CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria – who has recently had off-the-record conversations with President Obama on foreign issues – noted the president's “restraint” in his dealing with the “Arab Spring” and the war in Libya Wednesday. Zakaria previously gave a thumbs-up for Obama's Mideast speech in May and defended the president's plan for removing American troops from Afghanistan. The point-of-note is that this is the same analyst who, according to the New York Times , President Obama “sounded out” while shaping his foreign policy. The two simply had “off-the-record” conversations on foreign issues, according to Zakaria, and the CNN host claimed he was not an advisor to the President.
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If Gov. Jerry Brown signs a new California bill, the history of homosexuality might soon make its way into state textbooks. It would also be the first time a state has made gay education compulsory. The bill, SB 48, would require California public schools to acknowledge the accomplishments of gays, lesbians and transgender Americans to
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Somali man taken to New York to face criminal court trial after being questioned for two months without a lawyer The Obama administration approved the secret detention of a Somali terror suspect on board a US navy ship, where for two months he was subjected to military interrogation in the absence of a lawyer and without charge. The capture and treatment of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame has rekindled the debate within the US about the appropriate handling of terror suspects. Republicans in Congress have objected to Warsame being brought to New York this week to be tried in a criminal court – an attempt by the Obama administration to avoid sending the prisoner to Guantánamo Bay, which it has promised to close. From the opposite viewpoint, civil rights groups have objected to the secret questioning of Warsame on board a navy vessel, an innovation that they fear could see a new form of the CIA’s widely discredited “black site” detention centres around the world. There is some evidence that the US government is turning to detention at sea as a way of avoiding legal and political impediments in the treatment of terror suspects, both domestically and on the international stage. Last week Admiral William McRaven, soon to become head of US Special Operations Command, told his confirmation hearing that militants captured outside Afghanistan were often “put on a naval vessel” to be held until they could be sent to a third country or a case was compiled against them for prosecution in the US courts. Legal documents show that Warsame was captured on 19 April on a boat between Yemen and Somalia. Administration officials told the Washington Post that they had intercepted the boat after being given information that it might be carrying important terrorists. Warsame was flown to New York on Monday and now faces nine charges, including conspiracy and providing support to two groups closely monitored by the US: the militant Somali group al-Shabab and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. He is also accused of weapons offences including conspiracy to teach and demonstrate the making of explosives, and having been given military training by the al-Qaida group. Warsame, who faces life in prison if convicted, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Officials told the Washington Post that Warsame was interrogated on “all but a daily basis” on board the ship. The rules governing the questioning were those set out in the army field manual which prohibit controversial techniques used by the CIA after 9/11 such as waterboarding. But the right to a lawyer was withheld along with other habeas corpus rights known in the US as Miranda rights. Officials claimed Warsame did not need to be given those because he was being interrogated for intelligence purposes rather than in preparation for his prosecution. Civil rights groups have said the secret interrogation was a blatant violation of the Geneva conventions that prohibit prolonged detention of suspects at sea. Article 22 of the third Geneva convention states that combatants can be kept at sea only for as long as needed to transfer them to land. Had Warsame been taken to Guantánamo, he would have immediately been entitled to a lawyer and to benefit from the other rights that were withheld from him on board the ship. Wells Dixon, a senior lawyer at the Centre for Constitutional Rights who has represented several Guantánamo detainees, said the Obama administration, like the Bush one before it, was selectively borrowing principles from the laws of armed conflict. “And it is always to the detriment of the detainee.” Officials in Washington said they gave Warsame a four-day “break” from interrogation to separate the intelligence from the criminal part of his questioning. The intelligence portion, they said, had been “very, very productive”. After the interlude, he was questioned with an eye to preparing a criminal case against him. At this stage he was read his rights before each session, though officials said he waived them voluntarily. The justice department hopes this separation will avoid legal difficulties further down the line. Specifically, it wants to prevent crucial information being deemed inadmissible to the New York criminal courts on the grounds that it