The avarice of the great and the good: 4 MPs feel the full force of the law.
Enid Blyton’s stories of the ”Famous Five” which clearly supported the idea of childhood innocence and enthralled many a youngster for close on to three decades will always be remembered fondly by a postwar babyboom generation.
Yet in comparison to these important reminscences within the present time, newspaper reports of the unscrupulous actions of a certain four (who are famous for all the wrong reasons) have demonstrated that the UK’s parliamentary system has rested undeseredly upon heaps of shifting sand for millennia.
Jim Devine, David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Lord Hanningfield who have all had a charge of “false accounting” levelled at them now prepare themselves to be duely questioned in the criminal courts.
They have each claimed individually that if these charges are be answered to, a Bill of Rights Act of 1689, just might well prove that these kind of matters are still safeguarded by historic constitutional legislation, under quite emeritus parliamentary privilege and age old sentiment.
Outlining how the prosecutions might ultimately be sought, Mr Keir Starmer, (the Director of Public Prosecutions) as said “We have considered that question and concluded that the applicability and extent of any parliamentary privilege claimed should be tested in court.”
Reeling from the MP’s expenses and allowances scandal, a Theft Act of 1968 will be used like the Sword of Damocles to secure the conviction of these men if they are proven guilty. The Theft Act carries a maximum jail sentence of seven years.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200203180015
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118050§ionid=351020601
Connecticut Industrial Catastrophe
Expected to commence with operations in the summer of this year, an Energy plant in Connecticutt,(Kleen Energy by name) suffered a tough setback to their deadline for beginning with production there yesterday after having experienced a serious gas explosion on site.
In the wake of this happening people living in Middletown gave reports of hearing the major blast from at least a distance of 50km (30 miles). The actual location of the plant is set a little way from the town itself.
Twelve on-site workers are said to have sustained injuries, and five were killed in the tragedy. Several construction companies are known to possessed work contracts at the site, while 95% of the plant’s complex was complete.
An estimated figure of one to two hundred employees are said to have been registered to work there. A rupturing pipeline within the vicinity of this industrial area has been cited to have led to the incident.
Weblinks: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-02/08/c_13167367.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/07/connecticut.explosion/index.html
http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/middlesex_cty/middletown-power-plant-explosion
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=7263098
Geopolitical Intelligence Report: A Defensive Buildup in the Gulf – By George Friedman
This weekend’s newspapers were filled with stories about how the United States is providing ballistic missile defense (BMD) to four countries on the Arabian Peninsula.
The New York Times carried a front-page story on the United States providing anti-missile defenses to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, as well as stationing BMD-capable, Aegis-equipped warships in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the front page of The Washington Post carried a story saying that “the Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future attacks by Iran, according to former and current U.S. and Middle Eastern government officials.”
Obviously, the work is no longer “quiet.” In fact, Washington has been publicly engaged in upgrading defensive systems in the area for some time.
Central Command head Gen. David Petraeus recently said the four countries named by the Times were receiving BMD-capable Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) batteries, and at the end of October the United States carried out its largest-ever military exercises with Israel, known as Juniper Cobra. Read more »
Weblinks: http://www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/web/page/956/sectionid/557/pagelevel/4/interior.aspx
http://italy.usembassey.gov/pdf/other/RS21513.pdf
This excerpt has been republished by www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.com
Honesty is best for Foreign Policy: The Chilcot Inquiry.
Faithless: Mass Destruction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dSMJOpFUs8&feature=related
Although the remit of those on the Chilcot/Iraq Inquiry panel has been a tad restrained by UK Government and Departmental blockages with respect to the transit of particular memos and documents, the right given to the panel to now read certain qualitative kinds of national intelligence relating to periods of 2001-03 has much been improved upon compared to periods before the war began.
In direct contrast to how a keeping of a lid on the arguements and public protests (Not in my Name movement and George Galloway’s “Respect” Party) which was henceforth in the noughties dismissed by the British Establishment who then viewed these large assemblies of folk as having come together in one voice to speak up against a single issue.
