The Osterley Times

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Hung parliament looms as Tory support crumbles.

When The National Anti-bullying Helpline charity announced that staff at Number Ten had complained about being bullied, everyone assumed that this was confirmation of the claims made in Andrew Rawnsley's book that Gordon Brown was a bully.

It hasn't quite worked out like that.

One of the Tory party's best known MPs, Ann Widdecombe, quit as a patron of the National Bullying Helpline, the charity which on Sunday sparked a storm at Westminster when its founder, Christine Pratt, entered the political fray, saying she had received four complaints of bullying from No 10 staff.

Last night the charity was close to implosion as other patrons also resigned, saying Pratt had acted unethically. Among those who quit were the television presenter Sarah Cawood and the workplace stress expert Cary Cooper. There were also reports that Tory councillor for Hillingdon Mary O'Connor resigned.

The helpline withdrew any suggestion that the complaints involved Brown, and had to fend off criticism that it had close ties to the Conservative party.

I listened yesterday as Pratt suddenly announced that none of the complaints her charity had received had concerned Gordon Brown, which was not something one could possibly have gleaned from the lurid headlines which her intervention had contributed to, and suddenly her deciding to speak out now appeared more politically motivated than ever.

In an interview in the Economist, Brown gave his first direct response since Rawnsley's allegations were published. "The cabinet secretary has made it clear that he's had no inquiries, there's been no reprimand, there's been no private message to me ... (The) story is completely wrong," Brown said.

David Cameron and the Tories have leapt on this story as proof that Brown is unfit for office.

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said the allegations proved Brown was not "cut out for the job". He said on Sky News: "I don't think he has ever really shown that he can lead a happy team and maybe if there is truth in any of these allegations, that's part of the reason why."

However, this story is not the only thing that's crumbling if recent opinion polls are to be believed.

Support for David Cameron's Conservative party has crumbled to its lowest point for nearly two years, according to the latest monthly Guardian/ICM poll, leaving Britain on course for a hung parliament at the coming general election.

With no more than three months to go until polling day, the Conservatives have fallen to 37%, down three points on last month's Guardian/ICM poll and down two on another ICM poll earlier this month.

The party has not fallen so low in an ICM poll since the tail-end of the banking crisis, last falling to 37% in February 2008.

I detect a certain desperation when Cameron leaps on to this kind of story. I can sense his fear that the election is slipping away, and can't help but see him as a political opportunist who has no vision to sell, so he spends all his time looking for faults in his opponent. After all, Cameron has come this far in the polls simply because he is not Gordon Brown; and as the election nears, one can sense his confusion that this is no longer enough to have him elected.

Labour also claims that its personal polling of Cameron shows he is seen as "too shrill, divisive and not speaking for Britain any longer". Labour claims it is succeeding in portraying Cameron as a man running a concealment strategy, caught between his branding and his beliefs.

I still feel sure that the Tories will win the next election, but have been amazed at the way Cameron has crumbled the nearer we get to it.

Having enjoyed such terrific success in the polls by saying nothing, Cameron seems baffled that the British public are now asking just what exactly it is that he intends to do. But, rather than set out a vision of Tory policies, Cameron finds himself leaping over any story which shows Gordon Brown in a bad light.

It's a tactic which might very well backfire. I remember another election in which the occupant of Downing Street was guaranteed to lose. Every poll indicated that this was on the cards, but, on the day, John Major - another unelected leader who had taken over from a Prime Minister who had stepped down - prevailed and Neil Kinnock lost.

Cameron must do more than simply not be Gordon Brown, for the people might decide in such circumstances that it's better to choose the devil they know.

Click here for full article.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Schwarzenegger slams GOP stimulus hypocrisy.

Schwarzenegger has a pop at the hypocrisy which the Republican party have been indulging in when it comes to the stimulus.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was proud to accept stimulus dollars for his state praised the program for creating or saving over 150,000 jobs. "I have been the first governor of the Republican governors to come out and to support the stimulus money because I say to myself, this is terrific," Schwarzenegger told ABC's Terry Moran Sunday.

In contrast to many Republicans, the California governor believes the stimulus has created public and private sector jobs. "Anyone that says that it hasn't created the jobs, they should talk to the 150,000 people that have been getting jobs in California," he said.

Schwarzenegger lashed out at those GOP politicians who voted against the bill then took credit for benefits provided to their states. "Well, you know, to me I find it interesting that you have a lot of the Republicans running around and pushing back on the stimulus money and saying this doesn't create any new jobs, and then they go out and they do the photo ops and they are posing with the big check and they say, 'Isn't this great?'" said Schwarzenegger.

Good on him for saying it. The Republicans have developed a theme which is that everything Obama does results in failure, which is why they find themselves deriding the stimulus nationally whilst accepting it for their own states.

