Latest volumes of former spin doctor’s diary reveal fears that rivalry risked harming Britain’s interests on the world stage MI6 handed Tony Blair a private intelligence assessment which showed that the French and German governments drew up plans to exploit his divisions with Gordon Brown, according to Alastair Campbell. In a sign of how the rivalry risked harming British interests on the world stage, Campbell wrote in his diary that Blair was told by “the spooks” that Paris and Berlin hoped to use his rivalry with Brown to “divide them even further”. The latest volumes of Campbell’s diaries, serialised in the Guardian today, will also undermine the attempt by Ed Balls to claim that he was not a divisive figure during Blair’s premiership, after damaging private papers were published recently by the Daily Telegraph. Blair repeatedly told Campbell that Balls, then Brown’s chief lieutenant, was a highly disruptive influence who used to treat him like a junior official. “TB … said he had just about had enough of Ed Balls talking to him like something on his shoe,” Campbell wrote on 25 April 2001. Balls breached Treasury rules by leaking details of the government’s response to the fuel duty protests – that fuel duty would be frozen for two years – before Brown’s pre-budget report in November 2000, according to Campbell. “It was wrong to leak tax measures … it was misleading,” Campbell wrote after Brown outlined plans for Balls to brief the Times and the Mirror. But the diaries also show that Balls and Brown helped save Britain from direct involvement in the current Greek euro debt crisis after Blair made clear in private – at one point even to the Sinn Féin leadership – that he would take Britain into the euro. Brown campaigned hard against Blair on the euro and in October 1999, as they finalised plans for the launch of the Britain in Europe group, said to his face: “Do you want to be held responsible for mass unemployment?” Campbell left much of the Blair-Brown tensions out of the first condensed version of his diaries, which were published in 2007 shortly after Blair stood down as prime minister. But in the latest volume, covering the years 1999-2001, Campbell provides vivid details of their turbulent relationship. He reveals that: • Brown put pressure on Blair to give a date for his departure before the 2001 election – earlier than had been thought. In April 2001 Brown told Blair he was “crap” and that he should stand down to allow for the restoration of cabinet government. • Just two months before the 2001 election Brown accused Blair of having “betrayed” him when he stood for the Labour leadership in 1994 and of having taken “that job away from me”. • Before the 2001 election Blair said he expected Brown to strike against him. He appealed to Campbell to remain on board on the grounds that he was his “Exocet”. • On the day before the 2001 general election Blair told his inner circle he had “sadly, very sadly” reached the conclusion that Brown was working against him. But he said it was impossible to sack him or move him from his position as chancellor. • Relations became so fraught that in 2000 Blair asked Lord (Richard) Attenborough, the veteran actor and film director, to mediate. Attenborough was told by the Brown camp that Blair needed to say in 2003 when he would stand down. • Blair said that Brown lied to him in 2001 when he tried to secure money for schools and hospitals. • Blair turned “white with fury” – and later rebuked Brown in private – when his chancellor responded with “venom and contempt” to his question at a presentation by Treasury officials. • On 9/11 Blair declined to invite Brown to a smaller ministerial meeting in Downing Street, following the main Cobra crisis meeting, because his answers had become “monosyllabic” in recent discussions. Campbell believed that the splits were being picked up in Europe. On 12 October 2000 he wrote: “TB showed me a piece of intelligence which showed that the Germans assessed our problems on Europe not as one of public opinion, or the Tories, but a sense that TB and GB were on a different track to each other. So it was out there, probably picked up when some Foreign Office people were in Berlin.” A few months later at an EU summit in Nice, on 7 December, Campbell wrote: “The French and Germans, according to the spooks, were exploiting the fact that GB was seen as a rival to TB, to try to divide them further.” Campbell also shows that Brown had never reconciled himself to Blair’s election as Labour leader in 1994 after he stood aside as part of the “Granita pact”. Brown saw this as a noble and selfless act; Blair saw it as a recognition of his status as the frontrunner. Nearly a decade later this was on Brown’s mind even at the height of the foot and mouth crisis. On 11 April 2001 Campbell wrote: “He [TB] said on Monday, GB had started a conversation with him straight out with the words: ‘You betrayed me. You said you would never challenge me and you took that job away from me.’ TB said GB was still very sore, and operated on the basis there was a genuine grievance, which TB did not accept. GB was back to saying TB had an operation ready to roll in 1994.” The diaries also show that Brown was the decisive strategic thinker in the government who often outshone Blair in cabinet. Blair regarded him as one of the top five politicians of the 20th century, on a par with Lloyd George. Campbell told the Guardian on Sunday that, for all his faults, Brown was indispensable. Campbell said: “As Tony made clear in his book, he viewed Gordon as both brilliant and impossible. What is interesting from these extracts is that even when we felt Gordon was wanting Tony out, and the division was causing real damage, Tony was always able to see the strengths that made him want to keep him as chancellor and later support him as leader. “I shared that ambivalence which is why even though I lived through some of these difficulties and divisions, when push came to shove I went back to try to help Gordon in the last election campaign. He could be a complete nightmare, but he could also be absolutely brilliant and it is important people remember that. Tony was always the more rounded figure, and in my view a remarkable political leader, but Gordon also had formidable strengths.” Tony Blair Gordon Brown Ed Balls Alastair Campbell MI6 Labour Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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Commission will suggest fund-raising changes allowing local authorities to lend money against the value of property Local councils are poised to take on a major financial services role under proposed reforms to be unveiled on Monday of the funding system for the care of elderly and disabled people. Under the scheme local authorities will be empowered to make a loan at a preferential rate against the value of a property owned by someone entering a care home. The loan would be redeemed on the sale of the property after the person dies. The plan is part of a series of ideas drawn up by a government commission led by the economist Andrew Dilnot. The proposals seek to inject more funding into the care system by tapping into people’s assets. The typical 55- to 64-year-old in the UK has total wealth of £200,000. Although the centrepiece of Dilnot’s report will be a recommended cap of about £35,000 on individual liability for care costs, which would require underwriting by the government, other proposals will seek to make it easier for people to draw on their assets without having to sell their home during their lifetime. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation about a million elderly homeowners have properties worth more than £100,000 yet qualify for means-tested benefits. Charities and welfare groups are calling on the government and Labour to seize the opportunity presented by Dilnot to begin a shakeup of the care funding system. An open letter from 26 leading charities declared on Sunday: “We expect all parties to deliver on this.” Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has reiterated his offer to engage in cross-party talks on the Dilnot proposals with an “open mind”, setting aside his party’s previous policy of a national care service. However, there are fears the issue will again be kicked into the long grass because of the potential cost to the Treasury – which amounts to perhaps £2bn to underwrite the cap, plus as much again if ministers accept a recommendation to raise significantly the ceiling of £23,250 personal assets above which the state currently offers no assistance with care costs. In a BBC interview, the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, promised “a very positive response” to Dilnot. But he added: “We are going to treat it as the basis for engagement … it is part of the overall questions that need to be answered.” In a blog on the Liberal Democrat Voice website, the care services minister, Paul Burstow, said: “Don’t expect … to hear the government’s final word on social care. The Dilnot report will mark an important milestone on the road to reform, but there are other questions and more milestones to come.” A No 10 source said the report was something to be looked at “very carefully”. There would not be a detailed government response straight away. An estimated 20,000 people sell their home each year to pay for their care costs, which for one in four people exceed £50,000, and for one in 10 run to more than £100,000. The so-called hotel costs, meaning accommodation and food in care homes, come on top of this. One of the key issues in Monday’s report, which applies to England and Wales, will be what Dilnot says about these extra costs, which can be as much again as the bill for care alone. The proposal for councils to lend to homeowners entering residential care represents a radical development of a little-known existing provision for deferred payment of care home fees. Under the Health and Social Care Act 2001, councils can make a deferred payment arrangement by taking a charge on an individual’s property. But interest is not levied until 56 days after the person’s death, making the scheme unattractive for councils. The key difference under the new plan is that the council would make a return on the loan from day one, being able to charge interest straight away. The Local Government Association reported last year that demand for such arrangements had almost doubled over 18 months because the housing market slump had made it hard to sell property. The association said at the time restrictions could be considered if such requests kept increasing. A spokesman was at the weekend unable to say if councils had begun to limit the number of arrangements. Another scheme studied by the Dilnot commission is the Rowntree Foundation’s “home cash plan” pilot, run with a financial services company and three councils. It enables homeowners to free up money from the value of their property to pay for care at home. Under the scheme, in Maidstone, Kent, and in the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, and Islington, people can borrow an initial £5,000 and further instalments up to a £30,000 ceiling. However, the arrangements carry fees of about £1,000. Long-term care Welfare Older people Carers Social care Health Local politics Local government Ed Miliband David Brindle Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
