The British army subjected Republicans to waterboarding torture during interrogations in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, according to a report in Tuesday’s Guardian newspaper: here.
December 22, 2009
British army torture in Ireland
MPs confirm CIA secret torture prison in Lithuania
From British daily The Morning Star:
US had secret detention camp in LithuaniaSee also here.Tuesday 22 December 2009
by Tom Mellen
A commission of Lithuanian MPs have confirmed that its spooks had let the US set up a secret detention camp in Lithuania over the heads of top politicians.
The head of parliament’s national security and defence committee revealed that the domestic intelligence service had opened two detention centres in co-operation with the CIA.
Arvydas Anusauskas said that top officials had not been informed about the jails, and that they had not been appproved by politicians.
The investigation found that five planes related to the CIA landed in Lithuania in 2003-2006 and that domestic intelligence officials stopped customs and border guards from inspecting them.
“Regarding the ‘cargo,’ I can’t confirm anything, because Lithuanian authorities could not carry out the usual checks, so what was being transported was unknown,” Mr Anusauskas explained.
The panel of MPs kicked off its investigation into the CIA prisons in November after the US channel ABC alleged that the ex-Soviet republic had hosted a so-called CIA “black site,” or secret interrogation facility, up to 2005.
ABC cited unnamed former intelligence officials and records of flights between Afghanistan and Lithuania.
It alleged that Lithuanian officials had agreed to host the prisons in return for Washington’s support for Lithuania’s 2004 admission into NATO.
Mr Anusauskas said: “We have identified the sites. The first project was developed from 2002.
“In response to the wishes of our partners and the conditions that were imposed, the site was meant to host one person. The second site was created in 2004.”
He said that the parliamentary probe had concluded that Lithuania’s two presidents over the period were “not informed, or only informed superficially” about the sites.
The parliamentary commission asked prosecutors to investigate three of the country’s former state security officials over possible abuses of power.
Responding to the commission’s findings, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said: “It is deeply worrying that a small group of state security department officials could make a decision to establish a detention centre without informing the society and state officials.”
Mr Kubilas declared that the officers had violated Lithuanian law and ignored the negative consequences to Lithuania’s international reputation.
“Lithuania is a strategic US ally, and co-operation in many fields, including secret operations and counter-terrorism, is very important,” he said, adding: “However, the strategic partnership with the US cannot be an excuse to essentially operate under Soviet methods, to ignore the civil control of special services and to violate existing laws.”
December 21, 2009
1970s British women’s liberation movement
This video from England says about itself:
Million Women Rise 2009, march for International Women’s Day London: Oxford Street 7th March 2009 Copyright: Pam IsherwoodBy Ian Sinclair in England:
Ms Understood: Women’s Liberation In 1970s BritainSee also here. And here.Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, E1
Monday 21 December 2009
Tucked away down a side street in east London, the Women’s Library is one of the best educational museums in the capital. The problem is nobody seems to know it exists. For example, during the hour I spent visiting the library’s latest exhibition on a dreary Saturday afternoon recently, I shared the exhibition space with just one other visitor.
It’s a damn shame, because Ms Understood: Women’s Liberation in 1970s Britain, like all their recent exhibitions, is an informative, fascinating and accessible introduction to a key period of women’s history.
Although substantial gains had been made by women in the preceding decades (the vote, legalised abortion, the introduction of the pill), there was still much to fight for.
Women continued to be “routinely discriminated against in education, the workplace and at home. There was no such thing as equal pay. If you got married, you could lose your job. If your husband beat or raped you, that was your problem,” one display notes.
In addition, while the popular image of the 1960s is one of revolution, free love and anti-establishment politics, the majority of dissident groups were male dominated, often belittling the important contribution women made.
Asked what the role of women was in the US civil rights group Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the main organisers Stokely Carmichael replied: “The position of women in SNCC is prone.”
