Blairy England

the last post

2007-06-27T21:43:00.000+01:00

So it is goodbye to Mr Blair, the prime minister, and goodbye to Blairy England the blog and the country as ruled by Blair.

I finally managed to publish some of my recorded poetry about this war criminal, cheat, lyer accomplice to mass murder, and master of manipulation.

If this country is a less safe secure honest predictable and honorable place ten years on it is due more than anything to what he has done to our political and social life.
If we are more prosperous, and we are, it is more due to Mr Brown, who took over as prime minister today.

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/pixelpoet/121588

There should be a war crimes trial for Blair. Maybe there will. He certainly has Iraq written in blood where his legacy should be.

For myself and my family.... we move on. We are in great shape, never better. Gill, I, the boys and the girls are all thriving. We have begun to do so in these last months as the reins of power have perhaps coincidentally been slipping from Blair's hands.

Gill is really well for the first time since we met. Joel can read and cope well at school. Holly has passed her Teaching Internship and is now qualified to start her new job in the top Catholic girls school in the country,
Rosie has grade 5 in music theatre and is looking confident and unaggressive for the first time.

I am winning contracts for work and selling my books and pictures.

Goodbye Mr Blair.

Farewell to Blairy England.

International of Torture: The Documents the Crown Would Like to Censor [Voltaire]

2006-07-20T09:20:00.000+01:00

International of Torture: The Documents the Crown Would Like to Censor [Voltaire]

Easter in Iraq 2006

2006-04-24T11:47:00.000+01:00

Easter in Iraq 2006
Originally uploaded by Why Not Studios.

Easter has gone, but images like this are still coming through.
I fear that very soon we will see another fake 911 in america followed by a fascist take over.
In Blairy England Brown is organising patriot youth groups in schools.

I fear for the future.

Blair the final denouement or the resurection of the darkness

2006-03-29T09:45:00.000+01:00

I have copied this piece from an egroup since I am not keeping close enough to the news myself any more. This is important stuff. Are we coming to the final days of Blairy england as the police widen their investigation into his possible corruption.
If only it were possible to prosecute him for the death of 100,00 people in an unsanctioned unnecessary uninvited indefensible war of aggression.
Yet he is defending the indefensible and seemingly sanctioning further murderous invasions of peoples who are unlike him ( not us).

"Britain: Blair sets out ideological justification for new wars of

aggression

By Julie Hyland

24 March 2006

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the

author

Prime Minister Tony Blair's March 21 speech in London marking the

third anniversary of the Iraq war coincided with President George W.

Bush's Washington press conference making clear that the occupation

of Iraq will continue for years and threatening military attacks

against any country deemed an obstacle to US interests.

As at the time of the invasion, Blair's task today is to contrive a

pseudo-moral justification for the illegal policy of preemptive war,

which the prime minister euphemistically termed "active

intervention."

However, he does so under conditions in which the catastrophe

wrought by the invasion of Iraq has stripped both his government and

the White House of any political legitimacy in the eyes of tens of

millions of people across the world. Thus, despite appearing before

a friendly audience at the Foreign Policy Centre—a pro-New Labour

think tank—the prime minister appeared harried and edgy, and his

remarks bellicose and

defensive by turns.

Three years on, the "majority view of a large part of Western

opinion" was that the war should never have taken place, Blair said.

He went on to acknowledge that "the precarious nature of Iraq today

and . . . those who have died" had made the doctrine of "active

intervention" the object of "scorn."

Many had also concluded that "George Bush is as much if not more of

a threat to world peace than Osama bin Laden," Blair continued, "and

what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else in the

Middle East is an entirely understandable consequence of US/UK

imperialism or worse, of just plain stupidity."

This admission is itself a damning self-indictment of his policy.

That so many hold these views is not difficult to explain. All of

Blair's justifications for the war have been exposed as lies. There

was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks on New

York, and Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

More than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, and rather than being

greeted as "liberators," the US and Britain have been confronted

with a popular insurgency, which they are seeking to extinguish

through a combination of military action against entire towns and

cities, and the deliberate cultivation of sectarian and ethnic

conflict.

Once again, Blair made clear his indifference to domestic and

international popular opinion and his determination to continue his

political and military alliance with Washington. Rather than make

any accounting for the disastrous results of his previous actions,

he sought to set out a new ideological pretext for further military

adventures aimed at "regime change," whilst denouncing his critics

as apologists for global terrorism.

Blair presaged this section of his speech by praising the Koran and

attributing to it a historically progressive character in an earlier

era. But he went on to claim that what was at stake was not a

clash "of civilisations" but rather a "clash about civilisation"—

i.e., that his opponents should be regarded as barbarians and

enemies of civilised values.

He complained that ministers had been warned against using the

term "Islamic extremist" because it might cause offence. Given that

the government has made repeated reference to Islamic extremism, and

has justified all its encroachments on civil liberties on the basis

of combating this threat, Blair's claim is nonsensical.

But the implied criticism of an overzealous "political correctness"

was of a piece with the prime minister's adoption of a slightly more

sophisticated version of the reactionary anti-Muslim campaign being

waged by the right wing across Europe This reached its high point

with the publication of cartoons denigrating the prophet Mohammed

that were

justified on the grounds of free speech.

Blair echoed those who profess that Islam has fallen behind the

advanced Western world due to the impact of the Renaissance, the

Reformation, and the Enlightenment. His invocations of an

ideological crusade were backed up by reference to his own Christian

faith and his desire to safeguard "our way of life."

It was not simply a question of defeating terrorism, Blair said, but

defeating the "global ideology" that lay behind it, which had

become "embedded now in the culture of many nations and capable of

eruption at any time."

This ideology had to be taken on by "telling them their attitude to

America is absurd; their concept of governance pre-feudal; their

positions on women and other faiths, reactionary and regressive."

The attempt to dress imperialist militarism in the mantle of

progress is Blair's particular ideological contribution to

Washington's war effort. The social base of the Blair government

constitutes a privileged section of the upper-middle class that

prides itself on combining a healthy respect for the benefits

of "free market" capitalism with progressive views, particularly on

questions relating to gender and sexual preference. Like the authors

of the cartoon provocation and their supposedly liberal apologists,

Blair seeks to exploit the position of Islam on women,

homosexuality, etc. in order to portray it as incompatible

with "Western" values.

What is the reality behind his claim to be waging an "ideological"

struggle in defence of civilisation? It is his lining up with the

world's strongest military power to inflict death and destruction on

defenceless peoples in order to seize control of their country and

its resources.

It is sanctioning the building of concentration camps such as at

Guantánamo Bay, where anyone deemed an opponent of the West can be

imprisoned without trial. It is an apologia for the sadistic

treatment of detainees, sanctioned by the highest echelons of

government and the state.

The tradition that Blair stands in is not that of the Enlightenment,

but the pious rhetoric of the "white man's burden" that was used to

justify the creation of the British Empire during the nineteenth

century.

Blair's proclamation that Islamic extremism is "embedded now in the

culture of many nations" constitutes a license to terrorise,

intimidate and even wage war in many of the nations of the Middle

East and Africa.

Just as with Iraq, this will be justified as a great civilising

mission

to safeguard world peace and liberate the native population through

regime change. Whatever forces offer their services as a proxy

government for the Western powers, regardless of their true

political character, will be proclaimed as representatives of

moderate Islam.

Worse crimes are to follow. Blair placed his speech in the context

of those on British foreign policy which he gave in Chicago in 1999

and Washington in 2003. It should be noted that both of these were

made with the immediate purpose of legitimising the wars against

Yugoslavia and Iraq.

Similarly, in his remarks this week Blair accused Tehran of

meddling "furiously in the stability of Iraq" and of supporting

terrorist attacks in the Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and

Beslan. "True," he said, "the conventional view is that, for

example, Iran is hostile to Al Qaeda and therefore would never

support its activities." But, he alleged, such divisions between

Sunni and Shia Muslims count for nothing as "fundamentally, for this

ideology [i.e., extreme Islam], we are the enemy."

There is a remarkable similarity between such spurious arguments

linking Iran and Al Qaeda to the earlier claims that the secular

Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. The

similarities do not end there. At one point in his speech Blair

responded to those who have pointed out that Iraq was not a threat

to world peace by citing the "fourteen UN resolutions" repeatedly

invoked by Washington and London in the run-up to the invasion to

provide themselves with a fig leaf of legality.

A letter leaked to the Times this week reveals that the Blair

government is engaged in a surreptitious campaign to create a

similar paper trail to provide a pretext for war against Iran. The

Times reports that a March 16 confidential note by John Sawers, a

leading British diplomat, addressed to his counterparts in France,

Germany and the US urges a united offensive to secure "a United

Nations resolution that would open the way for punitive sanctions

and even the use of force if Iran were

to refuse to halt its controversial nuclear programme."

Sawers sets out British proposals for upgrading the case against

Iran so as "to bind Russia and China into agreeing to further

measures that will be taken by the Security Council should the

Iranians fail to engage positively... We would not, at this stage,

want to be explicit about what would be involved then."

The Richard Nixon of Downing Street | the Daily Mail

2006-03-21T10:20:00.000Z

The Richard Nixon of Downing Street | the Daily Mail: "Caught red-handed, up to his neck in slush funds and sleaze, the Richard Nixon of Downing Street attempts to distance himself from the cash for honours scandal by presenting himself - risibly - as the champion of reform.

The gall of Tony Blair knows no bounds. Suddenly, the Prime Minister who so ruthlessly exploits loopholes in the rules to secure secret loans for the Labour party claims to have seen the light."

Jack Dromie has maybe started the assassination process with Blair.

The Daily Mail rejoices.

But with so many ministers in the same fog of war world where truth is an utter stranger, what does it matter.?

Suddenly, the man who moves heaven and earth to obtain peerages for wealthy cronies, despite the objections of the Lords Appointments Commission, wants to take politics out of the honours system."

(DV) Nichols: Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs

2006-03-21T10:07:00.000Z

(DV) Nichols: Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs

I cannot confirm the content of this link. It beggars belief. Even the most severe commentators I have read to not come near this figure. From the research I have read even a tiny fraction of the DU mentioned here would be enough to render Iraq uninhabitable for the forseeable future after a few years of dust spread.

I do not know if we are in the last days of Blairy England. I want to finish with this blog. I can no longer stomach writing about this Government which has gone beyond all contempt.

On the Today Programme day after day the ministers who dare to speak tell stories that even young children could see are grotesque twistings of any kind of truth.

and the future........

Mr Brown plans to start army cadets in schools.

So from Blairy England we progress to Brownshirt England, run by Scots on behalf of Americans.

It is probably what the country deserves. Re-electing this Government was a criminal act in itself. It sanctioned this war of aggression.

Mosque Before and After

2006-02-24T18:57:00.000Z

Mosque Before and After
Originally uploaded by jmillerdp.

This would also apply to British integrity and trust in the middle east

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask

2006-02-23T12:21:00.000Z

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask: "4. Who wrote the script for the rhetorical response to 9/11?

The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center complex and the Pentagon when the unanimous and universal cry erupted in government circles, and was relentlessly amplified by the media, that this was 'war,' not a criminal act of terrorism. How very convenient that this war, declared against a diffuse and stateless entity, would trigger long-sought legal authorities and constitutional loopholes which would not apply in the case of a criminal act. [5] Torture, domestic spying, selective suspension of habeas corpus, all the unconstitutional monsters whose implications are only clear four years after the event, all slipped into immediate usage with the rhetorical invocation of war.

This was not merely war, it was unlimited war, both in the sense of total war meant by General Ludendorff (civilian rights being trivial), and in the sense of lacking a comprehensible time span. 'A war that will not end in our lifetimes,' said Vice President Cheney on Meet the Press on the very Sunday following the attacks. How could he be so sure during the fog of uncertainty following the strike?

If bin Laden and his followers were merely a limited number of fanatics living in Afghan caves, as we were assured at the time, why did the Bush administration relentlessly advance the meme that a decades-long war was inevitable? Could not a concerted intelligence, law-enforcement, and diplomatic campaign, embracing all sovereign countries, have effectively shut down 'al Qaeda' within a reasonable period of time--say, within the period it took to fight World War II between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender?

Four years on, Vice President Cheney, doing a plausible imitation of the radio voice of The Shadow, continues to publicly mutter, in menacing tones of the lower octaves, that the war on terrorism [6] is a conflict that will last "

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Why we can't capture Bin Laden

2006-01-20T17:50:00.000Z

I don't care how crazy it appears. I think Bin Laden is working with Bushco. It seems that he pops up with a message just when America needs to be reminded that the bogeyman is still out there.

Catch him!? He is much too valuable as a continuing reason why we should have all our freedoms taken away by the extremists of left and right together.

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Why we can't capture Bin Laden: "Here's another theory, wacko though it may seem. Some have suggested that the worst thing that could happen to the fragile right wing coalition would be for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Its existence and promises to overturn it are simply too powerful a rallying cry to be replaced.

Could the capture of Bin Laden function similarly? Could the continued freedom of Bin Laden function as a free-floating bogeyman for the Bush administration to whip out when fear ebbs and civil liberties come to the fore?

Naah, that's just crazy talk."

Fathers 4 Justice halts operations - Yahoo! News UK

2006-01-20T11:27:00.000Z

Fathers 4 Justice halts operations - Yahoo! News UK

Little Leo, so much like my son J, just two years older.

I wonder what life is like for him inside the Government's spy ders web.

This was another piece of Blairco spin.
There was never a real threat against the boy.
Hey, but Blair needs all the sympathy he can get as his education minister blunders from error to disaster.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Iraq: Deconstructing the Reconstruction

2006-01-20T11:21:00.000Z

A Marshall Plan for the middle East?

Haliburton and Co have stolen so much money that even Bush is drawing back from offering these people any more.
What are the Iraqis getting.

Power? No
Water? No
Oil? No
An army. Hey, they have recruits, but the money for new weapons was stolen, Billions.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Iraq: Deconstructing the Reconstruction: "Score another one for the 'stay the course' hypocrites in the White House. Last week, I wrote about the president talking up our progress in Afghanistan while cutting U.S. troops and funding. Now he's doing the speaking-out-of-both-sides-of-his-mouth trick when it comes to the rebuilding of Iraq.

In a speech in front of a veterans' group last week, Bush said of Iraq: 'On the economic side, we will continue reconstruction efforts and help Iraq's new government implement difficult reforms that are necessary to build a modern economy and a better life.'

But this presidential promise is directly contradicted by recent reports that the administration has decided not to seek any more funds for reconstruction in the new budget -- effectively signaling an end to an effort that was once touted as a Middle East version of the Marshall Plan."

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The Torture Policy

2006-01-20T10:41:00.000Z

Why bother to repeat myself?
Well, someone might pay attention eventually.

The Government knows that if you lie long enough and sincerely enough people believe you.

So why not keep repeating the truth?

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The Torture Policy: "In England, The Guardian reported Thursday on new information it had received about the British government's knowledge of the US practice of rendition - the secret transfer of terror suspects to interrogation centers in Europe and Asia where they may have been tortured. The paper reported that the leaked document shows the Blair government is trying to 'stifle' attempts by members of Parliament to find out just how much Britain knew about what some MPs are calling the CIA's 'torture flights.'"

