The end in sight?

I am coming to the end of Blairy England.

It is Samhein, the feast of the dead, all hallows or all souls eve. I have focussed so much of my life energy on the will to destroy something obscene and corrupt, BushBlair incorporated.
But in doing so I have suffered from an unconscious identification with the target to the extent that I once dreamed I was Blair. I may not kill off the blog yet, but I will move my energies onto something more hopeful and creative.

With bonfire night I will burn the effigies of Bush and Blair for the last time, hoping that the events of this last week in October are the beginning of the end for this putrid mess that is the Anglo American war machine state.

This week past has marked 2000 American victims of war to add to the 100,000 Iraqi victims, maybe 25,000 killed by insurgents.

We now have one victim at the top of Bushco too. One deceiver and lyer less at the top.

If Bush does not dissolve and reform his forces all the others will likely fall too.
I quote from a Celtic Bards newsletter.

"It’s one of four fire festivals in the Celtic year. Fire symbolism relates to spiritual illumination, to the underlying awareness of Spirit through all life’s transitions. It’s a liminal, transitional time. Transition can be scary, hence we have assorted ‘spooky’ Samhain traditions. By concretising unknown scary change, or making it comical like the funny little Mexican Day of the Dead figures, we make it manageable.

There’s a childlike element of play at work. Death doesn’t particularly worry my toddler, Téa. She saw a dead mouse the other day and said, ‘Hello mouse.’ David said, ‘It’s dead.’ She went, ‘Hello dead mouse.’

The other day she was looking at the back cover of a friend’s ‘Fortean Times’ magazine that I was looking at. Unbeknownst to me, it had a lurid image of a zombie from a game based on the ‘Evil Dead’ movies. She started asking, ‘That?’ I looked, and not sure what to say, went, ‘Oh, that’s one of the evil dead.’ This delighted her. Later that day she was running around in the garden with a trowel pursuing the ‘Evee dead! Evee dead!’ Good shamanic instincts, I suppose! One wants ancestral spirits about, but certainly not vengeful or hungry ghosts.

Every time I think she’s forgotten, it pops up again, like the other day in a shop with Nepalese skull masks, ‘Evee dead! Evee dead!’ The shopkeeper was quite amused.

Now, you might say all this funning is because children don’t understand. But maybe they understand better than grown ups that it’s all playing. Maybe they’re close enough to our immortal origins that they remember that everything’s alive and nothing ever really dies.

As ‘grown-ups’ it can be harder for us to cope with the fear of death. At this time we can play with and reflect on beginnings and endings, life and death, fear and desire and the now moment. Samhain, as a fire festival, conjures the power of illumination, of sacred fire, to help us cope."

My daughter had a pop up book with a shark head opening at her when she was tiny. She would make a bigger shark face back at the book. That has always been her stance on life. She devours it. Her hero is now starting to tackle sexuality at adolescence.

Meanwhile Bush and Blair appear paralysed by events.

Let us wish Messrs Bush and Blair a happy Samhein. Are they fossils already, or can they die and be reborn? Will that be the sacrifice of Rove and Cheney and a new team? Will Blair reshuffle his cabinet?

Reagan restructured and ended the cold war after his nadir Iran Contra.

I am throwing my rage into the flames.

It is time for a new start. My wife is giving up alcohol and beginning a new working life.
I shall look for paid employment for this digital pen of mine.

I spent a full unbroken hour supporting J work at reading and writing the other day. He just was not ready last year. No Blair Government edicts or social work threats could change that. But J is flying now. The school is functioning far better with the new head. It was worth my effort there. J is at least 18 months ahead of R at the same age now. She only started to fly when she was 12.

Meanwhile C is learning to apply his brains and imagination in real life. I helped him take appart fix and rebuild the dyson yesterday. I hope it is the start of a new world for him too.

Governments that think they can change our lives by micro managing our development are dangerous and destructive.
The news today is of a nanny state. But it is the tyrannical state that we really need to fear.

It is worth noting that the imposed National Curriculum is now reported failing to achieve its targets on so many markers. Creative teaching and good teachers are being continually destroyed on the altar of Macdonalds style school management.
I want to hear your ideas more fully, Mr Cameron.

We have the most tested children on the planet. But these children who learn to do better and better at tests are less competent to move to the work place as business leaders avow.

Meanwhile the testers are incompetent and overwhelmed with work.
What is the point of tests if the results are averaged, or made up, or assessed by secretaries. Mr Cameron, why have you not confronted the marking scandal?

This Government is a disgrace.

Wowa, boy! You are supposed to let go of anger and find your bliss.

Old habits die hard.

It is very hard to accept that this country is moving towards American culture and away from Europe.

Tonight is the American festival of "trick or treat".

I think of this as the all American way, the exploitation of the weak by the strong.

Old people in their houses are menaced by children demanding treats, with the threat of something very nasty if nothing is forthcoming.

I read that in Detroit in the eighties it became so bad there were 400 cases of arson. I do not blame someone for wanting to burn down the appalling school where G used to work, though..

Too many American children grow up to be either conventional mobsters and business recketeers, or military racketeers.

Give us information or we will torture you. Or, as is reported this week, renounce the insurgency or have your water supply cut off.
Why is it American marines in uniform look so much like the storm troops out of "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Star Wars".

It is happening here.
My daughter, without my approval, will be out tonight trick treating, (they don't do any tricks) with her friends from her mother's house. My boys will not.
Through the post comes an advert for Age Concern featuring an old man refusing to tell anything to his torturing tormentors, not in 1944 but in 2004.

Blair,with an extraordinary degree of hypocrisy, declares that Iran is unacceptable in talking about the illegal destruction of another state in the United Nations.

How many United Nations states has he now invaded illegally?
He just wanted to depose the Governments.
But he and Bush seem to have effectively destroyed the state of Iraq.

Hizb ut-Tahir should not be criminalised

Though I disapprove of religious groups who want to rule any bit of the world in any way, I am happy to provide an outlet for this group, who are avowedly non violent and wishing to express a democratic right to a point of view. Crushing dissent and avoiding debate is no way forward for Britain.
I apologise to those who don’t like long posts. Try it anyway.


