International news – Bladsy 19

Zimbabwe: Best Performing Stock Market

CNBC and other stock market tabloids are notorious for making simplistic linkages between the stock market and gross domestic product (GDP). They tell us that any event that stimulates GDP growth inevitably drives stock prices up, and any event that hurts GDP growth pushes stocks down.

Since the largest share of GDP is consumption, consumer demand becomes the all-important figure driving growth. When the consumer gets too excited, the Fed must step in to cool them down with interest-rate hikes. When the consumer isn’t spending, Fed interest-rate cuts stimulate demand.

The tragedy currently occurring in Zimbabwe completely contradicts this sort of logic. Zimbabwe is in the middle of an economic disintegration, with GDP declining for the seventh consecutive year, half what it was in 2000. Ever since President Mugabe’s disastrous land-reform campaign (an entire article in itself), the country’s farming, tourism, and gold sectors have collapsed. Unemployment is said to be near 80%.

Yet something odd is happening.

The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (the ZSE) is the best performing stock exchange in the world, the key Zimbabwe Industrials Index up some 595% since the beginning of the year and 12,000% over twelve months. This jump in share prices is far in excess of increases in consumer prices. While the country is crumbling, the Zimbabwean share speculator is keeping up much better than the typical Zimbabwean on the street.

CNBC logic fails to explain the coincidence of a rising ZSE and collapsing GDP because it entirely ignores the monetary side of the economy. At this point Austrian economics makes its contribution to our story. According to Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), the peak-trough-peak pattern that economies demonstrate is not their natural state, but one created by excess growth in money supply and credit. New money is not simply parachuted to everyone equally and at the same time — it is sluiced into the economy at certain initial "entry points." From these entry points, a number of initial goods are bought by recipients of new money causing a rise in price for these initial goods relative to other goods.

Because entrepreneurs react to this observed but unjustified change in the structure of prices by investing their capital, misallocation occurs. As money-supply growth continues and prices become more contorted, more and more ventures are undertaken that would not be undertaken in a regime without money-supply growth. When, for whatever the reason, money supply finally contracts, the artificial strength in prices that encouraged unprofitable ventures is removed, prices collapse, and large numbers of ventures go bankrupt. Thus we have the recession part of the business cycle, the simultaneous failure of many firms at the same time.

If, as the Austrian theory states, money enters the economy at certain points, it is likely that a nation’s stock market will become a prime beneficiary of any monetary expansion. Fresh money enters the economy first through banks and other financial entities who may invest it in shares, or lend it to others who buy shares. Thus stock prices rise relative to prices of things like food and clothes and will outperform as long as this monetary process is allowed to continue.

This is what we are seeing in Zimbabwe. With the country suffering from Mugabe’s catastrophic policies, increasingly the only means for the government to fund itself has been money-supply growth. This has only exacerbated the economy’s problems. The flood of new money that authorities have created has caused the existing value of money in circulation to plummet, i.e., the prices of all sorts of goods to explode, some rising more than others.

As prices become more misaligned, basic decision-making abilities of normal Zimbabweans are impaired and the day-to-day functioning of the economy deteriorates. Perversely, all of this has forced the government to issue even more currency to make up for budget shortfalls and to buy support. At last measure, the country’s consumer price index was rising (i.e., the purchasing power of currency declining), at a rate of 1,729% a year.

The ZSE is growing some three times faster than consumer prices. This relative outperformance versus general prices is a result of stocks being a chief entry point for the flood of newly created money. Keep Zimbabwean dollars in your pocket, and they’ve already lost a chunk of their value by the next day. Putting money in the bank, where rates are pithy, is not much better. Investing in government bonds is the equivalent of financial suicide. Converting wealth into foreign currency is difficult; hard currency is scarce, and strict rules limit exchangeability.

As for capital improvements, there is little incentive on the part of companies to invest in their already-losing enterprises since economic prospects look so bleak. Very few havens exist for people to hide their wealth from the evils created by Mugabe’s policies. Like compressed air looking for an exit, money is pouring into shares of ZSE-listed firms like banker Old Mutual, hotel group Meikles Africa, and mobile phone firm Econet Wireless. It is the only place to go. Thus the 12,000% year over year increase in the Zimbabwe Industrials.

Our Zimbabwe example, though extreme, demonstrates how changes in stock prices can be driven by monetary conditions, and not changes in GDP. New money gets spent or invested. In Zimbabwe’s case, because there are no alternatives, it is stocks that are benefiting.

This sort of thinking can be applied to the stock markets in the Western world too. Though western central banks have not been printing nearly as fast as their Zimbabwe counterpart, they do have a long history of increasing the money supply. It forces one to ask how much of the growth in Western stock markets over the preceding twenty-five years has been created by a vastly increasing money supply, and how much is due to actual wealth creation. Perhaps stock prices have increased faster than goods prices for the last twenty-five years because, as in Zimbabwe, Western stock markets have become one of the principal entry points for newly printed currency.

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Desperate deception

DESPERATE DECEPTION: BRITISH COVERT OPERATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1939-44
Thomas E. Mahl
Brassey’s, 1998, xiv + 256 pgs.

Professor Mahl’s excellent monograph helps clear up a historical mystery. As everyone knows, Americans before Pearl Harbor opposed, in overwhelming numbers, entry into World War II. So much the worse for the American public, say some historians, such as the eminent Thomas Bailey.

Roosevelt saw that the defeat of the Axis was necessary to save the world. Only American entry into the war could secure this goal. The President accordingly had to resort to deception to inveigle America into the conflict. While promising peace, he provokes war. Roosevelt’s policy, it is claimed, was vindicated by the Allied defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945.

Not everyone convinced that isolation from war in 1941 was wrong adopts this bold line. Some historians, such as Dexter Perkins, reluctant to embrace Machiavelli so openly, argue that Roosevelt and the American public were not so far apart as first appears. True, the great majority of the public opposed entry into the war. But the public also favored aid to Britain of a sort that risked war. Roosevelt thus acted to secure what the public "really" wanted.

As Louis D. Rubin, Jr., has expressed this position: "But public opinion was overwhelmingly on the side of Britain; an opinion poll taken in July 1940 indicated that seven out of ten Americans believed a Nazi victory would place the United States in danger, and so were in favor of assistance to the embattled British" (p. 85).

