Snippets from the news.

The New York Times reports on a controversy that is brewing in some areas. Some people wish to hang their laundry up to dry, instead of using a dryer. Often they do this because they are convinced it will "help save the planet." No matter. As I see it, it's their laundry and their house, so it's their business.

Some of the states are passing legislation that says people may hang laundry outside, regardless of what local regulations say. The Times reports: "Opponents say the laws lifting bans erode local property rights and undermine the autonomy of private communities." So, if people are allowed to control what other people do on their own property that is supporting property rights while not being allowed to control what other people do with their property is erodes property rights? And the New York Times reported that as if it made sense.

Most of the time when I lived outside the U.S. I didn't have a dryer. I really don't see clothesline as a threat to anyone.

You have blood on your hands.

Hundreds of family members showed up at St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, to attend a memorial service for British soldiers who died in Iraq. The none-too-popular Tony Blair, who sent these young men off to war, had the audacity to show up. Mr. Blair has said that he went to war because he felt God wanted him to do it. Shortly after leaving office Blair converted to Catholicism, apparently it was the Catholic deity that wanted young men killed.

At a reception after the service Blair was running around glad-handing those in attendance. He attempted to shake hands with Peter Brierley, who was there to mourn his son. Brierley was shocked to be approached by Blair with his outstretched hand. He told the former politician: "I'm not shaking your hand, you've got blood on it."

Blair looked surprised and his security detail quickly shunted him out of the area. Good for Brierley, I'm not sure I would have been that restrained.

Who needs stinking civil liberties?

It won’t be long now before England’s worst prime minister ever drops into the dustbin of history (unless Bush rescues him and gives him a cushy job -- which has been hinted at).

As he did in his term of office Mr. Blair is doing in the last days of his odious rule -- he is doing his level best to strip Englishmen of more of their civil liberties. Blair has made it clear that civil liberties hinder government, which is precisely what they are meant to do mein Führer said some as they were blackbagged and carted off. (Of course Cheney said much the same thing recently to the cadets at West Point, basically urging them to ignore Constitutional protections when it comes to those deemed “terrorists”.)

Throughout his carrier Blair has introduced measure after measure expanding the police powers of the state. One could argue he has committed treason agains the English tradition of freedom. And as he is being shown the door he’s still working to expand police powers. Peter Hain, Blair’s own Northern Ireland Seccretary attacked the measures as the “domestic equivalent fof Guantanamo Bay.” Perhaps a bit of hyperbole but where his degree of worry is wrong his direction is not.

The idea is to give police the right to stop and question anyone they wish, anytime they wish, for any reason they wish. Failure to answer them could result in a fine of up to $10,000.

The previous Blair measure in this area is the Terrorism Act 2000, an act that truly is terrorism. It gives the government the right stop and search anyone traveling in public whether there is a reason to suspect them of anything or not. Except it is limited to areas designated by a chief constable. Still pretty lose when it comes to reigning in that terrorist organization known as government.

In that law not only did a chief constable have to delineate the area covered he had to set a time limit. Police could arrest people merely on suspicion but if the person didn’t cooperate by answering their questions there was no additional penalty. Blair finds that too restrictive. No doubt Cheney is whispering to Blair and suggesting that perhaps he should consider torture as well.

Under the new legislation individual police officers could interrogate people randomly without any restrictions as to the area or with time limits imposed. It removes the slight restriction of having the area designated by a chief constable. Now any would be “Terrorist Buster” on the force could begin questioning anyone found in public. And if someone found it a violation of their rights and refused to answer they could be fined heavily.

Blair, in perhaps his most disgusting comment in public life, defended these new police powers saying that society is wrong to protect civil liberties. “We have choosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this misguided and wrong.”

Of course the police state/surveillance state that Blair has created doesn’t come cheaply. The most recent analysis of the tax burden on individuals alone, not on business, shows the every single taxpayers pays about $13 in taxes for every hour they work. Just last year alone the tax burden on individuals increased by $50 billion. And these figures don’t include local taxes. Under Blair’s police state taxation has doubled since 1997.

