I stayed in this roundy cottage in Portmerion and was given a whole lot of stuff to think about

Back from the Clough Ellis vision of Italianate Arcadia, setting for the surreal 1970s spy series, ‘The Prisoner,’ I struggled to synthesise what I heard, present it as a General Theory of Universal Knowledge, flog it to a New Age business publisher, save the planet, buy myself a converted trawler with a bikini bird crew and bother Japanese whalers (with the bikini bird crew pole dancing round the mizzen mast).

Frankly, I was plaiting sawdust until this morning, stuck at the general theory of universal knowledge bit, and not for the first time. The whole save the planet/get some cash/buy a trawler/bother the whalers with pole dancing sirens scheme looked as dead in the water as my chances of becoming foreign policy advisor after telling Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, another Portmerion guest, that the UN resembled a second rate, more corrupt, version of FIFA. Then I awoke to the epiphany that we are names, not numbers. Every life form on the planet  has a unique individual identity, dignity and purpose. Nature indiscriminately abhors entropy. Humans, the last, lunkheaded twirl of the evolutionary dice, persist in the deadly fallacy that they are above, not a part of, creation. Their high-handed, cack-handed interventions, based on mathematically impossible attempts to exclude uncertainty and randomness from the infinite possibilities afforded by an ever-expanding series of variable circumstances will, by nature, always generate unforeseen, counter-intuitive consequences. The more binary data we collect, the greater the hubristic illusion of control in a quantum universe. We are the deadly meddlers, psychopathic intellectual delinquents with yottabytes of information but no understanding of the tendency of exosystems to deliquesce. Or something along those lines.

Just then another thought hit, me like a great wave biffing a Japanese nuclear plant: ‘Jesus, it’s 8-30 already. I need to walk the whippet. I’ll park this stuff until I’ve seen what the others have written and knock something off tomorrow after I’ve bought a few robots and done Waitrose.’

Firing up my ecologically incorrect 1972 Beetle convertible, partly compensated by its unique interior rainforest microclimate of continual damp and lichens, I was soon yomping round Hampstead Heath, London’s last great wilderness, with no sighting of any other native species apart from George Michael and packs of exotic dogs and their walkers, dressed for the mild weather in North Face Arctic survival parkas. Coffee beaker in one hand, dogpoo bag in the other – careful which one you lift to your lips – I relegated the Mission to Explain to an internal rant about Arsenal’s inability to grasp the essential notion that the purpose of football was not to create the perfect balance sheet but to win the occasional trophy. I was considering whether a latter day Christopher Marlowe would have substituted the tale of Arsene Wenger’s Icarean 49 match unbeaten run followed by six years of no silverware for Tamburlaine the Great when I thought I saw a huge white airbag, bouncing at great speed across the manicured blasted wasteland. As everyone who wasted time in front of the TV in the 1970s instead of revising knows, whenever he tried to escape Portmerion, the Prisoner was engulfed then herded back by a giant chewing gum bubble. The genius of the series was the ambivalence as to whether the village, its inhabitants and the sheepdog bubble itself (called Rover) were real/partially real or whether we were observing the Prisoner’s dream state, induced by his captors to find out how much he knew. Was this why I had been transported to Portmerion?

This will happen if you can't remember what you learned at Portmerion

Hardly. I didn’t put my hand up once to ask a clever question, fearing the bubble would drag me out as soon as I brought tin robots or whippets into the Big Conversation but nobody noticed, much less dragged me off in an airbag. My engulfing bubble on the Heath was the dread of explaining to Julia that despite inviting me to the most stimulating and sometimes surreal weekend I have spent for a very long time, in the company of some of the most stellar minds in this or any other chiliocosm, my tendency for transference activity was once again getting the better of me. For example, revelations from Nassim Taleb that the best laid plans of mice and men always conform to SNAFU were merely reinforcing my resolve to arse around in life and achieve little. My new best friend Sylvia Earle’s plangent exposition of the wanton destruction of our oceans moved me almost to tears but didn’t stop me from discussing 1950s American nudist postcards and the vanishing folk art of ice cream vans when I sat next to the great lady at dinner.

I walked on the beach with Frieda Hughes, daughter of Ted and Sylvia Plath, two of my favourite poets, an original bard herself and a painter of profound physical and psychological depth, discussing big motorbikes (Frieda rides one, in mitigation). At breakfast with Human Rights diva Baroness Helena Kennedy I turned the conversation to Glasgow hardmen. I simply frolicked in the anarchic slipstream of my heroine, Miriam Margolyes. But I was one of the lads, to all intents and purposes. The genius of Portmerion is partly the geniuses but also the Thusness of the whole shebang. We’re all names, not numbers, individuals with collective responsibility to do the best we can. Julia’s genius is her understanding of the palette of personalities.

