Last June I posted a piece about my disabled car parking woes. In it I pointed out the action of the local Tory MP Anthony Steen in leaving his car for 2 days in a disabled parking bay at Newton Abbot railway station and complaining about the level of provision of disabled parking spaces. There being to many as opposed to there being not enough. Well, he has made the news again, this time by spreading falsity about Romanians living in Britain and trafficking children.

The story starts on the 24th January this year when the Metropolitan Police and Thames Valley Police carried out a joint operation in Slough called Operation Caddy. They raided 17 homes at dawn and took 10 children into care. The press and TV were invited along to witness the  smashing down of doors as the police heroically save children who had been sold into slavery with criminal gangs by their Romanian parents and were, according to the Daily Mail front page the next day, "Fagin's Heirs". ITN filmed the raid and the report with its sensationalised language is something to behold. The story also made headlines in other tabloid papers like the Daily Star. 

The Daily Mail, that renowned purveyor of hate for the 'Other', has been running a campaign demonising Romanians (the new euphemism for Roma or Gypsies) living in Britain for some years and this seems to be the latest installment. Then, on the 2nd of February the Guardian carried an article about the raids which debunked the official story justifying them - there were no Romanian children sold by their parents to criminal gangs. After spending the night in local authority care the children were returned to their parents except one 14 year old whose parents couldn't immediately be traced. Of the 15 adults arrested, none were charged with child trafficking. 10 were charged minor immigration offenses going back 7 years, 3 were charged with receiving stolen mobile phones and one was sentenced to 8 weeks for having a stolen phone worth over £400.

Even the Daily Mail has had to retract the allegation of child trafficking. Under the headline "'Smuggled Fagin kids' were actually living happily with their Romanian parents, embarrassed police reveal", the Mail passes the buck.

In the Guardian article by Helen Pidd and Vikram Dodd, the police officer in command of the operation, Commander Steve Allen said when trying to explain the anticlimactic charges levelled against those arrested, "I'm not able to see into the future. I don't know exactly who and what we were going to find in those addresses". The Daily Mail extended the quote to include, "But I did act on the basis of sound intelligence".

Also a spokesperson for the Romanian embassy complained of not being given access to their nationals unlike the case in Romania; when British nationals are arrested they are seen by the British embassy within 24 hrs.

Then on the 6th February, my local MP, Anthony Steen repeated in Westminster Hall, using parliamentary privilege, the antique myth about Gypsies selling their children by citing the Slough raids. He even puts an amount expected by the parents from the selling of their Roma children - £20,000.

Steen's contribution to the House of Commons referred to "intelligence"  providing the evidence for his figures. I wonder if the source of his "intelligence" was the same as that of Commander Steve Allen who led the raids, or that which produced the 'evidence' showing that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

On the same day as Steen made his disgraceful contribution to Parliament, 6th February the local paper, 'Totnes Times' carried its regular column from a local policeman, Sgt Steve Hopper. The column started off by explaining a series of 'high profile' police actions around the town with one of the forces ANPR (automatic number plate reading) units stopping cars to check for tax evasion, MOTs etc and with which I have no problem. Vehicle tax evasion can usually point to other problems with the car or owner. Unfortunately the following was buried deep in the article;

"You may have seen on the evening news that same day a huge police operation up country involving Romanian criminal gangs using children, some of whom had been sold by their parents, being used for crime. The news described it as modern-day child slavery straight from the era of 'Dickens' and would such criminality affect us in Totnes or south Devon? The answer is yes, one of the first vehicles stopped by one of the ANPR team, crewed with the town NBM Pc Mike Elliot, contained a team of four Romanian nationals, so be warned and be aware. We may live in a safe area but travelling criminals have for a long time had us within their sights."

Part of the full article (unfortunately I cannot find the article at the Totnes Times web site to link to) suggests that Sgt Hopper wrote the piece the day after the Slough raids and it was only published two weeks later. He may not therefore have had knowledge of the subsequent embarrassment suffered by Commander Steve Allen when he was writing the above. But this does not excuse his implying that Romanians per se are travelling criminals. That is just plain wrong.

Steen on the other hand has no excuse. He is an MP who should be fully up to date on any issue he speaks to in the House of Commons - on top of his brief. I can only assume that at the very least he is incompetent or at the worst, he is engaging in the politics of hate.

A further indication of Steen's politics can be deduced from an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons he put his name to a year ago sponsored by Michael Gove;

EDM 900

IRAN AND ISRAEL

19.02.2007

Gove, Michael

That this House notes the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declarations that `Israel should be wiped off the map' and that the `Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of its life'; further notes President Ahmadinejad's statement that the UK, Israel and the United States will eventually disappear from the world; further notes that President Ahmadinejad has called the `Jews a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians', and has said that `they should know they are nearing the last days of their lives'; further notes that President Ahmadinejad has called the murder of six million Jews `a fairytale' and that Iran has holocaust denial as official government policy; believes that President Ahmadinejad is inciting genocide in his declarations; further notes Iran's development of nuclear weapons which could be used to put into effect the genocidal declarations of its President; and therefore urges the British Government to put forward a resolution at the United Nations Security Council demanding President Ahmadinejad be brought to trial on the charge of incitement to commit genocide, in clear breach of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention of 1951.

