WikiLeaks’ latest spill is a 2008 US diplomatic cable that says Robert Mugabe has prostate cancer that’s spread and “will cause his death in three to five years,” Reuters reports. The 87-year-old longtime Zimbabwe leader was apparently advised at the time to resign the presidency; Mugabe last year denied cancer…
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The justice secretary, writing in the Guardian , says there is an urgent need to stop reoffending among a ‘feral underclass’ The justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has blamed the riots that swept across England last month on a “broken penal system” that has failed to rehabilitate a group of hardcore offenders he describes as the “criminal classes”. Revealing for the first time that almost 75% of those aged over 18 charged with offences committed during the riots had prior convictions, Clarke said the civil unrest had laid bare an urgent need for penal reform to stop reoffending among “a feral underclass, cut off from the mainstream in everything but its materialism”. Writing in the Guardian, Clarke dismisses criticism of the severity of sentences handed down to rioters and said judges had been “getting it about right”. However, he adds that punishment alone was “not enough”. “It’s not yet been widely recognised, but the hardcore of the rioters were in fact known criminals. Close to three quarters of those aged 18 or over charged with riot offences already had a prior conviction. That is the legacy of a broken penal system – one whose record in preventing reoffending has been straightforwardly dreadful.” He says: “In my view, the riots can be seen in part as an outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes – individuals and families familiar with the justice system, who haven’t been changed by their past punishments.” Clarke uses his intervention to call for the coalition government to adopt a “renewed mission” in response to the riots that addressed an “appalling social deficit”. His comments will reignite the debate on the causes of the disturbances, which the prime minister, David Cameron, has said “were not about poverty”. The first attempt at an empirical study of the causes and consequences of the riots was announced by the Guardian and the London School of Economics on Monday. The study – Reading the Riots – will involve researchers interviewing hundreds of people involved in the disturbances. The research, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, will also include interviews with residents, police and the judiciary, and an advanced analysis of more than 2.5m riot-related Twitter messages. The project is based on a groundbreaking survey conducted in the aftermath of the Detroit riots in 1967 by the Detroit Free Press newspaper and Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The professor who led the Detroit study, Phil Meyer, is advising on the research into the disturbances in England. The LSE’s involvement will be led by Professor Tim Newburn, head of the university’s social policy department. There is little agreement in Westminster about the causes of the worst civil unrest in England in a generation. The government has resisted calls for a public inquiry. A “victims’ panel” announced by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, will take evidence from residents in areas where there was rioting and report preliminary findings in November. The four-person panel will be chaired by Darra Singh, chief executive of JobCentre Plus. A parliamentary hearing into the riots will on Tuesday hear evidence from the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Tim Godwin. The home secretary, Theresa May, will speak to the home affairs select committee about the unrest on Thursday. “There is an urgent need for some rigorous social research which will look, without prejudice, at the causes and the consequences of the recent riots,” Newburn said. “Crucially, it is vital that we speak with those involved in the disturbances and those affected by them to try to understand any lessons for public policy.” Executives at Twitter’s headquarters in California authorised the collation of 2.5m tweets, pooled from hashtags relating to the riots and their aftermath, so they could form part of the study. A spokesman for the company said: “Twitter provided publicly available information that is accessible to researchers and others.” The project will also interrogate a second database, compiled by the Guardian, containing 1,100 defendants who have appeared in court charged with riot-related offences. The data, covering more than 70% of the defendants processed through English courts for offences linked to the disorder, indicates that sentencing by crown court judges has replicated the punitive response of magistrates in response to the riots. An initial analysis of the crown court cases suggests the three most severe sentences relating to the riots were handed to individuals who did not directly participate in the disorder, but were convicted of inciting riots via Facebook. They include Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan and Jordan Blackshaw, who received four years for inciting riots in their home towns of Warrington and Northwich. None of the messages posted by either individual led to a riot and both men are appealing against their sentences, which were condemned by some quarters. However, Clarke warns against criticism of the judiciary. “The judiciary in this country is independent and we should trust judges and magistrates to base decisions on individual circumstances,” he writes. “Injustices can occur in any system: but that’s precisely why we enjoy the services of the court of appeal.” The tone of the justice secretary’s article – his first public response to the disorder – contrasts with that of the prime minister, who has taken a more