Tag: Great Britain

Feb 17 2009

Under Oath, MI5 Officer Reveals Official British Torture Program

The UK Guardian, which has been right on top of the Binyam Mohamed drama unfolding in the British courts, delivered another bombshell article this morning in London. “Whitehall devised torture policy for terror detainees,” the headline reads, “MI5 interrogations in Pakistan agreed by lawyers and government.”

The British High Court resumed their hearing of Binyam’s request for documents to prove his torture, as part of the legal proceedings against him at Guantanamo. Previously, the British judges had ruled that what they called “powerful evidence” suppressed relating to the torture of Mohamed by the U.S. and their proxy torturers in Morocco, where Mohamed had been sent as part of the Bush Administration’s policy of “extraordinary rendition.” The judges then revealed that they had been told by the British Foreign Minister, David Milibrand, that the requested documents could not be released, or U.S.-UK intelligence relations would be affected.

Nov 24 2008

Kenya

When future historioranters analyze the data from this past election, at least one thing will be abundantly clear: of all the nations in Africa, Kenya played the largest role in America’s 2008 electoral process.  It hadn’t been expected to be so – the odds were on perennial favorites like Egypt, South Africa, the still un-interdicted Sudanese Genocide, or that nutjob in Zimbabwe – but there Kenya was, looming like Kilimanjaro over the Serengeti.  And I mean over all the Serengeti: not only does the President-Elect have a close connection with the nation – Sarah Palin’s Witch Doctor is Kenyan by birth.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll contemplate a land that’s seen everything from the Dawn of Humanity to becostumed imperialists to a sad-but-all-too-typical history of governance since the Era of Decolonization.  Maybe along the way, we’ll come to know a little more about the most famous Kenyan-American of all – a guy who even now seems to be operating by that old African proverb, “Just because he harmed your goat, do not go out and kill his bull.”  

Sep 30 2008

Boom and Bust, from a Notable Economist

While many of us find ourselves swallowed up by the panic stimulated by 24-hour news cable services and the dying daily press, when we consider the current credit crunch and threats of doomsday, it is important to get some perspective on what is really happening.

History provides us that perspective. The following description of the famous economic panic that followed the collapse of the speculative bubble that surrounded railway expansion in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century presents an illustrative example.

The economist writing here looked back at this famous economic collapse and drew some serious conclusions. The parallels between then and now are striking, even if “then” was over 150 years ago (emphases added):

Sep 28 2008

From across the Pond: Will the crisis lead to the rebirth of the Labour left?

Original article via Socialistworker.org (UK):

Now, I know what you’re thinking (well, maybe one or two of you):  rjones2818’s gone off the deep end now, trying to connect the Labour party in the UK with the Democrats in the US.  The comparison is good in the sense that both parties are the one’s who are said to represent working people.  The difference is that there actually is a Left in Great Britain, so a return to the left is not out of the question for Labour.  If the Left actually took control of the Dems, it’d be something of a revolution (the Left, as it is in the US, has been tromped upon by the Dems since at least post-1972’s election).  The comparison is valid in that both Labour and the Dems have come under the thrall of neoliberalism.  So…

Sep 08 2008

Meet the Luddites!

Mention the term “Luddite” to most folks nowadays, and it’ll conjure up images of John McCain types – elderly folks still mystified by the electric typewriter, with “12:00” blinking perpetually on their VCRs – or the hard-core back-to-the-Earth sorts, who bristle at any device with moving parts.  As usual, the actual history is far more complex: these “frame-breakers” of early 19th-century England were not a variant on Amish farmers given over to vandalism, but rather the product of a complicated confluence of occurrences involving everything from newfangled labor-saving machines to the Napoleonic Wars.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll take a look inside the changing marketplace at the dawn of the 1800s – and at a group of folks who tried to plow the sea by attempting to arrest the flow of history.

Aug 11 2008

Ghost Islands: Diego Garcia

WANTED: Extraterritorial location for indefinite detentions, torture of prisoners, and gigantic secret military installation.  Island preferred, remoteness a plus; must be cleared of troublesome natives and provide for completely restricted access.  Ideal landlord would consist of a compliant allied government willing to eat up the obvious bullshit that we’re going to spew trying to explain the patently illegal actions we carry out on their territory.

Contact:  D. Vader, US Naval Observatory.  Seriously corrupt inquiries only.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where our old ally Great Britain will answer the above ad – by cravenly permitting the United States to reverse-colonize Her Majesty’s empire on the island of Diego Garcia.  Upon (and in the waters near to) this speck of coral in the Indian Ocean, the British and Americans have established a base/prison/human rights deprivation facility that has played a larger role in the Global War of Terror than even Guantanamo Bay – a fact to which the Brits, at least, are finally growing wise.

