Yearly archives: 2009

Joint Human Rights Committee Postpones Again Decision on Whether to Call My Evidence on UK Complicity in Torture

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Considering for a second time whether to hear my direct evidence of conscious UK government complicy in torture, on Tuesday 10 March the joint human rights committee decided to postpone a decision again. At the same time they decided to rebuke me for questioning their motives and integrity.

This is the text of the letter from Andrew Dismore MP, Chairman of the JCHR:

BEGINS

Request to give oral evidence to the Committee

Dear Mr Murray

Thank you for writing to the Committee to offer to give oral evidence about the allegations of UK complicity in torture abroad. The material you sent has been circulated to Members of the Committee, who have now had time to discuss your request fully.

Select committees usually request oral evidence from some of the individuals and organisations who have submitted detailed written memoranda, which form the basis for the questioning and can be made available to the public and the press at the start of the evidence session. In your case, it would be helpful if you could expand on the bullet points that you have already submitted and set out in more detail the case you wish to put across to us. Written evidence should not exceed 2,500 words and we would ask you to supply us with a signed hard copy as well as an electronic version, preferably in Word.

In preparing your memorandum you should be aware of the Committee’s terms of reference, which relate to human rights in the UK and which encompass the compliance of public bodies (including the intelligence and security services) operating overseas with the UK’s human rights obligations.

Our starting point for this inquiry is that the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service are both public bodies for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and its agents are required to act in accordance with the Act. In addition, the agencies should comply with the provisions of the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT). Our 2006 report on UNCAT (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200506/jtselect/jtrights/185/18502.htm) includes sections on cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies and complicity in torture and abuse (paras 52-60) which are relevant to our current inquiry.

We are not able to consider the policies and activities of other countries in relation to the treatment of detainees. This would be a matter for the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

If you have any questions about submitting written evidence to the Committee, I suggest that you contact the Commons Clerk, Mark Egan, with whom you have already been in correspondence.

Finally, the comments you published about the Committee on your website last week were intemperate, unjustified and untrue. I have already drawn your attention to the Committee’s report on UNCAT, which clearly demonstrates that we have consistently sought to hold the Government to account on torture. I would also like to draw your attention to the membership of the Committee (http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/joint_committee_on_human_rights/joint_committee_on_human_rights_members.cfm): not only are there no Whips on the Committee, but Labour members are in the minority. The Committee deprecates your comments and hopes that you will take a more constructive attitude towards our work from now on.

We will publish this letter on our website (http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/joint_committee_on_human_rights/tortureiniraq.cfm) and I expect that you will do likewise. I would be grateful if you could direct readers of your website to this letter so that those who have emailed the Committee about your evidence can see my response. We are unable to reply individually to everyone who has emailed the Committee.

Yours sincerely,

SENT UNSIGNED

ANDREW DISMORE MP

Chair, Joint Committee on Human Rights

I telephoned the Committee Clerk to check what this meant. He confirmed that I have to submit a further memorandum of up to 2,500 words. Only after receipt of that memorandum will the Committee consider – again – whether to accept my evidence.

I had of course already submitted,this memorandum, with attachments:

BEGINS

I wish to offer myself as a witness before the Joint Commission on Human Rights on the subject of the UK government’s policy on intelligence cooperation with torture abroad.

I appeared as a witness in person before both the European Parliament and European Council’s enquiries into extraordinary rendition. My evidence was described by the European Council’s Rapporteur, Senator Dick Marty, as “Compelling and valuable”.

The key points I wish to make are these:

– I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004.

– I learned and confirmed that I was regularly seeing intelligence from detainees in the Uzbek torture chambers, sent me by the CIA via MI6.

– British Ministers and officials were seeing the same torture material.

– In October/November 2002 and January/Februray 2003 I sent two Top Secret telegrams to London specifically on the subject of our receipt of intelligence gained under torture. I argued this was illegal, immoral and impractical. The telegrams were speciifically marked for the Secretary of State.

