The Respectability of Torture
St Mary’s University College, Thurs 1st August, 7.30pm
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was a whistleblower who was removed from his ambassadorial post by Tony Blair for exposing the Tashkent regime‟s use of rape and systematic torture, including the boiling to death of political opponents. He has also spoken out against Central Asia‟s appalling dictatorships, regimes which are allies of the West, involved in torture and rendition, and was accused of threatening MI6‟s relationship with the CIA. Now a human rights activist, author and broadcaster, he outlines the dynamics of torture and the hypocrisy of incriminated Western governments.
My first public appearance for a while will be in Belfast on 1 August where I shall be giving a talk. Long term readers of this blog will recall that, while my focus is largely on international affairs, the domestic political achievements I most hope to see are a united Ireland and an independent Scotland.
@ Pykrete
I think it was R D Laing.
Do you agree with that idea of his?
” I wonder why you didn’t.”
Gee. I hope you don’t lose any sleep over it.(snort !)
Just to be crystal clear, the excerpt was taken from here http://www.release.org.uk/sites/release.org.uk/files/pdf/publications/Release%20-%20Race%20Disparity%20Report%202013_0.pdf
I know how important accuracy is to the likes of yourself. I just thought you might actually want to read the links provided before you pronounce judgement, oh so thoughtfully.
So, accuracy is a second language for you, after all?
You really are a careless, pull it out your arse kind of troll. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
thanks for bringing some sense to this, Chris Jones.
Even barristers and other learned guff, as I read someone fart, have yet to realise that EU legal rights and seniority of courts is such that EU law over-arches, a nice term, British law.
Now some politicians in Germany are contemplating more privatisation and Merkel is one of them. I hope that the German newspapers highlight the bad value for money deals struck by councils and I challenge you all to investigate and itemise your local councils figures for the last three years and longer.
We have done so in Norfolk. We found PFI used for small and medium sized projects, when it was explicit to be only used for major projects. That is the reality and I bet there is more to be found behind that new reality and in the garden of it, not to talk about the shed, or cellar, this new reality wants to be everywhere.
This is to say, should anybody prefer/want to cut of their economy/nose from a 380 billion revenue market and rising, whilst paying some 9 billion into this market, you know like these UKIP candidates falling over themselves trying to make out that they are not interested in Europe, but fight each other to the teeth to become a EU candidate next year, two faced gits the lot of them.
Party political leeches who hang on strings making jerky, note not …king, motions to underline their lack of public consent or mandate.
Not any of the parties speaks the truth, they are in fact so much part of Europe, that parting could become economically painful.
Ms Merkel, Koennen Sie hoeren? Renegotiating the future of the EU should include Britain, not copy every damn PFI/PPI mistake they’d made. Zero hour contracts in Buckingham palace? MP’s should be on zero hour contracts and their nuts/nibs cut off for sleaze, they are falling over themselves trying to be the hardest but fail to see further than their own horizon.
Europe could become a not so free anymore market, if most agree, or have their arms bent that way, as it is usual in the Commission, that unelected ilk who should be root and branch reformed, just as the rest of the travelling gypsies.
Indications are that the ways old allegiances who have lied to each other for decades, for show, will now have to realise a new reality.
Truth will come out!
ATOMIC SECRET:
I have a ‘special relationship’ or personal love for the American people within whose community I have lived. Interestingly there exists a contrasting and formal ‘special relationship’ between the United States of America and Britain which is called: The US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA).
http://web.archive.org/web/20061130073554/http://www.basicint.org/nuclear/MDA.pdf
This agreement has been abridged according to Lord Astor of Hever who said, “My Lords, following on from the Minister’s reply, the confidential intelligence contents of the MDA have never been disclosed to Parliament.[Hansard]
With Iran’s membership of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in mind and awareness and leakage of the so called ‘confidential intelligence’ partitioned from the MDA, it then becomes self-evident, if we assume and expect, the NPT, which is the fundamental international legal instrument covering nuclear weapons, takes precedence over the MDA under international law that the MDA is internationally unlawful.
The MDA is directed towards “improving the UK’s state of training and operational readiness and atomic weapon design, development and fabrication capability” and confidential information assumes the transfer of military grade uranium and plutonium.
Article I of the NPT forbids the transfer of nuclear weapons or devices, and Article VI of the NPT requires all parties to pursue nuclear disarmament.
According to International law we judge the MDA illegal, prosecutable and taboo while any amendment to the MDA in breach of the provisions and understanding contained in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons signed and bound on 189 countries.
The Swines yesterday released a foto of Bradley dressed as a woman wearing a blonde wig, despicable shits
And away from all the whitewashing of international Law violations –
Bradley like every soldier was Duty bound to reveal war crimes
Wrt “Collateral Murder” video, that incident
constitutes three separate war crimes.