An obvious problem with this interpretation is that it ascribes to the public views that quickly generate tension, if not outright inconsistency. People believed, it is claimed, both that the United States should stay out of the war and that the country should adopt policies liable to produce just the undesired outcome.

Given this tension, would not people be apt to revise their beliefs to restore equilibrium? That is to say, would they not either reject unneutral policies or abandon the resolve to stay out of the war? Certainly, people sometimes hold beliefs that ill comport together, but this problem was glaringly obvious. Were we that stupid?

Mr. Mahl disposes of our problem through a simple stroke. The polls that showed American support for violations of neutrality were rigged by British agents. "British intelligence had `penetrated’ the Gallup organization…. British intelligence officer David Ogilvy later wrote about his days at Gallup: `I could not have had a better boss than Dr. Gallup. His confidence in me was such that I do not recall his ever reading any of the reports I wrote in his name’" (p. 75). By careful manipulation of the questions asked, results could be contrived to order. "In 1940 and 1941, BSC [British Security Coordination] rigged a series of polls…to project the notion that the members of prominent organizations were pro-British, avidly in favor of intervention, and intensely antagonistic toward America First" (p. 77).

Mr. Mahl’s argument seems to me a vital contribution to World War II historiography. Further research is needed, though, to consolidate his thesis. What exactly were the questions asked in the various polls? Had they been phrased differently, would the respondents have answered in a way more consistent with non-intervention?

The balance of evidence suggests strongly that they would have done so. Although a Gallup poll taken August 1940 showed an "astounding figure" of 70 percent in favor of conscription, Congressional mail "overwhelmingly" opposed the draft (p. 83). Further, a poll sponsored by Robert Hutchins, a strong opponent of the war, showed that only 34 percent of the public favored entry into the war, even if Britain was defeated. (Incidentally, one wonders whether polls still are rigged. A careful examination of the polls that showed a rise in popularity for President Clinton whenever a new act of his malfeasance was disclosed seems warranted.)

Professor Mahl offers a comprehensive account of British intelligence activities designed to involve the United States in war. The single most striking example of the effectiveness of the British effort is this. Before the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was established, a presidential directive in July 1941 set up a preliminary group called The Coordinator of Information (COI). Not only was this group, which devised the plans for the OSS, organized at the behest of British Intelligence; its head was a British agent. Colonel Charles Howard "Dick" Ellis, an assistant to the principal British intelligence agent in America, Sir William Stephenson, "actually ran [William] Donovan’s COI office and produced the blueprint for the American OSS" (p. 194).

I cannot describe in detail the vast range of episodes which Mr. Mahl discusses. Rather, I shall confine myself to two additional examples of British influence. The first relates to the crucial US election of November 1940. In order to win the war, Britain needed the support of the United States as a fighting ally. But, if the Republicans ran a strong noninterventionist campaign, not even the machinations of Franklin Roosevelt would suffice to accomplish this. "The first peacetime draft law in American history, Burke-Wadsworth, and the Destroyer Deal would not have received Roosevelt’s endorsement had a genuine opposition candidate stood ready to make it a political issue in the 1940 election" (p. 164).

To secure the British goal, then, the Republican candidate had to be solidly in the interventionist camp. How could this be achieved? Mr. Mahl answers his question by pointing to an anomaly: the unexpected surge of support for Wendell Willkie in the months before the Republican convention, and at the convention itself.

The stampede toward Willkie, the quintessential dark horse candidate, puzzled informed contemporaries. H.L. Mencken "wrote, after watching the nomination: `I am thoroughly convinced that the nomination of Willkie was managed by the Holy Ghost in person’" (p. 156). Our author essays a more down-to-earth explanation. The boom for Willkie was contrived with heavy British support; the banker Thomas W. Lamont played a key role in the endeavor. Whether Mr. Mahl’s account is successful must be left for readers to judge.

In any event, once nominated Willkie enabled the British strategy to proceed apace. Mr. Mahl cites in this connection a telling remark of Walter Lippmann, himself an ally of British intelligence: "Second only to the Battle of Britain, the sudden rise and nomination of Wendell Willkie was the decisive event, perhaps providential, which made it possible to rally the free world when it was almost conquered" (p. 164). Willkie was if anything more interventionist than Roosevelt; non-interventionist voters in 1940 were in effect shut out of the presidential election. The other incident selected for discussion will, I fear, evoke memories of The Starr Report. (May I reiterate what is said elsewhere in these pages: The Mises Review has no connection with that salacious document.) Again the key issue involves the paralysis of isolationist opposition to British plans. Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, a protégé of the isolationist William Borah, ranked among the foremost non-interventionists during the 1930s. He executed a sudden volte-face in July 1940 and supported the crucial Lend-Lease Bill in March 1941.

Mr. Mahl attributes the change of heart to the influence of Mitzi Sims, Vandenberg’s mistress, who had strong ties to British intelligence, and of another woman, Betty Thorpe Pack ("Cynthia"), also romantically linked with him. Our author admits he cannot prove that Vandenberg’s relationship with those women changed the senator’s views; but his conjecture certainly helps us understand Vandenberg’s otherwise inexplicable behavior.

But is Vandenberg’s change in fact a strange phenomenon that requires special explanation? One might object that it is not: if the interventionist view of the wartime situation is accepted, then Vandenberg’s support for Lend-Lease responded realistically to grave threats to America’s interests. Perhaps, to echo A.J.P. Taylor on Lord Halifax, Vandenberg "heard the call of conscience in the watches of the night." More generally, why need we invoke British intrigues to explain American policy? Once more, will not the national interest suffice?

The imagined rejoinder fails. It begs the question by assuming the correctness of interventionism. No doubt, Lend-Lease was in the national interest-but only if one accepts the interventionist account of that interest. The point at issue is that only a minority of people in the United States held this view before Pearl Harbor. On the isolationist position, Lend-Lease and similar measures did not serve our interests. Why then were these policies instituted? Mr. Mahl’s study gives us indispensable aid in answering this question.

Bush doesn’t want detente

In the next few days an unprecedented meeting between US and Iranian officials is expected to take place in Baghdad; both sides have insisted that discussions are limited to Iraq. Could this first official encounter since the Islamic revolution herald detente between Washington and Tehran?

At the moment nothing suggests that is likely, as each country continues to try to mobilise the states of the region. The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been touring the Arab world, reiterating Washington’s determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, is visiting the UAE, the first by an Iranian leader since independence in 1971 and all the more important because of a serious territorial dispute. Responding to the threatening noises from Cheney, President Ahmadinejad declared: "The US cannot strike Iran. The Iranian people can protect themselves and retaliate."

