Eloquent Protest IV

Cyrus Thatcher was a teenager from Reading who joked that his atrocious spelling was typical of a young infantryman. Yet this Remembrance Sunday his words will echo out across a West End theatre alongside those of the noted poet Wilfred Owen – another soldier who died in battle.

Actor Jason Isaacs, famed for his roles in the Harry Potter films, will be reading out Rifleman Thatcher’s letters at Eloquent Protest – a powerful piece of theatre fusing poetry, music and drama to honour the fallen.

The actor, who worked extensively with soldiers while filming Paul Greengrass’s thriller Green Zone alongside Matt Damon recently, said he had developed a nuanced understanding and enormous respect for the men and women of the forces and their pride in putting their training into action. But he said it was also important to remember the toll war took on those coming home. Among others appearing will be actor Sam West, who will be reading Wilfred Owen’s “Futility”, and former SAS soldier Ben Griffin, who will be reading Siegfried Sassoon’s, “A Soldier’s Declaration”.

8 November at Duke of York’s Theatre in London. Proceeds from the £18 tickets will go to the Mark Wright Project, set up in honour of the 27-year-old Corporal from the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, who was killed when British forces first went into Helmand in 2006 to help ex-servicemen and women overcome the mental wounds of war.

PDF with more details and full cast, good to see Ben Griffin is involved even if he can’t use his own words.

Kweshtuning Times

Last month James Macintyre, a former producer on Question Time, revealed in the New Statesman that the programme’s makers wanted Griffin on the panel two years ago, long before the BNP’s limited breakthrough in the summer. To its credit the BBC resisted at first the naïve showbiz instincts of some who run the independent production company that is responsible for Question Time. According to Macintyre the company, Mentorn, persisted for two years and finally got the go ahead from the BBC. This suggests that Mentorn wanted what Peter Hain calls a “beanfest” for reasons well removed from the BBC’s charter obligations.

Excerpt from Macintyre’s piece-

Yet such was the controversy into which the BBC had plunged itself that the corporation’s bosses found themselves spinning lines on behalf of the BNP. After Hain wrote to the BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson, to point out that the BNP was an “unlawful” entity with a whites-only membership policy, Thompson seemed to leap to Griffin’s defence. Following legal advice sought by the BBC, he said, “the [BNP] is not prevented from continuing to operate on a day-to-day basis”. Ric Bailey, the BBC’s omnipresent chief political adviser, went further in claiming, without evidence, that the corporation could have been challenged in the courts had it not hosted Griffin on Question Time, since it had, in Thompson’s words, an “obligation to scrutinise and hold to account all elected representatives”. Bailey also resorted to the electoral argument: the BNP had to be represented on Question Time, he said, because it “won more than 6 per cent of the vote across Britain – approaching a million people”.

None of these positions bears scrutiny. First, as I revealed last month, Question Time wanted to host Griffin as early as 2007. At the time, I was working as a producer on the show, and this was long before the BNP’s electoral “breakthrough”. Much has been made of the BNP’s “million votes” in June’s European elections but, nationally, its vote share was a tiny 6.2 per cent – up 1.3 per cent on 2004. The BNP benefited from a collapse in the Labour vote. And, as Hain told me: “The BBC’s argument is threadbare. The logic of saying that a million votes gets you a place on Question Time is that if, say, [the Islamist cleric] Abu Hamza formed a party and attracted that support, he would go on.”

Second, there was never any “obligation”, legal or otherwise, to invite Griffin on to the BBC’s most popular current-affairs show, any more than there is an “obligation” for Griffin to appear on Ready Steady Cook. The BBC’s current-affairs output has to be impartial and balanced but, as I argued at internal meetings in 2007, the main problem is the format: it is difficult not to have a “good” Question Time. It was far better having the BNP on Newsnight and Radio 4’s Today programme. Labour’s Jon Cruddas, who confronts the BNP threat daily in his Dagenham constituency, has pointed out that the BBC could have given Griffin “45 minutes with John Humphrys or Andrew Neil”.

I think though Chicken Yoghurt makes an excellent point, please go and see it in full but basically all the things you can accuse the BNP of believing in Jack Straw puts into action. Yes it’s a retrograde step to have the BNP on but so is lying a country into war and torture and not holding the political class to account for 30 years of neoliberal attacks on British society that has created the opportunity for the BNP to rise. I think the protest outside the BBC is a stirring example of British people’s passion for an inclusive democracy.

However no platform was under threat once the bar to entry for media was lowered by the web, BNP idiots thrive on conspiracy theories and being barred from mainstream media feeds this. They should not be treated as any other party, a clever and considered lancing of the boil, a concerted exposure that would deflate the lies of the activists and the paranoid theories of supporters seems the least worst choice. But what chance of the corporate media doing this?