And, when they behave in an utterly obstructionist way, we have Palin popping up saying, "How's that hopey, changey stuff working out?" as if their obstructionism is, in itself, a proof of Obama's failure.

I find their behaviour quasi-adolescent.

Gordon Brown hit by fresh bullying allegations.

Anyone who has ever watched the BBC's brilliant political satire, The Thick of It, knows that politics is not a place for the faint hearted.

Websites have been devoted to the programmes more memorable quotes:

[knock on door]
Malcolm Tucker: Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.

Glenn Cullen: This is a bucket of shit. If someone throws shit at us, we throw shit back at them. We start a shit fight. We throw so much shit back at them so they can't pick up shit, they can't throw shit, they can't DO shit.

Malcolm Tucker: Sam? Can you get me Terri Coverley and Glenn Cullen? Make them an appointment to come over? I think I got to shout at somebody, you know? Oh, actually, get me John at Culture on the phone, I think I'll have a bit of a shout now.

This is what makes the latest story about Gordon Brown such a blatant stitch up.

The cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, was tonight under pressure to launch a formal investigation into Gordon Brown's treatment of his staff after an anti-bullying helpline revealed it has received several complaints from people working at No 10. It follows publication by the Observer journalist Andrew Rawnsley of hotly- disputed allegations about Brown mistreating staff, including assertions that he swore at staff, grabbed them by lapels and shouted at them.

Rawnsley also claimed O'Donnell had warned Brown to change his behaviour.

The Conservatives responded to the allegations by suggesting "there may have been a cover up at the heart of government over the prime minister's behaviour".

The National Anti-bullying Helpline charity went public after the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, flatly denied Rawnsley's claims, insisting that Brown was simply "demanding", "emotional, "and had a degree of impatience".

Christine Pratt, the helpline's director, said: "We are not suggesting he is a bully. What we are saying is there are people in his office working directly with him that have issues and concerns, and have contacted our helpline. We believe the present statement put out by Lord Mandelson is a nonsense and non-credible."
She said four staff had contacted the helpline, the last one only a few months ago. "I have personally taken a call from staff in the prime minister's office, staff who believe they are working in a bullying culture and that it has caused them some stress," she said.

Thatcher was famous for tearing strips out of her male colleagues and the right wing press would applaud her as "the only man in the cabinet" and demand that, if her colleagues couldn't stand the heat, then they should get out of the kitchen.

Why is there this blatant double standard when it comes to Brown? And why has this National Bullying Helpline decided to go public with it's claim that staff at Downing Street have been phoning them?

Well, a hint might be that Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe is it's patron and that David Cameron is quoted supporting their work on their website. Of course, Widdecombe insists that the charity is "utterly non-political".

However, government sources questioned the charity's credentials, suggesting it had made no contact with No 10 and operated only two doors away from the local Conservative party.

This is simply another way for the Tories to attack Brown whilst avoiding talking about any of their policies. It's a really cheap attack as one can only imagine what these same people would say if a biographer were to describe Thatcher as "a bully".

I can hear their snorts of derision already as they applaud her determination "to get things done" and her lack of time for niceties.

Related Articles:

Bullying row charity chief spoke to Tories.

Click here for full article.

Photographer films his own 'anti-terror' arrest.

The police promised in early December that they would stop the practice of using Section 44 to question photographers of everyday scenes in cities, including sites of interest to tourists, and Acpo - the Association of Chief Police Officers - sent out an email warning officers to decease this practice.

The strongly worded warning was circulated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) last night. In an email sent to the chief constables of England and Wales's 43 police forces, officers were advised that Section 44 powers should not be used unnecessarily against photographers. The message says: "Officers and community support officers are reminded that we should not be stopping and searching people for taking photos. Unnecessarily restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional, is unacceptable."

However, the Guardian are this morning showing the footage taken by an amateur photographer in Accrington while he was being arrested for failing to give his name and address to policemen who thought that his behaviour was "suspicious" as he took footage of everyday scenes in the town centre during the Christmas period.

The photographer, Bob Patefield, is polite throughout, but obviously knows his rights and knows what the police are and are not allowed to do.

Patefield and his friend declined to give their details, as they are entitled to under the act. The police then appeared to change tack, saying the way the men were taking images constituted "antisocial behaviour". Patefield, who is in his 40s, was stopped three times before finally being arrested.

This man was held for eight hours before finally being released without charge. His crime was that he declined to give his name and address to the police, which he is allowed to do under Section 44, but the police then claim that other citizens have been complaining - although the officer who makes this claim admits that no complaint has been made to himself - and suddenly change their reason for questioning him to a matter of "anti-social behaviour", for which he is required to give his name and address.

To be fair the footage does not show Patefield being manhandled in any way, nor are the police impolite or bullying. They simply appear as if they are put out that this man knows the law and they are determined that he is, one way or another, going to give them his details.

