Ottagone / Selected II [2026]
8 minutes ago
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Blair aide's Iraq war note must be published, says former foreign secretary
The former Labour foreign secretary Lord Owen is demanding the publication of a key document revealing the Blair government's private attitude about the need for UN authority for the invasion of Iraq.
He was responding to a report in Tuesday's Guardian disclosing that Britain and the US were secretly planning to take action against Saddam Hussein without a second UN resolution five months before the invasion.
A note from Blair's private secretary shows Blair privately agreed at a meeting with his closest advisers at Downing Street in October 2002 to commit Britain to war while publicly suggesting it would use military force only after seeking fresh UN authority.
The highly classified note, written by Matthew Rycroft, said it was agreed that "we and the US would take action" without a new resolution by the UN security council if weapons inspectors showed Saddam had breached an earlier resolution. In that case, he "would not have a second chance".
The document was released after a freedom of information request to the Foreign Office. It is not clear whether it has been seen by the Chilcot inquiry into the decisions made in the runup to the Iraq war. The inquiry has not published it and does not comment on official documents relating to the invasion of Iraq.
Owen told the Guardian: "If it has not been shown to the Chilcot inquiry it should have been." The inquiry must also publish it, he said. He insisted that the full story surrounding the invasion, and Blair's role in it, must be disclosed.
Rycroft's note was sent to Mark Sedwill, private secretary to the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw. "This letter is sensitive," he underlined. "It must be seen only by those with a real need to know its contents, and must not be copied further."
The note was copied to a number of other senior officials, including Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the UN. There is no indication that it was seen by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, who at the time advised that invading Iraq without a fresh UN resolution would be unlawful.
The Chilcot report is now not expected to be published until early next year, Whitehall officials have told the Guardian. One of the reasons for the delay, they say, is an argument with Whitehall, notably the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, over the release of official documents.
Read the letter from Blair's private secretary
Richard Norton-Taylor @'The Guardian'
Dan Sicko: Journalist shared Detroit's techno music with world
Mr. Sicko died of ocular melanoma, a rare form of eye cancer, Sunday at his home in Ferndale. He was 42.
Mr. Sicko worked as a freelance writer for magazines such as Urb and Wired and released the acclaimed book "Techno Rebels" in 1999.
"Really, I know this is a serious statement, but he was the first guy who legitimized Detroit's techno history," Jason Huvaere, director of Movement: Detroit's Electronic Music Festival, told the Free Press on Sunday. "Now, the world is drowning in Detroit techno coverage. But before that, there was Dan, who not only understood the history of the city and electronic music, but he was the historian who put it all down on paper."
Mr. Sicko, who wrote "Techno Rebels" after being inspired by the experimental underground scene he witnessed firsthand in Detroit during the 1980s, went back to documenting artists such as techno's founding fathers Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson after the popularity for the genre and its Motor City roots soared to new heights.
In 2010, through the Wayne State Press, "Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk" was released, an expanded and cleaned-up second edition that explored in even greater detail Detroit's role of shaping techno.
John Cathel, best known as DJ Powdr Blu, said Mr. Sicko paved the way for DJs and fans alike.
"He might not have been a programmer, but through his language, as a writer, he played all the right keys," Cathel said.
Sicko's wife, Amy Lobsiger, said that she and her 11-year-old daughter Anabel are extremely grateful for the support that has been shown to them both financially and spiritually through www.mattsicko.blogspot.com . It's there that Lobsiger details the challenges Mr. Sicko and his family faced while fighting cancer, including medical costs.
"I was always interested in Dan's work before, but over these last few days we're now starting to grasp the impact he had," she said.
"This whole thing has been mind-boggling, a real stinker," Lobsiger said of the 2008 diagnosis. "But the community has been so supportive. It's really meant a lot to us."
Lobsiger said the "Dan's Story" Web site will continue to be used to keep people informed and that Dan's co-workers at the marketing firm Organic, where he was an assistant creative director since 2005, are looking into developing a Web page for his book.
As of Sunday evening, Lobsiger said funeral arrangements at St. James Church in Ferndale are still pending. She said visitation likely will be at Spaulding & Curtin in Ferndale on Wednesday.
Hammerstein @'Detroit Free Press'
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
We’re failing kids in drug education. How can we fix it?
Zoe Kellner aged 21
Last week at an open and lush Midtown East coffee shop, I met a stranger, a chance Twitter connection. This well-dressed, petite, dark-haired woman somehow recognized me when I was still half a block away, her clasped hands in front of her glimpsing into a wave. “I knew it was you,” she began warmly. Then, over black iced coffee, she told me everything. Alone in the cafe, this unexpected newfound friend, Robin, told me about drugs and her daughter. Four years ago she lost her only child, Zoe, to drug overdose. Zoe, a vibrant, beautiful 22-year-old college student, born and raised in New York who preferred West side to East. A young woman who fatally overdosed before entering treatment.
Read Zoe’s story, narrated by her mom. It took everything I had not to cry as her brave mother described the most tragic event of her life.
Today, August 31, is Overdose Awareness Day. And as much as we would like to think otherwise, to think it’s some other person or family, substance abuse and addiction hit us all. Similar to a plane accident, the conventional wisdom goes, “well, that won’t happen.” Well, yes, it could. It could happen to any of us. Zoe’s mom learned that:
I want to start the story when my daughter Zoe was in the 9th grade at a wonderful school in New York City. It is a lovely, nurturing, very sweet school, small, like a family, a community. She started in the first grade and went all the way through high school and graduated from there.
But in the 9th grade something happened that I can’t help thinking back to now.
One of Zoe’s classmates was very suddenly removed from school and sent out west to rehab. The next day, the school called a parent breakfast, because the kids were buzzing about what happened, and the parents didn’t really understand.
As I sat at this breakfast, and they explained what had happened to this young man, who was a good friend of Zoe’s, I thought to myself, “What am I doing here? This has nothing to do with me, because it’s so not Zoe.”
Fast forward. This young boy – now a young man — lives out in California, has a band, owns part of a restaurant, is smart and handsome and successful and thriving. Zoe is gone.
As parents, we don’t want to think our kids could get off track. In a million years, I never thought that I would be the parent who would lose a child to drugs. I never, ever, ever thought that could happen...
Continue reading
Cassie Rodenberg @'Scientific American'
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