UK Moves to Block US Senate Report to Protect Blair, Straw and Dearlove 461

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From a British diplomatic source I learn that Britain has lobbied the United States against the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and extraordinary rendition.  The lobbying has been carried out “at all levels” – White House, State Department and CIA.  The British have argued that at the very least the report must be emasculated before publication.

The British argument is that in a number of court cases including the Belhadj case, the British government has successfully blocked legal action by victims on the grounds that this would weaken the US/UK intelligence relationship and thus vitally damage national security, by revealing facts the American intelligence service wish hidden.  [We will leave aside for the moment the utter shame of our servile groveling judges accepting such an argument].  The British Government are now pointing out to the Americans that this argument could be fatally weakened if major detail of the full horror and scope of torture and extraordinary rendition is revealed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.  The argument runs that this could in turn lead to further revelations in the courts and block the major defence against prosecutions of Blair, Straw and Dearlove, among others, potentially unleashing a transatlantic wave of judicial activism.

The unabashed collusion of two torturing security states in concealing the truth of their despicable acts – including complicity in the torture of women and minors – and blocking criminal prosecution of the guilty is a sign of how low public ethics have sunk.  Fortunately there are still a few people in the British Foreign Office disgusted enough to leak it.

 

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461 thoughts on “UK Moves to Block US Senate Report to Protect Blair, Straw and Dearlove”

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  • Dreoilin

    RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s king has appointed a new intelligence chief, Youssef al-Idrisi, replacing Bandar bin Sultan in the key post, which oversees the kingdom’s support for Syrian rebels.

    The Saudi Press Agency carried the royal decree Tuesday saying Bandar had requested to be relieved of the post. Al-Idrisi was Bandar’s deputy.

    The news comes after security officials told The Associated Press that 65-year-old Bandar was returning to the kingdom after around two months abroad for surgery on his shoulder.

    Bandar’s responsibilities as head of intelligence included executing Saudi policy in the Levant, including policies toward Syrian rebels seeking to oust President Bashar Assad.

    Bandar was ambassador to the U.S. for 22 years before becoming director general of Saudi Intelligence Agency in July 2012.

  • Ben-Smoker, joker, red-eyed toker

    Bandar, no doubt has a rotator-cuff issue from pitching for the Yankees. 🙂

  • Ben-Smoker, joker, red-eyed toker

    Yeah, Fred, but Hab made an issue of my intemperance. Time to revise the add-on. My swordfight with him is past, thank the Gawds.

  • Rose

    Baal 8.22 – “mucilaginous” what a wonderful word – goes with oleaginous a treat. Pome now complete. Patience Strong – eat your heart out!

    Thanks for all the digging and prodding; power to your elbow.

  • oldasiahand

    Brilliant article Craig.

    Of course, the situation today is even worse with British citizenship being removed in private and the US then told they are free to drone or render the victim.

  • Tony M

    What are we to make of the revelation Neil Kinnock had been in the pocket of and owned fully by the US/CIA since 1970 -so that’s Labour institutionally fucked, with the Tories it seems just as likely a voluntary submission, swearing fealty would be all it would take; the SDP-Liberal-Dem lot are actual US/CIA creations, with UKIP revising that trojan role to spearhead a further pro-US rightward lurch in this new century of American shame.

    “The British argument is that in a number of court cases including the Belhadj case, the British government has successfully blocked legal action by victims on the grounds that this would weaken the US/UK intelligence relationship and thus vitally damage national security, by revealing facts the American intelligence service wish hidden.”

    The claim that “that a large part of the case should not be heard for fear of damaging relations with the USA” sounds similar to the weaselly arguments David Miliband made in court in another case where he claimed the US had threatened to reduce or end intelligence co-operation with the UK. Frankly that would be no bad thing and a desperate bluff that should have been called. Unravelling the 75 year long post-ww2 entanglement of our interests with those of the US, all done without any popular mandate approving such fusion and confusion in peacetime, in effect subjugating our interests to those of fickle US delusions and whims, is long overdue and that threat, unexpected indeed from a ‘friend’ or even partner, bluff or not, should have been grasped, it would have been far more damaging to the US in cementing its utter friendless isolation, and by now our again independent capabilities would have been commensurate with any realistic need.