was obtained from the defendant without his having been given his full rights. But Dixon said the distinction between portions of the interrogation was spurious. “We know from experience representing detainees in Guantánamo that it is very easy to break an individual who is held incommunicado. It is, by contrast, very, very difficult to undo the damage, so providing a person with a ‘few days off’ in no way establishes that they voluntarily waived their rights.” Leading Republicans have also objected to the handling of Warsame, accusing the Obama administration of attempting to bypass the will of Congress. The Republicans have blocked the transfer of detainees in Guantánamo for trial in civilian courts on the US mainland, claiming that to import terror suspects poses a risk to the American public. “The administration has purposefully imported a terrorist into the US and is providing him all the rights of US citizens in court,” said Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republicans in the Senate. “This ideological rigidity being displayed by the administration is harming the national security of the United States of America.” Human rights Global terrorism Guantánamo Bay United States Barack Obama Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
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• Inquiry pledge, but David Cameron and Nick Clegg at odds • Ministers resist delay to decision on Murdoch BSkyB takeover David Cameron and Nick Clegg are wrangling over the membership and status of the inquiries that will be held into illegal phone hacking at the News of the World and wider questions about the future of media regulation. The prime minister bowed to pressure to hold at least one inquiry, but is resisting calls by Clegg for a judge to take charge. The differences between Clegg and Cameron came as the government faced calls from across the Commons and from City shareholders to delay its final decision on the proposed takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation. Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, gave the provisional go-ahead for the deal last Friday, subject to a final seven-day consultation over plans to spin off Sky News as a separately listed company to allay plurality fears. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, took the momentous step of turning against Rupert Murdoch’s empire, calling for the resignation of News International’s chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and demanding the BSkyB decision be referred to the Competition Commission. “The public will react with disbelief if next week the decision is taken to go ahead with this deal at a time when News International is subject to a major criminal investigation and we do not yet know who charges will be laid against,” he said. Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said he would ask Ofcom to exercise its right to assess whether the directors of News Corp were “fit and proper” to take full control of BSkyB. “Ofcom … has a statutory obligation to consider at any time who is appropriate to hold a broadcasting licence. The message from this House must be that we want it actively to consider that obligation. “If it comes to the view that the future owners of BSkyB are inappropriate, it should rule accordingly, which would mean that the BSkyB merger could not go ahead.” Nicholas Soames, the former Tory defence minister, called for a pause in the BSkyB bid on the grounds of “serious criminality on the part of some people at News International”. Soames is listened to with care because he is close to the Prince of Wales who was angered when Prince William’s phone was hacked. Several City shareholders called for Hunt to delay his final decision while investigations into the operations of the News of the World were ongoing. Robert Talbut, chief investment officer of Royal London Asset Management said: “There are issues here that go beyond a simple financial transaction.” Another investor, speaking on the basis of anonymity said: “Hunt should hold fire because we are faced with a further concentration of media power in News Corp’s hands at a time when there are allegations of malpractice within one of its major subsidiaries.” Government sources insisted it was wrong to talk about pausing the process. They said that Hunt would consider submissions made during the consultation period and would make a decision in consultation with Ofcom and the OFT. Shares in News Corp and BSkyB fell as the News of the World phone-hacking scandal put Murdoch and his bid to take control of the broadcaster under scrutiny. News Corp shares fell by 5% at one stage on Wall Street, to $17.17. BSkyB shares in London closed 2.1% lower at 827p. Murdoch denounced as “deplorable and unacceptable” the revelation in the Guardian earlier this week that the News of the World hacked into the telephone of Milly Dowler after she disappeared. But Murdoch offered support for Brooks, who was NoW editor at the time of the schoolgirl’s murder. “I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively co-operate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks’s leadership.” Cameron announced the inquiry or inquiries would be held after consulting Clegg on his return from Afghanistan. It is expected one inquiry will examine how phone hacking was started and tolerated, while a second will examine the future of media regulation and the future of the