Here's the more recent Page not Found blog

Since my blog on the British Government's tardiness on freezing the assets of Abu Musab al-Zaqarwi has inexplicably become unobtainable, I will try to recap the story here.

Months before the Ken Bigley case (Kidnapped and beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zaqarwi), I wrote to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to ask how the financial prosecution of the "war on terror" was going.

They wrote back, fine thanks, no problem, on top of the case.

Then when Ken was kidnapped, it was reported that the Government was taking action to freeze the assets of Abu Musab al-Zaqarwi, Ken Bigley's killer.

So the Government officers had not previously taken action against al-Zaqari's group. Now this was either because either (a) they were ignorant of his existence, or (b) they knew of his existence, but did not see fit to freeze his accounts. I wrote via my MP 12 months ago to ask which was the case.

Baroness Symonds at the FCO replied.

The Baroness writes, "The Government always takes action to freeze the assets of any terrorist or terrorist group, whenever it is apparent that there are clear grounds on which to do so".

This is a clear indication that Government knew of the Musab al-Zaqarwi's group's existence, but did not see fit to freeze its assets.

The question I would now like you to put to the Baroness is,
"How many other terrorist groups of Musab al-Zaqarwi's calibre is the Government aware of, but does not see clear grounds to freeze their assets?"

A related question is this: "How does the funding of the officials charged with the identification and asset freezing of terrorist groups, compare with the military expenditure on the Iraq invasion?"

A further question, which has just popped into my head, is this: "If Al-Zarqarwi was the last terrorist to be spared having his asset's frozen, why was this, given that he has a long history of terrorist activity predating the Ken Bigley murder?".

To my recollection, I have not yet had an answer to these questions, so I will prompt them for a reply. I would have forgotten about this had someone not diverted the URL of the original page to the Not Found page.

You can ask them too, if you like. The address is

Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
LONDON SW1A 2AH

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Posted by DocRichard to Mabinogogiblog at 11/18/2005 02:55:00 PM

Easy as falling off a Blog...

O dear, Blogger has blog rot. I mentioned on November 18 that my page referring to the UK Foreign Office's tardiness in freezing the assets off of Abu Musaq al-Zaqarwi had gone missing: enter this link:

http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/al-zarqarwi-and-baroness.html
and you get Page Not Found.

Try this one:
http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/bush-avoided-attacking-al-zaqarwi.html and you also get Page Not Found.

That was a story about the number of times Bush had spared the life of Zaqarwi, the inference being that if Bush zapped Z he (Bush) would have no pretext to invade Iraq.

I wrote to the Blogger techies but they have not yet acted. They live at support@blogger.com

So, so much for the wondrous freedom of the Internet.

Index of Human Rights Inches Forward

I have just had a very encouraging response from the office of the Commonwealth Secretary-General regarding the proposal for a Human Rights Index in the UN. While unable to give an immediate endorsement, Donald McKinnon has asked me to remain in touch with the Human Rights Unit at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The Index has also received endorsements from: the Movement Against War, Green Party of England and Wales, World Concern, and the Global Action Plan to Prevent War.

Rosemary Banks, Permanent Representative at the UN for New Zealand, was also very encouraging, and mentioned that NZ supported the UN special rapporteur on Violence Against Women to develop indices on states' performance in eradicating gender-based violence.

I hope that these modest successes may in turn encourage the Boards of the
UK United Nations Associations to take a positive view of the Human Rights Index I have yet to encounter any absolute objections; the most common relative objection is the anticipated difficulty of getting abusing states to agree to the Index, but I imagine that the same might be said of any progressive proposal.

The great virtue of the Index is that it is not just another statement of
principle, but an effective instrument to influence states' behaviour on a
continuing basis.

Read all about it here:

One Buncefield a Day

The Buncefield oil depot disaster might look nasty, and indeed it is, but in terms of Carbon Dioxide pollution, the 60 million gallon of kerosene burnt, represents less than one days average UK consumption of airline fuel.

Thought y'all might like to know that.