US ‘shamefully’ refuse to release Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo despite UK pressure
Shaker Aamer © Wikipedia
RT | August 20, 2015
American authorities are “shamefully” refusing to release Shaker Aamer, the last British resident detained at Guantanamo Bay, despite calls from Prime Minister David Cameron for the prisoner to be freed, a lawyer has claimed.
Aamer’s legal counsel Ramzi Kassem called on the British government to pressure the White House further after President Barack Obama promised to “prioritize” his case in January.
Kassem also blasted the US government for refusing to allow Aamer access to independent doctors, despite concerns over the neutrality of army medical personnel.
The New York-based lawyer said the physical condition of Aamer, who has been imprisoned without trial for 14 years, “deteriorates with each passing day.”
Kassem filed a 26-page motion at a court in Washington calling for the British resident to be examined by two independent doctors and an army doctor to gauge how Aamer is coping with post-traumatic stress.
The Department of Defense has rejected the request, claiming it is too “difficult.”
Aamer’s last independent assessment took place in October 2013, when Californian psychiatrist Dr. Emily Keram described he had been mentally “destroyed” by interrogators, who allegedly subjected him to sleep deprivation and beatings.
Law professor Kassem expressed dismay at the reluctance of US authorities to release Aamer.
“It is truly shameful that we have to litigate every step of the way despite the prime minister’s demand and the president’s pledge to prioritize Shaker’s case,” he said.
“The UK government must press the White House to make good on its promise. The only thing more shameful are the arguments the US government is making in court to prevent Shaker’s examination.”
Cameron raised the issue with Obama on his official visit to the US earlier this year.
Obama promised to “prioritize” the case in January, but Aamer’s legal team claim nothing has been done to progress his case.
Writing in the Guardian last Friday, Aamer’s UK lawyer Clive Stafford Smith claimed the US military has deliberately ignored Obama’s order in breach of the constitution.
“President Obama, it seems, has personally ordered Aamer’s release, and his subordinates have ignored and thwarted his order,” Smith wrote.
“The contravention of the president’s orders indicates that there is a profound problem with the state of democracy in America.”
Kassem slammed the US government for not taking Aamer’s physical and mental health seriously.
He condemned the United States’ “self-servingly attempts to dismiss Mr. Aamer’s reliably-diagnosed and grave ailments as only ‘minor long-term impairments.’”
Aamer has never been charged with a crime or faced trial since he arrived at the high security prison in Cuba.
In describing his treatment at Guantanamo Bay, Aamer said he was stripped of his pride.
“I was not a human being any more. I meant nothing to them. I lost my dignity, my pride,” he said.
“I had to take off my underwear and hand it to them. I had sleep deprivation for 11 days. That made me crazy. They poured cold water over me. They kept me standing for 20 hours a day. I had to hold my hands and arms out.
“All of the statements I made at Bagram were during the sleep deprivation. I would have said anything. I told them, ‘I will tell you I am Bin Laden if you want me to,’” he said.
Aamer was arrested in 2001 in Afghanistan and subsequently moved to Guantanamo Bay, where in 2007 the US military claimed he was a “close associate” of Osama Bin Laden and a “recruiter, financier, and facilitator” for Al-Qaeda.
The Saudi citizen has always insisted he was only in the country to perform charitable work and said he confessed to being a jihadist while being tortured at the hands of the CIA.
Iraq Inquiry: Five Year, £10 Million Whitewash of Blair Regime?
By Felicity Arbuthnot | Dissident Voice | August 17, 2015
Bereaved UK families who lost sons and daughters in the illegal invasion of Iraq have now threatened legal action against Sir John Chilcot who headed the near two year long, £10m Iraq Inquiry (30th July 2009 – 2nd February 2011) if a date for release of Inquiry findings is not announced publicly within two weeks. Further, suspicions over the reason for the approaching five years near silence from Sir John are raised by a detailed investigation by journalist Andrew Pierce.
Writing in the Daily Mail he highlights the seemingly close relationship between Sir John Chilcot and Tony Blair.
Pierce refers to Blair’s first appearance before the Inquiry five years ago when “the Chairman, Sir John Chilcot treated him with almost painful deference.” What few realized was that Sir John, a former career civil servant, “could, in fact, have greeted Blair as an old friend.”
