I have been summoned to give evidence before Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee on 20 October, in a secret session. It ought not to be secret as my evidence goes to illegality at the heart of government and collusion in torture. It will be based around the evidence I gave to the Metropolitan Police, which you can read here.
We are now in the ludicrous position where the FCO is considering whether I can be allowed to see documents I actually wrote myself, communications which were sent to me and minutes of meetings I was at, or whether I should be asked to give evidence without any access to the written evidence. I am also waiting to hear whether I shall be allowed to be accompanied by my counsel, the great lawyer Gareth Peirce. I need help and support in preparing and organising my evidence, and I need moral support in appearing in a secret meeting where the large majority of the committee have been chosen specifically as security service “trusties” with an unquestioning neo-con world view. I expect to receive a very hostile reception.
I have just sent this email to the committee:
Dear James,
I have been considering my appearance before the Committee.
As you will know, there has been very substantial doubt in the human rights community about the good faith of your committee’s inquiry. I have been prepared to give the benefit of the doubt and offer to cooperate.
However if the committee really are genuine, they should wish me to be able to prepare and give the best evidence that I am able to do. There is no doubt that something went very wrong in terms of the UK government’s collusion with overseas torture programmes. The Feinstein report made plain that the CIA was very wrong in what it did, and your committee know very well that the CIA was sharing with SIS the intelligence obtained by torture. The British government has settled with large payments cases where the British government was involved more actively.
To the best of my knowledge, I am the only member of the senior civil service in the UK who attempted to raise a red flag and stop what was happening. My evidence is therefore of some weight. I will also testify there was a deliberate policy of not writing down the policy on accepting torture. I was told this directly and can point to documentary evidence of senior level unminuted policy meetings on the specific subject.
At the time I blew the whistle, Jack Straw denied the existence of the extraordinary rendition programme and I faced 18 trumped-up disciplinary charges, some of them criminal in nature, which resulted in the destruction of my career and my health. I attach a letter from the government to Lord Jones of Cheltenham which confirms I was cleared of all the original charges (but found guilty of revealing their existence). To the best of my knowledge this letter tells a direct untruth that the charges against me arose from formal complaints from members of my staff. I was never told this during the disciplinary process and no such formal complaint was ever put to me.
You will therefore understand that it is essential I am given every facility to give the best evidence to the committee. That means I must be allowed to see the paperwork I have requested already, to refresh my memory. It would make a farce of your inquiry were I not allowed to see communications which were sent to me, minutes of meetings I was at, and even correspondence I wrote myself.
I am not prepared to appear before the committee in a position where the members of the committee have the appropriate documents before them, and I do not. Still less when nobody has the relevant documents.
Similarly, I wish to prepare my evidence with my counsel, Gareth Peirce, and to have her alongside to support and advise me in giving my evidence. If the best evidence to get at the truth is the genuine desire of your committee, I am sure you will decide to allow this.
I should be grateful if you could pass this email and its attachment, which I am publishing, to all members of the committee.
Craig
Craig this post really serves to highlight some of your ‘followers’ here who are deeply cynical people who have little experience of dealings with The Establishment, topped with equally limited self-awareness.
Any Outer Revolution is going to have to come from working within the rule of law, as well as the Universal Laws of Intelligence encoded within us which for the most part people do not ‘see’ because it represents another dimension essentially inaccessible to the common heavily conditioned human; man or woman, idiocy doesn’t differentiate.
Examples above of Ruth, Rob G and anti-hypocrite. Cretins. Fine examples of Type Zero Global Civilisation.
* RobG you’re partially redeemed cos of the wikileaks breaking news there.
I do not know what revolution you have in mind that came from working within the rule of law. The thing about the law is that it can be relied on to make revolutions illegal.
Who cares about the establishment – they will neither yield nor change direction. They will remain in favor of ongoing subservience to US hegemony and the bizarre cult of money printing. Because their policies are insane they are doomed to failure. Once this failure becomes too massive to hide then, one way or another, the establishment will be swept away. Their cold dead hands will need to be prized from the levers of power.