A police state isn’t cheap. The wives of Henry VIII got better treatment than Blair deserves.
Ron Paul

Carter, Bush and the Catamite

Former President Jimmy Carter is in the UK and his trip has reconfirmed something my appraisal of him. He was an awful president but he’s a decent man unlike the current occupier of the White House is an awful president and an indecent man.

My only quandary about King George is deciding whether the vast amount of evil he does comes out of stupidity or malevolency or perhaps a unique combination of the two. Tony Blair, on the other hand, cannot excuse his actions on account of being dim-witted. Blair knew what he was doing and consciously choose evil. And this brings up back to Mr. Carter and his scathing comments about the nature of Blair.

Carter said Blair's support of Bush and his ill-conceived, counterproductive, invasion of Iraq as “abominable, loyal, blind and apparently subservient.” Carter said that Blair’s obedience to Bush as been “a major tragedy for the world” because without it the US may have thought twice before blundering into a war without victory possible. “"One of the defences of the Bush administration... has been, okay, we must be more correct in our actions than the world thinks because Great Britain is backing us....”

There is much truth to the suggestion that a reluctant England might have held back the dogs of war. Instead Blair was acting as Bush’s political catamite. His unquestionable subservience served what I suspect was his real purpose: war was a justification for his creation of a British police state -- although in reality it only heavily policies the innocent. It is so busy reigning in the liberties of the average Brit it has little time for actual criminals.

Blair left office despised even within his own party. But every catamite is due his reward. Now it is being leaked that King George may reward his faithful servant with appointment as the president of the World Bank. Bush’s previous appointment stepped down in the midst of a major scandal. Scandal with Bush appointees? No!

The reality is that Bush wants to reward toothless Tony for always following closely at his heels and “sitting” or “begging” when master asked. In addition Bush knows that if there is one man in the Western world more despised than Blair it is King George himself. If Blair retires into obscurity hiding from the well-earned contempt of his fellow citizens it would bode ill for the dullard from Texas. If Blair can hold some overpaid, entirely unnecessary office it serves as Bush’s reminder to the world this is how he expects to be treated when he’s finally ridden out of Washington -- unfortunately not on a rail.

The reality is that Bush and Blair are war criminals and deserve to be treated as such. Neither deserves comfort in their retirement though I do believe each is worthy of a cell of their own making in Guantanamo. The one thing that might persuade me to support appointing Tony to this cushy position is if the World Bank moves its offices to Baghdad.

Ding dong, Blair is resigning.

A few days ago I wrote: “It could be just days now” before the vile Tony Blair resigns as Prime Minister of England. Today he announced his resignation. And he knows he goes out of office a hated figure in the history of English politics. Hated with good reason, I might add.

Blair admitted his Labour government did not live up “to high expectations.” That is an understatment. It not only failed to live up to any positive expectations but it involved England in a no-win war justified by lies and deceit. In addition he has destroyed individual rights and privacy for the English people and imposed a Big Brother system of controls tracking the formerly free people of England.

The pathetic little man was pratically begging the population to forgive him for his tyrannical and corrupt actions. “I ask you to accept one thing: Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.” What political tyrant hasn’t? Hitler went to his suicide convinced he did what was right. Stalin didn’t lose sleep over his actions. That Blair finds it necessary to put on this sad display of groveling for forgiveness indicates that not only did he do wrong but that he knows it.

Meanwhile we have exclusive video clips of the reaction at one school when word of Blair’s announcement was made public. Enjoy.

It could be just days now. Stunning defeat for Blair

Watch British politics carefully over the next few days. One bit of good news is that it appears to be just a matter of days before the vile Tony Blair retires. Here is a man who acted as a toady to the lying George Bush and who has worked hard and long at turning England into a fascist state.

Blair's party wants him to go. The British people want him to go. Blair is doing to the Labour Party what Bush has done to the Republican Party -- destroy support for it. In local council races the Labour Party is bleeding support. With about a third of the council elections called Labour has lost over 100 seats while the Conservative Party has gained almost 200 seats. The Conservatives should gain at least 400 seats. Too bad they don't stand for anything anymore.

