Just had a meeting with my boss here and he wrote me an effusive letter of recommendation. So lovely and completely unexpected. The team here is really fabulous and I will miss working with them.

Tonight anyone that would like to join us for my leaving do can join us at All Bar One around the corner and then at 7:00PM (or 19:00 as they would say here) my team is off to The Lowlander because I have an urge to drink beer made by Trappist Monks.

I told Bill that under no circumstances are they to have one of the company leaving do speeches things they do here. They send out an e-mail, the company gathers around, someone says a speech about how great the person was and how much they will miss them and they give the person a gift. Then the person that is leaving gives a speech about how great everyone is and how much they will miss everyone. Then everyone shuffles back to their desk muttering, “Who was that?”

I begged him to not do that to me.

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Sent my CV in for the Product Management job I want. . . (Fancy way of saying resume. It is the abbreviation of the Latin curriculum vitae)

Guy who would be my boss told Janelle he thought I would be a good fit and wondered when I would be available to start. Have a meeting with him Thursday, so we shall see. . .

Even if I don’t get it- kinda nice someone seeing me outside the little box I have put myself in the last six years.

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I did something this weekend that I never thought I would do. Something that troubles me to my very core.

Saturday I danced. I danced to Pour Some Sugar On Me, without a hint of irony. . .

It all started innocently enough. After the bottle of red and helping Janelle finish her pitcher of sangria at the Spanish restaurant, we decided we wanted to go dancing. We tried to get into Barcelona, a postage stamp sized club that plays Spanish dance music but after twenty minutes in the queue we couldn’t be bothered.

Janelle knew of a place and that is how we ended up dancing until 3:00 AM to AC/DC, Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe. It was a complete blast and I now know where all the big haired 1980’s nostalgia fans hang out in London on a Saturday night.

We hopped on a night bus and stumbled into the flat where Stuart, bless him had made up the sofa cushions for Janelle to crash. I’m really not sure how he managed that since he had taken a small hit of some hallucinogenic something or other and was babbling about the Pink Panther following him home.

Then I woke up in the bathtub.

I haven’t slept walked since I was a kid (that I know of). One moment I was happily tucked into bed, the next Stuart was standing in the doorway asking me what I was doing in the bathtub.

“I have no idea.”

Odd thing was I wasn’t slumped against the side of the porcelain—I was sitting up holding on to my knees. Stuart thought that I did it to freak him out. I am no where near that diabolical.

I will never mix copious amounts of sangria with Def Leppard ever again. It makes strange things happen.

Sunday Avi had us over for a dinner and we completely stuffed ourselves.

Very odd that this is my last week here. I’m already rather booked up. . .Tonight I need to work on my CV for a job I want here. Tuesday Jen wants to have some sort of leaving do for me. Wednesday is my work leaving do. Thursday Stuart and I are dropping off some things at his parents house to keep it safe until we have our flat. Friday, we leave.

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And more from The London Times. . .

BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

He’s vowed to complete his mission in Iraq, but President Bush faces growing disillusion as leaked documents reveal the hidden path to war and the mood changes in America

You can sometimes tell when a political conversation is at a turning point because the rhetoric goes nuclear. With respect to the Iraq war, that is what is beginning to happen in America.

Last week saw Dick Durbin, a leading Democratic senator, compare an account of detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay with prisoner abuse in totalitarian regimes. It also saw Karl Rove, the president’s most powerful political aide, essentially call all “liberals” a danger to their country for their response to 9/11 and the Iraq war.

Chuck Hagel, a leading Republican senator, called the White House “completely disconnected from reality. It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along”. The internet blogs and the op-eds were full of similarly calm discourse.

It’s not that the Bush administration policy is likely to change any time soon. It’s that the American people have reached a point of no return with the president and his constant and unpersuasive assertions that everything is just peachy in Mesopotamia.

A poll that showed 60% of Americans want to start removing troops from Iraq merely confirmed the obvious: Bush’s war policy can no longer be sustained by the kind of “trust us” condescension that he has previously employed.

The doubts have increased markedly since America woke up to the secret Downing Street memos that shatter illusions about the build-up to war. The memos — first revealed in The Sunday Times by Michael Smith on May 1 — have since stormed through American websites and made headlines in the mainstream US media.

Last weekend the Associated Press agency moved a special package of six articles on the memos to its media subscribers throughout America.

The memos reveal that Tony Blair agreed to support President George W Bush’s plans for regime change as early as April 2002 — a year before the war started. They also show that the head of MI6 reported back from America to Blair that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.

