Top US lawyer warns of deaths at Guantánamo.

Lieutenant-Colonel Yvonne Bradley, an American military lawyer, will tomorrow go to the Foreign Office in London and demand the disclosure of 42 secret documents which she alleges will prove that her client, Binyam Mohamed, was tortured and that Britain was complicit in his torture.

She will also reveal that Mohamed, a British citizen who is currently on hunger strike, could very well die and the JTF [the Joint Task Force running Guantánamo] are keeping the scale of what is taking place at the Cuban base out of the public eye.

Bradley recently met Mohamed in Camp Delta's sparse visiting room and was shaken by his account of the state of affairs inside the notorious prison.

She said: "At least 50 people are on hunger strike, with 20 on the critical list, according to Binyam. The JTF are not commenting because they do not want the public to know what is going on.

"Binyam has witnessed people being forcibly extracted from their cell. Swat teams in police gear come in and take the person out; if they resist, they are force-fed and then beaten. Binyam has seen this and has not witnessed this before. Guantánamo Bay is in the grip of a mass hunger strike and the numbers are growing; things are worsening.

"It is so bad that there are not enough chairs to strap them down and force-feed them for a two- or three-hour period to digest food through a feeding tube. Because there are not enough chairs the guards are having to force-feed them in shifts. After Binyam saw a nearby inmate being beaten it scared him and he decided he was not going to resist. He thought, 'I don't want to be beat, injured or killed.' Given his health situation, one good blow could be fatal," said Bradley.

"Binyam is continuing to lose weight and he is going to get worse. He has been told he is about to be released, but psychologically and physically he is declining."

David Miliband has already refused to release evidence which could prove whether or not Mohamed was tortured, on the grounds that this could stop the Americans sharing intelligence with Britain, which is a simply astonishing thing to claim regarding our ally in the war on terror.

On Tuesday this week High Court judges Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones will decide whether or not to reopen this case which Mohamed insists will validate his torture claims.

Astonishingly, the Guardian are reporting that the American security services might actually prefer for Mohamed to die:

Suspicion is also growing that some sections of the US intelligence community would prefer Binyam did die inside Guantánamo. Silenced forever, only the sparse language of his diary would be left to recount his torture claims and interviewees with an MI5 officer, known only as Witness B. Such a scenario would also deny Mohamed the chance to personally sue the US, and possibly British authorities, over his treatment.

But if Mohamed survives to come back to London, his experiences of the past six years promise a harrowing journey through the dark underbelly of the war on terror. For Miliband, the questions concerning Britain's role may have only just begun.

The worst thing about all of this are the lengths that the British government are prepared to go to in order to prevent the truth from coming out here. No-one regards as credible the claim that the US would stop sharing information with us were we to reveal a summary of the evidence in court.

Indeed, as the judges made clear in a stinging rebuke of Miliband's position last week:

"Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials ... relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be."

And that is the entire point here. There are no grounds of national security which might be breached and it is simply cheap for Miliband to hide behind that defence, especially as he is using that defence to hide the evidence of possible torture of a British resident. They are trying to avoid political embarrassment born from the extent to which the British government were complicit in Bush's crimes.

UPDATE:



Shami Chakrabarti brilliantly takes Geoff Hoon to task over this on Question Time.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Lieutenant-Colonel Yvonne Bradley, Binyam Mohamed, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Torture, Miliband

Israeli Arabs fear a Gaza backlash as far right prepares for power role.

I cannot be the only person who finds what's happening in Israeli politics at the moment to be scary.

On Tuesday, if all the polls are right, Lieberman will emerge as the most significant beneficiary of an Israeli general election campaign played out against the bloody background of the three-week assault on Gaza in which more than 1,300 Palestinians died, many of them civilians.

The rightwing Likud party of Benyamin Netanyahu will probably emerge as the winner ahead of the Kadima party of Tzipi Livni. But most Israelis also recognise the wider significance of the moment: these elections are likely to mark the emergence of a far-right force, with a racist anti-Arab agenda, as the country's power broker.

Lieberman is currently running his campaign under the slogan, “No Loyalty, No Citizenship”, and wants to introduce a law forcing 1.2m Palestinians with an Israeli passport to choose: either they swear an oath of allegiance to the Israeli state and serve in the military – or commit to alternative national service – or they lose their citizenship.

He wants to demand that Israel's Arab population agree to actions like the recent attacks on Gaza, which were the subject of almost worldwide condemnation, or simply cease to be citizens. That's almost textbook fascism and yet, astonishingly, his party, Israel Beitenu, look at the moment as if they are about to take almost 15% of the vote, placing Lieberman in a very strong negotiating position in a country which decides elections by proportional representation.

I was appalled when Olmert invited him to join his cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister, a position which Lieberman resigned from under protest that Israel were prepared to have any negotiations with the Palestinians. I was also appalled at the time that the Bush administration, which had lots to say about Arab extremism, was utterly silent whilst a man who held such appalling views was made Israel's Deputy Prime Minister.

The party mostly emphasizes a secular nationalist vision and demands that all citizens must demonstrate their loyalty to the principle of a "Jewish and democratic state" before they can enjoy the benefits of citizenship. Israel Beitenu's TV commercials boast that "only Lieberman speaks Arabic"—that is, he is the only candidate who understands how to deal with the problem of disloyalty he attributes to many members of the Israeli Arab minority.

I find that terrifying. Lieberman is insisting that it is disloyal for Israel's Arab population to have views which differ from the views of the state, which is a simply astonishing claim for anyone to make within a democracy.

Even Ariel Sharon, who no-one could accuse of being left wing, found the views of Lieberman to be too much and Sharon insisted that, "We regard Israeli Arabs as part of the State of Israel." Sharon went on to dismiss Lieberman from the cabinet.