The overarching message, if there was one, was probably wasted on me, like the time I met the Dalai Lama and spent the few seconds in the presence of a Realised Being wondering if he was wearing a Casio or a Rolex. But if you get the chance, go to the Editorial Intelligence Names Not Numbers Symposium. For a taste of the Portmerion conversation, listen to The Forum on the BBC World Service. Make an effort to see Beeban Kidron’s documentary on the Devadasi. iPod the EI podcasts. Read anything by Frieda Hughes and Sylvia Earle’s ‘The World is Blue.’ Imagine Simon Schama having a bloody good knees up in the bar at 2 am then delivering a multidimensional summary of all the big ideas of the past 2500 years six hours later. Try to understand Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan then imagine he was sitting next to you on the bus, which, by the way, was one of those executive football team coaches with leather seats and a big round sofa at the back with loads of snacks and Sky TV  . . .  Jesus, is that the bubble again? Be seeing you.

John J Kelly

PS. Here’s a handy link to all the videos and podcasts from Portmerion

In those great days we were helped by the US, then Imperial apprentices, now big swinging dicks. This time we have stopped short of war. Instead, our very own Great Helmsman, Gordon Brown, recognising the media opportunity, interrupted his Yuletide wassailing to summon the Chinese Ambassador, twice, no less, to the Foreign Office for a stern telling-off. The insolent Chinamens’ excuse was that smuggling more than 50 mg of heroin was an offence punishable by death under their sovereign laws, and claimed that the perpetrator’s 5 kg stash was enough to maim or kill more than 27,000 people. This overlooked the fact that he was British, possibly (but not provenly) suffering from bipolar syndrome (aka manic depression) and was clearly (provenly) delusional – as evidenced by a terrible song which he believed would make him a pop star. Tragic, but hardly worth provoking an international incident.

British heroin smuggler Akmal Shaikh knew what he was doing and did it for money. Bipolar syndrome does not imply the inability to determine right from wrong. China, like all the other countries which endorse or carry out the death penalty – notably the US – should be urged to join the civilised world, but Gordon Brown and his hypocrite cronies are hardly the folk to make them change their point of view. China executes the most people in absolute terms, but is 14th when per capita judicial killing is taken into account, with the US close behind. The Bahamas, a British Commonwealth nation, is top. Singapore, held up as a paragon state by unconvicted mass murderer Tony Blair – is second. Kuwait, whose ‘democratic freedom’ we defended in the first Gulf War, is sixth. British trading partners Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia are all in the top 10.

None of these countries are daft enough to execute a British, much less a US citizen, though Singapore and our lovely Saudi friends have been known to administer the cat o’ nine tails to errant expats for boozing/fornicating, while Thailand and Malaysia have mostly commuted the death sentence for EU citizens caught smuggling drugs (usually out of the country). Afghanistan, of course, is the world’s top exporter of heroin grade opium, while the brother of its democratically-elected and UN endorsed President, the fragrant Hamid Karzai (Thus passim ad nauseam) is allegedly Capo di Tutti Capi of the smack barons. But he’s our man, as banana boy Miliband is wont to remind us.

I’m sad for the family of Akmal Shaikh, but this is not about the rights and wrongs of a tragic individual case. It’s about the rank, steaming hypocrisy of a country which scarcely raised a finger in protest when 1200 citizens of occupied Gaza, mostly women and children, were bombed out of existence precisely one year earlier, on December 27, 2oo8. Britain defended the ‘sovereign right’ of Iraq’s corrupt whacko puppets to publicly hang Saddam Hussein after a laughable show trial. As the Chinese pointed out, a country which has played a lead role in the killing and maiming of at least 200,000 Iraqi citizens and displacement of up to 4 million others, killed and wounded thousands of Afghanis and a growing number of Pakistanis, is in no position to point any fingers whatsoever. The same government gave Chinese Premier Wen a regal welcome in 2008 and brutally suppressed protests from Free Tibet campaigners on his triumphal procession through London before the Beijing Olympics. China was executing/ murdering dissidents (as well as common criminals, for offences less than murder) then as now. We’ll continue to buy its tat, often produced in slave labour conditions. We even sold them our beloved car company, Rover (although this could rank as a subtly hostile act).

This week, 10 Afghan citizens, including 8 children, were executed/murdered by US ‘Special Forces’, according to Afghan investigators. The US claim they were militants/terrorists. Even if they were, does this justify execution without trial of these and several thousand others on other sovereign territories? Ask Brown and Miliband. You won’t get a straight answer.

