UK
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By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 6:49am BST 24/04/2007
The state now has 266 powers to draw upon when its agents want to enter homes, according to research.
A report from the Centre for Policy Studies says that an Englishman's home is less his castle and more "a right of way'' for police, local government officials and other bureaucrats.
English law has traditionally regarded a citizen's home as a privileged space
In the 1950s just 10 new powers of entry were granted by statute. In the 1980s and 1990s an extra 60 were added.
For the first time, Harry Snook, a barrister and the author of the study, Crossing the Threshold, has drawn together the full list of entry powers in the state's possession.
Force can be used in most cases.
The research comes at a time of heightened concern over the lengthening arm of the state, with ID cards around the corner and more sophisticated surveillance equipment being used to watch people.
Mr Snook says: "The state today enjoys widespread access to what was previously considered to be the private domain. Entry powers - some of which have their origins in EU legislation - have proliferated over recent decades.''
One of the most powerful bodies is HM Revenue and Customs whose officers can exercise a "writ of assistance" with almost unlimited rights of access.
Its holders can break into any private house to seize any goods which the customs officers believes are liable to be forfeit without seeking prior judicial approval.
However, Mr Snook discovered that HM Revenue and Customs does not keep a regular record of the use of this entry power.
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Under English law, a citizen's home has traditionally been regarded as a privileged space. Courts have insisted that servants of the state cannot enter a private home without the occupier's permission unless a specific law authorises them to do so.
However as the state's role in society has expanded so have the number of statutes that allow forcible entry.
"As a result of the proliferation and variety of entry powers, a citizen cannot realistically be aware of the circumstances in which his home may be entered by state officials without his consent, or what rights he has in such circumstances," says the report.
"Force can be used in the exercise of almost all these powers. In part this is due to its specific authorisation by law; in part to the courts' readiness to imply a right to use force on grounds of necessity."
It adds: "In many cases, discretion as to what is considered as reasonable behaviour in exercising an entry power is left to the judgment of those wielding the entry power.''
Laws now going through Parliament will give bailiffs additional powers to enter homes in pursuit of traffic penalty debts.
But Mr Snook says: "Many powers are drafted so broadly that the citizen has little or no protection if officials behave officiously or vindictively. Some carry draconian penalties for obstruction, including heavy fines and prison sentences of up to two years.''
His report says the disparate provisions should be harmonised under a new Act.
This should make clear that officials should always seek permission to enter a home; a reasonable time for entry should be specified; and state officials should always have to get a warrant before they can force entry to a private home.
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
Silence of the hawks
As the humanitarian crisis in Iraq goes from bad to worse, the war propagandists are turning to more trivial matters.
The International Red Cross warned this week that the humanitarian crisis in Iraq is getting even worse. At the same, time a major academic study by the Oxford Research Group concludes that the illegal US/UK invasion has "spawned new terror" in the region. In the light of the latest damning evidence of the consequences of the invasion, what has been the reaction of the lap-top bombadiers who five years ago so energetically propagandised for war? I've been trawling the web to find out.
Melanie Phillips, the "moralist" who condemns teenage youths for smashing up bus shelters but not coalition forces for smashing up Iraq, makes no mention of either report on her website this week.
Ditto William Shawcross and Nick Cohen, self-appointed scourge of the anti-war left.
David Aaronovitch has kept his silence too (perhaps he's in training for another London marathon), as has Andrew Roberts, the "talented historian" who argued that we could equate sanctions-devastated Iraq (including its non-existent air force and its Dad's Army) with Nazi Germany at its peak.
Harry's Place, favourite watering hole of "pro-liberation left" prefers to discuss road rage, school history syllabuses and union-made hoodies.
Daniel Finkelstein of The Times has discovered an interest in mediums.
Stephen Pollard informs us that he's been reading Norman Lebrecht's Maestros and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry. The Daily Telegraph's 'Neo' Con Coughlin, who regaled us with tales of Saddam's deadly armoury, has turned his attention to Russian bear-baiting.
Across the pond, Andrew Sullivan opines about shopping bags, while David 'Axis of Evil' Frum tells us about his grandfather.
Mark Steyn, who once accused anti-war demonstrators of having blood on their hands, focuses on the trial of his old mentor, Conrad Black.
