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US election: Obama and McCain shirk discussion of Guantánamo and executive overreach
by Andy WorthingtonWhile pundits have been busy analyzing Friday’s Presidential debate, no one has been talking about a crucial issue that has disappeared from the election campaign since Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination in August, even though it is absolutely central to the complaints about the Bush administration’s behaviour over the last seven years.
The issue is unfettered executive power, and it has been manifested, to the horror of the world, and the dismay of Americans who pride themselves on being a nation founded on the rule of law, in the endorsement of torture as official US policy, the transformation of the CIA into an organization that has run a colossal “extraordinary rendition programme” and a network of secret prisons around the world, and the detention of thousands of prisoners without charge or trial in a legal black hole between the Geneva Conventions and the US court system.
In Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, over 20,000 prisoners in US custody are held neither as Prisoners of War, who would be protected from “humiliating and degrading treatment” and coercive interrogations by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects who will be tried in a US court. The only trials put forward by the government — the Military Commissions at Guantánamo — are so tainted by accusations of pro-prosecution bias and the suppression of exculpatory evidence that the administration is fighting a losing battle to establish their legitimacy, nearly seven years after they were set up by Dick Cheney and David Addington. continue reading… »
Why Labour Voters Ought to Think Again
by Jennie RiggYeah, I figured that headline would get the attention of some of you. Cory Doctorow has posted what it’s like to be on the sharp end of Labour’s current policies. Because I know that some of you won’t be arsed to click the link, I’m going to copy and paste.
Earlier this year, I married my British fiancée and switched my visa status from “Highly Skilled Migrant” to “Spouse.” This wasn’t optional: Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, had unilaterally (and on 24 hours’ notice) changed the rules for Highly Skilled Migrants to require a university degree, sending hundreds of long-term, productive residents of the UK away (my immigration lawyers had a client who employed over 100 Britons, had fathered two British children, and was nonetheless forced to leave the country, leaving the 100 jobless). Smith took this decision over howls of protests from the House of Lords and Parliament, who repeatedly sued her to change the rule back, winning victory after victory, but Smith kept on appealing (at tax-payer expense) until the High Court finally ordered her to relent (too late for me, alas).
Surprises from the airline plot
by Septicisle
There will be more than a few surprised people tonight, both in the media and outside it, at the verdict reached by the jury in the “liquid explosives” trial. The case, after all, had been presented, as George Tenet famously said, as a “slam-dunk”. Here were 8 Muslim extremists, caught red-handed with quantities of hydrogen peroxide, used by both the 7/7 and 21/7 bombers in their attacks, having recorded “martyrdom videos” and with apparent plans for the blowing up mid-flight of an unspecified number of transatlantic planes.
There were shrieks of initial incredulity then horror from the press, all liquids in containers above 100ml were banned from planes as a precaution, with mothers having to taste their babies’ milk, apparently as a result of claims that the bombers were prepared to blow up their children and use their bottles as containers for the explosives. This last claim, as Craig Murray notes, was nonsense.
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My MP just doesn’t get it
by Kate BelgraveSorry to butt in here, team, but thought I would take a moment to appraise you of an exchange we’ve had with our nobody Labour MP Joan Ruddock on the 42 days’ detention vote. Thought I might as well share this correspondence, so that you also could kill a few moments on a Friday savouring the kind of limp response former Labour voters get when they approach their local Brownite buttkissing MP on issues of real significance…
In the interests of balance: Why we shouldn’t support David Davis
by Jennie RiggWhat David Davis did today was not unprecedented, but it was something quite rare. However, I would urge caution on rushing headlong to leap into bed with him and give him our support.
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42 days is dead
by Sunny HundalI have a strong feeling that the government’s plans to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days, which we’ve been running a campaign against, is dead in the water.
There are two reasons for my optimism.
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Gangs and terrorists
by GracchiJohn Kerry, the former Presidential Candidate for the Democrats in 2004, was ridiculed when running for the White House because he compared terrorists to criminals. Whatever the merits of the case that some states encourage terrorism, Kerry may have been right to point to the similarities between terrorists and criminals. Both in the fact that it may be impossible to eradicate terrorism finally, and as a way of understanding the structure of terrorist movements.
This can all be illustrated if we turn to a recent Congressional Research Service report on the subject of some Latino Gangs that are increasingly worrying both the US and Central American governments.
