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In a Confidential memo dated March 12th 2008, “Lib Dems at all levels of the party” informed the US Embassy London that Nick Clegg must succeed as leader of the Lib Dems.  The secret memo which has been classified by Political Minister Counselor Maura Connelly appears to show a concern at Nick Clegg’s choice to abstain from voting on the EU Treaty and a general concern with the Lib Dems performance since the 2006 sex scandal which forced Mark Oaten and then later Simon Hughes to stand down from the contest.

“why would the UK’s most pro-Europe party, whose new leader actually worked for the EU from 1994 to 1999, abstain on a vote on the Treaty? The answer, senior Lib Dems have confessed to us, is that the party leadership believes a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would fail.”

The organisers of the Lib Dem party conference told the American Government that the issue of the Lisbon Treaty would not be discussed at the conference out of fear of causing the issue to “blow-up” has it did in the House of Commons previously.  One of the attendees at the conference said: “I know something bad happened, but I’m not sure what. I don’t really understand what the whole thing is about.”

“No matter how Clegg ultimately performs, however, XXXXXXXXXXXX told us frankly that, as the third Lib Dem leader in two years, the party has no choice but to make sure he succeeds. “We’ve got to make this one stick,” he said. Moore and Shadow Home Affairs Spokesman Jeremy Brown affirmed to us that there are no alternative leadership candidates to Clegg.”

The memo concludes on the performance of the Lib Dems being like a “Car crash in slow motion” starting with the previous leader Charles Kennedy being forced to step down for his alcoholism and then over the failure in the handling of the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  Nick Clegg’s performance at a party conference is said to have undone some of the damage which was previously caused. “…they continue to be worth watching – and not just because the horror of it makes great copy.”

On the 12th December 2010 a Freedom of Information request was made to the Metropilitan Police Service regarding an earlier incident which occured on the 9th December where it is reported by the mother of Alfie Meadows (the man who police assulted earlier) that police officers attempted to deny access to medical treatment because Mr Meadows was a protestor.  The mother of Mr Meadows recalls how the ambulance driver had refused to go to another hospital as he was instructed to because Alfie meadows required urgent medical attention.  The mother said:

“The ambulance man took us to Chelsea and Westminster hospital. That [hospital] had been given over to police injuries and there was a standoff in the corridor. Alfie was obviously a protester and the police didn’t want him there, but the ambulance man insisted that he stayed.” She said that he was then asked to take Alfie to another hospital. “The ambulance man was appalled and he said: ‘I’m getting angry now, and I’m not going to do this.’ “The senior nurse in charge took us into a resuscitation room to keep us away from the police because, she said, they were finding it upsetting to see protesters in the hospital.”

The injury to Alfie, a second-year undergraduate at Middlesex University, is already the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Yesterday afternoon investigators interviewed Alfie at Charing Cross hospital in west London, where he was taken for surgery as his condition began to deteriorate. His mother, an English literature lecturer at Roehampton University, said that her son had made a good recovery after a three-hour operation. “The first thing Alfie said when he woke up was about how many other people had been hurt and how the police had been striking and bashing everyone. Any one of those kids there could have been Alfie. “I’m from the generation of Blair Peach [hit over the head by police at a London demonstration in 1979] and we knew that anyone could die if they were hit. He’s amazingly jolly now. I don’t know it that is from a sense of having survived or the morphine.”

Police have today responded to that Freedom of Information request which was made on the 12th December 2010 stating that a DPS investigation had disproved the claim made by Alfies mother that police officers had attempted to deny medical treatment.

