Extracts from Tony Blair’s autobiography A Journey show the former prime minister failed to "guess the nightmare that unfolded" despite repeated warmings from political veterans with close contacts to Iraq including Tony Benn.

The Labour leader turned peace envoy expresses his regrets to the families of the British soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed but once again justifies his decision to go to war based on faulty inteligence about weapons of mass distruction.

And he describes his political opponents -...

Surprise is the last thing that anyone ought to feel on hearing the news that the Obama administration “has shelved the planned prosecution,” in a trial by Military Commission, “of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen,” as the Washington Post reported on Thursday, or that senior officials are “alarmed” by negative responses to the trial by Military Commission of Omar Khadr, as the New York Times reported on Friday. The...

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The New Yorker has a revealing feature article on the billionaire brothers, David and Charles Koch, who allegedly provide the right-wing libertarian Tea Party movement with a lot of its funding.

‘The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products.

Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the...

Early bird tickets for Fashion on Trial on Wednesday, September 29 are now on sale. Leading up to the event the host for the evening, Tansy Hoskins, is publishing a series of articles on Counterfire - the first is reproduced here with photographs from last night’s Mutiny fancy dress organising meeting in Vintage Secret’s stockroom.


Tansy at Mutiny with Vintage Secret by the-sauce.org“A mild interest in the length of hem lines doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing...

Some interesting links for your delectation (and an important appeal for support):

justice4bolton’s urgent need to raise £35,000 (Socialist Resistance)

Sport: tearing up the rule books (Jim Jepps)

Lions and jackals: review of ‘The Leopard’ (Lindsey German at Counterfire)

Diane Abbott for Labour leader (A Very Public Sociologist)

Disgraceful: The Ground Zero Mosque Controversy (Andy Worthington)

As the leaves turn gold, the world economy chills (Paul Mason)


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As combat operations officially end in Iraq, nearly seven and a half years after the Bush administration’s illegal invasion, it is difficult to know how to summarize succinctly the tragic cost of the enterprise. I retain nothing but disdain — and a desire for accountability — for those who initiated this criminal, and criminally ill-conceived attempt at nation-building — primarily, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and British Prime Minister Tony...

Whilst I never take pictures of people, I liked this one from the other day at the dead site of the Crystal Palace.

Today, the General Medical Council unpicked another thread in the state’s case for denying justice to Ian Tomlinson’s widow and his children.

It comes as no surprise that the GMC has ruled that the pathologist Dr Mohmed ‘Freddy’ Patel failed to meet professional standards during post-mortem examinations in three cases between 2002 and 2005. I can still remember clearly how devastated my friends Rupert and Sheila Sylvester were back in 1999, when Patel wrongly announced to reporters that their son Roger,...

From the Press Association. More on this later.

A disciplinary panel has ruled that the pathologist who carried out the first autopsy on Ian Tomlinson who died at last year’s G20 protest in central London, acted in a way that amounted to misconduct during two earlier post-mortem examinations and his fitness to practise is impaired.

The panel also ruled that Dr Freddy Patel displayed deficient professional performance in a third post-mortem exam.

The panel had already concluded that Dr Patel was...

Last November, I was delighted to meet Peter Jan Honigsberg, Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco, and the author of Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror, when he enthusiastically agreed to show the Guantánamo documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) as part of my US tour of the film. Peter is also the director of the admirable “Witness to Guantánamo” project, which involves “conducting in-depth,...

I’ll be doing a talk at the Pages of Hackney bookshop on The Meaning of David Cameron, on Wednesday 3rd November. There will be loads of new material.Copyleft of Lenin’s Tomb

"An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday."The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago."The manner of...

Interview with Erich Fromm, which in just 5 minutes opens up so many possible discussions…



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‘Dismiss fashion as trivial and you dismiss the issues of workers rights, globalisation, the environment, cultural representation, identity construction and body image to name but a few.

From anti-Bush t-shirts to £10,000 dresses, the bits of cloth we put on our bodies all have history and meaning. Wear a hijab or the niqab and you’ll be attacked by Jack Straw and outlawed by the French Government. Wear a miniskirt and some courts will say that you are to blame for being raped. Since polyester is made...