism offences at address across the North-West of England. At the time we were all assured that this was done in response to a very large terrorist attack that was planned for the Easter Bank Holiday weekend. A few weeks later all of the suspects were released without charge after absolutely no evidence of a terrorist plot was found. BNP leader, Nick Griffin, was of course standing as a candidate in the North-West of England constituency.



• On May 8th 2009 a former officer with the Special Air Service (SAS) leaked details of MP's expenses to the Daily Telegraph and someone assured the newspaper that they wouldn't be prosecuted if they published what is essentially stolen and sensitive government data. This information was scheduled to be published legally in July, after the election. By publishing a more detailed version two months early the Telegraph got one of the most explosive political stories of a generation and gave a massive boost to all the minority parties ahead of what is being called the "expenses election". The BNP were especially effective in campaigning on this issue by using the slogan "Kick out the Pigs" which also allowed them to cash in on the police violence at the G20 protests.

Obviously because the British National Party are an organisation who perfectly encapsulate the phrase useful idiots it simply wasn't enough for MI5 to promote them to the voting public. MI5 also had to spend a lot of time wiping the BNP's noses and tidying up after every time they made a clanging mistake.

• On April 7th 2009, the day before the North-West anti-terrorism raids, the police carried out another series of anti-terrorism arrests. On this occasion they raided two addresses in Hampshire, Southern England and arrested two men and a woman. All three were fulling paid up members of the BNP and were found in possession of gun powder, home made explosives and literature advocating starting a race war by mounting a bombing campaign. Of course this terrorist plot was covered up to the point that the only reference I can find to it is this 13 line report from that bastion of investigative journalism, the Southern Daily Echo. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/4272977.Three_arrested_in_terrorism_raids/ You will note this report at no time mentions the words BNP, explosives or race war. I know that the three suspects were only held for the standard 36 hours before being released on bail. Due to the reporting brownout I'm not sure if they've been charged, are still on bail or whether the case has been dropped entirely.



• On April 24th 2009 David Lucas the BNP candidate for Europe in Suffolk, Southern England, was arrested for trafficking illegal firearms in from continental Europe and selling them on to customers in the UK along with handling stolen goods. In a country with some of the strictest gun laws in the world this is a very serious offence yet there was next to no reporting of the arrest. The only reference I can find is this five line report on a local news section of the BBC's website which fails to mention the exact nature of Mr Lucas' alleged crime. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/8016752.stm When I last checked the BBC report also features an interview with Mr Lucas that was shown on local TV news. In the interview Mr Lucas is allowed to play the victim and question, unchallenged why the police took such a heavy handed approach to arresting a suspected gun smuggler. Incidentally when Mr Lucas isn't standing for the BNP or running guns his day job is building gallows out of finest British Oak which he then sells to despotic regimes across the globe so they can hang political dissidents.


• On May 5th 2009 a Mosque and Islamic centre in Luton was firebombed. Although this event was had to receive some extra coverage after the so called Luton Squabble over the Bank Holiday weekend at the time the best the BBC could manage was this 7 line report again buried on a regional news section of it's website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8033193.stm The Police and MI5 seem equally unbothered by the incident because although the fire brigade have confirmed the fire was the result of an incendiary device the police are yet to catch anyone and seem to be leaving the investigation to the Police Community Support Officers of the Safer Neighbourhoods team. Experience tells that if this had happened at an Animal research facility, a car dealership or a CoE church rather then an Islamic centre Special Branch and MI5 would be all over the case like a rash until all those involved had been caught and were serve long prison sentences.

With this level of Establishment support not even the BNP could fail to do well in the European elections and they did very well. The BNP returned two MEP's, Nick Griffin in the the North-West constituency and Andrew Brons in the Yorkshire and Humber constituency. This allows the BNP to take full advantage of European expenses which are far more lavish then UK Parliamentary expenses and work out at around £2million per MEP or £4million in total for the BNP. To put that figure in perspective the average budget for a BNP election campaign is around £30,000.