– I was formally summoned back to the FCO for a meeting held on 7 or 8 March 2003 specifically and solely on the subject of intelligence gained under torture. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe, FCO, Sir Michael Wood, Chief Legal Adviser, FCO, and Matthew Kydd, Head of Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, FCO.

– This meeting was minuted. I have seen the record, which is classified Top Secret and was sent to Jack Straw. On the top copy are extensive hand-written marginalia giving Jack Straw’s views.

– I was told at this meeting that it is not illegal for us to obtain intelligence gained by torture, provided that we did not do the torture ourselves. I was told that it had been decided that as a matter of War on Terror policy we should now obtain intelligence from torture, following discussion between Jack Straw and Richard Dearlove. I was told that we could not exclude receipt of specific material from the CIA without driving a coach and horses through the universality principle of the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement, which would be detrimental to UK interests.

– Sir Michael Wood’s legal advice that it was not illegal to receive intelligence got by torture was sent on to me in Tashkent (copy attached).

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf–

On 22 July 2004 I sent one further telegram on intelligence got by torture, with a lower classification, following FCO communications on the subject. Copy attached.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf

It was my final communication before being dismissed as Ambassador.

In conclusion, I can testify that beyond any doubt the British government has for at least six years a considered but secret policy of cooperation with torture abroad. This policy legally cleared by government legal advisers and approved by Jack Straw as Secretary of State.

Craig Murray

2 March 2009

Frankly my statement of 2 March seems to me concise, damning and to answer the exact questions that the Committee is supposed to be investigating. I cannot understand the lengthy passages in Andrew Dismore’s letter which appear to imply that my evidence is about a foreign country and not about the UK’s human rights compliance. I do not see how my evidence can go further to the heart of the subjects Dismore says the committee is supposed to be investigating.

Anyway, I will jump through the hoops and expand my above evidence into a memorandum which will say exactly the same thing.

Then the committee can discuss a third time whether to accept my evidence.

[Comments are enabled again. Apologies we were suffering the most massive spam attack involving many tens of thousands of items of spam. Many comments blocked today are not retrievable so please post again. Thanks]

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Light Relief

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I had a very enjoyable and relaxed weekend. I am very grateful indeed to more than four hundred people who have so far emailed the parliamentary joint human rights committee to ask that the committee accept my direct witness evidence on the UK and US governments’ use of intelligence from torture.

There are still 30 hours before the committee decides whether to hear me. If everyone can email round the appeal and encourage others to write, it would be very helpful.

Meanwhile, my weekend was cheered by small things. Nadira is now entering the eighth month of pregnancy. She still occasionally makes delightful little slips of English in her lovely light accent. Yesterday we had “Hot crutch buns” for breakfast, which made me giggle a lot in a Homer Simpson kind of way.

On Friday night I met some lovely people at a dinner party at my friend Elsie’s. They included the Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry. I was surprised to find he was not dressed as Marie Antoinette but was in fact completely down to earth in manner and appearance. It led me to recall that there is an old fashioned craft in his ceramic making which has little apparent relationship to his perfomance art (I presume that’s what his appearances in wedding cake outfits is).

We discussed art education, which has become a great inerest of mine as Dundee University includes the Duncan of Jordanstone Art College. Perry’s view was that you can neither teach creativity, nor can you expect it to reveal itself in great bursts. What you can teach is skill. I was very impressed by him.

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The Zimbabwe Solution

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Run out of money? Just print some more! “Quantitive easing” is scarcely new, even if now done electronically rather than with ink and paper. In current economic circumstances the obvious economic effect – inflation – is likely to be muted. I have never seen deflation before and few alive in the UK have. Stagflation, yes. Enough quantitive easing and we can eventually get back to stagflation. Meantime, thanks to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for bringing us a new experience.

But while the inflationary effect is likely to be overwhelmed by deflation, the redistributive effect of quantitive easing will be alive and kicking. By inventing more money, there is an effect – not as simple as it sounds but very real – of reducing the value of existing money, to the detriment of those who have some, and redistributing value to those who get the new money.

