Rabbi co-officiates at Clinton wedding

July 31, 2010

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Chelsea Clinton was married under a chuppah in a ceremony co-officiated by a rabbi.

Rabbi James Ponet, head of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, was joined by Rev. William Shillady, a Methodist minister. Clinton and the groom, Marc Mezvinsky, reportedly were married under a chuppah, in a ceremony that featured friends and family reciting the seven traditional blessings and a ketubah, the traditional Jewish wedding contract. The event took place Saturday night before the end of the Jewish sabbath.

Mezvinsky, who is Jewish, wore a yarmulke and prayer shawl.

Ponet, a Reform rabbi, has been the Jewish chaplain at Yale since 1981. He currently teaches a college seminar with Dr. Ruth Westheimer on “The Family in the Jewish Tradition," according to the bio on the Slifka Center website. He and his wife, Elana, also "lead a weekly discussion in Slifka Dining Room on the value of peace in Jewish life and thought."

Oliver Stone's apology is not enough, say some

USA TODAY
Jul 28, 2010

Oliver Stone's apology for remarks about the Holocaust is not satisfying some folks.

Media mogul Haim Saban is trying to get Showtime to cancel Stone's upcoming 10-part series, A Secret History of America, reports The Wrap. Saban who told The Wrap in an e-mail that Stone's "apology is sooooo transparently fake," and he has contacted CBS chief Leslie Moonves to urge him not to air the series. And Saban told The Wrap that super agent Ari Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, had also called CBS privately to urge that it be pulled. CBS, Moonves and Emanuel have not commented yet.

Stone said earlier this year at the TV critics' press tour that the 10-part Secret History series would put Hitler and Stalin "in context."

Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League has sent out a release saying the group is not satisfied with Stone's apology. Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following:

"Oliver Stone's apology stops short and is therefore insufficient.

While he now admits that Jews do not control Hollywood, the media and other industries, he ignores his assertion that Jews are '...the most powerful lobby in Washington' and that 'Israel has (expletive) up United States foreign policy.' This is another conspiratorial anti-Semitic canard that Mr. Stone needs to repudiate."

14 Shocking Facts That Prove the Criminal Justice System Is Racist

By Bill Quigley
AlterNet
July 26, 2010

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is – are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African Americans?

Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system -- from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom. Look what these facts show.

One. The US has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail over the last four decades. Most of the reason is the war on drugs. Yet whites and blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales, at roughly comparable rates – according to a report on race and drug enforcement published by Human Rights Watch in May 2008. While African Americans comprise 13% of the US population and 14% of monthly drug users they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses – according to 2009 Congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project.

Two. The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. When blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked according to information provided by the NYPD. The same is true most other places as well. In a California study, the ACLU found blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites.

Three. Since 1970, drug arrests have skyrocketed rising from 320,000 to close to 1.6 million according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice.

African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than the rate for whites – according to a May 2009 report on disparity in drug arrests by Human Rights Watch.

Four. Once arrested, blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial than whites. For example, the New York state division of criminal justice did a 1995 review of disparities in processing felony arrests and found that in some parts of New York blacks are 33% more likely to be detained awaiting felony trials than whites facing felony trials.

Five. Once arrested, 80% of the people in the criminal justice system get a public defender for their lawyer. Race plays a big role here as well. Stop in any urban courtroom and look a the color of the people who are waiting for public defenders. Despite often heroic efforts by public defenders the system gives them much more work and much less money than the prosecution. The American Bar Association, not a radical bunch, reviewed the US public defender system in 2004 and concluded “All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring…The fundamental right to a lawyer that America assumes applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the US.”

Six. African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury service according to a June 2010 study released by the Equal Justice Initiative. For example in Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from serving on death penalty cases.

Seven. Trials are rare. Only 3 to 5 percent of criminal cases go to trial – the rest are plea bargained. Most African Americans defendants never get a trial. Most plea bargains consist of promise of a longer sentence if a person exercises their constitutional right to trial. As a result, people caught up in the system, as the American Bar Association points out, plead guilty even when innocent. Why? As one young man told me recently, “Who wouldn’t rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk twenty-five years for a crime they didn’t do?”

Eight. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes. Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project reports African Americans are 21% more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and 20% more like to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants.

Nine. The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that non-white people will be the ones getting it. A July 2009 report by the Sentencing Project found that two-thirds of the people in the US with life sentences are non-white. In New York, it is 83%.

