Tony Blair at IRAQ Inquiry - AT LAST!

After much speculation we finally have Tony Blair in the Dragon's Den.

But it is not expected to reveal new information of any change of opinion from former premier Blair, so far he has given at times a slightly nervous and hesitant account of the time-line to go to War in IRAQ. But has offered nothing of any real substance to support the fact apart from "regime change" and "OIL" which he made reference.

So then it is the small give away asides and comments that if anything will be the more revealing of Blair and his WAR. It even appears that he may have influenced (certainly bolstered) George W Bush to making the final call to GO to WAR.

So far we have heard these facts to emerge from the AM and PM proceedings;

• When asked why go to war with IRAQ and not IRAN or N. Korea, responded that IRAQ was the place to start!

• Fails to understand significance of 45 min claim as presenting a false warning to people of UK!
  

• Playing a disgraceful game of word manipulation at this much-anticipated event. Blairism on full frontal display

PM session.

• TB looking very twitchy with questioning on legality of going to War without the 2nd UN resolution.Says that he had undertaken significant war planning: but could not have foreseen different outcome eventualities

• The panel returns time and time again to the issue of legality in going to war and how Blair sidelined the UN.

• Blair in closing comments of Inquiry has no regrets!

Author: Nigel Rumble

Haiti needs our help Now

Whether you can afford to give £5 or £500, it all makes a difference, says David Cameron in his latest blog.

On Tuesday, the poorest country in the western hemisphere was hit head-on by an enormous earthquake.

I’m sure you’ve seen the heart-wrenching images of Haiti. The full impact of the earthquake is still emerging, but it’s clear that hundreds of thousands of people have either been killed or left homeless.

It’s essential that this small nation gets the help it needs as quickly as possible.

Britain is an incredibly compassionate and generous nation. We showed that five years ago when the British public raised £350m in the wake of the Boxing Day Tsunami, and I’ve no doubt we will show it again.

The best way for you to help, if you haven’t already, is to donate directly to the Disaster Emergency Committee. Whether you can afford to give £5 or £500, it all makes a difference.

Call 0370 60 60 900 or visit the DEC website now to make your contribution.

In the meantime, I know our thoughts and prayers are with all those people who have suffered so much in that country over the last few days.

Posted by David Cameron, MP for Witney, January 15th, 2010

The women who clear Sudan's minefields

Jamba Besta had planned to be a secretary, hoping to find work in an office as her homeland of South Sudan emerged out of a 22-year long civil war.

Instead, the pregnant mother heads an all-female team of de-miners, removing dangerous explosives from former battlefields.

"I never thought I would be doing this," says Ms Besta, welcoming her six-woman team back from the danger zone they are clearing.

"But it shows those people who think that women can't do jobs like this that they are wrong."

The team's members say they work better as an all-women team - supporting each other against often critical comments that de-mining is work only for a man.

"We live and work away from home all as one team, so it is good we are all women together," she says.

Sudan's north-south war - fought over ideology, religion, ethnicity and oil - ended more than four years ago.

Some two million people died in the war, and its bitter legacy of landmines and unexploded ordnance continues to kill and wound.

Please read the full story here

By Peter Martell
BBC News, Bungu

G20 and Protests in the City on a sunny April Fool's Day

The G20 parties have started; the mass media circus is here in the City, well-rehearsed smiling faces are on show by G20 leaders. Lets hope that the G20 Talks are fruitful, that protests are peaceful and that everyone walks away with a sense of participating in what is seen by many as the last real chance to halt the recession taking hold in all economies. In the 1930's countries were seen to take unilateral positions adopting "protectionist policies", this historically worsened the recession into the “Big Depression”.

This must not be allowed to happen again, all G20 member countries must agree to actively participate in a multi-lateral policy of financial control measures. Already, we have “fighting” talk from France and now Germany wishing to put a more unilateral line into Europe. This would create a destabilisation effect to the G20 accords.

There must be a cohesive and affective adaptation of monetary policies by all G20 members’ countries.

In terms of the other melt downs taking place not just in the banking system but on our own Planet, such as the polar ice melts taking place at increasing speed. Climate change is happening fast, we have at best less than 10 years to check global warming and CO2 emissions, this represents not only a potential disaster in store for all generations to come on a scale unknown before. The current World “Financial Credit" problems will pale into insignificance by any comparison.

Written by: Nigel Rumble 1st April 2009

We must stop arming Israel

Brown has to stop sitting on his hands, halt British weapons exports and insist the EU do the same

The world watched in horror yesterday as the conflict in Gaza claimed its latest innocent victims in the rubble of a UN school. Any hopes of reconciliation are being snuffed out as anger spills into protests around the world.

The past two weeks have been a telling indictment of the international community. We have an outgoing US president sanctioning Israel's military response and an aching silence from the president-elect. We have a European Union encumbered by clumsy decision-making and confused messages.

And at home we have a prime minister talking like an accountant about aid earmarked for Gaza without once saying anything meaningful about the conflict's origins. Gordon Brown, like Tony Blair, has made British foreign policy effectively subservient to Washington. But waiting for a change of heart in Washington is intolerable given the human cost.

Of course, Israel has every right to defend itself. It is difficult to imagine what it must be like to live with the constant threat of rocket attacks from a movement which espouses terrorist violence and denies Israel's right to exist. But Israel's approach is self-defeating: the overwhelming use of force, the unacceptable loss of civilian lives, is radicalising moderate opinion among Palestinians and throughout the Arab world. Anger in the West Bank will make it virtually impossible for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, to continue to talk to Israeli ministers.