Britain has lost the high, middle and low ground in international diplomacy, and our citizens will suffer commensurately, as surely as we will lose the phony ‘war on terror.’

However distasteful and repugnant, China’s judicial killing of a British citizen carries more legitimacy than the countless acts of extra-judicial killing perpetrated daily by the US under the banner of liberal intervention. Both are crimes against humanity, but to paraphrase Stalin, one death is a tragedy. 1000 is a statistic.

John J Kelly

There are more twists in the tale of the Afghan elections than Hamid Karzai’s S shaped bed – not that I’d know, I hasten to add. What I do know is that donkeys laden with ballot boxes are finding their way back to Kabul to deliver the verdict that the international community needs – ‘don’t panic, democracy is flowering in Afghanistan.’ Well I reserve the right to panic. Another four soldiers died today, along with at least 30 civilians and 56 others wounded in Kandahar.

Here’s a suggestion for the Afghan election theme:

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss . . .

We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my knees and pray We don’t get fooled again. (The Who: Won’t get fooled again)

The only thing flowering is Poppy, and the chief gardener, who ‘borrowed’ $2 million interest free from the Ghazanfar Bank, (how and in what form will he make repayments?) has now seen his ‘massive lead’ whittled down to a ‘narrow lead’ over the man who spent the second biggest amount campaigning. To this extent, the Afghan campaign followed the ‘democratic’ model of the US – money talks. As I said several posts back, in lieu of a fair result, we might as well accept Karzai in preference to a prolonged period of even more violence and bloodcurdling carryings-on that might be generated in a runoff – but on the other hand, Abdullah has hinted that his supporters might get frisky if the ‘election is seen to be rigged’. Todays preliminary results (based on 10% of the votes cast, give Karzai 41% and Abdullah 39%, but do not include any votes from the south, where Karzai will win whatever votes the Taliban allowed to be cast. I’ve seen more convincing all-in wrestling bouts – in fact, a novel runoff might take the form of Karzai vs Abdullah, mano a mano, in the ring, wearing tights and masks, of course.

But let’s be serious for once. Thus has a brilliant idea (though I say so myself). Why not bring in Jeb Bush, Former Governor of Florida, to supervise and fine tune the election count? No-one could argue with that – after all, they didn’t in the 2000 US elections.

John J Kelly

Gordon Brown (the ugly one on the left) congratulates Colonel Gaddafi, thinking he is Sarah Boyle, winner of Britain's Got Talent

Over the past three days, as the Lockerbie ‘terrorist’ release turns into a full-blown international incident, we have heard not one word, or even a Twitter, from the man who saved the wurreld (and its banks). This is highly unusual; Gordon and his wife Sarah Twittered from Inverkilliecrankie, or wherever they are on holiday, catching crabs and burying each other in the sand, when the ungrateful Evil Empire dissed the NHS. This time it’s serious. Somebody gave Gordon’s independent-minded fellow Jocks a pass to give Abdulbasset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, a get out of gaol free card on the spurious pretext that he had less than three months to live.

Let’s leave aside the mountain of evidence that al Megrahi and Libya probably didn’t do it. He was threatening to appeal, a process which would have certainly opened the UK and US to wide and embarrassing scrutiny of their highly circumstantial fingering of Libya, then THE axis of the axis of evil, now everybody’s best friend and a bulwark against terror. Blame switched from Syria, the HQ of the PFLP- GQ terrorist cell allegedly paid by Iran to carry out the bombing as revenge for the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 six months earlier (1988) by the USS Vincennes, killing 290 civilians, when Syria joined the Bush 1 and Thatcher ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in the first Gulf War. Let’s ignore Scottish due process which dictates that a terminally ill prisoner should be released on compassionate grounds to die in dignity. Let’s ignore the oft-repeated fact that post-devolution, Scotland makes its own decisions in law. Let’s try and pretend that Britain isn’t the 51st US state, even if the antics of the past few years have understandably left the opposite impression.

