The Osterley Times

God, they're thick....

2009-12-11T10:32:00.006Z

More proof that Palin supporters share her ignorance of what the Bush doctrine actually was.

The Bush doctrine had nothing to do with the notion of unilateralism or of defending one's nation.

It was the declaration that he reserved the right to declare preemptive war against any nation he chose, without having to prove to anyone that the nation he intended to attack represented any threat whatsoever to the United States.

Indeed, he reserved the right to attack in cases where he thought certain nations might become threats in the future, rather than based on their current capabilities.

What Obama stated is no different to what any other leader would state about their right to defend their own nation.

It is certainly in no way comparable to the Bush bloody doctrine.

Bachmann Refuses to Denounce Voight's 'Subconscious Programming To Damn America' Remark.

2009-12-11T08:22:00.002Z

Watch as the insane Bachmann refuses to decry Jon Voight's comment that Obama's "only success in his one-year term as president is taking America apart, piece by piece. Could it be he has had 20 years of subconscious programming by Rev. Wright to damn America?"

Why am I not surprised?

UK issues new guidance on labelling of food from illegal West Bank settlements.

2009-12-11T07:59:00.004Z

Britain is about to mark imported food from the West Bank to distinguish between food produced by the Palestinians and food produced on illegal Israeli settlements.

Until now, food has been simply labelled "Produce of the West Bank", but the new, voluntary guidance issued by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), says labels could give more precise information, like "Israeli settlement produce" or "Palestinian produce".

Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which were conquered in the 1967 war. The British government and the EU have repeatedly said Israel's settlement project is an "obstacle to peace" in the Middle East.

EU law already requires a distinction to be made between goods originating in Israel and those from the occupied territories, though pro-Palestinian campaigners say this is not always observed.

Separately, Defra said that traders would be committing an offence if they did declare produce from the occupied territories as "Produce of Israel".

Defra are correct. The occupied territories - and the settlements within them - have never been internationally recognised as part of Israel, so it would be wrong to label such goods as "Produce of Israel".

The Foreign Office are quick to deny that this is an attempt to encourage a boycott of Israeli goods:

"This is emphatically not about calling for a boycott of Israel," a Foreign Office spokesman said. "We believe that would do nothing to advance the peace process. We oppose any such boycott of Israel. We believe consumers should be able to choose for themselves what produce they buy. We have been very clear both in public and in private that settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace."

But there are many of us who would certainly avoid buying any produce which came from illegal settlements.

I am pleased that the British government have taken this stance. Consumers have a right to know what they are supporting when they make a purchase. And there are lots of us who would not willingly support the occupation of the Palestinian people and their land.

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's chief executive, said: "Profiting from the goods produced in the illegal settlements is contrary to international law and they should be banned from sale in the European Union, as they are in Palestine. Trade in such goods undermines the viability of a sovereign Palestinian state and holds back the peace process.

"We support the right of consumers to know the origin of the products they purchase. Trade with Israeli settlements – which are illegal under international law – contributes to their economic viability and serves to legitimise them. It is also clear from our development work in West Bank communities that settlements have led to the denial of rights and create poverty for many Palestinians."

Dani Dayan, the Argentinian-born leader of the Yesha Council, which represents Israeli settlers, said the decision was the "latest hostile step" from Britain. "Products from our communities in Judea and Samaria should be treated as any other Israeli product," he said, using an Israeli term for the West Bank.

The very fact that Dayan refers to the West Bank and Gaza as Judea and Samaria tells us that there really is no way to have any reasonable discussion with him on this subject.

But this decision increases the pressure on Israel to abide by international law, and that can only be a good thing.

Click here for full article.

Humble Obama accepts Nobel prize.

2009-12-11T07:22:00.005Z

Obama turned up at Oslo yesterday to collect his Nobel peace prize, setting off the expected cacophony of hate from the usual right wing quarters:

In honor of President Barack Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think we should declare today Happy National Post-Achievement Day.

What award or honor don’t you deserve? Claim it.

What unearned prize for unmet aspirations would you like to give yourself? Declare it.

Of course, Malkin is ignoring the fact that Obama did not claim or declare his right to this honour. Quite the opposite. He admitted that the award had been "controversial", and that it had been awarded to him very early in his presidency.

"I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated," he said, to laughter.

The 108th recipient of the prize expressed humility, saying he could not be compared with giants of history such as Dr Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela who had received the prize. He said too that he was only at the start of his labours on the world stage, not the end.

Of course, the Malkins and other haters are ignoring the entire history of the Nobel peace award. It is not merely given to those who have brought about peace, it is also given to encourage those who seek a fairer world, often before their efforts have secured success.

It was for this reason that the Nobel committee threw it's protective arm around Archbishop Desmond Tutu, long before he had succeeded, along with Mandela, in ending Apartheid.

And Obama's acceptance speech, given by a man whose nation is currently fighting two wars, was certainly one of the most interesting that I have ever heard. It's unusual to hear someone accepting a Nobel peace prize whilst explaining the concept of noble wars.

By turns historical and philosophical and theological, Obama spoke about subjects such as reconciling the desire for peace with the need sometimes to wage war, the importance of nonviolence as well as its shortcomings and failures, and other Really Big Questions. Admirably, I thought, he did not give either this left-ish European audience or the American audience back home exactly what it wanted to hear. It was a complicated speech, maybe even hard to follow for some people. I love nuance myself, but it's not the kind of thing that makes the masses go ga-ga.

"My accomplishments are slight," Obama quickly acknowledged, before offering the second and more important acknowledgement that everyone was waiting for. Yes, he said, I am the head of state of a nation that is now enmeshed in two wars – one winding down (he noted hopefully), and one not of our choosing (an assessment with which many in that audience might have not agreed).

