Bloody Lawyers – Page 19

An Inconvenient Academic

Published on February 15, 2007

Man In The Iron Mask

Meanwhile, in another part of the ~~gulag~~ forest….

The Florida-based Palestinian academic who was tried and found not guilty of any offence, but who was forced make a risible plea deal with federal prosecutors just to get out of near-Gitmo remand conditions is now indefintely locked up in maximum security for contempt, at the whim of a pet judge, mostly because he could cause some embarasssment to the Chimperor and First Brother Jeb.

Do read this interview: the story’s worthy of Kafka at his most convoluted, but unfortunately it’s not fiction. Remember that this is an innocent man and he’s just one person that this has happened to. His story is only being told because he is a well-known academic, has contacts in the persistent left-wing media, a good lawyer and is able to be eloquent in his own cause.

How many more, less prominent people have been similarly locked up and abused for being politically inconvenient don’t we know about?

(Via Left I on The News)

My Coup-Ca-Choo

Published on February 10, 2007

Digby:

When I asked if Cheney had “found” a fourth branch of government in position that until a decade or so ago was considered a seat warmer for a presidential run and the designated state funeral stand-in for the president, I didn’t realize they were actually setting this forth as a legal argument. Dear God.

This means that he considers himself even more “unitary” than he considers the president, beyond all reach of either branch, answerable to no one.

Cheney is refusing to comply with a presidential executive order. What do you suppose the Empty Codpiece feels about this? Does he know that his Vice president believes he has an independent office that doesn’t answer to him or anyone else?

Digby has been writing for some time about Dick Cheney’s manipulation of US constitutional law to put himself beyond the scrutiny or oversight of any branch of government, including the judiciary. In effect Cheney and his lawyer accomplices have created a virtual dictatorship with unlimited and unaccountable powers that even usurps the presidency. That he planned to do this is something that has been obvious from the outset, as many law-bloggers have pointed out.

But some of Digby’s commenters seem taken aback. Have they been walking around with their eyes shut? Why are people so damned surprised at this? Juan Cole was warning of this explicitly in 2004:

In short, has there been a Cheney coup-by-default? Is W. so disengaged that he is taking dictation from the former CEO of Halliburton? And, we now know that LBJ used to spend his mornings on the phone to business cronies doing private business. How much of Cheney’s time is spent on the phone to old business associates in the corporate world (seeking to know what legislation they would like to have)? Who pushed Bush into the second, disastrous round of tax-slashing, which was a way of selling our children into indentured servitude?

It may well be that the US has not a presidency but a Duumvirate a la ancient Rome.

As they started so they’ll finish. Immediately post-election the White House promised “a cataclysmic fight to the death” with Democratic opponents. Well, they’re just doing exactly what they said. They may be evil bastards but at least they’re consistent evil bastards.

I’m not expecting anything at all from the Democrats: they are bought and sold and it’s all about the Presidential race now anyhow (which will be horribly ironic when Cheney cancels the election under the special emergency powers that he issued to himself in secret). From what I’ve seen of the Democrats in Congress so far it appears that, with honourable exceptions like Feingold, the leadership’ve already given up this fight – unless they’re playing a particularly abstruse long game that us mere mortals are unable to see. I know I can’t see it and I’ve been watching American politics for decades. But if there is no plan and Democrats don’t act, we’re all screwed. So why don’t they?

With Friends Like These…

Published on February 6, 20071 Comment

It’s come to something when a Murdoch paper does a public service , but for once The Sun’s has, by publiishing the sickening cockpit video of US forces casually opening fire on UK ground troops in Iraq resulting in the unnecessary death of 25-year-old Lance-Corporal Matty Hull. The US Defence department is refusing to disclose the recordings to the British coroner overseeing the enquiry into Hull’s death.

See the video for yourself:

Video
Transcript

Rumours abound that the US forces who did this were high on drugs, or over-fatigued and overstretched, or all three together. You can make ytour own mind up – US pilots certainly admitted they were off their heads on amphetamines when they killed Canadian troops in Afghanistan:

The pills, which are illegal in the US, are given to combat pilots who are involved in long eight or nine-hour sorties in small controlled doses, say the military.

The Air Force stopped prescribing the ‘Go’ pills, as they are known by the pilots, in 1993 after reports that crews using them during the Gulf War became addicted.

But the drug has been quietly reintroduced in recent years.

But no one knows for sure, because the evidence has been withheld by the Pentagon. For an inquest to get the full picture and reach a true verdict requires all the evidence and the inquest has heard all but the crucial recordings of the pilots responsible.

The US Defence department has dissembled, obfuscated and outright lied about the recordings: first there was no tape, then there was, then they couldn’t find it, then it suddenly it existed but had been classified… and Blair’s government, being the spineless poodles that they are, have done nothing to bring pressure on the Bush administration to disclose the evidence that’s so crucial to the determination of how this soldier died. The coroner is, understandably, outraged that the government refuses to uphold British law.

