Politics in the Zeros

The chameleon, Colin Powell, is now opposing the Grand Inquisitor plans of Bush to allow more torture and have those doing it be exempt from prosecution. While it’s always nice to see serious schisms emerge among Republicans, Powell has always reminded me of the Dylan lyric “You just want to be on the side that’s winning.”

This is the same Colin Powell who covered up the My Lai atrocities and torture during the Vietnam War, and who indeed, always manages to emerge from the shadows to back whatever faction seems ascendant at the moment. That he is opposing torture is of course good. That Congress is actually debating whether to allow more of it simply demonstrates the degeneracy and moral emptiness of those involved.

Besides, Powell isn’t opposed to torture per se. As the article explains, he just thinks it makes the US look bad.

That’s Lord Falconer, the highest ranking British legal official, on the Guantamano prison camp.

EU demands to know location of CIA prisons

Bush admits CIA had secret prisons

But he says no one was tortured. As always, one needs to cut through the fog of neocon lies and evasions to get to the truth. First off, Bush says the hideous treatment of detainees at Guantanamo isn’t torture because he defines torture as something only evildoers do. As with Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, words only mean what he wants them to mean. Until he changes the meaning, of course. Without letting anyone know. Some might call this delusional.

Also, and even more brutally, torture has absolutely happened at prisons the CIA has shipped people to. In Uzbekistan, immersion in boiling water in a favored method. The Bush spin is obvious. Golly, they weren’t “CIA prisons”, now were they?

The British authorities are threatening legal action against Craig Murray due to his new book, Murder in Samarkland, which details the US/British policy of sending prisoners to Uzbekistan to be tortured.

They blocked him from putting some of his documenting evidence into the book so he put them online. Now they want those gone too based on a bizarre legal strategy, not saying the document are classified, but that they belong to the crown and thus are copyrighted. Sounds bogus, doesn’t it?

I guess they don’t know the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

From the comments to our post on the release of the book.

Please note that the British government is taking legal action against Murray for having published these documents. See my blog [Leninology] for the letter and e-mail exchange with the government’s solicitor. International blogs should face no legal difficulties in *mirroring* the documents from Murray’s site and putting them up for general view, of course.

BlairWatch is mirroring the files, and has continuing updates, as of course does Craig Murray. They are still on British servers, but may not be much longer.

Polizeros now has a mirror of the documents (12.8 mb download).

The more sites that mirror the files, the better. Bloggers, start your downloads.

[tags]Craig Murray, Murder in Samarkland[/tags]

As Britain’s outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.

He was fired for his trouble, after exposing the US/British policy of sending prisoners there to be tortured, sometimes by immersion in boiling water. After months of legal battles his book, Murder in Samarkland, has been published.

Murder in Samarkand has finally been released after ten months in legal limbo. Amazon is posting it out today. Bookshops are still a bit wary of taking it into stock as we wait to see if the FCO carries out its threat to take legal action once published.

More from Lenin’s Tomb, an advance reader of the book, who notes that parts of the documentation are only available online.

Even though many of these documents were secured for release under the Freedom of Information Act, the government argues that they remain the property of the Crown and may not be published: hence, the publisher could not include them for fear of prosecution. Still, the internet is a wonderful invention…

[tags]Craig Murray[/tags]

Court curbs Bush power, fans Guantanamo debate

By declaring the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals illegal, the U.S. Supreme Court put fresh curbs on President George W. Bush’s powers in the war on terrorism and gave ammunition to those demanding the prison be closed.

Rumors that Cheney said “this shows the Supreme Court loves the terrorists and hates freedom” are as yet unconfirmed.

“Flying to select torture chambers around the world”

Air Torture is the premiere airline transporting detainees to select torture chambers around the world. Organizations such as Amnesty International like to call our business “outsourcing torture” because we deliver all our customers to countries where torture is routinely practiced – but our partners at the U.S. government have come up with a much better name: “extraordinary rendition.”

Thanks to the Bush Administration, the “war on terror” has been a big boon to our business. All flights are fully funded by unsuspecting taxpayers in the United States.

Bosnia and Herzegovina formally has acknowledged to the Council of Europe that it allowed US forces to seize six Algerian-born men and transfer them to Guantanamo even after a local court acquitted them due to lack of evidence.

The order came from Rumsfeld