Israel and the United States, which could be charged under international law with crimes against humanity for actions in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, will together boycott the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Geneva. Racism, an endemic feature of Israeli and American society, is not, we have decided, open for international inspection. Barack Obama may be president, but the United States has no intention of accepting responsibility or atoning for past crimes, including the use of torture, its illegal wars of aggression, slavery and the genocide on which the country was founded. We, like Israel, prefer to confuse lies we tell about ourselves with fact.
When President Obama released the four of the Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC) Bush-era torture memos last week, he issued a statement promising not to pursue torture prosecutions against CIA agents who relied on the memos to justify their use of torture tactics on terrorist suspects in U.S. custody. “It is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution,” Obama said. But in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Manfred Nowak, explained that Obama’s grant of immunity is likely a violation of international law.
Article 2 of the convention on torture explains that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever”
can be used to legally justify torture. Further, the convention states
that an “order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.”
As you look at their careful discussion of how to characterise different levels of pain inflicted on shackled and helpless captives, you are in the crazed world of Dr Mengele. It is obvious even to the most unqualified person that what they are discussing is, to any reasonable person in any normal definition, torture. And that their legal arguments are continually strained to breaking point. The acknowledgement that waterboarding induces "Fear of imminent death by drowning" but argument that this can be "contextualized", would be laughably bad if it were not so appalling.
Those Border Patrol agents and the other police involved are terrorists. They are the embodiment of that word. These are the terrorists you need to be afraid of, because they aren’t thousands of miles away in a country you’ve never heard of, they’re in your town, supposedly protecting you. They’re the ones with the guns closest to your head.
Barack Obama is being given great credit for releasing the memos, although as the president himself points out in his statement, their release was actually required by law. I suppose it's true that the United States government has become so degraded that we must be surprised and glad when a president actually obeys the law when it suits him, but I must say that I can't find any great cause for rejoicing - especially as Obama's statement immediately and definitely ruled out prosecuting any of the direct perpetrators of these criminal actions.
I know that some are holding on to the hope that Obama's carefully worded statement leaves open the door to prosecuting the actual instigators of the crimes - the top officials of the Bush Administration, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and a host of other very senior officials and advisers; but I believe this is wishful thinking in the extreme.
Patients admitted for emergency treatment at an NHS Trust were subjected to “shocking and appalling” care that included untrained receptionists carrying out medical checks and heart monitors being switched off, a report concluded today.The Healthcare Commission, the NHS standards watchdog, said that evidence suggested that as many as 400 deaths at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust could have been prevented and may have been the result of poor care.NHS watchdog criticises care at Birmingham Children's Hospital trust
The standard of care at a leading children’s hospital is criticised by the NHS watchdog today.'Whistleblower' nurse Margaret Haywood struck off over Panorama film
A report by the Healthcare Commission into Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (BCH) confirmed concerns raised by the hospital’s own surgeons that some aspects of care were not as good as they should have been.
A nurse who became a “whistleblower” by secretly filming the neglect of elderly patients for a television documentary was today struck off.
Margaret Haywood, 58, was found guilty of misconduct at a hearing of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in central London. Today it decided to remove her from the nursing register.
