Khobar Towers. Unhappy Anniversary

10 years ago today Hezbollah exploded a fuel truck adjacent to Khobar Towers in Dharan Saudi Arabia This eight-story building housed United States Air Force personnel from the 4404th Wing, primarily from a deployed rescue squadron and deployed fighter squadron. In all, 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi were killed and 372 of many nationalities were wounded. Some of the dead were scheduled to return to the US 3 days later. For a detailed report on the event go here.

For an Air Force memorial page go to here

Air Force Staff Sergeant Alfredo R. Guerrero, was stationed as a security detail on top of Building #131. He saw the men, recognized the vehicles (80 feet from the building) as a threat, reported it , he immediately began a floor by floor evacuation of the building.

His actions saved many, many lives.

Many of the evacuees were in the stairwell when the bomb went off. The stairwell was on the side of the building away from the truck bomb, perhaps the safest location in the building.

For his actions, Staff Sergeant Guerrero was awarded the Airman's Medal, the United States' highest peacetime award for valor. The explosion was calculated to have the effect of 20,000 pounds of TNT or greater than the Oklahoma bomb.

On June 21, 2001 an indictment was issued in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia charging 19 named people with murder, conspiracy, and other charges related to the bombing. Nothing seems to have happened since.

Paradoxically 14 more Saudis have been released from Gitmo detainees to the Kingdom which makes a total of 29 this year, not counting the two who returned dead after allegedly (which the families contest) committing suicide earlier this month.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki told Arab News that officials were awaiting the arrival of the detainees. He did not provide details about their fate in the Kingdom.

Al-Turki did not give a timeframe for their release or disclose their identity

More details from the excellent JURIST website here.

Is Tony Blair clinically mad ?

The Daily Mail report in Monday's paper that Peter Neyroud, chief constable of Thames Valley Police wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister last week, : "Move as much outside the courts into conditional cautioning, fixed penalty notices and restorative approaches as possible - 21st century justice."

The most preposterous evidence that is associated with this careful leak / release is the deceitful Attorney General "Lord" Goldsmith (whose dishonest, misleading and wholly incorrect advice to the Cabinet, led to the Iraq invasion) apparently supporting "conditional cautioning"."Lord" Goldsmith said a trial of the system in Lancashire had produced 'very good' results pointing as an example to the swift and apparently satsufactory resolution of a lady who had her window kicked in receiving an apology and a box of chocolates from the youth responsible - but not it appears a new window or the costs for it's repair.

Now he wants greater use of the caution, which carries a maximum penalty of £500 or 20 hours' community service. Other conditions, such as repairing damage caused, can be included.

The measure is part of Mr Blair's 'Respect action plan' to restore order to the streets. He is turning to conditional cautioning after losing faith in the ability of the courts to deal with 'low-level' crimes.

Blairs answer ...... if the courts don't work, don't fix 'em just by pass them. Visit your local Magistrates court today, see what a hopeless mess they are in due to sheer unadulterated incompetence, not the state of the law.

Pic is curious bust some 50cm-tall , which sits on a marble plaque with traces of limestone, one-third bigger than life size , of Blair commissioned by Fettes College (his Scottish alma mater) from John Doubleday. They are uncertain where to place it...suggestions welcomed. If required please name the lubricant of choice.

Bombing North Korea - Choices and Decisions .. and maybe timely celebrations ?

Yesterday Lord Patel updated his series of comments about the chances of a pre-emptive strike against the alleged launch of the alleged missile in North Korea.

Debate in the MSM is very limited but the blogospshere is alive with comment , gossip and a great deal of misinformed and ill informed lunacy.

A good starting point is the Slate(owned by WAPO) review "Nuclear Summer" by Michael Weiss, which concentrates on comment on the WAPO piece by Carter and Perry.

For more comment on that article trawl the blogs using search engine of choice such as Technorati which shows 186 links to the WAPO piece with 20 of them today.

The level of discussion is generally well informed, international, thoughtful and rational. Lord Patel has felt for a long time ... since the very genesis of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the Axis of Evil in the POTUS's State of the Union address January 29th 2002 that something was afoot.

Bush as ever has boxed himself (not without help) into a corner, Iraq falling apart, Afghanistan exploding in violence, poll numbers sagging, in some places quickly reaching freezing point. He wants some action. Just as the Falklands invasion saved Maggie (how exactly do you, with modern technology, overlook a mass invasion ?) a pop at DPRK could boost Bush ... some think.

There are 2 basic lines of action

1. Ignore the provocation and hope the alleged missile just doesn't work when they light the blue touch paper - carry on the pointless 50 year old diplomacy.

