SECURITY by Hunter Thompson, 1955

SECURITY by Hunter Thompson, 1955

Security . . . what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it to-day? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a Utopian goal or is it another word for rut?

Let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial and personal security for his goal in life. In general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? Has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel, and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that he has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better. What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world be if all men sought security and had not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must be laid aside from a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places in the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a tread-mill, cursing their exis­tence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.

As an after thought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

Reprinted from "Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson" biography by Paul Perry, 1992. Thunder's Mouth Press.

Climate Change

*source: "Sigma - Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters in 2003: many fatalities, comparatively moderate insured losses." Swiss Reinsurance Company, Economic Research and Consulting. No. 1/2004, p. 11. Full report online.

In defense of islands, the Arctic, ourselves
A spear through the global warming beast’s heart?
Culture Change e-Letter #86
http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-86.html

by Jan Lundberg

Enele Sopoaga is one of the prime leaders of the world, although he is “only” the United Nations ambassador from Tuvalu which has a population of 10,000.

Tuvalu is threatened by certain sea-level rise from global warming. The island nation in the South Pacific is no higher than four meters above sea level. A one-meter sea-level rise would not mean only some proportional destruction of Tuvalu, for the extreme weather associated with climate distortion means that averages mask the inevitable high-water disasters.

To put this in global context, an international news development dated January 23, 2005 should sober everybody up: “Global warming has already hit the danger point that international attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world’s top climate watchdog (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri).”

His Excellency Enele Sopoaga came to Berkeley, California on February 14, 2005 to take part in a “Valentine Gift to the Planet” and celebration of the world’s adoption of the Kyoto Protocol on February 16th. This international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions is shunned and violated by the U.S. and Australia, renegade nations evidently not part of the world community of nations. The implications of that status can be historic and involve war. And what may seem sufficient politically today – Kyoto Protocol's 5% cut in emissions between 2008 and 2012 compared to 1990 levels – is but a prelude to what must and will be done "tomorrow."

Tuvalu may be stepped on today by powerful bullies erasing an entire nation’s future, but other countries are already suffering too; hence the creation of the Association of Small Island States. Arctic nations have also made appeals to the U.S. and other polluters destroying the climate. These helpless victims who have lived by the sea for thousands of years can be ignored and even let die, but the answer to "who would be next?" is possibly "Everyone, eventually."

By the time the clear danger of “Hitler coming up the driveway” would be recognized by "people who matter,” it is too late. It is not only the low-lying regions, such as the high-populated Bengal Basin, and the island nations, that stand to endure near total destruction. As the greenhouse effect may have already attained runaway status, the entire biosphere may be at risk. Fortunately, there are still effective approaches on climate change that are outside the corporate mind-box.

The Tuvalu islands location

Ambassador Sopoaga gave a heartfelt speech at Berkeley city hall’s Peace Bell, referring to war for oil as an element in policy causing global warming. He understands fully the consequence of our fossil-fuels dependency. In his remarks he called for (1) a shift to renewable energy and (2) a reduction in fossil energy consumption. He also spoke of world-subsidized insurance programs and other means of mitigation for climate change.

The technofix versus radical conservation

However, His Excellency's first two priorities need to be reversed. For it is the immediate slashing of energy consumption, especially in the “developed world,” that will yield the greatest and fastest possible relief for Tuvalu, the Inuit peoples, and all of us – including other species. Unfortunately, the environmental movement is dominated by those funded to tout almost exclusively the technofix approach. They in effect contend and pretend that present consumption can simply be modified and fine-tuned, regardless of (A) today's and tomorrow's overpopulation and (B) the impossibility of any known package of alternative fuels to fully substitute for petroleum.

I told His Excellency that I had had no car for 16 years, and that there has to be a culture change such as a halt in road building. He repeated the phrase “culture change” appreciatively, and added that we all need “less Bush.” That latter statement is one of restraint, when discussing a veritable enemy of one’s country and the planet.

In a pro-wind-power opinion piece in the New York Times/International Herald Tribune on February 17, author Bill McKibben made this powerful point: "There are more than 100 coal-fired power plants on the drawing board in the United States right now; if they are built America will spew ever more carbon into the atmosphere. And that will endanger not only the residents of low-lying tropical nations that will be swamped by rising oceans, but also the residents of the Siamese Pond Wilderness [who do not want ten towering wind turbines in the Adirondack Park, New York state]." However, he said absolutely nothing in his piece about avoiding the need for more energy consumption, and nothing about conservation: "Right now, the choice is between burning fossil fuels and making the transition, as quickly as possible, to renewable power," he claims.

