Highlights of the Enniskillen Golf Club ladies day (they let Angela Merkel in so long as wore a blue tie) below:

Puppets of (from left to right) US President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, Prime Minister David Cameron, and Russian President Vladimir Putin at an IF campaign to highlight world hunger during the G8 Summit at Enniskillen Golf Club, Northern Ireland.

A police officer guarding security fence takes a photograph for protestors yesterday as the G8 Summit continues.

A protestor dressed as Osama Bin Laden at the security fencing yesterday as the G8 Summit continues.

Security in Enniskillen as the G8 Summit continues.

Prime Minister David Cameron holds a press conference at the end of this year’s G8 Summit on Lough Erne near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.

A buddhist monk outside this year’s G8 Summit on Lough Erne near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.

Prime Minister David Cameron holds a press conference at the end of this year’s G8 Summit on Lough Erne near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.

Prime Minister David Cameron holds a press conference at the end of this year’s G8 Summit on Lough Erne near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.

Irish musician Bono leaves Finnegan’s Pub in Dalkey where he had lunch with the US First Lady Michelle Obama and his wife Ali.

Irish musician Bono leaves Finnegan’s Pub in Dalkey where he had lunch with the US First Lady Michelle Obama and his wife Ali.

US First Lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters Malia Ann (left) and Sasha listen to Head Tour Guide George McClafferty explain about the historically important monastic site of Glendalough, Co Wicklow.

US First Lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters Malia Ann (right) and Sasha listen to Head Tour Guide George McClafferty explain about the historically important monastic site of Glendalough, Co Wicklow while he sits on the ancient Deer Stones with St. Kevin’s Church and the Round Tower in the background.

Marie Waterhouse, 68, from Enniskillen tries to post a letter at her local post box. Police have sealed off post boxes around Loch Erne Resort during the G8 Summit.

G8 Protesters break through an outer fence during a protest near the G8 summit in Loch Erne, Enniskillen.

G8 protestors breach the security corden around Loch Erne, Enniskillen.

Giant letters are set up during a demonstration in front of Enniskillen Castle, outside of the security perimeter of the G-8 summit, in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland on Monday, June 17, 2013. The summit is taking place under heavy security, with some 7,000 police lining roads and checking vehicles. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Anti G8 Summit demonstrator Kevin Willis takes to the streets of Enniskillen this evening.

Protestors wearing masks of Guy Fawkes hold a banner during a demonstration outside of the security perimeter of the G-8 summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland on Monday, June 17, 2013. The summit is taking place under heavy security, with some 7,000 police lining roads and checking vehicles. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Anti G8 Summit demonstrators take to the streets of Enniskillen this evening.

US First Lady Michelle Obama addresses the crowd on stage at the visit by her and her two daughters Malia and Sasha to the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin for a special performance of Riverdance.

G8 protestor Darren Carnegie poses by a mock missile brought into the camp at Broadmeadow, Enniskillen.

G8 protestor Darren Carnegie poses by a mock missile brought into the camp at Broadmeadow, Enniskillen.

A member of the public protests as Barack Obama arrives Belfast Waterfront Hall before delivering his keynote address ahead of the G8 summit.

Prime Minister David Cameron (2nd left) holds a meeting with the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe (right) at this year’s G8 Summit in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.

President of the European Commission , Jose Manuel Barroso (left) is joined by (from left to right), Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and EU President Herman van Rompuy as they pose for a family photograph at the G8 Summit on Lough Erne in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

G8 protestors at the security corden around Loch Erne, Enniskillen.

G8 protestors let their feeling known as they breach the security corden around Lough Erne, Enniskillen.

G8 protestors breach the security corden around Lough Erne, Enniskillen.

G8 Protesters break through an outer fence during a protest near the G8 summit in Loch Erne, Enniskillen.

The Gael Force protest art group erects a sign on Belfast’s Black Mountain as Barack Obama arrives Belfast Waterfront Hall before delivering his keynote address ahead of the G8 summit.

Anti-hunger activists, wearing giant head masks depicting the G-8 leaders, sail on a boat past the hotel where the G8 summit media center is located in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, on Monday, June 17. The protesters, from the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, call for leaders to eliminate the causes of hunger. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Crowd members wave an American flag as Barack Obama arrives Belfast Waterfront Hall before delivering his keynote address ahead of the G8 summit.

US President Barack Obama delivers a keynote address at Waterfront Hall in Belfast, ahead of the G8 Summit.

US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama, wave after he delivered a keynote address at Waterfront Hall in Belfast, ahead of the G8 Summit.

G8 protester Andrew Carnegie 43, from Glasgow, with his dog Grace at their make shift camp at Broadmeadow, Enniskillen, ahead of the G8 summit.

Protesters from Amnesty International dressed in orange jump suits and masks, hold placards requesting that President of the United States, Barack Obama, closes Guantanamo, as they congregate outside the Waterfront, Belfast, ahead of the G8 summit.

Previously unissued photo dated 13/06/2013 of a pint of Guinness with G8 formed on the head in Blakes bar in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, ahead of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

People have their pictures taken as G8 Summit leaders during the Big IF Belfast concert taking place at Belfast Botanic Gardens ahead of the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland.

People bang ‘Enough Food For Everyone’ inflatable bam-bams during a minutes noise-making session, which is part of a message to make themselves be heard by the G8 leaders at Belfast Botanic Gardens, where the Big IF Belfast concert is taking place ahead of the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland.

Police watch as anti G8 protesters take part in a rally in Belfast City centre ahead of the G8 world leaders summit.

Police officers on duty in Soho, central London, where protesters with banners were believed to be occupying a former police station in Beak Street amid demonstrations ahead of the G8 conference in Northern Ireland next week.

