Tags: St. Patrick's Day

We’re excited to hear about the official launch of Outpost, a blog on Irish-American relations by our colleagues at University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute. Martin, Geoff and team explain:

The purpose of this blog is to offer dynamic and wide-ranging coverage of American politics, culture and society from Irish and European perspectives. Ireland is situated in an unique position to foster a greater understanding of America’s role in the world, it’s relationship with Europe and how the United States is perceived by both the media and public.

Working within this frame Outpost will publish innovative analysis concerning significant diplomatic, economic and cultural developments. This will include expert commentary on the continuing US presence in Northern Ireland. As Ireland enters a new economic framework traditional discourses require reassesment. The Outpost will consistently address shifting paradigms in economics and politics in an innovative and engaging manner.

Recent posts include reports on the closure of Guantánamo, Obama’s healthcare plans, the Irish peace process, and PIGS. Visit the Outpost.

Tags: Clinton Institute, Ireland, Irish-American relations, Outpost, UCD

In February 2005, I decided to try my hand at a blog, Rebel Yell: “Better to offer alternative perspectives, not with the certainty of being right but with the hope of unsettling and challenging those who claim a universal perspective and an eternal “right” in the advance of their causes.”

Two weeks later, on 28 February 2005, I wrote about the US, Tony Blair, and Iraq. Almost five years later, and a day after Blair’s testimony to an enquiry into the 2003 Iraq, I stand by every word:

The Independent on Sunday reveals that Comrade Tony and Her Majesty’s Government decided in April 2002 to follow the Bush Administration’s lead for War in Iraq, almost a year before the formal opening of hostilities.

Credit to the Indy for publishing but this isn’t really news to Rebel Yell. The line here has long been that Dick Cheney came to London in March 2002 to tell Comrade Tony that Afghanistan was now out of fashion and today’s look was regime change in Baghdad. Never mind that Osama might still be skipping around the mountains of eastern Afghanistan — in early March, eight American troops (then considered, before 1500 US deaths in Iraq, a massive toll) were killed by an ambush in the botched Operation Anaconda. With the face that democracy had been brought to Kabul, Al Qa’eda was now little more than a diversion from the Bush Administration’s priority since January 2001: Saddam Must Go.

Officially the position was “the US does not target states on a day-to-day basis” but the tip-off was in the British announcement that a dossier on Iraq’s WMDs would be published by the end of March. Ah yes, that dossier. It didn’t beat the March deadline because the intelligence on Saddam’s arsenals of death wasn’t there. Indeed, it would take six more months — after Cheney had proclaimed that Iraq was about to unveil nuclear weapons — for MI6/Alistair Campbell [Blair's influential press advisor]/Comrade Tony to provide the fig leaf of “Saddam Able to Strike in 45 Minutes”.

So while we’re waiting for the unabridged version of the March 2003 legal opinion, which may or may not have been written by the British Attorney General, that told Parliament that the bombing of Baghdad was legit, how about adding a second request: what was the document in March 2002 that persuaded Comrade Tony that Saddam was an “imminent threat” who must be overthrown? Or was it simply Dick Cheney’s charm and winning smile?

Tags: al-Qaeda, Dick Cheney, Independent on Sunday, Operation Anaconda, Rebel Yell, Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair

The minor storm over Telegraph journalist and blogger Will Heaven’s recent posts on social media and the ongoing unrest in Iran, has brought much discussion of the pros and cons of reposting Iranian activists’ comments on Twitter and Facebook. To get to the heart of the issue, however, one needs to take a look at Heaven’s assumptions regarding Deep Packet Inspection.

On his blog post of 29 December Heaven stated:

It is now thought that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is using Deep Packet Inspection to check Facebook messages and tweets for “anti-regime” keywords. Once this is done, they are able to pinpont the location of online protesters using their IP addresses. Then it’s just a knock on the door and a confiscated laptop for evidence.

But is the use of DPI to punish dissent really this simple?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Deep Packet Inspection, DPI, Huffington Post, Iran, Iranian activists, Nokia Siemens Networks, social media, Telegraph, Twitter, Will Heaven

Last week, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon met with Britain’s Attorney-General Baroness Scotland of Asthal to discuss how British law may affect Israeli officials visiting the United Kingdom.  Ayalon called the current situation “insufferable”: ”This will make it difficult for the two countries to maintain a normal relationship.”