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Archbishop's anti-war message

2006-01-19T22:04:00.000Z

Remember this.

So many of us spoke and marched against this bloody murderous disaster of a war.

We must hold the perpetrators, the traitors to account.
These were crimes against humanity.
What we need most of all from the 21 century is that world leaders cannot any longer get away with that.

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Archbishop's anti-war message: "'The strategists who know the possible ramifications of politics miss the huge and obvious things and wreak yet more havoc and suffering.'

Despite better communications, intelligence and surveillance than ever before, the innocent continue to be killed, he said.

'Here we all are, tangled in the same net ... stepping deeper and deeper into tragedy', he added.

Dr Williams has previously warned against the dangers of war and urged the government to find a diplomatic solution.

On the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks he described war as 'at best the lesser evil' and added that attacking Saddam Hussein could bring 'real cost to our own humanity'."

The Scots have their own dossier

2006-01-19T21:48:00.000Z

The Scots have a detailed dossier on the dodgy dealings of Blair and co supporting the kidnapping of people and their export for torture.

Bad news for you Mr Blair

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier

westminster

The SNP has published a report on suspected US intelligence flights through Scottish airports. The document lists in detail the planes, dates on which they landed and 10 firms which allegedly operated on behalf of the CIA.

The publication comes as inquiries continue into “rendition flights” by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and an all party group of the House of Commons.

SNP Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP, has sent the report to First Minister Jack McConnell urging the Scottish Executive to “use every avenue open to it through the criminal justice system to establish whether there has been the illegal transportation of people through Scottish airports and discourage it ever happening in the future”.

The report lists 10 firms which allegedly operate as CIA shell companies and details the plane types, registration numbers and dates which they landed at Prestwick, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports. Among the planes was a Gulfstream jet (Registration number N379P/N8068V) nicknamed the “Guantanamo Bay Express” and was reportedly used to transport suspects to the US prison on Cuba. That plane is listed in the report as having landed five times at Glasgow and Prestwick airports between 2002 and the end of 2004.

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier — SNP - Scottish National Party

2006-01-19T21:33:00.000Z

aha
the Scottish Nationalists have a dodgy (for Blairco) dossier on renditions through Scotland.

The Government will go on wriggling but the questions will go on getting more detailed.
This one is not going away any more than Iraq has gone away.

We do not want a Government that supports torture in any way.

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier — SNP - Scottish National Party: "SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier
westminster
The SNP has published a report on suspected US intelligence flights through Scottish airports. The document lists in detail the planes, dates on which they landed and 10 firms which allegedly operated on behalf of the CIA.
[ Portrait ]

The publication comes as inquiries continue into “rendition flights” by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and an all party group of the House of Commons.

SNP Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP, has sent the report to First Minister Jack McConnell urging the Scottish Executive to “use every avenue open to it through the criminal justice system to establish whether there has been the illegal transportation of people through Scottish airports and discourage it ever happening in the future”."

Rendering unto Caesar. Leaked avoidance advice from the FO to Blair.

2006-01-19T18:07:00.000Z

Blair said he knows nothing about our involvement with US renditions apart fromn a couple in the Clinton era.

The Foreign Office has had a memo leaked suggesting he avoid anything specific and move subjects as fast as possible.

It may not be incriminating but it reveals a conspiracy to evade the truth.

Ms Rice says the Americans don't torture, but they do do what us Europeans would call torture.

We just don't ask what they are up to with those planes so we can plead ignorance.

I think that the Government could be donbe for conspiracy with another (the US) to commit crime.

AlterNet: The President Does Not Know Best

2006-01-19T15:57:00.000Z

Der Fuhrer knows best

Yes
he does.

AlterNet: The President Does Not Know Best: "It has been widely reported that even Bush appointees, such as former Assistant Attorney General James B. Comey, and possibly former Attorney General John Ashcroft, objected to the NSA's wide-ranging warrantless spying. After 20 years as a federal prosecutor, I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of career attorneys at DOJ and criminal prosecutors from U.S. Attorneys' Offices around the country, as well as federal law enforcement agents, would have refused to participate knowingly in this program. Bush and his coterie knew that their legal arguments were weak and intellectually dishonest, if not ludicrous, so rather than making their case honestly, even to their own people, they avoided dissent by acting in secret and affirmatively misleading the entire country. Using a tragically familiar modus operandi, Bush has carried out his unlawful spying scheme by acting not as a unitary executive (whatever that is), but as a solitary executive -- as if the President Knows Best."

AlterNet: The Return of Bush's Brownshirts

2006-01-19T15:53:00.000Z

yes the old slow boat chicken shitters are back, trying to destroy Murtha the way they did Kerry.

Will it work this time?

Who cares?
All it takes for BushBlairco sorry I should have said evil is for good men to do nothing.

The women as I said earlier are off their asses.

AlterNet: The Return of Bush's Brownshirts: "Here we go again. Buckle up, the bad boys are back in town.

Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question

(CNSNews.com) -- Having ascended to the national stage as one of the most vocal critics of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has long downplayed the controversy and the bitterness surrounding the two Purple Hearts he was awarded for military service in Vietnam.

(CNSNews bills itself as 'The Right News, Right Now,' and you can find it quoted and pointers to it on Christian-right sites like Pat Robertson's 700 Club and the Gospel News Network.)"

POLITICS: Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe

2006-01-19T13:15:00.000Z

While Salman Rushdie thinks Islam is afraid of female power maybe Bushco should start worrying.
American women are linking up with women around the globe to oppose the Iraq war.

POLITICS: Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe: "POLITICS:
Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe
Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (IPS) - Eminent female writers, artists, lawmakers and social activists in the United States are reaching out to women leaders across the world in an attempt to forge a global alliance against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

A U.S.-based women's group has launched a global campaign to gather 100,000 signatures by Mar. 8, International Women's Day, when they will be delivered to the White House and U.S. embassies around the world.

'We are unleashing a global chorus of women's voices shouting, 'Enough!' said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, a California-based rights advocacy group that has spearheaded the global women's campaign, called 'Women Say No to War'. "

Is It Warm in Here? Another story on irreparable climate change

2006-01-19T13:11:00.000Z

from Lovelock to Lovejoy.

How curious!

Another ecoscientist this time American thinks it may be too late for the planet.
The writer thinks that Americans are unlikely to notice till it is too late, if it is not so already.

Is It Warm in Here?: "Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.

'When do you wreck it as a system?' Lovejoy wonders. 'It's like going up to the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is. Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but that's what we're doing with deforestation and climate change.'"

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Civil War Looms; Media Yawns

2006-01-19T08:25:00.000Z

It would appear that the Shia have reneged on the possibility of changing the constitution, which was the only reason that many Sunni were persuaded to vote in the recent elections.

This could lead to a total melt down in Sunni Shia relations.

Does the media take an interest?

apparently not

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Civil War Looms; Media Yawns: "he has described the agreement to allow changes to the constitution as a key element in keeping the political process moving forward. 'Thanks to last-minute changes, including a new procedure for considering amendments to the constitution,' he said on the eve of the December vote, 'the revised constitution was endorsed by Iraq's largest Sunni party. Sunnis voted in large numbers for the first time. They joined the political process. And by doing so, they reject the violence of the Saddamists and rejectionists. Through hard work and compromise, Iraqis adopted the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world.'

Now it is clear that the Shiites were just saying what the Bush administration wanted to hear; they never meant it and never intended to follow through. 'We will stop anyone who tries to change the Constitution,' said al-Hakim yesterday.

This belligerent stance could easily drive Iraqi Sunnis (in the words of today's New York Times) 'into the arms of radical Sunni groups in neighboring lands' and 'leave the Shiites even more dependent than they are now on Iran and American troops.' Sounds like a recipe for endless civil war -- and a foreign policy debacle of unimaginable proportions for America.

But, despite this looming disaster, with the exception of the Times' powerful editorial, the mainstream media are giving this major development hardly any play. Even the New York Times has its news story on al-Hakim's statements on page A-10 -- and at the very bottom of the page at that. In the Washington Post, the story appears on A-14, while the Los Angeles Times and USA Today do not cover the story at all! And a LexisNexis search didn't yield a single mention of the story on any of the broadcast or cable news shows. So the match that could ignite an all-out civil war in Iraq was just lit, and the U.S. media can barely muster a yawn."

US Troops accused of raping Iraqi children

2006-01-19T08:02:00.000Z

I picked this up from a Pagan group this morning.
I cannot say that it is good quality intelligence, but it quotes sources and is probably as reliable as any of the sources BushBlairco relied on as excuses to invade Iraq.

U.S. TROOPS RAPE CHILDREN

--- In National-Anarchist-Online@yahoogroups.com, Troy Southgate

wrote:

Iraqi girl of nine kidnapped in front of her school, raped and

left unconscious and bleeding by US troops south of Baghdad on

Sunday 8 January 2005. Americans recorded as having raped 71

Iraqi children under the age of 10 in the year 2005 alone.

-------------------

In a dispatch posted at 7:45pm Mecca time Sunday

night, "Mafkarat al-Islam" Arabic site reported medical sources in

the city of "Al-Hillah", south of Baghdad, as saying that US

troops on Sunday had forcibly kidnapped and raped a nine-year-old

girl, abducting her as she came out of her school after classes.

The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a doctor in al-

Hillah General Hospital, who asked not to be identified, as

saying that the little girl was found four hours after the

criminal attack, unconscious with blood all over her face and legs.

Witnesses said that the little girl Aminah (the rest of her name

was not published) was standing by the door of "Umm al-Banin

School", waiting for her family to pick her up. In full view of

all the people in the area, an American soldier kidnapped her in

his military vehicle which was part of a patrol passing by.

Numerous witnesses reported that Aminah was later found in

the "Maqali` al-Hasa" area near "al-Hillah", close to an American

base there.

The doctor in al-Hillah General Hospital, who spoke with

Mafkarat al-Islam, said that he had reported the crime to

correspondents for the "Al-Arabiyah Satellite TV Network" and "Al-

`Iraqiyah TV Network" which is owned by American-run Iraqi

government, but they were not interested in the incident,

believing that running the story would get them in trouble with

the US occupation authorities and the American-installed puppet

regime.

Aminah's family requested that the Mafkarat al-Islam

correspondent not publish the full name or photograph of their

daughter in hospital for ethical reasons and Mafkarat al-Islam

complied with their wishes.

The correspondent noted that the "Iraqi Organization for

Children Welfare" had registered 71 cases of rape committed by US

occupation troops against Iraqi children under the age of 10

during the year 2005 alone

t r u t h o u t - 2002 Memo Doubted Niger Uranium Sale Claim

2006-01-18T17:07:00.000Z

The Americans quite quickly owned up to the Niger story being a fraud.
The Brits have hung onto it, saying it is real intelligence that they will not disclose.

Plamegate has faded out of the headlines recently, but Blair has never been made accountable for the plagiarised student thesis, that was 10 years out of date.

t r u t h o u t - 2002 Memo Doubted Niger Uranium Sale Claim: " The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous '16 words' in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy."

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Military Recruiter's Lament

2006-01-18T16:54:00.000Z

People don't want to kill for Bushco any more.
They are happy to take the risks of being a firefighter but they don't want to go to Iraq.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Military Recruiter's Lament: "When one examines the employment picture in America today, firefighting is listed as one of the most dangerous vocations. And yet America's youth are lining up to compete for firefighting jobs, despite the dangers. The reason for this is that danger aside, firefighting is seen as an honorable profession, one worthy of the sacrifice entailed.

Americans aren't afraid to put their lives on the line for a worthy cause. It is not military service that is being rejected, but rather military service in support of a cause not deemed worthy of the sacrifice expected. The military today has degenerated into an entity that is viewed by many in the American public as no longer serving the larger interests of the American people, but rather the play toy of a political elite who use the U.S. military as a tool to impose their ideology on others around the world, as opposed to 'upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States,' the mission assumed when one is sworn into military service."

AlterNet: Whistling in the Wind

2006-01-18T16:50:00.000Z

It seems there is no one left to blow the whistle to in Bushland.
The agency designed to help whistleblowers is needing whistleblowers of its own

AlterNet: Whistling in the Wind: "The silencing of Gabe Bruno and the whitewashing of FAA corruption is far from an aberration; under the tenure of Scott Bloch, such treatment has become standard practice. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), whistleblowers are coming forward in record numbers, yet the number of whistleblowers who have been helped by the OSC has plummeted.

Since Bloch took office, over 1,000 whistleblower complaints -- many leveling serious charges of government corruption and incompetence, including allegations of misconduct within FEMA before the Katrina disaster -- have been summarily dismissed. In the words of Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, the OSC has become 'a plumber's unit for the Bush administration, plugging leaks, blocking investigations, and discrediting sources.'"

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Bush OK'd illegal spying before 9/11

2006-01-17T15:44:00.000Z

More evidence comes in to show Bushco keeping spy records on Americans pre 911.

No doubt the Bushco could argue that it was necessary to defend the country then too.
After all, they knew 911 was about to happen.

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Bush OK'd illegal spying before 9/11: "Jason Leopold of Truthout reports that Bush authorized illegal spying before 9/11, according to a recently declassified document. In early 2001 the National Security Agency requested permission to undertake data mining operations that might bring up the names of American citizens.

The Agency requested that the administration delete those names, should they crop up. Keeping them would be illegal domestic spying. The administration ignored the NSA's request and used the names to compile an illegal enemies list.

Leopold writes:

What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information.

But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law."

t r u t h o u t - Juan Cole | 10 Things King Would Have Done about Iraq

2006-01-17T08:01:00.000Z

Martin Luther King had more than one dream. But the craven media will not tell you this one. It is a great dream.

What a pity the good stuff in America has been squashed by Bushco etc.

t r u t h o u t - Juan Cole | 10 Things King Would Have Done about Iraq: " 9. A revolution in American values away from consumer materialism and militarism is needed if we are not to go on having one Vietnam after another:

'The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality [applause], and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing 'clergy and laymen concerned' committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy . . .

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered . "

Cronkite: Time for U.S. to Leave Iraq - Yahoo! News

2006-01-17T07:56:00.000Z

Roll back the clocks for 89 year old Walter Cronkite, he is a bot flatulant these days, repeating on us.

He wants to tell you Americans again that it is time to go.

Home that is.

Go home Americans, you have nothing to add to improve the world.
How about a return to splendid or maybe flacid isolation.

Cronkite: Time for U.S. to Leave Iraq - Yahoo! News: "PASADENA, Calif. - Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he'd say the same thing today about
Iraq.

'It's my belief that we should get out now,' Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters.

Now 89, the television journalist once known as 'the most trusted man in America' has been off the 'CBS Evening News' for nearly a quarter-century. He's still a CBS News employee, although he does little for them"

t r u t h o u t - Global Warming to Speed Up as Carbon Levels Show Sharp Rise

2006-01-17T07:49:00.000Z

In the Independent yesterday Lovelock told us it is already too late. We face 10,000 years of overheated earth.

I guess that legitimises everyone grabbing everything they can now before our children or grand children have nothing left.

Three cheers for Blair and Bush

t r u t h o u t - Global Warming to Speed Up as Carbon Levels Show Sharp Rise: "Global Warming to Speed Up as Carbon Levels Show Sharp Rise
By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent UK

Sunday 15 January 2006

Global warming is set to accelerate alarmingly because of a sharp jump in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Preliminary figures, exclusively obtained by The Independent on Sunday, show that levels of the gas - the main cause of climate change - have risen abruptly in the past four years. Scientists fear that warming is entering a new phase, and may accelerate further.