Although the US administration’s current priority is Iraq, it has not given up on Iran. Silently, stealthily, unseen by cameras, the war on Iran has begun. Many sources confirm that the US has increased its aid to armed movements among the ethnic minorities that make up about 40% of Iran’s population. ABC News reported in April that the US had secretly assisted the Baluchi group Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), responsible for a recent attack that killed 20 Revolutionary Guards. According to an American Foundation report, US commandos have operated inside Iran since 2004.

President Bush categorised Iran as part of the "axis of evil" in 2002; the following year he said the US "would not tolerate" an Iranian nuclear weapon. It is worth recalling the context in which these statements were made. Tehran had actively helped the US to overthrow the Taliban. At a meeting in Geneva on May 2 2003 between Javad Zaraf, the Iranian ambassador, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan, the Tehran government submitted a proposal for general negotiations on weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and security, and economic cooperation. The Islamic Republic said it was ready to support the Arab peace initiative tabled in 2002 and help to transform Hizbullah into a political party. And in December 2003, Iran became one of the few countries to sign the additional protocol to the non-proliferation treaty, which strengthens the International Atomic Energy Agency’s supervisory powers.

However, the US swept all these overtures aside since its only objective is to overthrow the mullahs. To create the conditions for military intervention, it constantly brandishes "the nuclear threat". In 1995 the director of the US arms control and disarmament agency said Iran could have the bomb by 2003; Clinton’s defence secretary William Perry predicted 2000, a forecast repeated by Israel’s Shimon Peres. Yet last month the IAEA considered that it would be four to six years before Tehran had the capability to produce the bomb.

What is the truth? Since the 1960s, Iran has sought to develop nuclear power in preparation for the post-oil era. Technological developments have made it easier to pass from civil to military applications. Have Tehran’s leaders decided to do so? There is no evidence that they have. Is there a risk that they may? Yes, for obvious reasons.

During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran, but there was no outcry in the US, whose troops are now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two neighbouring countries, Pakistan and Israel, have nuclear weapons. No Iranian leader could fail to be aware of this situation.

So how is Tehran to be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, a move that would start a new arms race in an unstable region and deal a fatal blow to the non-proliferation treaty? Contrary to common assumptions, the main obstacle is not Tehran’s determination to enrich uranium. Iran has a right to do so under the non-proliferation treaty but has always said it was prepared to impose voluntary restrictions on that right and to agree to increased IAEA inspections.

The Islamic Republic’s fundamental concern lies elsewhere. Witness the agreement signed in 2004 with France, Britain and Germany, in which Iran agreed to suspend enrichment on the understanding that a long-term agreement would "provide firm commitments on security issues". Washington refused to give any such commitments and Iran resumed its programme.

The EU chose to follow Washington’s lead. The proposals of the five members of the UN security council and Germany in June 2006 contained no guarantee of non-intervention in Iranian affairs. In response, Tehran suggested "that the western parties who want to participate in the negotiation team announce on behalf of their own and other European countries, to set aside the policy of intimidation, pressure and sanctions".

Without such a commitment escalation is inevitable. Ahmadinejad’s election as president in 2005 has not made dialogue any easier, given his taste for provocative statements about the Holocaust and Israel. But Iran is a big country rich in history, and there is more to it than its president. There is much tension within the government, and Ahmadinejad had severe setbacks both in the local elections and in elections to the Assembly of Experts last December. There are substantial challenges, economic and social, and forceful demands for more freedom, especially among women and young people. The only strong card the regime has to win their loyalty is nationalism, a refusal to accept the kind of foreign interference Iran suffered throughout the past century.

Despite the disaster in Iraq, there is no indication that Bush has given up the idea of attacking Iran. The insistence at the weekend by Gordon Brown that there would be no attack on Iran seems unwarranted optimism rather than objective assessment. The idea of an assault against Iran is after all part of the Bushite vision of a "third world war" against "Islamic fascism", an ideological war that can end only in complete victory.

The demonisation of Iran, aggravated by the attitude of its president, is part of this strategy and may well culminate in yet another military venture. That would be a disaster, not only for Iran and the Arab world, but for western, and especially European, relations with the Middle East. Europe’s newest leaders – Nicolas Sarkozy and Brown – would do well to remember that.

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Iraq murders soar

The US military surge in Iraq, designed to turn around the course of the war, appears to be failing as senior US officers admit they need yet more troops and new figures show a sharp increase in the victims of death squads in Baghdad.

In the first 11 days of this month, there have already been 234 bodies – men murdered by death squads – dumped around the capital, a dramatic rise from the 137 found in the same period of April. Improving security in Baghdad and reducing death-squad activity was described as one of the key aims of the US surge of 25,000 additional troops, the final units of whom are due to arrive next month.

In a further setback, the US military announced yesterday the loss of an entire patrol south of Baghdad, with five soldiers dead and three others missing, after they were ambushed by insurgents in the town of Mahmoudiya.

The new figures emerged as the commander of US forces in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon, admitted he did not have enough soldiers to contain the escalating violence in Diyala province, which neighbours Baghdad and has become the focus of the heaviest fighting between largely Sunni insurgent groups and the US army, which has seen casualties increase by 300 per cent. Sixty-one US soldiers have been killed in Diyala this year, compared with 20 in all of last year.

Mixon, interviewed by The Observer earlier this year, has not made a secret of his frustration at the declining situation in Diyala and has already reinforced the area around Baqouba – the centre of the heaviest fighting – with additional troops.

Ironically, the violence in Diyala has been exacerbated by an influx of both Shia and Sunni fighters displaced from Baghdad by the surge and also from Anbar province who have relocated to Diyala to join a series of jihadi and nationalist groups already based there.

Mixon, who was speaking in Tikrit, said: ‘I’m going to need additional forces, to get that situation to a more acceptable level, so the Iraqi security forces will be able in the future to handle that.’ He was also highly critical of Iraqi government in Baghdad, charging that it was riddled with corruption.

Mixon’s request coincided with yet more bad news from Iraq – a draft US government report claiming that between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production may have been siphoned off through corruption in the past four years.

Iraqi and American officials have long contended that oil smuggling from fields controlled by Shia militias in the south is costing Iraq billions of dollars – funds that, it is feared, are going to armed groups.