Question Time is not the best venue to expose Griffin’s fascism, they are not a political party like any other, they are a group that support right wing white male belligerent supremacy and will cheerfully lie to gain support from people who should -but apparently don’t- know better. I think the mainstream broadcasters should have taken the BNP to task, fact check them and expose the criminal activity and links to open Nazi groups worldwide, however corporate media rarely acts like that in respect of right wing parties. The BBC news on now has done some of this but it is not confronting Griffin with it. The Question Time format is too easy for Griffin to escape scrutiny, let Paxman or Humphrys do an in depth interview with a follow up fact check, because again the key aspect of fascists is they use ‘noble lies’ to further their objectives. I would also ask that white people particularly  white men (as I am) think about their entitlement and how that makes Griffins loathsome but perhaps, to some, not as viscerally abhorrent as it does to people of colour. It is telling all the senior people who would have made this decision in the BBC & Mentorn (incidentally from my time pottering around the industry in the 90’s they had a terrible reputation for how they treated their employees & free lancers at that time) are white males, affluent ones at that. It’s possible Question Time will surprise us and Griffin will be exposed for the scumbag he is and his party for the racist fascist rump of losers that they are, history warns us that might not be the case and media analysis also suggests how such media institutionally fail to treat the right wing with due objectivity and scepticism.

Simply from my observation of the media today it is hard not to see an element of this entitled bias in action, endless -mostly- male white journalist and presenters applying their usual tools to the issue as if fascism was an ideology as legitimate as any other and repeatedly mentioning how ‘1 million’ people voted BNP in the Euro election. How is it that media that are happy to ignore the beliefs of millions more when they are environmental groups, anti war or anti corporate or anti neoliberalism are suddenly are falling over themselves to care about what 1 million hateful chumps want? A gender and racial bias that remains unchallenged at a personal and institutional level is to me rather obvious here, there is also a class bias, the BNP target deprived areas, they are a scourge among people the political establishment already ignores and despite what the media keeps repeating it is not the white working class it is the working class! The BNP can exploit divide and rule because the entire working and lower middle class of all races do not get representation in the one ideology politics of consensus happy clappy neoliberal corporatocracy land UK plc. What the BNP spread is violent, community destroying lies among people already under attack from the establishment. So again I see a certain elite group of people who are really not that affected by the BNP whatever may happen making the decisions (there seems to some foregrounding of black presenters by the beeb tonight but they are not the decision makers).

I think no platform was -sadly- going to fail, the technology, the needs of churnalistic corporate media was seeing to that, but the BBC has failed to approach the challenge suitably and that was probably the best prospect there was for a responsible approach among broadcasters (props to CH4 News, but what is their reach?). So, yes this could be a moment we will look back on as the Mainstreaming of Fascism.

To be honest at the best of times I can barely stand to watch Question Time so I don’t know if I can bring myself to watch it, I will try and if so will be also online here -open thread!- & on Twitter along with many others expressing our feelings.

Baha Mousa & The Rotten Barrel

Baha Mousa was tortured to death by British troops. There is little need to wonder about whether our forces were given the green light to torture,they were-

[June 2007] The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is facing accusations that he told the Army its soldiers were not bound by the Human Rights Act when arresting, detaining and interrogating Iraqi prisoners.

Such were the concerns of legal advisers on the ground over the Attorney General’s views that the MoD arranged for the senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Gavin Hood, to visit Permanent Joint Headquarters to settle any worries. Crucially, the emails make clear Lord Goldsmith’s legal opinion was not shared by Colonel Mercer, who contacted his superiors in London to ask for guidance after he had witnessed the hooding of 40 Iraqis at a British PoW camp in March. The men were all forced to kneel in the sun and had their hands cuffed behind their backs. Worried this could leave the soldiers vulnerable to prosecutions, he told the MoD that in his view soldiers should behave in accordance with the “higher standard” of the Human Rights Act.

But the response from the military’s Permanent Joint Headquarters in Qatar was that Lord Goldsmith had told the MoD the human rights law did not apply and soldiers should simply observe the Geneva Conventions.

When Colonel Mercer said he disagreed with the Government’s most senior law officer he was told that “perhaps you should put yourself up as the next Attorney General”. Colonel Mercer also asked for a British judge to be flown out to oversee the procedures for the detention of Iraqi prisoners, but this also was blocked at a high level.

Furthermore Ben Griffin is still gagged from speaking publicly on UK forces role in torture and their knowledge of US torture.

The BNP/Loyalist Crossover Forces Romanians From Their Homes

The BNP base their ‘call centre’ in Belfast where Jim Dowson — a top BNP fundraiser and a militant anti-abortion campaigner who has a string of criminal convictions and has had links to mass-murderer Michael Stone (the loyalist terrorist)- runs their operations. Nick Griffin visited there secretly just before the European elections-

BNP leader Nick Griffin made a secret trip to the Belfast base less than two weeks ago to film a propaganda video. Our exclusive picture shows Griffin pictured at the Belfast HQ flanked by two members of staff, whose identity we have protected.