What could have followed was a series of self-justifying bromides regarding the planned build-up in Afghanistan. Not that George Bush ever would have received a Nobel prize, but that's the sort of thing Bush would have done, the kind of thing we heard so often over eight years – one-sided, sophistic and intellectually flimsy justifications, delivered with more than a soupçon of defensiveness against those evil liberal elites (rhetoric of which conservatives never tire).

Nothing he could have done or said would have pleased those who have already decided that he is a Jimmy Carter figure, Hell bent on destroying the United States. But, to the rest of us, it was a minefield which he made his way through deftly.

My favourite line was the one he aimed at followers of al Qaeda:

"If you truly believe you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint."

Malkin and the other right wing haters will have ignored the fact that this line could have applied easily to the previous American administration.

I honestly think that this is what they hate most about Obama. He does nuance. And they loathe that. They seek constant certainty of the kind offered by the previous White House incumbent; even if what he was certain about was utterly wrong.

Click here for full article.

Huckabee: A ‘Big Tent’ Will ‘Kill The Conservative Movement’.

2009-12-09T08:28:00.003Z

Mike Huckabee thinks that "big tent" conservatism will destroy the Republican party.

HUCKABEE: One of the things that concerns me is that in the United States there’s a real talk of “maybe we need to have this big tent and make sure that we just accommodate every view.” That’s what will kill the conservative movement. Conservatives are conservatives because they have convictions and convictions aren’t preferences.

The Sarah Palin wing of that party really is in the ascendancy at the moment, and it appears that they want the party all to themselves.

Good luck to them, I hope they succeed. As they will make the Republican party utterly unelectable.

A very British inquiry: a chat in a Whitehall club.

2009-12-09T07:25:00.006Z

I found myself screaming at the TV last night as I listened to the utter bollocks John Scarlett had to say to the Chilcot inquiry.

I am pleased this morning that Simon Jenkins appears to have shared my frustration.

This may be merely a prologue to the star turn, Blair, who is not due until next year. But Scarlett was the star's apprentice, and the place was for once packed and expectant.

When pressed on being told to "firm up" the intelligence of weapons of mass destruction in 2002, Scarlett was left to declare blandly that that is what he did. When asked if there was any coercion from America, he said no.

When asked if perhaps the September dossier, and its 45-minutes warning, was confusing, he said probably. When asked if he might have disapproved of Blair's "without doubt" interpretation of it, he said maybe.

I never thought I would cry "send for a lawyer" but the inquiry desperately lacks a skilled cross-examiner, someone who at least knows the word supplementary. The inquiry's two historians, Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Laurence Freedman, appear to be researching their next book. Lady Prashar is interested only in "clearing things up". The diplomat Sir Roderic Lyne occasionally leaps to inquisitorial life, but not when faced by the head of MI6. This was like a private conversation in a Whitehall club.

Scarlett should have been nailed. More than anyone else, he was the person who put together the case for the invasion, and he did so at the bequest of Blair and Campbell.

To watch him sit before the inquiry spouting this nonsense unchallenged gives me grave doubts as to what the outcome of this process will be.

Before Scarlett took to the stage, we were reminded that the Foreign Office wanted nothing to do with any invasion.

The inquiry so far has been dominated by two themes, the chaos of the American occupation of Baghdad, and the zeal of the Foreign Office to drive a stake through Blair's heart at the nearest crossroads, for destroying Britain's reputation in the diplomats' beloved Middle East. Rarely can Whitehall's finest have turned so savagely on a recent boss. The FCO's chief, Sir Peter Ricketts, was blunt: "We quite clearly distanced ourselves from talk about regime change," which Blair had mooted as early as 1998. His colleague, Sir William Patey, said that when Bush came to power, "we heard the drumbeats from Washington … and our policy was to stay away from that part of the spectrum. It had no basis in law." The illegality of the invasion is a leitmotif, yielding Chilcot's one inadvertent scoop, a leak of a letter submitted by the then attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, to Blair in 2002. This declared that the invasion had "no legal basis for military action … as things stand you obviously cannot do it." When Blair ignored the letter and banned Goldsmith from cabinet, the attorney general reportedly threatened to resign and famously lost three stone in weight. Just two weeks before the invasion, Goldsmith was still warning the cabinet, as well as the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, that British soldiers could be "arraigned before the international criminal court" if they went to war. This led Boyce to demand "unequivocal advice" that the war was legal. Goldsmith duly changed his mind. The then lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, has publicly dismissed the spin put on the letter as "totally false". Since he and Goldsmith cannot both be right, their cross-examination in the new year should be the next test of Chilcot's muscle. They should be forced to appear together.

We are beginning also to get a very clear picture of the Bush administrations lack of concern for world opinion, and how they literally didn't give two hoots what the world thought of what they were proposing.

Blair's lack of influence in Washington is becoming ever more stark. Only the possibility that he might lose a Commons vote on going to war seems to have moved Bush to attempt another UN resolution. As the aid department's Sir Suma Chakrabarti said yesterday, he and his colleague could not believe America's lack of concern for the UN, indeed for world opinion, believing that "rationality would break out at some stage". It did not. The Americans did not care what their allies did or did not do.

I am still of the opinion that a case was made for war and that Blair and his team cared less about whether the case they were making was true than whether they were able to join Bush in this disastrous enterprise.

And Blair's very keenness appears to have weakened British influence on the Americans, although I admit that nothing would have held back the Bush administration from invading.

Blair's eagerness seems to have cost Britain all leverage. Meyer was forced by Lyne to confront the central question, whether Blair could have avoided going to Iraq without damage to British interests. Meyer's answer was yes. Bush even phoned Blair to suggest he could "sit out the war", while the Pentagon's Donald Rumsfeld was happy to go in alone. But Blair wanted too much to be there. So far, said Meyer, "we had underestimated the leverage at our disposal". Now it evaporated.