The sergeant also alluded to complaints from the public and, turning to Patefield, added: "I'm led to believe you've got a bit of insight into the law. Do you work in the field?"

In a statement, Lancashire police said they and members of the public were "concerned about the way in which [Patefield] was using his camera". It said police felt they had "no choice" but to arrest him because he was refusing to co-operate.

I don't believe for a second that there had been complaints from members of the public. The police were simply put out that someone appeared to understand the law and was refusing to give them his details.

And why in these days of Google Earth the police think terrorists would have to case out Accrington town centre with a video camera is simply beyond me. The whole thing in online anyway.

The video is worth watching.

Watch it here.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Beck suggests liberal "minority" has "hijack[ed]" America.

Beck thinks that a 20% "minority" of Americans, the people who identify themselves as Liberals, have hijacked the United States.

It's simply another way to ignore the results of an election which didn't go the Republicans way and deem that result as, somehow, invalid. It's a "hijacking."

Justice Department Declines Punishment for Bush Officials for “Poor Judgment”.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Apparently, Bush lawyers displayed merely "poor judgement" when they issued memos which allowed the US to engage in torture.

So John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury will face no meaningful punishment for the disgraceful way they deliberately misinterpreted the law in order to facilitate the Bush administration's desire to torture.

Jonathan Turley:

The Justice Department confirmed that the investigation originally found professional misconduct by Yoo and Bybee, but an unnamed high-ranking official at the Office of Professional Responsibility overruled the finding to avoid any professional action against them.

Now the report merely states that the men “exercised poor judgment.”

Now we are left with a former Vice President who proclaims proudly his support for torture and lawyers who will face no repercussions for their role — and of course an Administration that is refusing to even investigate war crimes. In the meantime, Bybee will continue to rule on cases as an appellate judge under a lifetime appointment – due to the failure of the Democrats to block the nomination.

How did we come to this ignoble moment?

How indeed...

Any hope that Obama was going to clean up this stain on America's reputation must surely now be consigned to the bin.

Torture is now officially, it appears, simply a difference in policy between the Democrats and the Republicans. It certainly is not being treated as a war crime.

They might have got away with this in the United States, but I would suggest that Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury never leave its shores. For they would be sure to face arrest abroad for what they have done. As Tzipi Livni discovered recently, we "old Europeans" still frown at war crimes.

UPDATE:

Newsweek has more and has started naming names:

The chief author of the Bush administration's "torture memo" told Justice Department investigators that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be "massacred," according to a report by released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.

The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department's internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed "intentional professional misconduct" when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects.

The report by OPR concludes that Yoo, now a Berkeley law professor, and his boss at the time, Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, should be referred to their state bar associations for possible disciplinary proceedings. But, as first reported by NEWSWEEK, another senior department lawyer, David Margolis, reviewed the report and last month overruled its findings on the grounds that there was no clear and "unambiguous" standard by which OPR was judging the lawyers. Instead, Margolis, who was the final decision-maker in the inquiry, found that they were guilty of only "poor judgment."
It strikes me as beyond belief that John Yoo could seriously argue that Bush had the power to have entire villages of innocents "massacred" if he so choose and that Margolis imagines that this is simply "poor judgement". People who make judgements which are that poor should be disbarred.

'Oath Keepers' chief points to Katrina reponse to justify paranoia: 'They disarmed Americans over some bad weather'.

O'Reilly promised the other day that he would interview a member of the Oath Keepers and, true to his word, he had one on last night. To be fair to O'Reilly, he didn't shirk from challenging the paranoid lunacy which Stewart Rhodes displayed.

O'Reilly: OK, so full members in the Oath Keepers have to have a military or police background. Or firefighters. Now, I'm gonna read you something from your website. "We will not obey unconstitutional and thus illegal and immoral orders, such as orders to disarm the American people or place them under martial law."

Well, who's gonna try to disarm people and place them under martial law. I mean, why would that even be something you would be discussing?

Rhodes: Well, it happened as recently as Katrina. You probably have seen the videos there of the old lady being tackled in her kitchen, and disarmed of her revolver, and there was house-to-house searches for firearms. And you had the police chief declaring that no one would be allowed to have weapons, or he'd take all the guns. And he did.

So they disarmed Americans over some bad weather, as though the bad weather suspended the Second Amendment. So, that's the most recent example.

Did you catch that? Hurricane Katrina was simply "bad weather". I would have called that a national emergency, but Oath Keepers appear to see their right to carry guns as so important that even natural disasters have to be downplayed if it interferes with that right.

Civil disorder broke out in the chaos which inevitably occurred in the aftermath of Katrina, so it would seem to me prudent that everyone should be disarmed.

Stewart Rhodes admits that Oath Keepers would not agree to be disarmed even if a state of emergency was declared, something which O'Reilly describes as, "quite an extreme position."

