Taliban warn Afghans who wore 'un-Islamic' Peaky Blinders outfits

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Once again, BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

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Cicero's Songs, making a welcome return, has naught for your comfort: "The decadence of the American Empire is upon us, and the consequences will be dire, unless the EU can manage to secure the defeat of Putin without American support.  Quite possibly the USA may now seek to obstruct the Europeans in their attempts to bring Putin's murderous misadventure to a close."

The allegations against British special forces operating in Afghanistan will not go away, argues Mark Urban.

John Sweeney says Reform's 19-year-old leader of Warwickshire County Council is skating on thin ice: "[George] Finch’s comments have the potential to jeopardise a fair trial and that, of course, would harm the victim and her family – and waste a huge amount of public money. ... Most people know that after someone has been charged for a serious offence, you must take care not to publish or say anything in the public square that could prejudice the criminal proceedings. ... Finch appears to have forgotten this."

"Here’s a rule I have developed for myself: never talk about a culture-war topic with anyone who only wants to talk to you about that topic. These conversations can only be helpful if they happen as part of a relationship. If you’re going in cold on a very hard topic, you will not be able to experience each other as people, only as opinions or symbols." Naomi Alderman offers 12 rules for online survival.

Dezeen chooses 10 key buildings by high-tech pioneer Nicholas Grimshaw.

"Screwball elements run through their films like runaway socialites: eccentric leads, unexpected reversals, physical comedy, chase sequences, false identities; best intentions go hilariously awry; hard-bitten cynics battle zany dreamers in matters of romance and will." Amber Sparks celebrates the Coen brothers' 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy 

Charles Dickens' early career as a parliamentary reporter

I found this video, Dickens in Parliament, via an article about the reporters’ gallery in the 19th-century House of Commons by Kathryn Rix.

It reminds us that the Palace of Westminster the young Dickens knew was largely destroyed by fire in 1834, and that he was reporting the proceedings of the Commons in the days of the Reform Act.

And I like the picture of Dan Jarvis reading Dickens while on active service in Afghanistan.

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"The government is trying to solve the wrong problem. They are focusing on those who are out of work, when it is increasingly clear that one big reason people with disabilities are not in employment is because work environments have fewer roles they can fill." Ruth Patrick and Aaron Reeves argue that cuts and caps to benefits have always harmed people, not helped them into work.

Fred Garratt-Stanley, writing for The Lead, finds malaise, discontent and the rise of Reform UK at the English seaside. "When you take away someone’s belief in the place they live in, you lay the groundwork for radicalisation. And when progressives lose the argument and subscribe to the right-wing view on the roots of this deprivation, it creates a vacuum waiting to be filled."

Wendy Chamberlain reviews The List - a moving documentary about one family’s attempt to rescue hundreds of artists from the Taliban during the fall of Kabul in 2021.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the state-controlled international news channel RT has all but disappeared from Western screens. But, report Rina Nikolaeva, Anastasia Korotkova and Dmitry Velikovsky, vloggers are being paid to spread the same pro-Russian propaganda.

"In 1968, when I was 28, I wrote the first English book on art deco." Bevis Hillier talks to dezeen about the centenary of the style.

Jim McCarthy, in an extract from his book Flowers in the Rain: The Untold Story of The Move, writes about the band and drugs: "Trevor Burton was definite and truthful, about the path into drug taking, 'It was only Ace and me that took drugs in The Move. We were like kids in the sweet shop. Our other thing was amphetamines. When you’re gigging six nights a week - you don’t mind a little help.'"

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"Heaving, oversubscribed, besieged by lobbyists and engulfed by the scent of power wafting from around the corner, the Labour conference this year was unlike any other I have ever attended. It was also the most mind-numbingly boring one yet." Jonn Elledge went to the Labour Party conference.

Rob Parsons reviews Johnson at 10: The Inside Story by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell.

"Young people are often excluded from decisions about mental health research and interventions. They tend to be seen as simply participants in research projects developed by academics who are often much older than they are. As a result, young people who have experienced a problem lack opportunities to influence the development and design of interventions that aim to help." Alex Lloyd and Manveer Sadhra argue that young people should have a say in the development of the mental health interventions they receive.

Imagine what Afghanistan could do if they played international cricket regularly, says Abhishek Mukherjee.

