Having been roundly defeated in the Court of Appeal, and with it now established beyond doubt that the UK knew that Binyam Mohammed was being tortured by the USA, Miliband has the massive effrontery to welcome the decision.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/feb/10/david-miliband-binyam-mohamed-statement
The truth about the government’s complicity in torture is becoming established beyond doubt. I am still shocked about the virtual media blackout on my own evidence to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI
But am comforted that the forthcoming dramatisation of Murder in Samarkand with David Tennant will do more for popular understanding than dry evidence ever could.
We will never see justice, but I would strongly support the calls for a public inquiry into UK complicity with torture. Preferably of an inquisitorial kind; but even the cosy conversations of the Chilcot committee have thrown up some truth.
Anyone else see what the redacted paragraphs said, and ask, “Is that it?”
The notion that the United States has been complicit in torture and mistreatment of detainees is beyond question – the only question is the extent to which the types of policies, documented by Philippe Sands in “The Torture Team”, have since been walked back.
Can anyone tell me what precisely was the significance of the information redacted in this case? I get that intelligence sharing protocols on confidentiality etc are nigh sacrosanct, but the whole government posture with respect to this case was that what was being witheld would if published cause major embarrassment. So what particularly was so embarrassing, when we now know waterboarding and other torture techniques were once official US policy?
Keep watching friends…don’t say i didn’t tell you so.
Keep them mirrors shiny.
Samuel Pepys styleeeeee.
Ed,
“Is that it?”
Well yes, but then you read the related stuff, and you see an enormous can of worms, not only open, but the buggers are crawling all over the place.
I’m a simple soul from Oldham, and don’t ask, nor expect much from my Government.
However, I expect my Government, to not only uphold The Law, which actually comes from the Common Man, rather some elite, but to also uphold the very basic tenets of human morality.
Whilst my Cat may Torture a Mouse to Death, my Cat dosen’t torture other Cats to death, and we do not live in the Middle Ages.
How else can I explain My Disgust, that my peers in the Year 2010 are not as Disgusted and enraged as I am at the Treatment of a Fellow Human Being.
Irrespective of the suspicion of evil, committed by others, if the Government is in any way suspected of even complicity in the Torture of Other Human Beings, then it loses all Moral Authority to Exist as Government.
It is On The Path To Barbarism.
The Law Applies To EVERYONE
Tony
I’m not sure what this means, or whether I agree with the meaning.
But take a look at this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00682/TTM102701CC_RGB1-co_682716a.jpg
Tony
Sorry, I didn’t ask my question very clearly. My view on torture is exactly as yours, my question was whether information about the torture or mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed could be considered potentially embarrassing when it is now widely known that this is what America did to suspected terrorists.
Having read a bit more about the case, it seems the Lord Chief Justice looked at this redacted text and decided it was not genuinely secret. I can only assume because of what we now know about official US policy.
So perhaps my question here has been answered… still, nothing short of a full investigation of UK policy on torture in the Blair years will be enough to draw a line under this.
Ed,
I understood your question completely.
My respect for the Judiciary has risen considerably.
I have No Respect For Any Members of The Government, Nor Any of The Civil Servants who Stayed Silent who Knew What Was Going On.
Craig Murray Could Have Gone Along With This Evil – and May Have Become The British Ambassador to The USA by Now.
Thank God For His Courage.
Where is Everyone Else?
Cowering Their Heads in Shame Whilst Slurping At The Trough of Evil and Greed?
Or Organising Their Hit & Torture Squads To ANYONE Who Dare Complain?
Tony
Why the silence?
John Pilger describes it all rather well:
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=555
Or you could take the Dick Smallpenis approach and just dismiss it all out of hand:
On “Binman” as he called him.
“Meanwhile, the usual useful idiots will have a field day, filling their boots with legal aid, and using his unsubstantiated claims of torture to bash America and undermine our own security services. Makes you proud to be ‘British’.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1153360/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-The-bras-panties-Straw.html
To torture a British politician all you seem to have to do is to threaten some kind of embarrassment, then they run for the Kleenex. Binyam Mohammed had to be put on the rack, deprived of sleep and then face a British court – and he still has self-respect.
I feel ashamed to be British. Miliband is a slimy lying fathead in the image of his makers: Blair, Straw and Campbell.
In my opinion many of the people tortured are entirely innocent. Torture was used by the US/UK to get confessions to confirm the existence of a ‘terrorist’ Strict Muslims were used to add credence to the belief that a particular person was engaged in terrorism.
The judiciary’s decision today actually made the News on Music Radio today.
Now, you might not think this is important, but whoever is the news editor on the Music Radio Station I am currently listening to, obviously thought it did
I Rarely Watch Mainstream TV News, because most of it is BLATANT Government Propaganda – like you used to get in Obscure Third World Countries 30 Years Ago.
