US Senate backs (“The President says it’s not really”) torture; extradition problems?

The Guardian reports that

The US Senate has voted for legislation endorsing President George Bush’s plan for tough measures to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects.

The new laws will grant the president permission to authorise interrogation techniques viewed as illegal under international conventions and allow the setting up of “military commissions” to prosecute terror suspects.

This is in apparent contradiction to the UN Convention Against Torture, which defines torture thus:

torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

If someone is prosecuted here for torture under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 — which gives our courts universal jurisdiction, so theoretically Americans could find themselves answering to British courts for their activities at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere — it’s for the jury to decide what constitutes ‘ intentionally inflict[ing] severe pain or suffering on another’ (the Act goes on to clarify, ‘It is immaterial whether the pain or suffering is physical or mental and whether it is caused by an act or an omission’); what President Bush or anyone else has to say in the matter is immaterial.

This seems to me as it should be; rather than worrying, as have some of the folks whom Jon Swift, the reasonable American conservative surveys, about whether this or that is torture, let a jury decide someone’s been inflicting ‘severe pain or suffering’ — it’s being done in their name, after all. If American juries aren’t considered up to the job, send the alleged torturers over here and let us try them.

This raises an interesting point about our one-sided extradition arrangements with the USA. I’m not quite sure upon whom this ‘President Bush says it’s not torture’ will be inflicted, but as far as I can make out from the AP report,

Those subject to commission trials would be any person “who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents.” Proponents say this definition would not apply to U.S. citizens.

(Neither AP nor many other American news sources seem to have heard of the words alleged or allegedly, by the way).

What guarantees are there that someone whose extradition is requested by the USA for his (or her, I suppose) alleged role in helping fund terrorism or otherwise damaging the US War on Terror won’t face treatment that is banned by British and international law and which is normally a bar to extradition?

It’s all very well saying — as doubtless will be said — that the USA can join the list of countries like Jordan and Lybia with whom we’ve signed ‘memoranda of understanding’ that they won’t torture people we send them, but the problem is that the Americans don’t seem to share our understanding of what the word torture means.

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Technorati tags: H.R. 6166, S. 3930, Torture, USA, UK, extradition, war crimes

Google’s alarming discovery in Germany

A giant, possibly radioactive, bug has been spotted by Google Maps somewhere in Germany.

Via Google Blogoscoped

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Technorati Tags: Google Maps, Germany, Giant radiocative bugs

Dr Reid again

Chris Dillow, at Stumbling and Mumbling asks, with particular reference to Reid’s apparent enthusiasm for both fairness and immigration controls ‘Dr Reid: Racist or Moron?‘. Nothing to stop Reid from being both, of course, but the case for his being a moron is certainly strengthened by this, from his speech:

And why shouldn’t violent offenders pay towards the healthcare costs of their victims?

Maybe because according to the current Court of Appeal and Sentencing Council guidelines,

* A compensation order should not be made if it would subject the offender on release from prison to a financial burden he might not be able to meet without committing further crime.
* Accordingly, someone sentenced to custody should not also be ordered to pay compensation without evidence that he would have the means to pay.

and, if he does have the means to pay, most people would think his victim, rather than the local NHS Trust, should have first claim on the money.

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Technorati Tags: Dr John Reid, Labour Conference, Compensation, Immigration, Stupidity

As if!

Telegraph | News | Government is accused of using ‘dodgy data’

Not WMD this time;

The Department of Transport released figures claiming that grave injuries in road accidents last year fell 7 per cent to 28,954.

But critics said the figures were based on police reports, rather than being obtained from hospital accident and emergency departments. This meant the number of serious injuries reported by Whitehall was artificially low.

The Government has set itself a target of bringing the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads to 40 per cent of the 1994-8 average by 2010.

According to the figures released today, that tally had dropped by 33 per cent. But the Government was overstating the success of its road safety programme to justify the continued use of controversial speed cameras.

Is anyone really surprised, though?  Mind you, given the government’s preference for believing what the police tell them (eventually), possibly they really do think that police reports are more reliable guide to injuries caused by road traffic accidents than is anything the hospitals have to say.

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Technorati Tags: Spin, Statistics, UK Government, Road Traffic Accidents

Dr Reid: ‘It’s just plain wrong’

“And let’s be clear. It cannot be right that the rights of individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and limb of the British people. It’s wrong. Full stop. No ifs, no buts. It’s just plain wrong.”

John Reid at the Labour Party Conference.

Interesting little rhetorical trick there; note how he sets the rights of the individual suspected terroristagainst those of the the whole of the British people.

More accurately, I think, he should pose it as a matter of balancing the rights of every single individual in the country against the protection that someone thinks may be afforded some of the British people (since no individual suspect, I think, can be a danger to all of us, all the time) if we ignore particular rights that we all enjoy at the moment, which are there for our protection in case a police officer or even a Home Secretary makes a mistake — which has been known to happen. Even cabinet ministers, after all, have sometimes to rely on intelligence assessments that are, with hindsight, less than 100% accurate.

