You really could not make it up!

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

You really could not make it up!

Despite being sent early drafts (at their request), at the eleventh hour - as the book is about to go into production, fully typeset and indexed - we get a formal "request" from the MoD to remove several passages on the grounds that they breach "OPSEC" (Operational Security).

One passage to which the MoD took great exception recounted how a soldier discovered an IED (aka roadside bomb) in al Amarah, detailing what he saw that made him suspicious. We have been asked to remove this because, "As it stands it may lead to IEDs being placed in less obvious locations hindering detection."

And the source of my information - referenced in the book? Ah! The MoD website. (I wonder how long that link will remain active - its only been up since 2005.)

Nor must I tell people that the Jackal (pictured) has armour "around the cab and the sides". This "may lead to increased targeting in that area." But, as someone said to me, these Taleban are really cunning - they've got this new equipment ... called "eyes".

Is it any wonder the MoD are losing the war?

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This might make it more entertaining

Another twist is being added to the dreary saga of the European elections that are coming in June (and dreary it is despite the apparently inexhaustible supply of people with more money than sense who fund ever more parties for the event).

EUObserver reported yesterday that

The Pan-African Parliament is in talks with the EU on sending monitors to the European elections in June, in a project that could see Zimbabwean politicians oversee voting in the UK.

The South Africa-based institution, which is the parliamentary wing of the African Union, agreed details of a monitoring mission with European Parliament officials last week.

Ten members of the African Parliament (MAPs) would first see how the UK conducts its election on 4 June. The delegation would then inspect the central vote-counting office in Wiesbaden, Germany. The MAPs would watch the final result with MEPs in Brussels on 7 June.

An interesting and potentially highly entertaining idea. At least no-one can accuse the African Union of supplanting existing parliamentary democracies (with the exception of South Africa itself and one or two other countries, like Ghana).

There is, we are told a double aim:

The main goal of the project is to learn lessons ahead of a potential pan-African election some time in the future. But the mission would also produce a final report on EU democratic standards.

Excellent. Can't wait for that report from Zimbabwean or Nigerian or Sudanese politicians.

Just one question: who is paying for all this? (As if I didn't know.)

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Still in a fog

Two press releases from Libertas UK (as they still call themselves) yesterday. Well, at least, they keep themselves busy. I hear, by the way, that Jury Team has had a tremendous website response. People are knocking on the door very insistently or, at least, as some of the pro-referendum demo organizers realized, looking at the website. As a political force that remains ungagable.

One press release is a response to Caroline Flint's highly amusing admissionthat she had not really read the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty though she had assured us all that the Irish no vote was based on a misunderstanding of that document. How would she know, precisely?

Mind you, there is no call for the Conservatives to crow. I recall similar admissions by Conservative Ministers with relation to the Maastricht Treaty. Memory failure is no excuse in politics.

Libertas's comments about Ms Flint are reasonable enough. Having reminded everyone that Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen had not read the treaty either, they add:

Flint and Cowen can't read it and we shouldn’t have to. Democratic governance should be transparent and accountable, not opaque and elitist.

Not sure what they mean by elitist. After all, is it not the case that we would all like to see better and more intelligent people in politics and is that not elitist? The trouble with the whole Libertas mess is that they are not all that good at drawing conclusions either. The whole purpose of the European project is to be unaccountable – its founders and promoters have not time for democracy but, much worse, they have not time for accountability or freedom either.

That Libertas and its denizens do not understand what the fight is really about is shown by the sentence that follows:

Libertas advocates a peoples' constitution that is clear and understandable.

What is a peoples’ constitution and who actually needs or wants it (apart from Mr Ganley and the Former British Soldier, Robin Matthews)? What is wrong with the constitutional structures we already have? You know the ones that involve the Houses of Parliament or the Houses of the Oireachtas or whatever other legislatures the various countries have, not to mention existing legal systems?

The other press release, rather oddly deals with the … ahem … inappropriate expenses on Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s account. Libertas, they tell us, are in a position to prove that this is merely one aspect of prevailing corruption that is present in the European Parliament as well as in the national one.

As in London, so in Brussels, where the bloated bureaucracy works for itself, not for European people.