Ten. As a result, African Americans, who are 13% of the population and 14% of drug users, are not only 37% of the people arrested for drugs but 56% of the people in state prisons for drug offenses. Marc Mauer May 2009 Congressional Testimony for The Sentencing Project.

Eleven. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in three. Latino males have a 17% chance and white males have a 6% chance. Thus black boys are five times and Latino boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail.

Twelve. So, while African American juvenile youth is but 16% of the population, they are 28% of juvenile arrests, 37% of the youth in juvenile jails and 58% of the youth sent to adult prisons. 2009 Criminal Justice Primer, The Sentencing Project.

Thirteen. Remember that the US leads the world in putting our own people into jail and prison. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the US has five percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prisoners, over 2.3 million people behind bars, dwarfing other nations. The US rate of incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed countries and black males are the largest percentage of inmates according to ABC News.

Fourteen. Even when released from prison, race continues to dominate. A study by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that 17% of white job applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers while only 5% of black job applicants with criminal records received call backs. Race is so prominent in that study that whites with criminal records actually received better treatment than blacks without criminal records!

So, what conclusions do these facts lead to? The criminal justice system, from start to finish, is seriously racist.

Professor Michelle Alexander concludes that it is no coincidence that the criminal justice system ramped up its processing of African Americans just as the Jim Crow laws enforced since the age of slavery ended. Her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness sees these facts as evidence of the new way the US has decided to control African Americans – a racialized system of social control. The stigma of criminality functions in much the same way as Jim Crow – creating legal boundaries between them and us, allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from millions, and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted people. She calls it a new caste system.

Poor whites and people of other ethnicity are also subjected to this system of social control. Because if poor whites or others get out of line, they will be given the worst possible treatment, they will be treated just like poor blacks.

Other critics like Professor Dylan Rodriguez see the criminal justice system as a key part of what he calls the domestic war on the marginalized. Because of globalization, he argues in his book Forced Passages, there is an excess of people in the US and elsewhere. “These people”, whether they are in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or US jails and prisons, are not productive, are not needed, are not wanted and are not really entitled to the same human rights as the productive ones. They must be controlled and dominated for the safety of the productive. They must be intimidated into accepting their inferiority or they must be removed from the society of the productive.

This domestic war relies on the same technology that the US uses internationally. More and more we see the militarization of this country’s police. Likewise, the goals of the US justice system are the same as the US war on terror - domination and control by capture, immobilization, punishment and liquidation.

What to do?

Martin Luther King Jr., said we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. A radical approach to the US criminal justice system means we must go to the root of the problem. Not reform. Not better beds in better prisons. We are not called to only trim the leaves or prune the branches, but rip up this unjust system by its roots.

We are all entitled to safety. That is a human right everyone has a right to expect. But do we really think that continuing with a deeply racist system leading the world in incarcerating our children is making us safer?

It is time for every person interested in justice and safety to join in and dismantle this racist system. Should the US decriminalize drugs like marijuana? Should prisons be abolished? Should we expand the use of restorative justice? Can we create fair educational, medical and employment systems? All these questions and many more have to be seriously explored. Join a group like INCITE, Critical Resistance, the Center for Community Alternatives, Thousand Kites, or the California Prison Moratorium and work on it. As Professor Alexander says “Nothing short of a major social movement can dismantle this new caste system.”

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. He is also a member of the legal collective of School of Americas Watch.

America's Vision in Afghanistan: What is the Sustainable End State?

Steve Clemons
WASHINGTON NOTE
Jul 22 2010, 11:00PM

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis in discussions on US policy towards Afghanistan separates the silly from the serious in those who can define a workable "end state" that the US is willing to work toward and pay for.

Missouri 8th Congressional District Democratic candidate Tommy Sowers, a former Green Beret and West Point professor, writes a particularly potent critique of Congress' dereliction of duty in defining a sustainable and workable end state in Afghanistan

This is a clip from Sowers' piece "Who Will Pay for the Afghan Army? The Question Congress Must Answer Now" at Huffington Post:

Victory in Afghanistan relies on building the Afghan National Army and police towards a day when Afghans lead and our troops finally come home. My experience as a Special Forces officer was in building a professional Iraqi military from scratch. No easy task, but my challenges in Iraq paled next to the challenges faced by our troops in Afghanistan: the second most corrupt nation in the world, millennia of history absent a strong central government or military, poor education and infrastructure, a tribal mentality and an illegitimate government and leader.

