US judge orders Algerians freed
US judge orders Algerians freed
No agreement for US car bail-out
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Former Labour, Tory and Lib Dem members on BNP list
The leaked British National party list contains the names of individuals who are former members of all the mainstream political parties in England, it emerged today.
A former constituency chairman for the Conservatives, a former Labour prospective parliamentary candidate, and a church minister who had been at various times a Green, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat, all went public on why they had switched parties in the wake of the leaking of a BNP members' list.
Lionel Buck said he was chairman of Ashfield Conservative association in Nottinghamshire for about four years, joining the BNP two years ago. He told the Guardian: "The way the country is at the moment, there is no major party, whether it be Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat, looking after the indigenous population."
Andrew Emerson said he had been due to fight Chichester in Sussex for the Labour party in 1997 before illness ruled him out, but joined the BNP in 2005, when he had been the party's candidate for Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.
He had since tried to get elected to Chichester council, in his last attempt last month gaining 12.3% of the vote in the ward. The main reason for changing parties was "my unhappiness with the [Labour] party's open-door immigration policy, making no attempt whatever to control immigration ... and to properly control our borders".
John Stanton, who heads the Rock Dene Christian Fellowship in his home town in Rochford, Essex, with a congregation of 22, had also been a Green, a member of Ukip, a Lib Dem councillor in the 1990s and a member of the Conservatives in the 1970s.
He told the Press Association that "the flood of immigration" was a problem, as was Islam and the European Union.
He said he had been with the BNP for eight months.
A worried Labour MP, whose constituency is about 98% white and appears to have the most BNP members, told the Guardian it was sometimes difficult to address concerns of communities "stirred up by malicious and false information".
Colin Challen, MP for Morley and Rothwell in Yorkshire, where there are 90 members according to the list, said it was "very disappointing that local people, even to that extent, have been persuaded to believe the racist claptrap and hate politics of the BNP".
But research indicated, he said, that "sadly it is very often the case that areas which have a very small ethnic minority population and large working class population have developed pockets of support for the British National party".
It was a "matter of shame" that a seat on Leeds city council that fell within his constituency was held by a BNP member. The main political parties had to understand the concerns of communities and work to address them, even in the face of inflammatory information.
The Labour party said it would expel anyone found to be a member of the BNP; the Lib Dems "deplored" its beliefs and tactics; and the Conservatives said all mainstream parties "have an obligation to address the voter alienation and disillusionment that fuels support for extremism".
Nine people on the BNP membership list are said to be former Conservatives, but the party said it only knew of six, and they had been associated with party some years ago.
Meanwhile, a police officer whose name appeared on the BNP list was tonight suspended from duty by Merseyside police, a spokesman for the force said.
PC Stephen Bettley, who worked as a driver for the chief constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe, in 2006, returned early from a holiday abroad tonight to help the force with an investigation into his alleged involvement.
Police are banned from becoming members of the far-right party because it conflicts with obligations under race relations laws.
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Judge: Algerian prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay must be freed
A US judge ruled today that five Algerian prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay must be set free, in a decision with far-reaching implications for the remaining detainees at the base in Cuba.
District court judge Richard Leon ruled in a Washington DC court that there was no legal basis to keep the five in prison. It is the first verdict in more than 200 habeas corpus petitions being brought before the US courts. The petitions challenge the American government to prove that there is evidence to justify keeping the men in Guantánamo Bay. The judge, known for his conservative views, said the US government should not appeal.
"The decision by Judge Leon lays bare the flimsy basis on which Guantánamo has been founded - at best, slim evidence of dubious quality, at worst, nothing," said Zachary Katznelson, legal director of Reprieve, the British legal action charity whose lawyers represent 33 Guantánamo prisoners. "This is a tough, no-nonsense judge. If he found there wasn't evidence to justify holding the men, you can be sure it wasn't there."
President-elect Barack Obama has promised to close down the prison camp as soon as he takes office, saying that Guantánamo "has done much to besmirch the reputation of the United States".
His team is considering what to do with detainees. One possibility is the setting up of "security courts", but the new administration is well aware it faces major diplomatic, political, and legal problems.
The latest hearing involved six Algerian nationals, five of whom are also Bosnian citizens and who were originally accused of plotting to blow up the US embassy in Bosnia. The men had been acquitted on these charges in Bosnia but were seized by the US and rendered to Guantánamo Bay.
"It is an illustration of the catastrophic policies of the Bush administration - ignoring the legitimate ruling of the court of an ally, rendering these men away from their homes and families, and holding them without legal recourse in Guantánamo Bay for six years," said Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve. "There are plenty more cases of injustice ahead of us, including the plight of the British residents who remain in this terrible place."
