Don’t look over here! Look over there!

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made today the most cynical – and least convincing – move yet to exploit “terror” politically in the UK. On the day that New Labour hit a twenty year low in the opinion polls and Harriet Harman blamed Gordon Brown’s office for her dodgy donations, we now have the first headline on the television news as a government announcement of the threat of a “Dirty Bomb” over Christmas.

I cannot say this loudly enough. I have checked with my own contacts and there is NO specific or new intelligence indicating a threat of a terrorist dirty bomb – or any other terrorist threat – this Christmas. Doubtless that will not stop Frank “Goebbels” Gardner appearing any minute now nobly to warn us of the grave danger we face.

Interestingly, even my friends in the Security Services – who normally are pretty happy to see the threat exaggerated, thus adding to their ever increasing budgets and career prospects – this time are sickened by the cynicism of the timing of this “Christmas Warning”.

Incidentally, there is no track record of an attack on “Christmas” and no actual reason to believe that a terrorist attack is more likely to occur at Christmas than any other time of year. The notion is based on a rather simplistic notion of the “Clash of civilisations”.

I have a lingering personal faith which won’t quite die, irrespective of the continuing evidence on the Dawkins side of the equation that the religious, given any power, are evil and dangerous. George Bush did no harm when he was just a parasitic alcoholic, then he discovered Christ and look what happened. Which just goes to show that alcohol is a much more benificent social force than religion.

Blair has revealed he didn’t tell us about his religious faith while in office in case people thought he was a “nutter”. If he thinks we didn’t notice he was a nutter, he is more deluded than I thought – plainly religion hasn’t helped his thought processes. Finally we have the vile authorities of the Sudan. I am of course outraged by their action against a British teacher, but compared to the appalling actions of that bunch of theocratic arseholes against their own people, it is minor indeed.

I had occasion to read General Gordon’s original diaries in the course of researching my master’s thesis. I found it an extraordinary thrill to hold in my hand the paper he had held and decipher his increasingly shaky handwriting. Gordon was a religous fanatic in the Blair mode; portraits show a remarkable similarity of “look” to Blair in the fixated gaze of the eyes. Gordon had a similar approach to Blair, from the same motivations, to bringing the benefits of civilisation to what he viewed as benighted peoples. But unlike Blair, Gordon was a man of incredible personal courage who paid the price for his beliefs. Blair just condemned countless (literally) thousands of other people to death, while shamelessly devoting his own life to raking in the cash.

Under our sweeping anti-terror legislation, to encourage terror is illegal, and we have adopted extra-territoriality – encouraging terrorism while you are abroad is an offence in the UK. Here we published some extremely important points about it made in the House of Commons debate on the legislation:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2005/10/mps_debate_the.html

Like all our recent anti-terror legislation, it is in fact designed to be used purely against Muslims. That is a bold claim. Let me demonstrate it is true in practice. Here Brian Kilmeade of Fox News calls for bombings in Iran. By the end of the clip, his meaning is unequivocal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH3BTaWrQ3I&eurl=http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2007/101107Bombings.htm

Now if any Muslim were to appear on TV, calling for terrorist bombings, he would undoubtedly be banned from entering the UK, and if he did enter would be arrested. But calling for the terrorist killing of Muslims is perfectly OK. None of these things is gong to happen to Mr Kilmeade.

The elected London Assembly has passed a motion of no confidence in Sir Ian Blair. If he had any honour (which being New Labour he doesn’t) he would go now. I watched much of his appearance before the Assembly. The result was no foregone conclusion, but his arrogance and rudeness swayed the Assembly against him. He effectively taunted them that they had no power to remove him. I do hope a transcript of this amazing meeting will be available.

With The Queen’s Speech tomorrow and Gordon Brown intent on ramping through 2 month detention without trial for Muslims, the traditional ceremony has been performed of wheeling out the Head of MI5 in advance of the Queen’s Speech to tell terrible lies about the extent of the terror threat. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6149726.stmJonathan “Pinnochio” Evans tells us there are 2,000 potential terrorists in the UK – and then throws in casually that it could be double that.

That is plainly bollocks. it is far too high a figure. The IRA – who were much more persistent and lethal terrorists in the UK – had a membership in the 80’s, when at the height of their bombing campaign, of about 90 actual terrorists. The current 2,000 clearly have severe productivity problems by comparison.