Let’s try and focus on the facts. Last Friday UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband furiously demanded that BBC news presenter John Humphrys retract the ‘slur’ that the FCO had anything to do with it. Today’s Sunday Times revealed that Ivan Lewis, UK Foreign Minister responsible for Libya, ‘is said to have written to the Scottish government, encouraging officials to send home’ al-Megrahi. Ten days ago ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, Business Secretary and de facto ruler of Great Britain, admitted discussing the subject a couple of weeks ago with Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif at the Rothschild villa in Corfu. Today, after a mysterious prostate operation (in sympathy with al Megrahi or the result of some other sort of probe?) Mandelson broke his own uncharacteristic silence to declare it ‘offensive to claim’ that this meeting was connected to the release of the Libyan or to trade deals, despite the fact that Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi had emphatically declared the opposite. Colonel Gaddafi, meanwhile, has effusively thanked just about everybody in the UK:

Sarkozy is pissed off because he thought he was welcoming Michael Jackson to the G20 Summit. All Gaddafi had to offer was unlimited supplies of oil, gas and cash, though he performed a passable moonwalk.

“To my friends in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, and Scottish prime minister, and the foreign secretary, I praise their courage for having proved their independence in decision making despite the unacceptable and unreasonable measures that they faced. Nevertheless they took this courageously right and humanitarian decision.” And I say to my friend Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, his Government, the Queen of Britain, Elizabeth, and Prince Andrew, who all contributed to encouraging the Scottish Government to take this historic and courageous decision, despite the obstacles.” (Reuters).

Barack Obama came slowly out of the traps to declare the decision ‘highly objectionable.’ Despite the fact that the release of al Megrahi was ‘on the agenda at every meeting between Blair and Libyan officials’ it was highly OK for St Tony to broker a return of Libya to the international coalition of the hypocrites in 2004 when we realised we were running out of oil and there was rather a lot of it there, not to mention a strongman capable of bullying the bejasus out of many of the the other whackjobs in Africa, especially Sudan, and Mahgreb Middle East. Despite the fact that we knew more than a week before it happened that this release was on the cards, FBI Head, Robert Mueller, sent a hissy letter expressing outrage and astonishment to Kenny MacAskill, Scottish Justice Minister, clearly intended for public consumption (printed in full in The Times). Various neocons (and David Cameron) have postured their horror at the release of this convicted terrorist and outrage at his hero’s welcome in Tripoli as though this was a bolt from the blue.

Exclusive: what they found when they operated on Mandy's prostate - a banana AND a Miliband.

Those are the facts. Here’s some outrageous speculation. Gordon Brown desperately needs sovereign funds. Mandelson told him that this was a small step to take and that nobody would bother once the dust had settled, and anyway, his new friend (and UK homeowner) Gaddafi jr had assured him the return of al Megrahi would pass off quietly. Scotland, an oil and gas economy, was promised lucrative oil supply contracts and plentiful exports of Dundee rock, Irn Bru, tartan and sporrans. The US agreed to turn a blind eye on the condition that Gaddafi refrained from dancing the Highland Fling. Besides, it’s a big bonus if al Megrahi dies without making an appeal – the dirty secrets surrounding massive CIA manipulation of witnesses and evidence, including the possibility that Pan Am Flight 103 was carrying US secret service contraband die with him. Mandelson wins either way: if Brown is discomfited and if the Scottish National Party is put in the hole, his task of bullying the Labour Party is strengthened (Labour desperately needs seats in Scotland in the upcoming General Election). The inconvenient truth is that Colonel Gaddafi is a loony and his son appears to be a blowhard, so the whole yellow ribbon homecoming was unfortunate, but you can’t win them all. Champagne all round at Chateau Rothschild, Corfu branch. Another dinner guest has provided immense entertainment value on the international stage.

John J Kelly

The historic Naz Foundation petition to the Delhi High Court actually began with a history lesson – of fetishism, perversion, fondling and fornication and the punishments thereof. Tellingly, the Christian and European side of the history is much more severe and restrictive than the Hindu Indian one. It only takes a visit to India’s most notorious temple to see that there is a history here of open discussion of sex. Section 377 of the 1860 Indian Penal Code, which criminalises “carnal relations against the natural order” is based on the English Sodomy Law. The embedded notion – sex is for procreation only and that other sex is “unnatural” -is very much a Judeo-Christian idea which still hold sway in Bible Belt America (cf Pro Life) and in the pronouncements of the current Pope and in several sects of Islam (itself Judeo-Christian) but is not a feature of mainstream Buddhism or Hinduism. This idea held sway in the early applications of the law, but quickly gave way to India’s need to control its population.

Some in India claim that gays are a decadent western import. India's ladyboys walk on the wild side - now they can do so legally. Will it make a fundamental difference to how society views its others?

The Delhi High Court Decision to exempt mutually consenting adults from section 377 is a major shift which has been compared to the Roe vs Wade case in America, where women won the right to choose an abortion. At the same time the ruling has opened the debate as to whether the civil rights process itself is an aspect of Westernisation. Extremists even argue that somehow homosexuality, and by definition, tolerance, is alien and that civil rights for minorities is an invasive, exotic way of thinking.