Down Under, Tim Blair, who in 2004 ridiculed claims that the future in Iraq was "frightening", shares his thoughts on Alaskan sea otters.
From all these people, not a single word about either the International Red Cross or the Oxford Research Group reports. How very different it was four years ago! On the day that Saddam's statue toppled in Baghdad, the neo-cons couldn't wait to brag about the "success" of the war they had so enthusiastically supported. This was William Shawcross, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
April 9 - Liberation Day! What a wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion - one that will live in legend like the fall of the Bastille, V-E Day or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Watching the tearing down of Saddam Hussein's towering statue in Baghdad was a true Ozymandias moment. All those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his idea that there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people - they will now have to think again."
Really, William? Since the illegal invasion, an estimated 600,000 people have lost their lives in Iraq. Twice as many people have died in Iraq in the last four years as were killed in the previous 23 years under Saddam. The only people who need to "think again" are not those "smart Europeans" who opposed the war, but those far from "smart" people who faithfully parroted - for whatever reasons - the official US/UK propaganda.
Forget mediums, shopping bags and union-made hoodies: it's apologies that we really want.
Neil Clark is a UK-based journalist, blogger and writer. A regular contributor to the Guardian, the Times, the New Statesman and the Spectator, his work has also appeared in publications as diverse as The American Conservative, Pravda, the Morning Star and the Racing Post.
Iran: the war ahead
Politics
John Pilger
John Pilger
Published 16 April 2007
The sailors' ordeal was a diversion from the bigger danger. The US and UK identified their new enemy long ago and are preparing the propaganda for the war ahead.
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she says. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'."
It is time we in Britain stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush-Cheney-Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (with tales of their "ordeal" almost certainly authored by the Ministry of Defence - until it got the wind up) is both a farce and a distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to Russia's leading strategic thinker General Leonid Ivashov: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets . . . at least 20 such facilities need to be destroyed. Combat nuclear weapons may be used. This will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond."
And yet there is a surreal silence in Britain, save for the noise of "news" in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapse and the truth be revealed. John Bolton, formerly Bush's man at the United Nations, recently spelled out the truth: that the Bush-Cheney-Blair plan for the Middle East is "an agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension and the only way to finally capture and enslave a country that has historically thrown out its occupiers on every occasion". He was referring to Iraq, but he also meant Iran, which would be next. That is the news.
One million Iraqis fill the streets of Najaf demanding that Bush and Blair get out of their homeland - that is the news: not our nabbed sailor-spies, nor the political danse macabre of the pretenders to Blair's Duce delusions. Whether it is Gordon Brown, the paymaster of the Iraq bloodbath, or John Reid, who sent British troops to pointless deaths in Afghanistan, or any of the others who sat through cabinet meetings knowing that Blair and his acolytes were lying through their teeth, only mutual distrust separates them now. They knew about Blair's plotting with Bush. They knew about the fake 45-minute "warning". They knew about the fitting up of Iran as the next "enemy".
Declared Brown to the Daily Mail: "The days of Britain having to apo logise for its colonial history are over. We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it." In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis documents that as many as 21 million Indians died unnecessarily in famines criminally imposed by British colonial policies. Moreover, since the formal demise of that glorious imperium, declassified files make it clear that British governments have borne "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of between 8.6 million and 13.5 million people throughout the world from military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain. The historian Mark Curtis calls these victims "unpeople". Rejoice! said Margaret Thatcher. Celebrate! says Brown. Spot the difference.
Brown is no different from Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and the other warmongering Democrats he admires and who support an unprovoked attack on Iran and the subjugation of the Middle East to "our interests" - and Israel's, of course. Nothing has changed since the US and Britain destroyed Iran's democratic government in 1953 and installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, whose regime had "the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture" that was "beyond belief" (Amnesty).
True carnage
Look behind the one-way moral screen and you will dis tinguish the Blairite elite by its loathing of real democracy. They used to be discreet about this, but no more. Two examples spring to mind. In 2004, Blair used the secretive "royal prerogative" to overturn a high court judgment that had restored the very principle of human rights set out in Magna Carta to the people of the Chagos Islands, a British colony in the Indian Ocean. There was no debate. As ruthless as any dictator, Blair dealt his coup de grâce with the lawless expulsion of the islanders from their homeland, now a US military base, from which Bush has bombed Iraq and Afghanistan and will bomb Iran.