2. If the blue touch paper ignites and a missile (which is unlikely) soars over Japan again, it wll further compund the international perception of the US weakness. So this forces two subsidiary choices.

a) Use the SDI missiles from Greeley or wherever and shoot it down , which carries the massive risk that it won't work (which the military knows is virtually certain) - although that could probably be concealed and suitable lies about success be floated. Which may fool the public but not the watching Chinese and Russians.

b) Smash the launch pads surgically and pre-emptively.

There are many convinced that when Dubya called in all his ex Foreign Secretaries (incl Perry) in January to the White House to ostensibly discuss Iraq this is what he sought their advice on.

Doing nothing, is, for Bush a risky option. Of course smashing up their launch sites is also risky, the concept of Armageddon being launched by Kim il Chung is minute, the population want release from the tyranny of the State and the enjoyments of Western civilisation. (Which is the conclusion of the Lord Patel in house necromancers and crystal gazers)

Doing nothing will hasten the continuing decline of US influence (which many see as a good and inevitable consequence of their imperialism since WWII) - with it will follow a decline in economic importance and strength.

As the Presidential Prayer Team reminds us, it is the POTUS's 60th Birthday on July 6th, 2 days after a National Holiday .... what a present a victory over the evil hordes would be for the nation and it's leader.

Westhawk has shrewd and useful analysis

What's in a name ?

Unsurprisingly Lord Patel has been keeping an eye on the state of the German nation and has in his lifelong pursuit of knowledge, uncovered, what is for him an extraordinary feature of European life that has hitherto escaped his knowledge.

In Germany when registering a childs birth and name at your local Standesamt, the officials can reject your choice, by law, if it fails to meet two criteria...

(1) It must reflect the sex of the child

(2) it must not endanger the 'well-being of the child.

To make life easier for themselves, Registry offices in Germany have an "International Handbook of Forenames," updated in 2002. The name law generates so many unresolved questions that there are expert "name offices" in Wiesbaden and Leipzig.The Language Society also helps navigate the minefield, responding to several thousand requests each year from residents (but mainly immigrants) seeking guidance on names before they go to the Standesamt.

"I receive more than 3,000 questions about forenames every year," says Gabriele Rodriguez, from the name office at the University of Leipzig.

So a German couple, fans of the dreadful and hideous Whoopi Goldberg wishing to name their child Whoopi had their choice rejected. (The 1990 US census showed that German-Americans were the largest single ethnic group in the United States with 57,947,374 persons or 23.3 % of the US population claimed some form of Germanic ancestry—German, Austrian, or German Swiss.)

That the State wants to interfere and micromanage your life seems inconceivable to US and UK citizens.

The practice has misty and historical origins - which released from, the Jews who emigrated to the US enjoyed, so they could discard their unwanted names and start afresh. Especially when The Nazi regime required every male Jew without an identifiably Jewish surname to adopt the middle name "Israel" and every such female Jew to adopt the middle name "Sarah." These names were placed on their national identity cards to make it harder for them to evade all the many restrictions imposed on Jews, and in the end, harder to avoid being murdered.

Of course these rules also stretch to cover adult name changes on marriage,especially forbidding hyphenated names, ont the curious supposition that a child named Schmidt-Kohl might marry a Brandt- Merkl and burden their children with a quadruple name.

This nonsense is not limited in Europe to Germany.

In Portugal the Registrars have asked to be released from the burden of having to apply the rules of the Ministry of Justice (by a law of 1911) whose Web site details 39 pages of legally acceptable first names, from Aarao to Zuleica, and 41 pages of unacceptable ones.Lolita, Maradonna and Mona Lisa are out, as are Guevara, Marx and Rosa Luxemburgo and Ovnis. OVNI is Portuguese for UFO..

In 2002, Norway replaced its list with a general standard that bans swear words, sex words, negative names and sicknesses.

A Danish law, that took effect on April 1,2006 expands approved lists to include names from the United States, Europe and other countries, and allows parents to apply for unlisted names.

The Swedish parliament has commissioned the government to overhaul its Personal Names Act of 1982...Parents wanting to use the name Twilight had to go to the Supreme Administrative Court before winning approval.

Spain has several acceptable name lists,(any other name being unacceptable) corresponding to regional languages like Catalan and Basque.

Slovakia, forbids first names that are "eccentric, derogatory or ludicrous" (parents can't name a child "Cigarette," for instance). It also generally bans hyphenated last names for children -- although the Ministry of Interior says it makes an exception for the children of hyphenated foreigners living in Slovakia.