As JFK observed “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable”
Things are changing and as the speed of change gathers pace we will get to observe the extent to which “Universal Laws of intelligence are encoded within us” Reading a little history would not lead to an optimistic assessment.
who are you to judge? busy putting people in boxes alcy, whats next? a little link to your cult hero? are you about to infest this, another thread with your missionary zeal?
bless yourself, why don’t you?
If some of Craigs 3.9K followers and readers want to comment on here they can, control freaks like you aside.
“The fact that its secret and that they are picking on you, very likely to threaten and to shut you up, is very relevant to their policy kept today.”
Sorry never-a-mind with that statement above, I should have put you on the top of my list of the contemptible neurotics on here. I completely agree with Habby how your lot are here to effortlessly undermine Craig’s good work. With ‘friends’ like you, he doesn’t need any ……. 😉
“Any Outer Revolution is going to have to come from working within the rule of law, as well as the Universal Laws of Intelligence encoded within us which for the most part people do not ‘see’ because it represents another dimension essentially inaccessible to the common heavily conditioned human; man or woman, idiocy doesn’t differentiate.”
But Alcyone, the only way to remain unconditioned is to not believe in anything at all until you have proven it to be true…
FRANCE to seek ICC options for war crimes investigation in Aleppo
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-russia-syria-idUKKCN12A0IA
I hope FRANCE has not done the wrong thing by selling two aircraft carriers to a military dictatorship – Egypt
Egypt is part of the Saudi led Coalition bombing the shit out of Yemen.
The U.K. U.S.A. and FRANCE have been supplying the Intelligence for Saudi.
Anyone remember when FRANCE was letting off nuclear bombs in North Africa and in the Pacific?
Russia tested too
“Russia tested too.”Did they? I thought they stopped years before the French and they did
not blow anyone up.
Yes I was in New Zealand when French spy`s sank the Rainbow warrior causing the death of one of the crew.
This report may shine some light on the information coming out of Syria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzEsDAoUvOI
The Intelligence and Security Committee will already have decided the outcome as they are all part and parcel of the illegality at the heart of government and collusion in torture, By attending the secret session you’re giving ‘respectability’ to a key orhanisation of the Establishment.
It is a gamble Craig does not have to take, you are right Ruth, it would send a message condemning the same conditions today. WHY SECRET?
off course some dimwits here just have to project their existence by spouting out venom in all directions.
‘duck and cover’
‘If I were to lead a revolution.’…… lead is heavy, it would never get off the ground, stop pretending your Napoleon and stop judging people for wishing Craig good luck.
And, pertinently, do you see Craig trembling? Whereas you, you are only worthy of the next lamp-post.
I really, really doubt you’d say that to Nevermind’s face. Or, indeed, Krishnamurti’s. Keyboard commando.
H.L. Mencken “Journalism”, he said, “is to a politician as a dog is to the lamp-post”.
Read it again in that sense.
Btw I credit myself with better judgment than to meet fools like Nevermind so yours is a hypothetical question. Introducing Krishnamurti raises it to delusional. That is a point I made elsewhere: Neurotic behaviour is on the rise, bigly. We don’t see that in Craig, that is all.
Thank you for explaining your obscure reference, whose applicability seems still in doubt., and may well not have been the image you originally intended to evoke. You disagree with Nevermind on some issues (as do I), but calling him a fool is probably not something you would do to his face: why do you feel it to be legitimate here? And would Krishnamurti (“Tolerance is a civilized acceptance of the division between people.”) sanction your behaviour? I think not.
Actually, I think you’re a complete fraud. Let me know where you live, and I’ll tell you that to your face.
Grow up Komodo and I won’t play your mind games. Besides Nevermind is old enough to look after himself?!
It’s not luck that you need Craig, it’s a fair and honest hearing of your evidence. I really admire your tenacity, bravery and courage. Very very best wishes
I am interested in the witness statement Craig and your remark: ..in February 2005 I resigned from the Civil Service. I was given six years early retirement severance pay.
