Blairy England

the last post

2007-06-27T21:43:00.000+01:00

So it is goodbye to Mr Blair, the prime minister, and goodbye to Blairy England the blog and the country as ruled by Blair.

I finally managed to publish some of my recorded poetry about this war criminal, cheat, lyer accomplice to mass murder, and master of manipulation.

If this country is a less safe secure honest predictable and honorable place ten years on it is due more than anything to what he has done to our political and social life.
If we are more prosperous, and we are, it is more due to Mr Brown, who took over as prime minister today.

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/pixelpoet/121588

There should be a war crimes trial for Blair. Maybe there will. He certainly has Iraq written in blood where his legacy should be.

For myself and my family.... we move on. We are in great shape, never better. Gill, I, the boys and the girls are all thriving. We have begun to do so in these last months as the reins of power have perhaps coincidentally been slipping from Blair's hands.

Gill is really well for the first time since we met. Joel can read and cope well at school. Holly has passed her Teaching Internship and is now qualified to start her new job in the top Catholic girls school in the country,
Rosie has grade 5 in music theatre and is looking confident and unaggressive for the first time.

I am winning contracts for work and selling my books and pictures.

Goodbye Mr Blair.

Farewell to Blairy England.

International of Torture: The Documents the Crown Would Like to Censor [Voltaire]

2006-07-20T09:20:00.000+01:00

International of Torture: The Documents the Crown Would Like to Censor [Voltaire]

Easter in Iraq 2006

2006-04-24T11:47:00.000+01:00

Easter in Iraq 2006
Originally uploaded by Why Not Studios.

Easter has gone, but images like this are still coming through.
I fear that very soon we will see another fake 911 in america followed by a fascist take over.
In Blairy England Brown is organising patriot youth groups in schools.

I fear for the future.

Blair the final denouement or the resurection of the darkness

2006-03-29T09:45:00.000+01:00

I have copied this piece from an egroup since I am not keeping close enough to the news myself any more. This is important stuff. Are we coming to the final days of Blairy england as the police widen their investigation into his possible corruption.
If only it were possible to prosecute him for the death of 100,00 people in an unsanctioned unnecessary uninvited indefensible war of aggression.
Yet he is defending the indefensible and seemingly sanctioning further murderous invasions of peoples who are unlike him ( not us).

"Britain: Blair sets out ideological justification for new wars of

aggression

By Julie Hyland

24 March 2006

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the

author

Prime Minister Tony Blair's March 21 speech in London marking the

third anniversary of the Iraq war coincided with President George W.

Bush's Washington press conference making clear that the occupation

of Iraq will continue for years and threatening military attacks

against any country deemed an obstacle to US interests.

As at the time of the invasion, Blair's task today is to contrive a

pseudo-moral justification for the illegal policy of preemptive war,

which the prime minister euphemistically termed "active

intervention."

However, he does so under conditions in which the catastrophe

wrought by the invasion of Iraq has stripped both his government and

the White House of any political legitimacy in the eyes of tens of

millions of people across the world. Thus, despite appearing before

a friendly audience at the Foreign Policy Centre—a pro-New Labour

think tank—the prime minister appeared harried and edgy, and his

remarks bellicose and

defensive by turns.

Three years on, the "majority view of a large part of Western

opinion" was that the war should never have taken place, Blair said.

He went on to acknowledge that "the precarious nature of Iraq today

and . . . those who have died" had made the doctrine of "active

intervention" the object of "scorn."

Many had also concluded that "George Bush is as much if not more of

a threat to world peace than Osama bin Laden," Blair continued, "and

what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else in the

Middle East is an entirely understandable consequence of US/UK

imperialism or worse, of just plain stupidity."

This admission is itself a damning self-indictment of his policy.

That so many hold these views is not difficult to explain. All of

Blair's justifications for the war have been exposed as lies. There

was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks on New

York, and Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

More than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, and rather than being

greeted as "liberators," the US and Britain have been confronted

with a popular insurgency, which they are seeking to extinguish

through a combination of military action against entire towns and

cities, and the deliberate cultivation of sectarian and ethnic

conflict.