Political painter Kaya Mar, 56, poses with a painting depicting the G8 world leaders, centre, ‘plus five’ leaders, right, pointing towards each other in blame for world problems as ‘the planet is sinking’ according to him at his home in London, Monday, June 10, 2013. The UK currently holds the one-year Presidency of the G8 group and leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, USA and UK will meet at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland for the G8 Summit on June 17-18, 2013. Leaders from India, Brazil, China, South Africa, and Mexico will also attend. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

WITH the Celebrity Police Force investigating, Charles Saatchi tells one and all that the photos of him apparently holding his wife Nigella Lawson’s throat were part of a “playful’ tiff”.

He tells the Evening Standard:

“The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place…

“About a week ago, we were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about the children, and I held Nigella’s neck repeatedly while attempting to emphasise my point. There was no grip, it was a playful tiff. Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt. We had made up by the time we were home. The paparazzi were congregated outside our house after the story broke yesterday morning, so I told Nigella to take the kids off till the dust settled.”

The story does not end there. Ever since the Sunday People published the photos, the story has been a cause of chatter. The Sunday Mirror even made a joke of it all, punning that TV cook Nigella was at “BOILING POINT“.

A few days on and vain arsehat Nick Griffin, the BNP’s monocular tosser, who thanks to the democratic experiment has the mandate from 120,139 voters, tweets:

If I had the opportunity to squeeze Nigella Lawson, her throat wouldn’t be my first choice.

The Mirror gets wind of that stupid comment and reports:

Controversial politician makes derogatory sexual comment about celebrity chef

Others would surely prefer to look at the fact that Griffin fancies a Jewish mother of two. (Griffin claimed he fell out with Tyndall over the latter’s policy on Muslims: “Because he hated Jews so much, he thought Muslims couldn’t be all that bad if they didn’t like Jews” – Times)

But let’s not analyse the pillock. Let’s just note that the Mirror made its own joke at a time when it appeared to be alleging that Nigella had been the victim of domestic violence. Classy stuff.

The Express picks up on the story. It thunders: “Outrage as BNP leader Nick Griffin makes sick joke about Nigella Lawson on Twitter”.

This would be the Express whose sister paper the Daily Star once backed the EDL? The Express that asked of Nigella, “So has TV’s yummy cook out a bit too much in her tummy?” Is this the Express whose sister organ, Channel X, is showing this week such right-on films as Angel’s Gutter Girls, Skint Students and St Teenycums Nymphic Games 1? Is that the same Express outraged by “derogatory sexual comment about the celebrity chef? 

The Daily Mail once invited us to look at Nigella’s “jumbo knees”. And ITV infamously tweeted: [Nigella Lawson] is “nowhere near as attractive as she thinks she is”.

Be outraged by Nick Griffin. Be more outraged that people actually elected him to be an MEP (one reason to quit the EU, surely, Mr Farage). But if you are going to outraged by sexism, recognise that it’s not only racial bigots who champion it…

It’s all wonderfully contrived. If it wasn’t whenever Dave spoke of gay marriage he’d look wistful rather than tough, and on the subject of drugs he’d inhale deeply, hold it…hold it… hold it… and lob an imaginary pot plant though a window…

DOCUMENTS leaked by US techy spook Edward Snowden show us that the US government is able to access details of smartphone and internet activity under a scheme called Prism. The allegation is that the US intelligence agencies have an open line to Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype and Apple. They also record all of your phone calls. The Guardian reprots that the UK’s electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, has access to the data. This might explain why the taxes for so many big Internet firm are so low. The elite want to keep paying foreign companies for data on British citizens off the books.

 What does it all mean, though? We’ve picked out the best opinions on the news:

Mark Steyn:

Perhaps this is just the way it is in the panopticon state. Tocqueville foresaw this, as he did most things. Although absolute monarchy “clothed kings with a power almost without limits” in practice “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.” What would happen, Tocqueville wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve to bring “the details of social life and of individual existence” within the King’s oversight? Eric Holder and Lois Lerner now have that power. My comrade John Podhoretz, doughty warrior of the New York Post, says relax, there’s nothing to worry about. But how do I know he’s not just saying that because Eric Holder’s monitoring his OnStar account and knows that when he lost his car keys last Tuesday he was in the parking lot of Madam Whiplash’s Bondage Dungeon?

When the state has the power to know everything about everyone, the integrity of the civil service is the only bulwark against men like Holder. Instead, the ruling party and the non-partisan bureaucracy seem to be converging. In August 2010, President Obama began railing publicly against “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity” (August 9th, a speech in Texas) and “shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” (August 21st, radio address). And whaddayaknow, that self-same month the IRS obligingly issued its first BOLO (Be On the Look-Out) for groups with harmless-sounding names, like “tea party,” “patriot,” and “constitution.”

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won’t end well.

Do we trust Obama?

Seth Masket:

 In my view, it’s hard for poll respondents to evaluate NSA surveillance, or any powerful government tool, without considering who’s in charge of it. When people are asked what they think about the government having this power, they’re implicitly being asked what they think about President Obama having this power. Is it really hackish for people to be more comfortable with a governmental power if they know someone they more or less trust is going to be in charge of it? Is it hypocritical to think that police state tactics are necessary when someone who shares your values is deploying them but excessive when someone hostile to your values is deploying them? Democrats are basically saying, “Yes, this is potentially problematic, but we trust Obama to do it right,” and Republicans said the same thing about Bush.

It never really came to a vote, but when Batman developed the technology to use all of Gotham’s residents’ cell phones as a giant crime detection device, I’m sure residents as a whole would have preferred Lucius Fox running that device than, say, the Joker doing so, even if they saw the device itself as morally questionable.