"A Venice that has less in common with Canaletto than with the slightly grubby canvases of Francesco Guardi, Don’t Look Now's locations are one of several things that’ll come to mind when asked to recall Roeg's masterpiece. Other elements include a terrifying sequence where John is almost killed when the scaffolding in the church he’s repairing collapses, and the abrupt, brutal finale which I won’t spoil through either discussion or dissection." Richard Luck marks the 50th anniversary of Nic Roeg's film Don't Look Now.

Andy Marshall on photographing the churches of Romney Marsh.

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"Biden labelling Afghanistan 'the graveyard of empires' is, at best, historically illiterate and, at worst, utterly self-serving. It not only negates thousands of years of Afghanistan’s history as a flourishing centre of civilisation, but also - in an act of supreme imperial hubris - shifts the blame for U.S. failures there onto the land and people of Afghanistan themselves." Alexander Hainy-Khaleel takes issue with the Western perceptions of the country.

"As in many other countries, most of the research funding in Norway comes from the government. Thereby, the government funds all stages of research production, but must then pay again to access the research results." Martin Hagve explores the strange economics of academic publishing.

Emma John exposes cricket administrators' regular claims that the game faces ruin and the uses they make of them.

Callum Marius reports moves to reopen York Road tube station to serve the King's Cross Central development.

Jade King traces the development of the artist Graham Sutherland.

"As great as it is to be able to choose whatever you want on Amazon, sometimes what you really want is to have no choice at all." Mark O'Connell makes the case for bad bookshops.

Clive Stafford Smith on cricket and human rights

In April Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast to help us endure what was then a world without cricket.

They are up to episode 25, which talks to the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith about his work as well as his love for cricket.

Emily Thornberry and the Taliban: It's all my fault

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The Daily Mirror tells us that

Jo Swinson has hit back at Labour's Emily Thornberry after she branded the Lib Dems 'kind of Taliban' over their Brexit policy.

And the Liberal Democrats have been united in their outrage.

Trouble is, I have had a nagging feeling all day that it may be my fault.

Because this is how I began my Lib Dem Conference diary for the Guardian website back in 2001:

Fierce, bearded and wedded to an impenetrable ideology. Not a description of the Taliban, but the average commentator's view of the Liberal Democrats.

Clearly, I am the one who put the idea into what we may loosely call Thornberry's mind.

Searching this blog I find that Rory Stewart - AKA Lawrence of Belgravia - made the same comparison in 2010 in the course of a Westminster lecture.

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" I was on the ... Social Liberal Forum stand. I was approached by a man who was attending his first conference. He had won a prize in the raffle. He explained that his son was on the Liberal Reform stall and they had told him we were a 'bunch of lefties'. He wanted to know about joining...." Iain Brodie Brown reports a conversation at the recent Liberal Democrat Conference.

Jennie Rigg offers her guide to filling out a speaker's card at Lib Dem Conference.

"Forced through war, poverty and uncertainty to make new lives in England, they were drawn to cricket as a way of connecting with home." Nick Greenslade tells the story of how Afghan refugees have saved a Kent village cricket team.

Andy Boddington asks if too many trees are being felled in Ludlow.

"Guillam’s interrogators - Laura and Bunny (the latter is a man) - are almost parodies of awfulness, and one cheers on Guillam as he gamely lies to them and seeks to protect ‘old Circus’ from the consequences of its actions." Dan Atkinson enjoys John Le Carré's A Legacy of Spies.

Clare Balding: all-round good egg or control freak? Listen to the experience of Ginny Dougary and learn how celebrity works..

Troubled Walberswick Parish Council appoints World Bank’s former Afghanistan country director

Coastal Scene ("Latest news and sport from the Suffolk coast") wins our Headline of the Day Award.

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Malik Jalal on what it is like to find yourself living on a drone kill list.

Eight Labour candidates are standing for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Stephen Glenn asks if it is time for the Liberal Democrats to fight those elections too.

Anthony Painter explains his conversion to support for Universal Basic Income.

"At the time of its Berliner re-launch, the Guardian had a daily sale of nearly 400,000. Ten-and-a-half years later this has slipped to 165,000." Stephen Glover speculates on the future of what is, for all its faults, my favourite newspaper.

Chris Heather uncovers a sad tale of murder and suicide in the National Archives.