Mr. McKibben should know that renewables cannot support today's fossil-fueled overpopulation nor float any semblance of the maximum-entropy growth-economy raging along – it is about to hurtle over a cliff called post peak-oil collapse. The grim reality on the alluring technofix and the warning on the global economy's petroleum dependence are unfundable and unprintable subjects in mainstream circles, something Mr. McKibben would be aware of. Is slashing energy use just, you know, so 1960s or something? Perhaps the main difference today is that the economy is much tougher than in the 1960s when idealism and one income per household got us pretty far.

Culture Change and other climate activists are not against renewable energy, and we are for it when envisioned for specific, local applications. But we do not support as a prime solution any fantasy-policy that doesn't make for an energy equation helpful in today's world. In 1970 perhaps, the technofix had a real chance. In 2005, selling cars and maintaining the petroleum infrastructure are even more vital for the corporate media. Such media are happy to give us a rare glimpse of climate catastrophe so as to claim to be providing us with objective coverage of the big picture. For reporters, authors and even activists, the need to get their stuff published can be more important than telling the whole truth. To be fair, it is also true that people do not understand petroleum's capabilities – whether cheap or stratospheric in price – compared to the limitations of alternatives such as wind power or solar in (not) providing farm chemicals, tires, asphalt, plastic, etc.

The Arctic and the spear

An speaker for victims of industrialists’ climate violence equally eloquent to Ambassador Sopoaga is Sheila Watt-Cloutier of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. She testified for Senator John McCain’s committee in late 2004: “Global warming connects us all – the planet and its people are one: The Inuit hunter who falls through the depleting and unpredictable sea-ice is connected to the cars we drive, the industries we rely upon, and the disposable world we have become.” Her people number 155,000 from Siberia around through North America to Greenland.

www.virtualmuseum.ca

"The Inuit people of the Arctic regions are preparing to

charge the United States with human rights violations, saying that country is the leading culprit behind climate change, which threatens their way of life – and their very survival." [ IPS news story, Feb. 15] This is also the position of the International Institute of Bengal Basin which is concerned about the extremely high-populated, low-elevation Bangladesh coastline.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference will present a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights/Organisation of American States in the next few months. Their goal is for the OAS to find against the United States, the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases (29 percent), for causing global warming and threatening the Inuit's existence.

This legal tactic raises the ante. This trend of more extreme action is the only direction our movement can go. Yesterday's appropriate response to deliberately-induced climate catastrophe was, in international forums, to “engage the U.S. and Australia to pledge reductions of their greenhouse gas emissions.” [Ambassador Sopoaga's speech in Berkeley] – the main approach today. All right, but for self-defense at this late hour, it is also true that a spear needs to be driven into the heart of the global warming beast due to the urgency and scale of the threat. What form the spear may take – it can even be love – is as important as the timing; whatever works!

It was in this spirit of urgency and taking action that the Global Warming Crisis Council was formed in 2003 (see Culture Change Letter #26), and why the U.S. embassy in London has been picketed regularly for years in the name of climate protection. The threat of global warming today has even gotten the Pentagon doing some planning, but the global warmers still control government and they say we must fry for their profit. What do you say?

As inadequate as the Kyoto Protocol is for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, it is a step that can be added to. And its mildness and allowance for market mechanisms expose, when it is rejected completely by the U.S., the real and anti-life purpose of the corporate state.

Cities such as Berkeley, Arcata and others across the U.S. have adopted the Kyoto Protocol. Sport Utility Vehicles have been targeted by activists who believe property destruction is distinct from violence (i.e., harming humans or life). These actions and many others, such as the report you are reading, may or may not be part of the spear vanquishing an insane enemy out to kill us.

from abrupt.org

We do not lack for knowledge or leaders to cope with the challenge of global warming. What is lacking is conscious people. Hundreds of millions more people could already be reducing waste and saving energy and trees, if enough people took small steps and took the trouble to communicate and plan with others. The process must work foremost with the greatest wasters of all, who needlessly and uncaringly flaunt wealth and pretend that the world is a sewer the size of the universe.