And yet, if the polls are correct, Avigdor Lieberman could very well find himself in a real position of power after the next Israeli election.

Here are some of the things he has said:

Following nine Palestinian attacks on Israelis during a two day period in March 2002, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Lieberman's proposal for an ultimatum to the Palestinians to halt all terror activity or face wide-ranging attacks on commercial centers: "if it were up to me I would notify the Palestinian Authority that tomorrow at ten in the morning we would bomb all their places of business in Ramallah, for example." This led Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to respond that excessive military measures could lead to accusations of war crimes.

In July 2003, reacting to a commitment made by Ariel Sharon to the US, where amnesty could be given to approximately 350 Palestinian prisoners including members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Lieberman rejected a chance to participate in the related committee and said "It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world," Liebreman continued, according to Galei Tzahal ('Israel Army Radio'), stating his willingness, as Minister of Transport, to supply buses to take the prisoners there.

This man is a far right extremist by any possible measurement and yet it looks as if he, with views which were rejected as too extreme even by Ariel Sharon, is now going to emerge as a sort of power broker in Israeli politics.

I find that terrifying, and Obama's task of finding a way to establish a state of Palestine will get a whole lot harder if someone like Lieberman has any real influence in Israel. Netanyahu is terrifying enough, but Lieberman is a whole different ball game.

Related Articles:

Israeli elections: Be afraid. Be very afraid

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Tags: Lieberman, Netanyahu, Israel, election

Countdown: Special Comment on Dick Cheney's Remarks About a Future Terrorist Attack in the U.S.

One thing that always astonishes me about Dick Cheney's constant, and yet completely unsubstantiated, claim that 61 of the people released from Guantanamo Bay went on to return to the battle.

Let's take what he is saying at face value, shouldn't he be ashamed of such a thing? I mean doesn't it reflect badly on the competence of the Bush/Cheney administration that they released such people?

Tags: Countdown, Keith Olbermann, Special Comment, Dick Cheney, Fear Mongering, Terrorism, Politico

Senate reaches tentative deal on Obama's stimulus plan.

There is now talk that there is a "tentative agreement" to push Obama's economic stimulus package forward.

The tentative agreement capped a tense day of back-room negotiations in which Senate majority leader Harry Reid, joined by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, sought to attract the support of enough Republicans to give the measure the needed 60-vote majority.

Officials strongly suggested that senator Edward M Kennedy's vote would be needed to assure passage. The Massachusetts Democrat, battling a brain tumour, has been in Florida in recent days and has not been in the Washington DC since suffering a seizure on inauguration day more than two weeks ago. The senator's office did not comment.

Under Senate rules, a senator must be in the chamber to vote. Reid met privately in the Capitol with members of his rank and file to present the proposed deal.

At $780bn, the legislation would be smaller than the measure that cleared the House of Representatives on a party-line vote last week. It also would mean a sharp cut from the bill that has been the subject of Senate debate for a week. That measure stood at $937bn.

Beyond the numbers, though, any agreement would mark a victory for the new president and would keep Democratic leaders on track to fulfil their promise of delivering him a bill to sign by the end of next week.

The Republicans have struck me as wildly out of step with public opinion on this one. It is worth remembering that it was the financial crisis which pushed Obama way ahead on the polls during the election and it was McCain's attitude to the entire subject of the economic crisis which brought about his downfall.

And yet, astonishingly, the Republicans have kept up the same argument as the one they lost the election on.

I find that breathtaking. They continue to argue for Reaganomics even after those policies have resulted in disaster. This is why they deserve to be out of power for a generation. They are bereft of ideas, simply repeating the same mantra which has sustained them for the last thirty.

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Tags: economic stimulus, Republicans, Democrats, Reagan

Shoesmith claims that minister was "reckless".

I've spoken before about the case of baby P and of the dreadful attitude of Sharon Shoesmith, the leader of Haringey's children's services who was fired after she refused to accept that her department had any lesson to learn from the terrible tragedy which fell upon that child.

Well, she has given an interview to the Guardian this morning in which, whilst admitting that she and her department "were out of touch with public opinion", she nevertheless goes on to attack Ed Balls and the decision to remove her from her office.

Speaking for the first time since her removal by Balls on live television in December, she claimed political opportunism and press hysteria had created "a local tragedy and a national catastrophe".

In a wide-ranging interview, the former Haringey children's services director said she felt an inquiry ordered by Balls into child protection in the borough had been an attempt to "discredit" her. She said the report, carried out by Ofsted inspectors and used by Balls in support of his ­decision to remove her, was misleading and lacked balance.

She accused Balls directly of making the task of protecting children in Haringey more difficult. The consequences of his "reckless" attack on Haringey, said Shoesmith, would be to make it "more of an uphill struggle" to achieve his aim of raising the standing and status of the social work profession.

This woman simply doesn't get it. A child died, after suffering the most horrendous injuries, (within the area in which she was charged with protecting children) and she felt that her department had no lessons to learn and nothing to apologise for.

The minute she stated that, it became impossible for her to remain in her position. Let's remember what happened here:

Baby P was 17 months old when he died after suffering more than 50 injuries at the hands of his abusive mother, 27, her boyfriend, 32, and their lodger, Jason Owen, 36, despite 60 contacts with the authorities over eight months.

Her comment at the time was this:

The very sad fact is that you cannot stop anyone who is determined to kill their children. Of course, we are shocked by the details of this, but no agency killed the child."

But, of course, you can stop people from killing their children, that is the entire point of social services. That is why they have the power to remove a child from abusive parents. To stop further harm.

