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He noted in an article published the day before the judgment (February 28, 2018) that "the case may allow the court to make a ruling on the proper delineation of powers between the executive and Parliament in relation to making treaties binding in South Africa; it also raises the closely related question of whether public consultation is always required before a treaty is signed."
A Wisbech man whose son took his life after allegedly being bullied in the Conservative Party has demanded that the party chairman resign.
Ray Johnson, whose son Elliott Johnson, 21, was found dead on railway tracks in September, said responsibility for the tragedy rests on the shoulders of Lord Feldman as he was sole party chairman when concerns first arose.
The party has said an investigation into claims of bullying in the youth wing will be conducted “in its entirety” by the law firm Clifford Chance.
But pressure continues to mount on Lord Feldman - an old university friend of David Cameron who was co-chairman with Grant Shapps until the general election in May.
Mr Shapps announced at the weekend he was standing down as an international development minister following claims he failed to act on reports of bullying in Conservative Future.
But Mr Johnson said that so far Lord Feldman had failed to accept any responsibility for what happened and described Mr Shapps as “just the fall guy”.
The allegations centre on the activities of the former activist Mark Clarke, who was expelled from the party earlier this month. Mr Clarke has strongly denied the allegations against him.
Mr Johnson says that his son’s concerns were brought to the party’s attention on August 12. He was found dead on railway tracks near Sandy station in Bedfordshire on September 15.
Mr Johnson said: “There was a month between my son making his complaint and him being found dead.
“If he had felt his complaint was being taken seriously and Mark Clarke had been suspended, maybe that would have altered his state of mind and he would still be here but the party failed to act.
“For me Lord Feldman is at the centre of this and has serious questions to answer.
He said he was pleased with the decision to bring in outside investigators but was keen to establish that the inquiry would be independent.
“This is definitely a step in the right direction - an internal investigation would never be seen as fair,” Mr Johnson said.
“Until now the Conservative Party basically ignored what we were saying and carried on arrogantly in their own way.
“I have asked my lawyer to contact Clifford Chance to establish what the terms of reference will be.
ABILENE, Texas — Visitors will hear a lot of stories in this part of Texas. Some are even true.
But truth or myth, history or make-believe, the tales to be found in Abilene will surely resonate with anyone who has ever watched a television Western or spun a ghost story around a campfire or read or listened to a bedtime story — with or without warm milk.
Abilene bills itself as the “Storybook Capital of America” and is home to the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, an institution that celebrates the beauty and creativity found in children’s picture books.
The center hosts events and weekly “family art adventures” as well as major traveling exhibits of original artwork created for children’s literature, and participates in the city’s Children’s Art and Literacy Festival each June.
More grown-up, but family appropriate, stories are told at Frontier Texas!, a museum located in a modern, downtown Abilene building designed to emulate the look of a frontier fort.
The museum’s opening video, “Blood and Treasure,” is an outstanding introduction to frontier times on the Great Plains and is stirringly narrated by Buck Taylor, the affable actor who depicted deputy Newly O’Brien in the long-running “Gunsmoke” television series.
The video also introduces a series of true-life old West characters. As visitors move through the interactive museum, those characters reappear as holographic “spirit guides” who tell their own Texas frontier stories. The life-size, high-tech holographs are quite realistic and their tales are very moving.
Individuals depicted include the Comanche leader Esihabitu, who fought and killed settlers but later worked for peace; and Pat Garrett, the barkeep and sometime lawman who shot Billy the Kid.
Other stories are told by Elizabeth Clifton, who lived a long, harsh, tragedy-filled life on the Texas frontier; and Britton “Britt” Johnson, a former slave and entrepreneur who undertook an epic rescue after his wife and daughters were captured by Indians.
Visitors will learn about the clash of whites and American Indians, the buffalo hunters who made fortunes while nearly wiping out a species, and the longhorns and cowboys that arrived when the buffalo were gone. Other exhibits focus on frontier settlements and military activity on the frontier.
More stories are dramatically told in the museum’s big-screen, cinema-in-the round, Frontier Experience Theater.
Frontier Texas! is also home to the Abilene Visitors Center and a large gift shop with lots of Abilene- and Texas-themed souvenirs.
An entirely different, but just as pivotal, episode of American history is explored at the 12th Armored Division Memorial Museum just a few blocks from Frontier Texas!
