myth

It was a little over three years ago that David Cameron first called for the Human Rights Act (HRA) to be abolished and replaced by a British Bill of Rights. His intervention was prompted by the revelation that Learco Chindamo, the convicted murderer of the head teacher Philip Lawrence, would escape deportation to his native Italy because this would breach his right to family life in this country. The then Leader of the Opposition did not mince his words: "It has to go. Abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights… The fact that the murderer of Philip Lawrence cannot be deported flies in the face of common sense."

Learco Chindamo: Britain must make its own human rights laws, 'Telegraph View'

David Cameron is a fool. So is 'Telegraph View' for believing him, and not bothering to do any research at all. Although it might have been the case that human rights law would have prevented Chindamo's deportation, in fact the law that was used was EU immigration law, not the Human Rights Act (or the ECHR). We wouldn't have been able to deport Chindamo whether or not we were bound by the ECHR: under EU law, we could only do so if he was thought to be a 'risk to the public'. The tribunal that considered his case thought he didn't present that risk.

An extract from William Engdahl's Century of War

...Iraq, unlike Khomeini's Iran, emerged from the costly war with an enormous foreign debt burden. In 1988 she owed an estimated $65 billion to various creditors...

The Anglo-American gameplan was to lure Saddam Hussein into a trap he could not resist, in order to provide a pretext for military intervention from the united States and Britain, professedly to secure the safety of world oil supplies. In June 1989, a top-level delegation from an organisation known as the United States-Iraq Business Forum, which included Kissinger Associates' Alan Stoga and senior executives of Bankers' Trust, Mobil Oil, Occidental Petroleum and other large US multinationals, came to Baghdad at the request of Saddam Hussein. He wanted to discuss an Iraqi post war plan to develop his country's agricultural and industrial potential.

Iraq had a five-year $40 billion plan to complete the large Badush Dam irrigation project, which would have enabled her to become self-sufficient in food production; Iraq at that time depended on US Government Commodity Credit Corporation grain imports for as much as $1 billion worth of grain in 1989. In addition, Iraq proposed to the US group major investment in building up its petrochemicals industry, agriculture fertiliser plants, an iron and steel plant, and auto assembly plant, as part of an effort to develop the country. The American businessmen told Saddam he must first restructure his foreign debts, and in return agree to privatise Iraq's national oil resources, or a major portion of it. According to best British and American geophysical calculations, Iraq was perhaps the largest unexplored oil region in the world, with the possible exception of the Soviet Union.

The best place to look for these is the Daily Telegraph. I don't know why I bother to look there, except it has a readership of nearly a million (nearly 2 million, if you look at the Sunday Telegraph). And because its readers mostly rule this land. And because lies are just annoying.

They are running a monster campaign against the Human Rights Act. It is European, bossy, foreign. It is weak on evil-doers, foreigners, and terrorists, and it ignores and penalises decent British citizens. We don't need it because we invented human rights. And we don't need it because we don't want human rights.

I shall add lies as I find them. Here is a spectacular example, contained within an article whose every other sentence bangs away to those enduring myths about British supremacy at which the Daily Telegraph excels.

neither of [habeas corpus, nor trial by jury] is guaranteed by the convention that underpins the Human Rights Act. While Article Five disallows imprisonment without charge and trial, only Britain and Ireland practice habeas corpus. It is possible, in many Continental countries that are signatories to the ECHR, to be locked away for months or years without charge by the simple expedient of handing the suspect over the judicial authorities. The fact that a juge d'instruction bangs you up for 15 months does not make it any more edifying than if it were done by executive diktat.

Philip Johnstone, It is time to draft another Bill of Rights

Is Ahmedinejad anti-semitic, is he holocaust denying - and does it matter? Should we bother to defend him if we think that he is not?

I think we should. Partly because he deserves, as any human being does, to be considered innocent until he has been found guilty, but mostly because this story about Ahmedinejad is being used to sell another war. Whatever he is, he is not deserving of a war, nor are the people in his country who will suffer it.

Some extracts below from Katie Couric's interview with Ahmedinejad on CBS.The whole thing is well worth watching. The first part (not transcribed) deals with the nuclear threat. Available here:

Part 1
Part 2

KC Some might say that Iran is the largest sponsor, the biggest... er... perpetrator of state-sponsored and has produced inflammatory rhetoric along the lines that Israel should be blown off the map. Given those things, can you understand the concern the international community may have about Iran, in particular?

AM: ... With respect to Palestine, I've always raised a very clear question. What I'm saying, is that we need to ask ourselves where did the events of WW2 happen? Well the answer is - it happened in Europe. So who killed 60 million people during WW2? It was.. people that belonged to the European governments of the time - some European governments at the time. So - what does this have to do with the Palestinian people? Why do we use the murders of WW2 as a pretext to kill Palestinian people now? So, the questions I ask are clear ones.