Once again, Blair made clear his indifference to domestic and

international popular opinion and his determination to continue his

political and military alliance with Washington. Rather than make

any accounting for the disastrous results of his previous actions,

he sought to set out a new ideological pretext for further military

adventures aimed at "regime change," whilst denouncing his critics

as apologists for global terrorism.

Blair presaged this section of his speech by praising the Koran and

attributing to it a historically progressive character in an earlier

era. But he went on to claim that what was at stake was not a

clash "of civilisations" but rather a "clash about civilisation"—

i.e., that his opponents should be regarded as barbarians and

enemies of civilised values.

He complained that ministers had been warned against using the

term "Islamic extremist" because it might cause offence. Given that

the government has made repeated reference to Islamic extremism, and

has justified all its encroachments on civil liberties on the basis

of combating this threat, Blair's claim is nonsensical.

But the implied criticism of an overzealous "political correctness"

was of a piece with the prime minister's adoption of a slightly more

sophisticated version of the reactionary anti-Muslim campaign being

waged by the right wing across Europe This reached its high point

with the publication of cartoons denigrating the prophet Mohammed

that were

justified on the grounds of free speech.

Blair echoed those who profess that Islam has fallen behind the

advanced Western world due to the impact of the Renaissance, the

Reformation, and the Enlightenment. His invocations of an

ideological crusade were backed up by reference to his own Christian

faith and his desire to safeguard "our way of life."

It was not simply a question of defeating terrorism, Blair said, but

defeating the "global ideology" that lay behind it, which had

become "embedded now in the culture of many nations and capable of

eruption at any time."

This ideology had to be taken on by "telling them their attitude to

America is absurd; their concept of governance pre-feudal; their

positions on women and other faiths, reactionary and regressive."

The attempt to dress imperialist militarism in the mantle of

progress is Blair's particular ideological contribution to

Washington's war effort. The social base of the Blair government

constitutes a privileged section of the upper-middle class that

prides itself on combining a healthy respect for the benefits

of "free market" capitalism with progressive views, particularly on

questions relating to gender and sexual preference. Like the authors

of the cartoon provocation and their supposedly liberal apologists,

Blair seeks to exploit the position of Islam on women,

homosexuality, etc. in order to portray it as incompatible

with "Western" values.

What is the reality behind his claim to be waging an "ideological"

struggle in defence of civilisation? It is his lining up with the

world's strongest military power to inflict death and destruction on

defenceless peoples in order to seize control of their country and

its resources.

It is sanctioning the building of concentration camps such as at

Guantánamo Bay, where anyone deemed an opponent of the West can be

imprisoned without trial. It is an apologia for the sadistic

treatment of detainees, sanctioned by the highest echelons of

government and the state.

The tradition that Blair stands in is not that of the Enlightenment,

but the pious rhetoric of the "white man's burden" that was used to

justify the creation of the British Empire during the nineteenth

century.

Blair's proclamation that Islamic extremism is "embedded now in the

culture of many nations" constitutes a license to terrorise,

intimidate and even wage war in many of the nations of the Middle

East and Africa.

Just as with Iraq, this will be justified as a great civilising

mission

to safeguard world peace and liberate the native population through

regime change. Whatever forces offer their services as a proxy

government for the Western powers, regardless of their true

political character, will be proclaimed as representatives of

moderate Islam.

Worse crimes are to follow. Blair placed his speech in the context

of those on British foreign policy which he gave in Chicago in 1999

and Washington in 2003. It should be noted that both of these were

made with the immediate purpose of legitimising the wars against

Yugoslavia and Iraq.

Similarly, in his remarks this week Blair accused Tehran of

meddling "furiously in the stability of Iraq" and of supporting

terrorist attacks in the Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and

Beslan. "True," he said, "the conventional view is that, for

example, Iran is hostile to Al Qaeda and therefore would never

support its activities." But, he alleged, such divisions between

Sunni and Shia Muslims count for nothing as "fundamentally, for this

ideology [i.e., extreme Islam], we are the enemy."

