A Place to Stand

Top story in the Scotsman today is that the Labour party has voted "overwhelmingly" for more nuclear power.

The Scottish Labour Party yesterday agreed to support the building of nuclear power stations north of the Border.

In a surprise move on the final day of the party conference in Aviemore, delegates overwhelmingly approved a call for ageing nuclear plants to be replaced or renewed. Allan Wilson, the deputy enterprise minister and a member of the party's Scottish policy forum, confirmed that the views of the conference would be taken into account when Labour draws up its manifesto for the 2007 elections.
..........

The official Executive policy - agreed with the Lib Dems - is that there should be no decision until the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management reports to the UK government on disposal of radioactive waste. But there is growing speculation that the committee report, expected in the summer or early autumn, will say that waste can be safely stored and that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, will then decide in favour of building new nuclear power stations.

In Scotland, the final say over whether new stations get the go-ahead lies with the Executive under energy and planning legislation and ministers will be forced to decide one way or the other.
'''''''

Yesterday's vote to endorse nuclear power as part of a balanced energy policy, including "clean coal" and new, renewable technology such as wind and wave power, came after a motion proposed by the Amicus union, which represents nuclear workers.

Hugh Scullion, of Amicus, said: "It is just plain daft to rely on one energy-generating solution and future generations will not thank us for making that mistake. We support a balanced energy policy that promotes the use of all available energy in the most productive manner possible. This should include conventional fossil fuels, coal and oil, gas, renewables and nuclear."

Dr Elaine Murray, the MSP for Dumfries, said: "We cannot continue to hide forever behind a sentence from the coalition agreement that says Scottish Labour does not support the further development of nuclear power stations while waste issues remain unresolved." She said that the nuclear waste issue had to be resolved and she added that new-generation nuclear power stations produced much less waste than older plants.

The Labour decision is unlikely to split the coalition. Sources close to Nicol Stephen, the deputy first minister, believe that when the committee on waste reports, the two parties will agree that they will study its findings, taking them to the 2007 elections. However, it now seems certain that in the elections, Labour will be pro-nuclear and the Lib Dems, still their most likely coalition partners, implacably opposed to the idea.

To call this good news would be a vast understatement. Reading between the lines this is a genuine popular move from the rank & file & thus a "surprise" move for a motion produced by Amicus. Looking at the Scottish Labour website there was no motion up on nuclear but there was one on Sunday morning on Growing Scotland's Economy (good to see them at least willing to discuss such things) & I suspect Amicus may have put an amendment to it. The Labour website doesn't have anything on this yet which also suggests it wasn't planned.

This is not an immediate solution to everything. If this can only go ahead after the 2007 elections we are not out of the woods. It takes the Japanese 4 years to build a reactor but most westerners have assumed about 12, the difference being 8 years for the paperwork. With Hunterston due to close in 2011 we would in practice need a short extension even if they started building on day one after the election. We are very much in the later minutes of the eleventh hour if we want to avoid blackouts.

Beyond that there is the long term. Avoiding blackouts is only one thing - we should & could have a genuine world class inexpensive electricity system able to end fuel poverty (& hypothermia). This would involve actually increasing our reactors & stopping shelling out for nonsense like windmills. Since this was passed by an overwhelming majority a concensus on this may, despite platitudes, be achievable.

I suspect that Labour's scare from the Dunfermline by-election has concentrated minds wonderfully - they now have an important policy on which they are sensible & the SLD & SNP are clearly silly. Indeed the novel option of the next Scottish Executive being formed by Labour & Tories in an alliance designed to prevent blackouts is a real possibility. The SNP & SLD will need to put in a bit of thought.

Despite what sources close to Nicol Stephen say about studying the report all this would do would be to ensure that in the pre-election period, the SLD were to be seen to be delaying & obfuscating an urgently needed decision. He has made it clear that he opposes nuclear. I happen to know that the party has refused debate to 2 pro-nuclear motions (in which I was not involved) & one amendment (in which I was). I have also previously mentioned that the Glasgow Lib Dem Councillors broke ranks with the party leadership to publicly vote for more nuclear power. Thus the Scotsman's assurance that the Lib Dems will be "implacably" opposed to nuclear may be wrong(though going into the election with a placable commitment would look silly).

Sources close to Neil Craig say that the the forthcoming conference debate nominally on radioactive waste but actually on nuclear power as a whole will be interesting & regrets that he & Steuart Campbell (the 2 people who spoke in favour last time it was discussed) will probably be unable to attend.

A couple of days ago I said there was something where I had had an unintended bad effect on Scots politics. Last year I did a review here of various motions up for debate at conference. I was able to do this because, while not at the time a member, I was able to read these motions off the ScoTLibDem website. This year they haven't been put up. At the time I had noticed that motions were not posted by some other parties on their sites & thought it a good thing that the SLD weren't that embarrassed by their policies. I think it is a bad thing for the public that we get protected from seeing this stuff.

Fortunately;

MOTION 1 MANAGING RADIOACTIVE WASTE*

No I'm not going to type these all out. All you want to know is "Conference reiterates its opposition to the construction of new nuclear power stations" followed by 10 paras of why radioactive waste will "remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years" (it won't). This is designed to keep the debate off the subject of the 2/3rds of electricity we are about to lose - a matter which makes a substantial number of Lib Dems support nuclear - Glasgow Lib Dem councillors produced a composite pro-nuclear motion with Labour, which, while purely token, is a substantial token.

2 - TRANSPORT PLANNING*
1(b) bullet train between Glasgow & Edinburgh - maybe £1 billion, maybe £3B
(d) "improving the regulatory ability of local authorities over bus services" (from the context "improving" automaticaly means giving the council more powers - I have a philosophical difference with this)
2(d) "encouraging public transport use, walking & cycling to tackle obesity" (this is a transport policy?)
3(c) "improving the attractiveness of walking & cycling by reducing vehicle speeds in residential areas" (anybody want to define a residential area?)

3 - TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES*
"supporting", "encouraging", "baseline audit", "expansion", ""building of capacity" & generally spending.

4 - HOLDING MOTION - MOVING TO FEDERALISM*

5 - EARLY YEARS EDUCATION CHILDCARE & FAMILY SUPPORT*
Breakfast clubs before school, more after school activities, parenting support training & nurturing classes (this has some points though again it is not costed)

6 - ALCOHOL & DRIVING (Inverness East constituency)
"conference notes with dismay that in the UK drunk driving caused the loss of an estimated 590 lives....1 in 6" so cut the limit from 80mg to 50mg. (I would point out that in 1879 total road deaths were 1590, half todays, & the car hadn't been invented so on balance I don't think that is to dismaying. In any case we are talking about deaths caused by people already over the limit - what effect will cutting the limit do?

7 - ENCOURAGING CYCLING (Inverness East)
"increase funding", "increase investment", "shift the balance of the law.....treat the vehicle driver more seriously than the vulnerable road user"(I sympathise with the intention but I don't like the idea of assuming one party guilty until proven innocent), "20mph zones in residential areas"(almost everywhere is residential to somebody)

8 - ROAD USER PRICING (Referred from Federal Conference)
(Personally I don't see that road pricing systems will be much better at allocating proper costs than petrol tax since cars in congestion use faar more petrol per mile than those on open roads. It will also give government an enormous system for watching & contolling us)

9 - HOSPITAL NUTRITION (Women's Group)
"awareness", "national standards", "attention given to the wishes of patients", "recruitment of dieticians", "attention ...in line with that now given to school meals"(actually while this would take a little money & runs the risk of getting staff into additional meetings hospital food is notoriously dreadful so I would support this)

10 - ENERGY EFFICIENCY & URBAN RENEWABLES (Scottish Green Lib Dems)
"we need a revolution in renewable energy in urban areas", ""require all new homes & buildings to (have) wind turbines (etc)", "reform planning law to make micro-generation permitted development" (well I support getting rid of planning regulations too but more to allow pputting up houses rather than noisy windmills - I guess this is amatter of priorities), "business rate reductions for companies fitting micro-generation devices" (it is good to see everybody agrees cutting business rates will encourage industry - it is just a pity that the only form of encouragement allowed to be discussed is not encouraging economic success but just encouraging windmills), "guarantee MG electricity can be sold back to the grid at market rate" ("market rate" means what somebody will buy it for - what they really mean is at 2 in the morning when nobody is using we would still have to pay for it, & for all the metering etc this nonsense would cost), "tax reforms that will reward energy saving businesses"(One of the reasons for not allowing my motion is that it was "not costed" which it was - this motion shows no sign of costings & would clearly, if implemented at non-token level cost many billions annually & drive up housing costs substantially)

11 - HEALTH SERVICES IN SCOTLAND - East Renfrewshire
"extend GP hours", "fine those who fail to attend appointments"(I am amazed this got put up - since it is exactly what the health service needs it is extremely politically incorrect), "mandatory ambulance ...within a guaranteed time"(mandatory waiting list times have led to people playing around with list - you don't have time on a 999 call to play with lists), "review...competitive tendering..end cleaning staff serving food"(more union power, more demarcation dispute ....it makes me feel young), "establish gender balance ...of medical students"(so nursing courses go abegging because they can't fill 50% of places with men), "requirement of all dental practitioners to allocate time for NHS"(or what - you won't allow them to emigrate), "increase the number of UK citizens who wish to be medical, dental & nursing students...to faciltate 3rd worlders ...to serve in ...countries of need"(how to increase that number - tell them they will be forced to work longer hours & more time in the NHS?)

12 - FIRE SERVICES - HOLDING MOTION - Aberdeen South



Once again, as in every conference since devolution, nothing on improving the economy & creating wealth. Nothing on reducing bureaucracy or nannyism. Just lots & lots of niggling silly ways of telling other people what to do, & a very few good points.

* motions marked this way are from the Policy Committee so only 3 full motions from constituencies got accepted, 2 from the same contituency but the Wimmen's & Green special interest groups got on which shows how much the special interests have hollowed out what was a live party.

A letter today in the Scotsman. I am really rather pleased about this as it is about Yugoslavia & really rather hard hitting. I also submitted this letter to the Herald & numerous others. The Herald hasn't used it & Google news doesn't mention it. The Washington Post emailed they were considering it but haven't published.

They did edit out a mention of Tudjman being seated beside Ashdown at the celebration but that was only in to provide verification. This was where Tudjman drew Ashdown a map of how he wanted Bosnia to look - half Serb, half Croat, zero Moslem but Ashdown's making that public doesn't hurt him.

No doubt the Scot Lib Dem executive will consider any mention of this particular genocide to be not very nice & therefore further proof of "illiberality"
- which is the point of the letter.
_________________________________

Unacceptable Nazis

David Irving is sentenced to three years in jail for denying the Holocaust. The late ruler of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, also denied the Holocaust, but this did not prevent us helping him to get his own country and ethnically cleansing 560,000 Serbs, 240,000 of whom are still "missing". Nor did it prevent him being invited to the United Kingdom's celebration of the defeat of Nazism in Europe. Just as there are some Holocausts which may not be denied and some which may, there are clearly acceptable and unacceptable Nazis.

One of the basic tenets of marxism & socialism generally is that individuals don't matter in the by-play of political movements. I, on the other hand, think that a particular individual at a pivotal point can changes the destiny of parties & indeed nations. This is the "butterfly's wing" theory applied to politics which assumes that politics is a chaotic system, in the scientific sense. Indeed if I didn't believe that I wouldn't be bloging I'd take up gardening. A corollary of the butterfly effect is that the result is unpredictable & has only a better than even chance of being in the desired direction - I intend to do a piece in a couple of days about a demonstrably bad & unintended effect I believe I have had on the SLD.

A case in point is shown by this letter in the Scotsman a couple of days ago about Ming Campbell

I was interested to read that Sir Menzies Campbell, one of the three candidates hoping to become leader of the Liberal Democrats, received great applause for his comments on the war in Iraq to a recent hustings meeting in Edinburgh for party members (your report, 20 February).

