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?
Alcyone – I wrote to ‘Save the Children’ here:
From – Fri Nov 21 21:09:00 2014
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Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 21:08:48 +0000
From: COIA
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To: [email protected]
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[email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Global Legacy Award
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Dear Sirs,
This charity is appalled and outraged the war criminal Mr Anthony Blair was honoured with Save The Children’s ‘Global Legacy Award’ in supposed recognition of his vanguard leadership on the world’s international development stage.
May I remind ‘Save the Children’ that this charity witnessed children burned alive, infants maimed and teenagers orphaned and disabled in the illegal March 2003 Iraq war that Mr Blair approved, admitted and empowered.
Yours faithfully,
Mark Golding
Chair
Children of Iraq Association
http://www.coia.org.uk
Recognised by the Charity Commission – Application pending
I received no reply from the trustees therefore do not endorse this charity. I judged the video on content and effectiveness as you observed and posted in recognition of the grass-roots activities on those good people who work within its ordinance.
Mary
Thanks for The Felicity Arbutnot piece
All the Life, and Timeless Art… For so FEW.. the Less than 1%
Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, said:
“For more than 1400 years these cities were preserved and protected by successive Muslim rulers and governments and yet now the extremists claim to have destroyed them in Islam’s name. This can only be branded as an extreme cruelty and a transgression of Islam’s teachings. No true Muslim could ever comprehend acting in this way.”
Palmyra first appeared in written records in the 2nd millennium BC, in cuneiform texts. It has been controlled by the Assyrians, the Persians, became part of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Greek Empire. On his death in Babylon in June 323 BC, his empire was divided between two of his Generals, Ptolemy and Seleucus, Ptolemy controlling Egypt and Seleucus Babylonia, extending his power to Palmyra and much of Syria.
At the end of the Seleucid Empire, Palmyra, stranded between the warring Roman Empire and the Parthians, carved itself a niche as the principle trading post, including between the two hostile powers. In AD 77, Pliny the Elder wrote of the settlement’s mediating role:
Enjoying certain privileges with the two Great Empires, that of the Romans and that of the Parthians, Palmyra is sought out whenever disputes occur.
What an irony that this wondrous place of ancient mediation, also home to Christianity under Emperor Justinian (527-65) when churches were restored, then Islam under General Khalid ibn al-Walid and was silent witness to the Middle East’s golden ages and tribulations from then to now, is being erased by demented deviants spawned by George W. Bush and Tony Blair’s declared “Crusade.”
Shortly after this foray into cultural genocide, the head and hand choppers with a penchant for burning people and more recently babies to death – seemingly continually “accidentally” dropped arms, food and medical needs by the US – kidnapped renowned archeologist Dr Khaled al-Assad, Palmyra’s Curator.
On 18th August the US aid recipients beheaded the eighty-one year old Dr Al Assad, for his refusal to reveal where many precious artifacts had been hidden according to his son, who was kidnapped with him but released. The body was hung from one of the great Graeco-Roman columns, his head placed between his feet.
Suhayl
” I know, Mary, I’m sure a lot of us feel the same way. Deeply depressing, the whole damn thing ”
Second that…Knowing what’s coming, how it started.. Millionaires, Billionaires, War Criminals that Rule us… Some of em must be Trillionaires With a Capital Evil Cnuts
Bizarre coping mechanism, but I fear you are rationalising the abhorrent behaviour of a bunch of psychopaths whom enjoy the notions of not being one of the target group and reaffirming their own miserable/illiterate/poor/stagnant existence.
You are projecting your own decency onto those lesser primates that have not attained any higher notion than throwing their faeces around to express fun/happiness/anger/disdain/etc. limited tool chest in dealing with the variances in real life situations. In fact just check the oligarch owned media, and the gubimnet statements;
Problem; refugees streaming out of war zone
Solution; Bomb Syria
Problem; Financial markets crashing
Solution; Bomb the crap out of an oil rich mid east country.
