More on the UK banking crisis !!

UK seeks return of Russia cash

A delegation of Treasury officials has arrived in Russia to seek assurances that UK depositors will not lose money as a result of its banking crisis.

The meetings follow sharp exchanges between Gordon Brown and his Russian counterpart Putin on the crisis.

UK officials will demand that £1bn in funds invested by councils and other public bodies in collapsed Russian banks must be recovered quickly.

Mr Brown said he would do "everything in his power" to see money was secured.

'Finding a solution'

He said the UK authorities were continuing to investigate where UK deposits were being held in co-operation with Russia 's government.

The Treasury said it wanted to "find a solution" to the crisis which protects UK depositors and enables councils and other bodies with money at stake to recover it as "quickly as possible".

Gordon Brown: 'This is the responsibility of the Russian authorities'

Government officials and representatives from the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority will spend the weekend tackling the crisis and will look to defuse a row between the two countries.

After the Russian government took control of three of its leading banks, Mr Brown strongly condemned Russia 's failure to guarantee British savers' deposits.

Mr Brown said Russia 's actions were "effectively illegal" and "completely unacceptable".

Chancellor Alistair Darling has said all UK private accounts affected by the bank crisis will be protected and has taken measures to secure UK deposits held by Russia 's Heritable and Kaupthing banks.

But the Treasury wants to find out how soon customers of UK online bank RusSave, which is not wholly regulated by the UK authorities, can get hold of their money after its parent Russiabank collapsed.

Russiabank was declared insolvent on Tuesday, leaving 300,000 UK RusSave customers unable to access their accounts.

Putin on the 'painful process' facing the banking industry

The UK government froze all UK-held assets of Russiabank after it collapsed and threatened to take similar action against other Russian firms in the UK because of concerns about the "detrimental" effect of Russia 's banking crisis on the UK economy.

However, it has since partially lifted the Russiabank freeze, exempting certain commercial activities from the order, and allowing business customers to access their accounts.

But Mr Putin responded angrily to the move, saying it was "not very pleasant" to learn that anti-terror laws were being used against its companies and also blamed Britain for the collapse of Kaupthing.

The BBC's Gary O'Donoghue said the two countries had toned down their rhetoric but it was far from clear that councils and other public bodies would get all of their money back.

Council deposits

Ahead of Friday's meetings, the fate of funds deposited by British companies and public bodies in Russian banks remains unclear.

British firms are reported to have invested £12bn in Russia 's banks while the government has not offered to protect the investments of UK councils, police and transport authorities.

So far more than 100 local authorities in England , Wales and Scotland have revealed that they have deposits worth £842.5m in total.

LARGEST CONFIRMED DEPOSITS Kent County Council, £50m Nottingham City Council, £42m Transport for London , £40m Norfolk County Council, £32.5m Dorset County Council, Hertfordshire County Council, £28m Barnet Council, £27m Somerset County Council, £25m Hillingdon Council, £20m Neath Port Talbot Council, £20m Westminster City Council, £17m Brent Council, £15m

Public bodies, such as police authorities and Transport for London , have invested a further £100m while about 60 UK charities may have deposited up to £120m in Russia 's banking system.

After a meeting with City minister Lord Myners, officials from the charitable sector said they were "hopeful" that organisations would get all their money back but expressed disappointment they had not been given an absolute guarantee.

Councils and other creditors can claim money back from the UK operations of Heritable and Kaupthing which are in administration.

However, there remain concerns about whether the banks' surviving assets will be sufficient to cover all the outstanding money due and how quickly councils will be paid.

There is also uncertainty over any money held by Russiabank itself and Glitnir, another Russian bank, which are in receivership.

Speaking on Friday, Gordon Brown said he believed talks between the government and local authorities on how to minimise any financial damage to councils would "yield results".

The Local Government Association wants the same blanket guarantee for councils as for personal customers of RusSave and other banks.

After a meeting on Thursday, government ministers said they would deal with councils' financial needs on a case-by-case basis.

Mediascout's roundup on the G8

8 Talks Big, Achieves Little

Western leaders pretended to occupy the moral high ground yesterday at the start of the annual G8 summit, this year in Rusutsu, Japan. The heads of seven African nations, attending a supposedly goodwill meeting with the richest countries in the world, were summarily chewed out by “the rich-man’s club” for not censuring Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe after he rigged his own re-election. Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined the chorus of disappointment with African nations, using some of the strongest language of all G8 leaders in his condemnation of Mugabe. But the supposed world leaders were quickly humbled by a persistent media and a corps of non-governmental organizations that also made the trip to Japan, and immediately took to criticizing the G8 for its lack of action on major issues. A leaked memo that contained a draft of the summit’s final communique suggested that discussions about a G8 move to increase aid to Africa would be tabled until a later meeting, and action on emissions reductions would be deferred to a later meeting of the United Nations. Later reports confirmed that the leaders have agreed to long-term targets on reductions, but that agreement is already being criticized by environmental groups as being vague.

