Former British prime minister Tony Blair has acknowledged that he ignored the warning of his then-Attorney General that attacking Iraq was illegal without United Nations approval.

Mr Blair, who was summoned on Friday for a second time by the official inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war, said he believed the warning was provisional.

During a four hour appearance, he said he thought the Attorney General would change his mind on whether a second UN resolution was necessary when he knew the full details of negotiations that had been taking place.

He just cannot help himself. With half of eastern Australia a quagmire of endless heartbreak, with bodies still to be found, mourned and buried, there is Tony Abbott playing cheap politics yet again.

The government should abandon the $36 billion national broadband network and spend the money on reconstruction, he said on Tuesday. The network was "a luxury that Australia cannot now afford. The one thing you don't do is redo your bathroom when your roof has just been blown off.''

The Department of Homeland Security has released a trio of chilling PSA video clips in which ordinary everyday activities are characterized as signs of potential terrorism, with the public being indoctrinated to assume the role of domestic spies reporting on their friends and neighbors as America sinks deeper into a decaying police state.

He said Iran "is doing everything it can to impede progress in the Middle East peace process, and to facilitate a situation in which that region cannot embark on a process of modernisation it so urgently needs".

He added: "And this is not because we have done something. At some point - and I say this to you with all the passion I possibly can - the West has got to get out of what I think is this wretched policy, or posture, of apology for believing that we are causing what the Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing. The fact is we are not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12246410

from Crikey .....

The discredited agencies that drive Labor policy

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

"A fabulous Easter gift," commented Monsanto Director of Development Initiatives Elizabeth Vancil.

Nearly 60,000 seed sacks of hybrid corn seeds and other vegetable seeds were donated to post-earthquake Haiti by Monsanto. In observance of World Environment Day, June 4, 2010, roughly 10,000 rural Haitian farmers gathered in Papaye to march seven kilometers to Hinche in celebration of this gift.

Upon arrival, these rewarded farmers took their collective Easter baskets of more than 400 tons of vegetable seeds and burned them all!!

Tony Blair has appeared a day early at the Iraq Inquiry.

The iconic picture of him photographing himself with Iraq in flames in the background was projected onto the building opposite the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, where the Chilcot Committee will question Blair on Friday 21 January, and where Stop the War will hold a protest to demand that he is held to account for his war crimes.

Tony Blair Appears A Day Early At Iraq Inquiry

The possibility that 2010 would emerge as the warmest year on record was raised by scientists after the year began with a period of El Nino conditions - unusually warm waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere.

However, a switch to the opposing La Nina conditions halfway through the year cast doubt on whether the record would be broken.

Although December was exceptionally cold in some places - the coldest for 100 years across the UK - other regions, such as Greenland and eastern Canada, saw unseasonably warm weather.

The WMO notes a number of extreme weather events ocurring during 2010, including:

Chinese President Hu Jintao has acknowledged that "a lot still needs to be done" in China over human rights.

Mr Hu was speaking at a rare joint news conference with US President Barack Obama on the first full day of his state visit to the US.

Asked to justify China's human rights record, Mr Hu said China had "made enormous progress recognized in the world".

Mr Obama said he saw China's "peaceful rise" as good for the United States.

"The US has an interest in seeing hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty," Mr Obama said.

The United States was advised to adopt a policy of "covert sabotage" of Iran's clandestine nuclear facilities, including computer hacking and "unexplained explosions", by an influential German thinktank, a leaked US embassy cable reveals.

from Crikey .....

If voters can't trust their government to give them the full story how can they trust them enough to vote them back into power?

That's the question that the Keneally government faces in light of the extraordinary events in NSW since parliament was prorogued in December, events that have been partially eclipsed by a combination of Christmas holidays and devastating floods.

And we can only presume that that's exactly what the Keneally government wants.

When it comes to criticism, sometimes the harshest but most constructive feedback comes from friends.

This month, Australia's human rights record will be reviewed on the world stage under the United Nations' Universal Periodic Review process. This is a peer review in which, every four to five years, the human rights record of each of the 192 UN member countries is reviewed by the 191 other countries.

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations - detailing massive potential tax evasion - will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.

Here's the AAP story on today's Wikileaks rally in Sydney:

More than a thousand advocates of free speech have taken to the streets of Sydney in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Australian-born Mr Assange has enraged the United States by leaking American diplomatic cables that embarrassed world leaders.

This week, Anthony Albanese, the federal Labor member for Grayndler & husband of the state Labor member for Marrickville, Carmel Tebbutt, took a shot at Marrickville Council over its resolution last month to support a global boycott of things Israeli, in response to the Zionist government's ongoing crimes against the people of Palestine.

Now most people know that the Mayor of Marrickville Council is Greens member, Fiona Byrne, who will, coincidentally, come head-to-head with Carmel Tebbutt in the March state election.