I'm feeling exhausted and frightened

This entry was posted on
Monday, February 20th, 2006 at
9:28 am and is filed
under The War on Stupid.

Independent – I invented story about Berlusconi bribe, claims Jowell’s husband: David Mills, the husband of the Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, was last night facing a deepening crisis over allegations that he received a bribe from Silvio Berlusconi… Mr Mills claimed that he wrote the letter when he was working for an Italian client, whom he named yesterday, for the first time, as Diego Attanasio. Mr Mills said he wrote it because he wanted to invest $600,000 for Mr Attanasio without identifying him. He was horrified to learn subsequently that the letter to his accountants was in the hands of the Italian police, who accuse Mr Mills of being paid to give false evidence in court for Mr Berlusconi. The letter resulted in him undergoing a 10-hour interrogation, at the end of which he signed a confession which he said yesterday was false, insisting that he had signed it when he was “exhausted and frankly frightened”. The signed statement said that he “protected Berlusconi in various trials and investigations”.

Poor Mr Mills. Imagine being forced to sit in a chair and answer questions for hours on end, and then – when the true story becomes clear – to have to face politically-motivated claims that he is lawyer and former politician and therefore a ‘trained liar’.

Craig Murray – UK police arrest stars of award-winning film “The Road to Guantanamo” under the Prevention of Terrorism Act: Citing the “Prevention of Terrorism” act, British Police have arrested and interrogated three of the stars of the award-winning film The Road to Guantanamo, together with the three ex-Guantanamo detainees on whose story the film is based.

Oh, come now. Surely as former inmates of Guantanamo Bay, these men have to be guilty of something… and the actors who portray them are equally guilty; if not for glorifying terrorism (the men they portray must have been in Guantanamo for a reason, remember) then surely purely by association. One only has to stand next to a suspected terrorist or an outspoken cleric to become part of the al Qaeda network, you know.

What’s that you say? Torture without trial in the what now?

Independent – Shameful: This is the world’s view on Guantanamo. But Tony Blair still calls it ‘an anomaly’: A UN report condemns ‘torture’ at the detention camp. But, like other revelations in the ‘war on terror’, the reaction is to deplore the publicity and ignore the brutality…. The Bush administration has called the detainees “terrorists” and “trained liars”, and stressed that the committee’s members had not been to Guantanamo, without adding the reason: the panel refused to visit the camp because they were barred from speaking to detainees. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, said the call by the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, for the closure of the facility was “just flat wrong”.

Oh, get serious. This is the UN we’re talking about here. They have done nothing but stand in the way of peace for decades now. As you may recall, they dared to sabotage the invasion of Iraq (that did so much to combat the spread of terrorism) and now they want to shut down a system that – one day soon – is sure to level charges against (and stage trials for) the guilty parties involved.

Claims of torture and brutality can easily be dismissed by that nice Mr Rumsfeld: Mr Rumsfeld also said that terrorists are trained to lie about their treatment while in custody. “They do it consistently and it always works,” he said.

Liberal lefties and communists only make things worse by publishing images that have no bearing on current events (because, as we all know, this matter was dealt with years ago). As John Bellinger of the U.S. state department notes; this is “an invasion of the detainees themselves”…

For shame, liberal lefties. For shame…

Bloggerheads – Jack Straw, Tony Blair, and the ‘truth’ about torture

Bloggerheads – Too many bystanders

Bloggerheads – The now very real prospect of house arrest at the order of Mr Rupert Murdoch

BBC – Timeline: Guantanamo Bay Britons

Bloggerheads – 10 March 2004 (commenting on the release of Tarek Dergoul, Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed, and Asif Iqbal).

The Road to Guantanamo will air on Channel 4 on 9 March 2006 (the 2nd anniversary of their return to the UK).

UPDATE – How about that? Rendition flights DO pass through the UK…

UPDATE – Mark Grimmer – Guantanamo Film Stars Detained in Luton: She said they need to stop us and the Tipton boys as anyone with “terror links” must be questioned – not that I had any necessarily, she said. I added that the Tipton Three didn’t either, as is widely documented. She then asked to go through the contents of my wallet. I felt uncomfortable about the ambiguities in the purpose of the detention and this proposed search, and so asked to speak to a lawyer. I was denied access to legal advice, supposedly officially, under powers used to detain me. However the specific powers under which I was being held were deliberately made unclear by the detaining Special Branch officer… While searching through my wallet she asked me whether I intended to do more documentary films, specifically more political ones like The Road to Guantanamo. She asked “Did you become an actor mainly to do films like this, you know, to publicise the struggles of Muslims?”. She also asked me what my political views were, what I thought about “the Iraq war and everything else that was going on”, whether the Iraq war was “right” in my view.

UPDATE – eclectech : the guantanamo bay song