THE INDIRECT CONNECTION

We modern humans have always lived in pretty well connected world, so if you think that there is no direct or even indirect connection between a public meeting about the plan to build a gas fired power station in Wrecsam and the suppression of a teacher union in Bahrain, then think again. The plan to build an £800 million pound gas-fired power station in Wrecsam, which Wrexham Power have said could create up to 1,200 construction jobs and 50 permanent posts on the proposed site at Wrecsam Industrial Estate, has led to the creation of an action group Wrecsam Residents Against Power Scheme (Wraps) whose concerned members have "many reservations" about the proposals for the gas fired power station.

The plan to construct (yet) another gas fired power station (in Wales) adding to ones constructed earlier in Pembrokeshire and in Newport (Gwent) is part of yet another Conservative inspired ‘dash to gas’. Whether the thrown bone of jobs is enough of a distracter to allow to project to go through on the nod is a matter of conjecture. If nothing else the Con Dem Westminster Government is running greater risks by increasing the UK’s dependency upon imported gas from the chronically unstable Persian Gulf and Russia.

Successive Westminster Governments should have been working consistently to ensure our energy independence. Instead they have presided over our increasing dependence on imported energy supplies and left energy planning to the privatised energy companies who are only interested in generating more profits.  Much of the gas for the new generation of gas fired power stations comes from the Persian gulf and despite Mr Cameron’s best efforts to sell the Gulf elites more rubber and real bullets than they can use in a month of Sundays the region remains chronically unstable.

Bahrain has a reputation as being quite the repressive regime having cracked down on protests for democracy in 2011. Amongst those arrested in the crackdown were members of the Bahrain Teachers Association. Amnesty International has repeatedly called for the release of the jailed president of the Bahrain Teachers Association, Mahdi Abu Dheeb. He was convicted by a military court of plotting to overthrow the government during unrest that swept Bahrain in 2011, receiving a 10 year sentence, reduced to five on appeal.

Mr Abu Dheeb and his vice-president Jalila al-Salman have made allegations that they were tortured in detention after calling for a strike by teachers in March 2011 to support pro-democracy activists who had occupied the Pearl Roundabout, in Manama (the capital city). The Bahrain Teachers Association was subsequently dissolved by the government after its leaders were arrested. Ms Salman was originally sentenced to three years in jail but that was reduced to six months on appeal. In March this year she was sacked from her teaching job after criticising Bahrain's human rights record at a conference in Washington DC.  All these people did was call a strike as trade union leaders.

This is where energy policy, political repression and Human Rights all meet up. On a very basic level, to have an energy strategy that is to all intents and purposes dependent on imported gas from a politically unstable region is questionable to say the least. Surely if nothing else the events of the Arab spring should have taught the West one thing at least, in that at some point even the most heavily tooled up repressive regime can fall if enough people are willing to challenge it. At which point when the lights begin to flicker where exactly will we be left standing?

REMEMBRANCE

As a historian / archaeologist and someone who has more than a passing interest in politics I have to find a happy medium between living in the past and living in the now. It is important that we remember what has been done (for good and for bad) and to use that knowledge to make intelligent sensible choices about our future. I am a big believer in ‘rememberance’, by that I mean we should never be selective when it comes to remembering history.

If you want to wallow in nostalgia about the ‘British Empire’ or the ‘Soviet Union’ that’s fine, but, while remembering the heroic and principled stand against fascism in 1940 then you should also chose not to forget about the Bengal famine (which killed six million) in the middle of the second world war or the million or so who starved to death in Ireland in the middle of the 19th century.

The remnants of Stalin's Artic Railway

For those who yearn for the strong man in Russian politics and days when the sound of ‘Soviet rockets made the world tremble’ don’t forget the millions who were murdered or imprisoned by Stalin and his cronies (not to mention the millions killed and imprisoned by the fascist regimes in Europe and Asia in the 1930’s and the 1940’s) and the repressive regimes that held sway across half of our continent until the early 1990’s.

The vast majority of the old brutal oppressive Communist dictatorships, save for Cuba and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have collapsed and been rightly cast into the dustbin of history. While both Cuba and the PRC have made real social achievements (particularly when it comes to health care and literacy) it is important to remember that these achievements have come at one hell of a price in broken Human lives and scattered bones.

In recent years the tide may well have finally turned against dictatorship, even though we may yet have some way to go before they are finally gone. Certainly the real courage shown by protesters against tyrannical (nominally Communist and other) regimes, particularly in the last 12 months has been impressive, it has however been matched by what can best be described as a failure of leadership on the part of the UN Security Council which appears tired, out of step and unfit for purpose.

THUS SHOULD DIE ALL TYRANTS...

He won't be missed...save by his friends

The news that the Libyan ex-leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after fleeing an assault on his home town of Sirte will I suspect lead to the shedding of few tears for his passing. He may be missed by members of his family and his friends but by few other people. There will be more tears from the relatives of his victims and their surviving family members. Gaddafi may not have dodged the NATO bullets but he has successfully avoided a day in court at the Hague on War Crimes charges. Hopefully the National Transition Council will once its fully in-charge will publish any recovered paperwork relating to the supply or arms to the previous regime and hopefully have a full and public investigation into just who supplied the Libyan dictator with his weapons over the long and brutal years of his rule.

WHAT PRICE LIBERTY?

BBC Newsnight'S Sue Lloyd-Roberts was smuggled into Homs, which is the scene of some of Syria's strongest anti-government protests and most violent army crackdowns, to see what life is like for people there.