Sir Menzies seldom passes up an opportunity to boast that on that matter he got it right all along.

But did he? If readers were to turn to Hansard (24 September, 2002), immediately after the publication of the 45-minute dossier (the so-called "dodgy dossier") you can see what he said then.

After denouncing the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, as an evil tyrant who posed a real danger to both his own citizens and people from neighbouring countries, Sir Menzies went on to say: "He most certainly has chemical and biological weapons and is working towards a nuclear capability.

"This dossier contains confirmation of information that we knew or most certainly should have been willing to assume. Saddam's possession of chemical and biological weapons, have been eloquently demonstrated by this dossier."

Sir Menzies should explain why, and at what point did he have such a dramatic change of mind.

JOHN REID
Ardconnel Street
Inverness

He may be putting himself forward as a safe pair of hands who had a good anti-war but it must be clear that, had he been leader the Lib Dems would have supported the Iraq war (as they so enthusiasticly did the Yugoslav one) it is possible that a few members would have broken ranks but I suspect very few (expulsion is harsher weapon against MPs than us volunteers). During the Yugoslav War debate Simon Hughes was the only other Lib Dem to speak & he said, obviously having wrestled with his conscience, that he was supporting the war purely because the organisation we were part of (could be either NATO or the EU) was carrying it out. That is an argument which clearly lacks moral force or intellectual consideration. It does leave room for him to have wrestled more successfully over Iraq to the extent of opposing his leader but I doubt it.

Had the Lib Dems supported the war on the basis of the WMD lie they would have lost the credibility they obtained at the last election the millions of people who demonstrated against that war would have been totally alienated from Parliamentary politics. Fortunately the leader was Charles Kennedy who took a difficult stand on principle & has been proven right. I hope his successor is not too much worse.

Link from the Telegraph here.

Tourists will soon be able to fly 60 miles into space to see the curve of the Earth and experience weightlessness from a launch pad being built in Singapore, it has emerged.


The venture is organised by Space Adventures, the US firm that sent the world's first space tourists on Russian craft to the International Space Station for week-long visits....Passengers can expect to pay about £59,000 for each sub-orbital flight.

The initiative, which will be formally announced on Monday, will ignite a space race with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which is building a spaceport in the US state of New Mexico.

Both companies plan to fly their first commercial passengers within three years.

Both companies' spacecraft will be lifted to around 50,000ft by conventional planes. Solid fuel rockets will then take them to an altitude of 62 miles - 12 miles beyond the edge of space - where they will experience four minutes of weightlessness.
....... Branson promises to send tourists into space by 2007

Now this isn't the same as orbital flight it is just up & down. Nonetheless it is a significant step that way. Firstly lets congratulate the Singaporeans. Here we have a small country (4 million people & 60 miles diamater) which should, by all the rules be a poor struggling 3rd world country & is instead a progressive 1st world nation that happens to be located in the 3rd world & is a world leader in high technology such as bio-tech & now the space race. They have done this by having leaders who supported free enterprise & high technology - things they learned from Britain in the first place.

This shows that, starting from where we were, we could hav gone so much farther (my bet would be the orbit of Pluto) had we but lived up to our history. It also shows that the future does not lie only, or even particularly, in the hands of the of the big players. This is a country smaller than Scotland which has merely welcomed innovaters. I recently did a post here on X-Prizes as a way of encouraging the space effort - you can find it in the search facility here.

In 2001 the Scot Lib Dems asked around constituencies for a "blue skies" idea that would make an innovative conference debate without committing themselves to anything expensive & I suggested they offer a £20 million X-Prize amortised over 49 years for the first Scottish vehicle to soft land on an asteroid. Part of the point of such a prize is that it costs nothing if it doesn't work & in either case is likely to get satelite manufactuers considering setting up here. I doubt if anybody in the party but I had, at the time, heard of X-Prizes & the result was only marginally more contemptous than I expected. In about 20 years time I expect our political leaders will be explaining why it was inevitable that the East Asians colonised the universe while we became a 3rd world nation. I wish them good luck - if we are unable to do anything far better that somebody is.

Singapore does have a major unearned technical advantage over us - they are on the equator. Since the Earth spins fastest there it provides rockets with extra speed (which is why Cape Canaveral is in Florida & Baikonur in Kazakhstan). This is going to be a much greater advantage at some time in the next generation. The invention of the Buckeytube (an infinitely extensible tube version of the carbon Buckyball molecule) now makes it theoretically possible to build a Space Elevator. In practice it is at least a generation away but since it will make the marginal cost of transport to geostationary Earth orbit as cheap as a train journey & as regular the incentive is great. Since geostationary orbits are only possible directly above the equator the first equatorial city to build one will be the gateway to the universe.

THE British Government must act quickly and resolutely to plug the yawning energy
gap or face blackouts within six years, industry leaders said today. The call
followed a survey showing that three-quarters of business executives, academics
and politicians believed the lights would start to go out by 2012 as the country's
ageing nuclear power stations were progressively closed down. It also comes as
the Government plunges into a study of how to feed the country's electricity
needs while at the same time meeting its international obligations to cut
emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels which create climate change.
--Jeremy Lovell, Reuters, 20 February 2006

I get increasingly annoyed at the idiocy of politicians who think they can ignore stuff like this. Regular readers may have noticed.


Found via CCNet a scholarly electronic network edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe send an e-mail to listserver@livjm.ac.uk ("subscribe cambridge-conference"

Global Village time. Peter North in Australia pointed out this letter from a Mr Brian Gallagher in Liberal Democrat News.

Liberal Democrat News 6 August 2004 Issue 816

I am concerned that due to Iraq, the Liberal Democrats have forgotten about ex-Yugoslavia, where scrutiny is needed.

The UN appeals court overturned the conviction of Croat General Tihomir Blaskic for war crimes, his sentence reduced from 45 years to 9. A similar fate may await fugitive Croat General Ante Gotovina, whose case I have written extensively on. The UN have charged him and two others with the American controlled Croat offensive ’Operation Storm’ in 1995 which stopped Milosevic, saving Croatia and Bosnia.

The UN - which supported the Serbs throughout the war - ludicrously claim Operation Storm to be a war crime. These charges should now be dropped, not least because the prosecutors have contradicted them with evidence in the Milosevic trial. Must we wait for justice at an appeal?

Extensively reported in Croatia, British Intelligence are apparently falsely claiming to international officials that Croatia is harbouring General Gotovina
in an attempt to sabotage Croatia’s EU entry. Sadly, anti-British feeling is thus rife in Croatia.

Elsewhere - and virtually ignored - Hungarians and Croats are being violently attacked by Serb extremists in the Vojvodina province of Serbia. The Liberal
Democrats should start taking a interest - and to be sceptical of Foreign Office policy.

Brian Gallagher

One of the things I am facing expulsion for is is questioning the propriety of the ICTY & suggesting that they should take action against somebody who had undeniably committed perjury (admitedly it was Paddy Ashdown) & yet Mr Gallagher is given space by the party to criticise the ICTY for an opposite decision on prosecution.

Neither Mr Gallagher nor the editor are facing expulsion even for the egregious lies that "The UN - which supported the Serbs throughout the war - ludicrously claim Operation Storm to be a war crime" - The UN expelled Yugoslavia for intervention in Bosnia (part of Yugoslavia) butdid not do so to the Croatian Nazis& the claim that it is ludicrous to call the Krajina Holocaust a war crime coyuld only be stated by the sort of Nazi who would also deny Auschwitz.

Mr Gallagher's commitment to liberal principles, combined with his role as a "consultant" to the Croatian Nazi regime can also be seen in

Operation Storm Destroyed “Greater Serbia”

Gotovina's Offensive may have been bloody but it also forced Serbia to the negotiating table in 1995.
By Brian Gallagher in London (20-Jan-06)

There is no doubt that the indictment of General Ante Gotovina, along with two other Croatian officers by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in relation to Operation Storm, has caused resentment in Croatia.
And for good reason. Firstly, Operation Storm was instrumental in defeating Serbian aggression in both Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina. And secondly, the indictment against Gotovina is in itself questionable and has been contradicted by United Nations prosecutors themselves.
First, Operation Storm. There is no doubt that the Croatian army offensive in July 1995 against rebel Serbs, based in Knin, entailed human rights offences and several hundred quite unnecessary deaths of civilians.
But with the assistance and effective control of the United States, it liberated large swathes of Croatia occupied by the so-called Republika Srpska Krajina, RSK. The RSK had seized one-third of the republic and – though this is often forgotten – ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Croats from their homes and killed many.
After dealing a death blow to the RSK, the Croatian offensive was instrumental in pushing back the Serb military in neighbouring Bosnia,
breaking the siege of the UN safe haven of Bihac and forcing the Serbs
to negotiate peace at Dayton, Ohio, later that year.
Had Bihac fallen, tens of thousands of Bosniaks would have been expelled and many perished, and the Bosnian Serbs would have cemented their strategic position. So, Croatia had to act.
This action is now characterised as a "criminal enterprise" in which Gotovina, along with the late President Franjo Tudjman, ethnically cleansed thousands of Serbs, killing them and destroying their property to ensure they never returned.
There is no question that the charges are challenging the legitimacy of Operation Storm. It is expressly mentioned in Gotovina's indictment as part of the "criminal enterprise".
But the idea that the army offensive was in itself responsible for the mass flight of the Serbian population of the RSK needs to be challenged.
It is not controversial that the Bosnian Serb leadership - not the Bosniaks - in collusion with Belgrade, urged Sarajevo's Serbs to leave the Bosnian capital in 1995. Similarly, the RSK leadership, in collusion with Belgrade, ordered out the Serb population ahead of Operation Storm.
Moreover, the prosecutors themselves seem contradictory in their charges against Gotovina. On the one hand they allege ethnic cleansing on Gotovina's part. On the other, in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, they said that Milosevic was responsible for an "overall plan" in which the Serbs would be funnelled from Croatia into Kosovo, where the Serbs were a minority. Clearly these two points are not reconcilable.
If anyone should be indicted for the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs from Croatia it should surely be the RSK leadership and Milosevic.
There is another aspect to all this - the involvement of the US. The Clinton administration provided training and intelligence for Croatia before Operation Storm. It was the US that then stopped Croatian forces from continuing their advance in north-west Bosnia in conjunction with the Bosnian army towards the Serb metropolis of Banja Luka. The exercise of the US veto showed that Washington had a supervisory role over the operation.
It is simply not credible that the US in effect conspired with Tudjman and Gotovina to ethnically cleanse Croatia's Serbs. Rather, US involvement was to ensure an end to Serb aggression in the face of European impotence. The US almost certainly possesses the evidence that would exonerate Gotovina. It should provide such evidence to the defence.
If the indictment is shaky, it is to be hoped that the judges can be relied on to throw it out. However, previous experience is not good. The Hague's own appeals chamber in the case of the Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic listed a litany of errors by the original trial chamber. The Blaskic case does not inspire confidence in Gotovina's trial, especially given Gotovina's high profile.
What compounds the ICTY's poor image in Croatia over Gotovina is its poor record in the prosecution of Serb crimes in Croatia. For the bombardment of Dubrovnik there were only two convictions, with sentences for seven and eight years. For the destruction of the entire town of Vukovar in the autumn and winter of 1991, where thousands perished in a frightful siege, the prosecutors have focused on three middle-ranking officers, the so-called Vukovar Trio. The senior Yugoslav Army commanders most responsible for those horrors have eluded indictment. Yet Gotovina's alleged crimes pale in comparison with theirs.
If Operation Storm had not taken place, a Greater Serbia would exist today. Possibly thousands of Bosniaks from Bihac would be homeless or dead. Is it really possible that saving thousands of Muslim lives was part of a criminal act?
If the Gotovina case results in a guilty verdict, Serb extremists will be able to say they were justified in waging war against both Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina, and that they were merely defending themselves. Will the legacy of the ICTY really be that Radovan Karadzic has the last laugh?


Brian Gallagher is the editor of Croatia Business Report, www.croatiabusinessreport.com. He is also a consultant to the Croatian Worldwide Association.