It was in this general atmosphere that 600 women met at Ruskin College in Oxford for the first National Women’s Liberation Movement conference in February 1970. With men running the crèche, the delegates debated the issues facing women and the challenges ahead. “It was an amazing buzz,” remembers Sue Crockford. “I think it was one of those rare times in your own history when you know you’re there at an occasion that’s historically important.”
Playing on a loop in one corner of the exhibition, Crockford’s impressionistic 1971 documentary of the event, A Women’s Place, provides a glimpse of the chaotic and passionate discussions that took place, lingering on the men taking care of the children, albeit with a cigarette in their hands.
Out of the conference came four key demands - equal pay, equal education and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand and free 24-hour nurseries. This influential gathering energised the movement, leading to a headline-grabbing protest at the 1970 Miss World Competition and the first National Women’s Liberation Movement march in March 1971.
At the former, “demonstrators shouted, blew whistles, and threw flour bombs, tomatoes and stink bombs.” Heckled by the protesters, comedian and host Bob Hope replied: “Pretty girls don’t have these problems.”
Studying the photos, press clippings, magazines and oral testimony on display, many visitors will be surprised by the sheer radicalism and energy evident in the movement at this time.
Of the Playboy protest, the Women’s Liberation Newsletter had the following to report. “Sally was arrested for assault (stubbing her cigarette out on a police pig) … Maia was arrested for abusive language (telling a pig to fuck-off).” The past really is a foreign country.
From Ann Oakley’s Housewife and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch to the monthly magazine Spare Rib, which sold 30,000 copies at its peak, the exhibition argues the literature of the 1970s “brought about a new way of thinking” for many women. Special mention should also go to the selection of staggeringly good posters on display, many of which made me laugh out loud with their radical politics and sharp humour.
Turning to the present day, the question must be asked. Have the demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s been achieved?
With a new Fawcett Society report highlighting the persistent pay gap between men and women, pregnancy discrimination still rife in the workplace, abortion still illegal in Northern Ireland and childcare prohibitively expensive throughout Britain, the answer has to be a resounding No.
So what can concerned women (and men) do? The last section of the exhibition, titled “Where are we now?” gives hope, highlighting the important work women’s groups continue to carry out.
The rejuvenated Reclaim The Night marches, this year’s student-led protest against Miss England, the creation of the anti-porn group Bin The Bunny - this is where the radical spirit of the Women’s Liberation Movement lives on.
Runs until March 31. Admission free.
You can watch the film A Women’s Place here.
African-American anti-Franco fighters
From British daily The Guardian:
Spanish quest to identify black soldier who fought against fascism in civil war• US volunteer in picture killed in civil war battle
• Authorities plan to present image to Obama next year* Giles Tremlett in Barcelona
* Sunday 20 December 2009 16.50 GMTAs a volunteer in the International Brigades that fought in Spain’s civil war, the unidentified black soldier in the photograph was one of the first Americans to die fighting fascism.
Now Spanish authorities want to put a name to him so they can present his picture to President Barack Obama when he visits Spain next year.
The black and white picture of the African American volunteer forms part of an extraordinary collection of civil war photographs that was bought recently by the Spanish state.
“All we know is that he arrived with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of American volunteers and that he died in the battle at Brunete [in July 1937],” said Sergi Centelles, whose father, Agustí, took the picture.
The soldier is one of more than 90 African-Americans who volunteered to defend Spain’s elected Republican government from a 1936 rightwing military uprising that sparked a three-year civil war.
Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini sent troops to back the rebel army of future dictator General Francisco Franco. Leftwing and anti-fascist volunteers from around the world joined Russians sent by Stalin to help defend the Republic.
Obama defended the concept of waging a “just war” in his Nobel peace prize speech this month.
The New York-based Abraham Lincoln Brigades Association and New York University’s Tamiment library have scoured their civil war archives to see if they could identify the man in the photograph, which was probably taken in February 1937. Two possible candidates have emerged: Milton Herndon, whose brother Angelo won a famous supreme court case against a sentence for “incitement to insurrection”, and aviator Paul Williams.