Any genuine security expert will tell you that Evans’ figures are far too high. Assuming the large majority of these “terrorists” are adult male, that means according to Evans at least one in every 150 adult male Muslims in the UK is a terrorist, and at his higher surmise signifcantly more than one in a hundred. Plainly, to anyone who actually meets any Muslims, that is impossible.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of “Security consultants” who make a fat living from exaggerating the threat of terrorism and then advising on how to counter it. The BBC usually has no problem finding up this kind of so called “Security expert” to reinforce the ludicrous scare. Today the BBC rolled out Dr Sally Leivesley – who they failed to point out is Managing Director of “Newrisk Ltd”, an archetype of those seeking to make money from spreading fear.

And they have the ever reliable Frank Gardner. Chiselled profile held high, impeccable hair swept back, upper lip stiff, poppy impeccably in place, Gardner can be relied upon to retail any absolute rubbish the security services spew out without the slightest danger of passing it through a filter of independent thought. He can also be relied on to produce a meaningless graphic to illustrate the most ludicrous of propositions.

To date his finest hour was when 250 police stormed a house at Forest Gate and shot a completely innocent young postman as he got out of bed. The police explained that they were searching for a “Chemical weapons vest”.

There has never, ever been a “chemical weapons vest”, anywhere in the World. The very concept is nonsense – the point of a chemical weapon is to achieve maximum dispersal of the chemical, and wrapping it in fabric around the human torso would be ludicrous. That is why there has never been a chemical weapons vest.

Nonetheless the noble, earnest Gardner introduced a graphic of what a chemical weapons vest might look like – a laughable photo of a camouflage pattern waistcoat full of suspicious bumps and loops. He might just as well have labelled it a nuclear bomb vest. What a farce! What a wanker!

Anyway, Gardner was at it again tonight with a graphic to explain the latest ludicrous claims. How do they know there are 2,000 terrorists, he asked? Well, they can’t tell us because it’s intelligence, he explained. But the helpful graphic fills the screen, with hundreds of sinister black silhouettes of unknown terrorists, interconnected by numerous black lines indicating networks, nodes and axes of evil. And to explain it all, every so often, there was a not blacked out figure, a suicide bomber or, glowering at us, Osama Bin Laden. Of course!! That’s the evidence!! There really are thousands of them.

I was going to retaliate by producing a graphic of thousands of sinister silhouettes linked by criss-crossing lines, and dotted among them Goebbels, Hitler, Attila the Hun, Stalin, Mao and Frank Gardner. But I can’t be bothered – sounds like a job for Bloggerheads.

The truth is that since September 11 Islamic militants have killed about 70 people in the UK. That’s 12 people a year in a country of 60 million. Every death is terrible, but a threat to our existence it is not. You have a much better chance of drowning in your own bath, of being struck by lightning or of winning the national lottery than of being killed by a terrorist. But that wouldn’t persuade you to give up your civil liberties, or that we have to invade more oil rich countries for our security.

Of course Sir Ian Blair should resign. Hopefully he might finally do the decent thing once the inquest jury brings in a verdict of unlawful killing.

The main reason he should go is the telling of lies about the incident. For me it is deeply disturbing just how much traction these lies have. Surfing around internet chat on the De Menezes incident, there are hundreds of people asserting that De Menezes did not stop when challenged and ran from the police, while wearing a bulky jacket. Once you can get the germ of a lie into the heads of the public, it sticks. Plainly those police lies retain their force even though news bulletins for a fortnight have been showing CCTV footage of De Menezes perfectly normal behaviour in the underground, and shown quite plainly that he was wearing tight clothes .

He did not run, was not challenged, he walked quietly onto the tube where he was suddenly, with absolutely no warning, held down and viciously murdered. Yet the myths put out to justify his murder appear ineradicable.

I went yesterday to the Stop the War demonstration at Trafalgar Square, largely because the police had given notice that they were banning it under the Vagrancy Act 1824. This was an appalling attack on free speech, and they were using that Act because Gordon Brown had promised the repeal of the hated SOCPA (Serious Organised Crime Prevention Act), which the government of which he was Chancellor had introduced. In a marvellous piece of Orwellian doublespeak, it sought to prevent “Serious organised crime” by curbing freedom of speech, including banning demonstrations within a mile of parliament.