UPDATE: Eleciton results are coming in very slowly from the UK but there is little good news for the Blairites. with not quite half the councils reporting the Tories have pick up 378 seats while Labor has lost 181, the Liberal Democrats have lost 134 seats. Tories now contol 73 local councils compared to Labour's 19 and the Lib Dems have 11. In the Scottish Parliament the Labour Party has been the force but that appears to be over. Of the seats so far decided they have 32 seats versus the Scottish National Party with 30 seats, Lib Dems with 12 and Tories with 7. A further 47 seats are up for grab so it is possible for Labour to remain the major party but looking unlikely they will hold a majority. Labour will remain the major party but will lose their majority in the Welsh Assembly. In vote percentage terms Labour is almost tied with the third place Liberal Democrats, 27% to 26%, while the Tories seem to have 41%.

FINAL UPDATE: It couldn't have been much worse for Tony Blair. The more election results that come in the worse the news for the man who played lap dog to George Bush. Let us start with the local council elections which are a strong indicator of what voters are thinking. Labour has lost 485 seats across the country, with 9 localities still outstanding. The Tories were hoping to gain 600 to 700 seats and garned an addition 875 seats. They now control 160 local councils compared to Labour's pathetic 33. And Labour is lucky, they control 33 councils while the Lib Dems control 22 since the Lib Dems have 2114 councillors compared to Labour's pathic third place showing of 1803.

In the Scotish Parliament Labour has lost its dominant position to the Scottish National Party. The SNP has 47 seats to Labours 46 while the Tories have 17 and the Lib Dems hav 16 with 3 others. Since no one is anxious to be saddled with Labour as a partner they will be in the opposition there. In the Assembly in Wales Labour is still the dominant force but lacks a majority. It has 26 seats out of 60. In percentage terms this is the worst Labour result in Wales since the First World War.

How many more days will go by before Blair concedes he is one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers in British history and resign his position?

England Prevails.

I’ve spent the last few months in a small town on the English coast. Part of my day includes grocery shopping at the local store. And shopping here regularly shocks me. I will never adjust to the absolutely unrealistic prices for food nor will I ever grow fond of “traditional English” cooking, something HL Mencken once described as one step removed from cannibalism.

But the real horror here has been how far the UK has gone toward being a police state under the watch of the loathsome Tony Blair.

Irving Berlin, in 1946, wrote some lyrics for the musical Annie Get Your Gun which included the line: “Anything you can do I can do better; I can do anything better than you.” That encapsulates the relationship between Blair and King George of the Imperial Republic of the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq and soon to be announced. Unfortunately what they try to outdo each other with is authoritarian violations of civil liberties and expansions of state power.

But back to the grocery store for a minute. I’m leaving the UK in a few days and I wanted to pick up some items to take with, mainly since where I’m going the groceries are not in English and often that makes it hard for me to find specific items. And one item I needed was vanilla extract.

I’ve bought vanilla extract in three different countries before. No hassle. Today was slightly different. As the $8 bottle of vanilla extract was being scanned the clerk mumbled something. I had to have her repeat it. I still didn’t get what she was saying. It was one of those English accents that requires subtitles. The third time, and with a little help from the amused gentleman in line behind me, I finally got what she was saying.

She was under 18 years of age. So she is forbidden by law from pressing the buttons on the cash register to ring up the sale of the vanilla extract. I can still buy it, for now at least, but she can’t push the buttons without becoming a criminal of some kind. So we have to wait for a supervisor to come over and inspect the suspicious customer wishing to buy a small bottle of vanilla extract. Apparently the Nannys in Whitehall are worried that underaged individuals will buy expensive bottles of vanilla extract to consume in sufficient quantities to get plastered. From what I’ve seen the local yobs have no difficulty finding other forms of intoxication that are far cheaper and much more efficient.

