Radio Free Neptune

The US and UK have worked together many times before to bring self-determination to others. A good example is the treatment of the people of the Chagos Archipelago, a chain of small islands well to the south of India which are still nominally governed by the British as part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT.)
The islanders had unwisely chosen to be born on islands which are ideally placed for a military base controlling the Indian Ocean, and in 1966 the UK signed a lease for a US military base on Diego Garcia for fifty years, in return for a discount on the Polaris submarine missile system. The deal was kept secret from the US Congress and British parliament.
The problem was, the Americans wanted Diego Garcia, and the other islands of the archipelgo 'swept' clean of people. The UN Declaration of Human Rights states that 'No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.' (Article 9) and that 'Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.' (Article 13) Awkward, no?
Starting in 1965, legal and diplomatic shenanigans separated the islands from Mauritius, whence they had been administered, and while Mauritius became independent in 1968, the Chagos Islands were incorporated into the BIOT. The population was redefined as 'transients' by the 1971 Immigration Ordinance, which did not go before parliament, and a two-pronged strategy for dealing with the diplomatic issues raised was ironed out: keep quiet, and failing that, lie.
Between 1971 and 1973 the population was deported to Mauritius, to live among an ethnically different population and in an economy where the islanders' skills were not appropriate. They still live there in poverty.
In 2000, the islanders launched a High Court action against the British government, and despite Robin Cook's once-vaunted but quickly-forgotten 'ethical foreign policy,' the government contested the action after coming under pressure from the US government. The islanders wished to go back to two of the islands that the US were not using for bases - not to Diego Garcia - but even this 'would significantly degrade the strategic importance of a vital military asset unique in the region,' according to the US government.
Surprisingly, the islanders won a partial victory, the judges ruling that there was "no source of lawful authority" to justify deportation, and the Immigration Ordinance was repealed, hence the mistakenly optimistic last paragraphs of this detailed article from 2001. However, the military status of Diego Garcia was upheld, and the islanders were not allowed back. Their last legal action failed in October 2003, the judge ruling that they had 'no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim, and that it had no real prospect of success... The claim of unlawful exile as a legal wrong was not arguable.'
At least the US has been using the base to bring self-determination to Afghans and Iraqis - delivered by the B-52s based there - and they have laid to rest the myth that Americans have no irony - the base is apparently called 'Camp Justice.'

The US military has had to start an inquiry into torture of Iraqi detainees by Americans in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, now that 'dozens' of photographs of beatings, torture and humiliation have been given to CBS news.
One reservist interviewed by CBS said
"Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.' ...
We help getting them to talk with the way we handle them. ... We've had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours."
CBS continues:
According to the Army’s own investigation, that’s what was happening. The Army found that interrogators asked reservists working in the prison to prepare the Iraqi detainees, physically and mentally, for questioning.
But so far, none of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib are facing criminal charges. In fact, a number of them are civilians, and military law doesn’t apply to them.
...
One of the civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib was questioned by the Army, and he told investigators he had "broken several tables during interrogations, unintentionally," while trying to "fear up" prisoners. He denied hurting anyone.
Its about time the military cracked down on this sort of thing. How can their goons concentrate on torturing some captive when they're being distracted by cameras clicking away? And surely stronger tables can be found?

The fictional cease-fire flared into the headlines again today, as the US used artillery and air strikes against Falluja.
Blair, controlled by the microchip implanted by the neo-cons, today described the resistance there as 'Saddam regime remnants and terrorists,' and Gen. Kimmit referred to a 'determined aspiration on the part of the coalition to maintain the ceasefire,' bizarrely opining that 'a military solution is simple, quick and easy to turn on and off.'
Back in the real world, other sources were more ambivalent. A BBC radio correspondent noted that many Iraqis were 'not wildly pro-American,' and the UN special envoy Brahimi said that 'there is great risk of a very bloody confrontation,' which is a safe prediction in the middle of a very bloody confrontation.
Joining in the state-the-bleedin'-obvious-fest was Kofi Annan, who stated that 'the more the occupation is seen as taking steps that harm the civilians and the population, the greater the ranks of the resistance grows.'
Meanwhile, the collective punishment of Falluja continues, in contravention of Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention, as ordered by Bush. There is an Amnesty USA campaign to write to Rumsfeld objecting to earlier incidents of collective punishment which wins the worthy-but-futile prize for this week. Please mark your envelopes 'FAO FBI.'