While he is entirely correct in his statement that the Krajina Holocaust was carried out under the "effective control of the United States" howver the average level oftruth is this mishmash is more effectively shown by the claim that the Holocaust was justified because "Had Bihac fallen, tens of thousands of Bosniaks would have been expelled and many perished, and the Bosnian Serbs would have cemented their strategic position". Bihac was the Moslem northern province which, far from being under threat from Serbs was in alliance with them against the al Quaeda press gangs sent there by Izetbegovic. On a previous occasion local Serb forces had given refuge to its inhabitants when they were driven out by our al Quaeda friends. After 10 years of NATO rule the inhabitants still suffer from the random murders of "unknown" gangs of Moslem fundamentalists & their leader Fikret Abdic is imprisoned in a Croatian Nazi jail having been convicted of prematiure opposition to our al Quaeda friends. These people, like most Kosovo Albanians are in some ways the most tragic victims of our wars becuase there is nobody to speak for them & against the genocidal psychopaths we found it convenient to set over them.

It is obvious that if I have gone to far in my commitment to liberalism, freedom & the rule of international law, Mr Gallagher has gone equally far, to his financial benefit, in his commitment to Holocaust Denial & Nazism. If the party is to maintain a balancing act between these positions they cannot expel me without equally expelling him. I will be drawing their attention to this point.

The objections Mr Fraser raises to me mentioning any evidence given or available on the Serb side of the current "trials" raises another important point as to whether Mr Fraser's position here is consistent with Scottish party membership.

A few years ago a motion was passed, unanimously, by the Scottish Conference, which is the sovereign body of the party, calling for war crimes trials in Yugoslavia to be conducted on an impartial & non-racial basis (indeed as an example we called for the indictment of the leaders of the countries which supplied the KLA with weapons while they were recognised as terrorists - this certainly includes Messrs. Clinton & Kohl). A fair trial inherently requires that the media styled "trial of the century" be reported without fear or favour & for Mr Fraser to deliberately flout this by attempting to purge me for doing so is inherently not only in total opposition to liberal principles but in violation of Scottish party policy. Mr Fraser cannot even claim ignorance since he & I were co-sponsors of this motion.

To accuse me of being "illiberal" is totally untruthful. I dispute that supporting freedom, seeking to end poverty, seeking to prevent the unnecessary killing of 24,000 pensioners a year from fuel poverty or opposing genocide can be described as "illiberal" by anybody with a trace of honesty. I believe that it would be in the interests of the party, as well as the country, to commit itself to traditional liberal policies & particularly to achieving economic success - time after time it is shown that the electorate want wealth, whereas Ludditism, bicycling, windmills & banning things are not popular Even if it is decided that such matters are "incompatible with membership of the party" this would only prove that liberalism & membership of the Lib Dems are incompatible. I must leave that decision in your hands & those of the Appeals Tribunal.

I have said that nuclear power is more cost effective & reliable than windmills, that strong economic growth is preferable to the UK's current comparative decline & Scotland's steep decline & that illegal war, ethnic cleansing, genocide & child sex slavery are wrong. If the "Lib Dems" decide that these opinions are "incompatible with party membership" then you are neither honest, competent or liberal.

Neil Craig

THE PROBLEM

I admit to expressing myself 'robustly" (I would rather say with unflinching honesty). I note that on absolutely no point has Mr Fraser chosen to dispute the factual accuracy of what I have said merely whether it is right to say it. I regard this as "illiberal". I have mentioned my party allegiance on my site but dispute that anybody reading it could reasonably conclude that I was writing purely official party policy. Mr Fraser has chosen the piece entitled "Why I Quit" as an example & I submit that anybody reading it would conclude that I had quit the party. Nonetheless, to satisfy your objection, I have now put into the heading of my blog a statement that the party wish it to be known that this is not an official party site.

Mr Fraser has said that I "frequently" mention my party membership in letters. This is untrue. It may be that I have done so once, though I confess I have no memory of it. Nonetheless if Mr Fraser is in even the slightest degree honest I must have done so & I am forwarding this paragraph directly to him so that he can ensure he presents his evidence of this - or not as the case may be.

My reasons for not mentioning party membership in letters are twofold. Firstly because I think starting every letter with a reference to my party membership would tend to discourage publication. Secondly that I generally, at least while a party member, while not restricting myself to parroting the party line attempted to paint the Lib Dems as better than the alternatives.

I include a letter I had published in the Scotsman shortly before the EU election in which I portrayed the Libs (& more equivocally the SNP) as more supportive of economic success than Labour & Tories. In light of present events this may have been unfair to all 3 but at the time I believed it. No party member, at the time, suggested that this letter would have been improved by mentioning my previous allegiance. I have not previously been told, even by Norman, that this wasletter was harmful.
____________________________
LETTER IN SCOTSMAN 31/5/4

Political contempt


Being a bit of a political anorak, I went to the hustings meeting in Glasgow last week. All but two of the candidates - Elspeth Atwooll (Liberal Democrat) and, more equivocally, Alan Smyth (SNP) - came out firmly against a growing economy. Even Struan Stevenson (Conservative), from whose party we might expect more stodgy common sense, weighed in with the opinion that it just allowed the Chinese to buy more of our concrete rather than conveniently starving as they used to.

There was a time when politicians were, at least publicly, committed to reducing poverty. This matters more to the really poor of Shettleston, who are thereby robbed of a future, than to the chattering classes of Hyndland, who already have it. Nonetheless it shows a contempt for ordinary people among the political class that feels it proper to make people's lives harder.

...............................................

I absolutely dispute Mr Fraser's claim that anything I have said is "illiberal" unless Mr Fraser is allowed to so completely redefine the term that the founders of the movement are classed as "illiberal" as discussed above.

Mr Fraser objects to me including links on my blog with which he disagrees & for whose opinions he holds me liable. This is an argument from "guilt by association" which I absolutely reject as illiberal. Voltaire said "I absolutely disagree with everything you say & will defend to the death your right to say it". This statement is in many ways the basic axiom of liberalism & I will not, under any circumstances, accept that the party has a right to tell me who I may or may not bloglink with. By this argument does the fact that Paddy Ashdown & Osama bin Laden frequented the office of the Bosnian Moslem leader prove that they share philosophies?

In any case I provide links to Slobodan-Milosevic.org, England's Sword, Antiwar, Jerry Pournelle, Lenin's Tomb & the Adam Smith Institute. I obviously cannot endorse all their views. I doubt if there is any subject on which these would all agree.

Sample Postings on ‘A Place to Stand’



13/11/05 ‘Communists Support the Right to Bear Arms.’ Paddy Ashdown a perjurer and condoner of child sex slavery.
This merely reprints evidence presented in court & not now disputed that Mr Ashdown did say under oath that, standing on the Albanian border, he saw Yugoslav soldiers ethnically cleansing named villages & that said villages are not visible from that location due to mountains being in the way. This evidence is literally rock solid. The other incident is that a woman was indeed found, in a UK court, to have been wrongfully dismissed for objecting to a member of Mr Ashdown's administration purchasing & keeping a young girl as a sex slave. This was reported in 2 British newspapers. Mr Fraser makes no attempt to dispute the facts. He has elsewhere stated his attitude towards child sex slavery.

7/11/05 ‘Islamic Fundamentalism…’ An extraordinary attack on Lord Bonomy.
Exactly where in the Lib Dem constitution does it say that when a senior judge makes a particularly foolish statement we are required not to object? Lord Bonamy said, from the ICTY Bench, that fundamentalist Islam does not pose a security threat. I suggest that this is a statement, particularly in relation to Mr bin Laden, with which robust disagreement is reasonable.

24/10/05 ‘Glorious Defeat at the Lib Dem Conference…’ Neil’s speeches at Glenrothes were right (he says).
Of course I said they were right. Am I required to say that my speeches were wrong? These were public speeches made where the party had invited journalists to attend. They were in no way confidential. I spoke in favour of Free Trade & against having government political correctness officers throughout Scottish business & while I was heavily outvoted my opinions were & are consistent with the traditional Liberal position. Eileen McCartin said in her summing up that the position I was defending was no longer liberal because "principles change with time". I disagree.

I strongly suspect that it this, as much as the official charges, is the reason for the present circumstances. I spoke to a conference, whose mind I believe was already made up, to say that the motion, that North Korea & Burma are producing better economic examples than South Korea & Singapore, was wrong & that the motion saying that political correctness inspectors in Scottish business committed to satisfying the "expectations" of "special interest groups" would "increase productivity" was also wrong. When both motions were passed overwhelmingly Mr Fraser decided to use the expulsion card he has kept in his pocket since May. This redifinition of "liberalism" & purging of those who disagree is not liberalism in any sense - it is Orwellism.

Under Chairman Mao party members, whose opinions were found to be different from those of the Party were forced to engage in self criticism sessions but his party was not affiliated to the Liberal International. It is worth pointing out that I specifically invited those who voted for the motions, including Mr Fraser, to put their opinions on my blog - that none chose to do should not be held against me.

10/08/05 ‘So the Australian Media Censor…’ Neil denies the Srebrenica Massacre took place.
I do not deny that a massacre took place at Srebrenica. That thousands of unarmed Serb civilians (3,800 named individuals have been identified) were killed by Mr Oric, many by beheading, has been stated by the NATO general during the Milosevic "trial". Nor do I dispute that some Moslem soldiers died also - it would be a strange war were that not so. However it is a matter of fact that what were initially described as mass graves were empty & that, of what was initially described as a garrison of 7,500, 7,000 are now known to have escaped. I dispute that I have any duty not to mention the facts - indeed I deal with this principle later.

03/8/05 ‘Lies, Damned Lies…’ Neil attacks the Guardian on the same issue.
Ditto


01/08/05 ‘Srebrenica Massacre a Lie’
Ditto


24/5/05 ‘Question Time Lie’ an attack on Matthew Taylor who stated that in his opinion the war in former Yugoslavia was legal.
He stated that launching an aggressive war against Yugoslavia without a UN mandate was legal but neglected to say why. Since Nuremberg aggressive war has been prima faci a criminal act. I asked both him & the party to say why this one isn't but have yet to receive a reply. I would have been perfectly willing to post a reply. If Mr Fraser is treating all races equally he MUST be calling for the expulsion of all members of the Lib Dems who say that launching an aggressive war on Iraq without a UN mandate is illegal. I look forward to watching his campaign with interest.

I do not believe that there is a single member of the party who is honestly convinced that that war was legal & or anybody who has fully investigated it who believes it was moral. The refusal of Mr Taylor or any party representative to say why it was is indicative. I repeat my offer to post their response on my blog. So long as the party claims to support the rule of international law this is going to continue to eat away at its credibility & produce questions like the audience remark on Question Time.

03/04/05 ‘Hail, Hail…’ the Pope gave money to and smuggled arms for Croatia.
He has made an error here. While I have reprinted publicly available evidence that the Pope provided an unsecured long term interest free loan of $2 billion to Mr Tudjman the article on Caritas arms smuggling referred to the shipment of 1,500 mortars allegedly stolen by person or persons unknown from a NATO base, not to Croatia but to the KLA. identified as a Moslem terrorist organisation. This is entirely a matter of public record, although no UK media outlet has felt it of sufficient interest to report.

I have, on reconsideration, already removed this item on the grounds that the title was somewhat flippant & that my reference to the theological implications for the soul of the Pope, while doctrinally sound, were inappropriate bearing in mind that I am a nonbeliever. Nonetheless the article is factual & Mr Fraser has made no attempt to assert otherwise.

21/11/04 ‘Why I quit’ Neil’s view of why he left the Party in 2004.
Is it seriously suggested that I should not have given reasons or that this could be mistaken for official party policy.…

I will answer Mr Fraser's points in order

BACKGROUND

It is true that I left Maryhill party as a result of their refusal to submit for debate 2 motions, One calling for action to encourage mass production techniques in housing & the other calling for several actions to improve our economic performance, primarily a reduction in business tax. Both had been previously submitted but not called (though the Enterprise one was on the Autumn preliminary agenda). I felt that I could not honourably work for a constituency so opposed to what I consider progress. It is a convention that a constituency party need not fully agree with a motion to be prepared to see it discussed.

