David Cameron on Ali Mohammed al-Nimr and Saudi Arabia

The British Prime Minister suggests that he will try and personally intervene with Saudi Arabian authorities in the case of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who has been sentenced to death, as he is tackled over the British response to human rights abuses.

Channel 4 News

MI6 spy who was found dead in locked bag had 'hacked secrets files about US president'

A British MI6 spy who was found dead inside a bag in 2010 had hacked into restricted information about the US president, it has been claimed. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old employee of GCHQ who was seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was found dead inside a padlocked bag at a safe house in London.

The Sun on Sunday newspaper quotes an intelligence source as saying Mr Williams had obtained sensitive documents regarding former US president Bill Clinton. “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature,” the source is reported to have told the newspaper.

“It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.” A coroner had previously ruled that Mr Williams was probably unlawfully killed and that his death was likely to have been the result of criminal actions.

More at  The Independent

British establishment child sex abuse cover-up

British politicians fuelling rumours about Leon Brittan's involvement in a Westminster cover up of child abuse were this morning ordered to come clean about what they know or 'shut up'. Former Cabinet colleague John Gummer, now Lord Deben, said MPs were 'making innuendos and insinuations in order to make themselves look as if they know something when they don't'. He said it was 'wicked' to make allegations without any evidence. 

The Tory peer's outburst comes after campaigning MP Simon Danczuk said Lord Brittan's death was a 'sad day' for the victims of child abuse who wanted to question the former home secretary about the missing 'Dickens dossier' of paedophile allegations handed to him in the 1980s. Lord Brittan, whose death from cancer aged 75 was announced yesterday, passed away before he could be questioned about a ‘bombshell’ missing document at a public inquiry into Establishment child sex abuse. Mr Danczuk said his death made it 'much harder for the truth to come out'.

More at Daily Mail Online - Westminster paedophile dossier (wikipedia)

Westminster paedophile ring investigated over murder links

An alleged victim of the British Westminister "paedophile ring" currently being investigated by police has told officers he saw a Conservative MP murder a young boy at a sex party.

The allegation in the Sunday People comes after detectives examining allegations of historic sex abuse launched a new investigation into "possible homicide". Scotland Yard said officers working on Operation Fairbank, which is looking into claims that there was a paedophile ring with links to government, have been made aware of allegations concerning "serious non-recent sexual abuse", said to have occurred more than 30 years ago.

The paper, which has worked with investigations website Exaro, printed the the testimony of a man named 'Nick' who said he had known of three murders committed by the group.

But his most sensational claim was that a 12-year-old boy was strangled to death by a Tory MP at a orgy in the 1980s. “I watched while that happened. I am not sure how I got out of that. Whether I will ever know why I survived, I am not sure," he told the paper, describing how he and the victim had been driven to the party together. “I knew we were being taken somewhere to be sexually abused by powerful men. But I had no idea of the true horror of what was about to happen.

“The MP was particularly nasty, even among the group of people who sexually abused me and others. I still find it difficult to talk about these incidents after all these years.” Nick told the paper his father had arranged for the men to have sex with him. He has given the name of the MP to police working on Operation Midland, a strand of the Operation Fairbank ­inquiry and has allegedly help compiled “e-fit” ­pictures of the apparent murder victims.

Huff. Post - The Telegraph

The best of George Galloway vs the Mainstream Media

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, broadcaster, and writer. Since late March 2012 he has been the Respect Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West.

Child Soldiers in the UK? No, Child Police

Imagine his horror when Charles Veitch popped out to get a pint of milk and this silent and strange ceremony was taking place outside his Town Hall.
Such beaming parents all round, teary eyed, seeing little Johhny and Sarah turn into uniformed rows of obedient troops marching to what the man in the checkerboard says...

Charles Veitch

British MPs' pay rise

David Cameron and Ed Miliband will face embarrassment this week when it is announced that MPs will be paid an annual salary of £74,000 from 2015 despite their calls for "cheaper politics". The independent parliamentary standards authority, Ipsa, is to reveal its decision to increase salaries by 11%. (The Observer)

The coalition of millionaires

David Cameron’s coalition Government may have adopted ‘fairness’ as one of its defining slogans, but his team of Ministers has been drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the financial elite – leading to accusations that politics is once again becoming the preserve of the wealthy. Of the 29 Ministers entitled to attend Cabinet meetings, 23 have assets and investments estimated to be worth more than £1million. (Daily Mail - may 2010)

Equality is impossible because some people's IQs are too low

Boris Johnson displayed "careless elitism" when advocating that more should be done to help the intelligent wealth-creators of society, and that Johnson was being "fairly unpleasant" by talking about people as if they were a breed of dog.

