New calls for UK inquiry into secret CIA flights.
Ministers are facing fresh pressure for an independent inquiry into claims that Britain has been involved in secret CIA torture flights.
Tony Baldry, the chairman of the Commons International Development Committee, called on the Foreign Office to demand answers from the US about claims that British airports had been used as stop-off points for flights transporting terror suspects to countries across the world.
Blair can’t make this go away, he’s been trying for months. Public outcry keeps increasing. Good, let’s keep the pressure on.
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has launched a passionate attack on President George Bush, saying his administration’s refusal to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp reflected “a society that is heading towards George Orwell’s Animal Farm”.
Dr Sentamu, the Church of England’s second in command, urged the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) to take legal action against the US – through the US courts or the International Court of Justice at The Hague – should it fail to respond to a report, by five UN inspectors, advising that Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay should be shut immediately because prisoners there are being tortured.
Salon exclusive: The Abu Ghraib files
The DVD containing the material includes a June 6, 2004, CID investigation report written by Special Agent James E. Seigmund. That report includes the following summary of the material included: “A review of all the computer media submitted to this office revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts.”
“Why do they hate us, oh why do they hate us?”
BlairWatch comments about their government apply to the US too. Where is the outrage from elected officials? What will it take for them to oppose torture?
I’ve just reached the point where I just don’t know what to do. Earlier today I’ve been talking to a Labour party member who insists that they should carry on fighting from the inside. A good man, a well meaning man.
But he is a member of a party that has lied the nation into an unjust and unecessary war, a party that has introduced rendition, torture ansd secret prisons into the core of theit anti-terror strategy.
A party that can’t look at pictures like this and say “This Is Wrong”.
I’m sick of Labour lies and self justifications, I’m sick to the stomach of Labour Party members telling me of their hopes to ‘change from within’.
We heard these refrains in the 60’s too. “We’re burrowing from within.” “We agree with your goals but not your methods.” Well-meaning perhaps, but doomed strategies when up against thugs like the Bushies. Also, they are recipes for inaction and paralysis. “Limousine liberals,” they’re “just not there when it’s coming to a fight”, as Cream sang.
I would NEVER belong to a party that allowed torture, that bombed civillians and lied about it, that ripped up precious freedoms. Why do you feel so comfortable in such a party?
The populace in both countries oppose the wars and the tortures yet the ruling class moves steadily to the right. People in the streets is what will force the change. Don’t ask for change. Demand it.
The change will have to be root and branch. The system has to be destroyed and replaced with a ground up system based on the needs of the people not on the profit of the corpporate greed machine and its paid and bought clones.
People on the streets, yes but people informed and aware of the real need, not people asking for a more compassionate and accountable corporate greed machine and a listening state. Such beasts don’t exist.
A kinder gentler imperialism is still imperialism
And capitalism can be nothing else but capitalism and we know the nature of that beast.