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Feminist reaction against country’s ‘misogynist reflexes’ continues as poll shows voters split on political comeback France is divided over Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s possible return to public life, with 49% of voters saying they would like to see him back on the political scene. But even his allies concede that he would be returning to a country that is much changed. The feminist uproar against machismo, sexism, harassment and what one commentator called the “misogynist reflexes” of France sparked by Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in May shows no signs of abating. In the seven weeks since the Socialist presidential hopeful was charged with attempted rape and sexual assault, French society has undergone massive soul-searching in its attitudes to women. It was not the DSK case itself that sparked feminist street demonstrations but comments by the French elite, perceived as belittling both rape and women. Caroline de Haas, head of the group Osez le Feminisme , said: “The DSK affair showed that women were fed up with inequalities and machismo of French society.” That anger will continue, she warned. More than 40 feminist groups on Sunday held the biggest conference on women’s rights in a decade, with 600 activists present. Some said interest in the feminist cause had been boosted by the DSK affair, which had sparked a surge in calls to rape counsellors in France. Others hoped that doubts over the credibility of the New York maid in the case would not put off other women from reporting rape. According to a poll for Le Parisien newspaper, 60% of leftwing sympathisers want a political comeback by Strauss-Kahn, the Socialist once tipped to beat Nicolas Sarkozy and win the 2012 presidential election. Pollsters are now expected to dissect whether, regardless of the outcome of the case, his popularity among Frenchwomen will have fallen steeply, as some commentators predict. Although free from house arrest, Strauss-Kahn still faces charges of attempted rape and sexual assault. Both sides accept a sexual encounter took place in his New York hotel suite on 14 May – his lawyers say it was consensual, the hotel maid’s lawyers say it was a brutal sex attack. Stéphane Rozès, head of the political consultants CAP, said whether Strauss-Kahn could return would depend on whether he was cleared of all charges and specifically “what explanation is given by the judge”. He said France had been “traumatised” by the case, but one clear change in French life had been a new confidence among women to speak out about sexism and allegations of sex crimes. He said perception of Strauss-Kahn’s political competence had not changed among voters but his perceived “presidential standing” had been dented among both women and men. However, France would not now begin judging politicians “based on their private lives”, he argued, unless their behaviour was criminal. But Le Monde on Sunday showed some taboos had been broken, running a portrait of Strauss-Kahn with personal details that would have been unthinkable two months ago: former advisers and MPs dissected his philandering, womanising and what the paper called a “fatality of temperament”, “taste for pleasure and risk” and a confidence he wouldn’t get caught that verged on “amorality”. The paper detailed how when an adviser warned him about a 2003 story about involvement in an orgy at a swingers’ club he replied: “You’re just jealous.” In April, he had told reporters from Libération: “Yes, I like women, so what?” The paper said very few of his advisers dared warn against his thrill-seeking. Chantal Jouanno, the sports minister who admitted that French politics was so sexist that she dare not wear a skirt in parliament, told Europe 1 radio: “He hasn’t presented a very positive image, between his taste for luxury and other subjects.” The attitude towards alleged sex crimes in French politics seems to have been transformed. Last week saw parliamentary immunity lifted from Georges Tron, the former civil service minister whom President Nicolas Sarkozy forced to resign over sex assault allegations not long after Strauss-Kahn’s arrest. Tron has now been charged with rape and sexual assault relating to allegations that he attacked women who worked for him in his role as mayor in Draveil, south of Paris, for Sarkozy’s UMP. The women said they were emboldened to come forward after the Strauss-Kahn affair. Tron denies the accusations. “Without the psychodrama of New York, would Tron’s accusers have spoken out? And would Nicolas Sarkozy and [the prime minister] François Fillon have ejected a personality who had become a nuisance?” asked the political writer Bruno Dive in Sud Ouest. This week the Socialist party will decide whether to expel the senator Jacques Mahéas, who was convicted of sexual harassment last year. Socialist politician Pierre Moscovici said that Strauss-Kahn was not yet considering a political future in France but was trying to restore his honour after “worldwide humiliation”. Dominique Strauss-Kahn France Europe Feminism Women Gender Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk
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Liam Byrne insists leaked letter from Eric Pickles office shows ministers ‘haven’t been straight with the House of Commons’ Ministers have been accused of repeatedly misleading MPs about the impact of their £26,000 cap on welfare payments after it emerged that Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, secretly warned the plan would cost more money than it saved and increase homelessness by 20,000. Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, insisted that Pickles’s comments, set out in a letter from his private secretary to No 10 that was leaked to the Observer , showed that a succession of ministers “haven’t been straight with the House of Commons”. They have either dismissed claims that the cap would increase homelessness, or insisted its likely impact was impossible to quantify. The benefit cap, announced by George Osborne, the chancellor, to the delight of the Tory right at the Conservative party conference last autumn, is one of the most high-profile and controversial of the government’s myriad welfare reforms. The welfare bill still has to go through the Lords and Pickles’s letter will embolden peers seeking to amend it so the cap is less punitive. The letter, sent on Pickles’s behalf by Nico Heslop, his private secretary, explicitly says welfare cuts could make 40,000 families homeless. “Our modelling indicates that we could see an additional 20,000 homelessness acceptances as a result of the total benefit cap. This on top of the 20,000 additional acceptances already anticipated as a result of other changes to housing benefit,” Heslop wrote. The letter was sent in January. Since then, ministers and officials have made a series of Commons statements that Labour believes are hard to square with what Pickles was telling No 10 in private. Those highlighted by Labour include: • The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) publishing an impact assessment in February saying that it was “not possible to quantify” the cost to local councils generated by the welfare cap and the likelihood that it will require councils to house some families made homeless. • Grant Shapps, the housing minister, citing the DWP’s impact assessment when specifically asked by a Labour MP if he had an estimate of the number of households that would be made homeless as a result of the benefit cap. • Maria Miller, a welfare minister, telling Karen Buck, a Labour MP, to “get real” when asked about the impact of the benefit cap on homelessness. “I do not accept that the policies we are advocating will have the impact on homelessness that she talked about,” Miller said. • Chris Grayling, another welfare minister, saying: “I do not deny that the benefit cap may result in individual cases of housing mobility [ie, people having to move], but I do not believe that the measure will exacerbate [the problem].” Byrne said on Sunday night: “The idea that you can go out and say that there is no further evidence that you are aware of, four months after the Department for Communities wrote to the prime minister saying there was different evidence, is breathtaking. “We want answers from Iain Duncan Smith [the work and pensions secretary] in the House of Commons about why his department hid official government evidence that his policy would make 40,000 families homeless.” Byrne’s colleague Caroline Flint, the shadow communities secretary, said: “It has become clear that while Eric Pickles defends his government housing policies in public, in truth he doesn’t believe in them. The public and parliament have a right to know why time and again his department dismissed the very same housing concerns he secretly raised with the prime minister.” It is understood that Labour will try to force Pickles and Duncan Smith to respond to an urgent question on this in the Commons chamber on Monday. But it is up to the Speaker, John Bercow, to decide whether to accept the move. In the letter, the Department for Communities and Local Government suggested that the impact of the policy could by ameliorated by ensuring child benefit is not included in those benefits that count towards the cap. But on Sunday , the DWP, which is in charge of the plan to impose a £26,000 cap on the total amount of benefits than can be claimed in any year by an unemployed family, confirmed that Pickles’s proposal had been rejected and that child benefit would be taken into account when the cap comes into force in 2013. In the letter, Heslop also claimed the benefit cap would cost the exchequer money. Although it was projected to save £270m, that sum “does not take account of the additional costs to local authorities (through homelessness and temporary accommodation),” he said. “In fact, we think it is likely that the policy as it stands will generate a net cost.” He also said that up to 23,000 affordable rental units could be lost because the benefit cap would stop developers charging the rents they wanted, giving them less incentive to build property. The DWP said it did not recognise the figures in the letter, and did not accept the cap would increase homelessness. “You know what councils are like – when they have concerns, they are very vocal about it,” one source said. “The cap only comes in at £26,000 and that’s equivalent to a gross income of £35,000 for a family that’s working. And the minute someone enters into part-time work, they are exempted from the cap,” the source went on. “There might be some people who have to move to a less expensive area. But that doesn’t mean they won’t have anywhere to live. We are very optimistic about the behavioural change that this will bring about. We have already started to change housing benefit. And have you seen droves of homeless people? No, you have not.” The Department for Communities said Pickles was “fully supportive of the government’s policies on benefits”. A source said Pickles had not personally raised the issues set out in the letter with cabinet colleagues, either formally or informally. A spokesperson for the DWP said: We cannot carry on with a situation where people on benefits can receive more in welfare payments than hard-working families and where a life on benefits robs people of achieving their potential. No one needs to be homeless because of these reforms. Many working families live on this amount of money.” Welfare Homelessness Eric Pickles Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media (h/t Heather of VideoCafe ) New media? They keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what they think it means. Five Villagers, comfortably ensconced within the Beltway Bubble and the DC Cocktail Circuit, sit around and discuss how “new media” has changed modern politics. Except… Showing themselves to be on the pulse of what’s happening right now, they look the 2003 smearing of John Kerry by Swiftboaters and the astroturfed uprising of the town halls prior over the summer before the ACA vote. And they point to YouTube (?) and viral videos as the stuff that changed the world. But really, who played the Swiftboat ads ad nauseam to an audience perhaps not inclined to get their news from the internet (who gets their news from YouTube, for crying out loud?)