The Osterley Times

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Gonzales, Senators Spar on Credibility

Dear, dear, dear. Alberto Gonzales is up to his old tricks again, simply making things up as he goes along. That's certainly what Democrats claimed yesterday when Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gonzales stated that congressional leaders from both parties agreed in March 2004 to continue a classified surveillance activity that Justice Department officials had deemed illegal.

This brought an instant denial from Pelosi and Rockefeller and others.

"He once again is making something up to protect himself," Rockefeller said of the embattled attorney general.

The dispute came as Gonzales weathered one of the most contentious and hostile congressional hearings seen during the Bush administration. Democrats and the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused him of repeatedly misleading them and warned that he could face perjury charges if he lied to the panel.

"I do not find your testimony credible, candidly," said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who became visibly angry at several points during his exchanges with Gonzales. "The committee's going to review your testimony very carefully to see if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable."

Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) told Gonzales bluntly: "I don't trust you."

Specter is quite clearly stating that he thinks the embattled Attorney General is sitting before them and repeatedly perjuring himself.

This is all about the visit Gonzales and Card made to the sick bed of John Ashcroft in an attempt to get Ashcroft to overrule Comey's refusal to continue to sanction the classified surveillance activity.

Gonzales's testimony differed from an account Comey provided to the same committee in May. Comey said that he had rushed to the hospital after learning that Gonzales was headed there, and that he believed Gonzales and Card sought "to take advantage of a very sick man." Comey did not mention any discussion in the room about the congressional leadership's views.

Pelosi, Rockefeller and former senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who were members of the Gang of Eight at the time, also sharply disputed Gonzales's description of the White House meeting. Daschle said in a statement that he could not recall the meeting and is "quite certain that at no time did we encourage the AG or anyone else to take such actions." He added: "This appears to be another attempt to rewrite history."

Rockefeller said that lawmakers were never asked to give the program their approval and that administration officials' infrequent briefings about it were short and involved "virtually no questions."

Here's an example of Gonzales' smug testimony and Specter's reaction to it.

Bush continues to have faith in this man. Here, when the subject moves to the firing of US Attorneys, we have him stating that "there were some instances where peeople were asked to leave, quite frankly, because there was legitimate cause."

You couldn't make this stuff up.

He's becoming a perfect metaphor for the incompetence that defines this administration.

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Death toll rises in southern Europe's heatwave

Hot on the heels of the record breaking rains which lashed down on Britain last week, the news from Southern Europe is also bleak with record breaking heat causing the deaths of over 500 people in Hungary, where temperatures hit a record high of 41.9C (107F) in the southern city of Kiskunhalas.

Countries across the Balkan peninsula also laboured under temperatures that hit a historic 43C in Belgrade and 44C in Bulgaria. In an urgent announcement, Greece's weather service predicted temperatures of 45C (113F) and the government urged people to restrict their movements and stay indoors.
With blazes raging across much of the country for a third week, Athens' public order minister said the region was "on a war footing". In Bosnia and Macedonia, where temperatures shot up to 45C - the highest for 120 years - governments declared a state of national emergency.
Romania said at least 12 people had succumbed to the temperatures, pushing the death toll to 30 since June. Authorities said 19,000 people had been admitted to hospital, mostly with respiratory problems. In Serbia, volunteers joined firefighters and the army to help extinguish an estimated 50 blazes.

So we have now had both the extremes which the weather experts predicted would happen as a result of global warming in Europe alone in the space of a single week, and they are also occurring simultaneously across the planet. As Britain suffers unprecedented floods and southern Europe burns under record breaking heat, America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression, and in Australia even climate change sceptic, John Howard, has been forced to admit that climate change exists as the drought there got so bad that Australia was forced to consider cutting the water supply to it's agricultural region.

Bush finally agreed to "seriously consider" a climate change deal in two years time - when we all know he will be out of office - at the recent G8 summit, although even his recent promise to "seriously consider" a proposal that would result in a 50% cut in carbon emissions by 2050 is made on the premise that this reduction can be achieved by new technologies rather than by any actual change to our lifestyles.

The failure of the Bush administration to address this problem early in it's time in office - and it's reticence to even admit that such a problem even existed - will scar the Bush presidency in exactly the same way as Reagan's failure to address the issue of Aids scarred his.

The Bush team campaigned by claiming that the Democrats were overreacting to the entire subject of climate change:

'From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment - Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming "Doomsday!" when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'

Now things have got so bad that even Bush can no longer deny what is in front of his face.

Leaders are defined by the way they react to "events, dear boy, events". Global warming was actually the largest event on the table during the Bush years, it was the elephant in the lounge which Bush studiously ignored for almost his entire presidency.

That failure alone deserves to stand as another pitch black mark on an already toxic presidency.

I am being neither flippant nor funny when I say I think he will be remembered as the worst President in the history of the United States. He has been a modern Nero, fiddling whilst the world burns.

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Iran raises stakes in war of nerves over enriching uranium

The game of cat and mouse between Washington and Tehran - and let's face it, it's between those two with the rest of us acting as observers - took a decidedly tricky step yesterday, with Tehran warning that it will take "illegal" steps if any further sanctions are imposed upon the regime.

So far, Iran has refused to stop enriching uranium - which it has every right to do under the nuclear non proliferation programme - despite being subject to two rounds of travel, arms and financial sanctions for this refusal. There is now a possible third round of sanctions which could be imposed in September and Iran are warning that if the US insists on going ahead with this round of sanctions, then all bets are off.

"If there is another resolution, we will react with whatever we have," the senior official told western journalists. "So far we have answered legally, limiting [UN] inspections, and reducing cooperation with the IAEA within the legal framework.
"But if there is no legal option left, it is obvious we will be tempted to do illegal things. What is very important to us is our dignity, and we are prepared to act."