This is the Zimbabwe solution, where Mugabe’s regime prints ever more zeros denominated notes, which of course go massively disproportionately to the military and regime members. They have the additional advantages of being able to change them at a hugely advantageous “official” excahnge rate open only to them.

And in Brown’s Zimbabwe solution, who are the equivalent of the regime members, those who benefit from the game at the expense of you and me? Why, exactly the same beneficiaries who have already received over £15,000 from every man, woman and child in the country in various rescue measures and guarantees – the banks!

Yes folks, the 75 billion, and perhaps 150 biilion, of newly invented money is to go to the banks, in return for some pretty worthless bonds, in the hope that somehow the banks will lend it out responsibly to businesses and “Kickstart” the economy. As opposed to pay it out in massive bonuses to themselves, use it to hide their incredible bundles of “toxic debt” and invest it in dubous financial instruments, which is how they have wasted all the huge amounts of taxpayer cash they have been fed so far.

Brown’s blind faith in the baking system which he deregulated and allowed to go rotten, is the modern “trickledown economics”. The government hopes if they pump enough money into the banks, it will trickle out again and do something useful. The main useful thing they hope it will do is reinflate the bubble of our ludicrously inflated property market. In fact that would not be useful at all. If you have been the victim of a pyramid scam, it is not a good idea to try to repair your finances by joining another one.

Brown’s fawning Washington trip attempted to show him leading the World in economic recovery. In fact there are big differences between Brown’s plans – under which 95% of “economic rescue” financing is pumped straight to fatcat bankers – and Obama’s $719 billion rescue package which involves a great deal of direct job creation by old fashioned Keynsian public works. The “pork barrel” elements of tacking on pet projects to get Obama’s bill through Congress was not especially unhelpful in this instance.

It would be far, far better to let the UK banks go bust. Firstly the bastards deserved it. A system where the fatcats take the profits and you and I fund their losses is completely unacceptable. It is worth noting that even in the Royal Bank of Scotland the UK retail banking operation was highly profitable as a stand alone operation, so these elements could be rescued.

It would have cost the government less to give everyone their bank deposits back than it has cost to try to save the rotten corrupt structures.

Instead, a family of four now has a national debt share of £140,000, and increasing by £5,000 a month. Yet the only jobs saved have been those of City – not retail, they were profitable anyway – City bankers, plus their lap dancers and cocaine suppliers. Meanwhile ordinary people are starting to lose their jobs by the drove.

In Dundee, the twelve employees of Prisme Packaging were told this week they were immediately redundant, and there was no cash to pay statutory redundancy payments. Gordon Brown and the Bank of England strangely didn’t offer to print any money for them.

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Your Help Needed – Reveal Torture to Stop It

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On Tuesday 10 March the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights will discuss whether or not to hear my evidence on the UK government’s policy of using intelligence from torture. They discussed whether to hear my evidence on 3 March but failed to reach a conclusion.

The government is lobbying hard for my exclusion. I need everybody to send an email to [email protected] to urge that I should be allowed to give evidence. Just a one-liner would be fine. If you are able to add some comment on the import of my evidence, or indicate that you have heard me speak or read my work, that may help. Please copy your email to [email protected].

Please also pass on this plea to anyone you can and urge them to act. Help from other bloggers in posting this appeal would be much appreciated.

The evidence I am trying to give the parliamentary committee is this:

I wish to offer myself as a witness before the Joint Commission on Human Rights on the subject of the UK government’s policy on intelligence cooperation with torture abroad.

I appeared as a witness in person before both the European Parliament and European Council’s enquiries into extraordinary rendition. My evidence was described by the European Council’s Rapporteur, Senator Dick Marty, as “Compelling and valuable”.

The key points I wish to make are these:

– I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004.

– I learned and confirmed that I was regularly seeing intelligence from detainees in the Uzbek torture chambers, sent me by the CIA via MI6.

– British Ministers and officials were seeing the same torture material.