There is a remarkable similarity between such spurious arguments

linking Iran and Al Qaeda to the earlier claims that the secular

Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. The

similarities do not end there. At one point in his speech Blair

responded to those who have pointed out that Iraq was not a threat

to world peace by citing the "fourteen UN resolutions" repeatedly

invoked by Washington and London in the run-up to the invasion to

provide themselves with a fig leaf of legality.

A letter leaked to the Times this week reveals that the Blair

government is engaged in a surreptitious campaign to create a

similar paper trail to provide a pretext for war against Iran. The

Times reports that a March 16 confidential note by John Sawers, a

leading British diplomat, addressed to his counterparts in France,

Germany and the US urges a united offensive to secure "a United

Nations resolution that would open the way for punitive sanctions

and even the use of force if Iran were

to refuse to halt its controversial nuclear programme."

Sawers sets out British proposals for upgrading the case against

Iran so as "to bind Russia and China into agreeing to further

measures that will be taken by the Security Council should the

Iranians fail to engage positively... We would not, at this stage,

want to be explicit about what would be involved then."

The Richard Nixon of Downing Street | the Daily Mail

2006-03-21T10:20:00.000Z

The Richard Nixon of Downing Street | the Daily Mail: "Caught red-handed, up to his neck in slush funds and sleaze, the Richard Nixon of Downing Street attempts to distance himself from the cash for honours scandal by presenting himself - risibly - as the champion of reform.

The gall of Tony Blair knows no bounds. Suddenly, the Prime Minister who so ruthlessly exploits loopholes in the rules to secure secret loans for the Labour party claims to have seen the light."

Jack Dromie has maybe started the assassination process with Blair.

The Daily Mail rejoices.

But with so many ministers in the same fog of war world where truth is an utter stranger, what does it matter.?

Suddenly, the man who moves heaven and earth to obtain peerages for wealthy cronies, despite the objections of the Lords Appointments Commission, wants to take politics out of the honours system."

(DV) Nichols: Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs

2006-03-21T10:07:00.000Z

(DV) Nichols: Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs

I cannot confirm the content of this link. It beggars belief. Even the most severe commentators I have read to not come near this figure. From the research I have read even a tiny fraction of the DU mentioned here would be enough to render Iraq uninhabitable for the forseeable future after a few years of dust spread.

I do not know if we are in the last days of Blairy England. I want to finish with this blog. I can no longer stomach writing about this Government which has gone beyond all contempt.

On the Today Programme day after day the ministers who dare to speak tell stories that even young children could see are grotesque twistings of any kind of truth.

and the future........

Mr Brown plans to start army cadets in schools.

So from Blairy England we progress to Brownshirt England, run by Scots on behalf of Americans.

It is probably what the country deserves. Re-electing this Government was a criminal act in itself. It sanctioned this war of aggression.

Mosque Before and After

2006-02-24T18:57:00.000Z

Mosque Before and After
Originally uploaded by jmillerdp.

This would also apply to British integrity and trust in the middle east

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask

2006-02-23T12:21:00.000Z

Werther: a Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask: "4. Who wrote the script for the rhetorical response to 9/11?

The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center complex and the Pentagon when the unanimous and universal cry erupted in government circles, and was relentlessly amplified by the media, that this was 'war,' not a criminal act of terrorism. How very convenient that this war, declared against a diffuse and stateless entity, would trigger long-sought legal authorities and constitutional loopholes which would not apply in the case of a criminal act. [5] Torture, domestic spying, selective suspension of habeas corpus, all the unconstitutional monsters whose implications are only clear four years after the event, all slipped into immediate usage with the rhetorical invocation of war.

This was not merely war, it was unlimited war, both in the sense of total war meant by General Ludendorff (civilian rights being trivial), and in the sense of lacking a comprehensible time span. 'A war that will not end in our lifetimes,' said Vice President Cheney on Meet the Press on the very Sunday following the attacks. How could he be so sure during the fog of uncertainty following the strike?

If bin Laden and his followers were merely a limited number of fanatics living in Afghan caves, as we were assured at the time, why did the Bush administration relentlessly advance the meme that a decades-long war was inevitable? Could not a concerted intelligence, law-enforcement, and diplomatic campaign, embracing all sovereign countries, have effectively shut down 'al Qaeda' within a reasonable period of time--say, within the period it took to fight World War II between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender?

