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.
my god you think you’re C, D and X, don’t you
“I told you all that there seemed to be something not quite kosher about “James Mason”, didn’t I?”
Now this is right from the top of the bucket,cream/scum, choose
… so you told us so? must have been a post I skimmed over. So what does this mean? you told us so?
How daft do you think people are on this blog? do you think we need your guidance? you silly buffoon, such school masterly allures have no place here, try the fringe, if you’d ever dare.
For all I care you are JM, creating SFA,must be like stroking yourself.
Ben,
from earlier posts, right now Craig is apparently here http://dounetherabbithole.co.uk/
So we got habby caught sock-puppeting again, someone spoofing FJ’s handle to post on a Nazi site and habby then telling this new hasbara nut to feck aff cos it’s her patch.
Why all this cloak and dagger nonsense.
What’s habby got to hide.
Perhaps it’s all just falling apart…
Interesting stuff there, Ben. The global game seems to be under pressure as well.
Mark @ 2;31
Yes i have been keeping an eye on what the Russians are doing,
They Know Damn well who is behind the chemical attaks.
Aleksandr Lukashevich, said in a statement.
“We’re getting more new evidence that this criminal act was of a provocative nature,” he stressed. “In particular, there are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack. Thus, it was a pre-planned action.”
Looks like the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal was too good an entity too last against it’s enemies…Crying Shame
KUALA LUMPUR – Anyone with the chutzpah to accuse Israel of genocide is going to bring on a preemptive strike. That is as guaranteed as cream cheese on a bagel.
The word “genocide” is loaded, since many and probably most Jews believe themselves to have a monopoly on the term. Most often cited in reference to the Holocaust, the G word elicits an intense emotional reaction. “War crimes” is an acceptable term in international parlance, for even Israel’s most vociferous citizens grudgingly admit to instances of unrestrained violence against Palestinians.
“Genocide”, however, is in a class by itself, being the thermonuclear bomb of moral outrage. How dare supporters of Palestinian rights charge the Mideast ’s “only democratic society” with systematic annihilation prompted by racial intolerance, economic greed, cultural chauvinism and religious bigotry?
Suspicion Mars Proceedings
The organizers of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal have brought on just such woe onto themselves by summoning a panel of international judges to rule on whether Israeli is guilty of genocide ever since its national birth in 1948.
Unfortunately, and to their eternal shame, many pro-Israeli legal professionals are not up to ethical par, as was shown in a major investigation at The Hague during the mid-1990s. I served as one of a handful of reporters on the case involving a weapons-loaded El Al cargo jet that crashed into an apartment building in Biljmeer district of Amsterdam, killing residents in an intense fire and harming emergency crews with toxic releases. The legal case was criminally undermined by massive amounts of Israeli bribery of witnesses (guised as unofficial out-of-court settlements), interference by the Israeli security team at Schipol Airport and the eventual silencing of the Dutch team that investigated the air traffic maneuvers of the plane.
That Israeli-subverted case never got to trial in The Hague , and I cannot but now fear that the same fate could await the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal.
There are undoubtedly external factors aligned against the tribunal, other than the Israeli opposition to an undesirable verdict on Palestinian rights. Google, which cooperates with Israeli interests, posted warning signs on the website of the Kuala Lumpur foundation in its earlier tribunal hearings against the U.S. government for the illegal war on Iraq .
Closer to home, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have actively promoted protests, similar to their Arab Spring sponsorship, to weaken the Malaysia government. Under the White House strategic pivot to Asia policy and the Pentagon’s Air-Sea Battle Concept, Malaysia is perceived as a potential foe of American geopolitical intervention. Is the pressure on from Tel Aviv and Washington to crack the Kuala Lumpur tribunal?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/genocide-tribunal-against-israel-fails-palestinian-victims/5346841
AA; Been listening to the invites with some envy, but the days of fighting crowds and merchandising frenzy are behind me. I am quite the homebody these days.
I was part of the 1st Doune the rabbit hole, at the exact place were the Jacobite rebellion was planned, you could feel the historic relation, with the river gurgling past.
Today this little river will be gauging, sending the stones tumblin’, rather.
Doune the rabbit hole this year is wet again, they’ll all be staying in their burrows/bar, it will be full to the brim…;)
Herbie; Any thoughts on the Cannonfire link?
Ben
Joe Cannon says:
I heard on the grapevine that some journalists not immediately involved have seen the data. Worthless anecdotal hearsay of course, but just maybe it’s out in the wild more than we imagine.
