Miliband Once Again Claiming Torture Is The Price Of US Intel

Efforts will be stepped up tomorrow to suppress evidence of British involvement in the unlawful treatment of a UK resident, Binyam Mohamed, who says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco, and Afghanistan before being secretly rendered to Guantánamo Bay.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, is appealing against six high court judgments ruling that CIA information on Mohamed’s treatment, and what MI5 and MI6 knew about it, must be disclosed.

In a case which lawyers on all sides agree is unprecedented, counsel for the Guardian and other media organisations, Mohamed and two civil rights groups, Liberty and Justice, will argue tomorrow that the public interest in disclosing the role played by British and US agencies in unlawful activities far outweighs any claim about potential threats to national security.

Miliband’s lawyers will tell Britain’s three most senior appeal court judges, led by the lord chief justice, Igor Judge, that if the CIA material is disclosed the US might cut off the supply of intelligence to the UK, thus harming national security.

I am a little sick of the he said she said shuffle the two governments do, much like the laundering of fake intelligence to pimp the Iraq war, both are in fact colluding in this charade, neither want to let out evidence of their war crimes and both will tell different stories to their domestic audiences. You can bet Obama is not making a big speech about threatening to cut off intelligence, 1.Because he likes to do his Bush-shit quietly but really… 2. Because there is no threat. They have both agreed on this defence to cover up their crimes. Now if Washington could not rely on New Labour’s acquiescence then the threat might be real, but they can, so it isn’t, dig? Pantomime done, release the evidence and let’s get these torturing scumbags into court…I wish.

The Secret Of How To Stay Delusional

Make sure even your biographer Anthony Seldon is similarly in-fucking-sane. Yes clearly Tony Blair committing to Bush’s invasion of Iraq to alleviate ‘Iraqi suffering’ was really just the parable of the good Samaritan writ large. Um, just to be clear when you were alleviating this suffering why did you precede it with sanctions that killed half a million children and deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water system, then when the ‘shock & awe’ began (was that to alleviate suffering? Of course it was!) bombed infrastructure so food, power and sanitation was destroyed. I mean I really want to know how this alleviates ‘Iraqi suffering’ and is evidence of great concern for the Iraq people. I think it aids regime change by weakening a nation through collective punishment so when the opportunity to attack comes it is a walk over but that is not the same thing. Saddam Hussein=bad so anything we do to Iraq=good is about as retarded as you get, but nice try though you mad evil fuckos.

Tony, Tony, Tony…Andrew, Andrew, Andrew

Is it worth responding to the shit eating grin of Britain’s premier war criminal? What he has said here is what all of us who were against the war and who knew the rationales were bullshit (please, anyone who say how could we have known either cannot read or are clinically dumb as a spoon, the info was there at the time) yet he says it in such a way as if he were stating- Look I was right all along! In other words he is a motherfucker, he will do anything, ANYTHING, and spout specious shit about it afterwards and not care that he subsequently contradicts himself or proves himself a liar, after all in his position he is pretty well much assured there will be no consequences for his actions absent a concerted plot by capable snipers. So he is scum, sociopathic bulging eyed messianic scum. The real problem is media who continue to give him a platform and here we see hard news internationally respected independent investigative journalist John Pilger Fern Britton…um what? It can only be a matter of time before he appears In The Night Garden to defend his record BUT he need not run from the supposed real journalists at the BBC, on Start The Week Andrew Marr while talking with Tariq Ali did this-