Blair is not coming out of this well, but how could he? He was so keen to remain close to Bush that he would have done anything to be considered a world player.

But there are some of us who want this inquiry to go deeper, to question whether or not this war was even legal. I won't be holding my breath for that to happen.

The purpose of this inquiry remains obscure. Its tales are familiar to those who have followed the war, and such interest as exists comes largely from hearing the old tales from the horses' mouths. Sir John Chilcot treats witnesses like a therapist with a nervous patient. The absence, at least so far, of any Iraqis, Americans, foreigners of any sort or even British politicians has become glaring. If this is to be a first rough draft of history, it is so far a highly partial one.

Chilcot emphatically rejects being cast as a court, let alone a foretaste of a Nuremburg trial. It is a far cry from the scrutiny of America's Capitol Hill or the milder forensic thrust of a Hutton or a Butler. This appears as a very British inquest, an intrusion into the private grief, or perhaps the self-styled triumph, of one man, Tony Blair.

But who knows? Perhaps still waters yet run deep.

Perhaps... But Scarlett should never have been allowed to portray the "45 minutes from attack" warning as "confusing".

"The matter would not have been lost in translation, if it had been spelt out in the dossier that the word was ‘munitions' not ‘weapons'," Sir John said. "There was absolutely no conscious intention to manipulate the language or obfuscate or create a misunderstanding as to what they might refer to."

Campbell predicted that the "45 minutes from attack" warning would dominate the press coverage. So this wasn't confusion, this was the very message that Blair's government wanted the press to focus on. Chilcot should have extracted that confession from Scarlett.

And Scarlett was allowed utterly off the hook as to why he did not correct Blair's statement that there was proof "beyond doubt" that Saddam had WMD.

However, he distanced himself from Mr Blair's foreword to the document, published in September 2002, which claimed that intelligence information meant that it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Though Sir John admitted he had seen the foreword, and even made several alterations to it, he concluded that it was "quite separate" from the contents of the dossier. "The foreword was an overtly political statement by the Prime Minister so it was his wording and his comments throughout," he said.

He signed off on this document, even though he is now admitting that Blair's claim - which he signed off on - was false. He appears to be saying that he allowed that lie to stand because it was part of "an overtly political statement". He really should have been nailed on that.

Click here for full article.

‘It’s All About Joe’

2009-12-08T08:23:00.004Z

Those pesky Democrats are harassing poor Lieberman again, and all because he puts his own views before those who elected him.

When will the electorate finally realise that, once they have elected him, Joe has no more need for their input until the next election?

More here.

NPR reporter pressured over Fox role.

2009-12-08T07:56:00.006Z

Since the Obama administration pointed out that Fox News has ceased to be a news organisation at all, it seems that everyone is noticing.

Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.

According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.

At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.

Liasson says that she'd seen "no significant change" in Fox and I rather agree with her on that. It's not any more biased since Obama came to power, it's always been ridiculously right wing. The only difference now is that there is a Democrat in the White House so now Fox see their duty as to hold the executive to account, whereas, when Bush was in power, they saw there duty as to defend the executive no matter what actions it engaged in, including torture.

And I simply loved Liasson's reason for staying with Fox:

Liasson defended her work for Fox by saying that she appears on two of the network’s news programs, not on commentary programs with conservative hosts, the source said. She has also told colleagues that she’s under contract to Fox, so it would be difficult for her to sever her ties with the network, which she has appeared on for more than a decade.

In other words, she's taking the money and it would be very hard for her to stop doing so.

Click here for full article.

Lawyers fight to halt Ohio execution condemned as human experimentation.

2009-12-08T07:16:00.003Z

I am sure we all remember the story of Romell Broom:

A death row inmate has been given a week’s reprieve after executioners were unable to find a vein to administer a lethal injection.
Convicted killer Romell Broom even tried to help, by turning on his side and flexing his fingers to make his veins stand out, as the victim’s family looked on from behind a screen.
But after two hours, officials at Lucasville prison in Ohio gave up and took the condemned man, who began to sob at one point, back to his cell.
State governor Ted Strickland ordered a week’s reprieve for the 53-year-old former heroin addict.

Well, now the state of Ohio are determined to get it right when it comes to the execution of Kenneth Biros, although the method they propose using is controversial in the extreme, as Ohio are proposing using a technique normally reserved for the putting down of pets.

Barring last-minute appeals and stays of execution, Kenneth Biros, 51, will be put to death using a massive overdose of an anaesthetic. It would be the first time that a single-drug lethal injection had been administered, in contrast to the triple-drug cocktail that has become the norm in the 37 American states that have death row prisoners.

Opponents of the death penalty and lawyers involved in the Biros case have decried the move towards the single-drug method as over-hasty.

Tim Sweeney, Biros's lawyer, said: "This truly is experimentation and a more careful look needs to be taken by the courts before this new method can be used."

Ohio has moved to this method despite the fact that no doctor can be found to vouch for this new technique.

Charles Wille, a state prosecutor, told Associated Press: "Somebody has to be first. This plan is consistent with a long history of states attempting to take a very difficult social responsibility and make it less difficult."

Richard Dieter, head of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington, said that it was only because of the extraordinary nature of executions in the US that Ohio would be permitted to test out a new method on humans. "In other countries or in any medical field there would be all kinds of restrictions about doing things to experiment on human beings. It would never be allowed."

Under the Nuremberg Code, which stemmed from Nazi medical experiments, doctors must abide by strict rules relating to human experimentation, including that any test must be voluntary and for the social good. But executions are not covered by the code.

