The Osterley Times

Tory Eurosceptics threaten 'all-out war' over Brussels.

2009-11-08T06:51:00.005Z

Why am I not remotely surprised by this?

David Cameron has been given an 18-month deadline by a powerful band of Eurosceptic Tory MPs to renegotiate Britain's relationship with Brussels or face an "all-out war" for a referendum, it emerged yesterday.

This came after Cameron said he would include the promise of a referendum in the Tory party's 2015 election manifesto should the EU "move in the wrong direction".

This was the cue for all out nuttiness amongst the Conservatives.

The MP said: "I don't think a promise of a referendum on Britain's relationship with the EU in more than five years will sit very well. He [Cameron] needs to make progress, within the first 18 months of his premiership. If he does, it will be his crowning glory, but if he doesn't, it will be a thorn in his side."

Another Eurosceptic backbencher said: "We have agreed to keep quiet on this before the election, but if things do not start happening in the first year or so, there will be all-out war for a referendum."

The warning from the band of Conservative MPs steps up the pressure on the Tory leader after the resignation of two Tory MEPs, Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer, from the party's frontbench in the European Parliament. The issue threatens to spoil Mr Cameron's honeymoon as Prime Minister if he wins next spring.

Some 47 Tory MPs, including a handful of shadow ministers, signed a Commons motion last month that "insists that the Prime Minister rejects the [Lisbon] Reform Treaty ... and holds a referendum before or after ratification". Mr Helmer and Mr Hannan are both members of the Better Off Out group which wants the UK to withdraw from the EU. There are also five Tory MPs and eight Conservative peers who are members of the group.

So, they agree to keep quiet on this subject before the election, as they know fine well that parties which are as split as they are on this subject are rarely elected, but they will declare outright war on Cameron as soon as their feet are comfortably under the cabinet table.

Cameron has made a great play out of the fact that he has "changed" the Tory party from the nasty party of old into it's new 21st century facade. But look behind that facade and one finds that they haven't really changed at all.

The same divisions which destroyed Thatcher and Major remain. They still have this little Englander xenophobic obsession with Europe which we watched tear them apart during the eighties and nineties.

This is a party which, despite David Cameron's PR gloss, is still at war with itself. They should actually be unelectable. But the main players are agreeing to hide how split they are until the election is over.

And, once elected, we are going to witness the same old boring fights which plagued John Major.

These people are deranged and so very, very tedious. The fact that they are going to walk in come the next election is actually scary.

Click here for full article.

Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House.

2009-11-08T05:43:00.005Z

After all the shit that's been thrown at it, this feels very, very sweet.

After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years and that Democrats said would provide relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.

“This is our moment to revolutionize health care in this country,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and one of the chief architects of the bill.

Democrats were forced to make major concessions on insurance coverage for abortions to attract the final votes to secure passage, a wrenching compromise for the numerous abortion-rights advocates in their ranks. They hope to make changes to that amendment during negotiations with the Senate, which will now become the main battleground in the health care fight as Democrats there ready their own bill for what is likely to be extensive floor debate.

Only one Republican voted for the bill, and 39 Democrats opposed it, which I honestly feel will be something which they have done to their eternal shame.

During the private meeting with Democrats in the Cannon Caucus Room, the president acknowledged the political difficulty of supporting major legislation in the face of unanimous Republican opposition and tough criticism from conservatives.

But, those present said, he urged them on, saying, “When I sign this in the Rose Garden, each and every one of you will be able to look back and say, ‘This was my finest moment in politics.’ ”

Obama is getting nearer to achieving this than any previous president. We all know why the Republicans oppose this bill, it is because it undermines their belief that big government is useless.

If Obama succeeds in getting this bill passed, then he destroys forever that central plank in Republican philosophy, which states that government should get out of the way, that big government is automatically bad, and he will have established the notion that people as a collective can do things for each other cheaper and better than private insurance companies.

More importantly, he will have overturned a healthcare system which resembles the one we all remember from Dickensian London, where one's right to health care is based not on need, but on one's ability to pay.

This is the one area where the US has ranked behind the rest of the world. They have been paying more than any other nation on Earth for a healthcare system ranked 37th in the world by the World Health Organisation.

Obama has moved a step closer to ending that.

The paucity of the Republican argument was best summarised by this guy:

He decided to make the argument of "what Maddie wants". He's obviously oblivious to the fact that Maddie doesn't know what she wants, as she's still of an age when she shits in her own diaper.

But that's how pathetic the Republican argument now is, Shadegg is reduced to putting his own words into the mouth of an infant. It's beyond shameless...

Click here for full article.

Ex-GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo Storms Off MSNBC Set.

2009-11-07T08:37:00.003Z

Tom Tancredo is a complete tosser. Here, he storms out of a TV studio after Markos Moulitsas calls him out on his chickenhawk past.

Here's Jed Lewison:
A few minutes ago on The Ed Show, Tom Tancredo tried to make the case against government health care by claiming that the Veterans Administration is unpopular with U.S. military veterans. The only problem for him was that he was up against Markos...who is one of those veterans, unlike Tancredo, a pro-Vietnam War chickenhawk who got a 1-Y deferment.

When Markos pointed out that Tancredo was (a) wrong about the Veterans Administration and (b) not qualified to speak for veterans, Tancredo exploded in anger, demanding an apology. Markos did not oblige, and Tancredo stormed off the set.

Quit while you are behind, Tom.

And Moulitsas is bang on the money when he explains why the Republicans are terrified of universal health care. Their entire philosophy for the past thirty years has been built on the notion that government programmes do not work. Should health care in the US end up as popular as the British NHS, then that Republican argument would be exposed as the hollow edifice which it is. And that's one of the main reasons why they oppose it. Because they know it will work.

Obama and the Middle East.

2009-11-07T07:30:00.005Z

Robert Dreyfuss has a particularly negative view of Obama's dealings with Israel in an article entitled, "Obama Fails in The Middle East." He calls the recent announcement by Abbas, that he will not seek re-election, "the exclamation point on the utter collapse of the Obama administration's Middle East policy."

He then sets out how he thinks we got here:

First, Obama began a test of strength with Israel over that country's policy of illegal settlements, an expansion of its occupation of the West Bank driven by extremist, right-wing settlers who are fanatical, Bible-believing cultists who think that Israel has some God-given right to that territory. The settler-kooks -- indeed, one of their past leaders was named Rabbi Kook -- are supported by ultra-hardliners in Israel's security establishment, who see the West Bank as strategic depth in Israel's defense posture. What happened after Obama told Israel it had to stop settlements? Nothing. Score: Netanyahu 1, Obama 0.

Next, the Obama administration capitulated, refusing to insist on any penalty for Israel's defiant intransigence. Not even a hint of any retaliation by the United States to enforce what it had called the path to a peace deal. No talk of reducing US aid to Israel, or cutting back on US-Israeli military cooperation, or anything. Score: Netanyahu 2, Obama 0.