Trees worsen greenhouse effect

A leading expert in Germany has spawned a major scientific debate by claiming that trees put millions of tons of methane into the atmosphere every year exacerbating the greenhouse effect. Amid controversy, Dr Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry has reaffirmed findings by his team in Mainz, Germany, in January 2006 that they had detected methane exhaled from living plants.

"I am 100 per cent confident that plants emit methane," he told Chemistry World magazine, insisting that as yet unpublished research would confirm his findings once and for all.

Keppler’s unexpected discovery has caused heated debate among biologists and atmospheric chemists. Though bacteria in soil or decaying matter produce methane in anaerobic conditions, there seems to be no reason or mechanism for living plants to emit the gas in an oxygen-rich environment.

The implications of the findings are worrying: on a global scale, Keppler estimated, methane emissions from plants and trees could amount to hundreds of millions of tonnes a year, throwing scientists’ understanding of the greenhouse gas’s sources and sinks way off kilter.

But many researchers have queried the global impact, suggesting that Keppler’s scale-up calculations, based on methane emission per unit of metabolically active mass of plant, were a gross overestimate.

Yet until recently, no published research has questioned Keppler’s central discovery that plants can emit methane in the first place.

Recently, however, rival researchers reported that plants emit virtually no methane whatsoever.

Tom Dueck, of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, says his team’s independent investigations are the first published results to show that plants’ methane emissions are negligible or zero. That means their contribution to the global methane budget, and potentially to climate change, simply isn’t worth worrying about.

The Dutch group did not repeat Keppler’s experiment exactly, Dueck said, "because it was not methodologically sound." Instead, his team boosted the sensitivity of their methane measurements by growing plants in an atmosphere saturated with a heavy carbon isotope, 13C.

If the plants subsequently emitted methane (13CH4), it would be easy to spot above the background of light (12CH4) methane in the air. Photo-acoustic spectroscopy (a laser-based measuring technique) was used to detect the gas.

Dueck said it showed that even a large mass of plants produced negligible methane emissions – at most 0.3 per cent of Keppler’s values.

So if Dueck’s team is correct, where did Keppler go wrong? Dueck suggests that Keppler’s team might have forgotten that gas trapped in plants’ intercellular spaces, and in air pockets in the soil, could diffuse out and be counted as "emitted" by the plant in their experiment.

But Keppler rejects this, saying that this sort of methane desorption could only be partially responsible for the amounts of gas he found.

Indeed, he suggests that Dueck’s use of heavy isotopes may have actually changed the plants’ metabolic preferences, killing off their methane emissions. Dueck counters that no literature reports suggest this might be a problem.

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Pakistan on brink of disaster

Chaos gripped the streets of Karachi yesterday as gun battles left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured, threatening a complete breakdown of law and order in Pakistan’s largest and most volatile city.

With plumes of black smoke billowing over the city of 12 million people, there were extraordinary scenes as gunmen on motorbikes pumped bullets into crowds demonstrating against Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, while police stood by and watched.

In images more reminiscent of Baghdad, bloodstained corpses lay where they had fallen in the streets and bodies piled up in hospital morgues. As the sense of crisis deepened, a crisis meeting between Gen Musharraf and the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, resolved to send in paramilitary troops to restore order, and to place the army on standby. The men agreed that a state of emergency would be imposed if the first two options failed.

It was the bloodiest escalation of the two-month long saga which began when the president attempted to sack the country’s chief justice in March. The ensuing challenge by lawyers and opposition parties to Gen Musharraf’s eight-year rule has left the president – a key Western ally in the "war on terror" – desperately clinging to power.

Opponents believe he had hoped to create a compliant judiciary ahead of elections which he has promised to hold later this year. But what started as a political confrontation has now lit Karachi’s tinderbox of ethnic rivalry.

Many of the 15,000 police and security forces deployed in the city stood idly by as armed activists from Karachi’s ruling party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a coalition ally of Gen Musharraf, blocked Mr Chaudhry’s exit from the airport and took control of the city’s central district.

The movement’s leader, Altaf Hussain – who lives in self-imposed exile in London – co-ordinated opposition to Mr Chaudhry’s arrival and addressed crowds gathered on the streets of Karachi in a mobile phone call relayed by loudspeakers.

He called on supporters to be peaceful but to show whose city it was. Instead, violence reigned.

Gunmen tore off on motorbikes after brazenly firing AK-47 rifles at opposition supporters. One report described MQM gunmen exchanging gunfire for an hour with activists from the exiled former premier Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.

Road blocks, including trucks with deflated tires, prevented most of Mr Chaudhry’s supporters from reaching the airport to greet him. But a few dozen lawyers who reached there on foot chanted, "We are with you. Down with Musharraf." Dozens of vehicles and petrol pumps were set alight by the angry mobs.

Inside Mr Chaudhry’s intended destination, Sind’s high court, hundreds of lawyers, some of them bloodied after being beaten up by MQM supporters, milled about chanting slogans and receiving news on their mobile phones about the trouble engulfing them. Outside, MQM activists with pistols tucked into their jeans, blocked the entrance.

Lawyers railed against the government. "This is a shocking attempt by the government to suppress the people," Iqbal Haider, a human rights lawyer and former senator, told The Sunday Telegraph. "Musharraf is making all sorts of mistakes to save himself from sinking."

As fans stirred the humid air, news poured in of unrest spreading to other parts of the country. Convoys of buses, cars and rickshaws festooned with flags of political parties careered through Karachi’s main thoroughfares.

Tension has been simmering in Karachi for the past week, with rumours swirling round that Mr Musharraf had allowed conflicting rallies to go ahead to create the requisite level of disorder to justify the declaration of an emergency. The prelude to violence was familiar to Karachi, where hundreds of people were killed in ethnic violence in the 1990s.

Exacerbating the political furore in Karachi over the sacking of Mr Chaudhry is a decades-old and simmering feud between the MQM, a movement supported by the city’s mohajir population who migrated from India at Partition in 1947, and ethnic Pathans, who were originally from Pakistan’s North West Frontier province.

Opponents of the MQM claim that its actions yesterday were ordered in micro-detail by the movement’s autocratic leader, via telephone, from Edgware in north London.

Altaf Hussain wields great influence from afar over Karachi, a city of 15 million. Amid the chaos and bloodshed, the MQM chief addressed tens of thousands of his followers gathered along one of Karachi’s main streets.

