Vote To Deny A Working Tory Majority

It’s rearguard action time and at best all we get is the lesser of neoliberal evil but as Greece is showing corporate capital plans to attack and refusing to go quietly might mitigate their ambitions. Tory target seats, Grauniad Tactical voting guide, if you are in one, vote for the appropriate party to deny a Conservative victory (if your conscience allows). If the price of the war crimes engaged in by New Labour is a Tory government then to be honest we still get off a fuck of a lot lighter than around 1.2 to 1.5 million Iraqis and Afghans, so y’know have some perspective in your wailing and gnashing of teeth, because whoever wins welfare & healthcare will continue to be privatised & the ‘clients’ treated appallingly and migrants will still be imprisoned without trial. Torture will continue to practised and covered up, global capital will still be genuflected to and my brother will still be shipping out for Afghanistan this weekend.

The Human Centipede Model For Leadership In A Hung Parliament

Human Centipede is a schlock horror movie whereby a mad doctor who specialises in separating conjoined twins creates a… The clue’s in the title, he surgically attaches three hapless victims together, anus to mouth, to form an organism with one digestive tract, biologically implausible as that may be. Nevertheless such high concept body horror meets torture porn hijinks is doing its job causing sensation and gasps of horror which should translate into a healthy profit for the producers. It’s not called Showart, it’s Showbusiness people! Here below is the mad doctor with a helpful diagram for victims and viewers on his overhead projector (this immediately sets off alarm bells as to his competence, it’s 2010, Keynote, Powerpoint? Hello?)-

I say Cameron for the -worst- middle position, after all he already has that shit-eating grin…Clegg for front and Brown bringing up the rear, with Miliband following with the bucket & spade and a ‘Look, you’ve punished us enough about Iraq, all right? So don’t start punishing yourself.’ T-shirt.

The question then arises for the consensus state, could this creature be mated with a suitable female host to produce a new super race of neoliberal politician? Or are plans already afoot?

An antidote to such horror.

The Met Police Are Protecting A Killer They Know The Name Of

I wonder…if Officer E, the killer of Blair Peach, is named and if god forbid some member of the public foolishly follows the incitement by the right wing media (who never fail to side with the police oh the irony) to take an eye for an eye and enacts vigilante justice on the officer then the police can write a report about it, sit on that for 31 years and then release it but refuse to name or prosecute the murderer. Seems barbaric and wrong doesn’t it?

Also see Harpy– the illegal weapons, the Nazi regalia and the Police commander reiterating that police are allowed to murder people in a riot.

Dawkins & Hitchens Copy Me

Arrest The Pope, well Game On. While I said it on the 10th March better late than never eh fellas? However I would like for this considered attempt to not become a divisive Dawkos & Hitchites vs. Teh Religious, this is not simply religion that has enabled the paedophile mafia, it is Conservatism, the most potent and dangerous mix of ideologies has been the Right & God (whatever the flavour). That it found its ultimate expression in the abuse of the most defenceless children is entirely in keeping with that mix, it is predation, privilege & greed. The Vatican privileges its priests above the rights of the laity, using god as the cover for rigid hierarchies, since the inception of the church  figures within it warned about this and the abuse of those under the church’s power. This is not news or a surprise and when it is presented as such that indicates immediately the dishonesty and bad faith being engaged in by the leadership. This arrest idea might fall to just being a gimmick, the law is not applied to the elite, but it should be a serious change in the institutional position of religion, the god trump card should not be used to create an exceptional para legal world where rights are dependent on what some man (and it is usually a man) says god told him was right.

And if they do get the Pope, then let’s make Blair the next target, deal? Take it away Beau Bo D’or–

Makes Fools Of Us All

An April Fool’s really needs a veneer of possibility, of plausibility. Who is going to believe that a violent act caught on video tape and seen by multiple witnesses, many of them police officers, that led to a man’s death and that the perpetrator is known… Who is going to believe that an entire year after that killing absolutely no charges whatsoever have been brought before a court of law. I mean really what kind of immature prank minded joker is going to bother to create an April Fool’s when reality trumps any such malarkey hands down, even a day earlier a trial without a jury found another police officer not guilty of assault, the message being sent is loud and clear- Just when you though video cameras might constrain state violence we are telling you NO, perpetrators shall go free you unwashed serfs. The Establishment and its agents shall not be constrained by the laws we inflict on those beneath us (again with the photography), after all when the cuts come (and they will, one party or another or another) we shall need every weapon available to subdue the population and defend our privilege. Welcome to the Authoritarian End Stage of Neoliberalism you credulous chumps!

