Author: Welshman

Let the story in AP breaking news about the Amnesty International Annual Report speak for itself:

Let the US response mentioned in the same AP story stand as their answer and rebuttal of  these damning criticisms:

I have nothing to add to what Amnesty says in its introduction:

It is not just what the US does that is of concern. It fuels the abuses of others across the world.

Yes, this really is so, this really is the freedom that Bush has let reign. The freedom to kill and torture by other countries under the shadow of what America is doing.

I remember when the UK and France, with the connivance of Israel, jointly invaded Egypt to try and seize control of the Suez canal. Under the shadow of this illegal action, the Soviet Union went in and crushed the people of Hungary and their uprising.

What is happening now is on a far greater scale. We are committing illegal actions. By our illegal actions, we encourage others to follow suit.

Not all the Karl Roves and Karen Hugheses in the world can spin this story any other way.

The New York Times today has revealed the details of the torture and deaths of two prisoners in Bagram Prison, Afghanistan.

The details are so horrifying that I felt it needed the skills that Susan employs so well to describe the horror of these deaths.

Yet I have written this diary, despite these feelings, even though I am not going to express fully my outrage and disgust.

The truth is that I was sickened to my soul as I read what the journalists wrote and said in that newspaper.

So if no words from Susan, and certainly from me, would be adequate to express the fullness of my anger at these events, why publish even this small diary?

Because it is to create a sort of silence, even though the Internet does not allow for such a response. It is the only possible reaction that I can make whilst contemplating with disgust what some of our soldiers,what our governments, and what our people have created.

Tomorrow I shall let out my anger and my hatred of what we have become and what is being done in our name.

I don’t know how or why an unknown woman awaiting a death sentence in a foreign jail should suddenly capture someone’s attention. I cannot give you a logical answer as to why she, out of the many millions that need our humanitarian help, should be singled out for our attention.

Yet Amina Ali Abduladif has been singled out in this way and, therefore, we are faced with her presence here on Booman Trib at this moment in time.

I have no photograph of this woman, no appealing photograph of her two year old son looking into the lens of a camera. I only have her name.

Amina Ali Abduladif

I wouldn’t know this woman’s name if Susanhu hadn’t asked me, a bit irritatingly at the time because I was in the middle of a diary, to save a few dimes on a transatlantic call by telephoning Amnesty International in London on her behalf to  get some more information. Now I am stuck with this woman, this Amina Ali Abduladif.

I would like to walk away, pass her by on the other side of the road, but I can’t.

Well, I’m sorry because I have now stuck you with her name. Blame Susanhu, not me, and the diary that she wrote.

Who is Amina woman? Well, I got this information from Amnesty’s files:

I have three problems in not being able to walk away from this issue.

The first is that I have a lot of respect for Susanhu, one of our best diarists. I respect her not just because she writes well and  has a good sense of what is right and what is decent but because she tries to do more than just blog at it. She tries to actively make a difference. That makes me feel a little bit guilty. Hell, I am not even a member of Amnesty International, like I should be if I am a true liberal progressive.

Sue managed to get the support of two others to take an interest in this woman when she wrote her diary here. This is a start but not enough.

The second problem that I have is that I can’t convince myself that I won’t make a difference. I’ve tried, without success. I’ve asked myself if it is right to interfere in another country’s judicial procedure, how do we know the real background, aren’t there more important issues?

None of these questions give a substantial enough answer to allow me to now walk past Amina.

The third and last problem that I have comes from reading the latest update from Amnesty that says action now is urgent, important and can make a huge difference:

So I can’t walk by and leave Amina. Can you? There are very many of us here on Booman Tribune Sue got two responses fom on here and Daily Kos originally. Can we show that we can do better than that? Can One or two more of us not walk past Amina because we have an urgent comment to post on the Anne Coulter criticising thread?