Amnesty International are arguing that this amounts to human experimentation, and it's hard to argue with that when one hears arguments along the lines of, "Someone has to be first."

The death penalty is, to me, simply a barbaric thing for any society to carry out. But Ohio is taking that barbarity to new heights, by literally experimenting on human beings regarding new - untested - ways to kill them.

Click here for full article.

Climate Action in California (full-length version)

2009-12-06T09:11:00.003Z

It's refreshing to hear a Republican abandon the general right wing madness on this subject and accept what scientists are actually saying on this subject.

Countdown: Republicans who voted against Franken anti-rape amendment whine that vote is being held against them.

2009-12-06T08:57:00.004Z

The Republicans who voted against the Al Franken rape amendment are furious... with Al Franken.

Franken passed an amendment that was attached to a defense bill that would withhold government contracts from companies that refused to let employees bring rape cases before the courts. It should be tough voting against rape, but thirty Republicans did just that and now they are whining the night away because bloggers and some MSMers have highlighted their atrocity. And in their usual silly reality, they are blaming Sen. Al Franken because they are getting hammered over their malfeasance.

I presume that they are so programmed to vote for corporatism that they made this vote without giving any thought as to the consequence of such an action.

Brown Eton class comment spiteful, says Cameron.

2009-12-06T07:54:00.007Z

David Cameron has come out fighting the only way he can after Gordon Brown stated that Tory tax policies were "dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton." Cameron has immediately declared that Brown is fighting a class war.

Mr Cameron, an Old Etonian, said people were not interested in where you had come from, but where you were going to.

He told BBC1's The Politics Show he was "not in the slightest bit embarrassed" about his private schooling.

There is a certain irony to Cameron declaring that this is "a class war" as, if Eton is about anything, it is about class. The defence Cameron is striking is that there's nothing wrong with having a good education, but Eton is about much more than a good education, Eton is about who your parents were, how much money they possess, and whether or not you are accepted in the upper echelons of society.

And the truth is that Cameron has more old Etonians in his Cabinet than any shadow cabinet that I can remember.

The problem with this isn't that we don't want Etonians running the country, but that one can genuinely raise the question of how much such a privileged bunch of people understand the way ordinary working class people live, especially when Cameron is promising to make such savage cuts in public spending.

Cameron:

"My view is very simple... that what people are interested in is not where you come from but where you're going to, what you've got to offer, what you've got to offer the country.

"Now if Gordon Brown and Mandelson and the rest, if they want to fight a class war, fine, go for it. It doesn't work.

"It's a petty, spiteful, stupid thing to do but if that's what they want to do, you know, go ahead."

Cameron was also asked why the Conservative party website did not reveal where some people went to school unless they went to a state school. So, obviously the Conservatives are highly aware of how unusual it is for any shadow cabinet to have such a large proportion of it's members drawn from the most elite school in the country; especially, I would add, at a time when Cameron is attempting to dispense with the Tory image as the elitist party out of touch with the rest of us.

He answered: "I don't think it's any secret where I went to school... as far as the Conservative website is concerned, I'm sure we can sort it out."

As I say, no-one has anything against well educated people serving in government, indeed, surely we want the most intelligent and best trained minds to lead the nation?

But leadership is not only about the head, it is also about the heart. And only someone who has no experience of life at the sharp end of poverty could make the callous suggestions Cameron is making about savage cuts in public spending.

That is when the number of old Etonians in Cameron's cabinet becomes an issue. Do they have any understanding of the pain that would be caused by what they are proposing?

UPDATE:

There's more background on that photograph and the background of the Bullingdon dining club here.

What drives this enduring class consciousness? It's not envy, as the privileged love to insist. I've never cared about being rich, personally, and I don't think most ordinary people do. Since I got on the property ladder back in the early 1980s, my house is valuable and my children will suffer if Brown abandons his plans not to extend inheritance tax levels. But that's fine with me. Because it's not fair that they should benefit. They're not entitled to it.

Yet the fact that the children of the rich are not "entitled" to start their lives mired in even more privilege than they already enjoy is something the posh cannot grasp – not emotionally anyway, however much they may pay lip service to it intellectually.

It's just the damn unfairness of it all that offends basic English sensibilities. No one objects to David Beckham's riches, but the fact that the Shadow Cabinet is stuffed with the products of private schools when only 7 per cent of the country is privately educated sticks in the collective craw.

Likewise, the top universities and professions and most particularly the judiciary – with 75 per cent privately educated – are overstuffed with posh boys and girls, and that rankles too. The fact that private schools continue to be granted charity status compounds the offence – more tax breaks for the privileged.

The time has come for a reckoning, and again it is gradually dawning on Brown what political capital there can be made out of this.

Click here for full article.

America's regression.

2009-12-05T08:57:00.005Z

Glenn Greenwald highlights a scary change which has taken place in US society since 9-11.

Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1988, transmitting the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. . . . Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

Convention Against Torture, signed and championed by Ronald Reagan, Article II/IV:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.

Pew Poll, today:

Public opinion about the use of torture remains divided, though the share saying it can at least sometimes be justified has edged upward over the past year. Currently just over half of Americans say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can either often (19%) or sometimes (35%) be justified. This is the first time in over five years of Pew Research polling on this question that a majority has expressed these views. Another 16% say torture can rarely be justified, while 25% say it can never be justified.

Think on that. 54% of American think that torture is "often" or "sometimes" justified. That beggars belief. 54% of Americans are now to the right of Ronald Reagan on this subject.

I remember thinking that Reagan was a reactionary old bastard, now he's the centre right, with most Americans more right wing on this subject than Reagan was.

Adam Serwer says that this is "what happens when one party in a two party system makes something outrageous part of its political platform: Even the most abhorrent behavior can be mainstreamed."

That's scary.

