Something is, obviously to anybody, missing from this document series and something else is also missing obviously to anybody who has been a Whitehall civil servant.
For earlier documents in the series see here. But the crucial missing documents relate to these two above, labeled duffieldminute and mcDonald.
What is, obviously to anybody, missing is a communication from the PUS (head of the Diplomatic Service Sir Michael Jay, now Lord Jay for services to torture) to Jack Straw. Jack Straw’s Private Secretary minutes “The Foreign Secretary agrees with the PUS that you handled this very well. Thank you.”
Where is the communication from the PUS to Straw saying that Duffield handled this meeting with me, about complicity in torture, very well? We do not have it. This despite repeated Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act requests from me for all the documents. I have been told that some documents were withheld on grounds of national security. What did Lord Torture-Jay say to Jack War-Criminal-Straw, that is still being withheld by Hague to protect Straw?
The next part is that which anyone who has worked in Whitehall will understand. The Duffield minute is a record of an internal meeting between FCO officials. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of internal meetings between FCO officials every single day. Some will be on major policy questions, like the future of the EU or global warming. Yet only one or two minutes of internal meetings a day will be deemed important enough to be put into the Secretary of State’s box. An internal FCO meeting solely about matters in Tashkent will probably never have been selected before.
What was so important about this little internal meeting that it commanded the full attention of Jack Straw and Lord Jay?
Anybody who has ever worked in Whitehall will know that it is next to impossible that this minute was simply put before Jack Straw unexpectedly like this.
One of two things must be true. Either Jack Straw was fully up to speed and had been extensively briefed before about intelligence from torture in Tashkent and my attitude to it, or the Duffield minute was put up behind a substantive submission explaining the background. Either way, vital documents are being hidden concerning Jack Straw’s involvement in the policy of receiving intelligence from torture.
It is worth remembering that the FCO did not give any of the documents above to the Gibson Inquiry until I did.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036049/Libyan-dissidents-house-arrest-following-Tony-Blairs-deal-desert.html
Craig, liars assume that everyone else is lying. They do not have enough integrity to recognise integrity or good advice coming from others. They think you are also lying or have come under some foreign influence. You gave good advice from a good conscience, but this snake was unable to see it as good advice.
Uzbeks say: ‘Raven never bites another raven’s eyes’. The same unfortunately can be said about FCO.
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There have been some nasty arguments from David Milliband in defence of the information gain under torture during the last Question Time.
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I wonder if any of these Jays, Straws. Millibands have once been tortured would have reconsidered their views on this matter?
Thanks TFS for the link…
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“Secret UK/Libya Eyes Only” reminds me of the real reason for agent Cameron’s ‘Boosting Trade’ trip to Russia.
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It is my understanding that Cameron went to Russia with the main intention of ‘sounding out’ Dmitry Medvedev’s (i.e. Russia’s) opinion of pushing for UNSC sanctions on Syria as a prelude to a NATO invasion, of course ‘on humanitarian grounds’ and with the full support of America.
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Again the contents of this ‘little internal meeting’ to discuss the logistics of this trip will never be disclosed, withheld ‘on grounds of national security.’
Mark,
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In case you are unaware, Medvedev does not have any kind of opinion (or even if he has it is irrelevant to the Russian’s foreign policy) it all lays in hands of another powerful man-Mr Putin.
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But I like your point that Cameron went to Moscow to investigate Kremlin’s opinion on military interventions to Libya. On the other hand I think that Moscow on this matter will follow whatever China says.
It is clear that Jack Straw and Peter Jay were well-informed of your minute of 10 March 2003. The censored content just raises further suspicions for those of us not privy. Could the meeting have been done verbally, or is everything at that level minuted?
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Why Hague chooses to protect Straw and Jay is hard to fathom.
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Straw, (and the FCO) objectives, of getting on with the job, were somewhat different from yours, I suspect – since for them the emphasis was on commerce, whereas your was balanced between commerce and human rights’ abuse. But what is coming out of Libya now (cases of rendition) is likely to further implicate Straw, who, must be feeling somewhat uncomfortable at the moment due to exposure of his human rights’ record as foreign secretary. It’s a little thing to savour in a world of bad news. There may be bigger comforts to come.