The unprecedented criticism of Blair from senior diplomatic-establishment figures seems to have rattled him.
Yesterday he made two loud policy speeches before lunchtime. He prodded at the can of worms that is immigration, hoping to placate both normal people and Daily Mail readers with blather about 'managed migration' and a 'top-to-bottom' review of current practice.
He also sounded off about the environment - along the lines of 'gosh, yes, looks bad'. He claimed 'climate change was the single most important global issue' - but typically, he wouldn't criticize Bush, and all he contributed was hot air.
Blair's random hoofing at political footballs won't fool many - he is desperate to avoid his administration being defined by the Iraq war in history books of the future, and chaff thrown up on domestic issues will, he hopes, distract.
But the size of the Whitehall and intelligence iceberg that the Blair government has struck is only hinted at by the letter from former ambassadors. Further evidence comes from the state broadcaster. On BBC Radio 4 at midnight (BST) was a report of widespread understanding amongst Foreign Office apparatchiks of the concerns expressed; it was suggested that Sir Jeremy Greenstock was sympathetic to the statement. This is remarkably strong language.
There was a Soviet joke/observation that all the news was in 'Pravda', but you had to know how to read 'Pravda'. The Civil Service requires similar decryption.

The Earth Desk's media section has just been to see 'The Fog of War.' This film is an extended interview with Robert McNamara, a senior member of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, intercut with archive footage and White House tape recordings. McNamara has a lot of blood on his hands - he was involved in the statistical analysis of bombing raids on Japan in the Second World War to improve their efficiency, and he was Secretary of Defense before and during the Vietnam War. He left office (was pushed, possibly) in 1968 when he failed to completely succumb to the disconnection from reality which characterised the LBJ administration's groupthink, but quietly went off to head the World Bank rather than speaking out.
When people leave public office during a crisis and immediately warn the public about their government (Clarke, O'Neill, Foster, Kay, various others), and criticism from retired diplomats and intelligence officers is voiced in public, it is reasonable to recall the Vietnam era - another case where the shrinking group of Believers at the top insisted on the wisdom of their folly against all evidence. The analogy might not be as 'false' as Rove's puppet told you.
McNamara knows that he made some very bad choices over Vietnam, and a huge number of people died as a result. This knowledge has plainly eaten away at him during the years he didn't speak about the subject, and even in this film he avoids answering the questions 'Why didn't you speak out after leaving the Johnson administration?' and 'Do you feel guilty?' In the end, the interviewer, Errol Morris, doesn't push McNamara on the hard questions. McNamara admits errors in general, but no specific errors, polishing his reputation with a little humility, but pleading guilty to nothing.
When talking about the Tokyo raids, McNamara recalls a comment in which he is told that what they were doing would constitute war crime if they were on the losing side. The camera stays on him as his eyes fill and his chin reddens and quivers. He appears as one of the Elder Statesmen, 'sensitive' (as he describes himself), and burdened with a troubled conscience. After a career like that, he should be.

(Warning - this item contains links to tedious pages.)
The great virtue of the market is that it provides choice - in Britain, choice was widened a couple of years ago when the citizens were given a range of telephone directory enquiry services to choose from. Before, there was one damn communistic number, but now the freedom-loving British have a choice.
The free market model relies on people acting as self-interested, informed consumers. So, before dialling, they should choose the most cost-effective service. The different companies offering the service are motivated by profit, so the customer should be the beneficiary.
Once they have learned the tariffs of the directory enquiry companies, they are ready to move on to the cost-schemes of the mobile phone companies. Gas and electricity suppliers also compete for custom.
You have to hand it to the capitalists, they offer a bewildering variety of choices. Sadly, choosing to spend your spare time in a more fulfilling and creative way than poring over prices is not one of them.

The British Home Secretary David Blunkett is accelerating the introduction of ID cards for his flock. The majority of the population is said to be willing to carry them, in the light of the War On Terror for which the government has such enthusiasm.
The common argument you will hear is that 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.' The problem with this argument is that there is no logical point at which it no longer applies. Full cavity search when you walk out of your front door? 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.'
Ownership of statistical data on populations by government has not always been beneficial, so even if you trust the present lot, you have to recognise that they're building tools which can be used for totalitarian purposes.
The kind of statistical processing of people which ID systems are designed for inevitably means 'false positive' identifications. When data for millions of people is sitting on a government database, some will be identified as 'terrorists' from their 'profile'. When people can be imprisoned without charge or trial, on the basis of information which is concealed under the cloak of 'national secirity,' the chain is complete - ID cards will mean more innocent people being imprisoned, indefinitely and without charges or trial.

