Corruption in power can be seen throughout history
humanitarian aid’ is of little consolation to the people of Palestine. Israel is currently withholding humanitarian aid if it poses a risk to Israel. Israel clearly considers the very existence of Palestinians in Gaza as a threat.
A good friend and steadfast ally, John Hurson, is one of many humanitarians en route to Gaza by sea in a humanitarian flotilla to bring aid to Gaza and break the unlawful naval blockade of Gaza. A similar flotilla set sail on May 31, 2010, long before the Hamas incursion and atrocity of 2017. The unarmed flotilla was attacked and boarded by Israeli naval forces, killing nine Turkish pacifists.
The Saville Enquiry findings were published shortly after on June 14, 2010. I wrote an article for the Guardian to coincide with Saville’s findings.
It was therefore speculative and written in the present and future tense. The editor held it until the following day, lest my speculation proved wrong. However, the only editorial amendment made was the change of tense. I do not have the gift of ‘second sight’ just an obsession with stating the obvious I provide an extract from my 2010 article as published to demonstrate the point that if we cannot learn from history, it will repeat itself until we do.
June 14, 2010
Yesterday, the outcome of the Saville Inquiry was published.
A second British Prime Minister apologised for the killing of unarmed and innocent protestors.
A respected human rights lawyer has already offered their services in prosecuting the real culprit, the British state...but Lord Saville has exonerated the state.
Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, lied to parliament, and the House of Commons; the media willingly collaborated, adding insult to injury by uncritically repeating government misrepresentation. The military lied. Widgery lied.
Had Bloody Sunday been no more than disgraceful overreaction and unlawful behaviour on the part of a few ‘squaddies’ or overzealous commanders why did the entire apparatus of the British state conspire to create a complicated labyrinth of lies and deceit which has taken hundreds of testimonies, thousands of pages, millions of pounds and thirty-eight years to unravel?
The Saville Inquiry has refuted the lies and provided them [the families] with the closure they seek.
Respectfully, however, Bloody Sunday was never just about the detail of how thirteen people got killed on the day, the fourteenth dying later of his wounds. Lord Saville has not explained why everybody in authority lied until some of the truth was extracted at enormous expense.
I have consistently argued that Ted Heath’s government should be held responsible for the pre-meditated planning, conduct and cover-up of Bloody Sunday.
It is they, not the anonymous and brutalised ragbag of alphabet spaghetti soldiers, now carrying the can, who should be prosecuted.
Bloody Sunday should have been adjudicated in the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
The Saville Inquiry has no remit and no standing to determine whether the British Government committed a war crime in 1972 and in so doing started a war. Lord Saville found no evidence of his employer’s culpability. He looked for none. Lord Saville effectively closed the route to The Hague. For this alone, his government will feel it was worth every penny.”
Had the Heath government been tried in the international court at The Hague, there might have been fewer Bloody Sundays elsewhere since, not least for nine Turkish humanitarians recently on their way to Gaza.
Still, it continues: families seeking justice; governments breaking international law with impunity; the media with some noble exceptions, acting as the agents of power; and always Palestine bleeding.
THIS is a big year for elections. Right across the world oters will be exercising their mandate and going to the polls. India, the world’s largest democracy is currently in the middle of its general election. Due to the vast size of the population, the election process will last for 44 days. India’s eligible voters at 968.6 million are more than twice the size of the whole European Union at 448 million.
Meanwhile, in the United States of America, we are all watching who the next President of the great super-power will be. That will be decided in
November, and it is looking likely, according to most “informed” commentators that it will be November when the United Kingdom will also finally go to the polls.
How we consume our information on politics and news generally, has changed so much from when I first got involved in politics.
Then if a significant speech were made to a large gathering of people, it would have been written up in the newspaper the following day.
Now, we get a blow-by-blow account of the speech and its key messages from social media “live” from the venue. I am not sure how Jim Molyneaux or indeed Margaret Thatcher would have survived in the world of X and Snapchat, but I do believe that before the era of 24-hour news, politics was a much more thoughtful and considered place; a time when policies meant more than the latest gossip online.
As Thatcher herself once said it is ideas which are the stuff of politics.
An astute man once said to me, that we now had access to much more information than ever before, but information is not wisdom, and it was the latter which was needed today as we did yesterday. I totally concur we can be bombarded with information from lots of various sources but are we really any wiser?
And just as important is the source of the information how can we trust what we see as being true?
It is important when we are making decisions about who to choose as our next Member of Parliament that we have the truth and not a fictionalised account of their record or beliefs that applies whether we are here in the UK, India or in America where it is becoming nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction, especially online.
Since taking up my seat in the House of Lords I have spent some time looking at the online world and how it deals especially with vulnerable people the young, those with disabilities, and the elderly.
Since I started looking at this world, I have been discovering just how sophisticated the digital space is. One of those