He sums up the problem with U.S. foreign policy nicely: "We don't mind our own business!"

Fun fact: U.S. military veterans have given more money to Ron Paul's campaign than all the other campaigns put together.

I chatted with some of my kid's friends - currently @ university - they paint a picture of their generation as being totally distrustful of government, politicians, the media and the financial system. They view companies as only out to take as much money off them as possible and they see those in power as cynical, self-interested people who don't have their best interests at heart. Most don't read a newspaper and get their news online from a wide range of sources - bloggers, social media etc. Those who are on the escalator to a job and a career are pretty damning about youff culture - the Chav generation - of reality TV, obssessed with celebs and football. They fully expect the financial system to collapse sooner or later and seem to relish this possibility so that they can fundamentally remould society when it does - more just, less polluting, less violent seems to be the aim.

And so to the latest example of American hypocrisy. While the U.S. preaches to the world about justice and freedom it is renowned for the opposite:

It's quite notable that the mere threat of ending up in American custody is considered (at least by Assange's lawyers) to be a viable basis for contesting extradition on human rights grounds. Indeed, this argument is not unusual.

Indeed, almost every person I've spoken who has or had anything to do with WikiLeaks expresses one fear above all others: the possibility that they will end up in American custody and subjected to its lawless War on Terror "justice system." Americans still like to think of themselves as "leaders of the free world," but in the eyes of many, it's exactly the "free world" to which American policies are so antithetical and threatening.

Understandably, Israel is very concerned when the president of a country, a large country near them, states that they should be wiped off the face of the earth.

Which is simply a lie. Is it any wonder Americans are so brainwashed?

The Tea Party - thousands of hard-working middle-class FOX viewers fighting to make sure the rich pay less in taxes.

Dylan Ratigan interviews Daniel Ellsberg—the guy who blew the whistle on the Vietnam War in 1971—about WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning.

And Ann Wright, retired US Colonel and Diplomat, says Bradley Manning should be praised.

Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.

“None of your business,” I said.

Her eyes widened in disbelief.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said.

This did not go over well.

Many of the commenters took issue with my rude tone toward the CBP officers. This criticism is profoundly misguided.

To the authoritarian mind, there are only two responses to a demand: submission or defiance, and anything less than total submission is defiance.

Oh, not in practice, of course. But in form. The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill, passed unanimously less than an hour ago, gives Brownlee the power to repeal or modify practically any law on our statute book, without even having to refer to Cabinet, let alone Parliament.

‘Mere mortals are still inspired by a certain awe,’ he gushes.

Bill Clinton is ‘an extraordinary mixture of easygoing charm and ferocious intellectual capacity. Probably . . . he is the most formidable politician I ever met.’ President Bush ‘has great intuition.’ And of Barack Obama, he says: ‘The personal character is clear: this is a man with steel in every part of him.’

Stay classy Blair.

Meanwhile he's been pelted with eggs and shoes at a book signing in Ireland:

Skirmishes broke out between protesters and police at the first public signing for Tony Blair's memoirs, with shoes and eggs hurled at the former prime minister.

Protesters shouted … "Hey hey Tony hey, how many kids have you killed today?"

"It really is shameful that somebody can be responsible for the death and destruction that he was responsible for in Iraq and Afghanistan and walk away without any accounting for that and become a very wealthy man off the back of it."

David A. Moss, an economic and policy historian at the Harvard Business School, has spent years studying income inequality. While he has long believed that the growing disparity between the rich and poor was harmful to the people on the bottom, he says he hadn’t seen the risks to the world of finance, where many of the richest earn their great fortunes. Now, as he studies the financial crisis of 2008, Mr. Moss says that even Wall Street may have something serious to fear from inequality — namely, another crisis.

Höffner contends … that the near absence of copyright law in eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany laid the groundwork for the "Gründerzeit"—the enormous wave of economic growth that Deutschland experienced in the middle and later nineteenth century.

I felt very alone in the army. I couldn't talk about the things I felt were misplaced … I didn't have strong views but I felt uncomfortable about the talk, about soldiers hitting Arabs and laughing. I thought everyone else was normal and I was the one who wasn't. I felt an outsider to the group experience.

British taxpayers are paying a secretive lobbying firm $10,000 (£6,354) a month to push American politicians to award contracts to British defence companies.

The flotilla was carrying humanitarian aid, medical supplies, and construction materials, intent on breaking the Gaza Strip blockade being perpetrated by the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Palestine.

In the middle of the night on 30 May, while in international waters, they were forcibly boarded by armed Israeli commandos. The passengers defended their ship against the invaders and nine of them were murdered, most shot at close range in the back of the head.

