Local News

Quite old news, really.  The BBC programme about "Darley Oaks Farm" (25 July) showed an older woman among the protesters near the farm saying, 'If I was younger, I would be involved in "direct action" '. I heard in a local pub (the one whose landlord the brewery forced out after threats from the terrorists) that she was the mother of the woman killed protesting outside Coventry airport about ten years ago. The link is confirmed here. 

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Poland and Belarus (Sunday). There was a bit in the FT (30 Jul) about Poland's pressure on the authoritarian regime in Belarus, which is pushing around its Polish minority. Chrenkoff  had more here, with translations from Polish. Now, Lech Walesa has said he would support a people's revolution there, but has warned them not to expect any help from the West.

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I am reading Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies. After the Soviet agreement to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1988, Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's dictator, was killed in a plane crash. Of this and the massive explosion of an arms stockpile in Rawalpindi, Clarke writes 'I  could never find the evidence to prove  that Soviet KGB had ordered these two acts as payback for their bitter defeat, but  in my bones I knew they had.' (P50)

Robert Baer ('The Cult of the Suicide Bomber', C4, 4 Aug) highlighted the fact that for the 1983 bombing of the US Marine  barracks in Lebanon there was no claim of responsibility. The conclusion was that a state was behind it and wanted to avoid being identified. That state was, of course, probably Iran,