It is my birthday today, and I feel rather pleased with the progress being made on exposing the torture crimes of New Labour.
Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card has been that the courts accept the argument that national security overrides all, and the biggest threat to national security is the threat of withdrawal of intelligence cooperation in the “War on Terror”.
It was precisely the threat of withdrawal of Saudi security cooperation that the Law Lords concluded was the potential greater evil, which justified forbidding the prosecution of New Labour’s personal paymasters at BAE for corruption.
And it was precisely the alleged threat of withdrawal of US security cooperation which persuaded the High Court to ban publication of material detailing the torture of Binyam Mohammed.
Only then Obama got in and the Americans said “Milliband is wrong (ie lying), we never threatened to withdraw security cooperation”.
If you read the Guardian report of the High Court judgement, in any other age a Minister caught behaving as appallingly as Milliband has, would have resigned. I would love to be locked in a room with the little twerp for a couple of hours to teach him about the reliability of intelligence from torture. I would have him confessing to menbership of Al-Qaida before I severed his second testicle.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/16/binyam-mohamed-torture-evidence-miliband
Which is of course the major point. Binyam Mohammed is an innocent man whom we gave over to torture for no reason. The thousands tortured in Uzbekistan into confessing to Al-Qaida links were almost all innocent. That is just one problem with the “Torture Works” argument put forward by Britain’s highest paid thug Jonathan Evans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/16/mi5-chief-torture-al-qaida
Can anybody construe the government’s line as anything other than “We were not complicit in torture. We were complicit in torture, but it was necessary.”?
In a Kafkaesque twist, Sky News are today running the banner headline
“Release of Intelligence Papers Could Damage UK/US Intelligence Sharing Agreement”
They are reporting from “US sources” that the Americans have now been persuaded to help Milliband by threatening to reduce cooperation if the evidence of Binyam Mohammed’s torture is released.
Is there a single person out there who genuinely does not now believe that Mohammed was tortured, and further that MI5 and MI6 were not complicit in torture worldwide? The documentary evidence I have already published is damning:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf
More so are the minutes of the FCO meeting at which I was formally instructed to stop complaining internally about collusion with torture as it had been set as an undeclared government policy. The High Court ruling gives still further weight to my Freedom of Information Act request to have those minutes released.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/10/either_craig_mu.html#comments
Friday was the twentieth working day by which the FCO was supposed under the Freedom of Information Act to respond to my request. Hardly surprisingly, it has not done so (other than to acknowledge receipt). I shall now appeal to the Information Commissioner. The government’s attempts to prevent the truth being known about their complicity in torture, are simply desperate. There appears to be a weird fiction that everybody does not realise the truth already.
It really is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
Belated happy wishes for your birthday, Craig. And I should like to echo Ruth’s earlier sentiments – your blog continues to be a really important force for good. I don’t know how to measure it, but incrementally, I think you are changing things, not least on the issue of torture.
“I agree with Charles when he tells me that it is the job of intelligence to keep a secret eye on some very dangerous people.”
http://tinyurl.com/yjg3ttn
As if they didn’t already. Strange how so many in New Labour became ultra right wing when they got elected…is it not?.
No, not really. Theoretical Lefties nearly always do become extremely authoritarian when they achieve power. Look at Lenin.
As the old saying has it, “The people who shout ‘Power to the People’ are the people who want power for the people who shout ‘Power to the People'”!
Belated Health and Happiness to you, your birthday must have been good going by the duress the FCO must be feeling at this present time.
Jack Straw made sure you were in London when he stood up on a soap box in Blackburn this week. Just imagine you would have known and taken your own soap boax countering every bit of bollox he spouted out to some flag waving supporters. Each and every one interviewed on fascist FM, (Radio 5 live)was either a disgruntled noLabour supporter, or had Labour imprinted on their genetic makeup, i.e. nowt else was ever voted for in their house during the last 100 years.
Torture was not just practised by the Nazi’s, it was also practised by the Allies. KGB archives, despite the Lubjianka’s record of false information in the field, was one of the most accurate discovered when opened up to researchers. The Japanese, trying to tally their numbers of prisoners of war, realised that there was only a discrepancy of two in the KGB records vs. their own. The KGB also recorded that the german soldiers captured after fleeing the eastern front, were instatly transported to Flanders and Northern France. These imaciated men were shoved into holes dug by themselves in fields, they were fed on starvation ration, thats a max. of 700 calories/day and they died like flies.
Some 400.000 died under this slow torture regime.
UK/US archives relating to this issue were destroyed, only one archive, that of the red cross in Genever, could collaborate this evidence, but they are steadfaslty refusing to open it up to general research, despite the time past.
Thats one of the reasons why western nation can fool their populus, stay squeaky clean, whilst on a weekly basis point to the bad germans and their torturous regime.
But do not let this divert us from discussing Straws missing testicles, comparing it to Adolfs missing testiclestec. etc., its as de rigieur as the masochistic voting habits of stalinist noLabour supporters. Oh what fun we all had…
“The only hope of success in the modern world is if the UK starts to practice what it has hitherto pretended to be,
a moral force for justice in the world. If we do not practice that, we have absolutely nothing to contribute.”
– Oh how I agree, Anon. It’s as if these Broons, Millichumps, Strawmen etc are living in a massive bubble of delusion that Britain is still a great power. Bliar got out as soon as he could see a role of real power on the horizon (god help us).
If you don’t have military/industrial/financial/physical might, what you do is develop your more subtle skills and talents (as you suggest here: impeccable moral authority) and gain influence that way. Ask ANY woman!
