Labour's List of Shame

Here are all the Labour MP's who defied official party policy on Syria and voted for war:

Adrian Bailey	West Bromwich West
Alan Campbell	Tynemouth
Alan Johnson	Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle
Alison McGovern	Wirral South
Angela Eagle	Wallasey
Angela Smith	Penistone and Stocksbridge
Ann Coffey	Stockport
Anna Turley	Redcar
Ben Bradshaw	Exeter
Bridget Phillipson	Houghton and Sunderland South
Caroline Flint	Don Valley
Chris Bryant	Rhondda
Chris Leslie	Nottingham East
Chuka Umunna	Streatham
Colleen Fletcher	Coventry North East
Conor McGinn	St Helens North
Dan Jarvis	Barnsley Central
Emma Reynolds	Wolverhampton North East
Frank Field	Birkenhead
Gareth Thomas	Harrow West
Geoffrey Robinson	Coventry North West
George Howarth	Knowsley
Gisela Stuart	Birmingham
Gloria De Piero	Ashfield
Graham Jones	Hyndburn
Harriet Harman	Camberwell and Peckham
Heidi Alexander	Lewisham East
Helen Jones	Warrington North
Hilary Benn	Leeds Central
Holly Lynch	Halifax
Ian Austin	Dudley North
Jamie Reed	Copeland
Jenny Chapman	Darlington
Jim Dowd	Lewisham West and Penge
Jim Fitzpatrick	Poplar and Limehouse
Joan Ryan	Enfield North
John Spellar	Warley
John Woodcock	Barrow and Furness
Keith Vaz	Leicester East
Kevan Jones	North Durham
Kevin Barron	Rother Valley
Liz Kendall	Leicester West
Louise Ellman	Liverpool
Luciana Berger	Liverpool
Lucy Powell	Manchester Central
Margaret Beckett	Derby South
Margaret Hodge	Barking
Maria Eagle	Garston and Halewood
Mary Creagh	Wakefield
Michael Dugher	Barnsley East
Neil Coyle	Bermondsey and Old Southwark
Pat McFadden	Wolverhampton South East
Peter Kyle	Hove
Phil Wilson	Sedgefield
Ruth Smeeth	Stoke-on-Trent North
Simon Danczuk	Rochdale
Siobhain McDonagh	Mitcham and Morden
Stella Creasy	Walthamstow
Stephen Doughty	Cardiff South and Penarth
Susan Elan Jones	Clwyd South
Tom Blenkinsop	Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
Tom Watson	West Bromwich East
Tristram Hunt	Stoke-on-Trent Central
Vernon Coaker	Gedling
Wayne David	Caerphilly
Yvette Cooper	Normanton

 

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Syria - Official Labour Party Policy

You won't find this anywhere in the mainstream news.  Here is the full text of the official Labour Party position on bombing (or not) Syria, as passed at the Party Conference in September 2015:

Conference notes the evidence of an increased Russian military build-up in Syria; the announcement of talks between US and Russian military leaders aimed at avoiding the risk of clashes in Syria on Friday, 18th September; the meeting between the Israeli and Russian presidents in Moscow on Monday, 21st September, focused on preventing accidental conflict between their forces in Syria; and the growing international diplomatic effort to achieve a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Syria.

Conference also notes the likelihood that David Cameron will seek House of Commons support to extend UK participation in the bombing of Iraq to Syria in the near future.  

Conference believes the Parliamentary Labour Party should oppose any such extension unless the following conditions are met:

1. Clear and unambiguous authorisation for such a bombing campaign from the United Nations;
2. A comprehensive European Union-wide plan is in place to provide humanitarian assistance to the increased number of refugees that even more widespread bombing can be expected to lead to;
3. Such bombing is exclusively directed at military targets directly associated with ‘Islamic State’ and is not aimed at securing regime change in Syria, noting that if the bombing campaign advocated by the British government in 2013 had not been blocked by the PLP under Ed Miliband’s leadership,  ‘Islamic State’ forces might now be in control of far more Syrian territory, including Damascus.
4. Any military action is subordinated to international diplomatic efforts, including the main regional powers, to bring the Syrian civil war to an end, since only a broadly-based and sovereign Syrian government can ultimately retake territory currently controlled by ‘Islamic State’.