Within the space of time that it takes to post a comment on here, you can make a difference If you are from the USA you can send an email to  ambassador@yemenembassy.org and in Europe you can contact the Yemen Embassy in London at  info@yemenembassy.org.uk or the embassy in your own country.

Please send a copy to the respected Editor of The Yemen Times at yementimes@yementimes.com

I shall be sending a simple email:

That took me a fraction of the time to write that it took to blog this diary. And it meant that I didn’t walk by Amina.

Please leave a short comment on here if you feel able to send an email and also not walk by. It is quite a challenge for all of us, but think what an impact we could all make.

You may like to also privately email Susanhu, who is planning more personal responses to help in the plight of this woman and her child.

How eloquently our renowned and revered Frenchman Jerome a Paris writes about the French referendum on the proposed new European Constitution. If you want detailed and well expounded information, then read his diary.

What you will get here in this diary is a classic rant. Because I am a European and people like Jerome are killing the European ideal in me.
Firstly. let me address you Tribbers directly. I know you all recognise that the growth of Europe as a united force has relevance to the shape of your future world. Beyond that, there is no real need for you to kid me that the French voting on some poxy 138 page document has any real meaning to you. Don’t worry. Armed with this limited knowledge, come to Stourbridge in the heart of the Black Country in the West Midlands in the UK  with me, mate , and you will find you know more about it and have a higher interest in it for your future in Ohio than they do, who are going to live under it.

Jerome is a Frenchman, dammit, a citizen of that most passionate of countries. You would never believe it reading his diary about one of the biggest events in European history. That is because his highly educated L’Ecole education (OK, Polytechnique or whatever) has overcome his heart. Like it has removed the heart from those thousands of elite French civil servants who shared the same excellence of tutorship.

Did the Students not rise up in France magnificently in 1968? Was their passion wasted on the next generation that Jerome represents?

Jerome is a friend. A man I admire. We believe in the same things and we share a hunger to see a new Constitution bind Europe closer together.

But I despair when I look at what mon ami Jerome has written:

What? These grey suited, grey haired old men democratically represented Europe? An unelected, all powerful bunch of overpaid and sometimes corrupt, and certainly over influential European Commission, represent the people of Europe? The grubby dealing, national aggrandisement and self-interested, and politically fearful government ministers, represent the people? The politically compromising, desperate to ingratiate, ex-soviet countries leaders represent their people?

Jerome, where are you coming from? This is a progressive liberal blog, not a civics class in a faith-based school in the mid-west.

What did these men, these sad old geezers who love their big cars, big salaries, hidden mistresses and pomp give birth to when they charged that retired, elegant former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing to produce something at the Laeken summit in December 2001? Over the next 16 months, with countless political manoeuvres and by use of that camel-producing,  so-called consensus method, the elderly politician managed to draft most of the text for a bright new Europe with a potential membership of 28 or more states. One hundred and thirty-eight or more pages on how that future should work.

That is what the men of Marseilles and Stourbridge will be asked to vote on. Don’t go to that football match, put down your wine. Read it, absorb it, understand it and be prepared to answer questions on it.

Well one, at least. “Yes” or “No”.

Too much to ask? O.K. The same grey suited men that wrote it can be trusted to tell you which is the right answer. can’t they?

Vote “Yes”. they say.

Jerome says so. and Jerome is an educated man. Welshman says so, but Welshman is a Brit and not so easy to deal with and his vote “yes” comes with a resounding rebuttal that the people of of Marseilles and Stourbridge and the rest of Europe should not be asked to answer such a question.

Look, the Constitution is a pig’s ear of a document. The compromises are those of countries seeking to maintain sovereignty and those which recognise the incompatibility of doing so with a United Europe. They are the compromises of those who see France and Germany wanting dominating influence and resist it. They are the compromises of those who see France and Germany hamstrung by their social security commitments and want a freer, more liberal and perhaps more exploitable people, but certainly more flexible workforce, if the trading bloc is to survive.

What a mess.