Actually one great prank has been perpetrated upon us, Democracy, enjoy that election ‘consensus‘ fans.

New Labour’s Decade Of Torture

And with Brown reneging on publication of SIS guidelines there is every sign this will continue, I would also add I have little hope any other party would not do likewise, a key aspect is the intel relationship with the US and clearly no accountability for torture is coming from that direction. The Amnesty Report does not cover the domestic repressions that the last decade has seen, which go hand in hand with the war-on-terror authoritarian paradise that is now our reality-

Amnesty International believes that there is credible evidence that the UK has been involved in grave human rights violations perpetrated against people held overseas since the attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001 to warrant the establishment of an independent, impartial and thorough inquiry. Credible allegations implicate the UK in torture or other ill-treatment, unlawful detentions and renditions. Over the years, Amnesty International1 and others have documented cases of the UK’s involvement in these abuses, including:

• UK personnel were present at and participated in interrogations of detainees held unlawfully overseas in circumstances in which the UK knew or ought to have known that the detainees concerned had been or were at risk of being tortured and/or whose detention was unlawful;
• UK personnel provided information (e.g. telegrams sent by UK intelligence personnel to intelligence services of other countries) that led the USA and other countries to apprehend and detain individuals when the UK knew or ought to have known that these people would be at risk of torture and/or unlawful detention;
• The UK was involved in the US-led programme of renditions and secret detentions through, for example, the use of UK territory (e.g. Diego Garcia) and/or airspace;
• UK personnel forwarded questions to be put to individuals detained by other countries in circumstances in which the UK knew or ought to have known that the detainees concerned had been or were at risk of being tortured and/or whose detention was unlawful; and
• The UK systematically received information extracted from people detained overseas in circumstances in which it knew or ought to have known that the detainees concerned were being, had been or would be tortured and/or whose detention was unlawful.
• Amnesty International believes that the UK’s role in the abusive practices described above cannot be attributed exclusively to the actions or omissions of rogue UK agents. Policies and practices implemented in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 led directly to the UK becoming involved in grave violations of human rights committed against people held overseas. These policies and practices included:
• The UK government’s failure to respond adequately to the serious violations of international humanitarian law documented in the February 2004 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC);2
• The sending of UK intelligence and police personnel abroad to conduct or assist the interrogations of people held by other states in circumstances where the UK knew or ought to have known that both detention and questioning were not only unlawful, but may also have amounted to serious crimes under UK and international law, including complicity in torture on the part of the UK and possible criminal conduct on the part of individual UK agents;
• The refusal, for a substantial period of time, to oppose the unlawful detention of hundreds of people at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the concomitant refusal to make adequate representations to the USA and other countries, on behalf of UK nationals and former UK residents who were held unlawfully at various locations around the world, including Guantánamo Bay;
• The sending of UK intelligence personnel to Guantánamo Bay to interrogate UK nationals and UK residents;
• The concealment until June 2004 of the fact that a number of the detainees questioned by UK intelligence personnel had in fact complained about their treatment in detention at the hands of US authorities at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere (e.g. Afghanistan), and the subsequent refusal of the UK to provide any further detail about these complaints, including on how, if at all, they had been followed up in a manner consistent with the UK’s human rights obligations under international law;
• The authorizations issued by the UK government to the security and intelligence agencies under section 7 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994,3which provides a waiver of liability to intelligence service personnel for illegal acts, including criminal offences, committed abroad in certain circumstances, and the concomitant concealment — for “security reasons” — of the number of times and the circumstances in which these authorizations have been granted since 11 September 2001;
• The incorrect assertion that there were only very limited circumstances in which domestic and international human rights law would apply to UK operations abroad, including in Afghanistan and Iraq;
• The failure to disclose information in the UK government’s possession that supported claims on behalf of former and current detainees that they had been tortured or otherwise ill- treated and that their confessions had been extracted under torture or other ill-treatment;
• The wilful or grossly negligent failure to maintain adequate records — or any records at all — with respect to the use of Diego Garcia by the USA for unlawful renditions, and the activities of the intelligence agencies; and
• The strenuous defence of the use, in domestic legal proceedings, of information extracted under torture from people held overseas by other countries.

The UK government’s response to these charges has primarily been one of denial and of hiding behind a wall of secrecy. The Chiefs of the UK’s Secret Services (MI5 and MI6), the Home and Foreign Secretaries, the Prime Minister and the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee have in the past denied the UK’s involvement in the torture of people held overseas. However, such denials fly in the face of credible evidence to the contrary that has continued to mount in recent years.

