Can I just say how pleasant it is to be vindicated ten years after being sacked by Jack Straw for opposing the torture and extraordinary rendition programme – which Blair and Straw claimed I was inventing.
Off to hustings meeting in Larbert so considered post on this tomorrow.
It is good to see the USA trying to live up to its ideals.
John was last seen posing naked with blondes.
Now, how do we go about getting Bliar & co. in the dock – is an e-petition the way forward?
Nope. Didn’t get him booted out of the Quartet job – neither a petition nor his ostentatious approval of everything the IDF has done to Gaza managed that. The e-petition to stop him writing or saying anything ever again didn’t work either.
He’s too important and busy to attend Parliamentary committee enquiries –
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/tony-blair-on-the-run-from-commons-inquiry-claims-paisley-30815657.html
Mr Blair said last month that because of commitments in the Middle East it would be “challenging” for him to give evidence in person.
However, the committee has recently offered him a chance to appear by video-link from anywhere in the world.
A spokeswoman for Mr Blair has said that he will respond shortly to the committee’s offer.
… the world waits with bated breath…
Blair’s commitments in the ME include ‘advising’ Egypt’s Sisi on obtaining money from outside agencies with no questions asked. Sisi is now cracking down on gays, to add to his substantial human rights record.
It was bad before –
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/27/egypt-targets-gays.html
Worse than the Muslim Brotherhood? Yes. But Blair’s new friend is not content with that:
https://amrkhalipha.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/sisis-new-gun-homophobia/
Tony/Miranda may have to be rather careful on his next visit to Cairo.
And this probably won’t work either.
http://witnessiraq.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/12.05.14.Correspondence.Comar-FINAL.pdf
But I think enforcing the law is the way to go.
I’m still waiting to be vindicated twenty five years after being sacked by foreign secretary John Major for criticising PM Margaret Thatcher and accusing apartheid South Africa of targeting and killing UN Assistant Secretary-General Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103.
(https://wikispooks.com/wiki/The_How,_Why_and_Who_of_Pan_Am_Flight_103)
[craigmurray.org.uk – this comment was delayed in the Spam filter]
Looks like the Torture report blames the CIA. US media are following this line. (Herbie @09.15pm)
Spot on Herbie- and HRW are also in lockstep with the US media (no surprise there)-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30407950
However the UN Special Rapporteur, to his credit, would prefer that senior members of the Bush administration be put under similar scrutiny- and as Herbie’s links demonstrate, there are ample grounds for such action.
Benevolent Assimilation.
The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903
Stuart Creighton Miller.
Yale University Press.
Another source for American use of ‘water torture’ to terrorise the Filipino resistance. This anticipates the well known brutality of
the Japanese Imperial Army later on.
For all who can read German, there is no translation of the torture report in English yet on der Spiegels site, as not to offend the BBC’s sparse reporting.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/cia-folterbericht-us-psychologen-verdienten-mit-folter-millionen-a-1007587.html
Channel 4 and Newsnight, both instrumental to maligning Craig, their many cancelled engagements with Craig, both should feel obliged to right a wrong they have helped to cause and invite him to state his case for change.
How is it possible that the media can get away with not re-addressing their own mistakes, especially if it was an ex British ambassador who was maligned by them, in the press and on TV, for a whole decade?
Evan Davis and John Snow where are you? moreover, who are you?
Not to worry about indictments.
Clearly this crumb off the table is meant to assuage outrage but the code of silence is being shored up as we discuss. Obama will issue blanket amnesty out of a sense of survival in the co-conspiracy as well as for the sake of ‘comity’. Gawd he’s a disappointment. Campaigned from the Left, but he’s a dead-Centrist.
Craig on RT. Audio only. Video interview is currently running at the top of the hour on RT.
December 10, 2014
Obama and the Senate Report
Torture is Good?
by CHRIS FLOYD
A truncated version of the Senate investigation into the CIA’s Terror War torture regime has finally been released. Even in its limited form, it details an operation of vile depravity, one which would plunge a civilized nation into a profound crisis of conscience and spark a deep and anguished debate on how best to transform a system of government — and a national ethos — that could lead to such putrid crimes. It would also occasion a wide-ranging effort to subject the originators, perpetrators and accomplices of the torture program to the full measure of legal punishment they deserve.
Needless to say, nothing like that is going to happen in America. Indeed, even before the report was released, the New York Times — the standard-bearer and shaper of “decent” liberal thought for the nation — was splashing an opinion piece on the front page of its website, demanding that we “Pardon Bush and Those Who Tortured.” This was the very first “think piece” pushed by the Times on the morning of the report’s release.
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/10/torture-is-good/
December 10, 2014
A Spurious Challenge to the Senate Torture Report
The CIA’s Operation Deception
by MELVIN A. GOODMAN
CIA director John Brennan, having failed to block the release of the Senate intelligence committee’s report on torture and abuse, is now abetting the efforts of former CIA directors and deputy directors to rebut the report’s conclusions that the interrogation techniques amounted to sadism and that senior CIA officials lied to the White House, the Congress, and the Department of Justice about the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA directors George Tenet and Michael Hayden and deputy directors John McLaughlin and Steve Kappes, who were guilty of past deceit on sensitive issues, have threatened to make documents available to undermine the findings of the Senate committee. The senior operations officer who ran the CIA’s torture and abuse program, Jose Rodriquez, has been permitted to write a book and a long essay in the Washington Post that argue the interrogation techniques were legal and effective. Their charges are completely spurious and their credibility is non-existent.
