Showing posts with label terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terror. Show all posts

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Dear FBI...

The Longrider has utterly fisked this bleating arsewipe from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, sent to Scottish Minister Kenny MacAskill regarding the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

But your humble Devil would like to add a few words...
Dear Robert S Mueller, III,

You mention that you were complicit in the Lockerbie bombing invesgtigation.
Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.

Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law, having been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991.

Your piss-poor whining does not alter the fact that you know as well as I do that the entire investigation was a farce. You will know, as I do, that the investigation—which was, at the time, pointing towards Syrian terrorist with links to Iran—was suspended during the first Gulf War. And you will know the reasons for this, whilst I can only guess (pretty fucking accurately).

You will also know that crucial evidence—including parts of the bomb itself—went "missing" in this intervening period of suspension.

You will also know that the course of the case was dictated by spooks—your men in the FBI, who were with the prosecutors in court but not mentioned in the court papers—who dictated the availability of evidence, redacted crucial parts of documents and generally lied.

If you do not know any of this, might I point you to the report of Dr Hans Kochler, the UN observer, who laid all of this out in plain English?
Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law.

Why don't you shut the fuck up about the rule of law? You—you thrice-cursed shitstain—know damn well that the only thing that makes a mockery of the rule of law is the trial of this man.

You know damn fucking well that there is not a single shred of evidence to convict him: you know damn well that he is, in fact, innocent.

Your attitude is disgusting—you and the US administration knowingly imprisoned an innocent man because it was politically expedient to do so. And our government, to its eternal shame, was complicit in an act of disgusting US dishonesty—not for the first (or last) time.
Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world...

Oh really?

Tell me, you fuck: which country sent millions of pounds to the IRA when they were busy blowing up innocent men, women and children in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland?

Oh, yeah: that was you fucks, wasn't it? Got to help the mother country, eh? Who cares that they are terrorists? Who cares that they are ruining innocent lives, eh? As long as good old Oirland can hold her head high? After all, we're still waiting for you to put the IRA on your list of terrorist organisations.

So don't talk to us about giving "comfort to terrorists around the world", you fucking little shit.

Oh, and while we are about it, let's look at an Iranian motive for blowing up Pan-Am Flight 103, shall we? Many have claimed that this atrocity was in response to the USS Vincennes' 1988 shooting down of Iranian Flight 655—a civilian passenger plane—which killed all 290 passengers.

Whilst we are discussing giving "comfort to terrorists", Bob (can I call you "Bob"? Cheers), let's see what the US government's reaction to that was, shall we?
The men of the Vincennes were all awarded Combat Action Ribbons for completion of their tours in a combat zone. Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, received the Navy Commendation Medal, often given for acts of heroism or meritorious service, but a not-uncommon end-of-tour medal for a second tour division officer. According to the History Channel, the medal citation noted his ability to "quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure."
...

In 1990, Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989." The award was given for his service as the Commanding Officer of the Vincennes, and the citation made no mention of the downing of Iran Air 655.

Oh, yeah: you gave them medals. Nice one, Bob: that was extremely appropriate.

So, I don't normally comment on the pig-ignorant witterings of FBI agents but, in this case, I shall make an exception, because I know damn well that you know all of the above.

So, my duly considered response is this: shut the fuck up, you cunt.

Regards,

DK

Oh, and just in case Bob should read this, I would just like to add this: fuck you too, you dishonest little shit. Go fuck yourself.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Lockerbie non-bomber to be released

It seems that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, is to be released on compassionate grounds.
The Lockerbie bomber is to be released on compassionate grounds, the Scottish Government has announced.

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, was jailed in 2001 for the atrocity which claimed 270 lives in 1988.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill revealed that the Libyan, who has terminal prostate cancer, would be allowed to return to his homeland.

The US Government said it "deeply regretted" the Scottish Government's decision to release Megrahi.

The only reason that the US Government regrets it is that they are shit-scared that al-Megrahi might reveal what a fucking stitch-up his trial was.

Still, this development will make Shane Greer very unhappy.
No really, shocking though it is, I can confirm that I agree with Hillary Clinton (about something at least): Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, should not be released from prison or transferred to Libya to serve out his prison term at home.

