The Europeans really are different from us. Today's news from Scotland is that a Norwegian army troop has bestowed a knighthood on a penguin from the Edinburgh Zoo. Listen to the proclamation being read and watch the newly minted "Sir" review the troops at the BBC website.

Not exactly earth shattering, but I thought it might give pictures of hummingbirds and cats who can't spell a run for their money.

The British governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been shockingly complicit with the Bush administration both in using, encouraging, and facilitating torture, as well as in helping to cover up the traces. Some CIA torture flights passed through the UK, and British-controlled Diego Garcia has served as one of the primary staging grounds for those flights and itself is one of the network of 'black sites'. Indeed MI5 agents have arranged the arrest of men who ended up at Guantanamo, and taken part in interviews there - as for example in the case of Bisher al Rawi.

In other words, Tony Blair fully integrated the UK into Bush's torture regime. That's made even clearer in a new parliamentary report just published in Britain. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has been investigating the torture and murder of Baha Musa in Iraq in 2003. Musa was beaten and suffocated.

The Committeee found that top military officials misled it when they claimed that Bush-style "conditioning techniques" used by the British military had not been approved for interrogations in Iraq. Such techniques (e.g. hooding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions) were prohibited by law more than 30 years ago. Since 2004 UK military officials have pled the few bad apples defense, both in their own internal review and in testimony to Parliament.

[In 2004] Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, and Lieutenant General Robin Brims, Commander Field Army in 2006, had told the Joint Committee on Human Rights that hooding and sleep deprivation were forbidden.

But the committee said the assurances appeared to be false, and not all troops had known these and other "conditioning techniques" were banned.

Neither man has explained to Parliament why they lied. The Independent adds:

A scathing report from the Joint Human Rights Committee (JHRC) warns that the use of "coercive interrogation techniques" may have been officially sanctioned, despite assurances that troops knew they were outlawed...

The JHRC report also found that the use of hooding and stress positioning by 1 Queen's Lancashire Regiment in 2003 was based on legal advice received from brigade headquarters. It claims that, at least until the Baha Mousa case came to light, the prohibition on the use of conditioning techniques "was not as clearly articulated to troops in Iraq as it might, and indeed should, have been".

Legal advice from the military chain of command authorizing torture. How familiar.

Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, said: "We are meant to believe that it is just a few bad apples, but the evidence from courts martial and other cases shows that nothing could be further from the truth."

The report also finds that...

...even at the start of 2008 an official army investigation had found that the prohibition on [the techniques'] use was still not 'clearly being articulated' to ordinary soldiers...

[Phil Shiner said] "There is evidence that British forces in Iraq routinely used coercive interrogation techniques - including sexual humiliation - and that interrogators were made to use them."

In the face of this damning evidence, and very much on the model of the Bush administration, the British Defense Minister Des Browne has the temerity to say:

"Since 2003 we have made considerable improvements to the training and information given to soldiers deploying on operations about the correct and humane treatment of detainees. We have always been clear that we expect our forces to comply fully with international law. We will not tolerate anything less."

Even so, Browne has announced that a judge's inquiry will investigate the "discrepancies" between what military officials told legislators and, presumably, the truth. Such a judicial investigation into official government lies would be welcome in the US as well.

Photo: Autopsy of Baha Musa, Sept. 2003

It shouldn't surprise anyone that McCain's campaign team is trying to reach out to bloggers overseas, given the very poor coverage he's receiving in the MSM here. However, what trade paper PRWeek's UK edition reports is something a bit more worrying.

Jamaicans to do military jobs that Brits don't want to do...

Their strategy may not work, but it's fun to watch. The British Labour party is in massive trouble: it is on the verge of bankruptcy. Traditionally, it was, um, a "Labour" party--financed by and supposedly working for working people, as represented by the unions. Blair's project was to gradually cut this tie, repositioning "New Labour" as something more like the US Democratic Party, moderate and funded primarily by big business.
But now Labour's fair-weather friends in business are defecting to their true home, the Conservative Party. Labour is left at risk of literally having to sell off its HQ and let go staff, having lost hundreds of thousands of members since Blair's rise to power, the Iraq war, and many, many policy decisions that have hurt working people. They are very likely to lose the next  national election.
This has put the unions in an interesting position. More about what they want below the fold.

Photo from Reuters

You may have heard, "truth is stranger than fiction," and indeed, that often seems the case.  While that strange truth is usually just entertaining and innocuous, there are times when it is exactly the opposite... stupefying, shocking, even threatening.

Mimicking Ripley is not the intent here, though.  It is simply to point you to a variety of recent articles, some of which just bring a smile, some that give pause for thought, and some that deal with very serious issues.  Not surprisingly, many involve government and elected officials at various levels.

Aside from the trivial 'fun' articles, many are important but have been beneath the radar for whatever reason.  They need greater exposure, for they have implications which scream for attention.

The entries here do not comprehensively quote their referenced sources, except for maybe a one or two line teaser that might pique your interest, and, of course a link, along with maybe short comment. Better that you follow the links and look in the horse's mouth yourself:)   Hope you enjoy.

The race for the nomination is almost as keenly watched by residents of the UK as it is in the US.  