They first met in 1997 when Blair was still Leader of the Opposition, at the discreet Travellers Club in Central London, founded in 1819 as: “A meeting place for gentlemen who had travelled abroad, their visitors and (for) diplomats posted in London.” It continues to host: “distinguished members of the Diplomatic Service, the Home Civil Service …”
The meeting took place just months before Blair became Prime Minister. “John Chilcot, at the time, was the most senior civil servant at the Northern Ireland Office … Civil servants often meet Opposition politicians for briefings (prior to) elections but they are usually held in Whitehall Departments where (official) minutes are taken.” A meeting at the ultra discreet Club ensured “it was not made public.”
On becoming Prime Minister (May 2nd,1997) Tony Blair “worked closely with Chilcot on the Northern Ireland peace process.”
On Chilcot’s retirement he was “knighted by a grateful Blair … into the fourth most senior order of British chivalry.”
However, points out Andrew Pierce, Sir John never really left Whitehall, undertaking numbers of roles on public committees “often at the behest of the Blair administration.”
Moreover, in 2004 Lord Butler was charged with convening an Inquiry “into the role of the (UK) intelligence services in the Iraq war. Blair chose the Members of the Inquiry’s five strong Committee.”
Foxes guarding hen houses cannot fail to come to mind. “Surprise, surprise, Chilcot was one of the first asked to serve on it …”
Unexpectedly, however, the Butler Review as it was named: “Provided devastating evidence that (Blair’s) Downing Street, with collusion of intelligence chiefs ‘sexed up’ the threat” from Saddam Hussein”, yet “concluded that no one should be held responsible.”
“In short, it let Blair off the hook.”
When Blair’s successor as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown – former Chancellor of the Exchequer who wrote the £mega million cheques for the illegal invasion, thus also part of the crime of enormity – established the Chilcot Inquiry in 2009, it was originally to be held “behind closed doors.” Uproar from opposition MPs, from senior military figures and the public forced it into the open.
However, Philippe Sands, QC., Professor of International Law at University College, London and barrister with Matrix Chambers, a legal firm established, ironically, by Tony Blair’s barrister wife Cherie, quickly questioned the suitability of Sir John to lead the new Inquiry.
Sands questioned what it was in his “role in the Butler Inquiry that caused the Prime Minister to conclude he was suitable?” He cited a first hand observer who had described Chilcot’s “obvious deference to governmental authority, a view he had heard repeated several times. More troubling is evidence I have seen for myself.”
He was also dismissive of Sir John’s questioning of Law Lord, Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General, who had ruled that the Iraq invasion would be illegal – only to change his mind when Blair wrote on the top left hand side of the page: “I really do not understand this.”
Professor Sands – author of Lawless World in which he accuses former President George W. Bush and Tony Blair of conspiring to Invade Iraq in violation of international law – also cited “Sir John’s spoon-fed questions” to the former Attorney General “designed to elicit a response” demonstrating “the reasonableness of his actions and those of the government.”
In context, in Lawless World Sands cites a five page long “extremely sensitive” memo relating to a meeting between George W. Bush and Tony Blair at the White House on January 31st, 2003. The memo was written by David Manning, Blair’s Chief Foreign Policy Advisor at the time, who was also present.
Content included Bush mooting the idea of painting a U-2 spy-plane in UN colours and flying it low over Iraq in the hope of Iraq reacting by shooting it down, providing a pretext for the US and UK to attack and invade.
It also confirms Bush and Blair agreeing to invade regardless of whether weapons of mass destruction were found by the UN weapons inspectors. This contradicts Blair’s statement to Parliament after his return that Iraq would be given a final chance to disarm.
Giving a further lie to Blair’s Parliamentary assurances, Bush is paraphrased as saying:
The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10th March. This was when the bombing would begin.
In an opinion which should surely be George W. Bush’s epitaph he told Blair he “thought it unlikely there would be internecine warfare between different religious and ethnic groups” after the invasion.
In spite of the erased and ruined lives in millions, the ruins of Iraq, of much of Baghdad “the Paris of the 9th century”, of many of historical gems that have survived assaults over millennia but not Bush and Blair, it seems likely Chilcot’s Inquiry, if it eventually appears, will prove another dead end.
As Sir Christopher Meyer, former UK Ambassador to Washington pointed out:
When Downing Street set up the Inquiry into ‘phone hacking (by) newspapers, it was a Judicial Inquiry, led by a Judge (with) powers to compel witnesses to answer all questions put to them. Chilcot does not have that power. A Judge should be running this Inquiry, not a retired civil servant.