hardline approach and denied that the riots were connected to poverty. David Cameron has described the riots as “criminality pure and simple” and blamed the “the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations”. Clarke writes: “The general recipe for a productive member of society is no secret. It has not changed since I was inner-cities minister 25 years ago. It’s about having a job, a strong family, a decent education and beneath it all, an attitude that shares in the values of mainstream society. What is different now is that a growing minority of people in our nation lack all of those things and indeed, have substituted an inflated sense of expectations for a commitment to hard graft.” UK riots Crime Kenneth Clarke UK criminal justice Paul Lewis Matthew Taylor James Ball guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The justice secretary, writing in the Guardian , says there is an urgent need to stop reoffending among a ‘feral underclass’ The justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has blamed the riots that swept across England last month on a “broken penal system” that has failed to rehabilitate a group of hardcore offenders he describes as the “criminal classes”. Revealing for the first time that almost 75% of those aged over 18 charged with offences committed during the riots had prior convictions, Clarke said the civil unrest had laid bare an urgent need for penal reform to stop reoffending among “a feral underclass, cut off from the mainstream in everything but its materialism”. Writing in the Guardian, Clarke dismisses criticism of the severity of sentences handed down to rioters and said judges had been “getting it about right”. However, he adds that punishment alone was “not enough”. “It’s not yet been widely recognised, but the hardcore of the rioters were in fact known criminals. Close to three quarters of those aged 18 or over charged with riot offences already had a prior conviction. That is the legacy of a broken penal system – one whose record in preventing reoffending has been straightforwardly dreadful.” He says: “In my view, the riots can be seen in part as an outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes – individuals and families familiar with the justice system, who haven’t been changed by their past punishments.” Clarke uses his intervention to call for the coalition government to adopt a “renewed mission” in response to the riots that addressed an “appalling social deficit”. His comments will reignite the debate on the causes of the disturbances, which the prime minister, David Cameron, has said “were not about poverty”. The first attempt at an empirical study of the causes and consequences of the riots was announced by the Guardian and the London School of Economics on Monday. The study – Reading the Riots – will involve researchers interviewing hundreds of people involved in the disturbances. The research, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, will also include interviews with residents, police and the judiciary, and an advanced analysis of more than 2.5m riot-related Twitter messages. The project is based on a groundbreaking survey conducted in the aftermath of the Detroit riots in 1967 by the Detroit Free Press newspaper and Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The professor who led the Detroit study, Phil Meyer, is advising on the research into the disturbances in England. The LSE’s involvement will be led by Professor Tim Newburn, head of the university’s social policy department. There is little agreement in Westminster about the causes of the worst civil unrest in England in a generation. The government has resisted calls for a public inquiry. A “victims’ panel” announced by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, will take evidence from residents in areas where there was rioting and report preliminary findings in November. The four-person panel will be chaired by Darra Singh, chief executive of JobCentre Plus. A parliamentary hearing into the riots will on Tuesday hear evidence from the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Tim Godwin. The home secretary, Theresa May, will speak to the home affairs select committee about the unrest on Thursday. “There is an urgent need for some rigorous social research which will look, without prejudice, at the causes and the consequences of the recent riots,” Newburn said. “Crucially, it is vital that we speak with those involved in the disturbances and those affected by them to try to understand any lessons for public policy.” Executives at Twitter’s headquarters in California authorised the collation of 2.5m tweets, pooled from hashtags relating to the riots and their aftermath, so they could form part of the study. A spokesman for the company said: “Twitter provided publicly available information that is accessible to researchers and others.” The project will also interrogate a second database, compiled by the Guardian, containing 1,100 defendants who have appeared in court charged with riot-related offences. The data, covering more than 70% of the defendants processed through English courts for offences linked to the disorder, indicates that sentencing by crown court judges has replicated the punitive response of magistrates in response to the riots. An initial analysis of the crown court cases suggests the three most severe sentences relating to the riots were handed to individuals who did not directly participate in the disorder, but were convicted of inciting riots via Facebook. They include Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan and Jordan Blackshaw, who received four years for inciting riots in their home towns of Warrington and Northwich. None of the messages posted by either individual led to a riot and both men are appealing against their sentences, which were condemned