The dedicated fibre optic cable between Downing Street and White City that replaced the earlier cosy channels of communication is in danger of meltdown.

On Friday of last week we were treated to a BBC ‘exclusive’. Twenty ‘Al Qaeda’ personnel had been arrested three months previously in the Yemen. They had ‘confessed’ to planning a truck bombing of the British Embassy there. A connection with Iran was conveniently alleged. By midnight the Iran bit was omitted and by next morning ‘confessed’ had become ‘admitted’. The rawness of the word torture needs to be kept from our sleeping populations, as well as the fact that we provide both the political and electrical stimuli for such.

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"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage - - - - torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians - - - -  which does not change its moral color when it is committed by our side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." -George Orwell

And we do not forget - for instance - that Dr Chaitanya Patel OBE BM FRCP (?formerly/presently of Westminster Health Care Ltd) was advising Messrs Blair, Milburn, Reid, Hewitt etc on 'reform'** of the National Health whilst his loan to the rose perfumed party of government lay in a special account which Lord Levy might know about (Michael Crick - Newsnight 16-03-06). That he had a direct financial interest in the expansion of private hospitals had no bearing of course on the advice he gave. The irony of the firm's title is no longer lost.

**Reform - in Blairese: dismemberment, evisceration (as at the University Hospital of Stoke on Trent)

REMEMBRANCE and HYPOCRISY

It is Remembrance Sunday here in Britain. The shorter ceremonies took place on the eleventh day. Poppy and empire are garnered in Whitehall, by the Cenotaph and a stone's throw from the seat of power at 10 Downing Street. David Dimbleby has inherited the gravitas and fluency which march impeccably through the screen of BBC 1. The Portland stone of the Cenotaph is shining in the sun and it is framed by plane trees that are still in green leaf. This stone of the Jurassic period is reaching across 450 million years to these men and women, one of whom has his finger on the instrument which can blast us back in time, and beyond those deep seams of limestone and clay. The massed bands in their immaculate grey and the bearskins play 'Flowers of the Forest', 'Nimrod' by Elgar and 'When I am laid in earth' by Edward Purcell. The emphasis is on the sacrifice of those who lost their lives in the two world wars, those who were bereaved and those who returned disabled. After the Last Post, the wreaths are laid starting with the Queen. Her uniformed relations follow, and then the actor Blair. He is followed by Howard, the leader of HM's opposition who supported his political colleague in his treacherous plans for war on that country they had disarmed and laid waste already. Post Paisley, comes Straw. He is clutching a wreath which has flowers in it from every part of the Commonwealth. How good it is to think that those folk who have felt the stamp of these boots and the flash of those bayonets, should show their dying gratitude. And how apt that he should be the bearer; the latest thespian to sell that little country down the Jordan we gained mandate over in 1922.

 

It is understood that the Prime Minister has ruled out a public inquiry into the four explosions that occurred on the 7th of July. How then will the truth be established as to who perpetrated these atrocities and with whom were the guilty possibly connected?

A public enquiry could be set up for each of the four explosions using Section 17a of the 1988 Coroner's Act. This was designed for the investigation of multiple deaths when there was a common cause – for instance a train crash. Duplication is avoided and distress to relatives lessened. It has been invoked at least five times - twice for the sinking of the trawler Gaul. It was last used for the unnatural death of Dr David Kelly. An ad hoc inquiry by Lord Hutton was set up the day he was found, and the Section 17a vehicle added later and inappropriately given it was a single death.

06/06/04 "ICH" -- Ms Montague interviewed David Kay on the BBC Today programme yesterday.

He served as IAEA/UNSCOM Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector in Iraq following the Gulf War. From June 2003 he was appointed by President Bush to head the 1,400 man Iraq Survey Group. He resigned that position in January 2004 having concluded that there had been no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the war. He is now Senior Research Fellow at the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies - a major body in the constellation of Washington 'think-tanks'. He is concentrating on counter-terrorism and weapons proliferation in a section which is also working on the enhancement of 'blast weapons'. He has appeared before three senate committees dealing with intelligence failures etc.

Ms M was quizzing him about the resignation of CIA head George Tenet and his deputy. Kay said that the intelligence services had under performed since the end of the cold war and he could see the logic of Bush clearing the decks before the election. And what of the hunt in Iraq for WMD - was it a waste of time? It was not of the highest priority and likely to be any bit of use said Kay. Ms M said that Blair still speaks of unmasking WMDs in Iraq. This is delusional said Kay, 'there is nothing there' but 'there were programmes'.