? It was the mainstream media on the content-starved 24 hour news channels who played those videos and played right into the hands of these insidious partisan astroturf groups. It was Drudge and his rumors that ruled the mainstream airwaves. Sarah Palin did serious damage to Obama’s health care reform? No…the mainstream media that lapped up every ghostwritten Facebook entry and breathlessly repeated them verbatim did damage…and even then, polls showed that most Americans wanted even more than the ACA offered. The whole concept of “death panels” SHOULD have been laughed off by any responsible media outlet, but instead was left for the “new media” on the left to push back against. Katty Kay tries to give all the Villagers an out, by claiming that these videos reflected the zeitgeist of the American people…but did they? At best, they reflected the zeitgeist of a very, very small percentage of American millionaires and corporations. I think there are very cogent arguments that new media has changed American politics. But it’s also very clear that the old guard of the mainstream media is completely behind the curve on how and why.
Continue reading …George Will Asks This Week Panel: Can Congress Require Obese People to Sign Up for Weight Watchers?
July 3, 2011 No Comment
As NewsBusters previously noted , ABC's “This Week” began its Independence Day weekend program disparaging the Founding Fathers as guys who didn't let women vote and allowed slavery. What followed was a Roundtable discussion about the Constitution which got quite interesting when the host brought up ObamaCare and George Will marvelously asked the group, “Does Congress have the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers? If not, why not?” (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: We touched briefly on health care. The whole debate about President Obama's health care act is being called unconstitutional in some quarters. So is that going to be challenged at the Supreme Court? GEORGE WILL: 26 states, more or less, (inaudible) 26 are in various courts around the country in a case absolutely certain to be decided by the Supreme Court. The question is, has the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce been so loosely construed that now Congress can do anything at all, that there is nothing it cannot do. Let me ask the three of you. Obviously, obesity and its costs affect interstate commerce. Does Congress have the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers? If not, why not? Fabulous question. After all, if the entire premise of the individual mandate is that everyone has to have health insurance for their own good – and that it's not right that some people opt not to and therefore use emergency rooms that end up costing everyone else money – shouldn't it be constitutional to require people to lose weight? Will clearly stumped the liberal panelists: RICHARD STENGEL, TIME MAGAZINE: Justice Vincent's opinion about Obamacare, saying that the government can't regulate inactivity and that we're stretching the Commerce Clause too far. I mean, I think it's kind of silly. Everything having to do with healthcare does cross state boundaries. Even that notion of the Commerce Clause as regulating among the states is a kind of antiquarian idea. The government can ask you to do things. It asks us to — WILL: It's not asking us, it's mandating. STENGEL: It asks us to pay our taxes. It asks us to register for the draft. It asks us to buy car insurance if we want to drive our car around. (CROSSTALK) WILL: If you choose to buy a car. Exactly. This is a point it seems everyone on the Left – especially in the media – doesn't seem to understand. The states that require citizens to purchase auto insurance only require it of those that own cars. They don't require people to purchase cars, though, which means there is no mandate to have auto insurance. In addition, this is a state requirement not governed by the Commerce Clause because it is not interstate. But Stengel wasn't done making a fool of himself: STENGEL: If something is unconstitutional, people out there tend to think like some alarm will go off if something is unconstitutional. It's unconstitutional if the Supreme Court decides it's unconstitutional. And by the way, this can go to the Supreme Court, and we can see whether that happens. Well, that's not necessarily true. It could be constitutional or unconstitutional for the time being as the Court has been known to overturn its previous rulings. As such, what one group of nine jurists thinks does not necessarily mean they've definitively decided the constitutionality of an issue. But Will wasn't done pressing this one: WILL: Well, does Congress have the power to mandate that obese people sign up for — do they have the power to do this? STENGEL: I don't know the answer to that. WILL: You don't know. No, he doesn't know. Yet, like most in the press, he believes Congress has the power to require people to buy health insurance. Interesting hypocrisy that Will's next victim obviously shares: MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Well, the beauty of that is, the not knowing — and we can predict that Rick would say that because he's saying that's the color of the curtain. The basic foundation is set. WILL: Is that a yes, Congress does have the power to mandate? DYSON: It's open. If they decide that they will, they will have the power to do so. “If they decide that they will, they will have the power to do so.” Heaven help us.