Osama bin Laden, shadowy evil genius and 2001 BAFTA winner, is not so unambiguously a product of the Heathen East as some would have you believe. His family are not ascetic imams, but super-wealthy capitalists enjoying very cosy business relationships with the Bush family. Big cars and shopping in the rich capitalist countries is their thing. And guess who was on the only non-military flights in the lockdown of US airspace after 9-11?
The fact that the budding 'al-Qaida' movement was trained and funded by the West's secret services is well known (e.g. here and here), but the whole idea may have come from the Eastern mystic Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation' sci-fi series - food for thought, unless you and your dialysis machine are fasting for Ramadan.

The historical info in this post comes from Howard Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States.' Zinn was one of the people with whom Daniel Ellsberg left a copy of the 'Pentagon Papers' for safekeeping. Ellsberg sees a similarity between the way intelligence was used in the Vietnam war era and the way Baby Bush's maladministration uses it, and calls for leaks from insiders.
Howard Zinn, a history professor at Boston, draws the obvious conclusion from the fact that congressional and judicial 'checks and balances' (such as they are) have broken under the weight of the far right's determination to have a war.
'Big ups,' as younger Earthlings say, to both.

In a recent tragic incident, a fifteen year old 'detainee' (he'd have to have lived another three years to become a 'prisoner') was overpowered, fatally, at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in Northamptonshire, England. A plod said "it was necessary for staff to exercise their normal techniques of physical control and care in dealing with Gareth. While that procedure was being undertaken he lost consciousness."
'Physical control' is euphemistic enough, but what is the 'and care' doing there? Physical care should mean a hug, or holding someone's hand if they are in pain. If they end up dead, you're doing it wrong.
The killers in this case weren't police or prison officers, but employees of Group 4, which may be some comfort to the market solutions fans out there - the private service can do everything the state one does.

Bringing 'em on, and bringing 'em back...

An activist in the US has used the FOIA to get the military to release pictures of coffins arriving back at Dover Air Force Base. Notice how neatly and lovingly Old Glory has been wrapped round the caskets - it makes them look like lovely big Christmas prezzies.
The Pentagon is upset that they are appearing on the Web, so I'd like to express my sympathy for the top US brass at this difficult time. Lets hope it doesn't reduce popular enthusiasm for bloody imperial conquest.

A friend of mine who has very acute political antennae sees Blair's decision to hold a referendum on the European constitution as follows:
"I can't help thinking that Blair's referendum idea is actually designed to give him grounds for resignation. Wouldn't you want your political obituary to end '...forced from office after his courageous effort to lead Britain into Europe failed in face of xenophobic tabloid press...', rather than '...forced to resign after the occupation of Iraq decended into chaos...' "
Sounds about right. Blair's statement today that he wouldn't have to resign if he lost the referendum is just window-dressing; he would say that, wouldn't he?

Hey, guess what? Your leaders regard you as 'fungible' - bet that gets up your funny triangular noses!

Of course, people didn't used to be fungible - during the American Civil War, James Mellon avoided military service after his father wrote to him that "a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable." Other patriotic non-combatants included J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Philip Armour and John D. Rockefeller. Couldn't happen today.

I thought, what with al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, that I ought to find out what 'Mahdi' meant. I wondered if it was the same sort of 'Mahdi' whose forces slaughtered General Gordon in Khartoum back in 1885, and caused the British considerable expenditure of blood and treasure as they showed how civilisation worked.
Turns out, 'Mahdi' is an Arabic word for 'he who is led aright [by Allah]'. Its a Shia thing, and it refers to a messianic 'spiritual and temporal leader.' [OED]
Is there an American word meaning 'he who is led entirely wrong [by Dick Cheney], lies to his people, and pisses their blood into foreign sand for the benefit of Halliburton, [whose company?]'
Is there a British word for 'grinning, lying whore whose knees go weak in the presence of rich men, who eagerly pisses other men's blood into foreign sand while deluding himself that he has integrity'?

