IFES not 'IFES'

The CDRSB in any case held a meeting on 1st April 2005. Mohammad H. Al-Nagadi, Deputy Minister for Planning and Programmes and Vice President of the National Committee for the Saudi Building Code of the Ministry of Municipality and Rural Affairs, attended. He suggested we contact 'IFES.' This abbreviation should not be confused with the International Forum on Electoral Standards (IFES) which was formed at this conference in New York. The former 'IFES' abbreviation originally stood for 'International Foundation for Election Systems.'

'IFES' now claims to deliver solutions in democracy building and its name is simply 'IFES.' We did contact 'IFES' by letter, by e-mail and by telephone, but got no response. It is doubly important that 'IFES' should not be confused with IFES because, as L. Paul Bremer III makes clear in his recent book (Simon & Schuster, 2006) "IFES' was a key NGO contractor in Iraq involved in electoral systems. CDRSB positions in regard to Iraq were not however implemented by 'IFES' or anybody else. CDRSB/SDRS proposals for Iraq were presented at the USAID conference on Iraq of the 1st July 2003 and can be viewed on www.sortition.org.uk. They incorporated sortition both as a democratic practice and as an aid to recruitment vetting to prevent terrorist infiltration of the new Iraq security forces. We also submitted these proposals by e-mail to the US Army, at a US Embassy reception in London to Bechtel, the main reconstruction contractor in Iraq, as well as to the British Government.

Although Patricia Hewitt, then Secretary of State for Trade, appeared to favour these proposals, after some delay and mixed messages Labour International Development Minister Baroness Amos rejected them on the grounds that the British Government did not wish to be seen to 'impose' a government on Iraq. This response remains tautological. Hilary Benn, present Minister for International Development, also rejected our application for funding, on the grounds that local faction leaders would not favour it. As L. Paul Bremer also makes clear (ibid page 95), the British Labour Party subsequently persuaded him to include leaders of the Communist Party of Iraq in the governing council. President Bush has characterised the communist practice of a self selecting vanguard as a totalitarian device also used by Muslim extremism and Islamobolshevism. Presumably, like Baroness Amos, communism considered our proposals would 'impose' democracy. As anticipated in the SDRS proposals of 1st July 2003, Iraq government and security forces have since been thoroughly infiltrated by extremist factions.

It was against this background that the CDRSB decided, as stated, to postpone the conference on international electoral standards originally scheduled to take place on 1st April 2005. Enquiries were made in regard to venues in Florida, where armed defence procedures in regard to the rights of the ordinary citizen are based on a more commonsensical approach than in Britain and correspondingly less dependent on the favours of any one or other political faction. We booked the Capitol Building in Tallahassee, but at the same time we requested sponsorship from the British Permanent Mission at the UN in order to use New York conference facilities. We also asked such assistance from those among the international community who had expressed interest in the initiative - which at that stage included diplomats from 17 countries, along with the United States. The Nigeria Mission at the UN offered to sponsor the conference, thereby enabling the meeting to be held in New York.

These points above describe the course of events preceding the conference. They are of some significance, since they indicate that, certainly in the view of the CDRSB, the UK is not an ideal venue for international conferences which do not enjoy direct or secret government approval. It is in these circumstances that the relationship between factionalism, totalitarianism and the right to armed self defence attains greatest clarity. Although many leftists, for example from Sinn Fein, seek to abolish the right to bear arms, this inversion of the original radical standpoint cannot alter the fundamental relation between this right and the defence of all human rights, including the right to a secret ballot. As will be shown, inversion of conservative and radical standpoints in regard to many democratic issues is integrally connected to the emergence of totalitarianism. It is in this context that the right to free speech on a secure, fully unconditional basis in the UK does not exist. For example, there is no realistic possibility of any police investigation of threats to free speech in regard to discussion of the work of Anatoly Golitsyn, despite the fact that he continues to receive state protection services 45 years after defecting.

This point was mentioned in a letter to all Conservative MPs, none of whom responded specifically to it. The British state will neither assume legal responsibility for the protection of its citizens, nor will it allow those citizens the right to protect themselves. The recent killing of an unarmed British informant in Northern Ireland offers further demonstration of this, and reveals the duplicitous nature of Sinn Fein General Secretary Mitchell McLaughlin's offhand dismissal of the right to bear arms as only enjoying support from wild west White House warmongers, more especially so when account is taken of the fact that Sinn Fein leaders themselves have been granted the right to bear arms for self defence, and that the murder took place in Ireland, where the present controversial head of MI6 would have responsibility. Against this background London Mayor Ken Livingstone's claim that his capital is safer than Florida for American citizens similarly reveals the dogmatic nature of Leftist attitudes to human rights, which is the main reason ultimately why the right to a secret ballot is not being properly defended.

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