Civil liberties - new material (63)
01 January 2006
"I just want an apology" Lofti Raissi. Independent 16.2.06, p.43. Lofti Raissi was branded by the United States as the man who had trained the 11 September bombers and as one of the world's most notorious criminals. He, and other members of his family, were arrested 12 days after the attacks on New York when the US launched extradition proceedings against him on terrorism charges that carried the death penalty. After serving five months in Belmarsh high-security prison the case against him collapsed when the US "evidence" was shown to be fatally flawed. Nonetheless, the Raissi family are still prohibited from travelling by every airline in the world. Despite his wrongful imprisonment Lofti is still awaiting an apology for his treatment from both the British and the US governments, but Home Secretary Jack Straw's response has been to deny permission for any compensation to be granted.
Fake news in the UK, David Miller. Free Press no 150 (January-February) 2006, p3. This article considers British Satellite News, which is "provided by World Television which makes internal videos and fake news releases for multinationals such as GlaxaSmithKline, BP and Nestle. World Television also produced Towards Freedom Television on behalf of the British Government. This was a propaganda broadcast distributed in Iraq by US Army psychological operations teams."
The Torture Complex. The Nation, 26.12.05. This special edition of The Nation focuses on the use of torture by US agencies. It contains articles on the role of the Bush administration (Anthony Lewis), US military cover-ups (Tom McKelvey), Abu Ghraib (Sasha Abramsky), medical complicity (Jonathan A. Marks) the role of music and "torture lite" (Moustafa Bayoumi), rogue academics (Tom McKelvey), television (Richard J Greenberg) and the law (Lisa Hajjar). While the Bush administration continues to fly in the face of the evidence by denying any US involvement in torture (Bush: "We do not torture") at least a dozen reports from the US Defense Department demonstrate the exact opposite. The Nation can be accessed art www.thenation.com
The moral mirror, John Pilger. Free Press no 150 (January-February) 2006, p1. Pilger discusses "the "noise" of twenty-four news that is often not news at all, but a series of tales spun by those with power, justifying their deceptions and violence." He argues that journalistic objectivity and impartiality "have become code for profound establishment bias." Free Press is the journal of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom: www.cpbf.org.uk
War without rules: yes, the US has used chemical weapons in Iraq, George Monbiot. The Guardian, 15.11.05. Monbiot examines US troops' use of white phosphorus against the citizens of Falluja in November 2004.