The MPS Directorate of Professional Standards [DPS] has investigated claims that police denied a 20-year-old man, injured during the student protest of 9 December 2010, access to a hospital where injured officers were being treated. The investigation has found police played no part in denying the man access to the hospital and the claims have subsequently been disproved. The matter was between London Ambulance Service staff. We have informed the family’s solicitor of our finding. The DPS investigated the claims that officers denied the man access to the hospital, in response to widespread media coverage. To date, no complaint has been received. Commander Mark Simmons, head of the Directorate of Professional Standards, said: “This claim has been thoroughly investigated, and subsequently disproved. “The investigation was carried out in line with the MPS commitment to ensure that anyone found to fall below the very highest standards of professional behaviour is dealt with appropriately. “In the same way we would publicise if officers have been found to fall the below high standards required, it is only right that where allegations against police are disproven, we update on it.”

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital have also denied that they refused to treat anyone but they have confirmend that Chelsea and Westminster Hosiptal was designated to receive “Service Personel” and that they did treat “civilians” also. 

 I write in response to your FoI request sent by email regarding decision to treat
ambulance patients on the 10th and 11th December.
 
All patients presenting by ambulance were seen and treated at Chelsea and Westminster
Hospital. It is correct that the hospital was designated to receive service personnel, however a
number of civilians, as well as police casualties, were treated here.  All liaison with ambulance
crews as to where patients should be taken is carried out by London Ambulance Service staff.
 
Alfie Meadows was brought to the Trust by the London Ambulance Service and was treated
at the Trust.
 
The Trust is unable to comment on any communication that might have occurred between
LAS and specific ambulance crews regarding this specific patient, but he was accepted by the
Trust as soon as the ambulance driver made contact with hospital staff working in A&E.
 
This letter confirms the completion of this request.  A log of this request will be held
on a database held by the Trust.
 
If you are unhappy with the response that you have received the first line of action
would be to write to request that the Trust undertakes an internal review of your
request.  This can be done by contacting our Complaints Department at:- c/o
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Foundation Trust, 369 Fulham Road, London. 
SW10 9NH
 
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information
Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
 
Yours Sincerely,
 
Chelsea and Westminster Freedom of Information Department.

Israeli bulldozers have demolished part a hotel in East Jerusalem to make way for 20 new homes for Jewish settlers. The destruction of the Shepherd Hotel has angered Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said Israel was destroying any chance of returning to peace talks by carrying out the demolition. Israel says it has a right to build homes in any part of the city. The Shepherd Hotel was built in the 1930s and was once home to Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who became an ally of Adolf Hitler in WWII.

Its current ownership is disputed – Israel says it belongs to a Jewish-American property developer but Palestinians say it was seized illegally after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. “By doing this, Israel has destroyed all the US efforts and ended any possibility of a return to negotiations,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Mr Abbas. Attempts by the US to revive peace negotiations stalled last year, after Israel refused to end settlement building on occupied Palestinian land.  “Israel has no right to build in any part of east Jerusalem, or any part of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967,” said Mr Abu Rudeina. The Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, Adnan al-Husseini, said it was the latest in a line of demolitions of historic buildings and accused Israel of “trying to erase any Palestinian identity from the city of Jerusalem”.

The US had criticised the project as far back as 2009, when building approval was granted.  But Israeli officials said the demolition had been carried out legally and defended its decision. “This is something that every country does in its own domain without the necessity to give any report to any other government,” said the minister for national infrastructure, Uzi Landau. Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Syria on Tuesday blasted new Israeli military orders that pave the way for large-scale expulsions of Palestinians from the West Bank and warned the move was an “ethnic cleansing policy” in the occupied Palestinian territories. Under the new rules, which are to take effect on Tuesday, anyone caught in the West Bank without an Israeli permit could face expulsion within days or be sentenced to up to seven years in prison. This would include thousands of Gazans who have moved to the West Bank, foreign-born Palestinians married to West Bankers and foreigners who are in the West Bank on expired tourist visas. “This decision is the adoption of the ethnic cleansing policy and a step to the mass deportation aiming at emptying the land from its people,” a Syrian Foreign Ministry official said. “It also constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and human rights and disregard of the will and resolutions of the international community.