“Criminalising Political Dissent in the Name of ‘Glorifying Terror’

A statement from Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain regarding the Anti-Terror Bill 2005

On the 12th October 2005 the Home Secretary presented the government’s proposed anti-terrorism bill to
Parliament. Though rightly significant attention has been given to the proposed extension of questioning
without charge from fourteen days to ninety days, other parts of the bill are equally chilling and coercive.
Within the bill under clause 1, a new offence is proposed one of ‘glorifying terrorism’, which also constitutes
the criteria for the government’s intention to widen the grounds for proscribing organisations. The
proposed new offence is steeped in controversy (it can for example be applied to any geographical location
in the world). It is essentially a political device dressed up in legal lexicon to proscribe groups such as Hizbut-Tahrir despite the latter’s explicit condemnation of 9-11 and 7-7. In addition, the new offence has the
potential of not just criminalising 1.6m Muslims in the UK, but millions of non-Muslim residents as well.
Hizb ut-Tahrir reiterates that its objective of seeking the Caliphate in the Muslim world will only be
achieved through exclusively political and non violent methods. However the party also contends that in
the very specific situation of lands which are occupied, that people have the right to engage in legitimate
resistance in the face of imperialistic and military occupation. Within the appendix we highlight a number
of quotations from a wide range of people on all sides of the political and ideological spectrum. In many
cases we disagree with some of these quotes specifically when they espouse violence to justify political
change even when this occurs in totalitarian circumstances. In addition our intention is not to pass adverse
judgements on the people we have cited but to demonstrate how absurd the proposed new legislation will
be. In summary we make the following points
• This bill fails to pass the Nelson Mandela test, as it criminalises all resistance movements. If this
bill had been present in the 1980’s when the ruling parties in both the US and the UK viewed the
ANC as a terrorist organisation, then millions of anti-apartheid activists would have faced up to 7
years in prison, including dare we say a number of members of the current British cabinet.
• Statements from as diverse a constituency (documented in the appendix) as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela,
Edward Said, Cherie Blair, Jenny Tonge, Ronald Reagan, Ken Livingstone, Arundhati Roy, the
Geneva Conventions, Timothy Garton Ash, John Pilger, Article 51 of the UN Charter and countless
others we believe may well breach the new proposed off ence.
• While simultaneously appearing tough on Islamic groups, the current Prime Minister has been
cutting deals for over eight years with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. This is despite the
latter’s continued involvement in violence, terror, and criminality. Tony Blair justifies this double
standard on the notion that he could not imagine the IRA killing 3,000 people. However as Geoffrey
Wheatcroft wrote recently ‘In proportion to the respective populations of Northern Ireland and the US, the
numbers killed by the Provisional IRA are equivalent to 330,000 Americans.’ Why is there one law for Irish
groups who have armed wings and another for non violent Islamic groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir?
This double standard will not help to alter the view that many Muslims hold already that the War
on Terror is in reality a War on Islam and this measure will further deteriorate the already strained
community relations in the UK.
• This bill will criminalise 1.6m Muslims and millions of Non Muslims who give verbal support to
the principle of resistance when land has been illegally and imperialistically occupied whether this

occurs in Chechnya, Palestine, the Falkland Islands or Iraq. Indeed the same nations today who are
seeking to criminalise resistance to occupation, were falling over themselves to label the Afghan
Mojaheddin as freedom fighters after the Soviet invasion of 1979.
• In recent times, the British Government has been instrumental in justifying tactics such as ‘shock
and awe’ (state glorification of terror) in Iraq, internment in Guantanomo Bay and the use of evidence
obtained from torture. It has also stood shoulder to shoulder with regimes such as Uzbekistan,
Russia, India and Israel all whom have shocking and chilling records when it comes to the use of
state terror.
• The British Prime Minister believes that terrorism is defined as merely the systematic targeting
and killing of innocent civilians. Under this definition support of Dresden, Hiroshima, Baghdad,
Vietnam and Nagasaki (under the principle of equality under the law), should also then be captured
under the proposed legislation. As the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee
recently said to the Home Secretary ‘Two years ago you invaded Iraq to bring about political change....
You may want to look more closely at the definition of terrorism that is in our current law, home secretary.’
• The current offence is consistent with the post 9-11 strategy of violently imposing an imperialistic
neo-liberal system abroad while criminalising political dissent at home. Yet the irony is that the
‘War on Terror’ is pitched as a battle of competing ideas on how societies should be governed. In
the light of this legislation, the hollowness of this purported intellectual debate will not be lost.
A nation that repeatedly and exclusively has to turn to its military, to coercive legislation, which
undermines its own core values, is a nation that has lost the debate and moral high ground
• Lastly, though it is of course possible to proscribe organisations, even non violent political parties
(indeed what is not possible now under the War on Terror), it is absolutely impossible to proscribe a
set of ideas and thoughts. The globalised world we live in, the instant access to telecommunications,
the ubiquitous nature of the internet make the attempt to censor opposing political views laughable.
The British Government will join that growing paranoid and select list of regimes in Beijing,
Tripoli, Tashkent, Riyadh and Singapore who seek not only to control the fl ow of information but
also the ability to express dissent.
We hope the above points and the attached appendix provokes suffi cient thinking and debate, to show the
absurdity of this proposed offence.
Dr Imran Waheed
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain

Appendix
“Self-determination, the right to freely choose one’s own destiny, has been the central point of the Afghan
struggle. The Afghan people have clearly demonstrated that they will resist any eff ort by outsiders to impose
a leadership on them.
At every turn, it is the determination of the Afghan people and the valiant freedom fi ghters, the Mujahidin,
that stays the advance of tyranny in Afghanistan. We are proud to have supported their brave struggle to
regain their freedom, and our support for this noble cause will continue as long as it is needed.
The men and women of Afghanistan are an example to those anywhere in the world who would call themselves
free. If liberty comes with a price, the Afghan people have more than paid it for themselves and for
the future generations.”
[Ronald Reagan, December 1988]i
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the
French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justifi ed by any moral code of conduct...If they
[the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the
shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb.
They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British
in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they
had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment
upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against
the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”
[Mahatma Gandhi, 1938]ii
“It is absurd to condemn the resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, as being masterminded by terrorists.
After all if the United States were invaded and occupied, would everybody who fought to liberate it be a
terrorist or an insurgent or a Bushite? Th e Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle against
Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle.”
[Arundhati Roy. Author of the Booker prize-winning ‘The God of Small Things’] iii
“Every human rights document ever formulated entitles a people to resist military occupation, the destruction
of homes and property, and the expropriation of land for the purpose of settlements.”
[Edward Said]iv
“Th e crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967; it is the longest
such occupation in history, and the only one anywhere in the world today: this is the original and continuing
violence against which all the Palestinian acts of violence have been directed. Yesterday (10 December), two
children aged 3 and 13 were killed by Israeli bombs in Hebron, yet at the same time an EU delegation was
demanding that Palestinians curtail their violence and acts of terrorism. Today fi ve more Palestinians were
killed, all of them civilian, victims of helicopter bombings of Gaza’s refugee camps. To make matters worse,
as a result of the 11 September attacks, the word ‘terrorism’ is being used to blot out legitimate acts of resistance
against military occupation and any casual or even narrative connection between the dreadful killing
of civilians (which I have always opposed) and thirty plus years of collective punishment is proscribed.”
[Edward Said]