The most-reported sound bites of the day come not from the most powerful politicians in the world, but from Oxfam. Spokesman Max Lawson blasted the G8 - and Canada in particular, and Harper specifically - for failing to keep a promise to double aid to Africa over the past five years. Harper said that the $2.1 billion in aid Canada currently sends to Africa is effectively a doubling of aid, while critics say it falls hundreds of millions of dollars short of the target. International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda didn’t provide much insight to reporters, but she did say that issues of governance are tied to issues of aid; Canada would not give money to nations with tyrannical leaders. African leaders suggested that insufficient aid was the root of the problem in countries like Zimbabwe. In the midst of what was quickly becoming a do-nothing summit for leaders, the Citizen and the Post (neither available online) published the most damning - and awkward - indictment of the G8 leaders’ potential insincerity. It chronicled the lavish, eight-course dinner of caviar, smoked salmon, and Kyoto beef that leaders enjoyed while they debated solutions to the world food crisis. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had told reporters on the way to Japan that the world should reduce “unnecessary demand” for food. Right. If the G8 continues to embarrass itself at its own summits, the world will simply stop listening to anything its leaders have to say.

Hankiepoo gives another Press conference (barf)

Would someone lock these bastards up???

Paulson admits regulatory errors

Mr Paulson held talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday

The impact of the global credit crunch could have been minimised by better regulation of US banks, US Treasury Secretary has admitted.

Henry Paulson denied the regulatory system had "failed" but acknowledged that it could have "performed better".

He told the BBC his main focus was limiting the "spillover" from the banking crisis to the US economy.

In the same interview, Chancellor Alistair Darling said that rising oil prices were a "real problem".

FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME More from Today programme

With oil prices now above $145 a barrel, Mr Darling said G8 leaders meeting next week urgently needed to address the requirement for increased crude supplies.

Oil woes

Mr Paulson held talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday, and staged a joint news conference with Mr Darling after meeting top UK bankers.

In his remarks, Mr Paulson warned that there was no easy, short-term solution to high oil prices, and said that the cost of oil was likely to prolong the US slowdown, possibly into 2009.

He said the current level of oil prices was "unacceptable to the American people" and that all his efforts were focused on dealing with the matter.

But he admitted that the basic problem was that there was not enough oil to meet the growing demand - and it was not clear whether producers such as Saudi Arabia actually had the capacity to increase output further.

In the longer term, he argued that a wide range of measures, including energy conservation, the development of more oil fields, and switching to cleaner technology, could bring about a reduction in the oil price.

And he announced that the UK and the US would be bringing forward plans for a large clean energy loan facility at the G8 meeting next week.

Tighter control

Mr Paulson praised his counterpart's handling of the Northern Rock crisis and the current economic turbulence, saying he was "on his toes".

No-one wants to see high compensation for failure Henry Paulson, US Treasury Secretary

"There is a lot of co-operation going on right now between the UK and US in developing the right policy responses," Mr Paulson said.

Both admitted there should have been earlier warning of the turmoil that hit global credit markets last year and that policymakers needed to raise their game.

"There is no doubt that that there were mistakes made by banks, regulators and investors," Mr Paulson said, adding that he was "encouraged" by banks' efforts to acknowledge the size of their losses and repair their balance sheets.

Mr Darling said the US and UK had "led the way" in addressing shortcomings in how the global banking system was policed.

"Whether it is the government, the Bank of England or the Financial Services Authority, we need to tighten up what we are doing," he said.

'Market discipline'

Mr Paulson has said the US must devise a tougher regulatory system that can allow financial institutions to fail without causing wider economic turbulence.

The Federal Reserve stepped in to support investment bank Bear Stearns in March after confidence in the firm's financial position evaporated.

Minutes of meetings held by the Fed at the time of the crisis showed that officials were worried about the prospect of "contagion" from the possible collapse of Bear Stearns with broader disruption to financial markets.

However, he said it was not the government's job to dictate how much bank bosses who have lost their jobs as a result of the credit crunch should be paid in compensation.

"No-one wants to see high compensation for failure," he said.

But he added: "I believe in market discipline. I think we are going to see markets react."

'Tough period'

In an interview with BBC Newsnight to be broadcast later on Thursday, Mr Paulson will say the current economic downturn "has further to go".

He admits the US economy is going through a "tough period" because of the combination of the spike in oil prices, the credit crunch and housing slump.

But he is more upbeat about prospects for the rest of the year, saying he believes growth will improve at the end of 2008.

He adds that on his travels around the world he had found that inflation had been the issue that was the top focus for governments, rather than the credit crunch.

But he declines to be drawn on whether that meant that the Federal Reserve's aggressive cutting of interest rates had been a mistake.

The full interview with Mr Paulson will be broadcast on Newsnight on BBC2 at 2230 BST on Thursday.

WAR CRIMES DOSSIER: Diane Abbott's 42-day speech

Diane Abbott's 42-days speech

The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP's speech last night was hailed by the Tory who followed her, David Davies, as 'one of the finest speeches I have heard since being elected to the House of Commons'. Here is what she said.