Then, while all this was going on, Obama hinted that he might announce, this fall, something like a comprehensive US plan for the Middle East. Everyone knows what a solution looks like: withdrawal by Israel from the West Bank, dismantling of the settlements, an end to the Gaza embargo, the division of Jerusalem, some swapping of land to account for slight changes in borders (especially around the capital), and a formula to account for the Palestinians' right-of-return, involving financial compensation -- plus security arrangements. But months later, Obama has refused to even hint at his own plan for the region, caving in to Israel's demands that all of that be saved for "negotiations." Score: Netanyahu 3, Obama 0.

Finally, the United States cravenly supported Israel over the Goldstone Report on Gaza, the report that accused Israel (and Hamas) of war crimes during the December-January conflict there. Score: Netanyahu 4, Obama 0.

Secretary of State Clinton then put the final icing on the rotten cake, praising Netanyahu, an extremist, far-right ultra-nationalist, for his decision to expand, not halt, settlements. Clinton's blunder, which shocked and stunned Palestinians and Arab leaders, represented the ultimate cave-in to Netanyahu and Co. Final score: Netanyahu 5, Obama 0.

I find it very difficult to pick holes in anything which Dreyfuss has said, as I think I have made almost every one of those points myself over the past few months, Dreyfuss simply summarises it better than I ever could.

I no longer know what the Obama policy is in the Middle East. Oh, I know that he wants a state of Palestine. And I know that officially he wants Israel to stop settlement building. But, I also know that Netanyahu continues to defy him in an almost brutally public fashion and that neither Obama nor Clinton appear willing to call out Netanyahu as the clear obstructionist which he is.

Until Obama and Clinton are willing to put serious pressure on Netanyahu, then nothing will happen. And the present stalemate is a victory for Netanyahu as he will regard simply seeing out the Obama presidency with no formation of a state of Palestine as a huge success.

Abbas is stepping down because moderates like him have no chance of success unless they are backed up by positive actions on the side of the Israelis which will convince Palestinians that terrorism is counter productive. And only the Americans can force the Israelis into taking the kind of actions which are needed here.

At the moment that simply is not happening.

Abbas said that he was "surprised" -- bitterly angry and really pissed off, is more accurate, I am sure -- by Clinton's comments on Israel's settlements policy. And Clinton, asked about Abbas' move, delivered an insouciant fuck-you to Abbas: "We talked about his own political future. I look forward to working with President Abbas in any new capacity."

I know that Clinton has since sought to "clarify" her remarks, but the fact that she needed to do this at all shows that this White House is moving dangerously off message.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the others repeated ad nauseam that Saddam had WMD and needed to be taken out. They did so with no proof of any kind but remained so relentlessly on message that they made the Iraq war inevitable. In it's own sick fucked up way, it was sort of admirable. Those guys knew how to sell.

The Obama White House need to remain just as relentless on the subject of illegal Israeli settlements. Everyone understands that message and all but the most pro-Israeli supporters can clearly see the rampant illegality and unfairness of what the Israelis are doing.

Clinton has done real damage to the credibility of Obama's entire Middle East policy. And the White House's knee jerk reaction to The Goldstone Report is easily one which could have been made by the Bush administration.

We wanted - and were promised - change. And, after a great opening from Obama, we are still waiting for some meat to be put on those initially optimistic bones.

Abbas has clearly lost faith. Some of the rest of us continue to hold on to our initial hopes, but we are going to have to see some kind of action soon. Praising Netanyahu for promising to steal Palestinian land at a slower rate than he would like is simply pathetic. Indeed, it is not only pathetic, it is actually demoralising and spineless.

We expected much better than this from the Obama administration. From initially marking him an A+ on this subject, he has quickly dropped to a C-. "Needs to do better" the report card would read. "And quickly", I would add.

Click here for Dreyfuss's article.

Fort Hood: Obama urges caution amid fears of backlash against Muslims.

2009-11-07T05:56:00.005Z

I have deliberately avoided commenting on events at Fort Hood because the reports coming out of the place have so far been so open to loose interpretation that I think it is best to wait until all the facts are known before one comments.

I note this morning that President Obama is urging the same kind of caution.

Barack Obama today joined calls from across America for calm amid fears of a backlash in the wake of the shooting spree by a Muslim soldier at the Fort Hood that left 13 dead and 28 wounded.

Obama, speaking in the White House Rose Garden after being briefed by the FBI, sought to dampen tensions, as did politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties, the military, Muslim associations and the family of the alleged shooter, Major Nadil Malik Hasan.

I watched yesterday as Fox News questioned whether or not the army were being too "politically correct" around Muslims and found myself shaking my head. I know 24 hour news has a difficult job filling in stories like this when the facts are as yet unknown, but do we always have to go so quickly to these contentious talking points?

The truth is that we have no idea of why Major Nadil Malik Hasan did what he did. In time we will get the whole story, but the speculation which is swirling around right wing websites is unhelpful in the extreme. And much of it is proving to be factually incorrect.

Perhaps most irresponsible of all is the unverified claim that Hasan had written on the Internet in defense of suicide attacks by Muslims, even though the origins of those writings are entirely unverified. Similarly, certain news organizations -- like NPR -- used anonymous sources to disseminate inflammatory claims about Hasan's prior troubles allegedly grounded in activism on behalf of Islam. Much of this may turn out to be true once verified, or it may not be, but all of the conflicting, unverified claims flying around last night enabled many people to exploit the "facts" they selected in order to create whatever storyline that suited them and their political preconceptions -- and many, of course, took vigorous advantage of that opportunity.

Lots of people are taking this opportunity to fit these events into a narrative which suits their own political bias, but I think it's best to stand back and let the story fully reveal itself before one comes to any conclusions.

Obama's call for patience, saying there were still too many unanswered questions, was echoed by Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress, and by the Pentagon.

In a statement, Hasan's family said his actions were "despicable and deplorable". "His actions did not reflect how they were raised in the US," they said.

Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, joined the calls for patience. "That investigation is under way by law enforcement authorities, and let's let that be the number one priory in terms of ascertaining what motivations he had," she said in a television interview.

The simple fact of the matter is that none of us can, with any certainty, state what his motivations were. We simply don't know.

Fox News and other right wing sites are quite happily reporting on things which they admit they have "heard secondhand", but I think such rumour mongering should be ignored until the facts have been established.

So Obama, and I am pleased to note that he is joined in this by the Republicans, is quite right to ask that this reckless speculation be halted.

There are some aspects of the story which can be verified, such as the heroism of Kimberly Munley, but we can't get inside the shooters head, and we shouldn't even be attempting to until more facts are established.

Click here for full article.

Pulsating diversity of views on the Washington Post Op-Ed page.

2009-11-06T18:46:00.009Z

I was chastised on here a while back for daring to say that I thought The Washington Post was rather right wing, certainly by British standards. I was told this was an example of how little I understood American culture.

So, I was interested today to see Glenn Greenwald pick up on some of the opinions being expressed in today's Washington Post.