The division, known as the Hellcats, was formed during World War II and trained at Camp Barkeley near Abilene. The museum tells the story of the Hellcats’ World War II experiences through artifacts, weapons, photographs and several World War II armored vehicles. The museum also contains seven professionally created dioramas that depict the little-known but important battles at Herrlisheim, France, in January 1945.
Several historic buildings preserved in downtown Abilene tell their own stories. A walking-tour brochure, available at the Visitors Center, notes highlights including the Grace Museum, built in 1909 as the Grace Hotel. The building was once the city’s premier hotel. Today it has been restored as a local history museum and meeting space.
Other gems include the Paramount Theatre, a 1930 Art Deco and Spanish Colonial Revival delight that’s usually open for self-guided tours. The Cypress Building, Abilene’s oldest surviving commercial structure, is also worth a stop. Constructed in 1890 as a hotel, the restored building is now home to the Texas Store, which specializes in Texas-produced and Texas-themed goodies of all kinds.
And it’s a treat, in this often parched landscape, to taste a bit of vino at the Winery at Willow Creek along the shady, lazy creek of the same name.
My last stop was Fort Phantom Hill, a collection of ruins that was built as a frontier Army post in 1851 several miles north of Abilene near the Clear Fork of the Brazos River.
Visitors can park next to a large shelter house with restrooms. Also available at the shelter is a free, full-color brochure that unfolds to a poster-sized guide to the site.
Paths are maintained through the dozen or so stone chimneys that still stand tall against the deep blue of the Texas sky. Also standing are the complete stone guard house, and the stone magazine where gunpowder and shot were kept. The walls of the fort’s stone commissary are also standing.
Walking through the quiet ruins, with no sound but the wind rustling the prairie grasses, can be a slightly eerie experience, even in broad daylight.
The brochure tells some of the fort’s stories. But walking among the former barracks and parade ground and fort hospital, I couldn’t help conjuring up my own thoughts about the soldiers who abandoned the fort in 1854, the Butterfield Stagecoach passengers who continued to disembark here and the cowboys and buffalo hunters who camped nearby.
A small settlement later sprang up at the site, even serving briefly as the county seat. But the town, like the soldiers and cowboys and Indians of the Old West, eventually faded away — unlike the stories, which, thankfully, last and last.
BEIRUT — The leader of an al-Qaida-linked group that carried out attacks across the Middle East before shifting its focus to Syria's civil war died on Saturday while in custody in Lebanon, the army said.
In a short statement, the Lebanese army said Majid al-Majid "died this morning while undergoing treatment at the central military hospital after his health deteriorated." It did not elaborate.
Earlier, a Lebanese army general told The Associated Press that al-Majid died after suffering kidney failure. He was speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Al-Majid, a Saudi citizen, was detained in Lebanon late last month and had been held at a secret location.
He was the purported commander of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades — a Sunni militant group with al-Qaida links — and one of the 85 most-wanted individuals in his native Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. State Department designated his group a foreign terrorist organization in 2012, freezing any assets it holds in the United States and banning Americans from doing business with the group.
The brigades have claimed responsibility for attacks throughout the region, including the 2010 bombing of a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf and several rocket strikes from Lebanon into Israel.
The most recent attack claimed by the group was the double suicide bombing in November outside the Iranian Embassy in Beirut that killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens.
Reports first surfaced about his arrest in Lebanon early this week. Security officials eventually confirmed that they had a suspect in custody, but said they were not certain of his identity.
On Friday, the Lebanese confirmed his identity, following a DNA test.
Al-Majid was believed to have serious kidney problems that require dialysis. He was an important figure, and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades grew from a relatively small outfit to a larger terror group since he took over in mid-2012, after the organization's previous leader, Saleh al-Qarawi, was gravely wounded in Pakistan.
According to Lebanese newspapers, al-Majid was detained during the last week of December while on his way from Beirut to the eastern Bekaa Valley that borders Syria. The reports said that he was captured while in an ambulance after he had undergone dialysis at a hospital in Beirut.
In the spring of 2013, after the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group announced that it was fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's troops against the Syrian rebels, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades began to target Hezbollah as well — and by extension, their Iranian patrons.
On Friday, families of those killed in the Iranian embassy bombing demanded that al-Majid, who had not been charged in the attack, be tried in Lebanon and not be sent to his homeland.