But Obama said it’d be better.

Michael White:

Bin Laden would be chuckling in his grave today if he had a sense of humour or indeed a grave. Like a street brawler who starts a fight or a demagogue who burns down a mosque to create fear and repression, Ossie is getting what he wanted – or will do if all don’t push back and restrain the self-aggrandising features of the security state.

But what about Hope and Change?

I’m not sure which is worse: the NSA surveillance programs themselves, or the fact that the leaks about them have caused normally reasonable people to publicly commit themselves to so many strange notions in a desperate attempt to defend the Obama administration, e.g. “The whole concept of privacy is obsolete,” “Gathering data about phone calls doesn’t raise serious privacy concerns,” “Surveillance is unobjectionable if it’s been going on for many years,” “We don’t have to worry about the 4th Amendment as long as a judge is willing to rubber-stamp the government’s actions without any adversarial process,” etc.

Can we see the data, too, please

David Aaronovitch (Times):

Back in 1999, according to Wired magazine, Scott McNealy, the chief executive of Sun Microsystems told Americans: “You have zero privacy. Get over it.” This week, after the NSA story, the outspoken Mr McNealy was making a distinction. He asked: “Should you be afraid if AT&T has your data?

Google? They’re private entities. AT&T can’t hurt me. Jerry Brown [Governor of California] and Barack Obama can.”

If I were an American I would be more likely to trust the State whose head I elect than a company over whom I can exercise no accountability, other than not to buy or use a product. But there is some force to the argument that free speech may be inhibited online if you think the government might have access to it all. There is force too to the suggestion that what might feel safe under that nice Mr Obama would feel less comfortable with a Nixon in the White House. And force again to the worry that security agencies aren’t quite as fabulously competent as they depict themselves (think of Peter Wright, Geoffrey Prime and David Shayler).

More subtle is the worry that the fallibilities traditionally affecting enforcement agencies (confirmation bias, for example) could operate at a hugely scaled-up rate when applied to looking for patterns in vast databases. As in: “This one scores 11 out of 20 on the radicalisation index. Let’s see what he does next.”

I believe that in the choice (as choice there will often be) between privacy and information, we should and we will usually choose information. But this is a mediated choice and it seems to me that the only way of adjudicating this question of what is held on us, and by whom, comes down in the end to proportionality and transparency.

On proportionality take yesterday’s announcement of the database involving 11 million records of 350 cancers diagnosed across 50 million English people going back 30 years. In the wrong hands, as they say, it would be conceivably possible to identify cases. But the benefit of the database as opposed to the danger of misuse seems obvious. And I daresay the security services would say the same.
The problem is they might be wrong. And the only way we could conceivably weigh up the risk as against the benefit is if we know what they are doing. Not in micro detail, but sufficient for us to be able to trust those who act in our names and the laws that govern their activities. If privacy is to be surrendered then the price of our transparency is theirs. Without it, the deal won’t work.

Who is there left to trust?

David Brooks (New York Times):

“But Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good. This is not a danger Snowden is addressing. In fact, he is making everything worse. For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret NSA documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.”

But if you’ve nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Matt Miller (Washington Post):

“There are people I respect who say Snowden is a hero. I think they’re dead wrong. Thinking about ‘big data’ is a little like imagining how things look to God (assuming God exists). God may love you personally, but she’s a little too busy to worry about whether you get that raise you deserve. The National Security Agency (NSA) may have access to every bit and byte in the land, but the unfathomable river of information their algorithms must mine means no one’s focusing on the text you sent to that guy in accounting.”

“Not only do they ignore or disregard the fact that the government has carved out national security exceptions to protect power from disclosures that Snowden made by ensuring that he can be prosecuted, jailed and effectively silenced no matter how he makes disclosures, but they cheerlead for zealous prosecution of these individuals for periods of time that exceed the length of time they would ever advocate for torturers, war criminals or those who commit felonies in violation of laws intended to protect individual rights and liberty in theUnited States. Which means that when people like Edward Snowdencome forward, not only do they have to fear their own government but they also have to fear their country’s media and the pundits who populate the airwaves because they fully understand they will become victims of news coverage that might as well be paid propaganda produced by senior officials inside the national security state.”

Meanwhile…

ZNet:

“While the attention has been focused on the new NSA datacenter in Utah, a re-evaluation, 3 years into the Federal Datacenter closure program, identifies an additional 3,000 facilities that fall under the closure consolidation mandate. Granted, under the loose definition of datacenter that the government is using that could mean 3,000 racks hidden in 3,000 utility closets throughout the country, but how can any organization not know where its data processing and storage facilities actually reside?”

They’re watching. And we should be told…

Photo: Pro-democractic legislator Claudia Mo holds a copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” next to a picture of U.S. President Barack Obama and Edward Snowden during a news conference in Hong Kong Friday, June 14, 2013. Two lawmakers in Hong Kong said on Friday that they had written to U.S. President Obama to try to persuade him not to bring charges against the former US intelligence contractor Snowden. Snowden revealed last weekend he was the source of a major leak of top-secret information on NSA surveillance, saying he was uncovering wrongdoing. He spoke to reporters from an undisclosed location in the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Julia Gillard has recovered from the salamists sandwich tossers to be affronted by a whole menu of food. On the Reef & Beef menu at a Liberal party fundraiser held at the Richards and Richards restaurant on March 28 was a fried quail meal consisting of “small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box“.

But the menu was a fake. It wasn’t the official one.

But when the fake menu was tweeted by David Carter @chef09876, the news went global.

When asked for more information, Carter said he has “no idea” if the menu was on any tables. You see, he “wasn’t even working there at the time”. His position had been “terminated“.