Prime Minister David Cameron has paid lip service to exasperation, but as commented on before in these columns, regards Blair as a “mentor” and in opposition aspired to be “heir to Blair.” He has also refused Sir John correspondence between Bush and Blair (held in government archives) which Sir John has been reported as regarding as essential to his findings. Current speculations are, unless the families of the bereaved win out, is that the world will see nothing until late 2016.
Another reason for the inordinate delay is the decision of the Inquiry to write to every witness criticized in order to allow them to respond. How very cosy. Imagine that in a Court of Law!
However, if any of the above has you wondering, there is far worse to come.
According to a recent report although “as many as one hundred and fifty (government) Ministers, civil servants and senior military figures have been sent details of criticism, including draft pages of the Report”, due to the structure of the Inquiry, “Ministers and officials accused of wrongdoing in (the) Chilcot Inquiry will never be named.”
Indeed:
One former Labour Minister is now said to be going through hundreds of pages of the report ‘with a fine toothcomb’. The ex-Minister has also been offered free legal advice from the Government.
A £ ten million stitch-up?
Reg Keys, speaking for one of the bereaved UK families threatening action against Sir John Chilcot’s team, who ran against Tony Blair in his Durham constituency of Sedgefield as an Independent Parliamentary candidate in 2005, and whose son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys was killed in Iraq in 2003, has had enough. Tony Blair “should be dragged in shackles to a War Crimes Court” he says.
In a memorable speech on the 2005 election night, Blair and his wife standing with frozen faces, as Keys vowed: “I’ll hold Blair to account.” Unlike Blair, Reg Keys speaks the truth.
Europe’s Forgotten History: From Human Zoos to Human Trophies Displayed in Museums Today
By Garikai Chengu | CounterPunch | August 17, 2015
Global outrage was sparked when the Zimbabwean lion, Cecil was killed as a trophy; but to this day, Britain and America continue to display in museums human remains that are human trophies of their massacres and subjugation of indigenous populations.
Britain has recently revealed that it is currently negotiating with Zimbabwe over the repatriation of human remains, belonging to fighters from Zimbabwe’s struggle against British colonisers, currently displayed in the Natural History Museum of London.
On Tuesday, Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, said in a speech that the Zimbabwean liberation war fighters, “whose heads were decapitated by the colonial occupying force, were then dispatched to England, to signify British victory over, and subjugation of, the local population.”
That Thursday night, the British Foreign Office confirmed that “remains of Zimbabwean origin” were on display in a museum in London.
President Mugabe also remarked that, “surely, keeping decapitated heads as war trophies, in this day and age, in a national history museum, must rank among the highest forms of racist moral decadence, sadism and human insensitivity.”
Prior to European and American colonialism, the first museums were founded in Africa and played an essential role in many African civilisations. In fact, museums have been a part of human history for more than 2,000 years.
The tradition of collecting and displaying intriguing items began in Black Ancient Egypt. Most rising Western cultures from the Roman Empire onwards then displayed exotic animals and flora in their museums. The word “museum” comes from the Greek mouseion, meaning “temple built for the muses and museums”, which were originally designed to promote art, science and ingenuity. After the European Dark Ages, the next step in the evolution of museums occurred as a result of the ingenuity of the Black African Moors who conquered and civilized parts of Europe. The study of the natural world was once again encouraged by the Black Moors establishing “curiosity cabinets” across Europe after a millennium of Western ignorance.
Prior to the 19th century, museums tended to be small and private, open only to the aristocracy of a given nation. During the 19th century, the modern museum as we know it began to take shape. With plunder streaming in from all corners of the British Empire, the modern museum was born.
The British Museum, London.
The British Museum was created largely as a repository for artifacts looted from Africa between the 17th and 19th centuries. Such plunder includes many artifacts from Ancient Egypt which prove that the Ancient Egyptians, who established the first museum, were themselves dark-skinned Afroancestrals.
Across the world, one of the consequences of British colonialism was the violent appropriation of cultural artifacts, sacred and precious objects; and one of the legacies is their ongoing display in British museums. For centuries, the museums of Great Britain have served to bolster national white pride and glorify British imperial culture, by displaying a wide array of artifacts looted and plundered during European slavery and colonialism.
One example of the rather grim history of colonial racial terrorism is the long European history of human zoos, which featured Africans and conquered indigenous peoples, displayed in the same way as animals. Men, women and children would be kidnapped, locked up in cages and exhibited in front of European large audiences. Many people died after short stints in captivity and they lived in tortuous conditions. Visitors to the human zoos would often poke the African children with sticks, throw food at them and audiences were permitted to subject the captives to various degrading acts for a fee.
