Two weeks ago the UK was shocked by suppossed photos of UK troops torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners. The photos were spread all over the front page of one of the major tabloid newspapers along with articles from 2 soldiers alleging abuse. A scandal had broken. The UK government instigated an immediate investigation into these specific claims while stating that all previous claims had been investigated. There was widespread concern however that maybe there was some hidden problema dn th...

I read an interesting article today on torture and felt I should share it with those who may not see it. Link In the article, the physologists argue that two things are required for torture to occur. - Firstly an individual. Not necessarily any individual but many individuals, including well-adjusted individuals would do. - Secondly either bad or lacking leadership. Very interesting article. Paul.

With all the negative articles about US treatment of pows and the over the top 'USA are benign' counter posts I felt that a more balanced 'what now' post was in order. I'll start with the current facts (as determined by General Taguba). - US torture of pows is systematic in Iraq and Afganistan - mental and physical torture (beatings and sodomy have occurred) have occured - at least 2 murders have occurred (23 other deaths being investigated) - US government was warned by Red Cross,...

When I initially commented on the Iraqi pow treatment I blamed much of the problem on the US government. While I accepted that there were only a tiny number of soldiers mistreating prisoners I felt that it was a failure of the US system. I highlighted the fact that the government failed to provide soldiers with the Geneva convention requirements on treatment of soldiers, failed to give any training, failed to provide support, failed to provide leadership, and failed to provide supervision. ...

Like many other I am totally shocked and horrified by the recent 60 minutes program on the abuses by the US military in the Abu Ghraib prison. Links to CBS are http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/27/60II/main614063.shtml and to a BBC report http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3672901.stm The US government is responsible for it's military and their actions. Saying this is just a tiny minority of the 150,000 troops present is not enough. The damage these pictures do...

Dear Joe User, Over the past few months the level of activity on Jow User has risen very nicely. In some categories there are voer 50 articles posted a day. This is great but it also creates friction issues. It becomes obvious that some users would prefer not to see articles from other users. The solution is a user filter. If you find a particular user rubs you up the wrong way then you add their name to your personal filter list and no more articles from that person appear. Sim...

Over the past few months on Joeuser I have seen numerous negative comments between Americans and Europeans. Most of these comments are normally thrown into the debate when one or other disagree with the policies, laws or beliefs of the other side. It led me to thinking, 'why do the US and EU debaters often end up on oppisite sides of debates', especially when they are often arguing the same general point. I came to the conclusion that effectively it's the difference between black and white ...

I woke up yesterday, read my newspaper and noticed tht March had arrived and another US-EU trade war was upon us. After over 2 years of waiting for the US to recind it's illegal trade subsidies the Eu had finally acted. 5% extra tariffs were added to a diverse range of US products including paper, toys and jewelry. And for every month that the US fails to recind it's illegal subsidies the traiff rises by 1%. So where has this problem come from. Well long before the steel trade war the Eu to...

I had heard much defense of the US position on Guantanamo Bay and am very surprised at people's belief that it's legal. Based on Brad's suggestion, I've decied to post a new article where this can be discussed. The usual arguement made against it is that it breaks the Geneva convention. In particular Article 4 which reads, As many people point out, this articles does not entitle those held in Guantanamo Bay to POW status as most of them fail to meet all the requirements. What people se...

The article below gives a fairly balanced view of what went wrong with American intelligence, focussing particularly on Colin Powells presentation to the UN Security Council. Analysis by Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent A year after the US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the American case against Iraq to the Security Council, attention is turning from the actual failures of intelligence to why they happened. Powell made the case against ...

I once saw a statistic saying that 80% of the American population would always vote for their political party irrespective of it's policies. While I don't believe the number is so high (and I can't find the reference) it seems believeable that many people do indeed always vote the same party. I see it among my friends and colleagues. Worse is the fact that many of them have no idea of who their candidate even is, just which party they stand for. So what's wrong with this? How can it be put right...

Over the past few weeks I've noticed an annoying (to me) trend with blogging. Debates are often stifled and die off by the addition of new articles as oppossed to comments and replies to old articles. Being fairly new to this method of communication I had expected an initial article to spawn a deep discussion of the topic raised and various peoples feeling on this topic. I had (perhaps naively) expected a topic to go on being discussed for weeks as more and more people read the article and th...

This morning I noticed in the news papers that the EU has finally decided to start applying trade tarrifs against the US. 3 years after the deadline for action on a world trade organisation ruling against the US expired the EU has finally had enough of American arrogance and is acting. As of March $200M worth of trade tarriffs will be levied, rising by $40M a month for a year and then rising to the full $4B. Why? Well it all begain a few years ago when the US created tax breaks for export...