"Rendition" from within EU no longer hypothetical

"we have received official acknowledgment of “handing over” individuals to foreign officials through procedures which ignore the standards and safeguards required by the European Convention on Human Rights and other legal instruments of the Council of Europe"
Terry Davis, Secretary-General Council of Europe. Text of press release (link) http://www.coe.int/T/E/Com/Files/PA-Sessions/April-2006/20060412_Speaking-notes_sg.asp

Ban on glorifying terror comes into force

I've nothing to report about the US/UK axis of peace and their heroic efforts to bring democracy and freedom to far flung foreigners.. mostly flung by the impact of our bombs. It's apparently no longer legal to glorify such Governmental conduct. For further bulletins about what freedom means in this context you'll have to go to Fox News. Pop another christmas tree on my file there's a love, and list me for a nice visit to Room 101, along with the majority of the UK public who don't think you can have a war against concepts. Winston Smith has had enough.

Professional conflicts of interest

An interesting report in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle called Now Powell Tells Us and reprinted at Common Dreams has Colin Powell pinning the Iraq war entirely onto Vice President Dick Cheney.

Halliburton make literally billions in contracts following US military interventions and the motives of their number one lobbyist and former CEO, Dick Cheney, whom they still pay literally millions aren't terribly hard to fathom. Like another infamous neo-con, Richard Perle, he appears to be, and is, completely professionally conflicted and quite properly gets booed when he makes public appearances but if Powell knew the pitch (no pun intended) for invasion was all poop as he asserts, what did he think he was doing selling it for all it was worth on the floor of the UN and coaxing in the UK Government too, by using his own department's experts report (after it was "sexed up" at Downing Street) and calling it British intelligence? That would presumably be why he resigned? The so called "PhD thesis" was in reality written, as anyone who bothered to source it's author online could have easily discovered, by the guy the US Government used in Iraq War One to classify all the documents they captured, who worked in Powell's Department and lectured at the School of the Americas. What is it about all this people can't get?

Another political rant

I've got Myspace.com or knopfler.com for my music - so I figure this is the place for a good political rant and here's a line I read today that is gagging for a reaction...

"Even the Europeans are fed up with them" ... says former Whitehouse advisor and neo-con, Richard Perle on the present Iranian Government. Uh... What's with the Even Richard? Are we normally jerk offs then? And speaking of jerk offs - will someone just remind me why Perle had to resign? Something about conflict of interests ... isn't it ever when there's a lot of money swilling around. I guess when the BIGGEST REACTIONARY ASSHOLE in Washington tries to kill the story of award winning journalist from The New Yorker, then I guess the idea is everyone will stop worrying about US troop build-ups on the Iraq side of the Iranian border. You have to wonder if Iran was always in the trigger sights? And hey, won't all the media be relieved when it's just a conventional invasion ... it'll seem so moderate and reasonable

As it happens the democratically elected PM of Iran is an ignorant jerk too and a racist one at that... but at least he's an elected jerk...and presumbly someone who Saddam Hussain would have had no qualms about taking out, in the days when Saddam worked for the CIA and was being armed to the teeth by Rumsfeld and co.

When the US national debt is 4 trillion a year and according to the Financial Times yesterday, almost 50% of it is due to the spike in oil prices (great news for Bush core constituents in Texas) is this really what is in America's national interest? Okay I'm done here before I really get started.