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A Sorry Apology

Colm O’Gorman:- On Saturday Pope Benedict XVI published his letter to the Irish Church on the issue of child abuse. What was necessary seemed clear. As Pope, acknowledge the cover up by Roman Catholic Church of the rape and abuse of children by priests, take responsibility for it, and show how you will ensure it never happens again.

But the letter failed to do any of this. There was no acceptance of responsibility for the now established cover up, no plan to ensure that across the global church those who rape and abuse will be reported to the civil authorities and children properly protected.

The letter is clearly an effort to restore the credibility of a church rocked by the publication of three state investigations into clerical crimes and church over ups in Ireland. The Pope has seen all three of these reports.

Published in May 2009, following an eleven year State investigation, the Ryan Report detailed the full extent of the horrific abuse endured by children abandoned to the ‘care’ of the church.

It reported ritualized, savage beatings, endemic rape and sexual assault and the exploitation of children forced to work to enrich the bloated religious congregations charged with their care.

Disgracefully, the Pope used his letter and this issue to attack one of his favourite targets, secularisation. We are asked to believe that the secularisation of Irish society led to abuse and cover up. In fact, it is the secularisation of society that finally led to the exposure of the crimes of the church.

The most horrific abuse was perpetrated, not in a secularised Ireland, but at a time when Irish society was dominated, socially and politically, by the Catholic Church.

That the Pope appears to have wilfully ignored this established fact is a blatant and disgraceful deceit.

Some have reported that the Pope issued a heartfelt apology to victims of abuse. In fact the word ‘sorry’ appeared just once in a letter running to almost four thousand seven hundred words.

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Tangled Web, Deceive etc.

Publication of an interrogation policy for Britain’s secret agents has been delayed because of concerns that it may lead to members of MI5 and MI6 breaking anti-torture laws, it was claimed last night.

New guidance on the treatment and questioning of terror suspects held abroad had been expected yesterday after Gordon Brown committed the Government to disclosure last year. The revised rules follow a number of high-profile court cases in which MI5 and MI6 have been accused of complicity in torture.

But a Cabinet Office spokesman confirmed yesterday that the Government would not be able to meet its own deadline because of concerns raised by the committee of MPs which oversees the work of MI5 and MI6.

The admission led to accusations that the delay was because of legal problems over the use of the guidance. It was claimed that the revised guidance would still permit officers to be complicit in the ill-treatment of suspects.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch said: “In a section on counterterrorism, the FCO’s report outlines, for the first time in public, a policy that appears to authorise direct participation by UK security agents in interrogations of detained terrorism suspects by foreign intelligence services, even where there is a risk that those detained are being tortured.”

In a separate development, the ISC claims that government interference has threatened its independence. In a report published yesterday the MPs called on ministers to take steps to protect their independence by cutting the Cabinet Office’s close ties to the ISC.

Ian Davison, Another White Right Wing Terrorist On The QT

Ian Davison actually had made Ricin, in oder to conduct terrorist attacks, when the BBC reported this story online they censored out he was a white supremacist and this further instance of vicious right wing terrorism has received I would say about 1% (at best) of the coverage of a Muslim who might once have thought the word ‘Ricin’. As needs to be said again this is not simply a discreet establishment protection of fascist terror, it is a Europe wide policy. The simple point is this- people are going to be hateful and violent, (and lovely and splendid, there are all kinds of everything, ahem) when these qualities are obsessively & spitefully documented in one ethnic or religious group while they are excused and covered up for in another group that is not an accident, that is tribalism. Our establishment is white and right wing, they feel comfortable with their own even when they are terrorists (ask the spooks about its chums in the Loyalist terror gangs, well don’t bother they’ll say fuck all or just lie to you), however they are stricken with panic and revulsion when the alien other also (shock horror surprise surprise etc) acts in the same human way as they do.

Racism. Tribalism.

I am always impressed our *enlightened* media manage to report on Africa with reference to tribalism but our big shiny developed world is of course beyond such primitive behaviour. We really do need to Study Up. The extent to which right wing terror is hidden and excused is the extent to which our society wallows in unthinking entitlement and privilege, more sinisterly it also indicates a tolerance and even support among organs of state power for certain ideologies. Speaking of which… turns out Total Politics (nb. I don’t take part in their blog ranking polls, fixed tory nonsense) are going to publish a nice big interview with Nick Griffin.