Does that mean although you resigned on one’s own volition it was negotiated as ‘early retirement’ to allow for a severance payment to be made which would not breach the public funds must not be used wastefully or to underwrite inequitable or over-generous conditions of service, including severance conditions.
May I ask was the payment taxable, did you sign any agreement on accepting your ‘severance terms and can I assume you relinquished a pension?
I ask you to elaborate because quite frankly you were subjected to serious and cruel discrimination and I believe routinely ‘taken care of’ in a tawdry way. Thank-you.
H Mark,
I think your characterisation is broadly right. I had just been given between six months and three years to live with pulmonary hypertension, plus lost my job, so I was perhaps susceptible to being “bought off”. It was plain the alternative was to be sacked.
But there were no conditions or confidentiality clause, and no loss of pension rights, though obviously much less pension than if my career had continued another 15 years as usual. I rather beat them, and confounded the medical profession, by then not dying on time!
Craig
Are you beyond your rights under any statute of limitations? If not, you should speak with Slater Gordon, the solicitors?
Oh please, then the very next thing is that he’ll be in a TV advert… “I lost my job and my health but SG sorted out the entire British Government for me”
We are discussing torture or suffering, agony and distress contrived by the British establishment. This sham is a depravity that exists in the same fault line as the conduct and tactics used to enact regime change and complicity in war crimes.
While the foreign secretary Boris Johnson continues to defend UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, saying the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen is not “in clear breach” of international humanitarian law, a UN human rights office report published in August confirms Saudi Arabia is responsible for 60 percent of about 3,800 civilian deaths in Yemen AND Saudi warplanes targeted markets, hospitals, schools and other civilian targets.
Again we note Britain keeps schtum (nothing in writing) about the activities of ‘Special Forces’ in Syria and blaming the Syrian army while supplying sales of arms, fighter jets and other military hardware to the tune of £5.6bn to a regime that chops heads off and murders children by the hundreds in Yemen. Tawdry to say the least and acts that I will personally take legal action against.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/500-children-killed-yemen-conflict-151002112853295.html
Good reminder Mark and good of you to highlight the Saudi regime, which too often sneaks under the radar, for one of THE MOST EVIL regimes in the world. Sickening and a real blot on humanity. Saudi Arabia is the Dark Side of the Earth.
This is how they do things in Amerika.
CIA ‘Mistakenly’ Destroys 6,700-Page Torture Report
By Press TV/Global Research, May 20, 2016
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has “mistakenly” deleted its only copy of a Senate report into the agency’s brutal interrogation techniques.
The CIA Office of Inspector General (OIG), the spy agency’s internal watchdog, told the Congress that the electronic copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,700-page report and a hard disk were destroyed last summer.
A 500-page summary of the report was released to the public by then-Senate Intelligence chair Dianne Feinstein in 2014.
Feinstein said in letters to the agency and Justice Department that the CIA inspector general “has misplaced and/or accidentally destroyed” its only copy of the report.
Last August, acting inspector general Christopher Sharpley uploaded the file onto the office’s internal classified computer system and then destroyed the hard disk in what described as the standard protocol. Meanwhile, someone else in the office misinterpreted the Justice Department’s instructions not to open the file to mean that it should be deleted from the server. Both the original and the copy were both deleted.
At some point, CIA general counsel Caroline Krass told the watchdog that the Justice Department wanted all copies of the report to be preserved. The watchdog’s officials then carried out a research to find its copy, but understood they don’t have one.
Sharpley apologized for the destruction of the report and promised to ask CIA chief John Brennan for another copy.
Cori Crider, a director with the international human rights group Reprieve, described the destruction of the report as “stunning”, saying the move was part of a bigger effort to remove the practices from history.
“One worries that no one is minding the store,” Crider said in a statement.
The report includes details about the agency’s brutal interrogation techniques such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation at prisones overseas.
The 500-page executive summary concluded that the spy agency’s interrogation methods were far more brutal than what the agency had publicly acknowledged.
The notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba was set up by the Pentagon after the September 11, 2001, attacks to hold suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.
The CIA employed brutal techniques like waterboarding, physical abuse, sleep deprivation, mock executions, and anal penetration performed under cover of “rehydration” to interrogate terror suspects imprisoned after the September 11 attacks.
These torture techniques migrated from the CIA’s undocumented prisons, known as black sites, to US military prisons at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
The CIA reportedly paid $81 million to the psychologists to act as contractors to help run the torture program.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-mistakenly-destroys-6700-page-torture-report/5526231
IOW, deploy The Hillary Principle?
Dear All,
I made comments above to Craig and Ruth. The point of Craig appearing before the Committee could easily fit in a chapter in Professor Griffiths’ ( deceased) book. Here is the blurb:-
” John Griffith’s controversial book has been fully revised and updated to consider the latest developments in relations between politicians and the judiciary: Michael Howard’s conflict with the judges, miscarriages of justice, the Criminal Justice Act, the increased use of Judicial Review, the effects of anti-trade union legislation of the 1980s, and so on.
‘An instant classic… it is the achievement of Professor Griffith’s book to lift the debate to an altogether better level… he has, in effect, thrown down the gauntlet to any believer in the neutrality of the judiciary, or in its independence from government.’ Guardian
No – I am not an agent for the publisher nor am I family trying to sell more books to get more money. It is that better than most he simply hit the judiciary’s nail squarely on the head. Place the Committee in that context which Griffiths brilliantly analysed.
* J.A.G. Griffiths ‘Politics of the Judiciary’.
Read that CB. What is *your* blurb, other than the book-club pick. What is your substantive point? Spell it out. Use your own words, enough copy-paste.
Craig has seen this whole ‘game’ from the inside, one thing he is not is Stupid, if that is what you and ‘Ruth’ are implying. Is Ruth busy assembling some more hit-and-run dud hand-grenades?
Alcoyne,
Sounds like you are picking a fight – or – maybe merely trying to jolt response.
I never said – nor did I even imply that Craig was in the least stupid nor is he or was he at all inexperienced in his former foreign policy/Ambassadorial role. Ruth can speak for herself – I am sure.
Something came to mind because Griffiths really did publish a huge eye-opening book which continues to be relevant. Any problem in my juxtaposing something that was accurately identified in the nature of Judges ( add to that the nature of the Committee members) relative to what a nationally respected Professor had analysed?
Besides, Craig is being advised by Gareth Peirce–now is she also stupid?
Alcyone,
Where did I ever say or imply that either Craig or his lawyer were “stupid”.
If I were to bite bait – I may say that this sounds like:-
Some sort of Donald Trump prompting.
But – I replied politely and trust that this entire thread can proceed politely, constructively and with some intelligent comments ( mine of course – excluded).
Respectfully,
Courtenay
Respect, Courtenay — what is your point?
A link…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Politics-Judiciary-J-G-Griffith/dp/0006863817
Good gawd, page two of comments already (ha!).
Still on-topic (because it’s all intimately connected), Project Censored have just released their yearly report of the most censored stories in the western media. Top of the list is that the US military are now active in 70% of the world’s nations…
http://projectcensored.org/1-us-military-forces-deployed-seventy-percent-worlds-nations/
The biggest empire in the world (in $$$ terms, which is how they now generally do empires), backed-up by the biggest propaganda machine in history.
Yup, just be terrified of those dang Russians, who are trying to take over the world, DA DA DAH!
If you don’t buy into that one just be afraid of the Muslim terrorists who are trying to take over the world, DA DA DAH!
If you still don’t buy into the bullshit we will give you evil clowns who are trying to take over the world, DA DA DAH! Nope, I don’t mean the present total joke that is the US presidential election, but this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebbyVRd8r3M
Be afraid, be very afraid; and whatever you do don’t come to the understanding that you live in a total lunatic asylum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWAUuhsJxkw
Clearly their strategy is furious niggling to evade the massive turd in the punchbowl: that HMG’s acquiescence to torture is a grave crime in universal jurisdiction. It would be good sport to make that phrase a subordinate clause in every sentence you utter.
