BRITISH DONKEY SPAM AIDS WORRIES PATERSON

Horse meat scandal: 'More contaminated food likely to be found'

Horse meat could be found in even more British foods within days, ministers warned on Saturday.

 Britain has been eating scabby Romanian gypsy donkey..oh dear I do hope the British Government can try and sort this out without causing offence.

Telegraph claims horses in Romania affected by 'horse AIDS'.

Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said tests being held this weekend may well find more beef products contaminated with horse meat.

Officials at the FSA admitted that there have been no tests for horse meat content in British food for a decade, raising concerns that the scandal may have been hidden from the public for years.

Mr Paterson said retailers should remove products from shelves as soon there was any indication they might contain horse. Burgers and ready meals have already been withdrawn by Tesco, Findus and Aldi.

In a series of developments yesterday it emerged that:

• Twenty-eight local authorities have been instructed by the FSA to begin tests on a range of a limited number of beef products, including meat balls, burgers and lasagne ready meals;

• Mr Paterson said he believed there may be an “international criminal conspiracy”, while Scotland Yard met the FSA for talks but did not begin an investigation. Findus said it believed the contamination was “not accidental”;

• Horses in Romania — the source of the latest contamination — are “endemically” infected by a disease known as horse AIDS, although it does not pose a risk to humans;

• A French plant which handled horse meat sold in Britain as beef has previously been at the centre of a major E.coli discovery;

The latest developments came after Findus was forced to recall 18,000 packets of its frozen “beef” lasagne from supermarket shelves, and destroy another 200,000 held in storage, after it was discovered to be made up of between 60 and 100 per cent horse meat.

Aldi, the supermarket chain, also withdrew two of its ready meal lasagne and spaghetti ranges, which were found to contain between 30 and 100 per cent horse meat.

Mr Paterson ordered a summit in London yesterday with representatives of retailers and suppliers. After the summit, he issued the warning that more contamination was likely, saying there could be “bad results” from the tests now under way.

The 28 local authorities ordered to conduct tests have not been named but will be used as a sampling exercise to find the full scale of the contamination.

The tests will be the first in a decade. the FSA said it had previously only ordered tests on the basis of “intelligence” and none had been carried out since 2003, when Spanish-made salami was found to contain horse meat.

Mr Paterson said he feared the contamination was the result of crime and said: “This could be a question of gross incompetence but I’m now more concerned that there is actually an international criminal conspiracy here. This is a straight fraud. If a product says it’s beef and actually you are buying horse that is a fraud.”

He also said that retailers should products off the shelves as soon as there is a possible positive test for horse.

“Any retailer who becomes aware that a product has horse meat in it and withdraws it straight away will receive the full support of the Government,” he said.

Scotland Yard said it had met the FSA for discussions on possible criminal investigation but no inquiry had yet been launched.

However, one retailer warned that the complicated supply chains used by many suppliers made food safety hard to guarantee.

Dalton Philips, the chief executive of Morrisons, said that because the supermarket owned its own abbattoirs it could have absolute confidence in its products. “The truth is you have got to know your farmer.”

Fears over the safety of the horse meat are likely to be increased by the disclosure that Romania suffers from “endemic” infection of “equine anaemia”, or “horse AIDS”, which prompted a ban on live experts three years ago. Although it is not a danger to humans, experts said it could also suggest other health problems.

Meanwhile tests are taking place for the present of the horse painkiller bute, and Mr Patterson said that although no trace had yet been found, “we may discover that there may be other materials” in the horse meat.

Mr Paterson also suggested that retailers – rather than manufacturers - should ultimately take the responsibility for the content of the food they sell. The minister’s view may alarm corner shops and grocers who sell processed beef products, as they do not have the resources to test the content of food products.

Ministers have not ruled out actions against retailers in this country for failing to make adequate checks on their stock.

The horse meat crisis summit was held yesterday after Findus withdrew its meals last week. Yesterday it admitted that it first found traces of horse meat in its beef products on Tuesday 29 January.

However, it was not until Wednesday 6 January when Findus notified the FSA of the contamination, after it had carried out a range of tests including some DNA examinations of raw material at the factory where the meals were made in Luxembourg, which belongs to French food processor Comigel.

A spokesman for Findus said: “We are taking legal advice about the grounds for pursuing a case against our suppliers, regarding what we believe is their failure to meet contractual obligations about product integrity.

“The early results from Findus UK’s internal investigation strongly suggests that the horse meat contamination in beef lasagne was not accidental.”

It also emerged yesterday that Comigel last week told Findus that the contamination of its processed meat may stretch back to August last year.

