Hot Air in Bali and Global Warming

Comment is Free in the Guardian 10 December
The Bush administration is practicing a climatic form of coitus interruptus in Bali. It has made it plain that whenever something substantial looks like it's happening - it will withdraw. Its delegation is talking about a "road map" to climate protection, which is doubly ironic. The US has still has not found its way to the clearly signposted Kyoto after 10 years, and its other great cartographical exercise, the Middle East road map, has been wandering lost in the desert for a similar period.

We should of course welcome that domestic and international pressure has weighed enough on President Bush to send a delegation and pretend to be concerned, but it is clear that he is doing a sort of reverse Galileo. In the face of all the evidence, he still does not believe that his chums in the mining, auto and oil industries can cause climatic change while doing God's work - making money and keeping him in office.

We should also welcome a shift away from unilateralism. Instead of giving a finger to the world, bereft of Australian support, the US is once again trying to recruit developing countries like China and India to hide behind, even while at home it points to them as the bad guys, whose rapid increase in their carbon footprint would be at the expense of what is left of American industry.

In fact, even under Bill Clinton, America's ideological, indeed theological, refusal to countenance carbon taxes or binding multinational limits own emissions has shaped the international discourse - while paving the way for dodgy carbon-trading schemes that make subprime mortgage-backed bonds look rock solid in comparison, or highly subsidised bio-ethanol schemes that loot the US Treasury to dole out corporate welfare to midwestern agribusiness.

In the sacred name of the free markets, carbon trading raises a Byzantine structure of offsets, regulation and consequent evasion of emission limits. If there is a road map, it should point toward the real market-based solution. That is to tax the fuel, not the emissions, increasing the cost of carbon-based fuels to encourage efficiency.

Most industrialised countries outside the US are already on the way. For years they have been making more money in taxes on petrol than the producing companies have had in royalties. They should be charging carbon taxes and forcing efficiencies on reluctant Opec. And the oil producers have been onside with the US on most of the climate change issues, but in practice, by bringing oil up to $100 a barrel, they are doing the world a favour. In fact, increasing prices even more should not only benefit them in the short term by making larger profits from smaller production, it also pushes back the fateful day when the oil pumps gurgle dry and they have nothing left to sell.

Increasing energy prices makes alternative, renewable, sources of energy more economically feasible. In the US, where gasoline is cheaper than cola, increasing taxes to a level close to Europe would force Detroit to make more efficient vehicles if it wanted to survive, far more so than technical limits.

Instead of tax breaks for ethanol, the government should support technological development that could help developing countries do their part in reducing carbon consumption.

Opec members are not our customary candidates for green canonisation, but they could be! Indeed, for inadvertent collateral benefits we should doff our hats to George Bush, whose invasion of Iraq without thinking of the economic consequences and constant hints of attacking Iran have done so much to help Opec raise carbon prices to a sustainable level.

Read all the latest comment on the UN climate change conference here. For all coverage of the summit on Guardian Unlimited, click here

Brown, Blair .. and Clinton

With one bound, he could be free

Gordon Brown must publicly break with Blair's US-inspired techniques of fundraising and party-bashing
Ian Williams

Guardian Comment is Free
December 6, 2007 7:00 PM | Printable version

Poor Gordon Brown. With the latest contribution-laundering scandal, he is carrying the can for Tony Blair's over-enthusiastic fundraising. But there is, in fact, someone else to take the blame.

The New Labour project has always involved a slavish emulation of American models, and in this case Bill Clinton can take a bow. He really pioneered how to make a left-of-centre party conservative despite its members and supporters.

Both Blair and Brown were totally bowled over by Clinton's ability to win elections when the then-inseparable pair visited the US while John Smith was still the apparently healthy and eminently elected leader of the opposition.

As Blair and Clinton jointly pioneered the "third way" as a means of passing off conservative policies as modernisation of reformist parties, Clinton showed Blair the way. Fairly sure they had nowhere else to go, Clinton scorned the Democratic party's hardcore electoral base of unionised workers and minorities, deriding them as "special interests". He could do so largely because he ran away with much of the old Republican funding base, attracting donors from Wall Street.