Goodness, you have got them by the balls. Some people have all the fun.
I recall Michael Gove once ejaculated Gareth Peirce had an ulterior motive to destabilise the British establishment. My interpretation of this spasm from Gove was about damaging the parameters of a status quo tailored to $$$, fear, terrrror and sabotage or in Gareth’s terms entering a new dark age of injustice so frightening that we are overwhelmed by it as disseminated in her great read, Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice.
Gareth Peirce lives in my consciousness and her power of intention is light in any dark place.
Personally I wouldn’t go to a secret hearing where the security services are involved. I would want an open record of everything I do with these people who use secrecy to their advantage and not to yours.
As award winning journalist Denis Lehane, who had run a fowl of MI5 and the CIA by refusing to spy for them, found to his cost (and wrote about it in his book “Unperson a Life Destroyed”) that in trying to get justice from MI5 he was not only misled by politicians but by his own lawyers, the press, and the human rights industry as well. The fact is that over the years our secret security / intelligence services have morphed into a secret police (a sort of Stasi) and acquired great power so that most people are too scared of them to be impartial.
A couple of year ago I reviewed a Canadian case that a guy had brought against CSIS accusing them of harassing and intimidating him and his wife illegally. He was a former Canadian intelligence officer (and not the first to accuse his former colleagues of Zersetzen). The judge allowed CSIS to put up a secret witness (plus various affidavits) in their own defense secretly in camera without the complainant present so that the complainant could not rebut CSIS’s testimony since he didn’t know what that testimony was.
It seems to me that in UKOSA countries where the Spy agencies are involved we have a one sided legal process that one normally associates with a totalitarian state (inverted totalitarianism as some have called it).
Ha – give the case citation and post more details.
There is an assumption of there being justice – until – of course, lawyers and/or aggrieved complainants actually try to obtain an iota of same.
Courtenay
In its summer 2011 (Edition 61) Lobster Magazine published a story “Gareth Llewellyn – CSIS and the Canadian stasi” which provides some background information of Mr. Llewellyn’s complaint and concerns against CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service).
Some years later I was told that Mr. Llewellyn had made a formal request for information, under the Canadian “Access to Information Act” (ATII), to CSIS requiring that CSIS disclose any information they had on him. Following CSIS’s refusal to disclose, Mr. Llewellyn took the matter to a Federal Court. The case citation was 2014 FC 432 and the dockets are T-554-13 and T-1203-13. I had an opportunity to review the documentation. There is about a foot of it. Here are the reasons given for judgement, and the judgement:
http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2014/2014fc432/2014fc432.pdf
The ex-parte “in camera” nature of this hearing are referred to on page 5 of the judgement. I am not a lawyer but I don’t see how it is possible to have a fair hearing when evidentiary testimony and Affidavits that may contradict the complainant’s testimony are withheld from him so that he has no opportunity for rebuttal.
Of course I am a bit biased as I, more recently, made a similar request for information from CSIS under the ATII. It was also turned down on the grounds that that any information they have on me (not least relating to my well documented complaints to their review body, the SIRC) would “reasonably be expected to be exempted” from disclosure as it relates to “detecting, preventing or supressing subversive or hostile activities”. CSIS’s written statement to me is total bullshit and well they know it.
The rules exist in Canada (and the UK) for the protection of innocent citizens – but neither the government nor its institutions follow them where the security services are involved.
Roderick Russell
Personally I wonder if the correct thing to do, ethically speaking, is to tell them to fuck right off. It shouldn’t be a secret session, and some of these neocon clowns would have been happy when you were fired. And, honestly, what is their motivation for inviting you? I simply do not know.
