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January 30, 2007
Tony Blair's law
Just been listening to this fascinating radio programme - with a panel of legal experts discussing the changes that Tony Blair has made to UK law (and the international impacts of this). Well worth a listen, both for a good discussion of the way that the 'war on terror' has been used to change domestic and international law, and for the sound of a panel of otherwise bright, eloquent lawyers being struck dumb by some of (former UK Home Secretary) David Blunkett's, um, novel approaches to legal rights in the UK....
Posted by jon_mendel at 04:28 PM | TrackBack
January 28, 2007
Tony Blair, Iraq and responsibility
I've just watched Tony Blair give a fairly extensive interview to The Politics Show. Ugh - 'toe-curling' is the first word that springs to mind. There's no sense of regret, no sense that things could have been done better or that the 'reconstruction' was bodged - Blair just blames insurgent groups for preventing Iraq (and Afghanistan) from becoming democracies.
There's also a real sense of amnesia - Blair states that "I don't think anyone erm, really predicted accurately what would happen in Iraq". I guess it depends what you mean by 'predicted acurately', but many of opponents of the war did predict that the war would be a bloody mess, and Gordon and Trainor's book Cobra II shows that many in the US military also doubted that the resources available to them in and after Operation Iraqi Freedom would allow them to stabilise Iraq after regime change. Bush and Blair were warned that Operation Iraqi Freedom would not end well, and the warnings have been proved to be relatively accurate.
You can almost sense, with every word, it being made harder and harder for Labour to win the forthcoming Scottish elections. To see Blair punished at the ballot box isn't nearly enough - but it will be a start, I guess.
Posted by jon_mendel at 12:31 PM | TrackBack
January 26, 2007
Irish State TV decides not to show Loose Change
Just a quick update after this post. Apparently, after receiving a lot of complaints, the RTE TV station decided (correctly, to my mind) that Loose Change isn't suitable for broadcast. Yay :D
From what I can tell, lots of the campaign which got this Loose Change withdrawn from RTE was organised online. It therefore looks like, while the Internet can help films like Loose Change to spread, it can also help spread critiques of these films and perform a kind of self-gatekeeping - limiting how far these conspiracy theories can spread, and how seriously they get taken.
Anyway, does anyone know where can I find some exploding flying pigs to celebrate with?
Posted by jon_mendel at 01:28 PM | TrackBack
January 25, 2007
Exploding pigs force far-right party out of Second Life
The virtual world of Second Life became a better place last week: Jean Marie Le Pen's far-right Front National tried to establish an HQ there, but were forced to leave. When the Front National arrived, they drew protestors and (virtual) violence:
There's something wonderful about the image of French (post)fascists being driven away by a barrage of exploding pigs.
Posted by jon_mendel at 05:41 PM | TrackBack
January 24, 2007
Loose Change 9/11 Conspiracy movie to air on Irish RTE TV
Oddly, it seems that the Irish public TV station RTE TV has decided to show the Loose Change documentary next month. Loose Change is a movie which argues and implies that the 'official' story that Al Qaeda were behind the September 11 2001 attacks is false, and that a broader conspiracy (including the US government) was behind the attacks.
It's interesting how quickly Loose Change was able to spread on the Internet, but the film itself has been pretty thorougly shredded by a couple of compelling critiques (also distributed largely online). It's hard to see why RTE would want to focus on Loose Change when:
a) it's full of errors, and the makers appear to think that 'fact checking' is an evil CIA plot to silence dissent.
b) the film's about what's clearly a sensitive subject, which makes the dismal quality of the movie (to leave that many errors in the third version of a documentary to be released is shocking) all-the-more offensive.
c) there are many much, much better films offering critical discussions of 9/11 and US foreign policy (including the Watson Institute's own Eugene Jarecki's film Why We Fight).
d) Ireland, like the UK, has stringent libel laws and doesn't have the same right of 'fair use' that there is in the US (a problem cause Loose Change uses lots of footage lifted from news networks etc.) They run a real risk of getting sued - not for running a quality piece of investigative journalism, but for running an offensively bad 'documentary' full of clumsy, obvious errors.
This looks like an example of an Internet phenomenon crossing into the 'mainstream' media. However, I think RTE have picked the wrong phenomenon to use - if they show Loose Change then, at best, they'll look very silly. At worst, they'll get sued. This is one Internet video I'm surprised that the 'mainstream' media is reproducing.
Posted by jon_mendel at 05:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 22, 2007
Police "colluded" with Loyalist murders in Northern Ireland
While the bloodshed in Iraq continues, UK news has provided a reminder of a more 'old fashioned' type of terrorism. Nuala O'Loan - Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland - has reported that:
Special Branch officers gave [Ulster Volunteer Force] killers immunity...The officers ensured the murderers were not caught and even "baby-sat" them during police interviews to help them avoid incriminating themselves.The Special Branch officers "created false notes" and blocked searches for UVF weapons.