John Can I just correct something. It was Michael Jay now Lord Jay of Ewelme (not Peter Jay). Lady Jay is the vice chairman of L’Oreal according to Lord Jay’s Wikipedia page. This is a company which has an Israeli factory operating on Occupied Palestinian land and is therefore on the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign list. http://jfjfp.com/?p=18752
Oh, yes. Thanks for that Mary. And the link.
David Cameron goes to Russia because winter is coming and he has a few stolen Libyan cards to play to keep the home fires burning.
Syria is securely tucked up in bed between its two Shia controlled countries, Iraq and Iran, and the millions of Sunni Iraqis who have fled there know only too well what the current regime does to guests to its country who dare to breathe dissent.
If the US invaded Syria, every Sunni Muslim in the world would come to its defence. The world is tired of Afghanistan. It is now like Northern Ireland, so steeped in colonial treachery, political duplicity, double-dealing and double-think, nobody needs that much of a headache. The world is tired of Middle-Eastern Oil extravagance, pimping for the Zionist US.
If the US lights a fire in Damascus, you will see NATO crushed almost instantly in Afghanistan, and US influence crushed in the Middle East.
Right now, if one is honest, who cares about the North African Muslim Brotherhood/ Mossad mind-fucked Muslim Arab Spring countries? They are a by-word for evil dictators and evil Islamic leaders. Squeezed between Western backed oppression and Zionist backed religious deviation they have become famous for their terrible behaviour in spite of being Arabic-speakers.
But if you attack Syria, you will see the fist of sincere belief in Islam, which has been dormant under this oppression, finally throw off all fear.
She must be the ugliest woman on earth, even worse than Condaleeza Rice. A confusion of Thatcher and George Bush, with her ghastly long sexagenarian blonde hair, in infection of Thrush, Mrs Clinton. When she gets on her horrible flirtatious mons venus podium and demands Assad’s removal, I’m inclined to agree with him. I wouldn’t quit if that witch asked me to do it if I lived a million years. Maybe that’s why they gave her the job, because they want him to stay in power.
Under Every Stone: Britain’s Shameful Record of Abuse
by Lesley Docksey / September 13th, 2011
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Strike him so that he may feel that he is dying.
— Caligula, Emperor of Rome
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How many times does a practice have to be publicly outlawed before people stop pretending they didn’t know it was wrong? Suppose someone in a position of authority was being tried for murder. Would any court accept the excuse that he didn’t know it was illegal to kill someone? Yet this is precisely what has happened in the case of the British armed forces using illegal interrogation techniques.
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But all the promised inquiries into the UK’s complicity in torture must end in the prosecution of those unnamed secretive individuals who not only countenanced but ordered this abuse. And because I don’t want to be writing this article again in five years time, we must insist on the prosecution of the man at the top of their very nasty little tree – Tony Blair.
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http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/09/under-every-stone-britain%e2%80%99s-shameful-record-of-abuse/
Mary, keep saying it again and again, because one day they will tell us that the British Public were knowingly colluding with everything that we suspected and later discovered has been going on. As time progresses it will become clearer and clearer how delusional and criminal these people have been and will continue to be, until the time comes that everybody is in the same place knowing what they did wrong.
The rain falls on the good and the bad alike. the prophet Ibraheem peace be upon him, prayed for the pious people of Mecca until the end of time. But Allah replies in the Qur’an, ‘ for the disbelievers as well ‘.
It is a system that has been explained clearly in the Holy scriptures of Divine revelation. I had a Carribean girlfriend once, not noticeably Christian, who summed it up completely:
‘ Oh they’re being nice to you at the moment. What do they want this time? Haven’t you understood yet that the time will come these people are going to have to stand up in front of God for what they’ve done?’
The Carribean people were Muslim when they were transported as slaves, and many generations have come and gone. But if the gist of the scriptures can survive that persecution, surely it can survive a bit of media distortion, spin-doctoring and blanket TV sport.
There’s a nasty little tree in Hell producing vile noxious liquours that will be mixed with steam, as the only drink available in Hell.. Keep on recording every detail of evidence and every shred of regret that we have been unable to prevent these crimes. The British Empire was run by a very small, execrable group of bastards, but opposition is easier now than it was then. The strategy of toeing the line changes nothing. The strategy of political negotiation changes nothing.
The strategy of changing ourselves, maybe if we’re lucky get the thumbs up from Him upstairs, and we in fact may be the generation that actually sees change finally arrive.