Jerome wants people to vote on it and say “Yes”? What, when it comes into implementation, is the ordinary man, woman and child buying into?

Is it any wonder that the argument in France has descended into a ridiculous question of vote “Yes” if you want to break the rights of French citizens to the finest and most economically ruinous social security protections in the World or “No” if you want to maintain these and sink ever further down the economic ladder. Quelle! What a choice to present.

So Jerome. We agree about where we want to see Europe go. So why did you screw it all up? For goodness sake don’t mislead Tribbers here like we are all misleading our own people that Europe is about this damnable document.

No, this is what the people of Europe should have been asked to vote on, backed by the already agreed European Convention on Human Rights.. It is contained in the first couple of pages of a document that should never have been produced, let alone let loose amongst the politicians upon which to base a referendum.

Now I could vote for that! The students of Paris would rise up for that! Jerome would be right there alongside us.

Damn these grey suited politicians, damn these French bureaucrats and damn all those who have no ideals left from when they were young enough to dream and hope.

Like all elections, the day after is not really the time to try and properly assess what the result means for the future. I am surprised that I feel slightly emotionally drained from watching the results come in – I thought that I had a greater detachment these days.

I suppose it is a compliment to Edis’ contribution to the campaign diaries that I got so committed to wanting a good showing to be made by the Liberal Democrats. I have had so many years of entering elections with high hopes and then having the disappointment of ambitions not being realised. Once again, I hoped for more than in the end the electorate delivers in terms of seats. Yet, in a day or two, I will realise that once again they have taken another real step forward towards becoming part of a three party system. I cannot help feel, however, that Kennedy has taken them as far as his personable but limited skills are able. They need a new, harder and more managerial edge to their leadership, a Dean to work on the internal policy, but the reasonable result will give them little incentive to change, I fear.

The Tories were kept out of office and still have a long way to go. This is good news as far as it goes. My concern here is that they did better than I would have liked. To some extent, it nullifies the gains made by the Liberal Democrats. More importantly, they ran a nasty campaign with its underlying theme appealing to the baser instincts of the right-wing Little Englanders whilst disguising their programme with a veneer of softer conservatism. The problem is that there is no incentive in the result for them to radically re-think their position or even change their leadership. Meanwhile, one or two of those sharp, ambitious younger Tories gain a few extra seats and prepare themselves for the future. It will remain, in Theresa May’s words, “the nasty party”.

What of the Labour Party? Weakened, yes. Yet once again, the results have not made the sort of difference that will result in immediate pressure coming on Blair. He was totally discredited in the election campaign but he will only be ousted by internal machinations within the Parliamentary Labour Party and he may hang on for a “graceful” exit until 2007. This is not the outcome that I hoped for, as the end of one of the most shameful episodes in British politics.

A detail, that I hope will not be important, is that I utterly dislike the fact that Galloway has returned to Parliament. He is a man who voices many of my concerns but I do not want to hear them expressed through him. He will damage and make vile a number of the causes that I hold to be important because he taints them with an uglier source of inspiration.

Which brings me to my real point of post-election night blues. All those revelations that emerged in the last two weeks of the election have not been mentioned by any commentator in the last forty-eight hours. “The Iraq War” as a general concept been discussed, obviously, as a factor in the election results. The fundamental deception of what happened in the run up to war, the lies and the frauds perpetuated on the people, however, have not been maintained as the defining factor of UK Election 2005.

It is as if those shocking insights that have become known have had their catharsis in the election and the media are now ready to leave this behind and move on. This must not happen. The election campaign must not be seen to have been the Michael Jackson trial of Blair and his cabinet, and the election result must not be seen as the decision by the jury. One way or another, we must keep the conventional media still hungry to hold to account those responsible.

This is what the Republicans have publicly maintained. They declare that the 2004 election was their trial on the Iraq issues and the jury gave them a free pass. So move on, they and the media demand, it is all so yesterday. Even on Daily Kos we get those who regard these events as “old news”.