But a summit of the most polluting countries, convened by the Bush administration, last week refused to set targets for reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. Set up in competition to the Kyoto Protocol, the summit, held in Sydney and attended by Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea as well as the United States, instead pledged to develop cleaner technologies - which some experts believe will not arrive in time."

The Pacifist `Threat'

2006-01-17T07:45:00.000Z

"Peace and opposition to war". Yes, sir, the quakers are under surveillance again. They are the wrong kind of Christians. They don't like crusades, murder, torture, rape, and pillage.

The Pacifist `Threat': "Published on Monday, January 16, 2006 by the Hartford Courant (Connecticut)
The Pacifist `Threat'
Disclosure Of Recent Government Surveillance Of Quaker Activities Doesn't Surprise Members
by Francis Grandy Taylor

A group of Quakers who were protesting military recruitment efforts at a Florida high school recently learned their meeting was included on a secret Pentagon database of 'suspicious incidents.' When that news broke last month, it had a familiar ring for many American Quakers.

'With the restriction of civil liberties goes surveillance,' says Don Weinholtz, a Quaker who lives in Windsor. 'It just seems to be a very unfortunate natural course of events.'

The Religious Society of Friends is one of the largest groups of Quakers in the United States, with about 600,000 members worldwide. They embrace beliefs, called testimonies, that include peace, equality and rejection of war in all its forms."

Gore: Bush 'Repeatedly and Persistently' Broke the Law

2006-01-17T07:41:00.000Z

While Gore does his bull impersonation the Republicans reply with a kind of "Oh how can you criticise big daddy Bush who alone knows how threatened we are" Hitler would have been proud.

Gore: Bush 'Repeatedly and Persistently' Broke the Law: "Published on Monday, January 16, 2006 by the Associated Press
Gore: Bush 'Repeatedly and Persistently' Broke the Law
by Larry Margasak

WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Al Gore called Monday for an independent investigation of President Bush's domestic spying program, contending the president 'repeatedly and persistently' broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.

Also See Full Text of Prepared Remarks:
Al Gore 1/16/2006:
'We the People' Must Save Our Constitution

GORE: BUSH 'REPEATEDLY AND PERSISTENTLY' BROKE THE LAW
Former Vice President Al Gore gestures while addressing the American Constitution Society on the threat to the Constitution from President Bush's domestic wiretap policy, Monday, Jan. 16, 2006 at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washigton. Gore asserted Monday that President Bush 'repeatedly and persistently' broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Speaking on Martin Luther King Jr.'s national holiday, the man who lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush was interrupted repeatedly by applause as he called the anti-terrorism program 'a threat to the very structure of our government.'

Gore charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a 'direct assault' on a special federal court that authorizes requests to eavesdrop on Americans. One judge on the court resigned last month, voicing concerns about the National Security Agency's surveillance of e-mails and phone calls."

t r u t h o u t - Al Gore: 'America's Constitution is in Grave Danger'

2006-01-16T21:29:00.000Z

Gore has spoken
But are people listening

and if they listen can they do anything?

Over here Blair announces breathtaking changes to our system of law, taking a giant leap down the road to a police state

No outrage

No complaints

Nothing

Nada

The silence is deafening.

t r u t h o u t - Al Gore: 'America's Constitution is in Grave Danger': "US Constitution in Grave Danger
By Albert Gore Jr.
t r u t h o u t | Speech

Monday 16 January 2006

The following is the transcript as prepared for delivery.

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people."

Iran not a nuclear threat!?

2006-01-16T13:54:00.000Z

Some people, see below, think all the talk of Iranian nuclear weapons is just western propaganda.

I don't know enough. I am pretty sure of one thing, if the Iranians came anywhere close to having a nuclear bomb the Israelis would destroy it just as they did with Saddam's nuclear site.

Maybe you forgot about that.
Saddam abandoned his nuclear ambitions after the Israelis bombed his sites.

The rest of the wmd story was just western propaganda to justify the second gulf war.

"More Lies about Iran

By Mike Whitney

01/15/06 'ICH' -- -- There’s been a lot of rubbish written about Iran’s “removing the seals” from its uranium enrichment equipment.

The fear-mongering western media have exploited the expression for all its worth. Even those who are normally skeptical of the Bush-propaganda machine are taken aback by this ominous-sounding phrase.

What gibberish!

How else does one make nuclear fuel for electric power plants if the fuel-producing mechanism is under lock and key?

The fear-engendering description provided in the news would have the reader believe that “diabolical” Iranians are ripping off the seals with crowbars so they can quickly assemble their secret nuclear stockpile to bomb Tel Aviv.

This is the worse type of demagoguery.

The fuel that is produced from these uranium enrichment reactors DOES NOT PRODUCE WEAPONS-GRADE MATERIAL. That requires thousands of centrifuges which Iran does not have. "

t r u t h o u t - Airstrike by US Draws Protests from Pakistanis

2006-01-16T09:00:00.000Z

Blairy england looks forward to a time when Bushco will feel free not only to kidnap our nationals as it is already doing but to bomb villages in Wales or Scotland oe even this one, thought to be a threat to the Emperor.

Doubtless Mr Blair and his government would not oppose such developments. The Americans already claim the right to shoot our nationals if they seem threatening outside American bases.

t r u t h o u t - Airstrike by US Draws Protests from Pakistanis: " In a speech he gave to townspeople in Sawabi, President Musharraf warned that aiding militants was dangerous.

'If we harbor foreign terrorists, those who carry out bomb blasts throughout the world, then remember that our future is not good,' he said. 'People should not side with foreign militants,' he said. 'They should tell us about them so we take action against them,' he said.

He did not directly criticize the United States for the attack, and it was left to the Foreign Ministry to protest the infringement of sovereignty. 'Our armed forces have undertaken large-scale operations against the foreign militants, and it remains our responsibility to protect our people and territory from outside intrusion,' the ministry said.

The statement was the second in two weeks in which the Pakistani government has condemned what was thought to be an American attack on its soil. Eight people, including women and children, were reported killed Jan. 7 when missiles destroyed the house of a local cleric in North Waziristan close to the Afghan border. Pakistan lodged a strong protest with coalition forces on Monday, but said it was still investigating whether the missiles had been fired from Pakistani airspace or from Afghan territory."

t r u t h o u t - Court: Bush Can Be Sued on Faith Based Initiative

2006-01-16T08:02:00.000Z

Bush has been putting state money into backing christian groups of neo-cons for some time.

Now a court is challenging it.

That's good then.

t r u t h o u t - Court: Bush Can Be Sued on Faith Based Initiative: " Challenge to Bush Initiative Reinstated
The Associated Press

Saturday 14 January 2006

Madison, Wis. - A group can sue the federal government over claims that President Bush's faith-based initiative is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion, a federal appeals court ruled.

A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reinstated the lawsuit brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The group claims Bush's program, which helps religious organizations get government funding to provide social services, violates the separation of church and state.

'Bush says this is constitutional, but it's never been tried by the courts. So we're pleased,' said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation, said Saturday.

Bush sidestepped Congress by issuing executive orders to create the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and similar centers in 10 federal agencies during his first term. He said the goal was to help religious and community groups compete for federal funding to fight poverty, substance abuse and other social problems."

t r u t h o u t - Murtha Says Elections Could End War

2006-01-16T07:47:00.000Z

Not quite sure if this is worth blogging

Sometimes we need to record the obvious just to confirm that others have noticed it too.

t r u t h o u t - Murtha Says Elections Could End War: "Murtha Says Elections Could End War
Reuters

Friday 13 January 2006

New York - U.S. Rep. John Murtha, an outspoken Democratic critic of the Iraq war, said in remarks to be aired on Sunday that voter pressure in the November congressional election could force President George W. Bush to pull U.S. forces from Iraq.

'I think the vast majority will be out by the end of the year and I'm hopeful it will be sooner than that,' Murtha, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, told the CBS '60 Minutes' show.

The Pennsylvania Democrat said mounting pressure from voters tired of the war could affect this year's midterm election and force Bush to devise a plan to pull U.S. troops from Iraq.

'You're going to see a plan for withdrawal,' said Murtha, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees defense spending.

'I think the political people who give (Bush) advice will say to him, 'You don't want a Democratic (controlled) Congress. You want to keep a Republican majority, and the only way you're going to keep it is by reducing substantially the troops in Iraq.''

All 435 seats of the House are up for election in November."

t r u t h o u t - NYT Warns of Unrestrained Bush Powers

2006-01-15T18:36:00.000Z

Why can't you Americans understand it.

Your land of the free is being taken from you.

Do you care?

t r u t h o u t - NYT Warns of Unrestrained Bush Powers: "Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners.

The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an 'unlawful enemy combatant.' The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts.

Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous 'signing statement' on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.

Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat.

Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in sig"

Bishops Urge U.S. to Transition Out of Iraq - Los Angeles Times

2006-01-14T12:57:00.000Z

The bishops are saying get out of Iraq.
So it will soon happen then!?

Who listens to bishops when there are so many raving lunatic pastors telling you to kill anyone who isn't Christian?

Bishops Urge U.S. to Transition Out of Iraq - Los Angeles Times: "Declaring that the United States was at a crossroads in Iraq, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops said Thursday the time had come to withdraw U.S. troops as fast as responsibly possible and to hand control of the country to Iraqis."

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Commanding Responsibility from the Pentagon

2006-01-14T12:43:00.000Z

A law case has just opened the door to Bushco being convicted for torture.
Whistleblowers have confirmed that this regime authorised torture under US and International Law.

Sooner or later these people will have to lose power.
Then they will be up for prosecution

Unless of course permanent state terror has been established.

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Commanding Responsibility from the Pentagon: "Rumsfeld and Cheney are staring down the possibility they could be held accountable for crimes at Abu Ghraib, Falluja and Guantanamo.

A jury verdict in Memphis late last year caused little stir among the general public, but it may have caught the attention of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other high officials of the Bush administration. The jury found Colonel Nicolas Carranza, former Vice Minister of Defense of El Salvador and now a U.S. citizen living in Memphis, responsible for overseeing the torture and killing in that country 25 years ago. Could similar charges be brought against high U.S. officials for the actions of their subordinates in Abu Ghraib, Falluja, and Guantanamo?"

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Commanding Responsibility from the Pentagon

2006-01-14T12:42:00.000Z

AlterNet: Chomsky: 'There Is No War On Terror'

2006-01-14T12:34:00.000Z

the term "war on terror" is meaningless twaddle. The west bought into it in a state of shock after 911.

What is happening is a war between neo-liberalism and islamist thought.

Meanwhile Iraq has been invaded as a piece of leverage in global power politics.

AlterNet: Chomsky: 'There Is No War On Terror': "What do you think should be done in Iraq?

Well, the first thing that should be done in Iraq is for us to be serious about what's going on. There is almost no serious discussion, I'm sorry to say, across the spectrum, of the question of withdrawal. The reason for that is that we are under a rigid doctrine in the West, a religious fanaticism, that says we must believe that the United States would have invaded Iraq even if its main product was lettuce and pickles, and the oil resources of the world were in Central Africa. Anyone who doesn't believe that is condemned as a conspiracy theorist, a Marxist, a madman, or something. Well, you know, if you have three gray cells functioning, you know that that's perfect nonsense. The U.S. invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources, mostly untapped, and it's right in the heart of the world's energy system. Which means that if the U.S. manages to control Iraq, it extends enormously its strategic power, what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls its critical leverage over Europe and Asia. Yeah, that's a major reason for controlling the oil resources -- it gives you strategic power. Even if you're on renewable energy you want to do that. So that's the reason for invading Iraq, the fundamental reason."

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Murtha: Civil war

2006-01-13T16:04:00.000Z

A republican has started to tell America the way it is in Iraq.
Will they listen or stay the course with Bush
The course to total defeat, was that, Mr Bush?

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Murtha: Civil war: "Claims of civil war have been thrown about for months now. It is... it isn't... not yet... soon... maybe next Tuesday... since forever...

Rep. John Murtha, who made headlines -- and some enemies -- last month by standing up on the House floor and making the case for a phased and strategic withdrawal (not, as was charged, an immediate one), revisits the point. In a blog.

'93 percent of those fighting in Iraq are Iraqis. A very small percentage of the fighting is being done by foreign fighters. Our troops are caught in between the fighting. 80 percent of Iraqis want us out of there and 45 percent think it is justified to kill American troops.'

These are compelling factors, to be sure, but the more convincing argument for the damage we're causing, the futility of the Bush doctrine in Iraq, is that every step toward anything resembling democracy is actually a step toward theocracy and increased division -- and thus, away from democracy. You see the problem."

The Revealer: Poppa's Got A Brand New Sword

2006-01-13T15:59:00.000Z

Another mad mullah, but this one is claiming he is a Christian.
This sheer nonsense preacher is reputed to have delivered Ohio for Bush.

You should know by now it was the voting machines gave Bush Ohio.

Ah, well.

The Revealer: Poppa's Got A Brand New Sword: "Fundamentalists get Freudian, for real.

'With the right
hand of my
righteousness.'
Do you experience erectile dysfunction? Would you like a little more size? Pastor Rod Parsley wants to help -- he'll turn your 'male headship' into a deadly weapon with extra inches.

Pastor Rod is the fundamentalist feudal prince of Ohio, the bestselling preacher who tipped the Buckeye state for Bush in 2004. His strategy? Warning the citizenry that they would all go gay if they didn't beat back the homosexual agenda. Pastor Rod couldn't legally endorse Bush, but he pushed Christian conservative voters to the polls.

This past August, I reported that Pastor Rod was raising cash for holy war -- I mean, relief work -- in Sudan by offering an actual 27-inch sword, in exchange for a gift of $54 or more. Now, Pastor Rod's got a whole new sword to sell. And this one's ten inches longer, with a blade of steel and a 'gold-colored metal' handle inscribed with the cross. It's the 'SWORD OF THE KING,' promises Pastor Rod.

Just like the one Christ didn’t carry? Even better. This 'beautifully crafted' blade, writes Rod, is a 'replica' of King Arthur's. As in Excaliber, the magic sword Merlin told him to pull out of a stone. Sound like kid's stuff? No way. Who's going to tell a man packing 37 awesome inches of hard steel that he's lost in a fairy tale?

There's more. Don't worry about where to sheath your blade -- in a special email solicitation, Pastor Rod writes that it comes with a 'beautiful... mount.' And the best part of all? You get the whole package -- magic sword, mount, delusions of potency -- for only $41 dollars and ten cents, in honor of Isaiah 41:10 ('...yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.'). That's almost thirteen dollars less for ten more powerful inches of Christian manhood. And don't forget the gold-colored metal.
"

Goring for Bush

2006-01-13T15:30:00.000Z

Bush started spying on Americans pre 911. He is palpable claiming that his writ is the law.
If you don't successfully challenge this now Americans you can forget even thinking you have any democracy to export.