Problem; ——— anything ————
Solution; Bomb the crap out of the mid eastern countries, send in the troops to kill more and supply more deadlier weapons (fee gratis of course) to zionistan.
fedup, I considered you point, but actually I feel the song is a condemnation of the irrational sort of things you mention. I haven’t read the book. but it’s the notion of lack of consequence, drone killing etc.
It’s a punk song essentially. You may as well say god-save-the-queen was trying to rationalize the fascist’s, when it was clearly at odds with them.
Craig said ‘Are we so cowed as to accept this?’ – ‘The Sun newspaper sales have recently slipped to just below 2 million sales in the UK. Is that 2,000,000 people who are ‘groomed’ in the same way sexual perverts ‘rub down’ their targets?
I think it is. In fact Murdoch I believe is primed with instructions and content to be published by his news outlets after an Establishment catalyst such as after the dead body of Aylan Kurdi was found washed up on a Turkish beach – ‘The Sun’ displayed this little boy’s icon image on every fukin page of the drone strike story and pictures of British weaponry and murder material.
Fuck you Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great – Keith Rupert ‘Hackin’ Murdoch!
From –
Norman G. Finkelstein
“We entered Gaza…with an insane amount of firepower.”
Part Nine of ‘Has Amnesty International Lost Its Way? A forensic analysis of Amnesty’s reports on Operation Protective Edge’
How Israel Fought OPE: A Selection of IDF Testimonies
18 “When we left after the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert…. We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the company, how crazy the amount of damage we did there was. I quote: “Listen man, it’s crazy what went on in there,” “Listen man, we really messed them up,” “Fuck, check it out, there’s nothing at all left…, it’s nothing but desert now, that’s crazy.”
Although Israel recoils at comparisons between its own conduct and the Nazi holocaust, one of the testimonies (#83) breaks this taboo: “There’s that famous photo that they always show on trips to Poland (organized trips in which Israeli youths visit Holocaust memorial sites) that shows Warsaw before the war and Warsaw after the Second World War. The photo shows the heart of Warsaw and it’s this classy European city, and then they show it at the end of the war. They show the exact same neighborhood, only it has just one house left standing, and the rest is just ruins. That’s what it looked like.” To avoid mind-numbing redundancy, Table 5 omits quoting the succession of combatants who testified that the IDF’s modus operandi during OPE was shoot to kill anything that moves, often on explicit orders, but also because it was “cool.”[2] The last testimony (#111) in the Breaking the Silence collection provides insight into the society that nurtured this Vandal-like army. “You leave the [Gaza Strip] and the most obvious question is, ‘Did you kill anybody?’,” an IDF infantry sergeant rued. “Even if you meet the most leftwing girl in the world, eventually she’ll start thinking, ‘Did you ever kill somebody, or not?’ And what can you do about it? Most people in our society consider that to be a badge of honor. So everyone wants to come out of there with that feeling of satisfaction.
https://www.byline.com/project/13/article/227
“hypocrisy is a positive because you only have hypocrisy where you have values.”
Because you only have hypocrisy where you have values, it does not follow that where you have hypocrisy, you possess values.
The proposition is sophistry.
***
S Warren
A fool is all for sophistry if sophistry is wisdom, but if you mean sophistry as I think you mean it then perhaps you are partly right.
Although hypocrisy would not appear to have anything going for it nonetheless it has use as a measure to indicate to what extent we have values. If you have hypocrisy you have values because the hypocrite knows that there is value in pretending to be something he is not. If there is no value in pretending he can just be the monster he really is. In the absence of values only the fool bothers to be a hypocrite.
But what does that tell us?
Does it say a) that there are real values and we should aspire to them even it means that the hypocrites try to take advantage in which case isn’t it better that the monsters resort to deceit than the gun or the drone, or does it mean b) that our values may just be the sugar coated wall paper the monster designed to lull us into believing that he won’t hurt, kill or steal if we don’t hurt, steal, or kill him i.e. is civilisation and its veneer of values just a sleeping pill so that we don’t hurt steal or kill from the hypocrite when in return he hurts, steals or kills us – in which case should we all wake up and behave like monsters (or like pack wolves as opposed to deceiving monkeys)?