Extraordinary.

Hamas armed men kill 2 IDF and kidnap one - IDF move on Gaza awaited

Israeli tanks moved into the Gaza Strip today. Palestinians killed two soldiers(named as Lieutenant Hanan Barak (20) from Arad and Sergeant Pavel Slocker from Dimona) and have kidnapped a third (named as 19-year-old Gilad Shalit) at the Israeli base at Kerem Shalom. Attackers ( 8 are reported) claimed to be Hamas armed brigades, entered through a tunnel dug from the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The Israeli army described the operation as ``very sophisticated,'' it is claimed the attack was long in planning and was executed (uncluding tunnelling) over several days. Kerem Shalom lies at the junction of the Israeli, Egypan Israeli base near the Egyptian border.

The Palestinians used anti-tank missiles and grenades against a tank and lookout post killing two soldiers and wounding one, while a third is ``apparently in the hands of the Palestinians,'' Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz said at a news conference today. He said the kidnapped soldier is probably still alive.

Israel closed down all border crossings with Gaza today after the attack, the army said.

Yesterday, Israeli special forces seized two "wanted" Palestinians in the country's first arrest operation in the Gaza Strip since it pulled out of the area last year, the army said.

Sunday Night

Much comment and a little more information , claims that the tunnellers went 1/2 mile, that they were trained by Hezbollah and the Iranians and nateanyahu is saying I told you so Omert you pussy cat we must hit them so hard we breach their barriers of fear.

Olmert has given Abbas 2 days to hand the soldierback. Curiously comment from world leaders is hard to find.

Late today Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, made a rare appeal to the organization's militants to look after the health of the kidnapped soldier.

Israeli analysts speculated that just as Hizbullah used the abductionof 3 Israeli soldiers, in 2000 as a bargaining chip to secure the release of Lebanese militants held in Israel, Hamas hopes to do the same with the soldier kidnapped Sunday. The fact that Mr. Hamad spoke in Hebrew indicated that Hamas may have taken a page from Hizbullah's effective use of psychological warfare aimed at the Israeli public.

Kick one, they all limp.
The border crossing point was actually at Rafah until the Gaza pullout and moved at Israeli insistence to Kerem Shalom, 6 Km. from Rafah, and Israeli troops oversee all customs transactions and movement of goods which is against the agreement about allowing Gaza to have freeports, etc.,

Another Prisoner Tagging scheme failure

Scottish courts have been able to impose tagging orders(or more correctly Restriction of Liberty Order under Section 245A of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995) since May 2002.This is done under contract to Reliance Monitoring Servives Ltd.,

In 2004-5, a total of 1,335 tagging orders were handed out and 770 failures to comply were recorded. Between April 2005 and March 2006, a total of 965 Orders 987 failures - 22 more than the number of tags handed out.

A Restriction of Liberty Order requires an offender to be:

* restricted to a specific place for a maximum period of 12 hours per day for up to a maximum of 12 months;
* and/or from a specified place or places for 24 hours a day for up to 12 months.

Offenders will be aged 16 or over and must consent to the Order. The Court must find out relevant information about the places involved and the attitudes of the people living there. Outwith the hours of restriction an offender is free to go where he/she chooses.

The Executive has extended tagging ( see Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003) and insists it is not a 'soft option' and last night were reported saying that its figures showed the monitoring system was working effectively.

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: "These figures bring tagging into disrepute. We have never supported electronic tagging - it is just another excuse not to send someone to prison or to release them early."

Those readers with long memories may remember the wizard wheeze of Home Secretary Minister Blunkett ( not the last one, the fat , bleary eyed thickhead blustering Clarke, but philandering cuckold, shameless Blunkett) who introduced the £3MN trial of GPS taggging which then Clarke discovered didn't work - but demanded a media blackout on the report - which did.

They discovered (as any tech savvy teenager would tell you, and as US reserachers had long ago discovered) that the GPS signal, especially in cities with trees, building cover, subways, etc., can be a trifle tricky to the point of non-existent, and as 4 satellite signals are needed for accurate triangulation it wasn't long before Johnny Rotten realised this and was off on his toes.

In 2004 from September to June 178 offenders in Manchester were tracked in the pilot. Only 29 were allowed off satellite tracking after officials considered they successfully completed their rehabilitation programmes.

Another 83 were sent back to jail for breaches of release conditions, although these were not necessarily directly connected with the technology. The other 66 continued to be monitored.

