More on this hopefully later, but in the meantime here’s the initial dirt. They certainly pick their moments. And other depressingly overused epigrams.

Remember this?

Saudi Arabia has given Britain 10 days to halt a fraud investigation into the country’s arms trade - or lose a £10 billion Eurofighter contract.

Well, it took just a little over ten days. Here’s this:

The Serious Fraud Office is discontinuing its investigation into a multi-billion pound arms deals with Saudi Arabia, it has been announced.

Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said the decision had been made in the wider public interest, which had to be balanced against the rule of law.

‘It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest,’ apparently. Just what this wider public interest entails other than the massively subsidised (at the UK taxpayers expense) jobs in the British defence industry and the flogging of weapons to an oppressive regime, isn’t clear.

From now on, upon hearing the words ‘rule of law’ trip from the mouth of a New Labour hack, the urge to spit will be nigh on irresistible.

The Home Office is at the centre of a fresh row over its handling of asylum applications after it emerged that hundreds of people who have fled the slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan have been told by officials that it is safe to return to their homes.

Among those who have been refused permission to remain in the UK is a woman doctor who was gang-raped by Sudanese soldiers for protesting to aid workers about the rape of more than 40 schoolgirls.

read the rest…

…as a wise man once said.

Leading on from comments about freedom of speech made by the Prime Minister’s senior policy adviser, his former press secretary and the director of the Press Complaints Commission, we have this: Keith Olbermann (again) on former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s musings on the First Amendment.

It’s said from time to time by bloggers prepared to sail close to the wind on matters such as libel, that their blogs can’t be touched under British law because they’re not hosted in the UK. One or two bloggers like to point out that their blogs are hosted on blogspot in the US. Well, they might want to keep an eye on Newt and his own ideas about freedom of speech:

“This is a serious, long-term war,” Gingrich added, “and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country. It will lead us to learn how to close down every Web site that is dangerous.”

And now the apposite quote from a significant piece of prescient fiction (it’s 1984’s day off today unfortunately - it’s knackered through overwork):

Goose-stepping morons [...] should try reading books instead of burning them.

So I turn my back for five minutes and suddenly we’re executing Saddam?

I’m almost afraid to go on holiday, there would be nothing worse than getting home to discover everyone had spent the whole time I was away holding Kim Jong Il’s head down the toilet and pulling the flush.

Still, I see that the news has gone over well with those whose fierce commitment to universal human rights flops like a stiffy in a scissor factory the moment we, the Americans or the Israelis rev up our war machines to unleash some kick-ass whizz-bang upon lunatics and civilians alike.

read the rest…

Human rights are British. Human rights are as British as the Beatles. As British as the BBC. As British as bitter.

That was the Lord Chancellor, Charles Falconer this week, the man responsible for our legal system, finding an unlooked-for lyrical alliterative outlook in his unelected and illiberal largesse. You have to wonder how much it cost the tax payer to come up with such patronising and transparently contrived nonsense.

Ah, the evergreen Fab Four, our world-renowned broadcaster and the upstanding British pint. Of course, our championing of human rights around the world fully deserves to stand in that glittering pantheon. The thing is, the Government doesn’t perceive human rights in the same way the rest of us do. For them, our core of humane and decent values isn’t so much one of cast iron as one of warm plasticine to be shaped and moulded as they see fit. And like plasticine when you mix all the colours, human rights in this country right now are starting to resemble a shitty brown mess.

(more…)

None of this is simple for politicians to discuss. Arguments have to be clear and careful. None readily tabloidize. But if party hacks are wondering about electoral disaffection, they could start by interrogating their own eagerness to abdicate. While they’re happy to confine health debates to PCTs and the small print of dentistry contracts, the politics of abortion is happening without them.

read the rest…

You couldn’t call this unexpected:

Three Britons and a Canadian have been denied the right to sue Saudi Arabian officials they say tortured them.

And while Tony Blair did the usual non-specific condemnation at Prime Minister’s Questions today…

Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD): Now that Ron Jones and others have lost the right to sue Saudi officials for torture, what meaningful legal redress is there for any Briton tortured abroad in the light of the Law Lords’ ruling?