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Meal was a protest against reintroduction of bears to Dolomites, says Northern League Police have broken up a banquet of bear meat hosted by Silvio Berlusconi’s powerful coalition partner in northern Italy after government ministers and animal rights groups described the event as scandalous. The order to down cutlery came as about 200 people lined up to devour grilled and stewed bear at a rally in Imer in the Italian Dolomites organised by the Northern League. Organisers said they had bought the meat legally in Slovenia to get round a ban on bear hunting in Italy, but food safety officers from Italy’s paramilitary carabinieri police objected to the lack of import documentation for the 50kg of meat. Speaking at the event, Enzo Erminio Boso, a former League senator, said he suspected the raid had been arranged by members of Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party who earlier demanded that League leader Umberto Bossi halt proceedings. Foreign minister Franco Frattini and tourism minister Michela Vittoria Brambilla had condemned the bear feast as “a scandalous initiative”, while environment minister Stefania Prestigiacomo described the get-together as “barbarous”. In his blog, Frattini said the banquet was particularly offensive since Italian bears were “almost extinct and we are trying with great effort to bring them back to the mountains that have hosted them for centuries”. The brown bear population has risen to about 35 in and around the Dolomites after 10 were reintroduced there a decade ago. But instead of celebrating their return, some locals have complained that the bears are attacking chickens and sheep. Claims made for lost livestock rose to ¤100,000 (£90,000) last year, and farmers were fed up, said Maurizio Fugatti, an MP for the devolutionist and anti-immigrant Northern League. Hence the banquet, which, said Fugatti, had been planned to “send a clear signal to citizens who have the right to reconquer their territory and freely circulate”. To protect locals from marauding bears, he added, “we prefer to eat them like this.” Fugatti said half of the bear meat had been cooked for the cancelled banquet but the remainder was frozen and ready for a new dinner date should the paperwork be put in order. “The idea was to attract attention to a bear repopulation plan which has got out of hand, resulting in locals being followed by bears through woods normally frequented by families. Even if the banquet doesn’t happen, we have made our point,” he went on. The Northern League has long specialised in controversial statements and stunts. In 2007 Senator Roberto Calderoli proposed dissuading Muslims from building a mosque in Bologna by parading a pig across the chosen site, defiling it. Massimiliano Rocco, an officer with the WWF in Italy, praised the police raid on the banquet: “If they wanted to provoke debate about the right way to manage the bears in the area, there was no need to illegally import the meat of a protected species.” Italy Europe Conservation Tom Kington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …CBS Paints Anti-Israel Flotilla Activists As Nonviolent, Fails to Note Violent Coup By Hamas
July 3, 2011 No Comment
Residents of region near new north-south border have suffered heavy bombardments by government planes Fourteen-year-old Jacomo Tia Jibril was washing clothes at the village borehole when he heard the plane overhead. “I started running,” he says. “My sister shouted at me to lie down, but I couldn’t hear her.” He tried to take shelter in a brick factory, but the bomb exploded before he could get inside. From his hospital bed in the Nuba mountains, Jibril is surprisingly calm as he recounts the day his village, Tes, was bombed by the Sudanese government. During the explosion he was struck by shrapnel on his left forearm and, when he finally reached the hospital 18 hours later, he was told his left hand had to be amputated. Just a few beds away, seven-year-old Viviana Issa lies lifeless, her upper back covered by a white bandage. Hit in the spine by a bomb fragment, she is paralysed from the chest down. “I don’t know what to do with this girl,” says Tom Catena, the only doctor in the hospital, whose exact location is being withheld for security reasons. “Since I came here three years and a half ago, this is the worst situation I’ve ever been in.” Around him, beds are full with some of the130 people injured by the recent bombardments by government planes in the Nuba mountains, which lie towards the southern edge of Sudan’s Arabised north. Clashes between government forces and opposition fighters in the region have displaced more than 70,000 people in less than a month. The injured come from towns such as