Oh, those were the best of days for the real special interest groups, who came bearing cheques. A quick drop in the hat from America's biggest banana importer brought a Worlad Trade Organisation case against the EU and the West Indian banana producers. A small fundraiser from Cuban-American exiled sugar barons ensured that there would be tighter embargoes against Castro, and continuing tariffs against developing-world sugar. For a sufficient fee, a night in the White House was the reward.

With none of the ideological baggage of the new Republicans, Clinton's policies were up for sale - and all that was without a House of Lords to rent or lease!

On the other hand, it was easier for Clinton than for Blair because the Democratic party was already on the way to being a PO box for corporate donors, helped because in the US's rigid two-party system, most Democratic voters felt they had nowhere else to go.

Blair and New Labour had a bigger challenge, the comparative advantages of saleable peerages notwithstanding. The unions founded the Labour party and, mostly, paid for it. It had a membership-based structure, policy conferences and a national executive committee. But Blair rose to the occasion.

The unions became special interests; then we had peerages (a bow to Lloyd George) dodgy loans, proxy donors and the assiduous courting of business interests, not to mention a succession of funders who seem to think it would be good for Israel to fund Blair. This was Blair's creative adaptation of Clintonian funding principles.

The structure of the party was ignored or dismantled, and membership was converted from being actively concerned in policy formation and candidate selection to being part of a leader's fan club run by a coterie of New Labour infiltrators who in truth probably had a smaller support base than did Militant of old. Many ordinary members took the hint and left.

One should point out that, just as in the primary elections in the US, (only millionaires or billionaire-backed candidates need apply). The Labour party's own leadership elections seem to have been the chink through which the real special interests grabbed Blair by the wallet, confident that his heart and mind would follow. The now ennobled Lord Levy helped bankroll his campaign for that as well.

The US is not always a bad example to follow, but in this case it is disastrous and undemocratic. American politicians follow money more than the voters. So far in this election cycle, one in 600 US voters donated the minimum $200 or more that candidates have to declare. And you can be sure that most of the money came from far, far fewer voters than that. The leading contenders have already spent nearly $100m each - and that is just on the party primaries, not the general election. And voters will stay away in droves as they are increasingly doing in Britain.

Gordon Brown can extricate himself in one bound: disavow Blair's and Clinton's political and financial heritage and rebuild his party as one based on an active membership representing working people. That is, after all, a large part of the reason why so many were happy to see him take over from Blair of Baghdad.

UNCA Award Winners 2007

for our readers interested in such things

THE UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENTS ASSOCIATION
UNCA Awards Committee
United Nations Headquarters
New York
NY 10017
Email: UNCA-Awards@igc.org
UNCA President: J Tuyet Nguyen Awards Chair: Ian Williams

Press Release
Twelfth UNCA Annual Awards
Thursday 6 December 2007

Friday evening, 7 December, at the Delegates Dining Room, UN HQ, New York, the UN Correspondents Association hosts its Twelfth Annual Awards Dinner.

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon will present the awards to the following

UNCA Citizen of the World Award
Richard Branson,
For his strong support for environmental and humanitarian causes,
Who will be introduced by Oscar-winning Actress Mira Sorvino

UN Foundation Prize for Coverage of Development Issues
Gold: Lazaro Mabunda O Pais Mozambique
“a very strong effort at documenting national failure on what G77 governments claim is the most pressing UN goa.l”

Silver: Shakuntala Perera, Daily Mirror Sri Lanka
“A revealing window on how ‘jawboning’ by UN human rights bodies and representatives can generate domestic political pressures domestically for government to clean up its act.”

Elixabeth Neuffer Award for best Overall Print Coverage of the UN and its Work
Joint Gold:
Opheera McDoom Reuters, Sudan
“A consistent, continuing, and convincing coverage of the Darfur agony and Khartoum mendacity – from the capital and from the countryside; multitextured and fearless”
&
Maggie Farley & Edmund Sanders, LA Times , USA, Coverage of Darfur
“impressive reporting on a global disaster.”

