A couple of quick stories.

Firstly we need to note that it is a bad week for everyone who breach people's privacy for a living and not just News Corporation employees. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (the British version of the NSA) are all facing funding cuts and shock horror the Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary committee, wants some oversight over the operational activities of all three services. The article is perhaps most noteworthy however for helping me realise the gulf between myself and the establishment

GCHQ director Iain Lobban also says he is having trouble retaining sufficient numbers of suitably-qualified internet specialists.

"I need some real internet whizzes in order to do cyber," he told the committee.

"They will be working for Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whoever. And I can't compete with their salaries. I can offer them a fantastic mission, but I can't compete with their salaries.

"But I probably have to do better than I am doing at the moment, or else my internet whizzes are not going to stay… and we do have a steady drip, I am afraid .

"Month‑on‑month, we are losing whizzes who'll basically say 'I'm sorry, I am going to take three times the salary and the car and whatever else'."

I didn't think anyone talked like that anymore. Perhaps we can apply to the IMF for a bridge loan so as to damn the tide of Whizz loss?

and Secondly a news bulletin this morning relating to violence at a memorial service for Ahmad Wali Karzai, Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half brother was the straw that broke the camel's back. The article states:

Ahmad Wali Karzai, a controversial but key figure in Nato's battle against the Taliban, was killed by his bodyguard.

Now while it is fair to say that "controversial" has a fairly wide scope in a country as unstable as Afghanistan but it does imply his views prompted disagreement rather than his actions. His actions really should provoke more than controversy given he was a Drug Lord and CIA Asset. But the latter probably explains why anywhere above the fold or the first few paragraphs his nature will and can only be referred to as "controversial".

The onion is supposed to be satire damnit

A more serious 9/11 post.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

- Henry Kissinger 1973.

September 11th 1973 is a date which should be remembered by all citizens of the United States but it is unsurprisingly a date brushed under the carpet, unworthy of mention on Wikipedia's front page "on this day section."

September 11th 1973 was the culmination of a 3 year long US plot to overthrow the left leaning democratically elected government of Chile lead by Salvador Allende. During this plot strenuous efforts were made to destroy Chile's economy and to encourage the Chilean military to overthrow civilian government by the CIA and other US government agencies which was accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign both within Chilean and internationally to undermine Chilean democracy.

On that day 37 years ago the military finally moved in to end democracy in the country and Allende killed himself rather than be captured, his death one of around 3200 people killed by the Pinochet dictatorship that ruled the country after the US backed coup. Around a further thirty thousand Chileans were placed in concentration camps and tortured. This is in contrast to the 2977 who died on September 11th 2001. But hey a predictable backlash given US foreign policy is so much worse than the destruction of South America's oldest democracy and replacing it with a Military dictatorship that killed more people.

Predictably for a US backed regime the plight of the poor got worse under Pinochet, with the gap between rich and poor widened and Trade unions banned. Absurdly Chile under Pinochet is held up as an economic success story by Friedmanites, these free market advocates neglect to mention that Chile's biggest source of income and economic growth during the period (as it is today) was copper mining. The copper mines were publically owned, nationalised by Allende and kept hold of by Pinochet. But as ever with rightists, theres nothing wrong with government interference in the market if it benefits them.

You can read a much more indepth summary of this here. I highly reccomend you do.

Finishing Schools vindicated

Attempts by the US Government and Military to prove that traditional methods of creating civilised people, such as those employed finishing schools could be bettered by a system of abduction and torture in concentration camps over several years followed by release to an allied brutal dictatorship. However after nearly a decade of study it seems the American experiments have failed: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201062013047249951.html

Seriously though, who would have expected victims of abuse and torture to still hate the people who did that to them??

Ex-CIA man lies about regional strong man!

"Ex"-CIA man Robert Grenier uses his regular AJE editorial column to write about Ahmed Wali Karzai the younger half brother of the puppet that has fallen out of favour Hamed Karazi. In the piece he writes about the unfortunate emergence of Karzai the younger due to unforeseen consequences of US government action. Yet strangely US Government officials seem to think that Wali emerged quite deliberately as a result of CIA policy. Furthermore the US military seems to think this CIA asset is following in the agency's long tradition of also being heavily involved in the international drug trade.

It is thus troubling but also mildly funny that the "ex"-CIA man comes to the conclusion that we must "grudgingly" accept this CIA backed drug lord as a necessary evil in securing the support of Afghanistan's population now he has inadvertently risen to prominance. A wonderful post facto justification of an installed strongman. That supporting him is apparently necessary to combat the Taliban, another agency created group, just adds to the Irony.

If you ever want to know what the CIA's spin on a paticular issue is Grenier's editorials are well worth a read.