Her attitude set off a wave of revulsion around the country, resulting in the Sun newspaper receiving one and a half million signatures calling for her resignation. And yet, even today, she simply doesn't get it.

Today she regales us with the story of how she nearly killed herself and implies that she is as much a victim of this tale as baby P was.

Don't get me wrong, I am not someone who thinks that every child's death must be the fault of social services and that someone must pay a price. However, in this case there was a shocking breakdown in the level of care baby P could reasonably have been expected to have. And Sharon Shoesmith's attitude was that she and her department had done nothing wrong.

But, even today, she is said to be considering putting forward a claim of wrongful dismissal.

Ed Balls said last night: "I make no apology for the actions I took in Haringey last December, which I judged absolutely necessary to make sure children in that borough are properly protected. I believe that every community, every parent and every social worker would expect me to put the safety of children first. That is what I did - and faced with the same situation again I would have no hesitation in taking exactly the same decisions."

I back the decision which Balls took, it was simply unthinkable that she could remain in her position whilst refusing to admit that her department had been guilty of serious failings.

I am simply stunned that, after all this time, she is still pleading her case in public.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Sharon Shoesmith, baby P

AP accuses 'Hope' artist of copyright infringement

There are times when huge corporations go after the little guy and simply get it dead wrong in my opinion. Like this:

As we've previously reported, the Hope posters that artist Shepard Fairey created during the presidential campaign use an image of Barack Obama that's based on a photograph taken for the Associated Press by then-freelancer Mannie Garcia.

Now, the AP wants credit and compensation.

The wire service says Fairey didn't get permission to do what he did. Fairey's attorney says "fair use" gave him the legal right to take the image and rework it into a piece of art.

"We have reached out to Mr. Fairey's attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution," says the AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford, in a statement.

What do they hope to gain through this? Fairey, as far as I am aware, did not make huge fortunes out of this iconic image, so what does AP want? It's not as if the picture which they are claiming this poster is based on is especially brilliant or shows a side of Obama which we have previously never seen.

Indeed, it is what Fairey did with the image which makes it interesting, far more than the image itself.

And lawyers appear to at loggerheads over whether or not there has been copyright infringement in this case.

"Fairey's purpose of the use for the photo was political or civic, and this will certainly count in favor of the poster being a fair use," said Gross, based in San Francisco. "Nor will the poster diminish the value of the photo, if anything, it has increased the original photo's value beyond measure, another factor counting heavily in favor of fair use."

Is there a company out there wanting compensation for the iconic photograph of "Che" Guevara?

If they had any sense, AP would simply let this one go.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, icon, iconic, Associated Press, Shepard Fairey

Lords: rise of CCTV is threat to freedom

The House of Lords have published a new report which states that steady expansion of the "surveillance society" risks undermining fundamental freedoms, including the right to privacy.

It also questions whether Britain's quite extraordinary expansion of surveillance actually has any real effect in reducing crime.

The cross-party committee which includes Lord Woolf, a former lord chief justice, and two former attorneys general, Lord Morris and Lord Lyell, warns that "pervasive and routine" electronic surveillance and the collection and processing of personal information is almost taken for granted.

Although many surveillance practices and data collection processes are unknown to most people, the expansion in their use represents "one of the most significant changes in the life of the nation since the end of the second world war", the report says. The committee warns that the national DNA database could be used for "malign purposes", challenges whether CCTV cuts crime and questions whether local authorities should be allowed to use surveillance powers at all.

The peers say privacy is an "essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom" and the growing use of surveillance and data collection needs to be regulated by executive and legislative restraint at all times.

This is the point which I keep harping on about. Privacy is as important a right as any other. And yet, we live in a society where some 4 million cameras watch and record our every move, to be later pored over by the state.

They sell this to us by telling us that it helps reduce crime and aids in the fight against terrorism. I'm not sure that this is true. The only time I ever see CCTV footage employed in terrorist cases always appears to be after the event when we witness, for example, the 7-7 bombers boarding trains. So, whilst it appears to have a use in working out what happened after the event, I am not sure what role it plays in prevention.

"The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy," he said. "If the public are to trust that information about them is not being improperly used there should be much more openness about what data is collected, by whom and how it is used."

The constitution committee makes more than 40 recommendations to protect individual privacy, including the deletion of all profiles from the national DNA database except for those of convicted criminals and a call for the mandatory encryption of personal data held by public and private organisations that are legally obliged to hold it.

Were this data to have been held by the Soviet Union on it's own citizens we would not hesitate to condemn such intrusion into their privacy; indeed, we would have used this as the perfect example of the Big Brother state.

But, because it is our government which is gathering such a vast amount of information on it's citizenry, we are asked to trust that their intentions are benign, and that it is all for our own good.

Which isn't terribly different from the argument which the Soviets might have made.

Click title for full article.

Tags: surveillance society, United Kingdom, House of Lords

Ministers 'misled' judges over torture evidence.

I said yesterday that I found it hard to believe that the new Obama administration had made the threats which David Miliband was claiming they had made; namely, that they would stop sharing intelligence with the UK if a British court released details which proved a British resident had been tortured whilst in US custody.

Because of Miliband's claim the judges made clear that they had no choice other than to forbid the release of the information on the grounds of national security.

However, it now transpires that Miliband might have been gilding the lily.

In their ruling, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said they decided not to release the documents because Mr Miliband believed there was a "real risk" that the potential loss of intelligence co-operation would seriously increase the terror threat faced by the UK. Yesterday, however, the Foreign Secretary told MPs that Washington did not "threaten" to break off co-operation, but had simply affirmed that the sharing of information could be damaged.

Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in the UK in 1994. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and handed over to US agents. He claims he was secretly flown to Morocco and tortured before being moved to Afghanistan and finally, in 2004, to the US naval base in Cuba, where he remains. All terror charges against him were dropped last year.

He says the evidence against him was based on confessions extracted by torture and ill-treatment – a claim denied by the US – and that British agencies were complicit in his torture.

Last night, his lawyers wrote to the High Court to ask the two judges to reconsider their judgment, arguing that ministers were now denying that disclosure of the CIA dossier threatened joint anti-terror operations. Mr Mohamed's counsel, Dinah Rose, QC, quoted Mr Miliband as saying that no threat to end intelligence-sharing was ever made to Britain by the US.

Mr Mohamed's legal team says it is clear that the perceived threat of non-co-operation was crucial to the court's decision not to release the dossier, even though it was in the public interest to do so. "These admissions by the Foreign Secretary would seem to undermine the whole basis of the court's reluctant decision to refuse to publish those details," said a spokesman.

In the Commons earlier, Mr Miliband dismissed calls to urge the new US administration to disclose information about the treatment of a terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay. He denied the White House had ever threatened to "break off" co-operation, but argued that the mutual trust essential to the sharing of sensitive intelligence would be undermined if Britain insisted on publication. Such a move would "cause real and significant damage to the national security and international relations of this country," he told MPs.

So, we now have Miliband essentially making the same argument, but simply removing the American threat from the equation. He now appears to be making the argument that the Americans might stop sharing information with us.

But that wasn't the argument that he made to the court which led to the decision to withhold this information.

Opposition parties accused the Foreign Secretary of striking a "shabby and shady" deal with the White House. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat spokesman for foreign affairs, said the Government was trying to avoid embarrassing the US by covering up evidence of torture.

"The point at question is not a threat to our security coming from terrorists, but a threat to our security coming from our closest ally," he said. "The Foreign Secretary should have made it clear to our American friends that this country's opposition to torture meant we would have nothing to do with intelligence gathered that way. Instead, the British Government just rolled over in the face of a scarcely credible threat from a friend."

It is, as Davey says, a "scarcely credible" threat. I am quite sure that intelligence cuts both ways and that we give as much as we receive in return, so it makes no sense to claim that the US would refuse to share intelligence with such a strong ally as the UK.

It sounds to me as if Miliband is simply scared to do anything which might embarrass the new Obama administration and jeopardise his relationship with Clinton and the new team.

To that end he is willing to suppress the evidence of torture of a British resident. A resident who has had all terror charges against him dropped.

Mr Miliband said he had discussed Mr Mohamed's case with the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, when they met in Washington this week. But he insisted: "I am not going to join a lobbying campaign against the American government for this decision."

Of course he's not. God forbid he should ever put the truth and what is right before diplomatic niceties.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Miliband, Obama, Clinton, torture, information sharing, intelligence

Cheney Is Either A Pathological Liar Or Completely Unhinged!

Cheney has launched an astonishing assault on the new Obama administration, mainly to insist that the pro-torture, pro-Guantanamo policies of the last administration must be continued by this one.

And, of course, he's hitting that - by now well worn - Republican talking point, that if the US is attacked it will be Obama's fault. I have always thought protocol prevented former presidents and vice presidents from speaking out in this way about an incoming regime. Looks like Cheney never got that memo.

UPDATE:



Here Rachel Maddow gives her take on this most recent insanity.

Tags: bush, cheney, war criminal, crime, terrorist, gitmo, fear

Miliband: American threats meant "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk".

I spoke yesterday about the "special relationship" between the US and the UK and the way it is viewed with suspicion by many of us on this side of the pond.

The perfect example of why we are so suspicious is all over our papers this morning. Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident, who is currently being held in Guantanamo Bay, claims that he was tortured whilst in custody. However, David Miliband has claimed that UK judges cannot release "powerful evidence" that Mohamed might have been tortured in case the Americans stop sharing intelligence with us and, therefore, put our national security at risk.

Two senior judges said they were powerless to reveal the information about the torture of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident, because David Miliband, the foreign secretary, had warned the court the US was threatening to stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK.

In a scathing judgment, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said the evidence, and what MI5 knew about it, must remain secret because according to Miliband, the American threats meant "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk".

The judges made clear they were unhappy with their decision, but said they had no alternative as a result of Miliband's claim. Their ruling revealed that Miliband stuck to his position about the threat to the UK even after Barack Obama signed orders two weeks ago banning torture and announcing the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

Miliband appeared on TV last night, attempting to backtrack, but only made the situation seem even worse:

"It's American information and it is for the Americans to decide whether to publish their information," Miliband told Channel 4 television.

He's the British Foreign Secretary, talking about whether or not a British resident has been tortured, and he's telling us that our ally in the war on terror will stop sharing information with us, that they will actually put our country at risk, if a court reveals what they did to a British resident in their custody.

It's no wonder that the judges are as scathing as they are in making their outrage known.

The ruling, studded with thinly disguised attacks on the attitude of the foreign secretary and the American authorities, came after the judges last year invited the Guardian and other media groups to overturn Miliband's refusal to disclose information in the documents given to him by the US. In a telling passage, the judges said: "Given [the documents'] source and detail, they would ... amount to powerful evidence". None of the contents at issue could possibly be described as sensitive US intelligence, they said.

In further stinging comments they said: "Moreover, in the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States, it was, in our view, very difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.

"Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials ... relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be." The judges said yesterday: "It is plainly right that the details of the admissions in relation to the treatment of [Mohamed] as reported by officials of the United States government should be brought into the public domain."

And the US state department appeared to confirm that this is the US position even under the new Obama regime:

A spokesman for the US state department said: "The US thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long standing intelligence-sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens."