Mike Bernards is a farmer in McMinnville, Oregon and he just had installed a 120-foot tall wind turbine that is capable of supplying upward of 25 percent of the energy used by his family farm. The story about his 'planting' a wind turbine to yield a bumper crop of energy is in today's The Oregonian.

In Oregon, grants are available for wind turbine installation, but only for properties with 1 acre or more. Fortunately, Bernards' farm is 500 acres. So with the help of grants and Oregon Department of Energy tax credits, Bernards wound up paying only $12,000 for his $70,000 microgeneration set-up: a 10-kilowatt turbine is capable of generating 1,300 kilowatts of power a month.

This investment for the future will not only help lower energy bills for Bernards' farm, but also will help it keep growing produce — strawberries, beans, walnuts, filberts, artichokes, and zucchini — to feed hungry people in nearby Portland. This on-site microgeneration turbine is a small start to a more sustainable future, but more steps need to be taken.

Saudi Arabia is, of course, known for one thing above all others. That is the vast quantities of oil that the country produces. In terms of capacity it has no equal among the Gulf states. There are 264 billion barrels of proven oil reserves (more than a quarter of the world total) with up to one trillion barrels of oil probably being ultimately recoverable (Energy Information Administration report, January 2002). Not only is it present in vast quantities, but it is also cheaply produced due to flat land and huge deposits at shallow depths.

A poll conducted for the UK Daily Telegraph* in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia resulted with Obama 52%, McCain 15%.

Daily Telegraph link

The downside was the widespread "anti-American" feeling - though perhaps more accurately anti-Bush feelings in most cases.

*For the McCarthyites out there - yes, it's the Telegraph, a right-wing paper but it's also their poll so no choice.

I know, it almost sounds like a troll diary (but do check my other entries to see that I'm no troll). But there are two very real questions I'm asking here:

Would Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, ever change his nationality and become Turkish?

Would Rupert Murdoch actually endorse the almost-presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President in the US, Barack Obama, over John McCain?

The answers may surprise you. More, below the fold...

Britain's Labour government took a pasting in May Day local elections and now it's future looks grim...it's worth noting this was written for a British audience so there are some cultural quirks....

I guess after all this time; with all that’s transpired over the past seven years, I shouldn’t be at all surprised by this dubious development, and in fact, British arms dealers selling their wares to Iran doesn’t really surprise me at all. What does surprise me is that U.S. arms dealers aren’t involved as well.

British investigators have recently identified a number of national arms dealers trading with Tehran. The investigations have sounded alarms with various government officials, who along with the Bush regime fear the arms deals are also fueling Iran’s supposed nuclear arms program.

At least seven Britons have defied the latest [3rd] round of sanctions imposed by the United Nations on exporting arms, supplying Iranian entities such as the air force and the elite Republican Guard Corps. The Brits in question have also reportedly sold parts that would enhance Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Investigators argue that it is the generous riches being offered by Iran, not any shared ideology that is seducing the dealers.

Money, money money.

TimesOnline (hat tip Raw Story) has an article which sheds new light on the circumstances that led to the capture of 15 British sailors by Iran last year.

According to documents obtained from the British Ministry of Defense, the sailors were captured in disputed waters. It is noteworthy, however, that the dispute on the demarcation of Iranian territory stemmed from the fact that "the coalition unilaterally designated a dividing line between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Gulf without telling Iran where it was".  This might explain why Iranian forces had patrolled the waters in question an average of three times each week prior to the capture of the British sailors. On the ill-fated day in question it was the British who first pointed their weapons at the Iranians, before the Iranians came alongside.

So how does this report by the British Ministry of Defense jive with the contemporary narrative by the Bush administration and their domestic toadies? Well, here is a quote by President Bush from March 31, 2007:

"Relationship",says Hugh Grant in romantic comedy Love Actually, "is a word that covers so many sins". His fictional character then goes onto to chastise the fictional President of the United States in terms that I can only say I would immensley proud to hear from any British politician, let alone the Prime Minister. The 'special relationship' that the two countries are supposed to enjoy has definatly gone sour of late and a lot of people are starting to question it's worth. So, is it time for a divorce or at least a trial seperation??

The following Video was left as a reply in my Daily KOS posting, yesterday, on Nadia and 'Veterans Village'.

How far have we come as to what Wars do to those we send to fight them?

We don't Execute?, but we Still don't Understand, some Denie, and we Don't Give The Care Needed!

Societies 'Love War', at first, especially Wars of Choice, but Societies only send a small fraction of to engage, than they make them Fight for what it does to them!

Feeling safer now?

I was never one to so readily label the apparent myriad of missteps, mistakes and, quite frankly, bone-headed maneuvers attributed to the Bush regime over the past seven-plus-years as simple ignorance or the ever-popular "incompetence." There have been too many diabolical effronteries committed by this gang of thieves; too many lies and contrivances for my tastes, and way too much secrecy throughout the administration for me to simply write them off as incidental. However, when things like the following happen, I always feel a momentary urge to reassess my conclusions.

When British factory worker Gary Sinnott opened a tourism website in the late ‘nineties to promote his small home town of Mildenhall in Suffolk, he had no idea that anyone would confuse his website address with the U.S. Air Force. The address, Mildenhall.com, must have seemed a pretty safe bet to Mr. Sinnott, with the worst possible scenario imaginable being that someone would confuse the web address with that of an official town agency or function of sorts.

Gary Sinnott was wrong.