Just in case people thought Brown’s promise to repeal these SOCPA provisions signalled an end to New Labour’s rollback of liberty, the police blew the dust off the Vagrancy Act (1824) instead.

I couldn’t miss the chance to be arrested for “vagrancy”, it sounded so deliciously Dickensian, and I think it would give me a rock solid case for putting “Occupation: vagrant” in my passport. But half an hour before the march started, the police backed down and unbanned it.

Nevertheless, they had a trick up their sleeve. They split the band of 3,000 demonstrators up into three parts, on College Green, Parliament Square and Whitehall, where they confined them to pens, with a wildly excessive number of policemen herding them like cattle. People were kept crushed in small fenced areas for up to two hours and not allowed to go to the loo. When people sat down (understandable in the circumstances) they were arrested.

What a depressing country.

Which brings me to the state of Higher Education. I was formally “Installed” as Rector of the University of Dundee on September 26. The University refused to publish my Rectorial Address, or give it out to the press, because they “do not agree with it”.

What are we coming to in this country, where even a University seeks to censor out contrary opinion? I do urge you to read the Address, because beyond the in-jokes I made some points I believe are extremely important.

ADDRESS GIVEN UPON THE OCCASION OF HIS INSTALLATION

AS RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE

By

CRAIG J MURRAY Esq, MA(Hons)

In the

BONAR HALL, DUNDEE

26 September 2007

Under the Title of:

WHY LONDON SHOULD STOP WORRYING ABOUT SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE – WE CAN STILL RULE ENGLAND FROM BRUSSELS

Vice-Chancellor, My Dear Friends,

It is most kind of you to come along here today as I receive the singular honour of being made Rector of my own University.

I arrive here following our tradition of an idiosyncratic pub crawl known as the Rectorial Drag. That sounds like an occasion for which I should be picking out a nice skirt and blouse – which as some of my former student colleagues here will tell you would not be the first time. The Rectorial Drag however is an occasion where the students pull their new Rector through the streets in a carriage, from City Hall to University, entering the pubs on the way. I can honestly say it is the first time I have ever been dragged to a pub. Dragged out, yes. Chucked out, frequently. Dragged in is a new one.

By chance it is thirty years almost to the day since I arrived, bewildered, into freshers’ week, clutching everything I owned in one cardboard box and a battered BOAC flight bag.

Little did I dream that thirty years later I would become Rector of the place. Certainly not – I expected to be much too busy being Prime Minister.

In that distant first week I attended the Rectorial Installation of Sir Clement Freud. He was a man of great wit and perspicacity, and his installation address was hilarious. Sadly, as we all know, decline and decay is the natural order of things, and with the passing years Sir Clement declined to the extent that he eventually became Rector of St Andrews.

These occasions traditionally involve a certain amount of knockabout humour, and I am sure that no offence will be taken. We look in fact with fond regard to our sister institution south of the Tay Estuary, marking with sadness the scent of her senile decline, as we might an elderly relative whom we care about but are grateful we don’t have to live with.

I believe that Clement Freud was the only one of my predecessors to have made that particular error. Stephen Fry was invited to stand at St Andrews but sensibly declined. They can always try again when he’s 70.

All of which brings me to note what a tremendously talented bunch my predecessors as Rector have been. Here I give the obligatory tip of the hat to Sir Peter Ustinov.

I am biased in the case of two of them, George Mackie and Gordon Wilson, because I was the seconder of one and proposer of the other. That made my own election my third successful rectorial campaign, and I claim the record, to be beaten when I am re-elected in 2010.

Getting elected is of course the difficult bit. My own election was fiercely contested and the result was close. I would like to pay a sincere tribute to Andy Nicol, a real gentleman, for his well-fought and constructive campaign, and for being such a good loser. Though, of course, as a former captain of the British Lions rugby team he did have a great deal of practice.

One excellent piece of electioneering by my opponent was securing the entire front page of the election day Dundee edition of the Daily Record. Most of the page was taken up by a picture of Andy and the headline screamed “I was born to lead Dundee Students”. The Daily Record is a paper which is at least consistent in its standard of accuracy.

The flaw in this great ploy, achieved with considerable effort, was of course that not many of our electorate are Daily Record readers. Some folk surmised that this mistake came about because Scottish Labour HQ were under the impression the election was at the University of Abertay.