However Findus said it was “not aware” of any issue of contamination with horse meat last year, adding: “We were only made aware of a possible August 2012 date through a letter dated 2 February 2013 from the supplier Comigel. By then we were already conducting a full supply chain traceability review and had pro-actively initiated DNA testing.”

Comigel, the French company which supplied meat to Findus and Aldi, has admitted that some of the horse in lasagne sold in Britain came from Romania, a country where equine infectious anaemia has become endemic.

Three years ago the European Union banned Romania from exporting horses with the disease and also banned live exports of all Romanian horses.

Romanian and Polish meat providers are supposed to comply with the same European-wide rules as British farmers, but it is up to authorities in individual members states to enforce these regulations. There is concern the Romanian authorities will have little resources or appetite to pursue suppliers responsible for contaminating British food.

By Robert Watts, Patrick Sawer and Laura Donnelly

100, 000+ Thousand March Against Austerity Ireland

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions,which organized the rallies, claimed more than 100,000 people attended, with 60,000 marching in Dublin. Demonstrators also protested in Cork, Galway, Limerick, Sligo and Waterford.

Union’s General Secretary David Begg suggested that the campaign against the debt will carry on until the European authorities honour the agreement to separate bank debt from sovereign debt.

"It would be fatal for people to believe this issue is now resolved and we can all move on," David Begg said. "At the onset of the crisis Ireland had one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios in Europe. The difference between then and now is due entirely to Ireland socializing bank debt at the behest of the ECB, to save the European banking system."

I've no confidence at all in the deal, it won't make any difference to ordinary people," said Alfie Murray who marching in Dublin with his 8-year-old grandson. "It's the next generation that'll shoulder the cost," he said.

Financial expert Marco Pietropoli explained that Irish per capita a far bigger bill than other countries. "Therefore they are suffering a great deal more.”

Pietropoli says that Ireland's situation is one of the most difficult in the EU and that Dublin's holding of the bloc's presidency isn't likely to make things any better.

“I don’t think the Irish with the presidency are necessarily going to be able to exert much pressure or much influence to actually change the situation in Europe, because the power remains with the Germans.”

Image from twitter user‏@kierfoley

Image from twitter user‏@gribers

Image from twitter user‏@Darren606

Con O'Driscoll

When we got to Cooke Street it was quarter past two having parked up in Thomas Street. Cooke Street was still packed with marchers end to end, AGSI lining up at the Christchurch end, Sinn Fein in the middle and the Communist Party of Ireland with a load of Belfast Trades who'd been decent enough to come down at the St Audoen's end. So me and. Y kids marched with the AGSI figuring if any hassle started that was likely the safest place to be. And because my family's got a load of guards past and present. In fact walking down by Dublin Castle I met my cousin who's a detective wearing his blue AGSI vest and I said to him "Yer grandad would be proud of ya" and he said "tis the first protest Ive attended without being paid to" and I said something like "Never too late to mend yer ways" and we had a laugh and a chat all down Dame Street. Very well mannered crowds the COPter overhead had nothing to report save overly conservative estimates as to numbers. If they'd kicked off at 1330 and were still leaving Cooke Street an hour later and were marching anything up to ten and twelve abreast someone do the math. Ended up in Merrion Square and the Union poobahs were making their speeches and I decided I'd heard what they had to say five years ago the last time or maybe four the last time Id been on a Mach like this. It Eas just as good tempered then too. Asides from the occasional Trot in Army Bargains surplus shouting at street corners about the property tax and the need for a national strike to show EUrope who's boss I saw no real anger. Reasonableness yes. Annoyance yes. Worry yes. No anger though. Wonder how long that'll last hopefully awhile yet. Wonder will AGSI great people for all they do to keep us safe will march again when things are less even tempered. If things are less even tempered I hope.

Kyerin

My mother was at the Dublin protest and she reckoned there were around 50,000 people there. When the first protesters arrived at Merrion Square her group had not even left Cook St. and they were not the last group either. She also felt the RTE coverage didn't give anything like an accurate picture of the amount of people there, in fact she was pretty disgusted with it.

Marty Carr

I thought protest meant riots.... when did the meaning of protests change!!!!

As for David Begg and the leaders of the Unions, you only have to check their salarys to know that they are not their for you, if you want to protest give up your union memebership and start your own amongst yourselves that has proper morals, for example the leadership cannot earn over the average industrial wage, and also is not allow to take salaries from multliple board memeberships like Begg has, sure he is complicit in the mess we are in.

Hanger on society we have!!!! its so depressing, thats why there are no new ideas!!!

Provisional Sinn fein

February 9th, 2013 - Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD

Sinn Féin respresentatives and activists were out in force to support ICTU’s anti-austerity rally today in Dublin.