That is why the cross-Atlantic tag team strategy must work. From the UK came the evidence for the Democrats to reawaken the interrogation of the untruths that have changed the world in which we live. We shall need them to keep this alive long enough for the aftermath of our own election to subside before accepting back the inspiration to progress these matters in tandem.

I just wish our own voice here was that of Congressman John Conyers and not George Galloway. Maybe we can make that so.

The Final Election Diary comes totally from Edis (saugatojas), without my distanced and rather irrelevant comments that can add nothing to his direct experience gained from the hard basic work of politics in the UK of canvassing voters face-to-face.

I will not reveal all that Edis has said to me but there is, behind the guarded exterior of what he has written, an indication of some real anticipation. Edis has caught election fever and his constituency will be one I shall be watching closely as the results come in tonight.
Less than a day to go as I write. It is a curious business being a front-line campaigner on the doorsteps as we don’t see a lot of the campaign as others do. I have seen none of the Party Political Broadcasts for example and few of the televised interviews. I do however see the expressions on peoples faces, hear what some voters are actually saying, and know some of the hidden data I can’t talk about as it breaches declarations of secrecy.

I am rather pleased by the way things are going as seen from my blinkered position.

One annoyance in my locality is a close to home ‘defection’. The hard disc on my computer has gone Tory. On Sunday it started to crash in the middle of sessions insisting that the boot sector was bad and demanding all sorts of extreme action to revert to previous states. Well so far these threats have been ‘terminological inexactitudes’ as the machine always reboots OK. Also it is enforcing a restrictive immigration policy, refusing for long periods to log on to the INTERNET. I suspect Something Of The Night has slowed down my hard disc. Overheating CPUs possibly.

Living in an overheated Tory world is hugely unpleasant I can assure you.

As a consequence this is being forwarded to you using communal resources, including the magnificent new Library at the Open University. Long live Public Services.

Back in the virtual world of reality LibDems continue to pick up support just below the poll radars. The national figures don’t mean a lot when it comes to individual seat results though. As noted before there is a lot of churn hidden by the apparent stable figures. One interesting development I have seen is that people disgusted by Blair enough to consider voting Tory are wavering a bit on this now that the moment of decision comes. Perhaps they have hard disc problems too.

One indication that the LibDems are in serious player positions is the attention from our opponents, though we are not sure who exactly vandalised my candidate’s car last week or sent the series of anonymous death threats over the last few months. The car story is appearing in a local newspaper today just in time for Thursday. Nationally there have been some extraordinary assaults on LibDems. Up in Sheffield we have the most barking example yet. The Tories (and I assure you this really has gone out under official Tory auspices) paid for an item in a local freesheet newspaper saying that Libdems wanted to impose a Dog Tax, and the aim of this was to force dog owners to turn their dogs onto the streets so they could be rounded up by entrepreneurs and turned into Haggisses – dogmeat according to this tale being what Haggis is made from. We are hoping they reprint this one in Scotland.

Not to be outdone Labour in the shape of Blair personally denounced ‘The Liberal Democrats soft policy on Drugs’. The core of the policy attacked being actually what the Labour Government implemented 18 months age which we supported. The rest of the attack bears no relationship to anything we have said so it appears Labour are relying on the Rabid Dog tendency in the media (the parts unfit even to become Tory style Haggis) to go on a moral panic before facts can be checked.

This is one of the clearest examples of New Labour’s Boggart personality. Readers of the Harry Potter books will recall the magical pests called Boggarts. They are shape shifters who when seen by someone assume the aspect of what frightens that person most. Nobody knows what a Boggart looks like when it is alone, though Labour supporters fondly assume Boggart Labour really looks like Gordon Brown. Boggart Labour however has a subtle variation on this. When seen by a potential conservative voter it assumes the shape of a stereotyped Tory Allarmist policy thus occupying the ground that Tories might otherwise occupy and leaving Tories with nothing much to talk about.