They describe American efforts to find a cause for war as “frankly unconvincing”. And, perhaps most damningly in US eyes, the memos reveal that little effort was made to plan for the aftermath of invasion — which is still costing hundreds of American and Iraqi lives — despite warnings that it could be messy.

“A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise,” warned one memo in July 2002. “The US military plans are virtually silent on this point.”

THE debate on the war has polarised yet again — and the poles are further apart than ever. On the one extreme are those in the Bush camp who argue that the war is all but over and that we have already won. On the other are those who opposed the war in the first place and seem to take a perverse pleasure in every discouraging news report. In between are various shades of hope and disappointment, despair and grim resolution.

In all of these positions there is a new intensity. That intensity suggests that the long period of acquiescence in a policy barely explained and riddled with inconsistency is coming to a close. Some kind of tipping point is approaching — either for or against the entire venture.

The Bush boosters engage in several arguments. The first is that the mainstream media have deliberately ignored the good news from the country. Much of Iraq, they argue, is peaceful; the economy, after a nosedive, is recovering; the elections proved that the Iraqis want democracy; there are signs that the Sunni minority is beginning to accept a bigger role in the constitutional and political process.

Instead of focusing on the daily suicide bombings, the Bush defenders point to shards of evidence that there is a split within the insurgency between the Sunni nationalists and foreign jihadists.

They say that they have gained good intelligence from the detainees “interrogated” under the new exceptions to bans on “cruel and inhumane” treatment approved by Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary. They cite slowly growing numbers of trained Iraqi military units fighting alongside and sometimes even independently of US forces.

They argue that this is a long process, that setting up a democracy in a country recovering from dictatorship and war requires patience.

In an innovative logical move, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, has argued that the increased intensity of insurgent attacks is a sign that they are losing, not evidence that they have not been marginalised or contained.

How? Because the desperation of the attacks on Iraqi civilians, the brutal mass murders of Iraqi recruits and the deployment of suicide bombers are the last resorts of the militarily defeated.

Last month Cheney said that the insurgency was in its “last throes”. He did not, however, say how long those last throes might last. Even the fact that large numbers of jihadist terrorists seem to be pouring over the unsecured Syrian border has not fazed many Bush supporters.

David Warren, a columnist, recently wrote: “All ground indications are that large numbers of Islamist terrorists who would otherwise remain dangerously under cover, not only across the region but elsewhere, are irresistibly drawn towards these theatres of action, where they sooner or later get themselves killed.”

As for the poor or non-existent post-war planning, easily the most damning aspect of the Downing Street memos, Bush’s supporters argue that it was all deliberate. Too many troops would have alienated the Iraqis by appearing to be an occupation force.

By allowing mayhem, murder and looting, the Americans were able to show the malign motives of the Ba’athists and jihadists, and avoid the taint of imperialism. It was a deft ploy to expose the insurgents as murderous extremists, force the Iraqis themselves to oppose them and so build a consensus for a new democratic government.

The only problem with this defence of the conduct of the war is that an alternative scenario is just as plausible. It is worth recalling that the war plans anticipated only about 30,000 US troops remaining in Iraq by now. I knew of nobody in the pro-war camp before the invasion who anticipated a full-scale guerrilla war being waged for the duration of two presidential terms, as now seems likely.

Internal Bush administration assessments of the war have been nothing like as optimistic as the White House’s public arguments. The CIA’s recent report on the insurgency argued that, just as American forces have learnt a great deal from fighting the terrorists and insurgents in a difficult urban terrain, so have the jihadists.

THERE has been a major influx of Islamo-fascists into Iraq, especially from Saudi Arabia, through the porous Syrian border. Their training in urban warfare, the CIA worries, could soon spill over into other Arab states. The under-manned occupation of Iraq, in other words, might have created another version of Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, a training ground for terror.

The insurgents are also adapting fast in a terrain they know better than any foreign army and have developed lethality against US armed convoys and Humvees. The rate of American casualties has spiked this month and the toll on Iraqi civilians continues to climb.

Last week the top commander in Iraq said the insurgents’ “overall strength is about the same” as it was six months ago. This requires an indefinite retention of the 130,000 or so American troops, a level that has already strained the US military to its limits. Many of the soldiers over there are reservists who never expected to be sent into a war zone, let alone for lengthy consecutive stays. Retention has become difficult and recruitment has shown signs of collapse.

