Why Dont You Blog?

On the same day on which the Metro bus paper announced that an Oxford policy studies group said that the war on terror was disaster and had resulted only in strengthening al-qaeda the news emerged that Derek Pasquill, a Foreign Office civil servant, was arrested, on 27 September, for a series of articles in the New Statesman, the Observer and Policy Exchange.

The New Statesman sees this as an “abuse of state power” and reported that

This case is said to follow the publication in the New Statesman, the Observer and in a pamphlet by the Policy Exchange think tank of a series of articles highlighting damaging and dangerous government policy. These included an expose of British acquiescence in the secret and illegal “rendition” (Rendition: the cover up) by the United States of terrorist suspects, and various revelations about government policy towards radical Islam.

This issue raises quite a few issues. Government employees are bound by a requirement of loyalty. However, if someone finds that their government has been acting in contravention of international law, doesn’t international law require the individual to speak out. Revealing policy is one thing - disagreement over policy is a matter of opinion. Civil servants are, quite understandably, obliged to keep their policy disagreements to themselves.

Acquiescence in activity that contravenes international law is a different matter. Did the Nuremberg trials not establish that “only following orders” was not an adequate defence, when those orders contravened international law?

It is hard to believe the absurdly named “rendition” is not an offence under international law. The very word breathes 1984. There is no single English word for “kidnap and delivery of suspects to places where they can be tortured” but there are plenty of English words that could be used to describe this much more accurately.

There is a fuller story on this on Index on Censorship. The New Statesman’s political affairs editor describes how he was getting so many stories on this issue at one point that it was almost impossible to keep up with them, alerting him to the existence of dissatisfaction with existing policies at a very high level:

The documents showed that senior figures in the Foreign Office believed that Britain’s policy in Iraq had led to an increase in radicalism among young Muslims, something the prime minister was denying at the time.

…..The leaks provided me with a further news story for the Observer about plans to infiltrate extremist groups, and with features for the New Statesman on CIA rendition flights, diplomatic engagement with Egypt’s banned opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the panic that had engulfed the Foreign Office as a result of the disclosures. …

……It is difficult to imagine a series of documents that could have been more in the public interest to disclose.

Hard to disagree with that conclusion.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Popularity: 39% [?]

One thing is certain – it is not at all about doom and gloom. Above all, Satanism is fun!

Can’t you picture a vicar in jeans exhorting the youth club? But it’s in today’s New Statesman in an article with the title A brief musing on the nature of Satanic ritual

Visitors to The Church Of Satan website are often bewildered when confronted by an image of Anton LaVey fronting a group of black-robed Satanic ritual participants, their faces concealed by the donning of animal masks. When juxtaposed with the pragmatic philosophy that Satanism is purported to be founded on, the question that the curious are prompted to ask is: “well, if you don’t believe in the Devil, why all the demonic imagery?”

Well, it’s all just psychodrama and “therapy” apparently, according to the writer, but, to be honest, I don’t think that really answers the question….

The image in the aforementioned example depicts a ritual outlined in The Satanic Rituals known as Das Tierdrama. The rite was originally performed by The Order Of The Illuminati founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, and the purpose of the ritual is for its participants to willingly assume the animalistic attributes of purity, honesty and increased sensory perception.

Isn’t that as much bovine excrement as any religious appeal to authority? Secret teachings from the Illuminati, hmm? Hmm.

The Church of Satan website is ugly (purple text on black, argh, it hurts, it hurts) and so apparently self-parodying that it must be a joke.

Can we even trust these people to get their demonic backwards messages on rock albums right? No wonder it’s impossible to find the things, nowadays.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Popularity: 15% [?]