I thought how can they put up with such shit?
So I asked them, and although we had a bit of a language problem – after awhile we understood each other completely.
Unless you turn the TV off for a considerable period, and then turn it on again, you don’t realise how you are being programmed.
Everything you think is being delivered subconsciously when your brain is an open receptive non-critical state
If you read books instead, you might find that some writers also write complete and utter shit, but many write some extremely well researched obvious truth.
The words are revealing.
Tony
This doesn’t restore my faith in the judiciary at all. In this case it’s quite plain that the UK has been complicit in torture. Releasing all the evidence doesn’t really add to anything.
The judiciary appears to go against the government but is vital for the judiciary to give the semblance of being impartial. In cases I’m familiar with senior judges have quite deliberately refused appeals to hide state crime.
Ruth,
Neil Armstrong Said as The First Man On The Moon…
Well acually he didn’t, but that is not the point – most people thought he said it on the moon, and if you don’t give credit when it is due – just a little bit of encouragement – when you think the judiciary have actually said
Well, if we don’t slag off the British Government now, cos They are TOTALLY OUT OF Order
And They Didn’t Even Get a Place on The Chillcot Whitewash?
You See I Have Met These Judges and Their Wives in India
And They Want Their Kids To Enjoy The Same Priviledges
Otherwise They Worry that The Arsewipes Like Me, Might Get Arsey
And I don’t begrudge them dishing out a bit of Justice when it is DUE
I Do Not Want Anarchy and Civil War
I Want The Rule of LAW
And I KNOW it REALLY PISSES OFF The REAL ARSEWIPES When OLDHAM TWATS Like Me, DEMAND That WAR CRIMINALS IN GOVERNMENT Should Face a Fair Trial
I just ask and demand that they should be treated the same as any other suspected criminal.
They may actually be innocent.
I just want to see a bit of justice, and I am not going to get it by slagging the judges off.
You may be surprised about the places that working class oiks from Oldham get to.
But we’ve only got one world
And even High Court Judges go on holiday
They don’t half talk posh though and expect India to be like it was in Their Father’s Time, and to My Surprise Some Parts of India are largely untouched by events over most of the last 100 years.
I do admit I was really surprised, that the Press in India, still is written in the same flowery language as it was in 1920, but the World is a big place to be discovered providing you get off your arse and travel.
You may be as amazed as me at what you might find
Is that OK My Lord?
Tony
Miliband uncomfortably squirming and acting very uneasy on UK C4 7.00pm news while being interviewed this evening showed me how very worried the party must be.
They made their dirty bed. Now they are attempting to lie badly in it.
Hi everyone,
Just popping in – in a rush. Did you notice that Tony Blair said recently in regard to his evidence at Chilcot that people were looking for “conspiracy theories” about the lead-up to Iraq? I think he said it on Fox News.
I’ve been watching Jon Snow on Channel 4 News interviewing Miliband (that slimey lying slug) and he, Miliband, has just used the expression “conspiracy theory”. Jon Snow queried him about a government lawyer writing to the Justices in the Binyam Mohammed case to get them to water down their final conclusions (as I understood it) saying that they kept that letter secret from the other lawyers until 11am the morning after it was dispatched, when it was too late for them to do/say anything. Miliband tried to smile, and told Jon Snow to stop looking for “conspiracy theories”.
Watch out for them trying to discredit criticism/opposition with the phrase “conspiracy theories” from now on …
Doesn’t matter how much they blab on about conspiracy theories.
They’ve already been caught. The threads of their conspiracy and deceits are unravelling before our eyes.
Most people now quite openly know that the Blair gang were involved in a conspiracy to take the country into war they knew to be illegal. As each day goes by we see more and more evidence of these criminals and the tactics they employed to subvert and undermine all the elements of due process and diligence and any person, body or institution of the state that might have thwarted their criminal plan.
No one is any longer fooled by any of them. These are criminal gangsters pure and simple, and their day of reckonning will come.
We all knew he was guilty as charged, because he told us all the truth.
But his ex had learned from her friend how to almost completely destroy a man who still loves her and is the father of her children – but She (in both cases – had found someone else – and wanted to take EVERYTHING he had – his wife, his home and his children)
And so I just wrote everything down about the entire history of all related parties and submitted the evidence to the courts for consideration.
His only charge, was for breaking an injunction against him.
He was banned from anywhere near the family home.
He just wanted to see his wife and kids who he still loved.
He didn’t harm them in any way. He just wanted to talk.
And so after being arrested and spending even more time in jail and shackled and transported to the court by the outsourced security company.
