Religious figures really can get away with saying anything about Atheists, can’t they?

British Deputy Prime Minister calls the Iraq invasion illegal — but it doesn’t get much play in U.S. media.

The announcement of a United Kingdom torture inquiry has been met with approval by many, but many questions remain about whether the inquiry will really produce what the UK government promises. Meanwhile, in the U.S., frustrated by government obstructionist policies aimed against accountability for torture crimes, some are turning to legal actions against psychologists who were involved in torture.

The United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister, David Cameron. And a new Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. Cameron is a Tory Conservative. Clegg is a Liberal Democrat. Gordon Brown, the now former Labour Prime Minister, resigned today.

Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, won a hotly-contested race in Brighton Pavilion to become the Greens’ first-ever member of parliament.

Once extremely top secret telegrams prove, according to former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, UK complicity in torture. I’d add they prove the same thing about the U.S. government. The most amazing new piece of evidence is a memo by UK Foreign Office Legal Adviser Michael Wood that it was perfectly okay for the government “to receive or possess information under torture.”

It looks like we’re approaching an inflection point of great danger in working through problems in creating Economic Recovery. The inflection point is coming because there has been little economic recovery both internationally and domestically, with some nations continuing to run large deficits, and a growing chorus from many, calling for austerity and Governmental budget balancing even though it’s well known that the consequences of these policies will be economic contraction and further hardship for all of us but the rich. The big question is: which way will nations that have debts held in their own sovereign currency like the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia go? Will they listen to the domestic and international deficit hawks (e.g. the ratings agencies, the IMF, the European Commission (EC), and various currency traders and hedge fund managers) and cause further contraction and hardship for their citizens, or will they tell the deficit hawks to “take a hike,” create demand from the public sector, where private sector demand is falling short, full employment, and healthy economies?

I can’t answer this question, but what they ought to do is stated quite clearly in a recent blog post by L. Randall Wray and Yeva Nersisyan. Here’s an extensive sampling of their views along with some comments.

That was supposed to be us, right?

The Guardian has the story of a recent British high court decision to release previously withheld details about the torture of Binyam Mohamed:

In a ruling that will cause deep anxiety among the security and intelligence agencies, they rejected [British foreign secretary David] Miliband’s claims, backed by the US government, that disclosure of a seven-paragraph summary of classified CIA information showing what British agents knew of Mohamed’s torture would threaten intelligence sharing between London and Washington, and therefore endanger Britain’s national security.

One of the key paragraphs states that there “could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Binyam Mohamed by the United States authorities“.

this just keeps getting more and more depraved

Uighurs to Palau; Local British Cops Accused of Waterboarding; UK law lords repuke government on evidence in torture and abuse cases; ACLU files brief on US citizen tortured as US Government (CIA?) behest in the United Arab Emirates