The Green Ribbon

Stymied at Stormont

Brian Feeney has some interesting thoughts today on the paralysis of the Stormont Assembly, and particularly on Nigel Dodds' rejection of an all-island investment body:

Faced with a range of experienced financiers and economists the said Mr Dodds drew on his own vast expertise as a unionist nay-sayer and said, you've guessed it, "No". Northern Ireland's "interests would not be best served by a merger of INI and IDA. The reality is that we are competitors. The priority is to make the most of our assets and advantages".

Could he make a list of them? Is this the same Nigel Dodds who was up in the north-west last month with Micheal Martin agreeing a joint INI-IDA cross-border project for technology in Derry and Letterkenny funded by the EU Interreg programme?

One of the many sad aspects of Mr Dodds's predictably narrow-minded summary dismissal of Dr Gillespie's suggestions is that no-one else on the executive got a chance to say a word. It's too much to expect the executive to discuss the issue. (Irish News, via Nuzhound)

It's worth recalling that Sinn Fein had the opportunity to take Dodds' Enterprise brief but passed it up in favour of the joys of education, precisely the kind of decision that may yet create a political space for Fianna Fail in the north.

As things stand it's heartening that the momentum for an all-island economy is as strong as it is.

Salmond and Paisley unhappy with spending deal

Mark Devenport brings us news that the devolved administrations are not happy with Alistair Darling's spending settlement:

Alex Salmond met Ian Paisley at Westminster this afternoon. He claims NI and Wales are just as upset as he is about the Comprehensive Spending Review and they intend to work together to try to get a better deal...

FURTHER UPDATE: This evening the Finance Department confirmed that Peter Robinson had discussed the spending review with his Scottish counterpart and they hope to meet the Treasury soon, either separately or together. (Devenport Diaries)

(The Campaign for for an English Parliament reckons the dispute reflects the Barnett consequentials of a cut that was barely noticed when it was applied in England.)

Iraqis give Blackwater six months

It seems that the Iraqi Government is not giving up in its efforts to get rid of Blackwater. It will be interesting to see how this plays on Capitol Hill, given the way Henry Waxman's committee has targeted this issue:

Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months. They also want the firm to pay $8 million in compensation to families of each of the 17 people killed when its guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month.

The demands - part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press - also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.

The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House over the deaths in Nisoor Square - which have prompted a series of U.S. and Iraqi probes and raised questions over the use of private security contractors to guard U.S. diplomats and other officials. (AP via Huffington Post)

Congolese fear Heritage mercenary connection

The Monitor of Kampala has a piece today on the border tensions between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that points up once again the links between Heritage Oil and private armies:

Kinshasa remains suspicious of Kampala, while according to a UN official who spoke to Sunday Monitor on condition of anonymity, the DR Congo is also wary of Heritage Oil Corp, one of the companies prospecting for oil in Albertine Basin.

Sources familiar with this matter say Kinshasa is unhappy about the relationship Heritage might be enjoying with Executive Outcomes (EO) - a mercenary outfit of ex-South Africa army commandos. They also see EO's probable links with President Museveni's brother, Gen. Salim Saleh, through his Saracen Guards company, as being potentially problematic. (AllAfrica.com)

Mercenaries and the decline of the state II: Aegis

Part One

Ironically, the comparison with the East India Company was made by Tim Spicer, the head of Aegis, which holds the largest private military contract in Iraq, in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute. (audio link)

Just as the East India Company had its roots in the decline of the Mughal Empire, so the modern private military industry has it roots in the existence of weak resource-rich African states in the 1990s.

Mercenaries and the decline of the state I: Blackwater

The US Congress this week held hearings on Blackwater, the private military company whose involvement in a massacre in Baghdad has roused the anger of the Iraqi Government, and prompted renewed scrutiny of US use of mercenaries in Iraq.

Call for all-Ireland investment body

Today's Irish Times carries a very significant article by the chairman of Ulster Bank, Dr Alan Gillespie, calling for the creation of a new all-Ireland investment agency.

Dr Gillespie expresses strong support for an all-island corporation tax rate, but suggests that the UK Treasury's Varney review will probably only offer marginal concessions, so that a plan B is necessary.

I believe that to market Northern Ireland effectively we should align the inward investment marketing activities of Invest NI (INI) with the Republic of Ireland's IDA. We should promote an all-island economy through a single, joined-up effective agency with the IDA and INI no longer competitors but merged and fully collaborative. (Irish Times)

There are a number of sensitivities around this proposal as the Irish Times own commentary points out:

Blairwatch on Brown and Iran

There's some very useful commentary on Seymour Hersh's latest piece over at Blairwatch.

In particular Tom notes something very significant about the passage I highlighted earlier this week, in which Hersh reported Bush telling the US ambassador to Iraq that the British were onboard for an attack on Iran.

Hang on, early summer?  Blair went end of June, we're fairly confident he would have been 'on board', the sacking of Jack Straw as Foreign Sec. is generally taken to be a slap down to suggestions that attacking Iran was off the agenda.  I sincerely hope that any risk of the British being 'on board' with another engineered, illegal Middle East war died with the late Premiership.  Did it? (Sy Hersh with the latest from La-La Land)

Obviously the latest British troops reductions in southern Iraq strengthen the argument that Brown has little to gain from a new conflict.

Even without British involvement, a US attack on Iran might would still be an issue in Brown's election calculations. If he thinks it will happen he would surely have to factor in the potential for a major oil shock in 2008.

Update: Blood and Treasure suggests that some of Hersh's US sources may be trying to bounce Britain into taking part, and that increased tempo of troop reductions in Iraq may be related to this.

A Westminster election: The Scottish factor

With the prospect of an autumn election firming up all the time, one issue Gordon Brown has to consider is the impact of the SNP resurgence in Scotland.

Ruaridh Nicoll argues that this factor has been over-estimated:

while it's true that an early election would cause Alexander difficulties, it could do Scottish Labour good. Like the Tories, they need something to focus on. And the truth is that, in difficult times, they would not do too badly, and certainly not as badly as everyone seems to fear.

'We know that in votes for the Scottish and UK parliaments, people vote very differently,' says James Mitchell, professor of politics at Strathclyde University. Sometimes, in the same poll, nearly a quarter of votes shift when people are asked about their desires for representation in Westminster or Holyrood. (Observer)

Alex Salmond is nevertheless talking up the SNP's chances:

Speaking on The Politics Show on BBC Scotland yesterday, Mr Salmond said he believed the Prime Minister would call an autumn election and that he was sure the SNP would do well.

He said: "I'm certain the SNP would make an advance and I think that would be a good thing for Scotland." (Herald)

Can they both be right? Well consider the figures quoted in the Herald article:

Recent polls put the SNP on 35% on a Westminster ballot, with Labour on 40%.

The Conservatives are on 11% and the Liberal Democrats on 9%.

Put those numbers into Martin Baxter's Scottish election calculator and you get a very interesting result:

Gordon's War?

Martin Stabe points us to the latest New Yorker piece from Seymour Hersh, who reports that the White House is leaning towards using Iranian involvement in Iraq as a pretext for air strikes, rather than the Iranian nuclear programme:

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution. (New Yorker)

The prospect of a war with Iran in 2008 would be a very strong incentive for Brown to call an early election. In that respect, it might be a very hopeful sign if he were to pass up the opportunity.