– In October/November 2002 and January/Februray 2003 I sent two Top Secret telegrams to London specifically on the subject of our receipt of intelligence gained under torture. I argued this was illegal, immoral and impractical. The telegrams were speciifically marked for the Secretary of State.

– I was formally summoned back to the FCO for a meeting held on 7 or 8 March 2003 specifically and solely on the subject of intelligence gained under torture. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe, FCO, Sir Michael Wood, Chief Legal Adviser, FCO, and Matthew Kydd, Head of Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, FCO.

– This meeting was minuted. I have seen the record, which is classified Top Secret and was sent to Jack Straw. On the top copy are extensive hand-written marginalia giving Jack Straw’s views.

– I was told at this meeting that it is not illegal for us to obtain intelligence gained by torture, provided that we did not do the torture ourselves. I was told that it had been decided that as a matter of War on Terror policy we should now obtain intelligence from torture, following discussion between Jack Straw and Richard Dearlove. I was told that we could not exclude receipt of specific material from the CIA without driving a coach and horses through the universality principle of the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement, which would be detrimental to UK interests.

– Sir Michael Wood’s legal advice that it was not illegal to receive intelligence got by torture was sent on to me in Tashkent (copy attached).

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf– On 22 July 2004

I sent one further telegram on intelligence got by torture, with a lower classification, following FCO communications on the subject. Copy attached.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf

It was my final communication before being dismissed as Ambassador.

In conclusion, I can testify that beyond any doubt the British government has for at least six years a considered but secret policy of cooperation with torture abroad. This policy legally cleared by government legal advisers and approved by Jack Straw as Secretary of State.

Craig Murray

2 March 2009

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Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Commission Struck By Cowardice

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I have received this reply from the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Commission to my request to give evidence to them:

Dear Mr Murray

The Committee considered your request and decided it wanted to spend a little more time considering the information you sent before reaching a decision, so they will consider the matter again next Tuesday.

best wishes

Mark Egan

How typical. The Commission has been huffing and puffing and pretending to make a fuss about finding the truth behind the government’s attitude to intelligence from torture, with particular relation to the Binyam Mohammed case. This is part of the cosy Westminster game. But when someone comes along who can actually tell the truth, with documentary backing to prove it, they don’t really want to know – in fact their first instinct is to bury the truth.

The politicians will be seeking advice now from their political masters, and the government spin machine will yet again go into overdrive. The wires from Whitehall to Westminster and thw whips offices are already whispering yet again that Craig Murray is mad, alcoholic, corrupt and a pervert. Not the sort of chap you should take evidence from.

The government has had all those things published about me since I started fighting their use of torture. All of those things are lies.

But even if they were all true, I can nonetheless prove from documentary evidence and first hand testimony that the government systematically and as a matter of policy obtains evidence from torture abroad.

Why will parliament not hear me?

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How Hard for the Truth to be Heard

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Yesterday Harriet Harman was lying through her teeth on the Andrew Marr show, claiming that the Government had never had any idea any of its intelligence was coming through torture. Meanwhile, the Government has refused to testify on this subject before the Parliamentary Joint Commission on Human Rights, where such lies may have consequences. If Harman is telling the truth, what do Ministers have to hide from the Parliamentary Commission?

Of course, she is not telling the truth. I today sent this memorandum to the Joint Commission on Human Rights, offering to give evidence before them – if Ministers won’t tell them what is happening, perhaps I can:

I wish to offer myself as a witness before the Joint Commission on Human Rights on the subject of the UK government’s policy on intelligence cooperation with torture abroad.

I appeared as a witness in person before both the European Parliament and European Council’s enquiries into extraordinary rendition. My evidence was described by the European Council’s Rapporteur, Senator Dick Marty, as “Compelling and valuable”.

The key points I wish to make are these:

– I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004.

– I learned and confirmed that I was regularly seeing intelligence from detainees in the Uzbek torture chambers, sent me by the CIA via MI6.

– British Ministers and officials were seeing the same torture material.