Ken helped overpower two commandos and managed to disarm one of his pistol and empty it's ammunition. The commandos eventually overpowered the flotilla, then promptly kidnapped everyone, towing the ships to a detention camp. After stealing everyone's possessions and generally treating them like dogs the kidnappers relented to international pressure, releasing and deporting most of those they had kidnapped. Ken wanted to appeal his deportation to Ireland and instead go to Gaza, but, having already been seriously beaten twice by Israeli soldiers while captive, his solicitor advised him that for his own safety he should leave Israel.

For his troubles Ken was laughably listed on the IDF's official propaganda weblog—IDF Spokesperson—as "known to be involved in terrorist activity," and continuing with:

Ken O’Keefe (Born 1969), an American and British citizen, is a radical anti-Israel activist and operative of the Hamas Terror organization. He attempted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a commando unit for the Palestinian terror organization.

To form and train a commando unit? I've had some heated arguments with Ken over the years but 'terrorist commando'? Someone in the IDF propaganda unit's been telling porkies. (Note to IDF: when you're falsely accusing someone of being a terrorist try not to get their nationality wrong. Kind of makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about.)

So let's get this straight. They kidnap Ken (whose life story happens to be an open book). Then they deport him. And then they tell us he's a known terrorist? Wouldn't it perhaps be a little more prudent to hold onto a terrorist?

Someone in the IDF propaganda unit doesn't know how to tell porkies.

External links

• Ken's statement on the Israeli attack
• BBC HARDtalk interview with Ken, 28 June 2010

Time to look for a new web host in Iceland.

When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly, are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence. Fully 80% of Gaza’s population lives on the edge of malnutrition, depending on international charities for their daily nourishment. According to the UN and World Health authorities, Gaza’s children suffer from dramatically increased morbidity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity is a consequence of a deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but its physical and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically from the outside world. Particularly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amusement for some Israeli leaders, who according to Israeli press reports have jokingly described it as “putting Palestinians on a diet.” That, too, is reminiscent of the Hitler years, when Jewish suffering amused the Nazis.

Both the Conservatives and Labour have ensured the UK won't get a referendum on whether people want proportional representation or not. The Liberal Democrats didn't have the numbers. There will be a referendum on the Alternative Vote system but, while an improvement, it is not proportional representation.

Labour is now lying to their supporters that they didn't have the numbers for a coalition. In fact they did, the smaller parties were offering their support to an alliance. Labour supporters who are gutted that the Conservatives are now in power should realise that it is entirely Labour's fault that they are:

A [LibDem] spokesman said key members of the Labour team "gave every impression of wanting the process to fail" and the party had made "no attempt at all" to agree a common approach on issues like schools funding and tax reform.

"Certain key Labour cabinet ministers were determined to undermine any agreement by holding out on policy issues and suggesting that Labour would not deliver on proportional representation and might not marshal the votes to secure even the most modest form of electoral reform," he said.

This isn't a party interested in policy. They're interested in unbridled power. Instead of compromising a little on policy with the Liberal Democrats they'd rather compromise completely and have a Conservative government.

The biggest barrier to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is the Conservatives' refusal to support a referendum on electoral reform, offering instead a toothless "all party committee of inquiry on political and electoral reform"; the Conservatives would rather retain an unfair voting system which disenfranchises not just a third of voters (about 10 million people) but also 16 million or so eligible voters who didn't vote, most of whom probably don't see the point in voting in a representative system that clearly isn't even representative.

Meanwhile Labour is dashing its own chances of forming a coalition, which, along with the Liberal Democrats, would require the support of other smaller parties too. Alex Salmond of the Scottish National Party offered that support yesterday. Labour's apparent response? Unbelievably to refuse it:

BBC News:

Scotland's First Minister, SNP leader Alex Salmond, called on the Lib Dems to join a "progressive alliance" involving Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. However a Labour source dismissed that as "a desperate attempt by Alex Salmond to make himself look relevant after a terrible general election result".

Update: The Guardian has a map with a breakdown of all the problems that occurred around the country on polling day.

Brown systematically blocked, and personally blocked, political reform. I think he is a desperate politician and I just do not believe him.

"There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force"

—Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl,

spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad. (New York Times)

The reality is a bunch of coward rednecks flying around in helicopters committing murder from high above.

When the Nuremberg Tribunal described a war of aggression as the supreme war crime, because it "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole," this is the kind of thing they were talking about. These trigger happy rednecks flying around in helicopters just shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place.

And this redneck nation wonders why people want to fly planes into their buildings.