The thing that strikes all visitors to Earth about the US Marine Corps is their humanity and empathy with the poor and downtrodden - and their unflagging good sense.

Last Sunday the 24th London Marathon was held, along the usual route which runs past my local pub. I normally wander along and have a few of your Earthling 'beers', watching as the procession gradually changes in composition from stick-thin obsessives zoned out on their own endorphins, to bleeding-nippled Elvises playing infarction roulette.
This year the weather was wet and grey, so I stayed in bed and missed it, but last year I observed an incident which offers a window into the tiny mentality of the British 'Bobby' (aka 'filth').
The runners drink energy drinks out of squashy plastic pouches as they run, and chuck them away when they've had enough. One of the coppers policing the event trod on a half-full one, and energy drink squirted over the leg of a nearby spectator, who good-naturedly began bantering with the copper, saying she would file a complaint. The cop's reaction was immediate - he covered his left shoulder with his right hand, and his right shoulder with his left hand, obscuring the ID numbers sewn onto the uniform there.
While all this was carried on in a humorous way, it does show the attitude of the police towards public complaints - 'make sure they can't identify you...' The commandment they try not to break is the eleventh, 'thou shalt not get caught.'
This wouldn't matter if it was only about trivial incidents like that one, but since the police make it their business to kick the shit out of (disproportionately non-white) citizens...

One would be forgiven for thinking that even the US governing elite couldn't be stupid enough to make the mistakes that they have in Iraq. Examples are dismissing the Iraqi army with weapons but no pay, closing down al-Sadr's paper (circulation around 10,000),
and winning hearts and minds the Westmoreland way in Fallujah and elsewhere. Oh yes, and starting the war in the first place.
However, we can only call an action a mistake if we know what the actor's aim was - read an article about the ideas of the political science professor which form the basis of the neo-con philosophy here. A longer article on the same subject can be found here.
If the prospect of reading a short article on political philosophy fills you with fear or boredom, the main point can be summarised as:
"Scientists have proved that voting equipment gives off gases which cause cancer and worsen your accuracy at rifle- and handgun-shooting. Especially in November."

Last week, before the scrunchy-faced chimp pointed out its irrelevance, I started reading Michael Herr's excellent and idiosyncratic book on the US war in Vietnam, "Dispatches."
Here is a morsel:

"It was axiomatic that it was about ideological space, we were there to bring them the choice, bringing it to them like Sherman bringing the Jubilee through Georgia, clean through it, wall to wall with pacified indigenous and scorched earth... There was such a dense concentration of American energy there, American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channelled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years." (p 42)

The once-noteworthy newspaper 'The Sunday Times' publishes a list of the richest people in the United Kingdom every year, possibly to encourage the rest, and as usual the state broadcaster the 'BBC' noted some salient points in its news bulletins on that day (Five Live radio, 18 April 2004). The point they drew attention to was the replacement at the top of the list of the Duke of Westminster (top for the last three years) by the Russian entrepreneur Roman Abramovich.
The BBC's coverage is only of interest for the precise wording of the bulletin. They announced that the Duke had been 'usurped' by the Russian. According to my guide to the local language, the 'Oxford English Dictionary', the verb 'usurp' means 'to seize or assume (a throne or power etc.) wrongfully'. Now, since the rich list is based on a simple total of the cash value of the assets of the hyper-wealthy, it is odd to bring in a word with moral freight. Perhaps the BBC is casting aspersions on the way Abramovich made his money (a sinister form of compulsory swindle the Earthlings refer to as 'capitalism'). Perhaps the BBC feels that the richest in the land should be a Duke. I can't fathom it, but I know that manipulation of public sentiment of this sort would never occur in Neptunian broadcasting.

More seriously, the BBC have just announced (6.00 pm BST, Five Live radio) that negotiations in Fallujah have led to a 'reduction in tension' between the Fallujans and the US Marines, 'tensions', the BBC notes, which have been 'high' since the killing of four US contractors (mercenaries). Tensions have been high? TENSIONS have been HIGH? Six hundred plus dead Iraqis and 'tensions have been high'? What happened, did the five-hundred-pound bombs dropped on their mosque cause them to forget to take their ulcer medication? Maybe they forgot to listen to their whale-song cassettes while US snipers shot up ambulances? Refering to the recent ground-assault against civilians as 'tensions running high' seems to be a slight understatement.