Press Complaints Commission. But there were differences with Clegg over whether a judge would be involved. A Downing Street source said: “We do not have to have a judge-led inquiry to make it effective.” But Clegg insisted a judge would have to be involved in at least one inquiry. In an email to Lib Dem members, he said: “The inquiries must be independent, open, able to access all information and call witnesses, and that crucially the inquiry dealing with legal issues (eg relationship between police and media) must be presided over by a judge.” One Lib Dem source said: “There is no point in having an enquiry if it does not have teeth. We do not want a talking shop. Unless you have a judge you can’t deal with the crunchy bit.” The scale of the anger at News International across the Commons was highlighted when Tom Watson, a former Labour minister, accused it of entering the “criminal underworld” by “paying people to interfere with police officers and were doing so on behalf of known criminals”. He said James Murdoch, the tycoon’s son, had “personally, without board approval, authorised money to be paid by his company to silence people who had been hacked and to cover up criminal behaviour within his organisation”. John Whittingdale, the Tory chairman of the Commons culture select committee, named a series of News International executives who had told his committee that only one reporter was responsible for phone hacking while police possessed evidence of widespread illegality. News International is planning to relieve the pressure on Brooks, by claiming she was on holiday when a mobile phone belonging to Dowler was hacked into. The Guardian understands that the company has established that Brooks, News of the World editor from May 2000 until January 2003, was on holiday in Italy when the paper ran a story which referred to a message that had been left on the teenager’s phone. That is likely to focus attention on Andy Coulson, who was Brooks’s deputy at the time, and would normally have edited the paper in her absence. Procter & Gamble, Britain’s biggest advertiser, plus O2, Vauxhall, Butlins and Virgin Holidays joined Ford in pulling ads from this weekend’s News of the World. P&G, which spent almost £1.5m in the News of the World in the last year, said it shared the “growing concern” over the phone-hacking allegations. The Press Complaints Commission said that it “no longer stands by” a 2009 report which it concluded there was no evidence that phone hacking was carried out by journalists other than Clive Goodman. The chancellor, George Osborne, was notified by the Metropolitan police that his name and home phone number appeared in notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire and Goodman. Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines National newspapers News International Rupert Murdoch News Corporation Media business Rebekah Brooks Newspapers Jeremy Hunt Nicholas Watt James Robinson Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media While our media in the United States has largely ignored this story, the press overseas has not to say the least. BBC World News not only made this the opening segment on their show that reairs locally here on PBS, but did a follow up segment with as well. Our national media here appears to be too busy distracting the American public and ambulance chasing the Casey Anthony murder trial to bother reporting for the most part on this story. Here’s more from their web site on the story — Calls grow for inquiry into newspaper phone-hacking : Ex-Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott, actor Hugh Grant and dozens of other public figures are demanding an inquiry into newspaper phone-hacking. It follows allegations that a private investigator working for the News of the World hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone. Mr Grant said people felt “viscerally sickened” by the revelations. The House of Commons is to debate the calls for an inquiry for up to three hours on Wednesday. News International, which owns the News of the World, has promised to investigate the claims made against it. Hacked Off, a campaign supported by Mr Grant, Lord Prescott, Conservative former Health Secretary Lord Fowler, Labour MP Chris Bryant, Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders and the Dowlers’ lawyer, Mark Lewis, has started an online petition calling for a full public inquiry . Police are already investigating allegations over phone-hacking by detectives working for the News of the World, but the group described this as too “narrowly focused”. Read on… And here is Robert Greenwald’s interview with the BBC who’s done lots of great work documenting Murdoch and his media empire here in the U.S. in their Fox Attacks series . Click here to view this media
