The Mail on Sunday is doing a very good job on the odious Jack Straw’s involvement in torture and persecution. I think that at last the truth has entered the established narrative. There is a little box in the report about my own evidence to Scotland Yard. I will type it out here as the Mail’s box format here is not internet searchable:
“Torture” Evidence Handed to the Yard
Further pressure was piled on Jack Straw last night over the “rendition” of Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhadj after sensitive documents were handed to Scotland tard detectives.
Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, passed the documents to police as part of the inquiry into the behaviour of Ministers and intelligence officials over the detention of Mr Belhadj in Bangkok in March 2004.
The opponent of Colonel Gadaffi was flown to Tripoli, where he claims he was tortured.
Mr Straw, who was Foreign Secretary at the time, has denied ever condoning the use of torture to extract information.
But the documents appear to cast doubt on that position.
One memo, headed “Uzbekistan: Intelligence Possibly Obtained Under Torture” contains minutes of a meeting Mr Murray held with senior Foreign and Commonwealth officials on March 8, 2003 to discuss his concern that the UK could be in breach of international law by possessing intelligence obtained by torture.
The minute, dated March 10 2003, quoted Linda Duffield, then the FCO’s Director of Wider Europe, apparently justifying the use of such material as part of the fight against terrorism.
A second memo, dated March 14 2003, and written by Simon McDonald – the Straw’s principal Private Secretary – to Ms Duffield says Straw has read the minutes and “agrees that you handled this very well”.
Mr Murray is understood to have told police that during Mr Straw’s time at the FCO diplomats were told to only refer to the policy on torture verbally.
Mr Murray said last night “My evidence stated that Jack Straw introduced a policy of allowing evidence obtained by torture to be used. I also told them that written evidence had been destrpyed, and we were told to not commit details into writing.”
There is a slight misquote in the above. It should say Jack Straw introduced a policy of allowing intelligence obtained by torture, not evidence. In fact it was specifically stated such intelligence would not be produced as evidence in court (people were imprisoned without charge or rendered instead). The instruction not to put things in writing was given to me personally, I don’t know if others were told the same. As I was the only one protesting, perhaps not.
These links are to the documents in question.
The first two were obtained by Freedom of Information Act request. Details of the CIA’s colllusion with the Karimiv regime’s torturers have been redacted by the FCO. Last week Jack Straw came out and argued strongly for the effective abolition of the Freedom of Information Act. Now there is a coincidence for you.
” At last the truth has entered the established narrative.”
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Nicely phrased Craig.I hope you’re proved right.
Nice couple of links Komodo. Jack Straw first complaining about being over-lawyerised and then taking advantage of free legal representation at the behest of the taxpayer.
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I see no reason why the taxpayer should fund the legal costs of someone who not only took us into an illegal war but signed off, in writing or verbally, the extradition of asylum seekers to face torture in foreign lands. Mr and Mrs Belhaj are unlikely to be the only ones. However, I should be vrey surprised if this case ever gets to court. Plea-bargaining, that great American idea of shopping a few of your friends to buy your own freedom, is becoming more and more a part of the British legal system, with all the injustice that is likely to bring.
The medical specialists who have been calling for an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly are nothing short of persistent.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30485
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The case for holding such an inquest is overwhelming and in the name of justice it cannot be ignored. In the interim can people please pressurise Dominic Grieve to resign using the epetition to his attorney general’s office? {http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/26133}
If you have a look at the “global research” link that I notice John has provided you will see what I believe to be an unarguable case for an inquest into Dr Kelly’s suspicious death. The Attorney General no doubt will be desperately hoping that few people will see it. Please spread it around. After nine years Dr Kelly deserves justice!
Look out Blair, you know what happens to straw houses when the wind blows, he will take you down with him, first for this incident in question, and then for crimes against humanity in Iraq.
Further to the competence of SIS, isn’t it extraordinary that their vetting failed to pick up what was obviously a covertly complex sexuality of the guy found dead in a locked bag. His picture shows aggressively plucked eyebrows and i am sure we would have heard by now from the women for whom 20k worth of clothes were supposedly gifts. Or is it that they knew perfectly well, but wont admit it because it will look like they keep tabs on their agents sexuality, implicitly discriminatorily?