– In October/November 2002 and January/Februray 2003 I sent two Top Secret telegrams to London specifically on the subject of our receipt of intelligence gained under torture. I argued this was illegal, immoral and impractical. The telegrams were speciifically marked for the Secretary of State.

– I was formally summoned back to the FCO for a meeting held on 7 or 8 March 2003 specifically and solely on the subject of intelligence gained under torture. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe, FCO, Sir Michael Wood, Chief Legal Adviser, FCO, and Matthew Kydd, Head of Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, FCO.

– This meeting was minuted. I have seen the record, which is classified Top Secret and was sent to Jack Straw. On the top copy are extensive hand-written marginalia giving Jack Straw’s views.

– I was told at this meeting that it is not illegal for us to obtain intelligence gained by torture, provided that we did not do the torture ourselves. I was told that it had been decided that as a matter of War on Terror policy we should now obtain intelligence from torture, following discussion between Jack Straw and Richard Dearlove. I was told that we could not exclude receipt of specific material from the CIA without driving a coach and horses through the universality principle of the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement, which would be detrimental to UK interests.

– Sir Michael Wood’s legal advice that it was not illegal to receive intelligence got by torture was sent on to me in Tashkent (copy attached).

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf

– On 22 July 2004 I sent one further telegram on intelligence got by torture, with a lower classification, following FCO communications on the subject. Copy attached.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf

It was my final communication before being dismissed as Ambassador.

In conclusion, I can testify that beyond any doubt the British government has for at least six years a considered but secret policy of cooperation with torture abroad. This policy legally cleared by government legal advisers and approved by Jack Straw as Secretary of State.

Craig Murray

2 March 2009

So now I wait to see what response I get. The Foreign Affairs Committee refused to call me to give evidence, and I rather fear that the Joint Commission on Human Rights may continue the British parliamentary tradition of ostracising whistleblowers.

Please click on home at top to see latest post on how you can help.

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Andrew Mackinlay is Magnificent

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My previous attempts to explain that Andrew Mackinlay is the greatest man in Parliament have been met with some scepticism by my readers.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/07/andrew_mackinla.html

But nobody can deny that this week he was absolutely magnificent against Jack Straw’s continued efforts to hide behind a wall of lies over the invasion of Iraq:

Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) (Lab): Has the Justice Secretary looked behind him to see that there are only two office holders?”a Parliamentary Private Secretary and the Church Commissioner?”who support him? Not a single one of his hon. Friends is here endorsing him today. Could it be that they are ashamed and embarrassed by this announcement? Will he not reflect on the fact, which really is breathtaking, that he, who clearly was one of the people who piloted this policy and persuaded us?”I remember him, as it is photographed on my mind, promising that we would get the second UN resolution?”should also decide that those documents should not be available? It is appalling.

It is also a bad day for Parliament when we get synthetic anger from the Opposition, who are cosying up?”the Privy Council club closing down debate and discussion on things that must be revealed.

I bear the scars of having trusted the Prime Minister on this matter and I shall take to the grave the fact that I regret having listened to the porky pies and the stories of the Intelligence and Security Committee and of the Prime Minister. I shall regret it to the day I die. I should never, ever have trusted them.

Mr. Straw rose?”

Andrew Mackinlay: And I never will again!

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090224/debtext/90224-0006.htm

The closing of ranks by New Labour and the Conservatives to frustrate the Information Tribunal’s decision to release the Cabinet discussion that led us to war, simply illustrates the astonishing democratic deficit in the UK which enabled bellicose politicians to launch an illegal war in the first place.

I was deeply frustrated last night watching Question Time, where there was again a general closing of ranks by Labour, Tories and the Political editor of the Sun, offset only by a nice but inarticulate Lib-Dem non-entity. Everyone sagely agreed that it was necessary for participants to be assured of secrecy, or they would not be able to give their best advice.