To listen to the commentary at the moment you’d think the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, had a tough decision in front of him. Really? I mean, it looks pretty simple to me: a man convicted (only eight years ago) of killing 270 people would like to be released from prison because he’s ill. Solution: tough luck, you were convicted of killing 270 people.

How many of the people who were aboard Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 have been able to go home to see their families? Oh yeah, none.

Well, might I suggest, Shane, that instead of taking this shit at face value, you go and do some research into the evidence—or lack of it—and the conduct of the trial—which was condemned by independent UN observer as bringing "the entire Scottish legal system into disrepute".

There is, you see, a very simple reason why al-Megrahi should be released:

HE DIDN'T FUCKING DO IT.

Our government know that this man is innocent; the US government knows that this man is innocent; and the Libyan government knows it too. It is pretty certain that the Iranian government—which, entirely coincidentally, had a passenger airliner shot down by an American warship shortly before the Lockerbie bombing—also knows this.

I wrote about this some years ago, when I was just starting this blogging lark...
The excellent Private Eye special report written by the late Paul Foot, Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice highlights the considerable evidence for [Iran being responsible for the Lockerbie bombing] at the time.

Around the time of the first Gulf War, when we needed the Iranians onside, all investigations into the Lockerbie affair were quietly dropped. When they resumed after the war, it was found that several incriminating bits of evidence had been "misplaced".

Two things about the affair are certain: firstly, the man who is currently serving 27 years in a Scottish prison did not do it. Secondly, the politicians who organised, and the spooks who were present at, the trial (which was described by the UN observer, a Chilean professor whose report was printed in full in the Eye report, as having brought "the entire Scottish legal system into disrepute") know that he did not do it.

Libya agreed to go along with the whole thing because it would get them back onto the USA's trading list: that was the deal. And when you consider the amount that Libya could get out of trading with the US, the £6 billion compensation to the victims is a paltry sum.

The full report of another observer, Dr Hans Kochler, can be found online, but here are some broad points that he raises.
  1. It was a consistent pattern during the whole trial that — as an apparent result of political interests and considerations — efforts were undertaken to withhold substantial information from the Court.
    ...

    By not having pursued thoroughly and carefully an alternative theory, the Court seems to have accepted that the whole legal process was seriously flawed in regard to the requirements of objectivity and due process.

  2. As a result of this situation, the undersigned has reached the conclusion that foreign governments or (secret) governmental agencies may have been allowed, albeit indirectly, to determine, to a considerable extent, which evidence was made available to the Court.

...
  1. A general pattern of the trial consisted in the fact that virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility to a very high extent, in certain cases even having openly lied to the Court.

...
  1. Furthermore, the Opinion of the Court seems to be inconsistent in a basic respect: while the first accused was found “guilty”, the second accused was found “not guilty”. It is to be noted that the judgement, in the latter’s case, was not “not proven”, but “not guilty”. This is totally incomprehensible for any rational observer when one considers that the indictment in its very essence was based on the joint action of the two accused in Malta.

  2. The Opinion of the Court is exclusively based on circumstantial evidence and on a series of highly problematic inferences. As to the undersigned’s knowledge, there is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime.
    ...

  3. This leads the undersigned to the suspicion that political considerations may have been overriding a strictly judicial evaluation of the case and thus may have adversely affected the outcome of the trial. This may have a profound impact on the evaluation of the professional reputation and integrity of the panel of three Scottish judges.
    ...

  4. In the above context, the undersigned has reached the general conclusion that the outcome of the trial may well have been determined by political considerations and may to a considerable extent have been the result of more or less openly exercised influence from the part of actors outside the judicial framework — facts which are not compatible with the basic principle of the division of powers and with the independence of the judiciary, and which put in jeopardy the very rule of law and the confidence citizens must have in the legitimacy of state power and the functioning of the state’s organs - whether on the traditional national level or in the framework of international justice as it is gradually being established through the United Nations Organization.

  5. On the basis of the above observations and evaluation, the undersigned has — to his great dismay — reached the conclusion that the trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner. Indeed, there are many more questions and doubts at the end of the trial than there were at its beginning.

So, having quite deliberately made al-Megrahi a scapegoat for political power-broking—and imprisoned him not only as a sop to the families but also to stop people asking awkward questions—I think that the least that we can do is let the poor bastard go home to die, if he wants to.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if al-Megrahi conveniently pegged out long before he leaves these shores...