The Raw Story | Gore to deliver scathing speech Monday on 'constitutional crisis' in Washington: "“We are at a point of constitutional crisis,' the aide said, relating how Gore has articulated his speech. 'The president who has violated the law is acting above the law. It’s a wakeup call for Congress, the American people and the courts. If we continue down this road we will have a different constitution.

'Nixon’s quote about if the president does it it is legal, it’s kind of like Bush saying, if it’s about national security, it’s legal. This is going to be called transpartisan; it’s not about who your party is, it’s about what America stands for.'

Gore, the source said, will talk about the framers of the constitution.

'You can’t defend freedom while abandoning it at home,' the source said, speaking of Gore's planned remarks. 'The founders thought about this. They didn’t want a king, that’s why they didn’t set up a system to anoint a king. We have checks and balances in this country and we cannot abandon them.'"

The UN will start to investigate war crimes in Iraq.

2006-01-13T14:28:00.000Z

Maybe you signed this letter from Tony Ben via Blairy England

The letter is bearing fruit.

Reply from Kofi Annan's office: "Iraq war crimes allegations referred by UN Secretary-General's office to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Stop the War Coalition
Press release: Immediate
5.30pm Monday 9th January 2006

Tony Benn has today received a reply to his request to Kofi Annan to investigate possible war crimes in Iraq. In his letter to Mr Benn, Nicholas Michel, UN Under Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, states: 'your letter raises matters which are of extremely serious concern and which would appear to fall within the remit of a number of the mechanisms that the United Nations has established for the promotion and protection of human rights...On behalf of the Secretary-General, I am accordingly transmitting your letter and its attachments to the High Commissioner for Human Rights and asking her to explore what channels might be available to address your concerns.'"

What happened to the attack on Blair over wmd and Iraq?

2006-01-13T08:31:00.000Z

I copy this from the MK stop the war group.

Blair is embattled on many sides. But the confrontation with Blair over Iraq has been pushed out onto the More 4 Channel which we do not receive.
They had a very interesting looking programme this week on why we really went to war.

Sent: 13 January 2006 01:07

Subject: Credentials for lambasting Blair over the war in Iraq | The

Guardian | Friday January 13 2006 | Main Paper | page 39

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CREDENTIALS FOR LAMBASTING BLAIR OVER THE WAR IN IRAQ

[There's a letter - ill informed in my opinion - from Siôn Simon MP but I

haven't copied it - BR]

* As a former Labour MP who when in parliament took a detailed interest in

the illegal invasion of Iraq and its aftermath (as I still do now), I found

Gen Michael Rose's comment article very interesting. He is, however, wrong

on two matters. He suggests parliament has not yet ascertained how far the

prime minister evaluated intelligence regarding alleged Iraqi WMD.

Immediately after reading the now notorious intelligence-derived dossier,

published on September 24 2002, I tabled a series of questions to the prime

minister, including asking him to set out the technical basis for the

assertion made on page 19 that chemical or biological weapons could be

deployed within 45 minutes of an order to do so. The prime minister

answered: "These points reflect specific intelligence information." This was

over seven months before Andrew Gilligan provided his documented challenge

to the credibility of the 45-minute claim.

Rose also asserts that there has been no attempt in parliament to call

Blair personally to account over the Iraq blunder. Not so. In December 2003,

for instance, at prime minister's question time, I specifically asked Blair

if no WMDs were found in Iraq, would this parliament be right to expect

resignations to follow at the highest level of government? He replied: "It

is also absolutely clear to me that weapons of mass destruction are a real

issue, not just in Iraq but in the wider world. I believe entirely in the

information that was given to us at the time. We will carry on the search

for those weapons through the Iraq Survey Group, which should be allowed to

complete its work before anyone makes up their mind."

The problem was there were neither sufficient parliamentary colleagues nor

newspapers that were prepared to press for ministerial resignations when the

facts showed them to be demonstrably wrong on their claims over Iraqi WMD.

Llew Smith

Newbridge, Gwent

Iraq is the greatest disaster in US history

2006-01-13T08:14:00.000Z

Interesting despatch from Iraq this morning.
It amazes me that the US couldset up Iraq under Saddam to invade Iran with wmd and then hand the region over to Iran on a plate by destabilising Iraq.

I want to know how long will it take for them to decide to overthrow the new Shia majority party and starting rebuilding the Baath party.

IRAN AND ISRAEL WILL BE KINGS OF THE MIDDLE EAST JUNGLE

The US occupation of Iraq has turned its neighbour into a new regional

power. But the contagion is likely to spread far wider

Friday, January 13th 2006

David Hirst

In March 2003, before US troops reached Baghdad, Middle East scholar Volker

Perthes wrote that while the risks of this "illegitimate" war were enormous,

those of "a US failure to stabilise postwar Iraq would be even higher". With

those words looking increasingly prophetic, no one, in picturing the

implications of such failure, is now more lurid than the Bush

administration. The direness of the prospect has become its strongest

argument for "staying the course", but for others it is already a given,

amounting to "the greatest strategic disaster in US history", in the words

of the retired US general William Odom.

AlterNet: The Impeachment of George W. Bush

2006-01-12T11:10:00.000Z

America has a War Crimes Act.
Interesting. It seems likely that Bush has violated it with his exemption of abusers and torturers working for him.

AlterNet: The Impeachment of George W. Bush: "The evidence before us now suggests that the President himself may have authorized detainee abuse. In January 2002, after the Afghanistan war had begun, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush in writing that US mistreatment of detainees might be criminally prosecutable under the War Crimes Act. Rather than order the possibly criminal behavior to stop, which under the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act the President was obligated to do, Bush authorized an 'opt-out' of the Geneva Conventions to try to shield the Americans who were abusing detainees from prosecution.

In other words, the President's response to reports of detainee abuse was to prevent prosecution of the abusers, thereby implicitly condoning the abuse and authorizing its continuation. If torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners took place as a result of the President's conduct, then he himself may have violated the War Crimes Act, along with those who actually inflicted the abuse."

AlterNet: The Impeachment of George W. Bush

2006-01-12T11:07:00.000Z

Nobody wants to impeach a president says someone who was involved in impeaching Nixon. But you can't let the executive get away with high crimes and misdemeanours. With each passing day it becomes clear that Bush is acting above the law and as if he were immune to it.

That may well have been what 911 was for. Wake up from the spell America, your country has been highjacked.

AlterNet: The Impeachment of George W. Bush: "Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by Bush's breathtaking scorn for our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. I have also been disturbed by the torture scandals and the violations of US criminal laws at the highest levels of our government they may entail, something I have written about before.

These concerns have been compounded by growing evidence that the President deliberately misled the country into the war in Iraq. But it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate.

As a matter of constitutional law, these and other misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush. A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office. A high crime or misdemeanor is an archaic term that means a serious abuse of power, whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government."

t r u t h o u t - Inquiry Says CIA Jails Document Must Be Followed Up

2006-01-12T08:05:00.000Z

Evidence mounts in europe that the US is stealing people for torture.
But will they do anything with it or be bought off by uncle Sam?

t r u t h o u t - Inquiry Says CIA Jails Document Must Be Followed Up: " Tuesday 10 January 2005

Brussels - The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA prisons in Europe said Tuesday the purported Egyptian government document naming countries where such prisons existed is a new lead which must be followed up.

But Dick Marty, a Swiss senator leading the probe on behalf of the Council of Europe, said it still wasn't clear whether the document - a fax reportedly sent by satellite transmission from Egypt's Foreign Ministry to its embassy in London - was genuine.

The document's existence was reported Sunday by the Swiss weekly SonnstagsBlick. The fax, intercepted Nov. 15 by Swiss intelligence, reportedly said Egypt had confirmed through its own sources that the US intelligence agency had held 23 terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan at a military base in Romania."

Rapidly Shrinking Arctic Ice Could Spell Trouble for the Rest of the World

2006-01-12T07:59:00.000Z

While the polluters look for excuses and pseudo solutions in Australia the arctic ice is fast disappearing bringing drastic climate change in its wake.

Rapidly Shrinking Arctic Ice Could Spell Trouble for the Rest of the World: "Rapidly Shrinking Arctic Ice Could Spell Trouble for the Rest of the World
by Robert S. Boyd

WASHINGTON - Alarmed by an accelerating loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean, scientists are striving to understand why the speedup is happening and what it means for humankind.

If present trends continue, as seems likely, the sea surrounding the North Pole will be completely free of ice in the summertime within the lifetime of a child born today. The loss could point the way to radical changes in the Earth's climate and weather systems.

Bright white ice reflects sunlight from the Earth’s surface. In contrast, open water is very dark, and absorbs sunlight. As sea ice melts more water is exposed, which tends to increase warming. (Photograph courtesy NOAA Photo Library)
Some researchers, such as Ron Lindsay, an Arctic scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, fear that the polar region already may have passed a 'tipping point' from which it can't recover in the foreseeable future."

U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq Could Intensify

2006-01-12T07:56:00.000Z

This is another war crime. Losing the battle on the ground the US is doing what it did in Vietnam and trying to bomb the people to hell. It is likely that the Americans will retreat on the ground while bombing more and more and more.
This is typical abuse from a sore bully loser.

Hey, but this is all part of our fredom and democracy.

U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq Could Intensify: "U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq Could Intensify
by Drew Brown

WASHINGTON - U.S. warplanes have carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq in the past two years, bombing and strafing insurgent fighters and targets almost daily. And the air war, which has gone largely unnoticed at home, could intensify once American ground forces start to withdraw.

The war began with an airstrike targeting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The CIA reported intelligence on March 19, 2003 about the possible location of the Iraqi leader and President Bush approved the attack. On March 20 at 5:33 a.m. Baghdad time (March 19, 9:33 p.m. EST), U.S. ships fired about three dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles and a F-117 Stealth fighter dropped a pair of 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs. (Photo: CNN.com)
Since Iraq doesn't have a working air force, U.S. jets are expected to provide air cover for Iraqi troops for at least several more years."

British Officer Blisters US Army in Iraq Critique

2006-01-12T07:48:00.000Z

The American military have published a British soldiers critique of their war effort.

problems
1) Cultural insensitivity. Me Tarzan you Jane. Basically a racial superiority thing.

2) Too much belief in their own propaganda. Where are my flowers? They said I would get flowers.

3) Not reporting difficulties. Hey they do not want to hear how tough this is so why tell them.

4) Kill first talk later. American forces like to attack a problem with maximum force and minimum sensitivity.

After all the friendly fire incidents the RAF would rather trust the Iraqi enemy than the US military. This is true though not in the report.

British Officer Blisters US Army in Iraq Critique: "WASHINGTON - The U.S. Army has displayed damaging cultural insensitivity in Iraq, while being blinded by unrealistic optimism and predisposed to use maximum force, a senior British officer wrote in a blistering appraisal in a U.S. military publication."

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The Scoop from 'State of War'

2006-01-11T20:39:00.000Z

This chapter raises the question of continued connections between US intelligence and Al qaida. If thye had information that could have uncovered the whole financial base of Al qaida, why was it not persued?

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The Scoop from 'State of War': "Chapter 8: In Denial: Oil, Terrorism, and Saudi Arabia

Risen writes that after Abu Zubaydah was captured in March 2002, he was discovered to have had two bank cards on his person one from a Kuwaiti bank, and another from a Saudi bank, which Risen writes 'had the potential to be keys that could unlock some of al Qaeda's darkest secrets. The cards 'could give us entrée right into who was funding al Qaeda, no link analysis needed,' said one American source. 'You could track money right from the financiers to a top al Qaeda figure.' But something very odd happened when the FBI and CIA team [that collected Zubaydah's personal and business effects]. There is little evidence that an aggressive investigation of the cards was ever conducted.

'Two American sources familiar with the matter say that they don't believe the government's experts on terrorism financing have ever thoroughly probed the transactions in Abu Zubaydah's accounts...' Risen later reports that his two sources believe that this is because of a lack of oversight, 'rather than a political cover-up to protect the Saudis.' Risen writes that a 'Muslim financier with a questionable past, and with connections to the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda, and Saudi intelligence agreed to work with [American investigators]' on this story. Risen says that the financier reported that in 2004, '18 months earlier, he said he had been told, Saudi intelligence officials seized all of the records related to [Zubaydah's Saudi bank card]; the records then disappeared… The timing of the reported seizure of the records by Saudi intelligence closely coincided with the timing of Abu Zubaydah's capture in Pakistan in March 2002.'"

t r u t h o u t - Amnesty Releases New Gitmo Torture Testimony

2006-01-11T16:08:00.000Z

It is about time we started treating the Bush regime as if it were the Nazis and acting to defeat them before the world becomes a prison camp.
If there is evil on earth then this US regime is that.

t r u t h o u t - Amnesty Releases New Gitmo Torture Testimony: " 'Anniversaries usually represent milestones. Today's milestone is a frightening and disheartening one. The situation at Guantánamo is not getting better - in fact, it may be worse. First, the Bush Administration wants all 186 pending habeas corpus petitions filed on behalf of the detainees to be dismissed based on a new law that was not meant to apply to cases filed before the law went into effect. And now, after Congress overwhelming passed the historic Anti-Torture Amendment, President Bush is asserting that he can waive the restrictions on the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against detainees. When does the hypocrisy of defending democracy around the world while continuing to curtail fundamental due process end?' said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA."

AlterNet: 2006: The Year of Oil Collapse?

2006-01-11T10:33:00.000Z

Oh good, we just arranged to live in a house with oil and no gas.
Just as well we have a central wood burning stove.
Still the Russians are playing roulette or at least hard ball with the gas supply too.
OOPs no more Ukrainian Government.
Our nice Mr Blair has grabbed the oil from Iraq. What apity the Iraqis keep blowing it up for him.
Anyone for a home nuclear reactor. Mr Blair wants one, and lots more nuclear bombs too. I guess he wants to bomb the Iranians, or perhaps those irritating French and Germans.
That would be the Iranians.
What I want is a wind turbine on our hill or in our beech tree

AlterNet: 2006: The Year of Oil Collapse?: "I can't predict whether some maniac will drive a Zodiac boat into a tanker in the straits of Hormuz or fire a shoulder-launched missile at an Arabian refinery. If nothing like that happens, the first year of post-peak will express itself in turbulent oil markets. Fear of not getting enough will rule. Futures will be overbought and then dumped or shorted, and then overbought again. This will at least increase the violence of the ratcheting effect in the markets. Overall, I expect to see $100-a-barrel oil at some point this year. Last year I made a bet with a friend that oil would end 2005 at $75. I lost the bet. But it is a fact that the price of oil altogether ended the year 40 percent higher than 2004, so it is not as if the markets did not show extraordinary stress."

Bushco is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany now

2006-01-11T07:54:00.000Z

Post 911 Bushco changed the rules to allow the president to be able to torture children.

"What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us

Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished."

What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President’s right to order the crushing of a child’s testicles?

This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world?

It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memo’s, being equated to those during Nazi Germany.

Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qauueda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you’re trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too…I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible."

If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to order the torture of innocent children, isn’t sufficient basis for drawing such a "moral equivalence," then I don’t know what is. What would be irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I’ll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring "Bush Step Down And take your program with you.""

Dismal days of democracy and Bush war

2006-01-11T07:47:00.000Z

And for all those poor Iraqis life is getting worse.
Under saddam their health service was better than ours.
See below for the current situation.

