The law is not blind in this country – “joint enterprise” is used almost exclusively against young black men. But I can see no reason why the principle of joint enterpirse should not apply equally to those who set the policy under which people were rendered to be tortured in Libya, rather than merely to the security service functionaries who carried out the policy. In my reading of joint enterprise, if Ministers can show they were not involved in signing off individual rendition permissions, they should still be guilty for having participated in the behaviour that made such results likely, indeed inevitable.
I have given evidence to parliament that I was told, officially, as a British Ambassador, that Jack Straw had initiated a policy of using intelligence obtained by torture. I also testified before parliament that this was an unacknowledged policy which I was told, officially, should not be discussed in writing. The government has at no stage attempted to deny the truth of my account. The government did not submit evidence to the Parliamentary committee to claim that my account was untrue. The government has nowhere stated that my evidence is untrue; they prefer to rely on private media briefings to claim, untruly, that I am mad and alcoholic.
I shall tell the police that those involved in rendering persons to be Libya to be tortured were doing so in keeping with a War on Terror torture intelligence programme authorised by Jack Straw. It is no secret what I will say; here I am saying it.
Of course, I realise that the Crown Prosecution Service and the Met will,three years hence, claim there were no grounds to prosecute anybody. I am not that naive. But the fact of a formal police investigation will force some attention on whether or not my account is true. Ignoring the facts and just being rude about me is less easy in a criminal investigation.
Guano
Thank you for making such a strong point for decentralised politics, it is the elevation into sole leadership that provides multi nationals and other vested interest with an easy target to nobble.
@Mary, thanks for that, the ship should have been lifetd immediately after it was clear that the cold waters could hold no more survivors. 11.000? what a cheek.
I reckon that the company will go into administration an/or sold off as a going concern, with the new owner dragging it out for years to come. These ships have been designed wrongly, if they get hit by a super wave from the side they will almost certainly topple over, there is too much stories above water.
Ingo,
In this case the whole of S. America are probably rushing to put their orders for supersonic anti ship missiles and all manner of torpedoes. The gun boat diplomacy inevitably will come unstuck, however the notion of giving the appearances of a muscular leader, seems to be a contagion that cannot be all too easily contained.
Mary,
”
“The execrable Marr”,
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I have to disagree, that slick character, will be mighty difficult to pass (constipation supreme), due to his slickness, that will bond into any ind of surface and become fast stuck.
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BTW have you prepared for your street party Mary?
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Don’t have a coat so, I’ll just be on my way,
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Kidding Mary, only kidding.
The UK is doing its best to stir things up with Argentina. They are sending HMS Dauntless to the Falklands and the twerp who was on last week’s Question Time, Jeremy Browne is going there in June ‘to mark the war anniversary’. As he suffers from foot in mouth disease, wait for the political gaffes to follow.
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http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/uk-britain-argentina-idUKTRE80U15720120131
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PS Hague is saying that HMS Dauntless packs a punch! He is absolutely pathetic.
Craig,
Thanks for the comment on Libya/MI6 over at my site.
Remind me. When were you told “officially, as a British Ambassador, that Jack Straw had initiated (sic) a policy of using intelligence obtained by torture”?
I don’t think you were told that. I suspect you were told that Jack Straw had been given legal advice that it could be lawful for HMG to use intelligence possibly obtained by torture for certain operational purposes in the national interest. And that position indeed was upheld by the House of Lords in a landmark ruling, which you praised in your first book!
Don’t overegg the pudding?
Charles
‘Stenography journalism’, sez G Greenwald:
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“Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing to attack on U.S. soil, U.S. intelligence report finds”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iran-is-prepared-to-launch-terrorist-attacks-in-us-intelligence-report-finds/2012/01/30/gIQACwGweQ_story.html
Fred’s knighthood is shredded. Where is the satisfaction in that? Does nothing to repay the taxpayers or those made unemployed by the bank’s collapse.
