An oldie but perhaps relevant, perhaps not. Just putting it here for the record.
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[TD="colspan: 2"]Home of Tory defence spokesman Liam Fox burgled
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Liam Fox was at home when his house was burgled
A car and a laptop belonging to the Conservative shadow defence secretary Liam Fox have been stolen during a burglary at his central London home.
Dr Fox had been due to outline the Tories' armed forces manifesto on Thursday morning but the launch was cancelled at short notice.
A police spokesman said they had been called to an address near Tower Bridge and no arrests had been made.
Dr Fox said it was "not a nice feeling" to be burgled while he was at home.
The laptop was in his car when it was stolen, police sources say.
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[TD="class: sibtbg, bgcolor: #F3F3F3"] As Tony Blair once said, things can only get better
Liam Fox
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Dr Fox, a Somerset North prospective parliamentary candidate, was at his flat surveying the damage.
He said: "I feel like anyone else who has been the victim of an opportunistic burglary.
"It's not very nice to have someone in your house, particularly when you have been in it.
"It's even less nice when they have taken knives out of the kitchen drawer and leave them placed so that they can threaten you on their getaway.
"But I'm not the only person in this country who has been a victim of crime and I will have greater sympathy in the future with people who are.
"As Tony Blair once said, things can only get better."
Heinous offence
He described the burglary as "opportunistic" and said no sensitive documents were stolen.
Speaking as he campaigned in Exeter, Tory leader David Cameron said: "I'm very sorry for Liam.
"I've been burgled a couple of times and it's a horrible shock, the sense that someone has been into your house and taken your things. You feel completely invaded."
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said he was sorry the shadow defence secretary had suffered such a "heinous offence".
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla...636779.stm
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What we are seeing with this "Dr Fox" story is the integration of warmongering, freemarket fundamentalist, Neocons into British government and Conservative Party structures.
Two more items below:
Quote:Adam Werritty set up Liam Fox meeting with Iranian regime lobbyist
Revelation likely to add to claims that Werritty was running a shadow, more hawkish, foreign policy on Iran
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Ian Black and Luke Harding guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 October 2011 21.03 BST
Adam Werritty personally arranged a meeting between Liam Fox and a senior Iranian lobbyist with close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime, the Guardian has learned.
The Iranian lobbyist visited Fox in May 2009 at Portcullis House. Werritty met him at the entrance of the parliamentary building and escorted him up to Fox's office, sitting in for half a meeting on Iran. "I thought Werritty's was Fox's assistant," the lobbyist who declined to be named told the Guardian. "Werritty was the main contact for meeting Fox. He was the person who arranged the time of the meeting. He collected me at the gate of Portcullis House and took me up to Fox's office.
"There was a meeting between the three of us. Werritty wasn't introduced to me. I didn't get the impression that Werritty was an especial expert on Iran. I didn't know who he was but thought he was either an official or Fox's assistant."
The lobbyist declined to reveal what was discussed. He described Werritty as "a very pleasant, sociable guy". He said he met Fox briefly twice after he became defence secretary, with others present.
The revelation is nevertheless likely to add to claims not only that Werritty masqueraded as Fox's international fixer but that he was running a shadow foreign policy on Iran a policy more hawkish than the official government position. David Cameron is said to have been annoyed by some of Fox's more neo-con pronouncements on the subject.
In February, Werritty and Fox flew to Israel for a high-profile strategic conference on regional security. Fox called for stronger sanctions to compel Iran to give up its nuclear weapons programme. He warned the Commons during the same period that it was "entirely possible" Iran could have a nuclear weapon by 2012.
Werritty also arranged and attended a dinner at the conference with Fox and Matthew Gould, Britain's ambassador to Israel. Other top political figures also attended. The Independent reported that senior Israeli diplomats were under the impression that Werritty was an official adviser to the defence secretary. It is not clear why Werritty, rather than Foreign Office officials, organised the dinner.
Werritty attended the same conference in February 2009 as an "expert" on Iran. He was a guest of a UK-based pro-Israeli lobbying organisation. The British Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom) paid for his flight and hotel bill.
Lorna Fitzsimmons, Bicom's chief executive, said: "We have only ever done two things with Adam Werritty in the five years I have been at Bicom. We funded him to go to the Herzliya conference in 2009 to talk on a panel on Iran and I accepted an invitation from him to talk to a panel on Iran at an event in London in 2009 or 2010."
It's unclear, however, how deep Werritty's Iranian connections are, and on what basis he is a specialist on the region. Richard Dalton, Britain's ambassador in Tehran between 2003-2006, said: he had not come across Werritty, either during his time in Iran and subsequently. "He hasn't broken the surface of Iran expert circles. I've never read anything written [on Iran] by him."
