Clive Stafford Smith

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Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control by Medea Benjamin

air gap, airport security, autonomous vehicles, Chelsea Manning, clean water, Clive Stafford Smith, crowdsourcing, drone strike, friendly fire, illegal immigration, Jeff Hawkins, Khyber Pass, megacity, military-industrial complex, no-fly zone, nuremberg principles, performance metric, private military company, Ralph Nader, WikiLeaks

His cousin Waheed was equally poor, his family relying on the boy’s monthly salary of $23 as a shop assistant to make stretched ends meet. Thanks to the fateful meeting in Islamabad days before, the death of these boys—unlike other drone victims never mentioned or mourned beyond the village—was reported in newspapers around the world. American lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who had just met the boy in Islamabad, wrote a compelling New York Times Op-Ed.208 “My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory—as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970,” Stafford wrote.

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the judge inquired.276 The UK-based human rights law group Reprieve is considering bringing litigation against some European governments that have been complicit in the drone attacks on their nationals, including the governments of the UK, Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain. The laws in Europe make it easier than in the United States to sue in the courts. “We’re going to sue the government in Britain because the British have admitted that they provide intelligence for the drone attacks,” said Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith. “I think we have every chance to find violations of Geneva Conventions and humanitarian law. Whether we win in court or not, though, it’s the kind of thing where the British government cannot prevail in the court of public opinion, as what they are doing is just wrong.” Reprieve assisted its Pakistani partner organization, Foundation for Fundamental Rights, to lodge a legal case in Pakistan against John Rizzo, the former acting CIA general counsel who gave the final okay for adding names to the CIA’s hit list, and against the CIA station chief in Pakistan, Jonathan Banks, who fled the country after he was named in the case.

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US Ambassador Cameron Munter was put in the most undiplomatic position of having to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on each of these strikes. “Can you imagine if the Pakistani ambassador to Washington DC Sherry Rehman was required to say yea or nay to killing people in Texas every other day?” asked Reprieve lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. “She would be assassinated if she wasn’t prosecuted for the death penalty in Texas itself. What they are doing is making the State Department’s job absolutely impossible.” In the past decade, the State Department has become a weaker and weaker institution, watching its anemic attempts at diplomacy go up in smoke.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

4chan, Adam Curtis, AltaVista, Berlin Wall, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, Clive Stafford Smith, cognitive dissonance, Desert Island Discs, different worldview, don't be evil, Donald Trump, drone strike, gentrification, Google Hangouts, Hacker News, illegal immigration, Jon Ronson, Menlo Park, PageRank, Ralph Nader, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, Skype, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, urban planning, WikiLeaks

I’d leave Jonah and Michael and Justine feeling nervous and depressed. And so it was a nice surprise to receive an email from Richard Branson’s sister Vanessa inviting me to appear at a salon of talks at her Marrakech palace / holiday home / hotel, the Riad El Fenn. ‘Other speakers,’ she emailed, ‘include Clive Stafford Smith - human rights lawyer. David Chipperfield - architect. Hans Ulrich Obrist - Serpentine curator. Redha Moali - rags-to-riches Algerian arts entrepreneur.’ I googled her Riad. It ‘combines grandeur and historic architecture with hideaway nooks, terraces and gardens’ and is ‘just five minutes’ walk from the world-famous Djemaa el Fna square and bustling maze of streets that make up the souk’.

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Then I heard a noise. I looked up from my book. Vanessa Branson was rushing across the courtyard to welcome someone new. He too was dressed in linen and was tall and thin, with the gait of a British man of privilege. He might have been a diplomat. After a few minutes he bounded over to me. ‘I’m Clive Stafford Smith,’ he said. I knew a little about him from his interview on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs - about how he was all set for a life in British society until one day at his boarding school he saw a drawing in a book of Joan of Arc being burned at the stake and realized she looked like his sister.