The leader of an al-Qaida-linked group that carried out attacks across the Middle East before shifting its focus to Syria's civil war died on Saturday while in custody in Lebanon, the army said.
Oct. 26 7:50 AM PT8:50 AM MT9:50 AM CT10:50 AM ET14:50 GMT10:50 PM 北京时间7:50 AM MST9:50 AM EST18:50 UAE10:50 ETNaN:� BRT - Wideman had a power-play goal in Tuesday's victory at St. Louis.
Analysis: After sitting out three consecutive games as a healthy scratch, Wideman has bounced back with a goal, two assists and a plus-3 rating in three games since. The veteran defenseman has already matched the two-goal total he recorded in 51 games during a disappointing 2015-16 campaign.
Oct. 23 6:24 AM PT7:24 AM MT8:24 AM CT9:24 AM ET13:24 GMT9:24 PM 北京时间6:24 AM MST8:24 AM EST17:24 UAE9:24 ETNaN:� BRT - Wideman had two assists Saturday.
Analysis: Wideman returned to the lineup after sitting out the past three games as a healthy scratch.
Oct. 13 12:22 PM PT1:22 PM MT2:22 PM CT3:22 PM ET19:22 GMT3:22 AM 北京时间12:22 PM MST2:22 PM EST23:22 UAE15:22 ET16:22 BRT - Wideman had a power-play goal in Wednesday's season-opening loss at Edmonton.
Analysis: A good start for the 33-year-old, who's trying to put behind a forgettable 2015-16 campaign in which he scored just twice in 51 games and missed considerable time when suspended for striking a linesman in January. Wideman was a fantasy asset in 2014-15, posting career highs of 15 goals and 41 assists in 80 games.
July 31 6:48 PM PT7:48 PM MT8:48 PM CT9:48 PM ET1:48 GMT9:48 AM 北京时间6:48 PM MST8:48 PM EST5:48 UAE (+1)21:48 ET22:48 BRT - Twenty-year veteran NHL linesman Don Henderson underwent neck surgery to repair damage from being knocked to the ice by Wideman last January, and there are fears his career may be over, the Boston Globe reported Saturday.
Analysis: According to one of Henderson's friends in the officiating business, the recent surgery was aimed at repairing two ruptured disks in his neck, the result of the hit, per Kevin Paul Dupont's report in the Boston Globe. Wideman was suspended 20 games, but that was reduced to 10 games by a neutral arbitrator, although the defenseman had already sat out 19 games when the decision made following an appeal.
WASHINGTON - A programming overhaul of the White House's Web site has set the tech world abuzz. For low-techies, it's a snooze - you won't notice a thing.
The online-savvy administration on Saturday switched to open-source code for www.whitehouse.gov - meaning the programming language is written in public view, available for public use and able for people to edit.
"We now have a technology platform to get more and more voices on the site," White House new media director Macon Phillips told The Associated Press hours before the new site went live on Saturday.
"This is state-of-the-art technology and the government is a participant in it."
White House officials described the change as similar to rebuilding the foundation of a building without changing the street-level appearance of the facade. It was expected to make the White House site more secure - and the same could be true for other administration sites in the future.
"Security is fundamentally built into the development process because the community is made up of people from all across the world, and they look at the source code from the very start of the process until it's deployed and after," said Terri Molini of Open Source for America, an interest group that has pushed for more such programs.
Having the public write code may seem like a security risk, but it's just the opposite, experts inside and outside the government argued. Because programmers collaborate to find errors or opportunities to exploit Web code, the final product is therefore more secure.
For instance, instead of a dozen administration programmers trying to find errors, thousands of programmers online constantly are refining the programs and finding potential pitfalls.
It will be a much faster way to change the programming behind the Web site. When the model was owned solely by the government, federal contractors would have to work through the reams of code to troubleshoot it or upgrade it. Now, it can be done in the matter of days and free to taxpayers.
Obama's team, which harnessed the Web to win an electoral landslide in 2008 and raise millions, has been working toward the shift since it took office Jan. 20 with a White House site based on technology purchased at the end of President George W. Bush's administration.
It didn't let the tech-savvy Obama team build the new online platform it wanted. For instance, 60,000 watched Obama speech to a joint session of Congress on health care. One-third of those stayed online to talk with administration officials about the speech.
But there are limits; the programming used to power that was built for Facebook, the popular social networking Web site.