The Earth is unpredictable and alive with feeling and purpose. Recognizing the power of change and respecting the right of other species to survive and thrive will prepare those of us who are compassionately aware of climate change to anticipate and participate in a complete revolution of values – culture change – that will have to prevail if life as we know it is to endure.

Empire building through loans, pimping and toppling governments

http://alternet.org/story/21245/

A Game As Old As Empire

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted February 16, 2005.

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, worked for years as chief economist at an international consulting firm in Boston called Chas. T. Main. His job was to persuade countries that are strategically important to the U.S. - such as Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Iran and Saudi Arabia – to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and then to make sure the lucrative projects were contracted out to U.S. corporations. Saddled with huge debts they couldn't possibly repay, these countries came under the control of the U.S. government, the World Bank and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks, dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, already people are going to be wondering, what is he talking about, "economic hit man"?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, really, over the past 30 to 40 years, we economic hit men have created the largest global empire in the history of the world. And we do this, typically – well, there are many ways to do it, but a typical one is that we identify a third-world country that has resources that we covet. And often these days that's oil, or might be the canal in the case of Panama.

In any case, we go to that third-world country and we arrange a huge loan from the international lending community; usually the World Bank leads that process. So, let's say we give this third-world country a loan of $1 billion. One of the conditions of that loan is that the majority of it, roughly 90 percent, comes back to the United States to one of our big corporations, the Bechtels, the Halliburtons. And those corporations build in this third-world country large power plants, highways, ports, or industrial parks – big infrastructure projects that basically serve the very rich. The poor people in those countries and the middle class suffer; they don't benefit from these loans, they don't benefit from the projects. In fact, often their social services have to be severely curtailed in the process of paying off the debt.

Now what also happens is that this third-world country then is saddled with a huge debt that it can't possibly repay. For example, today, Ecuador. Ecuador's foreign debt, as a result of the economic hit men, is equal to roughly 50 percent of its national budget. It cannot possibly repay this debt, as is the case with so many third-world countries.

So, now we go back to those countries and say, look, you borrowed all this money from us, and you owe us this money, you can't repay your debts, so give our oil companies your oil at very cheap costs. And in the case of many of these countries, Ecuador is a good example here, that means destroying their rain forests and destroying their indigenous cultures. That's what we're doing today around the world, and we've been doing it since the end of World War II. It has been building up over time until today where it's really reached mammoth proportions where we control most of the resources of the world.

Robert MacNamara, you write about him. Talk about his roles from Ford to secretary of defense to World Bank.

I think that what we have here is a world empire that's controlled by a very few men I call the "corporatocracy," and these are the heads of the big corporations, big banks and government, and they tend to be the same person. They jump across these lines and MacNamara is a great example of that. He was president of Ford and then he became secretary of defense under Kennedy and Johnson and then he became president of the World Bank. And in all three roles, his main job was to promote American business, to promote the corporatocracy, to bring the goodies home, to exploit the world. And he was in democratic regimes, Kennedy and Johnson.

Today we've got Dick Cheney who's basically in the same picture. We had George Schultz under the former President Bush. So, the two Bushes both have these types of people, too. Condoleezza Rice. Government is filled with these people.

But it is not just a Republican issue. It's a bipartisan issue. It goes across all the lines, and MacNamara is a very good example of that. I think, at the same time, MacNamara was one of the most important people in terms of framing the new economics, what he called aggressive management. It was aggressive about going out and basically taking the world and bringing it into us so that today, out of the 100 largest economies in the world, 52 are corporations; 47 of them are U.S. corporations – they're not countries, they're corporations.

What about Iran?

Iran is where economic hit men really get started because in the early 1950s, Iran democratically elected a man named Mossadeq as premier. But as soon as he got into power, he went up against the oil companies. And he really stood up for his people. And he said, particularly British Petroleum, if you are going to be here, you are going to give your fair share to our people.

The oil companies were very upset, so the United States made the decision to go in and do something about this. Now, at the time, we were terrified of thermonuclear war. Russia was the enemy after World War II, and Iran is on the Russian border. So we didn't dare send in troops to get rid of Mossadeq, but we've decided we have got to get rid of him because he is opposing the oil companies.