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful by Glenn Greenwald

Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Clive Stafford Smith, collateralized debt obligation, Corrections Corporation of America, crack epidemic, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Brooks, deskilling, financial deregulation, full employment, high net worth, income inequality, Julian Assange, mandatory minimum, nuremberg principles, Ponzi scheme, Project for a New American Century, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, too big to fail, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks

Specifically, the British government said, the Obama administration had issued a threat: if the British court disclosed the facts of Mohamed’s torture, U.S. intelligence agencies would no longer pass on to Britain any information about terrorist plots aimed at British citizens. In April 2009, I interviewed the British international law expert Clive Stafford Smith, who was representing Mohamed in the British proceedings. In his view, the Obama administration’s extraordinary effort to force British courts to conceal evidence of torture was in itself probably a criminal act. It is clear that there has now been a threat, and indeed the judges say eight times in the latest opinion, that the British government was threatened with sanctions if they were to release evidence of torture.

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See also equality under the law Rule of Law Index Rumsfeld, Donald Russia Rwanda Salmon, Felix Salomon Smith Barney Salon Sandinistas Sasson, Theodore Savage, Charlie Schumer, Chuck Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Seidenberg, Ivan sentencing, mandatory minimums Sentencing Project Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sex offenders Shaw, Bernard Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) Shia Islam Shorrock, Tim Shreveport, Louisiana Sifton, John Sirota, David Slate slavery Smith, Clive Stafford Smith, Francis X. Smith, William French Smith, Yves Somin, Ilya Soud, A. C. Souter, David South America South Korea Spain Sprint Standard Oil Starkman, Dean State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices domestic eavesdropping and Iran-Contra and torture and WikiLeaks release of cables of states criminal justice spending prison sentences and state secrets State Sponsors of Terrorism List Stengel, Rick Stephanopoulos, George Stern, Vivien Stettner, Andrew Steward, Martha Stiglitz, Joseph Stored Communications Act Strigl, Dennis Sullivan, Andrew Summers, Larry Sunlight Foundation Swanson, David Sweden Syria Taguba, Antonio Taibbi, Matt Talking Points Memo (Web site) Talvi, Silja J.

The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World by Linsey McGoey

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-globalists, antiwork, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Clive Stafford Smith, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, fake news, Frances Oldham Kelsey, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, income inequality, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, joint-stock company, junk bonds, knowledge economy, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nick Leeson, p-value, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-truth, public intellectual, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Social Justice Warrior, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, wealth creators

‘The lawyers’ war: states and human rights in a transnational field.’ Sociological Review 64(2): 170–193; Nisha Kapoor, Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism (London: Verso, 2017). 26 Tamsin Shaw, 2016. ‘The psychologists take power’ (The New York Review of Books, February 25). 27 As US lawyer Clive Stafford Smith writes: ‘torture did not secure reliable information in 1600 (when witches “confesse”); it was no more helpful in 2001.’ See C.S. Smith, 2012. ‘Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain – A Review’ (The Guardian, November 23). 28 J. Arlidge, 2009. ‘I’m doing “God’s work”: Meet Mr Goldman Sachs’ (The Times, November 8). 29 Quotes are from E.

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath by Bill Browder

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist lawyer, Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Clive Stafford Smith, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Donald Trump, estate planning, fake news, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, Ponzi scheme, power law, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Bannon