And today’s post brought more interesting news. Local council elections are coming up. Already the Labour yahoos have been by and so have the UK Independence Party, but then their local offices are next door. But today the Conservative Party put in their appearance with a nice color brochure showing three of their local candidates, two of whom I’ve met since being here.

And what do they promise? Well, they promise lots more government! The social welfare state is alive and well in the Conservative Party. The difference is that they promise to give more of it than the Labour Party does. And they promise voters that if put back into office they will increase government surveillance of the population! More state cameras filming more people going about their daily life.

Of course they take their cues from David Cameron who is doing his best to be a Blair-lite candidate if not a Blairite candidate. What principles of small government the Conservative Party briefly and weakly held seems abandoned. Blair has had some opposition from his own backbenchers but on a whole he pushed the fascist state ahead by leaps and bounds.

And what I suspect will shock my American readers is that Blair is far more of a fascist, in the literal sense, than Bush. Fascism and socialism are, in practice, quite similar. Both promote state domination. The fascist just allows the pretence of private ownership. But the state regulates and controls what private owners may do. That is economic fascism and that has always been popular within Labour circles. In fact much of what is called “progressive” and “socialist” around the world is nothing more than economic fascism.

But Blair is adding the police state element of fascism to the mix in ways that America has yet to do so explicitly. As odious as the Patriot Act may be the UK has gone further. Admittedly they don’t run concentration camps and engage in torture but they don’t have to. Blair’s Big Brother George does that for them. But England supports the camps, the torture, the suspension of habeas corpus and the rest of the Bushian imitation of National Socialism. Still Blair is marching much quicker toward the final solution.

Consider that he wishes to have a DNA database of every citizen. Already the British fascist state has such information on one out every 20 citizens. Totalitarian Tony wishes to impose, and will shortly, a national passport which citizens will need to carry around with them in case one of the state police stop them and demand it. There appear to be plans to use RFID chips in the ID so that scanners placed around the country can trace the whereabouts of anyone at any time. I presume this can easily be used to also find anyone who is not carrying a card thus making arrest easier.

Any and all moves to a new address are to be reported to the local gestapo office immediately. And if you die without permission then your grieving relatives better hop down and report it right away lest they be fined. Surely you don’t think they should put grieving and a funeral ahead of our collective obligations to the State!

A new program would place monitors in every vehicle in the country in order to allow the government to trace your every move on the road. This will be incorporated into the tens of thousands of closed circuit television cameras Blair has installed. Currently England is alleged to have one out every five close circuit cameras in the world installed to monitor the population. As dictitorial as Bush has been Blair has gone much further.

In a joint effort the Tony and George Comedy Hour have pushed through requirements that put all people traveling in Europe and the US under surveillance before they even leave home. Vast amounts of private details, including your credit card details, are supposed to be sent to British and US gestapo agents prior to your boarding a plane. All this information, making you a ripe target for identity theft, is then scrutinized by a secret computer program that will determine whether or not you are a security threat. Suspicious details include seat preferences, meal preferences, how you pay for your ticket, etc. And if it targets you wrongly -- and most, if not all, people targeted will be wrong ---well that’s just too bad. Stop whining. You act like you have rights.

In another move the British government has told tax agents to use satellites to monitor the homes of people in the UK. It is used to watch for “improvements” since if you make any effort to improve your life you are required to pay the state for permission to do so. Already they demand that all your computer visits and phone calls for the last two years be saved and open to government inspection.

And if it gets really bad? Will the British people rise up and defend their liberty? Not likely, the government confiscated all legally held, registered guns several years ago. There are still several million firearms in the country, more so now then when the ban went into effect, but the government says those are all in the hands of criminals, hence the reason for the increase in crimes committed with guns after all guns were banned.

And since a huge percentage of the population now pays their living expenses with state largess the tendency will be to avoid biting the hand that feeds them. As awful as things have become under King George I can assure you that England is in far worse shape. When they are finished buying vanilla extract will be the least of your worries.

