Tony Hatfield's Retired Ramblings

Christianity and the Death Penalty-US Style.

As I write this, John Allen Muhammed is awaiting death in a Virgina jail. He will be killed by lethal injection. He will be given a series of  three injections. 

According to Wikipedia they are :

1  Sodium thiopental:  ultra-short action barbiturate, an anaesthetic agent capable of rendering the offender unconscious in a few seconds

2  Pancuronium:  non-depolarizing muscle relaxant, causes complete, fast and sustained paralysis of the skeletal striated muscles, including the diaphragm, and the rest of the respiratory muscles; this would eventually cause death by asphyxiation.

3  Potassium chloride:  stops the heart, and thus causes death by cardiac arrest .

 I've often wondered why the Unites States is one of the few countries to cling onto this brutal punishment.

Then I found this piece from one of their Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia. 

In January 2002, he gave a lecture to the University of Chicago Divinity School. His subject was the Death Penalty. You can read it in full here.

"This is not the Old Testament, I emphasize, but St. Paul.....[T]he core of his message is that government-however you want to limit that concept-derives its moral authority from the moral authority from God...Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral....I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life in exchange for the next?... for the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. What a horrible act!...

The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy is to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible. We have done that in this country (and continental Europe has not) by preserving in our public life many visible reminders that -in words of a Supreme Court opinion from the 1940s-"we are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being"........All this, as I say,  is most un-European, and helps to explain why our people are more inclined to understand, as St Paul did, that government carries the sword as " the minister of God," to " execute wrath " on the evildoer".

If you read this, slightly edited by the removal of "Old Testament", "St Paul" and "Christian", then this lecture could easily have been given by an Iranian Ayatollah....But Iran is a theocracy?  And happily, it is  unthinkable the  speech given by Scalia would be given by a " continental European" Supreme Court judge.

Trafigura-Carter-Rucked

Last night at about 8:30, the Guardian's website published this article by one of  its star investigative reporters, David Leigh.

Leigh's piece contained this.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

By the time the Rambler went to bed, the internet was glowing with this story. Indeed within a couple of hours of the Guardian's publication on of my tweeters had sent me a link to  the Order Paper that Carter-Ruck had injuncted.

It turned out to this question put down by Labour M.P. Paul Farrelly  to the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw.

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

It was clear what the original Guardian article was about, but less clear why Carter Ruck had acted to prevent its publication.

This morning my Tweetdeck was full of the Trafigura story. Hashtag #carterruck, #trafigura, or #wikileaks, and not only were you provided with Farrelly's question, which in itself would have made Carter-Ruck's application for relief more difficult, but the full text of the damning "Minton Report on Wikileaks.

I'm  sure  Carter-Ruck had foreseen  the internet response to their gagging order and the effect of that on their inter- partes application before the court this afternoon. To ask the court to grant further injunctive relief when the information they want kept secret was already in the very-public domain, would have been a hard ask.

Not surprisingly Carter-Ruck withdrew its opposition to the Guardian's application to publish. You can read Leigh's report here . Trafiguras' behaviour may have had  one large unforeseen result for them. The injunction of the "Minton Report" on the dumping of the toxic waste is now well and truly published. You can see it, and its devastating conclusions here.

It is  important not to forget the wickedly dishonest  behaviour of Trafigura in dumping the toxic waste on the Ivory Coast resulting in so much foreseeable suffering.

Update 15:50.  Wikileaks- Trafigura threats to Norwegian press over Minton Report exposing toxic dumping.

What Sir John Scarlett didn't deny!

The media has decided that Sir John Scarlett's interview with BBC correspondent Gordon Corera  represents a flat denial. The Independent shouts  that there was "No collusion in torture, says M16 chief"; the Guardian "MI6 chief denies torture complicity". Even the Associated press goes with " MI6 not complicit in torture, says chief"

Only the BBC's website, though not its News Channel, quotes what Sir John actually said. You can listen to  the interview here.

The relevant excerpt starts at 2:14 into the interview. Corera asks the question, and after a couple of seconds thought, out comes Scarlett's  answer " No torture and there IS no complicity in the torture".

The use of the present tense IS is important here.

I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone has suggested that M16 has been involved in the actual torture of prisoners. They have not applied the thumbscrews, Even Binyam Mohamed is not suggesting that M16 tortured him. What Scarlett is denying is that at present there is no complicity in torture. He is not denying that M16 have not been complicit in the past.