The primitive practice of putting indigenous people on display began during the modern period when explorers like Columbus and Vespucci lured natives back to Europe to be flaunted and paraded like trophies.
In the late 1800’s, Europe had been filled with human zoos in cities like Paris, Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, Warsaw, Milan, and London. Thirty-four million people visited the 1931 World Fair for human zoos in Paris. New York was not morally exempt from such racist and degrading practices. New York City saw these popular exhibits continue into the twentieth century, even after the ends of both World Wars. Millions of Americans attended these spectacles.
Prior to the Second World War, human Zoos in America were at their height and the New York Times reported at the time, “few expressed audible objection to the sight of a human being in a cage. The crowd loved it… It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation that they suffer.” At a time when America and Britain accepted human zoos as perfectly normal, Adolf Hitler was the one to ban them.
By creating the first mass contact between Whites and Blacks, and by promoting the spectacularization of “The Other”, human zoos were a key factor in the progressive shift in the West from scientific to popular racism.
The primitive European and American practice of exhibiting Africans in zoos continued well into the 1950s. During the 1960s, the baton of state-sanctioned racism towards Africans was passed from Europe’s human zoos into its museums. In fact, historically, museums in Britain have held some of the most reprehensible images of Blacks as barbarians and savages, and the most degrading images of Black women.
A 20 year-old South African woman known as Sarah Baartman would be emblematic of the dark era that gave rise to the popularity of human zoos. She was taken by an exotic animal-dealer to London in 1810. Sarah had a genetic characteristic known as steatopygia; large buttocks and elongated labia. Thousands of British men, women and children would come to human zoos to gawk at her naked body. Sarah’s days were punctuated by rape and scientific examinations. In 1815, Sarah died in abject poverty and her skeleton, sexual organs and brain were put on display at the Museum of Mankind in Paris where they remained for almost a century until 1974. In 2002, President Nelson Mandela formally requested the repatriation of her remains.
If you add up the attendance for every English Premier league football, rugby, basketball and cricket game in Britain this year, the combined total will come to about 30 million people. That’s a big number, but 49 million people will visit British museums this year. Museums are important sites for contestation over grand narratives of history, especially nationalist and imperial history. For more people to see the British state openly flaunting stolen loot in a museum this year than those who will watch sport, shows that cultural imperialism and true primitive racial attitudes are deeply entrenched in British statehood.
During the “Great Scramble” for control over the continent in the late 19th century, art counted among the highest prizes of imperialist plunder. Britain still unashamedly displays thousands of stolen African artifacts worth hundreds of billions of pounds in the British Museum, Liverpool Museum and elsewhere. Many other invaluable stolen artifacts from Africa, Asia and South America are in private British hands. Notably the Benin bronzes, ivories and other ancient works looted by British colonialists, especially during the reprisal attacks launched by the Queen’s soldiers against natives trying to resist imperialism in 1897.
The British Museum has long presented an array of African objects throughout its rooms, and its new African Galleries are second to none. Its ancient Egyptian collection is stunning. And they should be: while African collections in Germany, France and Belgium hold several important pieces, no other nation could match the British when it came to plundering so many art objects of a conquered people over so long a time period.
The British Museum, controls a quarter of a million artifacts from Africa alone, and maintains that looting those artifacts “was legal at the time.” As ever when the West perpetrates a crime against other people, they have a perversely fantastic way of asserting that their actions are completely bona fide, entitled and legal. Arthur Torrington OBE of the British Museums and Libraries Archives Council candidly admits that museums do not “want to accept the objects were stolen because if they do it for one, they’ll have to do it for all.”
The modern British museum may literally have been built on the backs of oppressed indigenous populations and its rooms filled with plundered goods from Europe’s colonial conquests; but in this day and age, the ongoing display of stolen loot and human trophies is unjustifiable in a modern, civilized society.
Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on garikai.chengu@gmail.com.
Palestinian photographer’s visa problem exposes British government’s double standards
MEMO | August 15, 2015
Palestinian Hamdi Abu Rahma is a gifted photographer whose work in Gaza has been highly acclaimed around the world. He is also now at the centre of a political storm after he was told that he could not travel to Britain in order to take part in the renowned Edinburgh International Festival. Scottish politicians and supporters have accused the British government of trying to damage the reputation of the festival by its “overly bureaucratic and insensitive decision” to refuse Abu Rahma a visa.
The row has erupted as Prime Minister David Cameron prepares to roll out the red carpet for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The timing is particularly sensitive, as an online petition calling for Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London next month has already attracted more than half of the 100,000 needed to trigger a parliamentary debate.