Having had their budget boosted by around 13,000% the BNP will now become a much more credible threat for gaining a UK Parliamentary seat at the 2010 General Election. This means that Black voters, Gay voters, Asian voters and Eastern European voters, who are all key demographics for the Conservative party, along with floating Labour voters face a difficult choice at that election. They can either vote for the Labour party and get the BNP or they can vote Conservative and get the Conservatives. The prospect of the BNP winning a Parliamentary seat will also help to motivate moderate supporters of the Conservatives to get out and vote. This was partly seen in the European campaign when I was overjoyed to see even the right-wing British newspapers lining up to put the boot into the BNP. As an added bonus for MI5 a newly rich BNP will undoubtedly pick up extra Council and Greater London Assembly seats in the 2010 local election.

Welcome to Britain, where it's only called a democracy as long as they have ways of making you vote.

Man Our Queen's Arse Lazy.

Today, June 6th, is the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings. It marks the moment in the second world war when the allied forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in military history. They were killed in their thousands but began the liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny and laid the foundations for the 65 years of peace and prosperity the world has enjoyed since.

The immense debt of gratitude we all owe them was, in part, repaid with a memorial service in Normandy, France. The heads of state of all the countries that took part were in attendance with one notable exception. The Queen of England was not there despite being the only sitting head of state who actually served during the second world war. The exact reasons for her absence are a little murky, wrapped up in the rather pointless mysteries of Royal Protocol. Here in Britain we've decided to explain the Queens absence using our default diplomatic position;

If in doubt, blame the French!

Officially French President Sarkozy failed to invite the Queen so she couldn't possibly just turn up or ask to be invited. By the time someone had pointed out their mistake to the French and they finally extended an invitation decided it was far too late for her to organise an official visit and dispatched her son, Prince Charles, to attend in her absence.

It's only today that I've just realised that the D-Day anniversary coincides with the Epsom Derby, the most prestigious flat race in the British horse racing calender. It's almost as it the Queen, being a huge horse racing fan, decided to bunk of a stressful memorial service so she could sit at home with her feet up watching the Derby.

Well I suppose she is in her 80's and is part of the greatest generation we're supposed to be honouring so she should be allowed to spend the day as she wants. Especially as it was a little bit careless to hold the European elections over the D-Day weekend.

Navel Gazing Alert!

So far we've spotted three battleships, two destroyers and one really bad pun. That's right today's post is going to be all about my favourite subject - me!

Aside from mild domestic niggles and the ever present nihilistic sorrow that comes from watching people you care about destroy their lives my life is probably the most stress free it has been in six years. This is because the British State has pretty much ceased it's attacks on me. There are three variations as too why this has happened; The excuse the Brits would like you to believe, the excuse the Brits tell themselves and the truth.

• The excuse they'd like you to believe is that they were so outraged by the conduct of a few rogue agents that they've had a moral epiphany and are no longer going to behave like a bunch of bitter and twisted lunatics who hold all forms of human life in utter contempt.

• The excuse they tell themselves is that when they attack me directly it goes straight on this blog and their violence comes back on them in spades. Therefore it is a tactically adept move not to attack me directly.

• The truth, at the risk of uttering famous last words, is they came in as hard as they could over the last two years, got bogged down and now they're out of ammunition.

Regardless of which of these interpretations you chose to believe the attacks on me have dropped off dramatically. The helicopters have all but disappeared, the number of break-ins have reduced dramatically and there's no-one they can deny immediate medical treatment too. Of course this does not mean the war has ended because like every sad old drunk the Brits always have time for one more round. This time the state will focus it's attacks on my known associates in the hope that they will be less able to defend themselves and the attacks will be more discreet.

One area they will concentrate on is my mother, brother and sister. I've commented on this before and the central point of the plan is for my brother to return from Europe to a long period of unemployment. This will force him to live in my mothers flat and give him lots of time to firm up relationships with his siblings, my father, my mother and my grandmother. This of course will make him the core reporting agent for the operation. The plan also features my sister having her medical treatment transferred from a hospital in Guilford to a hospital in South London in order to further cement the family unit. There may also be attempts to break up my mothers relationship in order to force her to share her flat with my brother. I have to say that I'm not particularly bothered by this because with me it's a simple either/or arrangement. Either you serve the state or you are a member of my family, you cannot be both.

It does look a little bit worrying for my mother though because unless she pulls her socks up pretty damn quick she could well ending living with her youngest son and her eldest daughter in that sweaty little flat for the rest of their natural lives.