Instead of sending in the troops, we sent in Kermit Roosevelt, a CIA agent who happened to be Teddy's grandson, and we sent him in with a few million dollars, and he managed to create riots, protest, havoc, and to make a long story short, he overthrew Mossadeq, the premier, and brought the Shah back into power. We all know about the Shah.

When you say everyone knows what happened there, I don't take that for granted. What happened in Iran under the Shah?

We wanted desperately to control all the Middle Eastern oil. We saw the Shah as being the person who could make this happen for us. The plan was that the Shah would help take over the rest of the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq, and we all know there was a war between Iraq and Iran much later. But from the very beginning, the idea was to become allies with the Shah. We did everything we could to shore him up.

At the same time, we realized that he had a lot of oil money and so our companies were benefiting tremendously. Once again, all those engineering firms that we've talked about, my own, Charles T. Main, and Bechtel and Halliburton, and everybody else who was in there building cities, building power plants, building highways, getting very, very, very rich. And we were making tremendous numbers of people angry. Even to this day, Osama bin Laden cites what happened with the Shah, how we overthrew Mossadeq and brought the Shah in, as one of the reasons for his anger.

Oil is the source of so much pain.

Every country in the world that has major supplies of oil has suffered. Oil is not a benefit for these countries. It's a benefit for a few of the very wealthy people at the top of the economic totem pole in these countries. But for everybody else, it's a curse. Oil is a curse to the world. It's destroying our environment, it's destroyed a lot of world economies, it's destroyed tremendous numbers of indigenous people who are suffocating from the results of the carbon dioxide that oil has produced.

You also were tied up in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia was our greatest success as economic hit men. I mean, that's how we judge ourselves. In the early 1970s, OPEC really flexed its muscle. It didn't like U.S. policies in Israel supporting Israel, and decided to do something about it. So it shut down oil production significantly. And as a result, the U.S. economy went into a tailspin. There were long lines of cars at gas stations, many of us still remember that. And we were afraid that it was going to be another crash like 1929 as a result of OPEC.

And so the treasury department came to me and some other economic hit men, and said 'this must never happen again. You have got to devise a plan. What are you going to do about this? How can you make sure this never happens?' And we knew the key was Saudi Arabia.

For one thing, it had more oil than anybody else. Even at that point in time, the Shah was getting a little bit shaky, and we'd seen that he wasn't probably going to take over the rest of the Middle East. We knew that the House of Saud, the royal Saudi family, was corruptible. They were corrupt, they are corrupt, and they were corruptible.

So, to make a long story short, we put together this deal whereby the House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro dollars, the money we paid for petroleum, back to the United States and invest it in U.S. securities. The interest from those securities would be dealt out by the treasury department to U.S. engineering construction firms to build Saudi Arabia in the Western image, to build huge cities out of the desert, which we've done – power plants, highways, McDonald's, the whole works – to make Saudi Arabia a very westernized country.

And the House of Saud would guarantee to keep oil prices within limits acceptable to us, and we would guarantee to keep the House of Saud in power. And we have. All those things have followed since the early 1970s. The policy still holds. Even to the point where we know that the House of Saud supports Osama bin Laden, supported him at our encouragement, of course, in Afghanistan, continues to support him and a lot of terrorist movements.

What was your personal involvement there?

I was one of the people that structured this plan. There were a number of other people involved. And then we sent an envoy to Saudi Arabia – I was never officially told who it was, but I'm almost positive it was Henry Kissinger – to convince the House of Saud to accept our plan. And the message came back to us that the House of Saud had accepted the plan, but now a number of princes had to be convinced because even though Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, apparently there was a certain amount of democratic consensus building within the family, anyway.

So, I was assigned to one of the princes and told that I needed to bring him around. He was a very, very strict conservative, Wahabi, and he didn't really want to see his country become westernized. He saw this coming. And so I knew my job was a challenge. He made it a little easier for me, in some respects, because at the beginning, he let me know that every time he came to Boston or I visited him in New York or Washington, he would expect to have a companion, a beautiful blue-eyed, blonde woman. And if I couldn't provide him with this, I could forget about meeting with him.

It was one of the few illegal things that I did. Most of my job as an economic hit man was, strictly speaking, legal. What we did to the other countries should not be legal, but it is. Pimping is not legal. So I was pimping in Massachusetts at the time, and the only way I could pay for these services was by basically padding my expense accounts, and that also is illegal.

And so what happened with this?

