Conrad Black Eats Porridge!

Yep, sometimes bad things do happen to bad people, cosmic karmic equilibrium is harmonised or…it couldn’t happen to a nicer (scummier) bloke-

Former media tycoon Conrad Black has started his six-and-a-half year jail sentence at a Florida prison. The former owner of the Daily Telegraph was convicted of three counts of fraud and one of obstructing justice. The fraud involved millions of dollars that was siphoned-off from his media firm Hollinger International. The UK peer will serve his sentence at a low-security prison 50 miles north west of Orlando in central Florida. He will also have to pay back $6.1m (£3m).

I’d like to think there’s still room at that country club jail for Rupert…

Spot The Pattern: Somali Edition

Yesterday-

2 March 2008, the Armed forces forcefully entered the offices of Radio Simba and took away three computers, audio mixer, a computer laptop, two Audiotape recorders, two digital cameras and four studio microphones. During the attack, the forces had beatenreporter Abdiaziz Hussein Hassan, who was in the Simba news studio. Yesterday, 1 March 2008, a rocket hit thebuilding of Radio Simba and destroyed the Radio’s archive.

Few minutes after the attack onSimba radio, the armed forces broke down the doors of Shabelle Radio, which isnear to offices of Simba Radio, and took two audio mixers and main computer fromthe production studio. When leaving from Shabelle Offices, forces orderedDirector of Shabele Muktar Mohamed Hirabe to go with them. Security Forces also visitedthe Horn Afrik Radio and ordered to shut down the radio, but did not take any equipment,according to Horn Afrik journalists.

Today-

The United States bombed a town in southern Somalia on Monday in a strike on suspected terrorists, United States defense officials told news agencies. Six people are reported dead.

Three missiles struck a building in Dobley, a town four miles from the border with Kenya, the Associated Press reported. Remnants of Somalia’s Union of Islamic Courts, an organization that ruled much of the southern part of the country until late 2006, reportedly took the town last week. The British Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that the missile strike killed six and wounded 20.

The above excerpt does what almost no other news outlet did, they said ‘suspected terrorists’ all others simply churned out the Pentagon’s line of Al Qaeda!!!!! And of course the context of the US backed invasion and the appalling humanitarian crisis it caused, hey who wants that when whizz bang missiles are to be had? So the pattern of the press being targeted and attacked then military action occurs is obscured by not relating the press attacks within the context of US involvement in Somalia, so the later action by the US seems unrelated. But journalists in America are reluctant to add 2 and 2 and state their government is killing journalists as a routine tactic of warfare and counter insurgency, they even imprison some without charge in various sites. In fact corporate hacks still act just as stenographers reprinting Pentagon claims as objective information, rather than become outraged they play along, or perhaps they are frightened by the killings. They would prefer a quiet (and affluent) life than to report the elephant in the room -Empire.

Update: The Pentagon Official who said it was Al Qaeda…Bryan Whitman, oh you know Bryan’s work, that video of Iranian boats ‘attacking’ US ships, all those off the record chats? So the hacks not only did a lazy job they repeat the claims of man already shown to be a great big fraud, which makes them either incredibly stupid or knowing conspirators. Hack motherfuckers.

Amnesty On Ben Griffin, Avaaz On Gaza

Following the injunction granted on 28 February 2008 by the High Court of England and Wales to prevent Ben Griffin, a former member of the UK Special Forces (UKSF) Special Air Services (SAS), from making any further disclosures relating to the work of the SAS, Amnesty International’s Senior Adviser, Anne FitzGerald, said:‘Rather than seeking to silence people who might have credible evidence of alleged human rights violations, which may include war crimes, the UK authorities should be seeking to investigate those allegations.’

‘Amnesty International repeatedly makes calls for the UK to ensure that full and independent investigations are carried out wherever there are credible allegations that agents of the UK, including members of the armed forces, may have been responsible for grave violations of human rights law or for war crimes. Those calls all too often go unheeded: only last week Amnesty International repeated its call for such an investigation into the UK’s alleged involvement in the US-led programme of renditions and secret detention, following official confirmation, after years of denial, that rendition flights did indeed touch down in the UK territory of Diego Garcia.’

