Harriet Harman: Equality Is OK For Everyone Else

HARRIET Harman is all for equality and giving every one a fair chance based on merit. This is why she is able to mock Nick Clegg and his comments on social mobility.

Harman, a niece of biographer Lady Elizabeth Longford, and educated at Paul’s Girls School, is all for equality. As she said of her decision to send her children to a grammar and the Oratory:

Sometimes a school is perfect for one child and another school is perfect for another. There is nothing unusual in a parent sending one child to one school and another to a different school.

Anorak

Posted: 6th, April 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

EDL: Iran Invades Oldham And Demands British Built Mosques In Mecca

THE English Defence League v Press TV: Iran’s mouthpiece has taken over Oldham. Oh, and listen out for the man demanding that mosques are built in Mecca by British builders…

Anorak

Posted: 6th, April 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment (1)

Nick Clegg Is The Celebrity Empathiser Who Wants You To Give Generously

NICK Clegg. Bit of a knob, eh? But he is worthy of comment. And like all good celebrities, it is being ignored that they most fear.

Clegg has been noticed because he has said something wholly obvious. Of course, this will not be his undoing because the political elite are never wrong; they have merely triggered debate and invited us to join in.

What he said was:

“In Britain today, life chances are narrowed for too many by the circumstances of their birth: the home they’re born into, the neighbourhood they grow up in or the jobs their parents do.”

Well, yes, Nick. It’s been like that forever – in every country. It was like that when Clegg’s dad helped get him a gap year post with a bank. Parents work for their children. Get over it.

Anorak

Posted: 6th, April 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

Former CIA Analyst Michael Scheuer Reveals Obama’s Libya Plan

A former CIA analyst called Michael Scheuer tells CNN what is really going on in Libya. You don’t see enough genuine opinion and expertise on the news…

spotter: Zero

Anorak

Posted: 5th, April 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Tory Candidate Caught Lying On Radio: Party Says It Was Not A Lie

ASHLEY Waterhouse, 22, is the youngish Conservative standing in the Normanton ward calling into the Radio Derby’s breakfast show debate on honesty. He gives his name as – yep, you’re ahead of us – “Paul in Normanton”. He’s local. And he wants you to know it.

Waterhouse gets found out because having earlier called and been told that candidates were barred form the conversation, the radio station recognised his number.

Having been caught lying, Waterhouse offers to resign for the sock puppetry. But Derby South Conservative Association says his deception is an honest “mistake” and he is fit to represent others and the Party.

Anorak

Posted: 5th, April 2011 | In: Politicians | Comments (2)

The Rally Against Debt Is Right On: May 14

ON May 14, there is to be A Rally Against Debt.

Any visits to Fortnum and Mason’s by protestors will only be to marvel at their selection of quality goods and perhaps make the occasional purchase.

Bonfires will be strictly forbidden: it’s out of season anyway

Trips to see Vodafone and other high street chains will result in congratulations to the company for providing jobs and growth in the UK.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, April 2011 | In: Politicians | Comments (2)

Kevin Drum Still In The Cult Of Obama

BARACK Obama is vying to win again in 2010. He think he needs one billion dollars. But Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum says all The One need to is stand in a room with each of us  while.

So what should I think about this? If it had been my call, I wouldn’t have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I’d literally trust his judgment over my own.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, April 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

British Police Train Bahrain Cops In ‘Community Policing’ And Kettling: Libya Burns

HAS the Government and the UN made pirates of the Allied forces? The rebellion in Bahrain is being squashed by police trained by the UK’s National Police Improvement Agency. (Pass the kettle.) As we learn on the NPIA website:

Three full-time advisers are working with the Bahrain police to offer assistance in the modernisation of the Bahrain Police Force.

Their focus is to develop and integrate the following within the Directorate of Public Security in the Kingdom of Bahrain:

 Criminal Investigation
 Forensic Science
 Operational Duties
 Community Policing

Nice, eh?

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, April 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comments (3)

When Arnold Schwazenegger Met Boris Johnson

DO we slow up as we get older? Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger was sat on a bicycle in London Mayor Boris Johnson’s office at City Hall in London.

“I’ll be bike,” says Arnie.

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, April 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Musa Kusa Holds The Establishment Who Knew To Ransom Over Lockerbie

LIBYA and Musa Kusa’s defection reads like a bad April Fool’s joke.

‘Tell us the secrets of Lockerbie,” orders the headline bannered across the Glasgow Herald today.

The Herald has led the campaign to get to the bottom and at least some of the truths/versions – for there will many – of the exact double-dealings which caused, on 21 December 1988, the deaths of 270 in the skies over and on the ground of the once quiet backwater Scottish rural market town Lockerbie.