The second area the Brits will concentrate on is my friend Iian and his cougarish girlfriend who live in Brighton. This operation has been up and running for quite a while now and has focused on Iian's job at energy company Npower and his girlfriends job with Lexus. It has intensified recently with Iian's co-erced decision to allow a colleague from Npower to move in the with the couple while he's between houses. This dropped out of a masters degree in architecture at Brighton university and seems to be the perfect thumbnail sketch of me if the artist could only draw in crayon. I won't go into much detail about this particular game because depending on how dull things get I might be tempted to play it myself just to keep my eye in. Again I'm not that worried about this operation because the relationship itself was set up by the Brits as part of the Bristol Abuse Case so by studying it the Brits are in effect simply spying on themselves.

The third area the Brits will concentrating on is the Bristol Abuse case and this is where they will be focusing most of their efforts. This will concentrate on bombarding the whole area with emotionally stressful stories like the Sam Riddell story and the Sam Puttrick case. The plan here is exactly the same as it was when it was aimed at me, shake up the entire region in order to see what falls off on telephones, emails and into the ears of community based agents. Amy herself will come in for special attention with news stories and customer issues that she will have to deal with as part of her job. There will also no doubt be the usual range of COINTELPRO operations including missing letters, interrupted telephone and utility services along with sleep deprivation through car alarms and low flying aircraft.

Aside from gathering information the Bristol operation also has the objective of breaking up Amy and Anna's relationship. This is because not only have the Brits realised that not only will the relationship not achieve the objective it was set for it will also act as a money pit and leave dark stain on Britain's reputation. Of course when the relationship eventually breaks up in the next 18-24 months all those involved will think that the break up is a result of a choice they made with their own free will. This will stop them looking for someone to blame and negate the state having to compensate the victims for what is, in effect, the loss of their lives.

All in all it looks like the next few years are going to get very unpleasant for those people who have acted against my best advice. On the plus side though the debate has changed from "Am I good enough?" to "Why should I obey people who are clearly not as good at this as I am?"

I'm Back !

Well intermittently because with the sun shining there's more interesting things to do then watch politicians squabble amongst themselves on the news channels.

So what did I miss in my absence;

Air France Plane Crash.

On Sunday night / Monday morning and Air France 737 crashed on a flight between Brazil and Paris. I was fortunate enough to watch this story live as it unfolded and it was fascinating. First the rolling news channels broke into the reports they were running with the announcement that Air France had lost radar contact with the flight. Then about twenty minutes Air France announced the plane had missed its landing slot and was being classified as overdue. Then two hours later it was announced that the plane had run out of fuel and hijacking was ruled out. There then followed an hour of speculation as to why the plane had crashed before it was announced that the plane had reported an electrical short circuit minutes before contact was lost. At this point I rather callously decided that all 240 on board had been killed and went about the rest of my day. Assuming the plane wasn't brought down by a highly elaborate and rather pointless cyber attack I'm pretty much convinced the whole incident was just the product of a highly unfortunate accident.

Yesterday it was quite clear that the British had little clue as to what had taken place. This was evidenced by lots of speculation over the human interest stories of those British passengers killed in the crash. This mainly focused on the 11 year old boy from Bristol and the young woman doctor from Belfast. No doubt this sort of speculation took place across the globe because for a group of 240 people the passengers on that plane represented a remarkable cross section of the world.

Ian Griffen Manhunt.

This is a follow on from an incident last week when a Polish millionairess, Kinga Legg, was found murdered in a hotel room in Paris. Since then the police have been searching for the victims British boyfriend, Ian Griffen, who fled from the scene and is believed to be on the run in Britain. I'm not familiar with the details of the death so I'm not sure if this was something the British orchestrated or something which merely happened and then Britain took advantage of. Either way it is a good story for Britain. The leader of the far-right British National Party (BNP) is a man called Nick Griffen so lots of headlines like "Police search for Griffen" and "Net closes in on Griffen" give the impression that Britain is putting pressure on the BNP leadership in an attempt to ruin their chances in the Euro-elections.

In reality Nick Griffen was recently invited to a Royal Garden Party by one of his BNP colleagues. This led to a small outrage which caused the Queen considerable embarrassment. So any pressure that is being placed on the BNP at the moment is more about giving them a friendly rap on the knuckles then it is about damaging their election chances.

Beachy Head Triple Suicide.

