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	<title>Ephems of BLB</title>
	<link>http://www.barder.com</link>
	<description>Brian Barder&#039;s blog</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:26:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Gordon Brown at the Iraq Inquiry: the unanswered killer question at last</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The prime minister&#8217;s brave decision to give evidence at the Iraq Inquiry on 5 March provided the opportunity for the central question about the Iraq war to be put bluntly and persistently to the second most senior member of the Blair government that took us to war, enabling us all to judge the adequacy or [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2410</link>
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		<title>Famine relief aid to Ethiopia diverted? A misleading BBC allegation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A BBC programme broadcast today, and the advance publicity for it, give the impression that a huge proportion of the famine relief aid given by the international community to Ethiopia in the 1980s was diverted from starving people to buy arms and ammunition for use in the civil war then raging in the northern parts [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2402</link>
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		<title>Perils of a hung parliament &#8212; and of PR</title>
		<description><![CDATA[With the opinion polls momentarily suggesting a narrow gap between the Conservatives and Labour, the chattering classes&#8217; newspapers and current affairs programmes on television are full of pundits agonising about the dangerous implications of a hung parliament after the impending general election &#8212; i.e. a result in which no single party has an overall majority [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2395</link>
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		<title>Bullying is not the central issue: what matters is how Gordon governs</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the many questions about Gordon Brown&#8217;s merits and defects as prime minister, his alleged bullying of his staff and colleagues is peripheral (except of course for those whom he allegedly bullies).  Any bullying is a symptom of a more fundamental problem, not the problem itself.  Whether staff at No. 10 Downing Street have complained [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2388</link>
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		<title>No more Ephems for a while&#8230; (with update 8/2/2010)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In a fit of absent-mindedness (aka sheer stupidity) I have just opened a seriously infected file (sent to me via Skype with a message purporting to come from a reliable Skype contact) which has played havoc with my computer, including disabling every known application that might have been able to clean it up.
So if you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2384</link>
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		<title>The Blair defence: never take a risk</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Tony Blair&#8217;s six hours at the witness table of the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry yesterday gave us a bravura performance, allowing him to display all the old familiar dramatic and forensic skills that got him out of so many scrapes during his years at No. 10.  The media this morning all comment on how nervous he [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2369</link>
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		<title>Iraq: the 45-minute warning and the dossier in three inquiries</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The academic and historian Professor Geoffrey Warner has kindly authorised me to publish on this website a short but meticulously researched paper comparing the evidence given to three official inquiries &#8212; Butler, Hutton and now Chilcot &#8212; about the famous (or infamous) warning in one of the two Iraq dossiers that Saddam Hussein could have [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2359</link>
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		<title>Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Powell and the 45-Minute Warning</title>
		<description><![CDATA[By Professor Geoffrey Warner 
(formerly Fellow in Modern History, Brasenose College, Oxford)
One of the most intriguing documents to emerge from the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly was an e-mail, dated 19 September 2002,  from the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, to Alastair Campbell, his director of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/alastair-campbell-jonathan-powell-and-the-45-minute-warning</link>
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		<title>Was the Iraq war legal? No, but the attorney-general didn&#8217;t change his mind</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This week the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry starts to hear evidence on, among other things, the legality or illegality of the Iraq war.  Among the key witnesses will be Sir Michael Wood, at the time the Foreign Secretary&#8217;s principal legal adviser:  Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then Wood&#8217;s deputy, who resigned because she could not accept the Attorney-General&#8217;s formal [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2334</link>
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		<title>That Tory poster again</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In your heart you know he&#8217;s wrong&#8230;.