Once again Scotland’s legal system is thrust into the foreground as The Herald tells us

“SCOTTISH detectives and prosecutors are to interview Libyan defector Moussa Koussa about his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.

“Colonel Gaddafi’s former foreign minister, who flew into the UK on a private jet on Wednesday, was a senior intelligence officer at the time of Britain’s worst terrorist attack in 1988, which claimed the lives of 270 people.”

Anorak

Posted: 1st, April 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comments (3)

The Truth About Libya’s Musa Kusa: How The 270 Were Betrayed

MOUSSA Koussa, aka Musa Kusa – crazy name, crazy guy – has defected from Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya. He is the former Libyan Foreign Minister now living in the UK in a secret location.

The media looks at a defector wanted by police in connection with the Lockerbie bombing and the murder of Pc Yvonne Fletcher.

A short bio:

Kusa, 61, is widely suspected of masterminding a string of terror attacks. He was a high-ranking leader in Libya’s notorious “external security bureau”, the Mathaba, which has been repeatedly linked to the 270 murders at Lockerbie.

It’s believed he was also behind the bombing of a French jet that killed 170 people in 1989, as well as a 1986 blast at a German disco that killed two American servicemen and a woman from Turkey.

And many believe he knows who killed WPC Yvonne Fletcher, gunned down in 1984 by two assassins firing from inside the Libyan Embassy in London.
Kusa was himself de facto ambassador to Britain in 1979 and 1980. But he was kicked out after openly backing the IRA – and announcing plans to murder two Libyan dissidents on British soil.

The IRA Years:

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Undated handouts of victims of the Omagh bombing. They are (top row, from the left) 12-year-old James Barker, Esther Gibson, Sean McGrath, Gareth Conway, Elizabeth Rush, Fred White, Lorraine Wilson and (bottom row, from the left) Veda Short, Alan Radford, Bryan White, Brenda Logue, Deborah Cartwright, Geraldine Breslin, and Oran Doherty.

The Nicknames:

Branded a “superstar of terrorism” and “envoy of death”, the list of atrocities linked to Libyan Musa Kusa send shivers down the spine. Described as the “black box recorder” of the regime…

The Cowardly Old Man:

Libyan spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Mr Kusa had permission to go to Tunisia as he was sick with diabetes and high blood pressure, but the regime was surprised to learn he had flown to London.

“People are saying ‘So what? If someone wants to step down that’s his decision’,” Mr Ibrahim said. “He is tired and exhausted. He is an old man. His heart and body cannot take the pressure.”

He Fled Us To Be With Us:

A senior Whitehall source said of Kusa, 62: “He came over because he thought we were going to bomb him. It was quite simple. He was scared and acted out of self-preservation.”

The Money:

MUSA Kusa’s interrogation will last from two to three years as MI5 officers ¬painstakingly squeeze every bit of ¬information they can from him.
But it may be well worth it to him, clinching a huge financial deal and a safe haven here or possibly in the US.

One source told the Daily Mirror that it was highly likely a secret Cabinet committee meeting in a few years would agree a package for him, perhaps worth several million pounds. But whatever his demands, no promises or even a hint of an offer will be made to him for at least six months.

He’s One Of Us, says Paul Pillar:

But I think his decision reflects more than just a calculation of odds about the outcome of the current Libyan civil war. Kusa is an urbane, polished man who would not look out of place as a minister or ambassador in the service of a western government. He has a western education, in the form of a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University. He is not the image of a revolutionary or a subversive; he comes across as a polite and pragmatic diplomat. Whatever thuggish history may be in his past, it is hard to picture him as representing the current thuggish elements of the Libyan regime. In this moment of trial, anguish, and uncertainty, probably something inside told him that he belongs in the west.

The Immunity:

In his statement Mr Hague said:

His resignation shows that Qadhafi’s regime, which has already seen significant defections to the opposition, is fragmented, under pressure and crumbling from within. Qadhafi must be asking himself who will be the next to abandon him.

We reiterate our call for Qadhafi to go. Musa Kusa is not being offered any immunity from British or international justice.

Who now speaks for the 270 people murdered at Lockerbie?

Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103 group, said: “He should not be treated as a witness but as part of the criminal enterprise that brought down the plane.”

“He knows who ordered it, who made the bomb, who paid for it, who transported it to Malta and how it was put on the plane. He knows the details of (bomber) Megrahi’s release from the Scottish prison, including the role of the British officials,” he said.

Jim Swire’s daughter Flora was killed in the mass murder:

Mr Swire, who met Mr Kusa during a visit to Libya in 1991, described Mr Kusa as “extremely frightening. More frightening than Gaddafi himself”. He said: “He was clearly running things. If Libya was involved in Lockerbie, he can tell us how they carried out the atrocity and why. I would be appalled if by now the Scottish police are not in England interviewing Mr Kusa. It is a great day for us.”

