Here is the News

A fairly uninspired browse through some of the main news stories of the day.



It occurs to me that I've written very little about the news recently, and that perhaps you may be getting rather sick of hearing tales of woe regarding pets, friends, and girlfriends. And so it was that I planned to sit down and review a few of the meatier items of note from the last few weeks. However I find that I am handicapped by one or two trifling factors. Not least of these is the following; nothing interesting has happened.

Well, that's not entirely true of course. Lots of things have popped up to stimulate my interest in the last month or two. It's just that something seems to have conspired to make them all seem as bowel achingly dull as possible. Lately the papers have been a torturous read, as if every journalist had suddenly and simultaneously decided to write in the style of Charles Dickens (i.e. dull and plodding; Dickens could quite easily take up 5 pages describing the turning of a door handle...). The only thing that was reported on by journalists who didn't seem to be somnambulant was the Amy Gehring trial, and frankly that's only because the whole affair was stage managed to resemble a twisted circus where the editor of the Daily Mail was the ringmaster. And besides which, I've already bleated on about her bouts of frenzied and drunken seduction. Should I be suspicious about this trend towards making important news seem as riveting as a football match involving Middlesbrough FC? And whether I should or not, what does that leave me with to actually talk about?

Well, I suppose one should really start with the aftermath of the Taliban. In Afghanistan itself there are now peacekeeping troops in place. This is of course a good thing. However, the peacekeeping troops are Para’s. This is of course a bad thing. It was the Para’s who were acting as peacekeepers on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. It was also the Para’s who had the lion's share of action in Sierra Leone, and acquitted themselves well. Finally, it was the Para’s who opened fire on a group of Afghanistani civilians last week, reportedly without provocation. In case I'm not making myself clear, Para’s make brilliant soldiers and appalling peacekeepers. From what I understand of Para training, their aggression and killing instinct are encouraged as much as possible within the constraints of military discipline. Asking them to fulfil the role of a peacekeeper is akin to using a starving tiger to guard some sheep.

And then of course we have Camp X-Ray, the holding facility for...well, they're not being called prisoners of war are they? I believe "Illegal combatants" is the current euphemism for the 500 or so men who are currently confined there. Does anybody know what has actually been happening to them, or what the reason for their continued detention is? Donald Rumsfeld, the American Secretary for Defence and for Americans in Favour of Behaving like a Pissed Up Redneck was adamant that the men held were dangerous and high ranking members of the Al-Quaida terror network. He talked grandly of secret military tribunals to try them (and of course to try Bin Laden and Omar Mohammed, but as they are still at large they remain unmentioned in most of the press; after all, we don't want to be reminded that the entire purpose behind the conflict in Afghanistan hasn't actually been achieved, do we?) Today the Pentagon shuffled it's collective feet like an embarrassed schoolboy as a spokeswoman admitted that none of those held are actually likely to face trial in the US (apart of course from the infamous American Taliban John Walker Lindh, who's committal proceedings occurred a few weeks ago; I won't go into detail about what happened at the committal, but suffice to say the prosecution lawyers seem determined to top the ratings of the OJ Simpson trial, and aren't shy about using pathetic media stunts to do so). Now that this has been admitted, the pressure will surely grow for these men to be sent to face trial in their own countries. Who knows, maybe the supposedly unsophisticated nations of the Middle East will do something that the US has been incapable of doing and actually charge them with a crime. Remember the outcry when the Taliban held those members of a Christian Aid group? At least the Taliban had the sense of due process to actually charge them with a crime pretty much straight away.

I wouldn't object to the cack-handed abuse of power in keeping these men out of sight but not quite out of mind (who would? It's difficult to shed many tears for men who supported a brutal regime or a self-obsessed terror group) were it not for the fact that it has been handled so badly. From the beginning the US has proclaimed that they are fighting in defence of freedom and democracy. Then they enforce it using methods that would not be out of place in a dictator’s paradise. If the west wants the rest of the world to follow the rules of "freedom and democracy" then we're going to have to as well, whether it suits our purpose or not. And if we're not, then we're going to have to learn to present it in a more palatable form to the rest of the world. Anyone who has a mindset of "Fuck them; it's out right as the victor to behave in this way; everyone else is just going to have to deal with it!" can look forward to a world of increasing tensions and further terrorist atrocities. The current methods of stamping out terrorism have the same effect as stamping on jelly; it doesn't get destroyed, it just fragments and spreads further.

