From everyone at North Coast VoicesWednesday 31 December 2008
Twittering Gaza in December 2008
#Israel allows some 100 lorries of humanitarian supplies to cross into #Gaza in coordination with Palestinian Authority
at http://twitter.com/ajgaza
If Rumsfeld and Ashcroft go before the courts, can Bush, Blair and Howard be far behind?
Some of the best news to come out of 2008 turned up in News Week earlier this month.
The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing—and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror.
In early December, in a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York agreed to rehear a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft brought by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. (Arar was a victim of the administration's extraordinary rendition program: he was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 while in transit through Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria, where he was tortured.) Then, on Dec. 15, the Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld by four Guantánamo detainees alleging abuse there—a reminder that the court, unlike the White House, will extend Constitutional protections to foreigners at Gitmo. Finally, in the same week the Senate Armed Service Committee, led by Carl Levin and John McCain, released a blistering report specifically blaming key administration figures for prisoner mistreatment and interrogation techniques that broke the law. The bipartisan report reads like a brief for the prosecution—calling, for example, Rumsfeld's behavior a "direct cause" of abuse. Analysts say it gives a green light to prosecutors, and supplies them with political cover and factual ammunition. Administration officials, with a few exceptions, deny wrongdoing. Vice President Dick Cheney says there was nothing improper with U.S. interrogation techniques—"we don't do torture," he repeated in an ABC interview on Dec. 15. The government blamed the worst abuses, such as those at Abu Ghraib, on a few bad apples.
High-level charges, if they come, would be a first in U.S. history. "Traditionally we've caught some poor bastard down low and not gone up the chain," says Burt Neuborne, a constitutional expert and Supreme Court lawyer at NYU. Prosecutions may well be forestalled if Bush issues a blanket pardon in his final days, as Neuborne and many other experts now expect. (Some see Cheney's recent defiant-sounding admission of his own role in approving waterboarding as an attempt to force Bush's hand.)
Now the Bush Administration may still be able to sidestep American laws, but one has to wonder if the day is drawing nearer when the Iraqi Government will have the courage to take the United States, Britain and Australia before The Hague on the basis of breaches of international law and war crimes.
Saffin ends the year as she began it - with good news for the NSW North Coast
Photograph showing Federal Member for Page, Janelle Saffin, with Big Scrub Landcare Group chairman, Dr Tony Parkes, in regenerated lowland subtropical rainforest at Binna Burra.The Northern Star reported last Monday:
THE TREES towering over Dr Tony Parkes are only 16 years old, yet they show what is possible when the Big Scrub Landcare Group decides to regenerate a forest.
Now it has bigger, more ambitious plans.
The environmental group, whose myriad partners include Rous Water and every local council from the Clarence to the Tweed, has just won a $369,000 Federal Government grant to rehabilitate some of the most significant lowland rainforest remnants in the country.
“Some of the vegetation around here is 20-odd million years old, and can trace its genesis back to 100 million years ago,” Dr Parkes said. “We are dealing with a very ancient rainforest that has evolved over time.”
The Member for Page has had a charmed year in the local media and is held in high esteem by many in local communities and groups which have benefited this year from Federal Labor funding.
However, when push comes to shove in 2009 and informed policy accompanied by firm action is urgently required on climate change, water security, the environment and human rights; Ms. Saffin may have to work harder to retain that political honeymoon mood within an electorate which cannot be brought.
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