Four years on, Vice President Cheney, doing a plausible imitation of the radio voice of The Shadow, continues to publicly mutter, in menacing tones of the lower octaves, that the war on terrorism [6] is a conflict that will last "

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Why we can't capture Bin Laden

2006-01-20T17:50:00.000Z

I don't care how crazy it appears. I think Bin Laden is working with Bushco. It seems that he pops up with a message just when America needs to be reminded that the bogeyman is still out there.

Catch him!? He is much too valuable as a continuing reason why we should have all our freedoms taken away by the extremists of left and right together.

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Why we can't capture Bin Laden: "Here's another theory, wacko though it may seem. Some have suggested that the worst thing that could happen to the fragile right wing coalition would be for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Its existence and promises to overturn it are simply too powerful a rallying cry to be replaced.

Could the capture of Bin Laden function similarly? Could the continued freedom of Bin Laden function as a free-floating bogeyman for the Bush administration to whip out when fear ebbs and civil liberties come to the fore?

Naah, that's just crazy talk."

Fathers 4 Justice halts operations - Yahoo! News UK

2006-01-20T11:27:00.000Z

Fathers 4 Justice halts operations - Yahoo! News UK

Little Leo, so much like my son J, just two years older.

I wonder what life is like for him inside the Government's spy ders web.

This was another piece of Blairco spin.
There was never a real threat against the boy.
Hey, but Blair needs all the sympathy he can get as his education minister blunders from error to disaster.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Iraq: Deconstructing the Reconstruction

2006-01-20T11:21:00.000Z

A Marshall Plan for the middle East?

Haliburton and Co have stolen so much money that even Bush is drawing back from offering these people any more.
What are the Iraqis getting.

Power? No
Water? No
Oil? No
An army. Hey, they have recruits, but the money for new weapons was stolen, Billions.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Iraq: Deconstructing the Reconstruction: "Score another one for the 'stay the course' hypocrites in the White House. Last week, I wrote about the president talking up our progress in Afghanistan while cutting U.S. troops and funding. Now he's doing the speaking-out-of-both-sides-of-his-mouth trick when it comes to the rebuilding of Iraq.

In a speech in front of a veterans' group last week, Bush said of Iraq: 'On the economic side, we will continue reconstruction efforts and help Iraq's new government implement difficult reforms that are necessary to build a modern economy and a better life.'

But this presidential promise is directly contradicted by recent reports that the administration has decided not to seek any more funds for reconstruction in the new budget -- effectively signaling an end to an effort that was once touted as a Middle East version of the Marshall Plan."

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The Torture Policy

2006-01-20T10:41:00.000Z

Why bother to repeat myself?
Well, someone might pay attention eventually.

The Government knows that if you lie long enough and sincerely enough people believe you.

So why not keep repeating the truth?

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The Torture Policy: "In England, The Guardian reported Thursday on new information it had received about the British government's knowledge of the US practice of rendition - the secret transfer of terror suspects to interrogation centers in Europe and Asia where they may have been tortured. The paper reported that the leaked document shows the Blair government is trying to 'stifle' attempts by members of Parliament to find out just how much Britain knew about what some MPs are calling the CIA's 'torture flights.'"

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Archbishop's anti-war message

2006-01-19T22:04:00.000Z

Remember this.

So many of us spoke and marched against this bloody murderous disaster of a war.

We must hold the perpetrators, the traitors to account.
These were crimes against humanity.
What we need most of all from the 21 century is that world leaders cannot any longer get away with that.

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Archbishop's anti-war message: "'The strategists who know the possible ramifications of politics miss the huge and obvious things and wreak yet more havoc and suffering.'

Despite better communications, intelligence and surveillance than ever before, the innocent continue to be killed, he said.

'Here we all are, tangled in the same net ... stepping deeper and deeper into tragedy', he added.

Dr Williams has previously warned against the dangers of war and urged the government to find a diplomatic solution.