Nobody countered this argument, which has been rolled out by almost the entire mainstream media. But it is nonsense. Is advice which of which somebody might be ashamed and which cannot stand up to public scrutiny always the best advice? Does the best government really thrive only in the darkest of corners, operating by subterfuge? I worked in government for over twenty years, including in some pretty senior positions working with intelligence and military affairs. I never gave any advice that I would not have been prepared to defend robustly and openly.

Indeed advice which you would not be prepared to defend robustly seems axiomatically more likely to be flawed.

The obsession of the British establishment with the view that the best government is hidden government must be challenged. What it does of course is to permit government for motives and interests they don’t want the rest of us to know about.

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One Law for New Labour

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Texting death crash peer jailed for 12 weeks and banned for one year

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7909510.stm

Texting death crash woman jailed for 21 months and banned for three years

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7865114.stm

Note that in neither case is it true – contrary to propaganda – that the texting was several minutes before the crash. In the case of the woman, the prosecution is appealing because the sentence was too lenient!

With thanks to Alaric.

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What Is A Student Union?

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The recent wave of student occupations over Gaza has spread truly across the whole country, and constitutes a most welcome return of student interest in international issues. I attended University Court in Dundee yeaterday, and without any opposition the University divested from BAE Systems as the start of an ethical investment policy. This was a student-led initiative.

But I also walked into a furore which for me carried strong echoes of my own student days. An extraordinary general meeting of Dundee University Students Association had passed motions on BAE and on Palestine, but the student executive were refusing to implement the motion on Palestine. They had obtained a legal opinion that, as a registered charity, the Students Association could not take political stances.

This question of whether students unions could take an interest in the outside world – known as the ultra vires debate – recurred frequently when I was a student. The legal principles remain unchanged, although the precise legislation has altered. The generally accepted view was that the students association was quite entitled to express strongly held views on behalf of its members, but it would be wrong for it to spend any of its charitable funds for extraneous purposes.

That seems to me still a sensible position now. The bogey that the Students Union may lose its charitable status over a pro-Palestinian declaration is a nonsense. For one thing DUSA already has existing and longstanding pro-Palestinian policy that still applies. Student bodies have been making declarations on the state of the World for over a hundred years at least, and no students union has ever lost charitable status because of it.

The threat is a fiction, and the suspicion must be that pro-Israeli supporters – not one of whom turned up to oppose the motion democratically – have resorted to legal subterfuge.

Much more dangerous is the idea that the executive can ignore the will of the students expressed by a general meeting. The notion that students are not trustworthy in democratic process, and that the executive know better when guided by professionals, is something that actually is inimical to the whole idea of a students union.

The sad thing is that the Executive are under great pressure from “the Establishment” and are being told that they would act illegally if they acted on the resolution passed. It is very hard for them not to bow to the general move to dumb down and restrict student activity. It takes courage to rebel – but that is why we have youth. If not now, when?

As it happens, for the first time in many years DUSA has an executive who are genuinely active, altruistic and concerned, and doing a pretty good job. Then they found themselve faced with this situation, which puts them under pressure.

The Executive must act on the letter of what the General Meeting passed, until and unless they get it overturned by another general meeting or referendum (and interestingly it appears that what the general meeting passed may include seeking advice from the Scottish charities commissioners). That they have to obey the general meeting really should go without saying, but DUSA has become so unused to student activity and democracy that it is disturbingly not being taken as axiomatic.

The charities commission in Scotland is, of course, a New Labour body, as witnessed by its scandalous indulgence of the Smith Insitute.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/07/the_smith_insti.html

The idea that it tolerates the fake charity that is part and parcel of Scottish New Labour, but would remove charitable status from DUSA over a few words on the massacre of Palestinians, is appalling.

I do hope our students find their backbone.

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Tessa Jowell Should Be Charged With Money Laundering

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David Mills has been given a jail sentence in Italy for corruption, though sadly he will probably escape jail as the rich and well connected normally do.

