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Friday, December 07, 2007
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Thursday, December 06, 2007
'US says it has right to kidnap British citizens'
From The Sunday Times
2 Dec 2007
" ... AMERICA has told Britain that it can "kidnap" British citizens if they are
wanted for crimes in the United States.
A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of
Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under
American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.
The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of
the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on
fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives,
including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are
under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal
charges in America.
Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping
only in the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects.
The American government has for the first time made it clear in a
British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise,
suspected of a crime by Washington.
Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as
just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial.
Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and
Washington believes it is still legitimate.
The US government's view emerged during a hearing involving Stanley
Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club and a friend of
Baroness Thatcher, and his wife Beatrice.
The Tollmans, who control the Red Carnation hotel group and are
resident in London, are wanted in America for bank fraud and tax
evasion. They have been fighting extradition through the British
courts.
During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of
Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC, representing the US government,
about its treatment of Gavin, Tollman's nephew. Gavin Tollman was the
subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005.
Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap
people if they were wanted for offences in America. "The United States
does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not
shared," he said.
He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in
another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US
court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: "If you
kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the
court has no jurisdiction to refuse -- it goes back to bounty hunting
days in the 1860s."
Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be "honest
about [his] position".
Jones replied: "That is United States law." ... "
" ... AMERICA has told Britain that it can "kidnap" British citizens if they are
wanted for crimes in the United States.
A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of
Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under
American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.
The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of
the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on
fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives,
including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are
under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal
charges in America.
Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping
only in the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects.
The American government has for the first time made it clear in a
British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise,
suspected of a crime by Washington.
Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as
just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial.
Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and
Washington believes it is still legitimate.
The US government's view emerged during a hearing involving Stanley
Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club and a friend of
Baroness Thatcher, and his wife Beatrice.
The Tollmans, who control the Red Carnation hotel group and are
resident in London, are wanted in America for bank fraud and tax
evasion. They have been fighting extradition through the British
courts.
During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of
Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC, representing the US government,
about its treatment of Gavin, Tollman's nephew. Gavin Tollman was the
subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005.
Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap
people if they were wanted for offences in America. "The United States
does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not
shared," he said.
He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in
another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US
court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: "If you
kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the
court has no jurisdiction to refuse -- it goes back to bounty hunting
days in the 1860s."
Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be "honest
about [his] position".
Jones replied: "That is United States law." ... "
~ Read on... ~
'The Last Days of the United States Dollar'
James Howard Kunstler
27 Nov 2007
Author of The Long Emergency
" ... At the risk of sounding even more extreme, I would be hard put to
believe any reports that "consumer" spending in the days following
Thanksgiving will match the hopes and wishes of economic officialdom.
My own hunch is that average Americans are so maxed out on debt
that they don't know whether to shit or go blind. Perhaps lot of
them are willing to take a last step into fatal insolvency in order
to put a plasma TV screen under the Christmas tree and appear as
heroes to their families. If that's the case, it would only imply
a greater bloodbath in credit card default thundering through the
system in February and March, which would only deepen the carnage
in collateralized debt instruments further up the food chain.
That stuff probably has a long way to unwind, even as the "train"
of losses hits the immovable obstacle of reality and the "boxcars"
of consequence fly off the rails. The slow-motion train wreck could
sweep away an awful lot of familiar things in its path -- banks,
companies, government-sponsored enterprises, whole industries, whole
economies, nations, up to and including the prospects for civilized
existence, if severe hardship leads to war, which it often does.
To some extent, the speed and severity of the financial train wreck
will occur in a mutually reinforcing relation to what happens in
the oil markets. The rise in price is only the mildest symptom of
growing instability for the system that allocates the world's most
critical resource. Even in the face of "demand destruction," weird
changes are occurring in the way that the oil producers do business.
The decline in export rates and the new spirit of "oil nationalism"
will take center stage now, even if the US economy seizes up. These
phenomena will represent a new cycle in world affairs: the global
contest for remaining fossil fuel resources. ... "
believe any reports that "consumer" spending in the days following
Thanksgiving will match the hopes and wishes of economic officialdom.
My own hunch is that average Americans are so maxed out on debt
that they don't know whether to shit or go blind. Perhaps lot of
them are willing to take a last step into fatal insolvency in order
to put a plasma TV screen under the Christmas tree and appear as
heroes to their families. If that's the case, it would only imply
a greater bloodbath in credit card default thundering through the
system in February and March, which would only deepen the carnage
in collateralized debt instruments further up the food chain.
That stuff probably has a long way to unwind, even as the "train"
of losses hits the immovable obstacle of reality and the "boxcars"
of consequence fly off the rails. The slow-motion train wreck could
sweep away an awful lot of familiar things in its path -- banks,
companies, government-sponsored enterprises, whole industries, whole
economies, nations, up to and including the prospects for civilized
existence, if severe hardship leads to war, which it often does.
To some extent, the speed and severity of the financial train wreck
will occur in a mutually reinforcing relation to what happens in
the oil markets. The rise in price is only the mildest symptom of
growing instability for the system that allocates the world's most
critical resource. Even in the face of "demand destruction," weird
changes are occurring in the way that the oil producers do business.
