Exactly twenty years ago the European Court of Human Rights found that the British Government had acted illegally in shooting dead three IRA members in Gibraltar, even though the court accepted that the government had a genuine belief that they were planning a bombing attack. Indeed the court accepted the victims were terrorists, and refused compensation to their families on those grounds. But the court refused to accept there was no possibility of foiling the plot through methods other than summary execution.
In the light of the decision that Operation Flavius contravened Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is difficult to understand how the government can claim its killing of British men in Syria, with no trial, is anything other than murder. I personally find it difficult to imagine technically how men journeying in a car in Syria were imminently able to instantly wreak havoc in the UK so that it was impossible to prevent by any method other than their execution without trial. The level of certainty required for that decision would involve sufficient knowledge of what was to happen in the UK to stop it here. If there was vagueness about what was actually to happen in the UK, there cannot have been the certainty about the threat claimed. It is a logical impasse.
Frankly in twenty years of experience working with British security services their level of accuracy (remember Iraqi WMD) was never that good. And everybody is fortunately now deeply sceptical about the continual claims by the security services that there are thousands of dedicated Islamic terrorists in the UK conducting hundreds of plots every year, and yet miraculously never actually managing to kill anybody.
Just in case anybody had not worked out yet that the Guardian is a disgraceful neo-con rag, it has an article by its “legal correspondent” Joshua Rozenberg, married to the even more rabid Zionist militarist Melanie Phillips (who still believes the Iraqi WMD exist, hidden in the bed of the Euphrates). Rozenberg assures us it is absolutely legal for the British government to kill us without trial if it wants. He even suggests the murdered Mr Khan would not object:
“If he was waging war on British troops and civilians, he can hardly complain the UK’s armed forces were one step ahead of him.”
Astonishingly for a lawyer, the disgraceful Rozenberg does not seem to notice that the opening “if” is rather important. “If Mr Jones was engaged in insurance fraud, he can hardly complain at being banged up for twenty years”, so according to Mr Rozenberg we can dispense with all that nonsense about trials and evidence and just take the government’s word for it. Not to mention that the government has now instituted summary execution without trial in a country that does not even have the death penalty.
As I have argued, it is not unusual for British people to go to fight abroad. There were British citizens in the Israeli Defence Forces participating in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza last year. Our neo-con governments of both blue and red Tories have positively encouraged the mercenary companies Executive Outcomes/Sandline/Aegis of Tony Buckingham and Tim Spicer. There are Britons fighting now in the Ukraine. We started by positively encouraging factions in the Syrian civil war, with the Saudis and CIA arming and training them and some of those factions helped constitute ISIL. There is no evidence at all that Islamic State had any interest in attacks in the UK until we started to attack it. (That is not to say it is not a very bad organisation and did not commit actions against UK citizens in its “Caliphate area”. But it did not threaten the UK).
For the government to claim the right to kill British people through sci-fi execution, based on highly unreliable secret intelligence and a secret declaration of legality, is so shocking I find it difficult to believe it is happening even as I type the words. Are we so cowed as to accept this?
O/T
Mission accomplished
Where will the Muslim refugees go from here?
Keep up the hate speech boys! This is upshot of acceptable and tolerated hate speech on demand against Muslims 24/7, get the zionistani flags out and cue the music for celebrations, now the Muslims are openly getting it in the neck in UK.
“Ke?”
Read the link I posted. The motion voted against was quite specific, it was proposing military action against Assad’s forces to protect civilians from chemical attack. Parliament has never voted against military action against ISIS, we are already doing that just the other side of an imaginary line on a map.
People who violate other people’s human rights forfeit their own. The Daish is a violent Fascist organisation that is a threat not only to the people of the region but also Europe and the UK. We should shed no tears for these victims, ‘British citizens’ or not. However, this drone strike sets a dangerous precedent and shows that the UK is engaged in US wild west style of international policing where the Brit PM can become judge, juror and executioner. It also encourages other states, such as Turkey, to do likewise.
The good news is Cameron is going to take 20,000 Syrian refugees the bad news is he is going to kill a lot more than that before he’s finished.
Alan Brooke
Good post (if I may say so), thanks.
I also like your choice of moniker.
They joined ISIS so it would be fair to assume that they were prepared to engage in the rape and murder of civilians and the other atrocities that this organisation has become notorious for. They must also have accepted the risk of death and injury. I doubt many people will be losing any sleep over it not least those who recruited them.