When Bill O'Reilly refers to a right wingers position in such terms that means that you are a flaming loon.

Brown in appeal to voters as poll shows Labour is closing.

It really is open season on Gordon Brown when he finds himself having to deny that he once assaulted a senior aide while rushing to a Downing Street reception.

He says that he finds himself dealing with a "hostile" media. The man has a gift for understatement.

Three allegations of physical violence on members of staff appear in a new book about the Brown regime by the political commentator Andrew Rawnsley. It is serialised in The Observer today.

"It is simply a lie to say that I've ever hit anybody in my life," Mr Brown said. "I may have done one or two good tackles at rugby, but the idea that is suggested in this so-called inside account is just ludicrous."

The problem of getting his message across at a time when he faced damaging claims that he had behaved violently towards junior staff during a "reign of terror" in Downing Street lay behind Mr Brown's decision to agree to his controversial televised interview with Piers Morgan last week.

"What I say to the public has been mediated by newspapers that are very hostile to me," Mr Brown told the IoS. "It's important that people form their own impression, rather than have an impression imposed upon them by other people."

Some parts of the UK press have decided that it's time for Brown to go and every single thing which has gone wrong in the world, including the financial crisis brought about by the sub prime mortgage market in the United States, has been labelled as being, somehow, his fault.

Of course, this has partly been brought about because David Cameron and and his associates are constantly claiming that Brown caused the financial crisis and a hostile press are very happy to repeat such nonsense.

I expect we will get more of this tripe as the election approaches as Cameron is bound to be in a blind panic as he witnesses public support moving away from him rather than towards him as people start to question just what it is that Cameron intends to do once he takes office.

Up until now Cameron has benefited in the polls simply because he was not Gordon Brown, but, as the election approaches, Cameron's tactic of wanting to be all things to all people is beginning to come under scrutiny.

A new poll shows Labour have cut the Tories lead to just six points, the smallest gap between Labour and the Tories since December 2008.

A YouGov survey for The Sunday Times showed Labour jumping two points since last month to 33 per cent and the Conservatives falling to 39 per cent. The share would deny the Tories an overall majority at the general election.

And it appears that these latest slurs have brought Brown out of his shell to battle to remain in Number Ten.

The Prime Minister used his interview with the IoS to set the scene for the campaign, attempting to establish "clear red water" between the Government and the Opposition across a wide range of policy areas. In an attack of unusual ferocity, he claimed that Mr Cameron was leading a party that was right-wing, "unreconstructed" and "would destroy opportunities for millions of people to get middle-class jobs and incomes".

Mr Brown said: "The Conservatives have done all the public relations part of ... trying to persuade people they've changed. They've got the posters, they've got the slick advertising, they've got the big budgets for slogans which suggest they're different. But, in practice, when you actually look at the policies, there's not much evidence that they've changed."

I think Brown is bang on the money, as I was making that very point yesterday. There is no proof at all that the Tories have changed.

Perhaps the public are also coming to that conclusion, which is why Cameron's party are starting to slip in the polls.

Click here for full article.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Erick Erickson: "We've got Fox News"

To be fair, Erick Erickson is not saying anything that any rational person does not already know when he states, "We've got Fox News", when speaking of ways to advance the Republican message.

What makes it surprising is that he states this at a time when Fox are pretending to be outraged at the Obama administration's claim that they are the broadcasting wing of the Republican party.

It would appear that even CPAC speakers find it impossible to go along with Fox's ridiculous claim that they are "fair and balanced".

Bob Barr shouted down at CPAC for saying waterboarding is torture.

Listen to how this CPAC crowd reacts to the subject of torture.

First, they applaud Dan Lungren when he states that he supports enhanced interrogation techniques, and then they further applaud him when he states that he would prefer the trials of suspected terrorists to be carried out by the military.

Bob Barr then points out the laws which have been passed in the US, and asks that people respect and value those laws, by taking terrorists to court and having those courts impose either the death penalty or a life sentence without any possibility of parole. And, to be fair, there were some in the crowd who applauded him for that sentiment.

But it is simply too much for this crowd when Barr states that, "Waterboarding is torture".

At that point they start to boo him.

The conservative base simply won't accept that certain actions are beyond the pale. Even though the person who signed the UN convention against torture into United States law was their hero, Ronald Reagan.

It's a sad day for the Republican party when Ronald Reagan would be considered too soft on terrorism for their liking.

Reagan:

By giving its advice and consent to ratification of this Convention, the Senate of the United States will demonstrate unequivocally our desire to bring an end to the abhorrent practice of torture.

That's the kind of sentiment which the CPAC crowd are currently booing.

Torture collusion probe urged by human rights watchdog.

The UK's human rights watchdog is calling for a review into claims that the British government colluded in torture.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission says 25 people now claim the UK knew of their mistreatment abroad.