This load of deluded fools are still operating off a very tired 100year old model of Great British Empire.
And as Ruth says (“In the UK there seems to be a growing divide between the corrupted, the incorruptible and a mass living in an illusion”), the vast majority of people here cling desperately to this delusion.
BTW, I don’t believe that there are some who are ‘incorruptible’. I don’t suppose I’d feel quite so unhappy about the state of the world/UK if I suddenly found that £1billion had been deposited in my bank account, would you? And yet these MPs are happy to lie, cheat, defraud for peanuts (tch – the cost of sink plugs and pr0n!) What does that tell us about their calibre?
The only element in all this humungous delusional mess they’ve created that holds any value for all of us is that truth will always, always be uncovered sooner or later: as Craig is so adroitly showing us. Thank you again Craig and hope you had a good day yesterday!
“What is truth?” said Pilate, and did not stay for an answer…….
@ Craig. Slightly off topic – but – belated happy birthday. Do not worry, the years will continue to creep up on you, but you can blog away such concerns to your heart’s content. Speaking of which, your blogging endeavours are now a global threat – just consider: – http://www.businessinsider.com/john-carney-obama-we-need-to-bailout-newspapers-or-blog-will-run-the-world-2009-9
Ruth,
“In the UK there seems to be a growing divide between the corrupted, the incorruptible and a mass living in an illusion”
So true – any ideas about what to do about it?
George Dutton,
The only time I actually remember seeing a major politician get up and stand on his soapbox and speak to the people directly was in or around 1965.
It was Harold Wilson in The Outdoor Open Market in Oldham.
My family was rabidly conservative – including my brother who had actually joined the Young Conservatives and Supported The Vietnam War.
Whilst I thought my older brother was a genius, I also thought he was a stupid cunt in supporting a war and told him so. I was 12 he was 23.
Thankfully Wilson had more integrity.
Tony
And so most people who have still got a brain that has not been switched off are demanding that he faces Trial For War Crimes Against Humanity
All The Indepedent Can Come Up With Is
“Blair for President? ‘Not necessarily a good idea,’ says his former adviser”
If we stand any chance, whatsoever of turning this World back into The Heaven on Earth which it should be…
We have got a really hard slog.
Tony
My eldest brother had already been mentally tortured at St Bedes, but he appeared to have come through it O.K., whilst my other brother escaped as soon as he could.
He did some completely amazing work with electronics in his bedroom – and made the Earth float…
And he was snapped up, even before he had left University…
Then the Medical Profession got hold of him – sure he had the same inherited muscular problem as I have – Myotonia Congenita…
They said – well we can do nothing about that, but you have hammerhead toes.
He had never had any problem whatsoever with his feet – and could run and walk fine, after his muscles had warmed up – hell he even joined The Territorial Army…
Bu The Doctors look at his feet – and smiled and looked at each other – and said – We can fix that…
So they surgically removed every toe of my brother, and applied forces to every toe ( I think they hit each toe with a surgical hammer to flatten it – whilst disconnected from his foot)
Then they reconnected each and every toe and drove a steal pin through each toe to reconnect it to his feet…
The Doctors smiled at each other – and said – well that is one satisfied patient. We have cured his hammerhead toes…
Meanwhile my brother was experiencing the most incredibly horrendous pain…
Eventually he could walk again, though it did absolutely nothing for his real problem Myotonia Congenita…
Throughout going through all this hell, his mind was in electronic design overload.. and as soon as he could walk again – he was working for one of the real leading edge electronics computer companies in the UK, over 200 miles away from home, but very close to where I have lived for most of my life…
And his brain exploded…
He couldn’t take it any more…
Straight Jacket, Padded Cell, the Mental Works…
And then he got over that, met a lovely girl, got married, and had 4 kids (two of who’m have achieved PhD’s at Cambridge)
And dropped dead of stress, before he reached the age of 60.
He did however beat cancer at the age of 29.
Tony
I don’t like this, but I’m not surprised. People facing possible prosecution for serious crimes usually will do anything to save their skins.
Happy 21st (again)
Called you the other day, but you were still in bed…give you a bell this week to catch up…
Allegedly, 2,000 of the “militants” currently engaged in battle with the Pakistani army in South Waziristan are “foreign militants, most of them reportedly from Uzbekistan” (source: today’s Morning Star)
Is the Uzbekistan claim likely?
“So is it against the law to refuse to enforce the law?”…
http://tinyurl.com/yfreloz
Great work and good p0st,as ever,Craig.
So many know now,or have experienced,the torture that Their denial is truly pathetic.The full Truth will out,in time.Way too many people know it happened/is happening.
Miliband is a disgusting child.
Evans,and his whole bunch of psychotic bully-boys and girls are on a very sticky wicket.Their abysmal brand of above-the-law gangsterism is coming to be seen and understood.Funny,sort of, how these self-appointed gaurdians of national faith,are the ones,at end,who destroy the system they claim to protect.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I’ll probably get tortured for posting this,more or less…
I dont care anymore.I’ve had it for years anyway.
A mighty Judgement is coming on these bastards.
Thanks,again,for all your brave work Craig.
Happy birthday.
** Two things you can do to oppose the war on terror **
Can I suggest that folks here who are in broad agreement that Western militarism, as applied to Afghanistan and elsewhere, is a disaster do two things:
* Come to the Troops Out demo this Saturday in London to make some noise
* Make a donation prior to the demo to help with the costs of publicising it. You can use Paypal, cheque or direct funds transfer.
Thanks :o)
I should have provided the address for Stop the War coalition:
http://www.stopwar.org.uk