Click here for Greenwald's entire article.

Elizabeth Warren: "We Rescued at the Top, and Sort of Left the Bottom to Fend for Itself"

2009-12-05T08:33:00.004Z

Elizabeth Warren sums up the bailout of the banks beautifully. We bailed out those at the top and left the middle class to fend for themselves.

While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.

And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families -- from people already working hard to make ends meet -- the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class.

Pundits talk about "populist rage" as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is "too big to fail." They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work.

Families are ready for change. According to polls, large majorities of Americans have welcomed the Obama Administration's proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The CFPA would be answerable to consumers -- not to banks and not to Wall Street. The agency would have the power to end tricks-and-traps pricing and to start leveling the playing field so that consumers have the tools they need to compare prices and manage their money. The response of the big banks has been to swing into action against the Agency, fighting with all their lobbying might to keep business-as-usual. They are pulling out all the stops to kill the agency before it is born. And if those practices crush millions more families, who cares -- so long as the profits stay high and the bonuses keep coming.

America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.

America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking.

That's why it's so sickening to listen to those same bailed out bankers now threatening to resign unless they are allowed to continue their obscene bonus culture.

They are simply not living on the same planet as the rest of us.

Police U-turn on photographers and anti-terror laws.

2009-12-05T08:12:00.005Z

I spoke yesterday about the ludicrous steps the police are taking over here to question people who photograph public buildings under terrorism laws.

Now, it appears, the public backlash is causing the police to rethink this particular tactic.

Police forces across the country have been warned to stop using anti-terror laws to question and search innocent photographers after The Independent forced senior officers to admit that the controversial legislation is being widely misused.

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

Writing in today's Independent, he says: "Everyone... has a right to take photographs and film in public places. Taking photographs... is not normally cause for suspicion and there are no powers prohibiting the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place."

It's a welcome U-turn from a policy which was simply daft.

Click here for full article.

Gordon Brown attacks 'flat-earth' climate change sceptics

2009-12-05T07:45:00.004Z

Gordon Brown has condemned Saudi Arabian and American Republican sceptics of climate change as being "flat Earth" cynics.

Sceptics in the UK and the US have moved to capitalise on a series of hacked emails from climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia, claiming they show attempts to hide information that does not support the case for human activity causing rising temperatures.

On the eve of the Copenhagen summit, Saudi Arabia and Republican members of the US Congress have used the emails to claim the need for urgent action to cut carbon emissions has been undermined.

But tonight the prime minister, his environment secretary, Ed Miliband, and Ed Markey, the man who co-authored the US climate change bill, joined forces to condemn the sceptics.

"With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics," Brown told the Guardian. "We know the science. We know what we must do. We must now act and close the 5bn-tonne gap. That will seal the deal."

Denying this problem until it's too big to fix appears to be an obsession - nay, a religion - amongst the far right.

Ed Miliband recently launched an attack on Nigel Lawson, the ex-Thatcherite Chancellor, for decrying climate change.

"It is profoundly irresponsible for people like Nigel Lawson, who has held high office, and David Davis to be doing what they are doing. It is very dangerous. People sabotaging the [Copenhagen] process deserve the name saboteur," Miliband said. "There are interests who do not want an agreement at Copenhagen. Anyone who comes forward at this moment and starts saying 'we can stick our heads in the sand' is irresponsible."

David Davis went as far as to claim that the leaked emails seemed to show leading scientists "conspiring to rig the figures to support their theories". Oh, how the right wing have come to love their conspiracy theories.

David Cameron continues to try to rebuild his party's image and lose the anti-green reputation of the Tories, but with people like Lawson and Davis coming across as members of the flat Earth society, you can see that Cameron has his work cut out for him.

Indeed, the top ten Tory bloggers in the UK all disagree with the stance Cameron is taking towards climate change.

All of the top 10 Tory bloggers either doubt or dismiss the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity, according to a survey of the views of top Conservative thinkers on the web. The views run counter to David Cameron's focus on environment issues and will deal a blow to his hopes of changing the Tory party's anti-green image.

All 10 bloggers, including MPs, MEPS and key Tory thinkers, reject or question the view that climate change is caused by humans, and many disagree with their leader that addressing it should be an urgent policy priority if they win power.

I don't quite understand how denying something which, in the scientific world, is almost universally accepted, has become such a defining principle to so many on the far right, but it undeniably has.

John Redwood went as far as to say recently that the better weather produced by global warming would be a good thing for tourism and outside sports. I'm not making that up, that's really the argument he put forward.

It's hard to take these nutcases remotely seriously. They are cranks and oddballs. And if they are that out of kilter on global warming, why should anyone trust them with the economy?

Brown was right to call them out as the Luddites which they are.

Click here for full article.

Bankers 'need to join real world', minister says.

2009-12-03T22:59:00.005Z

They're not bankers, they're wankers. Royal Bank of Scotland directors are threatening to resign unless they are allowed to pay out million pound bonuses.

City Minister Lord Myners has stated that they need "to come back into the real world".

RBS reportedly wants to pay a total of £1.5bn in bonuses to investment banking staff, and the board has threatened to quit if the government blocks the move.

The Treasury said it would intervene if it was in the interest of taxpayers.
[...]
Lord Myners has estimated that at least 5,000 bankers in the UK will earn more than £1m this year.

He told the BBC that the median wage in the UK was just over £20,000 a year, and yet some bankers expected as a matter of course to receive bonuses, in addition to their salaries, of millions of pounds.

He also said banks needed to be mindful of the fact that much of the profit they were now making was due to "the benign conditions" created by the government pumping billions of pounds into the economy to stimulate demand.

These buggers were bailed out to the tune of billions of pounds in the hope of ending the credit crunch and yet, because of their banking practices, credit remains as crunched as it ever was.