Afghanistan's specific challenges aside, the logistical question of the eventual size of the Afghan force is also problematic. History and General Petraeus' own U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine recommends a minimum force ratio of 1:50, or an Afghan policeman or solider to keep the peace for every 50 civilians. Afghanistan's current population is 29,121,000. Our doctrine dictates that to secure Afghanistan and bring our troops home will require training and arming, at minimum, 582,000 Afghans. This would be a force larger than the active U.S. Army.

Yet America' current strategy is not to train the minimum force of 582,000, but to double the number of Afghan security personnel to 400,000. This will cost significant American blood and treasure to achieve, but Afghan will and funds to maintain.

400,000 Afghan security personnel will cost Afghanistan at least 15% of its GDP, far and away the greatest percentage spent on the military by any nation in the world. While U.S. doctrine states that the future Afghan military will be too few to secure Afghanistan, logistics portend that the future Afghan military will be too many for Afghanistan to maintain.

The question Congress must answer now: Who will pay for the future Afghan Army? The Afghans can't. Our allies won't. And America's budget deficit and growing entitlements indicate America can't pay forever.

The Afghanistan War planners have given the U.S. an unworkable nightmare that is sapping American power and encouraging doubt among allies and ambitions among foes.

Bias by CNN Correspondent Ben Wedeman More than Just a Tweet

by Gilead Ini
CAMERA
July 21, 2010

Americans expect news journalists to be objective, or at least to strive for objectivity. That is why Octavia Nasr lost her job as CNN's Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs after publicly expressing her views about Lebanese cleric Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a man who has argued in favor of suicide bombings against Israelis and denied the Holocaust. Nasr's posting on Twitter, which stated that she had great respect for the "Hezbollah giant" and was saddened by his death, led readers to lose confidence in her ability to be objective about the Middle East conflict.

We might never know exactly whether or how Nasr's views contributed to skewing CNN's Mideast coverage, since her work was mostly behind the scenes. Not so with CNN's Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman. As with Nasr, a post on the Cairo-based correspondent's Twitter page raises serious questions about his objectivity. But in this case, the journalist's contributions to CNN seem to answer those questions in a way that should deeply trouble the network, as they suggest that his biases excessively influence his reporting.

In a June 29, 2010 tweet, Wedeman directed his followers to an "excellent" article, as he put it, by the harshly anti-Israel professor/blogger Juan Cole. Judging by that warm praise, Wedeman embraces, and thinks his readers should likewise subscribe to, the radical and facile narrative put forth by Cole in the recommended piece. Cole's article claimed:

[Israel's] isolation derives from Israeli policies, of illegal blockades ... and systematic land theft and displacement of occupied civilians under its control, along with aggressive wars on neighbors, which target infrastructure and civilians and are clearly intended to keep neighbors poor and backward.

In other words, Cole and Wedeman promote the argument that Israelis send their sons and daughters to war not for the country's security and preservation, but out of sheer malice. The Six-Day War, according to this view, did not stem from Egyptian acts of war and threats of annihilation. The war that followed wasn't forced on Israel when Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attacked against the Jewish state on Yom Kippur in 1973. Hezbollah's missile salvo on northern Israel and cross-border kidnaping raid wasn't the reason for war in 2006, nor were the thousands of rockets and mortars fired from Hamas's Gaza Strip, which made life in southern Israel intolerable, the cause for Israel's Gaza operation in 2009. Those crazy Israelis simply want their neighbors to be "poor and backward." (Moreover, according to this line of thinking, Israeli official Mark Regev was lying when he described Israel's belief that "a healthy, successful, prosperous Palestine is in the interest of the state of Israel. Living next to a failed state, a failed economy, would only be a recipe for further violence.")

That Wedeman presumably shares Cole's extraordinary biases should in and of itself raise red flags at CNN headquarters. But even if he does inwardly share Cole's sharply biased views, is Wedeman able to be objective in his reportage?

It seems not. In a conspicuously one-sided piece he wrote in early 2008, for example, Wedeman insists that Israel's security barrier had all but destroyed Bethlehem's economy by "reducing ... to a trickle" the number of tourists visiting the town. But it was clear at the time that the number of tourists visiting Bethlehem during Christmas, the town's primary tourist season, had in fact skyrocketed since Israel completed the barrier between Bethlehem and Jerusalem in 2005. That is, his biased narrative influenced the accuracy of his story.