Continue reading …Via Talking Points Memo. Just as it’s been rumored for months, Obama is proposing to cut Social Security: Two weeks ago, that first assumption proved true: Democrats proposed a few hundred billion in new tax revenues (a small fraction of the trillions of dollars in spending cuts Republicans are demanding) so GOP principals threw up their hands and abandoned the discussions. But the second assumption isn’t built on bedrock. And in recent weeks, congressional aides, strategists, and advocates have been floating, or warning of, a stealth change to the Social Security benefit structure that has quietly been placed on the negotiating table. The proposal wouldn’t just impact Social Security benefits. It would also shave off yearly increases in federal pension payouts , and result in somewhat higher tax revenues. But the ratio would be skewed toward benefit cuts by a factor of about 2-to-1 and would represent a financial hit to even the poorest retirees unless they were exempted. The idea is to change the way Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) are calculated across the federal government. Currently, the COLAs for tax brackets, pensions, and Social Security are tied to different measures of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Because spending habits change when living costs increase, some experts think these measures are too generous, and want to change all of the COLAs to a different, smaller measure of inflation: the so-called “chained-CPI.” On the tax side, this would likely draw more revenue: Tax brackets would rise more slowly than incomes, so people would get kicked into higher brackets more quickly and, voila, more income subject to taxation. But on the benefits side, this means money out of people’s pockets, even current retirees and pensioners. Responding to a letter of concern from House Democrats’ top Social Security guy the program’s chief actuary explained that moving to “chained-CPI” would constitute an immediate 0.3 percent benefit cut . That may sound small, but the effects would compound, and “[a]dditional annual COLAs thereafter would accumulate to larger total reductions in expected scheduled benefit levels of about 3.7 percent, 6.5 percent, and 9.2 percent for retirees at ages 75, 85, and 95, respectively.” Let’s not even get into the argument about why this Democratic president has entertained the mistaken illusion that cutting Social Security is part of some higher good. How on earth does he intend to get reelected by cutting what little the people on the bottom still have?
Continue reading …MSNBC’s Religious Expert Excoriates ‘Radical,’ ‘Theocratic’ Christians Who ‘Hate’ America
July 6, 2011 No Comment
In a segment on the religiosity of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, MSNBC's Richard Lui on Wednesday looked to an author who has smeared conservative Christians as “radical,” weird individuals who “hate” America. The guest host for Martin Bashir interviewed Frank Schaeffer, a blogger on the liberal Huffington Post website and also a constant critic of the religious right. Schaeffer, the son of a conservative theologian, excoriated conservatives: ” But, I came to understand that these people actually hate the United States as it is .” Lui never pointed out Schaeffer's liberal leanings or his endorsement of Barack Obama in 2008. The author and blogger warned of apocalyptic dangers, should Bachmann be elected president: “She comes from a wing of the evangelical movement where takes the Bible literally, and that includes the old testament that has passages about stoning gay people to death and all the rest of it.” Apparently, if the Republican Congresswoman wins the White House, she “would produce a theocracy in the country where the Bible would be paramount and no longer the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.”
Continue reading …The rent is still too high, but now you can watch the trailer for the upcoming documentary DAMN!, which traces the rise of 2010 New York gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. Though McMillan received just under 40,000 votes on Election Day, he is hoping more people will see
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Post-9/11 inquiry in disarray after revelation that key hearings will be secret and victims will be unable to question intelligence agents The government’s plans for an inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition after 9/11 is in disarray after human rights groups queued up to denounce it as a sham and lawyers for the victims said they were boycotting the hearings. Their anger was prompted by the publication of the detailed terms of references and protocols under which the inquiry will be run by Sir Peter Gibson, a retired judge. It showed that key hearings will be held in secret and the cabinet secretary will have the ultimate say over what the public will and will not learn. Individuals subjected to rendition and torture during the so-called war on terror will not be permitted to ask questions of MI5 or MI6 officers and the inquiry will not seek any evidence from foreign intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, about British involvement in the torture and abuse of detainees. The protocol states that the aim is to “establish a reliable account of what happened”, but critics point out that it also states that the inquiry “will not request evidence from the authorities of other countries or their personnel”. There are also doubts about how far the inquiry will go to uncover evidence about operations in which British troops secretly rendered detainees to prisons where they were likely to be abused. Even senior Tory MPs expressed concern that the inquiry may fail to draw a line under the affair, while a medical charity that treats victims of torture warned that the level of secrecy could result in victims being denied justice. “It’s just like Bloody Sunday – this is the first torture inquiry and there will need to be another in a few years,” said Louise Christian, solicitor for four men who were rendered to Guantànamo