There is no national security threat to either country here, other than the one brought about by the US threatening to stop sharing information with the UK if this evidence is released.

But the very fact that such a threat has been made is outrageous. Indeed, if this is true, then the US are subjecting Britain to the crudest form of blackmail.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said last night: "Despite best efforts to shine a light on the grubbiest aspects of the 'war on terror', the Foreign Office has claimed that the Obama administration maintained a previous US threat to reconsider intelligence sharing unless our judges kept this shameful skeleton in the closet. We find this Foreign Office allegation ... surprising."

It's hard to believe that this threat was issued by Obama's administration, especially as the evidence it suppresses was of crimes committed by the previous US administration. So we are left with two options: either Obama's new regime are treating us with such contempt, or Miliband is so frightened of annoying them that he is willing to suppress "powerful evidence" that a British resident was tortured.

Neither option makes one feel especially proud of the "special relationship".

Click title for full article.

Tags: Binyam Mohamed, torture, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, national security, Miliband, Obama

Petraeus versus the President?

This is an interesting clip telling the tale of how Petraeus and others are now working to put the blame for any violence in Iraq - what Obama referred to as a "bar set so low, that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation, to the point where we now have the levels of intolerable violence that existed in June 2006, is considered success" - and blame that violence on Obama's decision to withdraw the troops.

We see Keen on the Lehrer programme saying things that simply are not true. He seems to think that Iraq wants a relationship with the US rather than with Iran, which ignores totally the Iranian/Iraqi relationship which already exists.

They are applying an utterly false narrative, and we will now see this narrative play out across right wing sites.

Tags: Obama, Petraeus, Iraq war

Holder Sworn in As Attorney General.

Holder promises "a break from the immediate past" and says that the Justice Department has "no reason to be timid" in enforcing the law.

I hope that also applies to war criminals.

Tags: Holder, Attorney General, United States

Clinton praises special relationship.

Politicians do wrap themselves up in meaningless crap and nowhere is this truer than in British politicians bizarre need to prove that we have a "special relationship" with the United States.

British diplomats had played down the importance of whether Britain, France or Germany would be first to speak to the new administration but they were yesterday celebrating twin coups: Gordon Brown was the first European leader Obama called and Miliband became the first foreign minister to visit Clinton.

Clinton's praise sounded warmer than usual. "It is often said the United States and Britain have enjoyed a special relationship. It is certainly special in my mind and one that has proven very productive," she said. "Whoever is in the White House, whichever party in our country, this relationship really stands the test of time and I look forward to working with the foreign secretary."

Perhaps things will change under the Obama administration, but I seriously doubt it. Until now the United States has a "special relationship" with one country and one country only, and that is Israel.

The United Kingdom proves it has a "special relationship" with the US by going out on a limb with them to back every action which Israel takes, and by ignoring it's own citizens anger when it backs US policy which the citizenry is vehemently opposed to.

I'm sure I am not the only British citizen who finds our "special relationship" rather humiliating, especially when Blair was in office, when it honestly felt to me as if I was living in an American aircraft carrier parked just to the west of Europe.

So, Miliband can secretly cackle that he got the first meeting with Clinton, but I find our obsequiousness even to fellow progressives to be utterly embarrassing:

Miliband, speaking with reporters after the Clinton meeting, was at pains to appear even-handed between the Palestinians and the Israelis, saying that while the humanitarian situation was "very serious indeed", there was a need to combat arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.

There is a sequence at the end of the movie, "Love Actually" in which the British Prime Minister actually tells an American president what he really thinks. On the night when I saw it, and I suspect on every other night, this speech received a rapturous round of applause.

Richard Curtis was obviously tapping in to some part of the British psyche when he wrote that. We all find it embarrassing and we all realise that only in a movie would a British Prime Minister actually do that.

Tags: Clinton, Miliband, US, UK, special relationship

Obama: There aren't two sets of rules, "one for prominent folks and one for ordinary folks".

Barack Obama is saying that he "screwed up" over the nomination of Tom Daschle, who was forced to withdraw his nomination from a cabinet post because of unpaid taxes, but it's the reasoning he gives for why his screw up is unacceptable that I find most interesting.

"I screwed up,'' he said in one interview with NBC. "It's important for this administration to send a message that there aren't two sets of rules you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.

"I'm frustrated with myself, with our team. ... I'm here on television saying I screwed up."

That's the very reason why people like myself keep harping on that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others must be prosecuted. There aren't two sets of rules, "one for prominent folks and one for ordinary folks".

And it's not as if the US is shy about prosecuting "ordinary folks".

The United States accounts for 5% of the world's population and yet has close to 25% of the world's prisoner population. And the people who insist on the mandatory sentencing which accounts for this figure are the political class of the United States.

Under federal law, "the simple possession of just 5 grams of crack cocaine, the weight of about two sugar packets, subjects a defendant to a mandatory five-year prison term." In Alabama, the average sentence for marijuana possession -- an offense for which most Western countries almost never imprison their citizens -- is 8.4 years. Until recently, the state of Florida "impose[d] mandatory-minimum sentences of 25 years for illegally carrying a pillbox-worth of drugs such as Oxycontin" and still imposes shockingly Draconian mandatory sentences even for marijuana offenses.

Our political class has embraced mandatory minimum sentencing schemes as a way to eliminate mercy and sentencing flexibility for ordinary people who break the law (as opposed to Bush officials who do). The advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums details just some of the grotesque injustices here, including decades of imprisonment for petty drug dealing which even many judges who are forced to impose the sentences find disgraceful. Currently in the U.S., close to 7,000 people are serving sentences of 25 years to life under our merciless "three-strikes-and-out" laws -- which the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in a 5-4 ruling -- including half for nonviolent offenses and many for petty theft.

