from the US Centre for Constitutional Rights

Today, CCR filed a criminal complaint in Germany under their universal jurisdiction law charging Rumsfeld, Gonzales and other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration with war crimes . The complaint was filed on behalf of 11 former detainees who were victims of severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse in Abu Ghraib, and one detainee at Guantánamo Bay subjected to torture and abuse there under Rumsfeld’s specific authorization.

‘British Prime Minister Tony Blair made an open plea on Monday to United States President George Bush to recognise that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the core of any hopes for wider peace in the Middle East, including Iraq.

In his annual foreign policy speech, seen as a chance to recalibrate Britain's Iraq strategy, Blair said a solution to the conflict was central to a strategy that "pins back the forces trying to create mayhem inside Iraq".

‘The growth in global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels over the past five years was four times greater than for the preceding 10 years, according to a study that exposes critical flaws in the attempts to avert damaging climate change.

Data on carbon dioxide emissions shows that the global growth rate was 3.2 per cent in the five years to 2005 compared with 0.8 per cent from 1990 to 1999, despite efforts to reduce carbon pollution through the Kyoto agreement.

‘The United States last year provided nearly half of the weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, as major arms sales to the most unstable regions - many already engaged in conflict - grew to the highest level in eight years, new US government figures show.

According to the annual assessment, the United States supplied $8.1 billion worth of weapons to developing countries in 2005 - 45.8 percent of the total and far more than second-ranked Russia with 15 percent and Britain with a little more than 13 percent.

HUMAN RIGHTS LAW RESOURCE CENTRE PRESS RELEASE

12 November 2006

Urging or Supporting Unfair Trial of David Hicks may Constitute a War Crime

David Hicks - US Military Commissions Act of 2006 - Compliance with the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes provisions of Australian Law

A group of eminent Australian lawyers have prepared an Opinion about the continued detention of David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay and his proposed trial by a Military Commission. The Opinion has potentially alarming implications for the Federal Government and its Ministers.

‘As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neo-conservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.’

Neo Culpa

‘British Muslims have been driven towards extremism and terrorist acts because of the UK's part in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the head of MI5.

According to senior intelligence sources, the upsurge in terrorist recruitment was caused not by the Afghan war but by the conflict in Iraq. "Iraq was seen as more unjustified, more an example of Western, British and American, perfidy," said one source.’

‘Big oil companies will be a top target of Democratic lawmakers when they officially take over the House of Representatives early next year.

Democrats picked up enough seats in Tuesday's US election to win majority control of the House and have promised to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks and other financial incentives extended to the oil industry in energy legislation Congress passed last year.

Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is poised to be the next Speaker of the House when the new Congress convenes in January, says oil companies have unfairly earned record profits by gouging consumers at the gasoline pump.

‘For the first time in American history, Americans have gone to the polls in wartime and rejected that war. Not only that, but they've done so overwhelmingly. Just as the election of 1932 was a seismic repudiation of the failed economic policies of the Hoover Republicans, the election of 2006 was a landslide against the Bush Republicans and their criminally misguided war against Iraq.

Amid pre-election polls showing that voters oppose "staying the course" by margins of as much as three to one, the American people have issued a sweeping mandate to the U.S. government: Get out of Iraq.

from Friends of the ABC, NSW …..

A number of significant issues have arisen for the ABC since mid-October. Some members have voiced their concerns via the FABCList, the FABCDigest, and our website. These issues will also be covered in the December Update, but with the number and consequence of the issues, I have decided to write to those members whom we can reach by email.

Privatise the ABC: A large Opinion piece by Rudi Michelson in The Australian on Mon 16th October called for the privatisation of the ABC, and I responded with an e-mailed letter to the Editor that day which was not published. I will submit it to Helen, our Update Editor, to see whether it can be included in the December Update.

from the Sydney Morning Herald …..

‘Concern is growing among the Coalition back bench over the future of David Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years.

The Liberal senator Russell Trood said yesterday there was concern about how long it had taken Mr Hicks, yet to be charged under the new US military commission process, to receive justice.’

‘He might have lied his country into one of the most foolhardy wars ever schemed into existence. He might have thrown away billions of dollars of other people’s money, and thousands of lives and limbs belonging to other people’s children. He might have played a central role in bringing death to hundreds of thousands and disruption and destruction to millions in order to indulge a personal fantasy about taking out Doctor Evil. He might have declared the "right" to wage pre-emptive war and endorsed the "right" to torture out of one side of his mouth while This Country Does Not Torture was coming out the other. He might have resurrected the spectre of a nuclear arms race. He might have bullied his public into a state of political paralysis, while alienating an astonishing share of the rest of the world. He might have stained an already be-spattered election process and spat on an already be-spittled Constitution. He might have treated one of the most traumatic events in the history of his nation as an occasion to advance a crass political agenda. But Ted Haggard did none of these things – beside the clay-footed calamities of the Bush Administration, his dabbling in drugs and prostitution looks like community service. At least the pastor’s mistakes led to an immediate dismissal, and a frank apology. "I am a deceiver and a liar," Haggard said. In contrast, presidential mistakes seem to bring consequences down on everyone save their perpetrator.

The Editor,
Sydney Morning Herald.                                                 November 9, 2006.

Donald Rumsfeld will certainly do better justice to an orange jumpsuit, than George Bush did to a flight suit (‘Rumsfeld resigns in poll fallout’, Herald, November 9).

‘In Geneva today, at the new review of the conventional weapons treaty, the British government will be using the full force of its diplomacy to ensure that civilians continue to be killed, by blocking a ban on the use of cluster bombs. Sweden, supported by Austria, Mexico and New Zealand, has proposed a convention making their deployment illegal, like the Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel landmines.

But the UK, working with the US, China and Russia, has spent the past week trying to prevent negotiations from being opened. Perhaps this is unsurprising. Most of the cluster bombs dropped during the past 40 years have been delivered by Britain's two principal allies - the US and Israel - in the "war on terror". And the UK used hundreds of thousands of them during the two Gulf wars.

8 November 2006

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
PRESS CONFERENCE
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA 

JOURNALIST:

Do you think there is a case though for lifting the level of foreign aid?

PRIME MINISTER: 

I think there is a case for increasing it, which we have done. We have increased it a lot and the increases have yet to be paid, so let's just, at this stage, leave it on that basis.