Libertas has revealed that, fresh from awarding themselves massive pay rises and lower taxes, our MEPs have decided to also let their assistants help themselves to even more of our money. Employing family and friends (or even fictitious people) in these roles is commonplace and makes abuse very hard to track, making it easy for MEPs and their associates to help themselves to unbelievable amounts of European taxpayers cash.

I am shocked, I tell you, shocked, not least by the press release writer’s inability to put an apostrophe where it is required. But, seriously, none of us knew that about MEPs until Mr Ganley and his merry men came along. Or did we?

Never mind. Former British Soldier, present UK campaign manager for Libertas and prospective Toy Parliament candidate in the South-West, Robin Matthews knows the answer:

As Matthews explained “Libertas wants the people have their say so that together we can build a Europe that we can believe in. This means holding Brussels to account in order to stop the waste and save money. We need to open up the corridors of power and make the EU work for us, not for them."

Robin Matthews added "How can we expect national parties to hold Brussels to account for its corruption and waste when they are too are busy helping themselves to taxpayers money."

I am looking forward to Colonel Matthews explaining to me what he really means by the EU working for us, not for them. He certainly failed to do so at the launch.

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Shoot the messenger

Well, we all know whose fault it is that the media is gleefully publishingdetails of ... ahem ... inappropriate expenses listed by our underworked representatives:

A newspaper has claimed it had been offered computer discs containing full details of MPs' expenses claims for the last five years for £300,000.

The Times said it was offered the politically-sensitive material by a businessman with a company based in the City of London and similar offers were made to other papers.

The report came as Commons officials began a hunt for a mole believed to have leaked details of invoices submitted by MPs to support their claims for allowances of up to £23,000 a year on their second homes.

Shocking. Not like MPs using their position to extract confidential information from civil servants in order, not to raise it in the House, but publish it in the media.

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The soap opera doth commence

Preoccupying the media today are the protests in the City over the G20 summit, with "thousands of police officers" ready to deal with a series of demonstrations if violence erupts.

The prospect of violence has been signalled so much in advance that the police are undoubtedly well-prepared and is unlikely now that we will see anything more than the occasional, well-contained scuffle from a rag-bag of anti-capitalists, environmentalists, anarchists, anti-war campaigners and others.

As for taking the substantive issues seriously, the front page of The Daily Telegraph gives us this while the front page of the business section gives us this. That, it seems, is the measure of contemporary values.

As for the summit itself, this is mere theatre – another episode of the soap opera. What the "leaders" say openly for public consumption, what they actually agree behind the scenes, and then what they actually do – or are capable of doing – will be completely different things.

We are but the audience for this grand theatre, and indeed the paymasters for the extravaganza. But the actual cost of the summit is merely the down payment. The real bill will come later, the amount of which we will never be allowed to know.

As for the reckoning, that will come even later, but it will not be a bunch of dysfunctional renta-mob antis that deliver it.

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Turn your back for one moment …

… and they'll come out with another "daft" idea, this one suggesting that British naval bases should be handed over to Brussels.

The story comes from Justin Stares via Lloyds List, a usually reliable source, also copied out in The Daily Mail, which runs the item big.

The idea is that British (and other member states) naval bases around the world should be at the service of the European Union to protect shipping lanes. For Britain, that would include our bases in Gibraltar, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands, set up as part of an EU "forward presence" for securing vital trade routes. 

Actually, this is something and nothing. It is in a report commissioned by the EU parliament's subcommittee on security and defence, written by two UK-based academics, James Rogers and Luis Simon. It suggests that these installations would provide a formidable asset for the geographical and functional expansion of "EU Grand Strategy".

Trade lanes can be secured only if the far-flung bases belonging to the two main European naval powers are put to common use, the report argues: "As the world moves towards a dynamic multipolar system and US relative maritime power declines as powers like China and India rise, there is a growing and compelling need for Europeans to take responsibility for the Sea Lines of Communication that link them to the farthest corners of the world, particularly those most vital to European trade and security." 