The Prime Minister: May I point out to the hon. Gentleman that we intervened in this case in order to ensure that the rules of international law and state immunity are fully and accurately presented and upheld? That is important for us as a country and for others. But our strong position against torture remains unchanged: we utterly condemn it in every set of circumstances.

…you can sleep soundly again knowing that this slight bump in the road to harmonious trade with the Saudi government has been smoothed and the prestige that comes from selling massive amounts of military equipment to one of the world’s most brutal regimes is untarnished.

A cynic might ask whether the Government would have weighed in on the side of “rules of international law and state immunity” against four men seeking redress for what was done to them (one of the men has medical evidence proving he was tortured) had the torturers in question been the goons of pre-war Iraq or Iran, Burma, Zimbabwe or any other abattoir state with which we don’t have a multi-billion pound arms contract. If you are going to get yourself picked up and tortured while on holiday, try and check the Foreign Office’s Strategic Export Controls reports before you leave. If we sell your idyllic destination lots of armoured vehicles and electric stun batons, you’re better off being on your best behaviour.

Blair must now be sweating that England don’t meet Saudi Arabia in the knock-out stages of the World Cup. After all, if the House of Saud take umbrage, who will buy all those Eurofighters? Tony will have to make the call. “I’m sorry Sven, but for the good of BAE shareholders, your lads have to throw the match. Tell you what, lose in a penaly shoot-out, it’ll be more convincing”.

Failing that, just pepper the crowd with MI6 agents armed with blowpipes and curare-tipped darts. “Looks like the heat got to the lads once again, Gary.”

Update: As happy coincidence would have it, it’s Torture Awareness Month.

At a stage-managed “Let’s Talk” event with Labour supporters in London, Mr Blair sought to show that he was listening to the public - though his audience was provided questions to raise.

The carefully-selected audience discussed Government policies with Mr Blair and with a rehabilitated John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, who was making his first major public appearance since admitting an affair.

read the rest…

The Human Rights Act is increasingly being made a scapegoat for government incompetence, maladministration and badly drafted legislation. Take the case of Anthony Rice, the rapist who killed a woman nine months after being released on licence. From the report by the chief inspector of probation, it is clear that the fundamental mistake was letting Rice out of prison in the first place.

read the rest…

Which of these statements is true?:

a) In 2002, the German Vegetarian Society voted cannibal, Armin Meiwes (’It was passable, but a little tough,’ he said of eating his victim’s penis), its honorary chairman.

b) In September of last year, ultra-orthodox Catholic cult, Opus Dei, invited godlike atheist Richard Dawkins (’Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence,’ he once said) to join its number.

c) In 2003, Libya (’Over the past three decades, Libya’s human rights record has been appalling. It has included the abduction, forced disappearance or assassination of political opponents; torture… and long-term detention without charge or trial or after grossly unfair trials,’ said Human Rights Watch) was elected as chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the body set up to investigate human rights abuses across the world.

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The morality of high politics is beyond the ken of mortal man. How else to explain why Jack Straw could shake hands with Robert Mugabe at the UN (’it was quite dark,’ whined Straw afterwards) and then mock peace protesters (’I could have done better‘) while showing off in front of Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to Blackburn?

And then we have the curious story of the Government wading in on the side of Saudi Arabian officials who, it is alleged, tortured a group of British men wrongfully held after a spate of bombings in Saudi Arabia in 2001. A forensic pathologist, after examining one of the men, Ron Jones, confirmed Jones’ account of events. He had been beaten, deprived of sleep, told his wife and son were also in custody and being tortured, and given a ‘Rohypnol-style’ drug. He now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is recovering from a nervous breakdown.

The men were released after more bombings in the Saudi capital were blamed on al-Qaida. They are now seeking compensation in the British courts from the officials they say tortured them (Saudi Arabia, as a state, is immune from claims of compensation for torture). The Saudi Government, with the help of UK government lawyer, Christopher Greenwood QC, are applying to the House of Lords to overturn the appeal court ruling allowing the men to claim redress from their alleged torturers.