The bank base rate is currently 0.5%, but look at the rates they charge to borrow.

On Sunday, the chancellor said he was concerned that the cost of loans to small firms had risen in recent months, despite the UK's record low base interest rate of 0.5%.
He added that banks had a duty to restore lending levels, and that the government did not rescue the banking sector "out of some charitable act".
However, Ms Knight said the banks could not lend at 0.5% because they had to pay much more than that for the funds they themselves borrowed in the wholesale money markets.
She said the wholesale price of money was about twice the base rate.

No-one is even asking the banks to lend at 1%, which is the cost of money according to Knight, but I know of people who are being offered mortgages at an 8.1% rate.

So, the banks are not doing what they were given billions of pounds in order to do, and yet these same bankers are now threatening to resign unless they are able to pay themselves and others millions of pounds in bonuses.

Let the buggers resign. The government simply cannot be blackmailed in this way.

I'm with Vince Cable:

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said the government should "call the bluff" of the RBS directors and accept their resignations.

In a recession which was caused by these bankers, most people are happy simply to have a job, and yet the very people who caused the problem appear to think that the market will snap them up should they resign because they are not being paid million pound bonuses.

I say we should let them test that theory.

One banking analyst went a step further, suggesting the directors should be sacked. "Their job is very simple - to fulfil the requirements of the shareholders. If we tell them to paint everything blue, everything has to be blue," said Ralph Silva at SRN. "They should not be going up against shareholders. I think we should fire them [before they resign]."

Now that's a plan. Simply fire the buggers. After all, we are now the shareholders. And their rampant greed disgusts us.

Click here for full article.

Warning: Do not take this picture.

2009-12-03T08:08:00.004Z

This is how ridiculous anti-terror laws are becoming in the United Kingdom. Several photographers have complained that the police have approached them after they have take perfectly innocuous pictures of public buildings, accusing them of being terrorists planning attacks.

Most of those stopped are told they are being questioned under Section 44, a controversial power which allows senior officers to designate entire areas of their police force regions as stop-and-search zones. The areas are chosen based on their likelihood of being a terrorism target.

More than 100 exist in London alone, covering areas such as the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and other landmarks. Every train station in the UK is covered by a Section 44 order. In the first quarter of this financial year 96 per cent of all Section 44 searches were carried out by the Metropolitan Police and the British Transport Police. Every area of the UK which has a Section 44 in place is known to the Home Office. But, due to the fear that the information could be used by terrorists to plan attacks, most of the the exact locations covered by Section 44 authorisations are kept secret, meaning members of the public have no idea if they are in one or not.

Martin Parr, a photojournalist who was threatened with arrest after he took pictures of revellers in Liverpool city centre, said: "Unless we do something to stop this trend it will become virtually impossible to take photographs on a British street."

The British Journal of Photography says it has received a steadily increasing number of complaints this year. Olivier Laurent, the magazine's news editor, said: "The person will normally be taking a photograph of something perfectly mundane and a police officer will approach them and either claim that they can't take photos in that particular place or they will ask the photographer to explain what they are up to and record their details.

This came to public attention recently when a BBC photographer was questioned after taking pictures of Saint Paul's cathedral, and since then dozens more photographers have come forward to complain of similar treatment at the hands of the police.

The British Journal of Photography says it has received a steadily increasing number of complaints this year. Olivier Laurent, the magazine's news editor, said: "The person will normally be taking a photograph of something perfectly mundane and a police officer will approach them and either claim that they can't take photos in that particular place or they will ask the photographer to explain what they are up to and record their details.

"Those who refuse to co-operate have been threatened with arrest for either breaching the peace or impeding the public highway. We find that a lot of the time police officers are not even aware of the rules governing photography in a public place."

It's just so bloody stupid. People routinely take pictures of tourist sites, it's almost as if that's why they exist. There can't be a single Londoner who hasn't gone past Trafalgar Square at nine in the morning and seen a Japanese tourist sitting atop a lion being photographed. They look ludicrous, but that's what people do in a famous capital city.

The idea that the police should involve themselves in such a routine activity is simply stupid.

"Why is the act of taking a picture deemed by the state to be so potentially threatening? Photography is not a crime but it is being routinely criminalised," he said. "Anti-terrorism legislation talks about creating a hostile environment for terrorists to operate but the reality is that it is creating a hostile environment for public photography. That has an incredibly detrimental effect on freedom of speech."

Craig Mackey, who speaks for the Association of Chief Police Officers on stop-and-search legislation, said he does have sympathy for photographers, but said that part of the problem was that some officers were not aware how best to use the "complex" legislation. He said: "It goes back to the issue of briefing and training of staff and making sure they are clear around the legislation we are asking them to use. There is no power under Section 44 to stop people taking photographs and we are very clear about getting that message out to forces.

I find it quite scary that some police officers are so badly trained that they think it appropriate to even involve themselves in such matters. Because they are not doing this to simply annoy the general public, they genuinely think they are engaging in anti-terrorism activities.

That beggars belief.

Click here for full article.

Karl Rove: Obama took 80 days deciding, it only 'took us 50-some-odd days to remove the Taliban from power'.

2009-12-02T19:37:00.004Z

Listen to these two tossers bloviating. O'Reilly is upset that Obama didn't "define evil" or "get emotional". He complains that Obama is almost too intellectual. He is actually making the argument that Obama is too clever and doesn't rely on his instincts enough.

What he utterly ignores is that it was Bush - who he supported - working from that infamous "gut" instinct of his who got the US into this shithole in the first place.

But listen to Rove prattle on:

It took him 80-some-odd days to do this, it took us 50-some-odd days to remove the Taliban from power after 9/11, and it took him some 80-odd days to say, 'I'm gonna give McChrystal three-quarters of what he requested in order to get done the job I told him to do on March 27.'