Did the Ministers scrap the barmy, technologically flawed scheme ? Oh No!! Clarke ordered a media blackout and carried on - the leaked report said " "We have not sought to publicise the pilot scheme since its launch in September 2004 due to the risks of negative media coverage of the poor results to date.T here are risks to attracting media attention." For example they might tell the public out there that the scheme doesn't fucking work - and sex offenders are strolling the streets of the Athens of the North.

The Civil Servant writing the report was abright sort , they added ..."Media attention may highlight some of the difficulties with the technology and raise questions about the cost and low throughput of offenders." Too right they would.

In a a memo to Mr Clarke and other senior Home Office Ministers, "You were not prepared to take that risk." (Note the smart Civilese putting the responsibility on the Minister "You were not..." It continued "Press Office strongly advise against any publicity at the current time.".... We recommend that you agree to the proposed extension of the pilot until 31 March 2006."

Mr Blunkett when launching the scheme said it would create a "prison without bars where exclusion orders or curfews could be rigorously enforced. Paedophiles could be banned from approaching schools and wife beaters could be told to stay away from their victims."

He wisely refrained from any remarks about keeping track of errant wives shagging their friendly local Home Secretary being wined and dined by him at Buckingham Palace along withthe President of the United States and having his baby.

There have not been, as far as Lord Patel's staff can discover any further reports, leaked or otherwise, about the scheme.

However this is probably way down Boot Boy Reid's (very) long list of priorities. No wonder Sir John Geive got out of the Home Office and settled down in a nice psotion on Threadneedle Street.

Baghdad Life ... Official from the Ambassador to SOS

The Washington Post has made available a PDF of a cable from the US Ambassador in Baghdad to Dubya's bathroom Assistant, which reveals the daily life of their staff ...

Read it to see what a fun life it is to work in the Public Affairs department of the US Embassy in the Green Zone.

Westhawk has a take on the content and reasons for disclosure

Miami 7 Indictment soon to hit best seller Fiction lists

It is now possible to access the Indictment drawn up against the Miami 7 R Alexander Acostas US Attorney and his hard working Assistants Jacqueline M Arango and Richard Getchell are to be admired for the Indictment they drew up on the Miami 7 This work of fiction should hit the bestseller list any day soon. (There is another indictment handed out to the associated Atlanta 1 Lyglenson Lemorin but my staff cannot find it). (pic of Acostas boss, the Torturers Apprentice, Mr A. Gonzalez)

There is no mention of explosives anywhere although press reports mention them and the indictment alleges they intended to blow up several FBI buildings in Miami and a considerable chunk of Chicago real estate - it seems unlikely that these dimwits had ever been in Chicago and far from being Muslim jihadists had some sort of confused interest in Biblical revelationism and called themselves the Seeds of David.

What really warms the cockles of my heart in this story is ...

Indictment Item 5) Bro. Batiste provied his FBI plant ( apparently of Arabic descent who calimed that he was an Al Quaeda operative) with details of boot sizes his army needed (size and quantity not stated) - curiously no mention at this stage of detailed requirments of Uniforms, medals, hats, insignia of rank, sunglasses etc., Obviously Bro. Bat is a man concerned with his troops welfare and displays no egregious interest in gaudy uniforms often found among the power crazy who like strutting about in quasi military unforms at Thanksgiving dinners, on aircraft carriers etc.,.

Then again the Bros. were maybe going to march on Chicago in a display of military strength ?

Lord Patel admits to a total ignorance of and his staff cannot turn up any standard reference text book detailing the types and various styles of military uniforms that Al Quaeda currently sport - he admits they usually look as though they simply shop at charity stores and garage sales.

Item 21) Batiste went with FBI plant to purchase a memory chip for the digital camera so they could fillum the FBI buildings they wanted to blow up -- after having Item 18) 3days previously asked him for rental van to cruise by the said buildings, but evidenyl realised they hadn't got a working camera.

Go and read it for yourself and have a good chortle.

Carl Hiassen couldn't make this stuff up.

I bet you feel really safe when you think that the safety and security of the realm is in the hands of fine folks such as US Attorney R Alexander Acosts his hard nosed, keen minded sidekicks, Jacqueline M Arango and Richard Getchell.

That money spent on Homeland security is being really well spent... well in Florida maybe.

Pic stolen from Lisa at Meet the Factsirreverent, cheeky good looking Californian lady with lots of rude none PC pics and sparky comment.