Now that the decision to reject the young Palestinian’s visa application has been challenged by members of the Scottish Government, as well as festival organisers and pro-Palestinian activists, there are hopes that the UK Visa and Immigration agency will think again.
Already widely travelled to show his work at exhibitions around the globe, this is the first time that Abu Rahma has had a visa application rejected without warning. Some observers are particularly surprised since the focus of his photography is about the power of non-violent resistance in Palestine, which he has captured through his camera lens.
“The UK government refused to give me a visa today and the reason for refusal was that I didn’t show any bank statements or documentation to demonstrate my ability to support myself during my visit,” he said in a prepared statement. “Despite sending complete evidence of the sponsorship provided to fund my trip and all contact details of my sponsors, proving that all my travel and accommodation costs have been met, they still refused my application.”
Abu Rahma pointed out that he has travelled extensively in order to tell the Palestinian story through his photographs but Britain is the first country that has refused him entry. “We all know the real reason for this refusal,” he said. “Britain knows very well what my trip is about. I am not going there to claim asylum or beg in the streets. I am going there to educate the British people and pose some questions.” Such questions as: “Have you ever asked Israel why they kill and murder innocent men, women and children in Palestine? Do you know why Israel occupies Palestinian land illegally and destroys our homes, and why it allows colonial settlers to move into our homes illegally against international law?”
Expressing his “deep disappointment” at being unable to travel to Britain on this occasion, the young photographer thanked his friends across the country for their support and for being willing to host him in their homes.
Phil Chetwynd, one of the festival organisers who invited Abu Rahma said: “The Network of Photographers for Palestine raised the money through crowdfunding to finance Hamdi’s visit earlier this year.” All of his travel and subsistence expenses are covered by this, he explained. “I pledged to provide accommodation throughout the visit. Last month I tried to contact the visa office in Amman to back-up Hamdi’s application, but the process is so obscure that they didn’t seem to have a mechanism to add information to that already submitted by the applicant. It seems that the FCO has tendered out the whole process to another organisation.”
Despite the visa ban organisers have said that they will still exhibit Hamdi’s photographs and will ask a performer from another show to read out the speech that he has prepared. As news spread of the visa ban, an additional exhibition of his work may now also be shown at “Welcome to the Fringe: Palestine day at Out Of The Blue (OOTB)”. Other events organised for Hamdi to speak in Inverness, Dundee and Glasgow may still go ahead via a live link-up to his home in Gaza.
According to Sofiah MacLeod, the chair of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the visa rejection came as “no surprise”. She pointed out that the Cameron government is preparing to welcome the “war criminal” Benjamin Netanyahu to London in September. “As the petition calling on Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes nears 55,000 signatories, the government’s visa denial to Abu Rahma will only strengthen our resolve to oppose its complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing project against the Palestinians.” MacLeod is adamant that Palestinian voices, including Abu Rahma’s, will be heard at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in “unprecedented” numbers. “We already know that the Israeli government has received our message loud and clear that it is not welcome during the festival, or at any other time.”
Scottish Parliamentarian Joan McAlpine of the SNP raised the issue with Sarah Rapson, the Director General of UK Visas and Immigration within hours of hearing about Abu Rahma’s visa being rejected. In a letter seen by MEMO, she told Rapson: “While I understand that immigration is a reserved matter, culture is not. I am the co-convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on Culture. I certainly feel that this decision is damaging to culture and the world’s greatest art festival in Edinburgh.”
McAlpine called for a rethink on what appeared to be “an overly bureaucratic and insensitive decision” adding: “I am particularly concerned that the decision means festival goers will miss the opportunity to hear this artist discuss his award-winning work, which of course has implications for freedom of expression.”
This is not the first time that Palestinian artistes have encountered difficulties at the hands of the UK Border Agency. Ali Abukhattab and Samah Al-Sheikh, a married couple also based in Gaza, were due to appear at the Institute for Contemporary Art in June 2013 as part of the Shubbak festival. They were to read from their own works and discuss how Palestinian writers in Gaza have responded to the ongoing Israeli siege and internal political situation.
Al-Sheikh, a short story writer and novelist, and Abukhattab, a poet and critic, are both established writers whose works have appeared in collections and anthologies. Both are also active in promoting the arts in Gaza, but that was not enough for the British government. In an increasingly familiar scenario for artists and writers seeking to visit this country, their visa applications were also rejected.