Commission chair Trevor Phillips makes the demand for a review in a letter to Justice Secretary Jack Straw.

It comes after the Court of Appeal told the government to reveal what it knew about the torture of Binyam Mohamed.

In the letter, Mr Phillips says the government has not given good enough answers to allegations that officers from British intelligence agencies had colluded in the alleged torture or mistreatment of terrorism suspects held by the US, or on its behalf by allies, around the world.

Mr Phillips said that an independent review team should get unlimited access to documents and hold public sessions where possible.

He said: "Ministers and government agencies are facing very serious allegations of knowing that UK citizens were being tortured, failing to take action to stop that torture and supplying questions to be used in the interrogation of men who were subjected to a high level of ill-treatment.

"Given the UK's role as a world leader on human rights it would be inexplicable for the government not to urgently put in place an independent review process to assess the truth, or otherwise, of these allegations."

An astonishing number of people are now claiming that they were tortured and that the UK government colluded in their torture.

We have also witnessed the government going to incredible lengths, not to answer the charges, but rather to make sure that the courts keep secret any documents which might give us the answers which we seek.

The allegations cited by the Equality and Human Rights Commission include two men jailed for life for serious terrorism offences in the UK, both of whom say they were tortured by Pakistani interrogators before being handed over to British authorities.

Seven of the men referred to by the EHRC are trying to sue both MI5 and MI6 for alleged complicity in their ill-treatment, a case that may take more than a year to come to a full hearing.

The other cases include men whose allegations have been highlighted in recent reports by a UN working group on treatment of terrorism suspects and a separate paper by campaign group Human Rights Watch.

The time has long gone where the government can simply state, "We do not condone torture" and expect that to be enough to allay public doubt. Their credibility is being eroded by the sheer number of people now making the claim. And no case has undermined their credibility more than the case of Binyam Mohamed.

Courts have revealed that MI5 were sending questions which they wanted Mr Mohamed to answer long after their own reports were indicating that the man was being subjected to torture.

The Court of Appeal's judgement related to Mr Mohamed revealed that MI5 had received detailed reports from Washington of his 2002 mistreatment which included sleep deprivation, shackling and threats of being taken to a third country where he would disappear.

Two separate courts, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States, have found that Binyam Mohamed was tortured and the the government of the UK was aware that he was being tortured. Even Lord Goldsmith, who was Attorney General at the time when Mohamed was being tortured, has now called for a public inquiry.

The government's credibility on this subject is in tatters. Only an independent inquiry with unlimited access to documents has any chance of getting anywhere near the truth on this matter.

The government will no doubt resist this with all of their might, which will only increase suspicion that they have something to hide.

25 people claiming that the government were complicit in their torture is an awfully high number.

Click here for full article.

Friday, February 19, 2010

CPAC speaker proves it's just like a Tea Party.

This CPAC speaker really does sound like he should at one of those tea parties:

"And our notion of freedom doesn't consist of snorting cocaine. Which is certainly one thing which separates us from Barack Obama."

I was under the impression that Obama had admitted using marijuana, not cocaine. I thought the guy who was rumoured to have used cocaine was the previous president of the United States. That'll have been the guy that these folks adored.

A conversation between Bush and an old friend, author Doug Wead, touched on the subject of use of illegal drugs. In the taped recording of the conversation, Bush explained his refusal to answer questions about whether he had used marijuana at some time in his past. “I wouldn’t answer the dope questions,” Bush says. “You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.”

When Wead reminded Bush of his earlier public denial of using cocaine, Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything."

But, you know, never let the facts get in the way of a good punch line.

Johann Hari: Ignore the propaganda and spin – the Tory party hasn't changed.

There has been much made of the fact that David Cameron's latest election poster has been heavily airbrushed, which has led to a new site devoted to making spoofs of his election poster, one of which is on the left.

It's nice to see that not everyone is being taken in by Cameron's policy of appearing cute and non-threatening, but studiously avoiding actually telling anyone what it is that he plans to do once elected.

Johan Hari has an article in today's Independent in which he examines Cameron's central theme: that the Conservatives have "changed".

Since he became leader, he has been telling us “the Conservative Party has changed”. But is it true? Let’s start with the issue that Cameron said was “terrific evidence” of a “different Conservative Party” – global warming. Until 2005, he had never mentioned the subject, except to mock wind farms as “giant bird-blenders” and to demand “a massive road-building programme” in defiance of all environmental sense. But then he abruptly announced he was the true champion of this cause and people should “vote blue to go green.” The influential website ConservativeHome thought the New Cameron didn’t speak for the Party, so last month they commissioned a poll of the candidates selected to fight the most winnable Tory seats. They were asked to rank nineteen issues facing Britain in order of importance – and global warming came at the very bottom. The soon-to-be Conservative MPs think radically altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere is less important than imprisoning even more people and reclaiming powers from Scotland.