Monday, June 29, 2009

Gordon Brown + Ed Balls = bankruptcy

Ed Balls: "I'm gonna get mediaeval on yo' ass. Oh no, wait.. That's wrong. What I meant to say was: 'by the time that we've finished with the economy, you'll know what it was like to live in mediaeval times'."

Seriously, is Gordon Brown living in some kind of fucking fantasy world?
Gordon Brown is to reject warnings about the scale of the public debt and press on with high levels of spending through the recession, according to the Prime Minister's closest [surely that should be "only"?—Ed.] ally Ed Balls.

What the hell? For fuck's sake, can't some Civil Servant go over there with a bloody abacus and do some simple sums for the Gobblin' King? Y'know, and illustrate that we cannot fucking afford this!
Mr Brown's determination to boost spending on frontline services will be underlined with the launch of his much vaunted national plan for public services on Monday.

His Building Britain's Future document includes a number of proposals which will require significant Government spending.

Fucking hellski...
This will include the announcements of new funding for social housing and the recruitment of 100,000 personal tutors as part of an education White Paper.

Personal fucking tutors? I though that the education system under NuLabour was the best in the known world—what the hell do you need personal tutors for? Unless, of course, you have bollocksed up the education system which then begs the question—why the bloody hell do you think you'll be able to run a system of personal tutors, using yet more money that we don't have?
Mr Balls, the Children's Secretary, has defied suggestions from Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, that immediate action was required to check the levels of public borrowing.

Because, obviously, journo-turned-wonk Ed Balls—a creepy and undistinguished minister in the most financially profligate government in British history—is in a far better position to judge economic policy than the Governor of the Bank of England, eh?
He indicated increased spending on front line services such as schools and hospitals, and hinted for the first time that the police may also be protected from the cuts.

Yeah, well, once the people of this country wake up to the enormity of the fuck-up that you have delivered to them and their children (and probably their grandchildren), you are going to need the police on your side, aren't you?
The disclosure that ministers have little intention of reigning back on spending in the short term came as the Centre for Economics and Business Research warned that public spending was set to rise to 50 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of the next financial year.

How many different ways can I possibly say this: we cannot sustain this level of spending! No country can operate for any length of time when the government is spending more than half of the economic output!

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck fuck-fuck.
Alistair Darling, who narrowly avoided being replaced as Chancellor by Mr Balls in this month's reshuffle, was said to be planning to shield the true condition of the economy from the public in the run-up to the election by cancelling the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Treasury's biennial economic report card.

The last CSR was in 2007, but Mr Darling is said to feel that detailed forward-planning on the economy was impossible while the full impact and extent of the recession remained unclear. It is expected this will be after the next general election.

Oh. My. God. I... I... Just what the bloody hell is going on? How can these people possibly carry on spending at this rate when they know that they—we—don't have the money to pay for it?

Fucking hellski: we really are totally bastard screwed. Because Gordon Brown is living in a fucking fantasy world where al of this is somehow possible.

Fuck.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Change you can believe in...

I picked this up on Twitter, and it seems to be pretty fresh—here's the Washington Post.
White House Is Drafting Executive Order to Allow Indefinite Detention of Terror Suspects

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war.

Now, ain't that change you can believe in, eh?

Fucking hellski: I knew this clown was going to be a fucking disaster, but Obama really is exceeding my expectations in terms of total, uncompromising fuck-wittery...


Yep: that's how you save the world, Barack: by imprisoning people without trial for just as long as you fucking please.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: fuck. Ing. Hell. Ski.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition in Britain

It has not escaped your humble Devil's notice that our government has been happily locking people up with absolutely no justification whatsoever: I hadn't realised that these people were still locked up.
Up to 20 men regarded as Britain’s most dangerous terror suspects can challenge their detention after Britain’s highest court ruled that three of them had been denied a fair trial.

And yet the most dangerous cunt in Britain is still resident in Number 10 Downing Street, and allowed to go about his business of fucking everyone up the arse without suffering any material repercussions.
The men, who have been held under virtual house arrest under the Government’s control order regime, won the unanimous backing of a panel of nine law lords, on the grounds that the suspects did not know what they were accused of or what evidence was being used against them.