by some quarters. However, Clarke warns against criticism of the judiciary. “The judiciary in this country is independent and we should trust judges and magistrates to base decisions on individual circumstances,” he writes. “Injustices can occur in any system: but that’s precisely why we enjoy the services of the court of appeal.” The tone of the justice secretary’s article – his first public response to the disorder – contrasts with that of the prime minister, who has taken a more hardline approach and denied that the riots were connected to poverty. David Cameron has described the riots as “criminality pure and simple” and blamed the “the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations”. Clarke writes: “The general recipe for a productive member of society is no secret. It has not changed since I was inner-cities minister 25 years ago. It’s about having a job, a strong family, a decent education and beneath it all, an attitude that shares in the values of mainstream society. What is different now is that a growing minority of people in our nation lack all of those things and indeed, have substituted an inflated sense of expectations for a commitment to hard graft.” UK riots Crime Kenneth Clarke UK criminal justice Paul Lewis Matthew Taylor James Ball guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The editor-in-chief of a scientific journal that published a revisionist paper against climate change has quit, reports the BBC . “If a paper presents interesting scientific arguments, even if controversial, it should be published and responded to in the open literature,” said Wolfgang Wagner in his resignation letter . The problem, however,…
Continue reading …If you want to visit someone in prison in Arizona, it’s going to cost you $25, in a one-time “background check fee” believed to be the first of its kind in the United States, reports the New York Times . But prisoner advocacy groups call the fee “mind-boggling,” saying that such…
Continue reading …Prince Harry is about to show off his legendary partying skills in the party capital of the world—Las Vegas. The royal boozer, who tumbled into a pool last week while dancing at one of his recent bashes, is heading to California and Arizona for 12 weeks of helicopter training…
Continue reading …Nearly 165 million Europeans—about 38%—suffer from depression, anxiety, insomnia, dementia, or other mental and neurological illnesses, according to a new study. And with less than a third of those getting the treatment they need, Reuters reports that these illnesses are costing Europe hundreds of billions of euros each…
Continue reading …Sarah Palin’s hot-blooded barrages were loved by crowds in Iowa on Saturday, but despite the usual right-wing boilerplate solutions, the former Alaska governor’s attacks are coming dressed in uniquely left-wing language, notes David Sessions on the Daily Beast . “Crony capitalism,” “corporate welfare,” and “socialism for the very rich” were three…
Continue reading …Obama criticised for continuing civil rights ‘violations’ introduced by Bush
September 5, 2011 No Comment
Campaigners say US president became weak-kneed over closure of Guantánamo bay and that spying restrictions are gone The Obama administration has disappointed civil rights campaigners who had expected him to reverse most of the post-9/11 restrictions introduced by the Bush administration. On becoming president in January 2009, Obama promised to close Guantánamo Bay within a year. He did order an end to waterboarding but Guantánamo remains open and almost all the rest of the Bush era anti-terrorism apparatus, from the Patriot Act through to increased surveillance is still in place. Measures once considered only for emergency use are being consolidated. “I did not like it when the violations of rights were temporary but now, because of Obama going along with the changes, they are becoming a permanent fixture of our legal landscape,” said Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has been battling since the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. Ratner, who was among the first, small group of lawyers to fight on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees, said Obama had the chance to close Guantánamo but became weak-kneed about it. “Indefinite detention, restrictions on habeas corpus, rendition, all these continue under Obama. We still have military commissions under Obama.” He added: “All the restrictions on government surveillance and spying that we fought for and won in the 1970s, are gone. We are back to square one. There are no restrictions on the FBI. None. They are targeting Muslims in particular. One’s religion has become a key criteria for surveillance.” Michelle Richardson, a lawyer specialising in national security at the American Civil Liberties Union, echoed some of Ratner’s points. “We definitely think there has been quite a significant shift and there is much more government snooping. It started with the Patriot Act, which made it easier to spy on people who aren’t suspected of doing anything wrong.” There were fewer than 1,000 people being wiretapped before 9/11 for intelligence purposes and “now we don’t know how many”, she added. Richardson said the public is split between those who think the government is over-reacting and those who think the measures are justified. “The government has done a good job of keeping people in a state of emergency,” she said, adding that it was too soon to say whether the balance will change. The scales might tip if people begin to be denied benefits or jobs because they are on terrorist lists, she said. But Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in public law at the Brookings Institution, is less convinced that America is any less free today than it was before 9/11. Wittes said: “I am not convinced we are less free. If you talk to