Should Bush and Co push ahead with a third round of sanctions then it appears likely that Ahmadinejad will break away from the NNPT altogether, just as North Korea did, as he is at the moment being punished for behaviour that is perfectly legal under the NNPT.

However, unlike North Korea, the Iranian spokesman insisted that Iran have no intention of building a nuclear bomb:

He argued it would make Iran less secure, and pointed out that both the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, and his successor, the current supreme leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei, had issued a religious fatwa against possessing the bomb."We can exit from the non-proliferation treaty, but we can never exit from a fatwa," he said.
His comments came only hours after the chief negotiator, Ali Larijani, promised that Iran would finally answer all the IAEA's unresolved questions about its nuclear activities. "All the areas and all the questions will be answered. We have no problem with that," he said in an interview in Tehran. Those outstanding issues include an Iranian explanation for how its officials were found to have instructions on how to form enriched uranium into hemispheres, of the sort used in a nuclear bomb.
Mr Larijani laughed off the significance of the documents. He said: "I would find it strange for someone to make a bomb with a couple of pieces of paper. If a country wanted to make a bomb, it could get the information on the internet."

Iran have vowed to give a comprehensive account of its nuclear past to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and to allow UN inspectors to visit a heavy water reactor being built near the central town of Arak.

However, it is still clear that the cat and mouse game between the two is coming to an important impasse, with Tehran making it clear that any further sanctions will signal that all bets are off.

Now a stance like this will be music to the ears of some of the Cheney administrations hawks, who are itching to attack Iran and please their Israeli counterparts, so one can only presume that Tehran are making this stance clear in the hope of influencing Russia or China to alter their support for this US sponsored motion when it reaches the UN come September.

I personally think a US attack on Iran would be one of the most foolish steps that the US could possibly take, but it is already well reported that there are many in the administration who are adamant that they should do so before they step down in two years time.

Tehran obviously think that the US are too tied down in Iraq to carry through on their threat. So the stakes have been noticeably raised.

The madmen surrounding Dick Cheney will be salivating at the opportunity before them, but even nutcases should pause and reconsider before pressing the go button this time. A war with Iran, at a time when the US are already stretched to breaking in Iraq, is the last thing the US needs.

Should the US push ahead and attack, the myth of the US as an invincible superpower may very well be destroyed in exactly the same way as Israel's invincibility was put to bed in Lebanon last summer.

And should this happen, it will occur for the exact same reasons. Olmert was goaded into going further and further because the US saw what was occurring as "a great opportunity". In the end it was a disaster for Israel which saw Olmert's personal popularity plummet to 3%, a position from which he has never recovered.

Olmert's problem during the "great opportunity" was that it quickly became obvious that he didn't actually have a plan. I wonder if Cheney and his chums have any actual plan for what occurs after they launch their air strikes? I suspect they don't. After all, it's quite obvious from the diaries and autobiographies of British politicians and spin doctors that there was a discernible and worrying lack of any plan for what occurred after the invasion of Iraq. And we all know how well that worked out, don't we?

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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Would You Work For The Minimum Wage?

This is why I think Obama has a very good chance of becoming President. When asked this question both Edwards and Clinton say that they would be willing to work for a minimum wage. Only Obama has the courage to point out the bloody obvious.

Shame it wasn't asked.....

Here's a question I wished they had asked at the Democratic YouTube debate:

A 21st century catastrophe

The British Environmental Agency have said that the floods caused by last Friday's downpour was actually worse than the great floods of 1947.

"We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before," said the agency yesterday. "The benchmark was 1947, and this has already exceeded it." And the 1947 floods were said to have been the worst for 200 years.

What's simply astonishing - and this is why I keep saying that it is very hard to explain to anyone who wasn't in the UK that day what actually took place - is that the flooding that has surpassed the great flood of 1947 was as a result of rainfall which fell for a little over an hour, but did so with an intensity that I have honestly never seen before in my life. As a result of that hour and a bit of rainfall, entire British towns have been cut off, thousands have had to be evacuated and thousands more have been cut off from access to water.

It is obvious that the Government and the civil powers, from Gordon Brown down to the emergency services, are struggling to cope, not only with the sheer physical scale of the disaster itself, but with the very concept of it. It is entirely unfamiliar. It is new. Yet it is exactly what has been forecast for the past decade and more.

It is nearly 10 years since the scientists of the UK Climate Impacts Programme first gave their detailed forecast of what global warming had in store for Britain in the 21st century - and high up on the list was rainfall, increasing both in frequency and intensity.

This was thought most likely to happen in winter, with summers predicted to be hotter and dryer. But yesterday Peter Stott of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, an author of a new scientific paper linking increases in rainfall to climate change, commented: "It is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying."

The paper by Dr Stott and other authors, reported in The Independent yesterday, detects for the first time a "human fingerprint" in rainfall increases in recent decades in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere - that is, it finds they were partly caused by global warming, itself caused by emissions of greenhouse gases.

I was stunned today to read that what scientists are referring to as 'the catastrophic "extreme rainfall events" of the summer of 2007, on 24 June and 20 July' have now officially been deemed worse that the great flood of 1947.

As I say, and it all occurred in just over an hour. I think my original description of the events as "biblical" has been proven apt.

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How Do We Leave Iraq?

Obama and Biden clashed on how realistic it is to get the troops out of Iraq. I agree with Biden that there are logistics to be considered but also agree with Obama that there is no military solution to the civil war that is raging in Iraq.

Edwards: Aren't You Using Religion to Oppose Gay Marriage?

I thought the pastor asked an excellent question. Edwards' answer that he is on "a journey" is simply not sufficient. He says he won't stop gay marriage, but it's a very strange Democratic Presidential candidate who does not believe that all citizens are equal under the law. Obama gives a better answer I thought by moving the subject away from titles - "gay marriage" - and moving it towards entitlement.

