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31/07/2006

Pity poor Tony

A short one today. Consider this, dear reader.  Allow yourself to be tempted by the notion that, instead of ridiculing our PM, instead of characterising Blair as the lap dog of the US, we should feel sorry for him.

              

And the reason we should feel sorry for him is that he's had George Bush to contend with. Think of how much more loved Blair would be if he had seen out his premiereship with a Clinton in the White House, or if Gore had got in, say, or someone else who happened not to have been born with a silver Bible in his mouth.

     

But no. No he got George W., and because of it, history will remember him as the fool - the fool who did all the wrong things when it most mattered. What rubbish luck, eh?

      

Yours etc.,

    

Spinoff.

12:18 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

19/07/2006

Blast from the past

Iran's nuclear programme is not a sudden, recent development, despite constant implications that it is. The development of its nuclear capability goes back to the cold war.

                        

Back in the late 50s Iran signed up to a development programme called the "Atoms for Peace Programme" a US drive to promote the peaceful applications of nuclear physics after its shocking debut on the world stage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

           

The CIA had installed the Shah in 1953, Iran was therefore considered friendly and thus deserving of a slice of the nuclear pie. Assistance from the US resulted in the 1959 Tehran Nuclear Research Centre, a facility containing a uranium-fuelled research reactor. This was developed in concert with US technology and advice.

              

In 1974, Iran invited tender offers for a nuclear plant to supply energy to the city of Shiraz, and a German firm won the deal. One year later Henry Kissinger signed National Security Decision Memorandum 292, titled "U.S.-Iran Nuclear Co-operation," which drew up plans to supply nuclear technology to Iran in a deal that netted US companies $6 billion. In the late 70s Iran was an even larger producer of oil than it is today, producing 2 million barrels a day more than current rates.

             

Two years later, Gerald Ford gave the go-ahead for Tehran to buy yet more technology, this time giving the means to extract plutonium from used reactor fuel. Ford was in favour of Iran having a complete and independent nuclear capacity, and was keen that it should control large quantities of U235 and Pu239. Declassified documents from 1975 and 1976 show the two countries negotiated closely, the US offering Iran enrichment and reprocessing facilities.

                    

So the Iranian nuclear capacity that is so demonised by the US and its cohorts is, in effect, a product of the US. The US's installation of the Shah gave it a tactically vital ally in the middle east with a friendly government, huge energy reserves and a proximity to its great foe - the USSR. The US pushed as hard as it could to bestow the nuclear gift in return.

             

And who were the three individuals leading this drive for Iran to develop nuclear technology; who took the lead in championing the development of Iran's domestic nuclear programme? Well blow me if it wasn't Dick Cheney, U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Yet again, well done boys - what would we do without you?

             

(With many thanks to the great Wikipedia).

                  

Yours, etc.,

                

Spinoff.

15:15 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

06/07/2006

The scowling limpet

John Prescott looks like a very fat annoyed, shaved badger. On steroids. With a broken nose. Even better than that though, is that he managed to seduce and then do it with his not entirely unattractive secretary. So better make that a priapic fat shaved badger on steroids then.
       
Embarrassment has been heaped upon shame has been heaped upon screw-up has been heaped upon yet more shame and yet despite this, Prescott has not stood down. Everyone laughs at Mr Prescott. We laugh at his scowl, his paunch, his small willy and his wobbly relationship with spoken English, and yet still he's not going anywhere.
       
This blithering persistence is itself informative. Firstly it tells us that Prescott still has the support of Blair. This is not the mystery it at first appears. Blair wants him there so that he can negotiate the planned handover to Brown. Prescott is the only man who can speak both to the suited, sneering, bryll-creamed media contortionists in the Blair bunker, and also to the flatulent, old-Labour, econo-nerd gibberers of the Brown camp.
           
Remove Prescott from this equation and there's no go-between, no deal, no smooth handover. That way lies trouble. Prescott resigns and you'll have a contest for the Deputy PM slot. Blair wouldn't like this because it could hasten his departure, and Brown would hate hate hate this because  - horror or horrors - the amiable, entirely honourable Alan Johnston might get the job.
           
If Johnson gets into the ODPM, then there's every reason to suspect that he might chance his arm with a shot at number 10, and if he does this, then the Eiger-faced Brown would be faced with a very tough and eminently losable leadership contest indeed. Johnson is a man with both charm and a sense of humour. And he is English of course, which neutralises the Tory's latest line of argument on the West Lothian question. Thus Prescott has the support of Blair and Brown, in a self-serving triangle of cosy political back-scratchery. 
        
