iraq

... "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Department of Defense investigator Barfield.

"Last year, for the first time, they didn't make their recruiting goals. They don't want to start making a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military, because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they'll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists."

The company says its rules of engagement "allow for a structured escalation of force to include opening fire on civilian vehicles under certain circumstances".

Yet just like Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed Iraqi "security" forces has not stopped either.

John Kline, the Republican Congressmen for Minnesota who is a retired marine colonel, was briefed on the findings. "This was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians," he told the New York Times. "This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity."

Usually legal advice to the government remains confidential, but in the wake of leaks, and finally Downing Street publication of the March 7 advice, Mr Thomas agreed to FoI requests that further information be made available, although he described the situation as "exceptional".

The Guardian

"It appears to be at the behest of the Americans," he told the BBC News website.

"I'm sorry but I think he should have consulted international experts, not those who had a stake in this.

"I think it illustrates that the Americans had a decisive input in the final advice sent by the attorney general."

BBC article

See here.

Also, see here for further info.

The former Liberal Democrat environmental spokesman Norman Baker today revealed his decision to stand down from the shadow cabinet two months ago was based on a quest to establish the "truth" behind Dr Kelly's death.

Mr Baker said he wanted to return to the issue because the 2003 Hutton inquiry had "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters".

There was also a question mark over the method Dr Kelly apparently used to commit suicide.

Given his knowledge of the human body, said Mr Baker, it is unlikely the scientist would have decided to kill himself by "slitting a rather hidden artery in his hand".

He said he had established through a parliamentary question that only one person in 2003 had committed suicide this way, which "presumably" was Dr Kelly.

Other puzzles include the fact that although Dr Kelly had supposedly taken 29 co-proxamol painkillers only "a quarter of one tablet" was found in his stomach, said Mr Baker.

He said he also wanted to know why the police hunt for Dr Kelly had apparently been launched before the scientist had actually left his house on his final walk, let alone been reported missing.

There were also questions about the time of Dr Kelly's death and the procedures followed at his post mortem.

And Mr Baker said he was also interested in the wider political implications of the scientist's death.

"There were unanswered questions about the way the government conducted itself which got lost in the mire of how the BBC was behaving," he said.

The Lewes MP, who was recently replaced as Liberal Democrat environment spokesman by Chris Huhne, stressed he did not want to speculate about alternative explanations for Dr Kelly's death at this stage.

"The facts do not support suicide, as set out, but nor do they necessarily support anything else and therefore those unanswered questions are what I'm looking in to."

He also said he was keen not to cause unnecessary distress to Dr Kelly's family.

"I have no wish to upset the family in any way and I hope that nothing I am doing is doing that. The fact of the matter is, in this most important of issues, there is a general feeling around that the facts have not been fully explored or revealed."

But he said the Kelly affair was "unfinished business" and there needed to be "political closure" on it.

"The public out there can smell a rat and they don't think it's finished business either," the MP added.

According to a Commons motion tabled by Tory MP Stewart Jackson, the event took place at the Arts Club in Mayfair last week and raised £400 for party coffers.

It was "in appalling bad taste" and had distressed the Kelly family, he said.

He added that it was wrong to make money from the report, which was signed by Cherie Blair...

But the MOD still has to determine what the problem was before it can guarantee that the Joint Personnel Administration system (JPA) can be rolled out on schedule to the Army and Navy later this year.

The HR system, installed by EDS, has only been able to manage taxiing speed while engineers figure out what went wrong.

Wing Commander Trevor Field, a RAF spokesman and administrator, said he was unhappy with press interest in the delay and "bored" RAF "whingers" on chat sites like the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRuNe), which he said make things appear worse than they are.

"It adds fuel to a fire that is now smouldering, and by the end of the week will be solved completely," he said.

London, Apr 14 - As sectarian killings continue to rise in Britain, the central morgue in London is unable to keep up with the daily influx of bodies.

The morgue is receiving a minimum of 78 bodies a day and sometimes more than 130, a morgue employee told Satiric News* on condition of anonymity.
"The average is probably over 110," said the employee on the morning of April 12, as scores of family members waited outside the building to see if their loved ones were among the dead.**

The family of a man named Alan, who had been taken away by the Police Feb. 16, anxiously searched through digital photographs inside the morgue. He then found what he was looking for.