(more…)

“I don’t want to be gay anymore. When I go out to buy bread, I’m afraid. When the doorbell rings, I think that they have come for me.”

read the rest…

Christopher Greenwood QC, the international lawyer who advised the attorney-general that the Iraq war was lawful, will argue for the British government, which has intervened in support of Saudi Arabian officials accused of detaining and torturing four Britons in Saudi jails.

read the rest…

I understand that New Labour feels it must pander to the public’s basest, most disgusting human instincts in order to consolidate its power. I realise only too well that the only way to stay at the top is by warming the cockles and stoking the fears of Daily Mail readers.

But I wonder if anybody (apart from say, Nick Griffin) feels the requisite glow of a job well done after hearing this:

Ms Blears, as well as being Minister of State for Crime, Security and Communities, is the constituency MP of Olive Mukaraguwiza, a Rwandan asylum seeker who, after living in the UK for three years, without warning found her home raided by police at 6am last Tuesday morning. She and her three children were packed off to Yarls Wood detention centre pending their deportation. On Friday they were bundled onto a plane in such a distraught state that the pilot refused to fly.

Did even the official who signed off on this think it was the right thing to do? Did he tick the box, go home for his tea and proudly tell his wife and kids what he’d done at the office that day? Did even Hazel Blears, a person who is never, ever wrong about anything ever, not feel a small wave of cold disquiet upon hearing this story? Did what’s left of her humanity not itch, even a little?

As I said in the comments at Europhobia, I try very, very, hard not to believe that New Labour are actually evil. But doesn’t this kind of petty, bureaucratic “efficiency” (ad nauseum) pretty much amount to the same thing?

It’s time to show these people the door. You won’t convince me the Tories would be any worse than this…

“Lack of controls on the arms trade is fuelling conflict, poverty and human rights abuses worldwide. Every government is responsible. The Control Arms campaign is asking governments to toughen up controls on the arms trade.

Our Million Faces petition is collecting photos and self portraits from around the world to reach our goal of one million faces by June 2006. We will use these faces to send a powerful, global message of support to the world’s governments for an International Arms Trade Treaty.”

upload your fizzog >>

Human Rights Watch yesterday accused European countries, including Britain, of undermining human rights worldwide by courting countries such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia while ignoring evidence of their extensive abuses.

…

Mr Roth describes Britain as being “complicit in torture” by sending terrorist suspects back to their native countries even when torture is commonplace. The British government has signed, or is still negotiating, memorandums of understanding with countries in the Middle East and North Africa in which they promise not to torture suspects sent from Britain.

But Human Rights Watch says the memorandums “are not worth the paper they are written on” and said it was impossible for the British government to monitor what happened to suspects returned to their native countries. “Round-the-clock monitoring might deny torturers an opportunity to ply their trade, but Blair, like the Bush government, contemplates only periodic monitoring.”

more…

(HRW’s World Report 2006 is available, with a number of podcasts, here.)

Our guys at the Foreign Office got an early Christmas present this year:

FCO Press Release (23/12/05): UK SIGNS MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING WITH LEBANON

Today the Government of the Lebanese Republic and the Government of the United Kingdom (UK) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate the deportation of persons suspected of activities associated with terrorism.

And not forgettting that “the UK signed similar MOUs with the Kingdom of Jordan on 10 August and with Libya on 18 October”.

Still, look on the bright side:

Madeleine Moon (Bridgend, Lab):To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he takes if a deportee is discovered to have suffered an unfair trial, torture or ill treatment, in contravention of the UK’s agreement with the receiving country.

Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office): We firmly believe that governments are entering into these agreements in good faith, and are confident that they will abide by the terms of any assurances given. Any contravention of a bilateral international agreement between Her Majesty’s Government and another government would be a matter of considerable concern.

If there were an allegation suggesting that the terms of an agreement had not been honoured, we would seek an immediate report of the circumstances from the authorities of the receiving state, and would request immediate access to the individual concerned.

Action thereafter would depend on the nature of the breach, and on the remedial action, if any, taken by the authorities in the country concerned; it could include a request for an independent inquiry, and/or a request for the receiving state to take remedial action. Failure to comply with formal political commitments in a Memorandum of Understanding or similar political instrument can seriously damage relations between the signatory states, and the standing of the state concerned in the international community generally.

If you are unlucky enough find yourself spirited back to Libya or Lebanon or Jordan, you can console yourself, as the electrodes are applied to your genitals and you are being sexually assaulted, that what is being done to you is seriously damaging relations with the UK. Comfort yourself between your screams with the knowledge that an independent inquiry may soon be underway and remedial action shall salve your battered body.

