Michael.Blackburn.Poet.

In a pungent article in today’s Independent, Adrian Hamilton lambasts the empty rhetoric spouted by Western leaders at the recent Berlin Wall (demolition) celebrations. Sarkozy, Clinton, and –needless to say – Gordon Brown uttered meaningless platitudes about ‘freedom’ and the West’s role in promoting it. Brown’s “you know that while force has temporary power to dominate, it can never ultimately decide” takes the biscuit for sheer nonsense – the hastiest glance at history tells us it simply isn’t true.

Our purblind Prime Minister loftily proclaimed that “an Africa in poverty, Darfur in agony, Zimbabwe in tears, Burma in chains, individuals, even when in pain, need not suffer for ever without hope”. As Hamilton points out, all this Pollyanna-ish flim-flam churned out by his Whitehall speech writers flies in the face of reality. It wilfully denies the inescapable fact that, far from exerting themselves effectively to right these undoubted wrongs, Western leaders are tumbling over backwards not to rock the boats of petty tyrants, dictators and mini-Hitlers all over the world instead of putting pressure on them to reform.

Unfortunately, little of all this is the result of conscious hypocrisy or of deliberate lying. The reality is even worse – that our leaders sincerely believe most of the hifalutin nonsense they spout about ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, whilst blithely ignoring the damage they are doing to these concepts both at home and abroad. For most of the past decade – ever since the ‘9/11’ Twin Towers atrocity – they, and much of their electorates and the media, have lived in a paranoid state of false consciousness, misconstruing much of the actual state of world affairs and chasing will-o’-the-wisps such as a shadowy ‘Al Qaeda’ alleged to have the power as well as the will to launch murderous terrorist attacks on the American and European civilian populations. So, ostensibly to prevent this, the West has launched murderous attacks upon the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rationale of which are now being increasingly questioned. Whether it is already too late to retrieve a firmer contact with reality and tackle the outstanding issues which are making the world such a dangerous place remains to be seen. But judging from the flowery phrases uttered at the Brandenburg Gate, the chances are not very bright.

In these uneasy days, I am increasingly drawn back to Matthew Arnold’s superb poem Dover Beach (1867), in which he laments the ebbing Sea of Faith, hearing “its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,/retreating, to the breath/of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear/and naked shingles of the world/….And we are here as on a darkling plain/swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/where ignorant armies clash by night.”

The dwindling faith of which Arnold wrote was religious faith. Now, it is our previously taken for granted faith in democratic values, principles, and practices which is visibly shrivelling when confronted with our leaders’ self-deluded posturings and verbal acrobatics which defy a very different truth.

The reference to Matthew Arnold’s great poem is poignant and apposite. I just wish that some of my students when studying the poem last week had not been so resolutely unresponsive to it.

They’re going to have to live with the worst consequences of this failure of political faith, just as they’re going to have to endure the unpleasantness of a world in which Yeats’s famous words also apply:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM GMT 09 Nov 2009

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting.

Despite widespread opposition over Britain’s growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

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They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a massive Government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns.

However the Government announced yesterday it was pressing ahead with privately-held “Big Brother” databases which opposition leaders said amount to “state-spying” and a form of “covert surveillance” on the public.

It is doing so despite its own consultation showing there is little public support for the plans.

The Home Office admitted that only a third of respondents to its six-month consultation on the issue supported its proposals, with 50 per cent fearing that the scheme lacked sufficient safeguards to protect the highly personal data from abuse.

The new law will increase the amount of personal data which can be accessed by officials through the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which is supposed to be used for combatting terrorism.

Although most private firms already hold details of every customer’s private calls and emails for their own business purposes, most only do so on an ad hoc basis and only for a period of several months.

The new rules, known as the Intercept Modernisation Programme, will not only force communication companies to keep their records for longer, but to expand the type of data they keep to include details of every website their customers visit – effectively registering every click online.

While public authorities will not be able to view the contents of these emails or phone calls – but they can see the internet addresses, dates, times and users of telephone numbers and texts.

