Hamas is ready to talk: "While Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is busily courting Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas as a 'partner for peace', successive voices continue to speak out against efforts to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government. As the Britain's Commons foreign affairs committee concluded on Monday, this strategy is counterproductive and doomed to fail, for the simple reason that the support of the Palestinian people is unmistakably lacking. Abbas's party does not democratically represent the Palestinians, yet what is in effect now a dictatorship in the West Bank is being welcomed by Israel and its western allies. The duplicity of this situation is shameful. Israel and its allies were quick to dismiss Hamas and the national unity governments and isolate both, and are now equally as quick to welcome an illegally formed self-proclaimed government for the Palestinians. Is this democracy? While Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is busily courting Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas as a 'partner for peace', successive voices continue to speak out against efforts to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government. As the Britain's Commons foreign affairs committee concluded on Monday, this strategy is counterproductive and doomed to fail, for the simple reason that the support of the Palestinian people is unmistakably lacking. Abbas's party does not democratically represent the Palestinians, yet what is in effect now a dictatorship in the West Bank is being welcomed by Israel and its western allies. The duplicity of this situation is shameful. Israel and its allies were quick to dismiss Hamas and the national unity governments and isolate both, and are now equally as quick to welcome an illegally formed self-proclaimed government for the Palestinians. Is this democracy? "
Evidence of torture used in Iraq | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics : "The Foreign Office says the 'government, including its intelligence and security agencies, never use torture for any purpose' ( MI5 and MI6 to be sued for first time over torture, September 12). The evidence in the public domain from the court martial into the death of Baha Mousa and the serious abuse of 10 other Iraqi civilians is clear in establishing this is not true. UK armed forces went into Iraq with a written policy that allowed hooding, and with a policy of training interrogators to use hooding, stressing and sleep deprivation to gain intelligence. Iraqi civilians were routinely hooded in up to three sandbags - and even old plastic cement bags. When Baha Mousa died in September 2003, partly as a result of abuse while hooded, common sense dictates that at least at that point those in positions of responsibility within the civil service and military would have acted to change the poli...
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