So well done the Sun for once. Normally I consider it a rag I wouldn’t wipe catsick up with, but today? A bang-up job. Nevertheless, this video is of absolutely no evidentiary use except in the court of public opinion. We can see it, but the inquest can’t: despite the video now being in the public domain, it’s provenance can’t be verified because the US refuses to release an official copy. That means that although it’s plain as day to the world that the American pilots were acting like cowboys, the Coroner and the inquest jury are forced to be absurdly, officially blind.

This whole shabby episode is emblematic of the hollowness of the ‘special relationship’. Our troops must blindly follow orders to impose US foreign policy abroad and die needlessly at their supposed allies’ hands for the privilege, but no reciprocal sacrifice is required, not even the common courtesy of disclosing to this soldier’s devastated parents just how their son died.

We’ve come to expect the US government to cover up, sweep under the rug and lie, it’s the modus operandi of most government departments under Bush. The Pentagon just takes it to extremes.

But you’d think a British government would protest, however weakly, when it’s partner-in-crime kills British soldiers and covers it up.

Too many of our soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan not by the hand of the amorphous ‘enemy’ but by the ineptitude and bull-headed aggression of the US military, and this government is too supine and too obsessed with its own internal political troubles to protest, even in the weakest, most milquetoast terms.

I’ve never thought British troops should be in Iraq to begin with: this is and always has been an illegal war. But conversely I don’t think that that circumstance merits their casual annihilation by a bunch of gung-ho pilots, off their heads on jingoism and who knows what else.

Downing St and the Pentagon’s casual treatment of friendly fire incidents shows their contempt for servicemembers and their families and demonstrates that just as the average worker is to the multinational corporation, to the warmongers servicemen and women aren’t real people but just so much fodder for the free-market meat-grinder.

UPDATE:

Just to clarify: the MOD has had possession of the recordings for 3 years. What they didn’t have was Pentagon permission to release it. But now the government and MOD have said that as it’s now in the public domain, it can be admitted.

Good.

Tiptoe Through The Tax Shelters

Published on February 4, 2007

Champion of the poor my arse – when it comes to tax shelters, that sanctimonious professional Irishman and hypocrite Bono’s could house the world’s homeless. Unfortunately one of the places where he and his greedy peers stash all their cash virtually tax-free is Holland, and more particularly Amsterdam.

The NYT has a long, informative and well-worth-the-read article on the way the Amsterdam has become a popular tax haven destination for celebrities and dictators alike, because of the right-wing, neoliberal, Balkanende government’s lax attitude to corporation tax and exemptions.

Here’s some of the best bits: the whole article is behind registration but you can read the whole article below the fold, as it were..

[…]

The Rolling Stones are not the only celebrities sheltering income in the land of tulips, windmills and Rembrandt. The rock powerhouse U2 has transferred lucrative assets to Amsterdam, as have other pop singers and well-known athletes, all of whom have used or continue to take advantage of the Netherlands’ tax shelters, according to a Dutch tax lawyer who requested anonymity because of client confidentiality agreements.

Entertainment companies and others that benefit handsomely from the Dutch shelters include EMI, the giant record label, and CKX Inc., the entertainment company that owns stakes in “American Idol,” the Elvis Presley estate and the soccer pin-up idol David Beckham.

[…]

Many of the world’s multinational corporations, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Ikea and Gucci, have set up holding companies here in recent years to take advantage of tax shelters nearly identical to the ones that the Rolling Stones and U2 use. An additional draw is the Dutch Finance Ministry’s recent willingness to issue advance rulings that effectively bless the tax shelters, a fast-track process that has lured in companies and individuals seeking to use the Netherlands as a tax shelter.

[…]

The Dutch shelter is simple: royalties that flow into or out of a Dutch holding company are exempt from taxes. Although the nominal corporate tax rate in the Netherlands is around 30 percent, analysts say that domestic tax shelters bring that rate down substantially.

[..]

Some experts see a darker side to the emergence of the Netherlands as a sought-after tax shelter. In 2000, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, black-marked the country as one of the world’s top five industrialized tax havens for promoting “treaty shopping” for low-tax jurisdictions. The Netherlands tightened certain rules, requiring more substance for Dutch companies set up solely to reduce or eliminate taxes. But some analysts say that troubles persist.

In its report last fall, SOMO, the research group, said the Dutch shelters affect “both the capacity of developing-country governments to supply essential services to their populations and the capacity of developed-country governments to provide finance for development in the form of debt relief and official development aid.” The report also said that “tax haven features of the Netherlands also facilitate money laundering and attract companies with a dubious reputation.”

