What is the reaction in the overseas press to the torture bill? I

[rzemanfl]

have not seen anything on it all day. If you lived in Europe, would you take the chance of coming to a country where you could be "disappeared?" I don't think Disney is going to like the effect this is going to have on their bottom line on top of the passport law that will slam their cruise business.

[babylonsister]

1. Here's one:

Congress capitulates to Bush on Torture

http://www.watchingamerica.com/lemonde000102.shtml

And Finland weighs in:

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/President+Halonen+criticises+proposed+US+terror+legislation/1135221900572

This site, watchingamerica.com
is interesting.

[rzemanfl]

3. Thank you, I will add that site to my favorites. n/t

[tocqueville]

2. so far it's reported "as such" in French media

with a comment of Reed Brody (Human Rights Watch) and Ariel Dorfman 'playwright) in Le Monde. The impression I have while watching the main TV channels is that the situation doesn't surprise the Europeanss, which maybe don't see all the implications. A "debate" in the US senate is quite obscure for most of the viewers.

I think that things will change if "we" have a case that is to say a person that has been subject to torture, is innocent and charismatic and writes a book. Or if somebody known and popular in Europe at a top level starts a crusade. For example a boycott of a sport event.

[dflprincess]

4. Here's some snips from an article in the London Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1884351,00.html#article_continue

The Bush administration yesterday faced a raft of legal challenges to a sweeping new regime for Guantánamo that would deny court oversight to detainees in the war on terror, and would bar prosecution of US personnel for war crimes.

The vote, which passed 65 to 34, was cast after more than 10 hours of debate. It is a boon to Republicans, who plan to campaign on their national security credentials in the midterm elections.

However, lawyers for the 460 detainees at Guantánamo say they intend to launch legal challenges to what they described as a broad assault on fundamental human rights. "The fact that they are denying the right of habeas corpus is so unlawful and unconstitutional that it throws us back to before King John and the Magna Carta," said Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the Guantánamo detainees.

The first cases to go before the courts are expected to be challenges to the senate's denial of the right of habeas corpus to inmates at Guantánamo, some of whom have been held for five years without charge. Despite impassioned pleas from human rights advocates - and even some Republican senators - legislators voted 51 to 48 on Thursday night to bar detainees from challenging their detention in the US courts.
The measure goes even further than legislation enacted last December that would bar future habeas corpus challenges, because it would bar even those cases already before the courts from being heard. "No court, justice or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States has been determined ... to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant," the legislation says.

Detainees' lawyers are expected to challenge other controversial provisions of the senate bill, such as the granting of a retroactive amnesty to interrogators at the CIA's network of secret prisons against prosecution for torture and other war crimes.