On TV yesterday Blair asked for a philosophical debate on Liberty. The only philosopher he mentioned was Thomas Hobbes.
Hobbes said that the natural life of man was "poor mean nasty brutish and short" and could only be improved by the formation of a Leviathan where all are bound together into the state.

Saddam understood that. Under him the people were secure and wealthy, at least prior to the west sponsored war on Iran.

Now the Leviathan has gone we have a democracy where the fight is all against all and life is much much worse.

Now Blair wants to destroy Liberty in this country and create a state Leviathan where even parenting is determined by the state.

Come on Mr Blair, debate if you dare.

"'Democracy' Brings Bleak Days
by Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed

BAGHDAD - Many Iraqis see dismal days ahead in the face of rising violence and the decision by the U.S. administration not to seek any further funds for reconstruction.

'It is obvious that the situation is much worse than it used to be,' retired army general Ahmed Abdul Aziz told IPS. 'Can you walk free in the streets? Did you receive your food ration last month? It is essential for most Iraqis to receive the food ration just to feed their families.' "

Informed Comment

2006-01-10T16:14:00.000Z

Check out this American professor Cole.
I think this is the substantially correct version of the history of the creation of Al Qaida by the US and the saudi monarchy.

The only bit I am unsure about is whether the alliance between Bushco and Al Qaida had broken down by 2001, or that they were still working together in blowing up the world trade centre.

It is quite possible that Al Qaida split between those still working with the CIA and those against it.

The failure of the US to find Bin Laden suggests that the secret alliance still holds.

Informed Comment: "Not content with creating a vast terrorist network to harass the Soviets, Reagan then pressured the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions. He had earlier imposed on Fahd to give money to the Contras in Nicaragua, some of which was used to create rightwing death squads. (Reagan liked to sidestep Congress in creating private terrorist organizations for his foreign policy purposes, which he branded 'freedom fighters,' giving terrorists the idea that it was all right to inflict vast damage on civilians in order to achieve their goals). "

The Project for the New American Century

2006-01-10T15:59:00.000Z

If you don't know this it is time you did. If you have not read this it is high time to do so.

In the next few months we will either see a halt to the spread of American global domination under a neo-con tyrant or the whole thing will be beyond redemption.

We need to act determinedly and together.

The Project for the New American Century: "The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based
think tank created in 1997. Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one
thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of
all nations. They chafe at the idea that the United States, the last
remaining superpower, does not do more by way of economic and military
force to bring the rest of the world under the umbrella of a new
socio-economic Pax Americana."

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: Fitzgerald Maintains Focus on Rove

2006-01-10T15:26:00.000Z

Another Roving report suggests an indictment is coming soon.
Check this out.

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: Fitzgerald Maintains Focus on Rove: "Tuesday 10 January 2006

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to have spent the past month preparing evidence he will present to a grand jury alleging that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove knowingly made false statements to FBI and Justice Department investigators and lied under oath while he was being questioned about his role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity more than two years ago, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe."

Respect agenda or state terrorism?

2006-01-10T12:35:00.000Z

On the Today programme this morning we heard Blair talk of "eye watering proposals, not eye catching proposals."

It's Blair's way to detain , it's his way to embrace,
Like a knee to your balls or a fist in your face.

This is the next stage of imposing a Police State.
If you have cash in your pocket now you must prove it is yours.
If you do something the Police do not like you face an instant fine, summary justice. You can appeal later, if you dare.
Now you are suddenly guilty till proven innocent.
This is Blair's 21 century England.

Meanwhile a National Parenting Academy knows more about parenting than we do as parents. Just as we must assume British people know better how to rule Iraq than the Iraqis.

I come back to the fundamental issue that parenting is about giving an example.

The Blair Government is a terrible parent to the country, just as the Blair's are poor parents to their own children. Blair's son is a drunken brawler, his daughter probably suicidal.

Blair has made peace with the IRA. Why not, he behaves just like they did.

The IRA imposed their own bully boy gun-law on republican parts of Northern Ireland where the RUC had lost control.

The UN had lost control of Iraq according to Blair, so he was entitled to impose his torturing murdering army on the people of Iraq, doing the will of the UN in spite of its democratic opposition to the Anglo American invasion.

Blair and Bush can override democracy in the UN and start wars of aggression with impunity based on deliberate lies.

Student sare sent down for plagiarising essays, while Blair gets away with plagiarising out of date thesese for false propaganda.

We simply will not take it any more.

You absolutley invalidate your right to impose law in this country if you refuse to abide by the International system of law that you signed up to, Mr Blair. You are a war criminal. You are a thug.

Now you think you can impose state thuggery on our own people.

Nanny Blair strikes again on parenting | the Daily Mail: "Tony Blair is today giving the State alarming powers to seize control of how parents raise their children.

A National Parenting Academy will teach health professionals and social workers how to educate new mothers and fathers about their 'responsibilities'.

They will begin handing out the advice at ante-natal classes or in home visits immediately after a child is born.

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Parents whose children step out of line later in life will face draconian sanctions, including parenting orders, even if they have not broken the law.

Last night, critics attacked the plan as the most alarming example to date of the Government's 'nanny statism'.

They said the Prime Minister wanted to control every aspect of a child's upbringing from Whitehall.

'Orwellian'

Will McMahon, senior associate of the Crime and Society Foundation, said: 'The Government clearly wants to take over the parenting role. This expansion in powers has an Orwellian feel to it.'"

Feingold won't rule out Bush impeachment

2006-01-09T16:53:00.000Z

Hey there, why not string them up together,
or better yet, erect a ducking stool across the pond, maybe even start a sweepstake on who gets impeached first.

Feingold won't rule out Bush impeachment: "Feingold won't rule out Bush impeachment

By Shay Totten & Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian

posted January 8, 2006

BURLINGTON — If Pres. George Bush broke laws when ordering wiretaps and secret spying on U.S. citizens, a key Senate Democrat said he would not rule out calling for his impeachment."

Blair 'should be impeached over Iraq war' - Yahoo! News UK

2006-01-09T14:50:00.000Z

Hey the big "I" word over here.
But is it being said out side of the land of the Yahoos?

It is great to see a top General standing up to be counted asking for Blair to be held account.

Maybe we need a military coup before we have true democracy.
Wait a minute, is that they way they are justifying the iraq invasion now?

Well, the yanks are already embedded here, threatening to shoot ius if we go near their permanent bases.

Blair 'should be impeached over Iraq war' - Yahoo! News UK: "Blair 'should be impeached over Iraq war'
ITN Monday January 9, 11:50 AM

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Blair 'should be impeached over Iraq war'
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Tony Blair should be impeached over the Iraq war, a former top British soldier has said.

General Sir Michael Rose, who was a UN commander in Bosnia, says the Prime Minister has to be held to account.

He claims Mr Blair's actions were somewhere in between getting the politics wrong and actually acting illegally.

Certainly from a soldier's perspective there can't be any more serious decision taken by a prime minister than declaring war,' he said.

'And then to go to war on what turns out to be false grounds is something that no one should be allowed to walk away from.'

The general accepted Parliament had endorsed the war, but he said that was because the Prime Minister had stressed the weapons of mass destruction argument.

Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price has already led calls for Tony Blair to be impeached over the war in Iraq.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said: 'General Rose is entitled to his view. Equally, the Government is entitled to point out that we have had free democratic elections in Iraq for the first time in well over a generation."

Salon.com News | The atheist

2006-01-09T10:24:00.000Z

Oh Mr Dawkins, please!

I am delighted Dawkins is having air time to attack religion. But I wish he were a little less naive than this.
The quote below looks like the most innocent believer in some kind of unacknowledged "God" of progresss or scientific advance.
The Bush dark age is not something we can suppose will just go away. These morons have atomic bombs at their disposal.

Salon.com News | The atheist: "Still, so many people resist believing in evolution. Where does the resistance come from?

It comes, I'm sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States.

My American friends tell me that you are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, it's slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted Bush in.

But the broad direction of history is toward enlightenment, and so I think that what America is going through at the moment will prove to be a temporary reverse. I think there is great hope for the future. My advice would be, Don't despair, these things pass."

GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could Be Harmed

2006-01-09T10:12:00.000Z

It is pretty clear we are getting GM foods by the back door (Europe) even after closing the front door on this Blairy option through public opinion.
Now science starts to put the boot in.
Just how much damage has been done already to us or the biosphere?

GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could Be Harmed: "GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could Be Harmed
Mortality rate for new-born rats six times higher when mother was fed on a diet of modified soya
by Geoffrey Lean

Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies, startling new research suggests.

The World Trade Organization is expected next month to support a bid by the Bush administration to force European countries to accept GM foods.

The study - carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences - found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many were also severely underweight.

The research - which is being prepared for publication - is just one of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food damages human health. Italian research has found that modified soya affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon a decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study found they caused lung damage.

And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech giant Monsanto, which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn had smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional one."

Iraq news

2006-01-09T08:06:00.000Z

A despatch from Iraq for you.
Like 120 other occupied countries there will be permanent US bases in Iraq.
Meanwhile the US are retreating on the ground everywhere and bombing more and more places from the air.

War is utterly disgusting. This war is an Anglo-saxon obscenity.

"US Propaganda vs. Iraqi Reality

It appears as though the Cheney administration will soon “redeploy”

thousands of US troops out of Iraq. While several permanent US military

bases are under construction there as I type this, the Capital Hill

Cabal, desperate to paint the Iraq disaster in a glorious hue, are

working their pundits and spokespeople overtime to convince the

ill-informed they have not failed dismally in every aspect of their

illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush did not mention Iraq

once. Instead, he spoke of the bright and shining US economy and the

need to maintain current tax cuts.

“Unfortunately, just as we’re seeing new evidence of how our tax cuts

have created jobs and opportunity, some people in Washington are saying

we need to raise your taxes,” he said, “They want the tax cuts to expire

in a few years, or even repeal the tax cuts now.”

What better time to maintain tax cuts in the US, particularly when a new

study by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda

Bilmes estimates the cost of the Iraq war to be between $1-2 trillion,

and the national debt already over $8 trillion?

Meanwhile, the reality in Iraq is the opposite of that generated by the

Cheney administration as the carnage and chaos in Iraq worsens each day.

A quick look at foreign media outlets yields the following developments

that were either not reported or under-reported in the US:

January 4:

-Unidentified gunmen assassinated Rahim Ali al-Sudani, director-general

of the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and his son early on the morning of 4 January

in Al-Amiriyah area in northern Baghdad.

-Clashes broke out between civilians protesting against unemployment and

Iraqi police in Al-Nasiriyah city in Dhi Qar Governorate, wounding

scores of civilians and police officers. The TV added within the same

news summary that two civilians were “martyred” and two others were

injured when an explosive charge missed a US patrol unit in Kirkuk.

-Al Sharqiyah television reported that a US plane had crashed in Mosul.

Quoting its correspondent in the city, the TV said that US forces had

rushed to the area and sealed off the scene where the crash occurred.

January 5:

-At least 130 Iraqis and 11 US soldiers die (highest number of US

soldiers killed in one day since August) in one of the bloodiest days in

Iraq since the invasion.

January 6:

-A medical source at Al-Ramadi State Hospital [speaking on condition of

anonymity] reports that 14 civilians, including three children, “were

martyred at the hands of US snipers today.” The source added that “the

snipers stationed on roof tops of high buildings in Al-Ramadi, killed

those victims in the Al-Ma’arid district in the city center this

morning”. Al Sharqiyah correspondent adds that “Al-Ramadi has witnessed

massive protests against the presence of US snipers who have been

deployed throughout the city, spreading fear among residents.”

Al-Sharqiyah says that the US armed forces have yet to comment on this

incident.

-For security purposes, Iraq has suspended its daily pumping of 200,000

barrels of crude oil to major oil refineries in Bayji, north of Baghdad.

-A US convoy came under attack in Samarra when an explosive device

planted near a petrol station was detonated. Four children were injured

in the attack and were rushed to Samarra State Hospital.

-A doctor at Nasiriyah Hospital reported that two Iraqis were killed and

23 were injured today as clashes between demonstrators, who were

protesting against unemployment, and Iraqi police continued in Nasiriyah

in southern Iraq.

January 7:

-Fierce clashes broke out between resistance fighters and US forces in

Fallujah when armed men battled with the US troops in al-Tharthar Street

in the eastern part of the city as the latter tightened security

measures, blocking all main entrances to the city. Local residents also

reported fierce clashes between US soldiers and resistance fighters on

Arba’ien Street in central Fallujah.

-Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb went off at about 7:30 a.m. (0430

GMT) in eastern Fallujah as a US military patrol was passing by,

destroying a US Humvee, killing or wounding the soldiers aboard, the

source said. An Iraqi doctor from Fallujah General Hospital was killed

by a US sniper, according to residents.

A recent email from a good friend in Baghdad sums up life for Iraqis in

their new “democracy”:

“We are living in a very critical situation now, for the ING [Iraqi

National Guard] are covering every corner around us wherever you go

inside Baghdad. The killings are ongoing everywhere inside and outside

the city.”

“Everybody in my family is safe for now only because no one is

interested in putting themselves in danger. Demonstrations are going on

all over Iraq for different reasons; price of fuel, lack of security,

jobless people are having demonstrations as well as those who do not

accept the presence of the Badr Brigades or the American forces.

[Meanwhile others are demonstrating in support of the Badr Brigades but

against the Americans.]”

“This is some kind of situation around us. The last four nights without

electricity…only half an hour every six hours. Fuel prices prevent

people from running their generators at home. Fuel on the black market

is fifty times the price what it used to be, and nobody can stand

waiting at the pumps for days anymore. The minister of oil resigned for

this, and Ahmed Chalabi is now the minister…everybody is frustrated yet

life is still going on as if the people are hypnotized.”

“Nothing has changed except that we see US Humvees and pick-up trucks

full of Iraqi National Guard everywhere [in Baghdad,]” he concluded."

Sharon the man of pieces.

2006-01-09T07:41:00.000Z

Hail and farewell "man of peace."
I want to ask if this is what unites Israelis?

1953: he was the leader of the Israeli army’s Unit 101 that herded 69 civilians into their houses during a raid against the Palestinian village Qibya – before dynamiting all the houses. There were no survivors.
1971: he promoted a policy of bulldozing and demolishing Palestinian houses in the Gaza under the pretext of security. Destroying the houses of an occupied population is a war crime under Geneva Conventions.
1982: he was the architect of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon which became known in Israel as ‘Sharon’s war’. His invasion resulted in the deaths of more than 15 000 Lebanese civilians and he earned the epithet ‘the Butcher of Beirut’.
1982: during the invasion, Sharon cooperated with and provided protection to the armed militias of the extreme right wing Phalange fascist group when they massacred over 3 000 unarmed refugees (largely women and children) in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. An Israeli Commission of Enquiry found him “personally responsible” for the massacres and ruled that he was not fit to be the Israeli minister of defence.
1990-92: he served as Israel’s housing minister. This period saw the rapid and deliberate expansion of Israeli colonies (or settlements) on Palestinian land. The building of settlements / colonies on occupied land is illegal under the Geneva Conventions.
2000: Sharon triggered the second intifada by deliberately and provocatively swaggering into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, supported by thousands of Israeli security personnel.
2003: he was responsible for initiating the building of the apartheid wall, a grotesque 8-metre high wall which, on completion, will be 750 km long, imprisoning thousands of Palestinians and stealing large tracts of Palestinian land. The International Court of Justice ruled that the wall was illegal; Sharon refused to accept the ruling.
Through his prime ministership, he championed extra-judicial assassination of Palestinian leaders and the wanton bombings of Palestinian residential areas – both of which are illegal under international law.
When he was taken ill, Sharon led the world’s fourth largest army and sat atop more than 200 nuclear warheads, continuing to refuse the International Atomic Energy Agency any access to nuclear facilities.