In April 2012, a tour by Palestinian Oud player Ahmad Al-Khatib and other musicians was delayed because of visa issues raised by the UK Border Agency. Discrimination by immigration officials has also hampered other Arab artists visiting the UK, including Iraqi poet Sabreen Kadhim, and even those only in transit through Britain’s airports, such as Syrian painter Tammam Azzam.
In an age when racial and religious discrimination is increasingly — and thankfully — more unacceptable, the fact that Arab artistes can still face what looks like systematic institutionalised discrimination is a huge concern. Instead of welcoming an alleged war criminal to London, perhaps David Cameron could look into this situation and start to treat all would-be visitors to Britain with fairness and justice.
Britons sign petition, urging Netanyahu’s arrest
Press TV | August 10, 2015
People in Britain have been signing a petition that calls on the government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his arrival in the UK next month.
The petition entitled “Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London” is available at a petitions website set up by the UK government and parliament.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law, he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014,” the petition reads.
More than 26,000 people had signed the petition until GMT 1100 on Monday with the number of signatures dramatically on the rise.
The British government is expected to respond to the demand as all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures should be seen into, according to law.
Rules governing the petition site also stipulate that any petition that receives in excess of 100,000 signatures must be considered by the UK parliament for debate.
The deadline for signing the petition is on February 7, 2016. … Full article
Keith Meisner – No Thanks Trident
Chorus:
No thank you Trident, Try again
Try peace, Try love, Try Understandin’
Try talking, Try listening friends
No thank you Trident, Try again
Call me anything you like, call me naive
But I’m pretty sure it’s not missiles we need
I’m pretty sure, there will be no true peace
Until all these nuclear programmes cease
Chorus
Try instead of building nuclear bombs,
Try building schools, try hospitals
Try imagining how much there would be to go round
Instead of wasting one hundred billions pounds
Chorus
Scotland’s voice is loud and clear,
Try friendship, try hope over fear
Try compassion, try common sense
Try thinking that peace is the best defence
Chorus
You threaten others you say to stop a threat
That’s the thing that I don’t get
So come gather round people and make a stand
And rid these things from our land
No thanks Trident….
https://www.twitter.com/keith_meisner
https://www.facebook.com/keithmeisner…
Jeremy Corbyn calls for UK nuclear disarmament on Hiroshima 70th anniversary
Hiroshima aftermath © U.S. Navy Public Affairs Resources Website / Wikipedia
RT | August 6, 2015
Labour Party leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn has called for Britain’s complete nuclear disarmament at an event commemorating 70 years since the US dropped an atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Speaking on Thursday at the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) commemoration event in London, the anti-austerity candidate said that if he became prime minister he would not renew Trident, Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
Unveiling his Plan for Nuclear Disarmament, Corbyn said he would move away from a nuclear weapons based arsenal.
In the document, Corbyn lays out a strategy to protect the jobs of people currently working on Trident by investing in infrastructure projects and “socially productive” initiatives.
“We are making the case for a defense diversification agency because we have a moral duty, and strategic defense and international commitments, to make Britain and the world a safer place,” the document reads.
“As a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Britain should therefore give a lead in discharging its obligations by not seeking a replacement for Trident, as we are committed to accelerate concrete progress towards nuclear disarmament.
“Senior military figures have described our existing nuclear weapons as ‘militarily useless’ and our possession of them encourages other countries to seek a similar arsenal while undermining the efforts being made to advance the cause of international nuclear disarmament,” it adds.
The Green Party’s Lady Jones also attended the memorial event.
She said: “It is amazing that we haven’t learned more from the nuclear bombing of Japan, that nuclear weapons are indiscriminate, their impact incalculable and their cost insupportable.
“Britain should accept that such weapons are impossible to use with any guarantee of safety and we should scrap plans for renewing the Trident nuclear defense system, freeing up £100b billion to spend on our national wellbeing.”
Currently the UK has committed to the maintenance of four submarines, each equipped with Trident II D-5 nuclear missiles. Parliament will vote on their renewal in 2016.
Corbyn’s call for nuclear disarmament comes after he said Tony Blair could stand trial for war crimes if he is deemed to have broken international law during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, the prominent anti-war campaigner said Blair should stand trial “if he has committed a war crime, yes. Everybody who has committed a war crime should.”
He added the former Labour prime minister, who orchestrated the invasion with then-US President George W. Bush, should “confess” to any plans he made with the former president. The publication of the Chilcot Inquiry report would force Blair’s hand, he said.