See also Obsolete & Lenin.

UK & Israel Are Conspiring To Protect War Criminals

Britain is braced for a diplomatic row after a senior Israeli politician warned that she was preparing to travel to the UK, where she faces an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes. Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli Foreign Minister and now the leader of the Opposition, said that she wanted to test promises by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, that he would change the law to ensure that she was not arrested for her role in last year’s Gaza offensive.

Amnesty– The UK Government are planning changes to the law that would stop attempts to prosecute suspected war criminals. The move follows media reports that Israeli officials fear possible arrest if they visit the UK. Universal jurisdiction is the law that allows national courts to prosecute serious human rights violations committed anywhere in the world. Altering it would see the UK reneging on its international treaty obligations. One year on from the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel, the UK government should be working to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides and not undermining the judiciary’s independence and integrity.

The UK Government are planning imminent changes to the law, to avoid any future attempts to prosecute suspected war criminals, Israeli or otherwise. This would see the UK reneging on its international treaty obligations, particularly those under the Fourth Geneva Convention which commit signatories to ‘seek out and prosecute persons suspected of war crimes wherever and whoever they are, whatever their status, rank or influence, against whom good prima facie evidence has been laid.’ Such an attempt to undermine the judiciary’s independence and integrity must be rejected in the strongest terms.

Act now to stop Britain becoming a safe haven for war criminals

Do I even need to comment on the spectacle of the Israeli government who constantly invoke the Holocaust in its justifications working with the UK government, which also has its share of war criminals, to destroy the means by which we hold to account torturers, murderers and genocidal militarists. The message appears to be abuse wins, even if one specific generational group of abusers are defeated their abuse in turn creates further generations of abusers, even among their former victims. The much misused term ‘progressive’ (and I do not mean in party political terms, in this both tories & Labour, Dems & GOP are not ‘progressive’) does mean those humans who do try to progress beyond such repeating cycles of horror, as opposed to conservatives (little ‘c’ who run all the aforementioned parties and is a basic characteristic of Zionism) who reinforce them. Governments have now routinised torture in this era, it would be logical if they also now remove sanctions from war crime legislation, what then protects us from government?

So, Murder Then

Evidence relating to the death of Government weapons inspector David Kelly is to be kept secret for 70 years, it has been reported. A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in the case are dead, the Mail on Sunday reported. And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on written records provided to Lord Hutton’s inquiry which were not produced in evidence. The Ministry of Justice said decisions on the evidence were a matter for Lord Hutton. But Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has conducted his own investigations into Dr Kelly’s death, described the order as “astonishing”.

This as even the not under oath establishment are pretty conclusively saying, Iraq was an illegal war-

The Independent on Sunday understands that Ms Wilmshurst will tell the Iraq inquiry that she was not “a voice in the wilderness” in harbouring doubts over the legitimacy of military action without UN backing. Instead she is expected to describe how senior colleagues in the FCO shared her reservations, which were ultimately overruled by ministers. And, crucially, she is also expected to claim that her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, “clearly advised” that the conflict would be illegal under international law, when he offered his assessment of the situation to the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, days before the attack on Baghdad began. Philippe Sands QC, an expert on the legality of the war, last night claimed the inquiry had received documentary evidence of Sir Michael’s reservations – but is yet to publish it.

The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO’s most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution.

Oh not to mention that’s what an official Dutch inquiry also found. And in terms of official cover up of murder this reminds me of the revelations about the coroner who performed the autopsy on Blair Peach, he was a right wing police loving McCarthy-esque political activist-

Government officials withheld a document relating to the death of Blair Peach, the anti-fascist campaigner widely believed to have been killed by police in 1979, because they feared it would portray the coroner as biased and lend weight to calls for a public inquiry.

The inquest, at which several suspected officers gave evidence, controversially returned a verdict of “death by misadventure”, and the coroner, the late Dr John Burton, was accused by Peach supporters of prejudicing the jury.

Documents held at the National Archives at Kew reveal senior civil servants became concerned after discovering Burton had penned an “unpublished story” about the Peach death which railed against what the coroner saw as a leftwing campaign to destabilise the legal establishment.

Burton had also written to ministers before the end of the inquest, dismissing the belief that Peach was killed by an officer as political “fabrication”.

Burton began writing to ministers about what he believed was “a widespread campaign to damage the institutions of the law” in January 1980, before the inquest had finished.