“It is one of eight or nine photographs my father took of the Americans marching through Barcelona,” said Agustí Centelles.
The photograph remained hidden for four decades after Agustí Centelles, known as the “Spanish Robert Capa”, fled Spain as Franco’s forces looked set to win the civil war in 1939.
“My father took his photographs with him in a suitcase because he was scared they would be used to identify people and carry out reprisals,” said Sergi Centelles.
The photographer used the suitcase as a pillow in a French refugee camp to prevent it from being stolen. He later moved in with a French family in Carcassonne, in southern France, but had to flee again after the second world war broke out and the occupying Germans heard that he was using his camera to take photographs for false passports.
“The Gestapo were chasing him, so he walked back across the Pyrenees into Spain,” said Sergi Centelles. “He left the suitcase behind, telling the French family not to hand it over to anyone but him.
“It was passed down from the grandfather, when he died, to his son and then, when he also died, to the grandson.”
Agustí Centelles sent the French family a present every Christmas as a sign that he was still alive.
Spain did not give the photographer a passport until 1962, when the family travelled to Carcasonne to check the suitcase was still there. It was only in 1976, a year after Franco died, that he dared pick up the suitcase and bring it home.
It contained hundreds of civil war photographs, including one of writer George Orwell with a group of fellow international volunteers.
The mix of races in the International Brigades saw attempts made to observe a degree of racial equality otherwise unseen in western armies in the 1930s.
“We know there were quite a few African American volunteers and that many were treated badly when they went home, as people thought they were communists,” said Sergi Centelles.
“We have four or five names of possible candidates, but what we really want to do is to find their family.”
• If you know who the man in the main photograph is, or can provide any information that might help identify him, please contact giles.tremlett@guardian.co.uk
Jews oppose sainthood for ‘Hitler’s pope’
From British daily The Guardian:
Jewish anger as Pope Benedict moves Pius XII closer to sainthood• Catholic leader signs decree extolling virtues of predecessor
• Wartime pontiff accused of inaction during Holocaust* Riazat Butt, Religious affairs correspondent
* Monday 21 December 2009 15.44 GMT
Jewish leaders from around the world expressed their outrage today after the Pope opened the way for his controversial wartime predecessor to be made a saint, with some calling the possible beatification of Pius XII as “inopportune and premature”.
Benedict signed a decree last Saturday on the virtues of Pius, who has been criticised for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust. The decree means he can be beatified once a miracle attributed to him has been recognised.
Beatification is the first major step towards sainthood. But Benedict, who has long admired Pius, continues to draw fire for ignoring concerns over the controversial pontiff.
Among those to criticise him was the World Jewish Congress, whose president, Ronald Lauder, said: “As long as the archives about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and until a consensus on his actions ‑ or inaction ‑ concerning the persecution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust is established, a beatification is inopportune and premature.
“While it is entirely a matter for the Catholic church to decide on whom religious honours are bestowed, there are strong concerns about Pius XII’s political role during world war two which should not be ignored.”
He called on the Vatican to immediately open the files on the controversial figure. “Given the importance of good relations between Catholics and the Jews, and following the difficult events of the past year, it would be appreciated if the Vatican showed more sensitivity on this matter,” he added, referring to Benedict’s rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying cleric, Richard Williamson.
The incident sparked worldwide condemnation from prominent Jewish groups and individuals and placed an additional strain on interfaith relations, which were already under pressure after the pope issued an edict permitting a prayer that called for the conversion of Jews.
In France, the country’s chief rabbi urged the Vatican to abandon its mission to beatify Pius. Gilles Bernheim said: “Given Pius XII’s silence during and after the Shoah [Holocaust], I don’t want to believe that Catholics see in Pius XII an example of morality for humankind. I hope that the church will renounce this beatification plan and will thus honour its message and its values.”
The renewed source of tension could cast a cloud over Benedict’s inaugural visit to Rome’s synagogue next month.