Anyway, it was a good bit of electioneering, and made even better by the fact that in this special edition of the Daily Record, my two immediate predecessors, not without some encouragement from within the University hierarchy, chose to endorse the candidature of my opponent.

The Record told us “Outgoing Rector Lorraine Kelly and comedian Fred Macaulay threw their weight behind Nicol as the former Scotland captain urged the University’s Record readers to vote for him in the polls today.”

I believe the University’s Record readers both did.

I don’t regard former Rectors campaigning for a candidate – and thus perforce campaigning against a candidate – as quite the done thing. But it is still potentially effective electioneering. The only downside I see is that, should the ploy fail and someone else get elected, and were that person in the least bit vindictive, that person would then have a great platform in front of the entire University to get his own back. I do see that potential danger, don’t you?

Some of you will be relieved, and some disappointed, to hear that I do not intend to do this. I am very glad that my predecessor, Lorraine Kelly, was Rector of this University. Otherwise she might have gone her entire life without ever seeing the inside of an institute of higher education.

The other ex-Rector involved was Fred Macaulay, apparently a local comedian, though that is not obvious from reading his rectorial address. In the most striking passage, Fred tells us he does a great impression of Sean Connery, adding “Hey, I’m bald and Scottish, how hard can it be?”

Very hard, Fred, very hard. Sean Connery is bald, Scottish and immensely talented. Fred, however, is more like this egg: bald, Scottish and easily crushed. (Breaks egg).

I did say we should have some knockabout stuff, and seriously Fred was a hard-working and popular Rector. I am sure he’ll come up with some much better jokes about me.

Now this is going to be a very dull afternoon if I just ramble on like this and you just gawp at me. We need some atmospherics – feel free to laugh and cheer, or clap or shout “Rubbish” when you want to. Above all do heckle. Heckling is a fine tradition. The very word comes from Dundee.

Heckling is a process in the jute industry. To heckle is to comb out the jute prior to spinning. It was a tough, manual job and the heckling shops were murky with dust that choked the lungs. The hecklers were famous for their radicalism, probably a reaction to their terrible working conditions, and would turn up and yell at politicians. I think that’s quite right – present company accepted I don’t recall ever meeting a politician who did not ought to be shouted at. Thus the hecklers yelled, and the verb “To heckle” jumped from a textile process to a political barracking. Uniquely, as far as I know, what other student unions call election hustings, DUSA called election hecklings.

One appalling development in modern politics is the death of heckling.

Nowadays politicians deliver their sound-bites to a pathetically complacent and complicit media, in front of a carefully selected and vetted audience of the faithful. Just try getting close enough to a politician to heckle them. I mean that literally – please do try. When someone does manage, like Walter Wolfgang, the eighty year old who shouted “Rubbish” at Jack Straw, they are likely to be manhandled and arrested under the laughably named Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Jack Straw, incidentally, is a man who should have “Rubbish” shouted at him from the moment he steps out of the shower in the morning until the moment he retires with his evening cocoa.

The peculiar criminalisation of heckling is part of the most extraordinary onslaught on our civil liberties. Here in Dundee a woman was arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for walking on a cycle path. That is true – Google it. And last year we had the extraordinary incident of the Special Branch walking around Fresher’s Fayre. That is something which I promise you will not happen again. A university is no place for the thought police. We have no terrorists here; what our students are thinking is our students’ business. That is why they are here: to think.

Continues…

(more…)

I know that headline comes in the “Old news” category, but for once it’s official. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has ruled that the public were “Misled” over the death of Jean Charles De Menezes, the innocent Brazilian executed on the London Underground.

The lies which the Metropolitan Police told – from Sir Ian Blair down – in the ensuing cover-up were inexcusable.

Catalogue of Lies

– The Met maintained that De Menezes was a terrorist for 24 hours after they knew he was innocent.