The judge found him guilty
And Gave Him a Complete Discharge
He said You are Free To Go
He’s Over Her Now
And His Latest Girlfriend, who he has now been with for around 5 years is Completely Lovely and They Are Still Very Much in Love
Whilst Waiting In The Courtroom to Give Evidence – This Guy Came Up To Him
And Said What Are You Doing Here?
He was Completely Convinced (As I Was For awhile when I first met him) That He was in The Rolling Stones.
He Ain’t. In Fact He’s Younger Than Me.
He has survived a Major Cancer Operation and Has a Colostomy Bag That No one Knows about
And He Looks as Fit as a Fiddle
Tony
Hi Craig, I’m surfing by from the US, pardon my ignorance, but I clicked your link to your youtube testimony, and I’m trying to understand more about that quickly and I see it’s lengthy and serialized — when did you testify, what was the context, the before and after, and is there a link to a transcript or news coverage of that that you thought was good? (the link in the youtube info simply goes to UK Parliament website, not a specific moment, and I get over 700 results when I put your name in the search box there) Just trying to understand… many thanks for all you do.
Regards,
Me
But…nothing will happen…..ever. Labour will most likely go sometime during summer, and we get the Conservatives. Same as Labour really. Will be elected on a pack of lies. Most likely if you look back at party campaign literature and the promises made, you might find they did things differently from what they said they would. Still even if Labour had said they were going to bomb Iraq & Afghanistan, restrict human rights, sign up to Lisbon and make your kids pay billions in tax for years to come I am sure some folk would still vote Labour. Thats all they know.
I did my dissertation on China’s four largest commercial banks some years ago. I managed to speak to an employee of the Chinese central bank in person, I asked him why the banks had not paid any money back..he said that because banks and asset management firm state owned there was no need to pay any money back. I believe the money loaned to the banks will never be repaid. How much did the BOE pay for the distressed and worthless debt, do you know. The money was stolen from and the taxpayer will foot the bill.
Please take note that no word on torture has been made that I know by David Cameron.
Can we trust this man, or is he more of the same. I believe he is and I hope astute British public will come to the same opinion.
Ishmael,
There is Enough Food, Water and Energy On This Planet For All Life To Survive Including Us Human Beings – In Peace and Harmony
Sure We Have Problems But We Also Have Elegant Solutions That Almost Everyone Can Agree as Reasonable and Sensible.
We Just Need To Discuss All Our Problems and Potential Solutions as If We Are All EQUAL Human Beings
Now There is a Tiny Extremely Powerful Elite Who Don’t Want Us To Do This Because It Will Gradually Dilute Their Power…
But then they might agree when they think about the alternatives, because we are not going to take this shit any more
We all Know The Bankers are Wankers, But My Wife Has Worked in Banking, and My Perception Of Most Of Them is That They Are Just Incredibly Stupid Greedy Cunts But Not Intriniscally Evil
Most of Them Just Want a Fuck and a Line
Sure They Don’t Really Like Anyone Not Even Themselves Or Their Wives and Kids – Its Just Like a Sport To Them…
They are not a problem that cannot be solved, but the best change is gradual, such that people don’t realise much.
Inflicting pain on someone else only gives pleasure to the evil.
I watched Marnie with My Wife, last Night.
I had seen it before.
It was made in 1964 by Alfred Hitchcock
Marnie knew she was totally guilty but she was distraught for the horse, and had to do the right thing even in her Psychotic state.
She Blew its Head Off – Though Of Course We Didn’t See The Details Cos it Was Made in 1964 After JFK
Tony
I cannot see Cameron acting any differently. After all he is complicit and accepts gratefully the same sort of none UK political lobbying and funding as many of the current government similar to many others of his own party.
Vote for one of the independents or an honest backbencher and try to avoid the corrupted. Check out the MP relationships with others. Find out who serves you rather than serving other influential interests.
You see these City Guys – Most of Them in London – Are Barrow Boys From The East End – Who Have Now Moved Out To Essex and The Cayman Islands…
Fuck Knows Where The Wall Street Boys Come From – But I Reckon I have an Idea…
The thing is none of these cunts learnt the lessons of “The East India Company” – Traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea, and “OPIUM”
The idea is that you fuck over an entire Continent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
You are Not Supposed To Take Part Yourselves
Which is Something I Have Never Done.
Sure I have Done Pounds Shillings and Pence and I May Have Shagged Mary Jane, But I gave it all Up in 1985…
And I have seen such messes in people who drunk far too much alcohol and stuff, and my girlfriend a long long time ago told me about Neil Young and the damage done to her friend who ended up in a coffin.
So drink Nescafe and Speckled Hen Instead
Or Read Some Recent History
http://www.peterdalescott.net/q.html
Tony
Me,
I suggest you get hold of a copy of Craig’s book “Murder in Samarkand”. It tells the whole story plus loads of other details and sub-plots, reads like a novel, and is a real page-turner.