In the United Kingdom, I would like to thank Baroness Rosalind Altmann, Lord David Alton, Lisa Amos, Lord Donald Anderson, Anne Applebaum, Lord Ian Austin, Courtenay Barklem, Robert Barrington, Lord Richard Benyon, Olga Bischof, Ian Blackford MP, Peter Bottomley MP, General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, Tom Brake MP, Sabrina Brasey, Daniel Bruce, Malcolm Bruce MP, Chris Bryant MP, Robert Buckland MP, Barbora Bukovská, Ivan Cherkasov, Anna Chernova, Christopher Chope MP, Lord Timothy Clement-Jones, Lord Ray Collins, Claire Coutinho MP, Peter Dahlin, Luke de Pulford, Jonathan Djanogly MP, Anand Doobay, Anton Drel, Mark Ellis, Ben Emmerson QC, Catrin Evans QC, Carla Ferstman, Maya Foa, Andrew Foxall, Nusrat Ghani MP, Jamison Firestone, Jonathan Fisher QC, Edward Fitzgerald QC, Roger Gherson, Helen Goodman MP, Margaret Halton, Stephen Hayes, Henrietta Hill QC, Jonathan Hill, Eliot Higgins, Margaret Hodge MP, George Ireland, Bianca Jagger, Natalia Kaliada, Steven Kay QC, Alicia Kearns MP, Hugo Keith QC, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Eduard Khayretdinov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Stephen Kinnock MP, Vadim Kleiner, Maya Lester QC, Davis Lewin, Maria Logan, Edward Lucas, Imogen MacLean, Denis MacShane MP, Arthur Marriott QC, Ian Marshall, Stewart McDonald MP, Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, Andy McSmith, Alan Mendoza, Neil Micklethwaite, Andrew Mitchell MP, Jasvinder Nakhwal, Jessica Ní Mhainín, James O’Brien, Tim Otty QC, Vladimir Pastukhov, Alexandre Prezanti, Watson Pringle, Dominic Raab MP, Daniel Rathwell, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Benedict Rogers, Lord Jeffrey Rooker, Jago Russell, Mark Sabah, Jürgen Schurr, Bob Seely MP, Anisha Shakya, Jason Sharman, Laura Simmonds, Rupert Skilbeck, Iain Duncan Smith MP, Clive Stafford Smith, Joe Smouha QC, Mark Stephens, Dr. Charles Tannock MEP, Peter Tatchell, Sue Thackeray, Flavia Trevisani, Tom Tugendhat MP, Rebecca Vincent, Monique Villa, Patrick Walsh, Antony White QC, Andrea Wong, and Martin Woods. Following these two countries, I’m going to proceed alphabetically by country.

The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John J. Mearsheimer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Ayatollah Khomeini, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, Clive Stafford Smith, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, global village, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal world order, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Peace of Westphalia, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, Ted Kaczynski, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs

The focus here, however, is on cases where it is possible to capture the suspect but the decision is made instead to kill him because of all the legal problems that attend dealing with detainees. 91. Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” New York Times, May 29, 2012; Clive Stafford Smith, “Who’s Getting Killed Today?,” Times Literary Supplement, June 28, 2017. 92. Micah Zenko, “How Barack Obama Has Tried to Open Up the One-Sided Drone War,” Financial Times, May 23, 2013. Writing in January 2016, Zenko says: “Whereas President George W. Bush authorized approximately 50 drone strikes that killed 296 terrorists and 195 civilians in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, Obama has authorized 506 strikes that have killed 3,040 terrorists and 391 civilians.”

The Defence of the Realm by Christopher Andrew

Able Archer 83, active measures, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Boeing 747, British Empire, classic study, Clive Stafford Smith, collective bargaining, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, Desert Island Discs, disinformation, Etonian, Fall of the Berlin Wall, false flag, G4S, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, information security, job satisfaction, large denomination, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Kinnock, North Sea oil, operational security, post-work, Red Clydeside, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, strikebreaker, Suez crisis 1956, Torches of Freedom, traveling salesman, union organizing, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, Winter of Discontent, work culture

From May 2006 MI5 staff also had the option of consulting a part-time ‘ethics counsellor’ within the Service, who had the rank of director and guaranteed confidentiality to those who came to see him.75 Though not many did so (fewer than twenty over the next two years), there is no evidence that staff with ethical concerns felt inhibited from raising them.76 The most controversial case involving allegations that the Security Service connived in the use of torture is that of Binyam Mohamed al-Habashi, an Ethiopian and British resident arrested in Pakistan in 2002 who claims he was moved by US ‘extraordinary rendition’ operations to Morocco and Afghanistan before being interned in Guantánamo in 2004. While in Guantánamo, Mohamed told his British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith that British officials had interrogated him after his arrest in Pakistan and that ‘one of them did tell me that I was going to get tortured by the [Arabs].’ He also claimed that he was later tortured by the Moroccans, told that ‘they were working with the British Security Service’ and ‘asked questions, containing details about his life that could only have come from UK sources’.