Brown must stop sitting on his hands. He must condemn unambiguously Israel's tactics, just as he has rightly condemned Hamas's rocket attacks. Then he must lead the EU into using its economic and diplomatic leverage in the region to broker peace. The EU is by far Israel's biggest export market, and by far the biggest donor to the Palestinians. It must immediately suspend the proposed new cooperation agreement with Israel until things change in Gaza, and apply tough conditions on any long-term assistance to the Palestinian community.

Brown must also halt Britain's arms exports to Israel, and persuade our EU counterparts to do the same. The government's own figures show Britain is selling more and more weapons to Israel, despite the questions about the country's use of force. In 2007, our government approved £6m of arms exports. In 2008, it licensed sales 12 times as fast: £20m in the first three months alone.

There is a strong case that, given the Gaza conflict, any military exports contravene EU licensing criteria. Reports, though denied, that Israel is using illegal cluster munitions and white phosphorus should heighten our caution. I want an immediate suspension of all arms exports from the EU, but if that cannot be secured, Brown must act unilaterally.

Finally, the world's leaders must accept that their response to the election of Hamas has been a strategic failure. The removal of the EU presence on the Egypt border in response to Hamas's election, for example, has made it easier for the rockets being fired at Israel to get into Gaza in the first place. An EU mission with a serious mandate and backing from Egypt and Israel would help Israel deal proportionately and effectively with the threat from weapons smuggling.

Attempts to divide and rule the Palestinians by isolating and punishing Gaza will not succeed. To secure peace in the Middle East, Hamas must turn its back on terrorism, and help create Palestinian unity. Only unified leadership in the West Bank and Gaza can offer Israel the security guarantees that it rightly seeks.

My proposals to stay Israel's hand in this conflict may be unwelcome to some, but they have the country's long term interest at heart. No terrorist organisation has ever been defeated by bombs alone. Only a new approach will secure lasting peace for Israel itself.

Nick Clegg - published in the Guradian 7/1/09

The attack on Gaza must stop

For the sake of Israel, the attack on Gaza must stop
Tuesday, 06 Jan 2009 02:01

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey MP writes on the Israeli-Hamas conflict on inthenews.co.uk.

A true friend is someone who's prepared to tell you when you're wrong or you've made a mistake – even when they know that message may not immediately help your friendship. With its current massive attack on Gaza, Israel is clearly wrong. Worse still, it's in danger of making a historic mistake.

In criticising Israel's bombing, no-one is making light of the rocket attacks its civilians have endured for months by Hamas – even during the ceasefire. Nor do I question Israel's right to defend herself. Yet the rationale for the attack put forward by the Israeli government – that it will change fundamentally the security situation in the south of Israel – repeats one of the classic errors of too many modern military tacticians, in supposing that populations, be they terrorists or civilians, can be defeated this way. The truth is, this attack plays into the hands of Hamas, as it will rally support for it within Gaza and across the Arab and wider Muslim world.

Some commentators have suggested that Hamas' Palestinian rivals, Fatah, could benefit from the damage being done to Hamas, and that this will therefore bring a peace settlement closer. Quite the contrary. The Palestinian Authority on the West Bank could be seriously undermined by this carnage, and its negotiating team may find it more difficult to return to the table without risking its own credibility and remaining legitimacy, even when the dust has settled. The ferocity of the Israeli assault could result in the radicalisation of more moderate Palestinians.

After all, despite real progress behind the scenes with the current peace talks, as I found during a visit last November to the West Bank, the Annapolis peace process has in public delivered little, with illegal Jewish settlements increasing in the occupied territories and with economic and security gains for West Bank Palestinians only modest to say the least. No-one on the streets of Ramallah or Nablus had yet placed any hope in the strenuous negotiating efforts of president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad. Now fewer people will think they should be negotiating anyway.

So why has Israel attacked now? For the same reason that successive sensible governments have failed to stop illegal settlements on the West Bank: the fragility and fragmentation of Israeli politics. Just as religious parties crucial to Knesset coalitions have been bought off with subsidies and inaction on settlers, so with an election just a few weeks away, the current government felt compelled to act now, in the face of Hamas' Qassam rockets. Behind in the polls before the bombardment began, the signs of a electoral bounce are already there. Kadima's diplomatic strategy, including impressive restraint in the face of provocation, has switched to military tactics, in the fear of voter rejection.

Indeed, the question of timing is critical to understanding this current outbreak of killing. Israel will argue that their attack was forced upon them now, as after the ending of the recent ceasefire, the rocket attacks on their towns increased. And they have a point. Yet, without for a millisecond condoning the latest wave of rockets, surely there was an inevitability that a terrorist organisation like Hamas would do that, especially with the Knesset elections set for February. Surely true political leadership – as Tzipi Livni showed in rejecting impossible conditions for continuing Kadima's governing coalition demanded by Shas, one of the religious parties – now required a diplomatic facedown of the rockets, with demands to the international community to back that political courage.

By provoking an attack now, Hamas has copied Hizbullah's tactics in Lebanon, and may end up winning a similar tactical victory, with rocket attacks continuing and the IDF looking fallible once again. Since the Israeli government is too smart not to have predicted this, the truth must be that they were compelled by electoral calculations. No other explanation fits the fact that this assault is almost certain to prove counterproductive for Israel.

So that's why Liberal Democrats are right not just to join in the widespread calls for ceasefires, but to seek action to bring that about. With the US hobbled by their presidential transition, we need the EU to flex its muscles, and suspend the proposed new EU-Israeli cooperation agreement. How could the EU "upgrade" its relations with Israel at this moment? And we need the UN security council to debate a resolution, under chapter seven, instructing both sides to ceasefire. Given the US agreed to a security council press statement calling for such just three days ago, there is even a chance that the US may not veto a resolution requiring Israel to stop firing.

[Last week's] EU proposals for a ceasefire and a delegation to the region are helpful. Yet in the face of this type of self-delusion, we need more teeth.