Archbishop Nichols and Facebook- the leader of a church that systematically covers up child abuse

 

I read this morning that the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols,  leader of the millions of Roman Catholics in England, seemed to be concerned that young people were in danger using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

He warned that

   "Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships.
They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they're desolate."

There is  not a shred of evidence to support the link between suicide and the use of social networking sites. But there is evidence  he  is the leader of a church in  which large numbers of God's chosen priests have,  until recently,  been involved in physical and sexual child abuse on an industrial scale. And a church that is still in denial about how the leaders of that church deliberately covered  up this abuse. 

I've looked on the Archbishop's website, and can find no reference to his comments following the Ryan Commission Report into the systemic abuse in Ireland by  catholic organisations, The Sisters of Mercy and The Christian Brothers.
In an interview after the publication of the report, he defended the priestly perpetrators of the abuse.

“I think of those in religious orders and some of the clergy in Dublin who have to face these facts from their past which instinctively and quite naturally they’d rather not look at. That takes courage, and also we shouldn’t forget that this account today will also overshadow all of the good that they also did.”

Why of earth did  this man  not unequivocally condemn  this abuse? I suspect  it had something to do with his predecessor, Cormac Murphy -O'Connor's cover up of  the child abuse by  Father Michael Hill who was convicted in 1997 of sexual abuse of nine children. A cover up that allowed this man to abuse even more children.  It is clear that Murphy-O'Connor had been aware that concerns had been raised about Hill's behaviour, but had moved him to another parish.

Support Nadine Dorries' Freedom to Blog!

Nadine Dorries

The first time I heard of  Nadine Dorries M.P. for Mid Bedfordshire was when she was involved in promoting very odd pre term survival rates before the Science and Technology Select  Committee enquiry. She than accused Ben Goldacre of "bad behaviour".
I then saw the Dorries with Andrea Williams, a dumb Christian, barrister and leading light in the Lawyers Christian Fellowship.  In May 2008,they were attempting to reduce the upper limit for abortion from 24 to 20 weeks.
A couple of weeks ago, having been named in  the Damien McBride "dirty tricks" e-mails  and having been,  advised presumably  by the nutty Williams, she threatened to sue. I would be staggered if this action got off the ground.
Then last week the Telegraph suggested that the parliamentary expenses she had claimed were, to saty the least, a trifle confused.
Bloggerheads has got the fibbing Dorries well and truly hung out here and here and here.

I've no sympathy with this clown......until late yesterday,when  the owners of the Telegraph, the Barclay brothers, instructed  Withers  "Leading law firm for successful people"   to bully Dorries' webhosts to take down her blog. They collapsed before their learned friends.
Craig Murray, who suffered from the same bully boy tactics from law firm Shillings, was the first to support the  Dorries' right to  blog.
Most stuff on the internet is usually caught in Google's wonderful cache. And Dorries blog can be seen here.
A lesson.  Get your blogs hosted outside the the UK. It's  inconcievable that my own host, Typepad, would give in so meekly against such pathetic threats.

Obama-You must not let Bush/Cheney off the Hook!

Last November, I blogged here  about dragging Bush and his cronies into the dock to face punishment for the crimes they certainly committed during the time they all had their hands on the levers of power.

  I found this part of Obama's inaugural address  so disappointing.; "

 Paul Krugman in the New York Times interpreted this in the only possible way.

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Mark Anderson at Bright Fire takes Krugman's point much further.

I want to say one quick thing about Obama’s comments on this, echoing Paul Krugman in today’s NYTimes: a) Obama would be making a huge mistake, despite the short-term advice being given him by inside counselors (the top one the son of an Israeli terrorist) about letting the Neocons and other criminals get off the hook; and, b) it isn’t up to him. 

Krugman tally of  crimes  reaches six, but Anderson manages to add a few more, but both agree the biggie is this one. 

Here is a simple question: who is responsible for nearly a million civilian deaths in a faked war? There was never, ever a need for an Iraq war; and that statement will stand the test of history. Given its truth, we should not be talking about the few thousand GI deaths as the cost of the war, but should recognize that the United States, without cause or any particular aggression on Iraq’s part, and without any proven concern for its own safety, did cause the deaths of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 civilians in that country.