Those radicals who argue against the corrupting aspects of western notions such as democracy avail themselves of the internet, that most democratic of outside influences, to illustrate and promulgate their views. The paradox is vividly apparent in the case of Iraq and Iran. While the web gives activists in India an opportunity to pool intellectual resources and raise their game to the point where they often make a fool of the government – see the varying quality of the 377 case documents, this version of events does little to explain the particular history of the laws being fought. This applies not just for gay rights and sexuality, but equally to Forest Law. These were drafted around the same time, but in this case importing the commercial interests of the British Raj, with the conservation of forests predicated on the need for massive Timber extraction. In 2006, in a similar way, this legal regime was challenged, and ownership rights of India’s “original people” were re-asserted after more than130 years.

It is sad that 60 years after Independence, these relics of British rule still remain, but it is also joyous to see that India has the resources and will to remake itself, and to do so with dignity. Both the Gay and Forest Rights campaigns focused around the notion of human dignity, something central to the Gandhian ideal and the wave of decolonisation it triggered. To call this a western ideal is to ignore the History of Others - others who were also capable of understanding the value of human life. These values, asserted in the Indian Constitution, are now taking precedence over a painful legal legacy. Thus these legal changes are signs not of the dominance of western values, but of a growing sense of inner confidence and self-ownership.

Gordon Brown/Susan Boyle. Has anyone seen them in the same room?

Tribal politics won the day again in the mother(fucker) of all Parliaments as 59 Labour MPs voted yesterday to defeat the Tory motion to stop the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US (Thus passim). 84 Labour MPs had signed the motion to review the 2003 Extradition Treaty but under pressure from the whips (read Mandelson’s Blairite Stasi) 15 abstained, 59 touched their toes and only 10 backed the Opposition Motion. It was a glaring display of everything that is deeply wrong with the UK Parliamentary system, and should be added to the list of things that make it impossible for any right minded person to vote Labour at the next election.

Gordon Brown/the Incredible Hulk. Has anyone seen them in the same room?

Why are we not surprised? Gordon Brown is hoping for payback with a US foundation after his sorry arse is kicked out of Downing Street next year. May I suggest the ‘Neverland Foundation,’ housed in Michael Jackson’s hacienda? He can partner with Mike’s old friends Uri Geller and Lou Ferrigno, lecturing on the fine arts of deception and the transformative power of uncontrolled rage. Mandelson, rumoured to be seriously considering taking over the reins as Labour leader BEFORE the election (Thus passim), is a paid-up member of the Blairite 51st State Society and minces in mysterious ways. Alan Johnson, Home Secretary – the fifth in as many years – like his predecessors, is simply not up to the job.

Gary McKinnon, and others facing extradition under this obscene one-sided treaty, are victims of Labour’s bizarre obsession with a ‘special relationship’ which is only special to the extent that it condones and glorifies abuse. The Conservatives, whatever their ulterior motive may or may not have been, were right to call for a review and should have won the vote. Though it pains me to say it, the Daily Mail is right to campaign hard on Gary McKinnon’s behalf and give this iniquitous betrayal of civil liberties its front page headline, calling the Labour MPs ‘spineless.’ The Guardian meanwhile, spineless as ever and fantasising about its US liberal audience, condescendingly got round to the McKinnon case and pontificated that while it might be a tad unfair to extradite McKinnon, it was good of Labour to defend the Extradition Treaty. Even for Michael White, this was a prodigious feat of toe-touching. Thank goodness nobody takes him seriously any more, if they ever did.

I hope for the sake of Gary McKinnon that the US authorities will come to the aid of their Labour bitches and decide to overturn the extradition request. Meanwhile, everyone in the UK who cares about their freedom should make a point of registering their displeasure by voting out every one of the lickspittle cowards who condemned an Asberger’s sufferer in this way, whether or not you believe in Labour values. Make that ESPECIALLY if you believe in Labour Values. I’ll give you their names as soon as I collate a full list.

John J Kelly

The default position is that they must be guilty – of something. Being Pakistani will do for starters. A couple came from Peshawar Province, a ‘notorious Taleban stronghold’. Thus reported on April 10 that Liverpool John Moores University, where they were studying, has an official student recruitment agent in Peshawar but this appears to have been overlooked in the ensuing witch hunt. Others allegedly travelled to study in Britain on ‘incorrectly completed immigration forms.’ Phil Woolas, Immigration Minister, whose department is responsible for checking such matters, intemperately pronounced ‘we’ve got them’ (meaning bomb plot terrorists) on the evening of the arrests. If they are indeed guilty of entering the UK on false pretences, for the purpose of terror-related mayhem (no evidence was produced to even hold them for the 28 days permitted) and they do represent a real threat to security, then senior heads should roll in the Borders Agency. If they are innocent, they should be allowed to stay. In summary, logic dictates that Woolas should go if the ‘terror suspects’ are deported. 