The difference between this incident and Gibraltar is that Syria is to all effects a war-zone and how do you arrest somebody in the middle of a war-zone?
What is happening to this country? Psyop after psyop.
Birmingham ‘police kidnap hoax’: Three arrested
29 minutes ago
Police officers and staff were warned not to travel to work in uniform at the time of the “plot”
Three men, including a police officer, have been arrested following a hoax terror plot to kidnap an officer.
The West Midlands officer and two other men are being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Police said they were given “false and malicious information” suggesting an officer was to “be kidnapped as part of a terrorist plot”.
West Midlands police were put on high alert because of the hoax.
The three Birmingham men are questioned by anti-terrorism and anti-corruption teams.
The 28-year-old officer at Birmingham West & Central Local Policing Unit has also been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office and misuse of police systems.
The other men, aged 25 and 31, are also being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office.
‘Credible threat’
The force issued an alert to officers and staff after receiving the anonymous tip-off on 8 December last year.
It urged them to take extra precautions, including not wearing uniform during journeys to and from work.
“At a time when the national threat level was severe, the threat was considered credible and police acted swiftly to protect officers and police staff,” a police spokesman said.
The three men are being questioned by detectives from West Midland Police’s Anti-Corruption Unit, with support from the Counter Terrorism Unit.
A 31-year-old man, who was arrested on the day of the offence, was eliminated from inquiries and has been deported.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34185474
If you want to find the most lawless, unaccountable criminals look to the government. “war” it’s a cover to break the rules, to take part in the most abhorrent crimes…To break the taboos of society.
Of course they don’t need to just execute people, but they want to. It’s what’s it all about, the ability to put yourself above others and not follow the rules made for us, as i’v said before what the point otherwise?
Even yourself, must admit a large part of why you seek these positions is the freedom and exceptionalisum it gives you over others. I’m sure i’d convince myself jetting around the world that i’m serving others, as I check my investments, or just call my secretary to update me on them….
Politics is a self serving culture. And they all know it, you’ll be made very comfortable so just go along. This was exposed to me with stark clarity at the last Green party meeting I went to where I was effectively told its about pushing my own agenda, further my ‘career’ …They didn’t seem to get how this is totally antithetical to democracy, even as they discussed the plan for gaining more power by holding more closed meetings…And they are correct, they need to keep people like me out that would disrupt and expose the fucked up anti-democratic system they take part in.
It’s a filtering proses for the most blind stupid or outright criminal to make perceived achievement’s to exceptionalise themselves. And this is where it leads to. I can take life or give it…
It’s a total corruption/perversion of human nature…Operating on external validation of systems and cultural institutions over individual self reflections and responsibility. Sure there is some nuance, but this often just helps to legitimize the structure.
Hard to disagree with Craig’s conclusion in the final paragraph- the brazenness of yesterday’s announcement was to me one of its surprising aspects. It’ll be interesting to see whether the families go down the legal route of holding the government to account, as did the families of the Gibraltar 3 and Loughgall ambushers. At the very least (bearing in mind the ECHR ruling in the Loughgall case) an ‘investigation’ into the deaths, most likely 2 inquests, will have to be held-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loughgall_ambush
Pre 9/11 western governments were keen to ‘plausibly deny’ covert activities like assassinations, coups d’etat, and secret wars, but no longer. Indeed decades ago it was possible to execute a coup in a faraway middle eastern country, and carry out a fully fledged anti insurgency campaign its the aftermath, in almost total secrecy-
http://www.omanrafveterans.org/insidestory.html
The tender feelings of the electorate back home, who might disapprove of such cloak and dagger antics (even when deployed in a ‘good cause’) were to some extent acknowledged. However yesterday HMG seemed to act on the assumption that the announcement would boost Tory poll ratings. Cameron takes it for granted that the electorates sensibilities have been Murdochised, and that we can be ‘nudged’ into braying mob mode, celebrating the ‘professionalism’ of the hit team that carried out HMG’s orders. As Baal’s inspired typo has it the PM is indeed just ‘A privileged bully, openly contemptuous of the unprivileged, whose only recorded skills are those of a PR wank.’
If I acted individually like the government does internationally i’d be locked in a cage…And in fact i’d need no such lengths to get myself in one.
Craig said: “For the government to claim the right to kill British people through sci-fi execution, based on highly unreliable secret intelligence and a secret declaration of legality, is so shocking I find it difficult to believe it is happening even as I type the words. Are we so cowed as to accept this?”