The Bush administration always doubted that it could carry the public into a war as long and as difficult as Iraq was bound to be, so it fatally understated the risks and minimised the troop commitment. It never believed in nation-building, so it walked backwards into the task with insufficient resources. Forgivable early mistakes, such as disbanding the Iraqi army, made matters much worse.

By these early errors and half-measures, it actually made the war harder and longer. And because it never fully levelled with the public in the first place, it cannot ramp up commitment now.

I received a telling e-mail from a military official in Baghdad last week who explained his worries in very stark terms: “The lack of US troops in Iraq has been a disconcerting topic for many of us here. I still believe that we can defeat the insurgency with the current troop level . . . yet at what costs?” What if the American public balks at those costs? Last week Lindsey Graham, the always thoughtful Republican senator, told Rumsfeld: “We will lose this war if we leave too soon, and what is likely to make us leave too soon? The public going south. That is happening and it worries me greatly.”

The signs are all there that the administration now realises this and is also deeply worried. The president will, we are told, be launching a series of speeches to rally the country. His less scrupulous allies are preparing to accuse all critics of undermining the troops and aiding the enemy.

Hence Rove’s attack on Durbin for his comments about interrogation tactics at Guantanamo. “Let me put this in fairly simple terms,” he said. “Al-Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America’s men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

When the most influential man in the administration is dealing cards that low in the deck, you know he’s rattled.

Which scenario is the most persuasive: has the Iraq war been a brilliant piece of tactical planning or a screw-up of massive proportions? Are we still “misunderestimating” Bush? Or have we overestimated his capacity for strategic judgment and political skill? I tend to share the assessment of David Brooks, the New York Times columnist: “Since we don’t have the evidence upon which to pass judgment on the overall trajectory of this war, it’s important we don’t pass judgment prematurely. It’s too soon to accept the defeatism that seems to have gripped so many.

“If governments surrendered to insurgencies after just a couple of years, then insurgents would win every time. But they don’t because insurgencies have weaknesses, exposed over time, especially when they oppose the will of the majority.”

The key is the capacity of the Iraqis to construct a national army capable of defending a genuinely sovereign state. No serious observer believes that they can defeat the insurgency on their own over the next two years, which is the only foreseeable political schedule for the Bush presidency.

Does the American public have the stomach to lose another couple of thousand troops for such an uncertain goal over such an extended period of time? Before this war started, the Bush administration apparently did not believe so.

Moreover, the president has yet to demonstrate the ability to confess to great difficulty, to explain mistakes, to take responsibility for error, to ask for help. His strength can be both brutal and brittle. He is much better at declaring “mission accomplished” than at actually accomplishing the mission.

THE signals from the White House suggest that Bush will not attempt to level with the public and try to unite the country around persevering. He will instead insist that everything is on track and more time and resources are all that are necessary.

He will rightly argue that American security depends on winning the war in Iraq and that democracy can prevail. He will say that we have no choice but to carry on. He will attack much criticism as unpatriotic and disloyal to the troops. He will press ahead because it is all he knows.

This may not be stupid, although the toxic effect on America’s national identity and unity will linger for a long time. Part of winning wars is projecting complete determination and obstinacy.

The fact that the insurgents have no real alternative to offer the Iraqi people except mayhem and tyranny will count in Bush’s favour. His strategic case for the democratisation of the Middle East is the only real solution to the threat exposed by 9/11.

Maybe the political process in Iraq will speed up and lead to some kind of breakthrough. Maybe the split between the jihadists and nationalists will deepen and provide the opportunity for a lasting victory against the Islamists in the Arab world. Maybe it will prove an inspired decision to launch a war for the future of democracy in the cradle of civilisation.

That is certainly the scenario I wish for. Criticising this administration’s arrogance and intermittent incompetence does not mean hoping that it fails. For the security of all of us, it has to succeed.

The process of disillusionment has been a brutal one for me and many others. But it does not bar us from having hope, even as it prevents us having much confidence. That, at least, is the nagging sense of things in America today where so much, for all of us, still hangs precariously in the balance.

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It started with a phone call and has now swept across America: Michael Smith tells the tale of his ‘Downing Street memo’ scoop

It began with a phone call from a friend nearly 10 months ago — somebody well-placed who had given me a few stories before. But he wasn’t really a journalistic source, though he has now been dubbed “the British Deep Throat” by some of the US press.

He was just a friend. So I had no great expectations of the meeting we arranged in a quiet West End bar. I was just expecting a convivial drink, with the usual exchange of gossip, the catching-up on how our lives were going.