The problem continues. Wedeman's most recent commentary, a July 19 analysis piece entitled "'Groundhog Day' for Mideast Peace Process," promotes the view that Israel is the party primarily responsible for holding back the peace process, that it refuses to engage in "confidence-building measures," and that eastern Jerusalem, which includes the Old City's Jewish Quarter and the holiest site in Judaism, in fact belongs to the Palestinians.

Referring to a Cairo meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hosni Mubarak, Wedeman claims in his article that

The main focus of the talks in Cairo was to convince the Palestinians and Israelis to move from, until now, largely fruitless "proximity" or indirect talks to direct negotiations.

He repeated this theme elsewhere in the piece, stating that U.S. diplomat George Mitchell "has been trying to coax the two sides back to the table."

In reality, though, the Israelis needed no convincing. Again and again, Israeli officials have urged the Palestinians to join them in direct negotiations, and again and again Palestinians have rejected Israel's requests. On June 22, for example, a Reuters story noted that

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians on Tuesday for the absence of direct peace talks and insisted negotiations should resume right away "without delay and without preconditions."

Or as AP explained on June 28,

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been holding indirect talks with the Israeli government over the past two months but said Monday that Israel has not offered enough to make it worthwhile to move to direct talks.

In response, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said direct talks are the only way to solve the conflict.

A July 1 AP story likewise reported that

Speaking late Thursday at an Independence Day party at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu appeared to respond to Abbas' move by repeating his call for direct peace talks.

Mitchell has been shuttling between the Israelis and Palestinians for two months with the aim of relaunching direct negotiations in the fall. But Abbas said earlier this week that he has not received enough encouraging signs from Israel to warrant that. ...

Speaking late Thursday at an Independence Day party at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu appeared to respond to Abbas' move by repeating his call for direct peace talks.

"I would say to President Abbas that the best way to convince Israelis that you are serious about peace is to begin serious, direct peace negotiations," he said.

And just two days before Wedeman published his piece, Agence France Presse explained that "Netanyahu has repeatedly called for direct talks...."

Wedeman not only obscured Israel's repeated calls for direct talks, but also directed blame for toward Israel for the fact that those talks are not occurring:

Direct talks were suspended in December 2008 when Israel launched its offensive against Gaza. The 2009 election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never a peace process enthusiast, made reviving direct talks all the more complicated.

The correspondent's use of the passive voice — talks "were suspended" — meant readers weren't told that it was the Palestinians who cut off talks in December 2008. And Wedeman's glib suggestion that Netanyahu is an opponent of the peace process whose election complicated the move to direct talks further obscures Israel's requests for face to face negotiations.

If Wedeman wanted to let readers know that the peace process is complicated, why did he not mention Palestinian infighting or Hamas's stubborn refusal to renounce violence, accept Israel's right to exist and honor previous agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians? (The word Hamas does not appear even once in the analysis.) And what about the complications stemming from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's continued glorification of terrorists?

It gets worse. After falsely casting Israel as a party that needs to be "convinced" to re-launch direct negotiations, Wedeman went on to claim Israel refuses to make confidence-building gestures to help Palestinians until those talks start: "The Israelis say that direct talks must go ahead, and only then will Israel initiate confidence-building measures."

In fact, as noted by New York Times reporters Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram on the same day that Wedeman's piece was published, "Israel is considering confidence-building measures to propel the Palestinians toward direct talks." And these would be on top of additional measures already taken by Israel, such as a settlement moratorium, the removal of roadblocks, and other steps.

Wedeman's bias is perhaps most glaring when he refers to "Palestinian occupied territory, including East Jerusalem," thus accepting as self-evident the Palestinian position on the area in dispute. Eastern Jerusalem is in fact a mixed Jewish/Arab area under Israeli sovereignty, but which the Palestinians argue should be part of their state. Complicating the tense conflict over eastern Jerusalem is the fact that the area houses Judaism's holiest sites and the cradle of Jewish history alongside holy Muslim shrines. Writers of "analysis pieces" are expected to educate readers about the nuances behind the news, not obscure those nuances while unquestioningly accepting and promoting one side's claims over the other's.