What so offended Nick Clegg was Johnson's description of the innate intellectual inequality of humans, especially those "of our species" with the lowest IQ scores. When he delivered the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture on Wednesday evening, Johnson said that humans were far from being equal in "raw ability".

"Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent… have an IQ above 130," Johnson told his audience.

More on The Independent

CIA Finally Admits Role in 1953 Iran Coup

Sixty years ago, on August 19, 1953, modern Iranian history took a critical turn when a U.S.- and British-backed coup overthrew the country's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury tells ‘persecuted’ western Christians to grow up

Christians in Britain and the US who claim that they are persecuted should “grow up” and not exaggerate what amounts to feeling “mildly uncomfortable”, according to Rowan Williams, who last year stepped down as archbishop of Canterbury after an often turbulent decade. “When you’ve had any contact with real persecuted minorities you learn to use the word very chastely,” he said. “Persecution is not being made to feel mildly uncomfortable. ‘For goodness sake, grow up,’ I want to say.”

True persecution was “systematic brutality and often murderous hostility that means that every morning you wonder if you and your children are going to live through the day”. He cited the experience of a woman he met in India “who had seen her husband butchered by a mob”. Lord Williams’s years as archbishop of Canterbury were marked by turbulence over the church’s stance on the role of gay priests and bishops; gay marriage; and homophobia in the wider Anglican communion – with many members of the church expressing disappointment at a perceived hardening in its position on homosexuality.

Asked if he had let down gay and lesbian people, he said after a pause: “I know that a very great many of my gay and lesbian friends would say that I did. The best thing I can say is that is a question that I ask myself really rather a lot and I don’t quite know the answer.”

More on The Raw Story

GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications

Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months. GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects. This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets.

Full article on The Guardian

British forces are detaining dozens in Afghanistan

Philip Hammond, the British defence secretary, has confirmed that dozens of people are being detained by British forces at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan following allegations that the army is running a secret detention facility at the base.

Hammond said 80 or 90 people were being held at the site. He said many of them posed a danger to British troops, and reiterated that they could not yet be handed over to Afghan authorities because of concerns that they would be mistreated.

UK lawyers acting for eight of the men, some of whom they say have been held for up to 14 months without charge, have launched habeas corpus applications in the UK high court in a bid to free them, raising comparisons with the outrage over the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

The International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) rules dictate that British forces are only allowed to hold suspects for 96 hours. But in November last year, Hammond halted plans to hand suspected insurgents captured by British troops to Afghan security forces on the grounds they risked being abused and tortured.

The Guardian

UK Father dies in a fireball after being hounded by payday loan companies over debt

A debt-ridden father doused himself in petrol and turned himself into a human fireball after being harassed for money by payday loan firms. Antony Breeze, 36, died after setting himself alight, telling passers-by who tried to extinguish the flames: ‘I’ve had enough.’

In the hours before the tragedy Mr Breeze, who owed around £1,600, was bombarded with text messages about his arrears, an inquest heard. The next day he went out, telling his girlfriend he was getting petrol for a lawnmower. Minutes later he was found screaming and in flames on a pathway. He had been so worried about the debts that he lost a stone in weight in just two weeks, relatives said.

Mail Online

British bloggers may face libel fines under press regulation deal

British Bloggers could face high fines for libel under the new Leveson deal with exemplary damages imposed if they don't sign up to the new regulator, it was claimed on Tuesday. Kirsty Hughes, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, which campaigns for press freedom around the world, said it was a "sad day" for British democracy. "This will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on everyday people's web use," she said.

She said she feared thousands of websites could fall under the definition of a "relevant publisher" according to the rules passed in the House of Commons on Monday night as part of the courts bill. Under the rules sites that generate news and are written by several authors could risk exemplary damages. Hughes said: "Bloggers could find themselves subject to exemplary damages, due to the fact that they were not part of a regulator that was not intended for them in the first place."

More on The Guardian - It is terrifying how quickly we've slid from a free press to politicians stitching up press regulation (The Telegraph) - British Censorship on Wikipedia

Ed Miliband: 'I'm a Zionist and oppose boycotts of Israel'

Ed Miliband (UK Leader of the Labour Party) has pledged to protect Jewish customs including brit milah and shechita if he becomes Prime Minister. Speaking at a Board of Deputies event the Labour leader said he was opposed to boycotts of Israel and warned of the need to be “ever-vigilant”against antisemitism.