Almost immediately it was clear that this time it would be something more. The place was empty, but my friend chose the most secluded spot he could find. He was clearly nervous.

He wasn’t sure if I’d be interested in what he had, he said. It was about the run-up to the war. “All the Butler stuff,” he said, referring to Lord Butler, who had reported on the failures of intelligence over Iraq.

He thrust two sheets of paper into my hand. It was a “Secret — Strictly Personal” letter from Jack Straw to the prime minister written in March 2002, a year before the invasion.

In the letter the foreign secretary said there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction worth talking about and that, in part as a result of a lack of US preparation, post-war Iraq was likely to become a very nasty place.

It was, in short, remarkably prescient and would make a pretty good story, I said, with some understatement. Well, I’ve got five others just like it from the same period, said my source. “Most say stuff just like that, or worse.”

The documents covered the period running up to a summit between George W Bush and Tony Blair at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in early April 2002. At that time the swift victory against the Taliban in Afghanistan had left hawks in the US administration openly briefing that Iraq was next.

Most of the leaked documents were designed to brief ministers or Blair on whether backing the US plans to get rid of Saddam would be sensible and legal. They set out the merits and dangers of taking part. Their gist was that there weren’t many merits. The documents made it pretty clear that it wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t legal and it was very risky.

The document that seemed to encapsulate the problems was another “Secret — Strictly Personal” letter to Blair. It was written by his foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning.

“I think there is a real risk that the (US) administration underestimates the difficulties,” Manning wrote. “They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.”

When I reported these documents I was surprised to find that there was no real interest in them in America. The story swiftly died away.

Then eight months later, in the run-up to Britain’s general election, with the focus on the attorney-general’s advice to Blair on the legality of war, somebody else gave me further, even more startling documents. They concerned a meeting in Downing Street on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion, when Blair was insisting to the public that all options on Iraq were still open.

One leaked document was a Cabinet Office briefing paper for a crucial Downing Street meeting held on the day in question. It said the prime minister had promised Bush at the Crawford summit that he would “back military action to bring about regime change”. It added that ministers had no choice but to “create the conditions” that would make military action legal.

The other document was the minutes of the actual meeting, chaired by Blair and attended by Straw; Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary; Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general; Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6; John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff.

Dearlove, who had just returned from Washington, said “military action was now seen as inevitable . . . the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action”.

Straw agreed with Dearlove. He said Bush had “made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin”.

After reporting these secret memos, which revealed the dubious manoeuvrings of government, I expected the US press to react. Surely there would be a storm of anger over the way in which the American public had been deceived into going to war? But still there was no interest. Then slowly something astonishing happened. People power took over.

The Sunday Times website was inundated with ordinary US citizens wanting to read the minutes of the July meeting. Bloggers set to work passing the word.

Six ordinary, patriotic citizens with no political axe to grind were so outraged to discover the truth about the path to war that they set up their own website, naming it after the minutes, which had become known as the Downing Street memo.

Another website called AfterDowningStreet followed. People got together to lobby their local newspapers and radio and television stations to demand to know why they weren’t being told about the memo. There were even T-shirts made with the slogan: “Have you read the memo?” With anger over the war growing, Washington politicians finally acted. More than 120 congressmen wrote to Bush, demanding to know whether the memo was true. They held their own hearings to try to draw attention to it. The issue was forced into the mainstream media.

The focus turned to what may ultimately be the most important part of the memo: the point where Hoon said that the US had already begun “spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime”.

Ministry of Defence figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that virtually none were used in March and April; but between May and August an average of 10 tons were dropped each month, with the RAF taking just as big a role in the “spikes of activity” as their US colleagues. Then in September the figure shot up again, with allied aircraft dropping 54.6 tons.

If this was a covert air war, both Bush and Blair may face searching questions. In America only Congress can declare war, and it did not give the US president permission to take military action against Iraq until October 11, 2002. Blair’s legal justification is said to come from UN Resolution 1441, which was not passed until November 8, 2002.

Last week one US blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, unearthed more unsettling evidence. It was an overlooked interview with Lieutenant-General T Michael Moseley, the allied air commander in Iraq, in which he appears to admit that the “spikes of activity” were part of a covert air war.

From June 2002 until March 20, when the ground war began, the allies flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq, attacking 349 carefully selected targets. The attacks, Moseley said, “laid the foundations” for the invasion, allowing allied commanders to begin the ground war.