“This particular brand of terrorism, the suicide bomber, is truly born out of desperation.
Many, many people criticise, many, many people say it is just another form of terrorism, but I can understand
and I am a fairly emotional person and I am a mother and a grandmother. I think if I had to live in
that situation, and I say this advisedly, I might just consider becoming one myself.
And that is a terrible thing to say.”
[Dr Jenny Tonge, former Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park. January 2004]vi
“As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make
progress.”
[Cherie Blair, June 2002]vii
“All three [Barak, Sharon, and Netanyahu] suffer from this racist, white man’s burden attitude. We’re not
behaving like good little natives. We’re not grateful to our colonizers for the bits and pieces they want to
hand to us. The real problem is occupation. Everywhere in the world people have the right to resist except
Palestinians who are supposed to be good little boys and girls and die quietly.”
[Hannan Ashrawi]viii
“One need not be Arab to identify with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. Resisting occupation
is a legitimate, internationally recognised right, which many Jewish and Arab members of the
Knesset before me have affirmed from the podium of the occupying state’s parliament without it being
considered ‘support for terror.’ It is our civic and moral duty to oppose violence against civilians, even in an
anti-occupation struggle. Still, it is not our place to dictate to the Palestinians how to conduct their struggle
against that occupation, when what is needed is an end to the occupation itself.”
[Azmi Bishara, member of the Israeli Knesset for the Balad Party]ix
“Question: Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq’s anti-occupation resistance?”
Answer: “Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent
life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.”
[John Pilger, journalist & documentary filmmaker. January 2004]x
“What do you do if you are a young person in Uzbekistan, who sees the president of Uzbekistan boil alive
their opponents, gun down hundreds of civilian and peaceful protesters? Can any of us honestly say we
wouldn’t relish the moment when that evil man is removed violently from power?”
[Ken Livingstone, Mayor or London]xi
“In your terms, if it means fighting occupation is a terrorist movement, that is not a view that is being
shared by many people. Those who fight oppression, those who fi ght occupation, cannot be termed as
terrorist, they are freedom fighters, in the same way as Nelson Mandela fought against apartheid, in the
say way as Ghandi and many others fought the British rule in India. Th ere are people in diff erent parts of
the world who today, in terms of historical side of it, those who fought oppression are now the real leaders
of the world.”
[Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain. August 2005]xii

“It has to be attached to a context. What are we talking about? About the concept of martyrdom in general
which means off ering yourself for the sake of defending your homeland, for the sake of defending your
community, then that has to be glorifi ed of course.”
[Azzam Tamimi, Muslim Association of Britain. August 2005]xii
“Th ere is an important distinction between inciting hatred and violence in the UK, which is completely
unacceptable, and supporting a legitimate resistance movement abroad. It would be unacceptable for the
government to forbid statements of support for groups that are fi ghting oppression, such as those who were
fi ghting Saddam Hussein’s tyranny or the ANC fi ghting apartheid”
[Inayat Bunglawala, Spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain]xiii
‘’We will not allow the resistance to be trivialised as some sort of terrorist movement. It is a popular insurrection
resisting occupation.’’
[Chris Nineham, Stop the War Coalition Steering Committee]xiv
“I will not condemn an occupied people for using their legal rights, their legal rights as well as their moral
rights to resist the illegal occupation of their country”.
[Rt. Hon. George Galloway MP, when asked if he would condemn suicide bombers. December 2004]xv
“The Iraqi resistance have a right to defend their country against the occupying invader. They are exercising
that right, with a considerable degree of success”
[Rt. Hon. George Galloway MP]xvi
“These poor Iraqis - ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most
basic of weapons - are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations
every day, which has made the country ungovernable.
We don’t know who they are, we don’t know their names, we never saw their faces, they don’t put up
photographs of their martyrs, we don’t know the names of their leaders.”
[Rt. Hon. George Galloway MP]xvii
“Well, I think that as far as resistance to the US troops in Iraq is concerned, then I can understand why
people want to resist. I think if my country was under occupation I would want to resist. Now, I’ve got no
sympathy for the fundamentalist Islamists who would like to create a Sharia State in Iraq, and there are
many there. I’ve no sympathy for the Al Qaeda elements and the other foreign terrorists who are moving
into Iraq, but Iraq has been invaded. Iraq is under occupation by the troops of another nation and I think
if my own country was in a similar situation I would feel such resentment that I’m likely to take up arms
myself against that situation. I think that most red-blooded men probably would.”
[George Monbiot, author & columnist]xviii
“I am ashamed to admit that there have been times when I wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder
to teach our side a lesson. On Monday I found myself again hoping that this handover proves a failure
because it has been orchestrated by the Americans.”
[Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writer & columnist]xix

“But what they cannot by any sensible reckoning be called are terrorists - nor does the US have any right to
try guerillas who attack occupation troops as criminals, which Bremer announced it plans to do this week.
It is an almost universally accepted principle that a people occupied by a foreign power has the right to use
armed force to resist - though whether force will be the best tactic is another matter. It was the crudest
self-delusion on the part of the invading states to imagine that because most Iraqis wanted an end to the
Saddam regime they would accept the imposition of a foreign occupation to replace it.”
[Seumas Milne, author & journalist]xx
“The right to resist occupation is in any case recognized under international law and the Geneva convention,
which is one reason why routine western denunciations of Palestinian violence ring so utterly hollow.”
[Seumas Milne]xxi
“The resistance war can of course be cruel, but the innocent deaths it has been responsible for pale next to
the toll inflicted by the occupiers. Its political strength lies precisely in the fact that it has no programme
except the expulsion of the occupying forces. Jack Straw said this week that the resistance was ‘opposed to
a free Iraq’ - but its campaign is in fact Iraq’s real war of liberation.”
[Seumas Milne]xxii
“It is the Iraqi resistance that will determine the future of the country. It is their actions targeting both
foreign soldiers and corporate mercenaries that has made the occupation untenable. It is their presence that
has prevented Iraq from being relegated to the inside pages of the print media and forgotten by TV. It is the
courage of the poor of Baghdad, Basra and Fallujah that has exposed the political leaders of the West who
supported this enterprise.”
[Tariq Ali, writer & commentator]xxiii
“They don’t do it for a good reason: that they are not the Fedayeen Saddam. To deny the Iraqi people the
right to resist an occupation, which they don’t like, is quite incredible”
[Tariq Ali]xxiv
“Even within an internationally recognised state, there can be such oppression that armed resistance may
be considered legitimate. This is the position expressed with incomparable force in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell.
When the oppressed man can nowhere find justice, writes Schiller, then he reaches up into the sky and
pulls down his eternal rights that hang there, inalienable and imperishable, like the stars. If no other way
remains, then he must take up the sword. Such were the Polish uprisings for freedom in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Such was the American war of independence.
It therefore matters hugely what kind of state you’re in. It is one thing for groups like the IRA and Eta to use
political violence in states like Britain or Spain, where the means of working for peaceful change are equally
available to all in a mature democracy. It is another thing for Palestinian groups to use political violence
against an oppressive military occupation in the Gaza strip or the West Bank. Another again for the ANC
against the South African apartheid regime. Yet another for the violently repressed Kosovo Albanians to
take up arms against the Milosevic regime in Serbia.
We may want to uphold the universal principle “no violence”, but we all know that these are, in political
fact and in moral content, very different things, and some violent political actions are - shall we say - less
unjustified than others.