On Monday morning East Sussex police discovered the bodies of a man, a woman and a five year old boy at the foot of the Beachy Head cliffs, a notorious suicide spot in Eastbourne. It soon emerged that the bodies belonged to a young family from Trowbridge in Wiltshire. The parents were driven to suicide after the death of their five year old son, Sam, from meningitis. Given that both my MI5 and MI6 files lists the name Sam, Beachy Head in Eastbourne and Trowbridge in Wiltshire as points of interests it's clear that Neil Puttrick and his Japanese wife Kazumi were community based agents. They were probably first recruited in the late 1990's to allow the British to examine the cultural trend of western men marrying south east Asian women. When their son Sam was paralysed in a road accident in 2004 they became prime candidates for a new role setting up a website to keep in contact with people from 33 countries across the world who were all interested in the progress of poor little disabled Sam from Wiltshire.

The death of their child along with recent events made it clear to these to MI6 agents that their race was run and decided to end their lives. I'm not sure of their exact circumstances but it is more then likely that their handlers encouraged them into suicide because the Brits prefer it if their idiots do the decent thing once their usefulness has been expended. I'll go into more detail in a separate post but community based agents in the South-West of England had better get used to this sort of thing because it's going to be happening more and more. I think it's being known as the Anna tax.

MTV Movie Awards.

I know not the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a political round up but this years awards ceremony has been one of the most talked about events of the week. As part of the show British comedian, Sacha Baron-Cohen, in his gay fashionista character, Bruno, was lowered on wires into the audience and proceeded to rub his naked backside in rapper Eminem's face. Outraged Eminem and his posse stormed out in disgust.

This is nothing unusual for Baron-Cohen because since his early days on Channel 4's 11 o'clock show this has been the be all and end all of his act. He dresses up as a stereotypical character like Ali G, Borat or Bruno and proceeds to interview unsuspecting people. Playing on his interviewees fear of being portrayed a racist or homophobic he proceeds to ask then increasingly provocative questions in order to provoke confrontation and then use that confrontation to make some sort of satiricial observation about society.

On this occasion the observation that Baron-Cohen was making is that black hip-hop culture is quite homophobic. This observation is so old and well established I at first thought Baron-Cohen's act had finally run out of steam and he would soon be seen dressing up as a cat in order to poke a dog in the eye. It was then I remembered that Baron-Cohen is a member of a well established North-London, Jewish family. I also remembered that Israel had recently announced it will continue illegal settlement building on the West Bank in defiance of US President Obama's express wishes. This is the sort of thing that would normally put Israel in direct confrontation with Obama. I then realised that Obama's core political support is made up of Black voters, Gay voters and liberal voters who sympathise with both causes.

In light of that detail Baron-Cohen's performance looks exactly like a deliberate attempt to drive a wedge between Black voters and Gay voters in order to divide and conquer Obama's political base ahead of an expected bitter confrontation with Israel.

Home Secretary Stands Down.

At around 14:00 (BST) UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that she was going to step down from her ministerial post at the next cabinet re-shuffle which is expected after the European elections on June 4th. After the Prime Minister the office of Home Secretary is said to be the second or third most important position within the British government. The office bears ultimate responsibility for pretty much everything that happens within the UK especially control of the nations borders, counter terrorism and the conduct of the UK security services specifically MI5 and the police.

Jacqui Smith has been under considerable pressure to leave the post for a number of months now. Her troubles began with a seemingly unstoppable desire to push through the deeply unpopular National Identity Card scheme. The pressure increased with her attempts to drive through the Anti- Terrorism Act 2008 which was seen as such a widespread and deep attack on civil liberties and traditional British freedoms that it caused the Queen herself to refuse to pass large sections of it into law. Ms Smith also came into criticism over the repressive way that the police acted at the 2008 Climate Camp and April's G20 protests. She is probably most famous though as the MP who tried to claim back the cost of two porn films on expenses. In short I don't think there are many people in Britain who will be glad to see the back of her and I am especially glad to see her go. The only regret I have is that I was scheduled to be attending a funeral at the time her departure was announced so nearly missed the good news.

Of course Jacqui Smith isn't resigning with immediate effect so much as failing to re-apply for the job when her contract is up so she's got about a week left in the post with nothing less to lose. She could use this remaining time to make life for her successor much easier by taking some of the tough decisions she's been avoiding throughout her tenure. I doubt she will though, after all she's only resigned her cabinet post so she can cling on to her Parliamentary seat and the beloved expense account.