Michael Meacher reveals himself - amazing pictures

Michael Meacher is the MP for Oldham West and Royton, pompous, arrogant, puclicity seeking and supported by public service Unison, he is deeply unpopularin his constituency but curiously espouses string left wing views that betray his middle class upbringing and education

Last December he put down a Commons motion demanding MPs have a vote on replacing the Vanguard submarine and Trident nuclear missiles which was backed by 93 Labour MPs ... note, he wasn't agaimst it, just wanted to vote on it.

Jake Morris in today's People report Unison Conference tittle tattle that Meacher is set to become a Labour stalking horse to prevent Brown from becoming the next labour Leader and possibly PM.

He says Left-wingers believe a stalking-horse candidate would damage Mr Brown in the first ballot - and allow the grotesque, Education Secretary Alan Johnson to step into the contest.

Vincent Moss in the Sunday Mirror says that Meacher has not publicly declared his intentions yet, although since resigning in 2003 as Environment Minister (see pic from BBC as he gambols with bathing beauties at Blackpool) he has attacked the Government over many issues, Iraq, GM foods, and more recently demanding a Commons vote Trident missile replacement.

Moss also raises the unlikely possibility that ex Transport Minister Glenda Jackson could stand against Brown

However much of a twat Meacher maybe, he wrote and the Guradian published
on Saturday September 6, 2003 the most damning analysis of the neocons and their influence, on US foreign policy, the Reichstag Fire nature of 9/11 and the US thrust for world hegemony to secure hydrocarbon supplies.

This war on terrorism is bogus

The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination


His article ends ..

"The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course."

Condi is upset with these stories ....

Is Condi in Love ? Who with ? Jack Straw maybe ?

It really is quite dreadful how people like "wonkette" persist with these vile rumours about George and Condi that Communist rat fink Wayne Madsen in a fit of post menopausal gloom keeps pushing.

Even the trashy supermarket tabloid the Globe owned by American Media Inc.,, who also own the papers of record National Enquirer, The Star keep repeating the fiction about the strange goings on at the Mayflower Hotel etc., . Hmmm... wasn't it the Enquirer that got the first enevelopes stuffed with anthrax in their Miami, Florida (Prop. Jeb Bush) offices? Remember AMI employee Bob Stevens died on Friday, October 5th 2001.

Now don't go spreading lies about ... fatal things to spread ... Hmmm .... like anthrax I guess.

US bankers sell off last of UK vehicle manufacturing to Russians

There is little left of British vehicle manufacturing and the last serious chunk LDV, which was formerly known as Leyland DAF, was acquired by a group of shareholders backed by Finance House US based, Sun Capital Partners, Inc. (with US$3.5 Bn funds under management) in December 2005. Now Russia's largest automotive group Gaz, controlled by Russia’s aluminium oligarch Oleg Deripaska, has commenced negotiations to buy them. (pic the new LDV Maxus people carrier - a van with a lid)

Formerly known as Leyland DAF, LDV employs about 800 workers at its Birmingham plant. The company manufactures panel vans and minibuses and produces more than 13,000 vehicles a year and has annual sales of approx. £200Mn. LDV’s best known models are the Maxus minivan, which is used by the British Postal Service, and Sherpa.

Russian business daily Vedomosti said that Gaz may limit itself to buying a license to produce Maxus minivans, without actually acquiring the plant.

Nikolai Smolensky 23, son of Russia’s once-famous oligarch and banker Alexander Smolensky, bought the British producer of sports cars TVR in 2004 which is going through a dramatic downsizing exercise at present. Sackings of half the 300 staff were announced in April and car production once 12 a week is down to 2. Smolensky has also made a half hearted attempt to buy attempted to buy what remains (if anything) of MG Rover.

The MIAMI 7 - Aspirational terrists and home grown bombers

Patrick Abraham aka Brother Pat
Burson Augustin aka Brother B
Rothschild Augustine aka Brother Rot
Narseal Batiste alleged ringleader, aka Prince Manna
Lyglenson Lemorin aka Brother Levi
Naudimar Herrera aka Brother Naudy
Stanley Grant Phanor aka Brother Sunni

At a meeting "on or about 16 December" according to the indictment made public as the men made their first court appearance in Miami, Mr Batiste asked his contact A.N.Other ( a member of the South Florida Terrorist Task Force) to supply equipment including uniforms, machine guns, explosives, cars and $50,000 in cash for an "Islamic Army" that would carry out a mission "just as good or greater than 9/11".

He then proceeded to sell his contact the Brooklyn Bridge of which he had several photographs about his person.

More bollocks on 7/7 "suicide bombers" as anniversary of mass murder looms

Mr Martin Gilbertson is 45 and from Blackpool, but has lived in West Yorkshire for many years - he is a former Hell's Angel and Motorhead roadie, (weren't we all ?) but with age comes wisdom and he is now working on a university thesis on the radicalisation of Islam in Leeds.