Well, eventually we worked it out whereby we provided him with a blonde, blue-eyed woman from one of the Scandinavian countries. At that time, there was a large trade in white traffic of women to the Middle East, and we arranged for that for him. He became quite happy with all this and eventually he agreed to the plan that we wanted. He supported it. And the House of Saud completely supported it, and it went into place.

You tried to write this book over several decades. What happened?

It always bothered my conscience, what I was doing, and I really wanted to expose it because I didn't like what was going on in the world, what I saw my country doing. I'm a very loyal American and I believe very deeply in the principles of this country, the founding fathers. And as time went on, I began to see how we were cheating those principles, how we were distorting them, how we're losing our sense of democracy almost completely and becoming such a capitalistic corporatocracy-oriented country, a great empire, an imperialistic country.

Other empires have been created militarily and everybody in the country knows the armies are going out there and creating empire. But this one has been done so subtly that most Americans have no idea that it is going on.

I knew deep in my heart I needed to write this book. I needed to expose the truth behind what's going on in the world. I had a young daughter. She was born in 1982. So during the 1990s, she was very young. I was concerned about her safety and comfort, but I was also concerned about her future. But I could justify constantly not writing this book on many, many levels. And I was sworn to secrecy on it.

But when 9/11 struck, I was in the Amazon at the time. I went up to New York a few weeks later and sat there and I could still smell the burning flesh and see the smoke coming out of that hole, and I sat there and I knew that I had to take responsibility for what had happened there. I knew that I had to expose the truth because what happened at Ground Zero is a direct result of the empire building, of what we economic hit men did, and I knew as I sat there that if we don't do something to change the course we're on in the world, my daughter basically has no future and certainly her children don't.

This empire that we've created that's made so many people around the planet angry, that's resulted in destitution for billions of people on this planet: 24,000 people starve to death every day; 30,000 children die every single day from lack of medicines for diseases that could be cured and we have to take responsibility for that. We can change that and we will change it. But we'll only change it when we really come to understand what's going on.

Iraq: How does that fit in?

Well, Iraq followed Saudi Arabia. After our tremendous success in Saudi Arabia, we decided we should do the same thing in Iraq. And we figured that Saddam Hussein was corruptible. And, of course, we had been involved with Saddam Hussein anyway for some time. And so the economic hit men went in and tried to bring Saddam Hussein around, tried to get him to agree to a deal like the royal House of Saud had agreed to. And he didn't. So, we sent in the jackals to try to overthrow him or to assassinate him. They couldn't. His Republican Guard was too loyal and he had all these doubles.

So, when the economic hit men and the jackals both failed, then the last line of defense that the United States, the empire, uses these days, is the military. We send in our young men and women to die and to kill, and we did that in Iraq in 1990. We thought Saddam Hussein at that point was sufficiently chastised that now he would come around, so the economic hit men went back in the 1990s, failed once again. The jackals went back in, failed once again, and so once again the military went in – the story we all know – because we couldn't bring him around any other way.

Iraq had become very, very important to us for many reasons. Its strategic location, the fact that it controls a great deal of the water of the Middle East, the Tigris and Euphrates both flow through and out of Iraq and, of course, its oil.

And now we're not so sure we can keep the House of Saud in control. It's become extremely unpopular amongst its own people. Over 100 assassinations this year. We've been recently reading about the U.S. Consulate being attacked in Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud is losing control. It's very unpopular, partly because it accepted this deal with the West. It did a lot like what the Shah of Iran has done. And Osama bin Laden, of course, is very against it. But so are a tremendous number of Muslims around the world. So we've been afraid that we're going to lose the grip on the House of Saud. One way to protect against that is by taking over Iraqi oil fields, which may be larger than those in Saudi Arabia.

You work with a lot of people in other countries and right here in the international financial institutions, for example, like the World Bank. What understanding do they have? Do a lot of people feel the same way you do?

Well, that's a good question. It's hard to answer for a lot of other people. Within those organizations, most of the people don't realize what's going on. The engineers at Bechtel and Halliburton and the financial specialists at the World Bank and so on and so forth don't really realize what's going on. They should. They ought to look into it and find out. But there is every excuse not to on their part. They do their jobs.