Thanks, Duncan, for your post above on 30 Jan at 10.36 pm. You hear correctly. I got back home from hospital on Saturday with my heart strengthened by a quadruple by-pass. Now coping with a backlog of emails and getting ready to contribute substantially to Craig’s excellent website. Once he’s over his food-poisoning, I look forward to the results of his recent investigative work. I expect it to be better than the investigative record of our former colleague, Sir Christopher Meyer, as Chair of the PCC. He was in typical blustering, combative mode at the Leveson Inquiry this morning: an entertaining cameo of one part of the establishment combatting with another establishment dog to mark out its patch with its odour.
Did you know that Scotland’s water is still in public ownership? The English are taken for suckers.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/31/renationalise-english-water
@mary
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And yet you won’t see any positive press about Alex Salmond. Well, not in the UK anyway.
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http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2012/01/25/news/scozia_referendum-28763026/
Nuid, what I think everyone should be reading into the Washington Post report you linked suggesting Iran is planning measured attacks on US soil is that the US plans some false-flag operations on its own civilians as a justification for going to war with Iran.
Charles,
The answer to your question is 7 March 2003.
That was ten days before the terrible horror of the Iraq war began and in which the vile Straw was totally involved as he boasted to the Chilcot Inquiry.
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http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2010/1/21/straw-iraq-war-was-down-to-me
Britain’s military involvement in the Iraq war could not have taken place without Jack Straw’s support, the former foreign secretary has claimed.
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Mr Straw told the inquiry in a lengthy written memorandum he did not believe British military involvement would have been possible without his backing because it would have meant there was no majority in favour in Cabinet.
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“I was also fully aware that my support for military action was critical,” Mr Straw wrote.
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“If I had refused that, the UK’s participation in the military action would not in practice have been possible. There almost certainly would have been no majority either in Cabinet or in the Commons.
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It was only nine years ago yet it feels like a century. Hardly mentioned in the corporate media now.
‘The invasion was preceded by an air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on March 19, 2003. The following day coalition forces launched an incursion into Basra Province from their massing point close to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. While the special forces launched an amphibious assault from the Persian Gulf to secure Basra and the surrounding petroleum fields, the main invasion army moved into southern Iraq, occupying the region and engaging in the Battle of Nasiriyah on March 23. Massive air strikes across the country and against Iraqi command and control threw the defending army into chaos and prevented an effective resistance. On March 26 the 173rd Airborne Brigade was airdropped near the northern city of Kirkuk where they joined forces with Kurdish rebels and fought several actions against the Iraqi army to secure the northern part of the country.
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The main body of coalition forces continued their drive into the heart of Iraq and met with little resistance. Most of the Iraqi military was quickly defeated and Baghdad was occupied on April 9. Other operations occurred against pockets of the Iraqi army including the capture and occupation of Kirkuk on April 10, and the attack and capture of Tikrit on April 15.
/…
{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq}
Glad to hear you’re doing ok after that Iain. Didn’t realise it was a quadruple bypass! Let us know how you’re getting on in the coming weeks. I agree presenting Christopher Meyer as if he’s a neutral observer when he was Blair’s envoy to the UN on Iraq is pretty ludicrous.
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Charles Crawford wrote “I suspect you were told that Jack Straw had been given legal advice that it could be lawful for HMG to use intelligence possibly obtained by torture for certain operational purposes in the national interest. And that position indeed was upheld by the House of Lords in a landmark ruling.”
You seem to like technical points of law a lot and present them as if they’re a substitute for morality. They’re not. Courts in apartheid South Africa enforced the Apartheid laws. That didn’t make them right either. Even if what you said was accurate Straw would still be responsible for giving a nod to dictatorships like Karimov’s and Gaddafi’s to torture people knowing that whatever dodgy “evidence” they extracted by torture would get them brownie points with the British government. Apart from being morally wrong this didn’t even serve Britain’s national interest as most of the “evidence” and “intelligence” secured by torture is utterly worthless, just being whatever the torturers wanted to hear. CIA and FBI interrogators have confirmed this.
‘Don’t overegg the pudding.’