So the law, as it's applied to "ordinary folks" is rather draconian in the United States, I would go as far as to say it borders on merciless.

The very fact that Bush and Cheney are on the record admitting to having authorised war crimes, and that there is even a debate over whether or not they should be prosecuted, shows that there are two sets of rules, "one for prominent folks and one for ordinary folks".

No other criminal could confess - nay, boast - of his crimes on national television and expect prosecution not to automatically follow. And yet I have friends who think it would "be too left wing" for Obama to instigate prosecutions against Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Somewhere, deep in our psyche, we accept that there are two sets of rules, "one for prominent folks and one for ordinary folks". But we shouldn't.

And, if Obama means what he says, he's in a unique position to show us that those two sets of rules don't exist. If any group of people deserve prosecution, then war criminals should feature near the top of any rational persons list.

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Tags: Obama, Daschle, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, war crimes

The LA Times and rendition.

I notice that many on the right are getting themselves overexcited by a story claiming that Obama is going to be continuing the rendition program of Bush and that this means that Obama is continuing Bush's programme of torture.

However, I also note that several people are disputing the LA Times version of events.

Obama orders people to comply with the Convention Against Torture, and that Convention states that we cannot return people to states where there are substantial grounds to believe that they will be tortured. And nothing the Obama administration has done to date suggests to me that they would engage in the kinds of creative reading of legal documents that would allow them, say, to disregard Egypt's long record of torture in making this determination.

And Glenn Greenwald has also come down heavily against the LA Times article and its claim that Obama will continue Bush's torture policy.

The L.A. Times article is wildly exaggerated and plainly inaccurate. Harper's Scott Horton and The Washington Monthly's Hilzoy have typically thorough explanations as to why that is the case. Anyone with any doubts should read both of their commentaries. Suffice to say, the objections to the Bush "extraordinary rendition" program were that "rendered" individuals were abducted and then either (a) sent to countries where they would likely be tortured and/or (b) disappeared into secret U.S. camps ("black sites") or sent to Guantanamo and accorded no legal process of any kind. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Obama will continue any of that and, as Hilzoy documents, there is ample basis to believe he will not.

I am not attempting to argue that Obama will not continue the process of rendition, only that the argument put forward by Glenn Reynolds and others, that those of us who support Obama now officially support torture, is simply wrong.

That said, I am not happy that Obama is even considering continuing the process of rendition just as I was not happy about that policy when it was carried out by the Clinton administration.

Richard Clarke describes in his book the change which many see in the American system:

The critics tell a different story. In their account, America went from a society committed to the rule of law, even in tough situations, to one unbounded by it. Following the attacks, in this version, the administration tossed out long-settled understandings of international law concerning the detention, interrogation, and trial of terrorists; brushed aside the historic role of the courts in overseeing government action; and otherwise ran roughshod over civil liberties and human rights.

I am afraid I am one of those critics. I do not believe the state has the right to kidnap people. And certainly not to keep them out of the reach of their courts of law. The whole point of habeas corpus is to prevent the state ever being able to take part in such actions.

Clarke also, disturbingly, recounts this tale from the Clinton White House:

The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the president to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just fl own overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, “That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.”

I'm not attacking Clinton here - as this process actually became rather routine under the administration of Reagan - but, and this is my point, international law cannot be so casually dismissed by the most powerful nation on Earth without there being consequences for all of us.

If the law is wrong, or unfairly makes it more difficult to apprehend terrorists, then we ought to get together and change the law.

But we cannot have the US acting so blatantly outside of international law and it should appall even right wing Americans that the government has given itself permission to kidnap people and not have to answer for their capture to any court of law.

That's wrong if Reagan did it, if Bush did it, if Clinton did it, and it's wrong if Obama's considering doing it.

The US is either bound by international law or it is a rogue state. That said, Glenn Reynolds and others are simply talking nonsense when they say that the Obama regime is continuing Bush's torture programme.

If Obama is continuing the rendition programme then we should question why he is continuing an act which is outside of international law, but it is ludicrous to take this highly suspect procedure and equate it with the Bush torture regime.

However, Obama has stated that the US is a country of laws. To truly live up to the admirable standards which he has proclaimed, he should value international law as much as any other.

Tags: Obama, Bush, rendition, torture

Britain slips, slides and smiles to a halt.

I said yesterday that we had been hit by the worst snowfall in almost twenty years. Well, this morning we read of the damage that a mere six inches of snow has wreaked.

In London, where up to 27cm fell, all 700 bus routes – a total of 7,000 buses – were suspended for the first time in history. Not even during the Blitz were such measures taken. Similar chaos ensued on the Tube network. At one point, nine of the 11 London Underground lines were suspended or part-suspended.

More than 5,500 schools were closed across the South-east, including 4,000 in London, the Department for Children, Schools and Families said. A spokesman said it would not be until later today that the Government would be able to say how many schools in all were forced to close.

At airports, flights were cancelled and passengers stranded. At one point in the morning, both runways at Heathrow were closed. Those that did fly were subject to long delays. With the weather expected to become worse, passengers could be set for more woe. A BA spokesman said: "There will be some disruption. The forecast isn't good but it remains to be seen how many flights we can get up today. Every airline operating from Heathrow will have some disruption."

On the roads, traffic jams snaked along most motorways and major roads. The M25 had the worst tail-back. At about 9am, TomTom, the satellite navigation company, said that a queue of 53.8 miles stretched from Junction 19 at Watford to Junction 8 at Reigate. The A66 – the main road between Cumbria and North Yorkshire – was closed completely.