Carter went on the telly:

But the menu wasn’t real. The owner of the eatery wrote to Mal Brough. Joe Richards said it was meant as private joke. The menu was never distributed at the $1000 a head fundraiser. He wrote:

Dear Mal,

I have been following the rubbish that has been on the news today. I would like to confirm what actually happened: there were never any menus distributed on the tables or in the restaurant. I created a mock menu myself as a light-hearted joke, however as I said I never produced them for public distribution. Unfortunately a staff member saw the mock menu, and unbeknownst to myself, posted it on their facebook. It now appears that a third party for political reasons has distributed it, yet I can reassure you that no such menu was distributed on the night. As you know no one at the dinner was privy to such a menu, and it is so unfortunate that an in-house joke between myself and my son has caused you great problems and embarrassment.

Regards,

Joe Richards

Chairman

But the press had a story.

The Daily Mirror thundered:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has hit back after an opposition party fundraiser menu featured a dish named after her that offered “small breasts” and “huge thighs”.

The menu was used at a dinner in March for Mal Brough, an opposition candidate for the September national elections.

No. It was a crap joke produced by the restaurant’s owner.

The BBC went with:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said a menu for an opposition party fundraiser that made crude comments about her body was “grossly sexist” …

The menu was for a dinner for Liberal National Party candidate Mal Brough.

AFP sent it around the world: 

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday accused the opposition of a pattern of misogynist behavior, branding a menu for a party fundraiser “grossly sexist and offensive” after it featured a quail dish named after her that offered “small breasts” and “huge thighs.”

The menu was used at a dinner in March for Mal Brough …

Katharine Murphy told her Guardian readers:

The Australian prime minister has again been forced to confront sexism in the country’s politics after it emerged that the menu at an opposition fundraising dinner offered “Julia Gillard quail … with small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box.”

Wow! So much reporting based on the tweet of a part-time chef, who got it wrong.

As for the sexism, well 6PR DJ Howard Sattler asked Gillard if her partner Tim Mathieson was gay.

A veteran Australian radio host has been suspended for asking Prime Minister Julia Gillard on air whether her partner is gay.

Sattler: “Tim’s gay?” 

Gillard: “Well, that’s absurd.”

Sattler: “But you hear it. He must be gay – he’s a hairdresser … It’s not me saying it – it’s what people say.”

Oh, Australia…

NOW that Northern Ireland is more peaceful place, it’s encouraging to see it being picked to host the laste G8 bunfight. The great and good (and look out for Mr G9 Bono in attendance) will mass at the Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh:

The Resort is the ultimate expression in old world heritage and new world luxury, set on its very own 600 acre peninsula, between Castle Hume Lough and Lower Lough Erne, just outside Enniskillen, with stunning panoramic views from almost every vantage point. 

Unless you look to the right and see the barbed wire, armed uniformed goons and balaclava enthusiasts…

PS – When we’ve got them locked up inside, can we leave them there?

mbargoed to 0001 Tuesday June 11. PICTURE POSED BY MODEL: Temporary cell blocks which have been built at Omagh police station in Co Tyrone, which are being made available for G8 summit protests.
Issue date: Tuesday June 11, 2013. The police have diverted extra investigators, translators and forensic medical officers to the two custody sites at a former military barracks in Omagh and Musgrave Street station in Belfast to ensure cases are brought to court as quickly as possible. See PA story ULSTER G8 Courts. Photo credit should read: Paul Faith/PA Wire

Divers check water features in fields near Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

Razor wire is laid in fields near Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

A Water cannon at the main checkpoint and security fence near Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

Sign on the security fence near Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

Police man a checkpoint at the entrance to Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

A Water Cannon passing miles of fencing erected around Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

Razor wire is laid in fields near Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

A Water Cannon passing miles of fencing erected around Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

Main checkpoint and security fence near Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh, venue for next weeks G8 summit.

NICK GRiffin, the BNPs’ monocular head, is in the Middle East? He wants us all to guess why? Our guess was that he’d read his own placards and was only obeying orders:

But KarlRemarks other ideas?

Is he “about to relaunch the Crusades”?

Griffin says he’s conducting research.

BNP leader Nick Griffin during a demonstration in Westminster in central London on June 1.

Well, his beloved St George of England was born in Syria:

Spotter: photo via Ronnie Joyce.

MEXICO is a weird and wonderful country, but surely no-one could’ve ever expected that, within its borders, a cat would be elected to run for mayor.

Morris has been put forward as the citizens’ candidate for elections taking place on July 7th and cat-lovers are probably chortling to themselves as they say “Well! He can’t do any worse than the humans! HAR HAR!” Obviously, you’d need to say that in a Mexican accent for it to work.

If Morris were to win, he would become the mayor of Veracruz state capital Xalapa.

His campaign slogan is ‘Xalapa Without Rats‘, and he currently comes second of the four candidates with the amount of ‘likes’ his Facebook page has gathered.

Crivens.

According to his campaign, Morris insists that although he is likely to cause a mess on a regular basis, at least he will cover it up and not leave it lying around for everyone else to clean up.

He also lists his weaknesses as “quilts, sheets, pillows, couches and clothing in general”.

However, one thing worth thinking about – Morris has nine lives, so if he’s despotic, he may never leave office.

One moment you’re news, the next moment you’re stood around with your hands in his pockets, and your press secretary, Julian Leembruggen, is wondering where his life is heading.

YouTube link.