If CNN hopes to be "the most trusted name in news," their Senior International Correspondent must be reminded of the difference between "analysis" and pro-Palestinian advocacy.

KGB man: MI5 agent told me that David Kelly had been ‘exterminated'

By Glen Owen
MailOnline
Sunday, Jul 25 2010

The mystery over the death of David Kelly took a further twist last night after a former KGB officer said he had evidence that the scientist did not commit suicide.

Boris Karpichkov, who worked as a Russian spy for 15 years before fleeing to Britain, has sent a dossier to Attorney General Dominic Grieve in which he claims to relay information from an ‘MI5 agent’ that Dr Kelly had been ‘exterminated’.

His move comes amid increasing calls from within the Coalition Government for a full, independent investigation into Dr Kelly’s death.

Mr Grieve has indicated that he is ‘concerned’ by the growing scepticism among experts about the official version of events.

Dr Kelly was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003, after the Government exposed him as the source of a BBC report questioning Tony Blair’s case for war in Iraq.

There was no full coroner’s inquest – instead, Lord Hutton chaired a public inquiry which concluded Dr Kelly died from loss of blood after slashing his left wrist with a blunt garden pruning knife.

A number of doctors have since come forward to say that the incision could not have caused his death.

Mr Karpichkov, who sought political asylum in the UK in 1998 and now has British nationality, says he met the ‘agent’, Peter Everett, on dozens of occasions while carrying out work for Mr Everett’s company Group Global Intelligence Services, which hiredex-MI5 operatives for corporate detective work and infiltration.

In the document sent to Mr Grieve, Mr Karpichkov says that during one of their meetings, two days after

Dr Kelly’s body was found, Mr Everett told him that Dr Kelly had been ‘exterminated’ for his ‘reckless behaviour’.

Mr Karpichkov, who says that Mr Everett indicated that he was an ‘active field operative’ for MI5, writes: ‘He told me that it was extremely uncomfortable, inconsistent and unusual for Dr Kelly to slash his arm in the way he did. He would have lost some blood, but it would not have been fatal.

‘He also claimed that it was not a coincidence that Special Branch officers were the ones who first appeared on the scene – they moved Dr Kelly’s body to another location, changed the original position of his corpse and took away incriminating evidence.

‘He added that the scene where Dr Kelly’s body was found was carefully arranged and completely “washed out”, including the destruction of all fingerprints. When I asked who was behind his death, he [Mr Everett] answered indirectly, saying the “competing firm”, which I took to mean MI6.’
KGB claim: Boris Karpichkov says that Peter Everett told him what happened to Dr Kelly

KGB claim: Boris Karpichkov had worked as a Russian spy for 15 years before fleeing to Britain

Last night, Mr Everett – who is believed to be in his late 50s and whose former company was registered to his home address in Dulwich, South-East London – admitted meeting Mr Karpichkov on a number of occasions, and recalled discussing the manner of Dr Kelly’s death.

He said: ‘We had a general conver­sation about the David Kelly case, in which I said that it was very unusual for him to have slashed his wrist in that way.

'That is all I said. I do not have any particular inside knowledge on it.’

Asked whether he was a current, or former, MI5 operative, he said: ‘I am not commenting on that.’

Asked if he had carried out work on behalf of the agency, he said: ‘I have spent a number of years working in the world of intelligence.’

Associates indicated that his work on behalf of security agencies was indirect, rather than as a paid operative.

Mr Karpichkov’s testimony reflects the continuing debate in the intelligence community and associated agencies over Dr Kelly’s death.

He fled to Britain from Latvia with his wife and two sons after being accused of stealing £310,000 from a failed bank, although he claims that he was framed by the Russian mafia.

According to Latvian newspaper reports, he was recruited by the regional KGB in 1981, trained at the Secret Services School and served as a special forces operative during the war in Afghanistan.

Agent: According to Boris Karpichkov Peter Everett told him that David Kelly was 'exterminated' for his 'restless behaviour'

Claims: Karpichkov identified this man as MI5 agent Peter Everett

After the Cold War, he was assigned to undercover work in Latvia.

Mr Everett’s former company, Group Global Intelligence Services, which was dissolved in 2006, normally operated in the shadows.

But in 2004, it was accused of placing six members of its staff at Manchester United’s Annual General Meeting as ‘plants’ to ask embarrassing questions about manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s transfer dealings.

At the time, Sir Alex’s business rival John Magnier was known to be hiring private eyes to investigate the United manager.