&#8230;.but at least he&#8217;s better-looking than Gordon
[Hat-tip:  http://mydavidcameron.com/]
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2321</link>
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		<title>Iraq: a plan is not a decision, Mr Murdoch</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In its report of the secret letter of 25 March 2002 (a year before the US-UK attack on Iraq) from Jack Straw, then Foreign &#38; Commonwealth Secretary, to Tony Blair, warning the prime minister of the likely pitfalls involved in any future military action against Iraq, the Sunday Times of 17 January 2010 includes a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2314</link>
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		<title>We still need to know why Blair went to war when he did</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When I commented in question-time after a recent London club discussion dinner about Tony Blair&#8217;s pre-Iraq prevarications[1] over the conditions in which he would commit Britain to war, the distinguished speaker (I later learned) murmured to his neighbour that &#8220;this chap is obsessed with Iraq&#8221;.  Well, maybe I am.  It may be a lot of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2308</link>
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		<title>Alastair Campbell at the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry: the gaping hole</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s disappointing that the Chilcot Inquiry didn&#8217;t focus relentlessly on the gaping hole in Alastair Campbell&#8217;s defence of his and Blair&#8217;s record in Iraq, summed up here:
&#8220;When it came to it, when the diplomatic process clearly was not going to resolve the issue, post [UN Security Council resolution] 1441 and when the French pulled the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2300</link>
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		<title>Ephems is AFK and wishes all its readers a &#8212; you know&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ephems will shortly be intermittently AFK* for a variety of reasons so please don&#8217;t expect any blog posts or responses to comments for a while.
Meanwhile we sit and shiver in sub-zero London and wonder whether our daughter in snow-bound New York is going to make it onto her flight to Heathrow.  Global warming?  Pah, humbug.  [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2294</link>
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		<title>Blair, Iraq, and the truth at last</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Does Tony Blair realise that in a couple of sentences in a religious affairs interview with one Fern Britton on television, he has blown what&#8217;s left of his defence on the Iraq war out of the water?
&#8216;&#8221;If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?&#8221; Blair was asked. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2286</link>
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		<title>Tony Blair is not a UN Peace Envoy:  a dialogue of the deaf with the Guardian</title>
		<description><![CDATA[27 October 2009:  Me to Guardian Letters: submitted for publication

Sir,
I enjoyed George Monbiot&#8217;s proposals for Tony Blair&#8217;s future (Making this ruthless liar EU president is a crazy plan. But I&#8217;ll be backing Blair, October 27), but was sorry that Monbiot joined the many commentators who erroneously describe Blair as the &#8220;Middle East peace envoy&#8221;.  According [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2281</link>
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		<title>Reflections on another week</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Some more random reflections prompted by events of the past week or so:
The commentators&#8217; consensus on Gordon Brown&#8217;s apparently successful teasing of David Cameron at PMQs on Wednesday about his and other Cameroons&#8217; Eton educations (&#8220;[Tory] inheritance tax policy seems to have been dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton&#8221;) is that Labour has [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2271</link>
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		<title>Rescuing those misdiagnosed as in persistent vegetative state: we&#8217;ve been here before</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Two weeks ago, the UK press ran a sensational story about a patient, diagnosed by medical specialists as having been for years in persistent vegetative state (PVS) with no consciousness or ability to communicate, discovered through a state-of-the-art scanning system to have been fully conscious throughout, and now enabled to communicate through a specially designed [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2263</link>
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		<title>Iraq Inquiry lets Blair off one hook, impales him on another</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Barely a week into the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq, two ex-mandarins&#8217; evidence has pretty definitively acquitted Tony Blair of one of the gravest charges against him, and convicted him of another.
In the testimony by Sir David Manning, the prime minister&#8217;s foreign affairs adviser during the key period preceding the attack on Iraq in March 2003 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2247</link>
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		<title>The Iraq Inquiry: some helpful texts (with 27 Nov 09 up-date)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[With the aim of assisting the Chilcot Inquiry with its preparations for questioning Tony Blair about how he led us into war with Iraq, I have put some key texts on my website &#8212; at
 http://www.barder.com/tony-blair-and-iraq-some-texts
&#8211; in the hope that the questions arising from them won&#8217;t be overlooked.
I have also sent them to the Inquiry [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2234</link>
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		<title>Tony Blair and Iraq:  some texts</title>
		<description><![CDATA[. . . . .