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | School entry pledge is 'rubbish'

2006-01-08T11:33:00.000Z

Does kelly's absolute assurance on school selection rank alonside Blair's absolute assurances on Iraq.

whatever the lawyerly fine print says the reality is that schools will be better able to cheat on student selection after the Blair government has had its way.
The question is will these Tory reforms get through without the backing of the tory party.

We wait with baited breath.

What we do not have is a debate on how more power to individual schools will benefit either parents or children.

The case has simply not been made.

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | School entry pledge is 'rubbish': "
Last Updated: Friday, 6 January 2006, 11:27 GMT
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
School entry pledge is 'rubbish'
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter, in Gateshead

John Bangs
John Bangs: critical of government intentions
A teachers' leader says it is 'absolute rubbish' for the government to say that school admission rules will not be changed by its Education Bill."

Newspapers Urge President to Quit

2006-01-07T19:11:00.000Z

Good grief. Impeaching Bush. No wonder the democrats are not keen. We would be left with Richard the heartless.

Newspapers Urge President to Quit: "Still, it amazes me when people make fun of the very notion that a president under a dark cloud might be asked to leave office, or given a push, in light of the very recent experience involving one William Jefferson Clinton. This seems especially poignant, in light of President Clinton leaving office with an approval rating over 60%, while the current occupant of the White House sits at around 40%. Then there's the perennial debate over the relative demerits of fooling around with an intern vs. fooling an entire country into going to war based on false evidence (and anything else you'd care to add on top of that)."

Tales of the Freewayblogger IMPEACH

2006-01-06T21:59:00.000Z

Tales of the Freewayblogger

Maybe we could do the same over here

IMPEACH BLIER NOW

Fisk on Sharon

2006-01-06T19:37:00.000Z

Reading Fisk on Sharon is shocking, not for the fact that he was legally held responsible for terrible masacres of Palestinians. We should all know that. What is shocking was the ruthless brutality with which the Israeli military and the US responded to the attempts to hold him accountable.
Did you know the Americans passed a law that allows them to attack the hague if it tries to arraign an American war criminal?

The "man of peace" is fading. His peace makers go on killing as willfully as any German fascist.

"The subsequent Israeli Kahan commission of enquiry into this atrocity

provided absolute proof that Israeli soldiers saw the massacre taking place.

The evidence of a Lieutenant Avi Grabovsky was crucial. He was an Israeli

deputy tank commander and reported what he saw to his higher command. "Don't

interfere," the senior officer said. Ever afterwards, Israeli embassies

around the world would claim that the commission held Sharon only indirectly

responsible for the massacre. It was untrue. The last page of the official

Israeli report held Sharon "personally responsible". It was years later that

the Israeli-trained Phalangist commander, Elie Hobeika, now working for the

Syrians, agreed to turn state's evidence against Sharon - now the Israeli

Prime Minister - at a Brussels court. The day after the Israeli attorney

general declared Sharon's defence a "state" matter, Hobeika was killed by a

massive car bomb in east Beirut. Israel denied responsibility. US Defence

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Brussels and quietly threatened to

withdraw Nato headquarters from Belgium if the country maintained its laws

to punish war criminals from foreign nations. Within months, George W Bush

had declared Sharon "a man of peace". It was all over."

2006-01-06T19:27:00.000Z

I picked up some quotes collected by Brian Robinson. they make scary reading.
On British TV soon we have Richard Dawkins picking up the cudgels to fight with the men of religion. He would not get a platform in America. He should get one here.
It is a pity he is such a very fundamentalist sort of atheist.

I guess that is too much to ask of this mad mad world.

Quotes of the Week
ARE AMERICANS AT LAST WAKING UP THE DANGER THEY ARE IN?

“I can’t help but recall the words of my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. James Luther Adams, who told us that when we were his age, and he was then close to eighty, we would all be fighting the ‘Christian fascists.’ He gave us that warning twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other prominent evangelists began speaking of a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all major American institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government, so as to transform the United States into a global Christian empire. At the time, it was hard to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously. But fascism, Adams warned, would not return wearing swastikas and brown shirts. Its ideological inheritors would cloak themselves in the language of the Bible; they would come carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance.”
(Chris Hedges, Harpers magazine)

“What is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America’s great political parties - the country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram on almost every issue... What’s also unique is the intensity, organization, and anger they have brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists, and home grown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance their loathing of other people’s beliefs, of America’s secular and liberal values, of an independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for objective knowledge has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for state power.”
(Bill Moyers, Union Theological Seminary)

“I am persuaded we face in our country a movement that is trying its best to hijack this nation in the name of a set of ideals and values it claims to be Christian but which, on examination, are the very antithesis of the Gospel that our Lord preached and by which we, as Jesus disciples, are challenged to live our lives in the world. If this movement is successful if it is not stopped in its tracks it will transform the United States into a political and cultural nightmare that not only turns its back on two hundred years of American history, it will also be one that leaves this nation unrecognisable from all that we have been and all that we might aspire to be as a democratic society.”
(Dr Hubert Locke, Afro-American theologian)

t r u t h o u t - FOCUS | Lou Dubose: The Pimping of the Presidency

2006-01-06T15:56:00.000Z

Any doubts I may have had that Bush and the Republicans are in deep trouble have gone with this story.
Hey, though, he will probably declare it is all a legitimate part on the war on the rest of us/ sorry / terror.

t r u t h o u t - FOCUS | Lou Dubose: The Pimping of the Presidency: "Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff's lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush 'Pioneer,' delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove's personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated."

3 GOP Senators Blast Bush Bid to Bypass Torture Ban

2006-01-06T08:30:00.000Z

Is McCain bidding to be the next President already or do Republicans actually oppose torture?

3 GOP Senators Blast Bush Bid to Bypass Torture Ban: "3 GOP Senators Blast Bush Bid to Bypass Torture Ban
Reject assertion he has right to waive rules to protect US security
by Charlie Savage

WASHINGTON -- Three key Republican senators yesterday condemned President Bush's assertion that his powers as commander in chief give him the authority to bypass a new law restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees.

John W. Warner Jr., a Virginia Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, issued a joint statement rejecting Bush's assertion that he can waive the restrictions on the use of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment against detainees to protect national security."

Anger as Britain Admits it was Wrong to Blame Iran for Deaths in Iraq

2006-01-06T08:12:00.000Z

This is a very interesting development.
When America and Israeli are looking set to attack Iran, why is the Uk suddenly backing off?
Soldiers families are angry about the politics being played with the deaths of their children.
Could our Albion just be respecting the trurh?
I doubt it.

Anger as Britain Admits it was Wrong to Blame Iran for Deaths in Iraq: "MPs and soldiers' families have demanded an explanation from the Government after a U-turn over claims that Iran was complicit in the killing of British soldiers in southern Iraq.

Britain has dropped the charge of Iranian involvement after senior officials had repeatedly accused the Tehran regime of supplying sophisticated explosive devices to insurgents. Government officials now acknowledge that there is no evidence, or even reliable intelligence, connecting the Iranian government to the infra-red triggered bombs which have killed 10 British soldiers in the past eight months.

The twist comes three months after British officials first made strong assertions, widely reported in the media, of an Iranian hand in killing British soldiers. The highly publicised allegations emerged as America was locked in tense confrontation with Iran over its nuclear policy. It led to a major row and the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warned Tehran of the consequences of continuing interference in Iraq."

News from Italy

2006-01-06T07:51:00.000Z

"Italian kids hunted out stockings on Thursday ahead of the Epiphany holiday which brings a final round of gifts for children and the knowledge that seasonal festivities are almost over .

According to tradition, a white-haired witch known as the 'Befana' arrives on her broomstick during the night of January 5 and fills the stockings of good children with toys and sweets .

The naughty ones, on the other hand, find a lump of coal ."

I thought this was Condi rice on a visit.
I guess it is just the same old epiphany. It would indeed be a miracle if Rice brought anything but a cold and deadly smile.

The Italians have been trying to arrrest suspicious if not very wise men from the middle east who have been trying to steal their citizens.

Maybe under their Berlusconi leader, they will just hand the CIA men the odd lump of coal.

t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The un Quiet Death of Freedom?

2006-01-05T18:51:00.000Z

The BBC that fought against the war in iraq has been crushed. Now they do not even quote our greatest living dramatist when he tells the truth about the destruction of our free world.

t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The Quiet Death of Freedom?: "To its credit, the Guardian in London published every word of Pinter's warning. To its shame, though unsurprising, the state television broadcaster ignored it. All that Newsnight flatulence about the arts, all that recycled preening for the cameras at Booker prize-giving events, yet the BBC could not make room for Britain's greatest living dramatist, so honoured, to tell the truth.

For the BBC, it simply never happened, just as the killing of half a million children by America's medieval siege of Iraq during the 1990s never happened, just as the Dhafir and Padilla trials and the Senate vote, banning freedom, never happened. The political prisoners of Belmarsh barely exist; and a big, brave posse of Metropolitan police never swept away Maya Evans as she publicly grieved for British soldiers killed in the cause of nothing except rotten power."

t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The Quiet Death of Freedom?

2006-01-05T18:46:00.000Z

When I write about the death of freedom I feel like an outsider who is not going to be believed.
When I see Pilger writing this article I feel chilled.

Bush and Blair are completing their programme to destroy a free world.

700 people have been to Blairy england this week.
Our visitors are going up staedily.

But we have to do something more than read and write.

If the mad dads can do something we surely must be able to find a way to confront the new barbarism.
t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The Quiet Death of Freedom?: "Freedom is dying.

Eighty-year-old John Catt served with the RAF in the Second World War. Last September, he was stopped by police in Brighton for wearing an 'offensive' T-shirt, which suggested that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act and handcuffed, with his arms held behind his back. The official record of the arrest says the 'purpose' of searching him was 'terrorism' and the 'grounds for intervention' were 'carrying placard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info' [sic].

He is awaiting trial."

Insurgency or low key civil war in Iraq?

2006-01-05T10:48:00.000Z

The level of bombing has suddenly escalated. Shia and Sunni are becoming more antagonistic. A Shia minister's sister is kidnapped by Sunnis.

At what point should we start to call it civil war?

The Sunnis protest about the elections. But the UN seems to be content.

What is true?

t r u t h o u t - 50 Killed in String of Bombings in Iraq: "And this morning, Baghdad residents awoke to massive traffic jams and roadblocks as Iraqi security forces responded to a more personal attack: The kidnapping of the sister of Interior Minister Bayan Jabr. Mr. Jabr is one of the most polarizing figures in Iraq, a former Shiite militia leader whom Sunni Arabs have accused of orchestrating a widespread program of assassinating Sunnis.

After the kidnapping, Iraqi forces shut down bridges, set up checkpoints and rerouted traffic across much of central Baghdad. But insurgents penetrated the security to launch several car bombs throughout the city. In Khadhamiya, a large Shiite district, a stationary car bomb ripped through an Iraqi police patrol at about 10:30 a.m., killing 5 and wounding 15, the Interior Ministry said."

CBS News | Sharon Out Of Surgery After Stroke | January 5, 2006 05:03:55

2006-01-05T10:27:00.000Z

sharon is finished. There is little or no chance of him resuming control of Israel's destiny.
The butcher of the camps has ended his relabelling as a man of peace. He will end as a man of blood, even as the blood drains out of his brain.

But there is great hope that the new leader of the Labour party can now lead the country towards peace and justice. Let us hope for that.

CBS News | Sharon Out Of Surgery After Stroke | January 5, 2006 05:03:55: "Hawkins reports that Sharon's stroke throws Israeli politics into a period of uncertainty as Sharon runs for re-election on March 28 as the head of a new centrist party, Kadima. He enjoys a wide lead in the polls. The party's strength is centered on Sharon, and if he were forced to step down, Israel's political scene would be thrown into turmoil.

Ehud Olmert, 'is a veteran Israeli politician,' said Daniel Kurtzer, former ambassador to Israel. “Although it was clear during the last months in the Likud [Party] that his popularity was beginning to wane. He is a proven leader but he will now have to build a popular base certainly for the next few months of governing.” "

Bush could bypass new torture ban - The Boston Globe

2006-01-05T09:38:00.000Z

It is the usual story, victory without victory.
Torture is gone officially. But Bush can still do it as commander in chief.

America, when will you give up dictatorship and return to democracy?

Bush could bypass new torture ban - The Boston Globe: "Bush could bypass new torture ban
Waiver right is reserved

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 4, 2006

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief."

Guardians of power the myth of the liberal media

2006-01-05T09:35:00.000Z

Here is abook that is likely to tell us what most of us bloggers know already, that the supposedly liberal press runs a right wing agenda. It is interesting that they actually claim that this is a psychopathic agenda, one of ruthless exploitation of people and planet.

media alerts: "AD: The focus of your book is the liberal media. Why have you chosen this target rather than the right-wing media which many would consider far worse?

ML: As Joel Bakan notes in his book, The Corporation, the current status quo is fundamentally psychopathic - it systematically subordinates people and planet to profit. Much of the suffering in the Third World is the result of deliberate military, economic and other interventions to subordinate the interests of local people to Western corporate profits. Much of the destruction of the environment - for example of the climate - is the result of the same psychopathic set of priorities."

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Marketing Narnia

2006-01-04T19:25:00.000Z

It looks like the neo-con Christians are pedalling narnia as an antidote to Harry Potter (see the link)
For all the brilliance of hi teck animation this film is crap.
It is crap because Lewis' Narnia is crap.
His characters make Blyton's famous five look really dynamic. They are very pale shadows of Harry and co.

What really annoys me about Narnia is that there is no real learning here for the children. they escape to a fake Christian Fantasy worlf which lacks the complexity of the real world we live in.

While you come away from Potter knowing evil is a part of you, you come away from Narnia thinking it is probably just the other person's problem.
Yuk.

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Marketing Narnia: "What Lewis did understand as a theologian was what he already knew as a literary critic and fantasy writer: that the imagination was a crucial human apparatus. Thus his response, his theodicy perhaps, to the terrors of the second war, and its effects on the childhood psyche was to create an alternative world, a land only accessible via the banality of a wardrobe and the richness of a child's imagination. Lewis' greatest theological contribution was to posit imagination in the face of evil. Lewis' theology was therefore naturally concerned with myth. And here is where he cannot be fully appropriated by the kind of evangelicalism that is buying up copies of Mere Christianity."

Nuclear War against Iran

2006-01-04T12:33:00.000Z

Well maybe I was wrong about Ritter's verdict.
Likkud already voted for bombing.
the Iranains were mad enough to give the neo-cons and Israelis a great big excuse for real Shia martyrdom.

it is a mad mad mad world we live in.