JAMES CAAN, star of BBC Dragon’s Den and would-be baby buyer is working as Nick Clegg’s “social mobility czar”. The pair hooked up to lunch an initiative called of Opening Doors. On page one of his manifesto, Clegg writes:

Fairness is a fundamental value of the Coalition. Government. A fair society is an open society. A society in which everyone is free to flourish and rise. Where birth is never destiny. In Britain today, life chances are narrowed for too many by the circumstances of their birth: the home they’re born into, the neighbourhood they grow up in or the jobs their parents do. Patterns of inequality are imprinted from one generation to the next.

The true test of fairness is the distribution of opportunities. That is why improving social mobility is the principal goal of the Coalition Government’s social policy.

By definition this is a long-term undertaking. There is no magic wand we can wave to see immediate effects. Nor is there a single moment, or particular age, when the cycles of disadvantage can be broken for everyone. The opportunity gap has to be addressed at every stage in the life cycle, from the Foundation Years through to the world of work. And Government cannot do it alone. Employers, parents, communities and voluntary organisations all have a part to play.

Tackling the financial deficit is the Coalition’s most immediate task. But tackling the opportunity deficit – creating an open, socially mobile society – is our guiding purpose.

Nick Clegg MP

Deputy Prime Minister

Good stuff. And then we all noticed that Caan had employed one of his daughters in three separate roles and another worked for a company he had invested in.

Clegg, of course, benefitted from his dad getting him an internship at a Finnish bank.

Says Clegg:

“I am a parent, I want to do the best for my child, every parent does. I don’t want us to deny parental instinct. You shouldn’t be sanctimonious about this. All I’m saying is governments, businesses, those who can open doors to youngsters who don’t have the luck and good fortune of having supportive parents and families, I think should do so. Not only because it’s good for youngsters but it’s good for them as well – it’s good for governments, good for business, it makes sense all round.”

What was that bit about birth and destiny “never” being entwined?

At least we know why these celebrity preachers are called Czars.

A few other selected highlights from Clegg’s big plan:

There is a long way to go. The income and social class of parents continue to have a huge bearing on a child’s chances The influence of parental income on the income of children in Britain is among the strongest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Parental income has over one and a half times the impact on male incomes in Britain compared with Canada, Germany and Sweden. The lack of social mobility is damaging for individuals. It also leaves the country’s economic potential unfulfilled

.…

Our goal is to make life chances more equal at the critical points for social mobility such as: the early years of development; school readiness at age five; GCSE attainment; the choice of options at 16; gaining a place at university or on an Apprenticeship; and getting into and on in the labour market.
…

Getting on in work should be about merit not background.
…

We need to ensure that the jobs market is fair all the way up to the very top. Success should be based on what you do, not who you know

…

In a fair society what counts is not the school you went to or the jobs your parents did, but your ability and your ambition. In other words, fairness is about social mobility – the degree to which the patterns of advantage and disadvantage in one generation are passed onto the next. An unfair society is one in which the circumstances of a person’s birth determine the life they go on to lead.

He’s not a politician. He’s a ruddy missionary.

More here.

Lord Hylton and his beard

LORD Hylton, a parliamentary crossbencher is upset that homosexuals “stole” the word gay. Says he to the House of Lords:

“I regret very much that the fine old English and French word ‘gay’ has, in my lifetime, been appropriated by a small but vocal minority of the population.”

He adds:

“The result is that it can no longer be used in its original and rather delightful meaning. Now, under the pretext of securing equality, Her Majesty’s Government are proposing to change the meaning of marriage. It is surprising that the leaders of the Conservative Party, who might be expected to uphold traditional values, should lend themselves to this attempt.”

When did it change?

Jeremy Thorpe, the former Liberal leader, is said to have used the word gay to mean homosexual in the early 1960s. Lord Hylton was born in 1932. Might it have been that he was late to see what gay meant? The OED tells us:

The present work reviews all of the older senses of the word (noble, bright, light-hearted and merry, dissolute, etc.) from the Middle Ages onwards, and then looks in particular at borderlines: in particular, the shady border between pre-1940s use in homosexual contexts and post-1940s use when gay was used explicitly with reference to homosexuals. The entry presents (in parentheses) a number of early usages of the word in contexts where a present-day reader might jump to the conclusion that the sense ‘homosexual’ was intended, but where from consideration of the overall history this cannot be confidently asserted. The entry also finds the noun use as early as 1953 (previously 1971).

The British Library says the word is changing:

The 2003 addition records the new slang sense which is now commonly used by many UK teenagers in informal colloquial contexts, where gay is used as a synonym for socially inappropriate or disapproved of. There is anecdotal evidence that gay in this new slang sense has been diffusing through UK schools for ten years, but the first citation here, from the US, is from 1978.

In trying to make words stand still and own them, Hylton looks ridiculous. Our patron, Old Mr Anorak, has a poof in his chambers. He’s delighted that the word has now been reclaimed from the illiberal anti-homosexual jokers of the 1970s. He sits on his poof with ease.

In Kingsley Amis’s guide, The King’s English, the writer considers the word gay:

The use of this word as an adjective or noun applied to a homosexual has received unusually prolonged execration. The “new” meaning has been generally current for years. Gay lib had made the revised Roget by 1987 and the word itself was listed in the 1988 COD under sense 5 as a homosexual . . . And yet in this very spring of 1995 some old curmudgeon is still frothing on about it in the public print and demanding the word “back” for proper heterosexual use . . . [O]nce a word is not only current but accepted . . . no power on earth can throw it out . . . The word gay is cheerful and hopeful, half a world away from the dismal clinical and punitive associations of homosexual.

The OED entry for Gay traces its changing definition from light and carefree to homosexual and, more recently, feeble (see playgrounds).