The Washington Post published a total of 8 Op-Eds and opinion columns today, from these individuals:

* Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey (bashing Obama for wanting to try 9/11 defendants in an actual court)*

Neocon Charles Krauthammer (heralding the resurgent GOP fueled by "Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt")*

Newt Gingrich and GOP Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Obama's health care plan would destroy America)*

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (Obama has lost the American center and his health care plan will destroy Democrats)*

Conservative economist Martin Feldstein, former chief economic adviser to Reagan ("Obamacare" will raise premiums and increase the number of uninsured)*

Honduran coup defender Edward Schumacher-Matos (blaming Honduras' democratically elected President for "instigating mob rule" and criticizing both the American Right and Left for "extremism," while defending the administration-backed compromise)*

CEO of BP (British Petroluem) Tony Hayward (dismissing efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption as "simplistic" and advocating changes to cap-and-trade bill that would benefit BP)*

Liberal Eugene Robinson (warning of the takeover of the GOP by the intolerant, ideological Right)

So, to re-cap: The Post today has two former Bush officials, one former Reagan official, two right-wing politicians, a Fox News neocon, the CEO of America's largest oil and gas producer, a defender of the right-wing Honduran military coup leaders, and one liberal columnist. That overwhelming right-wing presence on the Post Op-Ed page is anything but unusual (the day after it fired Dan Froomkin, The Post published Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Hayden, Charles Krauthammer and an Iran-hawkish screed from David Ignatnius, preceded by Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Ramesh Ponnuru). And that's to say nothing of the always-pro-war Editorial Page itself, which typically advocates for those same positions.

If The Guardian or The Independent started printing that amount of right wing tosh I'd stop reading them.

So much for the supposed American "Liberal media"....

And I feel quite vindicated in my assertion that The Washington Post didn't come across as very left wing to me. They might have done a very good job of investigating Watergate, but I can only judge it based on the kind if things I read in it nowadays.

Citing no evidence, Hannity estimates that 20,000 attended Fox-promoted GOP health care protest.

2009-11-06T17:44:00.005Z

What is it about these tea party supporters and numbers? Malkin insisted that some 2 million turned up the last time they held one of these things, which is a simply insane thing to say as that would mean more people turned up for that 9-12 March on Washington than turned up for the inauguration of Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush. To my knowledge Malkin has never recanted that figure and still claims that it was true.

Now listen as Hannity initially claims that 20,000 people attended at Bachmann's request and walks that back to claim that 5,000+ turned up.

Capitol police estimated the crowd at only 4,000. That's hardly the "massive" amount which Hannity and others had told us would attend.

UPDATE:

Not only was the rally badly attended, but it appears to have been attended by nutcases, and highly offensive ones at that.

NBC's First Read reports on "jaw-dropping signs." In a November 5 post on the rally, the MSNBC.com blog First Read reported:

Here are some of the more jaw-dropping signs seen at the rally:

"Get the Red Out of the White House."

"Waterboard Congress"

"Traitor to the U.S. Constitution" (Picture of Obama on sign)

"Ken-Ya Trust Obama?" (Rep. Steve King, R-IA, autographing the sign)

"Un-American McCarthyite" (with picture of Pelosi)

"I'm the King of the World: Remember the Titanic?" (Drawing of Obama in the mold of the 'Jovial Sambo' from the Jim Crow era doing the Leo Titanic pose."

Here's the kind of pictures which were on display:

These people really are a class act.

Hat tip to Media Matters.

Stewart parodies Becks' paranoid conspiracy charts, Nazi rhetoric.

2009-11-06T11:02:00.002Z

Stewart captures this ridiculous man perfectly.

Newt Gingrich the latest Conservative to bow down to Rush Limbaugh.

2009-11-06T07:50:00.005Z

Having watched the Republican candidate being rejected by the Palin/Limbaugh/Beck set as "too liberal", Newt Gingrich goes on to the Hannity show and surrenders to the tea bagger logic.

In retrospect it is clear Dede Scozzafava should never have been nominated because she was far too liberal to be acceptable.

Yeah, that's right Gingrich, the electorate elected a Democrat for the first time in 120 years because the Republican candidate was too "liberal".

This is insanity. And it's surrendering to the lunatic wing of the GOP.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

We broke the law, admits CIA agent convicted of rendition.

2009-11-06T07:18:00.006Z

One of the CIA operatives, found guilty in absentia by an Italian court for the abduction in 2003 of a Muslim cleric, has admitted that she "broke the law".

Sabrina deSousa, employed in the US consulate offices in Milan at the time of the abduction, made clear in an interview with ABC News that she was disgruntled that she and the other 22 Americans who were convicted by a Milan court on Wednesday had been left to fend for themselves by their country.
Ms deSousa, who has not explicitly said she was working for the CIA, was sentenced to five years by the judge in the case. Indeed on the day that the cleric, known as Abu Omar, was taken from the street and whisked first to Germany and thereafter to Egypt, she was out of the city on a skiing break.
The longest sentence, of eight years, was given to the former Milan CIA station chief, Robert Seldon Lady. There seems little likelihood that the convicted Americans will serve their terms, not least because Italy has declined to seek their extradition from the US, partly in the interest of US-Italian relations. It is probably true, however, that the 22 will always run the risk of arrest if they leave the US territory.
Saying she felt "abandoned and betrayed" as the trial unfolded over three years, Ms deSousa said "everything I did was approved by Washington... and we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorised this."

I happen to agree with her. She was told that what she was doing was approved at the very highest levels of her government, so she would have acted believing that what she was doing was legal.

It is ludicrous that people like her should be facing prosecution, whilst the people much further up the food chain, the ones who ordered rendition and torture, should be facing no charges of any kind. Even Republicans are admitting that this is ludicrous:

"I think these people have been hung out to dry," complained Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra of the House Intelligence Committee. "They're taking the fall for a decision that was made by their superiors."

It makes a mockery of justice that the people following the orders should be prosecuted whilst the people who gave the orders are not.

But, as appears so often to be true, we appear to have a political class who are above the law.

Grunts on the ground are fair game for prosecution, but to prosecute the people who gave the orders is somehow "playing politics" or prosecuting "policy differences".

And we have only arrived at this clearly immoral place because the Bush regime engaged in such rampant illegality and there appears to be no-one in the United States with the balls to hold them accountable.

UPDATE:

Andy Worthington on just what this verdict says about the Bush regime's tactics in the war on terror.

The sentences for the Americans were delivered in absentia, as the US refused to extradite any of the men and women involved, but, as the first legal ruling anywhere in the world on the program of “extraordinary rendition” at the heart of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” the verdict is enormously significant. In the words of Armando Spataro, the Italian prosecutor who led the five-year investigation that culminated in the trial and the ruling, “It’s clear that the kidnapping of Abu Omar was a great mistake. It did serious damage in fighting terrorists because we don’t need torture, we don’t need renditions, we don’t need secret prisons.”

In a revealing interview after the ruling was delivered, former CIA officer Sabrina deSousa, one of those convicted, told ABC News that the United States “broke the law” in kidnapping Abu Omar and that “we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this.” She said the US “abandoned and betrayed” her and her colleagues, and pointed out that those who should have been held to account were the senior Bush administration officials who approved the program in the first place. As she explained, “Everything I did was approved back in Washington.”

Will the Obama administration ever get around to doing this? We were originally told that, if he went ahead with prosecutions, the Republicans would go bananas and bipartisan politics would come to an end.