In the second example, only the degree of suffering is dif ferent. Last October, the Lancet published research by Johns Hopkins University in the US and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad which calculated that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion. Downing Street officials derided the study as "flawed". They were lying. In fact, the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, had backed the survey, describing its methods as "robust" and "close to best practice", and other government officials had secretly approved the "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones". The figure for Iraqi deaths is now estimated at close to a million - carnage equivalent to that caused by the Anglo-American economic siege of Iraq in the 1990s, which produced the deaths of half a million infants under the age of five, verified by Unicef. That, too, was dismissed contemptuously by Blair.
"This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair," wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, "is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference."
Such is the scale of the crime and of our "looking from the side". According to the Observer of 8 April, the voters' "damning verdict" on the Blair regime is expressed by a majority who have "lost faith" in their government. No surprise there. Polls have long shown a widespread revulsion to Blair, demonstrated at the last general election, which produced the second lowest turnout since the franchise. No mention was made of the Observer's own contribution to this national loss of faith. Once celebrated as a bastion of liberalism that stood against Anthony Eden's lawless attack on Egypt in 1956, the new right-wing, lifestyle Observer enthusiastically backed Blair's lawless attack on Iraq, having helped lay the ground with major articles falsely linking Iraq with the 9/11 attacks - claims now regarded even by the Pentagon as fake.
As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 11 September 2001. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts", which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oil wealth among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by US and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies.
Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East, where Opec has ensured that oil business is conducted between states. Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway is another prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as non existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with the coming American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years, IAEA inspectors have said they have been allowed to "go anywhere". The recent UN Security Council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery.
Until recently, the British were unaware that their government was one of the world's most consistent abusers of human rights and backers of state terrorism. Few Britons knew that the Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner of al-Qaeda, was sponsored by British intelligence as a means of systematically destroying secular Arab nationalism, or that MI6 recruited young British Muslims in the 1980s as part of a $4bn Anglo-American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union known as "Operation Cyclone". In 2001, few Britons knew that 3,000 innocent Afghan civilians were bombed to death as revenge for the attacks of 11 September. No Afghans brought down the twin towers, only citizens of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest arms client, which was not bombed. Thanks to Bush and Blair, awareness in Britain and all over the world has risen as never before. When home-grown terrorists struck London in July 2005, few doubted that the attack on Iraq had provoked the atrocity and that the bombs which killed 52 Londoners were, in effect, Blair's bombs.
In my experience, most people do not indulge the absurdity and cruelty of the "rules" of rampant power. They do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with double standards and the notion of approved evil, of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government.
Certainly, they would agree wholeheartedly with Robert H Jackson, chief of counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders at the end of the Second World War. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
As with Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, who dare not travel to certain countries for fear of being prosecuted as war criminals, Blair as a private citizen may no longer be untouchable. On 20 March, Baltasar Garzón, the tenacious Spanish judge who pursued Augusto Pinochet, called for indictments against those responsible for "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history" - Iraq. Five days later, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, said that Blair could one day face war-crimes charges.
These are critical changes in the way the sane world thinks - again, thanks to the Reich of Blair and Bush. However, we live in the most dangerous of times. On 6 April, Blair accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of "backing, financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". He offered no evidence, and the Ministry of Defence has none. This is the same Goebbels-like refrain with which he and his coterie, Gordon Brown included, brought an epic bloodletting to Iraq. How long will the rest of us continue looking from the side?
John Pilger's new film "The War on Democracy" will be previewed at the National Film Theatre, London SE1, on 11 May. http://www.bfi.org.uk/nft
http://www.johnpilger.com
John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
US-British war on terror backfires: think tank
Wed Apr 11, 3:50 AM ET
The US-led and British-backed war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a think tank warned Wednesday.
"The 'war on terror' is failing and actually increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks," the Oxford Research Group said in its study, titled "Beyond Terror: The Truth About The Real Threats To Our World."
It said Britain and the United States have used military might to try to "keep the lid on" problems rather than trying to uproot the causes of terrorism.