Silver Godwin Nnanna Businessday, Nigeria,

“A good series ‘from the streets’ of Ivory Coast, tracking locals' assessment of the UN at work there."

Antena 3 Ricardo Ortega Prize for Best Electronic Coverage
Gold: Cairo Bureau NHK, Japan,
“For a broad television audience in a faraway land, this represents a major journalistic investment – and one that palpably captures the feel of a collapsed Somalia”

Silver: Martin Semukanya Executive Producer Channel Africa South Africa

“An informative radio report on development issues in Africa, balanced yet critical."

Gold: Talal Al-Haj, Producer, Al-Arabiya “for a detailed historical overview and current examination of UN for the Arab World”

As befits a competition rewarding coverage of the United Nations, this year’s finalists submitted in Arabic, English, French, Japanese, and Portuguese. The winners will share $33,000 in prizes- but it is the glory that counts!

Entries this year came from Afghanistan, Armenia, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroun, China, Egypt, Ghana, Japan, Kenya, Korea, India, Lebanon, Mongolia, Mozambique, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Uganda, United Kingdom, and the United States, which reflects the unique nature of the UNCA Awards, which are unusual in being international in nature and in not charging an entry fee.

There will be a photo-op at 7:15, on the second floor of the UN. The Dinner and Awards begin at 7:30 in the Delegates Dining Room.
Press must obtain a UN grounds pass for the event.

Photos of some of this year's winners and details of previous awardees are available at www.unca.com
For more details call
Ian Williams
Chairman UNCA Awards Committee, 917 362 1477

Clinton's Road to Blair's Downfall and Brown's Way Out!

Clinton's Road to Blair's Downfall and Brown's Way Out! Guardian Comment is Free

Anarchy on the High Seas

When bullets are to be bitten, never let it be said that I took a step backward. Let me say it: George Bush and the White House are entirely correct - about the Law of the Sea at least.

Twenty-five years after negotiators finally put down their pens on the Law of the Sea Treaty, Bush and the Pentagon have joined with rational Republicans like Richard Lugar and the Democrats to support its belated ratification, pushed along by oil, maritime and telecom lobbies that see the need to end oceanic anarchy.

The Senate foreign relations panel voted 17-4 on October 31 to send it to the full floor for a vote, where it seems likely to win the two-thirds majority needed for passage. Quite apart from the significance of the treaty itself, there is a certain symbolism: this would be the first multilateral treaty of its kind that the US has ratified since Ronald Reagan.

Reaganites may indeed appreciate one of the impulses behind the ratification: the Russian claim to the north pole. Outside the treaty, the US has no means of contesting the claim, which, if successful, would be recognised by almost every nation in the world.

The very first case to go to the Hamburg-based International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea demonstrated the need for it. In 1997 the MV Saiga, an oil tanker registered in St Vincent and the Grenadines, owned by Cypriots, chartered by Swiss, managed by a Scottish company, officered by Ukrainians and crewed by Senegalese, had been bunkering fishing vessels off the coast of Guinea when patrol boats from there seized the ship and detained the crew. Guinea claimed a customs zone that extended 250 miles from its coast. The tribunal ordered the release of the ship and crew on payment of a bond, and, after consideration, it threw out the Guinean claim and ordered the ship and its crew freed. Under the convention, Guinea was not entitled to claim more than 200 miles for its exclusive economic zone.

The Law of the Sea should be an important cause for internationally minded liberals and Democrats, representing as it does a global commitment to the health of the oceans and the rule of law. But their silence is stunning. A quick internet search shows that most of the clucking comes from loony right-wing Chicken Littles who think the sky is falling down. There is a certain ironic satisfaction that the White House is now under fire from the ideologically hardcore foundations that have so far been barraging its liberal enemies.

At this year's hearings on the treaty at the Senate foreign relations committee, the groups that spoke against ratification, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), depicted the treaty as an undercover version the Kyoto protocol - reminiscent of earlier far-fetched accusations of an undersea land grab by the United Nations.