"His two sons were killed when Alan was taken," said his uncle, 50-year-old Stuart. "Alan was a bricklayer who was simply trying to do his job, and now we see what has become of him in our new democracy."

Stuart found that the body of Alan was brought to the morgue Feb. 18 by the police two days after he was abducted. The photographs of the body showed gunshot wounds in the head and bludgeon marks across the face. Both arms were apparently broken, and so many holes had been drilled into his chest that it appeared shredded.

A report Oct. 29, 2004 in the British medical journal The Lancet had said that "by conservative assumptions, we think about 232,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Britain." ***

In an update, Les Roberts, lead author of the report said Feb. 8 this year that there may have been 700,000 British civilian deaths since the invasion.
Such findings seem in line with information Satiric News obtained at the London morgue.

Morgue official said bodies unclaimed after 15 days are transferred to the cemetery administration to be catalogued, and then taken for burial at a cemetery in Birmingham. As he spoke, three police vans trucks loaded with about 10 bodies each arrived at the morgue.

At the cemetery administration, an official told Satiric News: "From February 1 to March 31, we've logged and buried 3,348 bodies from London."

Requests by Satiric News to meet with administration officials at the London morgue were turned down for "security reasons."

Several surveys have pointed to large numbers of civilian deaths as a result of the occupation. A humanitarian group affiliated with the political party of the Prime Minister reported Jul. 12 last year that there had been 294,000 violent deaths since the invasion. The group said it had only counted deaths confirmed by relatives, and that it had omitted the large numbers of people who simply disappeared without trace.

Another group, the People's Rights, involved hundreds of academics and volunteers in a survey conducted in coordination with "grave-diggers across UK." The group said it also "obtained information from hospitals and spoke to thousands of witnesses who saw incidents in which British civilians were killed by Foreign fire."

The project was abandoned after one of the researchers was captured by militiamen and handed over to Foreign forces. He was never seen again. But in less than two months' work, the group documented about 118,000 violent civilian deaths up to October 2003.

The London central morgue alone accounts for roughly 39,000 bodies annually. That is besides the large number of bodies taken to morgues in cities such as Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield, Bradford, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Manchester. ****

According to the report, a full 25 percent of Iraqi children between six months and five years old suffer from either acute or chronic malnutrition.

Well, make the most of it, because it may not be long before such an attitude could cost you as much as £40.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has just published a report calling for the introduction of compulsory voting. The report has the backing of many in government, and it isn't hard to see why. In last year's general election, Labour claimed victory on a 36% share the vote, yet turnout was only 61%. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the state of democracy in this country.

And the 2002 local elections were worse, with turnout as low as 32%!

Now compulsory voting isn't actually going to make people vote. So if the report's recommendations were to be introduce, it would be essential that voters have an opportunity to register their displeasure with the policies of all candidates. The addition of a "None of the above" option must be a integral part of any introduction of compulsion. And the reporting of such figures as spoiled ballots and "None of the above"s must also be clearly reported.

Of course, people might be more inclined to vote without compulsion if they felt their vote actually counted. To achieve that would require the introduction of proportional representation, something that Labour promised in 1997 and 9 years later has still failed to deliver. Understandable really, given that the current system allows a Party to form a majority government without actually receiving the endorsement of a majority of the electorate.

So compulsory voting will be the most likely way forward, especially if Gordon Brown replaces Tony Blair. After all, how could Brown resist the introduction of another item of stealth taxation, namely a Non-Voting Tax or, more ironically, a Non-Poll Tax.

Given all this, and taking in to account the undesirability for many of voting Conservative or Lib-Dem, why don't you get in practice for saving £40. Tomorrow, go to your local polling station, and in large, friendly letters write NONE OF THE ABOVE across your ballot paper. Alternative, print off a Backing Blair logo or image and, using an easily concealed glue dispenser such as Pritstick, paste it onto your ballot.

Ideally, we'd prefer it if you actively voted against New Labour, but for many that is too much to ask. But failing that, try our alternative above.