I have puzzled quite a while in between sweary rants about what exactly this was, he was correcting Ali’s widely acknowledged figure for the casualties of the Iraq war with a lower figure which came from…well he said UN but I think he means the Lancet study figure that is now 3 years out of date (plus he lowballs it to exclude those dead from degraded health and sanitary conditions which the war created), because there is no UN total figure. But really what it put me in mind of more than anything else was a teacher’s pet or class prefect repudiating a fellow pupil who said something he knew his master would not like to hear. He then pushes the conversation onwards so there is no argument over his moronic interjection, because y’know 600,000 is like fine and ok and only loonies think it was a million or more and therefore it was a bad thing. Why fucking say it unless he has deeply internalised lower figures, why do that unless you fundamentally side with the establishment, I cannot say it made me glad I had not wasted time on his history vanity project because there was zero prospect of me bothering to watch it anyway. I presume he records the numbers killed by the Nazis as roughly half of what respected and sourced studies say and await the righteous fury for his Holocaust denial as he is fired from the BBC…oh look that hasn’t happened, I guess we’ll have to wait for a Nazi to present a show where they can interject into the conversation with a guest saying “6 million Jews and another 6 million victimised minority groups were killed”.

“Actually” Oberleutnant Marr will correct his guest, knowing his superiors are listening and his access to them for career enhancing interviews will dry up if he sides with this deranged lefty trouble maker, “it was only 3 million of each. But let’s leave that there, what about this new show my other guest has out, lets promote that, and later why big ears and looking like a deformed Gelfling formed through the unholy union between Gollum and Prince Charles is sexy.”

No wonder Anthony is so assured in his smug superiority to those who object to war crimes. And you know what, when he dies, it’ll be like when Reagan kicked it, he’ll be fucking canonised, if not by these actual hacks than by their following generation of arse lickers. And when some terrible act of violence rooted in what we did in Iraq occurs here, they absolutely will publish articles asking Why Do They Hate Us?

How could they not?

Maybe Israeli Security Are All On Vista…

Lily Sussman’s Macbook was destroyed by Israeli security, shot three times for being…erm ‘suspicious passanger luggage‘ but the goons were so rubbish the hard drive was recoverable! Read her story at her blog (ht2 Mondoweiss).

Friday! We Got That B Roll

From a Popper/Serafinowicz tweet. This features the comedy team calling themselves Cream. Anyways, enjoy!

30 Killed In Airstrikes Is A Con

Excerpts from RawStory-

…unnamed military affairs blogger has published a list of recent air strikes against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and an amazing pattern has emerged: It seems that just about every time an air strike is reported in the news, the Taliban casualty figure cited is 30.

Why 30, well…

(LA TIMES) in 2007, Marc Garlasco, the Pentagon’s former chief of high-value targeting, offered a glimpse when he told Salon magazine that in 2003, “the magic number was 30.” That meant that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians, it needed the explicit approval of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or President George W. Bush. If the expected civilian death toll was less than 30, the strike could be OKd by the legal and military commanders on the ground.

(RAWSTORY)… the Rumsfeld-era casualty policy applied to civilian casualties, not insurgent casualties. Yet the series of news reports this year cite the 30 number for Taliban casualties, and cite varying figures for civilian casualties, if any are cited at all. It would be hard to argue that the Pentagon believes the American public can only stomach 30 Taliban casualties at a time.

So the likelier explanation is that the Pentagon doesn’t know how many insurgents were killed…

So the 30 figure is made up, so the military do not get into trouble for not asking the higher ups (plus having to ask slows things up) and the rest is no revelation, they just kill a bunch of people and say ‘insurgents’ to the press who dutifully print it, when there has ever been any investigations the military has been found to have lied, try and act surprised. So…we have no idea how many people are being killed in the airstrikes in the Afghan war and how many of those are civilians and… our militaries do not care and do not want you to know both that they do not care (we are there to protect the Afghans from extremists blah de blah etc) and how many people our taxes are slaughtering in the Nobel Prize winning war. All of which reminds me of a Slowpoke cartoon I saw yesterday-

Well Duh

NHS walk-in centres near railway stations are not popular with commuters and are a waste of money, say University of Sheffield researchers.

…a study has found they are seeing as few as 30 patients a day and cost twice as much as other GP surgeries.

While they are paid for by the NHS, they are actually run by private health firms.

The Department of Health-funded evaluation found that the clinics were seeing between 33 and 101 patients a day, despite having capacity for 150 to 180 patients.

Four of the centres were in a poor location away from the beaten track, the study – reported in the British Journal of General Practice – concluded.