It said such an approach, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had actually heightened the risk of further terrorist atrocities on the scale of September 11, 2001.
"Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror only spawned new terror in the region and created a combat training zone for jihadists," the report's authors argued.
It pointed out that the Islamist Taliban movement is now resurgent, six years after it was overthrown in 2001 by the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
"Sustainable approaches" to fighting terrorism would involve the withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq and their replacement with a United Nations stabilisation force, it said.
It also recommended the provision of sustained aid for rebuilding and developing Iraq and Afghanistan as well as closing the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where most suspects are held without charge or trial.
And it called for a "genuine commitment to a viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
The study warned that military intervention in Iran over its nuclear ambitions would be "disastrous," calling instead for a firm and public commitment to a diplomatic solution.
Iran insists the programme is peaceful, despite claims from Washington that it masks a drive for nuclear weapons.
The study also said the British government's plans to upgrade the submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent could produce international instability.
"Nuclear weapon modernisation is likely to serve as a substantial encouragement to nuclear proliferation as countries with perceptions of vulnerability deem it necessary to develop their own deterrent capabilities," it said.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Ganging up on Iran
Published: 27/03/2007 12:00 AM (UAE)
By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News
I'll begin with a question. Is Iran an aggressor or a victim? If you've answered aggressor then may I suggest you take a moment to reflect.
Unfortunately, the fabricated scenario that led us into Iraq is at play again. And once again we're being suckered into being accepting of a neoconservative plan designed to ensure America's domination over this region's oilfields and maintain Israel as the sole nuclear power in the Middle East.
This is practically a replay of events leading up to the invasion of Iraq. In this case, the US-driven UN Security Council has ganged up to coerce Iran with sanctions into giving up its legitimate right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 30 days, the UN screws will, no doubt, be further tightened.
Iran's angry response is to reduce cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to threaten prosecution of British sailors and marines for operating in Iranian waters.
Backed by the US and the EU, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair is becoming bellicose over that issue while a slew of Israeli spokesmen make demands on the international community to forcibly prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
What you don't hear is that there is no proof that Iran intends to develop nukes. IAEA chief Mohammad Al Baradei has repeatedly said there is no smoking gun.
Moreover, as even the hawkish former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has admitted on CNN, US intelligence on the subject of Iran is sparse. Indeed, the latest National Intelligence Estimate suggests that Iran wouldn't be capable of producing a bomb until 2015, so, in that case, what's the rush?
Iran's numerous calls for a nuclear-free Middle East have been barely mentioned in the Western media and have not been taken seriously by the UN, fearful of debate over Israel's policy of "nuclear ambiguity".
The US has been gunning for Iran ever since the overthrow of its puppet, the Shah, in 1979 when the US embassy was seized. In 1980, the Carter administration authorised radio broadcasts to Iran calling for the toppling of Khomeini.
That same year Saddam Hussain, then Washington's friend, launched a war on Iraq that lasted eight years and which adversely affected or robbed the lives of millions.
As the Guardian reported on December 31 2002, "Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instruction the administration to do 'whatever was necessary and legal' to prevent Iraq losing the war" with Iran.
Now let's fast forward to January 29, 2002, the day that George W. Bush famously included Iran in an "Axis of Evil" along with Iraq and North Korea. This was no accidental inclusion.
General Wesley Clark reveals this on page 130 of his book Winning Modern Wars.
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more.
"This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran Somalia and Sudan." Clark says he left the Pentagon that afternoon "deeply concerned".
Gels perfectly
Clark's revelation gels perfectly with the Project for a New American Century document Rebuilding America's Defences; a blueprint for a global Pax Americana, signed onto by Dick Cheney and his neocon friends in 2000.
So now ask yourself the question posed at the beginning of this column again. Is Iran an aggressor or a victim?
Perhaps you're still not convinced. Before you answer think on this.
In 2003, Tehran proposed negotiations with the White House over its nuclear programme and offered to cease its support for groups that the US deems "terrorist". This overture was rejected out of hand by President Bush.
Today, Bush and co are intent on cornering Iran with the object of regime change. According to the New Yorker's investigative journalist Seymour Hersh there are plans on the table to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities using bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons. Ironic isn't it! Hersh says Bush privately calls the Iranian president "the new Hitler".
Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext to attack Iran.
At the same time Washington is funding Iranian opposition groups in the diaspora as well as militant ethnic separatist groups within Iran. There have already been several violent incidents in country stamped with the CIA's fingerprint.
Draw your own conclusions as to who is aggressing whom but bear in mind that Iran has never threatened to attack the US or its allies other than in retaliation for a strike on it. Moreover, unlike the US, Iran does not harbour neo-imperialist ambitions and does not have a record of launching wars or invading other countries.
It is true that the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn't pull any punches when it comes to Israel but the feeling is mutual.
In reality, Iran would be justified in fearing the US and Israel, which, together, constitute the most potent force in the world, than vice-versa.
I've got one final question. Should we fear a country that has no record of invasion or occupation and no nuclear weapons above one that espouses not only full spectrum dominance over the planet's resources, waters and skies but also outer space?
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com
By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News
I'll begin with a question. Is Iran an aggressor or a victim? If you've answered aggressor then may I suggest you take a moment to reflect.
Unfortunately, the fabricated scenario that led us into Iraq is at play again. And once again we're being suckered into being accepting of a neoconservative plan designed to ensure America's domination over this region's oilfields and maintain Israel as the sole nuclear power in the Middle East.
This is practically a replay of events leading up to the invasion of Iraq. In this case, the US-driven UN Security Council has ganged up to coerce Iran with sanctions into giving up its legitimate right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 30 days, the UN screws will, no doubt, be further tightened.
Iran's angry response is to reduce cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to threaten prosecution of British sailors and marines for operating in Iranian waters.
Backed by the US and the EU, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair is becoming bellicose over that issue while a slew of Israeli spokesmen make demands on the international community to forcibly prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
What you don't hear is that there is no proof that Iran intends to develop nukes. IAEA chief Mohammad Al Baradei has repeatedly said there is no smoking gun.
Moreover, as even the hawkish former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has admitted on CNN, US intelligence on the subject of Iran is sparse. Indeed, the latest National Intelligence Estimate suggests that Iran wouldn't be capable of producing a bomb until 2015, so, in that case, what's the rush?
Iran's numerous calls for a nuclear-free Middle East have been barely mentioned in the Western media and have not been taken seriously by the UN, fearful of debate over Israel's policy of "nuclear ambiguity".
The US has been gunning for Iran ever since the overthrow of its puppet, the Shah, in 1979 when the US embassy was seized. In 1980, the Carter administration authorised radio broadcasts to Iran calling for the toppling of Khomeini.
That same year Saddam Hussain, then Washington's friend, launched a war on Iraq that lasted eight years and which adversely affected or robbed the lives of millions.
As the Guardian reported on December 31 2002, "Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instruction the administration to do 'whatever was necessary and legal' to prevent Iraq losing the war" with Iran.
Now let's fast forward to January 29, 2002, the day that George W. Bush famously included Iran in an "Axis of Evil" along with Iraq and North Korea. This was no accidental inclusion.
General Wesley Clark reveals this on page 130 of his book Winning Modern Wars.
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more.
"This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran Somalia and Sudan." Clark says he left the Pentagon that afternoon "deeply concerned".
Gels perfectly
Clark's revelation gels perfectly with the Project for a New American Century document Rebuilding America's Defences; a blueprint for a global Pax Americana, signed onto by Dick Cheney and his neocon friends in 2000.
So now ask yourself the question posed at the beginning of this column again. Is Iran an aggressor or a victim?
Perhaps you're still not convinced. Before you answer think on this.
In 2003, Tehran proposed negotiations with the White House over its nuclear programme and offered to cease its support for groups that the US deems "terrorist". This overture was rejected out of hand by President Bush.
Today, Bush and co are intent on cornering Iran with the object of regime change. According to the New Yorker's investigative journalist Seymour Hersh there are plans on the table to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities using bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons. Ironic isn't it! Hersh says Bush privately calls the Iranian president "the new Hitler".
Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext to attack Iran.
At the same time Washington is funding Iranian opposition groups in the diaspora as well as militant ethnic separatist groups within Iran. There have already been several violent incidents in country stamped with the CIA's fingerprint.