In the film V for Vendetta the “Leader” of the British state, Adam Sutler, is seen speaking to a police officer whose job is to find the terrorist V. Sutler swivels in his chair and gestures toward a computer. He says to the officer:

“Mr. Almond, do you know what this is behind me?

“Uh... the Fate computer system, sir?”

“No. No sir. It’s more than that. This, this computer is a symbol, Mr. Almond. A symbol of the highest attainable goal of mankind. Do you know what that goal is, Mr. Almond?”

Sutler continues:

“Control, Mr. Almond! Control! The world around us is a changing, directionless, amoral morass and it is up to man and man alone to set things right! Without control, man is nothing, more than any other stinking, sweating, brute animal. Control, Mr. Almond. The control that we have painstakingly built up over the last ten years.”

The motto of Sutler and his crew of fascists is “England Prevails.” Indeed, it appears that England prevails. The good news is that when freedom dies you don’t have to file a report with the local government agents -- they knew before you did.

Photo: John Hurt doing his Tony Blair impersonation as Adam Sutler.

Looking inside the Tory party.

I just returned from a dinner with a top Tory party official. The Conservative Party of the UK is out of power and has been for some years. So I was interested in what he was going to say. It is not critical to me who said it so I will leave that part out, but what was said is interesting.

First, he assured everyone that the Conservative Party members of parliament are totally and completely behind David Cameron. I take that to mean that quite a few Conservative Party MPs are not particularly happy with Cameron.

Typically when a top party official speaks to local party members (I was the only outsider present) he is telling them what the party leadership wants people to believe. And what party leaders want the members to believe is happening is often at odds with what is really happening. You can’t exactly say that reality is the complete opposite of the official line but you are safe in saying that the two never quite correspond.

It became apparent to me immediately what issues are dividing the party. It is Cameron’s Labour-lite policies. I say this because the second point this party leader made was that Cameron’s Green politics and such are “really conservative” principles all along. He hammered home that point several times. So it appears that many Tories simply don’t believe it.

The third point he made was that the policies of Cameron are the reason the party is doing well in the polls. His argument is that there is a body of voters who float between the major parties and Cameron’s policies appeal to them. The reason the Conservative Party had lost recent elections, he argued, was that these voters were turned off by Tory policies and now Cameron has struck a cord with them and they are coming home.

This struck me as totally imaginary or very nearly so. If Cameron’s Labour-lite Greenie politics is the key to Conservative Party success that would imply that the reason Margaret Thatcher became one of the longest serving Prime Ministers was due to her Green politics and her mimicking of the Labour Party on policy. The idea strikes me as farcical.

Let us first ask why Tony Blair succeeded. You had John Major distance himself tfrom Thatcher’s policies. He rushed to the Left much the way Bush Sr. did against the Reagan legacy. On the other hand Tony Blair, like Bill Clinton, moved in the opposite direction.

What drives Tory party poll numbers today? The prime reason that people are willing to vote for the Conservatives is disgust over Tony Blair -- disgust that is as justified as disgust over Bush. But our Tory party spokesman tonight kept insisting that the reason for the poll numbers is enthusiastic support for Cameron and I don’t believe it.

Cameron’s electoral strategy is to appear exactly like Labour on most issues. That wins the party some support but dissatisfies their own base. But he hopes to keep the Tory base simply because they are so anxious to send Blair into the electoral dustbin. Even Labour wants that.

Some time soon Blair will be gone. And Gordon Brown will be Labour Party leader. He has nothing great to offer the voters. But he has the same qualification that makes Cameron appealing to so many voters -- he’s not Blair. When Brown takes over the Labour Party, I suspect our speaker of this evening will be in for an unpleasant surprise. He will find that much of what drove Tory poll numbers was disgust for Blair not support for Cameron. I could be wrong, of course, I’ve have been before. We’ll only see when it happens but when Brown takes over I expect a drop in Tory poll numbers and an improvement for Labour.