Nuclear War against Iran: "The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran is now in the final planning stages.

Coalition partners, which include the US, Israel and Turkey are in 'an advanced stage of readiness'. "

Reuters AlertNet - US Rep. Murtha says he wouldn't join military now

2006-01-04T11:57:00.000Z

Take note of this. My reading suggests Murtha wants an end to recruitment for a criminal invasion.

Reuters AlertNet - US Rep. Murtha says he wouldn't join military now: "WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Rep. John Murtha, a key Democratic voice who favors pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, said in remarks airing on Monday that he would not join the U.S. military today.

A decorated Vietnam combat veteran who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Murtha told ABC News' 'Nightline' program that Iraq 'absolutely' was a wrong war for President George W. Bush to have launched.

'Would you join (the military) today?,' he was asked in an interview taped on Friday.

'No,' replied Murtha of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees defense spending and one of his party's leading spokesmen on military issues.

'And I think you're saying the average guy out there who's considering recruitment is justified in saying 'I don't want to serve',' the interviewer continued.

'Exactly right,' said Murtha, who drew White House ire in November after becoming the first ranking Democrat to push for a pullout of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as it could be done safely."

AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: ACLU calls for special counsel on domestic spying

2006-01-04T11:54:00.000Z

AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: ACLU calls for special counsel on domestic spying: "The American Civil Union placed a full-page ad in the New York Times demanding an investigation into George Bush and the NSA's warrantless surveillance programs. The ad likens Bush's crimes to those of Nixon. 'What should we do when the president lies to us and breaks the law?' asks the headline. (Hint: 'Kidnap him, fly him to Morocco, and torture him' is probably the wrong answer.)"

That is still my first choice for any extraordinary renditions this year.

Scott Ritter on Iraq's future

2006-01-04T10:46:00.000Z

I am not as pessimistic as Scott Ritter. He thinks Iraq is headed for civil war. the surprising thing is that the country has resisted that inspite of massive provocation.

I do not think history can repeat itself now either, with the Anglos regretting their backing for the Shia and reverting to the Sunni arabs, as happened in 1920.

What the Americans now face is a very weak Iraq next to an ever stronger Iran.
It is no longer possible to think of Iraq as a bolster against the Iranians.

If Ritter is right then a military strike against Iran is inevitable.

I think we will just see a Likkud backed Isreaeli air strike against the Iranian weapons facility.

Democracy sweeping the middle east.
Do not make me laugh.

America has invaded many countries since the second world war it has not established a stable democracy in any of them.

AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Elections in 2005, Civil War in 2006?: "And while the failings of interim governance can be blamed on secular Shi'a like Iyad Allawi, or non-SCIRI Shi'a like Ibrahim Jafari, SCIRI operated behind the scenes to take control of the formulation of Iraq's new constitution (through the October 2005 referendum vote) and the new Iraqi government based upon that constitution (through the December 2005 election). Most Iraqis, when casting their votes in December, were ill informed about the reality of the internal political dynamic that they were participating in, and in effect certifying through their participation. America's rush to create a free and democratic Iraq has, in the end, created the exact opposite. We simply replaced one form of tyranny (the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein) with another (the theocratic dictatorship of SCIRI)."

Cindy Sheehan meets the mayor of London

2006-01-04T10:35:00.000Z

Cindy Sheehan is campaigning for peace round Europe just now. The very non-new Labout mayor of London has been lending his support.

London will be a lot safer from Islamist bombers when we renounce Blair and all his works.

Iraq is his legacy.
Let it not be London's broken mill stone.

t r u t h o u t - Cindy Sheehan | Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War Crimes: "The Mayor of London held a reception in honor of our peace efforts at the new and very modern City Hall, near the impressive and intimidating Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. Mayor Ken Livingstone has always been an outspoken critic of the Iraq war and the war crimes of Tweedledum and Tweedledee ... Bush and Blair ... the corrupt, yet sadly comical, mis-leaders of two of the most powerful countries on the planet. I believe Bush and Blair are too far gone for redemption. They both need to be removed from their power and tried for their war crimes and betrayals. Until they are removed, the murder and the mayhem will continue."

Hail the conquering hero chief. A fascist who cannot even make the oil flow on time.

2006-01-04T10:30:00.000Z

While a token right winger writes in the Independent that Bush may turn the tide in America this year with a slow withdrawal of troops on the back of the introduction of democracy in Iraq, the dreadful truth is available to all who wish to see it.
Bush has just pulled the plug on Iraq reconstruction money making his invasion one of the biggest disasters for an invaded people in history.

Another book comes out today with yet more evidence that the CIA knew theat Iraq had no weapons programme for mass destruction and had given up in 1992.

Hail to the chief, then,

and snow, ice and collapse of heating oil too.

t r u t h o u t - Iraq's Oil Exports Hit Lowest Level since War: " Iraq's Oil Exports Hit Lowest Level since War
Reuters

Monday 02 January 2006

Baghdad - Iraq's oil exports hit their lowest level since the war, according to figures released on Monday, heightening a sense of crisis as fuel supplies grow scarce and political leaders struggle to form a government.

Iraq exported 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil in December, a senior official said - less than any month since exports resumed in mid-2003 after the US invasion and about half the level seen during sanctions under Saddam Hussein."

Print - Steven Spielberg's Controversial New Film: The War on "Munich" - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

2006-01-03T18:35:00.000Z

The assault on Spielberg's new film began even before it came out.
But the time has passed for neo-conservatism. We are all waking up to the relativism of morality.

The only way forward to peace and justice is a balanced look at what is happening in the world.

Spielberg is trying to contribute to this. We should go see the film.

"The War on 'Munich'

By Michelle Goldberg

Neoconservatives launch a pre-emptive strike on Spielberg's latest, which dares to break the rules of post-9/11 political correctness."

A year in Blairy England

2006-01-02T17:33:00.000Z

To all our friends, family, and to the readers of Blairy (rhymes with merry) England.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2006

A year ago G and I were married happily, through a druid ritual in the north ring of the Avebury Temple complex. Our four children opened and closed the proceedings as holders of the mythical gates in the east south west and north. It was a very special occasion, the fulfilment of a dream that I had been only dreaming for 20 years. It was such a delight to have wonderful friends and family willing to risk the fierce cold of a winter solstice open-air ceremony.
It would also have been a wonderful beginning to the year but for a particularly spiteful and stupid head teacher/cum bad fairy at the boys’ school, called Clare Stanley. She felt able to complain to Social Services of her concerns about our parenting, “of J in particular.”
At the same time she also felt able to close down the school for a day due to snow, which failed to fall. It was the only school in the county to close. C was already assessed as the intellectual and emotional centre of his year 6 class by his teacher. He was later chosen for the “gifted and talented” summer school on transition to secondary school, as was my daughter R before him. But J, after an excellent report in year 1 for the second half of the summer term, was floundering in a group of boys described by one teaching assistant as “without motivation for learning”. He had also been paired with a boy with serious physical and mental impairments.
They say it takes a whole village to raise a child. That means co-operation and collaboration. But rather than helping us as parents, supporting J through a change of family circumstances, physical relocation and a change of schools, Charlbury School took an antagonistic stance to G and I. J was not a happy boy last year. He was struggling to adapt to the loss of regular week ends with his dad among many things. By their condemnation of G and I, Mrs Morris, and Mrs Stanley made his life a lot more unhappy.
Even today I remain utterly furious with the treatment we have received.

I resolved to write this diary of life in Middle England under the Government of Blair and Co in a place reputedly as fine as anywhere in the country. It focuses on the spiritual, ethical, political and educational aspects of family life and world ethics. Here is a link to my first entry:

January

http://blairyengland.blogspot.com/2005/01/thoroughly-modern-marriage-or.html

Though I had wanted to focus mostly on family life I became more and more angry with the steady destruction of freedom and dignity for all the people of England.
Almost immediately I found myself picking up in the news the criminal culpability of the parents in the houses of Windsor, Thatcher and Blair, even if Euan Blair is no more than a drunk and disorderly student.

http://blairyengland.blogspot.com/2005/01/sins-of-parents.html

February.
Auschwitz reviewed! Life is awful.

Blairco invited us to remember Auschwitz, at the same time that the stories of torture surfaced among the coalition’s troops in Iraq. My disgust with the hypocrisy reached a new higher level. If we were being abused, then the Iraqis were being brutalised.

The Government’s war on terror had become a war on our own democracy. I wrote “These may be the last days of Liberal Democracy. If we do not stand up and be counted, in parliament and all areas of our lives, the freedom under law which has made this country the highest ideal for many of the citizens and countries of our world will be gone, and probably forever.History is about to repeat itself. A charismatic leader, dismissed by many as a second rate mind, is positioning himself for permanent power. "You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," proclaimed Hitler, 72 years ago this week, standing in front of the burned-out Reichstag, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion..”

“The rules of the game have changed after 911,” said Blair. He clearly thought he could get away with anything now, as did Bush.

March.
H gets into Cambridge. We go to Social Services. R goes to Africa. The Pope died.

As Blair pressed ahead with laws to terrorise us, I pressed complaints against Charlbury School under the European Laws on Human rights. Meanwhile, H, my older daughter was offered a place at Cambridge to study for a Post Graduate Certificate in education. That would make us three qualified teachers in the family, all of us with significant pastoral responsibility, both for children and adults.

Social Services opened and closed our case as fast as they could. We went to see the closed file. Social Care officially judge us to provide "good diet, clothing, and accommodation, a loving home, affectionate parenting, excellent access to books, toys and good social contacts. The children have a good social situation".
This judgement was backed by two doctors and two health visitors.

But what did Charlbury School offer? The head of Governors substantiated most of my complaints. Bullying and violence at the school continued to escalate. The head has had no real authority since the no-snow closure. Parents’ anger had continued to increase.

Meanwhile on the International scene "US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair deserve life sentences, with the possibility of parole after 25 years, for the war crimes and genocide in Iraq, according to a lawyers' panel”. Another International Tribunal repeated this ruling later.

Nationally, the Government’s assault on parents’ and human rights escalated. The Observer | UK News | Child database 'will breach human rights' I wrote “It is not only Blair and the new Home Secretary who are a threat to our Human Rights. The dreadful Margaret Hodge is on the attack too.”

I discovered the Simultaneous Policy, a strategy for changing the world across all the national vested interest boundaries and a way to focus the world movement for peace and justice.

I attended a panel of Governors to address my complaint that the management of the school was incompetent and a referral to social services abused our human right to privacy. They failed to address the issues properly. The social worker had judged the referral appropriate, so that was the end of it as far as these school governors were concerned. They avoided discussing the school closure, and dismissed my criticisms of management as motivated by retaliation. Mrs Stanley, through her adviser, claimed that “to inform is to consult” in terms of the human rights act. This is absolutely outrageous and an abuse of the English Language and English law.

I spoke at length with our local Health Visitor who insisted she never made a referral without discussing it first. It is a matter of ethics. The new Childrens’ Department of the county council must decide which policy is correct for them.

The death of the Polish Pope made huge headlines. Bush and Blair turned up, despite his condemnation of their war crimes. Never mind the ethics, never mind the politics, this is good media coverage! Spin! Spin! Spin! But George hears the word of God direct.

April.
Stanley buckles under the pressure. The truth hurts Blair too.

I used to live next door to Rowan and Jane Williams in the village. Rowan is a saintly man and quite a contrast to the new ex-Hitler youth Pope. As well as speeches against the war he has begun writing about parenting.

“Jane would come back regularly and say that the problem was not teaching children how to read;” wrote Rowan, “the problem was communicating with children who were simply not used to talking with adults at all or being talked to by adults. Children had, in effect, been turned loose. Literacy is not only about words; literacy is about the reading of feelings and persons, about speaking and listening: emotional literacy, social literacy. "When H was six her teacher commented that you could have a conversation with her as if she were an adult. That is how we brought her up, with deep respect for her intelligence and humanity. It was hard for me to listen to her pain one afternoon about not having her chosen college at Cambridge. But I listened patiently as I always have.
In many ways we are not merely good enough parents we are really good parents. I cannot stand being judged by my inferiors as has happened this year.G told me the other day that H described to her the "loving" and "listening" qualities she values in me. I am also proud that she has formed such a confiding relationship in G.

Election torpor gripped the country. The only excitement was a stream of leaks exposing Blair’s lying connivance with Bush over the secret war plan.

Evidence started to build up that Bush had stolen his second election. New Labour was caught rigging ballots with false postal votes.

The “Respect agenda” was launched. I wrote “Mr Blair wants us to forget his sins and think of the future of education. If we re-elect Blair and the Opus Dei-fied Ruth Kelly, we will have to put up with an even tighter stranglehold on education from a National Curriculum that has already failed our children. We will also have to put up with an ever greater intrusion of the state into the lives of parents.No wonder parents and children are in revolt.Set us an example of respect for the truth, and direct honest clear communication, Mr Blair.No more plagiarising student theses. No more lies and spin.It is not the footballers' foul mouths we need to worry about affecting our children. It is political leaders who are war criminals, too powerful to be brought to justice.”

Suddenly, just as we are about to take J away from school in utter disgust and dejection, Stanley resigned. Several middle class children, including the son of a governor, had already been removed from the school. Stanley would still be there till the end of term but a back up head would be on hand, part- time, to help. From sources inside the governors I have discovered the school was heading for special measures, and the staff were actively resisting improvements suggested by the chair of governors. But some staff and governors chose to claim that all the school’s problems with parents were my fault for complaining.

May.
The tide has turned.

The Downing Street memo leaked just before the election. The Tories stale old message offered too little to topple New Labour, but the Blair majority for a Tory agenda had been wiped out.

We decided to keep J at the school. Under the influence of the incoming head things started to improve. He is happier and more confident. R may not have won the county swimming this year but she has made a huge step forward intellectually and socially after the Africa trip. She proves the case that late developers can go on to do really well at secondary school.

The blogosphere is making a big difference. People are finding the truth no longer comes in state manipulated media and television. But information comes fast on the web through blogs like mine. A vast engine of assault on the Bush Blair dominance of the world is building strength.

By the end of the month I was confident enough to write a positive assessment of how we are as a family.
http://blairyengland.blogspot.com/2005/05/respect-man-but-have-we-earned-it.html

June.
Making the G8 History?

Those early months of 2005 had been some of the darkest of my life. I have never been so hurt and angry. By April Stanley had resigned but the slur on my family remained. My work had suffered. I had become depressed.
Now I became more confident, joining the Joseph Rowntree Power Enquiry and writing open letters to my MP, David Cameron. He replied to some of them. But he avoided the Downing Street memo issue. We have an elite consensus conspiracy here just like in the states.
I now made one of my daftest decisions of the year. I took us all to Edinburgh to campaign on poverty. Bob Geldof, the organiser, after telling us to come in our millions, was much smarter. He did not turn up, preferring pop songs in Hyde Park. Naturally so did all the media.
It was amazing, camping by a midge infested lake, listening to the destruction of the Lions rugby team on the radio while driving into almost deserted Edinburgh streets. I am not sure the boys even understood the gesture. Edinburgh was full of Christian NGO’s. The real activists were all camping in an ecology centre near Gleneagles. You live and learn, maybe.

The G8 made some doubtful commitments to Africa. Blair, Brown and Bush felt happy. Most of us felt cheated.