It was estimated that the price per attendance at the clinics was £33 compared with an estimated £13 for walk-in centres provided by the NHS.

At some centres, the cost per patient was as high as £62.

Study leader Dr Alicia O’Cathain said the results showed that walk-in centres should be provided by the NHS, rather than private companies.

And she added that they needed to be placed near where people work, rather than at train stations. ”One of the problems was location, so one for example was near the train station but wasn’t on the commuter track and there were very few people who went through that way. At the start and end of the day people are in a rush, but the way that people use walk-in centres is to go in their lunchtime.”

Oh Consumerism!

Yes I have a cheap microfibre cloth to wipe down me mac so perhaps I am just being Scroogy decrying it comes in the form of a stuffed toy animal, but… Oh for chuff’s sake, enough crap already!

Jean Charles de Menezes Gets Permanent Memorial

I see Harpy also posts this, some good news-

Today, on International Human Rights Day, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes can announce that permission has been granted for the official installation of a permanent memorial to Jean outside Stockwell tube station.

After hundreds of signatures were collected in support of a petition backing the mosaic and following discussions between the family and London Underground, agreement was reached to place it on the wall outside of the station.

The mosaic will serve as a permanent reminder of the Menezes family’s fight for justice and will replace the shrine that has been maintained for four and half years outside Stockwell tube station.

The mosaic was created by artist Mary Edwards with help from Jean’s cousin Vivian Figueiredo and Chrys Vardaxi.

Speaking on behalf of the family, Vivian Figueiredo said:

“All of our family are so happy this memorial has been approved and we thank London Underground for their support. The pain of never achieving justice for Jean’s killing continues to haunt us everyday. But knowing his memory will be kept alive in the local community through this memorial is a tribute we could not have dreamed of. We thank all the members of the public who have supported us from the bottom of our hearts”

Jean’s family will be joined by special guests to unveil the beautiful locally-designed mosaic at 9:00am on January 7th 2010 to mark what would have been his 31st birthday. Further information on this event will be issued in early January.

PLEASE COME AN JOIN US ON 7 JANUARY AT 9am AT STOCKWELL STATION FOR THE UNVEILING OF THE MOSAIC

The True Face Of Change

While some satirical situationist happening goes on in Norway that affirms War Is Peace I present to you (ht2 Otto) the true face of change-

Bolivian President Evo Morales’ 10 commandments to save the planet, life and humanity:

1-Acabar con el sistema capitalista
1-Stopping the capitalist system

2-Renunciar a las guerras
2-Renouncing wars

3-Un mundo sin imperialismo ni colonialismo
3-A world without imperialism or colonialism

4-Derecho al agua
4-Right to water

5-Desarrollo de energías limpias
5-Development of clean energies

6-Respeto a la madre tierra
6-Respect for Mother Earth

7-Servicios básicos como derechos humanos
7-Basic services as human rights

8-Combatir las desigualdades
8-Fighting inequalities

9-Promover la diversidad de culturas y economías
9-Promoting diversity of cultures and economies

10-Vivir bien, no vivir mejor a costa del otro
10-Living well, not living better at the expense of others

Amnesty Int. On Post-Election Iran

Human rights violations in Iran are now as bad as at any time in the past 20 years, Amnesty International said today (10 December) in a new report six months on from June’s presidential election.

Amnesty’s report describes patterns of abuse before, during and, particularly, after the June election, when the authorities deployed the Basij militia and Revolutionary Guards to suppress mass protests at the disputed outcome. It includes testimonies from individuals who were detained during the protests, some of whom have since been forced to flee the country.

One man, Ebrahim Mehtari, a 26-year-old computing student, told Amnesty how on 20 August he was detained and put in a tiny 1.3m x 2m cell. He was subjected to interrogation sessions while blindfolded and accused of ‘working with Facebook networks’ and protesting against the election result. Interrogators tortured him into making a false confession: ‘They frequently beat me on the face; I was burned with cigarettes under my eyes, on the neck, head. I was beaten all over the body including arms and legs. They threatened to execute me and they humiliated me.’