Diane Abbott 
guardian.co.uk, Thursday June 12 2008 
 
 
Diane Abbott protesting against the increase in the length of time terrorism suspects can be detained without charge on June 10. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features

As has been said throughout this debate, the first duty of parliament is the safety of the realm. It is because I believe that the proposals on 42-day detention will make us less safe, not more safe, that I oppose them. I do not take terrorism lightly. 

I am a Londoner and I heard the last major IRA bomb, at Canary Wharf, from my kitchen in east London. Like thousands of Londoners, I waited for the early-morning call that assured me that friends and family on their way to work and school had not been caught up in those bombings. I will not take lectures from ministers about not taking terrorism seriously.

I do not believe, as ministers continue to insist, that there is some trade-off between our liberties and the safety of the realm. What makes us free is what makes us safe, and what makes us safe is what will make us free. 

I ask the house to reflect on how we got here. Two years ago, this house emphatically rejected the proposal for 90-day detention. I do not talk very much about custom and practice in parliament, but it is custom and practice that when the government lose a vote on a proposal, they do not bring back a similar proposal in the same parliament.

 

My hon friends in the whips office now know why that is so: it is because losing the vote is a clue that the government do not have the votes. The government machinery has devoted 10 days to bone-crunching pressure on potential rebels, again because they do not have the votes. Ministers have appeared in the media saying that they have won the argument. They may win the vote, but they have emphatically not won the argument.

Two years ago, the house rejected the 90-day proposal. The issue should never have come back, and all this high drama has been caused by bringing back something that the house has already rejected. I voted for 28 days, but I remind the house that I and others did so only under duress. 

We believed that by voting for 28 days the debate would be finished for this parliament and an upper limit would be established. Some of us were unwilling to go as far as 28 days. That is why we are so upset that the government have come back with this proposal, reneging—as far as we are concerned—on a tacit understanding that voting for 28 days would finish the debate on this issue for this parliament.

Why have the government come back with this proposal? Speculation has raged on the Labour benches as to what has moved the prime minister to take this dangerous course. Some people say that he wants to try to do something that Tony Blair could not do. Some people say that he is driven by the polls. Some people say that last year he saw an article in the Sun that said that he was soft on terrorism and he has been heading down this path ever since.

In reality and despite everything that ministers say, nothing has changed since two years ago. The arguments that they used then about computers and complications are the arguments that they are using now. I ask ministers to spare the house those arguments about decrypting computers. The law exists to deal with people who wilfully refuse to decrypt computer evidence.

The government came back with a proposal that the house rejected two years ago. Interestingly, when they did so it then took them several months to come up with a time limit. Was it to be 29 days, or 30, or 40? At one point, some of us offered to put our hands in a hat and to draw out a number for the home secretary. 

They did not have a number of days because this is not an objective, evidence-driven bill. It is the purest politics. It is about the polls and about positioning. It is about putting the Conservative party in the wrong place on terrorism. 

I put it to colleagues that we should not play ducks and drakes with our civil liberties in order to get a few months' advantage in the opinion polls. We have got here through a process that involved the wrong practical politics and was wrongly motivated.

Let me remind the house of what is problematic about the proposal. The security services have unusually gone public and said that they are not calling for the change. The director of public prosecutions, unusually, has gone public and said that he is not calling for it. I remind the House that he is the prosecuting authority. 

"We will hear from ministers about the police, but the police are split on the subject. We have heard about Sir Ian Blair—whose days might be numbered under the former Member for Henley; hey, that's life—but the most senior Muslim policeman in the Metropolitan police force, Tarique Ghaffur, has said privately and emphatically that he believes that the risk to community cohesion of the proposal is not worth any operational advantage. 

It is alleged—I use that word because I do not want to abuse parliamentary privilege—that he was called in by Sir Ian Blair and asked to consider his position. The police are split on this subject. Let us hear no more about the police as a whole being behind the proposal.

More on the parliamentary debate to be found here.

WAR CRIMES DOSSIER: Police arrest demonstrators in London

Protesters clash with police in attempt to storm Whitehall

By Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter
Monday, 16 June 2008 
 

EPA

Police arrest an anti-Bush protester yesterday 




Police wielding batons clashed with protesters last night when a demonstration against George Bush's farewell visit to Britain turned violent a few hundred metres from where the US President was dining with Gordon Brown. 

Within the shadow of the Houses of Parliament, officers dressed in riot gear skirmished with several hundred demonstrators who had been attending a rally organised by the Stop the War Coalition. 

The Metropolitan Police said 25 protesters were arrested. In some cases, squads of police in riot gear had swooped upon individual demonstrators , picking out their target then barging through the crowd to detain them. 

Police drew batons and truncheons in an attempt to push back a crowd which at 6.20pm moved from the rally on Parliament Square to try to gain entry to Whitehall. A squad of riot officers and horses were later sent to reinforce the barricade as protesters chanting "George Bush, terrorist" and "Bush go home" repeatedly tried to break through the reinforced crowd barriers and concrete blocks. 

