Hastings Decides Against Fla. Senate Bid. Well, although he had a shot at the nomination, he had no real chance to be elected. Which is sort of a shame, as he is a very impressive human when seen up close.
I guess this partly explains the mystery of Hastings's endorsement of Lieberman — Hastings didn't care about the tactical implications for a Senate race because he wasn't making one.
FTAA IMC. It looks from this page as if the police in Miami are on a hair trigger — which fits with everything we've been reading in the local press for the last couple of weeks. It would be tempting to dismiss this web page as agitprop — and it may be — but certainly the cops came armed for bear.
The mainstream media reports, Thousands march peacefully after early clashes. It starts off with how great things are, but the further you go into the article, the less great they sound — although so far at least there have been no major incidents, just many minor ones.
Even the boosterish Herald reports,
Among those arrested today: Marc Steier, an attorney with Miami Activist Defense, which defends the rights of protesters. He said he was seized by police early this morning and charged with obstruction of justice as he attempted to assist protesters.
''I didn't last 25 minutes on the street,'' he said.
This is a simply wonderful way to display one type of information: a map of the US showing where candidates are getting their money. (Via Joho The Blog.)
Here's some general information relating to the Arar case, including a timeline and a discussion of one of the relevant limits on the use of torture. The last two links suggest that it was the Canadians who fingered Arar to the US authorities, although whether they did so a routine matter or in the hopes that the US would do Canada's dirty work is not addressed. The Canadians do say that they never expected Arar to be sent to Syria, and didn't get advance warning of the transfer, although if that was the point of the exercise why would they?
Article 3 of the Convention on Torture, to which the United States is a party, states:
No State Party shall expel, return ('refouler') or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture…. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
U.S. treaty obligations and policy have been implemented through regulations issued by the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, that codify the United States' commitment not to send individuals to another country where they are likely to be tortured. Among other protections, these binding regulations require that individuals facing deportation or extradition be given an opportunity to be heard on the likelihood of torture in the country to which they are facing return. The Arar case suggests that either those procedures are not being followed, or that they are inadequate.
One should not be especially hopeful about the domestic Canadian inquiries unless Parliament or the Prime Minister set up a special independent panel, as the track record of police self-investigation in Canada isn't great. The standard police complaints body lacks the authority to get information from the security services, much less any means by which it can even send queries to the US side.
War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal
International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: “I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.”
President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq – also the British government's publicly stated view – or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.
But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that “international law … would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone”, and this would have been morally unacceptable.
French intransigence, he added, meant there had been “no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein”…
This 'the ends justified the means' argument is internally consistent, but it's weird in the extreme to have all the former critics of humanitarian intervention reborn as bleeding hearts. Or would be if we believed they meant a word of the humanitarian stuff (postwar planning? us?)….
The Maher Arar case is very disturbing, although the callous cynicism of Team Bush that it appears to reveal can hardly be a surprise at this point.
The key allegations are:
In short, the claim is that the US arranged for Arar to be tortured via an extraordinary rendition. Presumably because the Ba'athist Syrian intelligence has been very cooperative in the war on (religious) terror.
But you see, that claim is really very unfair. The US didn't arrange for the Syrians to torture anyone. No, no, a thousand times no. In fact, the US got the Syrians to promise that they wouldn't torture Arar. And the Justice Department not only believed those assurances then, they believe them today! The Syrians would never torture a suspected al Queda member when they had promised us they wouldn't. Or, at least, it was certainly reasonable of the good, honest, acting Attorney General to rely on the Syrians' assurances, for we well know that they are a nation firmly committed to the Rule of Law.
Jotwell
