Saturday, December 31, 2005



UK torture memos spread

The story of Craig Murray's leaking of documents showing that the UK was complicit in torture in Uzbekistan is spreading around the world. Not only has it been mentioned on hundreds of blogs, it has also appeared in the Independent, Al Jazeera, Scoop (of course), The Times, UPI, Slate and CNews. For those who are interested, there's a tracker here

The Register puts the finger on exactly what the problem is for the British government:

There is little obvious in the documents that one would not be able to read at Human Rights Watch, or at the blog Murray started up after he ceased to be an FCO employee; the point, and the difficulty for the FCO, is that they establish who said what, to whom, when. Claims by the FCO and the Government in general that it does not procure evidence via torture and that it is unaware that torture is taking place can most kindly be viewed as superlatively disingenuous when seen against the background of Murray's letters. In order to sustain the 'see no evil' policy in the face of these, Jack Straw must presumably also now claim to have been entirely unaware of what one of his own ambassadors was telling him, repeatedly and at some considerable length.

Unfortunately, that level of denial hasn't posed any problem for the Blair government in the past...

2 comments:

Damn I love the blogosphere! Doing the job the job that the chickenshit mainstream journalists fail to do and telling it like it is.

This image (from your link above) is a nice satirical take on the current state of Bush/Blair politics:

http://webpages.charter.net/micah/boiling.png

PS: still no sign of the leaked Aljazerra bombing memo? Drat-drat and double drat....

Posted by zANavAShi : 12/31/2005 06:40:00 PM

Didn't know about the torture? My dear fellow, we probably sold them the manacles. Well, not us exactly, that would be barbaric. We probably gave the company that made the manacles export subsidy credits. Well, you wouldn't want a fuzzie-wuzzie being hung from the ceiling to get hurt when the manacles break, and they fall? What? I mean that's what would happen if they were hung using poorly made foreign made manacles. I mean. What do the Chinese know about human rights abuse? What? Oh, they shoot prisoners and sel,theor organs for transplant? Jolly good. That's the free market we love so much. Carry on chaps. I say. Did those Uzbeks really get away with boiling dissidents to death?

We clearly have been complicit, and I do wonder how some politicians who we once respected sleep in their beds at night. Ill (I hope) lies the accusation of torture on the consciences of the powerful, and maybe the screams of the innocent (and even the guilty, for two wrongs do not make a right) keep our 'masters' from sleep.

Posted by Peter Mc : 1/01/2006 02:45:00 PM