Am I living in some parallel universe where the Republicans have never done anything else but play partisan politics? When I look at their behaviour over the health care bill I really wonder what it is that Obama and the Democrats fear that they will do. They simply couldn't be more obstructionist if they tried.

Click here for full article.

David Cameron's Europe plan is doomed - EU ministers.

2009-11-06T06:57:00.004Z

David Cameron's plans regarding Europe are coming under further attack, as more and more European leaders express dismay at the direction he is proposing taking Britain in.

Four more countries yesterday dismissed the Tories' new approach, in a direct rebuff to William Hague, who insisted that the party was not isolated after France's Europe minister accused the Conservatives of "castrating" Britain's position in the EU.

Europe ministers from Poland, the Netherlands and the Irish Republic – historically among the friendliest to Britain in the EU – as well as Spain, said Cameron would not achieve his demand to repatriate social and employment laws to Britain. His plans would need the agreement of all 27 leaders of the EU because they would involve rewriting the union's treaties.

Frans Timmermans, the Dutch centre- left Europe minister, told the Guardian the Tory plans would have a "paralysing effect on Europe … There is more chance of a snowball surviving hell than the EU restarting debates on treaty change."

Timmermans said no EU leader would want to reopen treaties to accommodate the Tories. "You can still hear the sigh of relief across Europe that we have finally finished with treaty change. Everyone is so relieved that we can finally stop talking about the internal rules of the EU and start doing something about the crisis, something about the climate change issues and about international affairs. There is no member state that wants another round of debate about the rules of the game."

This is simply a silly game which Cameron has been playing to appease the lunatic wing of his own party, there is no-one in Europe who imagines that he can be remotely serious about this.

But it says something about the man, that he would publicly embrace a position which most of his European allies openly scoff at. Indeed, as I spoke of yesterday, the French have gone as far as to label his plans "autistic." That's pretty strong language under any circumstances, from a diplomat it is almost unheard of, and it really gives some indication of just how bonkers Cameron's plans actually are.

Even right wing governments are chastising Cameron as naive:

Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, the centre-right Polish Europe minister, said treaty change was out of the question. He said the Tories were wrong to worry about powers being ceded to Brussels. "Nobody wants to repatriate powers from London to Brussels. The problem is powers are repatriated from London to Beijing. Without recognising that, without having Brussels and other European capitals on side, London will be marginalised."

Of course, none of this will matter to the Tories. They are not the brightest bunch, and they have been talking this nonsense for so long that they have come to believe it.

But, hopefully, the British electorate might reconsider who they are about to elect. They should certainly question why the whole of Europe, including all of our allies, are so incredulous at what Cameron is proposing.

Click here for full article.

Israel keeps up Palestinian evictions.

2009-11-05T08:58:00.002Z

It's simply scandalous that this is continuing to happen, day after day, and that the world watches and does nothing.

The Israeli police actually stand by and watch as this takes place, giving support - one can only assume - for what is happening.

Freed mercenary Simon Mann says he will testify against Mark Thatcher.

2009-11-05T07:47:00.005Z

The British mercenary, Simon Mann, who was convicted of an attempt to bring about a coup in equatorial New Guinea, has stated that he would be willing to give evidence against Margaret Thatcher's son, Mark, and and the oil tycoon Eli Calil; who were both rumoured to be co-conspirators in the botched attempt to take over the west African state.

Speaking as he flew back to Britain from the west African state, Mann made clear he had no intention of drawing a line under the episode, and would welcome a fresh inquiry that could lead to him giving evidence against his two old friends.
Mann warned Thatcher and Calil, who deny any involvement in the plot, that he will repeat in a British court the allegations he has made to Metropolitan police detectives and in front of a judge in Equatorial Guinea that they were both key players.
"As far as I'm concerned, I am very anxious that Calil, Thatcher and one or two of the others should face justice," Mann said. "I am very happy to restate those things in court in the UK as a witness for the prosecution."

Thatcher, who has plead guilty to supplying a helicopter used in the coup attempt, has always denied any knowledge of the plot itself.

A spokesman for Thatcher said he remained delighted at Mann's release, despite the possibility Mann could now testify against him. A court date might be some way off. Anti-terrorist officers are working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service in what they say is an active criminal inquiry, but a decision on charges is not thought to be imminent and no one has been arrested or interviewed under caution as part of the investigation.

Don't you just love these Eton types with their belief that they can simply overturn African governments for their own financial gain? We're about to elect a bunch of these toe-rags to govern the whole of the UK.

Behind the rhetoric, the reality is that Cameron’s inner circle is packed with Old Etonians like Toppo. Not since Harold Macmillan was Tory prime minister in the 1950s have Etonians held such sway.

At one point Macmillan had six in his cabinet. Among Cameron’s inner circle, no fewer than five went to his old school. They include Oliver Letwin, his head of policy; Edward Llewellyn, chief of staff; Danny Kruger, chief speechwriter; George Bridges, head of campaigns; and Zac Goldsmith, his environmental guru.

In addition, Cameron’s shadow ministerial team boasts Letwin and 12 other Old Etonians — including Hugo Swire, the culture spokesman, and Boris Johnson, the higher education spokesman.

I have obviously nothing against people with a good education running the country, but that's not what Eton's about. Eton is about telling the upper class that they are superior, by the very virtue of their birth, to almost any other person on Earth.

It's why these rich loons end up in jail for attempting coups in west Africa. It's in their blood, this belief that they have the right to do whatever they bloody please.

And we are about to elect a Tory party with more Etonians than any government since Harold MacMillan. I'm sure there is nothing that can go wrong there....

Click here for full article.

France: 'Autistic Tories have castrated UK in Europe'

2009-11-05T06:42:00.007Z

France's minister for Europe, Pierre Lellouche, has stated that David Cameron's stance towards Europe is "pathetic" and he says it will "castrate" UK influence on the continent.

Mr Lellouche told the Guardian the Conservatives' new plan was "pathetic". "It's just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest and disappearing from the radar map." "They have essentially castrated your UK influence in the European parliament," he added.

Lellouche also stated that other European powers would not help the Tories to renegotiate the treaties which Cameron has said he wants revisited.

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague insisted Mr Lellouche's comments did not represent the true reaction to the party's plans in Europe.

"I don't think you will find that's representative of the reaction in Paris or other European capitals," he said.

I think you'll find that this is the exact reaction from both Paris and Berlin. The Tories have aligned themselves with some of the most extreme parties in Europe, and are campaigning to remove European influence from the British parliament, so Hague is being disingenuous when he pretends that most European leaders won't object to Cameron's stance.

Mr Cameron said all future treaties would be put to a public vote.

He also promised a sovereignty bill if the Tories win the next election to "lock in" the supremacy of UK laws.

And the Tory leader vowed to repatriate powers on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, employment and criminal law - which would need the agreement of all 27 EU nations.

Cameron is setting himself on a collision course with Europe. The very fact that he needs the agreement of all 27 EU nations for some of the things he proposes gives some indication of the mountain he has to climb, and all to please the craziest buggers in his party.

He's attempting to position Britain as a member of the EU, which is subject to no EU rules which Britain doesn't agree with.