Ruth,
That is a cover story so far as tracking money goes, no need for any of the code breaking and detective work, the friendly bankers are to be found at the end of the phone line.
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That poor bastard was murdered because he either knew too much, and or was sick and trying to leave the shitty outfit.
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Back in 80s the scientists/mathematicians/employees used to have car crashes.
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MD
Nah of course SIS did not know at all, are you fecking kidding? For some reason all the more extraordinary characters in SIS turn out to be “sexual deviants” (whatever that may mean) ever since Alan Turing SIS has been using these, and as history proves abusing these too.
Telegraph report on Gareth Williams hearing today: Body in bag spy Gareth Williams ‘hated London and wanted to leave MI6’: The spy found dead in a padlocked holdall hated the “flash car and drinking” culture of MI6 and complained of “friction” at work, his family told an inquest on Monday.
@ Komodo,
Henry Kissing said this:-
‘He reminded us that, in the entire postwar period, the security of free people everywhere has depended on America’s willingness to defend them. “If America fails in its reaction to an attack on its own territory . . . the security of the postwar world will disintegrate. ” ’
(see: http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text94_p.html)
The free world and civilization as it exists is a construct that depends on grossly unequal global development and distribution of natural resources; a financial construct that enriches the few and impoverishes the many; a design of the military-industrial complex, which is destructive in the uses human productive capacity and decimates human lives via on-going pursuit of wars. That is what he is speaking to and speaking of.
It is not that alternative global architectures are inconceivable – it is inconceivable in the mind of Dr. Kissinger to envision a world where the many are permitted to live sustainable lives in dignity, while the few remain able to survive.
The writer of the article, from which the Kissinger quotation was taken, got something right, when he expressed the foregoing thought – not as an expression of a quest of an ideal – but – rather as the observation of a reality, in terms:-
“Surely the west must seek a world in which it does not have to decide between the present feudal regime in Saudi Arabia and the fundamentalist radical opposition to it. Would not we all feel safer as well as more dignified if Tony Blair did not have to go looking for common ground with every unattractive Middle Eastern dictator? But we shall not escape from these begging missions while diplomacy is stifled by the need for oil supplies.”
He goes on to say:-
“If the US were to tax petrol sufficiently and its allies were to substitute other primary fuels for electricity generation, we could be almost home and dry.”
Therein lies the rub, because the vested interests of the oil industry give succor to pursuit of the existing energy policies than do not permit the facilitation of timely and necessary change. The global oil and energy issues are central to many existing conflagrations in the world today. I tried to explain it in this way:-
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1781
Look y’all…here’s How It Is:
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Homosexuals are most welcome because they’re blackmailable.The SIS is full of deranged delinquent S+M freaks whose cruelty is blackmailable too-or usable for torture purposes. All our political leaders are probably groomed from primary school age for “shaping” or blackmailability.Straw,Blair,et al,have been groomed from birth or a very young age.
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Never mind Gareth William’s sisters claim of a culture of flash sports cars and booze.The Spooks are populated by third-raters dumb enough to serve they not what,yet fearful if they speak out.Cowards,basically.It’s still all blackmailability.
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Torture is endemic now-as is total incompotence.
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Very bad things have been happening in the name of,ahem,Freedom and Democracy.The Met,The Spooks,News International and NuLabour are the tip of a very large and sinister iceberg-loop of lies,blackmail,co-ercion,torture,propaganda and general grift.
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Over and out.
Hey! Brian Haw people! I clicked on Mary’s story link (no picture) above and saw this:
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Can you tell me if the man sitting in this picture (http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-12-28/news/17943088_1_umar-farouk-abdulmutallab-student-at-university-college-nigerian) with Undiebomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s class in 2001 is Brian? It must be! He’s holding a sign that says “Stop Killing Kids 26– Siege Day IL –” (I can’t read it all — “as long as it takes”?) and Umar is kneeling beside him and pointing to the sign. (The headline sounds ominous — “…flight 253 terrorist, openly supported Taliban” — but the story tells a different side: “The teacher recalled a class trip to Buckingham Palace in 2001 when Abdulmutallab, now 23, was still his student. The boy had about $80 to spend on souvenirs, but opted instead to give the money to an orphanage.”)