Obama has  now sworn to "preseve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States". By allowing Bush and his pals to walk away with no investigation into their behaviour, Obama's  first mistake is not far away.

Bush in the Dock?

Peter Harvey's  Lavengro blog pointed me to this New York Times spoof. The "original" can be found here.

 One of the articles  is headed " Court Indicts Bush on High Treason Charge.  Clicking on  that headline takes you to a  piece written by Bart Garzon.
 Garzon writes,

“In this case, high treason has been interpreted to include pursuing an illegal and devastating war that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of over 4,000 Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis, for essentially insane ends,” said Vincent Bugliosi, a former federal prosecutor....... . “In effect, the Iraq War amounted to a war against America,” added Bugliosi, who is also the author of the book, The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder."

And then

A friend of Mr. Bush, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that Mr. Bush would attempt to move the case to the International Criminal Court, which does not have a death penalty, and was quietly pressing Secretary of State Naomi Klein to bring the U.S. under the court’s jurisdiction. In 2002, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected the I.C.C.’s jurisdiction, saying it was “unaccountable to the American people.”

All quite amusing, but Bush and the other war mongers may be facing  more serious charges.

When the case of Hamdan v Rumsfeld eventually found its way to the  US Supreme Court the judgement contained, what may turn out for Bush and his colleagues, a slow burning fuse.

The US Supreme Court Blog, Scotusblog contains this comment  by Marty Lederman.

"Even more importantly for present purposes, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva applies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today’s ruling......... This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,” and that “[t]o this end,” certain specified acts “are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever”—including “cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

And as Lederman concludes.

"This almost certainly means that the CIA’s interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administration has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes)."

And in more forceful language, Dave Lindorff in Counterpoint.

 "In other words, the whole top administration, from Commander in Chief George W. Bush on down, is guilty of war crimes. The punishment for committing war crimes ranges from a lengthy jail sentence to, in the event the crimes in question caused the death of any prisoners being held, to death. And there have been many deaths among those who have been held and tortured on orders of the administration-most recently the three suicides at Guantanamo, which included on man who had only three days earlier been targeted for release (but who never learned this because government's secrecy and tight security prevented his attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights from getting the news to him)."

 Whilst Bush and his cronies still hold the levers of power in Washington, nothing will happen. After January 20th 2009 all bets are off.

The Chahal Dilemma - Revisited

Yesterday was not the best day the government lawyers have ever spent in the Court of Appeal.

The same tribunal, including the Master of the Rolls, the leading  civil judge, dealt with two cases here and here   (both pdf ). They  were to have devastating consequences on the government's ability to deport to states where fair trials and torture are commonplace.

Additionally, the court had to decide how much reliance could be placed on Memorandums of Understanding (MOU), a wheeze dreamt up in the depths of the Home Office/Foreign Office as a way to evade the European Convention on Human Rights' (ECHR) strictures on such deportations.

Both cases were appeals from Special Immigration Appeal Commission (SIAC).  Appeals from  SIAC lie only on points of law.

The first, that of  two Libyans citizens  served with deportation orders in late 2005. It was common ground that both men presented a great risk to the national security of the UK.

Although there were a number of issues argued before SIAC, the Appeal Court had a simple one to deal with. How safe would the two men be should they end up in Libya? And that meant dealing head on with  any friction between the MOU signed by the government of  Libya and  Article 3 of the ECHR

“No one shall be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"

On this point the Court of Appeal upheld the devastating critique of SIAC.

“We have accordingly come to the conclusion that although it is probable that [....] the Libyans would observe the MOU in relation to the physical treatment of the Appellants is sound, and that they would not be ill-treated in a way which breached Article 3, we cannot adopt [his] a conclusion that that would be well-nigh unthinkable. Instead we think that there is a real risk that that would happen. The need in this case to make a large allowance for the unpredictable reaction, which in the short term or occasionally diverges from the pragmatic path upon which the Libyans are set means that we cannot eliminate the real risk which we have identified. The fact that the direction of Libyan foreign relations would largely remain the same does not remove the risk. There are no domestic changes, institutions or considerations which would assist. Above all the risk is not reduced sufficiently by the monitoring system because it is at these times that its limitations would be most evident and felt.
We have to bear in mind that the monitoring system is intended to deter and check on potential breaches which can occur quite quickly, and to alert the UK’s diplomats to the problem rapidly. The diplomatic pressure which the UK could bring to bear and the responses adverse to Libya’s interests which it could deploy, would not be engaged if the monitoring were ineffective to report on possible abuse. We do not therefore have the confidence which we need to have, for the return of the Appellants not to breach the UK’s international obligations. In short there is too much scope for something to go wrong, and too little in place to deter ill-treatment or to bring breaches of the MOU to the UK’s attention.”