50 days to remove the Taliban from power and yet, eight years later, they are still an influence in Afghanistan because Bush took a sidestep into Iraq, which had bugger all to do with 9-11, terrorism or anything else.

The very fact that the people who rushed the US into two disastrous conflicts can now berate Obama for being too reflective is simply breathtaking.

These guys simply - even now - don't get just how badly they f@cked it up.

Iran 'releases' British sailors.

2009-12-02T07:27:00.004Z

I said yesterday that I thought Ahmadinejad was being foolish to hold on to the British yachtsmen, and the latest reports appear to suggest that he has come to his senses.

Five British yachtsmen who were being held by the Iranian Navy after allegedly straying into their waters, have been released, according to reports on Iranian state radio.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said it was "actively investigating" reports, that the sailors, who were captured a week ago, have been freed.

I hope this turns out to be true. Holding them as spies was simply irrational paranoid rubbish which would only harden the resolve of those seeking to persuade the US to attack Iran.

Iran should be seeking to portray itself as a rational nation seeking to fulfill it's rights and obligations under the NNPT, and not make it so easy for it's enemies to portray it as a nation of paranoiacs who will accuse every Tom, Dick and Harry of being a spy.

Click here for full article.

Barack Obama sets out final push in Afghanistan.

2009-12-02T06:31:00.006Z

He always argued during his election campaign that the real battle the US should be engaging in was in Afghanistan rather than Iraq, so I suppose I am not surprised that Obama has announced the troop increase.

He presented the troop surge as a necessary part of creating the conditions for eventual withdrawal. "As commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan," Obama said.

My problem was that I always thought he was emphasising Afghanistan in order to highlight the catastrophe which is Iraq, and that he was talking about Afghanistan so that he didn't appear soft on national security.

But, he appears to be determined to push ahead. Although there was some silver lining to the cloud he was laying out:

Although Obama and his officials were careful in public not to talk about a date for complete withdrawal, in private administration officials hinted they were working towards a date of well before January 2013, the end of Obama's first term in office.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, almost said as much publicly when he noted that Obama did not want to leave the problem to his successor.

My problem with all of this is that I don't see how the US can win in Afghanistan. It is a much more difficult and complex conflict than even the war in Iraq. Karzai to this day has no control outside of Kabul.

I wish him well. I would be delighted if he could wipe out al Qaeda and establish a national government which took charge of the whole of Afghanistan. I simply don't see how he is going to pull this off.

Although, I am also pleased that he has set out a timetable which determines when US involvement will end in that country. That's a first. It inevitably led to Republican complaints.

Republican criticism was swift. "The way that you win wars is to break the enemy's will, not to announce dates that you are leaving," said Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and Obama's campaign rival in last year's presidential race.

The Republicans would stay in Afghanistan forever rather than admit defeat. Obama has, at least, set a time limit for this war.

He also set out the need for Pakistan to work on the area of Waziristan, which has always been the problem of defeating al Qaeda; as long as they have a safe haven in that region of Pakistan then all US effort in Afghanistan is essentially a waste of time.

In the past, there have been those in Pakistan who have argued that the struggle against extremism is not their fight, and that Pakistan is better off doing little or seeking accommodation with those who use violence. But in recent years, as innocents have been killed from Karachi to Islamabad, it has become clear that it is the Pakistani people who are the most endangered by extremism. Public opinion has turned. The Pakistani Army has waged an offensive in Swat and South Waziristan. And there is no doubt that the United States and Pakistan share a common enemy.

In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly. Those days are over. Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust. We will strengthen Pakistan's capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear. America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan's democracy and development.

If he can get Pakistan to engage in this way then there is the very slightest chance that he can make this worthwhile.

But, the history of foreign intervention in Afghanistan tells it's own story and implies that hope of success in that region is always going to be a long shot. He is seeking to unify a nation which has defied foreign conquest for 2,500 years. A nation which saw off Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and many others.

It will be well nigh impossible for him to achieve what he has set out in the time scale he has given. The Russians spent ten years pounding those self same mountains before packing their bags and going home.

I genuinely wish him well, but I'd be lying if I pretended that I was remotely optimistic about this.

UPDATE:

Glenn Greenwald identifies a welcome change in Obama's rhetoric:

The claim that we must stay in Afghanistan in order to reduce genuine threats to our security is at least cogent, though ultimately very unpersuasive. But the claim that we're fulfilling some sort of moral responsibility to the plight of Afghans by continuing to occupy, bomb and wage war in their country -- and by imprisoning them en masse with no charges -- is sheer self-glorifying fantasy. Some credit is due Obama for refusing to promote that fantasy last night when doing so might have helped his case. Now that the "Commander-in-Chief" who is prosecuting the war has largely dispensed with this fictitious rationale, will other war supporters do so as well?

Obama has, at least, dropped all the shit about promoting democracy and helping Afghani women. That's not to say that those are not noble causes, but they were never actually anything to do with why the US were in Afghanistan.

Obama, at least, is avoiding sugar coating what he is doing with that familiar right wing bullshit. He's talking to the American people as if they are adults, which is why O'Reilly and Rove hated it so much.

Charles Johnson: "Why I Parted Ways With The Right".

2009-12-01T22:51:00.008Z

I've seen this coming for a while now, but it's a further indication of just how alienating the American right wing currently are. Now, Charles Johnson, the man behind Little Green Footballs, a website which has long been considered amongst the most right wing on the web, has finally broken ranks because of the lunacy that he recognises in his counterparts.

He hinted recently about where his mind was:

I don’t think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore... It’s all a bunch of kooks. I’ve watched some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts.