Jun 08 2008

From Across the Pond – Step forward George Bush

Keep your eyes and ears peaked for this coming week, when the whittle prince makes the rounds of his final goodbyes to Old Europe, many, my guess would be, will not enthused with welcoming his horror, whoops sorry, his honor.

Apr 29 2008

Sanctioning Iran: Foreign Policy 101

Philip Agee died on 9 January of this year in Havana, Cuba. He was 72.

ageeAgee joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1957 and worked as a case officer in several Latin American countries. He later claimed: “My eyes began to open little by little down there as I began to realize more and more that all of the things that I and my colleagues were doing in the CIA had one goal which was that we were supporting the traditional power structures in Latin America. These power structures had been in place for centuries, wherein a relative few families were able to control the wealth and income and power of the state and the economy, to the exclusion of the majority of the population in many countries. The only glue that kept this system together was political repression. I was involved in this. Eventually I decided I didn’t want anything more to do with that.”

Source

Agee resigned in 1969. His book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, was an instant best-seller and was eventually published in over thirty languages. An Agee interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now is available here.

One very important term often used by our government, military and corporate leaders is one which is almost never clealy defined. It hints at noble ideals. As a naive schoolboy in the ’50s or as an indoctrinated enlisted Marine in the late ’60s concepts such as spreading freedom and democracy, and freeing the world of injustice might have come to mind. The term is “US strategic interests”, or simply “our national interests”.

Mar 20 2008

Updated – Tibet: China Admits Protests Spreading After Footage Aired

…And Gordon Brown steps in to fill the Western void.

First, the footage. After this was aired on CTV in Canada and then picked up by other Western news outlets, China has formally admitted that the protests have spread outside Lhasa:

Feb 25 2008

Torture and “Inevitable Demoralization,” from 1902 to the Present

Paul Kramer at The New Yorker has written a fascinating look at the use of torture by U.S. troops in the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. Back then, the U.S. was accused of using the infamous “water cure” upon Philippine “insurgents.” A then-atypical confession by pro-war Judge Wiliam Howard Taft, head of the pro-U.S. Philippine Commission, described the technique:

The cruelties that have been inflicted; that people have been shot when they ought not to have been; that there have been in individual instances of water cure, that torture which I believe involves pouring water down the throat so that the man swells and gets the impression that he is going to be suffocated and then tells what he knows, which was a frequent treatment under the Spaniards, I am told-all these things are true.

Kramer’s article describes the political maneuvering around the torture scandal of that time, in ways that are eerily similar to today’s debates. What’s different, of course, is that other, more psychological forms of torture have been added since those early days of American imperialist wars. (Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers died in the conflict, and total Philippine deaths, both military and civilian, are estimated to be between a quarter of a million to one million people. It’s worth noting that U.S. military activities against Philippine “insurgents” or “brigands” continued until at least 1913.)

Dec 06 2007

Climate Change: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

With the world we know in just a little bit of trouble, thanks to global warming/climate change and other human-caused environmental disasters, three different countries are pursuing three very different approaches to dealing with it.

In Germany, Spiegel Online reports:

The cabinet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel approved a package of emissions reduction policies representing a 2008 commitment of €3.3 billion ($4.8 billion) on Wednesday. Cabinet members say it is among the most ambitious national initiatives of its kind in the world.

“The government is taking a big step forward to achieve its climate protection goals,” government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said, according to the Associated Press. “Germany will maintain its leadership role.”

The plan breaks down into 14 new laws and regulations, each designed to encourage businesses to conserve energy or expand Germany’s production of renewable energy.

Germany’s goals are to cut their greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2020, which would put it in compliance with the the overall European Union’s target, and to increase the share of its energy consumption that comes from renewable sources from a current 14% to 25-30%, by the same date.

Some other countries, however, are backing off previous promises.

(more)

Nov 30 2007

Britain’s Tories, Race/Ethnic Politics, and the 2008 Election

crossposted from Daily Kos, Truth & Progress, and My Left Wing

Ever since the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 during the American Civil War — when President Abraham Lincoln committed the Union to ending slavery — the issue of race has bedeviled not just the United States to this day but in recent decades, several European countries too as they struggle to assimilate minorities of color in their societies. Progressive-minded parties in Western liberal democracies have long been the home of minorities and immigrants seeking to benefit politically and economically from government policies designed to ease their assimilation into society. Some tangible successes notwithstanding, complete assimilation and recognition has often been elusive.  

As has been true for the Democratic Party since the 1930’s — when African-American voters started to switch their political allegiance from Lincoln’s Republican Party to the Democrats as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs provided economic relief to the poor — minorities in Britain have long supported the Labour Party for over 50 years.  

Are we now witnessing an electoral drift from Labour to the Tories in Britain?  More on the flip side.

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