However in most reports the origins of these racist crimes are rather vague, they balk at mentioning it is linked to fringe loyalists let alone the relationship between loyalists and the BNP. While the remnant Loyalist leadership condemn the attacks it appears the younger ones are feeling their oats and turning their hatred temporarily from Catholics onto Romanians and Poles, all of course encouraged by the BNP and Combat 18 Nazism who share the bigotry that includes hatred of Catholics (including insane theories such as the Islamic/Catholic/EU/Sinn Fein/IRA plot to destroy the UK with Catholic immigrants!).

Racists who forced Romanians to flee their homes threatened to cut a baby’s throat, it emerged today. Over 100 men, women and children were this morning taken to the Ozone complex in Belfast after they spent the night in a church hall following sustained attacks by a racist mob claiming to be from the fascist group Combat 18.

Thugs who target migrants in Northern Ireland for racist attack are guilty of ethnic cleansing, a community worker said today. Large parts of south Belfast are in danger of becoming no-go areas after 20 Romanian families were forced to spend the night at a church hall, Patrick Yu added. Bricks have been thrown through windows in the Protestant working-class Village area with increasing frequency in recent weeks.

Now the BNP have two MEP’s I think it is incumbent on the media to ask them directly their views on the attacks and to see if they will condemn them and demand all members and associates cease any activity they may be involved in. Will political journalists on TV have the guts to confront fascism on the air? It should also be asked how the police allowed it to get this bad, given their historic ties to loyalists and their paramilitaries should we deduce they ignored the victimisation of Romanians as those doing it had links to Loyalist groups gangs? Is the bias in British media in favour of Loyalism not allowing the true picture of bigotry to emerge? Many in the community though are far more courageous and if their lead had been followed this refugee crisis could perhaps have been averted, if the hardcore violent fascists had been dealt with by the police-

One family fled from their home in Belgravia Avenue. Another family, with a newborn baby, has been left terrified after their home at Wellesley Avenue came under attack just days after they were forced out of another property.

Their south Belfast homes came under sustained attack from Thursday evening, with their windows smashed and doors kicked in by crowds of thugs gathering outside shouting racist slogans. 

A number of local residents last night stood guard outside their new home in a bid to protect them.

One local resident, Paddy Meehan, said: “About 12 of us worked in shifts to defend the house last night. Local residents think these people have to be defended. These thugs have been shouting that they are Combat 18 and they dropped a letter containing text from Hitler’s Mein Kampf through the letterbox of one of the properties.

“This has been going on for several nights. Sometimes there is about 20 of them gathering outside the properties. There is a hardcore of maybe six or seven shouting abuse and kicking doors down.These families are terrified, so are all their young children. They feel very isolated which is why the local community is gathering around them to support them,” he added.

The PSNI said police in south Belfast are investigating a number of racist attacks and criminal damage to properties and a car in Wellesley Avenue and Belgravia Avenue on a number of occasions between June 11 and 14.

A spokeswoman added: “A crowd gathered on each occasion at the properties and a number of windows were smashed. Police have not received reports of any injuries.”

Major hat tip to Lancaster Unity.

The extent to which the true roots of this racist violence are obscured will determine its spread and increase in severity elsewhere. Because of the soft spot for loyalists in the British establishment there is the danger of it not being dealt with and spreading. Or as Dave Osler puts it-

The Six Counties has always been a case apart from the rest of the United Kingdom, if I can be permitted to use the two geographical expressions in the same sentence. Just because something happens in Belfast, that doesn’t mean that it must necessarily happen in Burnley.

But sadly, it does not take too much of a leap of the imagination to see that if bricks can readily fly through immigrant windows in Belfast, the tactic may yet be duplicated in many English towns. If the bricks are one day followed by firebombs, then yes, we will be talking about pogroms.

Fascism Is For Failures

The BNP are racists & fascists, who revel in violence and eugenics. If you vote for them, so are you. Don’t kid yourself, this isn’t politics, you’re a piece of shit. Clear?

The Guardian… the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has spent months infiltrating the far right’s network of websites and chatrooms and found that many BNP activists share O’Sullivan’s views.

 They include:

 • Jeffrey Marshall, senior organiser for the BNP’s London European election campaign. Following the death of David Cameron’s disabled son Ivan, Marshall claimed in an internet forum discussion: “We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it.”

 Later, in response to comments made by others on the site, Marshall is alleged to have written: “There is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive after all.” He said the comments were private and some had been paraphrased and taken out of context. He admitted making the former comment, but said he could not recall making the latter one in an email to the forum, a copy of which is in the Observer’s possession.