The firms involved in keeping the data, such as as Orange, BT and Vodafone, will be reimbursed at a cost to the taxpayer of £2billion over 10 years.

Chris Grayling, shadow home secretary, said he had fears about the abuse of the data.

“The big danger in all of this is ‘mission creep’. This Government keeps on introducing new powers to tackle terrorism and organised crime which end up being used for completely different purposes. We have to stop that from happening”.

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, added: “What is being proposed is a highly intrusive procedure which would allow Government authorities to maintain covert surveillance on public use of telephones, texts, emails and internet access.”

He added that the permission to access the data should be granted by judges or magistrates.

“Whilst this is no doubt necessary in pursuing terrorist suspects, the proposals are so intrusive that they should be subject to legal approval, and should not be available except in pursuit of the most serious crimes,” he said.

The Information Commissioner’s Office also opposed the moves.

“The Information Commissioner believes that the case has yet to be made for the collection and processing of additional communications data for the population as a whole being relevant and not excessive.”

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, has criticised the amount the scheme will cost for what is effectively “state spying”.

He said yesterday: “Any legislation requiring communications providers to keep data on who called whom and when will need strong safeguards on access.

“It is simply not that easy to separate the bare details of a call from its content. What if a leading business person is ringing Alcoholics Anonymous?

“There has to be a careful balance between investigative powers and the right to privacy.”

Ministers said that they have still got to work with the communications industry to find the correct way of framing the proposals in law – meaning it will not come before Parliament until after the General Election. But the Home Office yesterday insisted it would push the legislation through.

Jacqui Smith, then Home Secretary, originally launched a paper in April for consultation called “Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment”.

The responses, published yesterday, disclosed that more than 40 per cent of 221 respondents rejected it outright as the growth of the surveillance state.

Of those whose repsonses were considered, exactly half said that the proposed safeguards for the information to be stored were not adequate.

Only 29 per cent third supported the Government approach, whereas 38 per cent were against it.

Meanwhile the communications providers themselves questioned the cost of the scheme and whether it was even technically feasible.

The latest figures on the use of the RIPA legislation by public bodies, show that state bodies including town halls made 519,260 requests last year - one every minute - to spy on the phone records and email accounts of members of the public.

The number of requests has risen by 44 per cent in two years to a rate of 1,422 new cases every day, leading to claims of an abuse of using the powers for trivial matters such as littering and dog fouling.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “The Big Brother ambitions of a group of senior Whitehall technocrats are delayed but not diminished.

“We need a bold alliance of phone companies who fear losing public trust and concerned citizens to come together in opposition to these plans.

“If the authorities need to build up an intimate picture of a suspect’s communications, they should have to go to a judge for a warrant.

“Law-abiding people have sustained too many blanket attacks on their privacy and they’ve had enough.”

Alex Deane, Director of Big Brother Watch, said it was an “enormous and unwarranted intrusion into every aspect of our private lives” and said that the laws are in effect an “illiberal snoopers’ charter.”

John Yates, Britain’s head of anti-terrorism, has argued that the legislation is vital for his investigators.

The Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner said: “The availability of Communications Data to investogators is absolutely crucial. Its importance to investigating the threat of terrorism and serious crime cannot be ovetrstated”.

Home Office Minister David Hanson said: “The consultation showed widespread recognition of the importance of communications data in protecting the public and an appreciation of the challenges which rapidly changing technology poses. We will now work with communications service providers and others to develop these proposals, and aim to introduce necessary legislation as soon as possible.”

I’m afraid to say this is old news to some of us - the British media have proved yet again how criminally negligent they have been over keeping us informed about what our government is up to. They should have been aware of this years ago and telling us about it.

What this article also fails to do is to identify the source of this legislation - the EU. The innocuous sounding Directive 2006/24/EC laid out the requirements for this Soviet-style snooping. Check it out on Wikipedia and the EU’s own websites.

Don’t forget that EU law is superior to UK law and has to be implemented.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the same leaders who happily agreed to it, without asking us, have been parading themselves in front of the Berlin Wall, praising the spirit of democracy. I was under the impression that one of the things the East freed itself from was continuous state surveillance.