But Labour has nothing to solve the pressing problems that plague the country. National Health Service is a mess and people are dissatisfied. All Labour can do is promise to spend more money. The “conservative” response is exactly the same thing -- spend more money. Pensions are in crisis and Labour wants to solve the problem by raising the retirement age. The Conservative Party solution is to support Labour.

The Conservative Party is playing down their own policies, they say, because they don’t want Gordon Brown to nick them before the election. But from what I heard this evening Brown would only be nicking back the policies that the Conservatives nicked from Labour. What I’m not seeing is anything that distinguishes the Tories from Labour other than the fact that Cameron isn’t Blair.

Tonight’s speaker did have one point for the true conservatives in the audience. He told them that Cameron is the only Tory leaders in recent years to say he supported marriage! Well, that went over like, like nothing. No reaction. No one seemed to be excited by it. What does it mean in reality -- a few small tax breaks for married people (and I assume those in civil unions). But those few tax breaks will be eaten up by all the other Labour-lite polices the Tories are rushing to adopt. The net result will be higher taxes not lower taxes.

It isn’t that the Tories couldn’t steal thunder from the Left. They could but they won’t. Instead they are mimicking the worst aspects of Labour. I believe Mr. Cameron could support reduced taxes and some other small government proposals and yet steal support from the Left parties if he would publicly state the Conservatives want the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Liberal Democrats have done it and saw support grow. At the same time many Lib Dems started sounding more free market and voicing concerns about taxation. No wonder they saw support grow. They were stealing votes from both sides.

Can the Tories win the next election? I suspect they can but not because they are Labour-lite. And the bump they get now, because Cameron is compared to Blair, will die out as well since they won’t be running against Blair. Blair will be on the curb by then. But they will run against a party with no ideas and no means of solving the pressing problems plaguing the country. That will help the Tories to some degree but it appears that they don’t have much to offer either. And it appears their election strategy is to offer nothing.

Like many, come the next election, I’ll be happy about one thing-- Blair won’t be office. I know that whoever is elected president in the United States in 2008 it won’t be George Bush. That thrills me but I have no reason to be excited about any of the likely replacements. And the same is true for Blair. It will be a good thing he is gone and a shame that the main two options will be Brown or Cameron as neither man has what is needed.

Meanwhile I think the Tories should keep an eye on the Liberal Democrats. Just as the Lib Dems have taken support from Labour they are in position to do the same to the Tories. With Cameron sounding very much like a Labour candidate it wouldn’t take much of a shift on the part of the Lib Dems for them to woo over Tory voters. That would create an entire new ball game and a scenario for which the Tories are not prepared.

Hell bent for war no matter what.

A previously secret memo from within the Blair government shows that Bush was hell bent on war regardless of the facts. The memo, written by Blair's top foreign policy adviser, according to The New York Times, said Bush "was determined to invade Iraq" regardless of whether or not weapons inspectors found anything amiss.

The memo shows that Bush was convinced of a quick victory followed by a transitional government that would be a cake walk compared to the reality. Bush also said it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different regions and ethic groups." The Times writes: "The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."

Maybe I am misreading this but it seems to be saying that George Bush had determined he would go to war even if nothing justified it and even if he had to manufacture an incident to justify it. The more you know about Bush the more he looks like FDR.

Should Blair go?

The Economist magazine, one of the best publications around, had endorsed Tony Blair in the past. In the last election they supported him saying there was no better option. But they have now said that it is time for Blair to go. They suggest that Mr. Blair is unable to do much with the office anymore.

It's getting stuffy for Tony

In the UK the Labour Party of Tony Blair is in a scandal. It appears that the party took £14 million in "loans". Under British laws donations to the party need to be disclosed but loans do not. But there is nothing to force them to pay the loans back thus meaning they could essentially be donations but donations that are not revealed as required.

What is astounding is that this money was used in the Labour campaign in the last election. But the total spending on the election was just under £18 million. This means that almost the entire Labour Party campaign was paid for by a small group of individuals who were promised that their names would not be made public.

It is believed that several individuals who loaned the money to Labour were later rewarded with peerages by Blair.