 • Garry Aronsson, Griffin’s running mate for the European parliament in the North West, posts an avatar on his personal web page featuring a Nazi SS death’s head alongside the statement, “Speak English Or Die!” Aronsson proclaims on the site: “Every time you change your way of life to make immigrants more comfortable you betray OUR future!” He lists his hobbies as “devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading cunts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING.”

 • Barry Bennett, MEP candidate for the South West, posted several years ago under a pseudonym in a white supremacist forum the bizarre statement that “David Beckham is not white, he’s a black man.” Bennett, who is half-Jewish according to the BNP’s deputy leader, Simon Darby, continued: “Beckham is an insult to Britishness, and I’m glad he’s not here.” He added: “I know perfectly respectable half-Jews in the BNP… even Hitler had honorary Aryans who were of Jewish descent… so whatever’s good enough for Hitler’s good enough for me. God rest his soul.”

 • Russ Green, MEP candidate for the West Midlands, posted recently on Darby’s web page: “If we allowed Indians, Africans, etc to join [the BNP], we would become the ‘British multi-National party’ … and I really do hope that never happens!” Darby said he echoed Green’s sentiments.

 • Dave Strickson, a BNP organiser who helps run its eastern region European election campaign, carried on his personal “Thurrock Patriots” blog a recent report of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in east London beneath the words “Another teen stabbed in Coon Town”. The site also carried a mock-up racist version of the US dollar entitled “Obama Wog Dollar”. Darby said the BNP did not endorse these comments and described them as “beyond the pale”.

 When confronted in the past about the extreme views of some of its members, the BNP senior hierarchy has often tried to dismiss them as unrepresentative of the party’s core membership. But it appears that they run right to the top of the party.

 Lee Barnes, the BNP’s senior legal officer and one of Griffin’s closest allies, has posted a video on his personal blog of a black suspect being beaten by police officers in the US and describes it as “brilliant”. Barnes adds: “The beating of Rodney King still makes me laugh.”

 Barnes told the Observer his comments were “nothing to do with colour” but were merely a reflection of his belief that the police should have more powers to punish perpetrators of crime by “giving them a good thrashing”.

Reza Saberi & Context

I wonder how Britons would feel if another country had engineered a coup in Britain that led to a repressive regime? That had a secret police force that killed & tortured hundreds of people, and that country was now part of a group of belligerent nations that imposed sanctions and denied it sovereign control of its resources. That in fact backed terrorist attacks in Britain. And then to cap it all expected Britain to bow down to its demands and ultimately install a government friendly to this outside influence. Because simply starting from zero with criticising Iran is not remotely accurate, context is needed otherwise the stench of a bad imperialist hangover is strong. So Iran has had a different history to us (duh) and we have played a large role in destroying democracy in a nation that unlike us and our allies has not attacked or invaded another nation for 300 years.

And so we get to the case of Reza Saberi which clearly shows up the problem of the authoritarian establishment in Iran (gleefully reported by Voice of America). She is likely to become a bargaining chip and in the West where our political prisoners are almost never talked about the ease of painting Iran as repressive while we are freedom incarnate is remarkably easy for our press and government. For that reason such dynamics never help a nation in the public mind of westerners drip-fed corporate media. Everyone else is evil and has political prisoners, not us, and to suggest so is an unpatriotic socialist trouble making treason! Except…We have a special forces soldier gagged from telling the truth about our role in torture, we have civil servants who were jailed for letting us know the lies of govt to facilitate the war crime of Iraq, we lock up hundreds of people without trial simply for being foreign, our security forces kill people in broad daylight and those responsible are praised by their superiors (who get promoted) for doing a great job.

So nobody’s perfect.

Saberi remaining in Iran is also because she was in a relationship with award-winning film director Bahman Ghobadi. I’m sure many Britons while travelling have exceeded the terms of their visa and again in the UK we have jailed people for similar non-crimes. Which is to say people who jump to decry another nation for having poor human rights need to also be engaged in the fight for human rights in their own country. Human rights as a tool a patriotism, imperialism or national pride are a con game for morons. It begins at home, then you are able to also talk about similar injustices elsewhere, for most of the media and the dupes who consume it that is not the case and Saberi will be nothing more than a propaganda stick to beat the enemy du jour with. However to those with real concern who fight for human rights wherever they may be being abused, in Yarl’s Wood or Evin, her plight is a genuine concern. As she is on hunger strike she should be moved to a hospital and an appeal quickly granted, I’m sure there is no shortage of defence lawyers who can demolish the state’s case as it seems to have been built on an arrest for lapsed press credentials that was talked into a bigger case by tricking Saberi with promises of a quick release. Again not so different to how our police operate.