After five days Mehtari signed a ‘confession’ and was taken and left in the street, still bleeding and semi-conscious. An independent forensic medical examination substantiated his torture claims, finding numerous bruises, abrasions and burns on his body. However, once it became known that these were from torture by state officials, all documents disappeared, apart from a copy of the medical report retained by Mehtari. The authorities then refused to investigate his allegations, warning his family there would be severe consequences if they talked about the case.

Meanwhile, another former detainee has described being held with 75 other detainees for over eight weeks in a container at the notorious Kahrizak detention centre. During interrogation he was told his son had been detained and would be raped if he didn’t ‘confess’. He was then beaten unconscious with a baton.

Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said:

‘The Iranian leadership must ensure that the many allegations of torture, including rape, unlawful killings and other abuses are fully and independently investigated.

‘Members of militias and officials who have committed violations must also be promptly held to account and on no account should any one be executed.

‘The Supreme Leader should order the government to invite in UN Special Rapporteurs on torture and on summary and arbitrary executions to help ensure that investigations are both rigorous and independent.

‘Anyone who is arrested or detained must be protected from torture or other ill-treatment, prisoners of conscience must be released and those convicted after unfair trials – including the ‘show trials’ which made a mockery of justice – must have their cases reviewed, or be released. All death sentences should be commuted, and others not yet tried must receive fair trials.’

Over 90 students have been detained in the last three weeks, and others banned from study, in a clear attempt to forestall demonstrations and to warn students not to continue their demands for human rights and academic freedom.

Meanwhile Amnesty is demanding proper investigations into all election-related violence. Investigations held by the Iranian government to date generally appear to have been intended more to conceal than to expose the truth, said Amnesty. The Iranian authorities have established two bodies to investigate the post-election crisis, including the treatment of detainees – a parliamentary committee and a three-person judicial committee. Yet the mandate and powers of both bodies is unclear and the parliamentary committee’s findings have not been made public.

Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions have requested entry into Iran and are waiting to hear back from authorities.

Official figures say 36 people were killed in post-election violence; the opposition puts the figure at over 70. At least 4,000 people were arrested after the elections and some 200 remain in jail, some arrested after the initial unrest died down.

Nobel Prize For Comedy Maybe

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will frame the war in Afghanistan as part of a wider pursuit for peace when he accepts the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, a U.S. official said.

Obama Fail

Healthcare

Survival Of The Kindest

(ht2 Naj) ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2009) — Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to “every man for himself” interpretations of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of “Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life,” and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits. They call it “survival of the kindest.”

“Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others,” said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. “Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct.”

Also they have come up with the name, the ‘cuddle hormone’ excellent!

Keltner’s team is looking into how the human capacity to care and cooperate is wired into particular regions of the brain and nervous system. One recent study found compelling evidence that many of us are genetically predisposed to be empathetic.

The study, led by UC Berkeley graduate student Laura Saslow and Sarina Rodrigues of Oregon State University, found that people with a particular variation of the oxytocin gene receptor are more adept at reading the emotional state of others, and get less stressed out under tense circumstances.

Informally known as the “cuddle hormone,” oxytocin is secreted into the bloodstream and the brain, where it promotes social interaction, nurturing and romantic love, among other functions.

“The tendency to be more empathetic may be influenced by a single gene,” Rodrigues said.

Lack of which explains conservatives then…

Colombia Orders 140 Tasers

Woohoo, that bastion of human rights best practice and US ally/deluxe military base has tested the ethical standards of Taser Inc. and found yes indeed they will sell them to such wonderful not at all death squady torture happy Colombian cops, also gotta love the ‘electronic control devices‘ euphemism Taser employ…

(FinancialWire) Taser International, Inc. (NASDAQ: TASR), a market leader in digital evidence solutions and electronic control devices, announced an order from the Colombian National Police for 140 Taser(R) X26 ECDs and related accessories. The contract was placed with Tasers exclusive distributor, Eagle Commercial, S.A. in Colombia.