But money talks as the know-nothings cluck. Last year, Exxon - Big Oil's last-ditch opponent of the UN Convention on the International Law of the Sea -dropped its financial support for CEI. The lobby now left in the field against ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty reveals the wacko money tail that has been wagging the Republican dog, and, more often than not, converting many Democratic politicians into fawning puppies.

The process was described in an email that Mike Scanlon, the lobbyist who once worked for Tom DeLay, sent to his Indian tribal clients. It was released by the Senate Indian affairs committee when it was investigating disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff:

Our mission is to get specifically selected groups of individuals to the polls to speak out AGAINST something. To that end, your money is best spent finding them and communicating with them on using the modes that they are most likely to respond to. Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them. The wackos get their information form [sic] the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet, and telephone trees.

The wackos are now in the spotlight. But the sane wing of American politics does indeed seem to be letting the ratification of the Law of the Sea slip past them, even though it presents a unique opportunity to break the conservative hold on multilateralism. If the Senate cannot ratify this treaty when the White House, the Pentagon and former Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee are onside with a Democratic majority, then Americans had best resign themselves to being all at sea in a world of international anarchy.

All At Sea in Washington

Guardian Comment is Free on the Law of the Sea and US ratification

From partition to Annapolis - Sixty years on

Full Text of the Guardian Comment is Free piece from yesterday

Is it just a coincidence or was someone at the US state department indulging himself in a nerdish jape with the timing of the Annapolis peace conference this week? Thursday sees the 60th anniversary of UN Resolution 181, which divided Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was a bitterly contested vote, whose consequences have reverberated down the decades.

The resulting map broke many existing principles - not least of cartography. It produced a checkerboard state, without consulting the occupants directly. So, for example, the Jewish state held barely a majority of Jews and thus incorporated, presumably against their will, 400,000 Palestinian Arabs.

Jerusalem, in a decision worthy of the setting for Pontius Pilate's famous manual ablutions, was to belong to neither. It was to become a "corpus separatum" under UN direction - which is why today, except for a few banana republics, no country in the world, not even the US, will build an embassy there, or recognise it as Israel's capital, eternal or otherwise. Indeed, it is a telling argument against Palestinian claims to the city as its capital - but for obvious reasons it is not one that Israel and its supporters are likely to make.

The resolution passed in the general assembly, but in the modern age, any such crucial decision would now go to the security council, where the US can wield its veto. Indeed, Israel and the US now argue that general assembly resolutions are not binding. This is something of an anomaly for a state whose raison d'etre is based on historical claims, since if general assembly resolutions are not binding, then the creation of Israel as a Jewish state was not binding on the Arabs.

The resolution does in fact say that any breach by any party is a threat to peace and security to be dealt with by the security council - which is of course still "dealing" with it 60 years later.

On the contrary, of course, Palestine's supporters have somersaulted in the opposite direction and argue that general assembly resolutions are binding - but tend to overlook Resolution 181, which the Arab states in the UN at the time disregarded. It was certainly unjust in terms of self-determination, but legal.

David Ben-Gurion and Israel's founding fathers took a lot of flack from their diehard supporters for accepting partition but deflected it by pointing out quietly that they had no intention of restricting themselves to those boundaries - which in truth made little sense in any topographic, ethnographic or any manner. The partition would not be final, Ben-Gurion said, "not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders and not with regard to international agreements."

While Resolution 181 may seem anachronistic, its drafters presciently realised the Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg nature of the boundaries, and drew up plans for an economic and customs union with free transit, which would almost make a two-state solution feasible. It allowed people to reside in one state while holding citizenship of the other, which points to solutions to populations left behind any new boundaries established.

Maybe it is the time for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to draw a line on the road map between the initial resolution and the final status. He should apologise for the failure of the Arab states to accept Resolution 181 and its determination that there should be a Jewish state. But he should use the resolution's map as the starting point for negotiations to get back to the 1967 armistice line rather than start at the latter and negotiate backward to the separation wall.