Israel is also simmering nicely. After over a year of pretty much continuous pseudo civil war the Israeli people are starting to realise that Ariel Sharon's methods have not led to peace and never will do. I should also make it clear that, despite one or two accusations to the contrary, I do not hate the Israeli's, nor do I excuse the atrocities committed by the Palestinians. Both sides have suffered, both sides have committed terrible crimes, and both sides deserve a lasting peace settlement. Happily, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has provided a plausible plan for peace, which everyone has tentatively welcomed. So now all we have to do is wait for some extremists to do something truly abominable in order to derail any negotiations and we can get back to the daily business of hearing another report of a suicide bomber killing Israeli's followed by the deaths of Palestinian civilians in the retaliatory action taken. Both sides are as bad as each other in that respect. The most worrying thing is that the Israeli extremists number Ariel Sharon and half of his cabinet in their number. I have a sinking feeling that this conflict is similar to a hit West End musical; it will just run and run and run.

The Enron scandal also broke and singularly failed to engulf the governments of the US and UK in an avalanche of accusations concerning corruption and toadying to big business. It would have done so were it not for that fact that it involved economics, which is boring and therefore unimportant. No? Then why has the media simply reported the scandal as is, with no effort to break down the various (frankly baffling) elements of this sorry affair into something that would be understood by the majority of people? And why is it that the tidbits of coherent information that indicate corruption in and collusion between government and big business have been greeted with a "Yeah? And?" reaction by all and sundry?

Once again, it's my favourite scapegoat; apathy. No-one is really surprised to know that our government is corrupt to some degree, and we are happy to accept it as long as tomorrow is much the same as today. Enron got found out and shafted and is now a semi-worthless piece of intellectual property. Are we to believe that all other large companies play by the rules? Or that Enron was the only company with close ties to western governments? Of course not, and by doing nothing about it we are tacitly encouraging this sort of thing to continue. Oh, there have been various people who have said that nothing has been proved conclusively and so on and so forth. Usually these are the same people who are happy to repeat smears and slanders originating from the right wing press, and pass them off as pure fact, unpolluted by the "biased liberal media". Well, just as some of the accusations that have been thrown at the US and UK governments concerning their corruption are rather too rabidly left wing (I'm sorry, but I still don't believe in any governmental master plan to shaft the people of their country in order to line their own pockets; I believe in a series of greedy and rather weak willed individuals who are looking out for themselves), attempts to claim that Dubya and his pals have completely clean consciences show the same detachment from reality. Okay, innocent until proven guilty is one thing, but in burying ones head in the sand against the tide of circumstantial evidence (The vice president refusing to reveal details of meetings between himself and Enron where he is suspected to have offered them the chance to regulate themselves; had this happened then Enron would never have been caught. Not to mention Kenneth Lay's refusal to testify for fear of incriminating himself and a number of people in office, perhaps even Dubya himself) has the effect of making one seem wilfully and selectively ignorant.

The last big (ish) story that I want to look at caught my attention for no other reason than one of the main players is my local MP. I'm talking about the story that has rocked British politics in an extraordinarily boring way; the fall and further fall of the Transport Secretary Stephen Byers MP. Fate really does seem to hate Mr. Byers; not only is he lumbered with trying to sort out numerous problems not of his own making (the railways, the state of our roads, traffic congestion in cities) but he has inherited a government department consumed with a level of infighting and cattiness that has not been seen since the backstage footage of the Pop Idol Final was released. Basically, two senior civil servants in his department had a row. One (Martin Sixsmith) accused the other (Jo Moore) of forcing the civil servants (who do not work for the Labour Party but for the country; civil servants are theoretically apolitical) to do work for the Labour party itself. Both resigned, then Sixsmith declared that he had done no such thing and generally stamped his feet in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a 4 year old in a huff. Poor old Mr. Byers then found himself having to explain just why the senior members of his department seemed to be a bunch of self aggrandising turds who were happy to use the time that should have been spent doing governmental work composing spiteful emails to undermine their colleagues. In one way this story is reassuring though; it's good to know that anyone in any walk of life is capable of acting in such an immature way. It gives me great comfort to know that if they can behave like that then so can I, and I don't have to grow up quite yet. If only I came away from every news report feeling so positive.