Bay in 2002. She said her clients would be playing no part in the inquiry. Announcing the inquiry 12 months ago, David Cameron said that he and Nick Clegg were “determined to get to the bottom of what happened” because the reputation of MI5 and MI6 had been overshadowed and the UK’s reputation as a country that respects human rights and the rule of law was at risk of being tarnished. The furious criticisms triggered by publication (pdf) of the terms or reference and protocols comes after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by human rights groups who fear that the Gibson inquiry is intended to be a whitewash, rather than a genuine attempt to discover – and make public – the truth about the British government’s role in the abduction and torture of its own citizens, and others, in the months and years after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks. Some have already criticised the appointment of Gibson to head the inquiry, as he previously served as the intelligence services commissioner, overseeing government ministers’ use of a controversial power that permits them to “disapply” UK criminal and civil law in order to offer a degree of protection to British intelligence officers committing crimes overseas. The government denies there is a conflict of interest. On the other hand, Gibson and his inquiry team will have faced intense pressure from the intelligence agencies and senior civil servants, who will be anxious not only to avoid the airing of embarrassing state secrets, but to ensure that intelligence-sharing relationships with the US and others remain protected – even when those relationships have entailed the abuses at the heart of the inquiry. So restrictive are the terms under which the inquiry will be conducted, however, that Justice, the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists, warned that it was likely to fail to comply with UK and international laws governing investigations into torture. Eric Metcalfe, the organisation’s director of human rights policy said: “Today’s rules mean that the inquiry is unlikely to get to the truth behind the allegations and, even if it does, we may never know for sure. However diligent and committed Sir Peter and his team may be, the government has given itself the final word on what can be made public.” Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “When is an inquiry not an inquiry? When it’s a secret internal review. The use of torture by great democracies was the most shaming scandal of the war on terror. Today’s disappointing announcement suggests ministers, not independent judges will decide what the public is entitled to know. It is very hard to see the point of wasting public money on such a sham.” Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, said the inquiry was heading for a whitewash, with the US authorities in effect deciding what the public should learn. “Virtually nothing will be made public that is not already in the public domain,” he said. “This is meant to be an inquiry into British complicity into torture and rendition, almost all of which was complicity with the Americans. Yet these terms give America a veto on much of what should be public.” Solicitor Gareth Peirce, who also represents several victims, described the inquiry as “a wholly inadequate response to the gravest of state crimes – torture”. She added that while the Ministry of Defence exposed the torture of Baha Mousa to public scrutiny “the intelligence services, in contrast, are being allowed to hide”. Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP for Chichester, who chairs the all- party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, said: “Sir Peter Gibson has stated that he will not be asking the US or other foreign organisations for information on rendition. Without this information, his examination of other aspects of rendition is likely to be incomplete. The plain and highly regrettable fact is that the UK government is not in possession of all the facts on its own involvement in rendition. This is what government departments have confirmed to me.” Keith Best, chief executive of the charity Freedom from Torture, said: “Effective survivor participation demands an open process. Every decision along the way that privileges secrecy will erode the inquiry’s capacity to deliver justice to victims of torture that Britain knew about or was otherwise complicit in.” Amnesty International said the government appeared to have “squandered the opportunity to address a mounting pile of allegations of involvement of its agents and policymakers in the torture and ill-treatment of detainees” in a way that ensures public confidence. There was no immediate response from the inquiry team to the criticisms it is facing. Guantánamo Bay Torture CIA rendition War crimes Human rights MI5 MI6 Global terrorism UK security and terrorism Shami Chakrabarti Ian Cobain Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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• Dutch minister condemns French plan as ‘illusory’ • Yield on Portuguese bonds soar after downgrade Eurozone finance ministers are sharply divided over how to handle the spiralling Greek debt crisis, Dutch finance minister Jan-Kees de Jager revealed as he attacked France’s plans for a new rescue package. Speaking in London after a meeting with the chancellor George Osborne, de
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