As his speech echoed over its audience, in other parts of the city gunmen from both heavily armed factions took up positions on rooftops and sprayed streets with automatic gunfire. Dozens of wounded were treated in hospitals.

Last night paramilitary troops were preparing to be deployed in the city as the possibility of a curfew being imposed grew.

A Shining Light Goes Out in Africa

On Saturday, May 5, Anthony Mitchell died in the crash of Kenyan Airways Flight 507, which killed all 114 people on board. Based in Nairobi, he was an Associated Press reporter who had recently broken a story on secret prisons in Ethiopia and the U.S. involvement in the detention and interrogation of prisoners there. The world has lost another journalist, one who was taking the necessary risks to get at the heart of the complex and often ignored story of Africa.

Most Americans know of Somalia as the setting for the feature film “Black Hawk Down.” This film depicted the failed 1993 U.S. military assault on Mogadishu. Eighteen U.S. soldiers died. Less well known is that more than 1,000 Somalis also were killed. Somalia, which had been mostly ignored by the U.S. media, was briefly in the news as the U.S.-backed Ethiopian military overthrew the Islamic Courts Union, which had been controlling most of Somalia.

Mitchell’s exposé detailed the fate of some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees. They were fleeing war, but to the United States they were possible al-Qaida operatives who had found a safe haven in Somalia. According to Mitchell, dozens of refugees were “transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.”

In his groundbreaking report, Mitchell wrote, “CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse.”

The U.S. State Department documented Ethiopia’s use of torture, and the FBI admitted to Mitchell that it was interrogating prisoners there.

Several prisoners have since been released, including 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, a Swedish citizen. She was the first to report that uniformed U.S. military personnel arrested her and directed the Kenyan soldiers who took her captive. Amir Mohamed Meshal is also being held there. The 24-year-old U.S. citizen is from Tinton Falls, N.J. His family’s lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, told me: “The U.S. admits that the FBI has interrogated him. The Red Cross and family have been denied access. We can’t get a lawyer to see him because we don’t know where he’s being held. It has been over two months, with no charge. We are calling for congressional hearings.”

Salim Lone, a columnist with the Daily Nation in Kenya, knows about terrorism. He was the U.N. spokesman in Iraq when the U.N. compound there was bombed in 2003. After the U.S. launched airstrikes against Somalia last January, Lone told me, “The world does want to help the U.S. end terror, but the way the U.S. repeatedly is doing it, from Iraq and Afghanistan to now in Somalia, this will increase the amount of terrorism that exists in the world.”

Make no mistake about it, the Horn of Africa is in the cross hairs of the United States. There is oil in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. The New York Times reported that after the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, the U.S. allowed Ethiopia to buy arms from North Korea even though the U.S. had just won tough U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

The Pentagon recently announced the formation of Africom, the “new unified, combatant command” for Africa. Columnist Salim Lone’s response? “It’s the last thing Africa needs. … It’s going to militarize Africa; it’s going to inflame conflict. There is so much anger against the United States, especially if it’s in the Horn of Africa, which is primarily Muslim.”

Marc Lacey covered Africa for The New York Times from 2001 to 2006: “Africa correspondents spend a lot of time in the air, often on old planes. I think crashes are in the back of every reporter’s mind. Anthony Mitchell was a fearless reporter. He understood the complexity of the continent and cared.”

Our exchange with Africa must involve more than oil, guns and secret prisons. Once people know, they care. Shining a light, journalists provide understanding. We need more coverage of Africa, from African journalists and from reporters like Anthony Mitchell.

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Zim opposition splits

The last couple of years have been exceedingly tough for the Movement for Democratic Change, the only opposition political party of any note in authoritarian Zimbabwe. Party officials have been beaten with stones and logs; their cars have been hijacked; their posters have been methodically stripped from street poles. In one memorable instance, thugs tried to toss the party’s director of security down a sixth-floor stairwell at its headquarters.

And those are just the attacks they have endured from their own members.

Even more than the Zimbabwean government’s frequently brutal abductions and assaults on members of the M.D.C., the internecine brawls are evidence that all is not well inside Zimbabwe’s political opposition, the force on which the West has pinned its hopes for democratic change.

As President Robert G. Mugabe’s 27-year rule enters what many analysts call a terminal phase, the selfproclaimed democratic opposition is near its nadir.

The Movement for Democratic Change is split into two bitterly opposed factions, at war over ideology, power and prestige. Each has called the other a tool of Mr. Mugabe’s spy service, the Central Intelligence Organization, and each has accused the other of betraying the party’s democratic ideals.

Now, with a crucial national election looming, the question is whether they can reform their tactics and patch up their differences long enough to mount a serious challenge to Mr. Mugabe — and if they do, whether ordinary people will care.

Some Zimbabweans are skeptical. “They don’t seriously challenge the regime,” said Mike Davies, who leads a civic group, the Combined Harare Residents Association. “You ask young people here what they want, and their No. 1 answer is ‘I want to get the hell out of Zimbabwe.’ They don’t buy into the M.D.C.”

Another expert, a political analyst in Harare, the capital, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of expulsion by the government, was dismissive. “As a political party,” he said, “they haven’t cut the mustard.”

An unlikely amalgam of whites and blacks, trade unionists and intellectuals, the Movement for Democratic Change nearly won control of Parliament in 2000, just a year after its founding, and nearly beat Mr. Mugabe in the 2002 presidential contest.

But by the end of 2006, repeated miscalculations and sometimes violent infighting had divided the party into two feuding camps, both almost irrelevant.

They might still be, had Mr. Mugabe’s riot police not severely beaten dozens of opposition members during a protest on March 11, including Morgan Tsvangirai, the popular figure who now heads the party’s largest faction.

Although Mr. Tsvangirai and his loyalists presided over the party’s decline — and not a little of the violence — his photogenic head wound and swollen eye instantly elevated the party’s profile in the world press, turning him into a symbol of democratic change in Zimbabwe.

For the M.D.C., Mr. Tsvangirai’s drubbing could be a godsend. Though the economy is in ruins, millions of citizens have fled the country and most of those who remain resent Mr. Mugabe, the president, now 83, who has declared his intention to seek a new term in elections next March.

Zimbabwe’s neighbors, belatedly alarmed at the unraveling next door, have appointed President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa to mediate guarantees of a free and fair election.