There are big frustrations being a party that raises issues the others (mostly) don’t want to talk about. Not much said in this campaign about global warming despite this being the most serious threat we face. Not much said about the threat to our civil liberties. The press cannot really handle distinctive campaign issues, it needs everyone to bunch into a narrow agenda. So it goes. But we have tried to bring in positive proposals and maybe some of these will be developed later.

Of course despite us having put out a whole range of pertinent policies some Boggart fellow travellers are talking about the LibDems being a single issue party on the subject of the Iraq war. Well the war is being talked about, it is swaying some votes, and it wont go away in the next Parliament.

I know the result I want tomorrow (ignoring the miracle result of a LibDem overall majority) and yes the chances of getting it are rather slim. I hope the Tories get a thrashing and Labour gets a fright. Best result feasible is LibDems as second largest party, Labour cut back substantially. I suspect though that the actual result will be an absolutely classic case study for supporters of electoral reform as seat by seat outcomes will be a lottery in many cases. We could double our vote and lose half our seats as one example.

But I want at the least a principled opposition that will stand up for our freedoms against the Boggarts. There is no such thing as a wasted vote that establishes and upholds a credible opposition. Whatever the overall outcome and balance of forces the core of such an opposition will be the LibDems and the more there are in Parliament the greater the victory for Britain and for those who ant to protect the freedoms that centuries of Britons have fought for and which our current ‘big two’ parties are apparently willing to sacrifice.

(Cross posted from DKos)

It seems like many weeks since I sat down and wrote the sort of diary that I like writing. The one straight from the heart, where you want to say something that matters to you personally and that you want to share.

The trouble is that I have got too immersed in the mechanics of the world of blogging, too involved with the day to day worrying about how to get site visits up on New European Times, how to define its role better, how to attract some of you great posters to put up topics on there. Then we got infiltrated by someone running an experiment on our interaction there as if we were rats in an internet forum maze and I had all the issues of how does a liberal blog handle that sort of situation and was the banning process appropriate for an interesting guy.

This is not why I started writing on my first ever forum, Daily Kos, those long six or more months ago. Something was going askew somewhere.
It is true that during this time I was able to write two or three diaries that did matter to me. Things were happening in the UK that my senses said were building up to something big. A quiet election campaign was suddenly transformed by events that will remain long after it reaches conclusion and will have repercussions that will reverberate after the vote count tomorrow.

I wanted Kossacks to know about and to recognise that in the right hands of the right people, the events that were occurring could have an impact on George Bush and United States opinion.

It concerned, of course, the evidence about the legality of the Iraq war that was demonstrated in the leaked paper prepared by the Attorney General.

Then came the even more devastating revelation of the minutes of the Prime Minister’s meeting where the decision to go to war was acknowledged as having been taken by the US way before any of the charade on decision-making took place in out own Parliament, your Congress or in front of the wretchedly reduced world forum of the United Nations.

A great lie was enacted upon our people and the evidence is now available as the proof that even deep conviction needs if it is to overturn the power of the media control of those who perpetuated this shameful untruth.

Many people responded to those diaries that urged that this could have political significance in your own country. A number of  Kossack said that they would be emailing their political representatives of whom Congressman Conyers was one. We will never know if this had an effect. As I have written before, in this sort of situation you never know what effect you may have, you can only do what your conscience says is right. And do it loudly and as often as you can.

Many of you saw the BBC Question Time programme when the leaders of the three main UK political parties had to sit and face real questions from real people. The most penetrating questions came, as it happens, from three women. The camera captured one of these, about whom I will add a comment to this diary when it is published, full on as she responded to an answer from Tony Blair “If you weren’t fraudulent, then you were criminally negligent”.

Did she, by this sharp and direct response, change anything? Did she help create a climate in the country by this lucid and precise statement, on the most widely watched election debate that we have had, and help make the rest of the media wake up and have the bravery to do what they have now done? I don’t know and she will not either. She did what she felt in her heart what she needed to do.