"Alighting from Swindon station in 1910, she hired a driver to take her to Coate but before arriving was dropped off so that she could amble to the farm and reservoir and immerse herself in the sights and sounds of so-called 'Jefferies Land'." Barry Leighton introduces us to Kate Tryon, an American artist and admirer of Richard Jefferies.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Giving Isis one up the snoot

Who would have thought it? The old boy turns out to be a bit of a hawk on Syria

One up the snoot for Isis

In my view defence questions resemble a closely fought by-election: if someone is out to get you then you give them one up the snoot at the earliest opportunity. Thus I was happy to support the idea of lobbing the occasional bomb at ISIS (the Boat Race has deteriorated since my day). Let us remember that they attacked people going to a footer match, out for dinner at a restaurant and listening to the Eagles of Death Metal, who so enlivened a tea dance at Uppingham last summer.

Thank goodness there was no move to invade Syria the way we used to invade countries under Blair. It wasn't the soldiers the Iraqis and Afghanistanis objected to so much as what came after. Health workers to enforce safe drinking guidelines; animal welfare inspectors to measure the camels; social workers from Islington to enforce Jack Straw's National Bedtime.

Just after I had written this the telephone was brought to me; it turned out to be Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party, who has called for ‘peace talks’ with ISIS. “What concessions will you demand?” I asked her. “I’m going to ask them to throw homosexuals off slightly lower buildings.”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• A shadow cabinet maker

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"I handed in my Masters dissertation a couple of weeks ago ... I thought a summarised version of the key arguments would be of more interest than the whole thing." Congratulations to Nick Barlow, who argues that equidistance will help the Liberal Democrats win votes but not seats.

Joshua Lachkovic (a good man fallen among Liberal Reform) offers some thoughts from his first Liberal Democrat Conference.

"A working class lad from an ordinary working class estate in Preston, Lancashire, stood on a stage and did something new." Iain Donaldson was there too.

Chris Dillow says Jeremy Corbyn's 'people's quantitative easing' is no big deal.

US soldiers have been told to ignore the sexual abuse of boys by their Afghan allies. Joseph Goldstein reports from Kabul.

"Without wishing to sound full of self-pity, it is not easy being an English spin bowler at this moment in time. All we ever hear is that the cupboard is bare, but the simple truth is that we don't play in conditions that help young spinners to develop." Spare a thought for Ollie Rayner.

UK sends 600 former child asylum seekers back to Afghanistan

A shocking story from Maeve McClenaghan at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

Hundreds of Westernised young men who grew up in Britain after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan as children have been forcibly returned to their home country due to what experts believe is an inhumane shortcoming in the UK asylum system. 

The Bureau has established that in the past six years 605 individuals who had arrived unaccompanied in the UK as asylum-seeking children were deported to Afghanistan after their temporary leave to remain ran out on turning age 18. Hundreds of others are still in Britain awaiting a similar fate. 

Those deported often spent several years in Britain learning impressive English, going to school, playing cricket, taking GCSEs and A-levels, and forming close bonds with new friends and foster families. 

But they are wrenched from their new lives and frequently placed terrified on special charter flights, sometimes in handcuffs, to a country they no longer know, that many experts regard as dangerous – and with little support and money from the UK government.

Mission accomplished in Afghanistan?

David Cameron announced today that our mission in Afghanistan has been accomplished.

But was he right? Come to that, what was our mission there?

I found the answer in an old House Points column of mine from Liberal Democrat News. In March 2006 I wrote:

Now British troops are off to Afghanistan again. At Monday’s defence questions John Reid confirmed there are currently around 1600 there, and this will increase to around 5700. 

Why are they going? Reid described their task as establishing democracy, ending terrorism, achieving security in the south of Afghanistan, helping the Afghan economy and dealing with poppy destruction. He did not say what they are doing after lunch.

A little research tells me that I was writing about defence questions on 27 February 2006.

The list of tasks was not a direct quote from John Reid, then the secretary of state, but were put into his mouth by James Gray.

I am not sure I would want anything of Mr Gray's put into my mouth, but Reid did not demur from them.

So, no, our mission in Afghanistan has not been achieved, but that is no reflection on our forces or David Camerson - even if he was stupid to use George W. Bush's glib phrase.

No, it is a reflection on the absurd ideas the last Labour government had when it sent troops there.

What are we being asked to support in Syria?

Yesterday an email was sent over Nick Clegg's name to all Liberal Democrat members - something to be commended in itself.