July.
H graduates. Euen Blair crashes his car on the way to graduate.

It is a great day when you see your daughter graduate. “It is the day when almost 20 years of preparation for life culminates in a short ceremony. I am painfully aware that is her dead mother’s wealth that has supported her though university, while G and I have merely done our best to help her learn to play the Academic English Literature game.”
http://blairyengland.blogspot.com/2005/07/graduation-day.html

Too bad the event was overshadowed by the crushing security put on for the attendance of the war criminal prime minister who runs our country.

I observed that the country has become a police state, and wrote the “After Downing Street rap.” My poems on Falluja in Charlbury were printed in Australia.

Blair’s cuckoos came home to roost on 7/7. The bombers explicitly blamed his war crimes. He responded with ever more frightening measures of control. The battle between Blair and the Law really started to hot up.

August.
Holiday time, but the politics stay hot.

G and I had a wonderful week off in Wales together. The five of us went surfing in Cornwall. We started as a motley crew but finished as a tight team. We had triumphed over wind, rain and cold weather. The surfing was a disappointment. We enjoyed camping and playing cricket.

September.
A school transformed. A happier family.
And a production in Oxford

The new head, Jane Holt, has made changes that have turned the school around. Very soon J is learning to read fast. He has a decent new teacher. Even in September the transformation in the running of the school is extraordinary. I only wanted an apology from Stanley. Though I still did not have one, this was worth more. The Stanley faction of governors have mostly gone and been replaced with better ones.
Joel thrives now, and R and C are doing very well at Chippy School.
Suddenly my reclusive life has become more outgoing. I directed a play in Oxford with R and her three best friends as the actors. Directing your own daughter is not exactly easy, but we battled our way through it. I am glad to have done it though I doubt I shall do it again. The girls were as good as they could be under a very tight schedule.

Hurricanes blew through America. But even the destruction of New Orleans was not enough to prove just how corrupt the Bushmen are. But they were humiliated.
In England Blair was no longer strong enough to enforce his most draconian terror measures. The forces of democracy are rising again.

October.
Big steps forward

G gave up smoking and drinking. We all worked very hard to support her make these changes. I am so proud of us all. Within a short time G was fitter, stronger, and full of energy, looking forward to teaching again. All the extra building blocks I started to assemble in January to make us a good working unit were fitting into place. Our general practitioner had advised us to have every possible check on J to ensure our case against the education department. Every check outside the school came out very positively. I can say with little fear of contradiction now that J’s problems were natural and normal, except for the destructive effects of the dysfunctional school environment.
Our local authority has been defensive and complacent in response to my challenge. But the corruption of the Bushmen and Blairco was under ever greater scrutiny. The obscenity of Iraq will not go away. The destruction of Falluja ranks higher than Guernica as a war crime.
Blunkett and Blears had turned our Home Office into a great big joke. In 1984 speak they resigned because of misconduct, while simultaneously insisting on their uncompromised integrity. Yes Sir, and black is white, too, in Blairy England. Now he blew Pensions. Eventually he was laughed out of office, a contemptible corrupt immoral creep. The most reactionary and repellent cabinet minister in 100 years ended his political career as a Whitehall sex farce character. He was one of the last of the big Blair beasts. Thankfully, he is gone.

November.
Family therapy and more.

I have had family therapy to help earlier parentings as well as being a family therapist myself. This was a much better experience. The children were amazingly open and honest about life in our family. The therapists were impressed. But at the very first session they decided we did not need their help. I do not suppose they often meet a well functioning family like this one. I am so proud of us. Our lives get better by the week.
On the world scene the annus horibilis continues for Bush and Blair. Both are lame ducks, maybe even ripe for plucking.

http://blairyengland.blogspot.com/2005/11/fake-terror-road-to-dictatorship.html

By giving dictatorial powers to a crackpot head the Government has tyrannised my family this year. But we have come out stronger. Now the county must learn its lessons and so must the government. More power to heads is not justified. More power to governments is still less justified. But redress has begun. Now one Bushman is on trial and others will soon join Scooter Libby. Bush and Blair are being pounded by the forces of freedom and democracy for the first time. At last the craven media has joined in. Blair’s last deforms seem doomed to be defeated. There is renewed talk of impeachment for both Bush and Blair.

December

I JOIN WRITERS IN OXFORD, LAPIDUS, WOMB TWIN WORK, WYCHWOOD POETS. CHRISTMAS WITH THE WRITERS AT THE OXFORD PLAYHOUSE. CHRISTMAS WITH OXFORD STORYTELLERS. G TEACHING AGAIN. I EVEN ENTER THE POETRY SOCIETY COMPETITION

MEANWHILE, BLAIR GIVES UP ON EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE REFORM AND FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING. BUSH FIGHTS FOR CLIMATE DESTRUCTION AND TORTURE AGAINST ALL THE WORLD.

Althea Hayton came to visit us at the end of November unleashing an extraordinary burst of energy in both of us. We find we can both be our better selves! An outside world that had offered both of us much rejection in recent years suddenly started to welcome us once more with enthusiasm.
To cap it all we suddenly decided to move house. We could have stayed here till at least spring, but a stunning cottage presented itself to us outside the village and we could not resist.
I have been 14 years in Charlbury. R has lived here all her life. She is a swimming legend here in her young lifetime. But it is time to move forward. Many people have supported us in our struggle with Stanley. Many congratulated us on her going. The transformation of the school is there for all to see. But Charlbury has not offered us true friendship. Our best contacts are all outside the place.
I have lived here longer than in any other place, though I have worked in Oxford. I will doubtless miss so much about it. But G and I can now start afresh in a new place together. Over the next few weeks we will try to tie up the loose ends.
Nationally Cameron has had a remarkable triumph. I had a letter from him from the House of Commons the day he was selected as Tory leader. But his stance on Iraq is reprehensible. He fails to appreciate the monstrous crime we have perpetrated on the children of Iraq with our depleted uranium nuclear war.
The year ends with Harold Pinter receiving the Nobel Prize for writing. He denounces the crimes and corruption of the current world order in his acceptance speech.

We are with you Harold. Here is to a new year of poetry and education, and the repeal of repressive laws everywhere. Perhaps Blake’s England can rise from the ruins of the Blair experiment, the Blair disaster.

Please join me in a toast to International Peace and Justice and the rejection of tyranny.

Happy New Year Mr Rove

2006-01-02T14:24:00.000Z

Fitzgerald is taking his time, but just before Christmas he moved closwer to indicting Rove. Whoever thought he would escape is deluded.

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold The Case against Karl Rove: "As of Friday, neither Rove nor Luskin had explained Rove's misstatements to Fitzgerald's satisfaction, those familiar with the case said. The 11th-hour testimony from Viveca Novak - who Luskin pointed to as a crucial witness in keeping his client out of court - does not appear to have been helpful to Rove in dodging an indictment, they added.
Rove's alleged failure to disclose his conversations with Cooper and Novak, and the fact that he did not produce the email he sent to Hadley on two separate occasions, are the reasons he's been in Fitzgerald's crosshairs, lawyers close to the investigation said. "

A new year to confront the big lie.

2006-01-02T12:11:00.000Z

Delusional nonsense is now mainstream in America. Millions believe in the rapture. A third of the stupid people are fundamentalist Christians.

Too many of them are in power. They are destroying the world for all our children and they do not care, because what is important to them is not this world but the mythical next one.

t r u t h o u t - Bill Moyers The Delusional Is No Longer Marginal: " Immoral Imagination
Mike Leavitt, the former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment - a mandate for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.
The Environmental Protection Agency had even planned to spend $9 million - $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.
I read all this and then look at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer - pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; Thomas, age 10; Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, 'Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.' And then I am stopped short by the thought: 'That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.'
And I ask myself: 'Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?'
What has happened to our moral imagination?
The news is not good these days. I can tell you that as "

Installing Big Brother or what is hidden in the Bushes

2006-01-01T10:14:00.000Z

In the 1970's the Nixon administration was getting close to a police state. The Bushmen who were there then and are back now with Bush junior liked it that way and want it back that way.
911 was all part of the plan to install Big Brother.

As we start 2006 the big question is whether they will get away with it or whther a combination of libertarians from both left and right will come together to roll back the interfering state.

Hold your breath.

Its good practice for the water boarding that may come later if we lose.

village voice > news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway: "INSTALL BIG BROTHER
The failures of the FBI and CIA in 9-11 were not because of any wall. These agencies failed because they weren�t doing their jobs right. The congressional investigation found the CIA couldn�t penetrate al Qaeda�an especially odd claim since we had helped to create and finance al Qaeda as an instrument to win the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. John Walker Lindh and other Americans walked right into al Qaeda and were greeted by its high officials. How come the CIA couldn�t do the same? No wall kept the CIA from getting Osama bin Laden. They just couldn�t find him. As for how the hijackers got into the U.S., it�s hardly a mystery. An FBI informant among the Muslim community in San Diego socialized with two hijackers and rented a room to one of them. When Congress tried to figure out how this happened, the Bureau covered it up, refusing to allow the informant to testify. Again, there was no wall here�just plain incompetence made worse by a deliberate cover-up. The FBI reportedly was informed in April 2001 by a longtime reliable asset of an impending attack using airliners as missiles. It did nothing. An operation known as Able Danger reportedly turned up information on and tracked hijacker Mohammad Atta as far back as 1998, but the Pentagon wouldn�t tell the FBI what it knew. Even now, the Bush administration is fighting to prevent the Able Danger officials from testifying before Congress about what they knew and when they knew it. When it comes to intelligence, the only thing worse than the FBI�s record is the CIA�s.
Given all that�s happened, the only explanation for the Bush domestic spying is that it�s political. There are no crimes involved here. But there is an overweaning desire by this so-called conservative government to establish and i"

UK Torture Memos

2005-12-31T13:18:00.000Z

Mr Straw continues to lie about extraodinary rendition. He is becoming as much a joke as Mr Blair in the integrity stakes.
Here I link to the evidence from Craig Murray, our one-time ambassador, of our complicity in torture.

It is the end of the year. This morning I received my New Labour e-mail propaganda for 2006. It offers us "The Respect agenda."

Once we had things you could respect in England. Free speech, parliamentary democracy, habeas corpus, human rights, justice before the law. These things held the respect of the world. We were admired, respected, copied, envied. It is hard to argue that any of those things still survive. Bush and Blair destoyed what they purported to be fighting for.

If it were not for changes to the law brought about by joining the EU, we would be helplessly under the control of this tyrant.

What will 2006 bring?

Will it be impeachment for these western tyrants? Or will the last shreds of freedom and dignity be swept away
with the state terrorists having won the battle against freedom and democracy.

What was the high point of your year Mr Blair?
Was it arresting someone for reading out the names of the Iraq dead in your hearing?
Or was it the manhandling and arrest of an octogenarian labour party member for heckling at your party conference?
I will continue to remind you of the thousands of people who have died and will die next year from your invasion of and control over a country which offered no threat to any Englishman.

UK Torture Memos: "Craig Murray says:
In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.

After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying to suppress this."

t r u t h o u t - Robert Steinback: Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not

2005-12-29T22:55:00.000Z

Here is another guy like me who cannot understand how completely America has lost its soul.
Gill and I are pretty unwell right now. Lungs seem to be full of crap.

This western world does not offer much to go on living for.

Maybe tomorrow will bring hope.
Maybe not.

t r u t h o u t - Robert Steinback: Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not: "Never would I have expected this nation - which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty - would cower behind anyone just for promising to 'protect us.'"

t r u t h o u t - Report: The Constitution in Crisis

2005-12-22T10:51:00.000Z

Depressed

full of flu

Situation hopeless

these guys are exposed and they continue to get away with it.

As Bush supposedly said, the constitution is just a bit of paper.

t r u t h o u t - Report: The Constitution in Crisis: "Executive Summary

This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President's failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of Congress and more than 500,000 Americans in July of this year asking him whether the assertions set forth in the Downing Street Minutes were accurate. Mr. Conyers asked staff, by year end 2005, to review the available information concerning possible misconduct by the Bush Administration in the run up to the Iraq War and post-invasion statements and actions, and to develop legal conclusions and make legislative and other recommendations to him.

In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.

There is a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice-President and other members of the Bush Administration violated a number of federal laws, including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making False Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals; and (7) federal laws and regulations concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence."

Benn letter

2005-12-17T13:21:00.000Z

Dear reader
I invite you to join us and Tony Benn in challenging the war crimes of BushBlair

Benn letter: "I.........……………………………………………………………

AGREE WITH THE TONY BENN SUBMISSION OF 7 DEC 2005

Dated ............................

REQUEST TO KOFI ANNAN, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS, AND TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED KINGDOM
With Reference to The Iraq War 2003 - 20005

This is a request to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN that he should instigate an investigation into the claims listed in the attachment to this memorandum. It is also jointly addressed to Lord Goldsmith the Attorney General of the UK. The UK is a High Contracting Party and Signatory to The Geneva and Hague Conventions and Protocols and The Nuremberg Charter of 1945, and of The Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court. It is thus appropriate that The Attorney General should investigate what appear to be grave breaches of these Conventions and Protocols, and of UN General Assembly Resolution No 95, before and during the Iraq War 2003 - 2005.

We are concerned that, should these breaches be established, those responsible should be held to account. This is urgent. It appears that many breaches, even now, are continuing to take place.

Submitted by: Tony Benn, Mrs Rose Gentle MFSO mum of Gordon Gentle killed in Iraq 28:7:04, Reg Keys, Harold Pinter, Prof. Richard Dawkins, Bruce Kent, Lindsey German Convenor Stop The War Coalition, Michael Mansfield QC, Corin Redgrave, Jemma Redgrave, Andrew Burgin, Mark Steel, Brian Sewell Columnist on the London 'Evening Standard', Professor Ted Honderich, Dr Martha Mundy Reader in Anthropology LSE, David Halpin FRCS, Sara Wood , Nicholas Wood RIBA FRGS, Andreas Whittam Smith, Lord Nicolas Rea, Hywel Williams MP for Caernarfon, Peter Day, Anabella Pellens, Nicolas Kent, Theatre Director, Alan Plater, Jonathan Price, Willy Russell, Writer, Ralph Steadman, Anna Steadman, Dr C.J.Burns-Cox, Consultant Physician MD FRCP, Michael Naish, Richard Gott, Celia Mitchell, Adrian Mitchell, Una Doyle, NUT, Geoff Evans Bsc Hons Dip LP, Dr Margar"

The Blog | Martin Garbus: An Incredible Day in America | The Huffington Post

2005-12-17T10:46:00.000Z

A victory by another name may be a defeat. Maybe we are being conned yet again. Maybe the tide is only on the turn.
Read this lawyers view on the latest Bush corruption story.

The Blog | Martin Garbus: An Incredible Day in America | The Huffington Post: "The Bush-McCain torture compromise legitimizes torture. It is the first time that has happened in this country. Not in the two World Wars, Korea, the Cold War or Vietnam did the government ever seek or get the power this bill gives them.

The worst part of it is that most of the media missed it and got it wrong.

Secondly, the President in authorizing surveillance without seeking a court order has committed a crime. The Federal Communications Act criminalizes surveillance without a warrant. It is an impeachable offense. This was also totally missed by the media."