The Judge RANTS!
Date: 29/04/09
Creating A Market In Torture...And Silence
I hope no-one reading this site would be sufficiently naïve or trusting to think that the corporate media will invariably tell the truth about what those with power (political, financial or otherwise) get up to. The wisest default position should always be to doubt until you get it corroborated from a good variety of sources. This enables us to see and point out where and how they are lying to us.
It's a bit difficult to do that if none of those sources reports on what has quite clearly actually happened.
Such is a case in point with the evidence given yesterday (Tuesday) to the UK Parliament's Joint Committee On Human Rights by Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, regarding the complicity of our own government in torture under that country's hideous régime, and the use of information obtained under torture to justify the UK Government's policies.
It is remarkable that it has taken so long for such an important committee to deign to hear Mr Murray's evidence, given that he has been providing it to the public since he was removed from his job (and his career) for clearly political motives some five years ago. Nevertheless, yesterday they finally heard officially what he had to say, including his very clear accusations of complicity by our government (and particularly by Jack Straw - Foreign Secretary at the time of the events described) in torture carried out by the Uzbek dictatorship against internal dissidents and torture carried out by the CIA, evidence of which has recently been published by the Obama administration.
I point all this out, because if you were to rely on the corporate media in the UK for information, you'd wait for ever. Apart from a small (but perfectly formed) piece tucked away in a sidebar link on the BBC News website, the coverage has been...well, totally non-existent. The Guardian, nowt (although that seems to be their general position on Mr Murray, as the editor has some undisclosed personal animus against him - Rusbridger is probably a chum of Jack Straw); The Independent doesn't seem to be on this issue as on many another; The Telegraph? Nada. Even The Times, one-time newspaper of record and gazette of the governing classes, can't bring itself to mention yesterday's hearings (which also involved evidence from Professor Philippe Sands, Professor of International Law at University College London). All these rags (and their tabloid kid brothers and sisters) much prefer to yab on about MPs' expenses, Gurkhas, and about how we're all about to die from flying pigs or whatnot.
So, as it falls to us private soldiers in the Bloggers' Army to do the job of 'real' journalists, here are the links to Craig Murray's evidence. The truth has come out, but it needs help if it is to overcome the inability of our embedded press to tell the truth not only to power, but the truth about power as well:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