Home Secretary (for now) Jacqui Smith shows her ID card at the video shop

Woolas, arch advocate of the government’s Identity Card scheme, is an Oldham MP, so it is less than surprising that Manchester has been ‘chosen’ as the testbed city where ‘young people’ aged between 16-25 can voluntarily apply for ID cards (at a cost of £30.00). Foreign nationals have already been obliged to register. The scheme is opposed by Lib-Dems and Tories, who, human rights considerations aside, may not object to ID cards as such, but doubt the government’s ability to deliver the scheme on budget  - latest estimates are £5.5 billion, so let’s call it £11 billion –  but more importantly, whether the system will further compromise individual data and actually facilitate identity fraud. The half-baked cards which will not carry biometric data until 2015, there will be no new national identity database – the existing government databases are a hacker’s half hour recreation – plus scanners which link to said databases will not be readily available for quite some time. Apart from that, it’s great!

No2ID spokesman, Phil Booth (also based in Manchester) said: “It makes a lie of all these grandiose claims about biometrics if there is not the infrastructure to back it up. . . . It will be a bit of plastic that will be eminently copyable.” He added that employers who doubted the authenticity of the card have been told to ‘flick it to check for a distinctive sound’. File under ‘you couldn’t make it up.’

Along with the Pakistani student bomber farrago, Manchester gave us the imaginary 2002 Old Trafford bomb plot (10 ‘Iraqi Kurds’ released without charge in the runup to the Iraq War) and the curious case of Hassan Butt allegedly a Jihadist turned informer, but by his own admission, a publicity-mad fantasist. Even known mad mullahs, such as Sheikh Bakri Mohammed  declared Butt’s claims to be a Taleban recruiter fraudulent, as far back as 2002, but this did not stop the British hounyhmns from hanging on his every word. He – or they – may or may not have been manipulated by the security services, but Manchester police compounded the felony by wasting millions attempting to prosecute Butt and compel the gawps who promoted him to ‘reveal their sources.’  Finally, Manchester had the UK’s highest crime rate in 2007 - another compelling reason to make it the place to launch a hugely costly, half-arsed ID card scheme which is open to widespread abuse. As we said last December, put me down for two, mate.

John J Kelly

We landed in the middle of the night in Addis Ababa, took a small plane across the highlands to Dire-Dawa then travelled by jeep to Harar, passing vast herds of camels and a few hitch hikers with AK 47s on the road – destitute demobbed soldiers abandoned after the abrupt withdrawal from Somalia, a footnote to the Bush-sponsored ‘war on terror’. Fifteen hours after leaving Heathrow, we drank coffee, picked from the bush, roasted and ground before our eyes by a group of kids who might just hold the key to Ethiopia’s future. That’s what Simon had brought me to see, and that’s why I’m telling you this.

Manufacturing coffee at Webmart Business School, Harar

Simon Biltcliffe is a new age print farmer. His company – better described as a Posse – Webmart, brings buyers and sellers of print together. Webmart (turnover £37 million and rising) is fuelled on can-do, adrenalin and the principle that you make a lot of money if you save people money. Old school Quality, Service, Value empowered by peer-to-peer high technology enables turnarounds and transaction cost savings that would give RyanAir a run for its money (without the sweary CEO and leery attitude towards customers and suppliers). Planned philanthropy is embedded in the business model. Because. That’s why kids in a forgotten region of the horn of Africa were wearing yellow T shirts, learning how to use computers and how to build sustainable 21st century enterprises.

Hyena man and friends

We watched a shaman feed wild hyenas with strips of meat hung on a stick (from his mouth) at dusk outside the ancient Medina walls of Harar, one of the holiest cities of Islam (85 mosques)and erstwhile home of Arthur Rimbaud (he was an arms dealer when he wasn’t a poet). There was nothing remotely Disney about those beasts, the true entrepreneurs of the plains. Contrary to popular belief, lions feast on what the hyena packs leave behind. The Hyena man ekes a living with tips from passing travellers and a stipend from the elders – appeasing hyenas must rank among the most dangerous and unusual of council jobs.