Come In Mr Blair, Your Time Is Up

Published on January 28, 2007

Mr. Plod.

Yesterday I posted that Rove’s having been called to the stand in the Scooter Libby trial could sink Bush. On this side of the pond a similar fate is approaching Tony Blair with accelerating speed.

Scotland Yard, using New Labour’s own, recently-passed, draconian investigative powers over email and computers, is getting ever closer to uncovering the proof of Blair’s alleged complicity in the political corruption of Cash for Honours affair.

The Independent on Sunday has a very good roundup of the situation so far:

[…]

Following the arrest of Ruth Turner, one of the Prime Minister’s closest aides, last week, it is perhaps not surprising that members of the Cabinet are now invoking God to come to their aid.

The police inquiry which they curtly dismissed as opportunism a few months ago is swiftly gaining ground. Files of evidence are now in the hands of Crown Prosecution Service with the prospect of charges growing every day.

Not only is the Scotland Yard investigation under the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act gathering pace, but the police are also making solid progress in their investigations into breaches by Labour of electoral law.

The Electoral Commission, which has been advising the police on the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, is expected to recommend that the Act is tested in court and that Labour be tried for breaching its terms on disclosure of commercial loans.

What is more, Labour’s attempts to keep secret millions of pounds in loans made by millionaire supporters before the last election are being seen as supporting evidence in the case on the abuse of the honours system.

There is fresh talk of another police interview for Mr Blair. Even if the Prime Minister is not charged, ministers fear that Labour may be brought to court and the PM cross-examined, if not as a defendant then as a witness, where he could be asked anything by lawyers.

“It could be extremely embarrassing, and Blair would not have the same kind of protection he would have as a defendant if he is called to give evidence as a witness,” said one QC. “In many ways it would be worse.”

During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Mr Blair’s communications chief David Hill chewed his nails as his boss was asked by Tory MP Bill Wiggin: “Will he confirm that if a close aide is charged he will leave office?” Labour MPs sitting behind the Prime Minister stared nervously at their shoes as Mr Blair snapped back: “I have absolutely nothing to say about that inquiry at all.”

Mr Blair was possibly the only politician not talking about the latest revelations in the cash-for-honours inquiry. There was open talk in the tea rooms of forcing the Prime Minister to resign early as a damage-limitation exercise. “We are leaking support to the Conservatives,” said one former cabinet minister. “How can we fight the May elections with Blair in office and all these cash-for-honours headlines dogging us?”

One senior aide to the Prime Minister said that the hope now was that, if there are charges, Mr Blair would not be dragged to court as a serving Prime Minister. With the police inquiry expected to drag on until the end of February, a trial would not take place until after Mr Blair leaves office, which is expected in July.

John McTernan, director of political operations, who worked with Ms Turner in choosing names for peerages, has been interviewed again by the police. Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair’s chief of staff, has also been interviewed again. And unlike their first round of interviews these have not been cosy, informal chats, but, it is believed, grillings under caution.

The newly resolute mood in Scotland Yard is a sign of frustration that it has not been given the complete picture by the Labour Party. Senior figures in Government say that Downing Street, despite its protestations about aiding the police, has not been as helpful as it could have been.

One senior Whitehall figure said that although No 10 had not withheld information requested by Scotland Yard, it had done nothing to help them actively to find evidence. “They only give them what they ask for. They don’t say ‘you want to look here and you want to look there’,” he said.

But the police have proved persistent. They have followed an email trail which has shown inconsistencies and compared witness statements, which have not always added up. Emails deleted from aides’ personal queues have been discovered by police who have trawled through a secret back-up archive set up by Downing Street to store files that had been erased.

Government sources say that before Christmas six plainclothes police officers, trained in recovering missing computer files and emails, went into Downing Street and the Cabinet Office where they spent days downloading emails from computers belonging to staff who drew up Tony Blair’s honours list. The police looked through the secret internal Downing Street email system and other emails used for communications between journalists and outside organisations.

They even took away emails sent to Mr Blair himself. The emails referred to potential nominees for the honours list, including Labour donors. Others are believed to have discussed conversations between Jonathan Powell and Lord Levy, who preferred to communicate with Downing Street by phone.

The emails are understood to refer not only to those who were nominated for peerages but also to donors who did not make it to the final nomination stage. Sir Christopher Evans, whose loan of £1m is being repaid by Labour, is thought to have been among those names floated as a possible peer. Notes the biotechnology tycoon took of a conversation he had with Lord Levy give a rare insight into New Labour schmoozing. The note referred to talk of “a K [knighthood] or a big P [peerage]?”.

[…]

This is getting interesting on both sides of the Atlantic: like I keep saying, the wheels of justice grind exceeding slow but exceeding fine. Blair and Bush may have been able to escape justice so far with the use of nifty political footwork and outright lying, but it’s coming for them.