One of the bravest and most outstanding of America's artists: Harry Belafonte, veteran of the civil rights movement, fighter for democracy and justice and outspoken critic of current American politics (and *jump the line* a great musician) about American politics, Hugo Chavez and illegal wiretapping. Faszinating interview today on Democracy Now, listen to it as long as it's on the web.

Sound of Europe

“An interesting idea would be to start up a ‘Cafe d'Europe’: politicians, artists and intellectuals debating with the public in coffeehouses all over Europe", Wolfgang Schüssel at the closing conference. Whatever.

Let's skip that and move right to José Barroso's opening statement.

"Yes, Europe does have problems. We have economic problems, social problems, demographic problems. First of all I think there is a confidence problem."

What is it that makes Barroso say things like that? Fear of tax competition or demolition of the social and protection of labor by the Bolkestein-directive hardly is a "confidence problem". And grounded fear of declining social standards will not go away by accusing European citizens of narrow-mindedness as Barroso does.

Let's face it: a changing world needs changing policies. But nobody is questioning that anyway. So, let's also face the following: Barroso, Schüssel and their politics of paleo-liberalism are so much out of touch with both the European citizens and political needs.

People would not, as Schüssel suggested, support the current paleo-liberal agenda if they just knew enough of it. The Bolkestein-directive shows that as soon as those initiatives get to the knowledge of a wider audience they are confronted with vigorous resitance.

The real and pressing issues - education, research, job growth, integration - are barely tackled by the Commission's and the governments' current agenda, as the huge and embarrassing failure of the Lissabon agenda makes brutally obvious.

With his paleo-liberal agenda, Barroso plays a hazardous game with the most precious and important of Europe's agenda: integration and enlargement. Fear of further social cuts make Europeans cautious and resistant towards both the important admission of Turkey and Eastern-European countries and further integration of European politics, for example in social issues.

The so-called "confidence problem" is in reality a problem of political misrepresentation. There is no legitimization whatsoever for the politics of Barroso, Schüssel and their paleo-liberal sidekicks, neither in democratic terms nor in terms of necessity.

Council of Europe inquiry incriminates European governments heavily

The interim report of special rapporteur Dick Marty on the secret detention, abduction and extraordinary rendition within the CoE territory was published on 1/23/06.

Marty concludes from the evidence known that the US and its European allies do systematically use "outsourced" torture for intelligence purposes.

"Drawing on all this concordant information and evidence we can say that there is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of "relocation" or "outsourcing" of torture. Acts of torture, or severe violations of detainees' dignity through the administration of inhuman or degrading treatment, are carried out outside national territory and beyond the authority of the national intelligence services. Does this mean that torture is so easy to use in this day and age? Is it enough for one's own secret services not to be physically present at the place of interrogation and to pretend to have no official knowledge of this practice to state that the law is not being broken? In this context, the statements made by Mr Schäuble, Germany's new Minister for the Interior, appear at the very least highly debatable, if not alarming. He seems to consider that the use of information obtained by dubious means is acceptable, provided that the German services were not perpetrating acts of torture themselves."

"Did such pointers to the existence of "networked" torture really escape the notice of Council of Europe member states? What is, therefore, the share of responsibility of member states when their airport facilities are used to transport detainees to places where they will be subjected to torture, ie places – dare I say – of public notoriety ? Is there true co-operation between European states and the United States, or do the former display a respectable kind of duplicity?"

Please note that not all CoE member countries have so far cooperated sufficiently with the CoE inquiry. One of them, Romania - alleged location of the CIA secret detention centers - should be strongly held accountable as an EU accession country.

See also the reaction of Amnesty. It emphazises the need of various European countries to comply with the inquiry. The existence of secret detention and abduction has already been proven by various sources (including a November 2005 HRW report) - European countries like Romania, Britain or Italy now have to argue how their involvement in those unlawful actions would not be a breach of various human rights and anti-torture acts.

Craig Murray and the British involvement in the US human rights abuse system

One of the most shocking revealments of the recent months was about how deeply Europe and especially Blair's Britain is involved in the American dirty war against human rights.

Craig Murray was Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan until October 2004 and was fired after he criticized American and British collaboration with Uzbekistan's murderous president Karimov, one of the American allies in Middle Asia until summer 2005.

Since then, his efforts concentrate on revealing the dirty human rights record of the US foreign policy. From a European perspective the deep involvement of a variety of European governments, especially (again) Great Britain.

This week, Murray has given evidence to the Council of Europe's inquiry into the extraordinary rendition and secret detention cases revealed last automn. Murray has continouosly criticized the British participation in this US programme. In the last months, in connection to the Council of Europe's inquiry, more disturbing details have been revealed. With European cooperation, the US has allegedly transported over 100 suspects to countries where they face torture reported Swiss senator Dick Marty to the Council of Europe. (See Telegraph article on this issue)

Extraordinary rendition - the practice of shipping suspects to third countries - is illegal ... and the British government was aware of that, as a secret memo revealed by The New Statesman shows. The involvement and cooperation of Britain and other European countries known to this day are disturbing. The cooperation of European governments with the inquiry remains unsatisfying, as the interim report of the CoE criticizes.

The duty of the European political parties - especially the PES, where Blair's Labor Party is member - is now to push forward for a clear and transparent completition of the CoE's inquiry - and to press the governments to comply.

Check out and bookmark Craig Murray's website.

Human Rights and the EU 1

January brought the new edition of the World Report 2006 of Human Rights Watch.

From a European perspective, the 2006 report raises various issues of interest. As this blog is still empty and the questions interesting, I will raise them today and discuss them further in the next couple of days.

1) Amongst European Union member states, there are still countries involved in warfare activities in Iraq. The announcement of retreat of Italy is a good beginning, Britain, Poland, Denmark, etc still have to get out. This will have to be a focus of the PES, especially as Blair's Britain is the US main ally.

2) Through lack of leadership (as the Report argues) and silent agreement the EU countries help the US undermine the human rights system. This was no secret in the past, but the degree of cooperation revealed in 2005 was astounding. The role of the EU in third party countries has to be changed in various aspects in 2006.

3) Moreover, the development in security laws has to be agressively challenged. Extradition to torturing countries, as recently Britain tried to legally establish has to be prevented, and detention without habeas corpus strongly fought.

So, obviously a lot hot topics to be found in the report. Let's dive into that in the next couple of days.

Human Rights Watch - World Report 2006