Monday, July 23, 2007

HR 676 Universal Healthcare: Don't Stop Believin'

Thanks to John at The Largest Minority and all the other 35 percenters.

Kristol sees Dems harming themselves through Yearly Kos attendance

Kristol and his ilk spend their lives reassuring their supporters that every move the Democrats make will hurt them in future when the public gets to vote. They have made this claim and been wrong so many times I'm surprised they are still allowed to make these predictions, but make them they do... with surprising consistency.

Attendance at Yearly Kos is the latest thing that Kristol thinks will harm them at the polls... But just as with opposition to the Iraq war, he is merely making noises to console the base. I've also noticed that O'Reilly is making similar noises concerning Kos. What they're both missing is that most people have no bloody idea what the Daily Kos is never mind their convention.

Reid: Democrats and Republicans want Bush to change course

Senator Harry Reid discusses the Iraq all-nighter, the Bush administration's new policy on executive privilege, and efforts to help make college more affordable.

England under water: scientists confirm global warming link to increased rain

It's hard to explain to non-Brits the kind of rain we have been having recently. This month usually generates 35mm of rain in the entire month and last Friday we had 85mm of rain fall within a mere two hours. It's no exaggeration to say that the rain felt almost biblical in proportion. It was certainly on a scale of nothing that I personally had ever previously witnessed.

And compared to the Midlands we, here in London, are having it light. The flooding across the British Midlands has been going on for weeks now with entire families having to move out into temporary accommodation and insurance companies facing colossal claims from families whose entire house contents have been ruined in a matter of hours.

And now scientists are saying that this rainfall is directly linked to global warming.

More intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere are being generated by man-made global warming, the study has established for the first time an effect which has long been predicted but never before proved.

The study's findings will be all the more dramatic for being disclosed as Britain struggles to recover from the phenomenal drenching of the past few days, during which more than a month's worth of rain fell in a few hours in some places, and floods forced thousands from their homes.

The "major rainfall event" of last Friday fully predicted as such by the Met Office has given the country a quite exceptional battering, with the Thames still rising. In Gloucester water levels had reached 34 feet, just 12 inches below flood defences the same level as during the flood of 1947 although a police spokesman said last night that the River Severn had stopped rising.

Last night vast areas of the country around Gloucestershire and Worcestershire were still inundated, large numbers of people in temporary accommodation, transport links were widely disrupted, and yet more householders were standing by to be flooded in their turn, in one of the biggest civil emergencies Britain has seen.

About 150,000 residents in Gloucestershire were left without drinking water when the Mythe Water Treatment Works in Tewkesbury became inoperable after flooding. Another 200,000 people are at risk of losing their supplies. The water shortages may last until Wednesday and 600 water tanks were being drafted to the area.

There is a terrible irony to people who have been forced to evacuate their homes due to flooding being told that there is a water shortage, but yet that is exactly what is happening here. It has also been noted that the frequency of these floods is increasing:

The Great Flood of July is all the more remarkable for following right on from the Great Flood of June, which caused similar havoc in northern towns such as Doncaster and Hull, after a similar series of astonishingly torrential downpours on 24 June.

Now whilst the new study does not definitely prove that such events are linked to man made climate change, it certainly supports the idea by showing that over the past few decades rainfall has increased across several areas "including the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and linking this directly, for the first time, to global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases."

The study will be published on Wednesday but it's main findings are causing a stir and are being freely discussed:

One source familiar with the study's conclusions said: "What this does is establish for the first time that there is a distinct 'human fingerprint' in the changes in precipitation patterns the increases in rainfall observed in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, which includes Britain.

"That means, it is not just the climate's natural variability which has caused the increases, but there is a detectable human cause climate change, caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. The 'human fingerprint' has been detected before in temperature rises, but never before in rainfall. So this is very significant.

"Some people would argue that you can't take a single event and pin that on climate change, but what happened in Britain last Friday fits quite easily with these conclusions. It does seem to have a certain resonance with what they're finding in this research."

It's very interesting that this new report is being published so soon after storms the likes of which no-one in Britain has ever seen before, and that the report is claiming that these same storms are directly linked to man made climate change. Because that is certainly the feeling of people on the street. Now I'm not suggesting that people are standing in newsagents up and down the country ringing their hands over man's involvement in climate change, but there is certainly an acceptance that what is occurring has not occurred before and that a change of some kind is taking place.

The human fingerprint is detected by making computer simulations of the recent past climate, with and without emissions of greenhouse gases and then comparing the results with what has actually been observed in the real world.

In Dr Stott's research, and in the study to be published on Wednesday, the observed rises in temperature and rainfall could be clearly accounted for by the scenario in which emissions were prominent.

The conclusions of the new rainfall study are regarded as all the more robust as they are the joint work of several major national climate research bodies, led by Environment Canada, with each using its own supercomputer climate model.

Global warming is likely to lead to higher rainfall because a warming atmosphere contains more water vapour and more energy. Since climate prediction began 20 years ago, heavier rainfall over Britain has been a consistent theme.

Like many people I always associated global warming with hotter summers and never for a moment thought that it would result in massive flooding. But there are many northern towns in Britain which today show just what such a scenario will mean for people if the scientists are right.

There will be some who scoff at the scientists findings, but no-one who witnessed the rain that hit Britain last Friday will argue that something very strange occurred here, certainly rain with an intensity that none of us had ever previously witnessed.

As my roofer said when replacing tiles, "In 37 years of driving through London, I've never had to pull over before because I couldn't see the road in front of me because of the rain".

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Sunday, July 22, 2007

Current US Policy in Iraq

WARNING: This footage is not for the faint hearted.

This is the result of Rumsfeld's failure to employ enough troops to restore order to Iraq's streets. The US is now forced to back militias who were once their enemies - and may well become their enemies again - against other militias who they say are funded by Iran. US policy is now reduced to picking sides in the civil war they used to deny was even happening. This is success, Bush-style. It's shameful.