Kurchi, Dalami, Umsardiba and Kauda, strongholds of the Nuba resistance to the northern Sudan government led by President Hassan Omar al-Bashir. From these secluded hills, Nubians spent 20 years fighting alongside the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) of southern Sudan against an Arab-led government whose policies were seen as discriminatory towards native Africans. The conflict caused at least 2 million deaths and the displacement of another 4 million people. But while south Sudan has seceded from Khartoum and is preparing to celebrate independence on Saturday 9 July, the Nuba mountains are experiencing yet another bloody chapter in this never-ending crisis. Tensions have risen in the past months and flared up on 5 June after a controversial election for state governor. Amid claims of vote rigging, Ahmed Haroun, the candidate of Bashir’s ruling National Congress party, who is wanted, like his president, by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes, narrowly defeated Abdul Aziz Adam al-Hilu, of the Southern SPLM party, the rebel army’s political wing. Khartoum then ordered the Nuba rebels to give up their weapons and integrate into the Sudanese army. Clashes soon erupted. Government forces eventually took control of the state capital, Kadugli, prompting opposition fighters to retreat. Thousands of civilians fled, fearing reprisals by northern soldiers. “It took me three days to get to Kauda. I had to walk through the mountains to avoid the checkpoints manned by the Sudanese forces,” says a 46-year-old carpenter, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. He says Khartoum’s forces have rounded up civilians, gathering them in three places inside the city. “They plan to use them as human shields in case of an SPLA attack,” he says. If Kadugli has been the city worst hit by the conflict so far, Kauda, the headquarters of the Nuba SPLA, is still an impregnable stronghold. But the town is bearing the brunt of this renewed conflict. Schools are closed and the market is almost deserted. “People fled up the surrounding hills and come down early in the morning just to buy something,” says 25-year-old Abil Abraham, who keeps a small stand of vegetables. His family is hiding in a nearby village, but he has no intention of leaving. “How could I do it? This is my place,” he says. “If the war comes, I will manage to find a weapon and fight.” But unlike the last war, where the units of the rebels were able to engage the northern army and its allied militia, they can now do little against an enemy that comes from above. The conflict on the ground has stalled, with government soldiers controlling just a few main population centres such as Kadugli, Delling and Talodi, apparently surrounded by SPLA forces. But civilian areas are being bombed by Sudanese planes every day, making the lives of these rural communities nearly impossible. Fields have been left unattended by tens of thousands of internally displaced persons who fled the warzone at the start of the rainy season. If they do not manage to get back to work soon, today’s war might turn into next year’s famine. Fawzya Osman, 18, from the village of Kapuo, is among the few people defying the bombs to work on her small plot of land. “I have no option. Bombs or not, we have to eat,” she says with a smile. Just a few days ago, she witnessed the air strikes that hit Kauda and her village. A friend was hit by a bomb and killed instantly, a short distance from her. “It was so shocking, I couldn’t think or speak properly for two days,” she says. “Even now, the simple noise of a motorbike or an engine scares me.” Just outside the village, on an apparently deserted rocky hill, several pairs of frightened eyes peer out of a half-metre wide crack between two big rocks. Suddenly, four children aged below five emerge, curious to see the foreign visitors, while dozens of others come out of similar hideouts. The eldest of the group, 13-year-old Al Shaikh Ismail Kalo, has been given the task of looking after the 31 children. Their parents venture out during the day to try working on their fields and come up the mountain twice a day to hand them food. “I don’t like to stay here; this is a place for animals,” says Kalo, already trained to distinguish the noises of Antonov and Mig planes. “We can’t even play or study, because we left everything in the village. Everyone here just thinks about his life.” Locals say the Nuba mountains are “just as God created them”. Six years after the end of the civil war, development is nowhere to be seen in this region dotted by small rural dwellings and a few, isolated cities the size of small European villages. With no job opportunities, few schools and fewer health clinics, life is a daily struggle. Apart