GENEVA, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President George W. Bush has cancelled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.
Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod's annual dinner on Feb. 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.
Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.
Human rights groups said they had intended to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in the Swiss city on Monday for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba where captives from Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in the so-called War on Terror were interned.
Leftist groups had also called for a protest on the day of his visit next Saturday, leading Keren Hayesod's organisers to announce that they were cancelling Bush's participation on security grounds -- not because of the criminal complaints.
But groups including the New York-based Human Rights Watch and International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said the cancellation was linked to growing moves to hold Bush accountable for torture, including waterboarding. He has admitted in his memoirs and television interviews to ordering use of the interrogation technique that simulates drowning.
"He's avoiding the handcuffs," Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.
After the jump: Prosecute or Extradite
THE OWLS' NEST - Mostly U.S. Politics
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Dan Froomkin On Bush's Memoirs
Froomkin:
These days, when we think of George W. Bush, we think mostly of what a horrible mess he made of the economy. But his even more tragic legacy is the loss of our moral authority, and the transformation of the United States of America from global champion of human rights into an outlaw nation.
History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.
And that's why the two most essential lies -- among the many -- in his new memoir are that he had a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, and that he had a legitimate reason to torture detainees.
Neither is remotely true. But Bush must figure that if he keeps making the case for himself -- particularly if it goes largely unrebutted by the traditional media, as it has thus far -- then perhaps he can blunt history's verdict.
It may even be working. Extrapolating from the response to the book, former vice president Dick Cheney on Tuesday told a crowd gathered for Bush's presidential library groundbreaking in Dallas that "judgments are a little more measured than they were" and that "history is coming around."
The 'Decision' to Go to War
In "Decision Points," Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people's memoirs to prove it.
These days, when we think of George W. Bush, we think mostly of what a horrible mess he made of the economy. But his even more tragic legacy is the loss of our moral authority, and the transformation of the United States of America from global champion of human rights into an outlaw nation.
History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.
And that's why the two most essential lies -- among the many -- in his new memoir are that he had a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, and that he had a legitimate reason to torture detainees.
Neither is remotely true. But Bush must figure that if he keeps making the case for himself -- particularly if it goes largely unrebutted by the traditional media, as it has thus far -- then perhaps he can blunt history's verdict.
It may even be working. Extrapolating from the response to the book, former vice president Dick Cheney on Tuesday told a crowd gathered for Bush's presidential library groundbreaking in Dallas that "judgments are a little more measured than they were" and that "history is coming around."
The 'Decision' to Go to War
In "Decision Points," Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people's memoirs to prove it.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Chomsky on the Middle East and the Egyptian Uprising
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC86b-i2Kng&feature=player_embedded
This post is a bit confused. Anyway, the link to Amy Goodman's interview of Chomsky is at the end of Comment 1.
This post is a bit confused. Anyway, the link to Amy Goodman's interview of Chomsky is at the end of Comment 1.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Beck Dials Up The Crazy
Actually, I think this first video doesn't entirely match up with the Media Matters commentary below. I hunted around and found the second clip, which is about two minutes long, that speculates about Russia controlling the Netherlands.
From Media Matters:
On his Fox News show on Monday, Glenn Beck unleashed a torrent of wild speculation about the consequences of the protests in Egypt. Beck described a world remade by a shift in global power:
BECK: I believe that I can make a case in the end that there are three powers that you will see really emerge. One, a Muslim caliphate that controls the Mideast and parts of Europe. Two, China, that will control Asia, the southern half of Africa, part of the Middle East, Australia, maybe New Zealand, and God only knows what else. And Russia, which will control all of the old former Soviet Union bloc, plus maybe the Netherlands. I'm not really sure. But their strong arm is coming. That leaves us and South America. What happens to us?
That's right: China may control New Zealand, and Russia may control the Netherlands.
Later, Beck proceeded under the assumption that there are connections between recent protests in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Beck designated these countries -- which included France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Italy, among others -- as being "on fire." Pretty much every country that has seen a protest of any kind in the past couple of years, in fact.
While jabbing at Egypt on a map of Africa, Beck said, "When you take the Marxists and you combine them with the radical from Islam, when you combine those forces, which is exactly -- we'll show you this week -- what is happening here, the whole world starts to implode."
He also suggested that the Tunisian revolution could prove analogous to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the event that began the first world war.
All of this was offered up in service of his theory that the protests in Egypt are the manifestation of The Coming Insurrection, an obscure book that French police believe was written by a member of a small group of anarchists. Beck has repeatedly described the anonymous author (or authors) of the book as "communists." He's tied George Soros and President Obama to The Coming Insurrection, as well.
So, a diverse group of the Egyptian people are in the streets protesting an autocratic leader, and Glenn Beck has decided that this is directly connected to an anonymously written anarchist tract from France that he's been obsessing about for the past two years?
Normally, we are in the business of debunking the falsehoods and smears that Beck promotes. But how do you debunk pronouncements that quite obviously bear no relationship to reality?
This second clip is only about two minutes long.
From Media Matters:
On his Fox News show on Monday, Glenn Beck unleashed a torrent of wild speculation about the consequences of the protests in Egypt. Beck described a world remade by a shift in global power:
BECK: I believe that I can make a case in the end that there are three powers that you will see really emerge. One, a Muslim caliphate that controls the Mideast and parts of Europe. Two, China, that will control Asia, the southern half of Africa, part of the Middle East, Australia, maybe New Zealand, and God only knows what else. And Russia, which will control all of the old former Soviet Union bloc, plus maybe the Netherlands. I'm not really sure. But their strong arm is coming. That leaves us and South America. What happens to us?
That's right: China may control New Zealand, and Russia may control the Netherlands.
Later, Beck proceeded under the assumption that there are connections between recent protests in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Beck designated these countries -- which included France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Italy, among others -- as being "on fire." Pretty much every country that has seen a protest of any kind in the past couple of years, in fact.
While jabbing at Egypt on a map of Africa, Beck said, "When you take the Marxists and you combine them with the radical from Islam, when you combine those forces, which is exactly -- we'll show you this week -- what is happening here, the whole world starts to implode."
He also suggested that the Tunisian revolution could prove analogous to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the event that began the first world war.
All of this was offered up in service of his theory that the protests in Egypt are the manifestation of The Coming Insurrection, an obscure book that French police believe was written by a member of a small group of anarchists. Beck has repeatedly described the anonymous author (or authors) of the book as "communists." He's tied George Soros and President Obama to The Coming Insurrection, as well.
So, a diverse group of the Egyptian people are in the streets protesting an autocratic leader, and Glenn Beck has decided that this is directly connected to an anonymously written anarchist tract from France that he's been obsessing about for the past two years?
Normally, we are in the business of debunking the falsehoods and smears that Beck promotes. But how do you debunk pronouncements that quite obviously bear no relationship to reality?
This second clip is only about two minutes long.
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