It was wrong of the UK Government to respond in this way in light of the situation at that time (to disregard the political outlook of a million people marching in London) and which has only led to the now further entrenchment of people’s opinions on the issue.
Hearing evidence from the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Lord Goldsmith, it is clear that many of the official mechanisms of the Iraq war’s planning were overwritten and scuppered. Picking through all this still goes on.
Weblinks: http://news.scotsman.com/news/Iraq-Inquiry-Goldsmith-tells-of.6019576.jp
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article7011925.ece
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/related-4624-tony-blair.do
Past Iraq Inquiries:
http://www.usip.org/isg/index.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/200402020002
http://www.fpif.org/articles/cant_stay_the_course_cant_end_the_war_but_well_call_it_bipartisan
Ad lib and libel: Google provide a medium for chinese whispers to be heard.
Thirty or forty years from now when we come to properly study all the major world events of the twentieth century, littered as it was with periods of political upheaval, (the Khmer Rouge Cambodian Genocide – 1975-79, WW2 and the rise of Nazism, the Kosovan and Serbian War of the late 1990’s)hopefully we shall stay true to our word, and commit ourselves to ensuring that as the 21st century proceeds on, there will be no place for control freaks to hide.
Google’s experience of being in some way harangued by the Chinese Government after it reported that its Gmail facility had been interferred with, has sparked off a much wider debate about whether or not individual countries have the right to purposefully place restrictions upon their citizen’s use of the Internet.
Prohibiting access to materials which are too graphic for children to view through the use of parental locking devices is quite correct and surely advisable.
But when there are reports of people being prevented from writing blogs due to the fact that they contain political messages and a hint of criticism relating to a state’s use of oppressive mechanisms (such as wrongful imprisionment, torture and so forth) you could say that in this one area pertaining to our civil life, there need to be systems and sincere democratic channels in existence which promote advocacy and are able to some degree over-right the prevelence of any one ideologue’s line of thinking and statutary authoritiy.
Websites such as www.wikileaks.org and with the dawning of social media network (Facebook, Myspace, Youtube Twitter, etc) the propriety of newspaper and magazine publishers on the basis of what’s able to written and disclosed to the public at any one time is by all accounts being gravely undermined.
The British Government has struggled just of late to reform its own Libel and Defamation laws where the production of stories on the private lives of celebrities is concerned.
The recent lifting of a media injuction on any story pertaining to the footballer John Terry is a case in point, as he and other representatives for him have mentioned that the releasing of information which is too personal and gossip-like could expose the sports-star to ridicule and might effect his establishing of future corporate contracts and sponsorships.
As for the most consumable of our daily broadsheets, the combing through of paragraphs for the slightest troublesome ”turn of phrase” by all editors will lead to the best legal advice being sought for and meticulous care being taken.
Webinks:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/321b4e50-0079-11df-b50b-00144feabdc0.html
Iran quells two opposition voices
In yet another show of political adamancy against decidedly choosing to reform itself from within, Iran executed two men for their direct participation in the country’s post-election civil disturbances which happened in June 2009.
The two defendants had to contend with simultaneous prosecutory accusations levelled at them by members of the Iranian judiciary who claimed that both these individuals held affiliations to a counter-revolutionary movement.
The death sentences of these named protestors, a Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour were carried out at the behest of Iran’s Revolutionary Court on Thursday 28th 2010 and were furthermore supported by a hardline cleric named Ahmad Jannati Massah.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20100129_2_men_are_executed_in_Iran_s_crackdown.html
No time to regress in front of Congress: Obama and the State of the Union Address
Media pundits would’nt have gone too far wrong yesterday in their guesswork over what President Barack Obama was expected to speak about in his first State of the Union Address to US Congress.
Although it is quite remarkable that we are looking at a world leader who took six months to air an opinion on the deployment of troops to Afghanistan and only days to decide on building up legal armaments against Wall Street.
Having to scrape against the grindstone a little throughout his first in office, Obama again took the opportunity to try and reassure his audience that he throughly accepted the nation’s greivances and disparaging views with regards to taking the rough with the smooth before America itself would so confidently again enjoy the good times.