Immediately after the 7/7 bombings he was interviewed by the Police as he had helped in the the Iqra Islamic bookshop, the Leeds Community School, the "al-Qaida gym" and the Hamara Youth Access Point (YAP), an offshoot of a mainstream Muslim community centre nearby.

He claims he made DVD's for these quaint Muslim organsiations and came across Khan and Tanwneer and also installed cryptographic software and firewalls on their PC's - which is not rocket science, a bright schoolkid will do that for you.

Mr Gilbertson had become so alarmed by his own work ( he says - some fucking hard nut Hell's Angel evidently) and the general atmosphere and comment around him that he went to the local Holbeck police station totell the tale, spill the beans , grass 'em up. It is difficult, even impossible to imagine what impression this ex Hell's Angel and Motorhead roadie (and probably Lemmy lookalike) made on the station sergeant. Anyway he says he was told to send his material to West Yorkshire police headquarters. The package he sent to the force's HQ in Wakefield included examples of the DVDs he had produced, a contact number at which he could be reached and a list of names, including two of the bombers - Shehzad Tanweer and Siddique Khan.Wow!!

Curiously ex Hell's Angel never makes any mention of the use of, dealing in, handling of illegal drugs... possibly because all the other reports of such involvement are not true or credible.

The guys who ran these rum outfits in run down back street outfits were an odd bunch ;

Naveed "Jazz" Fiaz (probably known to the people in the Purple Palace in Vauxhall)
Tafazal "Taf" Mohammed (Ditto )
Martin McDaid, AKA Adbullah Mohammed ex UK Marine, a convert to Islam in 2000 who learnt Arabic - (this was the guy who directed the Daily Mirror to the offices of his London solicitor )

According to the Daily Mirror July 17th 2005, this motley crew obtained eye watering funding for their little enterprises a total of £589,000 in taxpayers' money made up of a £200,000 capital grant, a £200,000 neighbourhood renewal grant and a £189,000 EU building grant.

What are we to make of these claims and police silence about them ? Personally I don't believe a fucking word of what Gilbertson says and would like to know how much he has been paid to tell some newspaper this fanciful story.... "I'll tell you they eat budgies alive for another score..etc"

Yet again Rupe's rags are at it, apart from repeating again the nonsense from Suskind's book they now "reveal" ...

Today the Sunday Times reports in a typically anonymous fashion ..."This weekend a senior security official (role / rank / name / sex/ age / employer unknown) also claimed that a “beacon” tracking device of the type used by police had been planted in a car belonging to Khan. It was, said the source, discovered by investigators who took Khan’s car away for examination after he had been identified as one of the suicide bombers... yeah ... yeah

Take heart from that fine leader of men and murderers, Sir Ian Blair ..."It is not the police, it is not the intelligence services who will defeat terrorism. It is communities who will defeat terrorism."

At least the Met are making a fine start identifying the guilty by shooting all the inoccent first.

DPRK the Drum Beat becomes louder

If Necessary, Strike and Destroy / North Korea Cannot Be Allowed to Test This Missile

By Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry Thursday, June 22, 2006; Washington Post.


" .....Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry."

" .... We should not conceal our determination to strike the Taepodong if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out and take it back to the warehouse"

Ashton B. Carter (Rhodes scholar in theoretical physics) was assistant secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton and William J. Perry was Secretary of Defense. The writers, who conducted the North Korea policy review while in government, are now professors at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. See Carter, Ashton B., and William J. Perry. Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America, Russian Edition. Brookings Institution, 2003.

Preventative Defense Strategy - keep threats from emerging; deter those that actually emerge; and if prevention and deterrence failed, defeat the threat with military force.

Lord Patel has been maintaining an interest in the possibility that Uncle Sam might be up for re-arranging bits of the North Korean countryside, see previous posts here.

Thursday, April 20
North Korea - USAF keeps a watch

Wednesday, May 3
Sayonara Iraq, G'bye Okinawa, .. when do we bomb Pyongyang ?

When guys with these credentials write these sort of things in WAPO you begin to feel that something is happening...softening up the audience before they re-landscape Yongbyong.

Remember Dubya deosn't even have to declare war, because technically it is just a cease fire agreement.- ... and Congress don't have to be consulted having given him wide ranging powers after 9/11 to invade Iraq, intercept telephones en masse and obtain banking details.

What does a President do with these powers ? Anything he damn well wants. Gotta get those poll numbers up somehow.