I suppose there may be some small benefit in truth telling. Chomsky always says that telling truth to power is pointless: they already know. however, perhaps there are ‘liberal corner’ of the establishment, who seek to use Craig’s evidence for good, but it appears, if they exist at all, they are out-gunned by the neocon US satraps. I see little to be gained, though of course blog owner has every right to go, or not go.
Mention Secret Evidence and all the neurotics start coming out of the dark side of the moon! I should say Earth, the moon is as yet, still unspoilt. But here on Earth, the Lord save us, sanity has become the rarest of commodities, odd isn’t it? People are being heavily conditioned, they don’t even know it.
Alcyone, I’m not sure it’s neurotic to state that the security services are totally corrupt and out of control.
It’s a fact that GCHQ are totally in bed with the NSA.
That’s treason, under all legal terms.
Which is why I call for the arrest and prosecution of every one of these a-holes in the ‘security’ services.
This transcends politics. It’s about patriots and total traitors.
Apparently RobG, in Dundee Scotland, a chicken can’t even cross the road without being apprehended by a large police presence, and its motives being questioned. Seagulls run amok, pigeons do what they want but the second a chicken steps outta line it feels the full force of the Tayside law.
A spokesman for Tayside Police Division said: “Police are appealing for any information as to why the chicken was crossing the road.”
When Corbyn becomes prime minister (which will happen anytime in the next six months, providing that they don’t assassinate him), one of the first things he will do is sort out the total slime bags in the security services.
These security service people are both totally comical and utter vermin, much like this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnhfvGdmmw
Conservative party is 17% in front in the latest poll, Rob.
Why is FRANCE in such a bloody mess Rob?
Near perpetual state of emergency, most pathetic despised president, ever.
French police in life-threatening condition after Molotov cocktail attack
http://www.france24.com/en/20161009-french-police-injured-molotov-cocktail-attack-paris-suburb
‘US lackey’: FRENCH politicians blast Hollande for reluctance to meet with Putin
https://www.rt.com/news/362300-hollande-reluctant-meet-putin/
“I asked myself the question … Is it useful? Is it necessary? Can it be a way of exerting pressure? Can we get him to stop what he is doing with the Syrian regime?” Hollande told TMC on Sunday, adding that he “asks himself if he has to receive Vladimir Putin.”
I expect the people of France have asked themselves, what did they ever do to get Francois as their president,
what a hopeless idiot.
Emails published by Wikileaks between Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign chairman John Podesta pull back the curtain on the fight against Islamic State. One reveals the presidential candidate identifying Saudi Arabia and Qatar as “financial and logistic” supporters of the terrorist group. RT
This is the same Saudi and Qatari coalition that is bombing the shit out of the Yemen and slaughtering the civilian population. Using French, U.K. and U.S.A. Intel.
“I expect the people of France have asked themselves, what did they ever do to get Francois as their president,”
Voting for him is the usual way it happens.
Saudi Arabia has privately accepted that one of its coalition planes bombed a funeral in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Saturday, the BBC has learned.
At least 140 people were killed, most of them civilians, in one of the single worst death tolls in the two-year war.
More than 500 others were injured.
Saudi Arabia has agreed to a British request to participate in the investigation into the attack, which included a second air strike that hit rescuers.
The attack on Saturday was so horrific and of such magnitude that Britain has taken the unusual step of insisting it participate in the investigation now under way.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-37613440
Disgraced Andrew Mitchel is holding a debate on blaming Russia in Syria, today in Parliament.
Perhaps they would be better off spending their time debating Saudi crimes in Yemen?
With casualties mounting in Yemen, the U.K. is under pressure to suspend its lucrative arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has said the government could review those sales if it is found that civilians were knowingly targeted in an air strike.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen
Yes it is “quite” embarrassing for:
Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco
United States of America, France, United Kingdom
“Some” of these countries have rather poor records on how they treat civilians.
The attack on Yemen saw sales of U.K. bombs for 2015 increase from £9m to over £1bn in three months.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=mitchel+mp&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=l6X8V5TGLsTv8AfYhYHAAg
Why doesn’t Mr. Mitchell discuss the United Kingdom selling arms to Saudi Arabia
and the devastation these arms are causing in Yemen?