Corbyn, who staunchly opposed the invasion and is a leading member of the Stop the War coalition, said: “It was an illegal war. I am confident about that. Indeed Kofi Annan [UN secretary general at the time of the war] confirmed it was an illegal war and therefore [Tony Blair] has to explain that. Is he going to be tried for it? I don’t know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly.”
UK Defence Secretary praises Egypt
Reprieve | August 6, 2015
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has praised what he says is Egypt’s “vision of a more prosperous, more democratic society.”
Writing in Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram on the day of the opening of a new section of the Suez Canal, Mr Fallon said that the UK stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Egypt, but made no reference to the human rights situation in the country.
The article comes amid concerns over the fate of thousands of prisoners who have faced mass trials and the death penalty as part of a two-year-long crackdown on dissent by the Sisi government. They include Ibrahim Halawa, an Irish teenager who was arrested during the military’s breakup of protests in August 2013. Ibrahim, who faces a death sentence alongside 493 others in mass proceedings, has endured torture and mistreatment throughout his detention. Last weekend, his mass trial at Wadi Natrun prison, where conditions are poor, was postponed for the 9th time.
The UK Foreign Office has previously told human rights organization Reprieve that it is “monitoring” Ibrahim’s case, and that it has “concerns over the use of mass death sentences and the large number of people in pre-trial detention.”
Commenting, Maya Foa, head of the death penalty team at Reprieve, said: “At a time when Egypt’s jails are heaving with jailed protestors and journalists, torture is rife, and thousands are facing mass death sentences, it is disgraceful that Michael Fallon sees fit to praise Egypt’s government in such unqualified terms. To prisoners like Ibrahim Halawa, who is enduring regular torture and a Kafkaesque mass trial, talk of Sisi’s ‘vision of a more prosperous, more democratic society’ is a sick joke. If the defence secretary truly wants to support Egypt, he must tell Sisi to reverse the terrible human rights abuses of the last two years – and to release the many victims of the crackdown, such as Ibrahim.”
Mark Duggan killing: Four years later and still no justice
RT | August 4, 2015
On August 4, 2011, Mark Duggan was killed in Tottenham by the police. Four years on, the Duggan family are still seeking justice for Mark. But the officers involved were cleared of ‘any wrongdoing’ and it was eventually ruled that Mark’s murder was ‘lawful.’
While we see the ramifications of unbridled police violence all over the world, we are reminded that for many communities here at home in the United Kingdom, the treatment they face is little different from that which have seen of late in the United States.
The case of Mark Duggan stands amid a backdrop of many other tragic cases whereby young black men are killed by those who are supposed to protect them. Just as with the many hundreds of other cases which have seen citizens die in police custody, with no officer being brought to justice, Mark Duggan’s case is a chilling reminder of just how little progress has been made and how far there still is to go. The criminal justice system has failed to jail any officer, despite the fact Mark Duggan was unarmed and shot dead execution style.
Many anomalies and questions marks still surround the case, and the official line peddled by the police and the media in the immediate aftermath of Mark’s murder was shown to be a fallacy. There were also significant political implications with this case too.
Not only did the facts that emerged after Mark’s killing contradict the official police and media line, but the failure of the police to even communicate with Duggan’s family and inform them of his death led to protests outside Tottenham police station. These protests and the fact that police reportedly beat a teenage girl during the demonstrations are viewed by many to have been the initial sparks for the unrest which followed. The riots in North London quickly spread throughout the country.
Police relations with communities in Tottenham have historically been riddled with examples of police brutalising residents.
As a result of these tensions building up over many years, and because the police have failed to root out their own problems from within, the potential for this tension to explode has always existed on a knife edge just below the surface needing only a jolt to rear its head.
Duggan’s murder in 2011 provided such a catalyst.
But the media coverage at the time of the protests successfully diverted attention away from the criminal actions of the police, poverty, and racial tension and instead demonised the community, specifically young people.
One other knock-on effect from the English riots was that attention was diverted away from the MPs expenses scandal, which was breaking at the time, and onto young people who took part in the rioting from poorer communities. It’s worth noting too, that while these young people were being put through a kangaroo court system, paraded in the media, punishing them for taking part in the riots characterising the behaviour as ‘pure criminality’ (removing the factors underpinning the riots), at the same time politicians were being barely punished for looting the taxpayers pocket. This has left many people reeling from a bitter sense of injustice and double standards.
The tragedy of Mark Duggan’s killing is a reminder to all those who were living in London of how entrenched and normalised and accepted such injustice has become.