Whatever, hypocrisy are like guns in a society: a tool to measure something else.
I am not really into the social contract thing. You do the right thing because you know its right or more often to impress and get a reciprocal benefit. Its difficult to tell why another does the right thing: to impress or cos they know its the right thing….waffle waffle
Time for sleep.
And also. Their behavior is not without some kind of rationality. A psychotic rational, but it was all planned out wasn’t it.
Shit the Quote ( “We entered Gaza…with an insane amount of firepower.” ) aint Norman’s .. This i Know… Made the same mistook with Macky a few days ago ..For Which Soz.. But He Knew what i meant.
Time for sleep.
seconded…
Tony Abbott:
“Well, the outcome that we’re working towards, along with our coalition partners, is a Middle East comprised of governments which don’t commit genocide against their own people, nor permit terrorism against ours.”
From a sitting PM, that’s quite a statement. Has it ever been admitted as plainly as this? Don’t know. So there we have it. ‘We’ are working towards regime-change in every nation-state in the Middle East, using a NATO-flexible definition of’genocide’ as our essential criterion. Apart from Saudi Arabia, ‘course. They is cuddly.
I know it’s a pre-prepared press gumbo, but still. It’s as though they still think Iraq was a success, which is just insane.
Interesting points being made on the Guardian by a human rights lawyer, saying Fallon has basically redefined ‘imminent’ to mean ‘sometime in the future’. She adds that he claims to have a kill list–although he doesn’t call it that –but this too defeats the claim of imminence, because how can a list of people all be engaged in an imminent attack on the UK?
Calling it ‘Operation Flavius’ suggests pretensions of the Roman Empire. We would do well to remember that both we, and the countries we recently have destroyed, all were part of the Roman Empire, that (what are now) Glasgow and Basra were part of one country.
1600-2000 years ago, the Romans routinely sent soldiers and merchants from Damascus to London and vice-versa. These are not places ‘far away of which we know little’. We do not possess the Atlantic Ocean. These are Club Med countries.
I have never bought into the concept of the continent of ‘Europe’. It has no reality in geography. It is a cultural and religious-tribal construct and even then to justify it as a definition it is necessary to ignore much of history. Cyprus – an EU country – is in Asia and is a stone’s throw from Syria. Libya is closer to the Italian islands than Italy. Likewise Turkey, with the Greek islands. One can walk, ride, as the Ottomans routinely did, from Aleppo to Athens or Zagreb. It is not, ‘The Middle East’ – that was an arrogant British Imperial terminology, a conjuring trick to implant psychological distance and dominance. Nor is it our ‘backyard’ (an arrogant Amerian Imperial slang designed for the same purpose). It is our neighbourhood. This is not C19th. There will be consequences and these usefully will serve to justify an intensification of militarisation, a normalisation of perpetual war. We soon will be seeing armed drones in our shared sky.
In a society with ‘values’ (values which are not merely claimed, but lived) the hypocrite possesses a significant advantage. This is unsurprising and is quite obvious in the world. The extent of the advantage is a function of the accomplishment of the hypocrite; hypocrisy is functionally efficient. In addition hypocrites may not be aware of their hypocrisy: part of this problem is what I would describe as ‘the fallacy of rationality’, which has handicapped informed thought on the matter.
Breaking News: world runs short of Alphabet bricks as Nicholas Witchell files extra long panegyric to Her Madge
Fred@11:19
Looking backwards, who and where else could possibly finance the original creations known as satellites in such profuse volumes? That undertaking took unparalleled quantities of land, buildings, scientific and technical staffs, R&D support , failure and do-over operations, etc Nearly all hardware and software items were unique developments.
Simultaneously, there was the ongoing creation and maintenance of expanding military hardware and global establishment of bases, all on a simliarly huge scale of financial requirements.
IMO, Bretton Woods 1944 agreement to create a gold-backed USDollar as the World Reserve Currency was a trap that enabled the above scenario, that is still expanding in present time.