New Labour Admits Lies About Rendition & Torture, Time To Ungag Ben Griffin

The government admitted today that British troops in Iraq handed over terror suspects to the US, which then secretly rendered them to a prison in Afghanistan.

After a year of allegations and repeated ministerial assurances to the contrary, the admission was made in the Commons by John Hutton, the defence secretary, who apologised to MPs for inaccurate information ministers had previously given them.

He said British soldiers, believed to have been SAS troops, handed over two terrorist suspects to the US in Iraq in February 2004. The men had been captured outside the UK-controlled zone covering south-eastern Iraq.

But Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said damaging “secrets about British complicity in rendition and torture continue to seep out” and a judicial public inquiry into was the “only hope for lancing the boil and moving on”.

The call was echoed by Human Rights Watch, which described the internal review announced by Hutton as an apparent “bureaucratic and documentary exercise designed not to get at the truth but to cover tracks by ring-fencing any incriminating evidence in official records”.

In the Commons, Crispin Blunt, the Tory security spokesman, welcomed the information about the two detainees but said Hutton had left open the “glaring hole” of wider UK complicity in torture. Fellow Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, told Hutton that as ministers had previously denied a number of allegations that turned out to be true, he hoped he could “understand that we have less confidence than we did in assurances being made now”.

In March 2006, Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier, revealed that Iraqis and Afghans had been captured by British and American special forces and rendered to prisons where they faced torture. The MoD said at the time that it did not comment on the activities of special forces.

The government subsequently obtained a gagging order in the courts preventing Griffin from saying any more.

Not burdened with the wisdom or responsibility of a newspaper I am quite happy to say- they have been lying to cover up their role in torture and continue to do so. Isn’t lying to the House meant to be bit of a no-no? Yet this is odd, no one seems too upset, are they all pretty comfortable with facilitating torture? Resignations, prosecutions, hello? Anyone giving a fuck, or is the new Obama era leading the way, appear contrite while not actually doing that much different. Time for the gagging order to be challenged/lifted and for Ben Griffin to get national exposure for his testimony, or does the mainstream media only like SAS troopers when they write shitty books about ’slotting ragheads’. Mother hating psycho Hutton (formerly in charge of destroying welfare. See how it goes, you despise the poor then you get to play with torture, oh yeah baby you better believe it’s all connected, sadism abides) peddles this shit-

Hutton said the pair, believed to be Pakistanis, were still being held in Afghanistan. He said they were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned organisation that he said was linked to al-Qaida. The US had assured Britain the two continued to represent “significant security concerns” and it was “neither possible or desirable to transfer them to either their country of detention or country of origin”, Hutton told MPs.

The US had assured him the men were being held in humane conditions and had access to the Red Cross, Hutton said.

Thing is Johnny boy there is ample evidence the US tortures and lies about it, therefore these assurances are worthless and anyone taking them at face value is similarly likely to be seen as co-conspirator in war crimes. Clearly no one fears they will ever have to explain themselves in a court of law and the whole lying to Parliament bit, hey what does it matter, it’s only torture.

Get used to it, that’s where we live now- Hey what does it matter, it’s only torture.

Blair War Crimes Foundation

Go have a look @ BlairFoundation

It is necessary to make leaders hesitate before indulging in “the paramount war crime” to quote the judges of Nuremberg, of “unprovoked aggression against a defenceless country”. Unless leaders fear that they might be tried for their war crimes, we will live in an increasingly violent world, where The Geneva Conventions are treated as a joke, the UN is of no account, and death, destruction, torture, and repressive policing are commonplace. At the moment such leaders enjoy more and more trappings of power, and retire with vast sums of money, houses, medals and lucrative contracts. A group of UK Citizens have therefore set up an organisation, “The Blair War Crimes Foundation”, to initially bring one such leader to justice as an example.

Read their Letter of charges and Join the signatories (ht2 Craig Murray). Signatories already include- John Pilger, David Halpin, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Ken Loach, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Lindsey German, Ben Griffin, Dr Nawal Saadawi, Haifa Zangana, Dr Kamil Mahdi, Bruce Kent.

PS. A good answer to Blair’s $1 million ‘Leadership Award‘ from…well Israel for all intents & purposes, a rather obvious bribe.

Good Riddance

So Gordon announces British troops are withdrawing from Iraq, but note the stay behind military ‘advisers’ and of course no one talks about the mercs-

At a press conference, Mr Brown said: “We have agreed today that the mission will end no later than 31 May next year. “Our troops will be coming home within the next two months [after that].”

Mr Maliki confirmed that the agreement included a provision for the Iraqi government to request an extension of the British military presence. However, both leaders indicated it was not expected to be used.

But take the shiny spin off and look at it this way-

British Forces will leave Iraq by the end of next July under a humiliating proposal that lumps the once-valued deployment with five smaller contingents, including those of Romania, El Salvador and Estonia.