Mark Duggan’s case was significant because of the circumstances surrounding his killing, and because the actions of the police before and after highlighted the deep institutional failings of the police and so-called justice system. It was these failings which led to the riots.
Duggan’s killing was ruled as ‘lawful’. Officers involved were cleared of ‘any wrongdoing’ despite the fact they shot dead an unarmed black man in an area of London where racial tensions between the community and police were already fragile, with not much needed for things to erupt.
If you are young and black in the UK, you are still more likely to be stopped and searched than if you are white, despite the fact that black people are no more likely to commit crime than anyone else.
Poverty, a lack of access to further education, and low employment prospects have not just remained firmly rooted in some of the UK’s poorest areas – with government policy and austerity becoming further entrenched since 2011- these problems have undoubtedly worsened.
Food banks are now becoming more and more widespread and the gap between the richest and the poorest has widened too.
No one is denying individual responsibility for any crime, including looting or rioting. But surely all of the factors which lead to such a disaster like the London riots must be looked at. And surely the same level of personal responsibility we are all supposed to adhere to applies to the police too?
Surely yes, but the current state of play suggests that this ideal, is far from becoming a reality.
Many were quick to focus on anything which might justify the actions of the police and shift accountability for his death from their own actions to the actions of Mark Duggan.
He was smeared in the press before any trial had even taken place following his killing. ‘Journalists’ like Richard Littlejohn from the Daily Mail pretty much suggested that Mark Duggan deserved to be killed based on the media’s common portrayal of him. In one sensational claim it was suggested that Duggan was among “Europe’s most violent criminals”.
The only reason why entirely racist claims like these are allowed to be seen as the norm in the mainstream media, at least, is because they have become wholly acceptable.
In much of the media, and within the criminal justice system, the assumption is usually made that the police, by virtue of the fact that they are the police, are whiter than white, and innocent, and that anyone they come into contact with must somehow therefore automatically be guilty and have done something wrong.
Mark Duggan’s family and countless other families are still seeking justice for loved ones who have died in police custody.
Today we remember Mark Duggan and remember too just how quickly a sequence of events can spiral out of control. One could perhaps argue that if the police had handled the aftermath of Duggan’s death better (ignoring for a moment the fact it was they who killed him) the riots could have been avoided.
The crimes of the police to date have barely been acknowledged, and until they are we are not even in a position to suggest many solutions. Hope for the future rests with a more informed public, equipped with knowledge and a willingness to hold those accountable who do wrong no matter who they are, including the police. If we are organised we can pressure those who have the power to implement change among powerful institutions from the top down. It won’t happen just from marches and wishful thinking. It’s not in the nature of power to relinquish it without a fight.
Power concedes nothing without demand, and without justice there can be no peace-nor should there be.
Richard Sudan is a London based writer, political activist, and performance poet. He has been a guest speaker at events for different organizations ranging from the University of East London to the People’s Assembly covering various topics. He also appears regularly in the media, and has featured as a guest on LBC Radio, Colourful Radio and elsewhere. His opinion is that the mainstream media has a duty to challenge power, rather than to serve power. Richard has taught writing poetry for performance at Brunel University, and maintains the power of the spoken and written word can massively effect change in today’s world.
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From the Archives
US Also Destroyed Iraqi Water Supply During First Gulf War
International Humanitarian Law prohibits the attack, destruction, or rendering useless of objects indispensable to civilian survival.
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | June 10, 2026
… During the first Gulf War, the United States “deliberately bombed Iraq’s water system,” Thomas J. Nagy, a professor at George Washington University, wrote in September, 2001. The Bush administration, “with malice aforethought,” “destroyed, removed, or rendered useless” Iraq’s ‘drinking water installations and supplies’… They amount to a systematic effort to, in the DIA’s own words, ‘fully degrade’ Iraq’s water sources.”
Nagy found declassified documents at the website of the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses that detailed the effort to degrade Iraq’s water supply and commit a serious violation of humanitarian law. The documents included “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerability,” “Disease Information,” “Disease Outbreaks in Iraq,” “Medical Problems in Iraq,” “Status of Disease at Refugee Camps,” “Health Conditions in Iraq,” and “Iraq: Assessment of Current Health Threats and Capabilities.”
Then Representative Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat from Georgia (subsequently removed from Congress), referred to the Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities document, and said, “Attacking the Iraqi public drinking water supply flagrantly targets civilians and is a violation of the Geneva Convention and of the fundamental laws of civilized nations.” … Read full article
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