Showing posts with label Political Animal Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political Animal Blog. Show all posts

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Labour begs for more!

Owen Glenn really is the gift that keeps on giving. At least the Labour Party think so because they are asking him for more money!

In the wake of The Winston Peters donation scandal, over secret money from Glenn and other sources, Labour Party President Mike Williams has had the temerity to meet with Glenn within the past few months, and beg for more money for the upcoming election.

Most Kiwis would be a little confused by all this though.

Why would you ask for more money from a donor that you have publicly ridiculed on more than one occasion, and had two of your ministers, Michael Cullen and Winston Peters, question Glenn's honesty?

The simple answer is that Labour are desperate. Only desperate and out of control individuals or groups would stoop this low.

Labour were embroiled in an Owen Glenn funding saga of their own earlier this year. That revolved around when certain money was given by Glenn to Labour, how much it was and whether it was a gift or a loan.

They pretty much had done their dough with Glenn at that point because they dissed him in a highly public arena just after the scandal broke out and for Mike Williams to get on his knees to Glenn again shows a double lack of respect for the man.

Considering Labour passed their anti democratic and poorly drafted Electoral Finance Act in December 2007, in Helen Clark's infamous words, "to stop big money from buying elections", to keep going back to a billionaire to fund your election campaign is highly hypocritical to say the least and highly desperate again if I am to be fully accurate with my choice of words.

Given that Helen Clark knew that Owen Glenn had given money to Winston Peters and Peters had lied about it, it isn't beyond the realms of possibility to think that Ms Clark told Mike Williams that Peters had received money from the billionaire but asked Glenn for more money under these highly suspect circumstances anyway.

Helen Clark meanwhile has been backward in coming forward about dispensing with Peters services, because she needed his votes to pass fraudulent legislation and she has gone to ground over that issue and today's revelation.

You can bet she knew about Mike Williams plea from Owen Glenn for more money but she will not speak to the media.

Meanwhile, Winston Peters has been "stood down" or "stood himself down" from his portfolios and the Serious Fraud Office is investigating the multifaceted inaccuracies of his donations web.

Peters has employed well known ambulance chaser Peter Williams QC, whose main claim to fame is a penchant for advocating for those whose personalities who have acquired the "victim hood mentality" and whipping up media coverage. Winnie clearly fits that description to a tee.

Kiwis have had a gutsful of Labour's duplicity and lies over the Glenn scandal, theirs and Winston Peters.

We all now need a chance to either vindicate the present Government or elect a new one.

Lets get it on!





c Political Animal 2008


Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Political Animal gets a visit from the Labour Party

http://www.dontvotelabourcartoons.com/gallery/cartoon32.jpg
How the staffers at the Labour Party Blog The Standard look in my imagination. They wont identify themselves, so this will have to do until they get the testicular fortitude to do so.


Although someone from Parliament or the Labour Party "rainbow youth" visits this site on the odd occasion , they were quick off the mark after the publishing of the connection between the Labour Party Blog, The Standard, and the bugging of the National Party Conference last weekend.

*Please note that the visitor from Parliament went through the Labour Party Blog to get to mine.

Number of Entries:
Entry Page Time:
Visit Length:
Browser
OS
Resolution
2
6th August 2008 18:25:10
2 hours 4 mins 37 secs
MSIE 6.0
Windows XP
unknown
Returning Visits:
Location:
Hostname:
Entry Page:
Exit Page:
Referring URL:
0
Wellington New Zealand
pspc18-241.parliament.govt.nz (202.22.18.241) [Label IP Address]
darrenrickard.blogspot.com/2008/08/sub-standard-political-attack-backfires.html
darrenrickard.blogspot.com/2008/07/winston-peters-gets-donations-from-owen.html
www.thestandard.org.nz/?p=2685

The connections between The Standard and Labour are clearly in evidence here. Tipped off by a stooge at the Blog, a Labour minion visited not long after.

They spent over 2 hours here too, clearly they loved it!

Related Political Animal reading

Those behind Labour's Blogsite behind Labourgate affair
Sub-Standard Political attack backfires
Who is the deep throat?
Dirty, Filthy Politicians

c Political Animal 2008

Monday, July 14, 2008

Iraq Yellowcake clouds media judgement

The story below, about the removal of Saddam Hussein's Yellowcake uranium cache from Iraq, only came to my attention after being mentioned on the Leighton Smith show today. Today is the 14th of July but the story is dated 5th July.

The mainstream media have largely ignored it, we haven't seen it on our New Zealand TV screens, even though the likes of John Campbell from TV3 pushed the line constantly that Saddam had no WOMDs and the left salivated rabidly over President Bush's claims that Saddam was a threat to the West and those countries around Iraq. They were wrong dear reader.

Any self respecting media outlet or journalist would have reported this story and if they had a contrary stance before the July reportage, they are duty bound to backtrack, apologise for being wrong and then quit their jobs.

The facts are that sensationalists like John Campbell John Pilgered their way over the whole Iraq WOMD saga, so much so they ignored evidence to the contrary, evidence now uncovered and making its way to Canada to be used legitimately to produce electricity.

Even our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, and her cabinet flunkies got on the WOMD denial bus and are now left without a ticket and a bus running out of control down a really steep hill.

The spin put on the original AP story from some Internet outlets, like the New York Times and lefty hair brained bloggers, simply defies logic.

The evidence is there folks, end of story.

c Political Animal 2008



In a Monday June 9, 2003 file photo, UN inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) work at the nuclear facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, 50 kms east of Baghdad. The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program _ a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium _ reached a Canadian port Saturday, July 5, 2008, to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das, file)

AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.

The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.

"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.

The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.

And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger — and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims — led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.

Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.

Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.

"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.

Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.

Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.

An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.

But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.

At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers — some leaking or weakened by corrosion — and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.

In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.

On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.

The yellowcake wasn't the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.

Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.

The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.

The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.

Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.

But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive "hot zones" entombed in concrete during Saddam's rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take "many years."

The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.

A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.

A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

c Associated Press 2008

Friday, July 11, 2008

Tony Veitch and Fox stories cunning diversions

Although muck raking by the Labour Party has become something of an art form of late, and will no doubt become something of a masterpiece as the 2008 Election draws nearer, the distribution of news of the latest "wife-beating" scandal to hit New Zealand, Derek "The Muss" Fox, after Tony"left handed" Veitch, by a Labour staffer seems more of an inside job within the racist Maori Party, rather than another hole being dug by Ms Clark and her minions.

Besides the bloated porker Parekura "I want another sandwich" Horomia being threatened by Derek "I hate whitey" Fox and his running against Labour's Horomia, Labour has little else to gain by making this sort of move.

I could be wrong though, Labour have been on a suicide mission recently with bad news coming out every day from gaffs by ministers and bureaucrats. Only the Tony Veitch and Derek Fox stories have taken Ms Clark's crumbling goverment off the headlines as mainstream media "journalists" scramble for the salacious stuff.

These stories are indeed well timed and if one were a conspiracy nutbag, one might think of other motivations for people currently in power to leak these kinds of headline grabbing sagas.

It is classic Labour Party stuff.

The polls toll for Labour

Lets take a break
Is a coup against Helen Clark's leadership likely?

c Political Animal 2008