Gaza Clashes: Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Friday opened artillery and gun fire on a group of four Palestinians rigging explosives near the Gaza border. Two of Palestinians were killed. Following the incident Hamas’s Khaled Meshal, in an interview with London-based Al Hayat newspaper, threatened that a new conflict would not be limited to Gaza.
Israel Tries to Cut Off Gaza Enquiry: The Jerusalem Post has learned that the response Israel gave to United Nations on the investigations it is conducting into Operation Cast Lead seeks to deter UN action.
“Israel feels the report it gave was a serious, comprehensive, credible and complete answer to the UN secretary-general,” one senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office said.
2355 GMT: Just checking in to say we have posted a video of a Tehran University academic defending Thursday’s executions of Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour.
1910 GMT: We’re taking an evening break. We may be back for a late-night wrap-up. If not, all the latest news will open our Sunday updates.
1900 GMT: Pressure on Ahmadinejad. The “conservative” campaign against the President’s advisors has not ceased. The high-profile member of Parliament Ahmad Tavakoli has attacked the controversial Deputy Minister of Culture, Mo-Amin Ramin, and Ahmadinejad aide Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai. Read the rest of this entry »
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?
As soon as he was appointed as the European Union’s first President, Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy became the target of Turkish media and politicians, given his negative comments on Turkey’s membership in the EU. For many, the Union’s choice of Rompuy instead of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to one reason: “to block Turkey’s way”.
Suat Kiniklioglu, deputy chairman for external affairs of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said that France and Germany had championed Rompuy to harm Turkey’s European aspirations:
We are concerned. This man has made it very clear that he doesn’t want to see Turkey in the European Union. What is even sadder is that he is making that argument on the basis of the supposed Christian values of the union. That’s not the type of union we envisage. The values we envisage are of democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law.
His appointment is really evidence that the Franco-German axis in the union is gaining increased strength. I would not be surprised that his views on Turkey have played a role in that choice.
In 2004, Rompuy stated in the Belgian Parliament, “Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe. An expansion of the EU to include Turkey cannot be considered as just another expansion as in the past. The universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are also fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey.”
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.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Kenneth Vogel of Politico as he prepared his article on the British press and the myths and realities of the US-UK “special relationship”. His article pivots on the bigged-up story, which was hot for 24 hours, of a supposed “snub” of British Prime Minister by President Obama:
The British press’s Obama complex
After the latest week’s worth of British press reports that there’s no love lost in the White House for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, even his one-on-one meeting Friday with President Obama only provided the papers across the pond with a reason for another round of stories.
Since Obama burst onto the international scene last year, newspapers in the United Kingdom have spilled gallons of ink on his perceived slights of British leaders, and especially Brown.
To be sure, the “Special Relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K. has long been a favorite topic for the notoriously sensational British papers, but interest seems to have spiked since Obama’s 2008 campaign world tour swung through London for visits with top British leaders.
A major piece by Ian Cobain in today’s Guardian examines the significant part torture has played in Britain’s post-9/11 anti-terrorism policy:
Today, however, there is mounting evidence that torture is still regarded by some agents of the British state as a useful and legitimate investigative tool. There is evidence too that in the post-9/11 world, government officials have been prepared to look the other way while British citizens, and others, have been tortured in secret prisons around the world. It is also clear that an official policy, devised to govern British intelligence officers while interrogating people held overseas, resulted in people being tortured.
In a series of case studies Cobain shows how torture has become a standard method of interrogation for the British intelligence services, and how everyone involved- from personnel on the ground to high-ranking government ministers- may be complicit.
So Mark Sanford (pictured), Governor of South Carolina and a Republican Presidential hopeful for 2012, has fallen, if not by the wayside, for the wiles of a shady lady from Argentina.
It seems like no time at all since New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, another Republican presidential contender, got stung, this time trading cash for lady’s favours in the time-honoured way of “the oldest profession”. Even though Tony Blair’s Ministers, even “Lord Cashpoint” (Lord Levy) of cash-for-honours infamy, was never accused of this, the Sanford case leads me to question our fascination, both in America and Britain, with the ability of our political leaders to remain faithful to their wives and partners. Read the rest of this entry »
Gaza Clashes: Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Friday opened artillery and gun fire on a group of four Palestinians rigging explosives near the Gaza border. Two of Palestinians were killed. Following the incident Hamas’s Khaled Meshal, in an interview with London-based Al Hayat newspaper, threatened that a new conflict would not be limited to Gaza.
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As soon as he was appointed as the European Union’s first President, Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy became the target of Turkish media and politicians, given his negative comments on Turkey’s membership in the EU. For many, the Union’s choice of Rompuy instead of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to one reason: “to block Turkey’s way”.
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 had the pleasure of chatting with Kenneth Vogel of Politico as he prepared 
So Mark Sanford (pictured), Governor of South Carolina and a Republican Presidential hopeful for 2012, has fallen, if not by the wayside, for the wiles of a shady lady from Argentina.
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