Most political analysts say Mr. Mugabe has already begun his campaign, in his own way. In February his agents began a wave of kidnappings and beatings of hundreds of Movement for Democratic Change leaders — a crusade, critics say, to destroy the opposition’s will to contest another election.

Faced with that crusade, the two M.D.C. factions have declared a temporary truce and pledged to wage a single campaign against Mr. Mugabe. But with 11 months left before the vote, they have yet to choose a presidential candidate or a parliamentary slate, much less a campaign plan.

Brian Raftopoulos, a Zimbabwean political scientist at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, says the clock is ticking. “They have to agree at the very minimum on a common election strategy and a common nominee for president,” he said. “I think they’ve got very little time to do that.”

In interviews, Mr. Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube, the general secretary of the opposing M.D.C. faction, said they were in serious talks to put aside their rivalry and refocus their energies on defeating Mr. Mugabe.

That will be a tall order, for as Mr. Ncube says, the two sides split over bedrock issues about how a democratic opposition should function.

Divisions began to fester early this decade, after Mr. Tsvangirai was lured into a government sting operation that videotaped him talking of Mr. Mugabe’s “elimination” and relishing the prospect of his own party’s ascension to power. Mr. Tsvangirai’s subsequent arrest and trial on treason charges becalmed the M.D.C. for more than a year, crippled his control of party affairs and raised questions about his competence.

Since he was acquitted in 2004, the party’s internal feuds have blossomed publicly. While political analysts say the party fell apart for many reasons, violence seems to have been the trigger.

In mid-2004, vigilantes loyal to Mr. Tsvangirai began attacking members who were mostly loyal to Mr. Ncube, climaxing in a September raid on the party’s Harare headquarters in which the security director was nearly thrown to his death.

An internal party inquiry later established that aides to Mr. Tsvangirai had tolerated, if not endorsed, the violence. One of them, Isaac Matongo, later became the chairman of Mr. Tsvangirai’s wing of the party. Mr. Matongo died in his sleep in Harare last Wednesday.

Divisive as the violence was, it was a debate over the rule of law that set off the party’s final breakup in November 2005. As Senate elections approached, Mr. Ncube’s supporters argued that the M.D.C. should field a slate of candidates; Mr. Tsvangirai’s argued for a boycott.

When party leaders voted on the issue, Mr. Ncube’s side narrowly won, but Mr. Tsvangirai declared that as president of the party he was not bound by the majority’s decision.

In the ensuing divorce, each side accused the other of treason, and each said the other had been infiltrated by Mr. Mugabe’s spies, a charge that was probably true for both. But in the 18 months since then, the two factions’ differences have persisted — as has the violence, albeit sporadically.

Unquestionably, the scattered violence within the party pales next to the systematic beatings and torture that human rights advocates say have become the Mugabe government’s policy.

According to a new Human Rights Watch report, “hundreds of opposition members and supporters, and civil society activists have been arrested, abducted or tortured, and scores have gone into hiding” since the March 11 rally.

Mr. Tsvangirai and Mr. Ncube have publicly deplored the violence within the opposition’s ranks. Mr. Tsvangirai said the split in the opposition was “sad and tragic,” but added that the “petty squabbles” between the factions were now “water under the bridge.”

But in a party founded on the nonviolent principles of Gandhi and King, the image of disarray and, to some critics, hypocrisy, has taken its toll in support from civic groups and the press.

Roy Bennett, a Zimbabwean in exile who is the treasurer of Mr. Tsvangirai’s wing of the party, says those who bemoan the state of the Movement for Democratic Change are missing the point.

“Is the opposition the problem in Zimbabwe?” asked Mr. Bennett, who now lives in South Africa. “The problem is Robert Mugabe and ZANUPF” — Mr. Mugabe’s party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Mr. Ncube says he agrees, which is why the two sides are trying to present a common front in the 2008 elections. But he and others find a disturbing precedent in Zimbabwe’s original liberation movement, the one that in the 1970s defeated the government of the white autocrat Ian Smith in what was then Rhodesia.

That movement, too, was split — between Mr. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union and the rival Zimbabwe African People’s Union, or ZAPU. They put aside their differences until after liberation was a reality.

The result was an internecine war. It claimed tens of thousands of lives, perpetuated Zimbabwe’s long history of political violence and produced the nation’s current autocracy

Police using armored vehicles

After six people were shot in the city’s Homewood neighborhood in less than 24 hours, Pittsburgh police rolled in with a 20-ton armored truck with a blast-resistant body, armored rotating roof hatch and gunports.

No guns or drugs were seized and no arrests made during the sweep in the $250,000 armored vehicle, paid for with Homeland Security money. But the show of force sent a message. Whether it was the right message is a matter of debate.

With scores of police agencies large and small, from Lexington, Ky., to Austin, Texas, buying armored vehicles at Homeland Security expense, some criminal justice experts warn that their use in fighting everyday crime could do more harm than good and represents a post-9/11, militaristic turn away from the more cooperative community-policing approach promoted in the 1990s.

When the armored truck moved through the Homewood neighborhood late last year, residents came out of their homes to take a look. Some were offended.

"This is really the containment of crime, not the elimination, because to eliminate it you have to address some of the social problems," complained Rashad Byrdsong, a community activist.

Law enforcement agencies say the growing use of the vehicles, a practice that also has its defenders in the academic field of criminal justice, helps ensure police have the tools they need to deal with hostage situations, heavy gunfire and acts of terrorism.

But police are also putting the equipment to more routine use, such as the delivering to warrants to suspects believed to be armed.

"We live on being prepared for `what if?’" said Pittsburgh Sgt. Barry Budd, a memer of the SWAT team.

Critics say that the appearance of armored vehicles in high-crime neighborhoods may only increase tensions by making residents feel as if they are under siege.

Most departments do not have "a credible, justifiable reason for buying these kinds of vehicles," but find them appealing because they "tap into that subculture within policing that finds the whole military special-operations model culturally intoxicating," said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University and an expert on police militarization. The military-style approach "runs a high risk of being very counterproductive."

Peter Moskos, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said police departments would be better off hiring people with different language skills if the goal is to root out terrorism.

"It does worry me when cops try to be more military-like because an armored car is not going to stop a terrorist," he said.

In Pittsburgh, a city of about 370,000 with pockets of mostly drug- or gang-related crime, the armored truck made by Lenco Industries Inc. of Pittsfield, Mass., has been used about four times a month, Budd said.