Tessa Jowell actively participated in the laundering of the corrupt payments from Silvio Berlusconi, given to her husband David Mills in return for false testimony in court to cover up some of Berlusconi’s endless crooked dealings. Tessa Jowell participated as a full partner in the three time remortgaging of her home, paying off the mortgage with cash and then remortgaging. She has stated that there was “Nothing unusual” in this.

Most people would think it was very unusual to be able to pay off a large mortgage with cash at all. To do it twice and remortgage again each time would strike most of us as very weird indeed.

Which illustrates the gap between the hierarchy of “New Labour” and the “Hard working families” who are Gordon Brown’s favourite soundbite. This is illustrated by Mills’ description of £500,000 as “not very much”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/17/david-mills-berlusconi-trial-letter

This is of a piece with Jacqui Smith’s ripping off the taxpayer of £150,000 by pretending her sister’s home is her main residence, then wondering what the fuss is about. That would be ten year’s salary for the British soldier killed today in Afghanistan.

Nobody who reads Mills’ letter to his accountant (above link) can doubt that he is a crook. This particular Berlusconi deal was just one part of his bent practice, which included the financial arrangements for organised crime in Italy to sell on infected and condemned human blood from the USA into transfusion services in Europe. Tessa Jowell lived off these criminal earnings for decades and actively participated in laundering the cash.

Either Jowell did not notice she was living with a major criminal – in which case she is far too stupid to be a minister – or she was complicit – in which case she is far too corrupt to be a minister.

No ifs or buts are possible.

Only when Mills was exposed to the media did Jowell abandon her husband – sacrificing her marriage for her political career. If she had remained loyal to him it would have at least been some slight saving grace. In fact the woman is a total disgrace.

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Nadira

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Nadira talks here about why she is taking part in The Vagina Monologues in aid of V-Day.

http://www.whatsonstage.com/blogs/offwestend/?p=1036

Being a male fuddy-duddy I worry a bit about the stresses of stage performance for someone six months pregnant! She seems to be relishing it though, and looks great to me.

Nadira has developed a whole life of involvement with women’s issues and charities quite separate from me, and still continues to surprise me after six pretty dramatic years together.

I see from the same site that Deep Cut is coming to the Tricicle Theatre from 11 March. I couldn’t get a ticket for it in Edinburgh, but those who saw it tell me it is riveting theatre, as well as an expose of one of the weirdest cover-ups of the New Labour years.

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In Development Hell

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Steve Coogan has just described the position of the film of Murder in Samarkand as “Stuck in development hell”.

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/scoop-murder-in-samarkand-stuck-in-development-hell.php

Actually it is probably worse than that. Meantime, with no income from the putative film and my discovering just how near impossible it is to publish a book yourself and get bookshops to take it, my lack of funds is becoming positively terrifying, with a new baby due to arrive shortly. Do you know those moments when you feel like a checkmated king, with nothing to do but fall over?

Anyway, I shall boost my almost vanished store of feelings of self-worth by exhibiting some erudition you probably don’t know. Checkmate has nothing to do with the board being chequered, unless the word chequered comes from the game. Chess originated in Central Asia. Russian for chess is “Shakhmati” (normally in Cyrillic) which is perfectly straightforward everyday Uzbek meaning “The King is stuck”. Shakh of course being the same word as sheikh in other Muslim cultures.

So now I feel poorer than you yet in an obscure way slightly superior. But sadly still checkmated.

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Does Anybody Out There Still Believe in Liberty?

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There is no doubt that New Labour gives not a fig for individual liberty, so the banning by the money-grabbing Jacqui Smith of Geert Wilders is run-of-the-mill – but it is still both wrong and dangerous, and has whipped up precisely the kind of frenzy about his Melanie Phillips like gibberings which Smith claimed to be trying to avoid.

It was equally wrong to ban Yusuf al-Qaradawi. I just heard the BBC World Service conduct some unusually good interviews with political figures, where those who opposed the banning of Wilders (eg Baroness Cox) supported the banning of al-Qaradwi, while those who opposed the banning of al-Qaradwi (eg Ken Livingstone) supported the banning of Wilders. Both sides argue, equally unconvincingly, that the man they dislike may incite to violence.