‘There can be no accountability without transparency: people – including former soldiers – who have information that may constitute evidence of war crimes or of grave human rights violations must be reassured that they can safely make that information public, without fear of punitive legal action against them. If the government of the UK succeeds in gagging Ben Griffin and burying any significant information he may possess, it risks preventing others from coming forward who may have evidence of serious violations.’

And AVAAZ have a petition should you feel it might have an effect on any parties involved-

The Gaza-Israel crisis is out of control. It’s come to this: bloody full-scale invasion, or a cease-fire. With rockets raining down on both sides, Israel launched a ground assault into the Gaza Strip this weekend. Over a hundred combatants and civilians from both sides lie dead. The next 48 hours are crucial — Israel’s cabinet will discuss a larger invasion Wednesday. But Hamas floated a Gaza ceasefire months ago, and 64% of Israelis support the idea.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_ceasefire_now/3.php?cl=58186486

Behold Britain’s Mighty Nuclear Power!

The awesome power of British Nuclear plants shall rule the world!!!!

In the four years before 2002, the plant had produced annual figures respectively of 2.3 tonnes, 0.3 tonnes, 0 tonnes and 0 tonnes.

Erm…yeah but…

A nuclear plant built at a cost of £470m to provide atomic fuel to be used in foreign power stations has produced almost nothing since it was opened six years ago, the government has admitted. The mixed oxide (Mox) facility at Sellafield in Cumbria – which was opposed by green groups as uneconomic – was originally predicted to have an annual throughput of 120 tonnes of fuel.

No, but see the thing is…

The SMP was designed to make new fuel from the recycled uranium and plutonium recovered from used nuclear fuel, which had been reprocessed by the nearby thermal oxide reprocessing plant (Thorp) at Sellafield. A Mox demonstration complex was opened in 1998 but was hit by a scandal involving quality control and the falsification of documents, which led to the resignation of John Taylor, chief executive of BNFL.

Attempts to open the main SMP facility led to high court challenges by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which argued that the government’s decision to allow BNG’s parent group, BNFL, to proceed with opening the facility was unlawful under European law. The Irish government also took unsuccessful legal action to stop the SMP opening over concerns about radioactive effluent from the plant polluting the Irish Sea.

Jean McSorley, a nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace, said the Mox plant was – along with Thorp – “another great failure of British nuclear engineering” and pointed to the dangers of accepting the industry’s economic models and promises. She pointed out that Thorp had been shut for the past three years because of an accident and continual attempts to reopen it had been thwarted by further problems.

Um…

BNG has been forced to meet the needs of Swiss and other contracted customers for Mox fuel through buying alternative supplies from France and Belgium. With the £470m construction costs written off, the plant was assessed by government appointed consultants in 2001 to have a net positive value of only £216m, a value that was partly based on winning back Japanese business, which proved hard after the falsification of quality-assurance data in 1999.

It’s easy to mock, but you try scamming hundreds of millions of pounds out of the government, that was a success at least. The nuclear thing…not so much. Still I’m sure all those new power stations being pushed through against legal challenges and false consultation processes will be just peachy!

Going All The Way

A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the need not to divulge internal strategy, said the harsh Israeli reaction was intended as a clear signal to Hamas that hitting Ashkelon will not be tolerated. The official said Israel was willing to go all the way to stress its point — including a large-scale ground invasion into Gaza and the assassination of Hamas’ political leadership.

Ban Ki-moon –

 The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the latest violence in the Gaza Strip. He has described Israel’s use of force as ‘excessive’. He was speaking at an emergency meeting on the escalating clashes.

America sez-

“There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defense,” he added. “The United States remains deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and southern Israel.” 

So deaths in the ratio of 30plus to 1 is self defence? I must remember that if I have to fend off a homicidal assault, I’ll have to kill them and their family and their relatives and if I haven’t reached the 30 mark…erm, I dunno… just kill some people waiting at a bus stop or something? That’s an awful lot of effort. I mean if I did that I’d have to be really quite keen on murdering people, maybe to the point I maybe had bit of a problem with the killing type urges, sorry ‘self-defense’. Almost as if it’s hiding some deeper, darker intention towards the Palestinians. Hmmmm. Barak sez-

“It is time for action. The operation is continuing. Hamas is responsible and will pay the price,” Ehud Barak said in a statement. “They fire at innocent civilians. They leave us no choice. We will deploy force to change the situation — and we will change it.” 

Yeah, nothing at all fascistically deranged there.