ARMS AND THE MAN
18/04/05: Lancaster & Wyre's Conservative parliamentary candidate, former Member of the Scottish Parliament Ben Wallace might give the impression of being a down to earth sort of chap and comes across as some sort of country gentleman when seen canvassing in town.
In actual fact, as well as being a former Army captain he's worked in an advertising agency and as a ski instructor. More importantly, he is still EU & Overseas Director for QinetiQ (pronounced kinetic) - a defence company involved heavily in servicing the war in Iraq.
QinetiQ, Europe's largest research and technology organisation, was formed out of what has been described as the "rushed" part-privatisation of the Ministry of Defence's military research arm, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in 2002.
Private Eye (No. 1130, 15-28 April 2005) reports the sale left UK taxpayers with £100m in liabilities. Ben Wallace's fellow Tory, then shadow defence spokesman Gerald Howarth, described the sale as "a poor deal for taxpayers".
Read more...

PM DODGES QUESTIONS ON US ANTHRAX SALES TO SADDAM
6/4/05: Today's Spectator carries a further article on the Early Day Motion 300 / 303 campaign to force the government to report the US to the United Nations Security Council for breaching the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in supplying weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein. 125 MPs have signed the current motion, while a further 19 have signed a similar motion in the Scottish Parliament. Unwilling to embarass its ally in the Iraq occupation the government has been unwilling to pursue this matter and the PM has been shown to have sidestepped the issue in response to questions posed on the subject prior to the war.
Read the article
Read an article by Irene Gendzier, Professor of History and Politics at the University of Boston, who specialises in the Middle East. This prelude to her latest book mentions the campaign in Britain to hold the US accountable for supplying Iraq with the materials which fuelled its biological weapons programme.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer234/gendzier.html
A copy of the report for Parliament on the British
Government's response to the US supply of biological materials to Iraq, with details of the background evidence and a full list of the material supplied to Iraq by the US is available at: http://www.edm300.co.uk.
For EDM 303 and full list of MP signatories to date:
http://edm.ais.co.uk/weblink/html/motion.html/ref=303
Thanks to Geoffrey Holland for this item.

GUANTANAMO PRISONER'S FATHER DESCRIBES TORTURE

Azmat Begg (centre) with Vivian Yates & Billy Pye of the Peace & Progress party, organisers of the meeting..

16/3/05: Azmat Begg, the father of Moazzam Begg, one of the 4 British detainees at the notorious Gunatanamo Bay prison camp who was recently released, spoke movingly of his son's terrible experience this evening at the Gregson Centre, Lancaster. Moazzam was in Islamabad in Pakistan with his wife and 3 small children, shortly after the commencement of the bombardment of Afghanistan when the area in which he was staying was leafletted by the US offering a 5,000$ reward for anyone handing in terrorist. A group of men burst into his house and seized him and drove away with him in the boot of their car. They sold him to the US army in Kandahar and he was taken to the infamous US prison at Bhagram Airbase in Afghanistan. He was held there for a year, during which time he saw two of his fellow prisoners violently kicked to death. He was threatened with the same fate, beaten, kicked and punched daily and forced to beg for his food and water. He was kept in a cage without windows, in solitary confinement for long periods. Spiders and stinging insects were released into his cell in darkness. He has never been charged with any crime. No evidence has ever been produced against him.

Moazzam was then moved to the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp on territory leased by the US from Cuba. He was kept under constant camera surveillance in solitary confinement, with little food and water. Thanks in the main to his father's tireless campaign for justice for his son Moazzam and 3 other British citizens were recently released. However their passports have been taken from them and they still live under a cloud of suspicion - although no-one has ever specified what they are suspected of doing. 5 british residents are still held in Guantanamo - and Mr Begg said that the indifference of the British foreign office is the main factor keeping them there. Despite endless prevarication and stalling from the foreign office, Mr Begg said that the thing that kept him going was the tremendous support he received from the mass of British people with their entrenched beliefs in justice and human rights.

Azmat told us that his son is still very frail and it will take some time before he becomes accustomed to human company, and solid food again. Psychologically he has been appallingly traumatised. There is speculation that Guantanamo prisoners are deliberately subjected to mentally destabilising treatment so that they will be unable to bear witness to the torture and killings they have seen. Billy Pye noted that of the detainees held without charge or trial on British soil, over 30% developed mental illnesses where previously they had had no history of mental problems. The confusion, uncertainty and helplessness of their situation of unlimited detention without rights has a intensely destabilising effect.

The meeting was organised by Peace and Progress, a recently-launched political party campaigning on a platform of Human Rights. One of its founders, Vivian Yates, spoke at length about the loss, after 800 years, of the British people's right of Habeas Corpus - not to be detained longer than 24 hours without any charge and the right to trial. It is incredible that in 1215, when private armies roamed the land and civil unrest threatened to unseat the monarchy, stability was bought by conferring this basic civil right upon the citizenry. In 2005, when we face no identifiable local threat, our government claims that stability can only be maintained by removing our basic rights and all 3 major politial parties concur. Under the new legislation it is likely that several of the people attending the G8 Campaign meeting at the Town Hall last Monday, advocating non-violent direct action, would be eligible to be subject to the new Control Orders and indefinite house arrest without any evidence, defense, charge, trial or appeal. All three major political parties are responsible for this situation. It's no wonder people don't bother to vote.