Now I have not started this diary to write about these issues. Yet I cannot move on before I say something else in regard to them.

One of the difficulties I had in those diaries was coping with those who would shrug them off and say the bulk of the American people would be unmoved by the events to which they referred.  It was said that they had no relevance, that we should get Blair in handcuffs before expecting the States to take any heed and did anyone really expect this to happen. I needed and got help from many of you, including Armando to whom I am grateful, to keep those diaries afloat and on track.

Well, now Congressman Conyers has taken up the mantle more effectively than I ever could. His questions to Bush are questions with which he confronts the American people:

This is the first step before the Congressman and his colleagues can address the issue of the legality of the war for which again London has now provided vital evidence.

Trust his judgement that there is not just political capital to be gained here but something much more fundamental. It is to do with the rights of Congress and the upholding of the Constitution. It is just not about recognising yesterday’s wrong but about preventing another tomorrow.

Yesterday, he got overwhelming support. He will need it tomorrow and he will need it for the next few months. Even within our own ranks he hs been forced to justify himself:

Please,let this not be just today’s issue that sinks down the recommended list as the next breaking story takes our  attention. For this story to strike home, for it to take hold in the minds of that 1.8% that you need for 2006 and 2008, it needs your sustained activism. Put it on a yellow sticky on your monitor and don’t take it down until the Republicans, not just George Bush, are out of office – everywhere.

So I want to move on, but I do not want to let go. It is all part of the same coat of shame that covers our elected governments. The issue is this: an illegal war, now demonstrated, was started in our name based upon untruths, now revealed, that, and this is the next step, cynically and deliberately exposed a nation of men, women and children to unnecessary death and grievous injury.

You have known that for some time? You have evidence for that astounding indictment of your own government?  Good, but does Congressman Conyers have to come on here and say again:

Knowing and saying is not enough. We can only get others to see by presenting he searing evidence to strip away the layers of accumulated Fox News disinformation from the eyes of those whom we need to address. We cannot wait in the hope that a leaked memorandum of a meeting in London will do it for us.

Think about what we are saying. Our countries decided on a policy knowing that a consequence would be the deaths of innocent civilians not as a collateral to a bomb or a shell that was necessarily fired in order to secure the safety of our sons and daughters in the military but as a part of a coldly calculated strategy.

I will tell you right now, I do not know if this statement is supportable. I do know that I could only argue at this time from conviction to a Republican that is so, and not from clear evidence.

Every bomb that goes off, and there are more and more of them every day, that kills the men and women and children in Iraq is an insurgents bomb – it is an atrocity committed by Iraqis against Iraqis; a terrible and ignominious harm against their own people. It is with just that truth that is how Fox News lets your countrymen and my countrymen sleep more easily at night.

There is another truth and I believe we must gather the evidence. The other truth is that we made this happen, but not through stupidity, or mistakes or by misjudgement in the way that we have characterised these events. Characterisation now willingly encouraged by the White House “I think, yes, on balance, with hindsight, it was a mistake to disband the Iraqi army and the police”.

It has happened because we calculated that it would happen. It is taking place because it was there in our Pentagon model and we decided it was acceptable collateral that we would plan to and allow for in our post-war occupation strategy.

Is it worth taking this next step that will clutter up DKos with diaries which attempt to gather and display such evidence as may be out there? Is it “old news”, made tired by repetition here? Are those of us concerned to take the laser down right to the end of this rotten war with a vigour, if without the resources, applied to investigating Gannon, going to be told it has no relevance and no interest for the bulk of the American people?

Tell me and save my time. I have a three week old DKos alumni site in its infancy, “New European Times”, that needs nurture, support and encouragement.

(Cross posted from NEW EUROPEAN TIMES)

It’s that time again to discuss the latest breathtaking events surrounding the great democratic process of the British General Election.