Britain can either be a member of the EU and fight for the direction in which she believes the EU should go, or she can spend all of her time arguing that she should be exempt from certain EU rules.

Cameron has chosen the latter.

Giving vent to frustration across the EU, which has so far only been expressed in private, Lellouche – who said he was reflecting Nicolas Sarkozy's "sadness and regret" – accused William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, of a "bizarre autism" in their discussions.
He said: "They have one line and they just repeat one line. It is a very bizarre sense of autism."

Lellouche also pointed out that he has made it clear to Hague that he is wasting his time with this nonsense.

Lellouche made clear the Tories had no hope of securing support for their plans. "It's not going to happen for a minute. Nobody is going to indulge in rewriting [treaties for] many, many years. Nobody is going to play with the institutions again. It's going to be take it or leave it and they should be honest and say that," he said. "It is a time of tumultuous waters all around us. Wars, terrorism, proliferation, Afghanistan, energy with Russia, massive immigration, economic crisis. It is time when the destiny of Europe is being defined – whether or not we will exist as a third of the world's GDP capable of fighting it out on climate, on trade, on every … issue on the surface of the Earth.
"We need to be united, otherwise we will be wiped out and marginalised. None of us can do it alone. Whether you're big or small, the lesson is the same. And [Britain's] risk is one of marginalisation. Irrelevance."

Of course, Lellouche is absolutely correct. The Tory plan is one hatched out on the back of a matchbox, and yet they appear, at the moment, to be the party most likely to win the next election.

But even these insane plans have not been enough to keep all the Tories onboard.

But that position was not enough for the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, who quit his role as the party's legal affairs spokesman in Europe, saying he intended to fight for referendums to enable Britain to become "self-governing".

When it comes to the subject of Europe, the Tory party have always been insane, mainly due to the fact that they are a bunch little England Xenophobes.

Cameron, in order to keep his party together, is playing to their very worst impulses. The reaction of Lellouche - and the walkout of Hannan - gives us some indication of what the next five years are going to look like should the Tories get elected.

We will be ostracised and forced to the sidelines, whilst some Tories - as Hannan amply demonstrated by his hissy fit walkout - will never be satisfied, no matter how extreme a position Cameron takes.

We are about to elect, if the polls are correct, these extremists to represent us in Europe. And they, if the governments of Thatcher and Major are any indication, are going to spend the next five years tearing themselves apart over the subject of Europe.

And they will get nowhere, but they'll love the fact that they are being intransigent. Welcome to the 21st century Tory party. It looks just like the 20th century version, the only difference is that this lot are even less relevant.

Click here for full article.

Related Articles:

Adrian Hamilton: Cameron, Europe and pure waffle.

David Cameron is the opposite. He isn't frightened of the ruling party. He enjoys lashing them. But he is still nervous – and with good reason – of a backbench that has consistently torn his party apart on the issue of Europe and turned on its leaders whenever they appeared to be going native on the Continent.

How else do you explain Cameron's extraordinary decision to pull out of the European People's Party grouping in the European parliament and to try and construct instead a coven of non-federalist right-wingers – a pursuit that has brought him into disrepute across Europe, lost him putative friends amongst the centre right leaders of France, Germany and the smaller countries on the fringe, and looked just plain barmy to the ordinary members of the British public who took any notice at all?

Where There is Victory in Defeat.

2009-11-04T10:34:00.006Z

As the Glenn Beck supported candidate finally concedes defeat, Michelle Malkin wants us to know that the lunatic wing of the GOP are not about to quieten down.

Malkin:

Here is one of the loudest messages of the 2009 off-off-year elections: Conservatives in America will no longer let their opponents define them out of the mainstream. They will not submit to Democrats. Or to the media. Or to Beltway Republican capitulationists. They will not “rebrand.” They will not sit down. They will not shut up.

No less a Republican figure than Newt Gingrich had begged them to shut up and support the party's candidate, but the tea baggers are not for towing the party line, they want their extremists selected or they are going to find their own candidates to put forward.

But Malkin still thinks this defeat is a cause for celebration:

Hoffman may have lost narrowly, but NY-23 is a much broader victory for conservatives who believe the Republican Party should stand for core limited government principles.

She is insisting that the real message to be taken here is her "my way or the highway" philosophy, despite the fact that the voters did not seem to want Hoffman.

And yet, despite all this attention, Hoffman lost. Voters in the 23rd did not embrace his philosophy. They saw Hoffman as a carpetbagger -- he didn't even live in the district -- who was trying to hijack their district for his own ideological ends.

But this is only the start of the Republican disintegration. The Malkin crowd will continue to insist that only candidates who share their ideological zeal be put forward as electoral candidates.

The task for Republicans after the last election was to regroup and make themselves electable. It was inevitable that there would be some discussion of whether the party should move more to the centre or continue on the insane right wing path of Palin and co.

The Republicans, thanks to the actions of Beck, Malkin, and the other loons have just lost a seat which they have held for 120 years. Malkin sees this as victory.

I've said it before about the Republicans, but the lunatics really are taking over that particular asylum. It really looks as if all out war is now about to take place in that party.

UPDATE:

Here, Hoffman tells Glenn Beck that he is his mentor.

Click here for full article.

Glenn Beck: Health-care reform is just like the 9/11 attacks. And my followers are standing up before it hits.

2009-11-04T08:13:00.004Z

His insanity increases with each and every day that passes. Now Glenn Beck is comparing healthcare reform to the 9-11 attacks.

Beck: On 9/11, we experienced a feeling we had never had before -- when the buildings and the markets and our economy came falling down around our ears, we realized -- 'Oh my gosh. Our country isn't unsinkable.'

We came, on that day, to the understanding that this Republic is fragile. Here we are now, a decade later. I'm on the air again, warning you that our America cannot sustain our governments massive spending. The system will collapse if we continue down this progressive path.

Ten years ago, I could have shouted every single day about Osama bin Laden and his wacky, crazy threats to kill Americans in New York. And no one would have been willing to stand in line two hours while some security officers made grandma take her shoes off. No one would have done it.

But don't you see -- while the government is still not willing to do these things, today, America is different. America has changed. Washington, we're not going to let you get away with it anymore.

Look, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Conservatives are awake. 912ers are willing to do the hard things. We know what this means. We're taking time out of our busy lives, taking time away from their families, they're attending town-hall meetings -- you think they wanna do that? They are calling their representatives -- how many times do we have to be yelled at by your people in Washington?

They are reading 2,000-page health-care bills on the weekend. They 912ers are willing to stand in line and take our shoes off before the plane actually hits the tower.

He seems convinced that his gaggle of 9-12ers represent the new force in American politics. In actual fact they are a group of unhinged right wingers who are dragging the Republican party towards the abyss.

The simple fact is that Beck and his enraged right wingers are simply furious that the rest of the country chose to elect Obama. All of this whining is simply Beck's inability to accept the result of the electoral process.

But to compare healthcare reform to 9-11 really is going off the rails big time. But then, we already know how little respect Beck actually has for the people who lost loved ones on that dreadful day.

Obama’s Outreach to Muslim World Teetering.