(1)
Article 85 of the First Protocol to the Geneva Conventions describes making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack as a grave breach. The firing on and killing of civilians shown in the “Collateral Murder” video violated this provision of Geneva.
(2)
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions requires that the wounded be collected and cared for. Article 17 of the First Protocol states that the civilian population “shall be permitted, even on their own initiative, to collect and care for the wounded.” That article also says, “No one shall be harmed . . . for such humanitarian acts.” The firing on rescuers portrayed in the “Collateral Murder” video violates these provisions of Geneva.
(3)
Section 27-10 of the Army Field Manual states that “maltreatment of dead bodies” is a war crime. When the Army jeep drove over the dead body, it violated this provision.
Bradley fulfilled his legal duty to report war crimes. He complied with his legal duty to obey lawful orders but also his legal duty to disobey unlawful orders.
Section 499 of the Army Field Manual states, “Every violation of the law of war is a war crime.” The law of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions.
Enshrined in the US Army Subject Schedule No. 27-1 is “the obligation to report all violations of the law of war.” At his guilty plea hearing, Manning explained that he had gone to his chain of command and asked them to investigate the “Collateral Murder” video and other “war porn,” but his superiors refused. “I was disturbed by the response to injured children,” Manning stated. He was also bothered by the soldiers depicted in the video who “seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as ‘dead bastards.’ ”
The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth the duty of a service member to obey lawful orders. But that duty includes the concomitant duty to disobey unlawful orders. An order not to reveal classified information that contains evidence of war crimes would be an unlawful order. Manning had a legal duty to reveal the commission of war crimes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/bradley-mannings-legal-du_b_3390416.html
Well said Brian – totally agree; hat tip – respect Bruv.
Thank you Mark, great post by yourself there too. on MDA, and NPT, i believe it was Bush and Blair that Started Ripping up the NPT, and a Whole hoard of other international laws.
Bush clan were in it all along, but i think Bliar became by far the more evil,
And whilst on Bliar
Tech @ 3;51 LOL
Uncle Sam to sell “Seeds of Democracy” to Saudi Arabia.
http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/news/?id=4350
Brian Fujisan 12.24am,
Spot on Brian.
Thanks.
@ BrianFujisan 23 Aug, 2013 – 12:24 am
“The Swines yesterday released a foto of Bradley dressed as a woman wearing a blonde wig, despicable shits”
It was the prosecution who introduced the pic, and I think (but am not certain) similar pic(s) provided by Manning were on the web prior to the trial. It wasn’t a secret.
I read the readers’ comments (it’s a dirty job, etc.) and while there never was as much support for Manning as for Snowden, it hasn’t evaporated. Many are of the opinion it’s cool if she wants a sex change, but taxpayers should not bear the cost. Plus expected comments confusing gay, transgendered and mental illness. Best one: “He should have got the sex change done before he was due to be sentenced. As a pretty blonde, he would have got two years tops.”
Back to the DM’s soft-porn sidebar of celeb pics. Later.
After fooling the whole world on 911, they think we are all stupid now. The UN chemical inspection team has just arrived in Damascus two days before, and so Assad nerve gases 1300 people approximately 45 minutes away in the Damascus suburbs?!! WTF! Honestly only people who have blatantly fooled us before would think we are all so stupid to buy it, ITS DEFINITELY AN ISRAELI FALSE FLAG !!
Oh dear! Instead of reading about the old warmonger, he should have been picking up the latest report on the higher incidence of melanoma in the male of the species.
A cartoonist’s delight. Red Dave.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2400451/Awkward-moment-Cameron-struggles-shorts-crowded-beach.html
Warning. Discretion advised. Some of the photos may be found upsetting.
Comment on the action of the US in Sofia’s link is beyond words. The evil around us has never been greater.
US Export of Cluster Bombs to Saudi Arabia at Odds with International Ban Treaty
2013-08-22
The announcement this week that the U.S. has agreed to supply cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia is at odds with the international treaty banning these weapons, said the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) today. Neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the production, transfer, use, and stockpiling of cluster munitions.
Exclusive: UK’s secret Middle East internet surveillance base revealed in Edward Snowden leaks
Data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn web project still being assembled by GCHQ
Duncan Campbell , Oliver Wright , James Cusick , Kim Sengupta
Friday 23 August 2013
Comments on the article say that this is not news and that it is well known that GCHQ have a station on Cyprus.
Re “Seeds of Democracy to Suadi Despots.
The figures involved (Textron Defense Systems, Wilmington, Mass., has been awarded a $640,786,442 contract for these bombs) almost defy the imagination.