For more comment on the Annapolis conference click here.

Annapolis - Sixty Years after

Happy Birthday Resolution 181 - which partitioned Palestine Sixty years ago!
Guardian Comment is Free Curtain-raiser for Annapolis

John Bolton's Bile Lies A-smouldering..full text

Comment is Free, Guardian

Reading John Bolton's account of his tenure as George Bush's ambassador to the United Nations,Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations, there are times when you almost want to cheer him for his role as the little boy calling into question the emperor's new clothes.

His exasperation with the UN process that substitutes consensus or the unity of the security council for actual results will resonate with those who watched with horror Slobodan Milosevic's resolution-strewn trail to Srebrenica or, even now, Khartoum's juggling with resolutions and statements from atop a pile of corpses. He even, albeit briefly considering that he spent several years working on the issue, belabours the US and the UN for allowing Morocco to duck its promises and legal obligations to allow a referendum in western Sahara.

Similarly he takes to task "the EU's proclivity to avoid confronting and actually recognising problems," he says, and he does have a point, even if many observers would feel that one of the biggest problems it has been avoiding has been the unilateralist tendency of the US.

It would be refreshing for those Labour types fawning over the White House to read Bolton's scathing dismissal of the alleged special relationship. Indeed, if anything, he seems to have a visceral hatred of Brits, especially those who disagree with him, like the former UN ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, who makes him wonder how Britain won an empire but explains why it lost America, and indeed his successor John Sawers, but with special vitriol for Jack Straw and Mark Malloch Brown. He sneers: "Many Brits believed their role in life was to play Athens to America's Rome, lending us the benefit of their superior suaveness, and smoothing off our regrettable colonial rough edges." In fact, he is speaking about an older policy, in which British diplomats tried to bridge the gap between American unilateralism and the rest of the world. Blair's complete abdication of independent policy gets no thanks whatsoever.

And that of course reminds us that Bolton is not a presumptuously precocious little boy. He is a blustering boor with a chip on each shoulder, one on his own account as the working class kid made good, and the other for the conservatives who he thinks represent the real America, who have been thwarted by his lengthy list of liberal demons.

Indeed one senses a deep personal insecurity, since he frequently records words of polite praise, but never any of the numerous criticisms that he attracted. Since he lacked the diplomatic niceties himself, he fails to look beneath the surface of the pleasantries that the UN diplomatic corps used with him, although he seems to have the subliminal message from Jones Parry. Of course no one was going to tell the US representative at the UN that he was a blustering boor, whatever they said to each other.

Bolton is free with abuse for others, but he is surprisingly thin-skinned when it comes to criticism from others. Almost breathtakingly, he praises Terje Roed-Larsen of Norway for "a propensity for speaking his mind ... always a source of delight to me." Clearly, it was the Norwegian's slavish assent which delights the author, since similar outspokenness from the "petty bureaucrat", Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan and Bolton's numerous other hate figures sends him into petulant rage.

This is not mere xenophobia: his enemies begin at home, with the "eastern elitists", state department "careerists", the "High Minded", the "True Believers", the "EAPeasers" (state department East Asia and Pacific staffers) and eventually those whom the "Risen Bureaucrats" seduced - Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and, although he avoids direct criticism, George Bush.

Indeed, he claims that he left the UN not because of the poor prospects of Senate confirmation but because of the success of his internal hate list in suborning "real conservative" foreign policy, and this book is a lengthy Parthian shot at them all. His opposition to the EU and "EUroids" is rooted in his visceral dislike for what he sees as a social democratic counter to the United States, and thus a potential rival, and of course, the British and French and all the other pretentious Lilliputians who would tie down the American Gulliver with ropes of international laws and multilateral treaties.

This is an obsessive book packed with minutiae of bureaucratic feuds and internal crusades, and as such, in a strange way, provides valuable insight into how the US formulates its foreign policy and, one could almost say, consequently, the UN fails to implement effective policies.