2009-11-04T07:23:00.006Z

Jim Lobe over at Anti-War is touching on the fact that Obama's strategy to win over Muslim hearts and minds appears, at the moment, to be hitting the rocks.

From Pakistan – where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got an earful of growing anti-U.S. sentiment last week – to the West Bank and East Jerusalem – where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has successfully defied Washington’s demands that he freeze Jewish settlement activity – events appear to have strayed far from the president’s original game plan.

I have not lost faith that Obama can turn all of this around, but I do think that he needs to be much more ruthless - and use the power of the presidency to it's full capacity - if he is to achieve all that he is capable of achieving.

The Pakistan situation is - and always was under George W Bush - a f@cking nightmare. The US is forcing the Pakistanis to engage in a war which they really don't want to engage in. I understand the American position, but I also understand why the Pakistani government are reticent to go into battle against the wishes of so many of their electorate.

The Israeli/Palestine argument is one which I have spoken of a thousand times. Nothing enrages Muslim opinion more than the feeling that the US will back Israel no matter how illegal her actions are, and sadly that has appeared to be continuing under Obama, especially after Clintons recent visit to the Middle East.

His decision to seek peace talks without a freeze on settlement building was understandable, but it came across as, once again, the US caving to Israeli intransigence.

"There is a general concern now, especially in the Arab world, that the administration is not delivering with respect to any issues in the region," said Chas Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia who withdrew his appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC) earlier this year in the face of a media campaign by neoconservative critics close to Israel’s Likud Party.

"I think there’s been quite a difference between how Obama as a person is perceived and how the U.S. government as an institution is perceived," he added. "I think what may be happening is that Obama is sinking into the generally negative view of the U.S. government in the region rather than transcending it as he once did."

"He started really well, particularly in his speeches in Istanbul [in April] and in Cairo [in June], in changing how the region perceives America and in setting forth a vision of the kinds of relationships he wanted," said Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Project at the New America Foundation.

"But those words have not been followed up by the kind of deep restructuring of policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians that [former president Richard] Nixon implemented toward China," he added. "If he had done so, the trend lines we’re seeing in the region might not be as negative as they appear at the moment."

I agree with the statement of Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, who stated only last week that the Israel/Palestine situation is the "epicentre" of Muslim discontent with the US.

Obama won great support when he articulated his vision for a state of Palestine. The U-turns of the past few days have caused great consternation and doubt.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa:

"[W]e are once again the same vicious circle we were in in the 1990s," he said, while other Arab commentators argued that it was difficult at this point to distinguish between Obama’s policy and the Annapolis process pursued by Bush in his last year in office.

"There had been growing skepticism in the region, and I suspect this apparent capitulation to Netanyahu and the Likud will turn skepticism into suspicion," Freeman told IPS.

Obama needs to turn this around. And he can only do so with positive results on the ground.

At the moment he appears to be trying to do this whilst appeasing Netanyahu. That will never work. Most Muslims understand that Netanyahu has no interest in peace. He wants land.

Only when Obama demonstrates that he understands this will Muslims begin to believe that he is not simply giving them "words."

Click here for full article.

Ongoing U.S. efforts to protect and coddle Israel.

2009-11-03T17:50:00.004Z

It's so interesting to read Gideon Levy's latest article in Ha'aretz entitled "America, Stop Sucking Up to Israel."

Levy argues, and it's a point which I have made many times, that the US's unbelievable deference to Israel is merely creating a rod for it's own back.

There is no other country in the world who could treat Obama with the disdain that he currently is being shown by Netanyahu and expect have Obama's government continue to send them one third of all the aid the US gives out worldwide. And certainly no other country would treat the US with such disrespect and yet feel sure that the US will continue to use it's veto at the UN to prevent it from feeling the anger that it's actions have caused throughout the Middle East.

Levy via Glenn Greenwald:

Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this. In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone. It bombs in Afghanistan, invades Iraq and threatens sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Did anyone in Washington consider begging Saddam Hussein to withdraw from occupied territory in Kuwait?

But Israel the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing the Palestinians, receives different treatment. Another massage to the national ego in one video, more embarrassing praise in another.

Now is the time to say to the United States: Enough flattery. If you don't change the tone, nothing will change. As long as Israel feels the United States is in its pocket, and that America's automatic veto will save it from condemnations and sanctions, that it will receive massive aid unconditionally, and that it can continue waging punitive, lethal campaigns without a word from Washington, killing, destroying and imprisoning without the world's policeman making a sound, it will continue in its ways.

Illegal acts like the occupation and settlement expansion, and offensives that may have involved war crimes, as in Gaza, deserve a different approach. If America and the world had issued condemnations after Operation Summer Rains in 2006 - which left 400 Palestinians dead and severe infrastructure damage in the first major operation in Gaza since the disengagement - then Operation Cast Lead never would have been launched.

It is true that unlike all the world's other troublemakers, Israel is viewed as a Western democracy, but Israel of 2009 is a country whose language is force. . . . When Clinton returns to Washington, she should advocate a sharp policy change toward Israel. Israeli hearts can no longer be won with hope, promises of a better future or sweet talk, for this is no longer Israel's language. For something to change, Israel must understand that perpetuating the status quo will exact a painful price.

Israel of 2009 is a spoiled country, arrogant and condescending, convinced that it deserves everything and that it has the power to make a fool of America and the world. The United States has engendered this situation, which endangers the entire Mideast and Israel itself. That is why there needs to be a turning point in the coming year - Washington needs to finally say no to Israel and the occupation. An unambiguous, presidential no.

Levy writes this at the very moment when Netanyahu is crowing about the US backing down after realising that, despite all the demands made over the summer, Obama is no longer insisting that Israel stop settlement building before negotiations can take place.

Now he simply desires it, but wants the Palestinians to enter negotiations anyway.

I've said this a thousand times, Obama needs to start using a large stick, as trying to cajole and persuade Netanyahu is an utter waste of bloody time.

And, even as I write this, the American Congress are preparing to condemn the Goldstone report and are going to demand that investigations into Israel and Gaza's war crimes be suppressed.

Greenwald again:

It's so obvious as to require no explanation that we cannot and will not be taken seriously in our campaigns against "terrorism" and "war crimes" when we are not only willing, but eager, to exempt ourselves and Israel from those sermons. But after some initial, impressive steps from Obama, we are continuing to do that as much as ever, probably to Israel's detriment and certainly to our own.

I hate to say it, but this isn't change. This is the same old bloody crap all over again. If Obama wants to bring about change he needs to stop being so obsequious to Israel and to enunciate and stick to his principles.

He was right when he made those demands. When they are ignored he should not backtrack, he should - as Levy states - make Netanyahu pay; by withdrawing US aid and by refusing to offer Israel an automatic veto at the UN. Only when Netanyahu believes that Obama would dare to do such a thing will he ever begin taking him seriously.

At this moment, he clearly does not.

Click here for full article.

Clinton ‘Re-Backtracks’ on Israeli Settlements.

2009-11-03T08:19:00.006Z

Dear God, how can anyone keep up with Clinton's ever changing positions over Israel's illegal settlements?