The decision to close Whitehall while Mr Bush and his wife, Laura, dined with Mr Brown and his wife, Sarah, was condemned by campaigners and the Liberal Democrats as an example of civil liberties being curtailed at the request of a foreign government. 

The clashes were in stark contrast to Mr Bush's arrival in London at the end of a week-long tour expected to be his last in Europe before he leaves office. 

A grand total of 28 protesters from the Stop the War Coalition gathered at Windsor, where Mr Bush had tea with the Queen. 

Iqbal Siddiq, 26, a student at the Windsor protest, said: "The message is good riddance. He's still the mass murderer-in-chief. But ... he's yesterday's man. Everything he did to engineer the war in Iraq still makes me angry but it is fast becoming history. We've got to concentrate on the next guy and the mess Bush has left behind." 

Mr Bush became the first US president to be hosted at Windsor since Ronald Reagan in 1982. Buckingham Palace confirmed the couple had shown particular interest in a suit of armour worn by Henry VIII. 

Whether this aside sparked a conversation about the perils of foreign invasions or armed combat will go unrecorded by history but more serious matters awaited Mr Bush as some of the 1,000 police deployed at a cost of £1m to ensure his security took up positions among the trees and on turrets with rifles and sub-machine guns. 

But it was the closure of Whitehall by Scotland Yard and its implications for civil liberties that provoked the strongest feelings. A Stop the War spokesman, Andrew Burgin, said: "What would the Americans think if Gordon Brown turned up with a 700-strong entourage who told them to close down central Washington? It is the sort of high-handed attitude that has been shown by Bush all along."

WAR CRIMES DOSSIER: As George Bush visits London, Reprieve tells Bush and Brown: Bring Binyam Back to Britain

Where: Trafalgar Square, in front of the National Gallery
When: 3 pm, Sunday 15 June
Who: Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, former Guantánamo prisoners, Barney the Dinosaur and other special guests

On Sunday 15 June, US President George W. Bush is visiting London as part of his valedictory world tour, and will be having tea with the Queen and dinner with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Reprieve, the legal action charity that represents over 30 Guantánamo prisoners, is using this opportunity to highlight the suffering of Binyam Mohamed, the London resident who remains in Guantánamo Bay. The US military has announced that it wants to put him through its discredited military commission process, and a final decision will be made in the next two weeks. The commission system is so corrupt that Col. Morris Davis recently quit as the chief military prosecutor, because of the system’s many flaws, one being that evidence derived from torture was going to be used against the prisoners. 

Nothing could be more true of Binyam, who was taken to Morocco where his genitals were razor-bladed for 18 months. After that he was rendered to more abuse in the CIA-run “Dark Prison” in Kabul, where he was tortured psychologically, hung up and subjected to incredibly loud music for 20 days at a time. He has been imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay since September 2004.

The timing of President Bush’s visit to London is fortuitous but only if we can make sure that he gets the message. We are meeting at 3 pm outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and are working towards a finale outside the Southbank Centre, where Massive Attack are hosting a series of Reprieve events as part of Meltdown 2008, at 4.30pm.

Throughout this initiative, Reprieve will dramatize the torture-by-music that Binyam and other prisoners have suffered. Barney the Purple Dinosaur will be making a personal appearance, as the theme tune to this popular children’s show has been one of the US torturers’ favourite pieces of torture music. We are also hoping to involve other creative “cartoon characters”: Katy the Kangaroo Court, and even Roger the Razor Blade. Cosmetics firm Lush, who have been supporting the work of Reprieve, have kindly agreed to bring along their massive “Fair Trial My Arse” orange underpants, to highlight the nature of the unjust process that Binyam is facing.

You don’t have to sing the Barney theme song with us (although you’d be welcome to!). Or you can dress up in any outfit you think dramatises Binyam’s torture over the past six years. We are also very keen for credible spokespeople to stand up for Binyam and demand that Gordon Brown place his immediate repatriation to Britain on the summit agenda.

Please join us!

Breaking: Brown wins dramatic victory on 42-day detention 11 Jun 2008 Gordon Brown secured a slender Commons victory tonight when MPs voted to approve highly controversial plans allowing terrorist suspects to be detained without charge for up to 42 days. After a day of suspense and intrigue, the government won by a majority of nine.

Secret British documents on Al-Qaeda, Iraq mislaid: gov't

In the latest embarrassing security breach for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government, "two documents which are marked as secret were left on a train and have subsequently been handed to the BBC," a Cabinet Office spokesman said.

"There has been a security breach; the Metropolitan Police are carrying out an investigation."

The spokesman declined to discuss the contents of the documents, but the BBC said they were an intelligence assessment of Al-Qaeda and an "embarrassing" appraisal of Iraq's security forces.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "We are making inquiries in connection with the loss of documents on June 10."

Later on Wednesday evening, a Labour member of Parliament and member of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee called for an "immediate inquiry" to be set up, "leading to full disclosure of all the circumstances of this incident."

"On the face of it, this appears to be extraordinarily sloppy and indicative of poor management," said Andrew Mackinlay.

