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Sunday, January 15, 2006

I'm not arsing about here...

This relates to my post "Well i'll be dipped in dogshit" about my correspondance with my MP about the UK Govts. complicity in Uzbek torture. It strikes me that the post is a long one, you may not bother to read it all. Very simply it marshals the evidence of Craig Murray and compares it to the UN Charter against Torture (UNCAT), concluding that there are, at the very least, grounds for an investigation into possible offences committed by the UK Govt. mainly under Article 4 of UNCAT. I also go on to detail why the existing policy is almost certainly an offence under UK Criminal Law.

If i'm the only one trying to do this, i'll be ignored or somehow silenced. If many of us bring these concerns to our MP's, sooner or later, one of them will realise there is political capital to be made out of running with it and do so. I frankly don't care about the partisan aspects of this: it's far too important for that. It is imperative that the establishment get the message loud and clear that we will not stand for the abrogation of law and democracy. Otherwise who knows what they'll do next?

I've made an annotated and edited version of the letter i sent my MP available "Off The Main Page" so that you can simply copy & paste it, making minor adjustments, to fill in your and your MP's names, and remove my annotation. You can find your MP's contact details here.

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6 Comments:

Anonymous Dave Hansell said...

For what its worth the scepticism expressed in your correspondence off page is well founded.

No sycophant MP is going to rock the boat on this and I’d be surprised if anyone outside a select few would touch anything that upsets the regime in the USA.

A great deal of commentary has been forthcoming in recent times about the almost presidential powers that the current administration at No. 10 has accrued under Blair’s Prime Ministership.

Constitutionally, the parallels may not be so clear cut and the powers that Blair and No.10 have accrued morel likely reflect a peculiarly British approach to presidential style power.

On the basis of know your enemy I think the context is worth looking at. For example see the Washington Post article 9link below):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22665-2004Oct10?language=printer

Or, from the blog TomDispatch

“Last week, in an important, if somewhat overlooked, front-page piece in the Wall Street Journal ("Judge Alito's View of the Presidency: Expansive Powers"), Jess Bravin reported on a speech Sam Alito gave to the right-wing Federalist Society in 2000 in which he subscribed to the "unitary executive theory" of the presidency ("gospel," he called it) which puts its money on the supposedly unfettered powers of the President as commander-in-chief. This theory has been pushed by administration figures ranging from the Vice President and his Chief of Staff David Addington to former assistant attorney general and torture-memo writer John Yoo. As Alito put the matter in his speech: "[The Constitution] makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing." And Yoo put it even more bluntly while debating the unitary executive theory recently. In answering the question, "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" he responded, "No treaty."”



http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?mm=1&yr=2006

Regards

Dave Hansell

16/1/06 12:00  
Blogger nameis said...

Nice one edjog - have uused yoru material to my MP.

Rgds
Nameis

16/1/06 13:59  
Blogger edjog said...

Good man yourself nameistaken!

16/1/06 19:52  
Blogger edjog said...

Dave, i've replied on the main page.

17/1/06 00:11  
Anonymous some_maineiac said...

huh, "regime in the US"...almost implies a divine right to rule...my dead hero, Hunter S. Thompson called W the "goofy child-president" in his book "Kingdom of Fear" and skewered him unmercilessly in his piece "jesus hated bald pussy"...i never believed the shitbag when he said the war in Iraq wasn't about religion...it most certainly the fuck is!

17/1/06 17:13  
Blogger edjog said...

No, i think as in many cases, religion is being used as a justification, only this time subtextually. It's about what all war is about:

"War is the continuation of politics by other means."
~ Karl von Clausewitz

Although, in this case, war is both the means and the political goal because it ensures the continuation of the subjugation of the poor by the rich through 'hydraulic despotism': the control of essential resources, in this case oil. I'll be getting to the wider issues in the long one i promised in "Promises, promises..." it's still fermenting!

18/1/06 10:48  

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