Currently the UK and the US let their prisoners be sent to countries with lax ideas on interogation so that confessions can be gained from them. The CIA calls this ‘extraordinary rendition’ and in the UK it is termed a ‘friendly liaison’ with a foreign country.

So, in our names, in the War On Terror, what is being done? What do these polite terms ‘extraordinary rendition’ and ‘friendly liaison’ mean?

It means the woman who was raped with a broken bottle in both vagina and anus, and who died after ten days of agony. It means the old man suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling while his children were beaten to a pulp before his eyes. It means the man whose fingernails were pulled before his face was beaten and he was immersed to his armpits in boiling liquid.

It means the 18-year-old whose knees and elbows were smashed, his hand immersed in boiling liquid until the skin came away and the flesh started to peel from the bone, before the back of his skull was stove in.

These are all real cases from the Uzbek security services which we viewed as friendly liaison, and from which we obtained regular intelligence, in the Uzbek case via the CIA.

A month ago, that liaison relationship was stopped – not by us, but by the Uzbeks. But as Manningham-Buller sets out, we continue to maintain our position as customer to torturers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and many other places. The key point is that none of the these Uzbek victims were terrorists at all.

[….]

We do not receive torture intelligence from foreign liaison security services sometimes, or by chance. We receive it on a regular basis, through established channels.

So who is telling us this? The British ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002-2004. Do you feel sick yet? Do you feel safer knowing that these things are being done in our names, to supposedly protect us? Do you believe that in those circumstances that there is anything that you wouldn’t say just for a moment’s rest, or even a quick death? This price is too high.

I think that every generation has their shame, and this may well be ours.

Source

There is one thing that always interests me about the gap between the US and the UK: in the UK it is usually seen as patriotic to question our leader.

Take backingblair for example. Here’s a website that says, for very valid reasons, that it is in the best interests of the UK to get rid of Tony Blair as soon as possible. I’ve had emails from Americans telling me that my questioning of my prime-minister and theirs is against democracy. The point of democracy is that we have the right to tell our leaders when they aren’t doing what we want them to do. They then are supposed to act in our best interests (which is sometimes a different thing). When they are neither doing what we want or acting to make us safer and more secure then they aren’t doing their job.

This isn’t technically about the trial, but, after an election, all the supporters of Intelligent Design on the Pennsylvania school board have been voted off. It seems that parents in the area have had enough of the topic and would like teachers to get back to educating the children about science. That’s not too surprising really, but it’s heartening that it’s happened.

Full story here.

Is there such a thing as ‘religious studies’ in American schools? It’s a standard feature in the British curriculum. Admittedly, it is usually heavily biased towards Christianity, but we did cover other religions a little bit and I suspect things have got better in that regard since my time at school. I think it’s important for the peace of a country that people are taught about the alternative faiths that exist around them. From a personal perspective I think that knowing religious mythology gives you a richer insight into the archetypal images of humanity, but it can’t hurt to give people a greater understanding of why followers of Islam can be just as peaceful as those who follow Buddhism or any other religion.

You could probably write on the back of a small postage stamp the amount that most people know about different religions; I’ve taken an interest but I would still say that my knowledge is quite limited, so it wouldn’t hurt to bridge a few cultural gaps in people’s education… Although I think this moves us on to the rather touchy subject that perhaps not everything written in the American constitution is always a great idea, which I’m really not going to get into here. If anyone fancies discussing it, you could always start a topic up in the Issues section on my forum! http://www.matazone.co.uk/forums

Here’s an interesting one for you. Back in the 1990s a Catholic seminarian molested three children. He’s currently on the run. So far, so sad-but-unsurprising.

The interesting bit is that a court case has now been raised in the US naming the former Cardinal Ratzinger (who at the time ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), who is now Pope Benedict XVI, and several others as being part of a conspiracy to conceal the abuse. Previously such cases have been dismissed by US courts because the Pope is the head of state of the Holy See, and US law gives heads of state immunity from prosecution for reasons of international harmony (I assume). As such it would seem that the case can’t go any further.

