[Peace-discuss] The British contrast

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I think Greenwald may overstate his praise for the new British government here, 
but the contrast with the increasingly illiberal Obama administration is 
noteworthy.  Obama deserves impeachment for war crimes - aggressive war in 
AfPak, torture at Bagram, assassination from Pakistan to Yemen - and his 
domestic policy - in thrall to banks, insurance companies and the institutions 
of the rich - is joined to increased repression that contrasts with the new 
British practice. Administration policy filters down - the increasing impunity 
of police, prosecutors, and sheriffs across the country is not separate from the 
tone set by the administration. We can hope (and work) for a massive repudiation 
of the Democrats at the polls in November, but that doesn't put in place an 
appropriate alternate program at home or abroad.  Only ever-increasing public 
pressure can do that.  --CGE]

	Glen Greenwald's Notes
	The Tory/Lib-Dem Government endorses actual change
	Yesterday at 6:22am

Over the past couple years, I've written numerous times about the serious 
left-right coalition that had emerged in Britain -- between the Tories and 
Liberal Democrats -- in opposition to the Labour Government's civil liberties 
abuses, many (thought not all) of which were justified by Terrorism.  In June of 
2008, David Davis, a leading Tory MP, resigned from Parliament in protest of the 
Government's efforts to expand its power of preventive detention to 42 days (and 
was then overwhelmingly re-elected on a general platform of opposing growing 
surveillance and detention authorities).  Numerous leading figures from both the 
Right and Left defied their party's establishment to speak out in support of 
Davis and against the Government's growing powers.  Back then, the Liberal 
Democrats' Leader, Nick Clegg, notably praised the right-wing Davis' 
resignation, and to show his support for Davis' positions, Clegg even refused to 
run a Lib Dem candidate for that seat because, as he put it, "some issues 'go 
beyond party politics'."

Now that this left-right, Tory/Lib-Dem alliance has removed the Labour Party 
from power and is governing Britain, these commitments to restoring core 
liberties -- Actual Change -- show no sign of retreating.  Rather than cynically 
tossing these promises of restrained government power onto the trash pile of 
insincere campaign rhetoric, they are implementing them into actual policy. 
Clegg, now the Deputy Prime Minister, gave an extraordinary speech last week in 
which he vowed "the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832."  He railed 
against a litany of government policies and proposals that form the backbone of 
Britain's Surveillance State, from ID Card schemes, national identity registers, 
biometric passports, the storing of Internet and email records, to DNA 
databases, proliferating security cameras, and repressive restrictions on free 
speech and assembly rights.  But more striking than these specific positions 
were the general, anti-authoritarian principles he espoused -- ones that sound 
increasingly foreign to most Americans.  Clegg said:

It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if 
they have something to hide.  It has to stop. . . . And we will end practices 
that risk making Britain a place where our children grow up so used to their 
liberty being infringed that they accept it without question. . . . This will be 
a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate 
advances of the state. . . .

And we will, of course, introduce safeguards to prevent the misuse of 
anti-terrorism legislation.  There have been too many cases of individuals being 
denied their rights . . . And whole communities being placed under suspicion. . 
. . This government will do better by British justice.  Respecting great, 
British freedoms . . . Which is why we'll also defend trial by jury.

Clegg also inveighed against the oppressive criminal justice system that 
imprisons far too many citizens and criminalizes far too many acts with no 
improvement in safety, and also pledged radical reform to the political system 
in order to empower citizens over wealthy interests.  To underscore that this 
was not mere rhetoric, the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition published their official 
platform containing all of these proposals, and the Civil Liberties section 
begins with language inconceivable for mainstream American discourse:  "The 
Government believes the British state has become too authoritarian, and that 
over the past decade it has abused fundamental human rights and historic civil 
liberties."

Most striking of all, the new Government (specifically William Hague, its 
conservative Foreign Secretary) just announced that "a judge will investigate 
claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of 
terror suspects."  More amazing still:

The judicial inquiry announced by the foreign secretary into Britain's role in 
torture and rendition since September 2001 is poised to shed extraordinary light 
on one of the darkest episodes in the country's recent history.

It is expected to expose not only details of the activities of the security and 
intelligence officials alleged to have colluded in torture since 9/11, but also 
the identities of the senior figures in government who authorised those 
activities.  . . . Those who have been most bitterly resisting an inquiry -- 
including a number of senior figures in the last government -- may have been 
dismayed to see the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition formed, as this 
maximised the chances of a judicial inquiry being established.

What an astounding feat of human innovation:  they are apparently able to Look 
Backward and Forward at the same time!  And this concept that an actual court 
will review allegations of grave Government crimes rather than ignoring them in 
the name of Political Harmony:  my, the British, even after all these centuries, 
do continue to invent all sorts of brand new and exotic precepts of modern liberty.

Most readers have likely been doing so already when reading these prior 
paragraphs, but just contrast all of this to what is taking place in the United 
States under Democratic Party rule.  We get -- from the current Government -- 
presidential assassination programs, detention with no charges, senseless 
demands for further reductions of core rights when arrested, ongoing secret 
prisons filled with abuse, military commissions, warrantless surveillance of 
emails, and presidential secrecy claims to block courts from reviewing claims of 
government crimes.  The Democratic-led Congress takes still new steps to block 
the closing of Guantanamo.  Democratic leaders push for biometric, national ID 
cards.  The most minimal surveillance safeguards are ignored.  Even the 
miniscule limits on eavesdropping powers are transgressed.  And from just this 
week:  "Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will 
likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, 
according to a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday" 
(h/t Dan Gillmor).

Can anyone even imagine for one second Barack Obama standing up and saying:  "My 
administration believes that the American state has become too authoritarian"? 
Even if he were willing to utter those words -- and he wouldn't be -- his doing 
so would trigger a massive laughing fit in light of his actions.  While Nick 
Clegg says this week that his civil liberties commitments are "so important that 
he was taking personal responsibility for implementing them, and promised that 
the new government would not be 'insecure about relinquishing control'," our 
Government moves inexorably in the other direction.

I don't want to idealize what's taking place in Britain:  it still remains to be 
seen how serious these commitments are and how genuine of an investigation into 
the torture regime will be conducted.  But clearly, what was once a fringe 
position there has now become the mainstream platform of their new Government: 
that it's imperative to ensure that their country is not "a place where our 
children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it 
without question."

That's exactly what the U.S. has become, as each new Terrorist attack (or even 
failed attack) prompts one question and one question only, no matter which party 
is in power:  "which rights do we give up now"?  And  each serious government 
crime engenders new excuses for vesting political leaders with immunity.  And no 
new government power of detention, surveillance, or privacy-invasion is too 
extreme or unwarranted.  Unlike in Britain, the term "civil liberties" or the 
phrase "the state has become too authoritarian" is, in the U.S., one which only 
Fringe Purist Absolutists utter.  Unlike in Britain, efforts to impose serious 
constraints on unchecked government power are, in the U.S., the exclusive and 
lonely province of The Unserious Losers among us.  And unlike in Britain, the 
notion that political leaders should actually do what they vowed during the 
campaign they would do is, in the U.S., a belief held only by terribly 
un-Pragmatic purist ideologues.  Whatever else is true, it is encouraging that a 
major Western country -- one that has been the victim of a horrific terrorist 
attack and that has a substantial Muslim population -- has a government that is 
explicitly advocating (and, at least to some extent, implementing) these ideals.

	###


-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.