"We want to improve the tools used by thousands of people who come to WhiteHouse.gov to engage with White House officials, and each other, in meaningful ways," Phillips said.
It's also a nod to Obama's pledge to make government more open and transparent. Aides joked that it doesn't get more transparent than showing the world a code that their Web site is based on.
Under the open-source model, thousands of people pick it apart simultaneously and increase security. It comes more cheaply than computer coding designed for a single client, such as the Executive Office of the President. It gives programmers around the world a chance to offer upgrades, additions or tweaks to existing programs that the White House could - or could not - include in daily updates.
Yet the system - known as Drupal - alone won't make it more secure on its own, cautioned Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"The platform that they're moving to is just something to hang other things on," he said. "They need to keep up-to-date with the latest security patches."
Even as NATO celebrates its victory over the Gaddafi dictatorship, there is growing unease about the operation. The Libyan intervention was supposed to be a model of legality, but ended up exceeding the terms set forth in Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized a no fly zone but not regime change. US involvement violated the War Powers Resolution. The intervention was presented as a truly international operation, but ended up being directed by Britain and France, the two main powers from the heyday of colonialism, thus adding to the unsavory appearance of the whole enterprise. The intervention was supposed to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, but ended up enabling one in Sirte, where there have been numerous executions of pro-Gaddafi loyalists. It was supposed to dissuade other tyrants from oppressing their own people, but in reality had no such effect. Political repression in Syria actually increased after the intervention. The intervention has generated significant dangers to global security: The character of Western policy toward the Libyan despot – by first persuading Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons development program and then overthrowing him – has discouraged other countries from abandoning their own nuclear weapons programs. The intervention thus constitutes a setback for international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation. In addition, vast stocks of anti-aircraft missiles have been looted from Gaddafi’s warehouses in the course of the intervention; these have likely filtered into the world-wide arms market. And even the most hardened observers must be chilled at the fate of Gaddafi himself, who was apparently sodomized before he was killed. This was certainly not the “clean” overthrow it was supposed to be.
In this context, supporters of the intervention seek to shift discussion away from the embarrassing facts and lash out against those who disagree with their views. Michael Bérubé has created a stir recently with his article “Libya and the Left,” [please add link] soon to appear in print in The Point Magazine. This article defends the intervention, while it attacks writers who oppose it, with a special emphasis on attacking left-wing opponents of the intervention. Both Juan Cole and Brad DeLong recommend this article on their blog sites, while the online edition of The Economist also praises it.
Bérubé condemns what he terms the “addled left” and their “popular shibboleths about the war,” which includes the supposedly widespread view that “Gaddafi was a progressive in domestic or foreign policy” who was “justified in sending out the military to crush the protesters.” There is a strong insinuation throughout the article that most opponents of the NATO intervention were friends of the Gaddafi dictatorship. On his own blog, Cole agrees with Bérubé and extols the merits of his analysis which, according to Cole, exposes the left’s “Woolly thinking, outrageous lies, moon-eyed Gaddafi-worship,” among other sins.
And Bérubé criticizes those who question NATO’s motives for intervening. He is particularly incensed by allegations that Libya’s oil reserves – which are the ninth largest in the world – might have influenced the decision to intervene. Allegations that the NATO states might have acted on self interest are examples of mere “tropes that have been forged over the past four decades of antiwar activism,” and can thus be dismissed.
The article concludes by arguing for a “rigorously internationalist left” one that will support “the freedom of speech, the freedom to worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear,” and will do these things even where it “puts one in the position of supporting US policies.” There is a distinct tone of innuendo here — that the existing left is for the most part not internationalist, that it opposes freedom of speech and the like – but no evidence whatsoever.
True, Bérubé inserts intermittent statements that acknowledge a more complex picture and admit that the intervention can be opposed for legitimate reasons. But such qualifications appear brief and pro forma. For the most part, the article is a sweeping indictment against virtually all opponents of the intervention, mostly through insinuated slurs.
“Libya and the Left” will no doubt be cited by many who will nevertheless miss the point that the article is rambling, petty, and self-contradictory; that the most weighty “evidence” cited by Bérubé consists of extended quotes from Cole (who appears to have formed a mutual admiration society with Bérubé); that it cites few facts, and those it does cite are often cited tendentiously; that it focuses more on attacking the moral character of the anti-interventionist movement than on their substantive claims; and that overall, it presents a textbook case of a profoundly illogical ad hominem argument.