EDM 900 has been a campaigning priority for the Conservative Friends of Israel for the last year. I have no idea if Steen is a member of CFI, he is not listed as an officer of the organisation and they do not give a full membership list at their web site. The quotes used in EDM 900 attributed to Ahmadinejad have been shown to be a mistranslation and the accusations of Iran developing nuclear weapons smacks of Israeli state propaganda and which has been refuted by the USA's recent National Intelligence Estimate (pdf) and not proven by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei . It seems as though Steen is developing a track record of attaching his name to highly questionable motions in parliament. Regurgitating the myth that Roma sell their children is on a par with Christians saying the Jews killed Jesus. Both espouse the politics of hate.

Mentioning CFI also gives me the opportunity to raise problems the Labour Party have been experiencing with questionable fund raising and donations by members of Labour Friends of Israel. 

At the end of November last year it came to light that David Abrahams, an affluent businessman and prominent activist in Labour Friends of Israel, donated over £600,000 to the Labour Party via proxies. It is not allowed. The prime minister Gordon Brown had being re-gaining ground again following his indecision on holding a snap election two months previously, as well as with the announcement that half of our troops in Iraq would be coming home in May 2008 which could be interpreted as a weakening of British support for an extension of the war to Iran. The news of the questionable legality of the donations had the effect of destabilising the Labour Party anew. 

Almost immediately following the Abraham revelations, Peter Hain and Harriet Harman, both Cabinet members made public (in an attempt to retain control of the story) that they had also received funding through questionable channels to run their deputy leadership campaigns.

In  mid-January of this year the funding of Hain's deputy leadership campaign was subject to further investigation by the press . It came to light that the Hain campaign team had set up a 'think tank', the Progressive Policies Forum (PPF) which channeled at least £50,000 to the Hain campaign. The PPF received donations and loans totalling £30,000 from Willie Nagel, a diamond broker and supporter of both Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel according to the Jewish Chronicle. The PPF also received £14,600 from Isaac Kaye, who is the former chairman of Norton Healthcare, which was investigated by police looking into an alleged £400 million price-rigging of pharmaceuticals sold to the NHS. Kaye is a donor to Labour Friends of Israel. A police investigation has been instigated and Hain forced to resign his Ministerial position for Work and Pensions.

Again the Labour Party had been destabilised and the country distracted by questionable funding from people who are involved with Labour Friends of Israel and whose allegiance to the best interests for Britain is questionable to say the least. And in which their actions undermine the democratic process.

I have mentioned before how the nature and timing of any political intervention is crucial to its success or not. The timing of the Hain revelations in January 2008, the point at which he lost control of the story, is a case in point. Though originally surfacing along with the Abraham revelations, Hain's troubles only really started to gain any traction in the press a few days before Bush visited Israel as his first stop in a Middle East tour.

It is probably easier to see what I am trying to get at by a short time line;

8th January; the Guardian carries article by David Hencke and Patrick Wintour on Hain's failing to declare tens of thousands of pounds. 

9th - 11th January; Bush visits Israel where he criticises the illegal settlements while the Israeli military steps up attacks on Gaza. His tour then took him to the Gulf states where he again blamed Iran for all the woes in the Middle East.

15th January; 19 Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israeli military using tanks and jet planes. 

18th January; Israel closes border, sealing Gaza off and preventing UN food aid or oil for electricity generation from entering, which threatens mass starvation. A weekend of horror stories follow. 

21st January; Fuel supplies run out in Gaza and the area is sunk in darkness with sewage running through the streets due to lack of electricity for the pumps. 

21st January; Martin Luther King day in the USA. World share prices start to fall when the markets open in the East. It spreads across globe as Gaza suppression seen as possible first step toward attack on Iran. This is never admitted to publicly. The official reason given is a possible recession in the USA due to the 'sub-prime' housing debacle.

22nd January; Border disturbance at the Rafah crossing into Egypt. Palestinian women lead the demonstrations. 

22nd January; The USA returns to work and Wall Street plummets. Emergency meeting of the Federal Reserve displays signs of panic when cutting interest rates by three-quarters of one percent.

22nd January ; The Russian Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky speaking at a scientific conference in Moscow says, "We are not planning to attack anyone. But our partners should clearly understand... that the armed forces will be used if necessary to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and its allies, including on a preventative basis, including with the use of nuclear weapons,". This statement was delivered while a Russian fleet and combat ready aircraft exercise in the north Atlantic.

23rd January; The wall between Gaza and Egypt at the Rafah crossing is pulled down by the Palestinians who flood into Egypt breaking the medieval siege and bringing back into Gaza fuel and food.

25th January; The military commander of Hamas in Rafah, Mohammed Harb is assassinated by Israeli missile attack.

30th January; Two undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean off Egypt are cut disrupting the internet throughout the Middle East and stretching to India and beyond. Original stories say cables are cut by ships dragging their anchors. This is later questioned after a report from Lloyds surfaces.

2nd February; Undersea internet cable off Dubai severed.

3rd February; Border at Rafah resealed by both Egypt and Hamas. 

4th February onward; Israel attacks on Gaza continue. 

It is always worth asking of any political or military event - why at that moment in time?

So what am I saying by producing such a timeline? Nothing, except that there are on going military manoeuvres and political stratagems looking to pry an opportunity to war on Iran and weaken the opposition to such an attack. Reactionary elements within the establishments of the USA and Britain who have not yet fully understood how far global power has shifted from the USA and Europe to the East. When they do we can expect a turn to reaction at home. This seems to be in the early stages in Britain when Labour Party MPs are calling for a greater presence of uniformed military on our streets. (When I was in the army we couldn't wait to get out of uniform and into civies when going out on the town).

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