Hamas outlines basis for reconciliation with rival Fatah

Deposed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh has laid out what he calls the basis for reconciliation between Hamas and the Fatah party.

Haniyeh's vision includes the restructuring of Palestinian Authority security services formerly manned mostly by rival Fatah, respecting signed Hamas-Fatah deals and staging a general national reconciliation.

Speaking at the Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, he also said Palestinians should "protect their national principles and rights, respecting the legitimacy and dealing with the democratic choice as the solo option for rotating the authority."

"Any talks should go according to the principles rather than [U.S. President George] Bush's vision," he said.

It is very hard for any person who respects democracy to argue with this principle. It should go without saying that when a people make a democratic choice it should be respected. Of course, in the case of the Palestinians and Hamas this choice was not respected. Indeed, the US, EU and Israel immediately took actions against the Palestinians for making a choice that they did not agree with that resulted in a policy whose intention was to starve the Palestinians into submission in the hope that the Hamas led government would collapse. When that same government then formed a coalition with Fatah, in the hope of lifting these inhumane restrictions, the US and Israel started to arm Abbas with a private militia in the hope that he could take on and defeat Hamas militarily. As we all know, Hamas pre-empted Abbas and took the Gaza Strip.

But we should be under no illusion of how we arrived at our present position, with the Palestinian movement split into two. Nor should we pretend that the current situation does not suit the US and Israeli camps. They have what they always wanted. A weakened Palestinian leadership at each others throats. It's the policy that the old Roman empire described as "divide and conquer".

And Abbas is a fool to have fallen for it. All this has occurred because he did not want to accept the result of an election in which he was fairly beaten and because his US, EU and Israeli counterparts encouraged him in his pointless demands that the election must be held again until it yielded a result which named him as the victor.

So Ismail Haniyeh can talk "principle" as long as he likes and, whilst many of us who favour democracy will agree with the broad points he is making, he is pissing in the wind as long as Bush, Olmert and others insist on handing financial and military muscle to "their man".

And Abbas has no intention of allowing the democratic principle to shape events in the West Bank and Gaza. It's a principle under which his party was defeated, so he much prefers to bask in the power he is allowed to hold under the guidance of his American and Israeli sponsors.

At a time when the west claim to be seeking to export democracy to the Middle East, the situation in Palestine should be a source of shame to all of us. For the underlying principle which Haniyeh is talking about is the one question that our leaders are seeking to avoid answering at all costs. Do we believe in the democratic principle or do we not? Our actions suggest the latter.

Oh, I've heard every argument about Hamas being a terrorist organisation and seeking to destroy Israel, but, if we believe that the election of extremists is unacceptable, then why was there no western outrage when Olmert appointed Avigdor Liebermann - a fascist who advocates the forced ethnic cleansing of Palestinians - to his cabinet?

In Israel his appointment caused outrage:

In an editorial, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz warned that his appointment could inflame the entire region.

"The choice of the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around for this job constitutes a strategic threat in its own right," it said.

"Lieberman's lack of restraint and his unbridled tongue, comparable only to those of Iran's president, are liable to bring disaster down upon the entire region."

From our western governments? Disinterested silence. The argument that we oppose Hamas because they are extremists who wish to destroy Israel rings hollow when we have nothing to say regarding the appointment of an Israeli extremist who wishes to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. And the reason our argument rings hollow is because it is not actually based on any principle at all.

Israel, not only did not like the result of the Palestinian election, she was not willing to accept it, and we have been scrambling around ever since attempting to pretend that there is some principle in order to hide that fact. There is none.

We favour democracy when it yields the results that we agree with. That's not a principle at all.

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Shadow cabinet questions Cameron's strategy after poll reveals voters are rejecting party

It appears that David Cameron's honeymoon period with his own party is over now that Gordon Brown has taken Labour through that symbolic 40% barrier in the opinion polls for the first time in two years. The word on the street is that the Tory shadow cabinet are unhappy with the recent results of by-elections for two seats in which the Tories came third in both.

On current opinion polls Gordon Brown's Labour Party now have a six point lead over the Tories. Quite an astonishing figure for a party that has been ten years in power and has waged a massively unpopular war in Iraq. It would appear that Cameron's Tories have greatly underestimated the power of Brown to create a "new" government. The Tories have for the past few months been emphasising how Brown was part of the government for the past ten years and how only they could give the change that Britain needed. It would now appear as if the flurry of changes Brown made to his cabinet when he took office - and the tweaks he has made to policy - have been enough to convince the public that a new broom has swept through Downing Street.

This leaves Cameron dangerously exposed. He is already operating a "Hug a Hoodie" social policy that his party neither likes nor understands, but I suspect they were ready to thole it as long as it promised a return to power. With recent by-elections results placing the Tories in third place, there will be many in the Conservative Party who are asking what Cameron is for? Why is he leading us and where is he leading us to?

There were also reports last night that up to two Conservative MPs have signed letters expressing no confidence in Cameron's leadership. These are understood to have been deposited with Sir Michael Spicer, chairman of the backbench 1922 committee.
The Ealing Southall result came as a particular blow to Cameron because the Tory leader visited the constituency five times during the campaign. Ballot papers were also marked with 'David Cameron's Conservatives'.
This was strongly criticised by senior Tories. 'It is astonishing that ballot papers were marked with David Cameron's Conservatives,' one said. 'That was a silly mistake.'
In an ominous sign for Cameron, some senior frontbenchers are voicing criticisms about the leader's entire strategy. One said that Cameron was proving no match for Brown in the Commons, even though the Tory leader's polished performances have prompted opponents to award him a victory on points.
'All that matters is the 17 seconds that appear on television,' the senior frontbencher said. 'When people see Brown they will think one word: serious.'