It is not treachery or weakness to make these distinctions. It is common sense.”
[Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford University]xxv
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an
armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures
necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise
of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way
affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time
such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security”
[Article 51, United Nations Charter]
“The situations referred to in the preceding paragraph include armed confl icts in which peoples are fighting
against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right
of self-determination, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration on Principles
of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the
Charter of the United Nations.”
[Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Conventions, 1977, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter 1, Article 49, Point 4]
“One could argue that those resisting a foreign military occupation do not merit the label terrorists because
their acts of political violence against the military targets of a foreign occupier do not violate international
law. Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions gives lawful combatant status to those engaging in armed
conflicts against alien (or foreign) occupation, colonial domination and racist régimes. Non-uniformed
guerrillas also gain combatant status if they carry arms openly during military operations. Protocol 1 does
not legitimise attacks on civilians by militants who fall into these categories, however.”
[Wikipedia Encyclopaedia]xxvi
“Th e historic judgement by the Italian judge Clementina Forleo, Judge for the Preliminary Hearing in Milan
on 24 January 2005 adds legitimacy to the Iraqi struggle against US Occupation. Judge Forleo ruled that
the accused (five North African citizens) “cannot be classified as terrorists”, but resistance fighters. She
said: “[T]hat resistance [to] US occupation forces in Iraq by sending fi ghters does not amount to terror”.
Th e judgement was supported by an overwhelming majority of the Italian Legal Community. This historic
judgement is supported recently by the German Federal Administrative Court which ruled that the attack
launched by the US and its allies against the nation of Iraq was a clear war of aggression – as specified in
Article 4, Paragraph 4 of the UN Charter – that violated international law.”
[Ghali Hasan, columnist]xxvii
“I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any
love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation. Without
violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle.”
[Nelson Mandela, 1963]xxviii
“If the recent revelations of special branch spying on the Anti-Apartheid Movement Executive are anything
to go by I, along with Neil Kinnock, David Steel, Peter Hain and Lord Bob Hughes, would have been liable
to arrest under the new law for supporting terrorists.”
[Rt. Hon. Frank Dobson MP]xxix

“And I’m proud of our protests which helped overthrow apartheid. And how incredible that this year we
are able to celebrate the tenth anniversary of democratic government in South Africa. We salute heroes like
Nelson Mandela…That it was the labour movement who stood shoulder to shoulder in the long struggle for
freedom in South Africa. I thank you all. Labour on the side of freedom while Tory students sported ‘Hang
Nelson Mandela’ badges and Margaret Th atcher denounced Mandela as a ‘terrorist’, Th at South Africa has
come so far in so short a time, against all the odds, is testament to the transformative power of progressive
government.”
[Rt. Hon. Peter Hain MP]xxx
“I was a strong opponent of the foreign policy of the United States when I was young. I can remember my
worldwide list of campaigns: opposing US support for fascist states in Greece, Spain and Portugal; struggling
against colonial and apartheid regimes in southern Africa; fi ghting US support for dictatorships in
Latin America; campaigning against nuclear weapons; and, of course, opposing the commitment of US
troops and resources to Vietnam and Cambodia.”
[Rt. Hon. Charles Clarke MP]xxxi
“We owe it to them [the Afghan people] to help them overthrow the Taliban terrorist regime, which represses
them, and we owe it to them to provide the humanitarian support afterward that can help build
their country so it can be part of the world community,”
[US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher]xxxii

The Epic Crime That Dares Not Speak Its Name

Pilger is on the nail head once again here.
The RAF man refusing to go along with a war of aggression may yet be the only way forward in the persuit of Blair.

If he wins his right to refuse the military will all have to refuse to go on co-operating with this Government in fighting in Iraq. Then the Government of Blair must surely fall.

The rats who went along with his conspiracy will be falling over each other to be first off the sinking ship.

The Epic Crime That Dares Not Speak Its Name: "The question of legality deeply concerns the British military brass, who sought Tony Blair's assurance on the eve of the invasion, got it and, as they now know, were lied to. They are right to worry; Britain is a signatory to the treaty that set up the International Criminal Court, which draws its codes from the Geneva Conventions and the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. The latter is clear: 'To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.' "

Will the Americans now do what we failed to do?

EXPOSE THE WHIG!

WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP INQUIRY

Democrats.com (10/25/05) -- Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced a Resolution of Inquiry to demand the White House turn over all white papers, minutes, notes, emails or other communications kept by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG).

“This group, comprised of the President and Vice President’s top aides, was critical in selling the Administration’s case for war,” Kucinich said. “We now know that the Administration hyped intelligence and misled the American public and Congress in their effort to ‘sell’ the war.”

This Resolution must be voted on in the House International Relations Committee by November 9^th, 2005. The same committee, on September 14, came within one vote of passing a Resolution of Inquiry into the Downing Street Memo (H. Res. 375).

That near victory came after a great deal of citizen activism. This time we need to persuade all of the Democrats on the Committee to push a little bit harder and a few more Republicans to do the right thing. Co-Sponsorship of the Resolution by members not on the committee helps this effort.

Scott Ritter. Is this the end of democracy?

"If the American people go along with such blatant attempts at obscuring the

reality of the criminal conspiracy that has been committed, then it is

perhaps time we finally lay to rest this experiment we call American

democracy. At the very minimum, Congress should be compelled into action.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and in particular its two

senior senators, Pat Robertson, R-Kan., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va, should

not only complete their investigation into how the Bush administration used

(or misused) intelligence to formulate Iraq policy, but also re-open its

initial report into the so-called "intelligence failure" regarding the

flawed WMD assessments, with the intent to indict any and all who conspired

to keep relevant information from, or made false statements to, that

committee during the conduct of its original investigation." Ritter.

Congress, Parliament and media have conspired along with the Bush and Blair administrations to allow a war of aggression based on lies and deception on a grand scale.
Unless we can now act successfully to overturn this crime based on the trial of Libby and the facts of the Butler report than the western experiment with democracy is over.

We are very close to being run by a new plutocracy.
Pluto, lord of the darkness is almost in control as we celebrate Halloween.

It is no surprise that spooks and witch costumes are selling very very well these days.
Not even the Christian Fundamentalists can resist the rise of Pluto.

Thank all and any Gods for Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk comes up with some wonderful stuff here
But sometimes I find him a very lonely voice of sanity in a mad world of media made bubbles.

"We have not counted on the Churchillian vision of Lord Blair.

"I have never come across a situation of (sic) the president of a country

stating they want to wipe out another country," he told us on Thursday. Oh

deary me. What can we do with this man? For Rome was rather keen, was it

not, to wipe out Carthage (delenda est Carthago, Tony)? And then there is

the little matter of Herr Hitler - a regular bogeyman for Lord Blair when he

stares across the desert wastes towards the Tigris - who insisted that

Poland

should be wiped out, who turned Czechoslovakia into the Nazi protectorate

of Bohemia and Moravia, who allowed the Croatian Ustashe to try to destroy

Serbia, who ended his days by admitting that his own German state should be

wiped out because its people didn't deserve him.

But now let's listen to Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara again. "If they (the

Iranians) carry on like this, the question that people are going to be

asking is: when are you going to do something about this? Can you imagine a

state like that with an attitude like that having a nuclear weapon?" Well

yes, of course we can. North Korea. Whoops! But they've already got nuclear

weapons, haven't they?