Speaking after the event party spokesperson on social protection Aengus Ó Snodaigh said:

“We in Sinn Féin are proud to have supported ICTU’s ‘lift the burden’ rally today in Dublin.

“This week the government had an historic opportunity to secure a real reduction in the cost of the toxic banking debt foisted on the people by Fianna Fáil. Not only have Fine Gael and Labour wasted that opportunity, they have increased the cost of that burden for decades to come.

“The so-called deal will mean nothing to the families who are struggling to make ends meet. It will mean nothing to the mother who cannot put food on the table, to the father losing all hope of finding work, the family who have to wave goodbye to their loved ones at Dublin airport.

“The government is still pressing ahead with plans for water charges and a property tax – measures which will place even more of a burden on hard-pressed families.

“These issues and more made today’s rally all the more important.

“I hope that this will be the start of many popular demonstrations against the government’s reckless mismanagement of the economy.

“The message today was ‘lift the burden’ – I am calling on the government to listen to that message and realise that citizens cannot take anymore. We need a change of direction; we need a better fairer way.”

According to the SWP

"The energy to take resistance forward to a point where the country is shut down for a day will probably come from wider social movements – as occurred in Spain.

A national day of civil disobedience can bring together the growing movement against austerity and the increasing opposition to the waste of public money for these insane gambling debts.

This would involve walk outs from colleges, schools, workplaces as well as occupations and sit downs on roads.

Promoting and make concrete such a call should be a key task over the coming weeks. The government thinks it can contain demonstrations and marches such as we’ve seen so far so we need something different.

In the longer run, the power to terrify the political establishment lies in the workplaces and so the call for a national day of action must be part of a wider process of encouraging workers to use their industrial muscle to bring change.

In July 2013, for example, PAYE workers will face the prospect of their wage packets being raided once again by the Revenue Commissioners to collect the notorious property tax.

The more the movement builds up now to civil disobedience, the more likely it is that that grassroots of the union will remove or byepass that thin crust of union leaders whose primary loyalty is to the Labour Party when they see the effects of the property charge.

There can be a general stoppage in Ireland – but it won’t come without effort.

CIA CATHOLIC IRISH ALCOHOLIC Access UK Data

U.K. Warned-CIA Will Access All Government Data
By Conrad Jaeger

February 09, 2013 "Occupy.com" --  U.S. intelligence agencies will soon be able to trawl through all British government documents stored online including ministerial files, local authority records and public sector data thanks to an unchallenged amendment to a spy law in Washington.

Britain’s ambitious plans to store all government data on the so-called G-Cloud have led to warnings from the European Union that security will be compromised now that U.S. intelligence agencies have the legal right to survey all data held on U.S. owned Cloud services.

At least four U.S. companies are involved in the U.K. government’s G-Cloud project which Whitehall hopes will slash costs and “deliver fundamental changes in the way the public sector procures and operates.”

Eventually, it is hoped the G-Cloud will hold the bulk of State data in addition to that of schools, charities, the BBC and police, even the Bank of England.

While the recent amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) have received scant attention in the British Press, there are a few Members of Parliament so concerned that they want Britain to think about ending all intelligence cooperation with the U.S.

“The Americans have got to remember who their allies are and who their enemies are,” Conservative MP David Davis told The Independent, warning of “a whole cascade of constitutional and privacy concerns for ordinary British people”.

Cloud storage is increasingly popular in the U.K. where around 35 per cent of businesses and an unknown number of private users employ some form of remote storage from U.S. based companies like Apple, Amazon and Google. The government wants to see even greater use of Cloud storage across all sectors in what it describes as a robust “public cloud first policy.”

The FISA amendments now give the CIA and NSA the right to access all this data not just in Britain or Europe, but anywhere in the world. U.S. citizens are excused this intrusion by the Fourth Amendment, but everybody else is included.

In the case of Britain, by putting all government data online – including health and criminal records – every facet of peoples’ lives will be open to scrutiny by intelligence analysts across the Atlantic.

Many warn that this will also lead to activists, journalists, politicians, Muslims and others being specifically targeted without the need to justify national security.

“In other words, it is lawful in the U.S. to conduct purely political surveillance on foreigners’ data accessible in U.S. Clouds,” warns the report for the European Parliament, Fighting Cyber Crime and Protecting Privacy in the Cloud by the Centre for the Study of Conflicts, Liberty and Security.

While most of the attention has been focused on Cloud storage and the effect FISA will have on Europe, the actual wording of the amendment speaks of “remote computing services” which could literally mean anything stored on a computer other than your own.