I wouldn’t be side-tracked by the idea it’s only possibly being suspected of terrorism (subtext: if you’re not a young Muslim, particularly a male one, there’s not that much to worry about) that’s going to cause everyone problems; it’s probably not in John Reid’s mind at the moment, but it won’t take too long for some logically minded soul at the Home Office to start to wonder why, since we ignore rights upon which, so far, everyone’s been able to rely, when someone’s suspected of even quite peripheral involvement in terrorism, we preserve those rights for people suspected — often with better cause — of far more direct involvement in very serious crimes.

I must confess that I can’t quite see, if we’re trying to protect the ‘life and limb of the British people’ against those who are suspected of involvement in something that

(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c) endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

we don’t protect against any and all such threats, no matter what their motivation might be.

If someone’s contemplating serious violence against me, I’m not at all bothered about whether he’s doing it ‘ to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and (c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause’ or some more mundane reason, such as his wanting to rob me. I want him stopped, and we’ll worry his motives later. Agree to Dr Reid’s proposal, and we’ll rapidly see the protections we all enjoy under the law eroded — as they were, of course, and for much the same reason, in another country which Dr Reid used to admire very much.

Dr Reid’s dismissal of his communist party membership — ‘I used to be a Communist. I used to believe in Santa Claus’ — shouldn’t , to my mind, allow him to skate so easily. I used to believe in Santa Claus, too, but I didn’t still believe in him when I was in my late 20s, which is how old Dr Reid was when he joined the Communist Party, and nor did I believe in him in the face of evidence for his non-existence was quite as glaring as was, in the mid 1970s, the evidence of how appalling the Soviet Union was for those unfortunate to live there. Despite the best efforts of The Sword and the Shield of the Party to protect them.

Jon Swift on Traditional Torture Values

Jon Swift, the American reasonable conservative, some months ago converted from Judaism to Born Again Christianity, as he movingly described at the time, after watching The Chronicles of Narnia:

The film is about British children who have been sent to the country during World War II when London is being bombed. In this big country house where they are staying one of the children discovers this closet and goes inside. I am not sure what being in the closet is a metaphor for (I am very new at this Christian allegory stuff) but I do know it awakened in me feelings of being safe and secure.

In a recent post, he writes of some of how his new faith helps him analyse a current ethical problem with which American conservatives are understandably concerned:

Some people have the mistaken impression that Christians are inflexible and unable to change with the times. The debate over the bill to clarify what techniques the CIA and our military can use in interrogating prisoners and what constitutes torture illustrates just how “with it” Christians can be. As the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition shows us, sometimes in order to maintain your traditional values you need to change with the times.

As Dr Swift explains,

Now let me just state at the outset that like President Bush I am opposed to torture except in certain circumstances when it’s really, really necessary, which is why I am a member of Blogs Against Torture. I agree with the President that “torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere.” But liberals have got us all so confused with their convoluted notions of what torture is so we need to get back to traditional torture values. If we let the liberals and activist judges define torture down, the next thing you know our secret prisons will be like country clubs and the terrorists will take over our country and impose their ideas of morality on us, which, except for the stuff about homosexuality and a few other things, we vehemently disagree with.

Fortunately,

The Evangelical Outpost held a symposium of very thoughtful conservative Christian ethicists who responded to an article by Charles Krauthammer that criticized McCain’s bill outlawing torture

which has clarified the matter for him no end, as he explains in a lengthy and thoughtful post, which I greatly recommend.

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Technorati Tags: Jon_Swift
Christianity, Iraq, War on Terror, Terrorism, Bush, Torture, McCain, Lou Sheldon , Abu Ghraib, La Shawn Barber, Foreign Policy, Politics

“Give me sex, money and I’ll protect you from terrorists” — 8 years for manufactured terror threat

A truly strange case this, with all sorts of resonances. Man tricks woman into believing she’s under threat from violent Islamic extremists from whom he can protect her, in return for sex and money.

The case was heard at my local court and, despite its truly bizarre nature, hasn’t been widely reported — I’m told it’s in a couple of the local papers, but they aren’t on-line.

Anyway, the freelancer who does the reports for our local courts very kindly gave me the copy he filed to blog about if I wished — he sees it as almost a parable for our times, too. Not sure what the copyright situation is here; OK to blog about, but if anyone from the commercial press wants to do anything with it, please drop me an email and I’ll forward it to my reporter chum. Here’s his story, anyway:

Sex Toy of the Week: George W Bush Butt Plug

Via Boing Boing, in case anyone’s wondering how I found it.

Sex Toy of the Week: George Bush Butt Plug – Fleshbot

Not much one can add to the title, I suppose. It’s apparently 4″ long and not recommended for taking through airport security in the USA. There’s a comment, presumably from an American, that

“I’ll stick with my Dubya catnip toy. I love watching the cats bite, slash, and hump our dear leader.”

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Technorati Tags: sex toys, US Presidents, butt-plugs

Mozart opera dropped in Germany for fear of causing offence

BBC NEWS | Beheaded prophet opera dropped

A Berlin opera company cancelled a Mozart production over security fears because it features the severed heads of the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus.