The meeting follows the revelations that a delegation of Israel Defense Forces officers canceled a planned visit to the UK after the British hosts failed to guarantee that arrest warrants would not be issued.

Baroness Scotland said that she is aware of how much Israel is heeding an urgent solution and of the very same attention British are currently showing to solve the problem. However, Ayalon continued:

If the British law remains unchanged, this would undermine the good relations between the two countries who share common values and interests. The British must bear in mind that these visits serve both countries.

Tags: Britain, Danny Ayalon, Israel, Israeli Defense Forces, Lady Scotland

UPDATE 1115 GMT: Spectacle has posted the video of an interview with Omar Deghayes, speaking about his interrogation by British Intelligence agents while detained in Islamabad, Pakistan and Bagram, Afghanistan.
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Long-time EA readers will know that I have been none-too-happy with the evasions of the British Government over torture in the War on Terror, criticising Foreign Secretary David Miliband for using deceptions as well as court action to prevent the truth from emerging.

This week Human Rights Watch brought out a bit of that truth, publishing a 46-page report on Britain’s involvement (not observation, involvement) in the torture of detainees in Pakistan. This is the summary, followed by a link to the full report:

A key lesson from the past eight years of global efforts to combat terrorism is that the use of torture and ill-treatment is deeply counterproductive. It undermines the moral legitimacy of governments who rely on it and serves as a recruiting sergeant for terrorist organizations. This is recognized in the UK government’s counterterrorism strategy, “CONTEST II,” which asserts that the protection of human rights is central and that the UK’s response to terrorism will be based on the rule of law.

However, this principled and pragmatic assertion of core values is being undermined by the official whitewash surrounding the complicity of UK intelligence and security agencies in torture in Pakistan, with ministers repeatedly rejecting calls for an independent judicial inquiry from a cross-party parliamentary committee and human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) alike. Research by Human Rights Watch and path-breaking investigative reporting by The Guardian newspaper makes it clear that British hands are not clean. The refusal of the government to order an independent and transparent investigation has been an important missed opportunity.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: British Foreign Affairs Committee, CONTEST II, Convention Against Torture, David Miliband, Detainees, European Convention on Human Rights, Gordon Brown, Human Rights Watch, Inter-Services Intelligence, Joint Committee on Human Rights, MI5, MI6, Omar Deghayes, Pakistan, Pakistan Intelligence Bureau, Rangzieb Ahmed, Rashid Rauf, Salahuddin Amin, Spectacle, Torture, United Nations Committee Against Torture, Zeeshan Siddiqui

Crying Wolf: The Real Significance of Afghanistan for the UK’s Security is that it’s not Significant

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Below is Gordon Brown’s speech on foreign policy, delivered at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. (Transcript via Number10.gov.uk):

My Lord Mayor, my late Lord Mayor, your grace, my Lord Chancellor, your excellencies, my Lords, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Chief Commoner, ladies and gentlemen.

We live in no ordinary times.

• A year into dealing with the greatest economic challenge for generations – the first global financial recession.
• A few weeks before the most important climate change decisions in human history.
• A few months ahead of nuclear negotiations that could for the first time genuinely bind the world to cooperate and not proliferate.
• And we meet just as America and NATO are making vital choices about how to continue and win the fight against global terrorism.

These are the four great issues of our time, and what they have in common is that – global in nature – they require global solutions. None can be answered by one country or one continent in isolation.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Gordon Brown, Lord Mayor's Banquet, November 16 2009, UK foreign policy

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In the 1940s and 1950s, my family looked forward to the arrival of so-called care packages from our better-off relatives in New York. The goodies were marvellous. Chocolate was very scarce in those days. Hence, I was led to believe that all Americans enjoyed abundance, whereas all Brits could look forward to was rationing and penury.

I think of those care packages and wonder if British politicians like Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg look longingly towards America. In the United Kingdom, campaign spending is limited and closely monitored and regulated, but political parties manage to get themselves heavily into trouble and debt at election time. To repair the damage, the major parties have acted like shiftier financial advisors. “Don’t ‘give’ us the campaign contribution, Mr. X, lend it to us and then we don’t have to declare it.” If a Mr. Tony Blair thought up this clever little ruse, maybe he should be taking a more active role with J. P. Morgan.

Yet this British manoeuvring is child’s play to the sleights-of-hand in the US, where American campaign finance laws do not work.

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Tags: David Cameron, Gordon Brown, J.P. Morgan, Jennifer Stern, Michael Bloomberg, Nick Clegg, Tony Blair