Asked whether he would work to ensure religious slaughter and circumcision practices could continue in Britain, Mr Miliband said: “Yes, these are important traditions. The kosher issue has recently been brought to my attention. Ways of life must be preserved.” He added: “I take antisemitism very seriously. Any kind of delegitimisation of Israel is something we should call out for what it is and not tolerate it.

“I think the boycotts of Israel are totally wrong. We should have no tolerance for boycotts. I would say that to any trade union leaders.” But Mr Miliband warned the audience that while he was opposed to anti-Israel activities in this country, people must “understand the anger and dismay about settlements”.

He said that he considered himself a Zionist but was critical of some Israeli government policies. Asked about Labour’s support for the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations, Mr Miliband said he wanted to “encourage moderate” Palestinians and work in an “even-handed” way

The Jewish Chronicle

British Defence Secretary wants to cut benefits, not troops

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has warned he will resist further cuts to the armed forces in Chancellor George Osborne's forthcoming spending review.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said other Conservative Cabinet ministers believed that the greatest burden of any cuts should fall on the welfare budget. There was, he said, a “body of opinion within Cabinet who believes that we have to look at the welfare budget again”, and that “we should be seeing welfare spending falling” as a result of rising employment levels.

More on The Independent

Why does a Duke worth £320m want to double the rents of his farmers?

He is the aristocratic owner of the castle featured in Harry Potter. And although his fortune is said to be around £320million, it seems the Duke of Northumberland wants more. Ralph Percy, 56, has been accused of wrecking the livelihoods of tenant farmers after his land agents demanded massive rent increases. Some have been asked to pay up to 98 per cent more or face eviction.

The Duke, whose son George was last year rumoured to be dating Pippa Middleton, owns some 132,000 acres of land. His 1,000-year-old castle at Alnwick, which featured as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films, is known as the Windsor of the North. But despite his wealth, it emerged yesterday that the Duke’s Estate is conducting a crippling round of rent reviews on its farmers in Northumberland. There is no legal limit to the rent  the land agents can ask for, and tenants are unlikely to challenge them because this can end up costing them even more. 

Mail Online

A Plastic Princess made for breeding

Hilary Mantel has woken up to something of a firestorm after a long speech she recently made about the royal family and society's relationship with them was interpreted as an "astonishing and venomous attack" on the Duchess of Cambridge.

The headlines did not pull punches: "a plastic princess designed to breed", read the Daily Mail, which lambasted the "Booker prizewinner's venomous attack on Kate"; "plastic princess slur", said the Sun headline, which described Mantel's speech as a "bizarre rant".

The Guardian

Oxford College Being Sued For 'Discriminating Against The Poor'

An Oxford college is being sued for allegedly discriminating against poor students after it rejected applications from postgraduates who couldn't prove they had £21,082 for tuition and living costs. Damien Shannon, 26, is taking St Hugh's college to court claiming the policy amounts to "selecting by wealth" and bars all but the wealthiest of students.

Shannon had successfully applied to take an MSc in economic and social history but was told his place was conditional on meeting Oxford's financial requirements. According to the Guardian, Shannon's submitted legal papers state: "It is my contention that the effect of the financial conditions of entry is to select students on the basis of wealth, and to exclude those not in possession of it.

Huffington Post

From grainy CCTV to a positive ID: Recognising the benefits of surveillance

Professor Mark Nixon has “had a few fights” with civil liberties groups in his time. As a world-leading expert in developing biometric techniques to identify people using CCTV – every anti-surveillance campaigner’s Big Bother bête noir – he knows all too well what they think of his work. “They say we’re ruining their privacy,” he says. “I don’t think their personal liberty is in danger.” The techniques he has pioneered “have been used to put murderers away – and I agree with that”.

Through the work of Prof Nixon and Dr John Carter at Southampton University, it is becoming increasingly easy for authorities to monitor us all. Research at the School of Electronics and Computer Science – funded by the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence among others – means technology can spot and identify criminals in surveillance footage with increasing accuracy.

Now Prof Nixon’s department has received extra funding from GCHQ to form part of the national Cyber Security Centre of Excellence, with Southampton specialising in biometrics: ID-ing people using personal traits or physical characteristics. It’s a controversial area of science which Prof Nixon can claim to have helped father. One of the key aspects is gait analysis: allowing people to be identified by their body shape and the way they walk.

See The Independent for more