It's hardly surprising that  the Home Secretary has now  chucked in the towel with all other Libyan detainees  she wants to deport.

The other case involved that Jordanian citizen so beloved by out tabloids, Abu Qatada otherwise known a Omar Othman.

Again  it was common ground that Qatada presents a danger to the UK. But the issue for the court to determine was whether sending him back to Jordan would  breach of his  ECHR Article 3 right- the right to a fair trial.

The trial process itself would not breach Qatada's Art 3 rights but

....... the use of evidence obtained by torture or ill-treatment is prohibited not just, or indeed primarily, because of its likely unreliability, but rather because the state must stand firm against the conduct that has produced the evidence, is universally recognised both within and outside Convention law.

And that disposed of the case.

The  Home Office Minister of bluster, McNulty responded foolishly

"We are seeking to overturn that point, and I believe that we will be able to secure his deportation to Jordan and we will push for it as soon as possible. In the meantime, he remains behind bars."

Should the case end up in the House of Lords, I suspect  their Lordships decision would be made before the arrival of the first tea and biscuits.
I do hope there are more sensible folk in the Home Office looking at how to deal with the likes of Qatada without trying to evade the ECHR with the nonsense of  detention without trial, Control Orders and now deportation  to states where torture is commonplace, all of which have been rightly struck down by the courts.

Dodgy Spanish Practices?

I find the application by the Spanish authorities to extradite two of the Guantanamo detainees who arrived in the UK a couple of days ago a little  puzzling.

Spanish Magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, appears to have  signed a European extradition warrant to bring  Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes to trial in Madrid to face charges   of  "belonging to an al-Qaeda terror cell called the Islamic Alliance between 1996 and 2001."

What appears strange is that no  extradition application was made directly to the US. For some time the Bush administration have wanted to get rid of as many minor players held in Guantanamo as possible. There appears no legal bar for an extradition from the US to Spain. Indeed, El Banna's lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith, had encouraged the Spanish authorities to start extradition proceedings. According to Stafford-Smith, those authorities, who are now seeking to bring him to trial, showed no interest.

Garzon had successfully applied to extradite two Guantanamo detainees apparently involved in the al-Qaeda  terror cell, both were acquitted in Spain. It's unclear why  El Banna and Deghayes were not included in the extradition request  at the same time.

All very strange.

Gooners Beware!

Here, I blogged about the new chap in charge at Manchester City F.C. He's wanted by the Thai authorities who think they have evidence to convict him of massive corruption.

Alisher Usmanov   [Алишер Бурханович Усманов](above) according to the BBC intends to secure a "blocking stake" in Arsenal Football club.
I think the Gooners ought to be worried.
Today, as usual I logged onto Craig Murray's blog....Firefox told me they were unable to connect.
Schillings, lawyers acting on behalf of Usmanov had apparently  sent a threatening letter to Murray's web host concerning a piece written by Murray, posted on his blog.This was  mirrored at Tim Ireland's Bloggerheads.This action  switched off not only Murray's blog but also Tim Ireland's.
The article that got the huge Usmanov into a dither concerns his shady past in Russia and his connections with some deeply unpleasant characters in both Russia and Uzbekistan, a country that Craig Murray knows well.
Schillings sell themselves as experts in "Reputation and Brand Protection". Their website advises  clients:

"We don’t need to tell you about the importance of reputation and brand value, or how vulnerable they are to external events.But we can tell you about the legal tools that can be used to protect your reputation and brand as part of your communications and risk strategy.  These tools can be used in a crisis."

The problem for those like Schillings' client Usmanov, is that once a piece is posted on a blog, it is most unlikely to disappear. You can  read Murray's piece entitled "Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist", here and here and here. As usual, you can rely on Postman Patel for robust comment!