He said the Lenco B.E.A.R., or Ballistic Engineered Armored Response and Rescue vehicle, was bought primarily to be used in hostage situations and when officers are wounded. On Sunday, the truck was deployed when Pittsburgh’s SWAT team responded to a report of an armed man holed up in a home. The standoff ended peacefully.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, police in Lexington, Ky., a city of about 280,000, have obtained two armored vehicles, including a Lenco B.E.A.R. paid for with Homeland Security money, and two military helicopters acquired from the Pentagon.

Police Chief Anthany Beatty said the equipment is used mostly to fight daily crime but is also meant to protect the area’s "significant military assets" from terrorists. Lexington’s SWAT team takes its armored truck out on every call, including the serving of warrants to heavily armed suspects.

Police in Austin — home to about 720,000 — bought Lenco’s smaller armored vehicle, the BearCat, with a $250,000 Homeland Security grant. Lt. Vic White, who heads the department’s tactical operations, said it is deployed every time the SWAT team is called out, including instances in which officers need to be taken into an area where armed suspects could be holed up.

Robert J. Castelli, chairman of criminal justice at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., said if he were a police chief of a force with an armored vehicle, he would order it sent out on every SWAT call.

"Things can go pretty bad pretty quick in police work," said Castelli, a former member of the New York State Police.

Castelli said armored vehicles can send a positive message — that police are in control of the situation — and make police better prepared to deal with more heavily armed criminals, as well as terrorists.

Lenco Industries president Len Light said Homeland Security grants have significantly boosted sales but would not provide precise figures. He said the company has sold hundreds of armored vehicles to police nationwide, and has annual sales of about $40 million.

The Homeland Security Department has said it may have been too free in giving out money.

Until recently, little scrutiny was given to whether grants served a national purpose, said Larry Orluskie, a Homeland Security spokesman. In March, grant-giving was handed over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"Now, states have to propose a plan and how the money will be used to support Homeland Security missions," he said.

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Iran accepts compromise

Iran on Tuesday accepted a compromise for the agenda of a global meeting on how to fix the troubled nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, averting a collapse of the session after a week of deadlock.

Tehran had blocked consensus for the programme over a phrase "reaffirming the need for full compliance" with the NPT, calling this a blank cheque for Western powers to bully it over its nuclear activity to the exclusion of other treaty issues.

Iran, which denies Western charges of noncompliance with NPT safeguards but has been hit with U.N. sanctions, agreed to a footnote in the agenda text stipulating that "compliance" meant "with all provisions" of the treaty.

The 130 NPT member states at the meeting then adopted the agenda by consensus, prompting relieved applause in the chamber.

The footnote was tailored to assure Iran that debate would also push industrialised nations with atomic arsenals to do more to heed NPT commitments to do away with them.

The Islamic Republic rejects as unfounded Western suspicions that it is trying to build atom bombs behind the facade of a civilian uranium enrichment project. But it has not fully cooperated with a U.N. nuclear watchdog probe of its programme.

Iran’s acceptance of the compromise meant that the two-week gathering, due to run until Friday, could start substantive debate on setting priorities for follow-up meetings leading to the next decision-making NPT Review Conference in 2010.

The NPT binds members without nuclear bombs not to acquire them, guarantees the right of all members to nuclear energy for peaceful ends, and obligates the original five nuclear powers from the post-World War Two era to dismantle arsenals in stages.

Iran’s envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh said Tehran accepted South Africa’s proposal as "a display of good will and flexibility"

The U.S. delegation chief said "Iran’s obstruction" had cut seriously into time needed for meaningful discussions.

"Nevertheless we are pleased this point has finally arrived and that in the face of pressure from a united international community, Iran has backed down in return for a restatement of what has been obvious all along," Christopher Ford said.

Some diplomats and analysts said Iran’s delay dismayed many fellow members in the Non-Aligned Movement of developing nations and that it relented under their prodding.

"NAM want to raise pressure on nuclear weapons states but worried that Iran’s (agenda) shenanigans could prevent that, weaken respect for the NPT and play into the hands of the anti-multilateralist faction in Washington," said Rebecca Johnson of the London-based Acronym Institute, which monitors the NPT’s performance.

Disarmament campaigners say Iran, as well as North Korea which bolted from the NPT in 2003 and detonated a nuclear device last year, pose serious threats to the treaty’s integrity.

But they say plans by nuclear-armed states to upgrade their weapons, even if that means reducing their overall number, and keep them as symbols of strength have eroded respect for the NPT and may spur some nations in unstable regions to circumvent it.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, speaking in Oslo, said Tehran did not see the need for nuclear arms.

"This is our experience, this is our background, and the countries who are the first users of nuclear weapons and who are testing now the latest innovation of nuclear weapons are claiming that Iran should not have nuclear weapons," he said.

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Force ‘cannot solve Afghanistan’

Nato head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has said he believes there is no military solution to the Afghan situation.

Mr Scheffer was speaking during talks in Pakistan on ways of containing the Taleban insurgency on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Violence in Afghanistan has returned to levels not seen since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.

More than 4,000 people were killed last year in fighting between militants and international-led forces.

"It is my strong opinion that the final answer in Afghanistan will not be a military one and cannot be a military one," the Nato secretary general told a joint news conference after talks with President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad.

"The final answer in Afghanistan is called reconstruction, development and nation-building."

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, said his country had deployed more troops and suffered more casualties than international forces in its attempts to secure the border.

"The onus for border control cannot be placed on Pakistan alone," he told the news conference.

"We expect a matching response from Afghanistan as each side must play its due role to combat the menace of terrorism."

Pakistan has suggested fencing and mining parts of the border to stop militants crossing.

However, the Afghan government opposes this on the grounds that it will divide families within the Pashtun tribal belt.

It and Western military commanders have accused Pakistan of allowing pro-Taleban militants to operate in its border tribal regions.

Mr Scheffer’s visit is seen as part of a wider effort to ensure Pakistan’s support in the conflict in Afghanistan against the Taleban and the wider "war on terror".

Galileo ‘in deep crisis’

Hope is receding that a private consortium asked to run the system can end its infighting and meet a 10 May deadline to move the project forward. This is likely to mean European taxpayers stepping in to cover costs.

German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, speaking on behalf of the EU, said: "Galileo is going through a deep and grave crisis."

He added: "We’re in a dead end street. The cardinal problem is that the companies still have not been able to agree on the way forward. We need to find an alternative solution."