Let us now turn to the reality of the situation with regard to the Gaddafi dictatorship: In fact, there has been a problem of Western collaboration with the dictatorship. However, the problem was not one of leftist collaboration, which was relatively minor. The real sources of collaboration were the very same Western leaders who recently crushed Gaddafi — who had been Gaddafi supporters only a few months before. This history of collaboration provides vital context for understanding NATO’s recent intervention.
Here are the facts: Around 2003, Gaddafi essentially offered to abandon his radical policies, including his support for terrorism and his nuclear weapons development program, on the condition that the Western powers would end their adversarial stance and lift economic sanctions, which had been in place since the 1980s. He also offered to cooperate in the War on Terror. The US and European powers accepted this deal, and Gaddafi became a de facto ally. Internally, Gaddafi’s oppression of his people continued uninterrupted, but this was not a problem since Western officials were unconcerned about human rights.
It is important to emphasize that the Western collaboration with Gaddafi during this period was very close indeed. Several states sought to sell weapons to Gaddafi. The French in particular were trying to sell him fighter planes as late as January 2011, only two months before they began to bomb him. Ironically enough, the fighter plane the French sought to sell was the Rafale, which was later used as the main weapon of war against Gaddafi, once French policy changed. We should not be shocked by France’s cynical shifting of loyalties in this case, since France has had a long history of cynical arms dealing (with extensive sales to Libya in the 1970s).
Leaders of several NATO states in addition to France established close relations with Gaddafi, and his previous history of terrorism was forgotten. Western companies poured money into Libyan oil fields, while British MI-6 agents formed close relationships with Libyan security personnel. Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the post-2003 dealings with Gaddafi concerned the practice of extraordinary rendition: We now know that the Central Intelligence Agency sent terrorist suspects to Libya, where they were tortured by Gaddafi’s thugs.
This sickening involvement with Libyan torture practices makes Dennis Kucinich’s pro-Gaddafi dalliances seem trivial in comparison.
And there was further collaboration: Nongovernmental institutions accepted Gaddafi money, with few qualms. The London School of Economics received a large contribution from the Gaddafi family, which aimed at improving their image in Britain. From the US, the Monitor Group consultancy arranged for prominent Americans such as Richard Perle to meet the Libyan dictator.
Thus, Western elites were perfectly comfortable with Gaddafi’s oppressive rule, including his use of torture. These states only broke with Gaddafi when his hold on power tottered, in response to the Arab Spring, and he ceased to be useful. He was no longer viewed as a reliable protector of Western access to Libya’s oil resources.
This shift from being pro-Gaddafi to anti-Gaddafi was undertaken with such suddenness and crass opportunism that the shift must be viewed as another iteration in the sordid history of realpolitik. And contrary to Bérubé’s claims, this collaboration was not undertaken primarily by the antiwar left. It was done by many of the same Western leaders who today are claiming the moral high ground in having overthrown the tyrant — who was considered a close ally only a few months before.
“The Left and Gaddafi” serves mainly to whitewash the history of official collaboration with the Gaddafi dictatorship, and it thus contributes to historical amnesia and foreign policy ignorance. Supporters of intervention may indulge Bérubé’s fantasy that leftists were the main supporters of Gaddafi, but this is a fantasy all the same.
The article also stands as a testament to the debasing of public discussion, whereby serious issues are trivialized through ad hominem attacks. Bérubé presents himself as part of the “decent left,” but he uses the same techniques as David Horowitz and the McCarthyite right.
David N. Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona, who has published extensively on international relations, political economy, and US foreign policy. His latest book is First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009).
Would you be willing to die for your beliefs? Would you be willing to let your child die for your beliefs? The Children Act, based on the novel by Ian McEwen’s 2014 novel, explores topics of hospital authority vs. religious convictions in a dramatic showcase of superior acting talent.
Emma Thompson in The Children Act. Photo by Nick Wall. Courtesy of A24 & DIRECTV.
Emma Thompson delivers a riveting performance as Fiona Maye, a judge in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, who encounters a case of a Jehovah’s Witness family refusing a blood transfusion for their 17 year-old son Adam (Fionn Whitehead). Instead of succinctly delivering what should be an uncontested verdict for the hospital, Maye insists on visiting the young man’s bedside. That brief connection sets the final act forward as Adam’s doubts begin to surface, along with feelings for his judicial savior.