In time, homosexuality may well need a new word. We’d suggest Hylton or the snappier Hyl as in ‘He’s bit Hyl’. Or why not look to m’lord’s de-pomped name, Raymond Jolliffe. Maybe Ray could be the new gay? Best to play around with the words, try them out and see which one catches on. And ditch the beard.

Photo: United Kingdom’s House of Lords Member Lord Hylton, left, and Qatar’s Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs minister Faisal Al Mahmood attend the opening ceremony of The Fourth Conference on Dialogue between Religions held in Doha, Qatar on Tuesday, April 25, 2006. Eye to the front, m’lud. Eyes to the front.

Born 22 April 1870, this is Lenin in aged 3 or 4. 

Age 6 or 7.

The youthful revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin photographed in February of 1897 in St. Petersburg.

The Russian inscription on his right says: ““at this time, Lenin, the generous teacher of Stalin, started in Petersburg to further the fundamental principles of Bolshevism.” 

Vladimir Lenin shown in workmen’s clothes around July 1917. 

Vladimir Lenin at early middle age, date unknown.

Vladimir Lenin, revolutionary leader of the first government of Soviet Russia, poses in his study at the Kremlin in Oct. 1918. 

1920: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars

This is a 1921 photo of Vladimir Ilich Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov) speaking at a celebration in Russia.

Vladimir Lenin poses for a photographer in this 1922 photo.

Also 1922.

Recuperating from mysterious ailment at a sanitarium –in 1923.

Premier of the Soviet Government of Russia, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, lying in state on Feb. 9, 1924 in Moscow. 

This huge mosaic head of Vladimir I. Lenin hangs in Moscow’s Palace of Congresses on April 21, 1969. The crowd below is observing his 99th birthday. The 100th birth celebration promises to be one of the biggest jubilees ever observed in the Soviet Union. 

And those statues…

Two Russian soldiers, now prisoners of war, inspect a giant statue of Lenin, somewhere in Russia, on August 9, 1941, torn from its pedestal and smashed by the Nazis in their advance. Note the rope round the neck of the statue, left there in symbolical fashion by the Nazis.

A crowd gathers near a statue of Lenin after being dismantled in Riga, Latvia on Sunday, August 25, 1991. Latvia, along with Estonia and Lithuania, has intensified their struggle for independence since the failed Kremlin coup.

Young girl student wears cap similar to one on head of Lenin sculpture in Warsaw’s Zacheta exhibition hall, Poland on Tuesday, April 22, 1970. Sculptor Jan Kucz created the Lenin head which along with other art works are being shown in connection with Lenin’s centenary birthday on April 22.

Young children touch the fallen statue of former Communist leader Vladimir Lenin in Valmiera, a small town of Soviet Latvia Republic, which has declared independence from Russia, on Oct. 1, 1990. The local city government approved the dismantling of the statue. 

A seven-ton bronze statue of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilich Lenin is taken down in front of the State Publishing House, former home of the Communist newspaper Date: 03/03/1990

The huge granite head of Berlin’s Lenin statue is hanging at a crane during its dismantling in Berlin November 13, 1991. After four days of preparation the 63 feet tall statue comes down. 

This photo shows children playing on the fallen statue of Vladimir Lenin in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Friday, Aug. 30, 1991. The statue was toppled following the failed Kremlin coup.  Date: 30/08/1991

One of Russia’s best-known statues of Vladimir Lenin damaged by a blast is seen in St. Petersburg, Russia Wednesday, April 1, 2009. The blast hit the towering statue Tuesday night, in the square outside Finland Station in St. Petersburg. The bronze statue, portraying Lenin with his arm raised, commemorates a speech he gave outside the station when he returned to Russia from exile in April 1917, a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution

Georgian soldiers participating in NATO training exercises walk near a broken statue of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, foreground, at Vaziani military base, a former Soviet military facility, outside Tbilisi, Georgia, Sunday May 31, 2009. 

AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Julia Gillard is the target for Salamist sandwich tossers. In early May, Amy Remeikis reported:

There was one student holding a handwritten “Kevin Rudd 2013” sign. There were a few more who spoke about Mr Rudd … Somewhere in there, half a Vegemite sandwich was thrown, allegedly by a student.

The culprit was dealt with:

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard says she’s treating a sandwich attack at a Queensland school as a laughing matter – but won’t be offering a Prime Ministerial pardon. Kyle Thomson, 16, has been suspended for 15 days after being blamed for throwing the sandwich as an otherwise friendly group of students mobbed the PM.

She said:

“I didn’t see a sandwich in the air. I did see half a sandwich on the ground.”

An investigation was demanded:

Kyle’s mother believes her son is being unfairly blamed for the incident and has demanded all footage from the visit be reviewed to find the real culprit.

And then in happened again in Canberra:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has had a sandwich thrown at her during a school visit for the second time this month.

Ms Gillard was walking in a crowded foyer at Lyneham High School – where she was announcing the ACT had signed up to her Gonski reforms – when the salami sandwich was thrown.

It was lobbed from behind, over the top of her head, and landed at her feet.

Stephanie Peatling told us:

The PM was not hit. I repeat the PM was not hit by the sandwich. 

But:

The bread-based missile, which appeared to contain salami and what was possibly a slice of cheese, was lobbed by an as-yet unidentified culprit in a crowd of students. It is reported to have hit her arm before falling to the ground …

File under: Sandwich monkeys…

Spotter: Tim Blair

THE murder in Woolwich has all the hallmarks of a religiously motivated attack. One of the two murderers said to camera:

We swear by the Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. The only reason we have killed this man this is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth … 

An eyewitness says the killers screamed “god is Great” in Arabic before murdering:

“I saw a guy with no head lying on the ground. He had been decapitated. There were two black guys walking around his body saying ‘This is what God would’ve wanted’. 