This week we are without Febble. She has, as many of you know, produced an extraordinary piece of statistical research work concerned with the US Exit Polls. We are very proud of her.  Sadly, however, it has become a temporary pre-occupation for her as millions of hungry statisticians across the Internet subject it to the fiercest peer review assessment that I have ever known. The paper has stood up to it and stood up to it well. Febble, I fear has not. She is a quivering wreck as she nervously opens the next email that may be the first to find flaw in her algebraic equations.

What a weird life these academics live. Not like a permanent blogger. Oh, no. We are normal. There is not a week that doesn’t go by that I don’t change my pajamas and I alwys wear an overcoat when I venture outside in them.

Take care of our Febble, guys, as you have your way with her. She is precious to us and we want her back!

So, it is just Edis and me today.

And of course Anthony Charles Lynton Blair whose anagram is the remarkably accurate  “Nobly rare. Nonchalantly shit”.

Along with him is Michael Howard, Tory Leader for whom the anagram “Oh Dear Me! A cowardly **.”(Censored to avoid offence) is very worrying , indeed.

And finally, there is Charles Kennedy liberal leader, recent father showing post natal depression, whose anagram “Lechery and likeable slanderer” only goes to show that you can get two out of three accurate but not the third. I hope.

Now at all of this might seem like pretty trivial and childish stuff. Have pity on your poor weekly diarist. There may be some Brits that will come on here and write up some detailed and lengthy piece about the political exchanges of the last week. Ignore them. They are giving you a false impression. It is like producing an impressively researched biography on the academic achievements of George Bush. No cattle, sure, but no hat either.

The best summary I can give is this:

That’s right, nonchalant shit, you have it in the bag. Just look at the latest polls:

Labour               368    -42
Conservative        180    +19
Liberal Democrat        67    +12
Or take the betting forecasts:

I mean, 33 to 1 ON Labour forming the next government and 16 to 1 AGAINST the Conservatives? Is it any wonder I give you anagrams to fill the diary?
OK, this weekend, finally and at long last, the Liberal Democrats remembered their ace card in the form of their steadfast opposition to Iraq. It is a strong one. I will applaud their poster, the best of the campaign:

Of course the Tory Party couldn’t resist jumping in and also criticising Blair, in the hope that the electorate will forget that it was their vote that gave Blair the confidence that he could sway Parliament in his favour to authorise his support for GWB. (Even more sickeningly, asked if Blair had done anything right in a Sunday Times magazine article last week, Michael Howard offered up the war against Iraq as the one example)

Will it by itself change votes. It is doubtful. Only 16% of voters have identified this as an issue that will influence them. What it will do is remind people not to trust Blair and will adversely affect his ability to influence people regarding his other policies.

More importantly, the polls allow Kennedy to concentrate on now persuading the voters that Blair is so securely back in office that hesitant Labour Party supporters can afford to vote for Lib/Dems in protest without fear of putting the Conservatives into office.

So concern for those 12,000 soldiers out there in Iraq? Well, they are yours really:

So, despite the best efforts of a minority to persuade the British public to take action NOW, in one fell swoop, by saying…..

……it sadly looks like the fear of a Conservative government is such that we will have to wait until after the election to deal with Mt Blair.

Next weeks post will be the last week of the election. I shall do my best to give you a final and more detailed summary of the issues that have emerged. Really, though, this rather sparse and flippant report today is no less than the attitude and impression of the majority of the British Public.

Markos will be there next week, giving his impressions in the Guardian. It will be fascinating how he handles it. He will feel almost compelled to be polite. Inwardly, I suspect he may wonder what on earth he is witnessing. I wish him well, good weather, much more interesting material than I have been able to find and provide here and the chance of a decent lunch if he comes up North at all.

Out of respect to Markos, I will finish on the high note of Edis’ contribution. Edis is out there in Milton Keynes, canvassing from door to door, meeting voters and distributing the leaflets on behalf of the LibDems. Salute him, he is the hero of this week’s diary.

