Middle East Peace Talks

While the American media and the entire Internet has been ablaze with discussion over US President Obama's comments on the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates another friend of Obama's named Gates has been quite busy. Robert Gates, Defense Secretary has been in Israel discussing the best way to restart peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The exact details of what was discussed has not been made clear but it is believed that they did not go well because Israel once again flatly refused to halt the building of settlements on the West Bank.

Aside from the obvious wars settlement building is the most controversial aspect of Israel's relationship with its neighbours. The practice began after the six day war in 1967 when Jewish extremists who think it is their mission from God to clear all non-Jews from the land between the River Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea began setting up home in small settlements on the land that had been seized by the Israeli army. Although the Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit the settling of civilians on land seized by an invading army the Israeli government has fully supported the practice. Over the years they have given money to help the settlers, use the army to forcibly clear areas for settlement, issued permits for illegal construction projects and connected the settlements to Israel's power and sanitation infrastructure alongside sending the police and the army to provide security on special "Jews only" roads that like the settlements to Israel. The Netanyahu government have also taken the irrational step of trying to differentiate between legal and illegal settlements which is impossible because any settlement on land seized in 1967 is indisputably illegal.

Israel's renewed refusal to adhere to international law threatens to undermine any hope of any future peace talks with the Palestinians. Both Hamas, the Palestinian's elected representatives and Fatah, the only Palestinian representatives that Israel will allow America to talk to have indicated that they will be unable to engage in peace talks with Israel until it halts settlements because otherwise it would mean that they are trying to talk peace with a neighbour who is actively involved in an ideologically committed to expanding into and settling in their rapidly shrinking territory.

The Ministry of Defence Shows its True Colours..

Since Tony Blair's election in 1997 it has been clear that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has not got on well with the Labour government. It would appear that the government's commitment to diplomatic solutions was at odds with the military's necessity to find violent ones. The relationship deteriorated dramatically in 2004 when Britain's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan started going wrong and British soldiers started being killed and injured. This led to three years of accusations that the MOD was not receiving the funding it felt it deserved, calls for special treatment for members of the armed forces and ultimately the ousting of the Prime Minister. After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister the animosity continued and will no doubt be a major contributing factor in the Labour parties upcoming election defeat.

Now with Britain's elected government deposed in all but name it is the MOD's time to shine finally giving Britain's troops the high quality treatment that they claim the Labour government had been denying them for all these years. It is telling then that it was the MOD who yesterday took two British servicemen to court in an attempt to claw back compensation they had received for injuries sustained in the course of their service. The first serviceman, a solider, was shot in the thigh in Iraq. During treatment for the injury complications arose leaving the solider with one leg short then the other. The MOD's argument is that they should only have to compensate the solider for the gunshot would not the other injuries he sustained as a consequence of the gunshot wound. The second serviceman, a marine, sustained a similar injury while on a training exercise. Although the judges in a test case that could potentially affect thousands of British servicemen and women is not expected to return a verdict until the autumn the MOD have already made it clear that if the judges do not find in their favour they will simply appeal to a higher court. Today the Defence Minister, Bob Ainsworth, intervened and announced that he would force the MOD to review their compensation structure although it is unclear if the MOD will now drop the case.

Britain's courts were a busy place yesterday because they also saw the conviction of Ricardo Morrison for the murder of his girlfriend, Amy Leigh Barnes. During the trial and it coverage in the media a great effort was made the emphasise that Morrison was a dangerous, violent and psychologically controlling man who killed his girlfriend out of the selfish motivation that if he couldn't have then no-one else could. The agenda for this story is quite clear, Amy is Amy and I'm the dangerous killer. Aside from the obvious slander I suppose I should be quite pleased at the story because at least the Brits are now accepting that as long as Amy is on the path they laid out for her she's as good as dead. That's a sort of progress.