British troops are often praised for their skills in 'stability operations' in urban terrain. However, it's worth remembering that many of these skills were gained by serving in Northern Ireland during the troubles there. There are many aspects of the troubles in Northern Ireland - and the army and police responses to these troubles - that we would definitely not want to export to Iraq.
Posted by jon_mendel at 07:11 PM | TrackBack
January 20, 2007
The Independent: How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
Writing in the Independent, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb report that:
Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil.
This plan will allow oil companies that invest in Iraqi oil infrastructure to "take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals."
In a hole, the Bush administration still appears to be digging. The idea that this was 'war for oil' has helped make the US-lead invasion unpopular in Iraq; passing laws which appear to verify this, and are drafted by the US, will only stir up additional anger. There are, also, a number of simple, relatively cheap measures that could quickly be taken to improve the functioning of Iraq's oil industry: for example, one point emphasised by shocked interviewees on the BBC's recent Baghdad Billions documentary is that Iraqi oil is still not metered properly. Such basic measures should be taken before there's even a need to think of more complex moves such as long-term oil extraction deals.
There is also the issue of Iraqi 'sovereignty'. The state's currently nothing like a sovereign country in any conventional sense - for example, it lacks the Weberian monopoly of legitimate force. Elections held in Iraq have, to put it mildly, been problematic, and the government is currently facing a number of violent challenges. If long-term deals are made under this Iraqi government, this could seriously limit the capacity of future governments to decide what to do with the state's resources - and thus further limit the capabilities of the Iraqi state.
One more positive solution which has been suggested is to use the revenue from Iraqi oil to pay a 'resource dividend' to the Iraqi people - similar to the situation in Alaska, with each Iraqi citizen being given a regular payment drawn from Iraqi oil sales. This would have several benefits:
- it would provide additional income to Iraqi citizens, and thus boost the economy and help to ameliorate poverty.
- if Iraqis knew that they would benefit from oil revenues in a transparent way, attacks on oil infrastructure would become less popular and calls for transparency and anti-corruption measures are likely to become more insistant.
- this would leave the control of and income from Iraqi oil in the hands of Iraqi citizens. They would benefit from this in the short term and, if Iraq became more stable and decided to change the way oil is handled in the longer term, the Iraqis would be in a much better position to negotiate their terms with the oil companies.
(by the way, the reason for the lengthy post is that I've been forwarded the Inde article by a colleague, and asked for a response. This can class as a rough draft, I guess...)
Posted by jon_mendel at 09:43 PM | TrackBack
January 19, 2007
Google Earth used to target British bases in Basra
It was reported last week (I've only just been forwarded the story) that "Terrorists attacking British bases in Basra are using aerial footage displayed by the Google Earth internet tool to pinpoint their attacks" This is a surprising (and creative) use of the Google Earth tool - and, if the story is accurate (it has been questioned) it's another example of how effectively insurgent groups in Iraq have been making use of communications technology.
It seems that Google has now replaced the images of British bases in Basra with pre-invasion images. This apprarent censorship has been questioned and come in for criticism
Posted by jon_mendel at 05:00 PM | TrackBack
January 12, 2007
Bush in a hole in Iraq, digging
As I'm sure you've heard, the US is increasing troop numbers in Iraq; the hope is improve 'security' for Iraqis (in Baghdad in particular), to take military action against anti-occupation insurgent groups, and to take military action against Iranian and Syrian influence in Iraq. Bush hopes to achieve this with about 20,000 extra troops.
There's a number of problems with this, lots of which have been (correctly) repeatedly raised elsewhere: the troops serving as targets for insurgents, the inadequate troop numbers for Bush's goals, and problems with 'reinforcing failure'. I'll write about one issue which hasn't got so much attention: dealing with the Iranian influence in Iraq.
Firstly, a military response won't do anything much about cultural and political links between Iraqi and Iranian Shia (except perhaps strengthen them, through a sense of solidarity). The number of troops being sent in also won't be able to do much about Iraq's porous borders (which have now become sufficiently open that Iraq may be becoming a staging post on a new drugs route).
The major problem, though, is how on earth 20,000 extra troops can deal with the stronger Iranian-linked groups. Taking 'just' the Iranian-linked Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, this has a large (c. 10,000 troops) in a relatively effective militia, which would be extremely hard to deal with in assymetrical warfare. It is also part of the Iraqi government - so, as well as having the SCIRI having a lot of popular support, the SCIRI would be hard to separate from the Iraqi state/government. The links between Iraqi security/military forces and Shia militias means that it is unclear to what extent these will support or oppose US-lead forces.
Anyway, this also has interesting links to UK policy, and our horribly ineffective attempts to influence US policy in Iraq. That's enough for me to write for now, though - I'll add more in another post.
Posted by jon_mendel at 05:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