Giuseppe Laras, president of the Assembly of Italian Rabbis, told the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica: “I hope it goes ahead but after this latest move I wouldn’t be surprised if it is cancelled. While I respect the autonomy of the church in matters of sainthood, I don’t see how the pope could have taken such an untimely decision. Anything can happen now.”
British Christian Rightist supports killing Ugandan gays
From Pink News in Britain:
Christian leader supports death penalty for gaysa former Chairman of the Conservative Family CampaignDecember 21, 2009 - 11:06
A far right Christian group has urged fellow Christians to support Uganda’s proposed law that would make homosexuality punishable by death.
leader of the Christian extremist group ‘Christian Voice‘, remarked:Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill: Inspired by the U.S.: here.“The Bible calls for the ultimate penalty for sodomy (Lev 20:13) and for rape (Deut 22:25), and our Lord upheld the death penalty when He called for the accusers of the woman caught in adultery to cast the first stone (John 8:7) – if, that is, they were not implicated in adultery themselves.
“The contrast between our politicians and those of Uganda could not be more stark. A Parliamentarian in Uganda is trying to protect his nation’s children. The House of Commons of the United Kingdom is trying to corrupt ours. Which country is the more civilised, I wonder, in the eyes of Almighty God?”
The law would impose the death penalty on those convicted of having gay sex with a minor or disabled person or someone infected with HIV.
Friends and family members of gay Ugandans who do not report them to authorities could also face up to three years in prison.
People who “promote” or assist homosexuality could be jailed for seven years. The bill would also punish Ugandan citizens who have gay sex abroad.
The bill’s sponsor, David Bahati MP, has argued that it will curb HIV infections and protect the “traditional family”.
It has been subject to worldwide condemnation and since the first reports emerged in mid-October and has received widespread media attention. …
Christian Voice opposes abortion, homosexuality, no-fault divorce and safer sex education. Additionally it supports the death penalty and does not recognise the concept of marital rape.
On 2 September 2006, Green was arrested while handing out what were considered by the police to be homophobic leaflets at the Cardiff Mardi Gras.
He was arrested for an alleged “homophobic incident”, detained for four hours, and charged with public order offences. The Crown Prosecution Service decided to withdraw their prosecution of Green on the grounds of insufficient evidence, though the police stated that this did not “challenge the legality” of his arrest.
Human rights court cases, for the rich only?
This video from the USA says about itself:
On Books of Our Time, a one-hour TV program produced by the Massachusetts School of Law, Atlantic Monthly senior editor and distinguished author Jack Beatty was interviewed by Dean Lawrence R. Velvel of MSL about his new book, The Age of Betrayal. Beatty passionately discussed the Gilded Age, a time when money talked and little else mattered, and the events that led to social, economic, and political suppression of the working class and sometimes to actual starvation of workers.Translated from Dutch news agency ANP:Beatty likened important political and economic problems besetting ordinary citizens in today’s America to the time when the labor force, oppressed by corporate tycoons and the politicians, was victimized by public policy dictated by the wealthy. Beatty says that, in the Pennsylvania Railroad Strike in which over 100 citizens were murdered by the National Guard after the railroad cut wages to one dollar a day, the blood of the labor force was shed to secure riches for corporations and big businessmen while workers starved.
Plan to make human rights complaints more difficultRICH JUSTICE, POOR JUSTICE in the USA: here.21 December 2009
STRASBOURG - It may become more difficult to lodge a complaint at the European Human Rights Court. In order to stop the big quantity of cases, there are plans to limit the criteria and to not keep complaining free any more. …
The Strasbourg Court is the final legal authority where 800 million Europeans can complain about violations of human rights such as freedom of speech or the right to a fair trial. …
The idea to ask for money for registry has political aspects as well. “For someone from Eastern Europe who wants to complain, for example 20 euros may be a really big amount. That would make it harder for them to complain than for rich Westerners.”
England: A Yorkshire parish priest has offered a radical solution to poverty among his parishioners by advising the needy to shoplift from major stores: here.
United States economic crisis continues
This video from the USA is called Dan’s Foreclosure Story.