As it is, every financial transaction passes through U.S. intelligence channels. With the new extension, no stone need remain unturned. Every time you comment on a book, join a club, or do absolutely anything that passes through a computer owned by a U.S. company, you are open to scrutiny.

The Cloud, however, comes with other concerns. There is debate as to who legally owns what if it is stored or edited in the Cloud, and you can’t even bequest your online music collection to a loved one when you die.

NSA aside, hackers can easier access data en-route to the Cloud than they can on a local area network, and the Cloud administrators might one day be compromised. The companies themselves may go bust or be taken over. They might suffer some catastrophic event or decide to amended their terms and conditions.

The European Union is being urged to add a warning to all U.S. based Cloud services, with clear wording that anything stored in the Cloud will be under direct scrutiny by Federal authorities. The report also wants to see E.U. citizens given the same rights as Americans in U.S. courts.

“A lot of people wouldn’t realize where data is stored, and hence wouldn’t expect to be subject to U.S. law,” cautions another Member of Britain’s Parliament, Julian Huppert of the Liberal Democrats.

He wants to know if the government has received any guarantee from Washington that sensitive data will not be scrutinized as foreign intelligence fodder.

“If the U.S. will not give a clear assurance about government data,” he says. “Then we will have to stop using the Cloud, as we cannot allow that to happen.”

IRISH EEJITS & THE CLIFFS OF MOHAIR

When people were asked who they would vote for if an election were held tomorrow, party support – when undecided voters are excluded – compared with the last Irish Times poll was: Fine Gael, 25 per cent (down six points); Labour, 10 per cent (down two points); Fianna Fáil, 26 per cent (up five points); Sinn Féin, 18 per cent (down two points); Green Party, 1 per cent (down one point); and Independents/Others, 20 per cent (up six points).

The survey was undertaken among a representative sample of 1,000 voters aged 18 and over, in face-to-face interviews at 100 sampling points in all constituencies.

The margin of error is plus or minus 3 per cent.

The "men in the mohair suits"regularly socialised with cabinet colleagues such as Donogh O'Malley and Brian Lenihan.^[4]

By day he impressed the Dáil. By night he basked in the admiration of a fashionable audience in the Russell Hotel. There, or in Dublin's more expensive restaurants, the company included artists, musicians and entertainers, professionals, builders and business people. His companions, Lenihan and O'Malley, took mischievous delight in entertaining the Russell with tales of the Old Guard. O'Malley in turn entertained the company in Limerick's Brazen Head or Cruise's Hotel with accounts of the crowd in the Russell. On the wings of such tales Haughey's reputation spread.

As Minister for Finance, Haughey on two occasions arranged foreign currency loans for the government which he then arranged to be left on deposit in foreign countries (Germany and the United States), in the local currency - instead of immediately changing the loans to the Irish currency and depositing in the Exchequer - these actions were unconstitutional, because it effectively meant that the Minister for Finance was making a currency speculation against his own currency. When this was challenged by the Comptroller and Auditor General Eugene Francis Suttle, Haughey introduced a law to retrospectively legalise his actions. The debate was very short and the record shows no understanding of the issue by the opposition finance spokesmen, O'Higgins for Fine Gael and Tully for Labour. The legislation was passed on 26 November 1969.

 One of his first functions as Taoiseach was a televised address to the nation – only the third such address in the Republic's history – in which he outlined the bleak economic picture:

“	I wish to talk to you this evening about the state of the nation's affairs and the picture I have to paint is not, unfortunately, a very cheerful one. The figures which are just now becoming available to us show one thing very clearly. As a community we are living away beyond our means. I don't mean that everyone in the community is living too well, clearly many are not and have barely enough to get by, but taking us all together we have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amount of goods and services we are producing. To make up the difference we have been borrowing enormous amounts of money, borrowing at a rate which just cannot continue. A few simple figures will make this very clear...we will just have to reorganise government spending so that we can only undertake those things we can afford...	”
—Charles Haughey, 9 January 1980

VICEROYAL VILLIERS : British Occupied Ireland

Indecent exposure: Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, surrounded by a press scrum as they leave the Old Bailey during the trial of Stephen Ward in 1963. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Occasionally, a single passage in a book lingers long in the memory. This one will. A dominatrix who flogged men was asked why her rich clients had these tastes. "It went back to their nannies. Bus drivers and people like that who don't have nannies don't ask you to whip them," she replied.

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the affair to beat all affairs, Richard Davenport-Hines's book on the scandal is a masterful depiction of everything that was wrong with the 1950s and early 1960s. Yet for all the deceit and bullying, this is a romp of a read, full of colour and verve, a mix of The Hour and Mad Men in a single volume.Thus was life in the England of the early 1960s, an era epitomised by privilege, hypocrisy and sordid glamour, by powerful men and the "good time girls" they bedded. The era bears a name: Profumo.