The consortium comprises leading aerospace and telecom concerns: EADS, Thales, Inmarsat, Alcatel-Lucent, Finmeccanica, AENA, Hispasat, and TeleOp.

The European Commission (EC) set the May deadline for them to come forward with a single company structure to run Galileo, a chief executive and common negotiating position.

But with little sign of the target being met to the Commission’s satisfaction, the EC is now expected to present new proposals to overhaul the project on 16 May.

"Our view is that the current scenario to put Galileo into place cannot work," said Michele Cercone, spokesman for the EC’s directorate general for transport.

Galileo’s planned network of 30 satellites will beam radio signals to receiving devices on the ground, helping users pinpoint their locations.

The system’s technologies are designed to bring greater accuracy and reliability to navigation and timing signals delivered from space. The intention behind Galileo was that taxpayers in the EU would inject more than one billion euros (£0.7bn) into the early development of the project.

The deployment phase – the launch of the satellites and the construction of ground stations – was expected to cost at least two billion more, with two-thirds of the investment being borne by the private sector.

The latter was also expected to pick up all the running costs in the long term.

The first demonstrator spacecraft, Giove-A, is already in orbit. A second, Giove-B, which has had some technical problems, should be in orbit by the year’s end.

The contract for the first four satellites proper in the final constellation was awarded at the end of 2004, but the time has now come to order the remaining 26.

It should be the private concession making the spacecraft order – but with no progress on its formal establishment, it seems certain that European taxpayers will now have to shoulder a greater burden of the construction costs if Galileo is to stay on track.

"There will be a stronger participation of the public sector in the construction phase of Galileo," said Mr Tiefensee, adding that the future of the system would be decided at an EU transport ministers meeting in June in Brussels.

Originally, Galileo was to have started launching its 30 satellites by 2008. However, that date was postponed to 2011/12 due to previous disagreements between EU governments on how to pay for the system.

Does Blair Deserve a Medal?

Does Tony Blair Deserve a Congressional Medal?

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this legislation for a number of reasons. First, forcing the American people to pay tens of thousands of dollars to give a gold medal to a foreign leader is immoral and unconstitutional. I will continue in my uncompromising opposition to appropriations not authorized within the enumerated powers of the Constitution- a Constitution that each member of Congress swore to uphold.

Second, though these gold medals are an unconstitutional appropriation of American tax dollars, at least in the past we have awarded them to great humanitarians and leaders like Mother Theresa, President Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and others. These medals generally have been proposed to recognize a life of service and leadership, and not for political reasons – as evidenced by the overwhelming bi-partisan support for awarding President Reagan, a Republican, a gold medal. These awards normally go to deserving individuals, which is why I have many times offered to contribute $100 of my own money, to be matched by other members, to finance these medals.

I sense that this current proposal is different, however. No one is claiming that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has given a lifetime of humanitarian service like Mother Theresa, or demonstrated the historical leadership of a Ronald Reagan. No one suggests the British Prime Minister, leading the avowedly socialist Labour Party, has embraced American values such as freedom and limited government, as Margaret Thatcher attempted before him. No, Tony Blair is being given this medal for one reason: he provided political support when international allies were sought for America’s attack on Iraq. Does this overtly political justification not cheapen both the medal itself and the achievements of those who have been awarded it previously?

I find it particularly unfortunate that the Republican-controlled Congress would nominate Tony Blair to receive this award. His political party is socialist: Britain under Blair has a system of socialized medicine and government intervention in all aspects of the commercial and personal lives of its citizens. Socialism is an enemy of freedom and liberty – as the 20th century taught us so well. It is the philosophical basis for a century of mass-murder and impoverishment.

In May, a British television poll found that Prime Minister Blair is the most unpopular man in Great Britain. A brief look at his rule leaves little question why this is so. He has eroded Britain’s constitutional base- recently abolishing the ancient position of Lord Chancellor without any debate. He has overseen a huge expansion of government, with the creation of costly "assemblies" in Wales and Scotland. He also has overseen changes in Britain’s voting system that many believe open the door to widespread voting fraud. In short, he is no Margaret Thatcher and certainly no Winston Churchill. Yet today Congress is voting to give him its highest honor.

Mr. Speaker, it is very easy to be generous with other people’s money. I believe the politicization of this medal, as we are seeing here today, really makes my own point on such matters: Congress should never spend tax money for appropriations not authorized within the enumerated powers of the Constitution. When it does so, it charts a dangerous course away from the rule of law and away from liberty. I urge a “No” vote on this unfortunate bill.

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Rhodesian convert advises Blair

Tony Blair decided to wage war on Iraq after coming under the influence of a "sinister" group of Jews and Freemasons, a Muslim barrister who advises the Prime Minister has claimed.

Ahmad Thomson, from the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said Mr Blair was the latest in a long line of politicians to have been influenced by the group which saw the attack on Saddam Hussein as a way to control the Middle East.

A Government spokesman confirmed last night that ministers and officials consulted Mr Thomson on issues concerning Muslims but refused to be drawn on his views. "We talk to a lot of people, including many whose views we do not necessarily agree with," she said.

Mr Thomson said: "Pressure was put on Tony Blair before the invasion. The way it works is that pressure is put on people to arrive at certain decisions. It is part of the Zionist plan and it is shaping events."

Mr Thomson wrote a book in 1994 in which he said Freemasons and Jews controlled the governments of Europe and America and described the claim that six million Jews died in the Holocaust as a "big lie". In The Next World Order, Mr Thomson, a Muslim convert who was born Martin Thomson in Rhodesia, wrote: "When the majority of people in a predominantly Christian society cease to worship God, the result is fascism.

"When the people in a predominantly Jewish society cease to worship God, the result is either communism or capitalism. A predominantly Christian society is concerned primarily with establishing a political ideology, whilst a predominantly Jewish society is concerned primarily with establishing an economic system."

This, he suggested, led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Mr Thomson, who was called to the bar in 1979, wrote: "The fascism of Hitler was the Christian element in the increasingly "Jewish" environment in which he and his followers found themselves."

He also wrote that the Jews have no right to live in "the Holy Land" because they are not a pure race and therefore not the true biblical Israelites and that Saddam was used as an excuse for US troops – "including thousands of Jews" – to occupy Saudi Arabia.

A Government source said: "It is by talking to people with varying views that we find out what the range of opinions is. It doesn’t mean we agree with what they are saying."

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