2004

Civilian Charged In Beating of Afghan Detainee (washingtonpost.com) A privately employed interrogator has been charged with assault over the case of an Afghan man who was beaten to death during three days of interrogation. According to a “source”, the CIA men then tried to blame the army: “Immediately after Wali’s death, he said, the CIA…

Mind you, this is funny enough to be worth blogging. The TUC’s report into the drunken brawl at the ASLEF barbecue is out. “After about half an hour the general secretary physically removed the president from the decking on which the bar becue had taken place,” says the report. “The general secretary was in the…

The US Department of Agriculture is obviously in mourning for Ronald Reagan, as they have acquired a federal judge’s ruling that chips – in fact, chips in *batter* – may be considered a vegetable. It seems, sadly, that despite the Reagan nostalgia (when ketchup was officially a vegetable for school dinners) this only applies to…

Well?

17% of a 40% turnout equals a thick 6.8% of the electorate. Get real.

How much worse can it get? Seymour Hersh, who broke the torture scandal in the first place, has this to say(via Brad DeLong): “He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said,…

To my horror I see I was very, very wrong about the local elections, specifically the BNP contribution. Looks like I spoke too soon. Poor Bradford will have to put up with some four fascists. Worst of all, one of them was elected for Keighley West! This is a shocker, as back in the riot…

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Election blow for Labour Still the horrors pour in. A good example of the rare case when Field Marshal Haig was wrong about “the situation never being as good or bad as first reports indicate”. The whipping is now up to 330 seats lost. Ouch! Pleasantly, though, it…

On my way to Big London yesterday, sitting in a slow train (and on South West Trains that’s really slow). About Hounslow way a school trip of girls was loaded into the carriage. Or should that be poured? I feared the worst and prepared to go into mindless tube mode, eyes blank, brain emptier, but…

This is the text of my resignation from the Labour Party, more than a year ago today. Alexander Harrowell (address here) 08/05/03 Party No. B045893 Dear General Secretary, One week ago I decided to destroy my Labour Party membership card and cancel my subscription. This letter is intended to be a formal statement of resignation,…