Short thoughts
Two quick thoughts on the spying thing:
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Would everybody please stop talking about “bugs”. They intercepted phone calls as they were transmitted to satellites; they did not sneak into Kofi’s office and stick microphones in the pot plants. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s nonetheless an important distinction.
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Why did Clare Short wait until after the war to out the warmongers’ dirty tricks? It would have been far more effective to have raised the issue when it was happening, and it might have changed the course of history. I’m a bit disappointed.
So, what, UN people don’t make local calls?
The tapping of phone lines and the planting of microphones in U.N. offices are common enough that the organization employs a team of debuggers, headed by a former New York police officer, to routinely sweep offices and respond to requests from nations that suspect their officials are being monitored.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10951-2004Feb26.html
Why did Clare Short wait until after the war to out the warmongers’ dirty tricks?
Because she only just now made it up.
More likely because in the leaddup to war, she was in the inner cabinet and maintained some semblance of cabinet solidarity. I dare say these days her conscience pricks her endlessly.
nice time to find your scrupples,well and truely after the hourse has bolted.but really such technology wasn’t really invented to not be misused,are you really that supprised?
“More likely because in the leaddup to war, she was in the inner cabinet and maintained some semblance of cabinet solidarity. I dare say these days her conscience pricks her endlessly.”
No. More likely it’s her sense that Tony Blair is a prick for deservedly manoeuvring her out of Cabinet that rankles. I’m guessing that it’s got nothing much to do with “conscience” and everything to do with revenge.
She voted for the War. She stayed in Cabinet when Robin Cook left the government. She cut and ran whenshe assessed it as politically expedient to do so and if she’s so deeply tortured by the notion that (GASP!) Britain has an electronic surveillance intelligence capacity, why did she spend years in Cabinet being an instrumental part of the collective responsibility required to enable it?.
Oh, chuck in the fact that it now emerges that she might not have even seen these transcripts. Though she certainly heard about them…..
She’s either profoundly stupid – or she thinks we are.
Geoff, could you be partly right on the first explanation, and Short partly right on the second?