But while he attacks the processes of the UN, he frankly claims that "consensus" was supposed to mean that the United States was satisfied. In his indignation he fails to acknowledge that the other 191 could also play and thus paralyse the decision-making process. With complete lack of self-awareness, he does not acknowledge the role of his undiplomatic unilateralism in antagonising opponents and frustrating the efforts of allies.

Above all, we should remember that while Bolton can be faulted for thinking that bullying and blustering produce dividends, he is not being innovative in the essence of American foreign policy. He strips the skin off the skull of much of American foreign policy since the end of the second world war, but in doing so does little to advance it. Compromise being excluded, so essentially is diplomacy or anything like normal alliances.

Bolton quite clearly does not share the neocon illusions of spreading democracy at the point of a bayonet. How foreigners suffer is no concern of his. But he is quite prepared to threaten and use force to advance what he sees as American national interests, as judged by himself and his conservative cohorts. In that sense it is refreshing. What you see is what you get. If the EU, the UK and others have interests, they should stand up for them, instead of deferring to a presumed automatic altruism on the part of Washington.

John Bolton's Bile Lies A-smoulderin'

Review of John Bolton's Book! in Guardian comment is free

Hang Down Your Head George W Bush: full text

Full text from Guardian Comment is Free

"There is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty's deterrent value and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty's implementation is irreversible and irreparable," declared the UN resolution passed in committee on Thursday, calling for a global moratorium on capital punishment.

There are many old and highly appropriate proverbs about the company you keep. The vote found the US spinning at the axle of the Axis of Executions, standing firmly alongside China, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and Syria for the right to behead, stone, gas, fry, inject, hang or shoot grown human beings.

And one has to say that these countries put their fangs where their mouth is, since between them they carry out 90% of executions.

In a frenzied last minute attempt to amend the UN resolution to death, the US also supported attempts to insert amendments opposing abortion, "to take all necessary measures to protect the lives of unborn children."

Joining with several other hang 'em high countries in their deep concern for prenatal as opposed to post-natal life, the US envoy Joseph Rees sermonized that "countries that advocate for the abolition of the death penalty should be at least equally scrupulous in showing concern for innocent life."

Of course he unwittingly laid himself open to the reverse charge: that the Republicans who put their heart and soul into anti-abortion resolutions in the US should be at least equally concerned with the deaths of fully-grown humans in executions. It is interesting to contrast the shrill fidelity of some American Catholic bishops on the Pope's views on abortion to their almost complete silence about executions.

In Britain, there are politicians with excellent left-wing credentials who still share the Pope's right-to-life position, which is at least consistent in opposition to both the death penalty and abortion. However, while it is not easy to establish when human life begins in the womb, it is sadly easy to determine when it ends it the execution chamber.

But since these amendments were a cynical attempt to ambush and kill the death penalty resolution rather than protect the unborn, it will not help the Bush administration if ever any of them get to immigration control at the Pearly Gates.

Sadly, the abolition of the death penalty is not a popular issue, even in the UK, where many people support it in principle, even if they almost always oppose it in execution, as it were. In the US it is even foggier. I remember a nice, young, liberal audience opposing ethnic cleansing in the Balkans being quite upset when they discovered that the Hague tribunal had no death penalty.

The issue also gets confused with some on the left, who, for many years have fervently confused the issue of whether celebrity convict Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent, which is debatable, with whether he should be executed. Guilty or not, he should not be.

And, for some reason opposing executions in the US is for some a separate issue from executions in say, Cuba. At least Venezuela is on the side of the civilised angels on this one and supports the resolution, along with most Latin American states, as indeed does the UK and the rest of the EU.

The UN vote, which will now almost certainly pass in the full general assembly and already has the support of the human rights committee, will also certainly provoke the American know-nothings into paroxysms of rage against UN bureaucrats interfering in their country. Of course it is no such thing. It is simply stating the global community's sense of what constitutes civilised behaviour. And if the US wants to join Iran, China, Sudan and Syria, it is its right to do so.

But perhaps American presidents should think twice before invoking international law and moral standards against other countries, such as Iran, Syria and Sudan, as an excuse for action.