“Syria, while confirming the need for an urgent move at both Arab and international levels to condemn this decision and prevent its implementation, sees that it is extremely dangerous to continue providing immunity to Israel as this enables it to disdain international law and will of the whole international community,” the source added. His statement was carried by state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. The West Bank has attracted a growing number of foreign activists who have joined Palestinians in protests against Israeli military rule. In recent months, Israel seized two foreigners with expired visas in a West Bank town and then expelled them. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Arab League chief Amr Moussa on Monday condemned Israel’s decision and said after a set of talks in Damascus that the world had to take up an “urgent action” to stop the measure.

“For as long as this lasts, things will get worse, and it will be more difficult to bring true peace” to the region, Mussa said, adding that the Arab League council would hold an “urgent meeting” on Tuesday to discuss the issue. Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War. It is expected to form the main part of the Palestinians’ promised future state.

Dr. Ilan Pappe

Dr. Finkelstein

HEBRON, West Bank — Israeli troops mistakenly shot and killed a 65-year-old Palestinian man in his bed during a pre-dawn raid Friday to arrest a Hamas militant in the West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli officials said. Late Friday, the Israeli military said a soldier was killed and four others wounded by friendly fire after a gunbattle broke out with Palestinian militants along the border with Gaza. Palestinian security and rescue officials in the West Bank city of Hebron said Israeli troops shot and killed 65-year-old Omar Kawasmeh, who lived in the same building but on a different floor as the Hamas militant targeted in the early morning raid. Associated Press Television footage showed a bloodstained bed and shell casings in Kawasmeh’s bedroom. The Israeli military said in a statement that it “regrets the outcome of the incident” and was investigating. Soldiers still arrested the wanted militant, Wael Mahmoud Said Bitar, during the raid.

The Home Office has changed their threat Level from “substantial – an attack is a strong possibility” to “severe – an attack is highly likely”.

The man recognized as the winner of Ivory Coast’s recent presidential election called Thursday for special forces from West African nations to remove Ivory Coast’s incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo in a commando operation. Alassane Ouattara told The Associated Press that Gbagbo’s location can be quickly identified by a team of elite troops because he “is essentially at his residence or at the presidential palace.” The regional bloc of West African states, ECOWAS, has threatened military action but in recent days African leaders have shied away from making a commitment to an armed invasion, fearing mass casualties and a possible return to civil war. Ouattara said in the interview that elite forces have previously carried out similar operations in Latin America and Africa “to remove the person who is the problem.” “So If ECOWAS do send in special forces with the objective of removing Mr. Gbagbo he will be removed, without much damage,” Ouattara said. The interview took place in the seaside Golf Hotel, where Ouattara has been running a shadow government under protection of U.N. peacekeepers.

On Wednesday at a pro-Gbagbo rally, one of the incumbent’s closest associates warned that any attempt to remove the 65-year-old Gbagbo by force will lead to war. “We need to avoid that the Third World War begin in Ivory Coast … No army in the world can come in and remove our president. It’s in Abidjan that such a thing can happen,” said Charles Ble Goude, who heads the Young Patriots, a militia-like organization. Ouattara maintains that a military operation will not take much time or resources, and that if ECOWAS carries one out, Gbagbo will cave in immediately. “I know Mr. Gbagbo. If he sees that ECOWAS troops are coming to capture him, believe me he will start running away. I know him well. He does not have the courage to face those type of situations,” Ouattara said. While the United Nations and other world powers recognize Ouattara as the winner, Gbagbo has refused to step down, insisting he won.

Gbagbo has been in power for a decade and maintains control of the military. Human rights groups accuse his security forces of killing political opponents. The African Union’s envoy to Ivory Coast said Wednesday that a military ouster should be only a last resort. Some 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers are in Ivory Coast but their mandate is to protect civilians, not participate in any military intervention. Gbagbo came to power in 2000 and ruled during the civil war that erupted two years later, then overstayed his legal term which expired in 2005, claiming the country was too unstable to organize a poll. The election was rescheduled at least six times before it was finally held in October, with the runoff between himself and Ouattara held in November.