The reader is taken on an extraordinary tour ofpolitics and the bedroom, and the politics of the bedroom. Pretty much everyone in public life, it seemed, was having it away with someone, usually a girl (or boy) of a lower station, either preyed upon or seduced by the vague prospect of a "better" life.

Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, the two young women at the heart of the story, were no different from others, desperate to get away from their stifling homes. "England was a country where the gravy served at main meals made everything taste alike," the author writes. It was more regimented than at any point in its history, the time of theLady Chatterley's Lover ban and backstreet abortions. "Audiences stood in respectful silence when the national anthem was played at the end of every cinema performance; pedestrians still doffed their hats… family-planning clinics did not dare to give contraceptive advice to the unmarried; every foreigner had to register with their local police station."

Keeler had lived with her mother and stepfather in a grim estate between Staines and Windsor, with no running water or electricity, and no privacy. As a teenager, she earned money babysitting, where it was normal for fathers "to kiss, fondle or rub against her". After an overture from her stepfather, she kept a knife under her pillow at night. She started working in a cabaret club in London where she met Rice-Davies. They launched themselves into society, with the "help" of a series of older men.

John Profumo, the secretary of state for war who famously had to resign after lying to Parliament about sleeping with Keeler (at the same time as Keeler was sleeping with a naval attache at the Soviet embassy), was a man of moderate intelligence. He had eased his way through Harrow and Oxford, and he knew the people he needed to know and how to climb the ladder. Married to a film star, Profumo was a breezy type who "scooted along on charm" yet was mistrusted by some because of his "Eye-tie" surname. He met Keeler at a party at the Astors' country pile, Cliveden.

The fourth and, according to the author, saddest victim-villain wasStephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite, whose sex-fuelled parties were the talk of London.Davenport-Hines vividly describes the extent to which the police, press and politicians colluded to hound Ward. It was partly an act of individual vindictiveness; it was also what was generally done to anyone who fell out with the establishment. Once Macmillan's government realised it was in trouble, everything was done to pursue Ward. One of the more bizarre charges levelled against him was the Sexual Offences Act of 1956. This included the crime of introducing any man to a woman under the age of 21 (even though the age of consent was 16) if they ended up sleeping with each other.

The levels of police corruption and press intrusion were on a different scale, a point Lord Justice Leveson might care to reflect on. "Reporters and photographers were proud of their deceptions," the author writes, "inveigling their way into houses pretending to be meter readers, equipping themselves with flowers or grapes and invading hospital rooms masquerading as relatives, waylaying children on their way from school… bribing and suborning."

The public craved to be shocked: the better the scandal, the higher the circulation. Newspapers indulged in an auction of prurience and faux indignation. "Keeler, the Shameless Slut," wrote the People. She was an "empty-headed trollop" who "smoked marijuana, loved orgies" and seldom washed. Such language about women was commonplace. The author quotes the Labour MP Richard Crossman as saying, shortly after marrying his third wife, a graduate in PPE from Oxford: "If you're going to marry, you want to marry either an alpha girl or a doormat. I married a doormat."

So sexually charged had the Brits become, the Americans were growing worried. J Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, "became fixated on Keeler's attraction to 'coloured men' and this solidified his conviction that British sexual and security looseness was a menace to the United States".

The police were in cahoots with the worst of the hacks – just as they are now. They also did whatever it took to secure convictions. One tactic was to keep witnesses waiting for hours at the station until they were too weary to resist signing inaccurate statements. Once, Rice-Davies was arrested at the airport as she tried to leave for Spain, was taken to Holloway prison where she was "subjected to body searches, her pubic hair was shaved and she was locked in her cell for 20 hours a day". The chief inspector told her: "You don't like it in here very much, do you? So you help us and we'll help you." She told them what they wanted to hear about Ward and his parties. Ward killed himself through an overdose as his "trial" was concluding. The report by Lord Denning on the affair was a masterpiece of whitewash.

Many a book and film have been devoted to the Profumo affair. It is easy to rush to judgment. If there is a criticism to be levelled at this tale, it is the author's projection of disdain from a contemporary vantage point in which we worry incessantly about our approach to race, gender and sexuality. Public life in 1963 revolved around homophobia, with its "abasement of vulnerable individuals, prudish lynch mobs [and] the deviousness behind the self-righteous wrath of the judiciary". Fifty years on, the government is planning to recognise gay marriage. Some things do get better.

John Kampfner is author of Blair's Wars and Freedom for Sale