The decline in export rates and the new spirit of "oil nationalism"
will take center stage now, even if the US economy seizes up. These
phenomena will represent a new cycle in world affairs: the global
contest for remaining fossil fuel resources. ... "
~ Read on... ~
'The Atrocity Files: Deciphering the Archives of Guatemalas Dirty War'
From the National Security Archive:
"...New! The December issue of Harpers Magazine includes a feature
article by Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle with nine pages of
full-color photographs.
The Atrocity Files: Deciphering the Archives of Guatemalas Dirty
War
Contact: Kate Doyle, kadoyle@gwu.edu 646-613-1440, ext. 238
December 4, 2007Harpers Magazine carries a feature article this
month by the National Security Archive's Kate Doyle on what has
been described by the New York Times as the biggest trove of files
found in the history of Latin America. Titled The Atrocity Files:
Deciphering the Archives of Guatemala's Dirty War, the 7,000-word
article describes the massive effort underway to rescue the recently
discovered records of the brutal former Guatemalan National Police
estimates are that the collection may reach 50 million pages and
how analysts and human rights investigators are sifting through the
documents for evidence of human rights crimes.
Doyle directs the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National
Security Archive. She has played a key role in organizing international
efforts to secure, preserve, and analyze records from the National
Police Archive. The discovery of this stunning cache of police files
offers Guatemalans an unparalleled opportunity to recover a secret
history, says Doyle, and confirms through official records a
government policy of repression and terror that left more than
200,000 citizens dead or disappeared after 36 years of civil conflict.
Sample text:
As we moved from room to room, the policewomen accompanied us,
obligingly yanking open drawers when requested or slipping pages
out of bound folders to show us. They balked only once, when we
came upon a pile of records from the old Detective Corps, a greatly
feared special-operations squad that existed in the 1970s and early
1980s, notorious for the kidnapping, torture, and execution of
suspected subversives. We asked the woman in charge to hand us some
file folders, but she began shaking her head no and then her finger,
shaking it at us, no, no, No se puede, no se puede, that cant be
done. It took us a few minutes to understand: we werent prohibited
from looking at them, but she still had strict orders, almost ten
years after the abolition of the National Police, not to touch.
Buy Harpers Magazine at your local news stand or bookstore now!
Subscribers can read the article here:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/12/page/0054 ... "
See the original posting from the National Security Archives Guatemala
Documentation Project about the police archives here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB170/index.htm
article by Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle with nine pages of
full-color photographs.
The Atrocity Files: Deciphering the Archives of Guatemalas Dirty
War
Contact: Kate Doyle, kadoyle@gwu.edu 646-613-1440, ext. 238
December 4, 2007Harpers Magazine carries a feature article this
month by the National Security Archive's Kate Doyle on what has
been described by the New York Times as the biggest trove of files
found in the history of Latin America. Titled The Atrocity Files:
Deciphering the Archives of Guatemala's Dirty War, the 7,000-word
article describes the massive effort underway to rescue the recently
discovered records of the brutal former Guatemalan National Police
estimates are that the collection may reach 50 million pages and
how analysts and human rights investigators are sifting through the
documents for evidence of human rights crimes.
Doyle directs the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National
Security Archive. She has played a key role in organizing international
efforts to secure, preserve, and analyze records from the National
Police Archive. The discovery of this stunning cache of police files
offers Guatemalans an unparalleled opportunity to recover a secret
history, says Doyle, and confirms through official records a
government policy of repression and terror that left more than
200,000 citizens dead or disappeared after 36 years of civil conflict.
Sample text:
As we moved from room to room, the policewomen accompanied us,
obligingly yanking open drawers when requested or slipping pages
out of bound folders to show us. They balked only once, when we
came upon a pile of records from the old Detective Corps, a greatly
feared special-operations squad that existed in the 1970s and early
1980s, notorious for the kidnapping, torture, and execution of
suspected subversives. We asked the woman in charge to hand us some
file folders, but she began shaking her head no and then her finger,
shaking it at us, no, no, No se puede, no se puede, that cant be
done. It took us a few minutes to understand: we werent prohibited
from looking at them, but she still had strict orders, almost ten
years after the abolition of the National Police, not to touch.
Buy Harpers Magazine at your local news stand or bookstore now!
Subscribers can read the article here:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/12/page/0054 ... "
See the original posting from the National Security Archives Guatemala
Documentation Project about the police archives here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB170/index.htm
Washington, D.C., November 21, 2005 - On July 5, officials from the Guatemalan government's human rights office (PDH - Procuraduría de Derechos Humanos) entered a deteriorating, rat-infested munitions depot in downtown Guatemala City to investigate complaints about improperly-stored explosives. During inspection of the site, investigators found a vast collection of documents, stored in five buildings and in an advanced state of decay. The files belonged to the National Police, the central branch of Guatemala's security forces during the war - an entity so inextricably linked to violent repression, abduction, disappearances, torture and assassination that the country's 1996 peace accord mandated it be completely disbanded and a new police institution created in its stead.
The scope of this find is staggering - PDH officials estimate that there are 4.5 kilometers - some 75 million pages - of materials. During a visit to the site in early August, I saw file cabinets marked "assassinations," "disappeared" and "homicides," as well as folders labeled with the names of internationally-known victims of political murder, such as anthropologist Myrna Mack (killed by security forces in 1990). ..."
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