Cameron is ploughing on with his visit to the Rwandan capital Kigali, another attempt to show the new face of the caring-sharing Tory party, but one can't help feeling that - admirable as all this may be - he really is leading this party down a road which they do not want to travel. The old biddies who support the Tories are happiest when they are discussing immigration, why gays disgust them, and tax cuts. Cameron has them talking about global warming, the environment, and the plight of Africa. They are not happy bunnies.

'This is when the modernising approach is tested,' a senior Cameron ally told The Observer. 'Normally at this time we retreat to our comfort zone and talk about immigration... This is the moment to hold our nerve.'
But one senior Tory voiced strong criticism of the policy commissions: 'Having lots of policies is no good if you do not have the philosophy to underpin that. If we can't answer "Where do you want to go?", then the policy means nothing. We have been weak on that.'

They say a week is a long time in politics and that has never been truer than of this week. Cameron, who for so long has looked like the Tory Party's answer to Blair, now resembles nothing so much as Iain Duncan Smith before the Tory's ditched him.

Brown has succeeded in making him look light and inconsequential. And the more he attempts to lead his party down a path which they do not want to travel, the further into IDS territory he treads.

He's hanging over the cliff by a thread. And all that has happened in a single week. Funny old game politics.

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Saturday, July 21, 2007

Ron Paul Testimony to U.S. House Financial Services Committee

This guy seems to be one of the few Republicans who ever talks sense.

Cash for Honours: The "torture" is over.

At a time when the British Labour government cannot bring themselves to condemn Guantanamo Bay in any term more harsh than as "an anomaly", the Labour Party reaction the news that no charges will be brought against any Labour figures in the Cash for Honours investigation has lacked irony to say the least.

Denis MacShane, a Labour MP, said people were put through "the most impossible torture".

I fear dear Mr MacShane has no idea of what torture is if he thinks being questioned by the British police constitutes such a horror.

And he should know better. Indeed, when a European report condemned European governments for assisting in extraordinary rendition of terror suspects to secret jails where it was suspected they were being tortured, Mr MacShane dismissed the report as having, "more holes than a Swiss cheese." The report was later found to be correct.

No, Mr MacShane reserves the torture analogy only for the nightmare of having a British Bobby ask you if you gave money in order to get a knighthood. That's simply despicable, torturous and terrifying. Ten times worse than any act committed upon any "Muslim terrorist".

Not that I should find Mr MacShane's hyperbole surprising. After all, he was the man who caused much distress amongst the Muslim community when he demanded that Muslims choose between the "British way" and the way of terrorists.

So tact is obviously not his strongest point, but still, to use the analogy of torture at this moment in history - and only when it refers to actions taken by the British police against the Labour Party - really does make me wonder what planet this man resides on?

Even Blair, whilst refusing to condemn the police for their investigation, nevertheless referred to what he called, a "terrible, traumatic time" for people questioned by the police.

It really is strange that these people, who seem to have so little empathy for others caught up in their war on terror, see the act of being investigated for possible wrongdoing - an act for which they have now been cleared - in such apocalyptic terms.

What happened to them is "terrible" and "traumatic", really "the most impossible torture", and yet what is happening and has happened to some totally innocent men in Guantanamo Bay is simply an "anomaly" that needs to be addressed.

I personally think they should simply be thanking the CPS for it's extraordinary decision not to proceed with prosecutions, a decision which Angus MacNeil, the MP who initiated the investigation, has expressed his astonishment at:

"It simply beggars belief that the police and the CPS both believe that no charges should be brought," he added.

But then maybe Angus should consider that, like "Scooter" Libby in the United States, perhaps for some people the "torture" of investigation is sufficient punishment.

"Those buggers in Guantanamo Bay don't know they're living! Have you ever had a British Bobby ask you a question in that gruff tone of his? Jesus, I nearly shit myself. Waterboarding would have been a piece of piss after that! And the tea? Yurgh! Almost barfed! I tell you... Abu Ghraib is nothing compared to the nightmare that is Westminster Borough Police Station. Those bastards work you over good with their 'Ma'am' and 'Sir' shit and their little fucking McVitties biscuits. And when they switched on the tape recorder it was like the Spanish bloody Inquisition. I'd rather be tied upside down to a bed for a week with a lightbulb up my arse than ever go through that again. Torture. I tell you! Torture! Those Afghans and Iraqis don't know what side their bread is buttered on."

People who can only see pain when it applies to themselves really should not enter professions where they are asked to represent the needs of others. They have, by their total inability to express empathy, already proven themselves to be spectacularly unqualified for the task.

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Rules Lay Out C.I.A.’s Tactics in Questioning

Glenn Greenwald this morning highlights the US condemnation of Russia's human rights abuses in a 2001 report. Amongst the condemnations are the following:

Article 21 of the Constitution prohibits torture, violence, and other brutal or humiliating treatment or punishment; however, there are credible reports that law enforcement personnel regularly use torture to coerce confessions from suspects and that the Government does not hold most of the torturers accountable for their actions.

There were credible reports that Government and separatist forces in Chechnya tortured detainees. There are also claims of abuse of psychiatry by authorities.

There is a terrible irony to Greenwald pointing out this report on the very day that the White House have given the CIA permission to resume its use of some severe interrogation methods for questioning terrorism suspects in secret prisons overseas.

It would appear that the CIA are now being given permission to engage in the very actions that the 2001 report routinely condemned.

A new executive order signed by President Bush does not authorize the full set of harsh interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. since the program began in 2002. But government officials said the rules would still allow some techniques more severe than those used in interrogations by military personnel in places like the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The White House order brought condemnation on Friday from human rights groups, which argued that it helped systematize a program of indefinite, incommunicado detention and used methods that violated international law. But in a message to agency employees on Friday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, defended the program as having been “irreplaceable,” though he said extraordinary techniques had been used on fewer than half of about 100 terrorism suspects.