Over the weekend, Secretary Clinton was visiting with top Israeli officials, and publicly praised Israel for its commitment to peace despite its repeated refusals to halt settlement growth, and chastized the Palestinian Authority for holding on to demands that themselves were at the center of the Obama Administration’s position only a few months prior.

Now, following what is being described as a rather awkward meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Morocco, Secretary Clinton insists that the position she took just 24 hours ago isn’t really her position.

Instead, she praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for taking steps toward peace and pressed for Israel to “reciprocate,” insisting that the United States still wanted Israel to freeze all settlement construction.

Well, which is it? I spoke yesterday about how Netanyahu's government were crowing about the US's U-turn, and now Clinton has only gone and turned again.

Obama has made much out of the US, under his leadership, being a nation of laws. If this is to be true, then the US must also respect international law.

International law deems the Israeli settlements illegal. The Obama administration would do well to stick to the simple principle that it will insist that all nations it deals with comply with international law. To that end they should insist - as agreed in the 2003 Road map for Peace - that Israel desist from settlement building so that negotiations can commence.

Clinton's slithering on this really is a thing to behold. I mean, this is not a difficult concept.

Hillary needs to get her shit together, adopt a principle, and stick to it. No matter what excuse the Israelis come out with.

She looked yesterday like she had been played. Today she looks like she'll say anything to please whatever audience is currently in front of her.

The Obama administration were impressive when they clearly set out the fact that they did not accept the legitimacy of Israel's settlement activity. They had international law and world opinion on their side.

Clinton's step away from that position was a gross mistake. Today, she is back on the right course... but for how long?

Click here for full article.

Johnson under fire as more advisers threaten to resign.

2009-11-03T07:45:00.004Z

I've spoken before of the fire-storm which Alan Johnson's sacking of David Nutt has set off. And, four days in, it shows no sign of abating.

In a letter to Mr Johnson yesterday, the council said that while it had not been possible to contact all 28 remaining members – two resigned at the weekend – "it is clear that a majority of the council have serious concerns" about Professor Nutt's dismissal and the future of the council.

The letter said the case had "brought to the fore wider and pre-existing concerns among members about the role and treatment of the council". It added: "For some members these matters are of such seriousness as to raise the question whether they can, in good conscience, continue on the council. In this situation members wish for clarity and assurances about how the ministers view the council's advice and will view the council's advice in the future."

Johnson is promising to meet them, "shortly", in the hope that this will in some way stop the hemorrhaging currently taking place at the Government's scientific advisory council on illegal drugs, but it's clear that he has undermined the entire reason for the advisory council to exist at all.

If scientists can't speak freely without the risk of being fired - as happened to Nutt - then it's impossible to believe that the government want their opinion free from political considerations.

Listen to the reasoning Johnson gave for firing Nutt:

But he told MPs that he had "lost confidence in the professor's ability to be my principle adviser on drugs" because he had "acted in a way that undermined the Government rather than supporting its work".

It's not the job of a drugs adviser to support the government in it's work. His job is simply to give his honest advice, whether that coincides with what the government does or not.

Johnson is now hinting that Nutt was fired because he was not supporting Labour policy.

That's hardly going to give confidence to the rest of the advisory council.

Click here for full article.

Cameron admits U-turn on Lisbon.

2009-11-03T07:12:00.004Z

It would appear that David Cameron has ridden his Euro sceptic luck as far as he is going to be allowed to ride it; and, now that the Lisbon Treaty is about to be signed into law (due to the forthcoming ratification of the Czech Republic), it really is time for Cameron to shit or get off the pot.

He's getting off the pot.

Mr Cameron said that his party would "do what we can to make good all our promises", but finally conceded that a chance to hold a vote on the treaty was fading rapidly. It is widely anticipated that he will soon formally announce that a Conservative government will not hold a referendum, despite giving the public a "cast-iron guarantee" in 2007 that they would be given a vote on the treaty.
"What I said is that we would hold that referendum on the Lisbon Treaty but it seems we are getting close to a point when it is part of European law," he said. "I had always hoped that President Klaus wouldn't sign but it seems that times are changing."

Mr Cameron's team are well aware that his refusal to answer questions on his party's future policy should the treaty be ratified is beginning to damage his credibility. "It is clear that times are changing," said a spokeswoman. "The ruling by the Czech court is obviously an important moment."

This is, of course, the cue for the Euro sceptics, the very people that Cameron has been toadying up to with this Lisbon bashing nonsense, to go bonkers. And, as always, they never disappoint.

Bill Cash, the Tory MP for Stone and a prominent Eurosceptic, called for Mr Cameron to hold a referendum with "no ifs or buts". He said that any move to replace the pledge with a promise to renegotiate some of the changes the treaty brings about would not be acceptable.

"As David Cameron has said, we need an association of member states. In order to achieve this, we cannot simply cherry-pick individual aspects of the treaty and call for renegotiation of those," he said. "We need a full referendum on Lisbon as we were promised and as we voted in the House of Commons. This is about the Government of the United Kingdom operating in line with the democratic wishes of the electorate."

The Bruges Group, a Eurosceptic think-tank popular among Tory backbenchers, also warned that simply renegotiating Britain's involvement in the treaty would be "incoherent, disingenuous and utterly unconvincing".

"What is the point in David Cameron upending one pledge on Europe but promising he'll offer us yet more European promises in his general election manifesto?" asked the group's co-chairman, the former Tory MP, Barry Legg. "Why will they be any more credible than the 'cast-iron guarantee' he has just broken?"

Ah, Bill Cash... We'd almost forgotten about him. The man who made John Major's life Hell. Indeed, Major had to resign as Tory leader and stand for re-election in the hope of making Cash's team of madmen "put up or shut up" whilst he was Prime Minister. If my memory serves me correctly this cunning ploy succeeded for about a fortnight before they were back in full throated opposition to all things European.

Cameron has kept them quiet because he has aligned himself with some of Europe's most extreme right wingers. But, now that even the Czech Republic are about to ratify, Cameron is hinting that he is about to come clean. He is not going to have a pointless referendum on a treaty which is already law.

Cameron's honeymoon with the Euro sceptics is now officially over. They will loathe him in the same way as they loathed John Major.

He kept them at bay by pretending that he could deliver them a Britain free from European influence. Now they see that he could not. They will now push, not against the Lisbon treaty, but against Britain's entire relationship with the EU.

Some MPs are now calling on Mr Cameron to live up to his promise for a referendum by giving the public a chance to vote on an even wider issue of Britain's involvement with the EU. Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, said: "I would like to see a referendum on our relationship with the EU. The public has been promised one, and I think it falls to us to give people some kind of say that they have been denied so far."

From here on in, Cameron's life is utter Hell. He now will experience - full force - the madness that lies just under the surface of the British Tory party. It's called "Europe."

Click here for full article.

Netanyahu savours victory after US drops settlement demand.

2009-11-02T14:06:00.006Z

Netanyahu's government are relishing their victory over the Obama administration:

"There is no question that the United States are our staunchest friends and that Israel's firm stance on its positions pays off," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon happily told public radio.

