Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

America! Fuck yeah!!

David Miliband has admitted two US "extraordinary rendition" flights landed on UK territory in 2002.

'someone found out so I'm telling you now'

In a statement to MPs the foreign secretary said in both cases, US planes stopped on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia to refuel.

Diego Garcia is a bit of curiosity anyway, as John Pilger reported three-and-a-half years ago with a story that was generally ignored by the rest of the media. (After all, who cares if a few brown people are booted out of their homeland, with no rights and no compensation, to make way for a 'strategic' US air base?) So it's only a 'UK-dependent colony' in technical terms. 'Colony' implies that people are allowed to live there who aren't US military or the people who work for them; 'dependent' implies that they actually depend on the UK, which they don't.

Unfortunately for Miliband, splitting hairs about DG's 'Britishness' might raise a few awkward matters such as the dispossession of an entire people and the flogging-off of their homeland to the US. Well, maybe a page or two in the Independent or the Guardian, if they can be bothered with news among all the wealth of lifestyle bollocks that predominates the 'serious' press today. I doubt the Tories would give a shit, given that they'd have done exactly the same thing and much of the brutality in DG took place under their watch; and the Murdoch press doesn't often wring its hands about a few brown folk having their human rights upheld or not upheld. But all the same, someone might say something that might make a few people aware of what DG actually is and Britain's shameful record of casual racism ("Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ...") there.

So instead, we get a simpering apology.

Mr Miliband said the flights had only come to light after a US records search and said the US shared the UK's regret.

A 'records search' by whom? Someone who might expose the facts in the press perhaps, leading to a swift admission and a public sorry? And the flights only came to light then... so the UK doesn't know what's happening in a 'UK-dependent colony'? Spare me this crap.

And 'the US shared the UK's regret'. Over what, being found out? Surely not over the flights having taken place, seeing as they, dur, flew there on purpose on their way to torture chambers (let's not forget what 'rendition' actually means, given that the BBC has decided to be rather coy on the issue in this particular story) - one of whom has since been released without charge (or apology), according to Miliband.

This on the same day that a bit of 'America! Fuck yeah!!' took place in outer space, with the shooting-down of a satellite trumpeted by the Pentagon:

"We're very confident that we hit the satellite," Gen Cartwright said at a Pentagon briefing hours after the missile was fired. "We also have a high degree of confidence that we got the (fuel) tank."

Did it pose a real danger, this stray satellite? Or was it just a bit of willy-waving from the US after China zapped a satellite themselves last month.

Either way, it's the militarisation of space writ large (as predicted by Noam Chomsky and others for donkeys' years) and another disturbing stage in modern warfare. As technology improves, how to ensure you stay one step ahead? Target the satellites. China and Russia might be a bit miffed, but so what? We showed them!

Whoo-ha!

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