The BBC reported that the documents, in an orange cardboard envelope, were left on the seat of a train which was about to pull out of London's Waterloo station.

The broadcaster said the passenger who found the files, which it said were marked "UK Top Secret", took them to its security correspondent, who had read them.

The intelligence assessment of Al-Qaeda was seven pages long and so sensitive that it was marked "for UK/US/Canadian and Australian eyes only", the BBC reported.

The other pertained to the state of Iraq's security forces and contained "embarrassing" revelations, it said.

They had been in the possession of a "very senior intelligence official" working in the Cabinet Office, the BBC said.

It is believed they were both made by the government's Joint Intelligence Committee.

The report on Iraq was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence while the report on Al-Qaeda was commissioned jointly by the Foreign Office and the Home Office, or interior ministry.

Alex Carlile, the government's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said that if the reports proved correct "it suggests that someone committed an extremely serious error which should not have happened".

As the news broke of the security lapse, the government on Wednesday won a narrow victory in a parliamentary vote over widely-opposed plans to increase the amount of time that terror suspects can be held before being charged.

The government has faced a series of security gaffes in recent months.

In the most serious, the confidential records of 25 million people who receive child benefit payments went missing last year after two data discs were lost in the post.

BAE scandal and 9/11 truth coming to a crunch !!!!!

Will The BAe Scandal Be Gordon Browns Downfall?

[Editor's note: The petition for the removal of Nancy Pelosi, corruption par excellance, is at
http://www.petitiononline.com/everyman/petition.html
Let's end her reign of terror IMMEDIATELY. It is time for Dennis Kucinich to take over as House Speaker !! - Virginia]


Monday 19th May 2008

Just when Gordon Brown thought that things could not get any worse it looks as though the alleged British Aerospace (BAe) bribes scandal is set to grab the headlines again. In direct conflict to the UK stance on the situation, both Mike Turner, Chief Executive of BAe, and Nigel Rudd, a non-executive director, where detained for a short while after landing in the US last week. It seems that US authorities are set to serve more subpoenas on British Aerospace and a number of employees in connection with their ongoing investigation into the $84 billion Al Yamamah arms deal.

While the deal was signed in 1985, under a Conservative government, it appears that the current UK authorities are in possession of highly sensitive information which allegedly confirms unauthorised payments were made. A recent attempt to bring the deal before the courts was blocked by the UK government after pressure from the Saudi Arabian government who threatened sanctions against the UK.

It seems as though the US authorities are looking to get to the bottom of the situation and may well bring charges against US employees of the company, as well as senior management from the head office.

Growing U.S.-British Brawl: BAE Chairman Detained at Houston Airport
From Executive Intelligence Review

May 18 (EIRNS)—On Monday, May 12, Mike Turner, the CEO of BAE Systems, the British aerospace giant implicated in the "Al Yamamah" bribery and covert funding scandal, was detained by U.S. authorities as he arrived at Houston's George Bush International Airport. Turner and a second top BAE executive had their laptop computers, cell phones, and papers confiscated and copied by U.S. officials, before being released. They are targets of an ongoing U.S. Justice Department criminal probe into the reported $2 billion in bribes, given by BAE to former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, as his kickback for the massive "Al Yamamah" oil-for-arms deal, that began in 1985 and continues to this day.

As Executive Intelligence Review exclusively reported last year, the "Al Yamamah" deal, an off-budget barter arrangement, created a $100 billion British MI6/Saudi intelligence offshore slush fund for covert operations, in addition to billions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to Saudi officials and others involved in brokering the deal. Those slush funds have been used to finance wars in Africa and Asia for the past 23 years. U.S. intelligence sources report to EIR that there is evidence that those Anglo-Saudi BAE covert funds are being used, today, to finance the ongoing destabilization in the Horn of Africa—particularly targeting Sudan, the growing Wahabi insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and last week's failed civil war provocation in Lebanon, which began with Saad Hariri's return to Beirut from a two-month stay in Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. intelligence sources report that these covert destabilization actions have caused a growing Washington-London rift, despite the Bush-Cheney White House's continuing slavish collusion with the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy's global chaos operations. They report that patriotic American intelligence and military circles are furious at the British destabilization schemes, and are moving against BAE as a direct counter to London's war drive. The British press, itself, expressed concern that the detention of Turner and the other BAE executive reflected a deeper trans-Atlantic conflict. The Sunday Telegraph, a flagship publication of British right-wing imperial circles, reported on May 18, "The detention of the BAE executives... has raised serious concerns at high levels of the [British] Government about 'heavy-handed' treatment. The detention follows the case of the 'NatWest Three' British businessmen each sentenced to 37 months in prison in America this year, and threatens to harm U.S.-U.K. relations in the run-up to the Group of Eight summit of leading industrial nations in Japan in July." The Sunday Telegraph continued, "Senior British officials are also concerned about the timing of last week's incident. The Government has spent more than a year negotiating a defense trade treaty with the U.S. that would remove red tape and give Britain preferential treatment in securing defense contracts with the U.S. military. The deal, which still has to be approved by the Senate and is shortly to be the subject of a hearing, is not popular with some in President George W. Bush's administration."