An astonishing one in five people failed to turn up for work yesterday, meaning that 20% of the workforce were unavailable. And, unbelievably, several London theatres failed to open their doors last night.

I went out yesterday to the local park where I found it much busier than normal with kids building snowmen and adults all carrying cameras and all taking pictures of the snow scape. It did seem to me as if Britain had chosen to take the day off.

From my window this morning things look exactly as they did before I went to bed. The snow from yesterday is still there, but it doesn't look to me as if there has been any more snowfall overnight.

Breakfast News says that trains are operating normally and that most motorways are open again.

As always the Tories sought to make political capital out of something as unusual as the worst snowfall in twenty years.

As the snowfall intensified yesterday afternoon, and forecasters warned the cold snap could last for the week, the government and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, were under pressure to explain why they had not been better prepared.

During a press conference with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, Gordon Brown said every effort was being made to get the transport system moving again.

"We are doing everything in our power to ensure that the services - road, rail and airports - are open as quickly as possible and we are continuously monitoring this throughout the day," he said.

But the Conservatives said bad winter weather was not a wholly unexpected phenomenon and better provision should have been made. "Both our national and local transport infrastructure should have better contingency plans in place for extreme weather," said Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary.

Were this to be a more common event, I would agree that London should be able to cope better. But the truth is that events like this occur once every twenty years, so it's silly to expect London to have the same snowploughs that clear New York's streets. They would simply sit idle for two decades waiting for the day that they were needed.

It looked to me as if London had chosen to take this as an opportunity to have an unofficial day off, and it certainly looked as if London was enjoying itself.

Click title for full article.

Tags: London, UK, Snow

The lunatics refuse to hand over the asylum without a fight.

I've been predicting for ages that the Republican party are coming apart at the seams and now we have this outburst from David Duke:

I am glad these traitorous leaders of the Republican Party appointed this Black racist, affirmative action advocate to the head of the Republican party because this will lead to a huge revolt among the Republican base. As a former Republican official, I can tell you that millions of rank-and-file Republicans are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore! We will either take the Republican Party back over the next four years or we will say, “To Hell With the Republican Party!” And we will take 90 percent of Republicans with us into a New Party that will take its current place!

I think the insanity of nominating “Mr. Amnesty” John McCain and now this Black racist — will lead to insurgency in the Republican ranks, and a lot of dissidents getting elected in Republican Party primaries around the country. This will result over the next four years a real move by millions of Republicans to take the party back to the populist issues that are not only right but can win for the Republican Party.

Everything is in place. Now we can all sit back and let the circular firing squad begin.

Click title for entire rant.

Tags: Republicans, suicide

Barney Frank: Iraq war was the biggest spending program ever.

Barney Frank is right when he says that no tax cut ever built a road or put a policeman on the street. And he's especially right when he rounds on Republican claims that the stimulus package is "the largest spending bill in history" and points out that "the largest spending bill in history" will actually turn out to be the Iraq war.

Tags: Barney Frank, Iraq war, economy, stimulus package

Israeli governing parties face poll battering amid Gaza scepticism.

So many innocent Palestinians dead, and for what?

Israel's governing parties are facing eclipse in an upcoming general election as the Gaza campaign fails to convince a sceptical public while playing into the hands of opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

With Israel's 10 February election just over a week away, opinion polls and analysts say that the two principal government parties, Kadima and Labour, have extracted little benefit from the three-week Gaza war.

That much was underscored yesterday when at least 10 rockets were fired into Israel, injuring three and drawing ominous promises of retaliation from the government. Hamas has not taken responsibility for the new attacks, some of which have been claimed by smaller groups. But Israel says it holds Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since seizing power in June 2007, responsible for all attacks coming from the territory.

Israel retaliated by bombing three targets in Gaza last night after the government threatened "harsh and disproportionate" action as it scrambled to stop Palestinian rocket fire and to check the rise of its right-wing rival, Netanyahu's Likud party.

The election of Netanyahu would be the worst possible result for those of us who hope that the election of Obama might, at last, signal an opportunity to see a peace deal in the Middle East.

After all Netanyahu is a man who has said:

"Since the Six Day War the Arab world has been trying to get us off the mountains of Judea and Samaria, but as long as we are on this mountain, we are unbeatable," opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday.

And, of course, getting Israel off those mountains is exactly what Obama will be seeking to do. Which Netanyahu is set to oppose every inch of the way.

The opposition leader noted that "the automatic assumption of withdrawing to the 1967 borders is unjustified, immoral and very dangerous to the State of Israel."

And yet opinion polls in Israel are predicting that Netanyahu and the Likud party are set to win the election.

A poll conducted for Haaretz newspaper at the weekend predicted that Likud and its allies would win 65 seats in the elections, giving it a 12-seat advantage over the centre-left parties, which are expected to capture just 53 of the 120 parliamentary seats up for grabs.

So, Olmert and Livni have killed hundreds of innocent Palestinians in an attempt to outdo Netanyahu, and it appears as if it was all to no avail. Come February 10th, it looks like the world will have to deal with a man who regards the West Bank and Gaza as Judea and Samaria.

What Olmert and Livni have done is simply criminal. But there will be no punishment for it.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Olmert, Livni, Netanyahu, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, West Bank, Judea, Samaria

Transport hit as UK wakes to heaviest snow in decades.

Viewed from my window it looks like a winter wonderland but the Met Office are warning that we are actually witnessing, "an extreme weather event" and that the snow is set to stay for the next week.

The heaviest snow for two decades moved into Britain on a freezing easterly wind last night after gathering strength over the North Sea. Falls of up to 10cm (4in) are predicted initially on the south-east coast and inland as far as London before the storms head north.