The Met then proceeded to tell a series of lies about De Menezes behaviour to justify his killing. They said he had:

– Run into the tube station

– Vaulted the ticket barrier

– Raced through the subway and dashed onto the train

– Been wearing a bulky jacket from which wires protruded

These were 100% lie. In fact De Menezes had

– Picked up a newspaper in the station

– Used a ticket in the normal way

– Walked calmly throgu the station

– Been wearing tight clothing with no wires

These lies by the Met are inexcusable. In fact the IPCC were unable to get to grips with much else for lack of evidence – the cover-up went much deeper. Especially

– The CCTV footage of De Menezes throughout the station and at the shooting got “Lost” or corrupted

The IPCC named only Andy Hayman, the Head of counter-terrorist operations at the Met, as guilty of these lies. But we all know it went both higher and deeper. In fact:

– Police chiefs ensured the removal of criticism of more senior officers by the Police Federation taking out legal cases against the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

In any real democracy this scandal would cause not just major resignations amongst senior police, but a government to fall. Unfortunately we are no longer much of a democracy. News reports are emphasising that the shooting was “understandable” as it happened the day after the attempted July 21 bombings. In a classic piece of news management, the immediately preceding news item is that a man has today been charged with “Witholding Information” about the 21 July bombings.

Two years after the event, the police arrested him two days ago, and now charge him on the day that the IPCC report came out. Both those timings were within the sole remit of the police. Anyone who believes the timing is coincidental is so naive as to be certifiable.

Given the catalogue of lies they told in the De Menezes case, I am not prepared to believe the police version of what happens in any “Terrorist” incident without other verification. That goes for the recent London alleged car bomb too. Just like Tony Blair and WMD, the same applies to Ian Blair and Andy Hayman:

– Never take the word of a proven lying bastard.

Hidden beneath the good news of the withdrawal of army patrols from the streets of Northern Ireland, the government has snuck through powers for police and army in Northern Ireland that it has mooted for the rest of the UK.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article2820539.ece

They will be able to stop you – without requiring any reason to do so – and ask you to identify who you are, where you are going and why. You will be obliged to reply and justify yourself.

It really is not hyperbole to describe this new power as Nazi or Stalinist, and completely antithetical to the entire heritage of British liberty. It is our right to go about our lives and not to justify ourselves, unless we have actually done something wrong. This is a move to the system I fought in Uzbekistan, where nothing is permitted unless you specifically have authority to do it.

I have written before that the first policeman to stop me for no reason, and demand that I identify myself and explain where I am going, will get bopped on the nose. I attracted much criticism for this, and some of my supporters kindly tried to suggest that I was speaking figuratively. Let me be plain: I really mean it. As our liberties are sluiced away, at some stage respectable people have to start to resist. Or one day we will wake up and find we have no meaningful liberty left at all.

According to Sky News, a former BNP candidate was jailed today for possession of a large number of chemicals including hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and hydrochloric acid, the main ingredients of TATP. This explosive acheived notoriety due to its alleged use in the 7/7 bombs and other incidents.

From Orange

A former British National Party candidate has been jailed for two-and-a-half years for possessing explosive chemicals.

Robert Cottage, 49, was cleared after two trials of conspiracy to cause explosions but had earlier pleaded guilty to amassing the chemicals. Police discovered a huge stockpile of chemicals and food at his home in Colne, Lancashire last September.

Officers mounted the operation after Cottage’s wife told a social worker she was concerned about the substances and her husband’s belief that immigrants were swamping Britain.

The court heard that Cottage feared the country was on the brink of civil war. He appeared at Manchester’s Crown Square Court to be sentenced in relation to the charge of possession.

From The Muslim News

A former British National Party (BNP) candidate and a dentist were cleared of plotting explosions on July 12, despite being accused of possessing the largest sum of chemical explosives of its type ever found domestically in Lancashire….

Former BNP candidate Robert Cottage, of Colne, and David Jackson, of Nelson, had stockpiled chemicals they bought on the internet and discussed using them to cause explosions.

The record haul included the discovery of a rocket launcher, a nuclear biological suit, BB guns, gas masks two 56 kilogram bags of sugar, a box of mini flares, 34 gas canisters, a selection of pellets and an air pistol. Officers also found a series of printed bomb recipes from The Anarchis’s Handbook, downloaded from the internet.

Lancashire police were forced to deny accusations the trial would have been handled differently if one of the terrorism suspects had been Muslim.

There is not much to add to this excellent report, except that some of the “Intelligence material” against these poor people almost certainly comes from foreign torture chambers and the extraordinary rendition system.