I profoundly disagree with Mr Fraser's opinion, which he obviously still holds, that encouraging growth by tax reductions is so extremely "right wing" a policy that nobody within the party should even discuss it. I point out that this policy is precisely that proposed by Adam Smith & the founders of the party & that for Mr Fraser to call it "illiberal" is to make liberalism an entirely different philosophy from the originators of the term

Mr Fraser's claim that the motions were "badly drafted & not thought through" is in no way truthful. As said the Enterprise motion had already been preliminarily selected for debate at conference. Moreover both motions had had been drafted together with Debra Storr whose job is to ensure that motions debated are properly drafted. She can confirm that she pronounced both motions, after she had finished with them, as satisfactory for debate (though she thought the committee might choose to split the housebuilding one in 2). Indeed after she had finished I suggested that she should publish & put the notes on drafting that she had given us on the Scotlibdem site - she did this which contradicts her endorsement of allegations against me so demeaning of her own abilities. This was done because a previous draft of the Enterprise motion had been rejected by the Conference Committee on the grounds that "it did not call for a change in policy". Far from not being "thought through" the motions had been subject to extensive debate & revision within the constituency over nearly 2 years. Mr Fraser participated in the drafting meeting with Debra.

I accept that my annual membership ran out in April. I was not informed that Maryhill had decided in May that I should be expelled. Shortly after I quit the SNP adopted a policy of cutting business taxes to stimulate the economy, very similar to my proposal.

In a subsequent email correspondence with Mr Robert Brown MSP in which I suggested that it would be unwise for the Lib Dems to wholly abandon this classic liberal position to the SNP, particularly in light of the fact that it was being extremely successful in Ireland (Ireland's economy has grown by just under 20% since I originally proposed my enterprise motion -see http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=032805E ), He requested that I rejoin the party & re-present my proposal. This proves that he did not believe it had not been "thought through". After consideration I did this in July. I related this in my blog on 1st September describing Mr Brown only as "a senior member of the party" but I think his action in endorsing Mr Fraser's lies about my motions deprives him of any right to anonymity.

As Mr Fraser has eloquently proven, it would have been impossible to carry out Mr Brown's request as part of Maryhill. It should be pointed out that Maryhill itself has many members who do not reside in the constituency, which has been of assistance in their maintaining conference voting rights.

Indeed the extraordinary meeting which decided that cutting business taxes should not be submitted again, because it was "to right wing" to even be discussed, was arranged by Mr Fraser in the home of a member who lives many miles outside the constituency & takes no part in its activities but broadly supports Mr Fraser's opposition to traditional liberal economic policies.

I regret to say that, despite what, in honour, I must presume to be Mr Brown's efforts on behalf of the motion he asked me to present, neither motion has, yet again, been chosen by the Conference Committee. Indeed, as on every occasion since devolution, no primarily economic matter will be discussed. His influence in the party organisation must be much less than generally believed.

There are however 2 about bicycling. Of course bicycling might be a classic liberal principle - I don't know how many motions there were at the Liberal conference in 1906 about bicycles.

I regretted to note that, on finally being allowed to see the charges against me, it turns out that for the most serious one, that of having had "illiberal" letters published in the newspapers (readership of my blog is unfortunately orders of magnitude smaller) no attempt whatsoever had been made to produce any evidence.

Cynical though I had been about whether this enquiry was, or was ever intended to be, in any way impartial or of integrity I was taken aback to find that the party executive could unanimously support this accusation on the basis of absolutely no evidence. This confirms my suspicion that my sole fault has been to support a fairly traditional liberal position, on laissez faire economics, individual freedom, national freedom, the rule of international law & technological progress at a time when the party is being run, at least within Scotland, by people who are intent on jacking up the name "Liberal" & slipping an entirely different vehicle underneath.

Further than this I submit that the new vehicle is one which they believe cannot be sustained in open debate. Hence the refusal of debate at conference etc. In this they are quite correct. That is why the opposition to my position has not been by debate but by compulsion.

Liberalism, the original sort, is sweeping the world because it offers freedom, wealth & a decent society people can be proud of & that is what the overwhelming majority of citizens want. Economic decline, windmills, dependency culture & visiting government busybodies telling them they can't smoke in their own homes is no substitute.

Nonetheless I am forced to defend my letters against the accusation that they (all?) are "illiberal". In reverse order from the date of the accusation - all items are on my blog archives:

On 29th November I had a letter in the Herald, a few days earlier in the Scotsman, also on the 24th (Scotsman), 22nd spoke on Radio Scotland against Alex Salmond, 3rd Nov (Scotsman) & 22nd July (West End Mail) all supporting nuclear power. I am aware that the official party policy is that we should support the closure of Hunterston & Torness & of the high emission coal generators leading to the loss of 2/3rds of our electricity. We would then rely on windmills (or unspecifiable methods) which currently supply under 2%, unreliably, to make up the shortfall. However I submit that the question of whether party leaders can guarantee that there will be no shortfall is not a question of principle but of engineering. My position that we should seek to halt the current death, by fuel poverty, of 24,000 pensioners a year, by producing affordable electricity, is much more liberal, not to say humane, than that of the leadership. Former executive member Steuart Campbell felt forced to resign from the party over nuclear policy but that is not quite the same as expulsion.

On 17th November (Herald) I wrote against the planning system preventing houses being built taking as an example knocking down particularly well built brand new houses because they did not fit council plans. This is in line with my housing motion, which unfortunately, the party has not been allowed to debate. I made no specific mention of the Lib Dem position. I submit that the idea that the state should not massively artificially limit homebuilding is classic liberalism.

On 17th September (Herald) I wrote very strongly in favour of the proposed reduction in business rates saying "it is particularly remarkable since it was Jack McConnell, in his previous post, who was responsible for increasing rates in the
first place. While the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility prevents us knowing for sure, it seems likely that the accession of Nicol Stephen, who, while running for Lib Dem leader, pledged support for business tax cuts, may have played a part in this" & then going on to call for a corporation tax reduction.

Present events, including the refusal to allow Enterprise to be discussed at Conference & that allowed motions are would increase regulation, taxes, government spending enormously & prevent the introduction of modern technology make it less likely that the leadership actually sincerely supported pro-growth policies as anything other than a reaction to the SNP's more thorough adoption of the Irish example. That would suggest that the proposed future rate cut back to the level we started at is merely token.

The letter was intended to draw attention to what I consider to be a news item favourable to the party & whether it was correct or not I still believe it to be favourable.

On 15th September (Herald) I wrote that the New Orleans hurricane should not be blamed on global warming. What the Lib Dem position on this is I don't know but this is the scientific "consensus". On September 3rd I wrote in the Scotsman that Ireland's growth was due to free market policies not to EU cash, pointing out that the EU money went mainly to agriculture, the slowest growing part of their economy. This is classic liberalism - it is also correct.

On 22nd August (Scotsman) I wrote congratulating Hollyrood Speaker George Reid on persuading the Executive to look at how other countries achieve economic growth. I suggested looking at examples outside the EU as well as within - I dispute that this was "illiberal".

On 1st August a letter I had sent to the entire British national & much of the US press was published by the Morning Star alone (what Mr Fraser would call a "right wing" newspaper). This was about Nasir Oric, the Moslem commander of Srebrenica responsible for the genocide of at least 3,800 Serb civilians, who showed journalist videos of him beheading men, women & children (as reported by the Toronto Star & Washington Post). Supporting evidence was given on oath by General Marillon, the ranking NATO general in Bosnia at the time. I suggested that this person should have been charged over this genocide. Under the benevolent rule of Mr Ashdown he returned to civilian life as the owner of what is, I suspect euphemistically, called a "night club".

I dispute absolutely & without possibility of compromise that to be opposed to the deliberate beheading of children on a racial basis is "illiberal". I suggest that the only political movement which could support such obscenity is a Nazi one.

Our transport minister, Nicol Stephen, has announced that the Executive are going to subsidise air tickets to people living in the Islands & Caithness by 40% although there will be no reduction for outsiders (ie tourists).

In 2004 I spoke at conference & later sent a copy to Mr Stephen saying

Currently we subsidise these airports by 2/3rds of their operating costs & have done so for years with no disapproval from the EU. The rest is raised from landing charges. Unfortunately traffic at these airports is so small that the landing charges per person are nonetheless prohibitive. I checked recently & found that a flight to Barra would cost £27 but it would cost £33 to land.

Much of the cost of these airports is because they have the same regulatory framework as larger airports. For example approximately 20% of running costs are for security. This, for example means £16.62 is spent per head on keeping bin Laden out of Tiree. Equally each airport is required to keep its own fire brigade. Firemen at Heathrow expect to go through their entire working lives without having to attend a fire – nonetheless when dealing with 30,000 people a day this is a necessary cost. I would argue that it is not when dealing with 5,000 people a year. There are other ways to save expense such as putting the management out to tender & putting runway maintenance in the lands of local authority roads depts. If we could reduce running expenses by 1/3rd these airports could be run with no landing charges at all

The Scottish Parliament has authority over this regulatory regime. The whole point about devolution is that from a nearer perspective it is possible to produce solutions which would not be apparent from London. This is a clear example & we should use it.

High landing charges are the main thing detering low cost airlines. In the example I gave earlier the total cost was £60. Were there to be no landing charges it would be £27. Were a no frills airline involved I expect it would roughly halve & were the number of passengers to skyrocket, as seems likely it could halve again.

One difference between the proposal & the current intention is that under the proposal costs would probably be reduced considerably further, at least if the effect of no-frills air was duplicated & that the reduction would apply to everybody thus having a real effect on the economy. The other is that, at roughly half of the subsidy already being made to Island airports the cost would be under £8 million whereas the current offer is costed at £11 million. The reason for the difference is that in my proposal the subsidy is applied at the earliestpossible point in the process, prior to landing charges, whereas this is applied at the end, ticket price, after all the middleman costs have gone through.

Why the less effective more expensive method was chosen I couldn't say.

Some time ago the Sunday Herald did a poll on nuclear power & Friends of the Earth decided to do their bit to help democracy along by sending out

-------------------------------------

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 11:12:01 +0000
From: Friends of the Earth Edinburgh
To: list / FoEE Events list TEMP: ;
Subject: Action Alert: Vote in Sunday Herald poll on Nuclear

Hello

The Sunday Herald has an online poll on whether Scotland should use Nuclear
power. Please take a moment to vote NO: - see http://www.sundayherald.com/


---------------------------------


Having worked once (apart from my vote) a bit later the BBC did an item on nuclear power which also contained a poll & again FoE sent out this email

Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 11:46:04 +0000
From: Friends of the Earth Edinburgh
To: list / FoEE Events list TEMP: ;
Subject: ACTION ALERT: BBC/nuclear online poll

*ACTION: BBC/nuclear online poll

BBC have an online poll asking if we should expand nuclear energy - so far
nuclear is winning 70/30%. Do your bit and vote no on the link below:

The answer is of course: NO

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4638610.stm?dynamic_vote=ON#vote_4638750


*please pass this message to all your contacts

Naturally I again voted & passed it on.

The real matter of interest here is that, at the time I voted, the BBC voting was running 70/30 in favour of nuclear. I assume without the benefit of FoE's opinions it would have been even better. The BBC have decided to remove the poll & checking the comments page find it to be overwhelmingly anti-nuclear. While the BBC do give their word that the comments they choose to allow are a balanced selection of those received but I know from experience that somebody holding my views (ok then - me) has a statisticly zero chance of being selected. I would assume that the removed poll results remained at least as overwhelming & the comments could be expected to be similar.

// posted by neil craig @ 5:45 PM 0 comments

The by-election triumph of the Liberal Democrats in the previously safe Dunfermline seat deserves all the credit going.