You’re a dull, little man with your dull little life, a dull, little wife, two dull, little kids and your dull, little job. You never hurt anybody. You keep your head down and don’t rock the boat. Apart from the odd large lunch, you have no vices. You draw your dull, little salary at the end of the month, you’ll draw a dull, little pension when you retire and you’ll die a dull, little death.

“What did you do at work today, daddy,” one of your dull, little children asks you one day.

“Oh, I signed the papers that will return 15 asylum seekers back to Iraq,” you reply, dully.

“Gosh,” says your child, “isn’t Iraq frightfully dangerous, daddy?”

“Well some of it is,” you say, “but the area these people are being sent back to is sufficiently stable. Besides, we’ve done our homework. There’s nobody going who shouldn’t be and they’re all getting a lovely bullet-proof vest and helmet. They’ll be alright.”

You sleep like a baby.

Another example of the whacky world of British counter-terrorism:

The Independent: Enemies of the state? Police fail even to question men held as a terror threat

Four men deprived of their liberty for four years on suspicion of being international terrorists disclose today that they have not once been questioned by police or security services since being arrested.

The Observer: Rice rejects EU protests over secret terror prisons
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inflame the transatlantic row over America’s alleged torture of terror suspects in secret jails by telling Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other European officials to ‘back off’.

Condi knows best and uppity Old Worlders should know their place. America doesn’t “do torture” and “does not allow rights abuses”. All this cloak and dagger stuff is no doubt just to give what is otherwise a routine and mundane job a little frisson. It probably makes the workers’ lives a bit more exciting, like being able to wear jeans on a Friday.

In other news…

Washington Post - Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake

In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country’s interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA’s Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.

Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.

I urge you to read this fantastic post from Robin Grant at perfect.co.uk and follow all the links - all much worth a read.

Well, we’ve had the avalanche of emotional blackmail from New Labour and its supporters to bring us back into the fold. When that didn’t work, David Aaronovitch - so Labour he’s about to take the Murdoch shilling - and Peter Hain decided insults and smears might be a better tactic. Again, no joy.

So now, as Robin points out, us anti-war, would-be dissenters, deserters and betrayers are to be offered a wide-ranging smorgasbord of humanitarian pledges to get us back on the New Labour bus. Some might be swayed and fair enough but, with this coming from the government that enthusiastically embraced the nomination and appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, I’ll wait to see the fine print if you don’t mind.

Also, do you really think we’d be seeing this if the New Labour high commmand weren’t, in the words of John Harris, “bricking it” after Peter Hain reported bad news from the marginals? You’ll have to forgive me for my cynicism but this is a crew that’s set its sail in any direction in contempt of the deeply held beliefs of the people who gave them their jobs. Now they’re donning their superhero costumes and offering (to heal) the world. Can they raise the dead as well?

“Labour officials admit that Iraq ‘comes up regularly’ on the doorstep,” says the above Guardian piece. Really? That’s not what John Reid’s been saying when he’s wheeled out to smear humanitarians. Or Jack Straw. So which is it? It can’t be both. Ah, silly me. This is New Labour we’re taking about. Of course it can be both. A fish rots from the head down and the stench of Tony Blair’s bifurcated mind hangs over all.

It’s too little too late and with trust in Blair resembling downtown Fallujah, how do we know we’d even see any of these goodies? And then, at the next election, we’re still pissed off and the whole perverse circus starts again - the blackmail, the insults and the promises.

Something’s got to give. Tactical voters, here are your orders.

Craig Murray, erstwhile ambassador to people-boiling T.W.A.T. allies, Uzbekistan, and (hopefully) future nemesis of Jack Straw, has a shiny new website.

Craig hates the concept of hurting people to extract information. Jack thinks there’s a time and a place for it.

Compare and contrast.

This exchange during a debate in the Commons yesterday about lifting the EU arms ebargo with China is worth noting:

Mr. Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness) (Con): There is a strong and growing alliance against lifting the EU embargo. All the informed regional players—the United States, Japan, Australia, Russia and South Korea—are, for regional security reasons, all against lifting the ban.