    We don’t need no stinking US approval to try Blair or Straw domestically, nor for that matter Cameron/Hague, and of course the culpable head-of-state, throughout these orgies of depravity and bloodshed, is the one who calls herself Queen. You have to follow this through to its logical and just conclusion, as well as prevent any recurrence.

    I recommend too, the voluntary dismemberment and ‘pastoralisation’ of the United States.

  • Mary

    Yes Brian. RIP Mike Ruppert. He obviously found that living in this world with its injustices and evils was no longer possible for him. In the link that AlcAnon sent, he said his head woke up before he did and that it was terrified.

    I thought of this poem by Louis MacNeice

    ‘Prayer Before Birth

    I am not yet born; O hear me.
    Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
    club-footed ghoul come near me.

    I am not yet born, console me.
    I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
    with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
    on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

    [..]

    I am not yet born; O fill me
    With strength against those who would freeze my
    humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
    would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
    one face, a thing, and against all those
    who would dissipate my entirety, would
    blow me like thistledown hither and
    thither or hither and thither
    like water held in the
    hands would spill me.

    Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
    Otherwise kill me.’

    http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prayer-before-birth/

    One of his friends speaking on the link is involved in monitoring the radiation being brought to the American Pacific shores from Fukushima. She was saying that the irony is that she has to pay $600 for the tests.

  • Mary

    The Tories are killing our NHS

    Wednesday 16th April 2014

    Now’s the time to pile on the pressure for Labour to go big on the health service, says JOHN LISTER

    Join the dots, you can see the emerging picture – the NHS is being suffocated through prolonged and deliberate cash starvation.

    What began under the banner of the Con-Dem coalition trying to address the deficits created by the banking crash has now emerged as a thought-out, long-term Tory plan to scale down public spending and permanently reduce the size of the state.

    [..]

    Since then we have seen things get even worse – more billions of “unspent” NHS money have been clawed back by the Treasury, and £1.5bn of the frozen, allegedly “ringfenced,” NHS budget has been forcibly handed over to councils this year to prop up the even more parlous finances of social care, with even bigger sums to be deducted next year.

    There’s also a huge question mark over the future of NHS spending after the 2015 election – a year in which a further round of major cuts in public spending has been set in motion by Osborne, and many expect that as soon as the general election votes are counted the “ringfence” protecting the NHS against outright cuts would be scrapped if the Tories get back in.

    But even in the best-case scenario Osborne’s plans would see a 10-year freeze in health spending while costs and pressures increase each year.

    /..
    http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-9fe3-The-Tories-are-killing-our-NHS

  • Ba'al Zevul (Close Brackets)

    The Slog – Good to see you here. Quality blogging.
    Rose – We try to please, and when we succeed we are astonished. “Oleaginous” doesn’t quite convey Mandelson’s exudative propensity, does it? Glad you agree.

  • nevermind

    Excellent post,Craig, but it was to be expected that Jack and Tone both of the same hue, chosen for their ‘guile and cunning’ (barbara Castle)would act to ensure thier retirement is a fluffed pillow, not a cell at the ICC.

    Its refreshing to see new posters here, thanks for your contributions and wit, the more the merrier.

    leaves to say, time to exchange scoundrels is only a year away and should any of you want someone Independent to vote for, now is the time to put yourselfs about and start campaigning, time for it was never better. Norfolk has lost 40% of its Conservative membership and party politics is at its lowest ever….. good luck

  • Mary

    Mr Schultz of Starbucks wants our custom back. Revenues have fallen since the tax evasion was revealed and he is relocating the EU HQ to the UK, and the MENA offices too.

    http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/starbucks-to-move-europe-hq-to-uk-30191348.html

    I will never be a customer of his due to his support for Zionist Israel.