I am cross posting the diary here from DKos because I have tried to start a campaign

The British press has again picked up the story of the legal advice given to Tony Blair on the legality of the war with Iraq has considerable importance on both sides of the Atlantic.

This questioning in the UK will have implications for George Bush and the more so if we can bring pressure on to him at the same time as it is being brought onto Tony Blair

Can co-ordinated requests be made to our two administrations in the US and the UK at the same time to increase its effect?

s it has serious implications in the US, can you write to the appropriate Congressional representative/s asking that this be pursued in the US at the same time as it is being pursued now in the UK?
This is how the story was broached in NEW EUROPEAN TIMES much earlier today:

This diary on DKos is not to seek to repeat the posts about the legality and objections to the Iraq war.  It is to make a simple but straight-forward statement to you Kossacks to try and prompt action:

1- There has to be advantage in your writing to your representatives seeking renewed pressure on the White House to release its legal advice at this time when the UK newspapers and MPs are bringing renewed pressure on Blair regarding this issue

2- Will you help?

Or is this a duck that can’t fly and should we all give up and blame the new Pope?

I hope not and that one or two of you will feel able to heed this specific call to action. I give this commitment: What you say on here can be used and sent to leading Members of Parliament in the UK.

Equally, I hope that you will make sure that your Democratic Party representatives are alerted, by you, to what is being said in the British Press right now.

Bush received advice, just as Blair did, on the legality of war with Iraq. Bush has been asked by Democratic congressmen, just as Blair has, to release that advice. Bush has, just as Blair has, claimed that this is a sort of personal advice to their administrations from their own legal counsel and protected as such.

Their response has been hand-in-glove with each other. Neither will reveal the truth of that advice.

Tell me that there is not some co-ordination across the Atlantic on this point and I will tell you that the 12,000 UK troops in Iraq are, similarly, just an illusion.

If they can work together, surely we liberals on either side of the Atlantic can?  

I have been asked to suggest how a letter to your representative might be framed.

My suggestion is one that could be sent to both Republican and Democratic Party representatives in your State (there are still some in the GOP who remain jealous of the powers of Congress regardless of who is President). I leave it to you to customise it and strengthen it according to your own views and knowledge of the recipient.

I would suggest something along the lines of:

“There is considerable discussion in the British press at this time and on the Internet regarding the legal advice supplied to the UK government concerning the legitimacy under International Law of the invasion of Iraq.

I urgently request that you renew the attempts to seek the release of all relevant documents under the Freedom of Information Act so that we may answer with authority those who question us on this issue.”

Britain is gripped in an election fever of a ferociousness that I have never seen before. There is no point in time when one can say with certainty that a choice is critical to the future of generations to come but now must surely be one of them.

The country is at war in the Middle East, has real concerns about the economic future in a world rapidly running out of fuel resources whilst environmentally threatened by our own pollution of our planet. Under financed and under performing, our public services struggle to provide the basic care and safety net that our people crave. Shifting patterns in industrial strength are causing thousands to lose their jobs in a massive decline in the manufacturing base of the country.

There are long-term concerns about the declining and ageing population that only immigration can help resolve and a new constitution for Europe proposed that poses difficult choices between loss of sovereignty and a unified continent and between a liberal economic market and social security.

Small wonder that there are deep divides showing over this election. Town hall meetings are packed with huge crowds expressing their concern and raucously making heard their dissenting voices.  Television debates and Party Political Broadcasts  show up the sharp divides in the clearly delineated politics of the competing parties.

Except that does not appear to be happening. Decide for yourself.

This week you will get insights maybe, but you are more likely to get crying babies by the bucketful and elephants sitting on lounge sofas. Don’t ask me to explain. I will have to leave that up to Saugatojas and Febble.

What we do offer in the  diary is an extremely interesting demo of the UK Election that is well worth a spin

So, we serve up to Booman Tribune readers our pink elephant of a summary of events here