Labour or Tory: London doesn’t want Bush
November 19th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Back in 2003, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone had declared George W. Bush ‘the greatest threat to life on earth,’ and said he was unwelcome in the great city. Now his Tory successor Boris Johnson has recorded his own displeasure at Bush’s prospective visit with equal eloquence. Here is the mayor in his own words:
It is not yet clear whether George W Bush is planning to cross the Atlantic to flog us his memoirs, but if I were his PR people I would urge caution. As book tours go, this one would be an absolute corker. It is not just that every European capital would be brought to a standstill, as book-signings turned into anti-war riots. The real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again.
One moment he might be holding forth to a great perspiring tent at Hay-on-Wye. The next moment, click, some embarrassed member of the Welsh constabulary could walk on stage, place some handcuffs on the former leader of the Free World, and take him away to be charged. Of course, we are told this scenario is unlikely. Dubya is the former leader of a friendly power, with whom this country is determined to have good relations. But that is what torture-authorising Augusto Pinochet thought. And unlike Pinochet, Mr Bush is making no bones about what he has done.
Unless the 43rd president of the United States has been grievously misrepresented, he has admitted to authorising and sponsoring the use of torture. Asked whether he approved of “waterboarding” in three specific cases, he told his interviewer that “damn right” he did, and that this practice had saved lives in America and Britain. It is hard to overstate the enormity of this admission.
Distorting Iranian-Latin American Relations
November 19th, 2010 § 1 Comment
According to an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz entitled “Iran, Venezuela plan to build rival to Panama Canal”, the current border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua—in which the former country has accused the latter of sending military troops into its territory along the San Juan River during a river dredging project—is a “trial balloon” for a new Iranian-funded “‘Nicaragua Canal’ linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans”. The article takes care to specify that Costa Rica is “a country without an army” but does not suggest whether the announcement earlier this year regarding U.S. naval militarization of the Central American nation might also have constituted a trial balloon for something.
While the article goes on to state that “[t]he plan has aroused concern in Washington, and the U.S. has started behind the scenes efforts to foil it”, this information is curiously juxtaposed with other details such as that “[a] U.S. State Department official told Haaretz’s Washington correspondent Natasha Mozgovaya on Wednesday that the U.S. is not aware of any plans to build a new canal in Latin America”.
Christopher Hitchens on Iraq
November 19th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The only reason I post the words of former Leftist turned neoconservative Christopher Hitchens is because some people still take him seriously. On November 18 Hitchens had the following to say about Iraq. He really shines in the last paragraph. (Thanks Ann)
Our Iraqi friends have written a federal constitution, inscribing rights for national and religious and ethnic minorities, where differences are to be settled by parliamentary election – of which there have been two, both in the teeth of appalling odds and intimidation, both of them so far with very disappointing outcomes.
There’s a Supreme Court, there’s a free press – or the simulacrum of one, the idea of one and quite a lot of the practice of it. Almost every Iraqi now has a cell phone. They were illegal until quite recently.
Huge number of Iraqis can connect to the internet. They have a convertible currency. They have diplomatic relations with other countries now, which were impossible under the UN rules of the old regime. Iraq was sanctioned almost out of its sovereignty because of the crimes it had committed and not uncommitted.
It’s still a maimed and traumatised country coming out of three and half decades of war and fascism and the political class is made up of pygmies.
Saddam Hussein made a sweep of the intellectuals or any possible rival.
But it has a pulse now. I can’t say that I know that the Iraqis will take advantage of all the wonderful enactments they’ve made but I still think it’s an inspiring thing to see – to have seen – and for the very small part I can claim to have played in advocating it, I would say I was proud.
Catch the London Russell Tribunal on Palestine Live
November 19th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Watch the Russell Tribunal on Palestine London Session live on November 20/21. Find more information here. Video by Leah Borromeo.
Miral
November 18th, 2010 § 2 Comments
It will not come to a threatre near you soon; it might if you insist.