When confronted by journalists, Mr Everett said: ‘I was nothing to do with that side of the alleged operation.’

Ministers increasingly believe that the continuing speculation about Dr Kelly’s death – fanned by the fact that he emailed a friend on the morning he died to warn that there were ‘many dark actors playing games’ – will not end until a proper inquest is held.

Earlier this month, one of Dr Kelly’s close female colleagues, Mai Pedersen, wrote to Mr Grieve reiterating what she had first revealed in an interview in The Mail on Sunday in August 2008, saying that Dr Kelly had been too weak to cut his own wrist – because a hand and arm injury meant he even had trouble ‘cutting his own steak’, and he would have to have been a ‘contortionist’ to have killed himself.

She demanded a ‘formal, independent and complete’ review of the case.

Her claims are backed by 13 specialist doctors, who have compiled a dossier rejecting the Hutton conclusion on the grounds that the cut to the ulnar artery could not have caused death.

In addition, it was recently disclosed that Dr Kelly’s death certificate was not properly completed.

It was not signed by a doctor or coroner and does not state a place of death, leaving open the possibility he died somewhere other than where his body was found.

Furthermore, the pruning knife has been revealed to have had no fingerprints on it.

Campaigners are aggrieved by a mysterious decision to classify all evidence relating to the post-mortem for 70 years.

But they are encouraged by the fact that one of their most vocal supporters, Lib Dem MP Norman Baker, who has written a book questioning the Hutton verdict, is now a member of the Coalition as a Transport Minister.

A spokeswoman for Dominic Grieve said last night: ‘Mr Grieve expressed concerns about this issue when in opposition and has, since taking office as Attorney General, been exploring with ministerial colleagues any actions that may be taken.

‘No decisions have been made.’

British deputy prime minister Clegg says U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was ‘illegal’

By Thomas E. Ricks
FOREIGN POLICY
Friday, July 23, 2010 - 11:04 AM Share

That's what he said. Funny that just seven years after the invasion, the British and American governments both basically feel this way -- but I bet the Iraqi government doesn't. But who expected in 2003 that in 2010, the president of the United States would have "Hussein" in his name but the president of Iraq wouldn't?

Meanwhile, here is the hot-off-the-press testimony on the Iraq invasion of former British intelligence bigwig the Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller. Basically she megadittoes: "we regarded the threat, the direct threat from Iraq as low." As for al Qaeda and Iraq, she said, "there was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine, as you have also heard evidence on, which is why Donald Rumsfeld started an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

The BE M-B added that some unnamed parties made much too much of "tiny scraps" indicating some contact between Saddam Hussein and AQ.

Lady M-B also mentioned that she went to see Paul Wolfowitz once to tell him that disbanding the Iraqi army and banning Baathists from public life was a mistake:

"SIR RODERIC LYNE: But you didn't convert him?

BARONESS MANNINGHAM-BULLER: Not a hope."

One of the themes of the British testimony has been the pernicious influence of "special advisors"-people who stepped in and mixed the policy and intelligence roles. I think there probably is a good PhD dissertation to be done on this, looking at the situations in both the British and American governments. If I had time I would do it, but I already am deep into my work on my next book.

Behind exhumation of Simon Bolivar is Hugo Chavez's warped obsession

By Thor Halvorssen
The Washington Post
Sunday, July 25, 2010; B05

Upon Julius Caesar's murder, a struggle erupted over who would control his legacy. Octavius, Caesar's great-nephew, manipulated his position as Caesar's heir to wrest power from his rivals. He made Caesar a god and raised a temple, using Caesar's remains to underscore their connection. Symbolism was crucial, and to dispel any doubts about his legitimacy, Octavius added "Julius Caesar" to his name.

Shortly after midnight on July 16, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez reached back in time. He presided at the exhumation of the remains of Simón Bolívar -- Latin America's greatest independence hero, who helped liberate the region from Spain in the 19th century, and the object of Chávez's personal and political obsession.

The skeleton was pulled apart. Pieces were removed, such as teeth and bone fragments, for "testing." The rest was put in a new coffin with the Chávez government's seal. Chávez, who also tweeted the proceedings, gave a rambling speech in which he asked Christ to repeat his Lazarus miracle and raise the dead once more. He also apparently conversed with Bolívar's bones.