The Syrian city of Homs was one of the first cities to join the Syrian anti-government uprising when it began back in March. Thousands of city residents gathered in the main square to call for the lifting of the government's emergency laws and a genuine democracy.

Since that time the city has been effectively besieged by President Bashar al-Assad's armed forces and has been the scene of almost daily attacks. The unofficial title of the "Capital of the Syrian Revolution" has been earned at a heavy price without almost half of the killings of civilians since the uprising began, estimated to be at least 3,000, having taken place there.

KNOWING WHEN TO GO?

A potential visitor to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal and friend

There must come a moment in the 'politcal life' of 'a great leader' when they begin to lose the plot and any contact with real people (save for those telling you what you want to hear) becomes increasingly tenuous. Was it always about being the top dog, getting to the top of the greasy pole, getting to sit at the top table? Or was it always about lining ones pocket and siting pretty. Is the process gradual or seismic, or can said 'great leader' look back and pick the moment when any good being done was outweighed by the bad things being done.

Certainly of late we have seen 'great leaders' go from being favoured sons of the West to siting in a prison cell. For some dictators absolute power and endless overnight room service has been replaced with spending quality time with the slop bucket. And perhaps even more pleasingly having to keep a possible date in the Hague war crimes court in ones diary has become more prominent in a former great leaders diary than remembering peoples birthdays.

As a 'great leader' do you seek out 'Yes people' or is it something that happens around people who exercise power or run the shop? In the West (and in the UK) it has often been said that successful political leaders, regardless of their political hue, never quite know when to go.I have also heard it said that a political career always ends in failure. The long lingering departure of Tony Blair in 2006 / 2007 is a good case in point, a personal desire to clock up more time in office than Mrs Thatcher certainly overrode any political sense of reality, regardless of any electoral damage done to the Labour party.

Take Muammar Qaddafi, he overthrew the Libyan King Idris I (who was portrayed as puppet of the West (especially by Qaddafi after he took power), he was in power for 41 years, and until fairly recently was the longest-serving leader in both Africa and the Arab world. Having ceased power, in tail end of the Nasser era when the Arab great leader model was the height of fashion.

In the last 4 decades he has gone from handsome and charismatic young army officer to complete nutter and international pariah. Admittedly in this world being crazy and holding absolute power in a brutal dictatorship are not mutually exclusive, I mean who going to say no? The once smart uniforms have been replaced by (if I was being generous) a somewhat flamboyant dress-sense and gun-toting female bodyguards.

As bizarre as aspects of New Labour's policies were they have nothing on Gaddafi's political philosophy, as laid down in the Green Book. Gaddafi's green book which might be described if one was being particularly generous as a homemade alternative to both socialism and capitalism, with some aspects of Islam thrown in for good measure (the late Enver Hoxha (dictator of Communist Albania) would have been exceptionally envious).

Nominally Qaddafi created a political system known as the "Jamahiriya" or "state of the masses", in which power was supposedly held by thousands of "peoples' committees". In truth Qaddafi and his hangers on held and retained absolute power in a very centralised and authoritarian state and appear to have had few qualms when it came to hunting down their political opponents (and murdering them) at home or overseas.

There was a time when the West feted unpleasant brutal dictators because then were perceived as being anti communist or keeping the lid on a whole host of potential other problems. The Cold War has effectively been over since 1989, yet we in the West have carried on being nice to some pretty unscrupulous and brutal repressive regimes. After the Cold War was over various countries have been more than happy to sell arms to nasty repressive brutal regimes regardless of their human rights record e.g Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria, Indonesia, Egypt, etc.

I have absolutely no doubt if some of the dictators that have fallen in recent months had survived or had successfully fought of the challenge to their power then, then after a short interlude, they would be being quite happily wooed by governments and businesses from the West. I mean you can never have enough rubber bullets and ground attack aircraft can you? I suspect that Western leaders find it easier to deal with dictatorships than democracies. It's far easier to right of the Arab people as fundamentalists who are incapable to running their own democratic states, who need a firm authoritarian hand to rule them, etc.

If democracies successfully emerge across the Middle East, then things will be different, perhaps democratically elected Arab leader will remember just who exactly was no keen to support their oppressors. Not to mention exactly who was more than happy to tool them up with the rubber bullets, armoured land rovers, armoured cars, electric cattle prods and tear gas and all the other handy little things that dictatorships need to stay in power. On that thought, perhaps we will have to wait and see what emerges as the Arab spring moves through summer and into winter.

TOOLED UP!

News that the UK is training Saudi Arabia's national guard (the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain) in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles should come as no surprise. Plaid's Jonathan Edwards MP, who has tabled parliamentary questions to the Ministry of Defence about its links to Saudi Arabia, has done excellent work exposing this questionable but no doubt lucrative business to the cold light of day. The UK Government has spent may years tooling up the forces the of repression across the globe and signing lucrative arms deals with some of the worlds most repressive regimes.

Depressing though this news is, we would do well to note that this is relatively old news - in that the UK has been quietly supplying and training up some pretty questionable people's security services for years. Even David Cameron took arms dealers on a recent tour of Middle Eastern states - no doubt we can off a good discount of rubber bullets and tear gas in exchange for ensuring that more than a few pints of the dark stuff (and we are not talking about Guinness here) keep flowing. Mrs Thatcher in here time oversaw the the sale directly and indirectly of more than enough weapons to Saddam Hussein when he was our boy, some of which broke the sanctions that were imposed during the war between Iraq and Iran.