Don’t underegg it either Mr Crowfart. You’re a political opponent of Mr Jack Straw’s, so what’s with the footy footy under the table cross parties about the UK rules of torture?
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Let’s keep it clean, shall we? We know that Craig, as a diplomat, had the highest respect for Mrs Thatcher, and we know that to now he has loyal friends inside the Conservative Party who are prepared to leak unacceptable behaviour in current Conservative Government circles, and we know that he has personal connections to down-to-earth, honest members of the conservative party, though they are few and far between.
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Is that the excess of egg which you’re referring to, Sir? Craig has escaped your puny tentacles of puffed-up with your own importance, crow-fart, Tory power? Because if you’re trying to suggest that we as a nation should condone the use of torture, as New Labour friend of Israel, Zionist-bribed, opposition to nothing, fig-leaf for torture, Jackdaw, Jack Straw did, when he saw the chance of stealing power from George Bush’s bending of the Geneva convention in the War on Terror. Then [Mod – offence to contributor removed] crawl into something from a previous century when believing in torture was the mark of a gentleman. [And more…]. Begone. Bewarned. Bro!/means Go!
“Remind me”
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Charles Crawford, that is a sign of dementia!, comes with the setting on of old age!.
over egging?
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Nuremberg principles failed to see the legalised outrages carried out under the command of superior thugs.
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To hang onto such deviant methods of discarding morality is a sure sign of the degrees of decay and bankruptcy of ideology experienced by the proponents of such a reprehensible conduct.
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This deviant emotional paralysis towards torture often stems form the aggression that is routed in a lack of self-worth or clearly indicative of identity crisis as human being.
For those keen on the research herein, don’t forget about Salahuddin Amin.
@ Charles Crawford.
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“I don’t think you were told that. I suspect you were told that Jack Straw had been given legal advice that it could be lawful for HMG to use intelligence possibly obtained by torture for certain operational purposes in the national interest.”.
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Wriggling in the margins of semantics and bluster.Torture is torture and it’s morally repugnant.As Craig has repeatedly pointed out there has been a creation of a “market for torture” these last few years and no amount of legalese and dissembling can hide that fact.Why don’t Establishment lackeys like you grow a pair and be a man? A nauseating attempt to wriggle from the truth.I don’t know how people like you can sleep.
Dear Craig, thought you might like to know that there is a double page feature in the latest Winter Palestine News titled “Fox, Werrity, Gould…and Mossad”. It quotes you several times and pretty much mirrors the story you have given on this blog so at least a few more people will get to know about it. It’s not on the PSC website.
“Nuid, what I think everyone should be reading into the Washington Post report you linked suggesting Iran is planning measured attacks on US soil is that the US plans some false-flag operations on its own civilians as a justification for going to war with Iran.”
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Could be, John. Almost nothing would surprise me, given the codswallop coming out of the US and Israel. The fact that Europe is going along with sanctions seriously depresses me.
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Also this crap:
Caution on Twitter urged as tourists barred from US
“Holidaymakers have been warned to watch their words after two friends were refused entry to the US on security grounds after a tweet.”
Oops, link for “Caution on Twitter urged”:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312
Charles Crawford:
“I don’t know how people like you can sleep.”
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+ 1
Charles Crawford is a notably disgusting example of the British hierarchy, but typical nonetheless. Wasn’t he trying to jolly-up torture a few years ago, not just being its apologist but its champion? Creatures like this are well at home, soothing the hearts of all manner of evil institutions by giving it the veneer of an intellectual underpinning.
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Morons, sociopaths and monsters have their excuse – they cannot help themselves. The likes of Charles Crawford do not have such a let-off. People like Crawford, using their intellect for evil with full understanding of same, are the worst, most craven product by which humanity has been bedeviled. His filthy work is possibly the most wicked of all – knowingly enabling and excusing evil, without even having the courage of dipping his fingers in the blood he causes to flow.
Here is CC on his good friend Sir Mark Allen and torture. From the renowned ‘blogoir’.