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The fish – all of the same ‘drum’ species – littered the banks of a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River near Ozark, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) said. State wildlife officials are conducting tests to find out what killed them. Keith Stephens, of the AGFC, said fish kills occurred every year, but the magnitude of this one was unusual. “The fish kill only affected one species of fish,” he told CNN. “If it was from a pollutant, it would have affected all of the fish, not just drum fish.” Meanwhile, officials are also investigating the mystery of up to 5,000 dead blackbirds in the town of Beebe, around 125 miles from where the fish were found. The creatures began falling from the sky late on December 31 and continued into the next day, witnesses said. “I came out here and saw a bird drop,” said resident Stephen Bryant.

“It was horrible, you could not even get down the road without running over hundreds,” said fellow resident Melissa Weatherly. Beebe is a town of about 4,500 people located 30 miles northeast of the state capital, Little Rock. Residents were not evacuated as a test of air quality found no toxins. Officials are looking at various possibilities as to why the birds dropped dead – including being startled by fireworks, stress or hit by hail or lightning. Mr Stephens said: “It could be weather-related or possibly stress-related. “There were some fireworks shot off at midnight and it is possible that the birds were on their roost and stressed so bad that it could have killed them.” High winds and tornadoes struck Arkansas on New Year’s Eve, with the hardest-hit area more than 150 miles to the west of Beebe. The birds have been collected from rooftops, trees and yards and are being tested at facilities in Little Rock and Madison, Wisconsin.

Thousands of dead birds have fallen from the sky and more than 100,000 dead fish have been washed up on the shore in one U.S. state. In scenes reminiscent of a horror film, up to 2,000 blackbirds dropped to the ground in the city of Beebe, Arkansas, just before midnight on New Year’s Eve. At the same time, thousands of fish were swept up on the shore of the Arkansas River in the north-west part of the state. Environmental experts dressed in protective suits and breathing masks spent New Year’s Day picking up birds’ bodies from the streets, but have been unable to find explanations for the deaths. Resident Melissa Weatherly said: ‘It was horrible. You could not even get down the road without running over hundreds. It was that bad.’

Neighbour Charles Boldrey added: ‘I asked the guys who are out here picking them up and they don’t seem to know anything. Nobody seems to know anything. It just kind of freaked everybody out.’ Most of the dead birds were red-winged blackbirds, but other types, including a duck, also died. No toxins were found in the air, and experts are investigating whether bad weather at high altitude or stress from a firework display could be to blame. Just one type of fish – the drum species – was killed, meaning pollution along the 20-mile stretch of river was unlikely to be the cause. Scientists are now testing the fish to see if they were suffering from disease. But investigators have admitted they are baffled by the bizarre events and could find nothing to suggest the two were connected. Ornithologist Karen Rowe said: ‘Test results usually were inconclusive, but the birds showed physical trauma and that the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail.’

Times Square had the ball drop, and Brasstown, N.C., had its descending possum. But no place had a New Year’s Eve as unusual, or freakishly disturbing, as Beebe, Ark. Around 11 that night, thousands of red-winged blackbirds began falling out of the sky over this small city about 35 miles northeast of Little Rock. They landed on roofs, roads, front lawns and backyards, turning the ground nearly black and terrifying anyone who happened to be outside. “One of them almost hit my best friend in the head,” said Christy Stephens, who was standing outside among the smoking crowd at a party. “We went inside after that.” The cause is still being determined, but preliminary lab results from the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission revealed “acute physical trauma” in samples of the dead birds.

There were no indications of disease, though tests were still being done for the presence of toxic chemicals. Karen Rowe, the bird conservation program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said the prevailing theory was that the birds had been startled by New Year’s Eve fireworks and suddenly dispersed, flying low enough to run into chimneys, houses and trees. Pyrotechnics are used to scatter blackbirds for bird control, though only during the day, given the birds’ poor vision. Beebe (pronounced BE-be) is a congregating spot for blackbirds, and one witness told Ms. Rowe that he saw the birds roosting earlier in the day and heard them again at night just after the fireworks started. “It was the right mix of things happening in a perfect time sequence,” Ms. Rowe said.