Interesting account of how the US used a false flag bomb as pretext in Sarajevo, and comparisons with Syria:
“On Aug. 31, 1995, Jean Daniel, then Editor of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, wrote an article titled “No more lies about Bosnia”. In the article, Daniel recounted an exchange he had just had with French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur about the NATO air campaign and the motivations for it. “They [the Muslims] have committed this carnage on their own people?” Daniel asked. “Yes,” confirmed Balladur without hesitation, “but at least they forced NATO to intervene.””
http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/08/22/sarajevo-1995-and-damascus-2013-the-use-of-mass-attack-deception-to-decide-wars/
Phil; That’s what I was thinking. Hide in plain sight. There could be those programmer back-doors where the juicy stuff resides.
But i found the Israeli wheel-hub interesting.
What aspect of it, Ben
Seems a fair assessment.
“Seems a fair assessment.”
Joe is a bit cryptic sometimes requiring a reading between the lines. Do you get that he suspects Snowden has deliberately left out that Israeli connection?
Actually, for context, Herbie…a June ’13 piece.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2013/06/sick-think-and-ed-snowden.html
NR wrote, “After I followed him and then later peeked at StormFront, Twitter consistently presented me with three suggestions to follow. Two were always StormFront related; usually swastikas or a pic of Adolf himself. The third choice was often a black pop singer or rapper.”
Jon mentioned about deleting the SF cookie, which is good advice, but you should also delete the set of google cookies (about 6 of them) which appear nearly everywhere you go. Get rid of them – and the Facebook (“facebook” + “fbcdn.net”) cookies – at a minimum. Delete them before you visit SF, before you leave, and after you leave.
There are some seriously whacked out people there, it is true, but you can find stuff just as bad on a heck of a lot of sites. It’s rather disheartening, to be honest, to realise the mass of ignorance, racism, and hate-filled trash-talk that is just tolerated and expected as fair comment.
“Do you get that he suspects Snowden has deliberately left out that Israeli connection?”
I thought the idea there was that admitting to having those docs was an offense and Snowden was presenting himself as a public interest whistleblower alerting US citizens to unconstitutional or criminal acts carried out by US govt.
Also Mark, and Herbie
Exellent Piece in Washintonsblog. com
Preliminary Evidence Indicates that the Syrian Government Did NOT Launch a Chemical Weapon Attack Against Its People
Russia, which has previously said it has proof of chemical weapons use by the rebels, expressed deep scepticism about the opposition’s claims.
check this out too Mark, there are lots of very valuable input from western chemical experts in the Piece –
Chemical and biological weapons researcher Jean Pascal Zanders said that the footage appears to show victims of asphyxiation, which is not consistent with the use of mustard gas or the nerve agents VX or sarin:
I’m deliberately not using the term chemical weapons here,” he said, adding that the use of “industrial toxicants” was a more likely explanation.
Michael Rivero asks:
1. Why would Syria’s Assad invite United Nations chemical weapons inspectors to Syria, then launch a chemical weapons attack against women and children on the very day they arrive, just miles from where they are staying?
2. If Assad were going to use chemical weapons, wouldn’t he use them against the hired mercenary army trying to oust him? What does he gain attacking women and children? Nothing! The gain is all on the side of the US Government desperate to get the war agenda going again.
As I type these words, US trained and equipped forces are already across the border into Syria, and US naval forces are sailing into position to launch a massive cruise missile attack into Syria that will surely kill more Syrians than were claimed to have died in the chemical attack.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/08/is-u-s-launching-a-war-in-syria-to-distract-from-spying-and-other-scandals.html
Experts doubt “evidence” of chemical attack.
I wonder what Dr David Kelly would have said…
“”At the moment, I am not totally convinced because the people that are helping them are without any protective clothing and without any respirators,” said Paula Vanninen, director of Verifin, the Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
“In a real case, they would also be contaminated and would also be having symptoms.”
John Hart, head of the Chemical and Biological Security Project at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said he had not seen the telltale evidence in the eyes of the victims that would be compelling evidence of chemical weapons use.
“Of the videos that I’ve seen for the last few hours, none of them show pinpoint pupils… this would indicate exposure to organophosphorus nerve agents,” he said.
Gwyn Winfield, editor of CBRNe World magazine, which specialises in chemical weapons issues, said the evidence did not suggest that the chemicals used were of the weapons-grade that the Syrian army possesses in its stockpiles.
“We’re not seeing reports that doctors and nurses… are becoming fatalities, so that would suggest that the toxicity of it isn’t what we would consider military sarin. It may well be that it is a lower-grade,” Winfield told AFP.”
http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/RestOfAsia/Syria-over-1-300-massacred-in-chemical-attack-by-army/Article1-1110869.aspx
Technicolour. 1 21pm
“… I do love a bit of Voltaire. He fought for justice and the rights of people, as well as being a master of the pithy reality.”