One Iranian exile said that he had met Werritty in London to discuss Iranian politics. "We met over coffee several times", he said. "He [Werritty] even spoke a few words of Persian," the exile recalled. A second Iranian exile added that Werritty was a regular participant at seminars on Iran held by Chatham House, the foreign affairs thinktank, and the Royal United Services Institute.
The source said that Werritty had visited Iran once back in 1997 and the Iranian chamber of commerce. He said that when he met Werritty in 2005-2006 he described himself as "someone very close to Liam Fox".
The source added: "I heard recently from Arab colleagues that Werritty had called himself an adviser to Fox. I didn't get the impression he was an Iran expert. He could talk convincingly but I didn't see any depth in his Iran information."
It is understood that Bicom paid less than £1,000 for Werritty to fly to Israel to attend the 2009 conference, an annual event organised by academics and former luminaries of the country's intelligence and security establishment to discuss strategic and Middle Eastern issues and promote Israel's view of them.
Werritty was invited to attend by one of its organisers, Tommy Steiner, a Nato and international relations expert who served as the executive director of the Atlantic Forum of Israel, a network-based policy organization that promoted "Israel's relations with the Euro-Atlantic Community". Steiner was unavailable for comment.
Werrity is described in the list of 2009 Herzliya participants as "Dr Adam Werritty, Advisor, Office of Shadow Defense Secretary; UK Executive Director, The Atlantic Bridge" but is not listed as speaking on Iran or anything else. He does not appear in the list of 2011 participants.
In his speech in February Fox spoke of the need to resolve the Palestinian issue as way of undercutting Iran's ability to cause trouble in the Middle East. The 2009 conference was held just weeks after the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
Quote:Liam Fox took five MPs to Washington with donor's money
Michael Lewis, who donated almost £14,000 to Fox's Atlantic Bridge charity, paid for newly elected Tory MPs' flights in 2005
Rupert Neate guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 October 2011 09.38 BST
A major donor to Liam Fox's controversial charity paid for the defence secretary to take five freshly elected MPs on a first-class trip to Washington.
Three of the MPs joined Fox on the flight from London to Washington on October 18 2005, the same day as the first round of voting in the leadership election, which Fox subsequently lost to David Cameron. The other two MPs joined the trip on different dates.
It is thought that Fox's long-term travel companion Adam Werritty was also on the trip, but this could not be confirmed. Fox and Werritty did not respond to requests to comment.
The Tory MPs Mark Harper, member for the Forest of Dean; John Penrose, Weston-super-Mare; Brooks Newmark, Braintree; Adam Holloway, Gravesham; and Philip Dunne, Ludlow had only months earlier been elected to parliament.
All of the MPs declared in the register of members' interests that their flights and hotel bills were paid for by Michael Lewis. Lewis has donated £13,832 to Fox's Atlantic Bridge charity, which was shut down last month after regulators found it was primarily promoting Tory ideals.
"18-21 September 2005, to USA. Travel and accommodation costs met by Dr Liam Fox's office from a donation by Mr Michael Lewis, a businessman from London. I received flight upgrades on outward and return journeys from London to Washington from Virgin Atlantic," Harper registered on 17 October 2005. The other MPs' registers include similar entries, although some dates differ.
Electoral Commission records show Lewis, who is deputy chairman of the Israeli lobby group Bicom, donated £5,000 to Fox's leadership campaign on 27 July 2005.
Bicom paid for Werritty's flight and hotel bill to attend a conference in Israel in 2009 where he was asked to join a panel and talk about Iran. The Herzliya conference was one of the events listed by the Ministry of Defence at which he met Fox.
Kevan Jones, Labour's defence spokesman, said: "This is yet another question Liam Fox needs to answer. Why during his campaign to be Tory party leader, did Dr Fox's office fund a visit to the United States for new Tory MPs from a donation by businessman Michael Lewis? The only declaration of money to Liam Fox from Mr Lewis is in regards to his leadership campaign. Did he use this money donated to his campaign to fund these visits?"
Fox fucks off.
Fox's
web of connections.
This bunch of warmongering fools will soon be back, turning dreams to nightmares....
Neocons are viral, like Freddy Krueger.....
Freddy Krueger's motley crue:
Quote:Liam Fox resignation exposes Tory links to US radical right
Labour and Lib Dem politicians have stepped up demands for the PM to explain ministers' involvement with Atlantic Bridge
Toby Helm and Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk, Saturday 15 October 2011 21.30 BST
David Cameron has been accused of allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party, as fallout from the resignation of Liam Fox exposed its close links with a US network of lobbyists, climate change deniers and defence hawks.
