Over a lunch at a genteel Upper East Side French restaurant in Manhattan in 2006, the year before he died, Schlesinger, a liberal Democrat but also an admirer of muscular foreign policy, chose his words slowly and carefully. When asked what he thought of President Bush’s policy on torture, he peered over his glasses and paused. Schlesinger’s The Imperial Presidency had described Richard Nixon as pushing the outer limits of abuse of presidential power. Later, his book The Cycles of American History had placed these excesses in a continuum of pendulum swings. With his trademark bow tie askew, Schlesinger considered, and finally said, “No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world–ever.”
While there was nothing new about torture, its authorisation by Bush Administration lawyers represented a dramatic break with the past. As early as the Revolutionary War, General George Washington vowed that, unlike the British, who tortured enemy captives, this new country in the New World would distinguish itself by its humanity. In fighting to liberate the world from Communism, Fascism, and Nazism, and working to ameliorate global ignorance and poverty, America had done more than any nation on earth to abolish torture and other violations of human rights.
Yet, almost precisely on the sixtieth anniversary of the famous war crimes tribunal’s judgement in Nuremberg, which established what seemed like an immutable principle, that legalisms and technicalities could not substitute for individual moral choice and conscience, America became the first nation ever to authorise violations of the Geneva Conventions. These international treaties, many of which were hammered out by American lawyers in the wake of the harrowing Nazi atrocities of World War II, set an absolute, minimum baseline for the humane treatment of all categories of prisoners taken in almost all manner of international conflicts. Rather than lining prisoners up in front of ditches and executing them, or exterminating them in gas chambers, or subjecting them to grueling physical hardships, all enemy prisoners–even spies and saboteurs–were from then on to be accorded some basic value simply because they were human. America had long played a special role as the world’s most ardent champion of these fundamental rights; it was not just a signatory but also the custodian of the Geneva Conventions, the original signed copies of which resided in a vault at the State Department.
Any fair telling of how America came to sacrifice so many cherished values in its fight against terrorism has to acknowledge that the enemy that the Bush Administration faced on September 11, and which the country faces still, is both real and terrifying. Often, those in power have felt they simply had no good choices. But this country has in the past faced other mortal enemies, equally if not more threatening, without endangering its moral authority by resorting to state-sanctioned torture. Other democratic nations, meanwhile, have grappled with similar if not greater threats from terrorism without undercutting their values and laws.
But to understand the Bush Administration’s self-destructive response to September 11, one has to look particularly to Cheney, the doomsday expert and unapologetic advocate of expanding presidential power. Appearing on Meet the Press on the first Sunday after the attacks, Cheney gave a memorable description of how the administration viewed the continuing threat and how it planned to respond.
“We’ll have to work sort of the dark side, if you will,” Cheney explained in his characteristically quiet and reassuring voice. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies–if we are going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. And, uh, so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal basically, to achieve our objectives.”
Soon afterward, Cheney disappeared from public view. But his influence had already begun to shape all that followed.
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side.
As if anything could change, as if this city meant something. The crowded angst that was Sydney crowded around him. It is school holidays and the Block is crowded with rat bags molesting commuters and stealing from the neighbourhood's cars. The Lebanese next door had an almost new car stolen from outside their house yesterday afternoon. Next to them the back window of their wagon had been smashed. Police were up and down the street all evening, attending to inquiries. The nation said sorry but we still get robbed. It's always someone else's fault.
Petrol has dropped back to a $1.50. A year ago it was barely a dollar. The Australian dollar has plunged in value. There is talk of Depression everywhere. Our cartoon politicians keep repeating the same mantra: the fundamentals of the Australian economy are strong. The Rudd government looks shocked and out of its depth. Rudd himself spews forth verbiage and lies and garbage at an unseemly rate, and he still gets support because the other side proved themselves to be a pack of bastards, and just as dishonest in many of the same and different ways. No one paid the slightest attention to voices of dissent.
Dissent had become fashionable, and therefore neutralised, in the universities of the day. Next door the mad Alsatian continues to bark; and bark; and bark. The brothers share a bong in the back lane, setting off another stream of barking. One foul swoop in the modern era and he was transferred from the country to the city, the humming of machines, the tolls, from a sleepy land that time forgot, Tambar Springs, to the curdling city choking on itself, drowning in fumes. He made one confident prediction: The Emissions Trading Scheme will be a fiasco of the very first order.
The predictions of massive job losses and huge price jumps will come back to haunt Labour, which is caught by its own hysteria. They could have picked a proper, sceptical scientific type to be their climate change guru, instead they picked the princeling Professor Garnaut, a pompous twit with a messianic complex who thinks he has been burdened with saving the planet, and purrs to the ABC interviewers about how difficult the whole process has been. His girth has grown with pride and self conceit. These people already know that none of it's real.
His heart had been hardened by a thousand wrongs. Be happy, healthy, productive, he ordered, be strong, wise, compassionate, funny. And not the funny farm. It's spring and the country roads are lined with blossoms. Twenty years ago a kid threw an apple out a car window, and now a tree is covered with blossoms and buzzing bees, and the country takes on a new era of hope. The Depression cometh, sayeth the Lord. He grew up with stories of the Great Depression of the 1930s, which had hurt his family profoundly.