Nice people, aren’t they?

Tourists look at individually-painted dominoes along the former route of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

Update 5pm:
Here’s are some of the best quotes from the today’s events:

Angela Merkel: “Sometimes people forget today how many could not leave (the country) for years, how many sat in prisons … before the joy of freedom came, many people suffered.”

Mikhail Gorbachev : “My clairvoyant skills and those of (then-Chancellor Helmut) Kohl were up to nothing then. We did not think the wall would fall so fast.”

Hillary Clinton: “Now, we have to turn our attention to the challenges of the 21st century. A wall, a physical wall, may have come down but there are other walls that exist that we have to overcome and we will be working together to accomplish that.”

Gordon Brown: “The wall that had imprisoned half a city, half a country, half a continent, half a world for nearly a third of a century was swept away by the greatest force of all the unbreakable spirit of men and women who dared to dream in the darkness, who knew that while force has the temporary power to dictate, it can never ultimately decide.”

Update 3.30pm:

Today’s best Zelig moment comes from the French president Nicolas Sarkozy who used his Facebook page to suggest he was there 20 years ago.

Sarkozy, or a minion on his behalf, posted a picture of the young Nicolas chipping away at the wall, with a caption that reads: “Memories of the fall of the Berlin wall, November 9, 1989”.

The French media have pointed out that archives showed he was there a week later.

Meanwhile, back in Berlin “the atmosphere is fantastic”. Visitors to the city today tell Kate Connolly what the fall of the wall meant to them.

Link to this audio

Update 3pm: Under drizzly skies Merkel crossed the Bonhomer Bridge flanked by Walesa and Gorbachev. She paid tribute to the courage of both men and to the bravery of the people of East Germany.

She said: “This is not just a day of celebration for Germany, (but) a day of celebration for the whole of Europe.”

Residents remember the fall of the wall 20 years ago as politicians from around the world arrive to join in the celebrations Link to this video

Today’s events to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall will range from solemn reflection to high kitsch celebration.

Memorials are planned for the 136 people who died when they tried to cross the border while – in an event reminiscent of International It’s a Knockout – 1,000 foam dominoes placed along the wall’s route will be tipped over. Dancers dressed as angels will descend from prominent buildings.

At around 2pm, Angela Merkel, the first German leader to grow up in the communist east, will cross the Bornholmer Street bridge, where the first border post opened on the evening of 9 November 1989.

She will be accompanied by the former Soviet president Michael Gorbachev and Poland’s former opposition leader and ex-president Lech Walesa.

At around 6pm, Daniel Barenboim, who was in Berlin to witness the events of 1989, will conduct his Staats Kapelle orchestra on an outdoor stage at the Brandenburg Gate.

From 6.30pm, world leaders including Merkel, Gordon Brown, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, will give speeches.

Afterwards, the dominoes will be toppled and there will be fireworks at the Brandenburg Gate at 8pm.

To mark the anniversary, the Guardian has put together a special Berlin Wall package including a series of videos, audio from those whose lives were affected and interactive guides.

• The historian and columnist Timothy Garton Ash remembers the mood in the German capital after the wall fell. “As as symbol, it lives on, above all, as a image of peaceful liberation,” he writes.

• Take a historical and geographical journey of the Berlin Wall through five videos.

• A gallery of images shows the wall from its construction to the commemoration of its demise.

• “Without the Leipzig demos and the will of the people, it would never have happened.” Author Anna Funder reflects on life since the fall of the wall in this audio.

Link to this audio

• Our interactive timeline guides you through the dates and events that shaped the Berlin Wall and finally brought about its downfall.

• Our Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly, reports on today’s celebrations and the mood of anticipation in the city.

Link to this audio

The Berlin Twitter Wall provides live updates and thoughts from across the world. The subject is also trending on Twitter at #fotw.

For a historical perspective, the writer Gunter Grass has just published his diaries for 1990.

And writer Lisa Selvidge describes her experiences and how they inspired her to write her new novel, The Last Dance over the Berlin Wall.

You can see how the Guardian covered the events at the time on our digital archive.