Willie Rennie
Lib Dem 12,391 35.8% +15.6
Labour 10,591 30.6% -16.8
SNP 7,261 21.0% + 2.1
Conservative 2,702 7.8% - 2.5

Swing Labour to Lib Dems 16.2%
Swing Conservative to Lib Dems 9.1%
Swing SNP to Lib Dems 6.8%

John McAllion (SSP) 537
Ian Borland (UKIP) 208
James Hargreaves (Christian) 411
Tom Minogue ( Abolish Tolls) 374
Dick Rodgers (Common Good) 103

They didn't just overturn a ten thousand majority but turned it into a decent 1800 Lib majority in what used to be considered a socialist heartland. this is less than a year after the general election & in the midst of a leadership crisis which some people had said would lead to a "melt down" of the party's vote.

Voters do often, even usually, vote differently at by elections because they believe they can register dissatisfaction without bringing down the government. They also had what has been accepted as a particularly good candidate & party machine. It must be remembered that at Livingston & Cathcart they didn't get anything like this. I don't think anybody would expect a repitition of this sort of swing at the Scottish election but even half this from Labour to the Lib Dems would leave them as marginally the largest party. I think even that is being optimistic but they will certainly be able to go into Holyrood next time not just as kingmakers but as potential kings. Will Rennie the victor said in his speech that "People are fed up with Labour for taking them for granted for far too long, they are fed up of too much spin, and the people of Dunfermline and West Fife have spoken for the rest of the country with their views on the Labour government." I think this is dead on - it is not that the Lib Dems are that popular but that Labour aren't. The Lib Dems will now be the target of all parties & are going to have to be careful that they do not fumble the ball.

This will also put tremendous heart into the UK party since if they can do this the leadrship crisis is clearly not such a crisis. It was noticeable that Charlie Kennedy campaigned hard here (moreso than his replacements who after all had commitments of their own but I don't think anybody could have blamed him if he had stayed home). He was genuinely very popular on the doorstep which shows that he is still their star - this would make it very tough if Ming were to become leader since the relationship between the 2 is hardly trusting. Fortunately this seems much less likely since Chris Huhne is now leading Menzies 38% to 34% (this would not normally be a sure lead but since he achieved this from the position of never having been heard of a fortnight ago is pretty magnificent).

For Labour this is a disaster & then some. Having, for a decade chased "essex man", "mondeo man" & other pepsylogical chimeras they have lost the unswerving generations long loyalty of their core vote. With the SNP redefining their commitment to socialism into non-existence the idea that Scotland is intrinsicly socialist & Labour its natural representative is gone. A lot is being written about how Gordon Brown, who campaigned even longer than Kennedy has been wounded but what about Jack McConnell? "Lucky Jack" has run out of luck. He will probably survive until the election but he has never looked like a leader of any calibre merely floating on a wave & that wave is clearly going out. Perhaps the best thing for Labour would be to lose next time & spend a few years redefining them selves & hoping that their replacements screw up. If Wendy Alexander had the cojones she could try an immediate leadership coup before the pre-election period but the fact that she didn't stand against him before suggests she hasn't.

For the SNP this is more a dose of reality & a sign of long term problems than an immediate disaster. In fact their vote went up. What has happened is that the Libs have confirmed the Westminster result that made them the main opposition (as well as part of the government) & confirms the SNP as the 3rd party. However if they are aiming to be part of government, then the Libs, who are their likely partners, being strengthened to the cost of Labour, always their opposition, is a good thing. The immediate problem for the SNP is that they are, by their constitution, prevented from allying with the Tories. Putting together a post election coalition against Labour will be difficult - putting together one against both Labour & Tories is immensely moreso. The long term problem for them is that their main policy, independence, is not popular. I think they will have to vie with the Libs for the position of most competent opposition party - that would involve pushing their extremely sensible pro-growth policy & publicising some of the more loony policies the Libs have passed at conference - deciding that we need new nuclear stations too would help.

For the Tories it is a disaster. This happened in the height of the Cameron honeymoon & the Lib leadership crisis, with them high in the polls & the Libs down. If they get a swing against tham now survival in Scotland is the best they can hope for. Fortunately for them we have PR in Holyrood. They would be best advised to think about what role they could have in a coalition (or perhaps outside it but supporting a minority government) & what price they will demand for it. They could still play kingmaker & a Labour Tory deal is an option they could keep up their sleeve.

The SSP proved again that they are a one man show who have fired the man. I didn't have a high opinion of Tommy Sheriden but he would never have been stupid enough to call for the destruction of our national flag. They are toytown Marxists whose only ability is to throw tantrums.

It should be noted that the "also standing" parties got nearly 1,000 votes between them which is very high. This tends to substantiate the suggestion that Labour lost the support of the voters rather than anybody else winning it. Mr Rennie's statement shows he knows this - will the rest of his party?

Another Scotsman letter today rather spoiled by the fact that it is published right after a letter from one of the guys I accuse of not answering Niall Walker's question.The edited the "Would the Scotsman" intro into "It would be silly" but still left the question mark

Would the Scotsman publish a letter that suggested that Scottish tourism exploit the fact that Arthur's Seat, at 30,000 feet, is the world's highest mountain? Letters from Messrs Sadler & Dunion (23rd & 28th Jan) that nuclear reactors produce up to 40% as much CO2 as gas are proportionately even sillier. They have, unsurprisingly, failed to produce any evidence for this despite Cllr Walker's remarkably restrained request that they do so. The fact that no anti-nuclear groups have written to dissociate themselves from what they must know to be an untrue claim speaks volumes for the entire movement's credibility.

I have sent a reply to the reply pointing out exactly why the Professor quoted to support the 40% claim (A) didn't quite say that & (B) was wrong anyway.
------------------------------
This went unpublished by the Herald in response to a similar letter in the Herald claiming that the uranium will run out, this time in 15 years> I am glad to say that they published a response from Sir Donald Miller who, I found later, is the former boss of Scottish Power.His reply better than mine - more figures & less flamboyance - still I would have liked them to do both.

I believe that one should be willing to defend one's views robustly, indeed I have on occasion been accused of it myself, so I have some cheerful appreciation of David McEwan ('Nuclear power is the greatest idiocy" ever - letter Monday). On the other hand he does seem to have achieved a uniquely high ratio of things that just ain't so. Surprising in a letter so long.

He starts by conjuring up the vision of spaceships going to the Moon to find uranium ore. Attractive, & relatively feasible as a return to the Moon may be it is hardly the only, let alone best place to look for uranium.

He then correctly says that all a reactor does is to bile a lot of water, which I suppose is true in the same way that all George Bush does is to throw a lot of sticks at people.

However the main error, on which he dwells at considerable length is that we are going to run out of uranium real soon - he says 15 years. This is nonsense, rubbish & claptrap, not necessarily in that order. Uranium is not going to run out in 15 years or fifty, or five hundred, or 5,000 or even 5 million. Uranium is, even on the Earth's surface, relatively common. The point is that you don't need uranium in large quantities. There is enough uranium dust in a spadeful of coal to produce more power than would be produced by that spadeful of coal. It is much more common in rock, particularly granite, which is why you are exposed to considerably more radioactivity in Aberdeen Cathedral than in Hunterston. It is vastly more common in ore - that is why it is called "ore". As a purely theoretical exercise Professor Bernard Cohen of Pittsburgh has calculated that by extracting the radioactive impurities in ordinary seawater we could keep our current nuclear industry going for 4.5 billion years. This is not the upper limit since, being a relatively heavy material it tends to be more abundant in ore underground. It is what keeps the Earth's core molten. The Sun is expected to explode in a mere 5 billion years. This is a more urgent problem than running out of nuclear power.

Except that we are currently on track to run out of it if 2023 when our last reactor shuts down.

Boiling the seas is not the most practical way to go, unless, of course, the alternative is windfarms or other "alternatives". Alternatives are called "alternative" for good economic reasons. There is no difficulty in mining. We could even afford to mine more expensive ores since the actual cost of our fuel works out at about 2 hundredths of a penny per kilowatt hour. Currently uranium prices are at an all time low which does not imply shortage.

Just as his fears of our imminently running out of uranium, which is rather like running out of rock, are unfounded the idea that we will have "hundreds of thousands of tons of waste" lasting over "thousands" of years is inaccurate. Reactor waste, the only sort that didn't come out of the soil in the first place comes in very small quantities, about a cubic metre per reactor year, but precisely because it is highly radioactive it has a short half life & will be down to safe levels in about 50 years. Our descendants 4 billion years from now need not worry.

We, five years from now, should. He is wrong to say that this is a problem only for England about whose difficulties we Scots may happily chortle. The opposite is true. So long as France is willing to make nuclear electricity at 1.5p a unit & sell to the south of England for 4 they are comfortable, & I suspect the French will not become unwilling to do so. We on the other hand are to far away & with the closure of Hunterson & Torness & some coal stations, are shortly going to lose 2/3rds of our electricity. It is grossly irresponsible of politicians to ignore this, presumably in the expectation that their careers will already be over then. 2,500 pensioners a year currently die in Scotland annually from fuel poverty but that will be dwarfed by what is coming if we choose not to replace & expand our current reactors.

Amusing though Mr McEwan's letter is the way in which such scare stories are preventing us, by which I mean the human race as well as Scots, achieving our potential is the great tragedy of our civilisation. There is no reason why we should not all be much wealthier, more comfortable, healthier & less worried than we are now. Yes, & have the Moon & Mars & points beyond as well. We only have to stop nursing our problems to keep them warm. Look at them honestly, admit that most of them are smoke & mirrors & solve the others. We are descended from people who did more with less. We should live up to our potential.

I am reposting this item which is the first thing I ever posted (which is why I got the typecase wrong) & is still available in my earliest archive. The reason is because this motion is the official policy of the Scottish conference on Yugoslavia. While it is only advisory for the party as a whole (& they decided to ignore the advice) Conference is legally the sovereign body of the party so that it is legally the policy. It is a technical matter since (A) no part representative has ever, to my knowledge, referred to it & (B) the leadership often make up or change policy on the hoof & indeed have to because circumstances don't hold still (for example nicol Stephen's policy of cutting business rates has never been put to Conference although he did refer to it when running for leader).

However it does impinge on the claim that my position on Yugoslavia is "incompatible with party membership".

I am also proud of it, I had to resubmit the motion several times before it was granted a "dead" debate time. It has been ignored ever since. Nonetheless I believe it was the first time a major UK party criticised the corrupt "war crimes trials".
___________________________

SPEECH TO SCOTTISH LIBERAL CONFERENCE 30/3/01

BY NEIL CRAIG

SINCE THE PRINCIPLES IN THIS MOTION ARE SUCH THAT IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT FOR ANYBODY IN OUR PARTY OR EVEN THE LABOUR & TORIES TO DISAGREE I INTEND TO GO BEYOND THE AGREED MOTION.
IN DECEMBER 1991 ALL THE E.U. STATES EXCEPT GERMANY VOTED AGAINST RECOGNITION
OF CROATIA AND BOSNIA BUT GERMANY, WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE BILDERBERG GROUP AND THE VATICAN, WAS ABLE TO LEAN ON EVERYBODY ELSE, THIS WAS DESPITE THE FACT THAT UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW (I AM REFERRING TO THE COMPACT OF MONTEVIDEO) NEITHER COUNTRY FULFILLED ANY OF THE THREE CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR LEGAL RECOGNITION.

THERE USED TO BE 581,000 SERBS (12% OF THE POPULATION) LIVING IN CROATIA.
THEY ARN'T THERE ANYMORE.

YUGOSLAVIA & SRBSKA HAVE 300,000 REFUGEES FROM CROATIA LEAVING 250,000 MISSING.
THE UNITED STATES HAS ADMITTED TO HAVING SENT OFFICERS TO TRAIN AND DE FACTO
LEAD THE CROATIAN NATZIS IN THE KRAJINA HOLOCAUST. THE U.K. FOREIGN OFFICE HAS REFUSED
TO DENY THAT WE ALSO SENT OFFICERS. NATO ALSO PROVIDED SOME TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE.