The UN official investigating alleged abuses in Ivory Coast after a disputed election says he has evidence of extra-judicial killings. Simon Munzu told the BBC his staff had verified some cases, while others were reported by families. But he said a campaign of intimidation by incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo’s supporters appeared to have receded. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is travelling to Abidjan to help try and resolve a post-election stalemate. Mr Gbagbo has so far refused demands from the world community to stand down in favour of his rival in the 28 November presidential polls, Alassane Ouattara, who is internationally recognised as the victor. Mr Odinga, the African Union’s epresentative, is due to travel from Nigeria – where he has held discussions with President Goodluck Jonathan – to meet Mr Gbagbo and Mr Ouattara.

Peacekeepers from the UN mission (UNOCI) have been instructed to do all they can to investigate sites of alleged human rights violations, but say security forces loyal to Mr Gbagbo have twice blocked them from visiting the site of one of two alleged mass graves. The Gbagbo government has repeatedly denied the existence of any mass graves. The UN has also expressed concern that some of the homes of opponents to Mr Gbagbo have been marked to identify the ethnicity of their occupants, indicating signs the country could be heading for ethnic violence. Speaking to the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme, Mr Munzu said the UN had received many reports of killings. “In some cases the information has bee verified by our own staff of the human rights division right across [Ivory Coast] but for others we rely on information reported by family members,” he said. He cited an example of a report from one person who said his uncle and another man disappeared before their bodies were found in a mortuary with signs of “foul play”.

Ivory Coast mass graves investigation launched by UN

UN peacekeepers have been ordered to do everything in their power to investigate reports of atrocities and mass graves in Ivory Coast, where post-election violence is alleged to have left more than 200 people dead. The instruction came as the opposition leader Alassane Ouattara repeated his call for the international criminal court in The Hague to send a mission to examine the actions of troops loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo. In a new year’s message Gbagbo made clear he would continue his game of brinkmanship despite pressure from the UN and world leaders for him to avoid a return to civil war by standing down and allow Ouattara to enter office. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, phoned Ouattara yesterday. “The secretary-general told President Ouattara that he was alarmed by the reports of egregious human rights violations,” a UN spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said. The UN believes up to 80 bodies may have been moved to a building in a pro-Gbagbo neighbourhood in the capital, Abidjan. Investigators have tried to visit several times, and even made it to the front door before truckloads of armed men forced them to leave. A second mass grave is believed to be located near Gagnoa in the interior of the country, according to the UN mission in Ivory Coast, known as UNOCI.

Ouattara has asked for the ICC to send a mission to investigate reports of post-election violence committed by pro-Gbagbo forces. Ouattara reiterated that request during his phonecall with Ban. The UN has said the once-divided volatile west African country faces a real risk of renewed civil war, but a top ally of Ouattara said this conflict has already begun. “In any country that records more than 200 dead in five days, as the UN has certified, it’s war,” his prime minister, Guillaume Soro, told the Associated Press. “When … more than 20,000 Ivorians … leave their country to seek refuge in a country like Liberia, it’s war.” International pressure is set to intensify tomorrow with three presidents from the west African regional bloc, Ecowas, planning a second round of talks with Gbagbo to try to persuade him to cede power to Ouattara or face an operation to remove him by force. The African Union said today that the Ecowas delegation would be joined by Kenya’s prime minister, Raila Odinga, whose electoral dispute with President Mwai Kibaki in 2007 led to ethnic bloodshed in which at least 1,133 people died. Gbagbo has shrugged off a threat by the AU to unseat him by force. “You should not count on foreign armies to come and make [Ouattara] president,” he said in a television interview yesterday. “I therefore extend my hand so we can talk.” Gbagbo supporters who were called on to remove Ouattara from the Golf hotel on New Year’s Day failed to materialise as UN Bangladeshi riot police guarded the entrance.