Sites-lucy Lawless

Europe

Telegraph journalists Colin Freeman and José Cendon freed by kidnappers in Somalia

Colin Freeman and José Cendon were held for 40 days in a lawless wilderness of arid mountains and dusty caves.
Published: Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:47:35 GMT - Source: Telegraph.Co.Uk - Read the article

Europe

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Cameron's blunders are catastrophic

What is with David Cameron, and what's the matter with the Conservatives? They should be coasting towards victory at the next election. They deserve to benefit from the Damian Green affair, and the grotesque behaviour of Bob Quick: for a party of constitutional government and individual freedom, there can be no more urgent task than bringing our lawless police to heel.And yet, in this festive season, one is left with the uncharitable reflection that whenever the political match is going their way the Tories score another own goal - from their association with plutocrats to Cameron's recent stunt in Ulster, or even his naff Christmas card. He once claimed to be Blair's heir, and sometimes he does resemble the last prime minister at his worst: a man not so much seeking office to put a programme into effect as looking for a programme to be a means of achieving power; all form and no substance; or as Wagner unkindly said of Meyerbeer's music, all effects and no causes. But whereas Blair's opportunistic cynicism worked for a time, Cameron isn't even a skilful opportunist. All political parties are afflicted by an insatiable thirst for money, and none is much better than the others when it comes to fawning on the rich. New Labour set the tone, not only totally relaxed in principle about people who become filthy rich, but ready in practice to render quos for the quids of Bernie Ecclestone and the Hindujas. That might have served as a warning to Cameron, but he's a slow learner. So is George Osborne if the Corfu episode is anything to go by.There may well be no impropriety, as they say, in Cameron's relationship with David Ross, the disgraced former boss of Carphone Warehouse, although Ross did donate some of his however-gotten riches to the Tory party - and even that is far less shameful than the huge personal rewards Blair has pocketed from New York banks and publishers after years of supporting American policy. But still, a picture of the Camerons and the Rosses cavorting together is priceless ammunition for Labour. For someone whose first job was in PR, Cameron hasn't quite got the hang of it where his own career is concerned. Every prime minister needs a Willie, as Margaret Thatcher said.Maybe Cameron needs one, too, as it were. The Tories nowadays are very short of decent old buffers of the Willie Whitelaw kind, men with what used to be called bottom, possessed not necessarily of ferocious intellect but at least of a certain judgment, and the commonsense instinct that can spot a wrong 'un. To be sure, Mrs T sometimes lacked that instinct herself: despite every warning from Whitelaw and others, she absurdly appointed Jeffrey Archer Conservative deputy chairman. Do Cameron and his chums ever study the history of their own party? Couldn't Cameron make sure that the only snaps taken of him are at the Witney Working Mens' Club, or at any rate the Conservative Philosophy Group? Can't Osborne take his holidays in Torquay or Skegness?If Cameron's choice of companions suggests misjudgment rather than moral turpitude, so do his political stunts, which have been a series of unforced errors. When he flew to Tbilisi during the August crisis and demanded immediate Nato membership for Georgia he wasn't just doing something extremely foolish, he was on an electoral hiding to nothing. This wheeze might momentarily have pleased the gruesome Anglo-neocon faction in his party, but how many voters want to see British troops sent to the Caucasus?And how many were gratified by his quite inexplicable decision to form an alliance with the Ulster Unionists? As a matter of fact, the honourable unionist case has gone by default, not least because the silly Powellite right babbled endlessly about Northern Ireland and Our Sacred National Sovereignty, instead of simply and correctly saying that the Protestant Unionist majority in eastern Ulster has as much democratic right to self-determination as the Catholic nationalist majority in the rest of Ireland. But no one can pretend that this is now a popular cause - or a fruitful one for the Tories.At one time they did very nicely out of up to a dozen Ulster Unionist MPs who sat inertly on their benches. In the 1951 parliament the Tories had an absolute majority of only 17, which included nine "UUs". And yet, where the UUP held all 12 Northern Ireland seats in 1959, the ruptures of the 1970s and subsequent events have left the Paisleyite Democratic Unionist party the largest party in the province.The old Unionists still held nine seats to the DUP's three in 1992, but now hold exactly one to the DUP's nine. Cameron has bizarrely said that his cabinet would include a Unionist, but he evidently won't have much choice as to which that would be.No one in the government has any right to complain about the Tories on this matter, not after Labour's own cynical record - from the deal James Callaghan's cut with the Unionists 30 years ago to stay in office to the deal Gordon Brown cut this summer with the DUP to get his oppressive legislation through. But the sad fact is that most English voters would be happy to see the whole of Ireland towed out into the Atlantic and sunk. What did Cameron think was in it for him?Much of political life involves calculation of interests and assessment of opportunity. Cameron's harshest critics in the Tory press are really rightwing Trots, who prefer revolutionary defeatism and doctrinal purity to anything so vulgar as winning elections, and Cameron is right to ignore them. But if he is going to make calculations, he might at least make sensible ones. There's not much to be said for a party of inopportune opportunists, or cynics who get it all wrong.? Geoffrey Wheatcroft is the author of The Strange Death of Tory England wheaty@compuserve.comDavid CameronConservativesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Published: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:30 GMT - Source: Guardian.Co.Uk - Read the article

Literature

Donald Rumsfeld, War Criminal

Snip from a New York Times op-ed calling for action from the Obama administration to reverse the legislation of impunity by the outgoing administration: Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush?s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services. Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney?s former chief of staff. The report shows how actions by these men ?led directly? to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons. It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America?s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy. The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the ?war on terror? ? the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.The Torture Report...
Published: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:22:40 GMT - Source: Boingboing.Net - Read the article