Sim-O

Craig Murray: Your Help Needed – Reveal Torture to Stop It

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 jchr@parliament.uk 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 craigjmurray@tiscali.co.uk.

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”

Read the rest.

I’m not much of a letter writer, as you might have gathered from reading this blog, but my letter goes as follows:

To: jchr@parliament.uk
cc: craigjmurray@tiscali.co.uk
Subject: The evidence of Craig Murray

Dear Sir,
I write to urge you to hear Craig Murrays’ evidence on the use of intelligence gained through the use of torture.

As Craig was the Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, he was regularly seeing information from detainees that was gained through torture.

When Craig raised the issue, that it was illegal and immoral, he was dismissed. Now the government would like Craig not to appear at your committee to try and keep the fact that the UK government was/is complicit in torture.

You, the committee, need to hear Craigs’ evidence to bring to light the appalling things that were done to people in the name of ‘security’ and to hold to account those responsible.

Yours

Sim-O
www.sim-o.me.uk

Update: When you send your email, you may get an out of office reply. Apparently the emails are still being received and circulated.

Who is this twat Richard Beeston? Should I know him from anywhere?

He sound like a bit of a git to me. Get this…

Of all the parochial, navel-gazing, non-issues surrounding the Iraq war, the endless debate about the lead-up to it has wasted more time and energy than any other.

Some key participants are out of power and writing their memoirs (George Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder). Some have died (Saddam Hussein, Robin Cook). The only man left standing is the improbable figure of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister. Dozens of books have been written and films made on the subject. At least one public inquiry has been held. It is tempting to think that anyone left in any doubt about what transpired is not really trying very hard. Jack Straw’s decision to keep pre-invasion Cabinet minutes secret is of little consequence to anyone outside Westminster. All this happened six years ago. Get over it.

‘Get over it’?

What has happened since the invasion, the way troops have been equiped, the planning of the whole post invasion thing, the, basically, slaughter of Iraqi civlians and the behaviour of the troops, when under orders and when using their own initiative, does need debating and investigating. I don’t deny that at all.

But to dismiss the whole reason why we’re there with a ‘get over it’ when the architects of the illegal invasion have not been, at least, brought to trial is, just, well, shit. He should be ashamed of himself.

Just because the key warmongers are out of power, doesn’t mean they can’t be tried.

I do not have time to look up this turds views on the war during the build up, but it’s fairly obvious that he was in favour of it and now instead of admitting he was wrong or anything like that, he just wants to sweep it under the carpet.

Just to dismiss the reasons for the war are a smack in the mouth for everyone.

Dr David Kelly. British soldiers that have died or been injured, the thousands of Iraqis that have died needlesly (pdf), and to a lesser extent the country as a whole in our reputation.

To put this chicken-shits argument in a way that is easily understood, what he is saying is, if the police doesn’t catch a rapist in 6 years, or the victim cannot report it in that time for whatever reason then, tough. Get over it.

If you’ve got a mate that tells you secrets, then it’s right and propor that you don’t blab. After all, they’re not your secrets. It’s not your place to put his information into the public realm, is it.
Especially if that information was helping you. After all, he might stop telling you all the things that he found out.

But what if your mate was getting that information by, lets say, less that honourable means?
Would you still want the information? Would you try and stop you buddy being bad? Would your mate still be your mate or would you start distancing yourself, in case people started to think you were up to no good?

It must be torture having to make a decision like that.

Via

antiwar.com:

After ordering a cameraman to turn off his camera, Israeli Ambassador to Australia Yuval Rotem engaged in a very frank discussion about the recent Israeli war in the Gaza Strip, calling it “a preintroduction” to an attack on Iran that Israel apparently expects within the year.

Before the camera was turned off, Ambassador Rotem said “the best thing to do is to have a very open dialogue if there are no reporters or journalists here,” adding “I am far more reserved in the way I am saying my things (on camera).” Unbeknownst to him however Sarah Cummings, a reporter for Australia’s Seven News service, was actually in attendance at the meeting after having been “accidentally” invited.

Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, and while its officials have repeatedly attempted to tie the Iranian government to its war on the Gaza Strip this is the first time one of their officials has publicly (if inadvertently so) suggested that the attack on the strip was a warm-up to its long talked about attack on Iran.

Via

BBC:

Iraq will not renew the licence of US security firm Blackwater, which was involved in an 2007 incident in which at least 14 civilians were killed.
…
Five former Blackwater guards have gone on trial in the United States over the killings in Baghdad.

They have pleaded not guilty to killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others by gunfire and grenades.
…
A US embassy official confirmed it had received the Iraqi decision, and said US officials were working with the Iraqi government and its contractors to address the “implications of this decision”.

Mark Steel, from 9th January:

Amidst the coverage at the start of the year of all the bombing and lying and murdering and justifying and slaughtering, there was a splendid moment on Wednesday morning on Radio 4’s Today programme. The genetics expert, Professor Steven Rose, was introduced to talk about some new discovery that means we can identify the bit of the brain that deals with morality, which have been called ‘morality spots’. “How can we know about these spots?” he was asked. And with posh English academic authority he said, “Well – we could study the brains of the Israeli cabinet to see if they had no such morality spots whatsoever.”

heh.

Adbusters:

On February 29 last year the BBC’s website reported deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatening a ‘holocaust’ on Gaza. Headlined “Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust,’” the story would undergo nine revisions in the next twelve hours. Before the day was over, the headline would read “Gaza militants ‘risking disaster.’” (The story has since been revised again with an exculpatory note added soft-pedalling Vilnai’s comments). An Israeli threatening ‘holocaust’ may be unpalatable to those who routinely invoke its spectre to deflect criticism from the Jewish state’s criminal behaviour. With the ‘holocaust’ reference redacted, the new headline shifted culpability neatly into the hands of ‘Gaza militants’ instead.

One could argue that the BBC’s radical alteration of the story reflects its susceptibility to the kind of inordinate pressure for which the Israel lobby’s well-oiled flak machine is notorious. But, as I will show in subsequent examples, this story is exceptional only insofar as it reported accurately in the first place something that could bear negatively on Israel’s image. The norm is reflexive self-censorship. To establish evidence of the BBC’s journalistic malpractice one often has to do no more than pick a random sample of news related to the Israel-Palestine conflict currently on its website. In a time of conflict BBC’s coverage invariably tends to the Israeli perspective, and nowhere is this reflected more than in the semantics and framing of its reportage. More so than the quantitative bias – which was meticulously established by the Glasgow University Media Group in their study Bad News from Israel – it is the qualitative tilt that obscures the reality of the situation. This is often achieved by engendering a false parity by stretching the notion of journalistic balance to encompass power, culpability and legitimacy as well. The present conflict is no exception.

Read the rest

Related: Beau Bo D’Or – The BBC reinforces the blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza

BBC:

US President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as well as all overseas CIA detention centres for terror suspects.

Signing the orders, Mr Obama said the US would continue to fight terror, but maintain “our values and our ideals”.

Nothing like setting off on the right foot, eh?

teh Guardian:

The US president, Barack Obama, looked set to suspend the controversial Guantánamo Bay military tribunals, in one of his first actions after being sworn in yesterday.

Within hours of taking office, Obama’s administration filed a motion to halt the war crimes trials for 120 days, until his new administration completes a review of the much-criticised system for trying suspected terrorists.
…
The halt to the tribunals was sought “in the interests of justice,” the official request to the judges said.

An excellent first move, I must say. Especially if he’s going to hit them targets.

The Guardian:

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today declared that the use of the phrase “war on terror” as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks had been a mistake that may have caused “more harm than good”.
…
Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesman, said today: “If the British foreign secretary had said this to President Bush many months, if not years ago, then it would have deserved some credit. Mimicking President-elect Obama’s lines days before his inauguration does not show leadership.”

It’s just like sticking your fingers up at the school bully when he’s left the room.