Of course, we don't know the specifics of the techniques used as the details remain classified, but we are at least now promised that waterboarding is no longer to be admitted. And the order does now include a definition of “humiliating and degrading treatment” which accords with international law, an obvious victory for the state department.

But it is very clear that, although the banning of waterboarding is a victory of sorts, that the people who are defining whether or not what they do constitutes torture are a set of people with an incredibly lax approach towards their adherence to the Geneva Conventions. Not only has this administration refused to define waterboarding as torture, it has a Vice President who has gone as far as to describe waterboarding as "a dunk in the water".

So the problem remains that the Bush administration, who are so quick to point out what they consider torture when they are describing the acts of the Kremlin, refuse to even discuss the methods that they are using. Although they do precede their techniques with the word, "extraordinary" interrogation techniques.

Earlier this year, State Department officials rejected a draft of the executive order because they believed that the language was too permissive and could open the Bush administration to challenges from American allies that the White House was legalizing methods that approach torture. Some Bush administration officials, including members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff, pushed for a more expansive interpretation of Geneva Convention language and for interrogation methods that the C.I.A. had not even requested.

According to one senior intelligence official, nearly half of the source material used in the recent National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorism threat to the United States came from C.I.A. interrogations of detainees.

Some human rights groups said they feared that the Bush administration was using creative legal reasoning to justify practices that close American allies have banned.

“This is an administration that won’t even publicly denounce waterboarding,” said John Sifton, a lawyer at Human Rights Watch. “It’s hard to believe that they will be interpreting these standards in a way that is true to the spirit of the Military Commissions Act.”

But other critics of the harsh C.I.A. interrogation practices of the past, including former top Bush administration officials, said that the executive order was a step in the right direction. “The U.S. government is continuing to move toward an approach to this vital area of human intelligence collection that is more sustainable — morally, politically, and legally,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice until last year and who delivered a blistering lecture earlier this year denouncing the C.I.A.’s interrogation program as it was used in the past.

There can be no great surprise that there - at the forefront, demanding even more appalling techniques than the CIA had requested - is the Prince of Darkness himself, Dick Cheney. There are no words to describe the contempt in which I hold that draft dodging, war-mongering, scoundrel. And it is nice to know that some small victory has been achieved against this slug.

However, even Zelikow concedes that the US government are "continuing to move toward an approach to this vital area of human intelligence collection that is more sustainable — morally, politically, and legally". Please note that, according to Zelikow, a proper moral, legal and politically sustainable position is something that this administration are merely "moving towards", he does not claim that they are there yet. And, as John Sifton points out, we are still reliant on the opinions of an administration that refuses to condemn waterboarding as illegal, that what they are doing does not constitute torture.

What's interesting, and I really do suggest you read the report that Greenwald has come across, is that this administration - who condemned Russia for having equipment which enabled "the [Foreign Security Service] to monitor Internet traffic, telephone calls, and pagers without judicial approval" - has not, in so many areas, come up to the same set of standards that they demanded of Russia in 2001. I mean, it's simply a bad fucking joke to read the administration who today operate Guantanamo Bay deriding the Russian's because, "lengthy pretrial detention remained a serious problem".

This is an administration that has failed to live up to the standards it has set for others, so - whilst I'll welcome the banning of waterboarding - I won't take them at their word that they no longer torture, until they specify exactly which acts they consider torture and which acts they don't.

They've given themselves far too much rope on this issue in the past to be taken at their word now.

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Friday, July 20, 2007

Return of the Jihad

There really is nothing funnier than replaying what team Bush have claimed as "fact" and comparing what they say with reality.

Keith Blasts Bush Scapegoating: “This is YOUR War.”

Tonight on Countdown, Keith delivered a powerful special comment about the leaked Bush Administration letter that blames Senator Hillary Clinton and all war dissenters for President Bush’s own failures in Iraq.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Robert Fisk: TE Lawrence had it right about Iraq

Nice to see Fisk return to blazing form.

Back in 1929, Lawrence of Arabia wrote the entry for "Guerrilla" in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a chilling read - and here I thank one of my favourite readers, Peter Metcalfe of Stevenage, for sending me TE's remarkable article - because it contains so ghastly a message to the American armies in Iraq.

Writing of the Arab resistance to Turkish occupation in the 1914-18 war, he asks of the insurgents (in Iraq and elsewhere): "... suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour..."

How typical of Lawrence to use the horror of gas warfare as a metaphor for insurgency. To control the land they occupied, he continued, the Turks "would have need of a fortified post every four square miles, and a post could not be less than 20 men. The Turks would need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill wills of all the local Arab people. They had 100,000 men available."

Now who does that remind you of? The "fortified post every four square miles" is the ghostly future echo of George W Bush's absurd "surge". The Americans need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill will of the Iraqi people, and they have only 150,000 available. Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of "war lite" is responsible for that. Yet still these rascals get away with it.

Hands up those readers who know that Canada's Defence Minister, Gordon O'Connor, actually sent a letter to Rumsfeld two days before his departure in disgrace from the Pentagon, praising this disreputable man's "leadership". Yes, O'Connor wanted "to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your many achievements (sic) as Secretary of Defence, and to recognise the significant contribution you have made in the fight against terrorism". The world, gushed the ridiculous O'Connor, had benefited from Rumsfeld's "leadership in addressing the complex issues in play".

O'Connor tried to shrug off this grovelling note, acquired through the Canadian Access to Information Act, by claiming he merely wanted to thank Rumsfeld for the use of US medical facilities in Germany to ferry wounded Canadian soldiers home from Afghanistan. But he made no mention of this in his preposterous letter. O'Connor, it seems, is just another of the world's illusionists who believe they can ignore the facts - and laud fools - by stating the opposite of the truth. Bush, of course, is among the worst of these meretricious creatures. So is the late Tony Blair.