Grouping Britain with contingents such as Estonia, which has only 36 soldiers in Iraq, and El Salvador, with a mere 200, is a far cry from the start of the invasion when British Forces were second in importance only to those of the US.

That July includes those two months that now Iraq are not even reckoning on allowing, so The Times patriotic wounded pride aside…good we are -mostly- leaving, coalition of the shilling over. No word on reparations and of course this slinking home is spun by the government as a great victory where our brave boys made Iraq such a better place. So much so they can’t wait to kick them out. Oh yes and Ben Griffin? Still gagged, so no truth about our role in torture yet. Funny he didn’t get a look in at The Sun’s military award Imperio-patrio-pornography (in conjunction with the MOD, truth to power, fourth estate an’ all that… Gordon *Hearts* Rupert)

Gagged Yet Parliament Listened

British troops who hand over prisoners in Iraq to US military personnel could find themselves facing prosecution, according to a legal opinion compiled for parliament. The finding has led to calls for the British government to rethink its current policy and investigate how the US treats its prisoners, and whether torture is employed against them.

Earlier this year the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition sought legal opinion from Michael Fordham QC on whether a human rights violation would arise under the European convention on human rights (ECHR) and the 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA) if an individual in British detention in Iraq were handed over to US military personnel, “despite substantial grounds for considering that there is a real risk of that person being subjected to torture or inhuman and degrading treatment”.

The conclusion reached by Fordham and his colleague Tom Hickman is that an offence would definitely have been committed. If acted on, the opinion could mean that UK troops would not be allowed to “render” detainees to the US military until it was clear that they would no longer face the possibility of torture or ill-treatment.

What prompted the inquiry was a statement made in February this year by Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier who was on active service in Iraq. In his statement, Griffin said that he was “in no doubt” that individuals handed over to the US military “would be tortured”. He cited what had happened to those detained at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram airbase and Abu Ghraib prison.

MOD Admits…*Torture*…

Yep, although of course the the ‘t’ word is not mentioned, oh no that’s what filthy foreign types do, when we do it, it’s regrettable abuse (if found out, if witnesses are still alive and lawyers help them for years) when our noble forces of democracy do it-

Nine Iraqis who were assaulted and sexually abused [Tortured] by British soldiers while being held at an army camp are to receive up to £1m in damages after the Ministry of Defence admitted liability.

In the latest case, nine more Iraqis made allegations of “humiliating” abuse after they were arrested by the 1st Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in Operation Ali Baba, which was aimed at catching and deterring looters who were stealing humanitarian aid from a British Army camp.

Four soldiers were convicted at courts martial in Germany 2005 of offences at Camp Breadbasket after photographs emerged of Iraqis being abused, including being suspended in nets from a forklift truck, and forced to adopt simulated sexual positions.

No one was charged in connection with forcing Iraqis to simulate sex acts and give a thumbs-up for the camera, despite months of investigation by the Royal Military Police.

The MoD admitted yesterday that unlawful “assaults and batteries” were suffered by nine Iraqi men claiming damages for abuse by members of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in May 2003. SapnaMalik, a partner at Leigh Day & Co solicitors who are representing the men in their claims against the MoD, said: “It is good that the MoD has admitted that the treatment received by each of the claimants was unlawful, although its refusal to accept that Camp Breadbasket falls within the ambit of the Human Rights Act is frustrating. The maltreatment of the men was hideous, humiliating and degrading and the legacy lingers with them to this day.

“We hope that the admission marks the MoD’s willingness to resolve the claims fairly so that the men can try to finally move forward with their lives.”

However, it is understood that the MoD has requested further details of the abuse, including medical reports and witness statements before making any payouts. The MoD has also denied that the Human Rights Act or European Convention on Human Rights extended to the humanitarian aid distribution centre where the abuses occurred.

Um yeah, because human rights all depend on geography,have they been consulting with the Border Agency? Just read that again- The MoD has also denied that the Human Rights Act or European Convention on Human Rights extended to the humanitarian aid distribution centre- one more time- The MoD has also denied that the Human Rights Act or European Convention on Human Rights extended to the humanitarian aid distribution centre- got that? And they say Military Intelligence is an oxymoron. Lie about the war, lie about the basic meaning of words. Humanitarian intervention anyone?

No one was charged in connection with forcing Iraqis to simulate sex acts and give a thumbs-up for the camera, despite months of investigation by the Royal Military Police.- Yep that’s a culture that respects human rights and isn’t full of -sublimated sexual- violence and certainly no code of silence operating there.

It’s almost like the Iraqis don’t like being occupied and spoilt with splendid hi-tech death squads. And please note Ben Griffin is still gagged.