They told Ingrid Loyau-Kennett:

The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold. . . .The unwarranted snooping, which was revealed last week, would be troubling enough if it were an isolated incident. But it is part of a pattern that threatens to redefine investigative reporting as criminal behavior.

Jack Shafer:

The AP story that has so infuriated the government described the breakup of an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula plot to place an underwear bomber on board a U.S.-bound airliner. Published on the afternoon of May 7, 2012, the story patted itself on the back for having heeded the White House and CIA requests to not publish the previous week, when the AP first learned of the operation. The AP states in the article that it published only after being told by “officials” that the original “concerns were allayed.” In a chronology published in today’s Washington Post, we’re told that the CIA was no longer resisting publication of the AP story on the day it hit the wire (Monday) and that the White House was planning to “announce the successful counterterrorism operation that Tuesday.”

That may be the case, but the government was still incensed by the leak. In fact, it appears that officials were livid. As my Reuters colleagues Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria reportedlast night, the government found the leak so threatening that it opened a leak investigation beforethe AP ran its story…

…the perpetrators of a successful double-agent operation against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would not want to brag about their coup for years. Presumably, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will now use the press reports to walk the dog back to determine whose misplaced trust allowed the agent to penetrate it. That will make the next operation more difficult. Other intelligence operations — and we can assume they are up and running — may also become compromised as the press reports give al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula new clues.

Likewise, the next time the CIA or foreign intelligence agency tries to recruit a double agent, the candidate will judge his handlers wretched secret keepers, regard the assignment a death mission and seek employment elsewhere.

Greenwald:

LEADING foreign dictator Robert Mugabe – some say he’s the best in his field – has seen to it that a lecturer who called him  “a rotten old donkey” has been jailed for three months.

Chenjerai Pamhiri, 38, a lecturer at Great Zimbabwe State University in Masvingo city, was convicted in a Zimbabwe court for standing in a supermarket and shouting “dirt which should be discarded, a rotten old donkey” in reference to the country’s President. He was swiftly arrested.

CAN a person’s muscles dictate their politics?

Men who are physically strong are more likely to take a right wing political stance, while weaker men are inclined to support the welfare state, according to a new study.

Researchers discovered political motivations may have evolutionary links to physical strength.

Men’s upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, according to the research.

More power to your elbow:

Put another way, this study says that liberals are a coalition of rich wimpy men and strong poor men. By contrast, conservatives are a coalition of rich strong men and poor weak men.

Women are universally weak so don’t figure in the study.

Spotter: Instapundit

NIGEL Farage, the UKIP leader, was shouted and screamed at in Edinburgh. The MEP was forced to escape the crowd in a police riot van. The gaggle of self-declared anti-racists and Scottish nationalists joined forces to create an illiberal mob.

When nationalists and anti-racists join forces, something’s a bit smelly. They called Farage a racist and a homophobe. They demanded that the man they call intolerant and insular get off “their” streets.

Farage was forced to leave the Canon’s Gait pub when the landlord had enough of the aggro. Farage tried to get in a tax but the driver refused to take him. Then another declined to pick him up. So the police bundled him back inside the boozer, blocked the door and called for the van.

Farage told media:

“We’ve never, ever, ever had this kind of response. Is this a kind of anti-English thing? It could be.”

As one site puts it:

NIGEL Farage stared through the looking glass yesterday as he was besieged in an Edinburgh pub by demented nationalists. The UKIP leader had gone to Scotland to talk about why the country you come from is the most important thing about you, but was forced to flee by some furious Scottish people who believe exactly the same thing…

Bill McKay, a Scottish Farage, said: “I want to kill that posh English bastard and his message of hate.”

YouTube link.

Does he know why the State subpoenaed phone records of Associated Press reporters? He just doesn’t know.

Dans Milbank:

“In a sense, the two topics that dogged Holder most on Wednesday — the AP phone records and the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups — were one and the same. In both cases, Americans are being punished and intimidated for exercising their right of free expression — by the taxing authorities, in the conservatives’ case, and by federal prosecutors, in the reporters’ case.”

Jim Treacher:

“I stopped watching The Daily Show the day after the ’04 election, because Jon Stewart’s open grief was too much to bear. (I was a different person then.) Plus, once I saw through his Clown Nose Off/Clown Nose On routine — ‘You should listen to me because what I’m saying is important, but I’ll brush off your rebuttal by insisting I’m just a comedian’ — it was like the optical illusion with the cows. It might take you a minute to see it, but once you do, you can’t unsee it. Which just makes this all the more delicious.”

NFL player Evan Mathis, of the Philadelphia Eagles posted a picure of himself pissing on the IRS building.

James Bovard:

“The IRS has usually done an excellent job of stifling investigations of its practices. A 1991 survey of 800 IRS executives and managers by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed that three out of four respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie when testifying before a congressional committee. The agency also has a long history of seeking to intimidate congressional critics.”

Bryan Preston:

Steven Miller, the now resigned acting commissioner of the IRS, is telling staff that the abuse scandal is not the reason he’s leaving.

It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June,’ Miller wrote. “This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency.”

The Hill:

The testy press conference entrenched concerns at the White House and among its allies that the controversies could overwhelm Obama’s agenda.

“We now have focused the attention of everyone, including all of you, on the lengths to which the administration’s willing to go to quiet the voices of its critics,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday at a press briefing that addressed none of Obama’s legislative priorities.

The scandals also risk reinforcing and worsening some of the biggest criticisms of the president: that he is arrogant, secretive and interested in bending his political opponents to his will rather than in working with them.

USA Today:

In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like “Progress” or “Progressive,” the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.