I must admit it left me a bit stunned as well, particularly because Cameron is so confident that he’s got the mood of the country that he stood up in Parliament and admitted the drone strike; and as far as I can see, in the hysteria that’s been built up around ISIS, a frighteningly large percentage of the public do support it.
What’s going to be the next move? seems to be a pressing question.
‘A privileged bully, openly contemptuous of the unprivileged, whose only recorded skills are those of a PR wank.’
lol, it that a good skill. He’s an authoritarian wanker shouting loud commanding dictatorial pronouncements. Reminds me of Hitler. Always looks of the verge of blowing his top, red faced, pumped…
It’s pretty sick this is considered good PR skill. But I guess is the general acceptance the populace have for the fascist impulse. Yea he sounds like military commander, we must follow him. That’s a good leader. jeez…
I’m with Alan Moore on this, all we need at most is an administration, no leaders thank you very much.
Have nice day people. Laters.
I cannot help but think this drone assassination may be a test run. Cameron is obviously desperate to have a military success – a Falklands type legacy. He may be dipping his toes in the water to see what he can get away with. Obviously, much will depend on who wins the Labour leadership next week, but it is looking ominous for military intervention. Thin end of the wedge?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=143&v=IpBGfmIMfr0
Thank-you for watching.
The US/UK governments have been arming and training “moderate” Jihadis for years and many associated groups like Al Qaeda have been supported by Saudi Arabia other Gulfies and Turkey.
The potential harm these groups can cause in the middle east and the wider world is incalculable.
Their philosophy is, anyone who is not like them is an apostate and should be killed, his family sold as sex slaves etc, this is not a religion but a crazed cult which poses a threat to anyone who opposes them including the all the minority Yazidis, Christians, Alawite Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Sufi Muslims and even the majority Sunni Muslims caught rejecting Wahhabism. Saudi Arabia are the financiers of these monsters and have to be dealt with, certainly not by flying flags at half mast on UK government buildings as was done when the last Saudi King died, or by a fawning US President rushing out to meet the Saudi King in his car when he arrived in Washington recently. Any action against these Jihadis must be conducted in a legal manner. Were UK armed forces invited into Syria by the legitimate Syrian government to conduct these operations? If not, in my opinion they were illegal, through violation of Syrian sovereignty.
“The world cries when the Buddhas of Bamiyan are destroyed. The world cries when ancient monasteries and churches are destroyed in Syria and Iraq. The world cries when World Heritage sites are destroyed throughout the Levant,” “However, the world remains silent, in a stupor of apathy and hypocrisy, when the Wahhabi Najdis carry their openly sectarian and ethnic agenda against religious minorities across the region.” “ISIS and, through ISIS, Saudi Arabia has declared war on religious pluralism to impose its own dogmatic and bigoted interpretation of Islam in the Middle East. The real crime against humanity here is being blind and deaf to it.” https://platosguns.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/puritanically-radical-radically-puritanical-saudi-arabias-religious-cleansing-policy-expands-through-me-catherine-shakdammintpress/#more-9587
The papers were well prepped with this story I just wonder why Cameron decided to break it now?
It was certainly Cameron who broke it. All papers, front page, Dave ‘PR’ Cameron sending a message. And that message is “If you are a British citizen joining ISIS, it’s personal”.
Contentious? Of course. How else do you guarantee a front page lead? The outrage will die down. He can handle the flak. The media, rather than researching anything on their own behalf will continue to print spin from No 10. Nothing changes.
And this, illustrating how thoroughly ineffective threats will be:
http://www.albawaba.com/editorchoice/daesh-suicide-bombing-waiting-list-699830
Alan Brooke
“people who violate other people,s human rights forfeit their own”
If they are not for everybody, how can they be human rights?
For Mark Golding’s video above you need to pull the scroll-bar back to the beginning otherwise you will just get an advertisement for Save the Children (which I stopped supporting when it honoured Tony Blair).
“Contentious? Of course. How else do you guarantee a front page lead? The outrage will die down. He can handle the flak. The media, rather than researching anything on their own behalf will continue to print spin from No 10. Nothing changes.”
Yep.
I still want to know what happened to South Africa’s nuclear weapons. Who was really behind Lockerbie and the murder of Bernt Carlsson. Cameron can answer that. He is the worst kind of war-criminal. He should join Tony Blair in the dock.
Surely this is a material change of circumstances? The PM is a war criminal by any measure = indyref2?
