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.