Oh, how we miss Lawrence. "The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern (guerrilla) commander," he wrote 78 years ago, accurately predicting al-Qa'ida's modern-day use of the internet. For insurgents, "battles were a mistake ... Napoleon had spoken in angry reaction against the excessive finesse of the 18th century, when men almost forgot that war gave licence to murder".

True, the First World War Arab Revolt was not identical to today's Iraqi insurgency. In 1917, the Turks had manpower but insufficient weapons. Today the Americans have the weapons but insufficient men. But listen to Lawrence again.

"Rebellion must have an unassailable base ...

In the minds of men converted to its creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfil the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts.

"It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active in a striking force, and 98 per cent passively sympathetic ... Granted mobility, security ... time, and doctrine ... victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain."

Has the US General David Petraeus read this? Has Bush? Have any of the tired American columnists whose anti-Arab bias is wobbling close to racism, bothered to study this wisdom? I remember how Daniel Pipes - one of the great illusionists of modern American journalism - announced in the summer of 2003 that what the Iraqis needed was (no smirking here, please), a "democratically minded strongman".

They had already had one, of course, our old chum Saddam Hussein, whom we did indeed call a "strongman" when he was our friend and when he was busy using our gas against Iran. And I do wonder whether Bush - defeated, as he is, in Iraq - may not soon sanction an Iraqi military coup d'état to overthrow the ridiculous Maliki "Green Zone" government in Baghdad. Well, as one of my favourite expressions goes, we'll see.

But wait, Pipes is at it again. The director of the "Middle East Forum" has been writing in Canada's National Post about "Palestine". His piece is filled with the usual bile. Palestinian anarchy had "spewed forth" warlords. Arafat was an "evil" figure. Israeli withdrawal from Gaza had deprived Palestinians of the one "stabilising element" in the region. Phew! "Palestinianism" (whatever that is) is "superficial". Palestinian "victimisation" is a "supreme myth of modern politics". Gaza is now an "[Islamist] beachhead at the heart of the Middle East from which to infiltrate Egypt, Israel and the West Bank".

One of these days, Pipes concludes, "maybe the idiot savant 'peace processors' will note the trail of disasters their handiwork has achieved". He notes with approval that "Ehud Barak, Israel's brand new Defence Minister, reportedly plans to attack Hamas within weeks" and condemns the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, for buoying Mahmoud Abbas' "corrupt and irredentist Fatah".

So we are going to have yet another war in the Middle East, this time against Hamas - democratically elected, of course, but only as a result of what Pipes calls "the Bush administration's heedless rush to Palestinian elections"? It's good to see that the late Tony Blair is already being dubbed a "savant". But shouldn't Pipes, too, read Lawrence? For insurgency is a more powerful "vapour" than that which comes from the mouths of illusionists.

People like Pipes only emphasise what I have always believed. There are many pro-Israelis who have no interest in peace and only pretend to do so to in order to pacify their American sponsors. What these buggers want is land, nothing else.

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Brown gains double win in first poll test

I don't think any of us thought that "Cameron's Conservatives" had any chance of winning in Tony Blair's old seat in Sedgefield, but surely they were expected to do better in leafy Ealing than they have done?

In both results the Conservatives came third, a catastrophic result for Cameron who not only campaigned in Ealing five times but also sent out a ballot paper where his party were listed as "Cameron's Conservatives".

If Cameron is to have any chance of removing Labour at the next election then Ealing is exactly the kind of seat that the Tories need to take.

Virendra Sharma - a councillor in the area for 25 years - held the seat left vacant by Piara Khabra's death last month, getting 15,188 votes. That gave Labour a majority of just over 5,000, fewer than half its previous level. Nigel Bakhai actually increased the Lib Dem lead over the Tories, taking 10,118 votes to their 8,230, in a humiliation for Conservative newcomer Tony Lit.
"This is a great result for our new prime minister Gordon Brown," Mr Sharma said. "David Cameron staked his reputation on this by-election. The people of Ealing have given him their verdict - they do not trust the Tories to represent us."
Labour were quick to label the result a disaster for the Conservatives' controversial candidate who joined the party days before he was selected - infuriating local activists.

I have always believed that Cameron is operating with smoke and mirrors, pretending to take his party towards the centre ground - as Blair actually did with Labour - without confronting his party head-on and forcing them to change.

The Tory party, at it's grassroots, remains as reactionary as it has always been; and the results from Ealing appear to show that the general public are not buying Cameron's ruse. He recently conceded to the party's grassroots over grammar schools in a debacle that showed that, when it comes to confronting these people, Cameron is simply not up to the job.

There are many in the Tory party who have been waiting patiently for Blair to stand down, convinced that they could never defeat him at the ballot box and confident that Brown would be a much easier man to beat, because they hoped that Brown would remind the public of Old Labour rather than New.

The results from Ealing should give pause to that thought. From the day he took office and welcomed a Tory across the floor to join his Labour party Brown has confounded Cameron every step of the way. Indeed, what was Cameron's greatest selling point - his youthful vitality - appears as Bambi-like innocence when compared to the gruff Brown as opposed to the ageing Blair.

Andrew Grice did a very good summation of the Tory's problems at the end of last month:

The mood in Conservative circles is gloomy. Even before Mr Brown took over, Mr Cameron had lost momentum and got stuck in a rut. He was drawn into a fight with his own party over grammar schools and didn't win, forced into staging a messy retreat.

Mr Brown has now added to the jitters among Tory MPs. Don't buy the line that they don't care about the defection to Labour of one of their gang, Quentin Davies. It hurts. It is remarkable that, 10 years after winning power, Labour is still gaining such recruits. When the former head of the Royal Navy joins a Labour government, the Tories are in trouble.

A growing number of Tory MPs are worried that the public might prefer the substance of Mr Brown to the "sunshine" Mr Cameron promised his party last autumn. Plenty of Mr Davies's former colleagues agree the Tories are superficial and driven by public relations.