This is where it gets really interesting: they’ve tried this before and failed, but in that response the Vatican named itself as a church, and the First Amendment has a clause that bars laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” As such, because the Vatican and the Holy See has now established that it is a church, not a state, the new case can go ahead.

Obviously this is a very serious matter, but I find myself very intrigued by the religious ramifications for Catholicism if the Pope is prosecuted. What does it mean for a faith if their envoy of God on the earth is convicted of attempting to conceal child abuse? The concealment is argued to be because the Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter saying that child abuse would be dealt with by the church itself without need for external influence, in other words they wouldn’t tell the authorities. How far would mainstream Catholicism stick with their support for this defence if their leader is prosecuted for it? Would a new pope be selected? It’s interesting stuff. To be honest, I’d be very surprised if this got any further than an attempt, I suspect that higher levels of the US government would step in to prevent prosecution of the Pope, but the possibility is nonetheless thought provoking.

More info here.

Okay, so England have won a cricket match that they have been playing with Australia since Ayer’s Rock was knee high to a pebble, and this is the first time that this has happened in something like sixteen years. Suddenly this series of matches is being decribed as ‘the best Ashes series ever’. I wonder if the Australians feel the same way?

On the bright side for Australia, at least they came second.

Well, at least that’s some good news.

For those who don’t know, the BNP are a ‘political’ party who generally campaign with the attitude ‘we’re so proud we’re British, we’re not racist, there’s nothing racist about us, we just associate things we dislike with certain groups in the community, especially if they’re black, Indian, Chinese…’. Their leader is a scary man, not because he’s stupid and racist, but because he’s very intelligent and racist. Yes, apparently those two things can co-exist, and that’s why I find him scary.

The amusing element of all this is that the group that is so proud of Britain and British industry gets their newsletter printed in Solvakia. Now there’s a way to support your local businesses. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re hypocrits as well as racist, but I was really under the impression that the list couldn’t get much worse.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4236640.stm

Those DirectNIC people must be insane. You may remember I mentioned them a little while ago. The plucky server admin decided to remain running his server on backup power despite a hurricane, flooding, violent looting, and now massive risk of disease from the raw sewage, rotting food, and bodies of victims. They’ve set up a diesel generator to keep their server running, and have been given exemption from the forced evacuation of the city.

How weird is that? Why make an exemption for a server crew?

As The Register observes, this does seem like a story that could easily turn into a movie very soon, but how comfortable would we be with a movie based on a real and recent event in which (tens of?) thousands have lost their lives? After Sept 11th the media have dealt with terrorism mostly in metaphorical terms, Star Trek: Enterprise being a classic example of this: a supposedly evil alliance of species was trying to destroy earth, but it turns out that there was really a minority who had been misled by evil transdimensional beings. The metaphor simply being ‘don’t assume that everyone different from us is intent on destroying us, and even those that are are usually misled by a tiny group’. The series contained some quite direct criticism of the gung-ho guns blazing approach to tackling terrorism, but remained enjoyable.

How enjoyable could a film about Hurricane Katrina be when we know the death toll and with the lack of clear responsibility? The greenhouse effect probably made the storm as severe as it was, and industrial polluters should be held responsible for the way that their business effects the environment, but there isn’t any real enemy here, just lessons that should be learnt before this happens next year, and the year after, and the …

This said, there have been many films about real disasters, such as the sinking of the Titanic. With the rate that the media is consuming ideas in the constant search for the Next New Shiney Thing, baubles to attract the public, how long before this devastation becomes commodified? Will a year be long enough? Five years? People are already scamming donations from the public, but individual low morals should not be a guide to the morals of larger groups that have a responsibility to reflect public opinions. I think that we are the ones that will decide when ‘Katrina: The Film’ is made, and we may well damn ourselves with the speed that we are ready for it.

‘Finding’ things from the grocery store.

‘Looting’ things from the grocery store.

Hm.