So we'll ask a different question. Exactly who are those "people", Lord

Blair, who might expect you to "do something"? Could they have anything in

common with the million people who told you not to invade Iraq? And if not,

could we have some addresses, identities, some idea of their number? A

million perhaps? I doubt it."

t r u t h o u t - Maureen Dowd: Who's on First?

Is this the CIA getting back at the WHIG conspiracy and Cheney in particular?

MI5 and 6 seem to have backed Blair beyond sanity
at least at the top level.
But they had to get rid of Kelly for some reason.

Will Cheney get rid of Scooter or has he protected himself enough?
Right now it is all speculation.

" The back story of this indictment is about the ongoing Tong wars of the CIA, the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon: the fight over who lied us into war. The CIA, after all, is the agency that asked for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate how one of its own was outed by the White House."

t r u t h o u t - Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers to Senate Intelligence Panel

The battle over the war lies gets going.

Will we have anything like a Butler report?
Butler did everything but say we should convict the Prime Minister, and then left it to someone else.
No one stepped up.

It will be different in the USA

But will all ths be anything but business as usual.
Could we have freedom and Justice in America?


" Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources."

Fitzgerald moving onwards

Fitzgerald notes a number of things Libby did. I summarise some of them.

1) Let the White House press secretary know of Plames identity
2) Told Miller he believed Plame was CIA, but asked her not to attribute this to the administration
3) Discussed with the Vice President and others how to handle media enquiries about Plame
4) He confirmed to a reporter that Plame was involved in sending Wilson to Niger.

What do you make of it?

Libby tried to cover his tracks by making people think that he was merely commenting on information given to journalists by others, and that Plame was already public knowledge and he did nothing more than confirm what the public already knew. But he failed to wriggle out. He was the source of the leak, or one of them.
But what is much more important, he clearly discussed with Cheney et al a political strategy for dealing with Wilson by outing Plame.

The key cover up that is uncovered is the attempt to discredit opposition to the WHIG marketing of the Iraq war.

Bushco broke the law in order to destroy opponents to their war lies, anyone who was willing to tell the truth loudly.

They are exposed. They cannot keep doing it anymore, or not with the old impunity.

The dogs are loose.

Let them feed off Bushco corpses.

They will be the Presidents dead men.

But how long before the law comes after the lies of Blair?

t r u t h o u t - Stirling Newberry | Deconstructing the Indictment

What does the indictment give us to go forward with? That is the question that is central now. I quote from Stirling Newberry.


"It establishes that Libby engaged in a two-year-long criminal campaign to conceal evidence of his actions, and blame others. It reveals that numerous other people in the executive branch, including Vice President Cheney, knew that he was lying to law enforcement officials and to the grand jury to protect himself.

Which leads to another question: Why did they tolerate this, knowing, as they did, from before the investigation, that Libby knew Plame's identity, that he had obtained that information through official channels, that he had acted on that information in an official capacity, and that he had revealed that information to reporters?"

The obvious target from here is Cheney. But since Cheney has always been in charge at the White House, can Bush replace him now? He needs to do so or the whole thing will be stuck in legal proceedings for the next two years.

Then there is the mystery witness that we all think is Rove. Fitzgerald is turning the Bushco inside out here. They must be squirming.
Who will betray whom? Who has done so already.

The most important immediate impact is that America has finally started to talk about the false prospectus for the war.

Who will vote for more sacrifices now, when they are discovering that they have been making their sacrifices, not for America, but to Bushco carpet baggers, with Cheney's Halliburton the biggest winner.

I am still staggered that the BBC Washington reporter was making out that this was less significant than the little Lewinsky affair.

It will be bigger than Watergate for the reason that the crime of Nixon was nothing to the crimes of Bushco that this will expose.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Cheney aide resigns over CIA leak

The BBC thinks this is not Watergate or even Lewinsky.

How wrong they are.

These are big charges against Libby. There has been nothing like it for 135 years.

The suggestion that it is good news that Rove is not charged is stupid.
Fitzgerald can go on digging into Bushco now for months or years.
This is not good at all for Bushites, and they will know it, whatever public face they put on it.
Trying to attack Wison at this moment is just cornered animal behaviour.

But Bush makes a joke of it, and smiles his psychopathic trickster smile, winking at us as if we were all in the conspiracy with him.

And up to now most of us have been.

Not any longer.
BBC NEWS | Americas | Cheney aide resigns over CIA leak: "Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has accused Mr Libby of lying about how and when he learned and disclosed to reporters classified information about Ms Plame.


LEWIS LIBBY INDICTMENT
Two charges of perjury
Two counts of making a false statement
One charge of obstruction of justice

Indictment in full (110kb)
If found guilty on all five counts in the indictment, the 55-year-old faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and a $1.25m (£705,000) fine for each charge.

Mr Fitzgerald is to hold a news conference on Friday giving details of his investigation.

In a statement released with the indictment, Mr Fitzgerald said: 'When citizens testify before grand juries, they are required to tell the truth."

Former UN Weapons Inspector: Don't Rule Out Staged Government Terro

For those who think I am exaggerating the situation take a peek at this Scott Ritter essay.
He was the original weapons inspector in Iraq.

Former UN Weapons Inspector: Don't Rule Out Staged Government Terro: "Former UN Weapons Inspector: Don't Rule Out Staged Government Terror
Ritter says Neo-Cons are embattled, surrounded, could resort to desperate measures to further global domination

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | October 24 2005

Former United Nations weapons inspector and Marine Scott Ritter appeared on The Alex Jones Show and stated that he wouldn't rule out the possibility of the Bush administration staging a terror attack in order to jolt a wavering foreign policy agenda back on track."

CNN.com - Source: Prosecutor to seek Libby indictment - Oct 28, 2005

CNN has come out with strong suggestions that Fitzgerald is likely to strongly impact the Iraq war situation.

Yeah!
And the punches have not even landed yet.

CNN.com - Source: Prosecutor to seek Libby indictment - Oct 28, 2005: "Impact of indictments

David Gergen, a former adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, told CNN's 'Larry King Live' that indictments in the case could have an enormous impact on the Iraq war.

'Because if there are indictments, it will not only be people close to the president, the vice president of the United States, but they will raise questions about whether criminal acts were perpetrated to help get the country into war.'"

BBC NEWS | Europe | Islam feminists urge gender jihad

Gender jihad?

Jolly good, let's have a holy Islamic war against male chauvinism.
A little stirring of the pot going on in Spain right now.
A right hook there a little left hijab there.

Ah, but who gets to issue the fatwas?
Or is the best women can hope for is a thinwa?

We need a little light relief from the tension in the USA, where the women know there place.


"Organisers of the first international congress on Islamic feminism are calling for a 'gender jihad.'"

1000 new schools or nuclear weapons without a rational target or credible threat?

Mark my words, Blair is about to ignore the majority of us as usual and build more nuclear weapons. 55% of us wouldrather have the schools he once told us were his priority. At best 34% support the madness of continued proliferation of our weapons of mass destruction.

Consultation means nothing more thasn informing us to this Government.
All we can hope for is that as Bushco implodes Blairco will tumble too and we can see our way to a sustainable future.