In letters to the home secretary, lord chancellor and attorney-general, he complained that an organised and well-funded campaign was spreading disinformation about the death. He criticised media organisations, including the BBC, which he accused of “biased propaganda”.

Referring to some of the 11 witnesses who said they saw police attacking Peach, he noted how some were “totally politically committed to the Socialist Workers Party” and concluded: “The witness statements show that the story of the killing [of Peach] is a fabrication. This is a matter of fact and not of opinion.”

After the verdict, Burton authored a lengthy article entitled The Blair Peach Inquest – the Unpublished Story and told civil servants he planned to disseminate the report to fellow coroners via the Coroners Society’s annual report. A Home Office official noted how Burton was “extremely irate” at the way in which he thought the inquest had been hijacked by the “extreme left”.

When his unpublished report was circulated in Whitehall in June 1980, it caused alarm. “I am a little disturbed at the proposal,” one official wrote, “as I feel that if [his article] fell into the wrong hands it would be used to discredit the impartiality of coroners in general and Dr Burton in particular.”

The civil servants met with Burton on to dissuade him from going public. After the meeting – and with apparent relief – an official relayed the news colleagues. “He accepted our advice that the whale which exposes his surface invites harpoons, and agreed not to publish.”

Burton’s seven-page report is a description of Peach’s death and the subsequent inquest which, at times, implies a hostility toward Peach supporters. He complains about “the usual demonstrations by the usual people” outside the courtroom, and expresses frustration at what he saw his inability to control contemptible reports in the media.

He dismissed some witneses as telling “palpable lies” and, in an apparent reference to Sikhs who gave testimony, complained that some “did not have experience of the English system” to give reliable testimony. In contrast, he appeared to have more sympathy for the officers at the scene of Peach’s death, even though there were also inconsistencies in their evidence.

“Many policemen pointed out that in such a situation one looked upwards for uncoming bricks and not around to see what others were doing,” he wrote.

And in 70 years, no one will be alive to be held to account, not for Kelly’s death not for a single Iraqi death. See how that works? It’s called a clean getaway.

Eamonn McCann On The Irish Church & State Collusion In Child Rape

An excerpt-

…There’s scarcely a bishop in the 26 Irish dioceses who hasn’t issued a statement in the past fortnight explaining how dismayed/distressed/shocked/bewildered he’s been to discover the extent of the depravity perpetrated by priests and the failure of some of his fellow bishops to alert the civil authorities. Some of the more plausible performers have been wheeled out to widen their eyes for the cameras in displays of wonderment….“I cannot begin to understand the mentality…” They still take the people for fools.

Complaints of clerical abuse of children in Ireland have been in the public arena for at least 25 years. Occasionally, flurries of allegations have resulted in spates of publicity. But these tended to be short-lived. The local bishop might even apologise in the local paper. The response of the Northern as well as the Southern Irish State ranged from the inadequate to the inert. But you could bet the Lenten Collection that the Church itself was paying attention throughout, tracking every complaint, monitoring reaction, clucking with satisfaction that the faith of the people remained strong and resistant to any radical conclusion.

Now they ask the people to believe that they didn’t have an inkling of the full extent of the criminality until very recently. They never discreetly enquired of one another during prayer breaks at their conclaves at Maynooth or All Hallows, How’s that business with Fr. So-and-so going? Any more word about that wee girl from such-and-such? Is the mother in that other case still on-side?

Pull the other one, your Lordships, it’s got church-bells on.

The Church’s enmeshment with the State helps explain this confidence. On December 1st, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowan claimed in parliament that the Vatican had “acted in good faith” in refusing to cooperate with Judge Murphy. The authorities in Rome and their representative in Ireland, the Papal Nuncio, had refused even to answer letters from Murphy asking for access to their files on abuse allegations.

A State which had genuine concern for its children would have responded to the report by taking decisive action to remove the Catholic bishops as patrons of primary schools. Three thousand of 3,200 primaries in the Republic have bishops as patrons – with the power to hire and fire and complete control over the school’s “ethos”. No less appropriate category of men could be imagined to have such power over the moral formation of children. But not a single member of parliament – not one! – has urged the Government to take this obvious action.

Control of education is at the heart of the matter. A ferocious determination to secure the right to train the consciousness of the next generation dictated the Catholic hierarchy’s attitude to the emerging Irish State in the early years of the last century. Give us your children and we’ll give you our backing against the British and help shore up your State. The State was born in the embrace of the Church and hasn’t fully recovered from its origins

In the North, the Church did its dirty deal with the anti-Catholic Unionists. Control of the education of the children of Catholic parents in return for a commitment to keep the Catholics as docile as possible. The arrangement lasted at least into the 1980s, when the Northern bishops told the British government that if it proceeded with a plan to integrate teacher training the Church would be unable to restrain the anger of the faithful. That is, Lay a finger on our control of teacher training and we’ll stop condemning the IRA from the pulpit. And it worked.