Only 16,000 tourists came to Ethiopia in total last year and very few westerners make it to Harar. Sir Richard Burton (pervy Victorian adventurer and translator of the Kama Sutra, not the Welsh actor) was one of the first westerners allowed into the medina in the 1870s. He stayed a week. A Rastafarian called Solomon showed us round the back alleys (there weren’t that many front alleys). He remembered Geldof fondly – said Bob had stayed for five days back in the ’80s, loved it but hadn’t been back. He asked me about his wife and kids. I didn’t elaborate on Peaches or poor Paula. The Rastas aren’t favoured on account of their worship of Haile Selassie, but Christians, Muslims, Hyena men and folks with sidearms rubbed along together just fine, as far as we could see, contrary to dire western rumours of Islamic militancy and religious conflict.

Ethiopian natural resources

All were united in their need to work out how to survive another day. We had cash, food, shoes. We were lucky. We travelled further east, to Babile, a predominantly Somalian refugee township, where the lucky folk had cut up tyres on their feet. Most kids were missing one or more parent. Some were HIV orphans, others were victims of someone else’s pointless war. Although it rains for three months a year, water is scarce and agriculture is neolithic. The Chinese are building a pipeline and digging wells, but somehow it hasn’t happened yet. Women and kids slave as they have always done. The lucky ones have something to do. Babile’s cash crop is Chat, a mild hallucogenic leaf which men chew to give them energy and help them forget. Nothing much happens before the noonday chat wagon arrives, then men squat, chew and mill about. Our driver, somewhat alarmingly, was an Chat afficionado. He gave me some leaves to try: it would have been rude to refuse. The journey back to Harar was mellow.

Business 101, Harar, Ethiopia

Webmart Business School pays young people to come to learn computer and basic business skills. Even this tiny stipend helps the students and their families – often without parents – eat regularly. The logic and business plan is compelling and ambitious. Given the hurdles to development, it is pointless to sustain stone age subsistence farming practices. You can dole out metal hoes to replace the wooden ones and bring the people into the 18th Century, but Ethiopia needs and deserves access to 21st Century trading and management leadership. And it should be homegrown. The sleekest people driving the biggest trucks were UN workers and NGOs. The only difference between them and the wonderful kids we met was circumstance of birth and access to international aid money. Unchannelled Aid anchors subsistence, dependence and, sadly, enables corruption. In itself, it is as pernicious and harmful as Chat.

In partnership with Alchemy World, a small but perfectly focused social entrepreneurship group, Webmart is funding the development of a cadre of students who can seed a self-help culture in a country which has no shortage of beautiful and intelligent people, but precious little in the way of luck and natural resources. Back in Addis, we watched Obama’s inauguration on TV. Africans were uncritically proud. We met an Alchemy graduate who had made $400.00 in the last month from her nascent travel business. Her father makes $37.00 a month and needs to support a family of seven. Reed Elsevier have given her a stand at World Travel Mart in London in November, and support Alchemy with free advertisements. I for one will chip in for her expenses.

The maths are simple. 1000 Alchemy graduates could permanently transform the lives of tens of thousands of people. If they are obliged to emigrate they get upskilled jobs when they do. If they stay, they have the nous to exploit the undoubted human and natural resources of this extraordinary country. The investment has to be better than waiting for the next sack of UN rice or the Chinese water that never quite makes the last mile. What’s in it for Webmart? Absolutely nothing, apart from knowing that selling that print run just might have changed the lives of people who deserve a chance to help themselves.

John J Kelly.

PS. If you want to help, contact Simon Biltcliffe or Alchemy World.

Having returned from a trip to to region, I can confirm that the overwhelming view of Iraq’s neighbours is that the country has been pointlessly laid waste, destabilised, its people terrorised and factionalised by a brutal and mindless occupying force. The much-lauded ‘Petraeus Doctrine‘ was more in the hearts and minds of the Bush PR machine than in evidence among the US troops in Iraq. 

The footage here shows a heavily-armed and armoured US soldier brutally and callously harranguing and taunting Iraqi police. Having accused them of belonging to the Madhi Army (if they weren’t before, they most likely will have joined shortly thereafter) he personally threatens them, insults their country and finally urges them to prove themselves ‘as police’ by indulging in random acts of violence. It defies description, so I won’t try. If you want to see how not to win hearts and minds, watch this advertisement for insurgency and terrorist recruitment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1GrdTakvl8