Bretton Woods in 1944 created the future scheme whereby, as other sovereign treasuries/currencies became USD-backed, based on USD being gold-convertible to settle international trade imbalances, Nixon and his [unknown] minders could pull the plug[1971] on gold-convertibility thus allowing USD-printing without constraint/limit as long as ThePowersThatBe could justify it.
There was no consensus/vote/debate by “the other nations”, who had become dependent by having accumulated USD in their respective treasuries/banks, when suddenly the USD became non-convertible, i.e. just another fiat. IIRC, the first time in history there exists no convertible-currency.
Only America has the privilege of unlimited money-creation, Though it cannot continue forever, it will continue as long as the brightest, for-hire schemers can make it last. The factor of unlimited military power can keep the irrational rational-enough to maintain any such plan.
The above is only wild and crazy speculation, of course. All half-baked and unedited.
Saadi @ 7:52
Textbooks naming “Europe” and “Asia” as if they are separate and distinct “continents” is also quite a trick. Who benefits?
JSW: I agree. Its best to know when one is being a hypocrite, but too painful.
Will Nicola be curtseying/doffing her forelock at Waverley Station this morning? I hope not.
Have we all got our miniature ‘butcher’s aprons’ aka the Union flag, at the ready to wave today?
The troughers on the Network Rail Board will be there.
Angus Robertson is to get a place on the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13655829.SNP_s_Angus_Robertson_to_become_member_of_House_of_Commons_Intelligence_and_Security_Committee/
Desperation is setting in. They are all e-mailing today. This from Yvette.
Hi….
Voting closes for Labour Leader in just two days’ time. This decision could decide the future not just for us, but for millions of people who depend on having a Labour Government.
It’s clear now this contest is between Yvette and Jeremy (scroll down to read about it in the news). All of the candidates share strong Labour values. But we can’t put these values into practice if we don’t have a clear and credible plan for the country.
Research conducted by Ipsos MORI shows that Yvette alone can win back voters to Labour and win a General Election. Together we can stand up against injustice, introduce free universal childcare, oversee a revolution in housebuilding, reverse the Tory attack on Trade Unions, campaign for a proper living wage and more.
But we need a leader who can take on the Tories and not be taken apart – a leader who can deliver the Labour Government that so many people depend on.
Thanks for being involved with Labour,
Yvette for Labour Team
PS: Momentum is firmly behind Yvette with bookies continuously slashing the odds on her campaign in the last few days and weeks. You can catch up on some of the news below:
“Why Yvette is going to win” (Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/liam-byrne/yvette-cooper-labour-leader_b_8095114.html?utm_hp_ref=uk.
“Yvette Cooper keeps on gaining ground as bookies continue to shorten odds” (City AM)
http://www.cityam.com/223672/labour-leadership-race-odds-yvette-cooper-keeps-gaining-ground-bookies-continue-shorten-odds?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
“Yvette Cooper gets backing from Mary Creagh as signs emerge that she is gaining ground on Jeremy Corbyn” (The Independent)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-race-yvette-cooper-gets-backing-from-mary-creagh-as-signs-emerge-that-she-is-gaining-ground-on-jeremy-corbyn-10488395.html
“Yvette Cooper: change Labour’s clause IV to champion equality” (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/04/yvette-cooper-change-labour-clause-iv-champion-equality?CMP=twt_gu
“Will ‘Shy Cooper’ voters defeat Corbyn?” (Prospect)
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/labour-leadership-will-shy-cooper-voters-defeat-corbyn
“Cooper leads Corbyn in focus groups of ex-Labour voters” (BBC)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34087829
Multiple 🙂 s for the irony.
KOWN Do you remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMSzIG4a5cw
Yet Witchell carries on taking the BBC screw for ‘reporting’ on the ‘royals’ in spite of being so publicly humiliated by one of them.
With statements like “The Corbynistas are Roundheads in a Cavalier age, collectivists in an era dominated by individualism intent on waging class war rather than making peace with the conservatory-building classes” and “without our nuclear deterrent we are like ‘dead ducks’ waiting for slaughter, I have good reason to believe a professional whisper that a small number of Saudi commanders hand-picked by the British ‘E-Squadron’ or operatives from the Joint Support Group, the SRR and the Intelligence Corps that operated in Libya, will form a cell in Britain tasked with an unknown mission.