But even this is misleading. The party doesn’t just accord a low priority to deal with this problem – most actively deny it exists. The Spectator’s political editor, James Forsyth, reports: “At Tory country-house gatherings, global warming scepticism has replaced Europe as the issue of the day.” Tim Montgomerie, the head of ConservativeHome and physical embodiment of the Tory id, says: “I’m confident the sceptics are going to win. It’s for Cameron to decide how he’s going to get out of this – he’s lost the battle already.” This has only grown over the past month, when a handful of the tens of thousands of scientists working on this issue have been shown to have made a few mistakes. The massed ranks of the Tory party have seized on this as “proof” that releasing massive amounts of warming gases into the atmosphere won’t cause the planet to get warmer. The true message is: vote blue, screw green.

The attitude of many Conservatives towards global warming is important only in as much as it reveals a larger truth: Cameron is selling us a turkey.

The "change" which Cameron is selling us is utterly superficial. The only "change" is that a Conservative leader is publicly addressing such issues, but there is not a hint that the Tory party as a whole believe in or care about these subjects just because Cameron has decided that there are votes to be won by talking about these things.

And then there are the tales of Chris Horne and David Matthews who volunteered to work for the Conservative party in order to write a book about their experience. Matthews, who we are told is "warm" and "charismatic" is also black. His experience is not one of black man coming across a "changed" Tory party.

Everywhere he went, he was treated with suspicion and contempt. Horne writes: “The proportion of people who gave him a wide berth was around three quarters, and it was hard to escape the conclusion that this was because he was black. The Tories we met seemed fantastically uncomfortable around David.” Even in the most liberal Tory surroundings, like inner London, there was a “constant, almost knee-jerk mild racism,” where they felt the need to obsessively talk about immigration and race in disparaging ways in his presence. At a typical Tory dinner they attended, Cecil Parkinson said of Africa: “God decided to create the most beautiful continent on earth – wide rivers, fertile land, and every kind of natural resource you can think of. An angel said to God – if you make a place like that then it will completely dominate the earth. And God said – wait until you see the people I am going to put in it.” The assembled party members loved it, and said they missed good old Ian Smith, the last white supremacist ruler of Rhodesia.

When they were campaigning against the Liberal Democrat Susan Kramer, they were repeatedly told to emphasize she was an “outsider” and a “foreigner.” Horne asked what it meant, and he was told: “She’s a Jewess, but we aren’t allowed to say that? So all we can say is that she got off the train from Hungary.”

None of the above leads one to believe that there is any real change at the heart of the Tory party.

Beneath Cameron's airbrushed image, the old Tories remain, and they are as poisonous as ever.

Everywhere they went, the Party’s candidates and members said Cameron’s claims to have reformed are mere spin to win the election. For example, Ian Oakley, who was selected to be Tory candidate for Watford, bragged: “Last year it was all green this, and all green that; all that bollocks. People just want lots and lots and lots of cheap petrol. And we are going to give it to them.”

People with attitudes like that will form Cameron's parliamentary base and he will have to govern according to what he can get these reprobates to vote for.

So don't hold your breath waiting for a new "changed" Tory party. It's nothing of the sort.

Click here for full article.

Dubai police call on Interpol to help arrest Mossad head.

The pressure on Israel is intensifying as Interpol releases "wanted" notices for the 11 people suspected of having taken part in the kidnap, torture and murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

The faces of an 11-strong alleged hit squad appeared on the Interpol website this morning, 48 hours after authorities in the United Arab Emirates issued arrest warrants for the killing last month of the Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Their offences are listed as "crimes against life and health". The group stands accused of entering the emirate state using forged or stolen European identities, murdering the militant in his hotel and then fleeing the country on 19 January.

The red wanted notices are not international arrest warrants, but allow details of fugitives to be released worldwide with the request that the wanted person be arrested and extradited.

The Emirate's police chief went even further by calling for the head of Mossad to be arrested for his organisation's role in the affair.

Interpol should help arrest the head of Mossad if Israel's spy agency was responsible for the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai, the emirate's police chief said today.

In comments to be aired on Dubai TV, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim called for Interpol to issue "a red notice against the head of Mossad ... as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now".
Tamim said that the Dubai authorities were virtually certain that Mossad was behind the assassination of Mabhouh, as the incident threatened to turn into a diplomatic row between Israel and Britain over the use of false British passports.

"Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It is 99%, if not 100%, that Mossad is standing behind the murder," Tamim told the National newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.

The Israeli government are sticking by their formula of neither confirming nor denying their involvement, but this is now becoming an international incident, and the release of the passport images of the suspects who entered Dubai has only brought this story screaming back to life.

But the Israelis are sticking by their tried and tested formula:

The Foreign Secretary's comments came after an apparently fruitless meeting in London between the Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor and Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary who heads Britain's diplomatic service, which lasted just 14 minutes with no sign of any intelligence being shared. As the Israeli envoy left Whitehall, he said: "I was unable to add any information. I could not shed new light on the said matters".