Fascism Rising

As Frank Sidebottom would sing ‘it is, it really is.’ First of all the Homeland, Larisa Alexandrovna is in DC and at her hotel a ‘Values voter’ shindig is also going on, go to Atlargely for more (&pics of the Obama Waffles) but a snippet or two-

As you can see, it shows an image of Obama as a turbaned “Osama” and the text in the red box says “Point the box toward Mecca for tastier waffles.”

I asked the “chef” of this ugly version of reality if he was at all concerned that this might be viewed as a white man putting a black man into a frying pan and he laughed and said “I hope so.”

I sat down to look at the waffle box near the deli outside of the exhibit and I overheard two women discussing the notion – frightening to them – that if Obama were to become president there would be more black babies in America.

And right behind these two fine twisted sisters were a group of older men discussing that this election should be treated (and I wrote this down) “as nothing short of WWII” and that “liberal fascism had to be defeated the way [the US] defeated Hitler.”

But check this, other journo’s were their keeping a low profile, business…(or pleasure for some?)-

I saw one journalist (although I was undercover so I could watch and listen without being followed as the others were) visibly as shaken as I was. I won’t name him, but he was calling in a story to his editor over the phone and what became clear is that he overheard the black baby conversation and ran out as upset as I was. I saw Lou Dobbs, but he was simply making the rounds. I also saw Mike Allen of Politico,

So we’ll see stories about this from Dobbs and Allen, yeah? For the sharp end of this reality there is extermination-

On August 8th our company executed a 10-year-old boy. We shot him in the back with a full magazine M-16. Approximately August 16th to August 20th – I’m not sure of the date – a man was taken out of his hootch sleeping, was put into a cave, and he was used for target practice by a lieutenant, the same lieutenant who had ordered the boy killed. Now they used him for target practice with an M-60, an M-16, and a 45.

The US backed action in Bolivia in this translated bulletin-

The Bolivian government communicated today to the national and international community that a civil coup has been put into action in the departmental capital city of Santa Cruz, led by the President of the Civic Committee, Branco Marinkovic, and supported by Prefect Ruben Costas. The national government will not respond to “provocations by fascist groups” and will defend democracy and national unity without declaring a state of emergency in the convulsed regions.

The government denounced several times in the last few weeks that there were preparations for violent protests with internal and external support. Today the predicted events materialized and began a “civic prefectural coup against the unity of the country and democracy,” said the government minister Alfredo Rada.

Students and activists of the [neo-fascist] group the Santa Cruz Youth Union (UCJ) and shock groups of thugs paid by the business-led civic movement from Santa Cruz attacked on Tuesday offices of Internal Revenue, the National Institute of  Land Reform (INRA) and the National Company of Telecommunications (ENTEL).

More @ SU. Also they update on the case of Ayodeji Omotade, upstanding citizen, good Samaritan who was arrested with British Airways (virtually a corporate arm of the state) complicity and faces a trial next week-

“The man, who was thought to be about 30, was being held down in his seat by four or five police officers as the other passengers filed on board, and was crying out in broken English that he was afraid he would die if he were sent back to Nigeria.  The officers took him off the plane, then returned and arrested Ayodeji Omotade, one of the passengers who had complained about his treatment. When others on board protested noisily about Mr Omotade’s detention, the captain ordered them all off the flight. The only person who eventually flew economy class on flight BA0075 was the unidentified deportee who did not want to go.”

Lots of ways to support him at his trial check the SU post or go to respectnigerians.com , here’s hoping like the Greenpeace and Raytheon 9 acquittals this allows a jury of peers to show the state we are not as tyrannical as they are or wish us to be. The vote of a jury might be the last true democratic choice people have (ie it has real power). And Dave writes more about the case of Habib Khan and the BBC quoting BNP talking points and I’ve just read the original trial report and it is shocking they extensively quote a BNP councillor as if he was from a legitimate political party, or is that now BBC policy to treat the BNP as just a regular party? The piece ends with Khan’s lawyer remarking-

Khan’s barrister, Simon Drew, said police investigations into the various incidents often “came to nothing” because of “generous failures by the system”.

‘various incidents‘- That is racist attacks by both the dead man (a BNP ‘activist’, father of seven and personal friend of BNP leader Griffin) and his son. It’s arguable that the response of the police while useful for white racists (generally allowing them to get away with their ‘activism’ and the only conclusion is some police sympathise with them) allowed the dispute to ferment and led to the death, and now the BNP are enthusiastically capitalising on the case. Which is a somewhat morbid strategy for its members.

Mixed Messages

The government has agreed to pay almost £3m to the family of Baha Mousa and nine other Iraqis tortured by British troops and issued a full apology for the “appalling abuse” they suffered.

The MoD said in a statement: “The settlement is with an admission of liability by the Ministry of Defence which follows on from a statement on 27 March 2008 by the Secretary of State for Defence when substantive breaches of Article 2 (right to life) and 3 (prohibition of torture) of the European Convention on Human Rights were admitted.”