Thoughtful piece in the Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-gaddafi-the-uk-and-the-truth-we-must-be-told-7669084.html
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A timely reminder that the problem is institutional, and not restricted to Straw.
Used to be, Amnesty International only deplored the secretive and brutal regimes in the far country of Foreign. Something of a shock to see the UK on their shitlist:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/libyan-rendition-case-shows-it-s-time-uk-come-clean-2012-04-18
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But sadly appropriate.
More of Mr Straw’s extraordinary flexibility is hinted at here:
{http://www.metro.co.uk/news/550325-straw-is-told-to-ditch-the-snoop-law-on-personal-data}
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He eventually bowed to the pressure, and removed the data-sharing clause, but why did he put it in in the first place? Surely he was against the dissemination of personal information?
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http://www.blackburncitizen.co.uk/news/9471657.Jack_Straw_calls_for_complete_reform_of_motor_insurance_industry/
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Maybe they raised his premium?
What most people have seen on the Belhaj incident has been filtered through the MSM. Belhaj’s, his wife’s, al-Saadi’s, and al-Saadi’s family’s experiences are described less forgivingly here:
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http://www.reprieve.org.uk/cases/abdelhakimbelhadj/
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Belhaj and al-Saadi were in opposition to a “statesmanlike and courageous” leader, it must be remembered –
{http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-589735.html}
And one whom Straw has, with unusual consistency, refrained from criticising.
Take, say, the right of asylum, political asylum. Who accepts that? That’s, I think, Article 9. Take a look at what happens. Take, say, Jack Straw. In the year 2000, as Home Secretary and in that capacity he had to approve asylum requests. Well one of them – this was actually published in the British press and I didn’t think the government would be able to survive, but it passed very quietly – in 2000 there was a request from an Iraqi who had somehow escaped an Iraqi torture chamber and made it to England. He was applying for political asylum.
Straw turned him down with a letter saying “we have faith in the integrity of the Iraqi judicial process and that you should have no concerns if you haven’t done anything wrong “. In 2000!
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Noam Chomsky. From very lucid interview, well worth reading in full, here:
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20060121.htm
Well interesting, but at the same time nothing new for the most of the readers on this blog, I guess. It was long clear that MI5,6 is widely accepting information obtained under torture and assisted infamous rendition enterprise. It is just a matter of numbers on how many ‘one man’s terrorists’ were passed to various tyrants for keeping ‘axis of evil’ tale alive. It is no secret that Karimov and him alike personally have greatly benefited (and is continuing to benefit) from this tale.
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I bid that no Straw, no Blair, no Bush and no one at all will be charged with breaking international and Human Rights laws. If you ask why, I say it is because otherwise whole neo-colonial system will be undermined.
If you have the patience, this is illustrative of Straw’s sinister ability to face both ways at once. If you don’t, sorry.
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SIR RODERIC LYNE: I wonder if I could just try to clarify
24 this. Isn’t the point that Sir Michael was making that
25 you had taken a position with Vice-President Cheney, in
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1 saying that we would be okay if we tried and failed a la
2 Kosovo, that, at that time, was not the government’s
3 position because the Attorney General had not changed
4 his view at that time, and so you were actually
5 misrepresenting the government’s position to
6 Vice-President Cheney? Surely he was right to point
7 that out to you?
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/49448/20100802-straw-final.pdf
Mary
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Mikhail Chernoy is one of the most influential figures in the Post Soviet quasi criminal circles. He and his 2 brothers were the first one who started benefiting from Perestroika by laundering criminal capital and investing it into developing ‘legitimate’ businesses. Their connections go far beyond Post Soviet world. They have god relationships with Reuben brothers who are considered to be one of the richest and most influential in Britain.
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Here are few interesting facts about Mikhail Chernoy http://rumafia.com/person.php?id=189
Over to order-order.com for JS point raised on the death of the MI6 officer in the current news
http://order-order.com/2012/04/24/secretary-of-state-spook-connection/
Komodo, thanks for the link to the interview of Chomsky. Excellent other links, too. Yes, the problems are systemic. If it hadn’t been Straw, the system would just have used someone else.