A few posts back I wondered whether M15 and its master, the CIA, Twittered. Well, not for the time in the world of Thus, fact has rapidly overtaken fiction. The inept and authoritarian UK government is actually considering the mass surveillance and retention of all user communications on social-networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo. The UK government’s record on data protection is appalling, while its cack-handed hassling of its citizenry is a subject of grim humour in States considered repressive. Let us not forget, in passing, that the Security Services, led, as far as we know, by John Scarlett, served up the mess of misinformation about yellow cake uranium that nailed down the pretext to invade Iraq. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be laughable. The vast majority of this piece comes from ZD Net, so I’ll leave it to their excellent analysts to explain: 

Pay attention! Former Nottingham Deputy Headmaster, now Minister for State Security, Vernon Coaker, wants to outdo China in snooping the internet at vast cost to the economy and to civil liberties

“Home Office security minister Vernon Coaker said on Monday (16 March) that the EU Data Retention Directive, under which ISPs must store communications data for 12 months, does not go far enough. Communications such as those on social networking sites and instant messaging could also be monitored. ”Social-networking sites, such as MySpace or Bebo, are not covered by the directive,” said Coaker, speaking at a meeting of the House of Commons Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee. “That is one reason why the government are looking at what we should do about the Intercept Modernisation Programme, because there are certain aspects of communications which are not covered by the directive.” From 15 March, 2009 under the EU Data Retention Directive, all UK internet service providers (ISPs) are required to store customer traffic data for a year. The Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) is a government proposal, introduced last year, for legislation to use mass monitoring of traffic data as an anti-terrorism tool. It has two strands: that the government use deep packet inspection to monitor the web communications of all UK citizens; and that all traffic data relating to those communications are stored in a centralised government database.

The UK government has previously said that communications interception was ‘vital’, and has hinted that social-networking sites may be put under surveillance. However, responding to a question from Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, Coaker said that all traffic data on social-networking sites and through instant messaging may be harvested and stored. ”The honourable member for Carshalton and Wallington will also know the controversy that currently surrounds the Intercept Modernisation Programme,” said Coaker. “I look forward to his support when we present Intercept Modernisation Programme proposals, which may include requiring the retention of data on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and all other similar sites.” Deep packet inspection, the second strand of the IMP, involves intercepting and examining the contents of all data packets that flow over a network. In Monday’s meeting, Coaker said the government still intends to have a consultation on whether to inspect and then store all internet traffic data in a centralised government database. ”What is the point of having a consultation if, as the honourable gentleman implies, the government have already made up their mind to have a central database?” said Coaker. “We have not made up our mind. We have said we will consult on a variety of options.” Opposition to the government’s IMP proposal has been fierce. Cambridge University computer security expert Richard Clayton told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that the government proposal to monitor social-networking traffic was “extremely intrusive”.

Preview of 2010 Labour Election campaign poster

“The question is whether it’s necessary or proportionate, and the short answer is no, it doesn’t look that way,” said Clayton. “If the government wants to make us safer, having a few more police on the electronic beat would be a good idea.” Clayton said that the problem for the government is that the Data Retention Directive only applies to data held by internet service providers, but that a large number of people don’t use ISPs’ systems to communicate, instead using online services including webmail and social-networking sites. Servers may be located in different jurisdictions, said Clayton, and data-retention times may be short. ”The government wants to collect all of this data on everybody, just in case,” said Clayton. “Suppose you use hotmail.pk, and you blow up the Houses of Parliament. The government would have to persuade the Pakistani authorities to turn over the logs, which may then turn out only to have been retained for three days.” Clayton believes that the cost of harvesting this information, which would involve all UK internet infrastructure providers and ISPs having ‘black boxes’ to monitor data, would be prohibitively expensive. Clayton said that taxpayers’ money would be better spent on the police, who could target investigations to those they suspect of criminal activity, rather than on performing blanket surveillance of everybody. ”To deploy deep packet inspection equipment isn’t cheap – the word ‘billion’ is appropriate,” said Clayton. “It took the Home Office the best part of a year to find £3m for the Police e-Crime Unit. That’s what is wrong with this picture.” Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee also opposes the use of deep packet inspection to inspect people’s data. Berners-Lee told ZDNet UK last week that the internet should not be “snooped” upon. ”If [third parties] are using the data for political ends or commercial interest, there we have to draw the line,” Berners-Lee said. “There’s a gap between running a successful internet service and looking inside data packets.” 

I’m probably already on a bunch of gormless Watch lists but you all might consider the risks of arsing about on Facebook and the like in the dark days of Mordor under the watchful eye (he’s only got one) of Gordon Brown and his paranoid androids. Don’t say anything subversive such as: “Golly, I wish we had another government – any government – instead of these silly billies” or they’ll render you to Morocco and apply the Gillettes to the old man.  John J Kelly