The Dark Arts of Sith Lord Cheney

Disturbing  and shocking revelations about the Iraq War just keep coming. 

The latest is a piece in the Washington Note by Col Lawrence B Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was Bush’s Secretary of State.  A Republican, Wilkerson clearly detests Dick Cheney whose been touring the media extolling the virtues of torture in keeping America safe.

Summarising an MSNBC package he comments, ”Let’s just say that five minutes of the Sith Lord was stunningly inaccurate”.

The real reason for torture was nothing to do with keeping America safe; as Wilkerson explains (with my emphasis):

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

So now we see the real reason for torture.  In the absence of any evidence from the UN survey teams, the Iraq/al-Qa’ida link had to be manufactured wholesale – dodgy dossiers, torture – whatever it took with Bush and Blair playing off each other.

The Bilderberg Connection – for conspiracy theorists everywhere

The secretive Bilderberg Group, long a favourite of conspiracy theorists and target of anti-globalists,  are holding their 2009 conference in Greece over 14-17th May.

As Paul Watson of globalresearch.ca reports  ”Elitists [are] divided on whether to quickly sink economy and replace it with new world order, or set in motion long, agonizing depression”.  The way he writes it, this lot are puppet-masters pulling the strings that control the World and acting as kingmakers selecting future leaders they approve of.  His heading claims that the Group “plans economic depression“. 

Wow! Not quite up their with fellow Bielderberg critic David Icke who is on the record as believing the the Queen is a reptilian humanoid.

The fact is that the majority of policy-makers world-wide are working with deeply flawed economic theories.  This meant that they failed to see the crash coming until it was too late and don’t really understand it even now.  Not quite Master-of-the-Universe stuff even if many have been remunerated on the basis that it was.

A more rational explanation would be that the Bielderbergers, like anyone else, can spot a rising political talent and that they are free openly to discuss unpalatable truths about just what a big mess we are in in a way they don’t always like to when they know the press is hanging on their every word (even if conspiracy theorists sometimes get hold of garbled versions of their debate).

For what it’s worth there are hard choices to be made roughly along the lines Watson sets out.  Should we purge the system of its accumulated excesses as quickly as possible or try to keep the economy staggering on despite the difficulties until things improve?  The first option implies an intense, but relatively short depression, the second implies a long drawn out affair, possibly lasting 20 years.

I favour the first option, most politicians lean to the second, but I fear the mess may be too big for that to be deliverable; (or, to put it another way, I think the government will run out of credit and bankrupt us before they’ve filled the hole they dug earlier).

Worst Slide Story

West Side Story is deservedly a classic.  This animated remix for our times is another. 

H/T naked capitalism

Lurking in the shadows

HMRC’s rule is that “an employee or office holder may deduct expenses incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in performing the its duties” (sic).

Easy enough you might think (apart, that is, from the proofing error), but that is before this simple rule collides with a Parliamentary culture that is long past its sell-by date.   Some, like Norman Baker, have been fighting  to change it but too many MPs, ignobly led by Speaker Martin have used every trick in the book to preserve their cosy sinecure.  It’s long past time to drag Parliament into the 20th century; the rest of us have already moved on to the 21st!

What would Speaker Martin care to say to the three policemen arrested yesterday in connection with a number of offences including misconduct in a public office a.k.a. fiddling their expenses?   We all depend on Parliament to do a good job yet we now have an unconscionable situation where there is one law for them and another for the rest of us.  It is hard to imagine anything so offensive as this.

Yet beyond all the brouhaha about MPs expenses there is an even more serious issue lurking in the shadows; namely that it exposes a quite startling degree of complacency in ALL the party leaderships.

That this was going on they all certainly knew;that it would eventually detonate catastrophically became highly likely once the FoI Bill was passed and a racing certainty many months ago.  Any one of the Party leaders could have put his lot in the clear (at least as far as the more recent years are concerned) by unilaterally instituting a clear party policy on it.  Yet despite some gestures none managed to institute an effective policy leaving them all in an unseemly scramble to react to developments after the event.

I don’t want, and Britain can’t afford, leadership whose highest ambition is to hold office, that thinks it’s adequate to react after the event and whose habitual response it to spin and wriggle its way out of the mess that inevitably results.  We need leadership that is knows where it wants to go, is proactive in this and can analyse and plan accordingly.

There are many good and honest MPs in all parties but they can do little if the culture is against them.  So, before the Lib Dem leadership starts consoling itself with the thought that they got off relatively lightly, they might like to reflect not just on how it is that they failed to dodge this particular bullet but rather on how it is that they still languish in third place in the polls even after Labour has contrived to wreck the economy.