In May the US joined in the condemnation by the UN General Assembly of the use of these same munitions by it’s officially designated bad guys.
https://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2013/ga11372.doc.htm
Meanwhile nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnam war, Laos is still contaminated with 80 million unexploded bomblets, biding their time, waiting for the child who will have her legs blown off.
La vita non è così bella
Let’s not forget, while the hyper-power devotes the brains of it’s best to devising better ways of blowing people apart, it’s Us infrastructure crumbles through neglect, it’s major cities slide into bankruptcy and all my attempts to open articles about the 1.6+ billion rounds of ammo ordered by Homeland Security are met with 404s! (Can anyone help me on this one?)
Success! I found one that opened!
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_22594279/homeland-security-aims-buy-…
@Chris Jones
You do have some strange ideas. There is no right to sovereignty, I don’t believe there is even a legal definition of what it is. The only thing which makes a territory a sovereign state is that other states recognise it as such, if you wish Wales to be a sovereign state then all you have to do is persuade a few other countries to recognise it.
Pepe Escobar on the cluster bomb treaty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnB2wbAEDRo 3mins and to the point
We say ‘No child shall be harmed’ and still the gangsters-in-charge carry on.
Jesus wept,
Links to the Daily Mail’s coverage of Daves hols.
Are things that bad around here?
Flaming June at 8.05 a.m. With the exception of Israel, perhaps, the United States of America defies international law more than any other country to pursue its Zionist-led and evil attempt at world domination.
BrianFujisan,
Out of interest, do we know it as a fact that US authorities released the Chelsea photo? I rather saw it in a different light to you. My guess was that this is something that Manning has been going through psychologically for some time, but that it was recommended by her legal team that any announcement wait until after the verdict. Once the decision to announce the gender change was made, Manning’s team released the photograph to the media with her permission.
I agree that there will always be sections of Western thought that will homo/transphobic, and that’s sad indeed. But, I’m optimistic that times are changing, and it should be noted that the medical and scientific community acknowledge the existence of gender dysphoria (and have done for some time – this isn’t even that new). I think incarceration will be very hard for Chelsea – I don’t doubt that – but that the photo may garner sympathy rather than pushing it away.
‘Zionist-led evil attempt at world domination.’
😆
The usual suspects still turning out the same old tired nonsense.
Yes, the big GCHQ spy base which the Independent are too chickenshit to name is the Ayios Nikolaos Station in Cyprus.
Half of its costs are paid for by the NSA.
The other main GCHQ base outside Britain is on Ascension Island.
The fact that the NSA listen in to all of the world’s email, web, phone, and computer traffic, and that Google, Microsoft, Intel, Vodafone, BT, etc. help them until they are blue in the face, isn’t news either.
All Irish phone traffic used to be listened into using a suitcase-sized bit of technology in the US embassy in Dublin.
3% of the land area of Cyprus is under British military control and British sovereignty. Some decolonisation, eh? But then, decolonisation generally was a sham.
@ Sofia Kibo Noh 23 Aug, 2013 – 9:32 am
“Let’s not forget, while the hyper-power devotes the brains of it’s best to devising better ways of blowing people apart, it’s Us infrastructure crumbles through neglect, it’s major cities slide into bankruptcy and all my attempts to open articles about the 1.6+ billion rounds of ammo ordered by Homeland Security are met with 404s! (Can anyone help me on this one?) Success! I found one that opened!”
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_22594279/homeland-security-aims-buy-…
Seeing as the authorities in Boston, by their own initial reports, expended 200 rounds in “fierce gun-battles” in each of two encounters with the alleged Boston bombers — the first in which the alleged bombers had one handgun between them (plus some bombs with lighted fuses they were allegedly flinging about) and the second in which the remaining alleged bomber had zero guns — 1.6 billion rounds may not be considered excessive.
Typically, when police encounter armed or thought-to-be-armed suspects who do not carefully follow instructions, 9 to 130 rounds (depending on how many officers are present) may be used.
A Swedish gun-maker said that around the time of WWII, snipers used 3 rounds per kill on average, while combat troops in battle used on average some improbably high number of rounds per kill — something on the order of 10,000 or 16,000 rounds.
CE, more mobile phone posting? You’re quite welcome to actually engage with posters you disagree with – and would that not be more productive? Persuade whoever it is of whatever your own view is.
seconded Jon.
@ FJ. Far from Cameron turning red inside as well, his skin colour could mean that the condom was a little too tight for his size.
Should he have taken it off? was it the friction?
@Fred – That and a myriad of international law which defines and promotes the rights of countries, the sovereignity of states and the right to protect it and for it not be taken away through unconstitutional or undemocratic ways. At least you’ve slightly modernised your take on modern nationhood without resorting to medival notions of nationality