Day 3330: MI5 deny cover-up of [removed for security reasons]

Friday:


Writing in this morning's Tell-lie-graph, we hear from Mr Jonathan "good" 'Eavens, the head of MFI, the British Self-Assembly Security Service, who says:

"We did not practise mistreatment or torture then and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf."

Perhaps not. But we DID try to COVER IT UP.

It's, surely, UNDENIABLE that the Government DID go to Court to try to prevent the publication of the secret US documents which reveal that the treatment of British resident Mr Binyam Mohamed had been "CRUEL, INHUMAN and DEGRADING".

Nor can you DENY that the Government APPEALED against the High Court's decision to allow publication.

And it certainly looks pretty convincing that – allegedly –the Government had its lawyer try to lean on the Master of the Rolls to be a bit more, er, circumspect in his references to You Know Who.

With their fluffy foot forced, the Foreign Office have released the documents in question on their website and the crucial paragraph reads:

x. The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972. Although it is not necessary for us to categorise the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities.

So, quite clearly, the treatment of Mr Binyam was ILLEGAL in Great Britain. And it was ILLEGAL in Americaland. And we KNEW about it. And we TRIED TO STOP anyone else knowing that we knew about it.

What part of "covering up torture" have I missed here?


And yet Mr "good" 'Eavens says that a cover up is "the exact opposite of the truth". Which is, presumably, something he would know about. He says:

"The material our critics are drawing on to attack us is taken from our own records, not prised from us by some external process but willingly provided by us to the court, in the normal way"

Apart from, obviously, the whole going to court to prise the documents out of you, obviously. And:

Likewise, we co-operate willingly with the Intelligence and Security Committee so that it can fulfil its oversight role.

Ahh yes, the Intelligence and Security Committee… the Chair of the Committee, Hard Labour's Agent Kim "Philby" Howells huffed and puffed and tried to say that the published documents somehow "don't count" because they've not yet been proved in a Court of Law. Well if the CIA's OWN opinion that it was torturing someone doesn't count, I don't quite know what standard of proof will be good enough for you!

And both Mr Philby and Mr 'Eavens fall back on the old " Appeal to Fear" fallacy: Terrorism is very scary. You must let us do whatever we like because terrorism is very scary.

Mr 'Eavens opens his letter with a reminder of "…the backdrop of the current severe terrorist threat to this country" and concluded with the threat that "…our enemies will also seek to use all tools at their disposal to attack us" threatens. And Mr Philby begins his defence with talk of "Islamist suicide bombers and other murderous terrorists".

The terrorist threat is "very real" said Mr Philby at one point. Well no, actually. The WHOLE POINT of "terrorism" is that MOST of the threat is VERY IMAGINARY. The terrorists want to control MILLIONS of people by just harming (very violently) a few people; everyone else imagines that the threat might be to them personally too and react through terror. That's why it's called "terrorism".

It's basically: This thing we do is very scary. You must let us do whatever we like because thing we do is very scary.

Hang on; that sounds FAMILIAR…


The terrorist threat to Great Britain is PATHETIC. Motorists kill more people in Britain in a WEEK than al Qaeda have managed in a DECADE! SNOW, for goodness sake, SNOW has done more to paralyse London transport than the bombers could manage. They couldn't even ram-raid an airport without setting themselves on fire! Is it REALLY that the Spooks are so jolly brilliant that they've thwarted all the really dangerous attacks, or is it just remotely possible that the enemy we are facing is a bunch of poorly organised, badly financed, ill-equipped, not-terribly-bright malcontents without much of a plan or even idea of what they want to do? Basically, aren’t our enemies a bit RUBBISH?

We don't need "Special Powers" and "Section 44 Orders" to defeat this lot. We don't need the police forcing tourists to delete their holiday snaps. We don't need people being arrested for bad taste jokes on Twitter!

What we need is to show them we're BRITISH (dammit!).

The BRAVE response to the so-called "terror crisis" would be to REDUCE the powers of the police, increase freedom and say to them "look, we reject your ways of fear, we have nothing to be afraid of, and besides, your mother smells of ELDERBERRIES!"


It's about time that we stood up to these COWARDS and BULLIES – terrorists or Government, take your pick – and told them to just GET STUFFED.

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