POSTSCRIPT

Transcript of Fox News Special report discussing Cater and Perry's proposals for a pre-emptive strike

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: You know, dDmocrats have way of getting extremely hawkish after they have left office. As Mort indicated, these guys we're in office. Now we're in a post 9/11 world with wars going on all over the place with Americans involved with a lot of isolation for the United States. These guys are recommending a strike which undoubtedly will start a war and it would be the wrong war, the wrong place, the wrong time.

......

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO : What do you we think should do?

KRAUTHAMMER: Develop our missile defense system.

LIASSON: No, I mean about this?

KRAUTHAMMER: You've got to swallow it. Right now we are not in a position to do anything about it.

Krauthammer is possibly best remembered for his Time article April 9th 1999 about the Clinton Weltanschaung..

" The essence of foreign policy is deciding which son of a bitch to support and which to oppose--in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy, like a blanket anti-ethnic cleansing policy, is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion."

Ship Ahoy!

A chap called Ian McConnell who lives in New Brighton, has set up a superb website which uses Automatic Identification data (explained here) broadcast from international ships in the whole of the Irish Sea / Liverpool / Bay / Mersey / Manchester Ship Canal.

A fascinating insight into what goes on at sea and out of sight. Evidently a labour of love and done on worn out shoestrings, it demonstrates what powerful use can be made in real time data in the public domain, combining archive pictures, webcams, library ship data, live data and Google earth maps in a really powerful way.

Go here and discover more

Now if this could be done for airports .... Maybe it has, let me know

Where are they now ? Serge Brammertz the Hariri killing investigator

The UN Security Council met on June 14th for it's 5458th Meeting (AM), the meeting began at 10:07 a.m. and ended at 10:42 a.m.

Serge Brammertz, head of the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others gave his 4th report on progress a day before his mandate was due to expire.

The Lebanese Government has requested to the UN Secretary-General for an extension of the Commission’s mandate for a further period of one year, saying that such an extension would provide a sense of continuity and stability, and guarantee steady operations and planning.

That is something that appears to have missed the MSM press / TV who a year ago were screaming for Syrian blood etc., Google News returns virtually zero on the subject.

Now the boring Belgian Brammertz reveals that critical forensic evidence had revealed that former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others were killed by a massive, above-ground explosive device placed in a truck and detonated 14 February at precisely 12:55:05 as their convoy passed by. Well, that's a start.

“The crime must be considered a targeted assassination”, he said. You don't say !

“In light of the results, the Commission does not believe the claim of responsibility expressed in the videotape delivered to Reuters and Al Jazeera immediately after the attack establishes the identity of this individual”, he said, adding that, in fact, DNA analysis of human remains recovered from the crime scene suggested there was no evidence that Ahmed Abu Adass, the individual claiming responsibility, had detonated the improvised explosive device.

He said the probe was developing a working hypothesis regarding those who had commissioned the crime, the Commission was investigating a number of different motives, including political motivations, personal vendettas, financial circumstances and extremist ideologies, or any combination of those motivations.

The report acknowledged that Syrian cooperation had been satisfactory and that Syria had, in fact, cooperated with the Commission from the beginning.

The Council heard from Boutros Assaker, Secretary-General in Lebanon’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, who said that the former premier’s assassination was an unusual crime that continued to produce a resounding effect in Lebanon blah, blah , blah

Fayssal Mekdad, Syria’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, noted the report’s positive references to Syria’s efforts to cooperate with the Commission blah, blah , blah,

Which is all very curious .. remember last October when the corrupt German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis reported that there was "converging evidence" of Lebanese and Syrian involvement in assassination. Prompting Jack Straw (hoofing it up at the time in Alabama with Cuntileezza Rice) to say ""You simply cannot tolerate a situation where one state decides to deal with problems of another state by assassinating the other state's leaders."

The US State Department also issued a release at the same time stating, "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described as "deeply troubling" a United Nations investigation that implicates Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and finds the Syrian government to be obstructing the inquiry....

...... Asked what form a prosecution might take, Rice said there have been "numerous meetings and discussions about what kind of mechanism might be used to bring people to justice."

Curious how these urgent matters seem to run silently into the sand.

POSTSCRIPT

Lebanese MP Saad Hariri, Rafik Hariri's son was in Paris today 24th June, having an amiable chat with President Chirac (the only foreign leader to attend Hariri's funeral) and said "It will be possible to establish diplomatic ties between Lebanon and Syria."