“But…nothing will happen…..ever.”
The more we tell ourselves that, the more likely it will be to come true.
I’ve been saying on Irish blogs for the past year that we sit down under the shit the government throws at us — the government that was hand-in-glove with bankers and “developers” and left us holding the baby when the whole thing collapsed. We whine and whine in blog comments, and do nothing. If the Greeks can take to the streets why in hell can’t we?
I’m tired of listening to people telling me that nothing will happen and nothing can change. Well naturally it won’t, if that’s the attitude.
We need massive sit-ins at government buildings. We need massive sit-downs on the streets. We need to make ourselves felt, and heard, and get arrested if necessary. We need national strikes. We need to tell them that they GOVERN ON OUR BEHALF – AND AT OUR DISCRETION.
[Why do I have images in my mind of women knitting in front of a guillotine?]
Follow the money.
Two of the biggest funders of the political parties are the Israeli lobby group and the banks. Next in the US are probably the insurance, medical, oil and defence industry companies.
Our ‘democratic’ agendas are set by the huge cheques to the political parties written by these lobby groups, long before any vote gets cast in any election.
Look no further.
Tony,
You are not allowed to mention the Israeli’s on here unless you are an Israeli. I Tried doing once, and my post was deleted before I could even correct it for spelling mistakes, which of course you also can’t do on here.
But Gilad Atzmon can get away with it because he is an Israeli and Can Play Drums or Something
He Just Blurts it Out
I Still Haven’t Heard Him Play
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/britain-you-better-wake-up-by-gilad-atzmon.html
But he don’t half fucking write and talk.
I suppose he is a bit like an ex-smoker
Tony
Cameron models himself on Blair, and employs precisely the same modus operandi as Blair to undermine local democracy and opinion in his party.
They already understood that there was no democracy in the voting system, nor in parliament itself once elected. The only democratic link left to destroy was the local party. Labour destroyed theirs under Blair in the mid 1990s. Cameron is doing the same to his today, undermining his local Conservative associations, only the latest example being this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7199532/Joanne-Cash-will-stay-as-Tory-candidate-after-24-hours-of-confusion.html
It’s all very straightforward. These people don’t like democracy in any form.
They like big business and centralised control.
It’s called fascism.
It’s true that the only way out of this is to vote for independents across the country, on a platform of ensuring that none of these criminals, gangsters or fascists can ever have unchecked power again.
We need urgently to develop a modern checks and balances constitution. The British one is much too easily abused by fanatics like Blair and we must ensure that it cannot happen again.
I had learned of Craig when I read his post in Consortium News last October, How a Torture Protest Killed a Career: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/102409b.html. Since then I’ve bookmarked his blog and I check into it now and then. (I’m perplexed that I don’t see him in the lefty blogs as the go-to guy for commentary about the UK Iraq hearings — ? waiting, waiting…) Today I heard and cheered the news about Binyam Mohammed, on our local NPR public radio station, and so checked in here again for a quick look.
Looking back now over at the original Consortium News article, I see Craig includes a link to his post here about his parliament committee appearance March 13, 2009 (ah!): http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html .
Anyway, a lot to digest later, I was just hoping for something big and plain about the parliamentary hearings he referred to that I could grasp quickly. (I’m in America, remember–crappy torture news coverage–plus I have a short attention span and 20 windows open 🙂
Thanks,
Me
As you can tell, watching Miliband made me very, very cross. Goodnight, all.
I am the first to admit that I supported both The Falklands War and The First Gulf War…
But with the First Gulf War – I didn’t Understand Why They Made The Musicians Change The Bands Name, and didn’t even think about it for the Second Gulf War
As if It Didn’t Fucking Matter.
I Now Know All The Detail Leading Up To The First Gulf War, and if I had Known What I Know Now, I would not have supported it – but would have been protesting, except I was too busy working and having Babies
Now All I Can Do is Complain
Will The Fucking Bands Put Their Names on Their CD’s (I tend to be a bit chaotically disorganised)
Sure it Totally Matches The Colour and Theme Of Our Top Room That My Wife and Son and Even Me Have finished Decorating Today
BLACK AND WHITE AND STARS
And Sometimes You Just Have To Ask
Why The UK Government Insisted in 1991 That
MASSIVE ATTACK Change Their Name To MASSIVE
And Didn’t in 2003 When It Was Even Worse
And Why I Am Now Listening To The New Album HELIOGOLAND which arrived today at EXTREMELY HIGH VOLUME with a Lazer Machine Shining STARS
Perhaps We Can All Get Ready For a
MASSIVE ATTACK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EatYdFw3eHo
Tony