Turning a blind Eye
The recent UN round of meetings was used to condemn Iran for its nuclear ambitions. I personally have no reason to defend a dictatorial theocracy who have for the sake of preserving their power have fatally damaged the admittedly limited democracy that Iran had built in to its system of government.
Even, as is likely, Ahmedinajad won the elections, the violent response to protests by varied government militias showed that the establishment behave no differently when their power is threatened than any other elites. This governing elite gaining a nuclear weapon, I think we can agree is a outcome most people would wish to avoid.
The problem is that all the posturing by the President Obama and Prime Minister Brown is fatally wounded by the fact that one country in the Middle East already HAS nuclear weapons , has REFUSED to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, has REFUSED inspectors on its soil and yet has had no sanctions and is the biggest recipient of US aid, who but Israel of course.
Only one “Western” commentator mentioned this small but significant point. Yasmin Alibhai Brown in her column in “The Independent” asking “Don’t Israeli weapons count?”.
Now, I have no problem in rationalising the fact that the US and the UK are friendly towards Israel and will act accordingly, but even then surely there should be some acknowledgement of the facts, but no instead we have the sheer chutzpah of the Israeli Prime Minister standing in the very institution who’s resolutions & reports it condemns or at the least ignores condemning weapons of mass destruction! Going on in the speech to equate the bombing of British cities during World War 2 with the war on Gaza.Transcript here
Again I can rationalise the Israeli Prime Minister doing what he did but the amazing thing is no where did I read any criticism and reasoned analysis. Today we have the farce of the man, Ehud Barak, who led the assault on Gaza addressing the Labour Party annual conference.
How will the conference attendees react I wonder?
I can’t do better than quote from Ms Brown’s article in which an Israeli pleads for Israel to be treated like all other states:
“The Israeli human rights activist Gideon Spiro bravely asks that his country be subject to the same rules as Iran and all others in the Middle East: “Rein in Israel, compel it to accept a regime of nuclear disarmament and oblige it to open all nuclear, biological and chemical facilities and missile sites to international inspection.”
Subscribe to the comments for this postDon’t believe all you read…..
Today we had two examples of how we have to careful of what we believe to be true and not over reacting to stories of alleged terror plots. There was the case of the two school boys who were acquitted of “planning” to blow up their school, and a supposed hit list of prominent targets was admitted to be a complete fabrication. . Certain newspapers like “The Sun” have had to apologise after the hoaxer admitted that he had made it all up.
The threat of terror attacks is bad enough without the twin issues of authorities and media over reaction.
Admittedly the police have a very tough job but even they have to be careful that they don’t act prematurely or just over react with little evidence of an actual threat. The most recent example being the two school boys. They were exonerated but what about the Pakistani students who were recently arrested in a very public way and then released without charge but were then promptly thrown out of the country.
No apologies, no refund of the fees or expenses the students families had spent, nothing but silence from the authorities. No apologies either from the politicians who gleefully went on numerous TV programs talking about the “success” of the operation. Most vocal was the infamous Phil Woolas who kept on talking of “clean skins” – terrorists who with no previous record. He seems to forget the possibility that they may be “clean skins” because they are actually “clean”.
This fear can be amplified by the hysteria whipped by irresponsible reporting by the media. Which then of course builds to pressure on authorities to act etc……
I was involved in a “workshop” where the scenario was put to us of an Asian mother being disturbed by the company his son was keeping; what would we do? I said I would talk to the boy, talk to his friends and try and to get the family talking. The moderator seemed shocked and said “….and you would tell the police?” I said no, he asked why not? Fairly simply because I would have to be convinced that the police would not jump in all guns blazing. The number of arrests that lead to actual charges for terrorism are minute (3 out of 701 according to the BBC) and I told the moderator of some cases including the student who left a stressed message on his mums answering machine; she immediately called the police who promptly seized all his stuff including his PC. The student called a few days later to say hello, his mum explained her distress, he just said he had been stressed out by exams and had gone to stay with friends in another university. He directly went to the police where for his pains he was arrested on terrorism charges based on things he had been looking at on the internet.
It took him over two years to clear his name! We must not forget the “lyrical terrorist” a 20 year misguided young woman convicted for the stuff she had downloaded from the internet or the poor researcher at Nottingham university who was arrested while writing a MA dissertation on Al Qaeda! Again cleared of all charges but then re-arrested on “immigration” charges.
I fully accept that there is a real and present danger from terrorism and that everyone, especially the security services have a tough job but if we want to keep a society free, which after all is what the terrorists are trying to destroy, then we all have to be measured in how we act, re-in forcing our belief in due process, innocent until proven guilty and the rights of us all to be enquiring citizens.