On a complete tangent today I saw a televised fundraising appeal for a British charity called Merlin. Merlin is an international development charity that operates rather suspiciously in countries such as Zimbabwe, Iran and Burma. One of the things that makes them so suspicious was that they were able to spend millions of pounds a year with no visible fundraising apparatus. That means I'm taking their decision to boost the profile of their fundraising efforts as a clear indication that they are very much still on the game, especially when operating alongside Save the Children, and MI6 doesn't have the ability to change up their operations.

Big Green Gathering Shutdown.

The Big Green Gathering (BGG) http://www.big-green-gathering.com is an environmental and sustainable living festival that has been held in Somerset, UK for 15 years. While the festival features some singing, dancing and possibly even laughter it is not a traditional music festival like Glastonbury or the V-Festival because the stages at the BGG are all powered by 12v solar power and are strictly silenced, by the sun, at midnight. The main entertainment at the BGG comes from workshops, exhibitions and market stalls that allow people to promote techniques for sustainable living including a field demonstrating organic farming methods and an equestrian centre. There is even a green business zone where environmental entrepreneurs who meet with investors who can held them develop the bright ideas into commercial ventures.

I know that this might make the BGG sound like the more rebellious and disorderly Climate Camp but the organisation of the two couldn't be more different. While the Climate Camp is semi-legal operating on a squatted site the BGG takes place on Fernhill Farm with the full permission of the landowner. The organisers also comply fully with the local councils licensing department spending around £150,000 obtaining all the correct permits and licenses. As part of this compliance the security and safety infrastructure of the festival is handled by Stuart Security, a well established events company who manage security at a variety of festivals including Glastonbury, T in the Park, the Reading festival, Womad and the Royal Bath & West Country show. In order to meet these costs the 15-20,000 festival goers all pay £120 for a ticket and the event is sponsored by a select group of financial service companies and green energy suppliers while one of the major stakeholders is AEG who own the O2 Arena. In short the Big Green Gathering is about as subversive as a traditional English country show of the sort that are dying out across rural Britain.

This mild and legal approach hasn't stopped the BGG becoming a target of the powers that be though. In preparation for the 2009 festival which was scheduled to take place between July 29th and August 2nd the organisers applied to Mendip Council who decided that they were happy with plans for the festival and issued a license on June 20th. Then on July 24th, five days before the start of the festival, Mendip Council, acting under orders from Avon & Somerset police sought an emergency injunction to suspend the license and stop the festival from happening. This is unusual because, firstly, the injunction was not just taken out against the company that organises BGG, which has limited liability, it was also taken out against two named directors of the company who have unlimited liability. This appears to be an attempt to discourage BGG from contesting the injunction by backing the named directors personally responsible for any legal costs incurred. It is also unusual because the main grounds for the injunction was that the festival organisers had not gained the correct permissions for road closures from the Highways Agency. The problem is that the organisers applied to the Highways Agency for these permissions back in May. The Highways Agency have yet to process this application.

After their legal team advised them of the potentially very high personal cost of contesting the injunction the BGG organisers felt they had no other option then to call off the festival and hand back the license at a multiple agency meeting on Sunday July 26th. Before this meeting had even ended the Chief Inspector representing the police got on his radio and gave to order to begin "Operation Fortress" a large an pre-planned police operation that involved setting up road blocks and vehicle check points to make sure that none of the festival goers who were already on route were able to gain entry to the county. During the meeting the same Chief Inspector told the BGG organisers that the decision to shut down the festival was a political one and the order had come down from the head to the constabulary. It was also inferred that the decision had been made by Central Government in London.