USA: Foreclosures, job losses and medical expenses have forced more of the [Chicago] city’s working poor from their homes as the state slashes spending on emergency programs: here.
New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted last week to eliminate free transit passes for students as part of a package of drastic service cuts aimed at closing a $400 million deficit: here.
Sarkozy’s French chauvinism helps Le Pen
France: Sarkozy’s national identity campaign boosts the National Front21 December 2009
French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in a December 9 opinion piece in Le Monde, gave vent to an extreme nationalist and barely concealed Islamophobic appeal to the most reactionary forces within French society.
Its purpose is to win a social base for the imposition of authoritarian rule in order to make the working class pay for the economic crisis and the vast state debts incurred in bailing out the banks. It is also designed to create the ideological climate to justify France’s imperialist foreign policy, involving the unpopular military intervention in Afghanistan in the scramble for the world’s strategic resources, mainly oil and gas, by competing imperialist powers.
The article vigorously defends the recent Swiss referendum vote for a law making the building of mosque minarets illegal. Sarkozy asserts that those attacking the Swiss referendum vote were attacking “the Swiss people” and furthermore were showing a general “scorn for the people” and “a visceral mistrust for everything coming from the people.” He denies that the vote had any effect on “religious freedom and freedom of conscience.”
Sarkozy’s public endorsement of the Swiss referendum vote places him at the head of a sharp move to the right in European politics. Indeed, Sarkozy positions himself to the right of the ruling political parties in Switzerland, which had opposed a vote for the ban, if only for fear of possible damage to the country’s banking, trade and tourist interests.
The law is being challenged by Muslim groups in the European Court of Human Rights as being incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights. They point out that it is discriminatory because it exclusively directed at the Muslim religion.
Sarkozy’s article is part of the national-identity campaign, spearheaded by his increasingly fanatical minister of immigration and national identity, Eric Besson, the former Socialist Party spokesman on economic affairs. It is an escalation of the state racism and Islamophobia expressed in the 2004 law banning the wearing of Muslim headscarfs by girls in schools and the parliamentary mission preparing legislation for the banning of the burqa in public. …
Besson ordered the forced repatriation of nine Afghans, whose safety is in severe doubt, to Kabul on Wednesday, on a plane jointly chartered with the British government, against the express wishes of the Afghan government.
Most notable about Sarkozy’s right-wing populism is the complete non-recognition of class divisions within “the people” and his exclusive use of religion to define social categories: “Christian, Jew or Muslim, man of faith, whatever his faith, whatever his beliefs.…”
Asserting the fundamentally “Christian civilisation” of France and the “values of the Republic,” Sarkozy warns newcomers and particularly Muslims that any challenge by them to these “values…would condemn to failure the so-necessary establishment of a French Islam.” …
There are signs that Sarkozy’s strident embrace of large parts of the National Front’s programme and ideology, rather than attracting the far-right vote, is boosting the neo-fascists. Le Pen’s daughter and likely successor, Marine Le Pen, is shown on television working the markets with leaflets headed “ National Identity.” The opinion polls show 10% voting for the FN in the regional elections, which could be very damaging for the prospects of the ruling UMP (Union for a Popular Movement). Approval ratings for Sarkozy are now dipping below 40%. …
Increasingly, sections of the political elite are worried that the national identity campaign launched by Sarkozy and Besson is getting out of control. AFP quotes the UMP deputy Jean-Pierre Grand, a supporter of Sarkozy’s rival, Dominique de Villepin, describing the national identity campaign as “a marvellous boost for the National Front. I regret it profoundly.”
Former UMP prime ministers de Villepin, Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Alain Juppé have publicly expressed their objections to Sarkozy’s article and the national identity campaign.
US bombs kill Yemeni civilians
This video from Yemen is called Saudi Arabian Bombing on helpless civilians.
US President Barack Obama personally issued the order for US air strikes in Yemen last Thursday which killed scores of civilians, including women and children: here.