You overestimate the power available to the PM. Particularly one who is likely to be dependent on the support of a bunch of Blairites to get any measures through at all. The notion of deselecting the centrists to make way for socialists at the next election is one which it will be very difficult to implement: Corbyn will have enough on his plate without worrying about stuffing the committees with his own supporters.
And these security service people ( many of whom are neither comical nor vermin) are necessary
Sharp Ears
October 11, 2016 at 07:00
So secret that it’s not even listed.
http://calendar.parliament.uk/calendar/Commons/All/2016/10/20/Daily
‘It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.’
http://havetoremember.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/harold-pinters-nobel-prize-lecture/
(Craig has that Pinter quote in a frame on his wall just to remind him)
It sounds like a similar dilemma to taking part in a job interview in which you know you wont get the job. You are compromised by taking part because the questions are insulting, but you need to answer politely if you hope to get the job you know you wont get.
Craig is lured to attend because he has something to say and they want him to attend to give the appearance of a genuine investigation that will be covered up because they already know the answers to their questions.
It will be unnerving but the better approach would be to attend and give them the answers to questions they don’t ask. Tell them the entire war on terror is a fraud, a public relations show, based on the 9/11 lie which was an inside job. I mean the repeated pointless torture in legal limbo land is part of the pretence of fighting an enemy when the enemy is an invention of your own side.
Perhaps a waste of time, but at least you know they can’t then say they didn’t know the truth, which officially they use as a defence on the basis no one told them and they never asked.
NO. If he does that he can be marginalised as a bonkers lefty reading from a script provided by a conspiracy website. Besides, they know all that already. It’s well beyond my capability to offer advice to a trained diplomat on this….but I’m going to suggest that frequent repetition of the names Straw and Blair might offer the ISC the (disposable) scapegoats they need and at least partially satisfy the need for acknowledgement of this disgusting episode. Here’s how it’s done:
Mr Ellwood: The person who is pivotal to all this, if I read between the lines as to where this question goes—as I say, my focus and my contribution to this is on what we can do, looking ahead, to provide that bridge for discussion on the potential for compensation and discussion with Libyan Government, once a stable Government is formed. It is clear in my reading that Tony Blair is the person who would be helpful to provide some clarity as to what happened in the past and the decisions that were made. We obviously had a period when Libya was coming in from the cold and discussions were had in relation to the various terrorist incidents that took place. The Americans had an approach, as this Committee is more than aware, and it was also tied in with two UN Security Council resolutions—748, which I have here, is one of them, and 731 from 1992—that obliged Libya to stop pursuing any forms of terrorism but also to answer the questions in relation to what has happened. How these were then concluded and how we then moved on from that—how we went from a point whereby questions were being raised to there being no requirement for the Government to pursue further questions—I think is where Tony Blair could help you. I do not know if you want to add anything.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/northern-ireland-affairs-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/hm-government-support/
Blair having delivered curt and unhelpful answers by letter to the Committee twice, and having declined to appear in person, the situation remains as it was in March. But it would be an achievement to get the ISC, too, to ask Tony along for a chat, wouldn’t it?
yes, well argued Ba’al, it would be helpful to talk to Straw and Blair, except nobody would hear the tree fall because nobody saw it, hence it did not happen.
Secret meetings only serve the torturers,imho, it is highly questionable that these practises seized.
I think enough would escape to be interesting. Some unlikely allies might be invoked, too. Hague was spectacularly wrongfooted on the issue – forced to admit that torture had in fact happened – and, who knows, might like to give the Blairites, whom he regards as the only threat to a thousand-year Tory governmkent, a good kicking?
I’m afraid politics works that way. A lone voice telling the truth is easily drowned. A consensus isn’t.
Craig . O/T.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Over the last 5 days I’ve noticed the massed ranks of Scotland’s Football Journalists easing back from the vitriol they dish up towards Gordon Strachan.