On the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks he described war as 'at best the lesser evil' and added that attacking Saddam Hussein could bring 'real cost to our own humanity'."

The Scots have their own dossier

2006-01-19T21:48:00.000Z

The Scots have a detailed dossier on the dodgy dealings of Blair and co supporting the kidnapping of people and their export for torture.

Bad news for you Mr Blair

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier

westminster

The SNP has published a report on suspected US intelligence flights through Scottish airports. The document lists in detail the planes, dates on which they landed and 10 firms which allegedly operated on behalf of the CIA.

The publication comes as inquiries continue into “rendition flights” by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and an all party group of the House of Commons.

SNP Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP, has sent the report to First Minister Jack McConnell urging the Scottish Executive to “use every avenue open to it through the criminal justice system to establish whether there has been the illegal transportation of people through Scottish airports and discourage it ever happening in the future”.

The report lists 10 firms which allegedly operate as CIA shell companies and details the plane types, registration numbers and dates which they landed at Prestwick, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports. Among the planes was a Gulfstream jet (Registration number N379P/N8068V) nicknamed the “Guantanamo Bay Express” and was reportedly used to transport suspects to the US prison on Cuba. That plane is listed in the report as having landed five times at Glasgow and Prestwick airports between 2002 and the end of 2004.

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier — SNP - Scottish National Party

2006-01-19T21:33:00.000Z

aha
the Scottish Nationalists have a dodgy (for Blairco) dossier on renditions through Scotland.

The Government will go on wriggling but the questions will go on getting more detailed.
This one is not going away any more than Iraq has gone away.

We do not want a Government that supports torture in any way.

SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier — SNP - Scottish National Party: "SNP reveals 'CIA flight' dossier
westminster
The SNP has published a report on suspected US intelligence flights through Scottish airports. The document lists in detail the planes, dates on which they landed and 10 firms which allegedly operated on behalf of the CIA.
[ Portrait ]

The publication comes as inquiries continue into “rendition flights” by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and an all party group of the House of Commons.

SNP Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP, has sent the report to First Minister Jack McConnell urging the Scottish Executive to “use every avenue open to it through the criminal justice system to establish whether there has been the illegal transportation of people through Scottish airports and discourage it ever happening in the future”."

Rendering unto Caesar. Leaked avoidance advice from the FO to Blair.

2006-01-19T18:07:00.000Z

Blair said he knows nothing about our involvement with US renditions apart fromn a couple in the Clinton era.

The Foreign Office has had a memo leaked suggesting he avoid anything specific and move subjects as fast as possible.

It may not be incriminating but it reveals a conspiracy to evade the truth.

Ms Rice says the Americans don't torture, but they do do what us Europeans would call torture.

We just don't ask what they are up to with those planes so we can plead ignorance.

I think that the Government could be donbe for conspiracy with another (the US) to commit crime.

AlterNet: The President Does Not Know Best

2006-01-19T15:57:00.000Z

Der Fuhrer knows best

Yes
he does.

AlterNet: The President Does Not Know Best: "It has been widely reported that even Bush appointees, such as former Assistant Attorney General James B. Comey, and possibly former Attorney General John Ashcroft, objected to the NSA's wide-ranging warrantless spying. After 20 years as a federal prosecutor, I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of career attorneys at DOJ and criminal prosecutors from U.S. Attorneys' Offices around the country, as well as federal law enforcement agents, would have refused to participate knowingly in this program. Bush and his coterie knew that their legal arguments were weak and intellectually dishonest, if not ludicrous, so rather than making their case honestly, even to their own people, they avoided dissent by acting in secret and affirmatively misleading the entire country. Using a tragically familiar modus operandi, Bush has carried out his unlawful spying scheme by acting not as a unitary executive (whatever that is), but as a solitary executive -- as if the President Knows Best."

AlterNet: The Return of Bush's Brownshirts

2006-01-19T15:53:00.000Z

yes the old slow boat chicken shitters are back, trying to destroy Murtha the way they did Kerry.

Will it work this time?

Who cares?
All it takes for BushBlairco sorry I should have said evil is for good men to do nothing.

The women as I said earlier are off their asses.