from a few paved roads in the capital Kadugli, roads are little more than mountain tracks: to reach a small hospital three miles away from Kauda, cars have to pass through a dry river bed, on a journey that can take up to 45 minutes. As a consequence, the life of this proud people made up of nearly 100 tribes is still being marked by the endless cycle of nature. During the rainy season, adults spend their day cultivating sorghum and maize, leaving grandparents at home to look after the children. When the rains stop, they harvest their crops and repair damaged huts. Once a year, their sons leave the villages all together to graze cattle in the nearby plains, living outdoors for two months, dancing and practising wrestling (the traditional sport of Nuba people) in a collective experience called “Fariq”. For centuries, African and Arab communities coexisted in relative peace, as 60-year-old Hussein Ngalokuri, traditional leader of the Otoro tribe, explains: “Arabs used to beg us to pass through our lands and graze their cattle further south. We fed and helped them but, if we refused, there was nothing they could do. Now, they come here and act as our masters.” He says the situation deteriorated after independence, when the Khartoum government started a programme of forced Islamisation and Arabisation of Nubians. Land traditionally held by African tribes was confiscated and given to Arabs; bearing an African name was discouraged; local languages were forbidden in schools, where offenders were caned in front of other students and forced to carry the image of a donkey on their back. The only way to get rid of it was to find someone else making the same “mistake” and pass it to them. “Imagine if someone comes to your land and starts telling you he is better than you, in every respect,” says Chief Ngalokuri. “I am a Muslim, but what the Arabs are doing to us is not Islam.” For many Nubians, the scars of the past and the mistrust towards Arabs are too deep to accept any political settlement with Khartoum. The peace talks in Addis Ababa, meant to create a ceasefire, have been met with various degrees of indifference. “Reaching an agreement with the Khartoum regime is impossible,” says a 35-year-old former SPLA fighter, Solomon Osman Lonna. “Even if they talk about peace, they will send more troops. They have always done it and will keep on doing it.” Sudan Africa guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Murder of schoolboy in south London ‘as bad as it gets’, says senior detective
July 3, 2011 No Comment
Stabbing of Yemurai Kanyangarara in broad daylight is ‘among the very worst I’ve investigated in 25 years’, says Mark Dunne A senior detective has said that the murder of a 16-year-old boy, who died after having his throat slashed by attackers, is among the worst he has investigated. Yemurai Kanyangarara from Belvedere, south-east London, was stabbed in the neck in nearby Welling early on Friday evening. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Dunne described the killing as an act of “sheer brutality against a defenceless schoolboy”, adding that the murder – carried out in broad daylight on a busy street – was “about as bad as it gets”. Kanyangarara, who was brought to Britain from Zimbabwe when very young, was attacked by three boys almost immediately after stepping off a 96 bus with a friend on Upper Wickham Lane. Det Ch Insp Dunne told reporters: “You’ve got someone, 16 years old, a schoolboy, being stabbed in broad daylight in a busy street in front of many, many shoppers out enjoying the afternoon. “It’s about as bad as it gets. It’s among the very worst I’ve investigated in 25 years, the sheer brutality against a defenceless schoolboy.” Police believe the three attackers had been in a group of five or six who had got off another 96 at an earlier stop before walking to the stop where Kanyangarara and his friend disembarked. No clear motive for the attack has emerged and police cannot confirm if the weapon used was a knife. A man arrested after the attack has been released. The attack caused “catastrophic injuries” and the victim died “very quickly” after the attack, said Dunne. “It would be wrong to suggest this was a random attack – our belief is that they were known to each other, but we don’t know how,” he said. Nigel Fisher, principal at St Columba’s Catholic boys’ school in Bexleyheath, said Kanyangarara was a “kind, gentle lad”. He added: “He was a very popular and very well-known student, hard working, and had just finished his GCSEs. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time.” Kanyangarara is the eighth teenager murdered in London this year. Crime London Knife crime Alexandra Topping guardian.co.uk
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