PROJECT FOR A HISTORY STUDENT
Create a map of the middle east. Colour each country a shade of grey according to its death rate due to violence in 1900; white for low rate, getting darker as the rate rises.
Do the same for 1901, then 1902 …. 1903 ….1904 …. [keep going] ….2015
Use the maps to create an animation, one map per frame in chronological order.
Run the animation and watch the black cancer spread outwards after the founding of Israel in 1948.
The mendacious and conniving Westminster government waited till it was too late for the third largest party the SNP to object about the murders.
These kind of actions only show why it’s imperative that Scotland becomes an independent country. Simply put Westminster cannot be trusted.
Of course the airstrike would’ve had a knock on benefit to Cameron, who’s doing his Zionist masters bidding (another good reason for Scottish independence). In that it wouldve over shadowed the fact that the UK will only take 4000 refugees this year.
Surely the Extra-Judicial Killing of these men must lead to someone being held accountable. Furthermore it only makes one wonder if there’s an active kill list outside conflict zones.
Are we now part of a UK drone war, where British drones search for targets in Syria, at thd behest of their Zionist masters, it would appear to be the case. Can the UK government be trusted to do anything anymore.
Do these unlawful killings of British citizens, openly admitted by a British PM, now mean that, David Cameron is judge jury and executioner.
Does David Cameron not realise that such illegal actions will only incite others to raise arms in a cause that, they might not have taken up, of course he does.
The whole point as you said Craig is to take control of Syria and its resources for Israel and its backers such as Murdoch. Whilst claiming boots are on the ground to crush Daesh, in the name of freedom and democracy.
Westminster has or is becoming a proxy government for Israel and the US, and probably for the Saudi’s as well.
Node that is an elegant visualisation of the cancerous zionistan and its fruits of “success” ie destruction of all human values, human constructs, and humanity itself.
All the while the exceptionalism afforded to these marauding zionist supremacist seems to have no bounds and can excuse their barbarous conduct with a plethora of homilies.
The attack on the human rights of one human is that attack on the human rights of all humanity!
Yesterday a brown skinned, bearded, Welshman is purportedly murdered so openly, with the wider society tacitly sitting back, and even celebrated by some deranged lunatics. It is because for years the viewers of the oligarch owned media have watched packages of brown skinned, bearded men getting murdered and they are now desensitised to the murder of these human beings, so another brown skinned, bearded man getting killed by “our heroes” at the behest of our dear leader is a mundane matter, albeit the chap was a Welshman.
Just how many fucking generations will it take for these brown skinned, bearded men to come to be classed as one of us? Before the wider society starts asking; how come these people are getting murdered and no one is ever brought to justice for their murder?
Fallon is quite defiant and also complacent. ‘Perfectly legal’ and drone strikes will be repeated as necessary. I would like to see his smug face when he is brought to book if there is any justice.
UK prepared to carry out more drone strikes against British jihadis, says Fallon
Defence secretary Michael Fallon says strike in Syria was ‘absolutely legal’ because there was ‘no other way of dealing with these terrorists’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/uk-would-not-hesitate-to-carry-out-more-strikes-against-british-jihadis
4 hrs ago
Perraudin, Wintour and Watt.
Meanwhile Theresa and her team are holding the fort in the refugee debate. The place is less than a quarter full unlike yesterday. They have no answers.
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Austria-says-fight-against-Islamic-State-needs-Assad-Iran-Russia-415578
Got it in one, Austria. Against a common enemy, make alliances, not more enemies. (The Wisdom of Chairman Komodo, out soon, possibly)
Interesting to see that Turkey has become the number one holiday destination for Israeli tourist. Would it be unkind to say where there’s Israeli’s there’s false flag ops.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4689784,00.html
Israel and Turkey have now become..well chummy, Turkey was the scene those dreadful and very sad pictures of the little boy lying on the shore.
http://www.coppem.org/default.asp?hl=en&p=281
More on the new friendship.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-israel-to-discuss-establishing-industrial-zone-in-west-bank.aspx?pageID=238&nID=87755&NewsCatID=352
Off Guardian gets better and better. They do not hold back.
September 8, 2015
Death by Droning: the World isn’t changing, it is changed
Yesterday David Cameron admitted to murder. He did it loudly, in public, with self-justications primed and a self-important look plastered across his quivering jowls. The repercussions? He faces applause from some sectors…and “scrutiny” from others. Is that all the outrage our atrophied imaginations can offer?
http://off-guardian.org/2015/09/08/death-by-droning-the-world-isnt-changing-it-is-changed/