Here and now: …[T]he Graham-Levin-Kyl amendment, which is part of the same defense bill as the McCain [anti-torure] provision and is expected to pass along with it … would allow torture testimony to be used to hold and to punish detainees. … [It] allows the use of torture testimony before combatant status review tribunals, which the Bush administration has set up to determine whether a detainee is an enemy combatant.

While that may apply to Anglo history comparing 1500 versus 1960, it makes no sense in general – if anything, imprisonment without trial and torture on a global basis was far more endemic in 1960 (or within 1960’s recent past) than it was in 1500. It was not unusual for tyrannical regimes in the very recent past before 1960 to imprison or murder substantial percentages of their own populations.

In 1500, the terms “grievous and horrific and infamous slaughters” were often used to denote under a hundred persons being executed – events which modern tyrannical regimes would be upset by if their secret police DIDN’T achieve those numbers before breakfast in every minor regional prison.

FWIW, Kevin Smith, the American film director, felt the same way, which was highlighted in a fine NY Times piece I will leave to the reader to find.

I quote the damn thing all the time. Which is the only thing I find remarkable about Chris quoting it as if it were something new, or noteable.

For Wales, Richard? For Wales?

One of those oddities I think more and more about as I age are those things that we think of as essential parts of our mental landscape, yet which are, in fact, idiosyncratic. So many things are there that we, or at least I, tend to think of as essential basics for all of us, I have slowly learned, are in fact not. We share fewer such notions than we may perhaps think we do.

For me, A Man For All Seasons was a 12-year-old-thing. For others, not at all. For you, others, and for me not at all. What to do, besides talk about what matters to us each?

Good point: as far as I can tell, the Lords don’t.

In 1633, after being shown the instruments of torture, Galileo at the age of 69 recanted his heretical observations showing that the Earth moved round the Sun:
http://members.tripod.com/paulknepp/ANAGRAM.htm

Not to worry. The Church officially cleared him of heresy in 1983 and finally exonerated him in 1992.

“Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi is accused by the US government of planning a dirty bomb attack in America. He says he was tortured until he admitted the crime.

“He was arrested at Karachi airport in April 2002, with a passport under the name of Fouad Zouawi, a friend, and with a ticket to Zurich and then on to London.

“In documents compiled by the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, he describes an encounter with someone he believes to be an MI6 officer and details the horror of his torture. Mr Habashi says the officer told him ‘I’ll see what we can do with the Americans’.

“They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it. He said ‘Where you’re going you need a lot of sugar’.”

“He was taken to Morocco and questioned, then tortured after refusing to admit links al-Qa’ida links. . . ”
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article332481.ece

and from the Washington Post:

“BAGHDAD, Dec. 11—An Iraqi government search of a detention center in Baghdad operated by Interior Ministry special commandos found 13 prisoners who had suffered abuse serious enough to require medical treatment, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday night.

“An Iraqi official with firsthand knowledge of the search said that at least 12 of the 13 prisoners had been subjected to ‘severe torture,’ including sessions of electric shock and episodes that left them with broken bones.

“’Two of them showed me their nails, and they were gone,’ the official said on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. . . ”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/11/AR2005121101002_pf.html

It’s like, say, Rush Limbaugh being a drug addict – is it a misfortune for him and his family? I suppose it is, but at the same time isn’t it mostly a farce?

The judgement of the Lords in refusing to contenance evidence gained from torture has been widely celebrated but on looking through the finer print as sifted by the BBC’s legal affairs analyst, it was reported that:

““But the majority held that SIAC was entitled to admit such evidence if it was left in doubt about how it had been gathered.”

As it seems likely that there could often remain scope for reasonable doubt about whether evidence and admissions have been gathered through torture, it seems highly probable from the Lord’s judgement that the SIAC will admit evidence obtained by such means.

If not, perhaps someone will post up where and why I am drawing incorrect conclusions.

with more by the BBC’s legal affairs analyst here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4510866.stm

The latter answers my earlier question:

“Although the judgment on the substantive issue was unanimous, the law lords disagreed about a significant matter – standard of proof.

“Three took the view that if, after an inquiry, SIAC [Special Immigration Appeals Commission] could not reach a decision on whether evidence had been obtained under torture, it should exclude it.

“But the majority held that SIAC was entitled to admit such evidence if it was left in doubt about how it had been gathered.

“Given that chunks of SIAC hearings are held in secret, even the lawyers for appellants may not know why the commission has decided to admit some evidence, despite claims that it has been tainted by the use of torture.

“The law lords addressed the important ethical dilemma of whether the police or security forces should act on information which was the product of torture.

“But this was not the same as using that information in legal proceedings.”

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd051208/aand.pdf
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd051208/aand-1.htm

As I’m very much not a lawyer, I’ll fetch out the necessary cold towels before getting down to reading the 91 pages in shifts.

Which would put them about where things were during the Clinton administration, I guess.