Conspiracy Theories

The Geneva Convention Against Torture: Article Two, Section One “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability of any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary, 2005. Evidence to Parliamentary Select Committee.

"Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop."

Jeremy Wright, Attorney General, apology to the Belhaj family, Parliament 10 May 18.

" The UK Government believes your accounts. Neither of you should have been treated in this way.
The UK Government’s actions contributed to your detention, rendition and suffering. The UK Government shared information about you with its international partners. We should have done more to reduce the risk that you would be mistreated. We accept this was a failing on our part.
Later, during your detention in Libya, we sought information about and from you. We wrongly missed opportunities to alleviate your plight: this should not have happened.
On behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, I apologise unreservedly. We are profoundly sorry for the ordeal that you both suffered and our role in it."


So, in Jack Straw's words, there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States.

Of course Condi Rice was lying.  Everybody in the Bush administration was lying.  Most everyone in the Blair administration was lying.

In 2004 the reasons given for attacking Iraq, WMD (in itself not a legal reason), had been exposed as a lie.

  
Why would the U.S. set up an extra-legal prison (Guantanamo Bay) if not to render and torture prisoners ??  
Why would anyone think they weren’t doing it elsewhere ??  

We now know, due to the Senate Select Committee study (2014)  of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, that the US tortured prisoners to death.

We do know that one of the torturers’ overseers, who also destroyed evidence of torture, Gina Haspel is now head of the CIA.  And that former head of the CIA (and its torturers), Michael Pompeo, is now US Secretary of State.

We know that no one in the USA or the UK has been brought to book for extraordinary rendition and torture.


“The secret state ... in league with some dark forces” is Conspiracy Fact.




Kudos to the conspiracy theorists /citizen journalists who went to the airfields to note the ID numbers on the planes and examine the flight plans which led them to the conclusion that we were supporting the CIA’s rendition programme.



Jack Straw
(https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmfaff/768/5121304.htm  Q23)

Jeremy Wright
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-05-10/debates/B9AD50CD-9D54-41DA-A18B-1526E7658593/BelhajAndBoudcharLitigationUpdate

Senate Select Committee study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/senate-intelligence-committee-study-on-cia-detention-and-interrogation-program

Fears of the Semites

Lockdown 2.  I live alone, shielding, so have no conversation except with my self which, I find, only reinforces my prejudices.  I miss other people’s opinions. 

I rang an old friend.  We first met around 1980 so you can count the decades on your own  fingers.  He moved out of town in the mid ‘90’s but has kept up as a treasured friend since.

He’s just become a grandad and I figured he’d be full of news about the neonate and judgments on the Arsenal.
If only.

He opened with “What do you think about Labour ?”
“What ?”
“I’m feeling a bit nervous when I go out for a walk.”

(I’d known him for about five years when I learned he was jewish.  If that’s the word.  It was in conversation with him and his missus one day, about Israel, when she’d said “But you must’ve known we were Jews ?”  Why should I ?  It doesn’t occur to anyone to ask someone their race.  Does it ? )

“Why ?  You live in Brighton for God’s sake.  Where are you getting your news from ?    Do you only read the Guardian and watch the BBC ?”

“I read the Guardian. Did you see Nick Cohen’s piece ?”
“No.  Nick Cohen is a bag of bile.  He’s a chickenhawk neocon who probably thinks War in Iraq is still a good idea and is looking forward to Israel fighting Iran to the last dead American soldier.
Guardian M.G. employs people like Carol Cadwalladr who’s just apologised to Aaron Banks for lying about him,  and Luke Harding whose Trump /Russia Collusion fabrications collapsed under the Muller Inquiry.  And his story about Mannefort visiting Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy has been shown to be false.  It’s a disgrace the way the Graun have disowned Assange after the scoops he gave them..  Likewise the rest of the MSM.”

I gave up on the Guardian when they sawed up a couple of computer hard drives to destroy the files  Snowden have given them.  I mean, if they’d set fire to a filing cabinet full of paper files that he’d brought in a suitcase, fair enough.  But to “destroy” software by cutting up a hard drive is the gesture of an idiocracy.