Judge Leon's ruling on the detainees is the first since the US supreme court ruled in June that every prisoner in Guantánamo had the right to contest his imprisonment in the civilian courts.
Reading his ruling as the detainees listened in Guantánamo via a telephone link, Leon said the US government failed to show the five detainees had planned to travel to Afghanistan to fight US forces.
Ordering the release of the five, Leon said the allegation was based on a single source, and he did not have enough information to judge the source's reliability or credibility. He ordered the US government to take all necessary and diplomatic steps to facilitate their release "forthwith".
The judge ruled the government did provide enough evidence that the sixth detainee, Belkacem Bensayah, had planned to take up arms against the United States in Afghanistan.
Lawyers acting for Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at Guantánamo Bay, are demanding his release. They want US documents - some of which have been seen by the British government - to be disclosed, saying they will reveal that Mohamed had been tortured.
Sun sets on US power: report predicts end of dominance
The United States' leading intelligence organisation has warned that the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal networks".
The global trends review, produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) every four years, represents sobering reading in Barack Obama's intray as he prepares to take office in January. The country he inherits, the report warns, will no longer be able to "call the shots" alone, as its power over an increasingly multipolar world begins to wane.
Looking ahead to 2025, the NIC (which coordinates analysis from all the US intelligence agencies), foresees a fragmented world, where conflict over scarce resources is on the rise, poorly contained by "ramshackle" international institutions, while nuclear proliferation, particularly in the Middle East, and even nuclear conflict grow more likely.
"Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed" warns that the spread of western democratic capitalism cannot be taken for granted, as it was by George Bush and America's neoconservatives.
"No single outcome seems preordained: the Western model of economic liberalism, democracy and secularism, for example, which many assumed to be inevitable, may lose its lustre – at least in the medium term," the report warns.
It adds: "Today wealth is moving not just from West to East but is concentrating more under state control," giving the examples of China and Russia.
"In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the state's role in the economy may be gaining more appeal throughout the world."
At the same time, the US will become "less dominant" in the world – no longer the unrivalled superpower it has been since the end of the Cold War, but a "first among equals" in a more fluid and evenly balanced world, making the unilateralism of the Bush era no longer tenable.
The report predicts that over the next two decades "the multiplicity of influential actors and distrust of vast power means less room for the US to call the shots without the support of strong partnerships."
It is a conclusion that meshes with president elect Obama's stated preference for multilateralism, but the NIC findings suggest that as the years go by it could be harder for Washington to put together "coalitions of the willing" to pursue its agenda.
International organisations, like the UN, seem ill-prepared to fill the vacuum left by receding American power, at a time of multiple potential crises driven by climate change the increasing scarcity of resources like oil, food and water. Those institutions "appear incapable of rising to the challenges without concerted efforts from their leaders" it says.
In an unusually graphic illustration of a possible future, the report presents an imaginary "presidential diary entry" from October 1, 2020, that recounts a devastating hurricane, fuelled by global warming, hitting New York in the middle of the UN's annual general assembly.
"I guess we had it coming, but it was a rude shock," the unnamed president writes. "Some of the scenes were like the stuff from the World War II newsreels, only this time it was not Europe but Manhattan. Those images of the US aircraft carriers and transport ships evacuating thousands in the wake of the flooding still stick in my mind."
As he flies off for an improvised UN reception on board an aircraft carrier, the imaginary future president admits: "The cumulation of disasters, permafrost melting, lower agricultural yields, growing health problems, and the like are taking a terrible toll, much greater than we anticipated 20 years ago."
The last time the NIC published its quadrennial glimpse into the future was December 2004. President Bush had just been re-elected and was preparing his triumphal second inauguration that was to mark the high-water mark for neoconservatism. That report matched the mood of the times.
It was called Mapping the Global Future, and looked forward as far as 2020 when it projected "continued US dominance, positing that most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US".
That confidence is entirely lacking from this far more sober assessment. Also gone is the belief that oil and gas supplies "in the ground" were "sufficient to meet global demand". The new report views a transition to cleaner fuels as inevitable. It is just the speed that is in question.
The NIC believes it is most likely that technology will lag behind the depletion of oil and gas reserves. A sudden transition, however, will bring problems of its own, creating instability in the Gulf and Russia.
While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow in influence at America's expense, the same cannot be said of the European Union. The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be "losing clout" by 2025. Internal bickering and a "democracy gap" separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU "a hobbled giant", unable to translate its economic clout into global influence.
• Read the full National Intelligence Council global trends review (pdf)
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