Tony Blair has cancelled a trip to Gaza in his role as Middle East envoy because of security concerns, a spokeswoman for the former Prime Minister said today.

Ruti Winterstein said that Mr Blair's visit was cancelled because of what she called "specific threats" against him. She did not give details.

Mr Blair's visit was to be his first trip to the coastal territory since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized control of Gaza a year ago.

He was expected to meet with traders and inspect a northern Gaza waste water project being built with international funds.

Hamas was to have provided security for Mr Blair's trip.

hat tip to DeA for the turn on to this must-read, bookmarked blog

Blogger: The Archdruid Report - Post a Comment

Today, I scared up the barn swallow at the nursery I work at. It flew into a dead end, as many birds are wont to do, and rather than backing up (not that it could), it did what all swallows do, it turned in a magnificent spinning swoop and dove out past me.

That's progress for you. I will be amazed if politicians and marketeers don't spin just like that swallow and lead us into a "green future powered by sustainable power," rather than going back to the past. It's simply a matter of which semantics are more palatable to which audience. One thing we've got to watch out for in the druid movement is that we Romanticise the past (yes, the capitalization is deliberate), so going backwards isn't scary for us. But in our society, I think a lot of people are like that swallow, and backwards is a scary direction to go for them. They progress forward only. Of course, they spin so much that progress can go backwards, but there you have it.

One thing I would point out is that, under globalization, we've offshored a lot of our more polluting industries. When they come home, we can predict that many of our environmental laws will be gutted in the name of "progress towards an economically sustainable future." Time to start thinking about what we're going to do about this.