Conference believes that only military action which meets all these objectives, and thus avoids the risk of repeating the disastrous consequences of the 2003 regime-change war in Iraq and the 2011 air campaign intervention in Libya, can secure the assent of the British people.

http://act.stopwar.org.uk/lobby/stopbombingsyria

So is Labour Party policy to bomb Syria?  Obviously not.  Just for one, the latest UN resolution is certainly not clear and unambiguous. It does not invoke UN Chapter VII article 42 which is the one necessary to authorise war or military action. New!: Further reading.

The resolution actually says action should stay within the UN charter, i.e. 42 needs to be invoked before military action:

"Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter"

Meanwhile 2, 3 and 4 of Labour Party policy are clearly not met.

Despite what many of the over paid, rarely accountable,  unrepresentative Parliamentary Labour Party think. 

Corbyn letter

Quite hard to find, here it is:

"Dear Colleague,

The Prime Minister made a statement to the House today making the case for a UK bombing campaign against Isis in Syria. A copy of my response has already been circulated.

We have all been horrified by the despicable attacks in Paris and are determined to see the defeat of Isis.

Our first priority must be the security of Britain and the safety of the British people. The issue now is whether what the Prime Minister is proposing strengthens, or undermines, our national security.

I do not believe that the Prime Minister today made a convincing case that extending UK bombing to Syria would meet that crucial test. Nor did it satisfactorily answer the questions raised by us and the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

In particular, the Prime Minister did not set out a coherent strategy, co-ordinated through the United Nations, for the defeat of Isis. Nor has he been able to explain what credible and acceptable ground forces could retake and hold territory freed from Isis control by an intensified air campaign.

In my view, the Prime Minister has been unable to explain the contribution of additional UK bombing to a comprehensive negotiated political settlement of the Syrian civil war, or its likely impact on the threat of terrorist attacks in the UK.

For these and other reasons, I do not believe the Prime Minister's current proposal for air strikes in Syria will protect our security and therefore cannot support it.

The Shadow Cabinet met today for an initial discussion and debated the issues extensively. We will meet again on Monday, when we will attempt to reach a common view.

I will get in touch again when we know the timing of the debate and vote.

Yours

Jeremy Corbyn,

Leader of the Labour Party."
 http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Read-Jeremy-Corbyn-s-letter-Labour-MPs/story-28249617-detail/story.html

The French Connection

What is the connection?

1) Saudi prince arrested in drugs bust after TWO TONNES of Captagon drugs found on jet


Robert Fisk writes: "It’s not every day you get to bust a Saudi prince. Twenty-five boxes and six suitcases, all – according to photos and video – stamped with the Saudi Arabia emblem of palm tree and crossed swords, to be shipped out on a private Saudi jet. And on the boxes can be seen the name of an emir of the state for which David Cameron himself lowers the British flag when the monarch dies."

and

2) "Investigators, according to French media, [went] to rooms 311 and 312 in a hotel in Alforttville, a suburb about four miles southeast of central Paris. There, police found the needles the attackers had used to inject themselves with the amphetamine Captagon. The drug, police believe, helped the killers remain calm enough to complete their bloody rampages." Miami Herald

 

Syrian crisis: the booming business of Captagon 

"During wars, psychoactive substances have always been the secret weapon of military troops."

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article45315924.html#storylink=cpy

The Death by Drone Zones

"Nearly nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the Americans' direct targets"

A new US whistleblower has unveiled the procedure by which you get to die by drone.

POTUS is the President Of The United States

"This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the whistleblower told The Intercept."

"It’s stunning the number of instances when selectors are misattributed to certain people. And it isn’t until several months or years later that you all of a sudden realize that the entire time you thought you were going after this really hot target, you wind up realizing it was his mother’s phone the whole time," the Intercept cited its source as saying, suggesting that drone killings "depend on unreliable intelligence."

http://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-kill-chain/

The North Africa Death by Drone (or 'persistent stare')  Zone