This coupled with the involvement of the Highways Agency makes it appear that the British Security Services have been involved in a high level conspiracy to not only shut down the 2009 Big Green Gathering but bankrupt the company that organises it by waiting until the site had been set up and all up-front costs had been paid before withdrawing permission. There are a number of reasons for why they may have done this;

1. They simply saw the words "Green Energy" and "Sustainable Living" and decided to shut down the BGG in a panic that it was part of the world wide conspiracy behind the Climate Camp.
2. They fully understood that BGG and Climate Camp are separate entities yet see the BGG as an "acceptable" approach to environmental problems. Therefore they shut it down blaming an association with the "unacceptable" Climate Camp in the hope of splitting the protesters off from the main stream and stop environmental problems being a political issue.
3. Again they fully understand that the two are separate entities yet see the BGG as unacceptable because it's professional and organised approach along with it's backing by not exactly anti-capitalist hedge funds adds credibility to environmental concerns making them more mainstream. Therefore the would prefer it if Climate Camp became the centre piece of the British Environmental movement by boosting its attendance because it organisational structure and more amateurish approach makes it easier to portray the environmentalists and their concerns as a fringe group of malcontents.

Which of these is the correct motivation depends on which agency was the driving force behind the shut down. If it was simply a police operation then the first reason is probably correct because the police only really act to prevent disorderly protest and have little interest in setting the political agenda. If the order came from higher up though then the other two options are the more likely although which approach will be followed up depends on other events over the next six to nine months which will be absolutely critical for the environmental movement.

So What Have I Missed?

Since Monday I have been cutting the grass under my father's close supervision. There isn't that much grass to cut but somehow this simple task has managed to take up three days of my life and due to mechanical failures is still unfinished. This means I haven't had much time to watch the news and from the bits I have seen there doesn't seem to be much happening.

The only real highlight was Britain getting itself into a bit of a tangle over it's Swine Flu advice to pregnant women. On Sunday one government department issued a statement advising pregnant women to avoid going out in public and to avoid crowds. This was mainly for my benefit because on Sunday morning my sister turned up for a visit and my brother turned up for dinner in the evening. Someone obviously decided that filling the days news agenda with images and stories about pregnant women avoiding swine flu would give me the impression that the Bristol contingent is now pregnant causing me to go into a panic that would help the state long planned counter offensive along. It didn't work and the best bit is that the story managed to confuse quite a few other government departments which released a flurry of statements all offering different advice. After two days of chaos they finally agreed on a statement that advised pregnant women to "practice good hygiene to protest themselves against swine flu."

There has also been the bit of local news that Croydon Council are now out of the running to become a sort of regional development zone. I haven't read up on the details of this but I'm aware that Croydon have been chasing this status for a number of years and are so upset about the financial consequences of failure that they're threatening legal action against the Greater London Assembly. I don't think Croydon had much chance of success in the first place but the story still made me smile because it brings to mind the old adage that things that can't learn to be flexible often end up broke.

Iranian Protesters Defeat Themselves.

On Friday (17/7/09) Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani a senior Iranian cleric and former President who has been seen as a supporter of the opposition addressed Friday prayers at Tehran University for the first time since the countries controversial election. In highly diplomatic speech Rafsanjani seemed to accept the validity of Ahmadinejad's re-election but declared that there were still sections of Iranian society that needed to be convinced. The main thrust of his speech though was to call for the humane treatment and timely release of those Iranians who had been arrested during recent protests. Ignoring the fact that many of those arrested have probably committed criminal offences up to and including murder and would face long prison sentences in any country in the world the main reason that so many people have been detained for so long is as part of a form of martial law designed to prevent further unrest and violence.

Outside of the university around 10,000 opposition supporters assembled in the largest such gathering in recent weeks. When the crowd began chanting anti-government slogans and, according the BBC report, attempted to storm the university the police moved in to disperse them. This led to the usual scenes of violence with the police deploying tear gas and baton charges while the protesters threw punches and missiles. That is the absolute last thing the protesters wanted to do because the longer that Iran goes without large and violent protests the more peoples memories will fade and the harder and harder it will be for the security services to justify the emergency powers that are keeping all those people in prison.