The BBC appeared unable to find any supporter of the principle of freedon of expression.

There was no reason to suppose that either Wilders or al-Qaradwi planned any unlawful activity in the UK, and had they done so they might properly have been arrested. But the gut instincts of New Labour are viciously authoritarian. Those of all views who value liberty should unite to resist them. The problem is, the number of people who really do believe in liberty for those with whom they disagree, appears to have grown exceedingly small.

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Some Good News, For a Change

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A group believe that a God created the whole universe, then decided for some reason having the ability to make anything and anyone he wanted that he would father a child, just once, at a pretty random time some millions of years after he did all that creating, and from the whole universe chose a girl in Palestine, who God decided to make pregnant without impairing her virginity, resultant child being God too and later being killed before coming back to life again. Well, one of the heads of this group has announced that Darwinism is not incompatible with this belief.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4588289/The-Vatican-claims-Darwins-theory-of-evolution-is-compatible-with-Christianity.html

This is a kind of improvement. That is in itself kind of strange because plainly they are actually incompatible, one being scientific fact, the other obvious tosh.

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Apologies for Absence

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Sorry for protracted intermission – I forgot how very hard work moving house is, not to mention that it leaves you without an internet connection for weeks.

I am in any event so stunned by the monumental arrogance and incompetence of this government that I find myself at a loss where to start back. Anyone care to suggest a topic? The extraordinary reliance of Brown on merchant bankers as his advisers and ministers on the financial disaster is a possibility, but it is so appalling I dissolve into helpless giggles just thinking about it,

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The Most Rancid Hypocrisy

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It is four years now since I was sacked as Ambassador for opposing MI6’s use of intelligence gained from torture and passed to MI6 by the CIA under the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf

Yet with incredible hypocrisy, four years after I exposed the whole evidence, David Miliband continues to trot out the barefaced lie that the UK does not support or condone torture.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/05/guantanamo-miliband-torture

even while referring to yet another case that proves beyond doubt that the UK receives torture intelligence from the CIA.

Meanwhile parliament continues to behave as though this is a terrible thing they knew nothing about. I am still furious that I was called to testify before both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, while the British parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee refused to accept my evidence.

None so blind as those who will not see. The stinking hypocrisy on this issue extends beyond New Labour.

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Fiddling While Rome Burns

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The nauseating smugness of the Davos gathering is sickening enough at the best of times. In these very bad times, it is unbearable. The idea that we just need to recover confidence and get credit moving again, was precisely what the promoters of the South Seas and Darien schemes said when those schemes collapsed. The Church of England were quite right to characterise New Labour’s proposed remedies as “An addict returning to his drug”.

Brown’s extraordinary reliance on paid advisers from the merchant banks themselves to devise the way forward is laughable – not to mention the hideously unpleasant Baroness Vedera, one of the endless stream of democratically unaccountable Brown cronies parachuted into the Lords as ministers. And if one more penny of public money gets put into the banks without all bank bosses and staff being put on civil service pay rates, I am organising a tax strike.

Am in the middle of moving house, so no more from me until the end of the week.

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People Who Really Don’t Like Me

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I had a rather peculiar happy thought today, caused by a somewhat aggressive phone call I received yesterday. The happy thought is that, while I am generally regarded as a pleasant and amusing fellow, there are a small but definite number of people who absolutely detest me.

How can that be a happy thought? Well, let me list them. I do not include people I surmise may dislike me, but only those I know for sure are aware of my existence and have said very nasty things about me:

Islam Karimov

Tony Blair

Jerry Rawlings

Gordon Brown

Tim Spicer

Jack Straw

Alisher Usmanov

Peter Mandelson

Gulnara Karimova

Baroness Amos

Lord Taylor of Blackburn

David Aaronovitch

That really is a collection of deeply unlovely people. If I have managed to do anything to protect anyone else from the effects of their relentlessly succesful and acquisitive lives, then I have achieved something in my life after all.

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