Home page: "The next 10 days are crucial in the campaign to prevent Trident replacement. The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) will discuss a motion on this issue in a PLP meeting on Monday 31st October. The motion reads: “This PLP questions the wisdom of spending billions on Trident replacement”."

Salon.com News | Will the Bush administration implode?

Salon looks like a smart magazine. I have no idea how close to the mainstream it is but I have to watch an audi car advert before I can read the article fully so it has money and connections with the rich mans world.
The quote below looks pretty accurate to me.
We atre on the edge of momentous change right now.
We will either see a move back towards sanity and a world consensus or a victory of the fascists in BushBlair world and in Iran.

I watch the news like never before.
I blog as never before.

Last night the news was full of madness from Iran followed by hypocritical outrage from Blair.

I guess Bush is too frozen in washington right now to offer a considered response.
Salon.com News | Will the Bush administration implode?: "'[T]he Bush administration has insisted with remarkable success that a vision of the world concocted more or less out of whole cloth inside a bubble of a world is the world itself. It seems, right now, that we're in a race between Bush's fiction-based reality becoming our reality� and an administration implosion in the months or years ahead as certain dangerous facts in Iraq and elsewhere insist on being attended to.'"

Salon.com News | All the vice president's men

The story on today this morning is that Bush and Cheney are fighting, and Bush has sent for his old Texas team to take over as and when Cheney and Co fall. I just heard that Rove will escape today but is still under investigation.
It looks pretty certain there is a juggernaut about to run down a certain scooter.
Salon.com News | All the vice president's men: "All the vice president's men

The ideologues in Cheney's inner circle drummed up a war. Now their zealotry is blowing up in their faces.

By Juan Cole
Print EmailFont: S / S+ / S++
story image

As Washington waits on pins and needles to see if Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald hands down indictments, the focus falls on Dick Cheney's inner circle. This group, along with that surrounding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made up what Colin Powell's top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, called 'a cabal' that 'on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.' Cheney is the first vice president to have had, in effect, his own personal National Security Council. This formidable and unprecedented rump foreign policy team, comprised of radical hawks, played a key role in every aspect of the war on Iraq: planning for it, gathering 'evidence' to justify it and punishing those who spoke out against it. It is not surprising that members of that team, and Cheney himself, have now also emerged as targets in Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press, along with Bush adviser Karl Rove."

Chicago Tribune | White House accused of security `crime'

The question we are all waiting tensely to have an answer to, is whether Bushco is above the law. Come on Fitzgerald. Or will you turn out to be another Hutton?

"In a speech here Wednesday night, Wilson said he was doing his "civic duty" when he disputed Bush's allegation that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from Africa.

Discussing the leaking of the identity and covert job of his wife, Valerie Plame, Wilson further accused the White House of committing "a crime against the national security of the country" and said "it's very clear this was an organized mission to use public officials on a political battlefield. The mistake they made was in crossing the law."">Chicago Tribune | White House accused of security `crime': "In a speech here Wednesday night, Wilson said he was doing his 'civic duty' when he disputed Bush's allegation that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from Africa.

Discussing the leaking of the identity and covert job of his wife, Valerie Plame, Wilson further accused the White House of committing 'a crime against the national security of the country' and said 'it's very clear this was an organized mission to use public officials on a political battlefield. The mistake they made was in crossing the law.'"

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Terrorism's Training Grounds or "Driving while Iraqi"

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Terrorism's Training Grounds: "'We used to call it DWI: Driving While Iraqi,' said Staff Sgt. Michael Nowacki, a military intelligence officer who strongly recommended the prisoner's release after his initial interrogation. Yet Hassen was not released.

Military officials call it a matter of security. Nowacki says it's an example of the arbitrary and dragnet-style arrests by the U.S. military in Iraq. A style that is more likely to create more terrorists than destroy them.

'I've actually had a commander tell me 'If I arrest ten people and one of them is bad, then I'm doing my job.' But what about the other nine?' Nowacki said."

AlterNet: Worse than Watergate; is it Chain Gang time for Cheney?

Looks like Cheney could be in trouble as well as Rove and Scooter.

AlterNet: Worse than Watergate: "We now know that Cheney lied to the American people about his involvement in the effort to smear Joe Wilson.

Three months after reportedly receiving a briefing about Wilson's trip to Niger from George 'Slam Dunk' Tenet, and then telling Scooter Libby that Plame may have helped arrange her husband's trip, the Vice President went on national TV and told Tim Russert he didn't have a clue about the situation: 'I don't know Joe Wilson ... I don't know who sent Joe Wilson ... I have no idea who hired him and it never came up.'

We now know that Karl Rove lied about his involvement, too.

Back in September 2003, when Rove was asked if he had 'any knowledge' about the Plame leak, he answered with an unambiguous 'No.'"

the night before Fitzmas

THE NIGHT BEFORE FITZMAS

Twas the night before Fitzmas, and in the White House

Every one was scared shitless, and Bush was quite soused

The indictments were hanging like Damoceles' sword

As verminous oxen prepared to be gored

The perps were all sleepless, curled fetal in bed

While visions of prison cells loomed in each head

And Dick in his jammies, and George in his lap

Were sweating and swearing and looking like crap

When out on the web there arose such a clatter

The blogs and the forums were buzzing with chatter

Away to the PC Rove ran like a flash

He booted his browser and cleared out his cache

The rumors that flew through the cold autumn air

Made Dubya shiver with angry despair

When what to his horror-filled eyes did he spy?

A bespectacled man with a brown suit and tie!

With an impartial manner that gave Bush the shits

He knew in a moment it must be St. Fitz!

With unwavering voice, his indictments they came

He cleared out his throat and he called them by name:

Now Scooter, Now Libby,

Now Blossoming Turd,

Now Cheney, dear Cheney,

Yes, you are the third

To the bench of the court

Up the steps, down the hall

Now come along, come along,

Come along, all!

He then became silent, and went right to work

He filed the indictments and turned with a jerk

And pointing his finger at justice's scale

Said, "The people be served, and let fairness prevail."

He then left the room, to his team gave a nod

And the sound could be heard of a crumbling facade

And we all did exclaim, as he faded from sight

"Merry Fitzmas to all, and to all a good night!"

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: "Treat Them Like Dogs" Karpinski dishes dirt on the big boys

Here Karpinski is doing her best to tie in Rumpsfeldt with the brutality at Abu Graib.
While back home Cheney is trying to drive through legislation to make torture the all American way.

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: "Treat Them Like Dogs": "And the memorandum was signed by the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. And said - it discussed interrogation techniques that were authorized. It was one page. It talked about stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of music, disrupting sleep patterns, those kind of techniques. But there was a handwritten note out to the side. And this was a copy. It was a photocopy of the original, I would imagine. But it was unusual that an interrogation memorandum would be posted inside of a detention cell block, because interrogations were not conducted in the cell block.

AMY GOODMAN: This was the command of Donald Rumsfeld himself?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Talking about the techniques?


COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: The techniques that were allowed. And there was a note - handwritten note out to the side of where the list of tactics, interrogation tactics were. It said, 'Make sure this happens.' And it seemed to be in the same handwriting as the signature. That's what I could say about the memorandum.