Geoffrey Van Orden is on the case, dismissing the report as "among the most hubristic proposals the EU has yet produced in support of its defence policies." He says he has criticised the EU's military operations as mere exercises in sticking an EU badge on our soldiers' arms. Now they want to run up the EU flag on our ships and even our overseas territories." 

And there the matter will rest – for the moment. It has no legislative status and is not even a formal EU proposal. But, in the history of the institution, the EU parliament is often used as a sounding board, testing the water, so to speak, to see whether an idea will fly. 

It also points to the direction of travel, confirming the long-range intention to integrate the whole of the member states' defence capabilities, no matter how long it takes.

With the focus on G20 and the economic crisis, the idea will quickly disappear from public view, but it will not go away, any more than the idea floated by the commission that in future the EU should represent member states on institutions such as the IMF. This, Bruno Waterfield tells us, is the EU's price for an agreement at the G20 summit. 

Nor will the idea, now well advanced, that there should be a stronger EU level telecommunications regulator. This has now been agreed by the EU parliament and member states, bringing into action in 2010 a new agency which will have the power to reverse decisions made by national telecommunications regulators in the EU – particularly on network access and pricing.

The Naval Base idea gets the attention because it is novel and outrageous. But it will be a long time in the future before it comes to pass. The IMF idea and the telecoms super-regulator are equally outrageous, but so technical and boring are they that they will be given little attention – even of they are also just as dangerous.

Thus, while we each focus on our own pre-occupations, the EU marches on unabated, watched by the likes of the invaluable Open Europe which each day brings us a fraction of the torrent.

It is difficult enough keeping track of what our puppet government is doing. With a supreme government over in Brussels, dipping its oar into virtually every aspect of our lives, it is impossible to pick up everything. 

And that is another reason why we have to get out of the EU. The sheer scale of the operation and its interests defy any effective monitoring. Every time you turn your back, it comes out with another "daft" idea... and most of them get implemented.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The abolition of "defeat"

Another landmark in the British defeat in southern Iraq was reached todaywhen Major General Andy Salmon, of the Royal Marines, formally handed command in Basra to his US Army counterpart Major General Michael Oates.

With that, the Royal Marine flag was lowered for the last time at Basra Air Station, when the flag of the US 10th Mountain Division was raised to replace the Marines’ colours. 

The symbolism of this has been entirely lost on the commentators, but it was elements of the 10th Mountain Division which assisted the Iraqi Army in the recovery of al Amarah last June, in operation Promise of Peace after it had been abandoned by the British Army in August 2006, thus leaving the Mahdi Army free rein to turn the city into the bomb-making centre for the rest of the Shi'a insurgency.

Despite this senior British generals are celebrating the "enormous success" of UK troops in Iraq, having coined yet another term for "retreat". Such is the language of propaganda that the earlier retreats from al Amarah and then central Basra became "tactical moves" while the retreat from Basra Palace became a "repositioning". But the spin doctors have excelled themselves today, describing the current humiliating hand-over to the Americans, as a "Change in coalition command structure in southern Iraq".

If only Lt-Gen Percival had been so agile with terminology in February 1942, he would perhaps have gained his knighthood instead of ignominy, and gone on to greater things.

Certainly, the Orwellian decay of the language does not allow for the use of the words "surrender" or "defeat". We have achieved a glorious "change in coalition command structure" and now our troops can be "repositioned" elsewhere, where they can repeat the process all over again. Now that the word "defeat” has been abolished, there can be no stopping them.

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Can't resist this

The good news is that I am working on setting up a parallel blog that will deal with all the subjects that are only tenuously related to the main themes of EUReferendum. When that happens all my postings here will be EU related. How lucky can you be!

In the meantime, I have to diverge from the main theme from time to time. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has, for some time, been using the words "the country is in the very best of hands" as a kind of refrain. I was going to plagiarize it for the postings about our own bunch of bozos, whether in London or Brussels. Luckily we have just been reminded both by Instapunditand Powerline that we are all plagiarizing or quoting the late great Johnny Mercer from a less well known musical "Li'l Abner".

The Treasury says the national debt is climbing to the sky
And government expenditures have never been so high.
It makes a feller get a gleam of pride within his eye,
to see how our economy expands,
The country's in the very best of hands...

Enjoy.