Komodo, I encourage you to edit Wikipedia. You do excellent digging here, but Wikipedia would give your work better long-term exposure. Comments on a blog receive less exposure as time passes. You wouldn’t have the same freedom at Wikipedia, but you would make an excellent editor because you’re so good at citing reliable sources. I’m certain that you could greatly expand and improve this, for instance:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Straw#Rendition_and_torture_allegations
MD,
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The SIS positive vetting process has a certain ‘risk management’ element that tries to establish any aspect that might render an applicant susceptible to bribery, baiting, inducement for information, allurement or seducement. Interestingly the initial SIS interview considers one’s ability to deceive, fool, hoodwink or lie out of a potentially compromising situation. Persuasion, sweet-talk, winning over and wheedling are considered valuable assets.
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Gareth Williams death sent a ‘chill’ round lower level SIS operatives and communications engineers.
James Rupert Jacob Murdoch still knows nothing about anything to do with phone hacking.
More interesting are the details of his meetings with Cameron at the George Club and at dinner at Rebekah’s home. Also meetings with Osborne and communications between Hunt, Hunt’s SPAD and Frederic Michel, News Corp’s ‘head of public affairs’. See the end of Legal Settlements and below Tiny Conversation.
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If the phone hacking story had not broken, the BSkyB bid would be all done and dusted by now.
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Leveson Inquiry: James Murdoch ‘stands by’ email testimony
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17821507
O/T Highly recommended
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People Will Die’ – The End Of The NHS. Part 1: The Corporate Assault
http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=676:people-will-die-the-end-of-the-nhs-part-1-the-corporate-assault-&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69
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Few political acts have exposed the sham of British ‘democracy’ like the decision to dismantle the National Health Service. In essence, the issues are simple:
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1. The longstanding obligation of the UK government to provide universal health care has now been ditched.
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2. The NHS is being carved open for exploitation by private interests.
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The media, notably the BBC – often ranked alongside the NHS as one of the country’s greatest institutions – have failed to report this corporate assault on the country’s health service.
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What is deeply disturbing is how little the British public has been told about what has happened, and about the likely consequences for an institution we all hold dear.
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I agree Mary, deeply disturbing. My NHS – RIP has largely been ignored on Facebook and other social media sites. Equivocation is no answer to government stonewalling where health is concerned.
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Agent Cameron introduced a bill that will do “irreparable harm to the NHS, to individual patients and to society as a whole.” – Not my words, but of more than 700 senior doctors and public health experts.
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When it’s gone… it’s gone…
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http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/healthandsocialcare.html
Mark G. could this have been more than just an issue?, was it an exercise in keeping control over the footfolk? making sure the reigns are attached and working?
More on *unt, Frederic Michel, Murdoch and Cameron
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http://infomag.nl/nieuws_item/2012/04/24/hackgate-day-469-james-murdoch-admits-cameron-misled-parliament-secretary-hunt-was-enthusiastic-facilitator-of-newscorps-bskyb-bid/
One criminal praises another
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24 April 2012
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Tony Blair’s star turn in Kazakhstan video
Mr Blair invited President Nazarbayev to Downing Street when he was PM
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Former British PM Tony Blair has appeared in a promotional video for Kazakhstan praising “progress” in the former Soviet state.
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In heavily edited clips from a TV interview he talks about the country’s “extraordinary economic potential”.
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Mr Blair has been advising President Nursultan Nazarbayev on political reform and economic development.
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But human rights campaigners say the video presents a “sanitised image of this repressive country”.
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The country has been criticised over clashes in December between police and striking oil workers in which at least 14 people died.
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This week the New York-based campaign group Human Rights Watch said the country should suspend the trial of other oil workers who took part, who have claimed they were tortured.
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The hour-long video, titled “In the stirrups of time” by Kazakh satellite channel Caspionet, features photos and video of the president and the country and clips of interviews with international business figures and Kazakh ministers.
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It also features several clips of an interview with Mr Blair recorded last November, conducted as the country geared up for the 20th anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17827773
Hunt will appear before the Leveson Inquiry. Should be interesting.
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http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=49181&c=1
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The communications between News Corp and the DCMS ref the BSkyB bid have been published.
{http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/?day=2012-04-24}