I have to ask if that whisper is truth will there be a ‘follow through’ from the barbaric drone strike ordered by agent Cameron?
It looks like Nationalists are somewhat divided on the subject of refugees.
https://www.facebook.com/theSNP/posts/10153683359574078
Mary, yes I remember it well. I felt sorry for him and still do in a way. I wonder who he offended to be exiled to this journalist’s Devil’s Island. I mean, if my memory serves me correctly, he used to report on wars and grown up stuff.
Which will be first?
Place bets now.
Chilcot published: 100:1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11853119/Sir-John-Chilcot-refuses-to-set-out-timetable-for-Iraq-Inquiry.html
Galloway’s Blair film released 33:1
Wing of bacon on HoC menu: 2:1 on
Hurry, hurry.
It looks like Nationalists are somewhat divided on the subject of refugees.
You mean Unionists aren’t? Compare:
http://uup.org/news/3689/Northern-Ireland-economy-affected-by-Calais-migrant-crisis-Lord-Empey#.VfAFqJde-8o
and
http://uup.org/news/3765/21/If-we-ignore-refugee-crisis-we-lose-sight-of-our-common-humanity-Nesbitt#.VfAF_5de-8o
Fred
I don’t think the people posting negative comments on that Facebook page are independence supporters. Anyone can post to it.
The BBC version is abrupt.
‘Iraq Inquiry: Chilcot to publish timetable ‘soon as able’
44 minutes ago
Iraq Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot says he has received the last of the outstanding responses to his findings from those facing criticism.
This brings to an end the so-called “Maxwellisation” process that was partly causing the report’s delay.
In a letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Sir John said he would write to Prime Minister David Cameron setting out a timetable for publication of his report “as soon as I am able”.
Sir John began his work in 2009.
In his letter, he said there was “inevitably, further work for my colleagues and I to do to evaluate those submissions, which are detailed and substantial, in order to establish with confidence the time needed to complete the inquiry’s remaining work”.
Conservative MP David Davis said Sir John’s latest announcement was “mixed news”.
He said it was “hard to see why it should take very much longer to conclude the report” and he added that he would have “expected a timetable within this calendar year and if not, why?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34197734
time.
Agreed, and the fact that since Nixon dropped the gold standard now the world is trading in toilet paper backed by the nukes and bombers, as the only collateral.
===============
Time to bomb Syria and stop “evil Assad” from hoarding all the alphabet bricks while “gassing” and “barrel bombing” and, and, ooohhhh all sorts of other nasty things!!! Bomb them I say now!!!! Where would our queen be if we are running short of alphabet bricks for ginger Nicholas?
==============
I seldom watch any TV, but last night whilst channel surfing I was astonished to find this bit of riches porn !
Where the meat comes from cows that have been massaged and played float and music to, the yoghurt comes from a herd in some tossing place with each of the cows having a name! The coffee costs £32000 for couple of pounds in weight, for a cuppa at a snippet of £350!
Each fucking food has a fucking story attached and a storyteller thrown in free of charge.
I kept thinking of my neck of the woods where the lads are keeping lurchers and ferrets to go hare hunting for their protein need, that is if they have a place to live in as IDS has seen that these “malingerers” are sanctioned and thrown out of their homes and they no longer can keep the lurcher and the ferret to feed themselves. That is the fucking travesty that these wanking bastards are frowning upon as a fucking class war!!!!
There were over 433 thousand signatories to this petition
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/105991
Accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the UK.
There is a global refugee crisis. The UK is not offering proportional asylum in comparison with European counterparts. We can’t allow refugees who have risked their lives to escape horrendous conflict and violence to be left living in dire, unsafe and inhumane conditions in Europe. We must help.
Now it is the Petitions Committee, not team, who say ‘get lost. We’ve had the debate and Cameron’s statement, so do one’ but more politely. Signed off by the Petitions team.