No shoes for school. The rejoicing over a single needle to do the sewing. The simple meals that could be stretched out to make way for their own happy, curling laughter. His grandfather who drank everything, the family fortune, who bequeathed him in part his own anxious soul, who sat on the veranda at 6am as the morning heat flushed on the first wave of cicada screech, getting in the first drink of the day before anyone was awake to disturb him in the bliss that passed down through generations; the bliss of intoxication, the first of the day, the first happy memory wiped, that beautiful taste, the bubble of beer, yet he was forced to face a world, a city, a complex path, beyond anything they would have known, simple farming folk. And he came back to the city, back from Tambar, and he shuddered at the pressure of it all. Why did people do it to themselves? No wonder so many were leaving. No wonder people went bush; and stayed there; the sleepy drone of the bees; insects adrift on the first flush of heat in the summer air.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE49763N20081008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund, in its bleakest forecast in years, said on Wednesday the world economy was set for a major downturn with the United States and Europe either in or on the brink of recession.
The IMF said the worst financial trauma since the Great Depression would exact a heavy economic toll as investors wrestle with a crisis of confidence and global credit is choked off.
"The world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s," the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook.
The assessment was written before a coordinated half-percentage point interest-rate cut on Wednesday by the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, Switzerland, Canada and Sweden.
China also joined the move with a more modest cut.
The IMF's new chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said the coordinated drive was a step in the right direction but more action may be needed as the world economy slows.
"Fifty basis points is not nothing," Blanchard told a news conference. But he said monetary policy was only part of the answer and further measures were needed to clear up clogged credit markets. "More is needed, in particular in Europe," he said.
In an interview with Reuters, Blanchard said the rash of crises in recent weeks had convinced world policy-makers that it was time to work together to find a way out of the credit crisis, which has raged for 14 months.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24466439-5007132,00.html
THE NSW Labor Party today stands disgraced, with 139 criminal charges recommended over the Wollongong sex-for-development scandal including 20 against four former Wollongong Labor councillors and a high ranking Labor official.
The ICAC yesterday labelled the saga as the most entrenched corruption it had witnessed with all involved facing possible jail sentences of up to five years if charged.
And it took aim squarely at the State Government, blaming a failure to properly administer planning regulations that could have prevented it.
Gallery: The main players in the scandal
But the most damning findings, as expected, were reserved for the woman at the centre of the scandal, former town planner Beth Morgan, with 27 recommended charges stemming from her sexual exploits with developer Frank Vellar, and the gifts she received for approving his $100 million Quattro development.
Mr Vellar faces a possible 19 charges for bribery when a brief is prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Ms Morgan could face criminal charges of corruptly taking benefits. It was the affair between Ms Morgan and Mr Vellar from which all other corruption flowed.
Listen: Hear the Wollongong phone tapping tapes
ICAC found Joe Scimone, a former council manager, had acted corruptly during his time with the council by giving favourable treatment to developers Frank Vellar and Bulent "Glen" Tabak.
He also failed to disclose his knowledge of the affair between his boss, Ms Morgan and Mr Vellar. He possibly faces two criminal charges.
Mr Scimone was a former campaign worker for Transport Minister Mr Campbell and friend of Ports and Waterways Minister Joe Tripodi.
Gallery: Beth Morgan's life
The "unprecedented level of corruption described by commissioner Jerrold Cripps, led to 10 people in total being found to have engaged in corrupt conduct. They included Ms Morgan, Mr Vellar, Mr Scimone, Mr Tabak, former council general manager Rod Oxley, senior manager John Gilbert and four Labor councillors Valerio Zanotto, Kiril Jonovski, Zeki Esen and Frank Gigliotti.
Criminal charges were recommended against all, except for Mr Oxley and Mr Gilbert who, while found to be corrupt, had not engaged in conduct that warranted charges.
How Beth headed home as the scandal broke
A further three men recommended for charges including the pair who posed as ICAC officials, Ray Younan and Gerald Carroll, who solicited bribes from council officers and developers claiming to be able to destroy evidence against them.
One of those developers, Lou Tasich could also face charges.
"It is not uncommon to find cases where multiple layers of management fail to detect corrupt conduct or mismanage known corruption risks," Mr Cripps said. "But to establish actual corrupt conduct within five levels of a NSW public sector organisation is without precedent."
Premier Nathan Rees will now go to by-elections in Ryde, Cabramatta and Lakemba with the stench of corruption girdling his Government.
http://news.theage.com.au/national/ocean-abyss-yields-new-marine-species-20081008-4wll.html
A voyage of discovery by Australian scientists into the uncharted depths of the Southern Ocean has found hundreds of new marine species, the CSIRO says.
The discovery of 274 fish, ancient corals, molluscs, crustaceans and sponges new to science has been announced at the CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research unit in Hobart.
The astounding discoveries of creatures never thought to have existed were found in waters up to 3,000 metres deep, among scores of extinct volcanoes whose great mountains and canyons provide vital, thriving habitats.
Scientists mapped 80 undersea mountains and 145 canyons, some larger than the Grand Canyon, for the first time.
The finds were made 100 nautical miles south of Tasmania during two two-week CSIRO voyages in November 2006 and April 2007.
New sonar technology, video and water samples were analysed from the Huon Commonwealth Marine Reserve and the Tasman Fracture Commonwealth Marine Reserve.
The discoveries will in some cases force the re-writing of textbooks, the CSIRO scientists say.
Dr Kate Wilson, director of the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship, said more was known about the surface of Mars than the depths of the world's oceans.
"In Australian waters, for example, more than 40 per cent of the creatures brought to the surface by our scientists on a voyage of discovery have never been seen before," she said.
About 70 per cent of the fish, crustaceans, molluscs, sponges and corals identified on the two voyages are new to science.
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