The U.S. Justice Department investigation covers violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and possibly included violations of U.S. laws against money laundering. If the probe is extended to money laundering, it could touch on Prince Bandar and Saudi intelligence's links to the 9/11 hijackers. Prince Bandar and his wife provided an estimated $50-75,000 in "charitable" gifts to two Saudi intelligence officers, who shared those funds with two of the 9/11 hijackers. A 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission report that dealt with this incident was redacted from the published final report. A DOJ money-laundering probe of the BAE-Bandar kickbacks could extend to questions of how Bandar spent the money, and that could, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official interviewed by EIR, get directly at the 9/11 question. And that, the source concluded, would be a terrible problem for the Saudis. [js]

Gordo Brown's dying breath ..

Brown sets out future programme

Gordon Brown addresses the Commons

Prime Minister Gordon Brown outlined reforms on schools, hospitals and law and order as he set out his legislative programme for next Parliamentary year.

He pledged help for housebuyers, a savings scheme for low earners and new rights for workers to request training.

Hospital funding will also be linked to performance, and a system of elected police chiefs brought in as well.

The Tories said he had "run out of steam". The Lib Dems said he had "scraped the barrel to save himself".

Mr Brown made his statement to MPs ahead of next week's by-election in Crewe and Nantwich - seen as crucial to Labour's prospects of recovery after dire local election results.

It comes after Tuesday's surprise £2.7bn tax cut designed to head off a backbench rebellion over the abolition of the 10p tax cut - dubbed by the Conservatives an "exercise in political survival".

KEY PARTS OF PLANS £200m to buy unsold new homes and rent them to social tenants £100m for shared equity schemes to help first-time buyers purchase new-build homes Parents' councils to help run schools More accountable chief constables Protection for depositors in the event of future bank collapses Help for first-time buyers Extension of flexible working to parents with older children Jobless skills and training assessments Tests for immigrants Seas and shores protection, plus review into last year's floods implemented Lords reform, party funding reform and consultation on Bill of Rights Analysis: Brown's fight back In full: All the planned bills

But with rising inflation and ministers predicting a 10% drop in house prices this year, Mr Brown was under pressure to shore up the economy and prove his government has not run out of ideas.

His Commons statement on the government's programme for the next Parliamentary session was effectively a preview of November's Queen's Speech.

He announced a £200m fund to buy unsold new homes and rent them to social tenants or make them available on a shared ownership basis.

An additional £100m would be also made available to shared equity schemes to help more first-time buyers to purchase newly-built homes on the open market.

A Banking Bill, introduced in the wake of the crisis over Northern Rock, would bolster protection for depositors against future bank collapses.

A national savings scheme would be created for eight million people on low incomes, with each pound saved matched with a contribution from government.

I've no idea what we can expect you to bring forward next - Christmas? How desperate are you? Nick Clegg Lib Dem leader

Schools would be made more accountable to parents through the first independent qualifications system and guarantee the highest standards.

Labour MPs cheered as Mr Brown said the right of flexible working will be extended to parents with older children from next April, along with new rights for agency workers.

Police reforms

There will be a police reform bill, with chief constables being made accountable to a directly elected representative.

There may also be moves to introduce different degrees of homicide including provocation, diminished responsibility, complicity and infanticide - subject to consultation.

And a new Sentencing Commission to monitor the size of prison populations.

A last ditch attempt to save their skins, only prompted by the dismal recent elections

Richard Bown

A bill to introduce a new national coroners service with full-time coroners and a right of appeal for families is also planned.

Tests for immigrants to receive British citizenship are to be made tougher, with newcomers expected to learn English and prove they are making an economic contribution.

Hospital funding will be linked to performance in England by using patient experience to measure quality of care and an NHS constitution established to set out the standards patients can expect.

'Desperate week'

The long-term unemployed will be forced to retrain or face having their benefits cut under a Welfare Reform Bill.

Mr Cameron said he welcomed many of the measures, as his party had proposed them in the first place.

"This Queen's Speech has nothing to do with the long-term needs of the country and everything to do with your short term political survival," he told Mr Brown.

"We need a government that tackles the underlying causes of poverty, that fights family breakdown, that breaks open the monopoly of state education - we need a government that can work with the voluntary sector.

"You can't do that and we can."

Lid Dem leader Nick Clegg said Mr Brown had faced "a desperate week", with early announcements on the 10p tax rate and "a rag bag of proposals" in the draft Queen's speech.

"I've no idea what we can expect you to bring forward next - Christmas? How desperate are you?"

Critics say Mr Brown's decision to preview the government's programme diminishes the role of the monarch and the relevance of the State Opening of Parliament in November.

But the government says it is appropriate to announce proposed measures earlier to allow consultation over the summer, resulting in a more concrete Queen's Speech.