In a sign that Fox's decision to fall on his sword will not mark the end of the furore engulfing the Tories, both Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians stepped up their demands for the prime minister to explain why several senior members of his cabinet were involved in an Anglo-American organisation apparently at odds with his party's environmental commitments and pledge to defend free healthcare.
At the heart of the complex web linking Fox and his friend Adam Werritty to a raft of businessmen, lobbyists and US neocons is the former defence secretary's defunct charity, Atlantic Bridge, which was set up with the purported aim of "strengthening the special relationship" but is now mired in controversy.
An Observer investigation reveals that many of those who sat on the Anglo-American charity's board and its executive council, or were employed on its staff, were lobbyists or lawyers with connections to the defence industry and energy interests. Others included powerful businessmen with defence investments and representatives of the gambling industry.
Fox's organisation, which was wound up last year following a critical Charity Commission report into its activities, formed a partnership with an organisation called the American Legislative Exchange Council. The powerful lobbying organisation, which receives funding from pharmaceutical, weapons and oil interests among others, is heavily funded by the Koch Charitable Foundation whose founder, Charles G Koch, is one of the most generous donors to the Tea Party movement in the US. In recent years, the Tea Party has become a potent populist force in American politics, associated with controversial stances on global warming.
Via a series of foundations, Koch and his brother, David, have also given millions of dollars to global warming sceptics, according to Greenpeace.
Labour said it wanted to know how, in 2006, when David Cameron travelled to Norway for his famous photo opportunity with huskies to promote his new-look party's "green" policies, his senior colleagues were cosying up to US groups that were profoundly sceptical about global warming.
Writing in the Observer, the shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, said the Tories still had many questions to answer and claimed that "while David Cameron's compassionate conservatism has been undermined by his actions at home, it could be further damaged by connections overseas".
Murphy writes: "With each passing day there have been fresh allegations of money and influence and it appears that much of the source was the Atlantic Bridge network and its US rightwing connections. We need to know just how far and how deep the links into US politics go. This crisis has discovered traces of a stealth neocon agenda. For many on the right, Atlanticism has become synonymous with a self-defeating, virulent Euroscepticism that is bad for Britain."
Fox resigned on Friday after admitting that he had allowed his friendship with Werritty, a lobbyist who portrayed himself as an adviser to the defence secretary, to blur his professional and personal interests. His resignation followed a drip-feed of revelations about the links between Werritty and businessmen and organisations with defence interests.
The revelations over Atlantic Bridge have triggered questions about the role played by Fox, chair of the charity's advisory council, and that of four of its UK members: William Hague, George Osborne, Chris Grayling and Michael Gove. As a UK charity, the organisation enjoyed tax breaks but had to comply with strict rules prohibiting it from promoting business interests.
The charity's political agenda, which it articulated in conferences devoted to issues such as liberalising the health sector and deregulating the energy markets, chimes with the thinking of many on the right of the Conservative party whom Cameron has been keen to check as he holds the Tories to the centre ground of British politics.
Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshot said: "Dr Fox is a spider at the centre of a tangled neocon web. A dubious pattern is emerging of donations through front companies. We need to establish whether the British taxpayer was subsidising Fox and his frontbench colleagues. What steps did they take to ensure Atlantic Bridge didn't abuse its charitable status?"
Werritty, the group's UK director, was funded by a raft of powerful businessmen including Michael Hintze, one of the Tories biggest financial backers whose hedge fund, CQS, has investments in companies that have contracts with the Ministry of Defence; Poju Zabludowicz, chairman of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, who chairs a US munitions company; and the Good Governance Group, a private security firm set up by a South African businessman, Andries Pienaar, who also has an investment firm, C5 Capital, focused on the defence sector.
The potentially explosive mix of big business interests and politicians that triggered Fox's demise is the subject of an investigation by the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell. Murphy said it was essential that the government then referred the wider issues to Sir Philip Mawer, the independent adviser on ministers' interests. "He should look at the issues in their entirety to establish precisely how this never happens again," Murphy said.
Questions are being asked over the role played by an organisation called the Sri Lankan Development Trust, whose headquarters were listed at the Good Governance Group. The trust paid for three of Fox's trips to Sri Lanka. In a statement the group said: "Our involvement with the Sri Lankan Development Trust was not done for profit or at the behest of any clients."
Arriving at the Ministry of Defence to take up his new role in charge of the department, Philip Hammond, the new defence secretary, said Fox had "done a great job.