BBC Newsnight, 6 February, 2003  Jeremy Paxman and Tony Blair
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/2732979.stm
JEREMY PAXMAN: &#8230; Will you give an undertaking to this audience, and indeed to the British people that before any military action you will seek another UN Resolution, specifically authorising the use of force.
TONY BLAIR: We&#8217;ve said that that&#8217;s what we want [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/tony-blair-and-iraq-some-texts</link>
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		<title>EU&#8217;s good appointments, UK media&#8217;s dismal coverage</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The EU&#8217;s appointments of the Belgian prime minister Herman van Rompuy (what comical names these foreigners do have![1]) as permanent Chairman (&#8220;President&#8221;) of the European Council, and (subject to the approval of the European parliament) of the EU&#8217;s (British) Commissioner for Trade, Baroness (Cathy) Ashton, as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2191</link>
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		<title>A referendum on the UK&#8217;s EU membership? Please not yet!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In an eloquent article on Our Kingdom, David Marquand, the academic, former Labour MP and later chief adviser (1977-78) to Roy Jenkins as President of the European Commission, laments that the Britain he&#8217;s proud of, the Britain that &#8220;stood alone against Nazi Germany for twelve long months&#8221;, that welcomed foreign exiles and was a beacon [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2186</link>
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		<title>The Guardian on what Tony Blair&#8217;s middle east job isn&#8217;t</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last month I submitted a letter to the Guardian pointing out that the same day&#8217;s issue had wrongly described Tony Blair&#8217;s job in the middle east as that of &#8216;peace envoy&#8217;.  What happened next is described in a further email which I subsequently sent to the Guardian&#8217;s letters editor and &#8216;readers&#8217; editor&#8217;, and on which [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2180</link>
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		<title>Classifying drugs: the Home Secretary and the David Nutt case (with 5 Nov 09 Update)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s worth trying to identify some of the confusions that have arisen in the controversy over the action of the normally mild-mannered Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, in dismissing Professor David Nutt from his post as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) after the Professor repeated his criticism of the government&#8217;s [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2163</link>
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		<title>The &#8220;President of Europe&#8221; and some other misconceptions</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The sudden burst of media interest in the fading possibility of Tony Blair being chosen to be something erroneously described as &#8220;President of Europe&#8221; has given rise to an extraordinary number of misconceptions and misunderstandings.  In a post in the admirable website LabourList &#8212; admirable in many ways, not just because it publishes articles and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2156</link>
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		<title>Question Time with the BNP: cui bono?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s been no shortage of strongly argued reactions to the BBC programme Question Time, starring the malodorous British National Party&#8217;s leader Nick Griffin.  (You can still watch the whole thing online here.)  We&#8217;re forcefully told that the BBC should never have provided this invaluable platform, a place on the BBC&#8217;s flagship Question Time panel, to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2145</link>
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		<title>Please sign a petition for victims of indeterminate sentences</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last August I posted a piece here about the scandalous injustice of &#8220;indeterminate sentences for public protection&#8221; (IPPs):  it&#8217;s at http://www.barder.com/696.  It prompted 37 comments, several of which starkly illustrate the human cost of this wicked system.  One comment, by &#8216;Mary&#8217;, urged readers of this blog to sign a petition to the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2141</link>
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		<title>The Noblemen of the UK Supreme Court</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As every UK newspaper-reader and television-watcher ought to, but probably doesn&#8217;t, know, since the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876, the judicial work of the House of Lords has been done only by the 12 most senior judges in the land, the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary—or ‘Law Lords’[1].  From 1 October this year (2009) the functions [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2130</link>
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		<title>AFK Monday 12 Oct to Thurs 15 Oct</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ll be Away From Keyboard from early on Monday, 12 Oct until late on Thursday the 15th, spending a few days with old friends in Edinburgh.  During that time I shan&#8217;t be posting on Ephems or anywhere else, nor responding to comments here or on http://www.labourlist.org/home.  See you again soon!
Brian
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.barder.com/2128</link>
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