The first public hearings of the Iraq Inquiry began yesterday amid protests outside demanding that Tony Blair & Gordon Brown be held to account for war crimes, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis & 179 British troops.

Joining the protest were representatives from Military Families Against the War, reminding the inquiry committee of the anger felt by many relatives of British soldiers killed in Iraq.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has urged his colleagues to unite behind him after a turbulent 24 hours for the Liberals which climaxed in the party's rejection of a move to hold a leadership spill.

The motion to hold a leadership ballot was brought on by backbencher Wilson Tuckey, but was voted down in the party room by 48 to 35 votes.

Mr Turnbull's leadership has been in dire trouble since he declared the Opposition would vote for the Government's amended emissions trading scheme (ETS) after a marathon day of meetings yesterday.

Rudd Labor was elected on a promise to "tackle climate change" but after signing the Kyoto Protocol in December 2007 (10 years late) it helped the US (the stand-out non-ratifier of the Kyoto Protocol) to sabotage the Bali Climate Change Conference (December 2007) and then the Poznan Climate Change Conference (December 2008) by refusing to commit to targets.

When General Suharto, the west's man, seized power in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, he offered "a gleam of light in Asia", rejoiced Time magazine. That he had killed up to a million "communists" was of no account in the acquisition of what Richard Nixon called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in South-east Asia".

Today, hundreds of workers, clergy members, community leaders, and other taxpayers converged on the Washington, D.C. headquarters of Goldman Sachs to demand the bank put an end to multi-billion dollar bonuses, reject the Too Big To Fail Doctrine, and use their anticipated $23 billion bonus pool to help families facing foreclosure. Taxpayers also called on Congress to take immediate action on real financial reform.

Barack Obama used his first day in China to offer a carefully worded critique of Beijing's record on freedom of speech, telling an audience of students that it was good for leaders to be forced "to hear opinions that [they] don't want to hear".

But by the end of the day that pointed message had been wrapped in a deferential approach apparently designed to avoid any serious clash with America's largest foreign creditor.

from the Guardian

Barack Obama acknowledged today that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal at the Copenhagen summit in December and threw his support behind plans to delay a formal pact until next year at the earliest.

During a hastily convened meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from next month's meeting by aiming to make it a first-stage series of commitments rather than an all-encompassing protocol.

The awarding of development rights over the huge West Qurna oilfield in southern Iraq to Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell last Thursday once again underscores the criminal character of the continuing US-led occupation. As the direct result of the Iraq war, major American and other transnational energy conglomerates are now gaining control over some the largest oilfields in the world.

Brown's pledge to prevent future governments cutting overseas aid will appear as a draft bill only

By Jane Merrick and Brian Brady

From the Moscow Times

Power is measured by four criteria: the number of people whom the person exerts power over; the financial resources that the person controls, with a country’s gross domestic product used for heads of state; the number of spheres in which the person is influential; and the extent to which the person exercises his power.

from Crikey .....

Singling out Muslims for shock value

Yasmin Khan writes:

Every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by Britons is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies.

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by British law to keep a record of every customer's personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited.

Despite public opposition, 653 public bodies will have access to the data, including police, local councils, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

John Pilger: Peace awards & Obama's wars .....

US President Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, is planning another war to add to his impressive record.

In Afghanistan, his agents routinely extinguish wedding parties, farmers and construction workers with weapons such as the innovative Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of your lungs.

The United Nations has said 338,000 Afghan infants are dying under the Obama-led alliance, which permits only US$29 per head annually to be spent on medical care.