It was already causing chaos last night as trains were delayed and some airport runways temporarily closed. Gatwick and London City airports were both temporarily shut as their runways were de-iced, although City failed to reopen, as it closes ordinarily at 10pm. A Gatwick spokeswoman said that 23 flights had been cancelled and 18 diverted, although the runway reopened at 10pm.

A number of train services linking London and the south coast were also delayed or cancelled as snow drifted on to the tracks. And all London bus services were withdrawn, according to Transport for London's website.

High ground in Kent and Sussex could see as much as 20cm fall. "Severe disruption to roads and airports is extremely probable during the peak of the Monday afternoon rush hour," said Tom Defty, head of forecasting operations at MetService.

On TV they are warning that it might get as cold a minus 5 and the BBC are currently telling me that it is "very dangerous out there".

They are reporting that parts of the M25 are closed and, strangely, they are also telling us that there is no London bus service for the whole of today.

Contrast that with what is currently taking place in Australia:

Leaves are falling off trees in the height of summer, railway tracks are buckling, and people are retiring to their beds with deep-frozen hot-water bottles, as much of Australia swelters in its worst-ever heatwave.

On Friday, Melbourne thermometers topped 43C (109.4F) on a third successive day for the first time on record, while even normally mild Tasmania suffered its second-hottest day in a row, as temperatures reached 42.2C. Two days before, Adelaide hit a staggering 45.6C. After a weekend respite, more records are expected to be broken this week.

Ministers are blaming the heat – which follows a record drought – on global warming. Experts worry that Australia, which emits more carbon dioxide per head than any nation on earth, may also be the first to implode under the impact of climate change.

So, in Australia they are suffering from excessive heat whilst, here in London, we are witnessing "an extreme weather event" which is so cold that you have to look back some twenty years to find anything comparable. And what is happening here is set, for the first time anyone can remember, to last for a week.

At the moment I, like almost every other Londoner, am viewing this as an exciting aberration, and a pretty one at that, but it'll be interesting to see how we all feel after a week of this weather.

Click title for full article.

Tags: United Kingdom, Snow, Climate Change

A Strong Middle Class = A Strong America.

It's such a relief to see Obama finally attempt to overturn Reagan's insane economic policy which stated that the more one gave to the rich, the better off everyone would be, as the money given to the richest in society would eventually "trickle down" to everyone else.

It was one of the most audacious attempts to explain and justify greed that I ever expect to hear in my lifetime. And yet, bizarrely, that was the Republican policy from the eighties onwards.

Obama now attempts to reverse that colossal error. It's not before time.

Tags: Obama, middle class, economy

Israel vows "disproportionate" rocket response.

You seriously have to wonder if such a thing as a war crime even exists any more when you hear commentators debating whether or not the US should torture people - and arguing that it is bad for the US and dangerous that Obama has said that he will not do so - and then one reads Olmert casually making this assertion:

On Sunday Mr Olmert warned Israel would respond forcefully to renewed rocket fire.

"We've said that if there is rocket fire against the south of the country, there will be a disproportionate Israeli response to the fire on the citizens of Israel and its security forces," he said.

"We will not agree to return to the old rules of the game and we will act according to new rules that will guarantee that we are not dragged into an incessant tit-for-tat war that will not allow normal life in the south of the country," Mr Olmert said.

Those "old rules" that he is so casually refusing to abide by have another name: international law.

Israel have already been accused by the United Nations and several other organisations of committing war crimes and, especially the crime of responding disproportionately. Olmert's response is to actually promise to behave disproportionately in the future.

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

• Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

• Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Olmert has been guilty of committing war crimes before, and he has certainly been guilty of using disproportionate force when he pummelled Beirut in response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. And I certainly thought he committed a war crime when, in the final days of that war - even as the UN were meeting to bring about the final resolution - he dropped almost 100,000 cluster bombs into areas where he knew a civilian population would be returning to.

At the time the UN's humanitarian chief described Olmert's actions as "completely immoral" and it was hard to dispute his logic:

"What's shocking and completely immoral is: 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution," he said.

Mr Egeland added: "Cluster bombs have affected large areas - lots of homes, lots of farmland. They will be with us for many months, possibly years.

"Every day, people are maimed, wounded and killed by these weapons. It shouldn't have happened."

Why did Olmert do it? Because he has no fear of prosecution. Which is exactly the same reason he feels free to stand up now and promise to commit more war crimes, because he knows fine well that nothing will ever happen to him.

Until we stop thinking that war crimes are something which are only ever committed by our enemies, and not by us, then the Olmert's and the Bush's of this world will continue to believe that they can act with impunity.

That's why it's so important that the Bush administration are prosecuted for their crimes. Olmert simply wouldn't make such a promise if he ever believed that he might one day have to answer for it.

Related Articles:

Robert Fisk: When Did We Stop Caring About Civilian Deaths During Wartime?

"I wonder if we are “normalising” war. It’s not just that Israel has yet again got away with the killing of hundreds of children in Gaza.

And after its own foreign minister said that Israel’s army had been allowed to “go wild” there, it seems to bear out my own contention that the Israeli “Defence Force” is as much a rabble as all the other armies in the region. But we seem to have lost the sense of immorality that should accompany conflict and violence.

The BBC’s refusal to handle an advertisement for Palestinian aid was highly instructive. It was the BBC’s “impartiality” that might be called into question. In other words, the protection of an institution was more important than the lives of children. War was a spectator sport whose careful monitoring – rather like a football match, even though the Middle East is a bloody tragedy – assumed precedence over human suffering.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Olmert, Israel, Gaza, war crimes, international law, laws of war