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/10/the-cias-operation-deception/
Habbabkuk,
“Yes, because we are operating in the world of blogging and not the real world. The Report has said what it did (and what it had to)and I see little practical point in adding my own voice (and little practical point in the commenters on here in adding their voices) to the justified chorus of condemnation. Whereas there does seem to be some point – not a great one, I’ll admit – in getting you to spell properly a word of which you make considerable use.
Consider the incident closed.”
******************
What utter garbage,weak dissembling garbage.
Indeed Mary the Senate report is both enigmatic and vacillate.
May I suggest the big black marker between ‘Top Secret’ and ‘NOFORN’ (no foreign nationals) hides ‘NOT FOR PUBLIC EYES’…
I too recall vividly watching the horror of that day, to include the television footage of
innocent men and women jumping out of the World Trade Center towers to escape the fire. The images, and the sounds as their bodies hit the pavement far below, will remain with me for the rest of my life.
That horror was dissimulated by the horror of new born babies, infants, mothers and their children burning to death at breakfast time when cruise missiles and cluster bombs hit the crowded suburbs of Baghdad in Iraq on the morning of Thursday 20th March 2003.
Ba’al Zevul – thanks for the response and links.
Yes, it was a bit dream like to think an e-petition might bring Bliar to justice. I don’t have any confidence in the established system to hold him or others accountable – it will only be a critical mass of the population that can do that. But as that critical mass is currently occupied with black friday/weather bombs/domestic energy costs/whatever they distract us with next, i doubt it will ever happen.
It’s a mad, bad world but what can you do? It’s not that they’re smarter than us, just more ruthless and possessing no morals, conscience or humanity. Sadly, that means they will win.
Out own version of a programme of “enhanced interrogation” exists in the UK. In some ways this is different but in many ways it is the same.
http://invisibleengland2.wordpress.com/
Ant – We can win. Do not constrain the power of intention. More than hope we actively commit ourselves to invoke transformation so that the truth can emerge strong on torture and rendition. See Craig’s latest post.
Critical mass? how about crowd funding for mercenaries as the last resort, Ant?….;)
as long as they are not Muslims, they might actually get somewhere with Tone, our most slippery grinch, a little bit of extraordinary rendering to somewhere else for some recreational exercises such as learning baseball?
I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people who have a soft spot for him, an irish peat bog from 30.000ft.
JIVES
I hope you pick this up. I am a human rights activist and have been under surveillance for over 5 years with no charges brought. I have also been subjected to EMF radiation and as my tweets reveal,also the Zersetsen tactics you refer to. This is a monster that has run amok. No budgetary constraints, no accountability, considerable ineptness and mediocre operatives. I know what I am talking about because I see them every day. These guys salaries depend on them not knowing what they are doing. And entrapment? They’ve tried the whole gamut- pornography, breaking the law, terrorism.
Last year I said to Fr John, these guys have got their eye on the wrong ball. And did they not? Lee Rigby was murdered and they had the perpetrators on their radar. IS came into being and if they were sharp about their operation they would have spotted it. They prefer to show who’s boss and a result? Misdirected effort. But no worries, there’s plenty money where that came from. They’ve followed me across borders and I can recognise some of the operatives. I have sent emails to Claude Moraes MEP and Keith Vaz…I did not get an acknowlegement of receipt. But then I am not surprised my internet is a hands on 24/7 monitoring operation. They accessed my apartments in the UK and Portugal with impunity. I have evidence of the subversion of the judicial process. I could write a book on whats going on. At his talk in Canada, G Greenwald pointed out that these guys operate like a state within a state. Change of parties make little difference. Democracy is an illusion. (Link on my tweets) This should be compulsory viewing for responsible citizens.
I have been repeatedly fobbed off when I tried to complain. Thank heavens for fora like this one. Thanks for thinking critically and seeing the monster for what it is. If nothing is done to rein it in, I am afraid we will be damning the quality of lives of our children and grandchildren. That is the essence of Snowden’s message and he himself said that he doesn’t want to live in such a world.
SO PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD
Antonio Menezes
[email protected]
@tony47menezes
Antonio Menezes,
Noted and understood.
You’ll understand i’m reluctant to say more on here,i know you understand why.
But yes,noted.
Others with good hearts will have noted too,make no mistake.
Stay strong.
The Torturers
Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / December 12th, 2014
By not prosecuting those responsible for torture President Obama failed to uphold the International Convention on Torture, further his current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, was a intelligence official in the Bush Administration, further the heavily redacted report on torture does not include Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo says Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/12/the-torturers/
Thanks Jives.
Your reply gives me hope indeed.
Sorry a bit late.
Antonio