The judgment, hailed by human rights groups, means that other suspects who have not been given sufficient evidence to enable them to defend themselves can now challenge the control orders in court. One of the panel, Lord Hope of Craighead, said: “If the rule of law is to mean anything, it is in cases such as these that the court must stand by principle. It must insist that the person affected be told what is alleged against him.”

The ruling prompted calls for the scrapping of control orders, which restrict suspects’ movements on the basis of secret hearings without charge or a trial, and the acceptance instead of evidence based on intercepts, which is currently inadmissible in court.

Now, one might argue—as, for instance, David Davis does—that intercept evidence should be allowed in court (provided that those intercepts have been approved by the courts in the first place) but laying that aside for a moment, let me spell out what the government has been doing here.

The government has been locking people away without telling them what they are accused of, who has accused them and what evidence there is against said people; needless to say, they have not been given a fair trial.

What this amounts to is the bastard government locking people up because the government bloody well says that they are bad men.

As Leg-Iron says, this is very reminiscent of at least one other organisation in history.
If you were denounced to the Inquisition, you were arrested. No evidence was presented because there was no trial. You had no idea who had denounced you or why. You were not told what you were accused of. You were kept until the Inquisition decided what to do with you and once arrested, you were guilty. If you were lucky, they might let you off with a minor penance but then they might never let you go, or maybe they'd get a confession from you and then burn you as a heretic.

With no accusation it was impossible to defend yourself - how can you defend against a charge unless you know what you're charged with? Since no evidence was put before you, you could not even guess at what the charge might be. All you knew was that you had been deemed guilty of something.

That was five hundred years ago. It's still happening now.

Our government are not 'using methods reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition'. They are using exactly the methods employed by the Spanish Inquisition.

And we all know what a freedom-loving organisation the Spanish Inquisition was, eh? What a bastion of justice it was, what a paragon of virtue.

This is Britain in the twenty-first century: no personal hovercars, no neural nets, no peace, love and harmony, no liberal utopia. No, what we have is a government resorting to the tactics of a five hundred year old terror organisation.

Thanks a fucking bunch, NuLabour, you bunch of Satan's cock-sucking fuckarses.

Of course, the bastarding fucking government could not have done any of this without the collusion of the arseholes in the mainstream media; this opinion piece in the Telegraph—written by some authoritarian shitstained weasel named Alasdair Palmer—is an example of said complicity.
How, then, should the Government protect us from the threat posed by the men it suspects of being terrorists? Their lordships did not say. As one of them put it: "The Government has a responsibility for the protection of the lives and wellbeing of those who live in this country… The duty of the courts, however, is not a duty to protect the lives of citizens. It is a duty to apply the law." Even if applying the law puts the public in danger? Yes: especially if it puts the public in danger.

What. The. Fuck? The law is the law is the law: it applies—or should apply—to everyone, regardless of rank. And given that the law is there to protect the freedoms of the citizen from the depredations of the state, it most certainly must apply to the government.

Wherefore comes this bollocks about how the law must be enforced "especially if it puts the public in danger", Alasdair, you fucking cunt?
This is nuts. The role of the law is to promote the wellbeing of citizens, not to threaten it. Something has gone badly wrong when judges decide that it is more important to preserve the legal principle that everyone accused of a crime should have full access to the evidence against them than it is to prevent a major terrorist attack. Can anyone seriously maintain that stopping mass murder is less important than violating that legal principle?

Yes, I can and do. But I can hardly put it more eloquently than Robert Bolt did in 1954...
"What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ... And when the law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

"This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down—and you're just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

I have no doubt that Alasdair Palmer, cuntface extraordinaire, would argue that these people are locked away for "safety's sake", but that is because Alasdair Palmer is obviously a stupid cunt who is utterly ignorant of even recent history.

Perhaps I should let Timmy spell it out...
But plain and simple, must people be tried fairly, with the evidence against them presented so that they can argue against it, whatever they are accused of, whether it be to ricin the entire water supply of London, fiddle with kiddies or cough up the supposed proceeds of a life of crime?

Must that fair trial include all of the historic twiddles that the modern world so derides? Habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence, the right to silence, the revelation of evidence, the right to question accusers and witnesses……?