AlterNet: The Return of Bush's Brownshirts: "Here we go again. Buckle up, the bad boys are back in town.

Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question

(CNSNews.com) -- Having ascended to the national stage as one of the most vocal critics of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has long downplayed the controversy and the bitterness surrounding the two Purple Hearts he was awarded for military service in Vietnam.

(CNSNews bills itself as 'The Right News, Right Now,' and you can find it quoted and pointers to it on Christian-right sites like Pat Robertson's 700 Club and the Gospel News Network.)"

POLITICS: Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe

2006-01-19T13:15:00.000Z

While Salman Rushdie thinks Islam is afraid of female power maybe Bushco should start worrying.
American women are linking up with women around the globe to oppose the Iraq war.

POLITICS: Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe: "POLITICS:
Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe
Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (IPS) - Eminent female writers, artists, lawmakers and social activists in the United States are reaching out to women leaders across the world in an attempt to forge a global alliance against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

A U.S.-based women's group has launched a global campaign to gather 100,000 signatures by Mar. 8, International Women's Day, when they will be delivered to the White House and U.S. embassies around the world.

'We are unleashing a global chorus of women's voices shouting, 'Enough!' said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, a California-based rights advocacy group that has spearheaded the global women's campaign, called 'Women Say No to War'. "

Is It Warm in Here? Another story on irreparable climate change

2006-01-19T13:11:00.000Z

from Lovelock to Lovejoy.

How curious!

Another ecoscientist this time American thinks it may be too late for the planet.
The writer thinks that Americans are unlikely to notice till it is too late, if it is not so already.

Is It Warm in Here?: "Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.

'When do you wreck it as a system?' Lovejoy wonders. 'It's like going up to the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is. Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but that's what we're doing with deforestation and climate change.'"

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Civil War Looms; Media Yawns

2006-01-19T08:25:00.000Z

It would appear that the Shia have reneged on the possibility of changing the constitution, which was the only reason that many Sunni were persuaded to vote in the recent elections.

This could lead to a total melt down in Sunni Shia relations.

Does the media take an interest?

apparently not

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Civil War Looms; Media Yawns: "he has described the agreement to allow changes to the constitution as a key element in keeping the political process moving forward. 'Thanks to last-minute changes, including a new procedure for considering amendments to the constitution,' he said on the eve of the December vote, 'the revised constitution was endorsed by Iraq's largest Sunni party. Sunnis voted in large numbers for the first time. They joined the political process. And by doing so, they reject the violence of the Saddamists and rejectionists. Through hard work and compromise, Iraqis adopted the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world.'

Now it is clear that the Shiites were just saying what the Bush administration wanted to hear; they never meant it and never intended to follow through. 'We will stop anyone who tries to change the Constitution,' said al-Hakim yesterday.

This belligerent stance could easily drive Iraqi Sunnis (in the words of today's New York Times) 'into the arms of radical Sunni groups in neighboring lands' and 'leave the Shiites even more dependent than they are now on Iran and American troops.' Sounds like a recipe for endless civil war -- and a foreign policy debacle of unimaginable proportions for America.

But, despite this looming disaster, with the exception of the Times' powerful editorial, the mainstream media are giving this major development hardly any play. Even the New York Times has its news story on al-Hakim's statements on page A-10 -- and at the very bottom of the page at that. In the Washington Post, the story appears on A-14, while the Los Angeles Times and USA Today do not cover the story at all! And a LexisNexis search didn't yield a single mention of the story on any of the broadcast or cable news shows. So the match that could ignite an all-out civil war in Iraq was just lit, and the U.S. media can barely muster a yawn."

US Troops accused of raping Iraqi children

2006-01-19T08:02:00.000Z

I picked this up from a Pagan group this morning.
I cannot say that it is good quality intelligence, but it quotes sources and is probably as reliable as any of the sources BushBlairco relied on as excuses to invade Iraq.

U.S. TROOPS RAPE CHILDREN

--- In National-Anarchist-Online@yahoogroups.com, Troy Southgate

wrote:

Iraqi girl of nine kidnapped in front of her school, raped and

left unconscious and bleeding by US troops south of Baghdad on

Sunday 8 January 2005. Americans recorded as having raped 71

Iraqi children under the age of 10 in the year 2005 alone.

