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| In article <memo.20060111123538.804O@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk>,
alan@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk (Alan) wrote:
> In article <memo.20060111120515.804N@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk>,
> alan@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk (Alan) wrote:
>
>
> Oh yes *Liceman* and this is what One of Britain’s top judges, the recently
> retired Lord Steyn, said:
>
> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/d.../stey-d08.shtml
>
> One of Britain’s top judges, the recently retired Lord Steyn, said Tuesday
> that the Bush administration’s policy of rendition and its treatment of
> detainees at Guantánamo are war crimes. He added that anyone who knowingly
> participates in or facilitates such practices is also guilty.
>
> Steyn was interviewed by Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow on December 6
> regarding the CIA’s practice of kidnapping and flying terrorist suspects
> through European airports to secret detention centres outside the US, where
> they are subject to torture.
>
> According to press reports, such “black sites” have been located in at least
> eight countries, including two former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern
> Europe. Some media reports have identified those countries as Poland and
> Romania, and ABC television in the US said terrorist suspects being held
> there were moved to facilities in North Africa only last week, ahead of the
> European trip by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
>
> Steyn dismissed Rice’s assertion that existing international law was unsuited
> for dealing with twenty-first century terrorism, and said her claim that the
> US was not involved in torture could not be sustained.
>
> “Specifically, when you refer to torture it is very important to know what is
> meant by torture,” he said. “I’m speaking purely as a lawyer. The US
> administration has adopted a definition of torture which is extremely narrow.
> It involves causing death, total organ failure and so forth. The true
> definition is much wider and it includes coercive questioning.”
>
> Questioned by Snow as to whether the US military camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
> was a “template for what is happening,” Steyn replied, “I think Guantánamo
> Bay is the clue to much of what we have seen unravelled even over this
> weekend. We have seen a scale of lawlessness unravel which in my opinion is
> the logical extension of Guantánamo Bay, because Guantánamo Bay involved
> taking prisoners from Afghanistan, and many other places, to an island where
> there would be a lawless black hole where they can never escape from, where
> they have no right to trial. This logically is not very different from what
> the Americans call rendition which, in truth, is abduction. It is not
> authorised by international law and the connection between this and
> Guantánamo Bay is very close.”
>
> Snow was asked whether Rice’s assertion that the practise of rendition was
> legal was valid. Steyn replied emphatically, “It is undoubtedly not legal.”
> All prisoners “must be dealt with in accordance with the Geneva Conventions,”
> he said, and “the Geneva Convention is not something you can opt into or opt
> out as you like. Those are binding conventions.”
>
> Regarding the Bush administration’s claim that those it was holding in
> Guantánamo and elsewhere were not prisoners of war, but illegal combatants
> because they did not wear uniforms, Steyn said he could not accept this. “In
> any event, if the Geneva Conventions are not binding, then customary
> international law is of the same effect.” This body of law “binds the United
> States and it binds the United Kingdom government,” he added.
>
> Snow put it to Steyn that “Even the British government has gone some way to
> saying what is happening is legal.”
>
> Steyn replied, “Well, it is true that the British government has said through
> the defence secretary that what the Americans are doing in Guantánamo Bay is
> legal, but that is a very surprising thing for the British government to have
> said. I have a copy here of what the defence secretary said. Mr Hoon said:
> ‘There is no doubting the legality in the way these combatants have been
> imprisoned.’ He added: ‘There is no doubting the legality of the US to move
> them for trial.’ That’s at Guantánamo Bay. That’s a very surprising thing for
> the British government to have said, and I’m not sure the British government
> would want that to be repeated today.”
>
> Steyn accepted Snow’s point that the “international legal system has so far
> totally failed” to hold the Bush administration to account.
>
> “That is true, of course,” he replied, noting that a ruling by the US Supreme
> Court in favour of Guantánamo detainees had been essentially reversed by a
> subsequent decision “to the effect that it was lawful to try these prisoners
> by military commissions on the island.”
>
> The cumulative effect of Guantánamo and rendition “is lawlessness on a truly
> grand scale,” he continued, adding that this had set back all the precedents
> upholding human rights that were established after the Second World War “for
> a very, very long time.”
>
> Steyn drew a direct connection to the international response to the crimes of
> the Nazi regime in Germany. “I’m specifically referring to Nuremberg, to the
> United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
> international covenants,” he continued.
>
> He stated that the Bush administration’s flouting of international law has
> “hugely damaged” institutions such as the International Criminal Court.
> However, responsibility for this did not rest with the US alone. Those
> countries which had allowed the US to take such actions could also face
> charges of war crimes, he insisted.
>
> The Nuremberg trials had established not only that those directly
> participating in torture were guilty of war crimes, he explained. “The person
> who authorises someone to do the beating may be guilty of torture and of a
> war crime. And what’s more, somebody who set up a system calculated to cause
> such events to take place himself could be guilty of war crimes.
>
> “... If prisoners are tortured at Guantánamo Bay or at black sites—if they
> are—those who commit those acts will be guilty of war crimes, and those who
> authorise it can be similarly guilty of a war crime.”
>
> Moreover, if the British government, or any others, knew that planes landing
> at airports under their jurisdiction contained detainees that might be
> tortured, “there is the risk that the British authorities may themselves be
> guilty of war crimes,” he said.
>
> Steyn suggested that this might be difficult to prove retroactively. In fact,
> there is a wealth of evidence already in the public domain pointing to
> British collaboration in US renditions. It is, moreover, impossible to
> believe that British intelligence was unaware of the CIA flights. In any
> event, Britain, no less than the US, is implicated in planning and carrying
> out a war of aggression—the basic crime laid down in the indictment against
> Nazi leaders at Nuremburg.