I'm struck by the fact that as I travel around the world how many people in these countries, even people we consider illiterate, question their government. They assume their government is corrupt, they assume ours is corrupt, but we don't. It is amazing to me how many of us don't, at least not openly. The fact is that Americans, for the most part, don't really want to know what's going on. But we need to. We really need to question that.

So within these organizations, you've got tremendous numbers of people that are just going along with the system, getting paid really well to do it, and getting jobs that they were trained to do. But then you always have a number of people like me at the top of the organizations who know what's going on. They are part of this and they use every means they can to keep the system moving.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program Democracy Now, where the entire transcript of this interview is posted.

McLibel Two win legal aid case

McLibel Two win legal aid case

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1415031,00.html

Mark Oliver and agencies
Tuesday February 15, 2005

Two campaigners known as the "McLibel Two" should have been given legal aid
by the British government to defend themselves against a libel action by the
food giant McDonald's, Europe's highest court ruled today.

The ruling by the European court of human rights is a huge victory for the
pair, David Morris and Helen Steel, and a pleasing end for them to the
15-year McLibel saga. It is being scrutinised by the government, which may
now be forced to change the libel laws. Campaign groups welcomed today's
verdict.

The McLibel Two lost a libel case against McDonald's in 1997, in which the
relatively penniless environmental activists famously represented themselves
against the firm's expensive lawyers. The firm had sued them for libel
because of leaflets the two Londoners had distributed, but not written,
entitled: "What's Wrong with McDonald's".

In the aftermath of that case, they brought a separate case to the European
court of human rights in Strasbourg against the UK government, arguing that
English libel law and the lack of legal aid for defendants of defamation
cases had forced them to represent themselves.

Today human rights judges upheld their argument, made at a hearing in
Strasbourg last year, that having to represent themselves denied them the
right to free speech and a fair hearing. The judges said the pair had not
been given a fair trial as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human
Rights, to which the UK is a signatory.

At the two-hour hearing in September, the pair's lawyer - for whom they did
have legal aid - said the 1994-97 David and Goliath struggle of the libel
case was "patently unfair" and there was a stark inequality between the two
sides.

The government had previously argued that the fact that the McLibel Two had
lost was not evidence they had been let down by the law. A spokeswoman for
the Department for Constitutional Affairs said today: "We are studying the
judgment very carefully."

The government has already amended the libel laws since it came to power in
1997. Changes introduced in the Access to Justice Act in 2000 mean people
may be eligible for legal aid in libel actions under "special measures".

In 1997 at the conclusion of the libel hearing, which at 313 days was the
longest court case in English legal history, the McLibel Two were ordered to
pay McDonald's £40,000 for handing out leaflets attacking the company's
commercial and employment practices.

The pair have never paid the damages. The case is thought to have cost the
fast food giant £10m and has been described as "the biggest corporate PR
disaster in history". The high court found the leaflet was true when it
accused McDonald's of paying low wages to its workers, being responsible for
cruelty to some of the animals used in its food products and exploiting
children in advertising campaigns.

After today's ruling the McLibel Two said in a statement: "Having largely
beaten McDonald's and won some damning judgments against them in our trial
we have now exposed the notoriously oppressive and unfair UK laws."

The statement said that following the ruling, "the government may be forced
to amend or scrap some of the existing UK laws."

It added: "We hope that this will result in greater public scrutiny and
criticism of powerful organisations whose practices have a detrimental
effect on society and the environment.

"The McLibel campaign has already proved that determined and widespread
grass roots protest and defiance can undermine those who try to silence
their critics, and also render oppressive laws unworkable."

The statement ended by noting there was "continually growing opposition for
McDonald's and all it stands for". This, the pair said was "a vindication of
all the efforts of those around the world who have been exposing and
challenging the corporation's business practice".

Earlier, speaking ahead of the outcome, Mr Morris told the BBC Radio 4 Today
programme that he still had concerns about McDonald's. He said: "I don't
think they can change because they are an institution that exists to make
profits and to increase their power.

" We can see the effects of not just what McDonald's is doing but what all
multinationals are doing to our planet. We believe there's an alternative
where people and communities have control over decision-making and
resources."

McDonalds has not been commenting on the case in Strasbourg, saying it was a
matter for the government as it was not directly involved.
Roger Smith, the director of the human rights and law reform group Justice,
said: "This is a wonderful victory for the sheer perseverance of two
litigants who have just stuck to the task and insisted upon justice. "I
think it's also a victory for human rights and a recognition of legal aid as
a basic human right which should be available in all types of cases where it
is absolutely necessary."