In the context of China’s anti-secession legislation, which talks about using non-peaceful means against Taiwan, is it not time that the UK Government stopped vacillating and that the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary took a principled stance on this issue?

Mr. Rammell: I seem to recall that the arms embargo was put in place in response to the events in Tiananmen square and that the first Government to visit Beijing after that event was the previous Conservative Government.

Let me deal with the hon. Gentleman’s specific concerns. As the Foreign Secretary has made clear, he recognises that the political environment has become more difficult in the light of the passing of the anti-secession law in China on 14 March. Nevertheless, China is a major strategic partner in the international community and the hon. Gentleman needs to reflect on whether it is right to put China in the same basket as Burma and Zimbabwe. We do not believe that it is, and we are protected by the EU code of conduct. There are questions and concerns across the EU and we must deal with them effectively. As I said, that process will take as long as it takes.

That’s Bill Rammell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

…the hon. Gentleman needs to reflect on whether it is right to put China in the same basket as Burma and Zimbabwe. We do not believe that it is…

I beg to differ. As do Amnesty International. In their report, The death penalty worldwide: developments in 2004, Amnesty say:

Based on public reports available, Amnesty International estimated that at least 3,400 people were executed in China in 2004, but the true figures were believed to be much higher.

Those executed included a minor. One case involved a pregnant woman charged with heroin smuggling who had her pregnancy forcefully terminated - Chinese law prohibits the execution of pregnant women - so she could be executed if found guilty.

Neither Burma nor Zimbabwe feature in the report.

It’s a useful mental exercise this - you could spend all day and learn a lot. Visit Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International and decide for yourself “whether it is right to put China in the same basket as Burma and Zimbabwe” or not.

Again, it’s the evil of banality and other such cliches. To be honest, I’ve almost stopped raising my eyebrows at the innate ability of these managerial types to paper over the crimes and abuses of those they want to do business with. I imagine most people never did, which is a shitty state of affairs in itself.

Politics.co.uk: MPs condemn Government silence in torture row

A group of MPs has slammed the Government for twice refusing to say whether Britain uses information extracted under torture in foreign countries.

Here’s was the report had to say:

105. We find it surprising and unsettling that the Government has twice failed to answer our specific question on whether or not the UK receives or acts upon information extracted under torture by a third country. We recommend that the Government, in its response to this Report, give a clear answer to the question, without repeating information already received twice by this Committee.

106. We recommend that the Government set out, in its response to this Report, a full and clear explanation of how its policy on the use of evidence gained under torture is consistent with the United Kingdom’s international commitments as set out in the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which states, at Article 15, that “Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made”.

But a small article in the Times on March 27, that doesn’t seem to have gained traction anywhere else, sheds a little more light. Here it is in full:

The Times: Torture ruling

Government lawyers have given MI6 the go-ahead to use intelligence obtained under torture — as long as no British officials are involved in the interrogation, writes Robert Winnett.

The legal opinion is in a leaked Foreign Office memo drawn up in 2003 by Michael Wood, the department’s legal adviser.

It was written after Craig Murray, then the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, raised concerns about human rights abuses. The memo states: “Craig’s understanding was that it was an offence under the United Nations convention on torture to receive or possess information under torture. I . . . undertook to re-read the convention. There is nothing in (it) to this effect . . . this does not create any offence.”

However, Wood said that he “would expect” any information obtained under torture would be inadmissible as evidence in court.

So where did Craig Murray gain his “understanding… that it was an offence under the United Nations convention on torture to receive or possess information under torture?” From the same legal school as Elizabeth Wilmshurst (Michael Wood’s deputy, as it happens) who said that war in Iraq would be a “crime of aggression” in her resignation letter?

Dear Oscar once said, “Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace”. But the lines drawn by our current government were drawn in pencils with rubbers on the other end. Who knew international law was so malleable on so wide a range of issues? It certainly must come as a relief to someone who plays as fast and loose with morality as Jack Straw:

“One of the things that is done with intelligence that comes from liaison partners, obviously an assessment is made about its provenance,” said Straw.

“Because it does not follow that if it is extracted under torture, it is automatically untrue. But there is a much higher probability of it being embellished.

So there you go. Start sterilising those needles. Anything you can glean between the screams won’t necessarily be “automatically untrue”.