“The settlement was accompanied by an apology from the Ministry of Defence.”

A spokesman added: “All but a handful of the more than 120,000 British troops who have served in Iraq have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behaviour, displaying integrity and selfless commitment.

“But this does not excuse that, during 2003 and 2004, a very small minority there committed acts of abuse and we condemn their actions.”

Yet-

At a court martial, six soldiers from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, including Colonel Jorge Mendonca, the commanding officer, were acquitted of negligence and abuse over Mousa ’s death and the ill-treatment of the other Iraqis. A corporal admitted inhumane treatment, but no one was convicted of killing Mousa.

Also bear in mind Ben Griffin is still gagged from revealing UK involvement with the US torture program. I’m just not feeling the sincerity here…

MoD Lies Even As It Admits Lying

The full truth about the destruction of an RAF Hercules aircraft was covered up by the Ministry of Defence to deny Iraqi insurgents a propaganda victory. The MoD said the C-130J was involved in an “incident” on landing and there was no evidence of hostile action.

The report makes it clear that planted improvised explosive devices were suspected within an hour of the blasts last year. But defence officials decided to cover up the full truth about the second incident to deny opponents of coalition operations a high-profile propaganda coup.

The report, published on the MoD website, hails their “sound and well-reasoned approach” to releasing information about the incident and the subsequent aircraft destruction. It notes this resulted in “minimal media interest” and “denied the enemy the opportunity to exploit the situation for the benefit of their IO (information operations) campaign”.

A spokesman for the MoD said: “It is our duty to protect the security of troops on operations. “At times this means we may need to restrict the flow of information for a period of time to protect that security. We would not deliberately mislead the public.”

Not unusual for the War Ministry to propagandise us-

Britain has no statute such as that in the US preventing the military, government or intelligence agencies conducting domestic psyops and disinformation campaigns on their own populace. But it may as well be the case that the US doesn’t either. In the modern information age, a lie can travel around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

But in this case not misleading the public would mean saying ‘No Comment’ because they knew it was enemy action. But instead they put about the story of an ‘incident” on landing and there was no evidence of hostile action. That is clearly a big old fib, they went over the line, they did mislead, yet again the spokeperson (because it is habitual) lies again “We would not deliberately mislead the public.”

This isn’t that big a deal, surely most sane informed people take any report by the MoD with a large (huge!) pinch of salt, but what else is a fiction that currently goes undiscovered, what of Ben Griffin still apparently gagged from speaking publicly of his evidence of the UK government, the Cabinet knowingly involved in US torture? There is a terrible traditional preference for secrecy in this country, a classist disrespect for the people by the establishment, a patronising attitude that we are foolish children not to be entrusted with truths. Would this have helped the insurgency? Well they would know they succeeded, the big explosiony things and reports of a Hercules down kinda would have tipped that off. So only as a wider propaganda element is it applicable and in that sense covering it up is saving government embarrassment during a massively unpopular war, the MoD admits this through the medium of jargonese “denied the enemy the opportunity to exploit the situation for the benefit of their IO (information operations) campaign”. And the reports low coverage shows the media isn’t overly keen on reporting how easily it is co-opted in the MoD’s IO campaign. This is not Britain under siege in WWll, journalists doing what the government tells them are not helping the war effort (and in that period that consensus was abused by the establishment)! This was a war of choice where the case was made through massive manipulation of the media, who are largely unrepentant.

The Brown Bridge

Gordon Brown today embraced one of Tony Blair’s most controversial legacies when he cast himself as the best-placed leader to bring Europe and the US together after the bitter divisions over Iraq.

His remarks in an interview with CBS, which are likely to draw comparisons with Blair’s attempts to cast himself as the “bridge” across the Atlantic, were aimed both at President George Bush and all three presidential candidates.

Brown said John McCain, the Republican candidate, was “great hero of his time” and he praised Hillary Clinton for her “very strong argument” about how to deal with the economic downturn. The prime minister admitted that it was “an accident” that he had yet to meet Barack Obama but he praised the Democratic frontrunner for reaching out to apathetic voters.

Gordon is a war criminal because of his involvement in the Iraq war and continuing backing of it, but on Friday corporate media acknowledged Bush admitted he authorised torture. The liberal US blogosphere is now admirably trying to keep this admission on the agenda and are campaigning for hearings to begin, although many are politic not to scream impeachment too loudly, fuck polite, call for impeachment. Either way this is a defining moment and those who went along with this will be held to account, Gordon just volunteered himself top of the UK list (well joint with Anthony) with his enthusiastic poodling. No surprise Ben Griffin is still gagged. Our leaders are criminals, they are using the full powers of the state to cover up and continue their crimes. This is NOT politics. This is very simple. They are committing criminal acts.