"I had some doubts," Chávez told his nation, paraphrasing the poet Pablo Neruda, "but after seeing his remains, my heart said, 'Yes, it is me.' Father, is that you, or who are you? The answer: 'It is me, but I awaken every hundred years when the people awaken.' "

By presidential decree, every television station in Venezuela showed images of Bolívar in historic paintings, then images of the skeleton, and then images of Chávez, with the national anthem blaring. The message of this macabre parody was unmistakable: Chávez is not a follower of Bolívar -- Chávez is Bolívar, reincarnated. And anyone who opposes or criticizes him is a traitor not just to Chávez but to history.

Legally, Bolívar's body is in the care of the Venezuelan state, but his most immediate known kin were Pedro and Eduardo Mendoza-Goiticoa -- the direct descendants of Bolívar's youngest sister, Juana Bolívar y Palacios. Eduardo, my grandfather, died less than a year ago in Caracas. My great-uncle Pedro died last month at the age of 96. No attempt was made to notify him of the plan to open Bolívar's tomb.

If you can imagine Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln rolled into one, you can appreciate Bolívar's historical power in much of Latin America, and why a "Bolivarian " revolution is infinitely more legitimizing than a "Chávez" revolution. Chávez's aggressive appropriation of Bolívar -- first politically and now physically -- is especially meaningful because it is an attempt to wipe away the most important opposition leader and philosophical nemesis Chávez could ever face: Bolívar himself.

After his failed coup attempt in 1992 against Venezuela's democratically elected government, Chávez, who had named his rebel movement for Bolívar, was imprisoned for two years and eventually received a presidential pardon. Upon running for office in 1998, Chávez dubbed his party the Bolivarian Movement, and as president he changed the name of Venezuela to include "Bolivarian Republic." He has often left an empty chair at cabinet meetings, for Bolívar's spirit, and even ordered the central bank to deliver Bolívar's sword for his personal use. (He has since presented replicas to Moammar Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin, Raúl Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)

Bolívar would be outraged by the notion of Chávez, a socialist, as his intellectual or political heir. In his correspondence, Bolívar revealed himself as someone in the company of Thomas Jefferson much more than Karl Marx (who documented his hatred for Bolívar in great detail). He described the American form of government -- so disparaged by Chávez -- as "the best on Earth." The small library that accompanied him on his military campaigns included Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," several biographies of George Washington and dozens of works on the rights of man and the tyranny of illegitimate government.

In language and thought, Bolívar was a student of the Enlightenment, and his struggle against Spain's domination of South America reflected that inspiration. He was an admirer of the American Revolution, and his worldview was shaped by travels in Europe and by the works of Hume, Montesquieu and Voltaire. Bolívar understood that great nations are governed by laws, not men; liberalism, separation of powers, civil liberties, free trade and freedom of thought are recurring themes of his speeches and writings.

Chávez, in his personalization of power, assault on private property, stifling of dissent and destruction of the separation of powers, does not embrace Bolívar's legacy. He represents its antithesis.

The idea to open Bolívar's sarcophagus first surfaced in a 2007 speech by Chávez in which he suggested that the remains in the coffin were not those of Bolívar. At the time, a popular outcry against opening the coffin nixed Chávez's curiosity, though not for long. As Chávez rattled sabers against neighboring Colombia, he publicly hypothesized that Bolívar had been killed by the Colombian "oligarchy."

Enter Paul Auwaerter, Johns Hopkins medical school's clinical director for infectious diseases. This year, Auwaerter, who enjoys diagnostic puzzles, presented findings at an annual conference analyzing the deaths of historical figures. He concluded that tuberculosis did not kill Bolívar in 1830; chronic arsenicosis did. A popular tonic at the time, arsenic was used frequently by Bolívar to treat fever spells.

The Chávez government seized on the news and began preparations to exhume the body. Auwaerter, who told me that his work was misconstrued, believes the available medical information supports chronic ingestion, not foul play. But Chávez says Auwaerter has provided proof of Bolívar's murder.

I imagine that soon the government will declare that the investigation proves that Bolívar was murdered, either by Colombians or Americans or both. Indeed, I would not be surprised if the government announced that DNA evidence showed that Chávez is a long-lost relative of Bolívar!

For Chávez, this is not just an existential obsession, but possibly an electoral one. His main political opponent for the presidency is Leopoldo Lopez Mendoza, a cousin of mine and former municipal leader in Caracas whose approval in the polls exceeded 70 percent before the government arbitrarily disqualified him from running for elected office. The state-run media machinery frequently caricatures him as an unlikely relative of the Liberator, though Lopez has not made a public issue of his bloodline.