AMY GOODMAN: People understood it to be from Rumsfeld?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, they certainly did. And I never heard a word - I did - certainly did see the reference to photographs in the original email, but when I asked the soldier, when I asked the sergeant, when I asked the commanders out at Abu Ghraib, what did they know about, they knew nothing about it. They had heard that there were some photographs, but they did not know any specifics."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Figure it out

This is almost a poem.
We need poems to reach people about the atrocity that is war.

Iraq was and is a crime against humanity.

Fat little (or big) western man refuses to see it, or challenge it.

Shame, shame, shame, on him, on us all.

It is all in the numbers refers to the way the economic the accounting machine runs our lives. We have forgotten human values.

Grass Lake, Michigan, USA">Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Figure it out: "I'm a Vietnam infantry veteran who has taken the time to peel away the onion of war. Strip off the uniforms, the flags, the nationalities, the slogans. War is, at best, the failure of leaders to solve problems. At worst, war is a massive money-generating machine with no regard for life. It's all in the numbers.
Arnold Stieber
Grass Lake, Michigan, USA"

Bush is discredited now. Why not Blair?

Plamegate is about to blow and already almost all Americans believe Bushco is guilty.
Still no response from Cameron.
Who will discredit and bring down Blair?

"Ninety percent of Americans believe the Bush administration is guilty of illegal or unethical behavior in the CIA leak case. Where does that leave our president?
In a poll taken yesterday, 90 percent of those asked said they believed top Bush administration officials are guilty of either illegal or unethical behavior in the CIA leak case."

t r u t h o u t - Richard Sale: Aides to Be Indicted, Probe to Continue

Today or tomorrow two top Bushites look certain to be indicted.
What we know for sure is that rather than ending, the investigation is going to pass into a new and more potent stage.

As 2000 US troops are dead in Iraq, and 15000 more injured, Bush calls fir more sacrifices.

The only reason for going on with this crime of aggression is another sin, the sin of pride.

Why Americans should make more sacrifices to the Gods of greed corruption exploitation and subversion of democracy is hard to comprehend.


If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, according to these sources."

mparent7777: Richard Sale update/Leak indictments: there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon

Libby and Rove seem to be indicted!

mparent7777: Richard Sale update/Leak indictments: there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon: "An hour ago I was contacted by a U.S. government official close to the Fitzgerald case. This person told me that there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon, and the Special Prosecutor will hold a press conference tomorrow.

Richard Sale"

VANITY FAIR : All roads lead to Rove

Just how mainstream is vanity Fair?

The magazine has come out against the Bush war conspiracy.
Read on or follow the link. The links work these days. There is a glitch acknowledged by blogger but I have found a way round it.

VANITY FAIR : ROUNDTABLE : CONTENT: "All Roads Lead to Rove
The revelation that Karl Rove was Time's 'double super secret' source for the outing of C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame started the unfolding of a much bigger story: what the White House did to sell the Iraq war. And the greatest irony of Rovegate? That the press was part of the cover-up (from V.F., September 2005)
By MICHAEL WOLFF"

t r u t h o u t - Senator Patrick Leahy | Bring Them Home

They have begun the debate in the senate that will herald the end of the long lie that is Iraq.
Come on Blairy Englanders, you better believe it and take the lie back to Blair again. Why is this speech not being made in Parliament?

Why did Clatre Short's bill to take the royal prerogative away from Blair and co get trashed?

t r u t h o u t - Senator Patrick Leahy | Bring Them Home: "Misled into War

We know today that President Bush decided to invade Iraq without evidence to support the use of force and well before Congress passed the resolution giving him the authority to do so - authority he did not even believe he needed - despite the Constitution which invests in the Congress the power to declare war. Twenty-three Senators voted against that resolution, and I was proud to be one of them.

We know today that the motivation for a plan to attack Iraq, hatched by a handful of political operatives, had taken hold within the White House even before 9/11, and without any connection to the war on terrorism that came later.

We know that the key public justifications for the war - to stop Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons and supporting al Qaeda - were based on faulty intelligence and outright distortions and have been thoroughly discredited. United Nations weapons inspectors, who were dismissed by the White House as naïve and ineffective, turned out to have gathered far better information with a tiny fraction of the budget than our own intelligence agencies.

And we know that the insurgency is continuing to grow along with American casualties - 1,999 killed and at least 15,220 wounded, as of yesterday - despite the same old light at the end of the tunnel assertions and clichés by the White House and top officials in the Pentagon.

The sad but inescapable truth, which the President either does not see or refuses to believe or admit, is that the Iraqi insurgency has steadily grown, in part because of our presence there."

John Sugg: Judith Miller and Me or what ever happened to real journalism

Now we know it, journalists are embeedded in the Pentagon.
So we can all be sure of unbiased and fair reporting from our free world press.

John Sugg: Judith Miller and Me: "I don't like what Miller represents in journalism. She is not, to my mind, a journalist. She forfeited that claim when she became a conduit of propaganda for the neo-conservative cabal that has its bloody hands on the control levers of the nation. In a stunning declaration this month, Miller admitted that she'd been granted a Pentagon security clearance. She tried to backpedal on the assertion, claiming the clearance was routine. But she couldn't spin away the disclosure that she'd been blindsiding her editors and colleagues. She had become a shill for the Bush administration; her employment at the New York Times

AlterNet: Preparing for a Bumpy Ride

The alternet is very confident today that we are about to start a second version of Watergate.
This time the agenda is nothing as simple as spying on the opposition and a bit of burglary and perjury, this is a conspiracy to take America to war on a phoney prospectus.
Alternet is turning Fitzgerald into a hero before he has showed us his metal.

Let us hope they are right.

No acknowlegement of my open letter to Mr Cameron yet.

We need a hero for England too.

AlterNet: Preparing for a Bumpy Ride: "WMD? Who knew what, and when did they know it? Joe Wilson was one of the few who knew -- and talked -- which is why he had to be destroyed. Destroying enemies was a specialty of Richard Nixon, and Dick Cheney was one of his more attentive students. (Cheney's political career began in 1969 when he joined the Nixon Administration, serving in a number of positions at the Cost of Living Council, at the Office of Economic Opportunity, and within the White House.)

When Cheney became second-in-command of the G.W. Bush's gang, he dusted off his Nixon play book and went about the work of destroying anyone who threatened them. He and Bush Capo Karl Rove didn't even care which party their victims belonged to. If they threatened the gang, they dropped the hammer on them. They didn't even blink when they destroyed two American war heroes when they got in the way, Republican John McCain and Democrat Max Clelland -- a Vietnam war triple amputee.

So by the time Ambassador Joe Wilson began spilling the WMD beans, the Bush/Cheney gang figured they could destroy Jesus Christ himself if He crossed them. Then they got careless, as all crooks eventually do.

So, buckle up folks. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including 'Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans,' which was nominated for a Pulitzer."

UPI Hears... - (United Press International)

Every day more people come out against the Bush 911 story.
This time it is an ex Bush team member.