>
> Steyn concluded: “From a legal perspective, I would say we are at least
> entitled to ask of our government that it must stand up to the international
> rule of law, that it must do so unambiguously and publicly. That necessarily
> involves that there should be no kow-towing to the lawlessness of the US
> administration.”
>
> In his interview, Steyn explained that one of his major concerns was that
> America’s actions “have outraged a very large part of the world.” He
> continued, “They’ve outraged the devout Muslim world, the moderate Muslim
> world. It is just simply a fact that events, for example, like Abu Ghraib
> would have outraged moderate Muslims throughout the world.”
>
> Steyn speaks for a section of the British bourgeoisie that fears the
> consequences of the unilateralist and reckless policies of the US and British
> governments and their open disregard for international law. As seen in his
> references to Nuremberg, he is concerned over the abrogation of the
> international legal framework that helped maintain relatively peaceful and
> stable relations between the major powers in the postwar period.
>
> He is also concerned that trampling on democratic rights and undermining the
> authority of the judiciary threatens social and political instability at
> home. Steyn is now chairman of the human rights group Justice, and took a
> leading role in opposing the Blair government’s efforts to criminalize the
> act of “glorifying” terrorism, calling it an attack on free speech, as well
> as Prime Minister Blair’s measures to extend the period in which a person can
> be held without charge.
>
> He denounced as a “fairy tale” Blair’s assertion following the July 7 terror
> bombings in London that “the rules of the game are changing.” The
> “maintenance of the rule of law is not a game,” he responded. “It is about
> access to justice, fundamental human rights and democratic values.”
>
> His concerns are shaped not only by his decade as one of the country’s senior
> law lords. Steyn was born in South Africa in 1932. After studying at Oxford,
> he returned there to establish a law practice in 1958.
>
> He has written that the country’s legalised tyranny led to him to leave once
> again in 1973, just three years before the Soweto uprising. As such, Steyn
> has had direct experience of revolutionary consequences arising from a regime
> that governs without democratic legitimacy. Steyn’s fear is that the Blair
> government, in its repudiation of long-standing democratic norms, is fatally
> undermining, both legally and ideologically, central pillars of bourgeois
> rule.
>
> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/d.../stey-d08.shtml
>
> So *Liceman* if one of Britain’s top judges, the recently retired Lord Steyn,
> is saying the same things that I am saying, do I need to be worrying that the
> British police might be watching me? I'll have some good company in jail,
> won't I? And of course, being a real Lord, he gets to vote in the House of
> Lords, and I thank God that we still have a House of Lords to protect us from
> power-mad politicians, who are just as dangerous as power-mad Kings. But of
> course, you don't have a House of Lords in America, do you?
Senator Frank Church: The NSA could enable a dictator to impose total tyranny
January 10, 2006
Senator Frank Church chaired the Senate Hearings on the FBI’s Cointelpro
operation, which spied upon & attempted to INFILTRATE, DISRUPT & DISCREDIT the
peace movement, even Martin Luther King Jr.
if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable [him] to impose total
tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
From James Bamford’s NSA, the agency that could be Big Brother, Senator Church:
"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people,
and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor
everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would
be no place to hide."
He added that if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable [him] to
impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
At the time, the agency had the ability to listen to only what people said
over the telephone or wrote in an occasional telegram; they had no access to
private letters. But today, with people expressing their innermost thoughts in
e-mail messages, exposing their medical and financial records to the Internet,
and chatting constantly on cellphones, the agency virtually has the ability to
get inside a person’s mind…
"I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church
said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and
we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology
operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over
that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
MLK had informants on his staff. I wonder who has informants on their staff,
travelling with them today…
BushCo is trying to bury the significance of their illegal spying, why aren’t
the Democrats "screaming to the rafters"?
hmmm- just read this on PDA, "John Conyers (D-MI), a leader in the Watergate and
Iran-Contra investigations"… interesting to note that NO Accountability came out
of those.
He also led the election fraud investigation in 2004 which concluded there was
reasonable doubt of fraud, but nothing came of it… and Conyers led the Downing
Street Memo investigation, McGovern’s testimony alone (mp3) should have been
enough to force impeachment… yet Conyers focused on collecting signatures asking
Bush for more information…
If I were Bush or Cheney, I would certainly be pushing for Conyers to be the
lead "investigator" as long as possible.
Think about it- after the explosive DSM hearing, there was no action until mid
July when Barbara Lee introduced a Resolution of Inquiry on the DSM, which has
to be acted on in 14 working days, but she introduced it "too late" and shucks,
they had to wait til after vacation in Sept to deal with it… and by then Katrina
had it and it was buried. It’s like they were stalling for Bush…
"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so
monstrous he cannot believe it exists." ~ J. Edgar Hoover
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m19445&l=i&size=1&hd=0
And I've noticed this, Liceman, that no matter what I say, or do, to convince
any American otherwise, what J. Edgar Hoover says is true.
Like I said, thank God we have a House of Lords, who enjoy living in a free
country as much as I do.
Alan
"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."
Nemesis Peace Centre
http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.../protector.html
Abuse of Women and Children
http://theoriginalfirebird.blogspot.com/
Nemesis News
http://lordcerneabbas.blogspot.com/
Absolute Anarchy
http://lordcerneabbastoo.blogspot.com/
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