someone walking on the street – other than in Washington, where we feel more of the brunt because we are more of a target – I would be surprised if they felt less free.” He suggested three categories of freedom. The first affects large numbers of people; the only post-9/11 example of such is airport security; this, Wittes said, is not a constraint on freedom as it allows people to fly. The second category is people who are non-Americans and has zero affect on Americans walking round the streets. Guantánamo is in this category. The third category is surveillance. “There is no doubt there has been an increase in wiretapping. It is a substantial increase, not dramatic. It is not awesome. Most of it is public. The wild card in this is the National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping and we do not know the volume of this.” What about waterboarding? “I agree that countries that engage in torture are less free than those who do it. If you accept it was torture, the question is still more complicated,” Wittes said. It is still a country that in a moment of crisis involved a small number of dangerous people and then stopped. Is that country less free? I think that is extravagant. I am more sympathetic to the CIA than most people.” The bottom line, for Wittes, is that waterboarding has stopped. Obama administration United States US politics Guantánamo Bay FBI September 11 2001 Human rights Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Obama criticised for continuing civil rights ‘violations’ introduced by Bush
September 5, 2011 No CommentCampaigners say US president became weak-kneed over closure of Guantánamo bay and that spying restrictions are gone The Obama administration has disappointed civil rights campaigners who had expected him to reverse most of the post-9/11 restrictions introduced by the Bush administration. On becoming president in January 2009, Obama promised to close Guantánamo Bay within a year. He did order an end to waterboarding but Guantánamo remains open and almost all the rest of the Bush era anti-terrorism apparatus, from the Patriot Act through to increased surveillance is still in place. Measures once considered only for emergency use are being consolidated. “I did not like it when the violations of rights were temporary but now, because of Obama going along with the changes, they are becoming a permanent fixture of our legal landscape,” said Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has been battling since the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. Ratner, who was among the first, small group of lawyers to fight on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees, said Obama had the chance to close Guantánamo but became weak-kneed about it. “Indefinite detention, restrictions on habeas corpus, rendition, all these continue under Obama. We still have military commissions under Obama.” He added: “All the restrictions on government surveillance and spying that we fought for and won in the 1970s, are gone. We are back to square one. There are no restrictions on the FBI. None. They are targeting Muslims in particular. One’s religion has become a key criteria for surveillance.” Michelle Richardson, a lawyer specialising in national security at the American Civil Liberties Union, echoed some of Ratner’s points. “We definitely think there has been quite a significant shift and there is much more government snooping. It started with the Patriot Act, which made it easier to spy on people who aren’t suspected of doing anything wrong.” There were fewer than 1,000 people being wiretapped before 9/11 for intelligence purposes and “now we don’t know how many”, she added. Richardson said the public is split between those who think the government is over-reacting and those who think the measures are justified. “The government has done a good job of keeping people in a state of emergency,” she said, adding that it was too soon to say whether the balance will change. The scales might tip if people begin to be denied benefits or jobs because they are on terrorist lists, she said. But Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in public law at the Brookings Institution, is less convinced that America is any less free today than it was before 9/11. Wittes said: “I am not convinced we are less free. If you talk to someone walking on the street – other than in Washington, where we feel more of the brunt because we are more of a target – I would be surprised if they felt less free.” He suggested three categories of freedom. The first affects large numbers of people; the only post-9/11 example of such is airport security; this, Wittes said, is not a constraint on freedom as it allows people to fly. The second category is people who are non-Americans and has zero affect on Americans walking round the streets. Guantánamo is in this category. The third category is surveillance. “There is no doubt there has been an increase in wiretapping. It is a substantial increase, not dramatic. It is not awesome. Most of it is public. The wild card in this is the National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping and we do not know the volume of this.” What about waterboarding? “I agree that countries that engage in torture are less free than those who do it. If you accept it was torture, the question is still more complicated,” Wittes said. It is still a country that in a moment of crisis involved a small number of dangerous people and then stopped. Is that country less free? I think that is extravagant. I am more sympathetic to the CIA than most people.” The bottom line, for Wittes, is that waterboarding has stopped. Obama administration United States US politics Guantánamo Bay FBI September 11 2001 Human rights Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
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