Iran, Obama – Clinton Tag Team Brits on Torture, and other world happenings
30 July 2009 11:03 am by Taylor Marsh
Police in Iran have crashed the mourning of Neda. The CNN piece here reports almost 3,000 mourners, plus Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, his wife, were present as well.
The Guardian has a provocative article about Secretary Clinton allegedly “indicating,” which in the Guardian title is judged as “threatening”, Britain about disclosing any CIA torture evidence regarding Binyam Mohamed. He was released in February 2009, with his lawyers now trying to get evidence believed currently held by the British government that Mohamed was tortured while in U.S. custody.
The court has heard how the Foreign Office and Miliband have solicited US help in keeping the CIA material secret. Today, it heard how Miliband met Clinton in Washington on 12 May this year.
In a written statement proposing a gagging order, Miliband told the court that she “indicated” that the disclosure of CIA evidence “would affect intelligence sharing”. Pressed repeatedly by the judges on the claim yesterday, Karen Steyn, Miliband’s counsel, insisted that Clinton was indeed saying that if the seven-paragraph summary of CIA material was disclosed, the US would “reassess” its intelligence relationship with the UK, a move that “would put lives at risk”.
Glenn Greenwald writes that if Britain discloses the “seven paragraph summary” the U.S. would “cut-off intelligence-sharing” with the Brits. Considering our century old relationship on intelligence matters, I find it very hard to believe that we’d sever our intelligence sharing, especially given the fact that Britain is in a much better place to monitor extremist elements that could harm U.S. interests than we are. However, the U.S. is in the driver’s seat in this relationship, make no mistake about it, with Pres. Obama adamantly clear about the unreleased photos. Additionally, Binyam Mohamed’s alleged torture at Gitmo seems hard to dispute considering the reports. Glenn does make a very good point, the bold below being the central issue in this story: New statements from the British Foreign Secretary yesterday — claiming that Hillary Clinton personally re-iterated those threats in a May meeting — highlight how extreme is this joint American/British effort to cover-up proof of Mohamed’s torture. The closing paragraph from this document from April, which admittedly I hadn’t read, makes that clear, obliterating any doubt I may have initially entertained:
.. …In the circumstances now prevailing, the balance is served by maintaining the redaction of the paragraphs from our first judgment. In short, whatever views may be held as to the continuing threat made by the Government of the United States to prevent a short summary of the treatment of BM being put into the public domain by this court, it would not, in all the circumstances we have set out and in the light of the action taken, be in the public interest to expose the United Kingdom to what the Foreign Secretary still considers to be the real risk of the loss of intelligence so vital to the safety of our day to day life. If the information in the redacted paragraphs which we consider so important to the rule of law, free speech and democratic accountability is to be put into the public domain, it must now be for the United States Government to consider changing its position or itself putting that information into the public domain.
Stunning once it sinks in.
Through Clinton, Obama is proving his point and what he expects out of our British allies. Miliband, someone I’ve watched in action, is a modern diplomat and leader looking at higher office (in my judgment), so the prospect that he’d interpret Clinton’s shot across Britain’s bow as a “threat” and say so through his attorney seems like a distancing mechanism to me, especially if you believe as I do that all secrets surrounding Bush-Cheney policy on torture will eventually be revealed. Obama’s obsession with looking backwards evidently has Sect. Clinton complicit in delivering language that demands covering up what they had nothing to with implementing. That said, I seriously doubt Clinton would do any differently if the positions were reversed, which is thrust of what Glenn is saying by pointing the finger at Clinton.
An interview with Eric Holder focuses on the “home grown” terrorism threat.
“I mean, that’s one of the things that’s particularly troubling: This whole notion of radicalization of Americans,” Holder told ABC News during an interview in his SUV as his motorcade brought him from home to work. “Leaving this country and going to different parts of the world and then coming back, all, again, in aim of doing harm to the American people, is a great concern.”
I’m not doubting the Attorney General, but I’d say we have a graver threat. The radicalization of right wing America who is being scared to death that Pres. Obama is threatening their lives. This furor is coming via racial motivation, for sure, but also from a socialist scare that goes back to the early 20th century when Democrats began being demonized, with the right picking up that frenzy again today, made more dangerous because Obama is African American. The across state lines concealed carry push, which recently failed in the Senate but not by as much as it should, is representative of the fear being stoked across the country.
Tony Blair is being summoned in his country’s Iraq war inquiry.
Hold on for this next one. China reports 13 million abortions per year.
Human trafficking is big business.
More than one million people, the majority of them women and children, are smuggled across international borders to work in near slavery every year, the US state department says.
And to end on a happy note, children in Gaza seek to win the world’s kite flying record. Visualizing a sky of brightly flying colors.