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Libya and MI6 (again): Sir Mark Allen
The Limits of Diplomacy, Civilisation and its Enemies, MTS, Non-MTS, The Art of Diplomacy, Democracy = Hard Choices, How to Negotiate, The Craig Murray Saga
31st January 2012
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Craig Murray and I have a fleeting moment of agreement, rather like ships sailing in opposite directions who pass and exchange friendly waves.
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He commented on my earlier piece about Libya and MI6, responding to another reader:
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/…
http://www.charlescrawford.biz/N5A207442111
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He describes Craig as a maximalist. Not a word in common parlance.
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maximalist One who advocates direct or radical action to secure a social or political goal in its entirety: “the maximalists . . . who want the undivided land” (Arthur Hertzberg).
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[Russian maksimalist, name applied in 1906 to an extreme splinter group of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party, ultimately from Latin maximum, maximum; see maximum.]
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!!!
On the day that Circle Healthcare take over the running of Hinchingbrooke Hospital, a reminder of Tory boy Mark Simmonds’ connection to Circle Healthcare.
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Strategic adviser to Circle Healthcare (social enterprise), 42 Welbeck Street, London W1. Quarterly fee, £12,500; 10 hours per month. (Registered 12 January 2011)
March 2011, £12,500 quarterly fee received. Hours: 10 hrs per month. (Registered 3 May 2011)
June 2011, £12,500 quarterly fee received. Hours: 10 hrs per month. (Registered 3 October 2011)
September 2011, £12,500 quarterly fee received. Hours: 10 hrs per month. (Registered 3 October 2011)
December 2011, £12,500 quarterly fee received. Hours: 10 hrs per month. (Registered 3 January 2012)
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http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/mark_simmonds/boston_and_skegness#register
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1 February 2012
Private firm starts running NHS Hinchingbrooke Hospital
Hinchingbrooke serves a population of about 160,000 people
A private firm has become the first to start running an NHS hospital.
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Circle, which is co-owned by doctors, has taken on managing Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Cambridgeshire, which had been threatened with closure as it grappled with £40m of debt.
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Circle aims to find a solution to the debt problems of the hospital by attracting new patients.
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Union Unison said although the hospital had been saved, it was concerned at involving private firms in the NHS.
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The groundbreaking +++£1bn+++ 10-year deal will see Circle assume the financial risks of making the hospital more efficient and paying off its £40m of debts.
Mod.
Thanks for cleaning up the vomit. That smelly piece of slime makes me throw up.[ more, sorry, just thinking about it ]
Moderation has its moments. It’s most satisfying when the deletion of straighforward cursing leads to wittier and more articulate insults.
I see that CC’s stuff appears on The Commentator. They have recently enrolled Harry Cole as their UK political editor.
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Harry Cole
@MrHarryCole South Ken (Kennington)
Journalist formerly known as Tory Bear. News editor of The @GuidoFawkes Blog and UK Political Editor of The @CommentatorIntl. Never knowingly on message..
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Enough said.
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The apologist for torture appears here.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/297/torture_versus_terror_a_tale_of_two_resignations
Good to hear of your successfull bypass op and recouperation, Ian, for second I thought that your arrival back here was a reposte to that awefull CC, I was wrong, he obviously does not deserve any recongition to his reactvien bluster here, but its also an indication that his pals in MI6 might still be at it, which would not surprise me.
This morning we had dennis Ross being wheeled out reminding us that Iran needs starffing and if the sdanctions don’t work…. what are these sanctions for?
Iran has complied with a vital part of UN requirements, they have repeatedly invited the IAEA back, now they are talking in Tehran, due back today. Sanctions should not be increased but decreased. Hague is becrying the daily death in Syria without mentioning the daily death in Iraq of Libya, the latter seemingly having learned from UK torture practises of the past.
Its the apologist of the CC type that are embellishing these human rights violations in a self perpetuating war on terror circus of their own making,pathetic figures who can’t live without their returns from bloody arms shares.
This link is for you CC, your next step is to start waving you …k around why don’t you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY&feature=player_embedded