    ‘In 1998, Schultz was awarded the “Israel 50th Anniversary Tribute Award” from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah for “playing a key role in promoting a close alliance between the United States and Israel”.’
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Schultz

  • Ba'al Zevul (Close Brackets)

    Very interesting piece, Macky. Not so much for the obvious questions he is asking, but for a lead on what it is Russia is actually trying to do, and even on how it intends to do it. Which appears to be to define spheres-of-influence wrt Europe and the US a little more rigorously than the US, particularly, would like. I’m inclined to believe that an actual takeover, or even division, of Ukraine are not the current objectives, but that destabilisation and demographics will force the election of a Russia – leaning government; the presence of Russophobes in the west of the country would provide a channel for trade with Europe – as long as Ukrainian identity is maintained, there would be no conflict of interest between Ukrainian and Russian-speakers, and Russia itself would have a buffer state between it and an apparently expansionist EU/NATO area.

    Latvia (half of whose population (28% of Latvians are Russian – speakers ) have no vote in Latvia (14%) and Estonia (similar demographic and citizenship constraints) are perhaps less likely to retain semi-autonomy in the event of Russian expansion. Worth noting, perhaps, that

    “in accordance with Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the settlement of Russians in the Baltic States during the period (1945 onwards, under Stalin – BZ) was illegal under international law” (“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”).[6][7][8] The convention was adopted in 1949, including by the Soviet Union. However, as the Soviet Union maintained the Baltic States joined the USSR voluntarily, it did not consider the convention applicable to the Baltic states.” [Wikipedia: Russians In The Baltic States]
    (There were at the time only 7-8% Russians in Latvia, but ‘voluntary’, slightly earlier, meant ‘us or the Germans’ – BZ)

    – and that if Stalin considered the Balts worth mopping up in the interest of coherent borders, Putin may well have a similar notion.

  • Ba'al Zevul (Close Brackets)

    Ok. I can see a slug in the hostas. Old piece – what was Lord Mandelson of Mucilage doing in Ukraine in 2011?

    http://www.whatson-kiev.com/index.php?go=News&in=view&id=10894

    Akhmetov, eh?

    https://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine-abroad/financial-times-ukraines-oligarchs-accused-of-double-dealing-over-separatism-343694.html
    (links to FT piece – paywall, sorry, but you get the idea)

    Looks like Akhmetov’s running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

    Private Eye’s current issue has a connection:

    Re:…the long-planned South Stream pipeline to bring Russian gas to southern European countries via a new route which bypasses Ukraine…construction contracts awarded to oligarchs close to…Putin….At the British Chambers of Commerce conference this month Peter Mandelson (who has many contacts among the ranks of the oligarchs) helpfully opined that all our gas bills could be lower if only the EU could negotiate a single gas purchase contract with Gazprom. [snip]

    …the undisclosed commissions paid on various big contracts between Gazprom and certain European national gas companies are legendary in the industry. Whom, one wonders, might Mandelson have in mind to negotiate the deal he is advocating?
    Private Eye 1364, print edition, p 8.

  • Ba'al Zevul (Close Brackets)

    Damn. Totally meaningless statement here:

    “Latvia (half of whose population (28% of Latvians are Russian – speakers ) have no vote in Latvia (14%)”

    To clarify: 28% of Latvians have Russian origins, either Imperial or Soviet. Half of these don’t have Latvian citizenship, probably mainly because as long as they don’t, they can cross the Russian border without visas. That’s 14% of the total.

  • Macky

    Ba’al Zevul; “I’m inclined to believe that an actual takeover, or even division, of Ukraine are not the current objectives, but that destabilisation and demographics will force the election of a Russia – leaning government”

    Most rational commentators agree with you on that score; talking of which, and as a complimentary return for your h/t iro the interesting Slog blog, check out this site;

    http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.fr/

  • Ba'al Zevul (Close Brackets)

    Thanks, Macky. Though it has to be said that both Ukraine and Russia are countries in which playing chess in the street is the norm, while I am crap at chess – so rationality may not be enough. The Saker site…may or may not be righteous but it’s very supportive of the Russian Authorised Version, and I have to treat it much as I would anything echoing William Hague, anywhere, on any subject whatever – with caution.

  • ESLO

    “Ok. I can see a slug in the hostas. Old piece – what was Lord Mandelson of Mucilage doing in Ukraine in 2011?”

    More to the point what are armoured vehicles bearing the Russian flag doing in Eastern Ukraine doing today! Hardly the local militia that the Putinistas deceitfully claim.

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