“What about when that woman MP said they should transport the population of Israel to the US ?”
“You mean Naz Shah.  That isn’t what she said.  From what I could make out she copied a tweet, a joke, from the twitter feed of prominent Jewish US academic Norman Finkelstein.  It’s a poor reworking of an old joke I first heard in 1966.
How do you solve the terrible problems of the world ?  Move the population of N.Ireland to Israel and the population of Israel to N.Ireland. “

He laughed.  It’s a good joke.

“You knew things had gone awry when Corbyn didn’t say ‘Je suis Naz’. 
The year before, we’d had the bloodiest handed tyrants and mass murderers of the world parading arm in arm in the streets of Paris for the right to spout offensive shit.  David Cameron was among them.
Instead, Cameron smeared Labour and Corbyn packed her off for reprogramming.

And another thing.  Just a few years before, US VP Joe Biden had told some meeting of Jewish dignitaries that  ‘it's fair to say that Jewish heritage is American heritage.’ “

“What about that mural ?”
“There are six people sat around the table.  Which two of them are Jews ?  What about the  people whose backs are supporting the table.  How many of them are Jews ? “
“But the hooked noses.”
“Are they ?  Some people see hooked noses where they care to look.  Have they ever been to France or Italy ?  Have they never heard of a ‘roman nose’ ?
The mural is typically ‘anti capitalist’, in the cartoon style I associate with Gilbert Sheldon of Furry Freak Brothers fame.”

“What about the eye in the pyramid above it.  It’s an Illuminati symbol ?”
“It’s also to be found on every dollar bill.  You don’t think the reserve currency deserves a mention in an anti capitalist mural ?”


“You surely don’t believe that conspiracy theory that it’s a smear campaign, do you ?”
“Not every conspiracy is a theory.  Just ask Guy Fawkes, it is November.
Antisemitism is traditionally the province of the right, not the left.  (he agreed.)


You don’t feel safe.  When I walk down the street, I don’t see ‘It’s all the fault of the Jews’ sprayed on the walls.  Marks and Spencers haven’t had their windows broken.
I’d like to see some quantification please.  Margaret Hodge submitted over two hundred antisemitism complaints last year but, it turned out only 20 of them concerned members of the Labour Party..
Half of all antisemitism complaints to the Labour Party in 2019 came from one individual. “


“But it’s all about Israel isn’t it.  Israel was set up as a safe home for the Jews.  If you’re anti Israel you’re anti Zionist and you’re against the Jews”.

“Christ on a bike, which school of philosophy did you go to ?  Not all Jews are Zionists  and not all Zionists are Jews.  Fact, most Zionists aren’t Jews.  Zionism is one of the tenets of the Evangelicals and over a quarter of the population of the USA describe themselves as Evangelicals.   VP Mike Pence is one of them. 
If I criticise Mike Pence for his Zionism it doesn’t make me an antisemite, it just means I find some of his beliefs a bit daft.”


“Have you read the EHRC?”
“It’s a hundred and thirty pages long.  No.  Have you ?”
“No.”
“I’ve read a few accounts by people who have.   Your fellow Brightonian Tony Greenstein for one.  (He’d never heard of him.  No reason why he should.)
Tony Greenstein was the first Jew to be expelled from the Labour Party for antisemitism.  I’ll just say those words again in case it sounded rational.  ‘Jew expelled for antisemitism.’

A lot of the ‘antisemitism’ expulsions have been Jews.

I’ll send you some links and in the meantime you can think about why Nick Cohen, Jonathan Freedland, Owen Jones and all the other shits at the Guardian etc haven’t metioned anything like what I have.

How’s the baby ??”


Turns out the baby’s bouncing and the parents are doing well too.  :thumbsup:


And I’m beyond disgusted that the media have created in people’s minds the illusion that it isn’t safe to walk the streets.


Joe Biden  http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2013/05/biden-jewish-heritage-is-american-heritage-164525