There was a similar outcome in Dublin where the Israeli ambassador, Zion Evrony, had an hour's meeting with a senior Irish diplomat over how three Eire passports were used in the assassination. "I told him I know nothing about the event," Mr Evrony said afterwards.

The outcry over this is said to have stunned the Israelis and I can imagine why. After all, since 9-11 there has been an incredible shift - mostly brought about by the attitude of the Bush administration - in the way government's feel able to shun international law as long as they can claim that they are hunting down terrorists.

But one only has to reverse the situation, and imagine say an Israeli government official captured, tortured and killed by Iranians using false passports, to see how outrageous Israel's actions were.

For far too long government's have only had to say that what they were engaging in was "fighting terrorism" to have their every excess indulged.

This is why Netanyahu refuses to accept the Goldstone report. He refuses to accept that their should be any limit placed on any government action as long as that government can claim that it was "fighting terrorism".

If any good can come out of this incident and the outcry surrounding it, it is this: ALL governments should realise that we can't harp on about international law as it relates to our adversaries and imagine that we can flout it ourselves when it suits as our purposes.

Israel may have carried out the most recent outrageous act, but the secret prisons operated by the United States and the practice of extraordinary rendition which many European governments have been said to have taken part in, are all part of this "anything goes" attitude towards international law which the Bush administration championed and which, shamefully, much of Europe went along with.

This notion that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys has had a corrosive effect on our commitment to live within international rules. An "anything goes" attitude to international law will only result in anarchy.

This is why I am so dismayed that the Obama administration appear determined to leave the crimes of the Bush administration unpunished.

At some point we have to draw a line in the sand and say loudly what is legal and what is not. Israel's recent actions may be outrageous, but they are no more outrageous than what was routinely carried out by the previous American administration. When does Obama plan to demonstrate that what they did was wrong? Until he does, Israel and other nations will simply say that they are fighting terrorists, and dare anyone to try to insist that this fight should be governed by laws.

Click here for full article.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Maddow calls out Beck for falsely claiming that "nobody's saying" the D.C. snowstorm disproves climate change.

Rachel Maddow takes on Glenn Beck and his insistent lies, in this instance about global warming and what he has claimed and not claimed.

This guy's relationship with the truth is tenuous to say the least.

Tea Party speaker wants Sen. Patty Murray to 'get hung'.

More people attend UFO Conventions than attend your average Tea Party rally, but Fox News continues to insist that the Tea Party protests are the greatest threat Obama faces and that they represent "the real people".

But, every time I see anything involving this group of ageing white protesters, they seem to be becoming more extremist in their rhetoric by the minute.

Here's the latest from a rally in Asotin, Washington, which is in the far eastern reaches of the state:

"How many of you have watched the movie Lonesome Dove?," asked one speaker from the podium. "What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd. He got hung. And that's what I want to do with Patty Murray."

We've already had Tancredo declaring that Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country" and now we hear calls for people to be hung.

This movement simply gets uglier and more irresponsible by the day.

Falkland Islands: First it was sovereignty, now it's oil.

I remember well my reaction to the news that Argentina had invaded the Falkland islands; I wondered what the Argentinians could possibly want with an island in the North Sea. Like many Brits, until the invasion I had never heard of the Falklands, and imagined that they must be somewhere around the Shetlands.

And, as someone who has never been comfortable with our colonial past, I was puzzled as to why we should own an island 300 miles off the south American coast.

We famously went to war to retain these islands, and to ensure Margaret Thatcher's political career, but the battle over who actually owns this place is certain to heat up with the discovery that there might be rich petroleum and gas reserves around the islands.

The Argentinian government has declared that it was taking control of all shipping between its coastline and the disputed islands it calls Islas Malvinas and the adjoining South Georgia, a claim promptly rejected by the UK.
Buenos Aires has demanded that the Falklands should suspend oil exploration on the seabed, which is estimated to contain 60 billion barrels of oil – indicating that it has reserves on the scale of the North Sea. Last week Argentina detained a supply ship, the Thor Leader, which was transporting pipes to the islands from an Argentinian port.
The oil rig, the Ocean Guardian, is said to have been “buzzed” by Argentinian warplanes on its way to the South Atlantic, although other reports say that it may have been coastguard aircraft which was involved. Anibal Fernandez, the chef de cabinet in Buenos Aireas, said: “Any boat that wants to travel between ports on the Argentinian mainland to the Islas Malvinas, South Georgia and the South Sandwich islands must first ask for permission from the Argentinian government.”
Following the 1982 war, an “economic zone” of 200 nautical miles was established around the Falklands. British military and diplomatic sources have stated that any attempt by the Argentinians to stop the rig in these waters would be in breach of international law.