Don’t be a foolish virgin, join your local friendly mosque, now!
Daniel Jazz: ‘Hell is full of vampire women, whiskey, gin and vice…
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust .. if the whiskey doesn’t get you then the women must….’
Then a member of the congregation says that sounds rather good.
And so it is made to seem to Tony Blair, that everything’s going to turn out nice.
Jesus is said to have said to the people of Jerusalem, who had seen many miracles and signs at his hands by the will of God.
‘ The people of Samaria, i.e. the ignorant pagans, would have been sitting in sack-cloth and ashes’ if they had witnessed what the followers of his faith, the supposed believers, had witnessed.
It is frustrating, the collective denial of the truth in the countries of the West. Maybe exile is best.
All the documents referenced in ‘Murder in Samarkand’ are available on Wikispooks here.
I have also begun to collect and collate European Council documents from Dick Marty’s Human Rights committee on Wikispooks. There really is some devastating stuff contained in his reports. In particular Craig and others should look at the latest Draft resolution based on his work which was adopted unanimously last week. The resolution and the reports underpinning it provide massively powerful ammunition for those seeking to hold their own governments and security services to account for torture and other gross abuses.
Under every stone.
Lawyer Philippe Sands started his witness to the JCHR after Craig’s with the explanation that Bush had declared that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the enemy combatants in the Warrant of Error. Pointing the finger at the US does not in any way absolve Blair of his crimes.
John Humphrys likes his job too much to tell Blair that nobody in the whole world believes him that he did not know about rendition.
Sometimes even a safety razor draws a little blood while shaving your private parts. You can’t expect the BBC to castrate its own castrator.
If it came to a fight in the blame game between politicians and the BBC, would you want to see the piles of blood, guts and eviscerated members on your TV?
How would a court manage to condemn Blair of war crimes without condemning itself too for all the previous constitutional crimes committed by UK plc ?
Kaffaa billahi shaheedaa. Sufficient is Allah as witness, but if we do not expose and object to these crimes, I fear we will be caught as accomplices. I personally do not want to hang for another man’s deeds.
When Philippe Sandys stated Bush’s policy to the JCHR without condemning it utterly and completely, I’m sorry, but in my book he will be caught as an accomplice for offerring a possible defence without making it clear that it was not valid. This is how lawyers have aided and abetted and prolonged the freedom of these criminals, by pretending to be merely legal advisors, when they are in fact additionally human beings responsible to the court of Allah.
The lawyers are the custodians of the law. Quis custodet ipsos custodes? Allah.
You can come and hear Humphrys in the theatre. As if. No shame. £18.50 a pop.
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An Audience with John Humphrys
Broadcaster and presenter John Humphrys has been a journalist for more than half a century and has achieved much throughout his illustrious career, including the Sony Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement. As well as being known for presenting Mastermind, his tough questioning as a journalist made him a notorious figure for both the Conservative and Labour parties. John was savagely attacked by one cabinet minister for “poisoning the well of democratic debate” and was even referred to as the “John Humphrys problem”. Be entertained as John delivers fascinating anecdotes from his long career as a journalist.
Main Auditorium
Fri 16 Sep
8pm
Stalls £18.50 Circle £17.50
http://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk/production/an-audience-with-john-humphrys
“I wonder if any of these Jays, Straws. Millibands have once been tortured would have reconsidered their views on this matter?” Uzbeck in the UK.
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Good idea. perhaps we might lock them up in a basement and play them loud, non-stop renditions of their own pompous statements on the subject, day and night, for months on end. That would be a fitting tribute.
“On the other hand I think that Moscow on this matter will follow whatever China says.” Uzbek in the UK.
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Interesting turnaround, eh?
Wikispooks – brilliant work!
“If the US invaded Syria, every Sunni Muslim in the world would come to its defence.” anno.
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I wish that were true. They said the same thing about Iraq, remember? And who would have imagined that Libya would’ve been invaded? In fact, who, in say, 1995, would have imagined that US and UK et al troops would be crawling all over Asia and Africa (again)? But no, the USA can invade anywhere they like outside of nations with nukes, and they will get away with it. Obvious (sad) message for Iran (and all non-nuke nations): Get a nuke, now.
“the USA can invade anywhere they like outside of nations with nukes”
Pity the UK – even our nukes haven’t kept the yanks out.
Ha! Well said, Quelcrime.