The bloggers may have found their own smoking gun.

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Day Five of no air con in the office. Walked in the office and there was a murder of fans in the hallway and I knew it for us.

Richard the Sales Director again game to the rescue and said that we can leave at 1 if we complete any necessary pre-weekend tasks. Not sure if that will apply to my team yet since we have a phone queue. Seems that no one here knows how to set the out going message.

I volunteered to stay behind if we can’t sort it out. Our manager is at Glastonbury so I am the In Charge Responsible Girl.

I really hate being In Charge Responsible Girl.

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iPod Queen,
originally uploaded by nicdthomas.

According to the “venerable” rag The Sun, Her Royal Majesty, The Queen has an iPod.

This completely tickles me if it is true.

What are The Queen’s guilty music pleasures I wonder? Does she bob around to ABBA’s Dancing Queen? The Complete Works of Twisted Sister?

Personally, I think she really digs DJ Z-Trip.

What do you think is on Elizabeth II’s iPod? Add a comment- let’s get a music list going for her.

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Arrrrrrr ye Matey!,
originally uploaded by nicdthomas.

Going into my last weekend here and I am melting- MELTING! It was been so warm and humid. Gasp. I guess I got what I asked for a few weeks ago when I was whining about wearing my winter coat.

To make it worse, the aircon has been out all week at work. They have been bribing us with ice cream hoping that we won’t revolt. (The ice cream names are different here too. Popsicles are ice lollies and cones are cornets)

Apparently there are laws on the books to protect workers from adverse temperatures in the workplace. Problem is those rules apply to cold weather. Nobody thought it would get hot enough here for it to be an issue.

Today Richard, Head honcho of the Department stood up and said, “It’s too fucking hot to work. Let’s go to the pub.”

Last weekend we hung out in Hyde Park for a few hours and flew a kite that I bought at the kite store. Amazing how parks explode with people when the weather gets nice.

I’m rather booked up this weekend. Tomorrow I am watching Moulin Rouge at a outdoor screening with Janelle. Saturday we are taking a river cruise up to Greenwich to look at the time then in the evening dinner at a Spanish restaurant that has a flamenco show. Sunday, Avi is having a dinner party.

I am really looking forward to getting home and being back in my space. I am also looking forward to going on a major diet and getting back into working out. I have easily gained 15 pounds since I have been here. Not good! It’s been a three month vacation really in that I have given myself permission to eat and drink what I want.

I suppose I should be pleased I still fit in any of my clothes!

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By Sunny Lewis - Editor-in-chief of Environment News Service, an independently owned, real-time wire service covering the environment.

The G8 plan to combat climate change has been “watered down” to satisfy the United States, an environmental group said last week after viewing a leaked draft prepared in advance of next month’s G8 Summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland.

Friends of the Earth reacted “with anger” at the content of the draft communique on climate change entitled “Gleneagles Plan of Action,” and dated June 14.

Compared to an earlier draft leaked on May 2, which itself had no specific targets or timetables for action, this version appears to be even weaker.

The latest draft “worryingly even calls into question scientists’ warnings that global climate change is already under way,” Friends of the Earth said.

On June 7, the national science academies of all the G8 countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — plus the three largest developing countries, Brazil, China and India, issued joint statement declaring “there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring.”

“It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities,” the scientific academies said, adding, “The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.”

Friends of the Earth International’s climate campaigner Catherine Pearce said, “Every reference to the urgency of action or the need for real cuts in emissions has been deleted or challenged. Nothing in this text recognizes the scale or urgency of the crisis of climate change.”

G8 Summit host, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has vowed to put action to limit climate change at the top of the G8 agenda, but with just 17 days to go before the leaders of the world’s eight wealthiest nations meet at the Gleneagles Hotel, it appears that the draft action plan is being weakened so that little action will result.

Enclosed in square brackets, which mean that unanimous agreement has not been reached, are the statements, “[Our world is warming.]” and “[The statement issued by the science academies in June 2005 said that there is now ’strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring’ and that ‘this warming has already led to changes in the Earth’s climate.]”

Other bracketed statements include, “[The world’s developed economies have a responsibility to show leadership.]” and the phrase “[and reduce greenhouse gas emissions]”

“[Those of us who have ratified the Kyoto Protocol welcome its entry into force and will work to make it a success.]” was enclosed in brackets.

Also bracketed was a much longer statement about the Kyoto Protocol that would strengthen its greenhouse gas emissions trading system and flexible market mechanisms that facilitate investment in carbon neutral projects.