Concerning internal Lebanese matters, Hariri said that Chirac supported dialogue among leaders as the only way to resolve pending issues.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Thursday that it was too early to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon because of the assertion by members of the Lebanese cabinet that Damascus was behind Rafiq Hariri's assassination.

Ukraine - Russia - RosUkrEnergo on the Brink of a Gas Crisis?

Glamorous, tough Yulia Tymoshenko, the so called Ice Queen of Ukraine's Orange Revolution is, after a lot of horse wrangling once again Ukraine's prime Minister at the head of an "Orange" coalition. There has been 3 months of political paralysis in Kiev (which even kept Dubya from calling last week) that she and President Viktor Yushchenko reached some form of deal. He will present the Tymoshenko nomination to parliament on Monday.

Politics is a rough tough business in this part of the world, Viktor Savkin a Ukraine MP and member of the Tymoshenko bloc, was shot dead in front of his 13-year-old daughter in Yalta last Saturday, on Friday, Grigory Potilchak of Yulia Tymoshenko’s party was shot four times and killed in the street in the Ukrainian town of Nezhin.

Hitting the ground running she has immediately raised the natural gas import deal the Ukraine signed with Russian oil giant Gazprom. On Ukraine TV she announced, "I think all agreements on gas supplies to Ukraine need a further profound revision,"

Simultaneously Turkmenistan has proposed raising the gas price it sells to Gazprom, from $65 per 1,000 cubic meters at present to $100 in the second half of 2006 which holds potentially momentous implications for Ukraine. This could signal the end of the murky RosUkrEnergo gas deal that was made at the expense of Turkmenistan.

This will of course have wide and troubling ramifications outside the Ukraine through which much of Europe's gas supply flows on its way west. Ukraine ended the crisis by agreeing a deal, which almost doubled the price Ukraine paid for gas from $50 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas to $95. Ukrainians were faced with 40% price rises, another of 85% is due with more promised next year. (Spontaneous) Demonstrations are being organised to protest on Tuesday.

Having agreed the deal the Ukraine have been falling behind on payments to Gazprom.

“Yulia Tymoshenko’s statement regarding review of the gas agreement with Russia is yet another warning bell for Europe… Realization of threats that were made in Ukraine today will pave a road to a new gas crisis. We believe that Yulia Tymoshenko’s words once again prove the thesis that Ukraine is unfortunately a weak link in the chain of Russian gas deliveries to Europe,” said Gazprom’s official representative Sergei Kupryanov on State Russian TV.

It promises to be a long cold winter again.... and not only in the Ukraine... it also highlights the problems that the UK faces in relying so heavily on imported gas in the next decades for power generation.

For helpful information about RosUkEnergo (RUE) go here and learn about this mysterious organisation and it's role in supplying gas to the Ukraine.

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Residents of the UK and Ireland can simply log on at www.1899.com, register, then simply by prefixing calls with "1899" get FREE UK landline calls at all times, forever. (3p flat connection fee)

Payment is by Credit Card, Debit Card or Direct Debit with instant access to your detailed account details -- CallNo / Time / Duration / cost. International calls.e.g US 1p per minute.

Also FreeVoIP, your own personal number and 300 free minutes per week.

Bush can wage war against Iran without a prior vote in Congress

At 7: 35 pm on the night of June 20, 2006 in the House of Representatives,Representative Maurice Hinchey (NY Democrat District -22) introduced an amendment to the 2007 Defense Department Appropriations bill.

The amendment reads: “None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to initiate military operations against Iran except in accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States” (Congressional Record, June 20, 2006, pg. H4300).

The amendment should be superfluous in that it merely re-affirms the existing constitutional division of powers between Congress and the president in time of war.

In commenting on his amendment, Hinchey affirms that its purpose “is to make sure that none of the funding in this defense appropriations bill is used to engage in any military operation against Iran without a full vote of the Congress of the United States in accordance with the Constitution of the United States.”

The amendment was defeated 158-262 ( 215 Republicans and 47 Democrats ) with 12 members (six from each party) not voting.

Read Col. DAN SMITH Iraq: Fool Me Twice Counterpunch for the fascinating tale of Hill politics how this happened and legally freed POTUS from the contrainst of Congress to wage war. (Lord Patel is not a constitutional lawyer but I think this also means he can wage war against anyone he likes, whenever he likes ... so if he wants to level the DPRK rocket site at Yongbyong ?)

You might also read with profit Hinchey's attempt (blocked) for an investigation by the Department of Justice into the NRA warrantless surveillance program.

Pic. Hinchey greets and meets Mrs Heinz Kerry who has more private jets than Hinchey has pairs of shoes.