Our friend Adam Horowitz thinks it has the potential to become this generation’s Exodus.
Hezbollah looks Mexican
November 18th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Nasrallah planning incognito holiday in Cancun (Photo: Mussa Al-Husseini/AFP/Getty)
In an August report for the global intelligence firm STRATFOR, analyst Scott Stewart writes:
When we [at STRATFOR] discuss threats along the U.S.-Mexico border with sources and customers, or when we write an analysis on topics such as violence and improvised explosive devices along the border, a certain topic inevitably pops up: Hezbollah.”
The hyperlink Stewart provides is to his report from the week before, in which Hezbollah does not pop up but Mexican government favoritism of certain drug cartels does. Hezbollah is also not generally a suspect when Mexican federal police shoot students peacefully protesting the militarization of Ciudad Juarez.
Stewart ultimately argues that Hezbollah is “radical but rational” and that it is currently choosing not to exercise its “transnational terrorism capabilities”. Instead, it limits its illicit operations to things like the sale of counterfeit Viagra in the U.S.
On Guantánamo, Obama Hits Rock Bottom
November 18th, 2010 § 1 Comment
by Andy Worthington
(Photo: AP/Brennan Linsley)
On national security issues, there are now two Americas. In the first, which existed from January to May 2009, the rule of law flickered briefly back to life after eight years of the Bush administration.
In this first America, President Obama swept into office issuing executive orders promising to close Guantánamo and to uphold the absolute ban on torture, and also suspended the much-criticized system of trials by Military Commission used by the Bush administration to secure just three contentious convictions in seven years.
In addition, in April 2009 he complied with a court order to release four “torture memos” issued in 2002 and 2005 by lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which purported to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA (in 2002), or broadly upheld that decision (in 2005). As well as confirming the role of the courts in upholding the law, these documents contained important information for those hoping to hold senior Bush administration officials and lawyers accountable for their actions in the “War on Terror.”
The final flourish of this period was the decision to move a Guantánamo prisoner to New York to face a federal court trial, which took place in May 2009. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian seized in Pakistan in July 2004, was held in secret CIA custody for over two years, until he was moved to Guantánamo in September 2006, with 13 other men regarded as “high-value detainees.”
The Invisibles: A Hidden Journey Across Mexico
November 17th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Mexican actor/director Gael García Bernal and British director Marc Silver have recently collaborated with Amnesty International in a series of four short films, entitled “The Invisibles”. The films draw attention to the plight of Central American immigrants traveling across Mexico in order to reach the U.S.
Watch “The Invisibles” here, and read Amnesty’s full 2010 report entitled “Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico“.
Following is a brief excerpt from Amnesty’s website, which gives an idea of the situation currently faced by migrants:
Kidnappings of migrants, mainly for ransom, reached new heights in 2009, with the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reporting that nearly 10,000 were abducted over six months and almost half of interviewed victims saying that public officials were involved in their kidnapping.
An estimated six out of 10 migrant women and girls experience sexual violence, allegedly prompting some people smugglers to demand that women receive contraceptive injections ahead of the journey, to avoid them falling pregnant as a result of rape.
Epilogue on Tony Benn
November 16th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Me chewing the fat with Ken Livingstone and Nadifa Mohamed.
More after the break..
The Verso Book of Dissent
November 16th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
To commemorate 40 years of radical publishing Verso Books has published The Verso Book of Dissent: From Spartacus to the Shoe-Thrower of Baghdad. I have just finished reading this brilliant collection of historical passages of resistance and dissent taken from ca. 1800 BCE to the present and am delighted to have the words of Ali Ibn Muhammad, Marquis de Sade, Audre Lorde and Harold Pinter in one place.
The wonderful folks at Verso have also offered to give away 3 free copies to US-based PULSE readers and we will be awarding the first 3 to write to our editor email address. This competition is now closed. Thanks to Verso and everyone who wrote.
Following is Verso editorial director Tariq Ali’s preface to this must-have volume.