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) – Terrorism suspects held under virtual house arrest in Britain suffer “Kafkaesque” treatment in special courts that review secret evidence against them, a committee of legislators said on Monday.

The committee’s report said “no right-minded person” would think the suspects had a fair hearing when they often had no idea of the case against them.

It likened the system to the Star Chamber, a secretive and oppressive English court abolished in 1641.

“This is a process that is offensive both to the basic principles of natural justice as we know it and to British ideas of fair play,” said Andrew Dinsmore, chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2936079920070730

I have just got round to reading the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee’s report into Extraordinary Rendition http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/publications/intelligence/20070725_isc_final.pdf

This really is the most laughable cover-up job I have ever seen. The committee does venture that some things might have happened which were – well perhaps morally difficult. It even in one sentence goes so far as to hint that the United States might have been a bit naughty:

“What the US rendition programme has shown is that these ethical dilemmas are not confined to countries with poor track records on human rights – the UK now has some ethical dilemmas with our closest ally.”

But fortunately, nobody actually did anything wrong and the phrase “No evidence” repeats again and again like a mantra. Nobody ever saw any evidence. British intelligence officers interrogating detainees in the rendition programme never saw any evidence of torture. The police never saw any evidence of rendition flights in the UK. Nor does the committee think that anybody should have looked to see if they could find any evidence – of course the police and security services are too busy protecting us from those dreadful terrorists to worry about the odd British Muslim being tortured by the Americans.

The Committee also fails to address the straightforward question of whether we do or whether we do not obtain intelligence from torture. It dances around the subject with equivocations like:

“These issues are not easily resolved. Intelligence and security services, here and abroad, rarely divulge information on their sources when sharing intelligence with foreign liaison services. The location, circumstances or treatment of a detainee (or even the fact that the source is a detainee) would not usually be shared.”

So there you have the basis of a defence: “We had no idea the Algerians had tortured him to get the information, your Honour.” Except that the statement above from the report is a direct lie. You very often know it is a detainee, and can easily discover from your liaison something about his circumstances, including torture, if you ask. If you’re a good enough liaison officer you’ll find out without asking. The details the Committee claim we “Don’t know” are in fact deliberately sanitised out by the Security Services before the intelligence report is issued, to give Ministers plausible deniability of knowing the information came from torture.

The Committee however have a second line of defence. Torturing people is OK anyway because it saves lives. Take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

“When he was in detention in 2003, place unknown, he provided [The pseudonyms of] six individuals…who were involved in AQ activities in or against the UK. The Americans gave us this information… These included high profile terrorists – an indication of the huge amount of significant information that came from one man in detention in an unknown place.”

In fact, KSM confessed under years of torture to an incredible amount of stuff, much of which could not possibly have been true. The Committee give a lot of space to the “Torture Works” arguments put forward by our security services, but fail to address – or even to meniton – the counter argment that torture gets you not the truth, but what the victim thinks will make the torturer stop. A few hundred years ago we would have succesfully been making KSM confess to communing with the Devil in the form of a cat. That wouldn’t make it true.

My breath is taken away by the moral cowardice of the committee in putting forward the argument that we need intelligence from torture, while pretending not to know if people are actually tortured or not. I could have given them irrefutable evidence that we do have a policy of obtaining evidence through torture – which I presume is why they did not call me to give evidence. I am named in the Report as having given evidence to the European Parliament Report on Extraordinary Rendition, but they make no mention at all of what my evidence was. They then dismiss the European parliament report of having “No real evidence”.

It is a matter of genuine sorrow to me that I have never given evidence in this country to the events outlined in Murder in Samarkand. I was called to give this evidence to both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, but our own parliament – including all three major parties – regard it as far too embarassing. Acknowledging our involvement in torture is inconvenient, because politicians would then have to support or oppose it. Everyone prefers that the security services do it, with government approval, while we all pretend it isn’t happening.

This was the result when I tried to submit evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee:

Dear Mr Murray,

The Committee considered your e-mail at its meeting yesterday, 15 March. As you requested, it was made available to all members.

The Committee decided not to receive the communication as evidence.

