scienceplease 2
Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 06 Apr 2009
Posts: 1702
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 Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 12:28 pm Post subject: UK Planned Torture? |
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Absolutely de-rigor listening about UK's Torture culture from WW2, Kenya, NI and post-9/11 described by
Ian Cobain
Ian Cobain is a journalist author of "Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture"
David Anderson
David Anderson QC is a barrister and the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation - didn't know there was one!
Clare Bayley
Clare Bayley is a playwright. "Blue Sky" (about Rendition) is on at the Hampstead Theatre in London until 10 November. She says she's amazed that so many supposedly knowledgeable people know nothing about Rendition or think it is fiction.
M R Hall. M R Hall is an author and screenwriter: "The Chosen Dead"
The programme can be caught here (and presumably on iPlayer)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nkwxc
David Anderson points to coincidence-number-1001 regarding the appointment of the previous incumbent of his job...
| Quote: | | On 11 September 2001, a few hours before the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Lord Carlile of Berriew QC agreed to accept appointment as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. As terrorist offences and counter-terrorism powers proliferated over the ensuing decade, the profile of the role increased. It was first put on a statutory basis in relation to control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, and is now referred to in a number of different statutes. Lord Carlile held the position for more than nine years, until he was replaced by David Anderson QC on 21 February 2011. |
http://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk/history/
Presumably this appointment was made by Tony Blair who was about to (not) make his speech to the TUC where he was expected to be boo-ed and jeered. But Coincidence City - he didn't have to make the speech. See second entry here: http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=21607&sid=f7a1aa1de63 12db8993ad357d8a076bc
Regarding Lord Carlile...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/03/counter-terrorism-watch dog-credibility-questioned
| Quote: | Lord Carlile's 'credibility' as terror watchdog questioned by MP
Chair of human rights committee suggests term of office should come to end for peer who recently endorsed control orders |
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More on "Blue Sky" - introduction by Clare Bayley
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When I started to write Blue Sky two years ago, there was plenty in the media about the still-unfolding story. By then it was no secret that US agents had been kidnapping people they considered terror suspects, bundling them into planes and transporting them to third countries to be tortured – and calling it “extraordinary rendition”. But oddly many people remained ignorant.
All the vocabulary around this practice was extraordinary – from “enhanced interrogation techniques” to “black sites”, it was chilling in its perversity. But even though it was written about in the press, many people didn’t really understand what had been going on, and others thought the whole thing so far-fetched that it couldn’t be true. At that point nobody dreamed that a secret document, blowing around in the bombed out ministry building in Tripoli, would reveal Jack Straw’s role in facilitating the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhadj, an opponent of Gadaffi, back into the hands of the regime. Or that that document would lead to legal action being brought against Jack Straw personally.
One of the reasons people couldn’t grasp it was because of the deliberately misleading language being used. We weren’t supposed to understand it. And the whole thing was unimaginable. It conjured up a world of terrorists and CIA agents that was like fiction, not like real life. You can’t imagine US government lawyers sitting around discussing the level of pain that you could subject a person to before it’s officially torture (pain equivalent to organ failure was one of the cut-off points discussed). You don’t think that when the US president says, “Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture,” he is actually lying.
The story of extraordinary rendition was so bizarre that it took a great deal of tenacity, skill and painstaking slog for journalists to uncover. One of them was Stephen Grey... He vividly described the bewildering feeling of realising that things he had suspected had been there all along, he just hadn’t been able to perceive them because they had been so cleverly, and deliberately hidden.
We have all seen reports about rendition on TV, in the newspapers, on live feeds. The information is there, in so many formats, but somehow it ceases to mean anything at all. Theatre is a way of making it real again. It’s a way of making you imagine yourself in relation to these big, impossible stories...
It’s enjoyable – though often depressing – having your suspicions confirmed about the people who are supposed to be running governments and countries. But I didn’t want to set Blue Sky in among the Bush administration, I didn’t want to put Donald Rumsfeld or Tony Blair on stage, nor set it in Guantanamo. I wanted to bring it all right back down to us, the ordinary people, to make it personal and intimate again. |
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More on "Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cruel-Britannia-Secret-History-Torture/dp/1846 273331
| Quote: | | In one of the most shocking and persuasive books of the year, Cobain details not just British complicity in torture, but the longstanding practice of the thing itself, and the lies British politicians have always told, and are still telling, to cover it up. |
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