Yes, it must. For the alternative, the dropping of any of those barriers painfully (if not by design, rather through a combination of whimsy and hard won experience) built over the centuries, is a system in which any one of us can be put away, stripped of our property, our freedom, our very liberty to be at large in this country, simply by the powers that be declaring that we’re a bad ‘un.

It would be a world in which Harriet Harman, Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, please do add your horror list here, would be able to shuffle whoever they liked off into a twilight world of near non-existence.

And the terrors of that are a great deal worse than a tube train or three blown up of a morning. I realise that those blown up, those who lost those blown up, might not agree, but that is indeed my argument.

There is a tension between the physical safety of some fraction of us, those who might be killed or maimed by those that a just system does not jail or restrain, even if they are bad ‘uns but we cannot prove it, and the liberty and freedom of us all. And in weighing that balance the liberty of 60 million outweighs the corporeal beings of 50 people.

As Timmy points out, this may be a harsh calculation. However, as he also points out, let us look at the regimes that have abandoned the rule of law or simply ignored it—especially where the agent has been the government.

Surely the suffering and deaths caused by those regimes have vastly outweighed any possible terrorist atrocities? Yes, terrorists killed 3,000 or so in the World trade Centre, but that pales in comparison to the 30,000,000 or more that Stalin killed, does it not? 50 people were killed on 7/7 in this country but, compared to the systematic extermination of 6,000,000 Jews, that is rather small fry.

The laws are there to protect everyone—every single person—in this country; the laws are there to protect us from each other, yes, but most of all from the state.

Now, I am sure that Alasdair Palmer believes that these breaches of the law won't apply to him. Alasdair is, I would imagine, a nice, middle-class gentleman of good habits who doesn't have even the faintest shade of brown in his skin. But, as I opined some time ago, creating and maintaining these divides is precisely what this government does best.
And so people get angry and demand solutions, they demand concessions for their own particular group and guess what?—the state can help you, friend, for the state is the friend of everyone. The state is the righter of all wrongs, the great arbiter, the generous donor of largesse. And as each group is appeased so the jealousy and resentment of the others are inflamed and they demand special treatment for themselves and more shoddy treatment for "those others".

And so it is that the government have been able to put through some disgusting laws, by aiming them at groups that the other groups dislike. 42 days detention without trial?—well, it'll only apply to terrorists, and they're all Muslims or at the very least darkies, eh?

The scrapping of double jeopardy, habeas corpus and trial by jury?—well, that'll only apply to the eeevil criminals (no matter that they have yet to be proven such). Oh, and the darkies, of course. And the poor.

The confiscation of your assets before you are even found guilty, or reversing the burden of proof for the confiscation of assets? Well, that'll only apply to drugdealers and the like.

And none of these people are really human, are they? Not like me.

And that's how they get us; that's how they pass those laws. And, they say that they won't use them except in the most exceptional circumstances, and only against those people who aren't really human.

Except that, by the time that the laws have passed and everyone has forgotten about them, suddenly you find that they are not quite so exclusive as you might have thought—that they might, in fact, be used against you and not just against those nasty, inhuman drug-dealers.

I am sure that darling Alasdair cannot imagine that such laws would ever be used against a nice chap like himself; on the other hand, perhaps Alasdair would like to take a look at what tends to happen to journalists under authoritarian regimes and amend his stupid, thick, uninformed and fucking naive opinions.

What's that, Alasdair? That would never happen here? Really? Is there something in our genes that stops us from being like Germany, or Russia, or Cuba, or China, or Cambodia, or Greece, or Spain, or Italy? I don't think so, sunshine.

What has kept us (generally) safe from similar authoritarian dictatorships is the rule of law: it is precisely because we do not let our state lock people up on little more than a whim that we have continued to enjoy a democracy.

Believe me, Alasdair: there are a few laws that I would like to suspend if ever I met you, but it is as well for you that I cannot. Do you see, you pig-ignorant, dangerous, authoritarian shitbag? Do you fucking get it yet?

Let us fucking well hope so, but I doubt it: no one who could think in any critical way is, it appears, likely to be a journalist—and they certainly would not have written that article.

So fuck you, Alasdair: fuck you right in the cock.