It would seem that Friday's violence was helpful to the British government though. It appears to have provided the final bit of pressure that was needed to get the Iranians to release the British Embassy official who had been arrested on suspicion of inciting and taking part in the earlier violence and was expected to stand trial on espionage charges. Releasing this prisoner seems to be an incredibly civilised move by the Iranian authorities because simply putting non-uniformed combatants on trial is hardly the western way of doing things.

Meanwhile the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has warned that American offers of discussion over Iran's nuclear program is a strictly time limited offer and will not last for ever. This seems to be a particularly harsh piece of timing because with the recent unrest Iran is hardly in a position to enter into dialogue with America or any other country on any issue let alone one as sensitive as nuclear enrichment. Clinton's aggressive stance could be seen as a response to Israeli attempts to put fresh pressure on the Americans in order to get the necessary support and equipment for an Israeli attack on Iran.

Phone Hacking Scandal.

Back in 2006 there was a scandal across the British press when the police announced that a journalist working for the Sunday Tabloid The News of the World (NOTW) was being investigated for illegally listening into the mobile phone calls and voicemail messages of members of the Royal family. Eventually the journalist was jailed for four months, the editor of the NOTW resigned and the whole story was forgotten about until July 2009 when rival newspaper the Guardian published an exclusive which revealed that the phone hacking was much more widespread then first thought with the NOTW tapping the phones of some 3000 public figures including Rebekah Wade the editor of the Sun, the NOTW's sister paper. These revelations prompted the police to launch another investigation into the matter and caused a House of Commons Select Committee to investigate the issue further not to mention the fact that it opened News International, the NOTW's parent company, up to potential lawsuits far exceeding the £1million they'd already paid out over the matter.

Personally I can't see what all the fuss is about because intercepting mobile telephone calls is such a standard investigative practice that pretty much everyone routinely does it. All the newspapers do it, private investigators do it, private companies do it to their rivals and to protests groups that may be targeting them, some of the smarter members of MP's staff do it and I know as fact that the Guardian newspaper most certainly do it. In fact there is a strong belief that the police themselves are none too keen to investigate the matter properly because such an investigation would not only reveal the police's own extensive practice of illegally intercepting mobile phone but also reveal some of the tactics they use to do so.

The practice is so widespread that I'm a bit surprised that the Guardian would want to draw so much attention to an illegal practice they're involved in. It's even more unusual because it goes against the unwritten rule of the British press that dog doesn't eat dog which is to say that despite the rivalries that exist between journalists and newspapers they do not attack each other. The Guardian is currently trying to justify breaking this rule by suggesting that because the NOTW is owned by News International they're not attacking another news paper they're merely striking blow against Rupert Murdoch, the scourge of liberals worldwide. The Guardian are also appealing to their left-wing readership by trying to dress the story up as an attack on the Conservative party because Andy Coulson, the editor of the NOTW at the time, is now the head of communications (spin doctor) for David Cameron the leader of the centre right Tories.

In reality I think that the Guardian's real motivation is much more spiteful and directed firmly against News International. I don't think I'm giving away any great secret when I say that the Guardian have been strong supporters for the Climate Camp movement and other related matters. Since the G20 protests there has been some strong and it has to be said deserved criticism of the G20 Climate Camp especially and the whole direction of the Climate Camp movement. Due to some other problems they've been having the Guardian seem to have taken this criticism as something of a personal attack and seem to be lashing out at News International who they see as being behind the criticism. Aside from the fact that this stupid, a bit childish and goes against the accepted conventions of Fleet Street it also seems to be an incredibly bad time for the Guardian to be doing it because the summer Climate Camp has been scheduled to take place in the last week of August/first week of September so you would think that the organisers of Climate Camp would be busy enough at this time without the Guardian raising the temperature by provoking a infighting amongst the media.