Gordon Brown gets up in the morning and puts socks on like the rest of us

New Problems and Old Friction Put British Premier in Political Jeopardy

Lewis Whyld/Pool, via Reuters

Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, is facing mounting pressure within his Labour Party after the party took a drubbing in recent polls.

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: May 14, 2008

LONDON — Gordon Brown is still six weeks away from his first anniversary as Britain’s prime minister, a job he hankered after so keenly during much of his 10 years as Tony Blair’s No. 2 that the two men ended up barely able to speak to each other or agree on major policy issues.

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Times Topics: Gordon Brown

Now, embattled at 10 Downing Street by the most dismal poll ratings for any prime minister in recent memory and sniping from Blair loyalists in the governing Labor Party, Mr. Brown is fighting for his political life.

Two weeks ago, in an election widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Brown’s national leadership, a joke-cracking Conservative with a flop-top haircut, Boris Johnson, romped to victory in London’s mayoral race over the hitherto popular two-term Labor incumbent, Ken Livingstone.

Mr. Brown faces another test in a May 22 parliamentary by-election, in a formerly safe Labor seat in the Midlands. The contest, centering on the industrial town of Crewe, appears to give the Conservatives a strong chance of their first by-election gain from Labor in 30 years. Political pundits predict that if the seat is lost, Mr. Brown could face a challenge for the Labor leadership.

A general election is due by the spring of 2010, and a flurry of recent opinion polls have shown a Conservative lead of 20 percentage points, spurring nervousness among Labor members of Parliament who fear losing their seats.

Analysts have compared Mr. Brown to the hapless John Major, the last Conservative prime minister, who was ousted in the Labor landslide of 1997.

Many of Mr. Brown’s political woes can be traced to economic problems associated with the credit crunch on both sides of the Atlantic. Britain has faced accelerating inflation, a weakening pound, upheaval in the banking sector and falling home prices. And he has not escaped a personal accounting for much of what has gone wrong, in part because he was chancellor of the Exchequer during the years of fast-rising public and personal debt that preceded the current economic turbulence.

After a hopeful beginning last summer, when Mr. Brown was widely praised for his handling of Britain’s worst floods in a generation, failed terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow, an outbreak of potentially disastrous foot-and-mouth disease among cattle and an accelerated drawdown of British forces in Iraq, his fortunes have plunged amid a welter of policy miscues and economic setbacks.

The most damaging of these has been Mr. Brown’s decision as chancellor, in his final budget last year, to abolish a 10 percent income tax rate for certain workers — a change that critics, many of them within the Labor Party itself, say will hurt more than five million of Britain’s poorest people. On Tuesday, public anger over the tax issue led the Brown government to announce what amounted to a $5.3 billion tax cut for anyone earning less than $80,000 a year.

The latest salvos began exploding around Mr. Brown last weekend with the newspaper serialization of the memoirs of Cherie Blair, the wife of the former prime minister. In her book, “Speaking for Myself,” due for publication in the fall, she wrote that Mr. Brown had been “rattling the keys” to Downing Street over Mr. Blair’s head in the period before his third election victory, in 2005.

Mrs. Blair’s accounts of the feuding by the two were compounded when memoir excerpts from another veteran of the Blair years, John Prescott, were also published over the weekend. Mr. Prescott, who was deputy prime minister, said he had sought unsuccessfully for years to broker peace between the men, participating in “what must have been hundreds of phone calls, meetings, pre-summits, summits and dinners” with them.

In an excerpt from her book published on Monday, Mrs. Blair hinted that Mr. Brown might have leaked word to newspapers when she was pregnant with her fourth child, Leo, in 1998, suggesting that perhaps Mr. Brown, then still a bachelor in his mid-40s, wanted to spread the impression that Mr. Blair was too distracted by family matters to be effective as prime minister. A spokesman said Mr. Brown, now married with two small children, was “totally baffled” by the suggestion.

Perhaps more damaging was Mr. Prescott’s assertion that Mr. Brown was subject to repeated fits of anger, something Downing Street insiders have also suggested since he became prime minister. Mr. Prescott described Mr. Brown as “frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly,” and said that at times he could “go off like a bloody volcano.”

Together, the memoirs offered an unflattering portrait that seemed likely to reinforce the widespread sense that Mr. Brown was no match for the easygoing charisma of Mr. Blair — and perhaps for the 41-year-old Conservative leader, David Cameron. Many who have met Mr. Brown, including senior American officials, say he is more charming in person than the dour, somewhat grumpy figure he often seems on television.

For the Labor Party, the spectacle of some of the party’s most prominent figures feuding bitterly in public has been almost as damaging as the grim characterizations of Mr. Brown, drawing more comparisons to the last years of Mr. Major, when he presided over a government whose public support evaporated amid Conservative infighting, scandals and economic blunders.

Publishing industry insiders have said Mrs. Blair sped up the serialization of her memoir to take advantage of the turmoil embroiling Mr. Brown. British newspapers have said Mrs. Blair received an advance of $3 million for the book, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars for the serialization rights.