Tim Carney:

“More than 75 percent of the campaign contributions from that office in the past three elections went to Democrats. In 2012, every donation traceable to employees at that office went to either President Obama or liberal Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The IRS officials whose names appear in the IG report are also Democrats with partisan histories. William Wilkins, IRS general counsel and one of the agency’s two explicitly political appointees, is a former Democratic congressional aide, lobbyist (clients included the Swiss Bankers Association), and Democratic donor. Joseph H. Grant, who ran the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division that includes the Cincinnati office, is a former Democratic staffer on the House Ways & Means Committee.”

Diane Patterson:

Would You Believe The Administration Got Phone Records of The House Of Representatives.

That’s the revelation made by California Congressman Devin Nunes, who sits on the House Ways And Means Committee on Hugh Hewitt’s Show Wednesday night. Here’s the key part of that transcript:

HH: The idea that this might be a Geithner-Axelrod plan, and by that, the sort of intimation, Henry II style, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest, will no one rid me of these turbulent Tea Parties, that might have just been a hint, a shift of an eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice. That’s going to take a long time to get to. I don’t trust the Department of Justice on this. Do you, Congressman Nunes?

DN: No, I absolutely do not, especially after this wiretapping incident, essentially, of the House of Representative. I don’t think people are focusing on the right thing when they talk about going after the AP reporters. The big problem that I see is that they actually tapped right where I’m sitting right now, the Cloak Room.

HH: Wait a minute, this is news to me.

DN: The Cloak Room in the House of Representatives.

HH: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

DN: So when they went after the AP reporters, right? Went after all of their phone records, they went after the phone records, including right up here in the House Gallery, right up from where I’m sitting right now. So you have a real separation of powers issue that did this really rise to the level that you would have to get phone records that would, that would most likely include members of Congress, because as you know…

HH: Wow.

DN: …members of Congress talk to the press all the time.

HH: I did not know that, and that is a stunner.

DN: Now that is a separation of powers issue here, Hugh.

HH: Sure.

DN: And it’s a freedom of press issue. And now you’ve got the IRS going after people. So these things are starting to cascade one upon the other, and you have the White House pretending like they’re in the clouds like it’s not their issue somehow.

And then there are the Banghazi lies.

BARACK Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden has news on guns:

“If we had guns that shot chocolate, not only would our country be safer, it would be happier.”

Chicago Gangsters agree. Now grab your Magnum and stick it to the man…

EMBROILED in scandal over Benghazi. Hilary Chabot writes in the Boston Herald:

President Obama’s angry dismissal of the growing outcry over the handling of last year’s Benghazi terrorist attack that left a U.S. ambassador dead shows all the signs of a White House in “damage control” mode, critics say.

“They are in damage control, and this story is now gaining traction because people are now talking about it even more,” said Richard Benedetto, an American University political science professor and former White House correspondent for USA Today. “This story to me has all the makings of a Watergate kind of story. What did they know and when did they know it, and what did people in the White House do to cover it up?”

And what about those IRS allegations? Hillary Chabot 
and O’Ryan Johnson write on the politicization of IRS audits:

Outraged Bay State Democrats are blasting President Obama for exhibiting a Nixonian abuse of power after the stunning news that the Department of Justice secretly obtained Associated Press phone records and the IRS targeted conservative groups — new scandals emerging against the backdrop of heightened Benghazi criticism.

“There’s no way in the world I’m going to defend that. Hell, I spent my youth vilifying the Nixon administration for doing the same thing. If they did that, there should be hell to pay,” U.S. Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Somerville) said about the IRS scandal. “Not only is it bad government and bad to society, it is horrendous politics. The worst thing you can do is give your opponent an easy hammer with which to hit you.”

“It doesn’t seem to be a couple rogue employees. This appeared to be a systemic issue,” said U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-South Boston), who wants to investigate the matter as a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee already has scheduled a hearing on the issue for this week, Lynch said, adding, “No American should find themselves the target of the IRS or any other federal organization because of their political beliefs.”

Both U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Malden) and the GOP’s Gabriel Gomez, rivals in the Senate special election, slammed the administration’s actions, as new reports emerged yesterday that the Department of Justice seized two months’ worth of phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors.

This is gangster politics. Obama is paranoid about leaks. As reported:

“The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.”

Washington Post: 

 “Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.”

The IRS apologised:

On Friday, the IRS apologized for targeting the groups, saying it was a decision made by career employees in an Ohio office in an effort to streamline the review process. The disclosure has led to heated criticism from Republicans, who are vowing investigations into the matter. The White House was also critical, as Press Secretary Jay Carney called the actions “inappropriate.”

A report on the matter from the Treasury watchdog overseeing the IRS is set to be made public this week.

But a leaked draft report was obtained by the Associated Press Saturday. The AP said the report found that senior IRS officials were aware of the targeting as early as 2011.

“They used key words to go after conservatives,” said Issa. “This is something where you have to institute changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“There’s got to be accountability,” he added.

You can read a timeline of the abuse of power here.

Most Transparent Administration in History Releases Completely Redacted Document About Text Snooping:

Totally Redacted FOIA response

Dick Cheney has this to say:

“When we were there, on our watch, we were always ready on 9/11, on the anniversary. We always anticipated they were coming for us, especially in that part of the world. I cannot understand why [members of the Obama administration] weren’t ready to go. … [It was] a failure of leadership.”

If Cheney is right and all warnings should be heeded, and when they are not then the buck stops with the chiefs, how did he remain as US Vice President after 9/11? The New York Times reported:

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” 

…

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

…

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” 

[On July 9]in Chechnya… Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. 

…

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

So. Dickey Cheney. Why wasn’t your role in 9/11 a failure of leadership..?