Swine Flu Weirdness

Like most of the rest of the world swine flu is gradually making its way through the British population. In the last two weeks the path of the epidemic reached an important milestone when the disease started killing people with no previous, underlying health problems. One of those people believed to have died from the virus was a GP, Dr Micheal Day who is suspected of catching the virus from patients he was treating although his exact cause of death has not been confirmed. Yesterday the local police in Bedfordshire took the unusual step of announcing that the autopsy showed Dr Day had died from "natural causes" This is peculiar because it is not standard practice for the police to make public the results of an autopsy in a case that is not suspected of being a murder. Also simply announcing that Dr Day died of unspecified natural causes doesn't even tell us if he died of swine flu or some other medical condition.

Rather then having anything to do with Swine Flu this announcement seems to be a response to a new wave of rumours surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly. For those of you who don't know Dr David Kelly was a British Government weapons scientist who worked on all those nasty little projects that the government doesn't want to own up to running. He also formed part of the UN weapons inspection team tasked with finding out if Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After British Intelligence, in the run up to the Iraq war, claimed that Iraq had WMD's that could be deployed in 45 minutes Dr Kelly contacted the BBC with evidence that this claim was false. Acting on the information provided by Dr Kelly the BBC broadcast a series of news reports which destroyed Britain's case for going to war and essentially accused the Prime Minister of lying to Parliament and the British public. In the ensuing political storm the BBC was forced to reveal it's sources and Dr Kelly was dragged up in front of a Parliamentary Investigations Committee. Days after his grilling by MP's and with his career in tatters Dr Kelly was found dead in fields near his home after apparently committing suicide. Due to the circumstances of his death and Dr Kelly's involvement in a number of highly sensitive military projects a number of conspiracy theories, some from very credible sources, began to emerge proposing that Dr Kelly was assassinated by the Intelligence Services in order to keep him quiet.

Over the years these conspiracy theories have investigated thoroughly, if not publicly, and it is widely accepted that while British Intelligence did no directly assassinate Dr Kelly they deliberately and purposely created the conditions in which Dr Kelly would decide to kill himself. An assisted suicide if you like.

The more traditional definition of "Assisted Suicide" in which terminally ill or seriously disabled people end their own lives with the help of a doctor or a close friend has been a major topic of discussion in Britain in the last year to eighteen months. The current round of discussion began last year when Debbie Purdy, a woman with Multiple Sclerosis, appealed to the Law Lords to clarify if her partner could be prosecuted under the Suicide Act if he helped her travel to a country where assisted suicide or euthanasia is legal. Although the Law Lords felt it wasn't their place to rule on the issue Purdy's case is seen as the motivation for Lord Falconers amendment to the Coroners and Justice bill when it was debated in the House of Lords two weeks ago.

This makes me think that the sudden re-emergence of the discredited Dr David Kelly conspiracy theories is an attempt by the Intelligence / Civil Service to lobby the House of Lords to pass the amendment. The message seems to be that is assisted suicide was legalised it would take alot off pressure of the Intelligence Service in issues such as the Dr David Kelly case. Of course this would be an attempt to drive the direction of the discussion rather then to reach a logical conclusion because it is as unlikely that changes to the Suicide Act would have any bearing on the Dr Kelly case as it is that members of the Intelligence Services would ever be prosecuted for any offence. As the law change wouldn't actually protect any members of the Intelligence Services there must be a hidden agenda behind this lobbying and it recently just revealed itself. Over the last two days it has emerged that within the next decade or so Britain will no longer be able to meet its pension obligations or its obligation to provide social care to the disabled. Therefore it would seem that they want to legalise euthanasia because the state would prefer it if the old and the sick could just be put down by doctors rather then forcing the state to do it's job properly.

Yesterday it was also announced that a young British girl called Hannah who underwent groundbreaking heart surgery by having a second donor heart transplanted in to her in order to allow her existing, damaged heart to recover has made a full recovery. The name Hannah is a long standing tag used to identify an imaginary female MI5 officers and this story has been doing the rounds in medical circles for a number of years. The public announcement of success seems to be acting to lay the story and the possibly the whole strategy to rest. It was probably also announced on the same day as this swine flu story was a way to confuse everyone.