“You guys want to be men? Why don’t you go down there and beat some people’s asses. You’re supposed to be Iraqi police but you’re too scared to do your jobs” . . . . . ”Get into a gunfight, and I guarantee you’ll fuck some people up . . . . . Having returned from [...]
Category Archives: human rights abuse
Torture scandal reveals a fatal flaw in the UK-US 'Special relationship'.
March 21, 2009 – 6:36 pm
“British policy fails because we behave too much like an ineffective old Jeeves, even when Bertie Wooster has gone berserk.” By Timothy Garton Ash. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, responded to my article about possible British complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed (Thus passim) with a reader’s letter in the Guardian, disputing its accuracy. [...]
Your mentally challenged, sociopathic Big Brother is hacking Facebook
March 19, 2009 – 5:24 pm
“Britons, never, never, never, shall be slaves.” UK National Anthem (to be replaced with ‘Do the Vernon Coaker’) A few posts back I wondered whether M15 and its master, the CIA, Twittered. Well, not for the time in the world of Thus, fact has rapidly overtaken fiction. The inept and authoritarian UK government is actually [...]
Torture is naughty, barbaric and illegal – except when we do it
March 18, 2009 – 4:09 pm
This week, Britain’s foreign minister will present the Foreign Office’s annual report on human rights violations around the world. For anyone who cares about Britain and human rights, it will feel difficult to ask about anything except the British government’s own entanglement in a case of torture. By Timothy Garton Ash The evidence, so far [...]
An open letter to Gordon Brown, saviour of the world's banks, apart from Iceland, the UK and . . .
March 17, 2009 – 12:52 am
As Gordon and Alastair puff out their chests and iron their M+S Let’s Pretend We’re Businessmen suits (made in Indonesia) to host the G20 Global Summit on the global economy, a letter from Steven Katirai, whose Google search reveals him as a capital markets consultant based in the North East of England, has been doing the rounds [...]
Liberty in Britain is suffering death by a hundred cuts
February 19, 2009 – 11:24 am
I still cannot quite believe this is happening to my country. It feels like a bad dream. But it is happening, and we must stop it. Now. By Timothy Garton Ash For thirty years I have been travelling to unfree places, from East Germany to Burma, and writing about them in the belief that I was [...]
War crimes charges filed by international attorneys against 15 Israeli officials
January 27, 2009 – 9:18 am
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4599&Itemid=1 According to Palestinian News Network (PNN) – international lawyers are filing war crime charges against Israeli officials at the international Criminal Court in the Hague. The French lawyer orchestrating the case claims that there is some fear of interference from the United Nations Security Council under pressure from the United States to stop proceedings [...]
Israel lobby victorious as BBC refuses to help with humanitarian appeal
January 25, 2009 – 6:21 pm
In a display of lip-curling spinelessness, the BBC has refused to air the non-aligned Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Humanitarian Aid to the victims of the Gaza conflict. Other UK (commercial) TV channels, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, have agreed to air the appeal. Sky Television is considering its position. (UPDATE: unsurprisingly, Sky has [...]
Blair, Howard and – er – Ulribe honoured in Bush medal ceremony
January 15, 2009 – 9:28 am
“The president is honoring these leaders for their work to improve the lives of their citizens and for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad“ White House spokeswoman… By John J Kelly On the day when UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband opined that the War on Terror had been a mistake, the Financial Times published conjecture [...]
Update: Not all the Israel lobby are unreasonable
Labour Friends of Israel vice-chair Louise Ellman joined the chorus of criticism of the BBC for refusing to air the DRC appeal. The Telegraph reported her comment: ‘The BBC should allow the appeal to go ahead. If the BBC has specific concerns about whether the money should reach those in need then it should raise [...]