Revealed: Britain's role in Guantanamo abduction

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1407040,00.html

Revealed: Britain's role in Guantanamo abduction

Freed detainee tells of horrors in US terror camp

David Rose
Sunday February 6, 2005
The Observer

British intelligence officials played a crucial part in the secret abduction of UK citizen Martin Mubanga to Guantanamo Bay. There, he reveals today in an exclusive interview, he endured 33 months of ill-treatment and often abusive interrogation.

Documents seen by The Observer disclose that even the Pentagon's own lawyers now accept that the intelligence that consigned him to Guantanamo may have been deeply flawed. Mubanga, who was released without charge after his return to Britain on 25 January, now plans to sue the British government.

In his interview today, the first by any of the four Britons who returned from Guantanamo last month, Mubanga, 32, describes a horrifying catalogue of abuse:

• In one interrogation session, he was forced to urinate in the corner of the interview room while chained hand and foot.
• He was treated to a regime known as 'BI [basic item] loss'. This meant his thin mattress, trousers, shirts, towel, blankets, and flipflops were all taken away, leaving him naked except for boxer shorts in an empty metal box.
• Last autumn, while Pentagon lawyers were writing memos suggesting that Mubanga may not have had any involvement in terrorism at all and may not have been given a fair hearing, the Guantanamo authorities subjected him to the harshest treatment in his 33 months in Guantanamo, with three brutal assaults by the 'Instant Reaction Force' riot squad for trivial violations of the camp rules.
  
• Mubanga's worst moment came last March, when the first five British detainees were sent home. He had at first been told he would be joining them, but was instead confined in a block with prisoners he could not communicate with, and told he would be held there for many more years.

The disclosure that British intelligence was instrumental in consigning Mubanga to Guantanamo raises serious questions about the consistency of British policy towards the controversial US camp. In public, ministers, led by Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, negotiated for months with the Pentagon for the release of British detainees.

Mubanga's solicitor, Louise Christian, said yesterday that she planned to take legal action against the government. His arrest, detention and transfer had clearly breached British, Zambian and international law, she said. 'We are hoping to issue proceedings for the misfeasance of officials who colluded with the Americans in effectively kidnapping him and taking him to Guantanamo.'

Mubanga, a former motorcycle courier, says he went to Afghanistan at the end of 2001 to study Islam. He was never, he insists, a sympathiser with al-Qaeda, and he condemned the 9/11 attacks. 'I do not approve of the killing of innocent men, women and children,' he said.

He says he fled to Pakistan after the beginning of the war against the Taliban, but says that someone stole his passport. A dual British-Zambian national, he phoned his family from Karachi and asked them to post him his Zambian passport. He says he used this in February 2002 to go to Zambia, where he was joined by his sister and stayed with other relatives.

However, on 2 March the Sunday Times claimed Mubanga had been arrested in Afghanistan, fighting with the Taliban - presumably this referred to the man who stole or was handed his passport. Soon afterwards, he was seized by Zambian security men.

He was held in a series of guarded motels, where he was interrogated for days by a female American official and a Briton who called himself Martin and said he worked for MI6. 'Martin' produced Mubanga's British passport, together with a list of Jewish organisations in New York and a military training manual that he claimed Mubanga had handwritten. They had been found with the passport in a cave in Afghanistan, he said. Mubanga pointed out that his handwriting was nothing like that in the manual, and said he had never seen the documents before, or been to any caves.

A few days later, Mubanga was loaded on to a plane by men in balaclavas and flown to Guantanamo. For more than two years, the claims made by the MI6 man - that he had been on a mission to reconnoitre targets in New York and had travelled to Zambia on false documents - were the main grounds for his detention.

Last October, this was confirmed by a Guantanamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal, a panel of military officers. Later, however, this decision was reviewed by a US military lawyer, who found it deeply flawed. His report shows that Mubanga had asked to call members of his family in his defence, saying they prove that he had not travelled to Zambia on false documents for a terrorist mission, but to visit relatives on his own passport.

Last night a Foreign Office spokesman said he could not comment on the activities of British intelligence or security agencies. He said Mubanga's 'transfer to Guantanamo Bay is a matter for the Zambian and American authorities'.