INDEPENDENT EXPERTS ALMOST ALL AGREED THAT TO CREATE A BOSNIAN STATE WAS,
DUE TO THE INTERMIXING OF COMMUNITIES, BOUND TO CAUSE AN INTERNECINE WAR LIKELY TO BRING
ABOUT THE DEATHS OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE (290,000 IS THE CURRENT FIGURE).

NOBODY SUGGESTS THAT ANY OF THE E.U. POLITICIANS INVOLVED IN THIS DECISION RECEIVED
DIFFERENT ADVICE FROM THEIR OWN EXPERTS.

THE BOSNIAN MOSLEM LEADER MR IZETBEGOVIC HAS BEEN WIDELY STATED IN THE MEDIA TO BE A LIBERAL MINDED MAN TRYING TO CREATE A MULTI-CULTURAL STATE.
IN FACT ITZEBEGOVIC IS KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN A MEMBER OF THE "YOUNG MUSLIMS" WHICH SUPPORTED THE NAZI OCCUPATION. TO BE FAIR I HAVE ONLY ONE SOURCE WHICH SAYS HE WAS ACTUALLY A MEMBER OF THE WAFFEN SS "HANDZAR DIVISION" WHICH COMMITTED GENOCIDE ON SUCH A SCALE THAT OTHER GERMAN UNITS COMPLAINED, BUT IT IS A MATTER OF RECORD THAT WHEN HE CAME TO POWER HE ESTABLISHED A BODYGUARD UNIT WHICH HE NAMED THE "HANDZAR DIVISION".
IN 1970 HE PUBLISHED HIS BOOK ENTITLED " ISLAMIC DECLARATION "WHICH WAS REPUBLISHED AGAIN IN SARAJEVO IN 1990 IN IT HE MAKES A CLEAR AND RINGING STATEMENT:
" THERE CAN BE NEITHER PEACE NOR CO-EXISTENCE BETWEEN THE ISLAMIC RELIGION AND NON-ISLAMIC SOCIAL & POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS".

WE HAVE BOMBED VILLAGES AND SCHOOLS THROUGHOUT SERBSKA FOR THIS MAN & HIS CAUSE.

WESTERN REPORTING OF THE YUGOSLAV WARS HAS BEEN UNIFORMLY SLANTED, THE CENSORSHIP OF MR IZETBEGOVIC'S VIEWS AND PAST IS BUT ONE EXAMPLE. ITN'S ACCIDENTALLY FAKED "CONCENTRATION CAMP" FILM IS ANOTHER.
ALTHOUGH ITN WON THEIR LIBEL CASE, TO QUOTE FROM THE JUDGES SUMMING UP, & I AM CAREFULLY ONLY GOING TO QUOTE FROM THIS, NOT ONLY HAD ITN'S JOURNALISTS "CONTRADICTED THEMSELVES" ON OATH BUT LM MAGAZINE'S ALLEGATIONS OF FAKERY WERE "ESSENTIALLY TRUE" & EVEN MORE FRIGHTENINGLY HE SAID "THIS DOESN'T MATTER". ITN DID NOT FEEL ABLE TO ACT AGAINST THE ARTICLE'S ORIGINAL GERMAN PUBLISHER'S WHICH WOULD HAVE ENTAILED SUING UNDER GERMAN LAW.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK WWW.EMPERORS-CLOTHES.COM FOR REPORTING THIS CASE BETTER THAN THE BRITISH MEDIA HAS, AS WELL AS MAKING AVAILABLE A MASSIVE INDEX OF INFORMATIVE ARTICLES ON YUGOSLAVIA.
WESTERN REPORTING ALSO UNCRITICALLY PUSHED MR IZETBEGOVIC'S CLAIMS ABOUT RAPE CAMPS (60,000 WOMEN ACCORDING TO HIM, 20,000 ACCORDING TO THE EU) BUT DID NOT REPORT THE SUBSEQUENT U.N. INVESTIGATION WHICH FOUND ONLY 126 CASES. IN A COUNTRY SLIGHTLY SMALLER THAN SCOTLAND, THIS SHOWS THAT SERB MEN, IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR, HAVE SHOWN MORE RESPECT FOR MOSLEM WOMEN THAN BRITISH MEN STATISTICALLY SHOW BRITISH WOMEN.

THE RAPE CAMPS STORY WAS ALWAYS LESS THAN CREDIBLE. IT IS A VARIANT ON PROPAGANDA HITLER USED AGAINST THE JEWS, SOUTHERNERS USED TO LYNCH BLACKS, BRITONS USED AGAINST INDIAN SEPOYS & INDEED, IN A MORE CIVILIZED FORM, GREEKS USED AGAINST TROJANS. IT IS AN ANCIENT & EASY LIE TO STIR UP RACE HATRED WITH & IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN PUSHED BY OUR MEDIA.

AS FOR THE SERBRINICA "MASSACRE" (NOT THE MANY EARLIER ONES CARRIED OUT BY THE MOSLEM MILITIA ON LOCAL VILLAGES, OF WHICH YOU HAVEN'T HEARD). IT IS NOW KNOWN THAT 7000 SOLDIERS, WHO REACHED MOSLEM LINES WERE IMMEDIATELY SECRETLY TRANSFERRED ACCROSS THE COUNTRY. SO SECRETLY THAT EVEN THEIR FAMILIES DIDN'T KNOW. THIS HAPPENED WHILE MR IZETBEGOVIC WAS CLAIMING THEY HAD ALL BEEN MASSACRED. THERE IS IN FACT NO SERIOUS EVIDENCE THAT THIS "MASSCRE" EVER HAPPENED & QUITE A LOT THAT IT DIDN'T.
THIS HAS NOT PREVENTED THE WAR CRIMES COMMISSION TREATING IT AS GENUINE, BUT THEIR RECORD IS, TO SAY THE LEAST, ONE SIDED. THEY HAVE ONLY POSTUMOUSLY ACCUSED MR TUDJMAN OF BEING THE "BUTCHER OF MOSTAR" WHILE, OVER KRAJINA, A NUMERICALLY FAR WORSE ATTROCITY THEIR PRIME INDICTMENT IS AGAINST THE KRAJINA LEADER FOR ATTACKING CROATIA. THIS IS PRECISELY EQUIVALENT TO CHARGING THE SURVIVORS OF THE WARSAW GHETTO WITH ATTACKING THEIR SS GUARDS. HE IS ACCUSED OF FIRING 1,REPEAT 1, ROCKET AT ZAGREB. THE SAME COMMISSION HAVE DECIDED THAT MSSRS. CLINTON, BLAIR & CO WHO FIRED THOUSANDS AT NORTHERN YUGOSLAV CITIES DID NOTHING WRONG.
THE POSITION OF THE COMMISSION IS SLIGHTLY UNDERMINED BY THEIR FINANCING.

SUCCESSFUL JUDICIAL SYSTEMS WORK ON THE PRINCIPLE THAT INTERESTED PARTIES SHOULD NOT MAKE A PAYMENT TO THE JUDGE. FOR THIS REASON WHEN IT WAS SET UP IT'S ARTICLES CLEARLY STATED THAT IT WOULD BE FUNDED BY THE U.N.. THE COMMISSION IS CURRENTLY BEING FUNDED BY, AMONG OTHERS, THE U.S. STATE DEPT. & BILLIONAIRES ASSOCIATED WITH THE BILDERBERG GROUP SUCH AS THE ROCKEFELLER TRUST & MR GEORGE SOROS.

ON TO THE RECENT WAR OVER KOSSOVO. HISTORICALLY THE KLA HAD BEEN A VERY MINOR TERRORIST GROUP, LESS THAN 1/10TH AS DESTRUCTIVE AS THE I.R.A.. AFTER THE DAYTON AGREEMENT THEY BEGAN RECEIVING LARGE QUANTITIES OF MONEY, WEAPONRY & MILITARY EQUIPMENT, LIKE THE GERMAN UNIFORM PARKAS WORN IN A KLA PROMOTIONAL VIDEO. THE SOURCE OF THIS LARGESS HAS YET TO BE OFFICIALLY DETERMINED.

IN JANUARY 1990, 2 MONTHS BEFORE GOING TO WAR FOREIGN SECRETARY ROBIN COOK TOLD PARLIAMENT THAT THE MAJORITY OF KILLINGS IN KOSSOVO WERE CIVILIANS KILLED BY THE KLA. THIS PROVES 2 THINGS. FIRSTLY, SINCE THE KLA WERE FAR WEAKER THAN THE YUGOSLAV ARMY & THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN THE AREA WERE ALBANIAN THE KLA, BUT NOT THE YUGOSLAVS, MUST HAVE BEEN DELIBERATELY KILLING PEOPLE ON A RACIAL BASIS (THIS IS TECHNICALLY KNOWN AS GENOCIDE). SECONDLY IT PROVES THAT THE CABINET KNEW THEY WERE GOING TO WAR SPECIFICALLY TO SUPPORT A CAMPAIGN OF GENOCIDE.

SINCE NATO TOOK RESPONSIBILITY FOR KOSSOVO THE KLA HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO MURDER OR DISAPPEAR APPROXIAMATELY 3000 CIVILIANS OF ALL NATIONALITIES, INCLUDING ALBANIAN. THIS GENOCIDE HAS GONE LARGELY UNREPORTED. FOR EXAMPLE LAST AUGUST A MASS GRAVE OF 160 PEOPLE WAS DISCOVERED IN THE UK'S ZONE. THESE PEOPLE HAD BEEN MURDERED SINCE N.A.T.O.S OCCUPATION. THIS, THE SECOND LARGEST SINGLE MURDER CASE IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH HISTORY, AFTER LOCKERBIE, HAS NEVER MADE EITHER THE BBC OR ITN NIGHTLY NEWS. THEY WOULD BOTH DENY THAT THEY PRACTICE CENSORSHIP. IF SO THEY HONESTLY BELIEVE MASS RACE MURDER CARRIED OUT WITHIN OUR AUTHORITY IS TO UNIMPORTANT TO REPORT. I HOPE THERE IS NOBODY AT THIS CONFERENCE WHO WOULD AGREE.

I ASK YOU TO SUPPORT THIS MOTION. KILLINGS ARE CONTINUING IN KOSSOV AT AN AVERAGE OF 5 PER DAY. IF THE MOST WE CAN DO HERE TODAY CAN SAY IS TO SAY THAT THIS IS WRONG THEN THAT IS THE LEAST WE SHOULD DO.

A FINAL WORD ON THE RECENT ATTACK ON MACEDONIA. THOSE WHO HAVE DEMONISED THE SERBS & MR MILOSOVIC AS AGGRESSIVE HAVE IGNORED HIS TREATMENT OF MACEDONIA. ALTHOUGH IT IS OBVIOUS MACEDONIA'S MOVE TO INDEPENDENCE OWES LESS TO AN OUTBREAK OF NATIONAL FEELING THAN TO THE E.U.'S ECONOMIIC BLACKMAIL MR MILOSOVIC DID NOT DISRUPT IT.

TODAY WE HAVE AN INSTANCE OF A AN AGGRESSION PLANNED & LAUNCHED FROM N.A.T.O. TERRITORY AGAINST A FRIENDLY COUNTRY. THIS IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF A WAR CRIME. IF THE WAR CRIMES COMMISSION IS TO CLAIM THE SLIGHTEST SIMILARITY TO A JUDICIAL BODY THEY WILL ISSUE AN INDICTMENT AT LEAST AS QUICKLY AS THE ONE THEY ISSUED AGAINST MR MILOSOVIC IN RESPONSE TO N.A.T.O.'S ATTACK ON HIM.

WHEN N.A.T.O OCCUPIED KOSSOVO WE HAD PREVIOUSLY UNDERTAKEN UNDER CLAUSE 1 OF THE HELSINKI TREATY TO "REFRAIN FROM ANY ACTION AGAINST THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY" OF YUGOSLAVIA. UNDER THE OCCUPATION AGREEMENT WE UNDERTOOK NOT ONLY TO MAINTAIN THE RULE OF LAW IN KOSSOVO BUT ALSO TO DISARM THE KLA.