"David needs to do serious," said one MP. "He needs to show he can master the detail of some meaty policies. Sunshine is not enough." Another said: "David is fighting the last war. The Blair campaign manual from 1994 is not right for 2007. The country has moved on, and Brown knows that."

Cameron has just had his first ever face to face with Brown and has emerged with a bloody nose. The public aren't buying Cameron's sleight of hand. If he can't win Ealing by-elections then he has no chance of winning a general election. This morning should be a huge wakeup call for Cameron's Tories. The distance between his rhetoric and Tory policy has been noticed. Now, like Blair actually did when he confronted his party over Clause IV, Cameron must decide whether he is actually going to take on the reactionaries in his own ranks.

Personally? I simply don't think Cameron has the balls to do it. Bambi is good at talking the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk he just doesn't have it in him.

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Blair starts his Middle Eastern role by saying very little.

Blair made his first public statements yesterday since accepting his new role as the international community's Middle East envoy.

He used his first meeting with the international Quartet the US, EU, UN and Russia who he will represent in the region, to restate his commitment to a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel.

Mr Blair, who will make a preliminary visit to Israel and the West Bank next week, declared in Lisbon: "I hope I can offer something in bringing about a solution to this issue that is of such fundamental importance to the world.

"I hope I can create the conditions under which this two-state solution can become a reality... This is an issue I have been passionate about for many years."

He was speaking after the Quartet committed itself to backing last Monday's declaration by President George Bush to advance a peace process by calling an international conference this autumn on the region.

While Mr Bush strongly denounced Hamas's seizure of control in Gaza after last month's bloody infighting in the Strip, the Quartet pledged not to ignore the residents.

From the reports that I've read I can find no comment from Blair regarding Hamas and whether or not he intends to engage with them. However, I notice that Condi Rice has been quick to get her tuppence worth in:

"Hamas, I think, knows what is expected for international respectability," said Ms Rice, alluding to demands that it recognise Israel, end violence and accept existing peace agreements.
Mr Blair was warmly endorsed by Ms Rice, though there was no sign of agreement to expand his limited terms of reference. "This is a very skilled, respected, historic figure ... who is absolutely dedicated to democracy, to building a better Middle East," she said, making clear that his role was "complementary".

So Rice is marginalising him already, making clear that he is "complimentary" to the fantastic job she has been doing ensuring that there is no progress at all towards the fulfilment of the moribund road map.

Reaction to Blair's appointment has been toxic in the Middle East, where his role as Bush's sidekick in the war in Iraq and as the man who refused - against all common sense and decency - to call for a ceasefire as Israel bombarded Beirut, has marked him as blatantly pro-Israeli. The very reason why Israel and the US have chosen him for this job.

Israel is delighted he is getting involved but Arab reactions range from sceptical to openly hostile. "George Bush wanted to reward Blair for his hostility to the Arabs," said Galal Nassar in Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly. "In backing Bush's nominee the Quartet has endorsed a disastrous choice." Columnist Rami Khouri wrote in Beirut's Daily Star: "If there is an award for the combined negative credibility of an institution plus an individual, the Quartet and Blair should be its first recipients. Appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome."

Before the Iraq war it was known that Colin Powell, although publicly holding his tongue, was thought to be privately against the intervention. On that occasion Blair sided with the hawks and backed the invasion - a decision which he refuses to admit was a wrong call.

Now, once again, Powell is arguing for a stance which goes against the one proposed by the hawks.

Mr Blair's remarks came after the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday broke with Washington orthodoxy by suggesting that the international Middle East Quartet should have contacts with Hamas.
But Mr Powell said in a radio interview: "I don't think you can just cast them into outer darkness and try to find a solution to the problems of the region without taking to account the standing that Hamas has in the Palestinian community"

He added: "They won an election that we insisted upon having. And so, as unpleasant a group they may be and as distasteful as I find some of their positions, I think through some means, the Middle East Quartet... or through some means Hamas has to be engaged."

Blair led a government that said it needed "more Colin Powell and less Donald Rumsfeld". He is now released from the burden of representing his nation and is fighting to remove the word "Iraq" from his tombstone. He would do well this time to listen to Powell rather than to the tired rhetoric of Rice.

There can be no peace process without the involvement of Hamas. The Palestinian people elected them as their representatives. The Israeli/US plan of negotiating with Abbas on his own is suicidal. They are planning on negotiating with the person whose party was democratically defeated. And, indeed, they intend to do so because they believe that he will agree to things that Hamas will not.

As I say, this is a suicidal policy. Israel and the US may get Abbas to give them things that Hamas will not, but any deal struck will be meaningless as they are negotiating with the monkey rather than the organ grinder.

Eighty-eight British MPs have signed an Early Day Motion after Hamas secured the release of the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, saying that international support for Mr Abbas should not preclude talks with Hamas.

Blair would do well to listen to Powell and his eighty eight former colleagues. However, early signals are not good as Blair is reportedly seeking an office in Jerusalem. Why Jerusalem? The capitol of Israel is Tel Aviv. Surely even Blair knows the dangerous signal he is sending by placing his office in the city which Israel claims to be it's capitol, a claim that even Washington have been slow to acknowledge?

His success in Northern Ireland is the only thing that gives me any faith that even someone as blatantly pro-Israeli as Blair might eventually - if he is realistic about achieving a peaceful settlement - realise that this can never be done without the involvement of ALL the players in this dispute.

Blair's comments remain vague. I can only hope that this vagueness is a tactical move. Time will tell.

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

CNN's Baghdad reporter: Beware of 'smoke and mirrors from the administration'

Bush is using fear in an attempt to get the US public to support the war and seeing success where there is none.

"Is there a sea-change in Baghdad?" Ware concluded. "Well, if he's seeing one, I'm afraid I'm not. Maybe you can see it from the Green Zone, but you can't see it out here in the Red Zone where Iraqis live."