UPI Hears... - (United Press International): "A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus' and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, 'If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling.'"

t r u t h o u t - Libby First Learned about Plame from Cheney

Could this be the link back to Cheney?
Bush has said that the situation is very serious.
We will soon know just how serious. Fitzgerald has set up his web site!

t r u t h o u t - Libby First Learned about Plame from Cheney: " It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry."

We are coming up to a crucial moment in this new century

I believe we are coming to what may be the most crucial moment in this new century.
As Wilson puts it; "Can democracy survive the coalition of fascist forces that have seized control of the levers of power?"

Now is the time in both Britain and America to stand and be counted on behalf of freedom and democracy or we can consider it gone for good, or rather for evil.

"The Bunker Mentality"
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 24 October 2005

I wrote to Ambassador Joseph Wilson last week to ask how he and his wife were bearing up, and to remind them that they had a lot of friends. "The outpouring of support has been of great comfort to us these past two years," he wrote back. "The stakes are enormous. This is all about whether our government can take us to war on lies without any fear of being held to account, and whether our democracy can survive the coalition of fascist forces that have seized control of the levers of power."">t r u t h o u t - William Rivers Pitt | The Bunker Mentality:

9/11 Theologian Says Controlled Demolition of World Trade Center Is Now a Fact, Not a Theory

The theologian David Ray griffin is leading the way in challenging the New York times to print the truth about 911, that it was a Government Conspiracy. It has taken 4 years to drag the evidence out of the authorities, but the evidence from the fire service is conclusive. The buildings were demolished by explosives placed before the planes crashed.

9/11 Theologian Says Controlled Demolition of World Trade Center Is Now a Fact, Not a Theory: "'The evidence for this conclusion (that 9/11 was an inside job) has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream press, perhaps under the guise of obeying President Bush’s advice not to tolerate “outrageous conspiracy theories.” We have seen, however, that it is the Bush administration’s conspiracy theory that is the outrageous one, because it is violently contradicted by numerous facts, including some basic laws of physics.

'There is, of course, another reason why the mainstream press has not pointed out these contradictions. As a recent letter to the Los Angeles Times said:

“'The number of contradictions in the official version of . . . 9/11 is so overwhelming that . . . it simply cannot be believed. Yet . . . the official version cannot be abandoned because the implication of rejecting it is far too disturbing: that we are subject to a government conspiracy of ‘X-Files’ proportions and insidiousness.'

'The implications are indeed disturbing. Many people who know or at least suspect the truth about 9/11 probably believe that revealing it would be so disturbing to the American psyche, the American form of government, and global stability that it is better to pretend to believe the official version. I would suggest, however, that any merit this argument may have had earlier has been overcome by more recent events and realizations. Far more devastating to the American psyche, the American form of government, and the world as a whole will be the continued rule of those who brought us 9/11, because the values reflected in that horrendous event have been reflected in the Bush administration’s lies to justify the attack on Iraq, its disregard for environmental science and the Bill of Rights, its criminal negligence both before and after Katrina, and now its apparent plan not only to weaponize space but also to authorize the use"

t r u t h o u t - Bush at Bay: Fitzgerald Looks at Niger Forgeries

Open letter to David Cameron,

From this story it seems that there is evidence that the WHIG group actually came together to market the war in Iraq, which we all know now was based on a false prospectus.
The Bushites seem to be in dissarray.
Now surely is the time to pressurise Blair again.

You cannot claim to be untainted as a new leader of the conservatives while still attached to a policy that the war in Iraq was justified.

With a big majority of Iraqis in favour of the killing of British troops, we have a democratic responsibiltiy to bringing them home, do we not?

This is a forces constituency. With the MOD survey showing a big majority of Iraqis hostile to us even in the south, how do you justify keeping these forces in Iraq?

t r u t h o u t - Bush at Bay: Fitzgerald Looks at Niger Forgeries: "The group included: Rove, Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and Stephen Hadley (now Bush's national security adviser) and produced white papers that put into dramatic form the intelligence on Iraq's supposed nuclear threat. WHIG launched its media blitz in September 2002, six months before the war. Rice memorably spoke of the prospect of 'a mushroom cloud,' and Card revealingly explained why he chose September, saying 'From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.'

The marketing is over but the war goes on. The press is baying and the law closes in. The team of Bush loyalists in the White House is demoralized and braced for disaster."

United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - Walker's World: Bush at bay

Well, well.

If we can't get Blair because of the teflon, maybe the coating is falling off the Bush regime.

If Fitzgerald is really onto the WHIG conspiracy we may have good news at last

In hope!


United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - Walker's World: Bush at bay: "Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush's closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair's aides has 'sexed up' the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

t r u t h o u t - The Case against the Cheney Cabal

These guys took over the administration as surly as the Blair inner circle took over the British Government. But WHIG was rattled when its fake intelligence was challenged by Wilson.

It looks pretty clear now that one or all of them conspired to strike back at Wilson by outing his wife as a spy thereby committing something akin to treason.
But the days go by, and though the possibility of indictments hit the Today Programme this morning, it has been receding since about 7a.m.

The bloggers have jumped the gun, me among them.

We must wait on events.

t r u t h o u t - The Case against the Cheney Cabal: "The group included Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and two Wolfowitz proteges: I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Douglas Feith, Rumsfeld's under secretary for policy. Together, the group largely despised the on-the-one-hand/on-the-other analyses handed up by the intelligence bureaucracy. Instead, they went in search of intel that helped to advance their case for war.

Central to that case was the belief that Saddam was determined to get nukes - a claim helped by the Niger story, which the White House doggedly pushed. A prideful man who enjoys the spotlight, Joseph Wilson grew increasingly agitated that the White House had not come clean about how the African-uranium claim made it into George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. In June, Condoleezza Rice went on TV and denied she knew that documents underlying the uranium story were, in fact, crude forgeries: 'Maybe somebody in the bowels of the agency knew something about this,' she said, 'but nobody in my circles.' For Wilson, that was it. 'That was a slap in the face,' he told NEWSWEEK. 'She was saying 'F--- you, Washington, we don't care.' Or rather 'F--- you, America'.' On July 6, Wilson went public about his Niger trip in his landmark New York Times op-ed piece."

Craig Murray - Planet Jack Straw - hecklers may be violently ejected!

If you think I am a bit hard on Blaircon then go read our friendly ex ambassador to the Uzbeks.
He is a good read if you have had enough New Labour lies.

Craig Murray - Planet Jack Straw - hecklers may be violently ejected!: "Just think, if it wasn't for 911, and the heaven sent 7/7 bombings, we wouldn't stand a chance of passing all this terror legislation. Detention without trial, deportations to be tortured, glorification. If New Labour hadn't stood up,when it counted to take blatant advantage, then where would we be?

People used to say that the labour movement stood for civil liberties and human rights, indeed concern for these values underpins our every deportation and rendition.
But the rules of the game have changed.
Only Tony has got the vision, the clarity and the leadership to take on the UN, and tutor them in the ways of righteousness. In our new world, Human Rights lite is the 3rd way. And just as soon as the world gets behind our vision of responsibility to protect [better check out what Dubya thinks of that one], then genocide and dictstorship will become a thing of the past, except for where we think we have a vested interest... We have to respect our friends in Uzbekistan."