Deutsche Oper said “incalculable” security risks would be posed by staging Idomeneo.

“We know the consequences of the conflict over the (Muhammad) caricatures,” the opera company said in a statement.

“We believe that needs to be taken very seriously and hope for your support.”

The opera was staged in Berlin in 2003, drawing criticism over a scene where the king presents the heads of Greek sea god Poseidon, Muhammad, Jesus and Buddha.

The director, Kirsten Harms, said security officials had now warned of possible problems if the production went ahead, and that it was in the best interests of performers and opera-goers to cancel it.

Dreadful news, of course, but I’m slightly puzzled by the adjective ‘incalculable’; do they mean incalculably large (I doubt it) or incalculably small? Or is it something on the lines of ‘In reply to your question, while we have no intelligence to the effect anyone plans anything, in theory someone could take offence and the scenes could thus present a security risk but we’ve no way of knowing’. It just seems a bit odd, particularly since they’d apparently performed the opera without problems, despite objections, in 2003.

I see from The Guardian that

The decision to cancel the opera has divided German Muslims. The leader of the country’s largest Turkish association, Kenan Kolat, criticised the move, saying: “We should not make art dependent on religion. That is a step back to the Middle Ages.”

However, Ali Kizilkaya, the chairman of the German Islamic Council, said the issue was one of respect, and welcomed the cancellation.The decision to cancel the opera has divided German Muslims. The leader of the country’s largest Turkish association, Kenan Kolat, criticised the move, saying: “We should not make art dependent on religion. That is a step back to the Middle Ages.”

However, Ali Kizilkaya, the chairman of the German Islamic Council, said the issue was one of respect, and welcomed the cancellation.

Though even Mr Kizilkaya seems unhappy about the situation; according to the BBC,

Germany’s Islamic Council leader, Ali Kizilkaya, supported the cancellation, saying the Muhammad depiction could offend.

“Nevertheless, of course I think it is horrible that one has to be afraid,” he told Berlin’s Radio Multikulti.

“That is not the right way to open dialogue.”

I wonder whether they were, in fact, reacting to a real threat or an hypothetical one. I have to say, too, that my late wife, whose background in some of the stranger reaches of law and finance gave her a curious take on such matters, would have said something about being interested to see the accounts and the details of their insurance cover in the event of having to cancel a production. But marriage to me gave her a cynical outlook on life, anyway.

UPDATE: It’s been uncancelled;

Wolfgang Schäuble, interior minister and the country’s top security official, said on Wednesday that 30 government and Muslim representatives, meeting in Berlin to launch a three-year dialogue forum, had “spoken out unanimously” that the opera should be performed as scheduled in November.

Deutsche Oper and Berlin city officials said on Wednesday night that efforts were under way to ensure the opera, already shown dozens of times in Berlin since 2003, returned to the stage.

Mr Schäuble, appearing to overrule Berlin police, insisted that “there was never a direct threat of violence” against the opera, but acknowledged that security forces had acted in good faith in responding to an undefined “heightened sense of danger” surrounding the 200-year-old work.

The support offered to the opera by the German-Islam Conference, the dialogue forum established on Wednesday and set to run for at least two years, showed that Muslim groups in Germany rejected extremism and supported artistic freedom, Mr Schäuble said.

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Technorati Tags: Germany, opera, islam, self-censorship, panic

US Intelligence Report on Iraq

The White House has now released the declassified sections of the intelligence report, leaked to the New York Times about how, in the words of one anonymous official “the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse”.

Tony Blair clearly wouldn’t agree; he protested in his farewell speech yesterday that ‘This terrorism isn’t our fault. We didn’t cause it.’ And, to be fair, he knows better than most about the problems you can run into if you rely overmuch on a dodgy dossier from the intelligence services.

The report, however, makes somewhat depressing reading. It reckons

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight. We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate.

In other words, bad news for us generally if the terrorists win in Iraq, but it unfortunately looks as if that’s what’s going to happen despite our best efforts.

It continues, very much echoing the recent Chatham House Report on Al Qaeda, that

Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq “jihad”. (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims — all of which jihadists exploit.

All very true, no doubt, but , unless it was in, but remains classified (which would be understandable) — why on earth doesn’t it mention — other than possibly by alluding to it in the phrase ‘underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement’ — what is clearly, rightly or wrongly, the most obvious ‘entrenched grievance’ and cause of ‘pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims’ ?

As Chatham House put it,

While Muslim anger was galvanized around Iraq it hardly ever lost sight of the Palestinian cause which could always be conjured up by any radical movement, whether religious or secular, to rally support. If there is one area of general consensus among Muslim majorities over the West’s double standards and the justification for the resort to suicide bombings, it would be in the case of Palestine. While the US and UK governments continued to deny a linkage between regional crisis and terrorism, not only al-Qaeda but also Muslims who condemn al-Qaeda continued to stress the connection. Even Muslim governments acknowledge it exists, particularly with regard to Palestine, and more recently the EU has acknowledged an implicit link between the two.

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Technorati Tags: Iraq, USA, Intelligence Assessment, War On Terror