Speaking before the weekly cabinet meeting, Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz said: "The US administration understands what we have always said -- that the real obstacle to negotiations are the Palestinians."

And now they get to do what always do best; pretend that they are searching for "a partner in peace" whilst all the while stealing more and more Palestinian land.

As I said yesterday, putting pressure on the Palestinians instead of the Israelis is not only madness, it is utterly immoral, especially as it is the Israelis who are breaking international law with every settlement they build.

But the Palestinians warned that Washington's change of tone threatened to "deal a fatal blow" to US efforts to secure a peace deal.

"Pressuring Palestinians to make further concessions to accommodate Israeli intransigence is not the answer," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said in a statement.

"Palestinians cannot accept continued settlement construction... in violation of international law," he said, adding that "what would be unprecedented is a comprehensive settlement freeze by Israel."

Arab League chief Amr Mussa on Sunday ruled out any resumption of talks before a freeze on settlements.

"If there is no freeze on settlements, there is no wisdom: What are you negotiating? Why build more settlements? Why create another fait accompli? It is not serious," Mussa said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit agreed. "It is not reasonable or acceptable to conduct negotiations with the continuation of settlements," he told journalists in Cairo.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad was more scathing.

"The current Israeli government does not want peace. There is no partner for peace in Israel. The (US) broker can therefore not do anything or be blamed if the Israeli side does not want peace," he said.

The truth is that Netanyahu's government does not want peace and has never wanted it. Obama must surely know this.

All Obama and Clinton appear to be doing now is preparing a way to put the blame for this debacle on to the Palestinians.

But, the demand that settlement building stops before negotiations take place was actually an obligation Israel undertook when she signed the 2003 Roadmap for Peace, so it's utterly wrong to insinuate - as Clinton does here - that the Palestinians are being unreasonable in any way, or springing "pre-conditions" on the Israelis.

Clinton is now eating her previous statement that Obama, "wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions."

And she's eating those words whilst Netanyahu smirks.

I had great hopes for Obama when it came to the Middle East. With each day that hope shrivels.

Click here for full article.

Jon Krakauer: McChrystal's Explanation For Pat Tillman Cover-up Is "Preposterous" .

2009-11-02T13:52:00.005Z

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McChrystal is currently being sold as the most brilliant military mind - oh how quickly Petreaus has been forgotten - mostly because he embraces the right wing narrative that a surge will end the US's problems in Afghanistan.

However, as Jon Krakauer points out here, McChrystal was involved in the cover up surrounding the friendly fire incident which killed pat Tillman, and Krakauer also goes on the describe his explanation of how this happened to be "preposterous".

MR. KRAKAUER: After Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within--instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star. And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal--Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That's why he was killed and the private wasn't. Without friendly fire there's no valor, there's no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.

GREGORY: And that's the important piece of it. And, and he actually testified earlier this year before the Senate, and this is what he said about it.
(Videotape, June 2, 2009)

LT. GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Now, what happens, in retrospect, is--and I would do this differently if I had the chance again--in retrospect they look contradictory, because we sent a Silver Star that was not well-written. And although I went through the process, I will tell you now I didn't review the citation well enough to capture--or I didn't catch that if you read it you could imply that it was not friendly fire.

(End videotape)

GREGORY: Even those who were critical of him and the Army say they don't think he willfully deceived anyone.

MR. KRAKAUER: That's correct. He, he just said now he didn't read this hugely important document about the most famous soldier in the military. He didn't read it carefully enough to notice that it talked about enemy fire instead of friendly fire? That's preposterous. That, that's not believable.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/01/jon-krakauer-mcchrystals_n_341545.html

Lieberman prefers 'nothing' to reform with public option

2009-11-02T11:11:00.002Z

The snake speaks:

"I'd say to the people who are all of a sudden making the public option -- a government health insurance company -- the litmus test here, they're stopping us from getting something done," Lieberman told CBS' Bob Schieffer.

So, doing nothing is preferable to the public option. The sooner the Democrats kick him out of the caucus the better.

David Nutt's sacking provokes mass revolt against Alan Johnson.

2009-11-02T07:54:00.004Z

This won't have even registered on the radar of most American readers, but the current British Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, is facing a mass resignation of staff over his decision to fire the Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for stating that ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes.

Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned today in protest at Alan Johnson's treatment of Professor David Nutt. Another member told the Guardian that the experts were "planning collective action" against Johnson, adding: "Everybody is devastated. We're all considering our positions."

Nutt said today that there was "no future" for the council in its present form and it is thought the group's members may use a meeting next Monday to announce a mass resignation.

In a letter in tomorrow's Guardian, Johnson accuses Nutt of "campaigning against government policy" but insists he was not forced out because of his opinions.

"Professor Nutt was not sacked for his views, which I respect but disagree with," he writes. "He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy."

Johnson can make any claim he wants regarding why he fired Nutt, but most people will still realise that what Nutt said was basically true.

Far more deaths occur in this country due to alcohol and cigarette use than occur from ecstasy or LSD abuse; that is simply a fact.

And, if he's firing Nutt for going against government policy - whilst we all know that what Nutt said was basically true - then surely we should be looking at the government's policy rather than simply firing those who disagree with it; especially when they are doing so on medical grounds.

As the controversy intensified today, Nutt said he had been contacted by more than half the council's members who had shared their "horror and disgust" over the manner of his dismissal and were now considering resigning en masse.

Dr Les King, a former head of drug intelligence at the Forensic Science Service, was first to act, followed by Marion Walker, head of the substance misuse service at Berkshire NHS foundation trust.

King said he had decided to step down because he felt Johnson had denied Nutt his "freedom of expression".

He said that while the government had "a right" to reject the panel's advice, its attitude towards the advisory body had changed.

Nutt said he could "fully understand" why his two former colleagues had chosen to resign. "The government has interfered with the scientific processes of the panel for several years and it has caused significant resentment," he said.

"People are very much considering their positions and they have made it clear they will not continue under the current regime. There is no future for the advisory committee on the misuse of drugs in the current way it operates."

You can't have an Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and fire any member of that Council who disagrees with government policy. It's alright to disagree with their advice, it's fine to say that you see where they are coming from but that you respectfully can't join them in their position, but to fire them for saying what they think is simply suicidal.

Indeed, if anything Johnson has done more to highlight how ridiculous the government's policy actually is than if he had just ignored Nutt's comments completely.

At the moment it looks as if Nutt has been fired for telling the truth.

But the home secretary found himself under fire from members of the scientific community. Lord Winston, the Labour peer and professor of science and society at Imperial College London, said he was "very surprised and disappointed" by Johnson's actions.

"I think that if governments appoint expert advice they shouldn't dismiss it so lightly," he said.

"I think it shows a rather poor understanding of the value of science."

On Nutt's claims that ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes, Winston said: "The overwhelming evidence is probably cannabis is actually less harmful than tobacco or alcohol, that's what the chief scientist is saying."

He added: "I think that's a very reasonable scientific point to make. And of course, science is not about absolutes."

Johnson would have served himself better by ignoring Nutt's comments, because when he tries to defend why he did what he did we come back again and again to those tiresome things called facts: and the facts don't back up government policy.

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