The environmentalists believe the changes were made at the insistence of the Bush administration, which has declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, although the United States signed the accord under the Clinton administration.

All of the other G8 nations have ratified the protocol that requires an average 5.2 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2012.

After listening to U.S. chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson speaking on the BBC’s Today Programme on May 13, Pearce said, “The G8 meeting provides an unprecedented opportunity for the richest nations to address the biggest threat facing our planet, but this opportunity will be missed due to the disgraceful, outdated and downright dangerous behavior of the U.S.”

In the “Gleneagles Plan of Action,” square brackets were also inserted into a commitment to work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) to provide an assessment of the climate impact of aviation.

The words [the IPCC] are bracketed, indicating less than unanimous agreement to work with the panel of more than 2,500 scientists established by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information about climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

At a minimum Friends of the Earth says the G8 must state “agreement on the compelling scientific evidence showing that climate change is already happening and that urgent action is now required to substantially reduce emissions.”

The group urges an agreement by G8 nations for “specific, substantial and timetabled cuts in their domestic emissions of greenhouse gases.”

“If they can’t do better than this,” said Pearce, “the outcome of G8 summit will be worse that hot air — it will be a backward step in international climate change policy, simply adding to climate injustice.”

Also bracketed is a a proposal to launch “[a Global Bioenergy Partnership to support wider cost effective biomass and biofuels deployment, particularly in developing countries where biomass use is prevalent…]”

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s Chief Executive Duncan McLaren, said, “Any suggestion that G8’s visit to Scotland would produce anything meaningful on tackling climate change is rapidly evaporating.”

“The first draft of this document was bad, this update is even worse,” said McLaren.

All reference to funding for climate change research was deleted from the latest version of the communique.

“G8 countries represent just 13 per cent of the world’s population, but account for 45 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions,” McLaren said. “A climate plan of action, by the world’s richest nations that does not include targets, timetables and extra funding is of no use to future climate victims.”

Speaking to Channel 4 News former British Environment Minister Michael Meacher said it is “extraordinary” that doubt is being cast on the simple assertion that the world is getting warmer. “Presumably it was taken out because of the Americans,” he said.

Other British officials said there are drafts and drafts in the days before any international summit, and the only draft that matters is the one signed at Gleneagles.

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Why The US Is Now Our Great Enemy

By Peter Oborne

Like many people, I was brought up to love, almost worship the United States. We were taught that it was the one sure protector of order, security, freedom and civilization across the world.

There was much justice in this. In the Second World War, the US had joined us in the great fight against fascism, and afterwards she led the way against the menace of Soviet communism.

But today new threats have emerged. One is Islamic terrorism, while the other—more terrifying by far—is global warming and environmental degradation. Both are just as menacing as fascism or communism, but more complex.

It is as urgent that we confront these dangers. But it is no longer clear that America is on our side as we fight them.

The meeting of G8 leaders in Gleneagles next month is a reminder that the US has turned from a friend and valued ally into the biggest threat the world had faced in half a century.

As The Observer revealed yesterday, the White House is blocking any discussion of global warming at Gleneagles. It has hijacked the summit agenda to make talk on the subject meaningless. The White House has removed all reference to the fact that climate change is “a serious threat to human health and to eco systems”, while banning even the suggestion that global warming has already started.

The reason for this is simple. President Bush takes his orders from the giant oil corporations which finance him. Three years ago they insisted that he did not even attend the earth summit in Johannesburg. This month, Bush is still dancing to their tune by blocking discussion of Climate change in Gleneagles.

It’s blindingly obvious that global warming is a reality. Anyone who has lived through British winters over the past 25 years has seen it happen. But America, the largest economy in the world, won’t admit we have a problem.

The US is destroying the planet that we live on, yet refuses even to discuss the matter. There are some interesting comparisons between this tragic intransigence and the way the US is conducting the so-called war on terror. It regards with contempt the international organizations, above all the United Nations, which should be used to combat the terrorist threat.

Instead it has embarked on a series of illegal operations of its own. Rather than hunt down al Qaeda, it embarked on a misguided and tragic adventure in Iraq. There has been no more effective recruiting sergeant for Osama bin Laden over the past three years than George Bush.

Those of us who grew up loving America must come to terms with the fact that she is no longer a benign force. There are still some wonderful things about the US. She is still the home of free speech and still has a democracy of sorts. And yet she has now become a rogue state which needs to be tamed.

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