We’re the good guys:

But Mr Cameron hailed the defection of Kusa as a ‘serious blow’ to the ‘crumbling and rotten Gaddafi regime’.

Change the words around and you get:

But Mr Gaddafi hailed the defection of Kusa as a ‘serious blow’ to the ‘crumbling and rotten Cameron regime’.

That’s hard on Cameron. The difference between democratic Britain and Libya is that the Tony Blair-led Labour administration that fixed it for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to escape justice and live out his days in freedom has gone. But the overriding message remains unaltered if the British Government does not get justice for the 270 and continues to lie and connive to sacrifice truth for money.

Says Cameron:

“Let me be clear, Musa Kusa is not being granted immunity, there is no deal of that kind. The point I would make about the dreadful events over Lockerbie, that investigation is still open and the police and the prosecuting authorities are entirely independent of Government and they should follow their evidence wherever it leads and the Government will assist them in any way possible.”

THEY WANT JUSTICE!

Susan Cohen, 72, of Cape May, New Jersey, who lost her 20-year-old daughter Theodora in the bombing, added: “He should go to jail, he has to be put on trial and he has to see justice. Britain has to take responsibility for this guy and do the right thing. This time Britain has to mean it.”

Tory MP Robert Halfon adds:

“I think what has happened is comparable to Rudolf Hess coming here during the Second World War. The fact is that this man is most likely a war criminal, allegedly been responsible for the deaths of British citizens, allegedly the organiser of the Lockerbie bombing. He needs to go to the international court to face trials for war crimes. There’s no way the British taxpayer should be subsidising one of Gaddafi’s henchmen to live in the UK.”

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Anorak

Posted: 1st, April 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Barack Obama Wins Transparency Award In Private

BARACK Obama – not George Bush – wins the Don Rumsfeld Award for doublespeak:

Ahem:

President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.

Anorak

Posted: 31st, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

Syria’s President Assad Drives His Own Car Into The Happy Throng: Video

IN Syria, the despot President Assad – he of the skinny wife and the long, brass neck – is talking to his people – who have no choice but to be his people.

Behold he speaketh:

Bashar al-Assad spoke to his people, but he made no concessions. He failed to lift the emergency rule, blamed the recent unrest of conspirators, and gave no sign that he would be backing down any time soon.

Anorak

Posted: 31st, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)

Police Make EDL V Blackburn Anti-Racists An All Ticket Affair

ONLY 3,000 people will be allowed to attend the English Defence League v BADUAR (Blackburn and Darwen Unite Against Racism) in Blackburn this Saturday.

As reader Karen asks:

How the hell are they going to impose that? Tickets only?

Anorak

Posted: 30th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Gorby 80 Gala Concert Photos: Mikhail Gorbachev’s Birthday Bash

TO celebrate Mikhail Gorbachev’s birthday, the great and good went to the Gorby 80 Gala Concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall in west London. Arsenal and Russia star turn Andrey Arshavin and his wife Yulia rocked up, so too did The Scorpions (remembered their gargled, semi-literate homage to wind?), solid Lech Walesa, tanned Paul Anka and the emancipating force of Kevin Spacey and Sharon Stone. All were there to cheer on the former Soviet leader in a building that will one day, thanks to his work, be owned by a Russian oligarch and relocated 100 yards to the right to afford abetter view of the shops…

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Sharon Stone signs autographs as she arrives at a charity gala concert celebrating the 80th birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Royal Albert Hall in west London.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Berlusconi Hires George Clooney To Play Him In Sex Trial TV Footage

THE sex trial of Italian septuagenarian Silvio Berlusconi welcomes Cristiano Ronaldo and George Clooney.

Berlusconi is the despot who stands accused of, while not being as big as Hosni Mubarak and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and fucking entire countries, nonetheless shagging enough locals to be noticed.

Clooney and Ronaldo are on a list of 78 witnesses named by the prime minister to defend him against charges of sex with under-aged prostitute Karima el-Mahroug. Berlusconi is also accused of using and abusing his position to intervene on Mahroug’s behalf when she was detained by police on suspicion of theft.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

Nick Clegg’s Green Lie Goes Nuclear

THE Telegraph creates a storm over Nick Clegg’s kak-handed attempt to create a coherent energy policy. For starters, we have Rosie Prince writing:

The Government has given provisional approval to the building of at least 10 new nuclear reactors, costing around £50 billion each, at eight sites as part of the pledge to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent in coming decades.

Each? No. Nuclear reactors do not cost that much. As recently as 2008, the BBC reported:

How much does it cost to build a nuclear power station?