In it Nick assures us that "this is not Iraq":

This is not about boots on the ground. This is not about regime change.

If that is what is not being proposed, what is it that is being proposed?

Nick says:

Deterring the use of chemical weapons to protect innocent people from being murdered in future by brutal dictators.

He also talks of "proportionate, targeted military action".

Having read this I am still not at all clear about what is being proposed. Who or what will be targeted? Assad's government machine? The Syrian army? Its chemical weapons?

And how realistic is it talk of "proportionate, targeted military action"? We have seen numerous civilian casualties in Afghanistan, for instance.

You may say that it is impossible to announce this in advance, but I wish I felt confident that this was the reason.

And even if the government has a clear idea of what military action it wishes to take against Syria, it is harder to believe that it has a clear picture of what happens next.

The desire to intervene prevent suffering is natural and hard to resist, but without that picture of what comes next I am afraid this may well be Iraq.

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"In short, this kind of bond will severely limit our opportunities to do business with any other country which isn't an ageing, predominantly white countries with sluggish economic growth." The Potter Blogger argues that Theresa May's plan to require visitors to the UK from 'high-risk' countries to pay a £3000 bond will be bad for the British economy.

The Real Blog asks why everyone is so angry these days.

The Atomium questions the prison sentence awarded to Jeremy Forrest.

"I may still be an arsehole, but at least I’m a sober arsehole," says The Alcohol-Free Shop Blog.

"Graeme Smith summed up the Afghan fearlessness before his South African side faced them in the ICC World Twenty20 in West Indies in 2010, the first of their two appearances on the headline stage so far. “I read their opener said he was not scared of facing Dale Steyn and I wouldn’t be either if I grew up in a war zone,” the Proteas captain said." All Out Cricket on the rise of the game in Afghanistan.

Seriously for Real? examines the beauty of the most haunted and mysterious abandoned amusement parks on earth.

Doctors of the Dark Side: Physicians, psychologists and torture

One of the sessions at the British Psychological Society (my employers) Annual Conference in Harrogate this week featured excerpts from the documentary Doctors of the Dark Side and a panel discussion with Dr Karen Kitchener, a former Chair of the American Psychological Association's ethics committee, and Frank
Margison, chair of the trustees of Freedom from Torture.

The video above is a nine-minute introduction to the role of physicians and psychologists in the detainee torture programme. It suggests how new US state legislation could stop this post-9/11 misuse of healthcare professionals and secure them as a force for torture prevention. It is made with excerpts and additional footage from Doctors of the Dark Side,

Labour peer calls for nuclear attack on Afghan border

So far it has not been picked up by the British press - a reader directed me to Press TV and there is also a report on the website of the Pakistani newspaper The Nation - but on Thursday a Labour peer called for a nuclear attack on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

Here is the former defence minister Lord Gilbert speaking in the Lords that day:

I draw your Lordships' attention to what used to be called the neutron bomb. It is a very misleading description. It was not necessary a bomb. It was a warhead that could be attached to a torpedo or a missile. The main thing was that it was not a standard nuclear warhead. Its full title was the ERRB-enhanced radiation reduced blast weapon. 

I can think of many uses for it in this day and age. It is something that we could go and talk to the Chinese about. Building on the example that I just gave your Lordships about the Straits of Magellan, you could use an enhanced radiation reduced blast warhead to create cordons sanitaire along various borders where people are causing trouble. 

I will give an example. Your Lordships may say that this is impractical, but nobody lives up in the mountains on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan except for a few goats and a handful of people herding them. If you told them that some ERRB warheads were going to be dropped there and that it would be a very unpleasant place to go, they would not go there. You would greatly reduce your problem of protecting those borders from infiltration from one side or another. 

These things are not talked about, but they should be, because there are great possibilities for deterrence in using the weapons that we already have in that respect.

If you ever doubted the need for reform of the upper house, John Gilbert here makes an eloquent case for it.

Paddy Ashdown: Afghanistan is not worth the life of one more British soldier

PoliticsHome has the front page of tomorrow's issue of The Times.

The lead story trails an article inside in which Paddy Ashdown says the war in Afghanistan is lost and not worth the life of one more British soldier.

I find it hard to disagree with this - it is been hard for some years now to discern what we are attempting to achieve in Afghanistan.

Paddy's article will be find behind The Times' paywall. In any case, thanks to the Guardian core readership strategy, I find myself buying The Times more and more these days.