Not that the IRA – now transmogrified into Sinn Fein – has proven any more useful that the other useless parties to the raped children of Ireland.

Consider a case from the North: A priest is transferred from the South into a Derry parish. The night before he arrives, the priests in the parochial house are visited by an emissary from the bishop who tells them to “keep an eye” on their new colleague, and specifically to ensure that he is not left alone with children. Over the next few months, despite two curates taking turns to follow him around, he rapes two little girls. The family of one of the girls informs the bishop. He ignores them. They then write to the Cardinal, the most senior Churchman on the island, describing the assault on their daughter in heart-rending terms and the shattering effect both on her and the family. The Cardinal acknowledges the letter, expresses sympathy – and assures the family that he will remember them in his prayers. The rapist is moved out of the parish and hidden in a monastery in the South. When he is traced there and exposed, the bishop lies in public that the Church had earlier informed the civil authorities of the allegations. The priest is eventually jailed.

The bishop concerned has been among those seen on television in the past fortnight explaining that the situation in his diocese regarding the handling of allegations of child sex abuse has always been tickedy-boo.

Bastards.

And then some. I was listening to an Irish radio call in show (we receive some here on the edge of the Irish sea) while waiting to drive my mother back from a hospital appointment and 99% of the calls, emails, texts were disgusted at the church, but what was interesting was the DJ tried to moderate the rage and people were calling for resignations, few made the conceptual leap to demand prosecutions (and given the state collusion this might mean an international court as the domestic legal system is less than open). Most callers were middle aged and older, I think the church is dreading when they have to rely for support on a younger generation, that bigoted old vampires at the top are probably hiding away the money even now. One caller had an idea for direct action for parishioners, simply stop putting money in the collection until the church’s conservative pro-abuse ruling faction is removed, all the way to Rome. So it was interesting that although they were rightly outraged the limits of the reaction were not too radical (was that how the show screened?), although what is radical about demanding a paedophile rapist and the people who covered up for him be tried I don’t know. Unless we define radical as demanding the same standards be applied to the powerful as to the powerless, it’s clever when we are convinced of that definition by the elite, works out just great for them.

‘…a series of suspicious deaths of Iraqi citizens.’

“I believe that I was serving in something that was party to covering up quite serious allegations of torture and murder,” said the former Royal Military Policeman of his time in the corps.

“I’ve seen documentary evidence that there were incidents, running into the 100s, involving death and serious injury to Iraqis,” he claims. “It is the actions of a few who have been shown to be bad apples. But the system is so flawed and some of the decision making has been so perverse that it is fair to say that the barrel is probably rotten.”

See the interview, podcast and read more.

IMFerialism

Not really news…

Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, said the United States, effectively the only member with veto power in the Washington-based institution, is looking to the IMF “to play a key role in assisting the assessment of G20 economic and financial policies.”

Not all were satisfied with the IMF steering committee’s approval of the G20 request for a shift in the allocation of quotas, or voting power, to mainly developing countries.

“There will be no ‘new IMF’ without a more representative and democratic governance structure,” said Argentina’s finance minister, Amado Boudou.

“To achieve this goal, the voice and representation of developing countries, including the poorest, must be significantly increased,” said Boudou, who also represents Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay on the IMFC.

International aid agency Oxfam director Bernice Romero agreed, calling the quota shift “shameful,” and adding that “rich countries are still making decisions for the rest of the world.”

Neocon Rory Stewart Was An MI6 Operative

Rory Stewart currently vying for selection as a Tory candidate, as Craig Murray reveals–

One person I would not vote for is the crusading neo-Conservative Rory Stewart. It is particularly annoying that he is constantly referred to as a former diplomat. Stewart was an MI6 officer and not a member of the FCO.

Three years ago I received a message from the FCO asking me not to mention this as, at that time, Stewart was still very active for MI6 in Afghanistan and his life could have been endangered. I agreed, and even removed a reference from my blog. However now that he is safely and lucratively ensconsed at Harvard, I see no reason to conceal the truth. I is necessary to reveal this so that people can correctly evaluate his political pronouncements on Iraq and Afghanistan, and his motives in making them.

Word.