IF WE HAD KEPT OUR WORD ON ANY OF THESE 3 POINTS PEOPLE IN KOSSOVO & MACEDONIA WOULD NOT TONIGHT BE DYING.

MOTION WORDING:
War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia

Since international law cannot properly be applied selectively on a racial basis and since indictments have been issued overwhelmingly against Serbs, this Conference calls on the War Crimes Commission for former Yugoslavia to report as a matter of urgency on:

1 whether there is evidence that the late President Tudjman of Croatia and members of his cabinet are criminally responsible for the ethnic cleansing of approximately 500,000 Serbs from ethnically Serbian territory seized by Croatian forces;
2 the fate of the large proportion of the people above who have not been recorded as arriving in Yugoslavia or Republika Srbska as refugees;
3 the 'disappearance' of over 2,500 persons from Kosovo since NATO took over responsibility for that territory together with the continuing involuntary migration of large numbers of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Macedonians and other minority ethnic groups;
4 the feasibility of prosecuting those KLA leaders involved in the large majority of killings in pre-war Kosovo; and
5 the identification and indictment of the leaders of the countries which, in clear violation of international law, supplied the KLA with vast quantities of weapons whilst they were an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation.

THE MOTION WAS UNANIMOUSLY PASSED DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE LEADERS REFERRED TO IN PART 5 CERTAINLY INCLUDE BILL CLINTON & HELMUT KOHL. SCOTTISH PARTY LEADERSHIP HAS IGNORED IT.

From Moscow News a useful paper if only to get some perspective on our own dear media.

Starting from 2,012, the process of global cooling will start on the Earth and by the middle of 21st century the whole planet will be captured by low temperatures, an expert from the Russian Sciences Academy Observatory was quoted by NewsRu.com as saying Monday.

The cause of the expected global cooling is a decrease in the flow of the Sun's radiation, Khabibulo Absudamatov says.

"We have already witnessed a cooling of the kind in Europe, in North America and Greenland in 1645-1705, with canals freezing in Holland, and people abandoning settlements because of nearing glaciers in Greenland. This is what we are expecting again in some decades," he said.

Analysis of the Sun's radiation fluctuations that influence the climate on Earth shows that the planet at the moment is on the peak of the global warming process, Absudamatov said. Now, with the decrease in the Sun's radiation, global temperatures are going to decrease, too.

"In 20th century, the Sun's activity could be characterized by a general increase in the amount of radiated energy, and global warming was a result of this process. Global warming is by no means an anomaly, but a normal phenomenon. Global warmings, as well as global coolings, have happened before."

According to Absudamatov, the global cooling will start in 2,012 or 2,013. By 2035 the Sun's radiation will reach its minimum, and 15 years later a deep cooling of the Earth's climate should be expected.

I don't know if this is any more reliable than the global warming scare & the fact is that neither does anybody else, or rather that those who claim to be certainty thereby prove themselves untrustworthy.

Despite the fact that the IPCC's beloved Hockeystick graphs denied the existence of cold periods at times of low sunspot activity these certainly happened & can be expected to happen again.

What we need is (A) more research, good research always pays off even, or particularly, when it finds something unexpected & (B) a space going civilization - the only place where we can not only see what is going on here but build the mirrors, shades etc to fine tune the weather (& to divert 100 million tons of cometary ice coming in faster than a speeding bullet) is in space.

The Israeli embassy's PR man has just been interviewed on Gary's show on Radio Scotland & I have just had this email I sent in read out (about 12.50). I was quite gratified to have it done in full, even with an "as he would see it" added to the NATO bit:

The number of Palestinians who were driven from Israeli territory (or as Israel would have it left voluntarily) was half a million. By comparison half of Israel's population were Jews driven from Arab lands (or as the Arabs would have it left voluntarily) & 2 million of the population of Serbia & Montenrgro are people ethnicaly cleansed from Croatia, Bosnia & Kosovo with the very active assistance of NATO, "as he would see it".

What do you think motivates people, particularly in Europe more affronted by Palestinain than Jewish or Serbian refugees?

His entirely reasoned & sensible reply was that the Palestinians had been kept as refugees quite deliberately as a symbol whereas the arabic Jews had got on with building a country. Israelis had hoped the Palestinians would have followed their example. I think this somewhat underestimates the problems the Palestinians have, but not all that much so, when you look at the problems that Israel faced in building the country on their side of the border.

He did not fall for the implication in my question that there is an undercurrent of anti-semitism in the opponents of Israel, particularly non-Moslems (which there certainly is) & considerably more than an undercurrent of Nazism in the attitude to Serbs (which is also true).

Neither he nor Gary mentioned the point about the Serbs which is what I expected - in fact I was quite surprised he hadn't cut that line.

A very interesting wirness statement form the Milosevic "trial" here from Ms. Eva Prentice a British journalist who has covered the Balkans for both The Guardian and the London Times newspapers since the 1980s. Over the course of her career she visited the former Yugoslavia at least forty times, & just about the only Britsh journalist who is clearly honest.

The most explosive part of her testimony dealt with an interview that she scheduled with Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. While she was waiting in Izetbegovic's foyer both she, and a journalist from Der Speigel, saw Osama bin Laden being escorted into Izetbegovic’s office. Yes *that* Osama bin Laden -- the same Osama bin Laden who masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Needless to say this evidence did not sit well with the tribunal. Mr. Nice immediately objected and Judge Robinson cut off the testimony immediately declaring it “irrelevant.”

Remember that this is what western media were virtually unanimous as announcing as the "trial of the century". You would think they would report that (before the invasion of Iraq they devoted many column inches to much less spectacular alleged links between Iraq & Osama). In pure news value this is a story that should be considerably bigger than the nonsense about cartoons. This was at a time when Paddy Ashdown & other assorted NATO spooks were in & out of Izetbegovic's office like rats in drainpipes. Did they meet? Very probably, though I suspect not in that office.

I have had a bit of stick from the Lib Dems for saying that Judge Bonamy was wrong to say that Islamic terrorism does not cause a security threat - so I'll probably get more for suggesting that the presence of bin Laden in the office of what, if the BBC is in any way honest, was a " moderate minded Moslem committed to a multi-cultural state" is somewhat relevant.

The rest of Ms Prentice's evidence is just as damaging though less spectacular & I suggest you read it here are some sinps

She testified that the Kosovo-Albanians told her that they were leaving Kosovo primarily because they were afraid of the KLA and the NATO bombing. She only came across one Albanian who told her that he was leaving because the Serbian police had told him to.

She said that the KLA was telling the Albanian population that it was their “patriotic duty” to leave Kosovo in order to make it appear that the Serbs were victimizing the Albanians and ethnically cleansing the province.

Ms. Prentice testified that she took measures to speak to Albanian civilians at times when Serbian police were not around. Her Albanian interpreter was a lawyer who worked for Ibrahim Rugova.

She testified that Albanian civilians were afraid to speak freely in the presence of the KLA. She recounted one instance in Kosvoska Mitrovica where she was interviewing a group of Albanians and they would not speak to her once a member of the KLA came within earshot.

.......She also witnessed the destruction caused by NATO bombing raids in Gnjilane, Istok (Dubrava Prison), Orohovac, and Meja. In each of these cases the indictment accuses Serbia for the destruction.

......While she was in Gnjilane she did not see any evidence of the deliberate burning of shops and houses alleged by the indictment. All she saw was the destruction caused by NATO.

The indictment says that Serbian troops forced the Albanian population to leave Prizren from March 28th onwards. But Ms. Prentice said that there were a lot of Albanians in Prizren while she was there in May.

Ms. Prentice was bombed by NATO herself. At about 3 PM on May 30, 1999 she was on her way to Prizren. She was on the road about 8 km east of Prizren when NATO attacked. Her driver was killed in the attack, and a cameraman she was traveling with was blown into a river several meters away.

She said that the NATO aircraft were flying low enough that they could have easily seen the civilian cars on the road below.

Ms. Prentice, who has a pilot’s license herself, estimated the aircraft to be flying at about 2,000 ft. Because she was traveling with a cameraman she also has videotape of the NATO aircraft. She was ultimately rescued from the scene Yugoslav Army personnel who took her to safety and gave her medical treatment.

About two weeks after the bombing Ms. Prentice began to suffer health effects. She lost her voice. Her immune system weakened. She has had cancer twice since then, and the presence of heavy metals in her blood stream causes her to suspect that NATO used depleted uranium weapons during the attack.

NATO has publicly denied that it carried out the bombing raid, but Ms. Prentice’s father (who is a member of the British House of Lords) received information from his contacts in the British military that NATO had indeed carried out the bombing.

Ms. Prentice testified that after NATO entered Kosovo a massive exodus of the non-Albanian population occurred. She said that the KLA, together with Albanians from Albania, went around Kosovo forcing the non-Albanian population to leave. She said that NATO did nothing to protect the non-Albanian population.
.........Milosevic questioned the witness questions about the Markale market. Over the course of her work, Ms. Prentice spoke with people who had access to ballistics data on the blast. According to the information she received the blast did not come from an outside projectile. The blast came from an explosive device that had been taped under one of the tables at the market.

When she interviewed Lord Owen she asked him whether he had believed that the Bosnian-Muslim government planted the bomb themselves. She said that Owen responded by refusing to confirm or deny the suggestion. The Markale Market is significant because NATO used it as the justification to bomb the Bosnian Serbs.

Ms. Prentice testified that when she visited Sarajevo in 1994 she did not find the city under siege. She said that there was some shelling but not a siege.

She said that one day while she was at the offices of the Bosnian presidency a shell exploded near the house she was staying. She observed that the shell fell in a location that was surrounded by tall buildings and narrow streets meaning that the shell could have only come in from a steep angle, which meant that it could only have been fired from a Muslim-held position.

During her time in Bosnia she visited Pale. She said that she was surprised to find that a large number of non-Serb refugees were being given shelter there. Before she actually visited Bosnia she had believed what the rest of the media told her about the Serbs.

She recounted one occasion where she tried to convince Robin Cook to visit Pale so that he could see for himself that non-Serbs were living freely in the Bosnian-Serb capital. Cook, who was on a fact finding mission, told her that he would not visit Pale because he thought the Serbs were “monsters.”

Robin Cook was the monster. An obscene lying genocidal Nazi piece of excrement - ie a typical cabinet member.

Oaten blames dirty tricks as he quits Lib Dem race
By Brendan Carlin Political Correspondent
(Filed: 20/01/2006)

"The Liberal Democrat leadership contest has descended into allegations of dirty tricks as Mark Oaten quit the race after leaked e-mails killed off his campaign.
.........
Yesterday Mr Oaten, the party's home affairs spokesman, withdrew after calling in the police over the alleged theft of an e-mail showing Charles Kennedy, the party's former leader, had at one stage canvassed on his behalf.

The leak provoked aides of Mr Kennedy into a damaging rejection of Mr Oaten's campaign. It had already been virtually devoid of support from fellow MPs and the disclosure effectively forced him to pull out.

.....Mr Oaten - who revealed that his wallet had gone missing - said he was "very upset that private conversations I had been having with Charles ended up in the press".

His departure leaves three candidates in the race - Chris Huhne, a little-known Treasury spokesman, Simon Hughes, the Left-leaning party president and Sir Menzies, now the hope of the party's so-called "Orange Book" economically liberal modernisers.

........Sir Menzies declared: "Under my leadership, the Lib Dems will not be making polite interjections from the sidelines - we will be hammering on the doors of power."
........
He effectively admitted that the recent exchange of leaked e-mails had helped force his hand yesterday. Mr Opik said yesterday that whoever was responsible for the "underhand" leak from Mr Oaten's office "does not really have a place in the party".



NOTE The first part of this post has been deleted by me since the original link has assured me that he has received a credible asurance that it had no foundation.