Now, in a post entitled "Why I Parted Ways With The Right", he lays out exactly why he is deserting this particular sinking ship:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

Make no mistake, Charles Johnson was a true believer; but it appears that the insane lurch to the right by the Republican party - and the fact that this lurch seems to embrace every lunatic theory that is going - has finally proven too much for Johnson to associate himself with.

I've said since Obama's election that I thought the Republican movement were heading for the kind of splits which happened within the British Labour party after the election of Thatcher. There were many who argued that Labour's problem - myself, I am ashamed to admit, among them - was that they were not left wing enough.

The problem for today's Republican party isn't even that they are making the same kind of argument people like myself were making in the eighties, their problem is that they are engaging in - and embracing - some of the nuttiest shit I have ever heard.

Johnson lays it all out and says this:

The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

I have never been a fan of Johnson or his site, so it's really saying something when the Republican party have lurched too far to the right for even him to embrace.

But I do tip my hat to him for having the honesty to admit that the current Republican party are heading "over the cliff".

The party of Malkin, Bachmann, Palin and Coulter has always been a party of lunatics, now even some of their own are beginning to recognise what has long been apparent to the rest of us.

Click here for Johnson's article.

Iraq inquiry: Blair told Bush he was willing to join, 11 months before war.

2009-12-01T07:50:00.004Z

I can't even pretend that I am remotely surprised:

Tony Blair made it clear to George Bush at a meeting in Texas 11 months before the Iraq invasion that he would be prepared to join the US in toppling Saddam Hussein, the inquiry into the war was told today.

The prime minister repeatedly told the US president that British policy was to back United Nations attempts to seek Iraq's disarmament, Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, told the inquiry.

However, Blair was "absolutely prepared to say he was willing to contemplate regime change if [UN-backed measures] did not work", Manning said. If it proved impossible to pursue the UN route, then Blair would be "willing to use force", Manning emphasised.

Manning recalled the meeting between the two leaders at Crawford, Bush's Texas ranch, in April 2002. "I look back at Crawford as the moment that he [Blair] was saying, yes, there is a route through this that is an international, peaceful one and it is through the UN, but if it doesn't work, we will be willing to undertake regime change," Manning said.

Regime change is, of course, illegal under international law as Lord Goldsmith, the British Attorney General, repeatedly made clear to Blair. This is why false dossiers were compiled and so much emphasis was placed on the non-existent WMD, as they were to supply the reason for the regime change.

Of course, that option still required a second UN resolution in order to be legal, something which Bush and Blair did not achieve, as they did not manage to convince the rest of the world that Saddam did, indeed, possess such weaponry.

As we all now know, the rest of the world proved to be right in their cynicism and Bush and Blair were shown to be utterly wrong with their overblown claims.

But, if the reasons for invading were regime change, and it is now being claimed that this is what Blair wanted, then it is possible to see Blair's claims regarding WMD as merely a means to an end.

The same was true of the UN weapons inspections. Blair and Bush didn't act as if they were seriously wanting to know if Iraq had WMD.They acted as if they wanted to invade and, if the inspectors couldn't assure them that Iraq did have WMD then they wanted the inspectors to get out of the way so that the invasion could begin; a point that Manning was critical of:

"I personally believed [UN weapons] inspectors should have been given more time to work." They left Iraq when it was clear that the US, with British backing, was about to invade Iraq even though there was no hard evidence, despite intelligence claims, that the Iraqi leader had pursued a banned weapons programme.

We all know that the inspectors should have been given more time, but that would only have been useful if the inspections were to find out the truth.

Neither Bush nor Blair wanted the truth, unless it was a truth that they had already decided upon.

They wanted regime change, and it's hard not to see the dance at the UN as merely a way of getting to the point of invasion.

Click here for full article.

Bid to free British yacht crew detained by Iran.

2009-12-01T07:37:00.003Z

I have always been willing to give Iran the benefit of the doubt, subject to inspection, when it comes to the nuclear issue, but this is becoming tedious.

Efforts are continuing by the Foreign Office to secure the release of five Britons detained by the Iranian navy while sailing from Bahrain to Dubai.
Their Volvo 60 yacht backed by the UK's Team Pindar was stopped on 25 November.

The FCO said the crew - Luke Porter, Oliver Smith, David Bloomer, Oliver Young and Sam Usher - may have "strayed inadvertently into Iranian waters".

When they picked up members of the UK military a while back, we all knew enough about UK and US forces working inside Iran to destabilise the nation to think that the Iranian claims might just have merit. But, in this instance, it seems very clear that these people are simply civilians who got into trouble at sea.

Dubai-Muscat Offshore Race organisers said the crew, who were participating in a race, may have been "drifting" after experiencing propeller problems.

Louay Habib, from the Dubai Offshore Sailing Club, told the BBC the shore crew for the boat the Kingdom of Bahrain had said "there was no wind at the time, and they told us that they were organising for a tow to come and get them".

He added: "It's purely speculation but they would have probably been drifting... in 10 hours they could well have strayed into Iranian waters."

Obama is doing his best to offer Iran a way out of the impasse of the past few years, but incidents like this don't endear the Iranians to anyone.

Ahmadinejad should release them as soon as possible. His credibility is already shot to pieces, and this won't help him one little bit.

Click here for full article.

Punditry...

2009-11-30T07:33:00.004Z

Anytime I watch American punditry I am always struck by how selling out the left in order to please the centre - which in reality is actually the centre right - is always favoured by the pundits.

They seem to love it when Obama bashes his base. When Bush was president I seem to remember the opposite being true. There were things he wanted to do but couldn't because it was vital that he didn't displease his base. Obama, on the other hand, is always being asked to show that he is not partisan by kicking his base in the teeth.

Strange...