Yes, people like this give the lie to the notion that “by the standards of the time” monsterous deeds were acceptable. I wonder if future generations will believe that “by the standards of our time” the behaviour of the Hyperpower and it’s henchmen was acceptable. I hope not.
…….
Seems like Flaming June just can’t win with some illustrious posters. Given her output to date, only an idiot (sorry Dad and Res Di**, but that’s the politest I could manage) would think she had a secret life as a raving white supremacist. The same goes for the slurs recently dumped on John Goss.
Driving people from their homes and terrorising them for the next sixty years is not a necessary component of Jewishness, just as anti-semitism never was a necessary component of witnessing and resisting Zionism. It seems to me it takes a specially perverse kind of mind to suggest otherwise.
Jfjfp and plenty more humane and courageous Jewish people illustrate this point every day but are ignored or vilified.
…..
I’ll leave the last word to Voltaire,
“Je n’ai sous très peu jamais fait mais une prière à Dieu, celui : Le « seigneur d’O, rendent mes ennemis ridicules. » Et Dieu l’a accordé.”
Latest article from Julian Assange, further exploring the relationship between Google and US govt:
“It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.”
http://thestringer.com.au/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding-the-shit-bag-now/
Sorry non francophones, that one does’nt translate well literally. It goes something like this,
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
Voltaire
@ Herbie
“So we got habby caught sock-puppeting again, someone spoofing FJ’s handle to post on a Nazi site and habby then telling this new hasbara nut to feck aff cos it’s her patch”
_____________________
Nice theory, Herbie, but I’d remind you that it wasn’t me who found that “Flaming June” post on the Stormfront website.
For all I know, you might be the spoofer, you’re certainly stupid enough.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2013/08/24/nr-sot-syria-chemical-weapons-allegations.cnn
CNN reporting Syrian claim that rebels used chemical weapons.
@ All
What a feast!
Great links, info, insights, internet hygene tips, banter and unintentional buffonery.
Who could ask for anything more?
And thanks Jon for attempting the impossible.
This thread is stopping me doing stuff I really need to deal with. Must go.
@ Nevermind, who bellows as follows :
“… so you told us so? must have been a post I skimmed over. So what does this mean? you told us so?”
_________________
Well, you should always read my posts and never just skim over them. Here’s what I told you on 23 August at 23h04):
“The comment from “James Mason” (22h34) makes me a little suspicious.
Such keen insights from someone brand new and who’s just looked backwards at a couple of pages on this thread? It’s a little too pat, isn’t it.
My wholly unworthy thought is that this might just be a sock-puppet, the aim of whose post is to “present” the offended reaction of a new and neutral reader and so to spur you into greater censorship efforts….”
And now be silent for a while!
RD wrote
Did I? when?
“As I type these words, US trained and equipped forces are already across the border into Syria, and US naval forces are sailing into position to launch a massive cruise missile attack into Syria…”
_______________
“As I type these words,..” – how awfully portentious. But never mind.
Anyway, let’s wait and see what happens. I shall remind you of your confident assertion at the appropriate moment.
“Craig; Where are you, dude?” Ben Franklin, earlier today.
Craig is ‘doune the rabbit hole’, somewhere in rural Scotland, purveying assorted beverages and stargazing, with Thomas de Quincy, a walrus and a large white rabbit in tow.
“Oh no, that can’t be right,” said Alice, “that can’t be right at all. It is I whom am the walrus!”
Re: J.Mason – he might indeed have felt we weren’t up to the job, or it could be (given what little record of his posting pattern is available) that he only posts between 22:34 & 00:21 hours. It’s also a bank holiday weekend, so anyone could be forgiven for doing something better with their time than posting here.
Tell ya what, habby.
I’m not stupid enough to get caught sock puppeting even once.
You got caught twice!!
Nor am I stupid enough to believe the fairy tales of elite interests.
You fall for them every time!!
Despite Jon and Craig’s insistence that you be allowed annoy everyone here, your only contribution seems to be losing arguments, running away from questions and generally making an absolute tit of yourself.
Perhaps Jon and Craig only allow you here as comic relief, and target practice for the rest of us.
Since we have had a visit from ‘James Mason’, perhaps we also should invite ‘Richard Burton’ to contribute. He could do that low, growling voice to which I used to love listening. Passion, perpetually on the point of becoming explosive.
Sofia, yes indeed, some excellent comment and links on this part of this very long (but nowhere near as long as the ‘Al Hilli’!) thread. Travelling down this thread – and actually the cybe-world in general – is like going on a mythical journey into the labyrinth, with various tasks and labours and monsters and sirens and phantoms of the night… But who is Theseus, and who, the Minotaur?
What I need is a large ball of golden string… and Ariadne.