Pressing forward his point that it is at this stage important for the American public to properly realise that the Obama Administration will succeed in making the country more safe and properous in the long-run, the president fell back upon his usual tactic of using warm and appreciable words in getting those in attendance to think about the seriousness of the government’s predilections towards bettering job security and healthcare reform.
Urging Republicians not to fight so hard against what Obama as said are fairly warranted moves to effecting the status quo within the US, his promising to augment the sort of change which has only thus far made people evermore excitable about what prospectively he is able to do.
The president will have to resign himself first with countering the public’s obvious disquiet over many salient aspects of his plans.
Weblinks: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/12/obamas-state-union-speech-scheduling-limbo/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-01-26-SOTU-obama-freeze_N.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/27/AR2010012702421.html
Doncaster Council’s own “Lord of the Flies” scenario
In the Spring of 2009 reports were read about in the press of a very brutal attack which was carried out by two brothers, now aged 11 and 12 upon two other minors, aged 11 and 9 years old within the the Brick Ponds area of Edlington, Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
The boys were enticed into following these two juvenile delinquents (who were only slightly more elder than their victims) in the supposed knowledge that they were being guilded to a place where a dead fox lay.
Once at this secluded spot, these younger children were repeatedly assaulted in a horrific fashion by these deviant pair for a period which lasted for a hour and an half. The seriousness and extent of both these children’s injuries have been said to be shocking.
As for the actual perpetrators, they themselves possessed greiviously dysfunctional backgrounds which in the long-term probably contributed to the severe deterioration of their psychological state of mind. Having to contend with a drug-dependent mother and a violent father, both boys were raised within and therefore could not escape from what was described by their defence barrister as a “Toxic family life”.
The brothers have confessed committing grievous bodily harm against their victims and were each given five year sentences at Sheffield Crown Court. In the handing down of the verdict of the court, the judge a Mr Justice Keith described the actions of the brothers as “appalling and terrible”.
In a further comment he said “The fact is this was prolonged, sadistic violence for no reason other than that you got a real kick out of hurting and humiliating them”.
Weblinks: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/22/edlington-attack-uk-broth_n_433603.html
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116960§ionid=351020601
http://www.indymedia-letzebuerg.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41493&Itemid=27
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Doncaster-Council-to-face-inspection.6011704.jp
The Haitian Earthquake.
Haitian citizens awoke in the early hours of Tuesday morning to a whole cluster of apocalyptic scenes spread across their capital city Port-au-Prince after 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck this poorest of Carribean islands.
The wrath unleashed upon the area has rendered hopitals, UN international and municipal buildings as all derelict, while among the places named specifically ”the presidential palace, the finance ministry, and the ministry of communication and culture.” Haiti’s President René Préval has suggested that estimated death toll could range between 3o-50,000 individuals.
Many UN staff working at a peacekeeping headquarters in the district of Petionville, situated from Port-au-Prince in the east have been reported as missing.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has relayed information to the press of 11 Brazilian peacekeepers, five international police officers — three from Jordan and one each from Chad and Argentina sadly losing their live in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Hamanitarian assistance has come from all angles, with France, the US, the UK, China and Iceland offering its condolences and large degrees of both infrastructual and logistic support.
Weblinks: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/haiti.quake/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/13/2791129.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/haiti-earthquake-relief-
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/13/f-emergency-contacts-haiti-relief-aid.html
Development and Appeal Info:
Afghan cold shoulder treatment given to Hamid Karzai!
Always standing in some way aloof from most of the political processing that has gone on around him, President Himid Karzai had his sense of personal grandeur and superiority shaken in these the beginning days of 2010, by the judgement of Afghanistan’s parliamentary lawmakers who have abruptly rejected 17 names from a list of 24 Cabinet nominees.
Mr Karzai’s ability to assemble and stitch together a properly functioning government ready and prepared to interact judicially on the world stage has been thrown into question, forcing Karzai to pull and veer away from being distastefully polevaulted out of Afghan political favour.
Weblinks: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6010MQ20100102
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/01/02/afghanistan.cabinet/index.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/02/afghan-parliament-rejects_n_409383.html
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