Hang Down Your Head George Bush

The US and the Death Penalty in Guardian Comment is Free

Swift-boating across the Atlantic: Full text

Swift-boating across the Atlantic

The smear campaign against Mark Malloch Brown owes its tactics to the American neoconservative movement

November 14, 2007 10:00 PM | Guardian CiF full text

If Gordon Brown wants to reassure British voters, and the world, that there is distance between himself and the pathological ideologues in Washington who dragged his predecessor down, he should stomp on any of his officials who are party to the smear campaign against Foreign Office minister Mark Malloch Brown, one of his more inspired appointments.

While at the United Nations, Malloch Brown provoked John Bolton, the US ambassador, into paroxysms of thin-skinned rage, by suggested that the Iraq war was a disaster and that the US had lost popularity. In a similar vein, when the swift-boating of Kofi Annan was under way, he mounted a vigorous defence of the UN against the neocon smear campaign initiated by Ahmed Chalabi when the UN refused to endorse his carpet-bagging rise to power in Baghdad. It is worth noting that far from being the epitome of anti-Americanism, he had earlier been attacked by third-worlders for being too accommodating to the Americans and too nice to the Israelis.

But then, so had Annan. But once he suggested that the war on Iraq was illegal and that the full scale assault on Fallujah was a mistake, that was it. For the American right, you are with them all the way or you are an enemy.

In the US, swift-boating is now a regular tactic emanating from the network of foundations and thinktanks endowed by deeply conservative family trusts, and they have been guaranteed amplification in the Rupert Murdoch media. The tactic is to invent a scandal against a liberal hate figure and run it round around until people think that with so much smoke there must be fire.

This swift boat raid against Malloch Brown began when the Spectator carried a cover article attacking him by Claudia Rosett, an employee of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a neocon thinktank which is financed by an assortment of palaoeconservative family foundations. It is not too surprising that the attack was amplified by the Murdoch press and Labour Friends of Israel.

The substance of the accusation should be a source of pride for Labour: Bush's lame duck administration does not like Malloch Brown. With Democratic majorities in Congress likely to increase at the next election, and a likely Democratic victory in the White House riding on a tide of anti-Iraq war sentiment, that surely makes him an asset. Unless, of course, your idea of being pro-American is being pro-Bush 43.

But since the advance guard of the swift-boat armada has landed on British beaches, it is worth checking the provenance of Rosett and the FDD. Her obsession with the UN almost makes one wonder if a blue-helmeted peacekeeper jumped out of the woodshed and frightened her when she was younger. But above all, try to imagine a journalist employed by a neocon thinktank writing anything positive at all about the United Nations!

Certainly one would have a long and fruitless search for any articles from the FDD or Rosett on the one definite oil-for-food scandal, which is the over $10bn of the UN programme's surplus handed over to the American occupation forces for the development of Iraq, which has yet to be accounted for. Much of it ended up paying for the no-bid contracts of the company that the vice-president of the US formerly headed - but the stunning sound of silence from Rosett and her neocon comrades implies that a scandal is not a scandal unless you can tie it, no matter how exiguously, to a liberal or a UN official.

Rosett can draw a salary paid for by the endowments of some of most reactionary people on the planet, such as the Scaife foundations, but that is not a scandal, while the idea that Mark Malloch Brown, after working for many years abroad, is housed by HMG is insupportable - or that he paid rent to George Soros. One has to remember that for American conservatives, association with the UN or Soros is ipso facto criminal or unethical behaviour.

The well-financed FDD is the Project for the New American Century - a major cheerleader for the Iraq war - in another form. As its own website boasts, it is closely connected with the Iraqis around the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi. Its board included Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, Frank Lautenberg, Newt Gingrich and James Woolsey, not to mention Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer and, until her death, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick opposed US support for Britain in the Falklands war, but the Thatcherites at the Spectator seem more forgiving than their transatlantic peers.

Gordon, meet Brown. Shake hands in public and put down the slimers.

Brown Stuff from NeoCons

Latest Guardian Comment is Free on Neocon assault on British Minister