No I am not going to link up to any of these cartoons. Ok take it as a given that I support free speech - if I support it for Nick Griffin I must support it for Danish cartoonists.

I do. Taken together I would have to say that what Griffin said, that some 2nd generation Moslems might turn into suicide bombers was less offensive, though more frightening because true, than saying that Mohammed would. So yes I do support their intrinsic freedom to do so.

But it isn't courteous.

If you go around gratutously insulting people then you deserve no respect. (Note that when I accuse Bliar, the Pope, Clinton, Kohl etc etc of various sorts of murders this is entirely tuitously insulting them & at least to some extent so is Griffin's), The Danish cartoons however seem to be just silly. Much worse the reprinting by foreign papers, & even more on the web are being done just to make a mess, like a small boy at a dinner party dropping his pants.

Lets not go light on the protesters either. For at least 1300 years people in Denmark have said rude things about Mohammed - for most of that time it was almost compulsory. What difference did it make to Haroun al-Rashid? Stop going around deliberately looking for things to be insulted by. In many cases you can see that individuals are attaching themselves to this "protest" movement for their own agendas. Palestine is threatened with melt down - what exactly is the point of armed street gangs/political activists going around Gaza looking for Danes to shoot. Actually the point, as with most street gangs, is to prove how tough you are but it has nothing to do with defending the ability not to anthropomorphise your worship of the Deity (which is the relatively sophisticated reason for not drawing their prophet).

Lets try reversing it - a good way of seeing the other guy's view. Should we defend the right of somebody in the Gulf to burn the flag (ours or the US), how about celebrating 9/11. In the former I think we should & to be fair to the Americans though there is a movement to make flag burning unconstitutional it isn't & I suspect never will be - when push comes to shove they do understand what their constitution is about. 9/11 is tougher. In theory, if freedom to insult Mohammed is that important then we should also defend the right to gratuitously celebrate that but I think I would draw a line there. If there was point to celebrating it that would be different but purely gratuitously upsetting people is different. Fortunately Moslems aren't going to produce jokes about Jesus in a blender because they believe in him too.

A lot has been made of the way Dave Allan made a living from jokes about the Pope some of them pretty wicked, thus proving how much nicer we, or possibly only Catholics are. The difference is the he was obviously, indeed he made it obvious with every word, an Irish Catholic. Thats allowed. Equally a Jewish audience will love a series of funny Jewish jokes told by a good Jewish comedian but an obviously goy one will go down like a lead balloon. The Reverend Ian Paisley telling Pope jokes doesn't work either or a Frenchman telling an American audience drunk jokes about Bush. You have to be inside the group to poke fun at it. This was why the Salman Rushdie affair had a real moral dimension, he was brought up in Islam & knew exactly what he was talking about & was an informed critic, whereas this is just about people who want to start something - from a safe distance.

This was a response to the very long letter in the Herald which claimed that we are going to run out of uranium in 15 years.
_________________________________
I believe that one should be willing to defend one's views robustly, indeed I have on occasion been accused of it myself, so I have some cheerful appreciation of David McEwan ('Nuclear power is the greatest idiocy" ever - letter Monday). On the other hand he does seem to have achieved a uniquely high ratio of things that just ain't so. Surprising in a letter so long.

He starts by conjuring up the vision of spaceships going to the Moon to find uranium ore. Attractive, & relatively feasible as a return to the Moon may be it is hardly the only, let alone best place to look for uranium.

He then correctly says that all a reactor does is to bile a lot of water, which I suppose is true in the same way that all George Bush does is to throw a lot of sticks at people.

However the main error, on which he dwells at considerable length is that we are going to run out of uranium real soon - he says 15 years. This is nonsense, rubbish & claptrap, not necessarily in that order. Uranium is not going to run out in 15 years or fifty, or five hundred, or 5,000 or even 5 million. Uranium is, even on the Earth's surface, relatively common. The point is that you don't need uranium in large quantities. There is enough uranium dust in a spadeful of coal to produce more power than would be produced by that spadeful of coal. It is much more common in rock, particularly granite, which is why you are exposed to considerably more radioactivity in Aberdeen Cathedral than in Hunterston. It is vastly more common in ore - that is why it is called "ore". As a purely theoretical exercise Professor Bernard Cohen of Pittsburgh has calculated that by extracting the radioactive impurities in ordinary seawater we could keep our current nuclear industry going for 4.5 billion years. This is not the upper limit since, being a relatively heavy material it tends to be more abundant in ore underground. It is what keeps the Earth's core molten. The Sun is expected to explode in a mere 5 billion years. This is a more urgent problem than running out of nuclear power.

Except that we are currently on track to run out of it if 2023 when our last reactor shuts down.

Boiling the seas is not the most practical way to go, unless, of course, the alternative is windfarms or other "alternatives". Alternatives are called "alternative" for good economic reasons. There is no difficulty in mining. We could even afford to mine more expensive ores since the actual cost of our fuel works out at about 2 hundredths of a penny per kilowatt hour. Currently uranium prices are at an all time low which does not imply shortage.

Just as his fears of our imminently running out of uranium, which is rather like running out of rock, are unfounded the idea that we will have "hundreds of thousands of tons of waste" lasting over "thousands" of years is inaccurate. Reactor waste, the only sort that didn't come out of the soil in the first place comes in very small quantities, about a cubic metre per reactor year, but precisely because it is highly radioactive it has a short half life & will be down to safe levels in about 50 years. Our descendants 4 billion years from now need not worry.

We, five years from now, should. He is wrong to say that this is a problem only for England about whose difficulties we Scots may happily chortle. The opposite is true. So long as France is willing to make nuclear electricity at 1.5p a unit & sell to the south of England for 4 they are comfortable, & I suspect the French will not become unwilling to do so. We on the other hand are to far away & with the closure of Hunterson & Torness & some coal stations, are shortly going to lose 2/3rds of our electricity. It is grossly irresponsible of politicians to ignore this, presumably in the expectation that their careers will already be over then. 2,500 pensioners a year currently die in Scotland annually from fuel poverty but that will be dwarfed by what is coming if we choose not to replace & expand our current reactors.

Amusing though Mr McEwan's letter is the way in which such scare stories are preventing us, by which I mean the human race as well as Scots, achieving our potential is the great tragedy of our civilisation. There is no reason why we should not all be much wealthier, more comfortable, healthier & less worried than we are now. Yes, & have the Moon & Mars & points beyond as well. We only have to stop nursing our problems to keep them warm. Look at them honestly, admit that most of them are smoke & mirrors & solve the others. We are descended from people who did more with less. We should live up to our potential.
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[/quote] More on Professor Cohen's article & on nuclear generally is on http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html#cohen[/
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To maintain the East West balance here is one not published by the Scotsman. They have since published replies from Councillor Niall Walker (Lib Dem) & Steuart Campbell (former Lib Dem who quit over the party's head in the sands attitude) who both said something similar to mine.

Why are the Tories listening to blonde bimbos whose eco-journalistic career depends entirley on running a small selling mag funded by Daddy's money, like Zak Goldsmith when they already have an intelligent blonde like Boris Johnstone on hand. Opinion piece from the Telegraph on the essential silliness of Prof Lovelock

The good news is that the Gaia in question is not my ex-mother-in-law. The bad news is that she represents a chthonic deity even more capable of vengeance upon errant mankind. Gaia is the Earth herself; she is Mother Nature; she taps her foot in ever-growing impatience at the antics of our species; and, according to Professor Lovelock, she is about to exact the most terrifying punishment for our excesses. She is about to get carboniferous on our ass.

........We delude ourselves, says Lovelock, if we think that the global temperature is going to rise in small increments over the next century. We are like the blindfolded crew of a boat approaching Niagara Falls, and there will come a moment when the temperature will rise with all the equivalent vertical horror. Some time in the next hundred years, he says, it is suddenly going to get hotter and hotter and hotter.

"Billions will die," says Lovelock, who tells us that he is not normally a gloomy type. Human civilisation will be reduced to a "broken rabble ruled by brutal warlords", and the plague-ridden remainder of the species will flee the cracked and broken earth to the Arctic, the last temperate spot, where a few breeding couples will survive.

It is going to be a "hell of a climate", he says, with Europe 8C warmer than it is today; and the real killer, says Lovelock, is that there is not a damn thing we can do about it. We are already pumping out so much carbon dioxide, with no prospect of abatement from the growing economies of China and India, that our fate is sealed.

We in Britain produce only two per cent of the world's carbon output and, even if we closed down British industry overnight; even if we abolished the winter fuel allowance and ordered the pensioners to wear more sweaters; even if we forested the entire country with windfarms, it would make not a bean of difference.
.......
And when the Great Heat has destroyed our industry, and wrecked civilisation, it will get worse, says Lovelock. Because then we will lose the aerosol of dust and smog that has kept out some of the sun's rays; and it will get hotter still.

......Phew-ee. Is Lovelock right? I haven't the faintest; but as I listen to his Mad Max-style vision of the coming century, I find my mind bubbling with blasphemous thoughts.

Wasn't it pretty hot in the 10th century? Didn't the Romans have vineyards in Northumberland? And is it really so exceptionally hot in modern Europe? According to yesterday's paper, Lisbon has just had its first heavy snowfall for 52 years. What's that about?

..........the more one listens to sacerdotal figures such as Lovelock, and the more one studies public reactions to his prophecies, the clearer it is that we are not just dealing with science (though science is a large part of it); this is partly a religious phenomenon.

Humanity has largely lost its fear of hellfire, and yet we still hunger for a structure, a point, an eschatology, a moral counterbalance to our growing prosperity. All that is brilliantly supplied by climate change. Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self-disgust, and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods.

And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful. One sect says we must build more windfarms, and these high priests will be displeased with what Lovelock has to say. Another priestly caste curses the Government's obsession with nuclear power - a programme Lovelock has had the courage to support.

Some scientific hierophants now tell us that trees - trees, the good guys - are the source of too much methane, and are contributing to global warming. Huh? We in the poor muddled laity scratch our heads and pray. Who is right? Who is wrong?

If Lovelock is only half-right, then we must have an immediate programme to pastoralise the global economy and reduce emissions. The paradox is that, if he is completely right, there is not a lot we can do, and we might as well enjoy our beautiful planet while we can.

Or is he completely wrong? To say that would be an offence not just against science, but against a growing world religion.

I have considerable respect for the jury system. Where it requires a selection of ordinary people, traditionally ordinary householders, to convict somebody, whatever the self styled "great & good" wish, freedom can never be totally absent.

I believe the jury in the BNP case have properly done their duty.

"We don't hate anyone from any ethnic minority in this country," Griffin told reporters. "We don't blame them for being here ... we blame our government for putting them above our people."

He said the BNP's wrath was directed at politicians who had turned Britain into a "multi-cultural mess".

Thursday's acquittals brought groans from anti-racist activists waiting outside court.

"We think it is a tragic day for justice that Nazis can hide behind freedom of speech in order to attack democracy and to encourage racism," said Weyman Bennett from the Unite Against Fascism group.

This prosecution has been entirely political. The BBC never spent 10s of thousands of pound trying to infiltrate the Labour party to find someone willing to say that bombing Serbs is ok. Professor Torrance, was never prosecuted for fabricating a story about Serbs putting their enemies through a sawmill, as part of his role as Moderator of the Church of Scotland. Such a story is clearly likely to produce racial hatred but when challenged on it he not only refused give provenance but removed the sermon for the Church's website. I have previously accused Mr Blair of being a Nazi war criminal. Nick Griffin is clearly not a Nazi, he has not bombed hospitals, he is not guilty of genocide, he has not murdered one thousandth as many people as the Cabinet, he is not as racist, or dishonest, as the as the Church of Scotland.

The difference is that he has not earned membership of the "great & good" either by birth or by his willingness to talk newspeak & that is what is threatening.

By comparison Mr Bennet & "Unite Against Fascism" do not know the true meaning of the words "justice", "Nazi", "freedom of speech", "attack", "democracy" & "racism".