Then this morning Phil Goodlad (BBC Radio Scotland) announces “Chris Sutton claims that Strachan has had enough of being Scotland’s manager”.
Instead of “he must win this game”, the scribblers have went to some length explaining Gordon’s decisions, in the Herald it was a case of how intelligent he is.
The mission of our Football Journalists is to turn the fans against the managers, make their tenure untenable, drive them out as fast as they can.
Dear Craig,
My mother was imprisoned, kept in solitary confinement and tortured by the SS. Against all odds she survived, and was given a safe haven in Britain, where I was born. I grew up believing that – after the trials at Nuremberg – the world was becoming a better place and that the ‘civilised world’ had left behind the such brutal practices once and for all.
I was wrong.
You and your website give me hope that all is not lost, that there are still principled people about who are prepared – at disadvantage to themselves – to stand up and not remain silent when fundamental human conventions are flouted.
My thoughts and moral support – and I suspect that of the majority of your readers – will be with you when you appear before the ISC.
Andrew Goltz
Please remember that you are dealing with the scum of the Earth. Look what they did to get into Iraq and what they did when they got there. Same for Libya, now Syria. See how they dealt with the Chagossians and how, if they’re not getting their way in the courts, they use the powers of the Privy Council to override the law. Look what they did to you and what they have tried to do to Corbyn, and are still trying.
These people have paid with their souls to get their way. They will do anything, it seems, to keep hold of their position and power: every dirty trick in the book is in their armoury.
But you have the strength of right and truth on your side: the terms they have set and their previous lies and deceits show their weakness.
Steve Bell on the reshuffle:
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stevebell
Can anyone explain why he calls him Jez Bi Wan?
Any fool would know that.
Thank you Ba’al, since you believe I am one, educate me.
Thanks in advance!
No, I think you’re a fraud, as I said.
You think too much! You could be a case of Analysis-Paralysis, perhaps.
Anyway what ‘you’ think of ‘me’ is totally irrelevant to the scheme of things!
Can anyone explain why he calls him Jez Bi Wan?
Steve Bell’s first cartoon about Corbyn was a joke about his name :
Jez = Jezebel = a woman who will shag anybody = a bisexual woman.
Thus : Jez Bi W(om)an
Your link dosn’t work. Here’s one that does:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2016/oct/11/steve-bells-if-on-jez-bi-wan-corbyns-very-slow-reshuffle
Thank you Node for the kind courtesy of your reply. I think his actual stuff is funnier than that derivative. I liked that Owen ‘Supernormal’ who seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Have a good day, which for whatever reason, the lizards aren’t!
…. and definitely nothing to do with Star Wars.
Nothing at all. 10/10.
I notice, Craig, that you stayed away from commenting on Trump’s leaks. Which slightly puts the kibosh on commenting on John McCain’s utter hypocrisy, publicly organising Islamic State while not getting recorded groping married women. US culture is more liberal than UK culture and yet US politics is much less tolerant.
You could reflect on the utter and institutional political hypocrisy of John McCain while you are sitting in front of the brain-farts. They are obliged to endure the ordure, which near enough stifles their ability to think.
Sir Richard Dearlove tried to have me killed twice when I was in the Middle East. I never bothered to complain about it. In stead I forced his resignation in August 2003. I was tipped off about a third attempt that was cancelled. I have never bothered to complain. It has reached the stage that public inquiries are likely to be pointless. In my own case, I have been hounded for decades. One of their cards is my Chinese wife’s visa applications. At present the Home Office is looking for a loophole in human rights law in order to force my wife and 13 year old British daughter to live in China. With Brexit, the Home Secretary plans to do away with European human rights legislation by early next year, which is presumably why they are sitting on my wife’s application, which should have been granted by now. We’ve been married since 2002.
I have had very bad internet connections for the last ten years. Is that a human rights issue?
‘National Security’ has long replaced patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels.
Great respect and very best wishes, Craig. Though I think my personal inclination would be within the ‘Fuck off with your secrecy’ camp. .