Chávez's necromancy will not end with Bolívar. He has announced that he will exhume corpses of Bolívar's family members and has promised to establish a new Bolívar mausoleum.

I hope that one day doctors convene a different conference, one to solve the puzzle of Chávez's warped psychology. How sad that, at the same time that Chávez shows Venezuela Bolívar's remains, Bolívar must endure what remains of his beloved Venezuela.

thor@humanrightsfoundation.org

Thor Halvorssen is a film producer and president of the Human Rights Foundation.

Massey Energy's Blankenship: No shame, but plenty of blame

By Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
Sunday, July 25, 2010; A17

If Don Blankenship had any sense of shame, he'd crawl into a mine and hide.

As CEO of Massey Energy, he has presided over a coal company that had thousands of violations in recent years, leading up to the April explosion that killed 29 of his miners. The company now faces a federal criminal investigation into what the government has called negligent and reckless practices.

But Blankenship must have no sense of shame, because he visited the National Press Club last week to complain about "knee-jerk political reactions" to mine deaths and to demand that the Obama administration lighten regulations on his dirty and dangerous company. "We need to let businesses function as businesses," an indignant Blankenship proclaimed. "Corporate business is what built America, in my opinion, and we need to let it thrive by, in a sense, leaving it alone."

The CEO was asked what he could have done to prevent the deadly explosion. "I probably should've sued MSHA" -- that's the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration -- "rather than waiting" until now, he said. In the future, he added, "you'll see not only coal companies but many companies resist the efforts of EPA and others that are impeding their ability to pursue their careers, or their happiness."

Poor CEO Blankenship. That mean federal government is not allowing him to pursue his happiness, just because his employees are dead. It brings to mind the sad plight of the BP CEO, Tony Hayward, who visited the Gulf Coast that his company has wrecked and complained that "I'd like my life back." Happily, Hayward got his wish and returned to yachting.

It's easy to paint Blankenship as a villain, with his moustache, double chin and rough edges (he twice lamented the "abstract poverty" in the world). But his theme -- and his complete absence of corporate responsibility -- is very much the message corporate America has adopted in this mid-term campaign year: If you've got a problem, blame the government.

Consider the efforts this month by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, once a center of moderate Republicanism that worked with both parties but now a sort of radicalized corporate Tea Party, spending $75 million this fall mostly to defeat Democrats. The chairman of the group's board -- on which Blankenship served until recently -- accused the Obama administration and congressional Democrats of a "general attack on our free enterprise system." Specifically, the chamber accused the Democrats of "an ill-advised course of government expansion, major tax increases, massive deficits, and job-destroying regulations."

Taxes? The nonpartisan Tax Foundation in May described Americans' tax burden in 2009 as the lowest since 1959. Job-destroying regulations? The lack of regulation on Wall Street led to a financial collapse that killed millions of jobs. Massive deficits? One of the biggest causes of the gap is the $800 billion stimulus package supported by -- wait for it -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And the chamber wants the government to spend even more: It demands that Congress "quickly pass a multiyear federal surface transportation bill." That would costs hundreds of billions more. And let's not forget the chamber's desire to "get the money from the government" to help pay for the BP oil cleanup.

President Obama wisely ignored that request and forced BP to pay for its mess. Likewise, the administration didn't accept the claims made by Goldman Sachs officials, who told Congress that they did nothing wrong in offering financial instruments that accelerated the market collapse. This month, Goldman agreed to pay $550 million as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over those very actions.

If anything, Americans think Obama has not been tough enough on business. In a new poll by the Pew Research Center, large majorities think that recent government policies have helped big banks (74 percent) and large corporations (70 percent), but only 27 percent think they have helped the middle class. This suggests Americans, though angry about the economy, aren't about to take the corporations' side against Obama -- particularly if corporate America keeps sending spokesmen such as Blankenship to make the case.

"There's 42,000 people killed a year on the highways," the coal boss offered as a way to put his miners' deaths in perspective. He protested that clean-water restrictions are so tight that even Perrier wouldn't pass. Blankenship's advice to fellow CEOs: "You should push back on the government."

He's got that reversed. Government should push back against a corporate culture that has lost its sense of shame.