Steve Priestley

Clerk of FAC

There was a great fashion among Blair acolytes for comparing their man to Gladstone. Blair himself promoted this, declaring several times, including in a speech at the University of Sofia, that Gladstone was one of his “Political heroes”. In fact I very much doubt the notoriously ill-read Blair had very much idea of what Gladstone once stood for. Anti-interventionism and anti-Imperialism were at the heart of Gladstone’s creed. He was famously reluctant to send troops anywhere, even to rescue General Gordon, who Gladstone regarded as an unhinged imperialist and dangerous evangelical fanatic. Now there are very definite and interesting parallels between the equally preening Blair and Gordon…

Blair made his claim at the University of Sofia to justify his military intervention in Kosovo, by reference to Gladstones stand against Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. But Blair seemed not to notice that Gladstone’s intervention was strictly non-military.

The difference between the two is most aptly summed up in this great Gladstone quotation, uttered in condemnation of the second Afghan War:

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.

William E. Gladstone

Compare that to Blair’s happy inflcition of shock and awe on the poor inhabitants of Baghdad, or the continual bombing of civilian targets in Afghanistan, with every haveli described as a “Taliban compound” and every dead farmer – and his dead family – described as “Taliban fighters”.

Then think of extraordinary rendition and the hundreds of people we helped the CIA to ship to be tortured. Think of the government going to the Law Lords to argue that confessions from torture should be eligible as evidence in British courts. Compare that to Gladstone:

Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.

William E. Gladstone

Gladstone was a great man. It falls to us who actually know something about him, to rescue him from annexation by the neo-cons.

The head of the British army has issued a dire warning about the state of the armed forces in the context of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the current low levels of recruitment, increasing numbers of service men choosing to leave, and the escalating rate of casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan, this is perhaps not that surprising.

From This is London

Britain has virtually no soldiers left to fight abroad or defend the country if there is an ‘unexpected’ development, the head of the Army has told his senior officers.

General Sir Richard Dannatt made his dire assessment in a letter to high-ranking commanders, saying that reinforcements – should they be required – are ‘now almost non-existent’.

General Dannatt, who is well-known for his outspoken comments, issued a private memo declaring that ‘we have almost no capability to react to the unexpected’.

He said that the Army is understrength by 3,500 troops and that only one battalion of 500 troops – known as the ‘spearhead lead element’ – is immediately available to deal with emergencies such as a terrorist attack.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (IRIN) have reported that NATO led forces are now responsible for more civilian deaths in Afghanistan than the Taliban they are fighting. Looks like the strategy of US commander, General Dan K. McNeill (Bomber McNeill) is having the expected consequences.

LFCM have more.

From BBC Online

The government’s controversial anti-terror control orders are set to be challenged in the House of Lords. Ten terror suspects placed under the measures – at least two of whom are on the run – will argue they violate their rights to liberty and a fair trial.

Five Law Lords will also consider Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s appeal against a ruling which said orders imposed on six Iraqis breached their human rights.

Control orders place terror suspects under curfews of up to 18 hours a day. Opponents say they amount to “virtual house arrest” and are often based on evidence which is not made public.

Eric Metcalfe, of human rights and law reform organisation Justice, said: “We cannot allow the fight against terrorism to compromise basic fairness.

It was unedifying to watch Cameron and Brown at Prime Minster’s questions trading stupidities on security which they hoped would impress the electorate, presumably via the Murdoch press.

Cameron pressed for the banning of Hizb-ut-Tehrir, on the basis of an old quotation allegedly from a Hizb-ut-Tehrir leaflet in Germany, which HuT have always denied. Brown sensibly queried whether this was sufficient evidence.

HuT believe in the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate to unite the Muslim lands. That is a strange thing to believe in, but I can see no reason why the belief should be illegal. Certainly driving them underground would be a great deal more dangerous. HuT arguably function as a safety valve, providing a non-violent outlet for fundamentalist Muslims in the UK. To ban them is tantamount to saying that fundamentalist Muslin belief ought itself to be illegal.

Brown then decided to outdo Cameron in useless but hopefully populist proposals. He regurgitated Blair’s favourite about needing to be able to deport people to countries where they are liable to be tortured or killed (which would involve resiling from Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture). He also proposed identity cards. This time Cameron made the sensible response that compulsory ID cards did not stop the Madrid bombers.

In fact, there is no reason to believe that any of these daft proposals would have had the slightest effect on the events of the last few days. Predictably, nobody suggested that we stop invading other people’s countries and killing their people. Now that might make a difference.