This doesn't answer the most pressing of all the questions. For a moment, gentle reader, place yourself in Prescott's shoes. You have been caught shagging the secretary and she has given intimate details of your sexual exploits to the national press. The national press has laughed at you mercilessly. Other individuals have also come to the fore indicating that you are fond of sticking your hands up strangers' skirts in lifts. Whenever you open your mouth at work you are laughed at. By a hall full of hundreds of people. Like in a nightmare. You've had to give up your house and your boss has taken away most of your duties. What would you do? What would any sane person do in that situation? You'd leave, wouldn't you? Clear off. Get out of the spotlight. Disappear for a while. Bugger off.
         
And yet on he clings. He simply cannot let go. Despite the media beasting, despite everything, he can't leave. In this he shows himself a classic example of a man who has lost sight of what he is there to do in the first place. He is there - as are all politicians - to serve the public, full stop. But as long as he maintains his high profile position he will remain a figure of fun and people will poke fun at him. Thus, he will constantly be fighting a PR battle to protect / save his reputation and career, whereas of course what he ought to be doing is making sure that his constituency's hospitals work, that there is enough affordable housing and so on. Doing his job, in other words.
        
The power has him. Now, faced by the abyss of political exile, the stark reality comes apparent. Lose that job and there'll be no more junkets, no invites to spend weekends on ranches with billionaires, no grace and favour houses, no having the doors held open wherever to you go, no ministerial salary, no power, no power, no power, no nothing. It'll be just you; you in a house with your cheated-on wife. For ever. It's easy to understand why he's clinging on like a limpet. John Prescott - the scowling limpet.
           
The only people who benefit from his staying in situ are Blair, Brown and himself. Oh, and also - whisper it - the Tory party. These are the only beneficiaries of his continuing to clog up the Labour party u-bend, a section of political piping until recently occupied by Charles Clarke. While he stays and the nation laughs, a lot of important work is not getting done. He must be flushed. It is time for Blair to straighten his political wire coat hanger, and to get mashing.
            
Yours etc.,
     
Spinoff.

13:09 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this

03/07/2006

Taking sides

People love taking sides - it's what they do. If it is an argument, fight, celebrity media cat fight or war, from the serious to the downright stupid there will be division, and you will have opposing factions.
              
Factions are a Darwinian response to potential threat situations. If there is danger and the tribe is in trouble, it makes sense to face that threat with the backing of a supporting group rather than alone.
                
The snap decision to go along with any given group is a reflex action, and is a remnant of a defence mechanism that prevents individuals from becoming outsiders during conflict.
              
It is dangerous to be unquantifiable and alone when the tribe is in dispute. Standing alone can make you appear weak - a potential victim. But if you take sides and have backing, then that threat is greatly diminished.
            
Assessing which side to support can have rational elements to it - political, moral and ethical ones - but the desire to give that support in the first place often does not. Before any reason, there comes an urge to get stuck in. The safety of a pack holds a strong allure. However, this allure can make fools of us all.
        
Take the Israel Palestine situation - the ongoing hell in the Holy Land - the most divisive issue of all. There has been a recent escalation; an Israeli soldier was abducted by armed Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid, and this was followed by retaliatory strikes by Israeli armour.
        
The respective sides fall into place almost reflexively. Right-wing press outlets point to the unconscionable actions of Hamas-backed Palestinian kidnappers who broke into an army base and carried out the latest in a long line of indefensible crimes.
           
They are murderers, terrorists and kidnappers, and purveyors of the most insidious and poisonous anti-Semitism. Their aim - the annihilation of Israel. This right wing view forms in an instant and is unshakeable.
                
The left-wing view is equally inflexible. The incursion into Gaza is a brutal and disproportionate strike against a disenfranchised people with no means of defence other than terror tactics. Israel is a puppet state of the US and the only way for it to stop Palestinian bombs is to negotiate a peace settlement with the people from which it stole lands after the 1967 war.
               
Aggressive strikes like this will only add to the sufferings of the Palestinian people and lead to more loss on both sides. Like the opposing view, this attitude is formed in a moment.
               
The urge to take sides is strong and the lines it forms are rigid. But this is an example of a situtation where the correct attitude is not to take sides. Here the only correct attitude is blanket condemnation.
             
For both sides have committed disgusting acts. Both sides have killed indiscriminately, both have been led by bellicose self-interested power-hungry autocrats.
      
Both have maintained hard-line stances that are as unrealistic as they are nihilistic and aggressive, and both have sought to drive a dispute to the verge of civil war rather than seek an alternative to the stupid, brutal animalist cycle of violence.
         
Neither side is in the right, neither side is worthy of support and so neither tribe is worth joining. Both sides act disgracefully, and yet in spite of this shared culpability media outlets, politicians, religious leaders and members of the commentariat leap to support either one or the other.
         
This is a manifestation of the instinctive and irrational urge to chose sides. Individuals give in to this urge.
       
Spinoff, however, will not.
          
Yours etc.,
      
Spinoff.

13:05 Posted in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

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