Blawg Review #297: The Hair Shirt Edition
Today marks the 514th anniversary of the notorious Bonfire of the Vanities, when the followers of Dominican Friar Giralamo Savonarola burned a bunch of extraneous stuff in Florence, like books and art. Oh, and cosmetics, lewd pictures, mirrors, nude sculptures, and a few people. Savonarola was one severe dude, who railed against excesses and told “lustful people to put on a hair shirt and do penance, because you need it.”
A very interesting article in The Guardian:
George Bush: no escaping torture charges
The Guardian: Sooner or later, Bush will step into a country where he will be prosecuted for authorising the abuses of the ‘war on terror’
Late last year, former US President George W Bush recounted in his memoir, Decision Points, that when he was asked in 2002 if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee held in secret CIA custody outside the United States, he answered “damn right”. This “decision point” led to the waterboarding of that person 183 times in one month. Others were waterboarded, as well.
Waterboarding is torture. In the past, the US prosecuted and convicted Japanese officials who waterboarded US and allied prisoners. US Attorney General Eric Holder has unequivocally stated that waterboarding is torture.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the….?
Paul Waugh is referring to Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens. The coverage of the extradition hearing continues….
Law Society launches legal aid campaign for the public
The Law Society Gazette reports: “The Law Society is to launch a high-profile campaign, ‘Sound off for justice’, this week – aimed at harnessing public opposition to legal aid cuts. The initiative will seek to raise awareness of what the cuts could mean for members of the public, in advance of the 14 February deadline for responses to the government’s legal aid green paper, which will slash £350m from the legal aid budget.A specially designed website for the campaign will go live today, with a wider launch on Friday.
Members of the public will be invited to ‘sound off’ by signing up to the campaign via the website.
Doesn’t appear to be giving the ‘public’ a great deal of time? Maybe I am missing something.. but February 14th is on Monday next? I can’t see Chancery Lane being filled with protesters? We shall see. So… if you want to “sound off”…whatever that means….. do feel free to do so on The Law Society website…..
the silence of so much of the legal profession about the cuts has been both revealing and (for me) dispiriting. the myth persists that there is a single – or perhaps dual – entity that is a legal profession. this allows the public, if they choose, to misrepresent all lawyers as fat cats. and of course we are reaping the inevitable result of the continuing domination of legal work by the upper middle class and still (albeit to a lessening degree) by the white male from a privileged background. the gulf between those working in law centres or in the high street and the massively well-rewarded magic circle solicitors or commercial bar is overlooked. and that encourages the dispossessed to cry ‘The first thing we do let’s kill all the lawyers’.