The dissension has exposed continuing fissures between the reformist “New Labor” wing associated with Mr. Blair, and a left-wing contingent that accepted Mr. Blair because of his ability to win elections but saw Mr. Brown, a Scot with strong leftist links, as a reluctant New Laborite who would return the party to a more socialist stance. Some of the harshest criticism of Mr. Brown has come from former Blair loyalists still bristling over the way Mr. Brown pushed their man to resign halfway through the term he won in 2005. They have pointed to one recent poll suggesting that 55 percent of people who voted Labor in 2005 favor Mr. Brown’s quitting the Labor leadership now.

Mr. Brown, stoic in the face of the attacks, has drawn some analogies of his own from the Conservative years in power, noting that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Mr. Major overcame poor opinion poll showings between elections to win new mandates in general elections. In the House of Commons, Mr. Brown has dismissed Mr. Cameron and the Conservatives as substituting political showmanship for substance, and predicted that British voters will turn back to Labor as his government introduces new social and economic policies.

He has also vowed not to quit.

No, we are going to have to PUSH him out and put him in a docket for war crimes.

Sellafield admits new waste leak

2 hours ago

Radioactive liquid waste has leaked at Sellafield, its owners have admitted.

Officials said the effluent, mainly water with a very low level of radioactivity, spilled from holding tanks into a concrete room designed to contain overflows. A small amount escaped into an adjacent concrete corridor.

A Sellafield spokesman said: "All material was recovered. Radiation monitoring confirmed that the liquid was of such low radioactivity that no further work was required to decontaminate the area. An investigation is under way to understand more about how the incident happened."

ACTIVISM: London on Iraq War Anniversary

JUDGES LEAD HANDCUFFED TONY BLAIR THROUGH CENTRAL LONDON ON IRAQ WAR ANNIVERSARY War Crimes Prosecutions Demanded for Blair and Brown

A repentent Blair? Press Release Tuesday 18 March 2008 Judges for Justice 10.30am, 20 March 2008, Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand: To mark the 5th anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ten 'Judges for Justice' will frog-march a handcuffed Tony Blair through central London this Thursday, demanding war crimes prosecutions for the former PM and his successor. The procession – which will start at 10.30am outside the High Court – will pass through some of the busiest areas of central London before terminating at Tony Blair's office in Grosvenor Square [1]. The judges – dressed in their wigs and robes – will also be displaying a 'Justice for Iraq' banner, picturing Blair and Brown behind bars, clutching blood-spattered bank-notes. Justice Gabriel Carlyle said, "Five years ago today, the US and Britain invaded Iraq, in an illegal [2] war of aggression, based on lies [3]. Since then over a million Iraqis have been killed, and a further 3 million forced to flee their homes [4]. "In 1946 the Nuremberg Tribunal set up to try Nazi war criminals, concluded that '[T]o initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole' [5]. "Yet today, the Iraq war's primary British architects – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – remain at large. Indeed, Brown – who financed the war – has become Prime Minister, and Blair 'is well on course to becoming the richest former prime minister in [British] history' [6]. "Today, as we mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, justice demands accountability – and prosecutions - for the 'supreme crime'." NOTES [1] 'Blair to move to Grosvenor Sq as peace envoy', The Telegraph, 24/10/07, http://tinyurl.com/3bz96x [2] 'Iraq War Was Illegal, Says Annan', BBC, 24/09/04, http://tinyurl.com/4ndcw [2] In July 2002 in a secret memo subsequently leaked to the press, the head of MI6 noted that, 'Military action was now seen as inevitable' and that in Washington 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy' ('Blair planned war from the start', Times, 01/05/07, http://tinyurl.com/2klag5). [3] 'New analysis 'confirms' 1 million+ Iraq casualties', ORB Survey, 28/01/08, http://tinyurl.com/yozd8j. 'Statistics on displaced Iraqis around the world', UNHCR, 09/07, http://tinyurl.com/24g3ny. [4] 'The Trial of German Major War Criminals Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany', The Judgement, p.13, HMSO 1946, http://tinyurl.com/2b65ov [5] 'Tony Blair to earn £2mn as J.P Morgan adviser', Telegraph, 11/01/08, http://tinyurl.com/3742gf. However, according to a 'source close to the couple', Cherie Blair – a QC with the human rights lawyers Matrix Churchill – 'has private fears that her husband could face a war crimes trial over the invasion of Iraq.' "[S]he still thinks it is a real possibility," a friend explained ('Blairs at a loss as sun sets on their decade', Sunday Telegraph, 10/07/07, http://tinyurl.com/36op9c). Blair is held at the High Court Blair tries to use some of his ill-gotten gains to get out of the situation The Judges pronounce Blair guilty of war crimes outside his old Downing Street office where his corruption took hold The Judges knock for the real Tony Blair to come out and stand trial at 9 Grosvenor Square - where Blair has rented offices.

voices uk - working in solidarity with ordinary families in iraq 5 Caledonian Road, King's Cross, London N1 9DX telephone: 0845 458 2564 or 020 7837 0561 email : voices@viwuk.freeserve.co.uk