There are few recent examples to draw on, but a new plant being built in Finland gives some indications. The Olkiluoto project is Western Europe’s first new reactor in a decade and is expected to cost about £2.25bn ($4.5bn), but there have been serious delays there. Other analysts put the cost of a plant at £1.5bn.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Libya: Obama’s Humanitarian Crisis Is Back In The US

PRESIDENT Obama is not at the London conference to talk about solving a problem like Libya. But Hillary Clinton is. As Obama says, there is a “looming humanitarian crisis.” Well, yes. When the far Right-wing rebels we’re backing hit Tripoli, then Gaddafi and his forces will be in a deep brown crisis.

As for a humanitarian crisis, get a load of that table on the left. Yes, it is in 000s.

Back in London, lots of politicians are vying to see whose vested interest will get the biggest say on Libya. Want to know which forces of good were there? Here you go. We’ve highlighted a few of the choice ones:

International Organisations

Anorak

Posted: 29th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Libya: How Iran And Syria Got Away With Mass Murder In Lockerbie

LIBYA – billed on the BBC TV news as a cosy “Conflict” and not a proper war, is a pathetic escapade based on emotion and greed. The anti-Gaddafi forces are called the “rebels“. But the real rebel looks more like Gaddafi. Madame Arcati takes a look:

WHILE Britain, America, France and other mighty nations play space invader games over the Libyan Desert, nudge-winkingly plotting the overthrow of the unloved Gaddafi, my mind keeps turning back to Private Eye‘s late and celebrated investigative reporter Paul Foot and his well-argued alternative view of the Lockerbie atrocity.

In 2004 he wrote in The Guardian: ‘The Lockerbie bombing was carried out not by Libyans at all but by terrorists based in Syria and hired by Iran to avenge the shooting down in the summer of 1988 of an Iranian civil airliner by a US warship.’

Anorak

Posted: 29th, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comments (4)

Jude Law And Kevin Spacey Get Belarus

FREE speech for Belarus is a cause beloved by Jude Law and Kevin Spacey. (Sean Penn has Haiti.) Good news for Dmitri Bondarenko is that Spacey is a fan. Law carries the banner for Natalia Radina. Roger Lloyd Pack carried no flag and is possibly available for sponsorship.

Anorak

Posted: 29th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

The Clean And On-Trend Anti-Cuts Anarchists Are No Radicals

ODD isn’t it that the anarchists always arrive on time, just when you expect them? Anarchists also wear the same clean and tidy outfit – on-trend black with hood and flashes of red. It’s odder still that these anarchists should attach themselves to the TUC march – a protest for more state control.

The aim is to look scary. But it’s big fail.

Anorak

Posted: 27th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment

Anti-cuts Protest Is Evidence Of The Stupidity Of Crowds

DID you see the anti-cuts march – when the State workers were marshaled through central London by the police – yep, those other State workers – in a protest to keep their jobs gold-plated and their noses in the trough?

AS the public sectariat go on the march to protect their grip on our wallets, Liam Halligan, chief economist at Prosperity Capital Management, asks a few questions, writes Richard North:

Why aren’t Osborne and Co. explaining these catastrophic realities [of our debt serving costs] and their impact on our medium-term ability to maintain our public services, using them to rally support for austerity measures that are long overdue? Why aren’t such stark facts thrown back into the face of those who claim that the Tories’ retrenchment plans are “driven by ideology rather than necessity”?

Anorak

Posted: 27th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)

Images That Glorify Violence Against State Control: TUC March Photos

WANT to see images of the violence from the TUC March For The Alternative in London – the protest against Government spending cuts? Of course you do? Marches are by their nature boring. You walk. You chant. You gather. You go home. But what we want is serious opposition. A palsied, bloated, gout-ravaged Labour Party can’t even hit the Coalition Government’s massive white elephant-sized arse with an expenses account.

Anorak

Posted: 26th, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment (1)

Hugo Chavez Finds Life On Mars

HUGO Chavez, keen to appear on the international news cycle, says capitalism might have ended life on Mars. Says the most famous face to emerge from Venezuela since Simón Bolívar shook the gold dust from his beard and declared the natives ripe for the taking:

“I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet.”

Curse Ming the Merciless. Curse him and his ice-cream concessions!

Anorak

Posted: 24th, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)

Gaddafi Invites Suicidal Muslims To Take Out Switzerland: Bombs Not Injections

COLONEL Gaddafi wnts to annihilate Switzerland, land of civic pride, assisted suicide (the jihadis will enjoy that – although the Swiss are not as messy) and racism.

Responding to the Swiss move to ban the building of minarets, Gaddafi says:

“Let us wage jihad against Switzerland… Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate, is against Muhammad, God and the Koran.”

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, March 2011 | In: Politicians | Comment