Draw your own conclusions as to who is aggressing whom but bear in mind that Iran has never threatened to attack the US or its allies other than in retaliation for a strike on it. Moreover, unlike the US, Iran does not harbour neo-imperialist ambitions and does not have a record of launching wars or invading other countries.
It is true that the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn't pull any punches when it comes to Israel but the feeling is mutual.
In reality, Iran would be justified in fearing the US and Israel, which, together, constitute the most potent force in the world, than vice-versa.
I've got one final question. Should we fear a country that has no record of invasion or occupation and no nuclear weapons above one that espouses not only full spectrum dominance over the planet's resources, waters and skies but also outer space?
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Iran's arrest of sailors was legitimate, says former UK envoy
London, March 26, IRNA
UK Sailors-Iran Arrests
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray Monday supported Iran's decision to arrest 15 UK marines in the Persian Gulf last week.
"In international law the Iranian government were not out of order in detaining foreign military personnel in waters to which they have a legitimate claim," Murray said, who was also a previous head of Foreign Office's maritime section, carrying out negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
"For the Royal Navy, to be interdicting shipping within the twelve mile limit of territorial seas in a region they know full well is subject to maritime boundary dispute, is unnecessarily provocative," he said.
The former envoy said that this was "especially true as apparently they were not looking for weapons but for smuggled vehicles attempting to evade car duty."
"What has the evasion of Iranian or Iraqi taxes go to do with the Royal Navy?" he questioned in comments on his webpage, set up after he was sacked from his post in 2004 after criticizing British foreign policy.
While working for the Foreign Office, Murray was also head of the UK's Embargo Surveillance Centre, analyzing Iraqi attempts to evade sanctions and providing information to UK military forces and to other governments to effect physical enforcement of the embargo.
He said that under international law, Britain would have been allowed to enter Iranian territorial waters if in "hot pursuit" of terrorists, slavers or pirates. But added "they weren't doing any of those things."
"Plainly, they were not engaged in piracy or in hostilities against Iran. The Iranians can feel content that they have demonstrated the ability to exercise effective sovereignty over the waters they claim," the former envoy said.
He criticized the "ridiculous logic" of Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying he was creating a mess that "gets us further into trouble." The Daily Mirror, which has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, reminded its readers Monday that "if the UK had never joined the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the 15 would not have been put in a position where they could be seized."
In its editorial on the incident, it also said that "US threats in the recent past to launch military strikes on Iran have inflamed tensions."
2220/345/1416
UK Sailors-Iran Arrests
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray Monday supported Iran's decision to arrest 15 UK marines in the Persian Gulf last week.
"In international law the Iranian government were not out of order in detaining foreign military personnel in waters to which they have a legitimate claim," Murray said, who was also a previous head of Foreign Office's maritime section, carrying out negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
"For the Royal Navy, to be interdicting shipping within the twelve mile limit of territorial seas in a region they know full well is subject to maritime boundary dispute, is unnecessarily provocative," he said.
The former envoy said that this was "especially true as apparently they were not looking for weapons but for smuggled vehicles attempting to evade car duty."
"What has the evasion of Iranian or Iraqi taxes go to do with the Royal Navy?" he questioned in comments on his webpage, set up after he was sacked from his post in 2004 after criticizing British foreign policy.
While working for the Foreign Office, Murray was also head of the UK's Embargo Surveillance Centre, analyzing Iraqi attempts to evade sanctions and providing information to UK military forces and to other governments to effect physical enforcement of the embargo.
He said that under international law, Britain would have been allowed to enter Iranian territorial waters if in "hot pursuit" of terrorists, slavers or pirates. But added "they weren't doing any of those things."
"Plainly, they were not engaged in piracy or in hostilities against Iran. The Iranians can feel content that they have demonstrated the ability to exercise effective sovereignty over the waters they claim," the former envoy said.
He criticized the "ridiculous logic" of Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying he was creating a mess that "gets us further into trouble." The Daily Mirror, which has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, reminded its readers Monday that "if the UK had never joined the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the 15 would not have been put in a position where they could be seized."
In its editorial on the incident, it also said that "US threats in the recent past to launch military strikes on Iran have inflamed tensions."
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