Tony Blair was heckled today as he refused to express any regret for the Iraq war and insisted Britain would ultimately be able to look back on the conflict with 'immense pride'. 

There were cries of consternation from witnesses watching the official inquiry into the conflict as the former prime minister rejected the chance to note his sorrow at the loss of British lives.

Chairman Sir John Chilcot had to tell audience members to be quiet during Mr Blair's closing comments, in which he insisted he stood by his actions in the run-up to the 2003 war, despite the 179 British troops killed in the conflict.

Last year I sat in my apartment trying to figure out what to do about Australia Day.

If you are in the UK the street surveillance is out of hand, does government really need a camera on every corner. The UK recently started a program enlisting covert human intelligence sources.

Children as young as eight have been recruited by councils to "snoop" on their neighbours and report petty offences such as littering, the UK Daily Telegraph disclosed.

The "covert human intelligence sources", as some local authorities describe them, are also being asked to pass on the names of neighbors they believe to be responsible, or take down their number-plates.

Cricket Australia's decision to nominate John Howard as its candidate for the top job at the International Cricket Council is as pitiful as it is disrespectful. Howard's knowledge of cricket is more characterised by enthusiasm than depth or imagination. Plain and simple, he is not qualified for the job. Moreover, the way in which he has been plucked from the sidelines shows CA in the worst possible light.

You will have read some of the reports. "His body is a mass of suppurating sores..." "A baby is on her back, her belly bloated and pronounced..." "This is what hell looks like and the people of Haiti are adrift in its lake of fire..."

The earthquake in Haiti has not only exposed the fragility of that Caribbean state - it has also revealed the British media to be stuffed with wannabe hack novelists more interested in providing horror-porn than factual analysis.

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great." Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base "shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order."

from Crikey .....

C'mon, Kev, show some guts: tell us where we're weak

Glenn Dyer writes:

Media images appear to be prime motivation this week in a collective, mobilized response underscored by Western guilt. Bombarded with dust-covered corpses, blood and broken bones, and bodies rotting in the hot sun, millions around the world have donated their money to various relief organizations in support of Haiti. The United States has even organized a text message campaign which allows cell phone users to donate as little as ten dollars by texting the word "Haiti" to a central national phone line.

Palestinian resistance to the theft of their country reached a critical moment in 2001 when Israel was identified as an apartheid state at a United Nations conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. To Nelson Mandela, justice for the Palestinians is "the greatest moral issue of our time."

Over the course of his first year in office, Barack Obama has shown himself to be a skillful and savvy politician, saying the things Americans want to hear while stealthily and inexorably moving forward the government's agenda of centralized power. For example, in one breath, Obama pays lip service to the need for greater transparency in government, while in another, he issues an executive order that will result in even more government secrecy.

from Crikey .....

ASIO, not the government, calling the shots on refugees .....

Jeff Sparrow writes:

So ASIO says that five of the unfortunates from the Oceanic Viking constitute a threat to national security.

Well here's a first - Alastair Campbell quoting the Bible. The moment occurs in an extraordinary blog he's posted today following his one-man show at the Chilcot Inquiry yesterday where he stood by "every single word" in the not-at-all-dodgy dossier and praised his old boss Tony Blair for "his deep conviction and integrity" as he made the difficult decision to follow George Bush to war.