-------------------

In a dispatch posted at 7:45pm Mecca time Sunday

night, "Mafkarat al-Islam" Arabic site reported medical sources in

the city of "Al-Hillah", south of Baghdad, as saying that US

troops on Sunday had forcibly kidnapped and raped a nine-year-old

girl, abducting her as she came out of her school after classes.

The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a doctor in al-

Hillah General Hospital, who asked not to be identified, as

saying that the little girl was found four hours after the

criminal attack, unconscious with blood all over her face and legs.

Witnesses said that the little girl Aminah (the rest of her name

was not published) was standing by the door of "Umm al-Banin

School", waiting for her family to pick her up. In full view of

all the people in the area, an American soldier kidnapped her in

his military vehicle which was part of a patrol passing by.

Numerous witnesses reported that Aminah was later found in

the "Maqali` al-Hasa" area near "al-Hillah", close to an American

base there.

The doctor in al-Hillah General Hospital, who spoke with

Mafkarat al-Islam, said that he had reported the crime to

correspondents for the "Al-Arabiyah Satellite TV Network" and "Al-

`Iraqiyah TV Network" which is owned by American-run Iraqi

government, but they were not interested in the incident,

believing that running the story would get them in trouble with

the US occupation authorities and the American-installed puppet

regime.

Aminah's family requested that the Mafkarat al-Islam

correspondent not publish the full name or photograph of their

daughter in hospital for ethical reasons and Mafkarat al-Islam

complied with their wishes.

The correspondent noted that the "Iraqi Organization for

Children Welfare" had registered 71 cases of rape committed by US

occupation troops against Iraqi children under the age of 10

during the year 2005 alone

t r u t h o u t - 2002 Memo Doubted Niger Uranium Sale Claim

2006-01-18T17:07:00.000Z

The Americans quite quickly owned up to the Niger story being a fraud.
The Brits have hung onto it, saying it is real intelligence that they will not disclose.

Plamegate has faded out of the headlines recently, but Blair has never been made accountable for the plagiarised student thesis, that was 10 years out of date.

t r u t h o u t - 2002 Memo Doubted Niger Uranium Sale Claim: " The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous '16 words' in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy."

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Military Recruiter's Lament

2006-01-18T16:54:00.000Z

People don't want to kill for Bushco any more.
They are happy to take the risks of being a firefighter but they don't want to go to Iraq.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Military Recruiter's Lament: "When one examines the employment picture in America today, firefighting is listed as one of the most dangerous vocations. And yet America's youth are lining up to compete for firefighting jobs, despite the dangers. The reason for this is that danger aside, firefighting is seen as an honorable profession, one worthy of the sacrifice entailed.

Americans aren't afraid to put their lives on the line for a worthy cause. It is not military service that is being rejected, but rather military service in support of a cause not deemed worthy of the sacrifice expected. The military today has degenerated into an entity that is viewed by many in the American public as no longer serving the larger interests of the American people, but rather the play toy of a political elite who use the U.S. military as a tool to impose their ideology on others around the world, as opposed to 'upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States,' the mission assumed when one is sworn into military service."

AlterNet: Whistling in the Wind

2006-01-18T16:50:00.000Z

It seems there is no one left to blow the whistle to in Bushland.
The agency designed to help whistleblowers is needing whistleblowers of its own

AlterNet: Whistling in the Wind: "The silencing of Gabe Bruno and the whitewashing of FAA corruption is far from an aberration; under the tenure of Scott Bloch, such treatment has become standard practice. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), whistleblowers are coming forward in record numbers, yet the number of whistleblowers who have been helped by the OSC has plummeted.

Since Bloch took office, over 1,000 whistleblower complaints -- many leveling serious charges of government corruption and incompetence, including allegations of misconduct within FEMA before the Katrina disaster -- have been summarily dismissed. In the words of Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, the OSC has become 'a plumber's unit for the Bush administration, plugging leaks, blocking investigations, and discrediting sources.'"