The Globalization of Justice?:
British Judges Overturn Terror Laws

On Thursday December 16 2004, the highest court of the United Kingdom ruled that the indefinite detention without trial of nine foreign terror suspects was unlawful under the European Convention on Human Rights.  In so doing, the court declared the Anti-Terrorism, Crime & Security Act of 2001 (Britain's Patriot Act), which Blair's government took advantage of the post 9-11 panic to rush through in December 2001, as essentially unconstitutional.

Press reports on this ruling include:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/international/17britain.html
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1375829,00.html
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/87c91fe2-4fd2-11d9-86b3-00000e2511c8.html

This ruling, supported by eight out of nine Law Lords (roughly the equivalent to the United States Supreme Court Justices), is important, and not merely in terms of British jurisprudence.  For the legal principles on which it rests raise many questions about the attack on human rights and constitutional liberties which have accompanied the so-called "War on Terror" around the world.

Might we perhaps, also, look at this ruling as a moment of historic convergence of the liberal traditions of Britain, the United States, and France?

More below the fold

While the EXIT POLLS predicted an easy victory for the challenger, the official results, with more than 99 percent of precincts counted, showed the incumbent winning with 49.42 percent to his challenger's 46.70 percent

Some 200,000 demonstrators -- waving signs which read "Today or Never!" and flooded into the capital to protest what they condemned as "election fraud".

If our congress does not take action, they declared  "we will have no choice but to block roads, airports, seize city halls."

The European Union called for an urgent review of the results.

Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, denounced "a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse."

(rest below fold)

I cannot be the only regular reader here who thinks that things have changed here significantly, and not for the better, over the last week or so.

Tim Russo is for me the symbol of what is going wrong here, althouth there are one or two brand new posters (possibly Russo himself under a pseudonym).

MyDD when firmly under the guidance of Jerome and Chris was self-consciously a community of the democratic left, with a great sense of solidarity.  There were a range of opinions represented, but work went in to understanding contemporary political currents and our enemies in a thoughtful, critical, but sympathetic voice.

Russo in my view has posted a series of messages which amount to direct or coded attacks on parts of our coalition.  I found his tasteless attack on Arafat who, for better or worse, is the beloved father of the Palestinian nation, quite characteristic: its outcome, probably intended, was an ugly kind of flame war.  It was also fascinating to see him investing in the 'war on terror' imaginary in that post.  Russo has made a number of posts attempting to discredit the important investigations which are going on into electoral fraud in 2004.  He seems, as per his Kinnock post (which revealed how little he understood about the last decade of British politics, which has seen the collapse of the British Labour Party into being on the right of the Conservatives on most issues), to suggest that the Democratic Party needs to move rightwards, and to do so in an aggressive and offensive way.  The spirit of these posts is that they amount to attempts at baiting parts of the Democratic left coalition, and  generating division.

Yes Russo has run a blog. So what?  Could it be that he is a mole who has been burrowing his way in the blogosphere towards us?  Chris and Jerome, ask yourselves how it was that this guy was recommended/introduced to you as a potential colleague?  He leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

While I am no Kucinich fan, I dread to see the attack he will make.  What fine sport for our visiting Freeper friends!  

We have nothing to gain from keeping quiet and from allowing what does appear to be systematic irregularities to be forgotten.  This issue needs to be hammered into the public consciousness.

I think the evidence does clearly show the fingerprints of electoral fraud-- probably at the level of the central computers tabulating the results across the state as a whole, and possibly with some destruction/addition of votes in specific counties.

But, even if this is not the case, we have everything to gain from completely discrediting this claimed Bush "mandate".   Had Kerry's landslide victory been accurately counted, you can bet that the Freepers, with far less reason than we have, would not have waited 12 hours before attacking the legitimacy of his election.  Let us push this "votergate" issue like a massive steel spanner in the works of the Bush juggernaut.  

At the very least, let us give them the maximum benefit of the doubt: let us assume that the many anomalies in Florida and Ohio are simply the result of massive Dixiecrat turnout +  benign mechanical fault + voter error + operator error-- and that there is nothing odd in the peculiar bump in Bush votes which which turned up in NC and NH etc..  It would still seem important for the future of democracy in the United States that people are made aware that the current system lacks sufficient transparency (in particular re: the lack of an auditable paper trail in Florida), and is highly vulnerable to electronic manipulation.  The election process must be made to be something beyond suspicion, and the only way to do that is to amplify and disseminate our strong (and in my view well-grounded) suspicions that it has been manipulated.

(more below fold:)

Turnout is the clue

All the evidence showed record turnout, but the numbers of votes suggest 2000 levels of turnout.  Something is fishy here. Someone with statistical finesse needs to look at these state by state totals and suggest what the implications are -- it is by spotting discrepancies in % turnout change re: 2000 that we are going to find places where some rigging has been going on.  

+1000 participants in sample
Among likely voters -- without leaners:
    11/1/04    

Kerry 50%/  Bush 48%   / Nader O% / Undecided 2%

Among likely voters -- with leaners:
    11/1/04    

Kerry 50%  Bush 49%   Nader O%  Undecided 1%

Looking good!

Yesterday on Daily Kos, a sharp eyed analyst spotted that the new Bush ad 'Whatever it Takes' had been faked using photoshop.  The blog story was then used by the Kerry campaign.  Hey presto 24 hours later, the Bush campaign pulls the ad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1338946,00.html

We are an enormous neural network!  We will win, and its only the beginning.

and, in the meanwhile, Bush futures continue to plummet on Tradesport, testing the barrier of 50, and "President Kerry" outcomes reciprocally break on through to the other side

Tradesports is a website which includes markets on outcomes in the US Presidential Election

I tried to explained it in this thread:

http://aruac.mydd.com/story/2004/10/24/114542/87#readmore

After a long period in which "Bush will win" contract was selling at well over 60, the "bids" have collapsed down to a low 50s level

No longer so interesting to buy into, but on the other hand its interesting to see that the Repugs are waking up to the possibility that their ship is going down

<img src="/files/user/1569/bushcontract2810.gif">