The last war for these islands involved the rights of the Falklands inhabitants to remain British whilst living as far away from Britain as it was possible to be. If oil and gas deposits are found there both the British and the Argentinian governments will have even more reason to demand that the islands are theirs.

Frederico Thomsen, a political analyst in Buenos Aires, said: “For centuries the Falklands were about some sheep, penguins and fish – and even so, we had a war. Should someone find ‘black gold’, things will get uncomfortable and nationalists will be stirred.”

If oil and gas deposits are found off the coast of the Falklands, then this whole sorry business might very well begin again.

Click here for full article.

UK calls in Israeli ambassador as Dubai killing row escalates.

One diplomat is reported as saying, "Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now," as the UK called in the Israeli ambassador to explain why some of the assassins who killed a Hamas official in Dubai were carrying British passports.

Of course, officially, Israel are not admitting that this was a Mossad operation, but it bears all of their hallmarks.

The Israeli ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office to "share information" about the assassins' use of identities stolen from six British citizens living in Israel, as part of the meticulously orchestrated assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement, but to signal its displeasure, the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret.

Gordon Brown yesterday launched an investigation into the use of the fake passports, which will be led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca). The British embassy in Tel Aviv is also contacting the British nationals affected in the plot, "and stands ready to provide them with the support that they need", the Foreign Office said in a statement last night.

"The British passport is an important part of being British and we have to make sure everything is done to protect it," Brown told LBC Radio yesterday.

Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, insisted there was no proof that the Mossad was involved in Mabhouh's killing in a Dubai hotel last month, but added that Israel had a "policy of ambiguity" on intelligence matters.

I am uncomfortable with targeted assassinations, although I understand that they may sometimes be necessary in times of war. But, on the whole, they make me uncomfortable.

The whole notion of law and order is suspended when one sends out assassins to act as judge, jury and executioner and kill people in cold blood. In this case there is even the suggestion that Mabhouh was tortured before he was killed.

We all know that this kind of thing goes on, but it takes us very far from being a world where we are governed by laws.

And the British government are hardly in a position to hold the Israelis to account if Mossad were responsible for this targeted killing, as our behaviour in the case of Binyam Mohamed puts us way outside of international law.

But, ever since 9-11, there has been a marked increase in this kind of "anything goes" approach to international law.

We are all on a slippery slope, as Gordon Brown will find as he puts on his most serious face to condemn Israel for practices no worse than anything which we ourselves have engaged in. Perhaps Gordon will condemn the Israelis for the killing and take comfort from the fact that, when we kill people, it's only in the case where our torturing of them has somehow gone wrong.

Click here for full article.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Trump the Chump.

Donald Trump joins in with the idiocy recently displayed on Fox News. If it snows in Washington, then climate change has been disproved.

"With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore," the tycoon told members of his Trump National Golf Club in Westchester in a recent speech. "Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn't care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America's stupidity." The crowd of 500 stood up and cheered.

The fact that Trump can acknowledge that we are witnessing "the coldest winter ever recorded" and then state that we have "snow setting record levels up and down the coast" and imagine that this is proof that the climate is not changing strikes me as simply absurd.

Click here for full article.

Dick Cheney: "I Was a Big Supporter of Waterboarding"

Cheney is almost goading the Obama administration.

His daughter has long ran from TV station to TV station demanding that the US commit war crimes, but here Cheney walks right into a TV studio and admits that he personally favoured the war crime of waterboarding.

A crime which the US have already prosecuted people for.

The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.
After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war.

He's doing this because he knows that the Obama administration will never prosecute him. And, by being so blatant and so public about what he has done, he is making it more likely that future Republican administrations can do the same as he did. They will be able to point back to Cheney's boasting and say: "Dick Cheney made no secret of what he did and he was never prosecuted, so how can you say that this is illegal?"

In courts of law this is known as precedence, and Cheney is being very blunt about establishing his.

UPDATE:

Glenn Greenwald makes the exact same point:

What would stop a future President (or even the current one) from re-authorizing waterboarding and the other Bush/Cheney torture techniques if he decided he wanted to? Given that both the Bush and Obama administrations have succeeded thus far in blocking all judicial adjudications of the legality of these "policies," and given that the torture architects are feted on TV and given major newspaper columns, what impediments exist to prevent their re-implementation?

They are allowed to make these points on national TV as if what we are witnessing are mere policy differences. War crimes are surely not going to be portrayed in such a fashion? And yet, routinely on American TV shows, people like O'Reilly insist that Obama is endangering America because he has said that he will not permit "enhanced interrogation", the present Republican euphemism for torture.

By not prosecuting, Obama is allowing this misperception- that waterboarding is not a crime, it's simply a policy which the Democrats choose not to practice - to take root.

It's a dangerous precedent which Obama is allowing. And it's one which the neo-cons will, in future, exploit.